#Or - Two (former) zombies and one (probably not) human walk into a bar.

[sage-is-in-fact-very-tired]

that stupid bit of some characters walking into a bar and just having. normal conversation but with the fable zombie apocalypse au and with percy jackson as their bartender-

[janiedean]

crack prompt inspired by all the tvd talk on your blog: damon, jaime, tony stark all walk into a bar alone and end up drunk oversharing ~~

(if you wanna include ships in it anything with delena/dalaric/bamon; brienne; pepper/bruce/strange/rhodey is okay lmfao so pretty much anything goes, i just want them being each other's therapist because the timeline collapsed for some time and their universes interacted somehow lmfao)

*spins the wheel* AAAND hello anon we can absolutely try that u__u

ten years on tumblr anniversary prompt post | buy me a coffee | commissions open

Well, now I really did bite off more than I could chew, Tony thinks as he shakes his head and hopes that he and Bruce didn't fuck up the entire fabric of reality.

Well.

He's not in New York and he wasn't in the span of five seconds since they got the machine turned on, but - but well. Bruce isn't here, so hopefully he'll figure out where the fuck he ended up. Maybe we should have been sober when trying to work out that whole different timelines and multiverses thing.

Now, damage control. He should probably try to not go anywhere, but in case he actually just... teleported somewhere, maybe he should just ask where he is. He glances at his back. He's in front of a bar named Mystic Grill, which... okay, shitty name, but he could be anywhere in fuck-all-middle-of-nowhere Idaho for all he knows. He takes out his cellphone, and there is zero reception.

Bad news.

He sees a blonde kid with a police badge coming up the road, so he clears his throat and stops him.

"Uh, officer?"

"Hello," the kid says, "I don't remember seeing you around here."

Yeah, because I'm not from this world, most likely. "Eh," Tony lies, "I was driving my car but it broke down outside town and the way I got in, there wasn't a sign. Would you mind telling me where exactly I ended up?"

"Mystic Falls," the guy says, "I didn't know the damned State of Virginia now took us off the maps, too." That was sarcastic, Tony can hear it, but.

He's sure that there is no such place where he comes from.

"Right," Tony says, "I'll, uh, be out to find a mechanic then."

The kid gives him instructions to reach one, Tony thanks him and lets him go. Well, he can't certainly go anywhere now, but at least it seems like they fucked up just his -

"What the fuck," he hears from his left side -

Just in time to see a blonde guy wearing a white armor and a white cloak fall through a portal just the same as his own, that disappears a moment later. The blonde guy has green eyes, Tony notices, is lacking a right hand because he has a rather heavy golden prothesis on it that looks tacky also for his own tastes and looks completely out of his depth as he moves to his feet.

"Uh," Tony says, "I imagine you aren't from... here."

"Certainly not," the guy says, sounding... near hysterical, as he takes the surroundings. "What - what are those things anyway?" Cars. Oh fuck, he's looking at cars. "How are you dressed? What - what are these houses?"

"Er," Tony says, "humor me a moment. What's your name and where do you come from?"

The guy rolls his eyes. "Jaime Lannister, and I come from Westeros, thank you very much, now where the hell am I?"

... Great, Tony thinks, now it's not even someplace where the USA exist. "Er," Tony says, "in another world. Listen, it's my fault, I, uh, sort of caused it, and my colleague will most likely fix it, but it's really better we don't go anywhere so he can locate us more easily. Tell you what, can I buy you a drink while we wait?"

"Another world?" The guy blurts, and then - then he stares at Tony, then at his surroundings, then rolls his eyes again.

"You know what," he says, "I've had a shit long day. What can this be on top of fucking undead Catelyn Stark? Buy me the fucking drink."

I'm not doing drunk science anymore, Tony vows to himself as they walk inside the place, and he really hopes he can spin some story as to why the guy with him is wearing bonafide armor -

"And who the fuck are the two of you now?"

So: Tony had not taken into account that there would be just one person in the bar and that this person would be of course not human because no one human could pin the two of them to the wall in a split second and hold them there with such strength, and that's how he finds out that pretty guy with blue eyes, dark hair, pale skin and homicidal face is a damned vampire.

Except that the moment Tony explains it - Jaime or whoever he is is just keeping his mouth shut, wisely - the guy stares at them, and then more, and then -

"With everything I've seen in the last years," he says, "honestly, that's not even the most fucking stupid. So, you just want to lounge around until your friend shows up to fix whatever the fuck you did?"

"Er, yes?"

"Whatever. I'm Damon. I can cover your drinks and compel the bartender to forget your face. I sorely fucking need some myself."

He lets them go, but then - "Get that armor off," he tells Jaime, "this isn't New York City."

"I can't just leave my armor around!"

"Just leave it in the bathroom and take it back later," Damon shrugs, and then nods towards what's most likely the bathroom.

Jaime shrugs and goes, muttering something about maybe having drank too much milk of the poppy, and Tony doesn't want to know whatever the hell that is.

--

"Listen," Jaime says later, wearing an attire that's still obviously Middle-Ages-like but at least doesn't stand out too much, sipping at the bourbon Damon shoved at them, "I'm choosing to think I'm making this all up, but if I'm not, how long will it be before I can go back where I come from? Because you dragged me away from a rather fucking delicate situation."

"No idea," Tony shrugs, "but he's good at his job. And he was less drunk than me. We might get you back at the point you left."

"And what would that delicate situation be?" Damon asks. "Entertain me."

"And why should I tell you?"

"First, I bought you that alcohol and you're definitely enjoying it. Second, this is my town and I could tear your throat open if I wanted to." Fuck. He just showed fangs at the both of them. What the fuck. "Also, my murderous former girlfriend who is the cause of all my problems just finally fucked off this planet for good after possessing my current girlfriend who looks like her but really is the whole contrary and my best friend just came back to life after being dead for a whole lot of time and it's a complicated situation and I need a distraction or ten."

"That... sounds like something," Tony mutters, sipping at his alcohol. It's good, at least.

"Believe me, it is. So, what's the poison from Middle Ages here?"

"Ah, fuck that," Jaime says, takes a drink, and starts talking.

--

Half an hour later, Tony thinks that he and Damon are equally staring at the guy with the same disbelieving face.

"... Was that the undead woman that got you like this?" Jaime asks, blinking. "Considering that he seems like he's some kind of living dead, that's a tad hypocritical."

"No," Damon says, "that's the least of my problems. How haven't you frenched this Brienne person already?"

"I frenched?"

"Dude, he's from the Middle Ages," Tony takes pity on him. "He means put your tongue in her mouth."

"I - what - she's not - I'm not -"

"Listen," Damon cuts him, "I've been there. I mean, thinking I couldn't live without an arse who didn't give a fuck about me, which you admitted. But you do realize you spent at least five minutes of your charming tale describing us exactly how this Brienne of yours is ripped and has pretty eyes and was about to die for you?"

"Yeah, uh," Tony says, "let it come from someone who had the right people in front of him for ages and didn't let himself go for it, you really don't wanna drag it any longer."

"That's - she's a knight, that's not -"

"Oh, sure, all knights are shit where you come from, you said that, but suddenly someone would rather hang than kill you and you're here jittering because you got sucked here while she's dealing with a zombie that wanted you dead but I have to think you don't wanna french her?" Damon rolls his eyes again, pours himself another drink and honestly, Tony has cut down on the alcohol lately but he's gonna just make a damned exception. "Please."

"He's right," Tony says, "and also, let it come from someone whose dad was loaded on money and fairly shitty and still way better than yours, whatever he said about you is wrong."

"How do you know -" Jaime starts, half-blanching.

"Told you," Tony shrugs, "loaded on money, shitty father, at least I missed out on the shit sister. Honestly, man, just fucking drop her like hot coal and follow your gut. And let it come from someone who's fucked around a lot to get distracted, if you wanted to bone her in that bath then you're into her."

"I -" Jaime goes red in the face, finishes the drink, "it's not like it ever happened with anyone else before, it was a mistake, most likely -"

Damon gives him a look that looks halfway worried.

Tony thinks he just matched it, except even more worried.

"My vampire friend," he says, "are you thinking what I am thinking?"

"I'm afraid so," Damon says, and then looks back at Jaime. "Newsflash," he goes on, "if you get hard looking at a naked woman most likely you find her attractive. Also, you can find more than one person attractive in your life. And let it come from someone who's been there in the sense that I thought I could only love fucking Katherine, you really don't want to keep on doing it."

"I didn't say I wasn't done with Cersei," Jaime replies, somewhat weakly.

"Good," the two of them reply at the same time, and Tony has to snort.

"Look at that," he says, "for once I'm the one with the healthiest relationship history sitting at a table. Who'd have thought?"

"Fuck this," Damon says, "I'm getting more bourbon."

"Please," Jaime says, and - well. Seems like when Bruce comes to collect him, Tony won't be sober.

--

"Wait," Jaime says, "wait, wait, wait, she possessed your girlfriend?"

"Yeah, well, as if," Damon shrugs, "honestly, sometimes I think I should have just run away to New York after deserting."

"You deserted what?" Tony asks.

"The fucking confederacy," Damon shrugs. "Well, what are you staring about? I'm a vampire, I've been around ages, I'm from fucking middleofnowhere Virginia, you think I got drafted with the unionists? But I disagreed and I hated it and I never wanted to go, so I fucking deserted. I hope you aren't here judging me, or -"

"Please, I used to build weapons for the army and stopped when I realized it wasn't what I wanted to be, and honestly, that just means you have a conscience, so -"

"Wait, you did what," Jaime says.

"Deserted. An army. Back in the day. Risked my neck for it, and I came back and met Katherine and honestly I should have just gone North, but -"

"Hm," Jaime says, drinking, and then - "you don't regret it?"

"No," Damon says at once, "best decision I ever took. Why, you want to do that, too?"

"Sure he wants to," Tony says when Jaime doesn't immediately reply. "Let me guess, not just your army. You want to desert the whole shebang, don't you?"

"I don't know what a fucking shebang is, but yes. So what?"

"Well, if you want my been there done that advice, do that," Damon shrugs. "From what it sounds like, your entire world is collapsing because of zombies anyway, what do you have to lose? Your sister? You're better fucking off without."

Jaime stares down at the glass, then knocks it down. "Can I have another?"

"Sure," Damon says, and generously tips it.

--

"So what," Tony says, "now that your best friend you had a thing with while your girlfriend was with your brother is back to life you're having trouble adjusting?"

"She also hadn't been possessed by my murderous ex until then," Damon shrugs.

Jaime just looks at them, then drinks some more. "Who am I to judge on that anyway," he says, "but that sounds like a lot of work."

"You wouldn't believe," Damon shrugs, knocking down some more of his bourbon. "Never mind that Stefan won't get over brooding instead of fessing up to the girl he is in love with now, but it's not like I hadn't expected it."

"Tell him to," Jaime says at once. "I let my father fuck things up for my brother once and I hate that I ever did, just - don't."

"This is getting fucking eerie," Damon says.

Tony, who is currently feeling very thankful he doesn't have siblings, takes another sip. Then -

"Man, if it's complicated just date the both of them. If they both like you and aren't the kind of super monogamous people that can't handle a threesome once in a while, they won't have a problem."

"... And what do you know?"

He shrug. "Well," he says, "my steady girlfriend was in front of my eyes for years. Took us a while to get over ourselves. The guy I was doing drunk science with, well. Was an instant hit and I didn't let myself drag it in the centuries and guess what, we have a nice lovely arrangement where I'm with both of them, they commiserate about how much of an idiot I can be and sometimes we all occasionally have sex. It's grand. You should try it."

And I really hope Bruce shows up soon.

"Huh," Damon says, "maybe it has merit. For me. Not for you."

Jaime sputters. "I said nothing!"

"You shouldn't even think about threesomes. I can see it in your face you're not the type. And certainly not including your sister."

"Fuck you," Jaime replies without meaning it, "I was not considering that." Huh. Now he sounds offended Damon implied it. Maybe he really will fess up to the other one when he's back.

"Then it means this enlightening talk has enlightened you," Tony grins. "Mind telling us more about that hand?"

"And why?"

Tony shrugs. It's not like he doesn't have time to waste. "What if I could help you with that thing?" He says, nodding towards Jaime's stump, and then - well. Time to test if he can summon the armor here, too.

--

"God," Damon says a while later, "I'll have to compel that poor bartender so hard, but fuck this is something."

Sure it is, Tony grins. "Hey, I managed to fuck with quantum reality, I'm not the first idiot that passes by."

"Seven Hells," Jaime says, "I have no idea what it is you're putting on me but if it works half as well as that thing you have, I'm going to show back up in King's Landing just to show my sister who has the useless hand now. If she didn't get herself killed."

"Well, now that is one reason I could approve of," Tony laughs, "and don't fucking move."

Sure, building a prothesis from the rests of whatever nonfunctioning electronics the bartender had lying around is... somewhat a challenge, but as stated, he has time to waste and it's not like he's wanted anywhere soon.

"By the way," Damon says as he watches him tinker around with the toolkit he found him in the backroom, "do you need advice in the whole I fucked up and want my brother to forgive me department?"

"What if I do?" Jaime replies through his teeth. "Because now that would distract me from how much this entire thing is fucking hurting."

The more they talk while he tinkers, the more Tony decides he's absolutely glad he was an only child and that his father only fucked one son up.

--

"You're doing this while not even being fucking sober?" Damon knocks back more bourbon. "You sure you don't wanna stay here and turn into an immortal? You'd be useful."

