I'm crazy, which most people tell me, and because of it, I feel like there aren't many things I hate. I will admit to disliking tomatoes. There's just something about the way they look at me, okay? I can tell the tomatoes are filled with malice, but the malice is only ever aimed at me. It's probably because of that time I crashed the market value of tomatoes, but that's a story for a different day. 

So why am I bringing up my ability to not hate things? Because I hate sand, and I'm currently surrounded by it. It was just a normal day. I was playing some chess with Mel while having a nice conversation about when Mel is going to talk with my Shadow Clones as their mother-in-law, when out of nowhere, a pillar of sand knocked the flying train down, sending us crashing into the ground. Fortunately, the train car ended up flooded with sand, which cushioned Mel and I, but unfortunately, the train car was slowly being filled out with sand. 

I hate sand for a lot of reasons. It's always getting stuck in my dress somehow, it tastes terrible, even in tea and tea is supposed to make everything taste good, and also, I'm forced to use my hands for magic when I'm on sand. Why is sand not stable enough to support my cool foot tap magic? I literally learnt that just because it was cool! Damn you sand!

"Madeleine! Stop talking about your hatred of sand and fucking help me break the window!"

Oh yeah, Mel is trying to break the window with her bow, but there isn't even a scratch. Good thing I have a dagger specifically made for breaking windows. I once used it to break into the mansion of a no-

"Madeleine!"

"Okay, okay!" I reached under my skirt, into my dagger-storing dagger and grabbed out the window-breaking dagger, chucking it near Mel, who quickly struck the window with it, making the sand and us flow out of the train car. 

I landed in some more sand next to Mel, who was coughing out some sand. Good news, I didn't get sand in my mouth. Bad news, there's more sand. I turned to the train and saw it was completely covered in sand, both inside and out, with the only visible train car being the one Mel and I escaped from. Goodbye flying train… you were the best six-carriage train I knew… and also the only one I knew. 

"Fuck!" I looked at Mel, who was rubbing her tongue with her finger. "Who the hell did this?"

At that moment, I heard a thud near me. I turned to the space between Mel and me and saw a man wearing a cape, a ring with a very yellow gem, and really bright orange pants. Why are the pants so orange? "Sorry ladies, but an assassin has to do what an assassin has to do." He punched the hand that had the ring on it into the sandy ground, and a second later, a giant hand made out of sand popped up next to Mel, punching her up into the air and into a nearby sand mountain. Did… did this guy just hurt Mel? That's it.

I got up, summoning three daggers into each of my hands, which I immediately threw at him. Soon after, a wall of sand suddenly sprouted up, protecting him. Clearly, he can manipulate sand, favouring this entire fight heavily against me. I need to either get rid of the sand, the source of the sand, or the way he manipulates the sand. Obviously, the ring lets him control the sand… close quarters combat is probably the way to go.

I started running towards him, and he tried to answer this by creating snakes made out of sand that would lunge at it. Too bad they're made out of sand, so a simple kick or punch quickly dealt with them, but it slowed me down a little bit. While I was slightly slowing myself down to take down the snakes, he dashed backwards, creating more space between me and him. Okay, new plan, I'll just ambush him… how? Oh… I know how. I keep forgetting about their Sacred Power. I tapped my foot on the ground. That's step one. Now for step two… stalling the fight. The easiest way to do that would be to constantly distract him.

"It says gullible on the ceiling!" I pointed at the sky.

"Huh?" He looked up, paused for a moment, and then looked back at me angrily. "Seriously?! Did you just seriously fucking do that?!"

"Teehee." To make it extra infuriating, I'm putting on a silly face. His anger flares up some more, enough that he takes his hand out of the sand, making the sand snakes stop.

"Do you not know who I am? I'm the fifth-best assassin of the Dome! I am No-" And he was suddenly knocked out by a Shadow Clone from behind. Since he's dealt with, I need to go to Mel… but first, take his pants, Shadow Clone. The tiny Shadow Clone does a curtsy with her maid dress, then takes the man's pants off. She runs over to me, diving into my shadow whilst also passing the pants to me. What a beautiful shade of orange.

