\u201cI didn\u2019t want to kill you at first,\u201d Maria says. \u201cIsn\u2019t that funny? It took having to hunt down and slaughter four kids that I\u2019ve practically raised up from nothing \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been three months,\u201d Tom says.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2014 to realize that it\u2019s not my targets that I\u2019ve been fighting. It\u2019s been me<\/i>, all along. It\u2019s been that part of me that doesn\u2019t want to be an assassin, that just wants to be an ordinary space princess and not <\/i>gun down a series of lovable scamps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jane sneaks up. She pats Maria\u2019s arm. \u201cI hear you,\u201d she says. She sneaks back away.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut,\u201d says Maria, after a momentary pause, \u201conce I knew that \u2014 once I knew that the only person I was really fighting was myself \u2014 I was able to move beyond it. I think. So you\u2019re going to come in here, because you have to. It\u2019s your one . . . slim . . . chance. And then I\u2019m going to charge up my space gun and I\u2019m going to shoot you, and you\u2019re going to be dead, and I will have a 4\/27 assassination success rate at last.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to kill you at first,\u201d Maria says. \u201cIsn\u2019t that funny? It took having to hunt down and slaughter four kids that I\u2019ve practically raised up from nothing \u2014\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s been three months,\u201d Tom says. \u201c\u2014 to realize that it\u2019s not my targets that I\u2019ve been fighting. It\u2019s been me, all along. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-3943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-4","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Maria-Chained.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3943"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6339,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3943\/revisions\/6339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3943"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=3943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}