"Thanks but I like my life as it is," Tony snorts. "But if you need tech tinkered with, you can ask while I'm here."

Jaime is just staring at the steel-colored hand coming to life while Tony puts piece after piece together, his throat working up and down.

He drinks some more. "Fuck, if only I had such a thing when I realized what the fuck Aerys had turned into."

"Wait, who's Aerys now?" Damon asks.

--

He hadn't told them that part in detail.

When he's done and Tony is at the fourth finger, he kind of wants to hurl, but mostly -

"Do we really have to stay here," Damon says, "or you think we could sneak him to a VA? I can compel them to just hear that he's talking about Vietnam or something."

"He's not old enough for Vietnam, but you know what, I think we could risk that."

"What in the Seven Hells is a VA?"

"Someone I really could have used in the nineteenth century," Damon sighs, and then just as Tony moves to the last finger -

"Tony, what the hell is this?"

--

Turns out, where Bruce comes from it took him two days to figure this out. He also immediately spots three different improvements Tony could do to that hand, and when he hears the entire shebang he raises his hands and says that he can send Jaime right back when he left at any point and he and Tony, too, but he supposes that if they want to compel the VA before they leave it's not like he's in a hurry, and wait, vampires?

Damon ends up asking him if the threesome thing is really working out as well as Tony says.

While he does, Tony manages the finishing touches on the sort-of-steel-and-iron-hand he cobbled up together, and thank fuck Bruce showed up because he had been the one studying how Barnes's arm worked, back in the day, and gave Tony the pointer he needed to make sure the entire thing was... well, connected to the nervous system without needing to rip Jaime's wrist open.

"Right," he says, "try to move the fingers."

Jaime holds them in a fist.

It works.

"Seven fucking hells -"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a genius. Just keep it out of too many lines of fire, but if you're from the middle ages it should withstand most stuff. You're welcome. And go french that knight of yours instead of waiting, really."

"I think in between him and you, you've made a case. Uh, thank you, I -"

"Nonsense, I was the reason you're here, I might as well have helped out. Hey," he says, "so, what about a last round before we drag him to the VA and Bruce here settles everything?"

"I'm so down for it," Damon says.

"Do I even have a choice," Bruce groans, but then he does sit down at the same table and lets Tony fill his glass.

"Oh, don't look like that," Tony says, "after all I didn't destroy the universe and made some friends, it could have gone worse."

"Wouldn't know about that, but I could have done worse, too," Damon says, and orders more bourbon.

"I sure as the fucking Seven Hells will never manage to explain this to anyone," Jaime says, "but I guess I'm not too disappointed, either."

"Tony," Bruce groans, "did you manage to somehow end up with two people with - never mind. Of course you did. We're never doing drunk science again, hear me?"

"Maybe so," Tony agrees, though... well.

Maybe he will want to check on them, once in a while.

But he can think about how to convince Bruce to make sure they can later.

For now, he'll enjoy his last round.

[zrtranscripts]

Radio Abel, Season Six

Part 5 of 6

Parts 5 and 6 take place after S6M24, “Mother’s Little Helper”

JODY MARSH: All right, I think I've got it. Glastonbury. That's what I'd do.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Glastonbury Festival! Oh, that's good.

ZOE CRICK: Hm, I suppose. If you like music.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We run a radio show.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, but what about the whole washing under a tap, pooing in a box and sleeping in mud thing? Don't you think we get enough of that sort of thing post-apocalypse?

JODY MARSH: Yeah, but I mean, it's totally different when you know it's a choice, isn't it? It's like the difference between going on a detox and not having enough to eat. Not that I'd go on a detox obviously, because it's ridiculous.

ZOE CRICK: Mm, I guess. Personally, I'd spend my day sipping champagne cocktails in the Maldives.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Sipping cocktails in the Maldives with Amelia, you mean.

ZOE CRICK: Phil.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I'm sorry. I know, I promised not to talk about it. But you know that's not a promise I was ever going to keep.

JODY MARSH: Yeah, come on, Zo. You are basically dating my mortal enemy. You can't expect us not to mention it.

ZOE CRICK: I'm not dating her.

JODY MARSH: So it's just sex? I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

ZOE CRICK: It's... I don't know what it is.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: A [?] inexplicable mistake?

ZOE CRICK: Like Jody's decision to spend her one pre-apocalypse day at Glastonbury.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You're changing the subject.

ZOE CRICK: Yes. Yes, I am. To the fact I'd like to spend my day sipping cocktails on a beach and Jody would very weirdly like to spend it at Glastonbury.

JODY MARSH: In a way, we're talking about the same thing, though.

ZOE CRICK: You've got a very strange idea of what Glastonbury was like. I went every year. It was less sipping champagne cocktails on a sun-kissed beach and more necking cider in a rubbish-strewn field.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You make it sound so glamorous! All right, citizens. More of your questions for Jody Marsh right after this.

JODY MARSH: No, but see, I never went to Glastonbury.

ZOE CRICK: Clearly.

JODY MARSH: I always meant to, but I just never got around to it. And now I never will.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, you might. Things are getting better, aren't they? I mean, apart from the whole Sigrid running half the country thing. There might be a Glastonbury Festival again one day.

JODY MARSH: But it wouldn't be the same.

ZOE CRICK: True. Three quarters of the acts would be zombies. Although to be fair, zombie Coldplay might be an improvement.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And zombie Morrissey would probably be a lot more cheerful.

JODY MARSH: But it's not about the bands! It's about the people. Glastonbury used to be so carefree.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, as long as you didn't care about where you'd be weeing.

JODY MARSH: What I'm saying is, if they held Glastonbury now, it would be full of people who'd lived through the apocalypse. I'd like to spend just one day in a crowd full of people who didn't know the end of the world was coming. I'd like to remember what that felt like.

ZOE CRICK: So, quick-fire questions: favorite color?

JODY MARSH: Bangladesh green.

ZOE CRICK: Weirdly specific, but okay.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Dogs or cats?

JODY MARSH: Dogs.

ZOE CRICK: Oh dear. Well, there goes our friendship.

JODY MARSH: Don't get me wrong. I like cats, but dogs are just better.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, you're just digging that hole deeper.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Dogs are better. They're actually, you know, loyal.

ZOE CRICK: Et tu, Cheeseman?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: This is a good one. If you wrote your autobiography, what would the title be?

JODY MARSH: Oh, that's hard. Can I have a think about that one?

ZOE CRICK: Yes. And while you're at it, why don't you have a long hard think about your wrongness on the subject of cats?

ZOE CRICK: Okay, here's another tough one for you, Jody.

JODY MARSH: Go for it.

ZOE CRICK: A listener from Walthamstow Commune wants to know, "How can you expect us to side with you when Sigrid can give us the cure and you can't?"

JODY MARSH: That's easy. We don't expect you to. It's not an easy decision to make, and if you've got a loved one who's been bitten, of course you'll go to whoever can help them. That's only human nature, and we won't judge you for that.

ZOE CRICK: Um... is that it? Don't we sort of want people not to go over to Sigrid just because she's got the cure?

JODY MARSH: Of course. And we're working as hard as we can on a cure of our own. But I'm not going tell people what they should do. I'm not going to judge them for making hard choices. That's the way Sigrid behaves. Just remember, like I said, Sigrid doesn't give anything for free, and the price of getting the cure from her may be much, much higher than you realize.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Also, if you go over to Sigrid, she'll probably make you stop listening to our show. So um, there's-there's that to consider.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah. Not sure that's quite the threat you think it is. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

JODY MARSH: Actually, you do get points for trying.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: For trying what?

JODY MARSH: No, that would be the title of my autobiography.

ZOE CRICK: Hm, I like that. Not sure it's true, but I like it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Who's giving out the points, though?

JODY MARSH: Well... me, I suppose. Or whatever that little voice is inside me that's always got an opinion on what I've been up to.

ZOE CRICK: I hate that voice. It's so judgey.

JODY MARSH: Yeah. Well, it used to be, but it's been getting better. I mean, I used to think if I didn't get what I was after, that was it. I was a failure. But these days, we've failed on a pretty global scale. We could just sit back and go well, right? That's us finished.

Or we could keep trying. And we might not get anywhere, but while I'm breathing, I'm going to keep trying. That's what Abel's all about, really. Looking at the way things are and going, okay, that's a bit rubbish, but maybe I can make it better, even if it's only a tiny bit.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: That's really lovely.

ZOE CRICK: And that's all we've got time for from Jody Marsh, former Commander in Chief of Abel Township. Thanks for your time, Jody.

JODY MARSH: My pleasure. And here's one last song from me. I always used to listen to it when I needed that extra bit of motivation.

BERNARD PRIOR: So, exciting news, worthy listeners. Coming up, old Bernard will be reviewing another jolly old motion picture. And I have invited none other than our glorious leader, Amelia Spens, to join me and give us her verdict. No doubt she will have her own opinions to impart, and they will be fascinating! Stay tuned, friends. Don't touch that dial!

BERNARD PRIOR: Greetings, everyone! The time is now! Welcome one and all to edition two of Bernard's Movie Thingummy Whatsit!

AMELIA SPENS: What? Is that the catchy name you've come up with for this? "Bernard's Movie Thingummy Whatsit"?

BERNARD PRIOR: Yes. Don't like it?

AMELIA SPENS: [sighs] Give me strength. Play another song. We're going to do that again.

AMELIA SPENS: Hello, and welcome to The Guide, your one-stop shop for all the best entertainment in Fort Canton. Today, Bernard and I will be reviewing another of the movies that you can rent for a modest fee from our sponsor, Fort Canton General Stores, where you can also pick up a range of groceries, homewares, and personal products, including soap. Bernard?

BERNARD PRIOR: What?

AMELIA SPENS: Uh, introduce the movie.

BERNARD PRIOR: Oh. I see. Sorry. I think I was in a mild state of shock for a second. [clears throat] Fair listeners, stay tuned please for our review of that great classic, Casablanca!

BERNARD PRIOR: Ah yes, Casablanca. What a story! Sweeping romance, tear-jerking sacrifice for the greater good. I confess, listeners, I did shed a single tear when the perfect soulmates, Rick and Ilsa, bravely put the war effort before their own happiness. They'll always have Paris! Oh, goodness me. I'm still a little choked up.

AMELIA SPENS: Yeah, I didn't get that bit.

BERNARD PRIOR: What do you mean?

AMELIA SPENS: I don't get why, if Ilsa liked Rick so much, why didn't she stay with him? Or failing that, go back to the bar. A much better option. The bar looked quite fun.

BERNARD PRIOR: Because she'd regret it! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow -

AMELIA SPENS: Yes, so Rick told her. Probably he just wants her to go so that he can go back to the bar and hang out with his real friends.

BERNARD PRIOR: Oh, you wouldn't understand romance, Millie. There was a war on!

AMELIA SPENS: Okay, no need to get precious. I expect you saw this when it first came out.

BERNARD PRIOR: The cheek, Millie

AMELIA SPENS: Tell me more about the war, grandad.

BERNARD PRIOR: You are trying my patience, now.

AMELIA SPENS: You love it.

BERNARD PRIOR: Oh, shush.

BERNARD PRIOR: So, we almost forgot, there. Casablanca: five stars! Run, don't walk, to Fort Canton General Stores to put your name down on the list to borrow the VHS tape.

ZOE CRICK: Sorry, listeners. Just me, tonight. Phil's off on a date. Yes, you heard that right. An actual date with an actual living human. [laughs] Well, that's what he told me, anyway. It's possible he was lying. Hopefully he's not going to mess it up.

I gave him a bottle of very nice wine I've been saving for a rainy day, and Jamie, I mean King Jamie, offered to cook them fish curry. It's not every date that gets catered by the King of England. Though don't tell Jamie I said this, but he really needs to go a bit easier on the coconut cream.

Anyway, conditions are favorable. Obviously, Phil will find a way to mess it up because this is Phil we're talking about. But he's going to have to get creative about it. Phil and Raisa, if you're listening, this one's for you.

BERNARD PRIOR: Okay. Okay. [beatboxes and raps] And Bernie was a radio host. He was bestest, he was the most. He had the listeners begging for more. He wasn't actually born until after the Second World War. Oh yeah! [regular speaking voice] See? I'm a man of many surprises. That was for you, Margot. Life will find a way!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Hello, ci-ti-zens! We've got a packed program lined up for you today. It's the first episode of our new cookery show, Recipes on the Run. There's the latest news reports coming from around the country. And yes, the moment has finally come – we'll be announcing the winner of the vote on our new name. Can't wait!

ZOE CRICK: Is that it?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yes. No! We'll also be telling you all about Late Night Review with Phil and Zoe.

ZOE CRICK: [sighs] That's not what I'm talking about. I don't care about any of that.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: "Any of that" is literally our job.

ZOE CRICK: I'm talking about last night.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: What about last night?

ZOE CRICK: Oh my God, you're doing it deliberately, aren't you?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Zoe, I've got no idea what you're talking about. Don't go away, citizens! We'll be sharing our best post-apocalyptic recipes right after this.

ZOE CRICK: But I - [sighs]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Quite an appropriate song there, because our very first recipe on the run is baked beans à la mode -

ZOE CRICK: No. No, absolutely not.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, that definitely is our first recipe. Look, Sam wrote it out by hand. I wish he did his J's clearer. I can't tell if that's supposed to be jam or ham.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] If Sam's been eating ham roly-poly for dessert, we need to have words. But it doesn't matter, because food's definitely not what we're talking about right now.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It literally is.