That explains the sand… as for the ring? Nah, Mel is more important. I ran towards the hill that I saw Mel towards. I dug for a while before eventually finding Mel, who was out cold, but fortunately still breathing. Good, good… I can relax now. I can go back to silly ol' Madeleine now. Okay… okay… I'm fine now. 

Huh? How did I win the fight? Oh, it was pretty simple. Remember how I have a bunch of Sacred Power holders stuck in the Shadowrealm, who I can make shadow clones of? Remember the tiny maid named Norika? Her Sacred Power is Stealth. As for summoning her… well, Shadow Cloning is a Sacred Power, not magic. I don't have to tap my foot to summon the Shadow Clones. I just do it for fun. So sand not being stable enough for my cool foot tap magic doesn't apply to Shadow Cloning… why did I explain all that?

Item profile: Pants of Pocket Sand

Sacred power: Pocket Sand

Name of Creator: Dale

Description: The pants with pockets eternally filled with sand. It's a pair of bright orange pants with sand in its pockets. Is there anything else that needs to be said?

Chapter namesake: Pocket Sand by Hank Trill feat. Dale Drizzle

pojlk

Hi everyone, it's the Q&A thing I attempt to do every 25 chapters. I'm doing this because I'm committed to bits, and also whenever I do these, I get the urge to be pseudo-introspective in these Author Note's, unlike the other ones where I spout out something random that reveals how little thought I've put into Side Note. Hmm... I feel like talking about characters. So let's talk about... hmm... let's say four characters.

Starting off with everyone's favourite mad maid herself, Madeleine. I'm going to be perfectly honest with you guys, I have put literally no thought into Madeleine whatsoever. In fact, she is the character with the least amount of planning out of all the main characters, but if that isn't Madeleine, I don't know what is. Seriously though, I didn't think of a name for Madeleine until I was roughly ten chapters in and realised I didn't give her a name. I only chose Madeleine because it sounded maidlike. So yeah, I guess there's not much to say about Madeleine other than she's crazy and has grown on me.

Mel, on the other hand, has much more history than Madeleine. For starters, Side Note was initially going to be an episodic series, with each chapter focusing on different Sacred Power holders. What Mel's role in this was that, since she held Side Character, she would be a side character in every single chapter. There was also a different version of Side Note I planned to be from the perspective of the holder of Side Character, because irony. Well, eventually I went with the Madeleine route, for some reason.

Hmm... I'mma talk about Merida now. I've mentioned it multiple times before that Merida was originally just going to be a running gag where Madeleine and Mel would constantly bump into this soup-making elf, but then I turned those plans upside down. Believe it or not, there have been a bunch of plans I've had for Merida that I just didn't do. I initially wanted Merida to be the reason Rich Ardrago can seemingly predict everything, until I established she can't see into the future. I was going to have her be the puppetmaster of the entire world then have her be in an antagonistic role, but I ended up not doing that due to not having an established geography (I should get to that at some point). I even was going to legitimately kill her off... but obviously, I didn't. Well, maybe next time I'll make plans for Merida that are the exact opposite of what I want, so I end up not doing that.

Lastly... Mara Rose, also known as the Creator. She hasn't made as many appearances as the past three, nor does she actually hold any importance to Side Note other than being Madeleine's father (Dick magic!), but she's an interesting case. Fun fact, Mara actually comes from my previous story, Split Divinity. I chose her cause I couldn't be bothered to come up with a Creator God character, and she just so happened to not only have the power to canonically create a world like Mendass, but also the personality of someone who'd actually create Mendass, and write all those Side Notes, since the Side Notes are canonically written by her. It also helps that her name starts with M, like most important characters in Side Note. Hmm... I should continue Split Divinity at some point... ah, as for readers of Split Divinity who just so happened to be here, it's on Hiatus because I got bored of writing it. Sorry.

Anyways, sorry for that long Author's note, I got really into it. So yeah. Ah, don't forget, the Q&A thing that happens every 25 chapters is happening. Feel free to ask anything, except for when the side story is coming out. I've decided I wanted to write all ten of the options I gave, then release them as a separate series. Might take a long time, considering I'll be writing Side Note and some other projects... Side Note has reignited my writing flame, so I have a bunch of stuff I writing in the background, that I'll probably never release. Whoops, I went a tangent. Remember, feel free to ask questions, and that blackcurrent is a good juice flavour.