A.killing miranda and ferdinand first
I believe the answer is A. This is because the sentence is supposed to be parallel and all of the verbs(except for hiss) have to be past tense.
A) Stamina I'm pretty sure
beauty is in yourself, good deeds, happy thoughts that repeat themselves, so B
is, am, were, was, are, be - the list is quite extenstive and depends on the sentence they are in.
Linking verbs connect a subject to a predicate adjective or predicate noun - they do not show action.