ZOE CRICK: Well, we're stopping and talking about your date instead.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, we're not, unless you want to talk about your date with Amelia. Your date with Amelia Spens, the most awful woman in Britain.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, me and Amelia's old news. [laughs] Our listeners are much more interested in you.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, they're not.

ZOE CRICK: They definitely are. Anyway, did you or did you not promise to fill me in on all the gory details?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I definitely didn't.

ZOE CRICK: Okay, but when you said, "Don't be ridiculous, it's none of your bloody business," I took that to mean, "I will spill the beans, I'll just need a little cajoling."

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Why am I friends with you, again?

[ZOE CRICK laughs]

ZOE CRICK: But I promised our listeners you'd tell them all about your date.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I know, I heard.

ZOE CRICK: You're listening to the radio during your romantic dinner?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I'm not answering that.

ZOE CRICK: Okay. Fine. But are you going to be seeing her again?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No.

ZOE CRICK: Right. It was a disaster. What did you do? Spend all evening telling her about why you think the Brady Bunch and the X-Files are in the same fictional universe?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, although they clearly are. It was fine! There's just no...

ZOE CRICK: Spark?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Actual date.

ZOE CRICK: What? She stood you up?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, no. I mean, yes. But no. Her ex decided she wanted to get back together with her. Which I totally understand. So I said of course she could cancel the date, and I gave her that nice bottle of wine to celebrate.

ZOE CRICK: All right. You obviously can't be trusted to organize your own dates. Next one I'm running for you, in person if necessary.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You're literally the last one who should be giving anyone else dating advice. Your idea of an appropriate person to date is Amelia bloody Spens, who is, in case I haven't mentioned it before, the worst human being in the world.

ZOE CRICK: Be fair. Amelia's not as bad as Sigrid.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Not as bad as Sigrid isn't the benchmark anyone should be using for dating!

[ZOE CRICK sighs]

ZOE CRICK: It's just... not all of us can have the big romance like you, Phil.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I haven't got a big romance. In case you haven't noticed, I'm totally failing to have a big romance.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, but you will. You're just that kind of person. I'm not.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, don't be silly.

ZOE CRICK: No, I'm really not. I'm too cynical. I'm always second-guessing myself. Do I really like them? Am I just flattered that they like me? What horrible secret are they hiding that I'll only find out about when I'm in too deep? That's what's great about Amelia. I'm not always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm already intimately familiar with the other shoe in all its horrible detail, so it can't come as a nasty surprise.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: But that's a terrible reason to date someone!

ZOE CRICK: Also, the sex is amazing. Amelia's surprisingly giving in bed for a person who's so entirely selfish.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Stop telling me things like that.

ZOE CRICK: You asked.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I take it back. I don't want to know.

ZOE CRICK: That's what I thought. [laughs] So no more questions about Amelia?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Never asking anything about her ever again.

ZOE CRICK: My work here is done.

BERNARD PRIOR: So, those travel papers they had in Casablanca...

AMELIA SPENS: I've told you, B, it was a movie.

BERNARD PRIOR: Yes, I do know that. But travel papers do exist.

AMELIA SPENS: Is this Chalk Valley again?

BERNARD PRIOR: And if it was?

AMELIA SPENS: It would be very difficult.

BERNARD PRIOR: But not impossible?

AMELIA SPENS: ... not impossible, no.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Hello, ci-ti-zens. Finally, it's the moment you've all been waiting for.

ZOE CRICK: The end of the zombie plague and the restoration of civilization as we know it?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: The new name for our radio show!

ZOE CRICK: Hm, that would have been my second guess.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: The votes are in, they've all been counted, and there's a very clear winner. So without further ado, here's a rundown of the top five. Zoe?

ZOE CRICK: A new entry at number five -

PHIL CHEESEMAN: They're all new entries.

ZOE CRICK: Cute and concise, it's Radio Dork. I'm going to assume you're talking about Phil there and not me.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: At number four, an old favorite, we've got Radio Cabel!

ZOE CRICK: Number three, it's Radio Treachery. And Phil and I would both like to thank you for keeping it clean on the insult front. It's appreciated.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: At number two, turns out Zoe was almost right. It's Radio Station McRadiostationface!

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] And for the new name of the Station Formerly Known As Free Abel, stay tuned. We'll be announcing the winner right after this.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: So... should we tell them?

ZOE CRICK: No. I think we should keep them in suspense a bit longer.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, but that's really irritating.

ZOE CRICK: And yet people like it. People are odd that way.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: They've been waiting a long time for this.

ZOE CRICK: They can wait a bit longer.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It's Radio New Hope!

ZOE CRICK: What happened to keeping them in suspense?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Sorry! I was just excited! It's a really good name.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, it actually is. [laughs] Both uplifting and geeky, which seems appropriate.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Although I think it might actually have just been Sam voting a million times.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] It's true. The person who first suggested that name on Rofflenet was CurlyWurlyLover.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Doesn't matter. It's a great name. So hello, citizens. And welcome to Radio New Hope.

BERNARD PRIOR: And ahoy-hoy, sweet listeners! It's Bernie Prior! Don't touch that dial, don't click that mouse. Do not, whatever you jolly well do, do not swipe left, because this is Fort Canton Today, the show with all you need and more! So that includes things you don't need. Sorry about that. Plus me, your most humble servant and host, Bernard Prior. Oh yes. Jolly what. Are you ready for a Bernie bonanza? A Bernie beanfeast? A Bernie-ucopia? Perhaps that was a bit too far, listeners. Please accept my humblest apologies for any distress caused by my raucous wordplay. Sometimes I simply don't know my own strength.

BERNARD PRIOR: Now listeners, what a jolly tune. And as that fades out, I have a rather personal letter about a rather personal topic. How rum. I suppose you want to get up close and personal with me and feel the Bern! What what? [laughs] Oh heavens, what has gotten into old B? But listeners, enough revelry. The letter.

"Dear Bernard, could you tell us more about your first love, Margot? How did you meet? Why did you break up?" What a question. You're asking about one of the most tragic and bittersweet love stories of our time. Let me try and recall.

BERNARD PRIOR: Exciting news for those of you who tune into this show for our thrilling entertainment guide! Keeper of the keys, Miss Spens, has informed me that there will be more film reviews coming up, whether I like it or not, to quote her verbatim. So if that's your thing – and who am I to judge? - you are rather lucky! Your wish is my command.

BERNARD PRIOR: Ah yes, where was I? The old gray matter does wander from time to time.

I met sweet, fair Margot at university. The same university where young Bernard was to learn much of the gripping political science that has been judged too hot for broadcast by our glorious censor. Margot was, in the vernacular, my best friend's girl. So I was, naturally, far too chivalrous to make a move. I loved her from afar, like a courtly knight of old, chaste and pure in my affections. Perhaps she guessed, perhaps she did not. It was not for me to make my feelings clear.

After university, my friend and I drifted apart, and though I was invited to their wedding, my heart was shattered to smithereens at the thought and I stayed away. Truly, I never thought we'd cross paths again. But I also didn't expect a bally load of zombies to start munching on all and sundry either, so... expect the unexpected should perhaps be Bernard's new motto. And now a tune.

BERNARD PRIOR: Ah, talking of expecting the unexpected, how are you, my dear Miss Spens?

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, fine, fine. Well, not fine. Not at all fine! I don't like to complain, but you would not believe what people will complain about.

BERNARD PRIOR: I probably wouldn't.

AMELIA SPENS: Jigsaw shortage. I ask you, peoples' ability to waste my time trying to waste their own time. It's a picture of a sunset, for example. You can spend all afternoon assembling it, or you can spend that same time doing nothing whatsoever, and then see pretty much the same thing, and have achieved the same amount, i.e., nothing!

BERNARD PRIOR: People like a sense of accomplishment.

AMELIA SPENS: I have raiding parties they can join for that. I ask you, if they riot over this... wait, is this thing on? If you riot over this -

[glass shatters, crowd shouts]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Perhaps a tune! A calming tune. How about this, honorable listeners? Sit back, relax. Pop the kettle on, or whatever you're using for a kettle, and try not to think about the rioters outside. And if you are rioting yourself, do keep hydrated!

BERNARD PRIOR: They're getting close. I believe I hear the distant sound of folk crying on the wind, "We want jigsaws!" Could they have discovered your whereabouts? You have been broadcasting it, quite literally.

AMELIA SPENS: I don't care. They are idiots.

BERNARD PRIOR: Perhaps, but they are rather voracious idiots. The demands are quite simple. I read a placard. Could we not consider manufacturing some jigsaws? I mean, we have the capabilities these days, surely.

AMELIA SPENS: No! How could you even suggest such a thing? I need my carpenters for actually making actual things, not cutting actual things into small pieces so other people can reassemble them for a misguided sense of achievement! No, Bernie, I will never give in to this.

BERNARD PRIOR: Sorry, listeners. While your host takes prudent cover under the shelter of this table, do listen to... this.

BERNARD PRIOR: So hang on a moment, Millie. You're not just hiding out in here? You actually want to talk about the film we watched?

AMELIA SPENS: Yes. The fact this studio has no windows and is reasonably secure is just a coincidence. To work, Bernie.

BERNARD PRIOR: I see. I suppose we can just gloss over the way your presence here endangers me. [clears throat] Delicate listeners, honest travelers. Coming up, Amelia Spens and I will be, I dearly hope, calm and contained enough to furnish you with our personal musings on the delightful motion picture Legally Blonde right after this.

BERNARD PRIOR: And we're just going ahead, despite all that? Okay, fine. Fine. Never mind professional standards, never mind them. What ho.

Ahoy-hoy. Oh, dear listeners, the visual treat that was Legally Blonde. What a story! A noble hero against the odds. A fight for love or glory. There's even a dog. I do love a plucky hound. Listeners, I am beaming as I think of it. Amelia, I don't suppose you agree.

AMELIA SPENS: I do, actually.

BERNARD PRIOR: You do? You like Legally Blonde? A story where a good-hearted ingénue wins through?

AMELIA SPENS: Yes. She's a hero of mine, actually. A heroine. I have on occasion modeled myself on her.

BERNARD PRIOR: Elle Woods? Really? But she's so... nice.

AMELIA SPENS: I've got nothing against being nice, Bernie. Sometimes being nice is an excellent plan when it suits one's needs. You catch more flies with honey, B. Oh! [laughs] Honey bee. Anyway, being nice, when combined of course with being smart, is very effective, as in the compelling case presented in Legally Blonde.

BERNARD PRIOR: Jolly good. Well, I suppose wonders truly do never cease.

AMELIA SPENS: You could say that. So off you pop, listeners, and reserve your copy at Fort Canton General Stores! As soon as it is safe to leave your dwellings.

AMELIA SPENS: I've had a message to say it's safe for me to leave the studio. Jigsaw riots are over.

BERNARD PRIOR: Really? But you didn't do anything. Surely a riot like that didn't just burn out.

AMELIA SPENS: Didn't have to do anything. It seems the riot destroyed most of Fort Canton General Stores' ceramics overflow storage next door to the studio. The jigsaw enthusiasts are now happily piecing everything back together!

BERNARD PRIOR: Really? Miss Spens, you sheltered here and encouraged a riot to pursue you so that in their destructive rage, they'd create their own puzzles?

AMELIA SPENS: Well, we did have a surplus of novelty mugs no one was using. Win-win-win. Now, isn't it time you played a record? Entertain your listeners, Bern! They don't need this waffle.

ZOE CRICK: I always think of that one as the zombie anthem.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, I know what you mean.

ZOE CRICK: You ever wonder what it would be like as a zom?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Not really.

ZOE CRICK: I do. It's just... don't you sometimes think how much easier it would be if you were a zombie?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Of course not.

ZOE CRICK: Really? I think about that a lot.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: But... the whole point of being alive right now is trying not to be a zombie. It's every single person in the world's current life goal.

ZOE CRICK: Well, yes. We all try not to be zombies, but that's just peer pressure, isn't it?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No.

ZOE CRICK: You're weird.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I'm weird? [sighs] I tell you what, let's ask a few people around Abel what they think, see who's out of step with mainstream opinion. Back in a moment, citizens.

ZOE CRICK: Okay, so maybe most people don't want to be zombies.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Literally no one except you wants to be a zombie.

ZOE CRICK: It's not that I want to, it's just I think it would be very peaceful.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: What, being brain-dead?

ZOE CRICK: Yes. Not having to worry about anything, not having to answer to anyone. All you need to do is shamble around groaning. It's a very undemanding job.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: There is the whole killing people thing.

ZOE CRICK: Yes, but on the plus side, you never need to worry about where your next meal's coming from.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I can't believe you just said that.

ZOE CRICK: It's true, isn't it?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I suppose. Except zombies don't worry about food. They don't worry about anything... I don't think.

ZOE CRICK: Thinking's overrated. It always gets me into trouble.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I thought it was not thinking that did that. Like that time you picked up a stray cat without thinking because it looked sad, and then it gave you ringworm. And then you gave me ringworm.

ZOE CRICK: And then you didn't speak to me for a week. See? Ringworm's another thing zombies don't have to worry about.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Right. This conversation's over.

ZOE CRICK: Why?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Because you're freaking me out. We'll be talking about something less disturbing than Zoe's brain right after this.

