-- well she might as well get a start on this now.

She shifts back into the Other Side and... gets to it. Time, to her, doesn't hold any real meaning. She exists, sometimes on the edge of an abyss, and lives. Alone, surrounded by shadows, she reads her books and learns and paints and tends to her new plants. She can't practice the language with anyone, but she makes good progress. She supposes she should have brought somebody with her, but the appeal of just being alone and -- being here in her world without that growing revulsion when other people were here with her. Ideal.

The plants struggle. They're almost wilted; many grow in with stems and leaves twisted and thorny. They look angry, and seem to move when Juliet's not looking.

She tries singing to them in her Other language while she tends them.

Some of them wither. A few grow steadily more ominous; one develops shimmery black leaves like looking into the uncaring void. One tries to bite her.

Adorable.

...she lets it bite her.

Its teeth are more soft spines, so it doesn't particularly hurt. The mouth closes like a vise around her finger, tiny hairs tickling her.

If a plant could look disappointed at the inedibility of its food, this one would.

She laughs and pets it.

Then starts adding a little bit of her blood to the solution when she waters it.

It flourishes, and develops an ominous sheen that shifts whenever she looks at it. The tooth-spines grow sharper and sturdier, the mobility higher, and the whispers seem to congregate around it.

She loves it and calls it Audrey. It seems very appropriate.

Eventually she comes to the end of her books. She also needs to actually speak and interact with the new language to progress. .So she gathers up all the things she brought over with her, plants, journals and paintings, and shifts back.

She's met after a short time, Orochimaru appearing at her door. "Everything to your liking?" he writes and says.

"Everything was great," she says with a strange accent. "Audrey is adorable and hungers for blood."

She presents to him her carnivorous plant-child.

He puts his finger in biting range because the one time he waved vaguely at the concept of caution he decided it wasn't for him.

Audrey promptly chomps his finger, breaking the skin, and steadily applying more pressure.

Awwww! What an adorable plant! Reminds him of some of his snakes.

(He... Probably isn't cooing. He does try experimentally feeding the plant a small trickle of chakra, which causes Audrey to sort of shiver and then look more.)

She smiles.

"So she was an unmitigated success."

"You've advanced well with the language, too," he comments off handedly, apparently now playing with Audrey. Mostly by slowly creeping a finger into biting range then yanking it back. (She needs to learn how to lie in wait before ambushing her dinner, after all.)

"I had nobody to talk to, but I'm good with languages. If you have someone I can practice with?"

"We can practice while you summarize the experiments, or I can assign you someone, yes. Do you care about certain personality traits?"

"How about both. I don't really have any idea about the sorts of people I get along with. It's been a while."

"A variety of conversation partners will likely help as well."

"Point."

She goes on to explain everything she did with the plants, in great detail, and hands him her journals detailing them as well.

He asks insightful questions and idly helps with grammar, pronunciation, and word choice when needed.

Eventually; "How did I do?"

She isn't asking for feedback because she's eager to please him. Nope. Not at all.

"Fairly well." And here's some suggestions on improving the process, a positive comment on something she thought of that he hadn't, and suggestions for Further Research.

She smiles and writes everything down.

"I wonder if this levels me up in villain-ness. I wasn't a very good villain before, I mostly spent my time breaking into places and stealing things. Sub-par villainy."

Technically, she was classified as a rogue. But her family connections made her sometimes shafted in with the villains. It was actually kind of annoying.