BERNARD PRIOR: Ah, listeners, I have to apologize. Your usual fun-loving host is rather lackluster today. But I do have a letter to share with you, the contents of which are in part responsible for my delicate state. [clears throat]

"Dearest Bernard, I do wish you had told me back then that you loved me. I never loved John. I just felt like marriage to someone like him was what was expected of me. I hoped you'd come to the wedding. I even – and I know this is ridiculous, but in some crazy dream – imagined that maybe you would rush in and stop proceedings. But it didn't happen, and now, sadly, I am stuck behind the Chalk Valley barricades. I've tried to reason with the governing council, but apparently, no one can leave without papers. Yours always, Margot.

[clown-bait]

29 Neibolt ST (Monster Roommate AU) CH 27

FINALLY FINISHED THIS!! So the monsters try really hard to figure out why they aren't monsters any more. Turns out they cant focus for five minutes without going off on a weird tangent about washing machines and butts. Papawise is gonna have to try to get these idiots to be productive. Good luck papa you’re gonna need it.

CH 27

Focusing is Hard

“Are we going to address this human problem now?”

Freddy and Drac sat on the couch already breaking into Chucky’s beer stash as Leech plopped herself onto Robert’s lap on the loveseat. the former clown brought a long arm around her and nuzzled his nose into her drying hair. “Mmm you smell just like me” he growled. “I wonder why” Leech giggled and kissed his jaw line. Freddy nearly gagged.

“*AHEM* SO is that a no on the problem solving then?” he asked the ex-nosferatu.

“Fred like either of us have any idea how this happened at all.”

“Well did you two do anything? I dunno like did you activate some curse or something? Maybe pissed off a witch?”

“What witch is powerful enough to turn Pennywise human? Let alone a whole town full of over powered evil.” Leech crossed her legs over the side of the chair getting comfy.

“I love it when you call me powerful.” Robert beamed with pride from having his ego stroked.

“Focus Bob” She scolded him.

As they discussed their options there was a clatter in the basement followed by a wheeze. Everyone froze solid looking at eachother and back down the hall. “Do we go investigate?” the nosferatu asked hesitantly.

“Isn’t that usually how humans get killed by us?” Freddy grumbled.

“Holy shit being on the other side of the horror movie sucks balls” Leech picked up a beer bottle in defence peering down the hall.

“I’ll go. You all would be such easy targets.” Robert rolled his eyes. His companions’ fears starting to annoy him.

“Like hell you are! We all know what happens when the prey splits up!” Leech grabbed his arm before he could march into any more danger.

“Lets just all go together then. Can’t be anything too terrible with everyone being turned human.” Freddy handed Dracula a broken piece of wood who glanced over at his roommate in confusion.

“We’re so going to die” the ex nosferatu groaned.

The former monsters approached the door leading to the basement where they could hear more panting and wheezing which seemed to get louder and louder. Leech hesitantly opened the door which made an extremely ominous creak causing the ex-vampire to grip her bottle tighter. They peered into the basement, everyone silently cursing Penny for making his house as equally scary as himself. Something wet and dark flopped out of the well gasping like a fish out of water. Robert felt both his arms get grabbed by Leech and Freddy at once while Drac clung to his roommate from behind. The weight of 3 grown adults clinging to his silk robe like baby sloths nearly pulled the former eldritch to the ground and he gave them all an angry scowl. “Really?!” he hissed. The wet thing began to stand it looked like a person, a very tired and pissed off person.

“I just walked for MILES through the freezing sewer, so you MORONS better tell me what the hell is going on right now or there will be consequences!” they said.

The man finally came into view. He looked quite different without the giant red nose.

“U-Uncle Penny?” Leech stuttered the man rung out the wet shirt he had clearly killed someone for as there was a large blood stain on the collar.

“This is what you look like as humans? Jesus Junior those pants tight enough?”

“Theyre Freddy’s…” Robert looked off to the side.

“Actually I think those are mine!” Leech pulled at his pants to inspect the pocket “Yeah theres the hole in the pocket!”

“Leechie why does Krueger have your pants?” If Robert still had fangs theyd be out.

“Oh calm down Fred and I swap clothes all the time.” she waved him off and rolled her eyes at his jealousy.

“Yeah Fangs does laundry at our place cause you won’t get a washer dryer”

“There’s a wash tub right over there!” Robert snarled at the former dream demon in annoyance. First it was wifi and microwaves now its modern washing machines! How is anyone going to be scared when they walk into the haunted house on Neibolt if theyre greeted with the scent of clean laundry and hot pockets.

“The 1800s were over a long ass time ago Bob!” Leech complained she had been trying to get him to change his mind on this for weeks now.

“I am trying to cultivate an atmosphere that generates fear! Dryer sheets and laundry detergent create the opposite effect Leech!”

“Sheesh Junior you take your interior decorating a bit too seriously.” his uncle rolled his eyes at his younger counterpart.

“Will all of you please drop the washer/dryer thing”

“IS THE CLOWN FINALLY GETTING A WASHING MACHINE?” came Tiffany’s voice from upstairs

“Look you’re in the minority here Robert, just let us get something basic.”

“Yeah Jingles, that way Fangs will stop leaving her pants at our place.” Freddy grumbled.

“Hey now I remember you saying you liked those pants and I let you borrow them!” Leech snapped.

“Yeah alright fine. Theyre good pants, I mean look at how great Jingles’ ass looks in them!” Freddy spun Robert around and slapped his ass howling in laughter at Robert’s enraged reaction.

“O să discutăm acum despre problema noastră?” ((will we talk about our problem now?)) Dracula asked. He had no idea what anyone was saying or why they were all humans all he knew was that he wanted to get back to being immortal as soon as possible.

“I dont speak French Dracula!” Uncle Penny grumbled.

“Oh my god how does that remotely even sound like French? Its fucking Romanian!” Leech snapped at him defending her extremely confused mentor.

“Whatever. Can all of you focus for just five minutes?! That’s all I’m asking for here. As soon as we figure out why the hell I can’t shape shift you can all go back to blabbering about eachother’s butts!” The older eldritch groaned in frustration.

“Ok but you have to agree theyre great pants though!”

“FIVE MINUTES KRUEGER!”

“Pff youre asking a lot, Freddy came over to do the same thing and within the first hour we all ended up being violently attacked by the cat and Robert lost a finger.” leech held up Robert’s injured hand.

“You lost a finger Junior? How do you fuck up this bad?”

“THATS WHAT I SAID!” Tiffany yelled once again from upstairs

“By the way, there a reason the dolls arent joining us in figuring this out?” Freddy asked Leech ignoring the enraged Uncle Penny’s complaints.

“A) I dont think they want to, and B) I’m pretty sure from the Rob Zombie music blasting from their room and the creaking bed springs theyre uh..busy..” Leech said.

“Gross” Robert snarled.

“JINGLES YOU’RE NOT MUCH BETTER!” Chucky shouted down.

“Unbelievable. You couldnt even do one minute of concentration! Were never getting back to normal jesus.” The elder eldritch tilted his head up at the ceiling growing tired of the other monsters constant distractions.

“Fine where do you suggest we start because we’re all out of ideas here.” Leech snapped.

“Did you even try having any ideas in the first place?”

The monsters opened their mouths to speak and immediately closed them. Ok so maybe they haven’t been the most proactive about this.

“Can we at least take this out of the basement then and get more beer before we start? I think I’m going to develop asthma from all the dust down here.” Leech began to walk back up the stairs to the kitchen. “You boys can either join me or stay down here in the dark. I’m out.” The other monsters shrugged and followed suit.

—————-

“Ok so we need to narrow down who is powerful enough to turn an entire town of powerful entities into humans.” Uncle Penny began drinking the beer Leech had got him from Chucky’s  nearly empty stash.

“I can think of no one.” the younger vampire said.

“You haven’t been with us very long Leechie.” Robert patted her on the head.

“Wait isnt today Halloween?” Freddy asked having a rare appiphany.

“Yeah so?” Uncle Penny took another long swig of the beer surpriesed that he liked it so much.

“Yeah doesnt that mean certian supernatural parties are stronger today?” Leech asked

“Oh fuck ive heard of this before. Did any of you break the rules of Halloween?” Freddy asked, he had seen something like this in another town once. People who broke tradition on Halloween that night had bad things happen to them.

“There’s rules to this holiday?” Robert raised an eyebrow and tried to drink Leech’s beer grimacing at the tast and shoving it back into her hands. Everyone turned to him and glared.

“What did you do Jingles”

“Why are you accusing me?”

“Bob what did you fucking do?”

—————-

“YOU STOLE HIS WHAT?”

“I thought he was a regular child!!” Robert snarled. He recalled a small boy in an orange scarecrow outfit in the haunted house that just was not scared of him. He tried everything eventually getting frustrated and snatching the boy’s candy bag and vanishing to go find his mate. He had no idea he had just stolen from Samhain, who for one night a year was the most powerful being in existance.

“Wait hold on you fucking stole the spirit of Halloween’s bag of candy after you couldnt scare him because your feelings were hurt!?” Leech had hopped out of his lap and pushed her hands through her hair.

“He had no fear and I couldnt just let him get away! All the candy bars had razors in them anyway..”

“Where’s the fucking bag now Robert??” She grabbed his robe in her fists.

“In my lair I was going to eat around the knives!”

“Jesus christ Junior you must have really pissed him off!”

“How do we fix this then just give him back the bag?” Freddy asked.

“That’s a start….” The ex vampire took a long drink from her beer.

“Where would we find the little brat though?” Uncle Penny asked.

“Probably where the celebrations are thickest. That’s where I’d go for a holiday about me.” Freddy added.

“Looks like were going to have to do a traditional human halloween then. Let’s get some costumes carve some pumpkins and get me another god damn drink.” Leech sighed, it was going to be a long difficult day.

—————-

“Ok so what im thinking is if the Cenobites are still throwing their big ass Halloween party then thats probably a good place to start since that thing is going to be huge. Which means if were going everyone is going to first need a costume.” Leech and the rest of the former monsters stood in the center of town finally making it out of the house.

“Yeah one, none of us were invited and two, theres going to be nothing left in the stores. Except the sexy stuff and there is no way im going as sexy thing that should never be made sexy…maybe Jingles will though that seems like his wardrobe of choice.” Freddy grumbled keeping a firm grasp on the poor overwhelmed Prince Vlad.

“Well sorry for being too tall to fit into your clothes which are made for small women” Robert sneered at the former dream demon. He was getting strange looks left and right for his overly tight pants/ pink bathrobe combo. Leech took note of it when a few girls stopped and stared while giggling amongst themselves. The ex vampire grabbed her mate’s arm glaring daggers at the women. Robert put two and two together and shot her an amused smile “Really?” he asked her. “We need to get you some real clothes” she grumbled.

“How are we getting into this party then if we weren’t invited?” Uncle Penny interrupted them. “We’re not exactly equipped for sneaking in and out of places anymore.”

“Crashing will be easy, its taking on an all powerful being as humans that will be extremely difficult.” Leech stated. she had crashed many a party in her teens when she used to deal pot to rich kids getting in wouldnt be a problem.  

“And what are we gonna do when we catch the twerp? Shake and yell?” the older eldritch asked.

“I have a feeling rattling his brains and screaming at him is probably a bad way to appease the god of Halloween to change us back” Freddy added.

“Well I’m not saying I’m sorry” Robert growled. There was no way he was going to beg some young pagan god to forgive him.

“You do realise as humans we can die now right? You better fucking say youre sorry Bob” his mate scolded him.

“Seriously Jingles what if were stuck like this for a whole year?” freddy added realizing the entire monster population depended on the proudest thing in existence to admit he fucked up. They were doomed.

“I do not beg.”

“Ha! That’s a load bullshit! I’ve heard it!” Leech laughed.

“Leech! that’s….thats different…” Robert hissed

“we’ve all heard it Jingles anyone with a drain has heard it at some point.”

The former clown looked off to the side and grumbled something unintelligble.

“All right look, we need to hurry up and get something for us to wear to this thing. I’ll take the clowns. Freddy you try to handle your roommate.”

“Good luck with that.” Uncle Penny said eyeing the frantic looking prince.

“Just call me when he eventually breaks something” Leech grabbed the eldritchs and made her way to the nearest store.

—————-

“Robert what the hell is that?” both Leech and “Uncle Bob” as he decided to call himself, stared at Robert Gray in confusion as he exited a near by restroom

“You said buy a costume.”

“Ok but I thought youd get another clown costume why the hell are you Spiderman?” his mate placed her fingers over her temples. Of course hed pick out something like this.

“I’m a giant spider trapped as a man I thought it was fitting.”

“Yeah but I’m going as a ring master and…..you know what never mind, fuck me for trying” leech groaned it was hard enough to control two eldritch horrors in a crowded Halloween store already, trying to coordinate anything was off the table at this point.

“I’m going as the devil!” Uncle Bob announced proudly pointing to his horns.

“Yeah Im pretty sure Phil is not going to be too excited about that.”

“Ah fuck Phil. He thinks hes hot shit with his whole goat yoga scheme right now. This is how a real lure is done!” the former clown gestured to the red and black suit he was wearing smugly.

“Did you…put paint…on your face?” Leech sniffed the air, it reeked of paint fumes.

“Yeah! Spray paint! It burns a little but man do I look good!”

“I think the fumes are going to your head old man” Robert folded his long arms over the spider logo on his chest.

“Jesus christ neither of you would survive a day as humans without my help.” Leech grumbled as the clowns began to argue once again. She ignored the inevitable chaos and got out her phone groaning loudly over the 6 missed calls from Freddy. No doubt they were about something Dracula had done. Robert yellped when Uncle Bob whacked him on the head with his plastic pitch fork. Leech debated taking a photo of them for later blackmail but decided she should probably find out what the hell happened to Freddy first. As she was about to call him back she doubled over in pain. Something just went wrong in her abdomen. Something she’d never thought she’d feel again.

------------

OH NOOOO what ever could it beee! Poor Leech she’s had to put up with so much today. Penny better try to make it up to her. 

[funkymbtifiction]

The Walking Dead: Glenn Rhee [INFJ]

UNOFFICIAL TYPING BY: anonymous

Introverted Intuition (Ni): Glenn is a sentimental at heart, who likes to keep objects that symbolize his values and the people in his life that he loves. When Hershel gives him a pocket watch, he keeps it with him all the time afterwards. At first, he doesn’t totally understand what it means, but when he asks for Hershel’s blessing to marry Maggie, he tells him that it is a symbol of the fact that their time alive could suddenly end at any moment because they are living in the zombie apocalypse, so their future is uncertain. When he finds out that Maggie is pregnant with their first child, Glenn feels afraid at first because he knows that Lori died giving birth, and his wife was the one to deliver the baby for her. However, he overcomes his fears when they get separated again in season four, realizing they can’t just be afraid to be alive, and comes to see having a child as a wonderful opportunity to build a family with Maggie. Although he is not a very religious person, or one who has ever claimed to believe in god at all, Glenn has been seen praying to god in on some occasions of great desperation and fear, and he tells Maggie that he’ll “find her” from beyond the grave, so he does seem to feel some sort of faith in a higher power and believe that there is life beyond death, even if he’s not totally certain of what that exactly entails. This last part of his Ni-dom function works in tandem with his Fe-aux function, but Glenn often intuitively sees things in other people that they don’t see in themselves. For instance, he sees that Maggie has a lot more strength to survive on her own than she initially believes herself to be capable of, and he helps her come to realize this when they fall in love. He takes a high-risk chance on helping Tara because he needs her help to find Maggie, and some instinct deep inside him tells him that she is a good person worth helping. Surprisingly, Glenn is right, and the two become best friends.

Extroverted Feeling (Fe): Glenn is by far one of the most remarkably caring, ethical, loving, and selfless members of the main cast. However, in spite of his good nature, his strength to do the right thing, fight back adversity, and survive the apocalypse do not really come from any sort of self-reliant internal strength, an internalized set of personal values, or a ‘gut’ feeling of the moment based ethical decision-making process, like an Fi-type. No, Glenn’s good nature and strength are based around the feelings of other people. He doesn’t learn to fight back adversity, and stick up for himself until he finds the strength to do so through true love with Maggie by starting a relationship and family with her. Before that, he was essentially the main group’s errand boy and “walker bait,” but Maggie’s love made him realize that lhis life was actually worth fighting for again. He spares the lives of most people, even if they are acting like jerks, like Nicholas, because he knows that in another life that they were good people, who would have done the same thing for him. He knows that everyone is just trying to survive in the apocalypse, and that the people who act like cowards in this world, probably weren’t that way before the world went to shit. Even though it greatly angers and saddens him, he is willing to forgive the cowardice of the Alexandrian people that he takes on supply runs with him when they leave other people in their group behind when they are hurt or stuck in compromising situations that will slow the rest of the group down because he wants to believe that humanity can change for the better. Glenn finally kills living people for the first time in the series in season six when he absolutely has to do so in the Savior’s camp for the sake of defending his group, and he is seriously uncomfortable about having to do it because he cries the whole time. Although he is willing to forgive the people who hurt him, he refuses to forgive the people who hurt Maggie, and/or anyone else in his group, who he is close to. He refused to forgive Merle, not because he hurt him and took him to the Governor, but because he also took Maggie to the Governor, “a man, who humiliated her and terrorized her,” and Glenn “cares more about her than he does himself.” He even goes through a reckless period of wanting to get revenge on the Governor for terrorizing and humiliating Maggie in S3 afterwards. Glenn also has an amazing ability to see, predict, and bring out all of the potential for good things hidden underneath other people’s fears, insecurities, and temptations to make the wrong choices, like with Rick, Daryl, Maggie, and Tara. This is his primary Ni-Fe functions working together in tandem.

Introverted Thinking (Ti) In Glenn’s debut episode of the series in S1, he shows Rick and the rest of his group in Atlanta a map that he has created, which show all of the exits and tunnels under the sewers of the city that are (mostly) clear of zombies. He has created a system that can help them all escape through the sewer system. He quickly figured out how to hot-wire a car, and siphon gas from others when he needed it. At this point in the series, he is not very adept at fighting off walkers, or at sticking up for himself, but he seems to have survived as long as he has with his fairly strong ability to use internal logic. Still, Glenn’s Ti-function is in the weaker half of his stack of cognitive functions as an INFJ, so that means that it also sometimes comes out unhealthily at moments of self-hatred and self-doubt. He analyzes the things that he should have said and done in a situation with other people involved beforehand, but didn’t do at the time because he was too afraid, or not fast enough, and blames himself. In season two, Glenn blames himself for freezing up in a shootout with two outsiders, and not doing anything to help Rick, Daryl, and Hershel fight them back in the bar, even though he knew they were also armed at the time. Although it is never directly stated or shown outright in the series, there is strong evidence that Glenn unfairly blames himself for not being able to save Noah from those walkers that devoured him right in front of him in that revolving door, given the fact that he really did try his best to reach out to him and save his life before it was too late, and looking at just how upset he was over the whole ordeal afterwards.

Extroverted Sensing (Se): Extroverted sensing (Se) is the weakest of Glenn’s main cognitive functions as an INFJ, but it can be seen in his character in several moments throughout the series. Sure, Glenn never became the grizzled, ruthless, and dangerously threatening zombie apocalypse adversity killing-machine warriors that Daryl and particularly Rick became in the series, but he still adapted the necessary physical aggression and strength to fight back and survive adversity in the apocalypse pretty impressively. A big part of that is thanks to his Se-inferior function. He gave Merle a bloody nose when he was tied down to a chair, and getting beaten up by him. He successfully fought off a walker, while he was duct-taped and tied down to a chair in season three when he and Maggie got kidnapped by Merle and taken to the Governor by him. He was the main group’s primary supply runner throughout most of the series because he was well-known to be “quick on his feet,” and being really good at getting out of tough compromising life-or-death situations. He punched Abraham, a big, beefy, and strong former military seargeant, in the face, and actually almost beat him before they got pulled apart. Still, like I said before, Glenn’s Se function is the weakest of his four main cognitive functions as an INFJ, which means that it has often come out in moments throughout the series when he is unhealthily stuck in an Fe-Se loop. For instance, in S3, he goes through a reckless phase, after he and Maggie get kidnapped by the Governor, and their relationship starts to show some strain when Glenn finds out that Maggie took off her shirt because the Governor threatened for her to do it, or he would cut off Glenn’s hand. After this point in the series, Glenn goes through a bit of a reckless, vengeful, and blindly self-destructive Fe-Se loop phase. He tries to talk Michonne into teaming up with him to go and kill the Governor to get back at him for humiliating and terrorizing Maggie by sexually assaulting her. He gets frustrated when Hershel advises Rick and the rest of the group to keep Glenn away from the Governor and Woodbury for the time being because he is afraid that he is going to get himself and everyone around him killed with his blindly reckless anger and lust for vengeance. When the group listens to Hershel, and leave Glenn behind because they are afraid  that he could be a danger to himself and those in his group, he aggressively bludgeons a walker to death in his frustration. After the group convinces Glenn that they can’t just kill the Governor outright, he takes out his remaining frustration one last time against Merle albeit too aggressively when he tries to leave the prison to go and kill the Governor without the others’ permission, and then he starts to let go of his anger, makes up with Maggie, and come out of his Fe-Se loop.

[artificialqueens]

Just The Game We're In- Chapter 4- Ortega

A/N: a fun fact, I almost burst into fucking TEARS when I finally finished this chapter. I am SO SORRY for the wait of approximately 213 days (seriously folks…if your fav fic doesn’t get updated after like…2 weeks…just think…you could be reading this piece of shit) but HERE IT IS GUYS, chapter 4 of every mobile user’s waking fucking nightmare, Just The Game We’re In!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In case any new readers need a rundown, this fic is inspired by the best TV show on god’s green earth, The Thick Of It. This one goes out to every single one of you that has waited so so patiently for this update, I love the actual heart and souls of you. Also to the gals at AQ Brits who have kept me (in)sane writing this monster. This chapter holds two of the most favourite scenes I’ve ever written and is generally a bit of a wild ride, so I hope you all enjoy!!

Plot Summary: Willam is a senior political advisor to the government’s minister for social affairs and citizenship, Sharon Needles. Throw in a crush on co-worker Courtney, Sharon acting weird around Willam’s colleague Alaska, an incompetent press department headed by Actual Living Zombie Jinkx Monsoon, and Willam’s job couldn’t get much more stressful. No wonder spin doctor Bianca Del Rio is permanently at the end of her tether…

There was definitely something fishy going on in the department, and it wasn’t Jinkx’s disgusting home-made tuna and sweetcorn sandwiches.

Willam hadn’t really noticed it at first. She’d been too busy with her work if she was honest- December was looming ever-closer and the hurry to compile the existing crime stats in time for New Year was a busy race. But she’d first spotted it on Monday, when Alaska had been twenty minutes late for work and arrived at exactly the same time as Sharon, her face grubby with what was presumably makeup from the day before.

“Christ girl, did you get out the wrong side of bed this morning?” Willam had pressed her, yelling across the office as Alaska had sunk sheepishly into her chair. “And then hit a wall and dragged yourself through a river of pig shit and gorse bushes?”

Alaska had simply rolled her eyes, scrunching the bird’s nest of hair on her head a little self-consciously. “I don’t look that bad, drama queen. Just overslept, that’s all. Now can we all just get on with our damn work before we accidentally let in a million illegal immigrants or something?”

That had been that, and Willam hadn’t really thought any more about it. That was until the next evening, when Alaska seemed to leave work but reappeared again beside the lifts, dressed immaculately in a fancy red shift dress and gold heels with makeup to match. She’d quietly slipped away before Willam could even interrogate her.

The weirdest by far had been the morning after, when Alaska arrived at work in a dress that was almost identical, in fact completely identical, to one Sharon already owned.

“What, do we get to share Sharon’s clothes now? Is that our festive bonus this year?” Willam had laughed incredulously, narrowing her eyes at Alaska in confusion.

“What? It was a nice dress, I went and got the same one. It’s only from H&M, for crying out loud. Half the girls you see in any clapped-out Camden bar are probably going to be wearing it,” Alaska had snorted in response.  

It was all just odd. There was also the fact that Alaska was barely out of Sharon’s office prepping for the New Year’s trip to Brussels, where the minister, one of her advisors and one member of the comms team went over for an international summit on European social affairs. It was almost as if Willam barely knew what was going on with her friend anymore.

Courtney was being weird with her as well. She’d turned colder, almost like some weird professional ghost of her former self. She barely even smiled when Willam tried to joke with her, was strangely quiet, and never really ate lunch with her anymore. Willam wished she knew what was happening with her. It wasn’t as if her crush on Courtney had died down- in fact, being borderline ignored by her only made her heart hurt more, made her wonder if she’d done something horrendously wrong or offensive. Even as a friend it worried her, and she wished Courtney would open up to her as she had done all those weeks ago.

The combination of what was essentially her two best friends completely ditching her made Willam feel a little lonelier than normal, and so she’d begun spending her lunch breaks with the comms team. Katya was always happy to see her (even if she did tease Willam about Courtney mercilessly when nobody was listening), Trixie would often share her snacks with her, and Willam had found herself warming to Violet who was actually very sharp and witty, though she concealed it well under her stony, statuesque resting bitch face. Although she liked spending time with the civil servants, Willam couldn’t help but wish her friends would be back to normal again.  

It had started out as an ordinary Friday morning, if a little more boring now that Willam no longer had Alaska to bitch to or Courtney to flirt with, even if said flirting was under the guise of being platonic. In fact, the morning almost had an atmosphere of calm; that was until Jinkx answered the phone and proceeded to squawk the department down.

“What?! The seven o’clock?! Absolutely not. There’s no way! It’s not possible to collate that amount of data in time, let alone brief her on everything necessary.”

At this point everyone had stopped working entirely, all eyes fixed on Jinkx who was biting her lip impatiently and staring at Sharon’s door with uncertainty. “I’d need to discuss it with her. Can I get you to call me back? Right. Thank you.”

“Whose cat’s being strangled?” came a voice from the other end of the office. As if on cue, Sharon had appeared from her room. She seemed a little more tired today, and was clutching a Red Bull for dear life in her red-taloned hand.

Casting her eyes back down the office, Willam also noticed an identical Red Bull sitting on Alaska’s desk just beside her computer monitor.

Ignoring Sharon’s sarcasm, Jinkx gestured to the phone in irritation. “I have just come off the phone with Dan Donigan over at radio Five Live.”

“What, Milk?” Willam piped up, curiosity piqued. Milk, to give him his DJ name, was an interesting host. He was a lovely guy, chilled and easy-going, and on the surface seemed like a good interview. However one slip up and he would go in, firing off questions like one of those machines that shot out tennis balls one after the other, whacking you with them until you were a crumpled heap on the floor.

Barely acknowledging Willam’s interjection, Jinkx continued. “And he had the utter nerve to ask for an interview with you at seven o’clock this evening, a ‘showdown’ between you and the shadow minister covering the refugee crisis.”

“Wait, he wants me and Phi Phi?” Sharon asked, narrowing her eyes a little and suddenly more alert than she had been 60 seconds previously. Jinkx nodded in reply.

“I told him I’d have to ask you but if you want my opinion, there’s absolutely no way you should do it, Sharon. We have approximately-” she craned her neck to look at the clock. “- nine hours to prep you, which is not nearly enough time for you to collate all the facts and figures you’d need for a debate like that!”

“We had three hours to prepare for a Michaels interview and still pulled it off,” Alaska interjected, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Yes, Alaska, but this is different. Chad Michaels knew Sharon was in the right and simply wanted her as an illustration of tabloid sexism. This is Dan Donigan. And from what I’ve heard, he’s pretty buddy with Phi Phi.”

“Look, the refugee crisis is something I care a lot about and know a lot about. I have a lot of the facts already, it wouldn’t take me long to brush up on them and potentially even learn a couple more of the intricacies. It would take- what, a couple of hours to fully brief me about Five Live? I see no reason why I can’t do this, Jinkx,” Sharon said, her eyes more determined than ever.

Jinkx looked like a wearied mother whose child had just asked if they could have their entire class round for a sleepover the next day.

“What’s Bianca’s opinion?” Willam asked, leaning forward on her desk with her elbows. It made sense to her that they would ask Bianca, and if anyone was going to know if it was a good or bad idea it would be her.

“No idea. Call her and ask,” Jinkx shrugged, clearly happy to be palming off some extra work.

Despairing of Jinkx’s laziness for what must have been the thousandth time that year, Willam took out her work phone and dialled Bianca.

“Willam Belli. Good morning,” Bianca chirped down the phone jovially. She seemed to be in a good mood, a really good mood, which was fucking weird.

“Bianca, hi. Listen, we’ve had Milk on the phone, he wants Sharon and Phi Phi for a debate about the refugee crisis at 7pm. What do you think?”

“I say carpe that fucking diem. Get her on.”

Surprised, Willam gave her phone a double-take, as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “Sorry, this is for 7pm tonight, not tomorrow.”

“I know how the fuck time works! Get her on the damn show.”

Willam was nothing short of amazed. “Bianca, are you su- I mean, this is definitely a good idea then?”

“Listen. Sharon is a walking, talking database. She retains facts and figures like some horrifying human sponge. She’s a confident girl, Dan will love her. Just get her on and get her to make Phi Phi look like she’s drowned hundreds of refugee orphans personally with her own two hands.”

Rolling her eyes a little at Bianca’s harsh turn of phrase, Willam had heard all she needed. “Okay, well, thanks for your input.”

She hit ‘end call’ before Bianca had a chance to say any more, turning to face Sharon, Jinkx and Alaska who were all craning their necks, waiting to hear what the verdict was.

“Hell has frozen over and Bianca has actually approved something,” Willam shrugged, and was met with an excited beam from Sharon and a disgruntled sigh from Jinkx. “It’s going ahead. Jinkx, phone Milk back.”

Muttering in exasperation under her breath, Jinkx simply turned around in her swivel chair and dutifully began hitting a number of buttons on her phone. Waiting for some form of instruction from Sharon, Willam was surprised with she instead turned to Alaska, chattering happily but not quite audibly. At one point, Sharon seemed to excitedly grab one of Alaska’s hands, squeezing it once, twice and then letting go. Alaska didn’t appear the least bit fazed, as if this was almost a regular occurrence between them. In any event, if Sharon tried to involuntarily grab Willam’s hands mid-conversation, she was getting a slap.

With nobody left to talk to, Willam turned to Courtney’s desk to find her deep in concentration, her brow furrowed like a tiny ploughed field.

She’d been so deep in her work that she’d missed the entire exchange.

***

It was another lonely lunchtime for Willam. Well, she supposed she was being melodramatic. It was just that Alaska had been called into the office yet again about the trip to Brussels, and Courtney was sitting eating her lunch at her desk in front of her work. Willam had asked if she wanted to join her but all she’d received in reply was a shake of Courtney’s head and a small smile tinted a little with sadness. Willam could’ve asked her about it, finally confronted her about whatever was going on with her, but she’d never heard of a successful heart-to-heart that had taken place over crime stats so she’d just joined the comms team for lunch instead.

“Bow down, ladies! The minister’s political advisor has once again deigned us lowly civil servants worthy enough to be graced with her presence,” Katya announced dramatically as Willam took the chair next to her, earning her a barely-stifled laugh and an unimpressed roll of Willam’s eyes. The table shoved into one of the corners of the office was small but they’d managed to fit Violet, Trixie and Katya round it already, who were all currently munching their way through their lunch.

“Hey, just let me eat my disappointing Costa sandwich in peace, okay?”

“No, sorry. There’s nothing more disappointing than this,” Trixie interjected, giving Katya a death stare as she held up a sad-looking hot dog in a bun. “Who the fuck gives this to their girlfriend for their lunch? I swear this is a form of domestic abuse in some countries.”

“I’m sure there’s a child bride in the third world that’s weeping for you, Trixie,” Violet deadpanned, smirking a little at Katya’s hysterical laughter.

“All I’m saying is, why the fuck would the woman that supposedly loves me more than anything in the world give me this abomination in a ziplock bag?!”

“Because when you eat it, it makes me think of you sucking dick and it turns me on,” Katya batted her eyelashes, opening her legs to inhuman proportions under the table. As Trixie reached across the table to shove her, Violet flared her nostrils.

“That is gross, Katya.”

“You’re saying the undying love I have for my girlfriend and our obscure sexual practices is gross?! You are a homophobe, Violet Chachki.”

“Hey, I can’t be homophobic towards you if neither you nor I know what kind of sexuality you even are!” Violet laughed, her usually marble face breaking into the sunniest of smiles. Katya tilted her head to one side, suddenly deep in thought. She’d made it quite clear and had been quite open about the fact that she didn’t really believe in labelling herself, insisting in her own words that people were people, and if we were meant to have labels we’d be tins or jars.

“I think I’m that one that doesn’t give a fuck whether it’s a peen or vagine or whoever that peen or vagine belongs to, as long as they’re hot and can make me laugh.”

Trixie seemed to momentarily turn a little green. “If you ever refer to genitalia using those terms again, I’m breaking up with you.”

“What’s it called? Potsexual?”

Everyone at the table burst out into raucous laughter at Katya’s expense.

“Pansexual, you silly bitch!” Willam howled, clutching at her stomach which was now doubled up with laughter. Composing herself slightly and wiping the tears of laughter away from her eyes, she shook her head. “Y’all are fucking batshit crazy, no wonder I never eat lunch with you.” 

“Hey! It’s not my fault I’m not down with the tumblr lingo of the cool kids of today,” Katya shrugged, taking a bite of her own plain, dry hot dog. At that moment Adore appeared at the table, almost melting into the hard plastic chair.

“Christ, you look hellish. Did Laila have you up all night?” Trixie greeted her as Adore rubbed her eyes, clearly sleep deprived.

“Very funny, bitch,” she bit back, opening her pasta salad. “Sadly it wasn’t even fucking. Her neighbours have just had a new baby and the walls are paper thin so we got treated to Beethoven’s ninth symphony in Constant Screeching until, like, 5am.”

“To be fair, you’ve probably given them Mozart’s nocturne in Loud Moaning quite a few times,” Violet joked, earning her a kick under the table from Adore.

Willam looked at Adore curiously. She had no idea that her and Laila were still a thing, least of all that Adore was at the stage where she was staying over. Well, she concluded, it did the party no harm to have a journalist on their side and it was certainly more fruitful an endeavour than chasing a co-worker around for weeks on end whilst being ignored.  

“Anyway, why’s this bitch eating with us again?” Adore changed the subject, looking at Willam with a slightly confused air. “Where’s the two other blonde dye jobs?”

Willam glared at her a little, mildly offended. “Well Courtney’s still working on those bastarding crime stats and Alaska’s got yet another meeting with Sharon about Brussels.”

“Wait,” Violet scrunched up her face, the picture of confusion. “That’s not right. We’re not scheduled for meetings about Brussels until December, Sharon emailed me and Alaska last week.”

“She’s taking you to Brussels and not us?! How dare she! We’re the most professional and competent fuckers in this department,” Katya cried, appealing to her girlfriend for backup. Trixie simply smirked at her.

“Katya you literally spilt your entire cappuccino over your keyboard yesterday. The whole thing.”

“I did n-”

“The whole. Thing,” Trixie repeated, chucking a piece of bread at Katya from across the table.

“Can we just get back to this situation?” Willam cut in quietly, looking Violet directly in the eye. “So there’s no meetings about Brussels until next week?”

Violet shook her head, still as confused as before. Willam didn’t blame her- Alaska and Sharon had been meeting for the past two weeks about Brussels, or at least that was what Willam had been told. But now she didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what they’d been talking about or planning. She hadn’t been told anything, neither had Courtney, and that made her blood boil.

Setting her lunch down on the table, Willam marched towards Sharon’s office, the combination of determination and annoyance almost clouding her vision. If she was being cut out of the loop, it would be the last, mouldy cherry on top of this shitstorm of this week’s cake. What did she care that Sharon was in charge? She had no right to exclude her and no right to exclude Courtney either, Willam’s heart swelling at the thought of her crush. No wonder she’d been so distant all week. If Sharon was planning something with only one advisor, then Willam had half a mind to tell her where she could stick her job.

That was until she burst open the door and saw Sharon sat behind her desk, her head tipped back and her eyes half-lidded, the smallest moan escaping her lips. Looking at the foot of the desk, Willam suddenly understood why- the red bottoms of Alaska’s Louboutins poked out from the strip of the desk just above the floor, almost concealing her from view, but not quite.

She put two and two together and got one million.

Aware that she’d slightly flung the door open, and still half in shock, Willam began to back out. 

“I’ll, um. Okay. I’m…yeah,” she babbled quietly, the sudden noise in the room causing Sharon’s eyes to fly open and her hands to shoot immediately up from her lap as if Willam had her at gunpoint. Ignoring her protestations, Willam made her way briskly down the corridor and into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her. 

She badly needed to clear her head. It made sense, of course it made sense. It explained away so much of what had been going on in Dosac in the past fortnight. She just couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been not to notice it. Courtney had been right all along, and Willam could’ve kicked herself for not listening to her. Furthermore, she could’ve kicked Alaska for her stupidity in the matter as well. What the fuck was she thinking about, getting into a relationship or casual fucking or whatever the hell this whole mess was with Sharon? With her boss?! How was she now meant to give impartial advice about serious departmental- scratch that, governmental matters? 

Making to splash some cold water on her face, Willam stopped when the bathroom door burst open to reveal Alaska. 

“Willam,” she began, seemingly not knowing how she would follow it up. Her face was flushed, a scarlet blush striking her cheeks as if she’d been slapped. 

“I, um. I don’t really know what to think,” Willam shrugged, looking her friend in the eye and wondering if she really recognised her all that much anymore. “You didn’t tell me anything, Lask. I mean, what am I meant to think? What even is this? What the fuck is going on?! I just…”

“We’re together,” Alaska cut in quietly. “Sharon and I. We’ve been seeing each other these past two weeks.”

There was a frosty pause in which Willam wanted to give all kinds of sarcastic remarks, but nothing could really hide how much she’d been hurt by the whole situation. “I just don’t understand…Alaska, she’s your boss.”

“Yeah, well…” Alaska sighed, running a hand through her hair and appearing frustrated at not being able to articulate herself properly. “It doesn’t feel like that, Will. It feels different. It doesn’t feel like a workplace relationship, it feels like we’re equals.”

“Well that’s just peachy. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve not been able to give a single piece of impartial advice since she’s arrived. You’ve sided with her on everything, Alaska. It’s been up to me and Courtney to be the fucking common sense in this department.”

As Willam finished, Alaska shrank back, leaning a little on the sink and casting her eyes to the white tiled floor. Annoyed at the pang of sudden sympathy she felt for her friend, Willam changed tack.

“Does Jinkx know?” she asked her, knowing that if she’d confided in anyone it would have been her.

“No,” Alaska sighed, appearing sincere as she looked Willam in the eye. “You’re the only one that knows.”

Rolling her eyes, Willam scuffed the floor with the heel of her shoe. So now she was being burdened with this, this massive mess that Alaska had managed to enter into, hell, that Sharon had entered into as well. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her secret to keep. Growing more annoyed by the minute, Willam found herself snapping at her friend.

“And so you want me to go to the trouble of covering this up for you and helping you both be happy as two pigs in shit together, wilfully ignoring the inevitable shitstorm this will cause if it gets to the press. I mean what are the papers going to make of this, Alaska?! They find out that Sharon’s been fucking one of her advisors so none of her policies have been properly analysed or vetted because the aides are too elbow-deep in their boss to care?! I mean why the fuck should I cover this for you, because as far as bad ideas go this sounds as if it could’ve been dreamed up by Darienne!”

“Because if this was you and Courtney, you would beg me to do the same!” Alaska barked back, covering her mouth slightly as if she’d just vomited all over the bathroom floor.

Willam felt her spine freeze up, as if she was suddenly in a horrible nightmare.

“How…How the fuck do you know about that? Did Katya tell you, is that it? Did Katya tell everyone? Holy fucking shit.”

Feeling the panic rise in her throat, Willam’s breathing hitched a little. This was an unmitigated disaster, people knew. Hell, Courtney probably knew, why else would she have been avoiding her? There was no way on God’s earth that Willam could show her face in the department again. Catching a quick glimpse of herself in the mirror, she noticed she’d gone completely white. 

Clearly feeling guilty, Alaska took Willam gently by the wrist. Her voice was softer as she addressed her friend.  "No. Nobody told me. I worked it out. I recognised that look you’ve been giving her for ages. It was the same one I’d been giving Sharon since the day she arrived, to be honest.”

Willam barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes, admittedly grateful that the news of her crush clearly wasn’t all around the office. Pausing a little in the silence, she cleared her throat.

“I won’t, um. I won’t tell anyone about you and Sharon, Lask. I was never going to, you’re my friend for Christ’s sake. I just want you to know what you’re doing,” Willam muttered, sweeping a long strand of hair out of her face. Alaska smiled slightly guiltily.

“Thank you. I do. And you’re right, maybe I could work on that whole impartiality thing. Honestly though, don’t worry. We won’t do anything that would put the integrity of the party at risk,” she said sincerely, squeezing Willam’s hand gently. Glad that things seemed to be calming down, Willam let out a breath she hadn’t really known she’d been holding. Alaska suddenly opened her mouth again, a cheeky glint in her eye. “You’re clearly worried about it getting out, but if you ever need someone to talk to about Courtney, well. I’m always here. You’re my friend, Willam and…well, no matter how involved I get with anyone, that won’t change.”

Relaxing a little, Willam allowed herself to laugh. “Thanks, girl. Has she, um. Has she mentioned anything to you?”

Alaska gave her a quizzical look. If she was being honest, Willam hadn’t really meant to ask Alaska anything, but the constant silence from Courtney was making her worried. Clearly deciding not to ask about it, Alaska shrugged.

“Not to me. In fact, she’s not really said much to me at all these past few days. She’s been a little quiet, don’t you think?”

Willam simply nodded in reply, secretly glad she wasn’t the only one that Courtney had been weird with.

“I guess I’ve been too caught up in the honeymoon phase of everything with me and Sharon that I haven’t really been making much time for my friends,” Alaska admitted, her face guilty as she looked to the floor. Realising that she’d probably suffered enough, Willam pulled her friend into a hug.

“It’s alright, girl, we’ve all done it. Well, not me, because I don’t actually have a heart.”

“Hey, you can’t make those jokes anymore, bitch!”

“Shut up, whore! Anyway. Court’s clearly going through something. Let’s just show her we’re there for her?“ Willam sighed, slightly at a loss as to what to do anymore since her life was beginning to be turned upside down at such a rapid pace, like some bizarre hourglass that someone kept flipping over and over.

“Agreed,” Alaska smiled. Her smile was so infectious and goofy that Willam couldn’t help but smile back, happy to have at least one of her friends back again.

“Hey, did you have lunch yet? Mine is still half-eaten at the table. Well, if Trixie hasn’t got to it yet,” Willam joked, earning a laugh from her friend.

“Go for it. And you can gush to me all about Court while we eat,” Alaska laughed as she threaded her arm through Willam’s. Rolling her eyes, Willam snorted a little, embarrassed but secretly pleased she had someone to open up to about things.

Of course, she would never let Alaska know that.

***

The building which held the Five Live studios was nice, from what Willam had seen of it so far. The entranceway was open and airy and certainly wasn’t as intimidating as it had seemed from the outside. The café also didn’t seem too much of a rip off, which was half the problem with a lot of the BBC buildings. Rubbing her eyes a little and being careful to avoid her mascara, Willam began pouring herself a latte from the coffee machine. It had been a long drive, and Willam had found herself wishing for the energetic presence of Katya as she sat squashed between Courtney and Sharon, who had both been completely silent for the duration of the journey with their heads in their notebooks. She wished Alaska had been there, but one of them had had to stay behind in the department in case anything horrific happened with communications while they were away, and considering what had happened earlier Alaska had volunteered herself, saving Willam from feeling like the third wheel on the office tryst tricycle.

It was good to have Alaska back as a friend. Even in the short space of time between their chat in the bathrooms to the drive to the Five Live studios, Willam felt it was as if nothing had ever happened. If anything, she seemed closer to Alaska; now that they both knew each other’s secrets they could open up to each other, and Willam felt far better for it. She actually felt happy for her friend, and hearing her talk about Sharon made her realise that what they had was definitely more than a flimsy office romance.

Taking her coffee to the counter to pay, Willam noticed Sharon already at the till. She realised that she hadn’t yet addressed the elephant in the room between them. Wondering if she should say something, she noticed that Sharon had only bought an apple and a bottle of water.

“You nervous?” she asked her, making Sharon jump a little bit beside her and subsequently answering Willam’s question without her even having to speak.

“A little,” Sharon smiled, seemingly grateful that Willam obviously didn’t hate her. “It’s just I’m expected to be an expert on this, you know? I feel like I need to deliver. I know it’s only a stupid radio debate but if I argue my point clearly enough we could maybe finally get something done about this in parliament.”

Willam nodded understandingly. “You’ll be fine, honestly. You’re good at shit like this.”

There was a small pause in which Willam wasn’t sure if it was the time to bring up the whole situation with Alaska. Sharon seemed to sense what Willam was thinking.

“Look, Willam, I’m really sorry for…well, earlier. It was severely unprofessional, I’m really not normally like that, I swear,” she babbled out, clearly trying her best to look Willam in the eye but too embarrassed to follow through with it. Laughing a little at the scarlet blush that was beginning to attack Sharon’s pale cheeks, Willam put her out of her misery.

“Sharon. It’s okay. Alaska talked to me about it. Sure, I don’t think it’s the most amazing idea in the world, but you two are clearly happy and as long as it’s not going to intervene in your work, then who am I to stop you?” she shrugged, turning around at the last second to pay for her coffee. When she turned back, Sharon was smiling at her, relieved.

“You’re a good friend, Willam,” she said sincerely, which stopped Willam in her tracks a little. She didn’t really think of Sharon as one of her friends, but thinking about it she supposed that there was probably no harm in letting someone else in. She simply smiled in return as Sharon continued. “I didn’t plan on getting so hung up on Alaska but that very first day when I arrived at Dosac and met her I just instantly felt connected to her, you know? I think she felt that way too.”

“She did. She’s told me,” Willam smirked, watching as Sharon broke out into a huge smile.

“Wow. I guess I try not to talk about those sorts of feelings so much round her in case it scares her off,” Sharon shrugged, her face still bashful.

“Believe me, I don’t think you’re in danger of doing that in a hurry.”

Just then, the little click-clack of heels behind them announced the arrival of Courtney, her footsteps almost as quiet as her recent demeanour.

“Shall we get going?” she asked, putting on what looked to be a brave face. “Phi Phi and her team should already be there. There’s still a couple of minutes to go but it’s best to be punctual, don’t you think?”

“You’re the boss,” Willam smiled cheerfully in an attempt to counteract Courtney’s downbeat air. “Well, technically Sharon is but, you know.”

Courtney only offered a polite smile in return. With Willam more confused than ever, the three made their way over to the lifts.

Six floors up sat the Five Live studios, a labyrinth of corridors and tiny offices with sofas and armchairs perched outside them. Three right-turns away from the lift, they were greeted by the three stony faces of Phi Phi, Detox and Roxxxy, a tall girl with long, straight blonde hair in a ponytail and huge hoop earrings, and a relaxed-looking man with a chiselled jaw and styled brown hair. If Willam hadn’t known who he was, she’d have mistaken him for a male model.

“Sharon, hi! Lovely to meet you. I’m Dan, although please do call me Milk,” he smiled, leaning forward and shaking Sharon’s hand warmly. Sharon seemed a little taken aback by such a friendly gesture from a journalist, but then Milk wasn’t really all that conventional anyway. Today he was wearing loose, cuffed black joggers and a baggy hoodie; so not exactly a picture of professionalism, but over the years Willam had learnt never to judge a book by its cover. Turning to include the opposition, Milk carried on.

“Okay, so you’ve probably heard the breaking news that Scotland are going to be aiming to take 20,000 refugees within the next five years, so we’re going to be covering that and springboarding the debate from there. The news is going to be after you.”

A quick glance to Phi Phi showed that the breaking news obviously hadn’t been broken to her yet. She was shooting a side-glance at Detox that could’ve melted a steel beam. Detox had the same level of discomfort on her face as someone halfway through a colonoscopy.

“This is Ganja, she’s our producer,” Milk waved a hand to the girl beside him, who smiled briefly and snuck a look at her clipboard.

“Your advisors will be allowed in the control room, although they will have to keep the noise down so I can put through texts to Milk. And this is all going out live, so no swearing from either of you two,” she glared coldly at Sharon and Phi Phi as if she’d just been informed that both of them had Tourette’s. “You’re all in this green room here.”

She gestured to the glass-panelled room beside the corridor, in which sat two coffee tables, three little sofas, and a coffee machine. Suddenly, Willam noticed that Sharon was stifling a laugh.

“I take it you spend a lot of time in the green room? You know, what with…your name,” she finally joked, clearly impressed with her own wit. All she got in return was a sour look and a click of Ganja’s long talons.

“My name is actually of Persian origin,” she sniffed, prompting an awkward silence. Milk was the one to finally break it.

“Okay, we’re going to go start the show and then Ganja will come and get you when it’s time. Please take a seat,” he smiled, walking off down the corridor with the producer.

Still cringing at Sharon’s joke, Willam led the way into the green room and relaxed onto the sofa. To her surprise, Courtney sat beside her. It would have been a normal occurrence every other day, but today Willam was surprised that Courtney wanted to be near her at all. As Sharon sat down, Willam became vaguely aware of Phi Phi ranting away to a sheepish-looking Detox.

“…why I, the damn shadow minister for social affairs and citizenship, apparently doesn’t know shit about what’s going on in relation to that? I mean we’re meant to be the ones that are one step ahead all the damn time!”

“Bitch was probably too busy ordering dresses for Alyssa’s to look at the BBC News 24 notifications blowing her phone up,” Roxxxy chipped in snarkily, shooting Detox a poisonous glare.

Interesting, Willam thought. All was clearly not well in political advisor paradise for the government or its opposition. 

“Oh, you think you’re immune to this?!” Phi Phi suddenly turned on her incredulously. Realising she’d perhaps been a little too loud she shot Sharon a sudden faux-relaxed smile, then resumed her hissing. “I mean, why didn’t you know? Why doesn’t anybody know anything? Jesus, twenty-fucking-thousand refugees? How am I going to explain that one to the cabinet? I mean, why was that allowed to happen?”

“Probably because Morgan McMichaels and the rest of her government don’t have a fucking compassion deficiency,” Willam muttered under her breath to no-one in particular. To her surprise and delight, she heard Courtney let out a soft giggle beside her. The remark had gone unnoticed by Phi Phi, who was still foaming at the mouth.

“When I see Morgan at Alyssa’s damn ball next week, she’s getting a piece of my mind. I mean, this decision has just come completely out of nowhere!”

“I guess it is their problem, though, Phi Phi. I mean, it is their government, they’ve got to worry about it, not us,” Roxxxy shrugged, attempting to calm the energy in the room down and failing.

“That’s all very fucking well and good until the public start asking me why I didn’t challenge it, or if things will be the same in the other three quarters of this damn, so-called United Kingdom. I mean, hell, the only reason Morgan’s doing this is so she can look good to the rest of the world and get some traction going on these dreams of another fucking independence referendum, which was bad enough the first time round!” Phi Phi’s voice raised to a dramatic crescendo as she reached the end of her sentence and slapped her lever arch file across her knees for emphasis. The room fell silent once more as Willam caught Sharon’s eye and they shared a knowing smile. Phi Phi was flustered, and that was good news for them.

A couple more minutes of frosty silence passed where neither Phi Phi or Sharon would look at each other.

“This is a joke. Are we just going to ignore each other until the debate starts?” Sharon whispered to Willam.

“I think that’s her plan. Anyway, it might be for the best. Release all the pent-up aggression in the studio like some kinda political Mike Tyson.”

“Well, as long as she doesn’t bite my literal ear off then I’m fine,” Sharon joked, shuddering a little. Just then, the silence in the room was broken by Roxxxy’s phone, the classic and yet generic iPhone ringtone deafening in the glass room.

“It’s Betty,” she whispered to Phi Phi. Phi Phi looked momentarily as if someone had swiftly removed every organ from her body in one go. Willam perked up. If the opposition’s spin doctor was trying to contact them, something important was obviously going on. She tucked her hair behind her ears in order to try and hear better.

“Hi Betty!” Roxxxy sing-songed down the phone in an effort to appear cheerful. Her face immediately faltered as something was being yelled down the line to her. Looking to Phi Phi, she leaned closer and Willam could only make out certain things she was whispering.

“…complete U-turn …in concurrence with the British people…welcome people in…”

Phi Phi was not as subtle. Narrowing her eyes at the phone then back to Roxxxy, she murmured a reply. “Roxxxy. I’ve been invited here for a debate. If I U-turn, there won’t be any debate. Plus I will be the only shadow minister in this whole party pulling this stance and I am not going to be spending the rest of my days in Westminster feeling like the girl who has to go and eat lunch in the toilets on her own, so no, tell her the answer’s no.”

Just then, Ganja appeared from the corridor, beckoning them all through. Sharon immediately leapt up, with Willam and Courtney following behind her. Roxxxy was still on the phone.

“Hi Betty, yeah, Phi Phi is kind of reluctant to do that so we’re just going to stick with the line we’ve been given.”

As Willam passed by her, she could hear the muffled yell of a woman at the end of her tether on the phone.

“Well this is the line I’m giving you! You tell her that-”

No more could be heard of Betty’s shouting as Willam made her way into the control room, with a quick “good luck” thrown Sharon’s way as she stepped into the studio behind a rattled-looking Phi Phi. Through the soundproof pane of glass she could see Milk chatting away into the microphone, Sharon sat at the huge wheely chair to his left and Phi Phi opposite them both. Willam could see Roxxxy’s face through the tiny pane of glass at the studio door, frantically trying to get Phi Phi to come back presumably so that she could communicate whatever Betty had been yelling to her. Suddenly, Detox stormed into the control room, irritation all over her face.

“Everything okay on your end, Detox?” Willam smiled pleasantly, revelling in the death glare that was sent her way in return.

“Fine, thank you Willam. All Phi is concerned about is making your boss look like the laughing stock she is,” Detox snapped back smugly. Willam could only laugh in reply.

“If I were you, I’d be a bit more worried about your boss actually knowing shit that goes on in this country instead of looking like an A-level government and politics student that just entered an exam room and forgot to revise. But y’know. You do you,” she shrugged nonchalantly, her smile becoming even bigger when she realised that Detox had absolutely no comeback. Casting a quick glance to Courtney, she was surprised to find her already smiling her way. Willam gave a timid smile back.

Timid. That was a word Willam never thought she’d be using to describe herself, but then so often being around Courtney fucked up her own self-expectations. Her kind, gentle nature always seemed to throw Willam off a bit, softening her personality. Although did she really need that if she wanted to get anywhere in the world of politics? This job was her life, it always had been. Perhaps that was only the case because she’d never had any alternative.

Willam scrunched her face up, chasing those particular thoughts away. This was neither the time nor the place.  

Roxxxy suddenly came scrambling through the control room door, earning a steely glare from Ganja as she pulled on an enormous pair of headphones. Detox cast her colleague a questioning gaze.

“Betty’s gone nuts. She wants Phi Phi to completely agree with Sharon on everything. The latest polls came in and apparently the majority were in favour of more refugees. Betty doesn’t want the party being hated more than they already are, so she wants Phi Phi to be in concurrence with the public.”

“Who the fuck did they poll, exclusively university campuses? What’s Phi doing?”

“Ignoring her. Which got me an earful of tinnitus from Betty, but Phi Phi’s put her foot down. The lady’s not for turning,” Roxxxy rolled her eyes, doing a sort of double-take as she saw Detox pull out her phone. Her face turned sour. “So you’re texting Guy all of this, then? Fucking couple goals.”

Willam was intrigued. There it was again, this reference to things not being perhaps all they should be between the two advisors. Roxxxy and Detox had always been close, the Tweedlebitch and Tweedlecunt of Phi Phi’s party, and this closeness had only increased when Alaska crossed the floor. Willam was left wondering what had happened.

Detox was fixing Roxxxy with a stare that suggested she was loath to bring this particular topic up in front of the opposite party. “Don’t start. We’ve discussed this.”

“I’m not starting anything. I’m just saying-”

“No, you’re not ‘just saying’. You’re being passive-aggressive and it’s getting on my tits,” Detox snapped at her. Roxxxy’s nostrils flared.

“Well maybe I’m just being aggressive!” she barked loudly, forcing Ganja to rip off her headphones and spin her chair round to face them both.

“Look,” she hissed, turning to address Roxxxy. “If you and that fucking inflatable dinghy don’t shut up right now, I’m removing you from this room. All of you.”

Annoyed that she’d been dropped in it, Willam glared at the two members of the opposition, but was distracted by Courtney pulling on her shirt sleeve.

“It’s starting,” she muttered, not once turning her gaze from the studio where Milk had begun introducing the topic.

“…and in the wake of Morgan McMichaels announcing that Scotland is to take twenty thousand new refugees over the next five years, we’re asking; should the rest of the UK be following in her footsteps? Discussing this with me today is Sharon Needles, Minister for Social Affairs and Citizenship-”

“Hi Milk, good to be here,” Sharon smiled easily, seemingly quite comfortable with the situation.

“-and the Right Honourable Phi Phi O’Hara MP, Shadow Minister,” he continued, gesturing to Phi Phi. Phi Phi sort of spluttered a hello.

“She doesn’t look entirely…comfortable, does she?” Courtney whispered, making Willam jump a bit. “Phi Phi, I mean.”

“She doesn’t. But that’s good news for us,” Willam replied, earning another smile from Courtney which had her wondering what had changed.  Milk was still talking.

“…and of course, you can get involved in the debate as well on Twitter, at Radio Five Live or using the hashtag ‘gotmilk’.”

“Fuck’s sake. This is today’s journalistic standard. Hashtag ‘gotmilk’,” Willam snorted, earning herself a glare from Detox and Roxxxy.

“So, Phi Phi O’Hara,” Milk was continuing, smiling lazily at the shadow minister. “What do you think? Should we be welcoming more refugees to the UK?”

A beat of silence. “Um, well, it’s a very good question, and one that does not necessarily have a yes or no answer, but a list of pros and cons. It is one of these situations where both the pros and the cons must be lined up together, and, um, from there it should be examined which the longer list is, the pros or the, um, cons. Now, of course there are many pros, however in the UK-”

“Fucking hell, Phi Phi, answer the question,” Detox muttered under her breath, as Roxxxy shook her head disparagingly.

Phi Phi seemed to have finally reached the end of her point, whatever the hell it was, as Sharon had begun speaking.

“Well, I think I’d have to answer that same question in much fewer words than Phi Phi did over there, and say yes, I think this country should be welcoming many more refugees, and I think Morgan McMichaels has done a brilliant thing today in announcing these plans for Scotland. I think they’re definitely going to see much of an economic benefit, much more diversity, a much more enriched culture, and certainly a more tolerant society.”

“Sharon, you mentioned the economic benefit- could you expand a little on that?” Milk questioned.

“Certainly. Well, I think it’s easy to forget that the refugees that are seeking to move over here aren’t all unskilled, many of them will have been in work or education before their country got completely ripped to shreds. In this case, this provides a vast pool of skilled workers who can set up businesses, contribute to established businesses, and generally help the economy.”

Phi Phi’s face looked as if Sharon may as well have taken a shit on the desk in front of her. Milk seemed to pick up on this.

“Phi Phi O’Hara- do you agree?”

“No, I don’t agree, Milk, and to be honest I don’t think Sharon really knows what she’s talking about. You think-” Phi Phi turned to Sharon. “-that more jobs are going to be created by these people coming over here, when we’re currently on our way out of a recession and unemployment is at its highest in years, thanks to your party. If these refugees are as skilled as you say- which they’re not, by the way, they’re only really coming over here for the benefit system- it’s going to mean that our own citizens are out of work, struggling to provide for families, and potentially even becoming homeless.”

Sharon sat and listened to Phi Phi’s tirade, finally smiling and stretching out in her chair as if she was in her family home and not a radio studio. “First of all, you weren’t even aware of the fact that Scotland was going to welcome these refugees until you arrived at this studio half an hour ago, so don’t talk to me about knowing what I’m talking about when I have been campaigning for the safety of refugees since I was at university. Second of all-”

Willam actually punched the air. Sharon was killing it, and Phi Phi was coming across just plain jittery. She turned to Courtney excitedly but found her concentrating on what Sharon was saying in the studio. Too hyped to listen properly, Willam peered over Ganja’s shoulder at the Five Live twitter feed.

Sharon is bae!!!! Love her!!!!! #gotmilk

lmao phi phi who #gotmilk

#gotmilk who is this lefty loony theyv got on this week? REFUGEES OUT THIS IS ARE COUNTRY #EDL #KNIGHTSTEMPLAR #PAULGOLDINGFORPM

#gotmilk interesting points from both sides but phi phi is winning for me atm

#gotmilk U TELL EM MOM @SharonNeedlesMP

A mixed bag, but Willam would take what the party could get. She became aware that Sharon was still talking.

“…and finally, honestly? If refugees are as unskilled as you say but at the same time can still steal your job? You probably weren’t really that good at it in the first place.”

Willam almost yelped when she felt an excited grab at her wrist. Looking sharply to her left she saw Courtney beaming with pride at Sharon, who was now lazing back in her chair like a satisfied cat. Seemingly realising where she was, or what she’d done, or exactly whose wrist she was grabbing, Courtney suddenly dropped her hand back to her side, looking up at Willam meekly.

“Sorry,” she muttered, her cheeks flushing a little pink before returning her gaze back to the ground.

Deciding this might be the only possible available moment of the day where she would be able to build a bridge with Courtney, Willam turned slightly to face her. “Hey, Court? Once this is over, do you think we could maybe talk about-”

She was cut short by a vibration from her pocket and a life-ruining generic iPhone ringtone ringing out into the studio. Ganja spun around in her chair with such a force that it almost spun through the glass into the studio.

“OUT. NOW. NO PHONES!”

Sighing in irritation, Willam stormed outside, pulling her phone out of her pocket. Bianca.

“Hello?”

“I had no idea the BBC were hosting a barbecue, are you having fun?”

Taking the phone away from her ear and double-checking the caller ID, Willam returned to the call in confusion. “What?!”

“Well it’s just all I’m hearing on the radio is Phi Phi O’Hara being absolutely roasted.”

Rolling her eyes a little, Willam held in an irritated hiss. “And you phoned to tell me this why exactly?”

“Hey! Stick that attitude far up your ass, you moaning bitch!” Bianca immediately snapped back, all joviality gone from her voice. Willam winced a little. “I wasn’t phoning you for the express purpose of making jokes, does it look like this government is being policed by Frankie Boyle to you?!”

Willam wanted to reply that sometimes it did with the amount that Bianca swore, but she thought better of it. “So why did you phone me then?”

“As great as Sharon’s doing, she’s coming across like a smug Poxbridge twat who’s just won her first debate and is about to piss her pants. Get her to tone it down a bit, will you?”

Willam shrugged, not completely disagreeing with Bianca. Sharon’s style of debate hadn’t really changed since uni and her years at the stock exchange really showed. She concluded that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to get Sharon to reign in the smugness.

“Right. I’ll try and communicate that to her, Bianca, but you see it’s a bit difficult when there’s a massive fuck-off pane of soundproof glass between me and my boss. “

“Drop that attitude or I’ll dropkick you into the Thames! Get it done!” Bianca yelled down the phone, her voice gone immediately after, indicating that she had hung up.

Willam internally bemoaned Bianca’s erratic mood swings as she headed back into the control room, Ganja giving her a sour look as she returned to her place beside Courtney. Phi Phi was currently rabbiting on about how immigration spelt the end for Britain, whilst Sharon was sitting back in her chair, feet up on the studio desk.

Milk looked displeased.

“Bianca’s right,” Willam thought aloud, then jumped a little as she felt Courtney’s eyes on her. “She just phoned me there. Wants Sharon to tone it down, and we’re supposed to get that message through to her.”

“Right. Well. That shouldn’t be too hard,” Courtney frowned, only slightly frosty. “Does Sharon know sign language?”

“She barely knows fucking English,” Willam muttered, sighing in exasperation as Sharon began to refute Phi Phi’s point with the same lazy smugness she’d displayed throughout the whole interview. “We could signal something to her?”

Courtney’s brow furrowed before she turned to the clear glass of the studio and started miming pushing her hands down rapidly. Willam watched her in severe disbelief, fleetingly wondering why she harboured such strong feelings for someone who was clearly such a massive blithering idiot. It seemed to be catching Sharon’s attention though, so dutifully Willam began miming the same action.

Sharon began to trail off, looking at them both incredulously. In fact all three people in the studio were giving them awestruck looks. Wishing and willing Sharon to understand what the fuck they both meant, Willam kept pushing her hands down in the hope that she’d get the message.

“Um…as I was saying, we have to remember that Britain is a country that is built on diversity and multiculturalism, and I do have to wonder what would happen to that if we suddenly stopped allowing- or deporting, as Phi Phi is arguing- immigrants and refugees,” Sharon continued, in a voice about three octaves lower than her normal tone. Willam physically slapped her palm to her forehead.

“Why the hell would she think we were talking about her fucking pitch?!” Willam ranted, as Courtney attempted to change tact by mouthing furiously to the clear glass. Out the corner of her eye, Willam could see Detox and Roxxxy sniggering in the corner. Bristling with rage, she decided that at that current moment she had bigger fish to fry.  Turning back to Courtney, she noticed that she was mouthing “TONE IT DOWN” furiously, ignoring the judgemental glares of Roxxxy and Detox. As Phi Phi rebutted Sharon’s point, Sharon was just staring at Courtney completely dumbfounded.

“It’s not working,” Willam sighed, as Courtney ran her hands through her hair in frustration. She looked good when she did that.

God, Willam wished more than anything that they were on good terms.

Shaking all unprofessional thoughts out of her head, Willam was suddenly hit with a brainwave.

“Do you have lipstick with you?” she turned to address Courtney. Appearing a little affronted by Willam’s blunt turn of phrase, Courtney raised her eyebrows and scrambled into her bag.

“Sure. Here.”

Grabbing it from Courtney’s hand, Willam fleetingly noticed it was MAC. Well, she hoped Courtney wasn’t particularly attached to this colour.

Without even hesitating, Willam wrenched the cap off and scrawled backwards on the glass the very three words Courtney had been mouthing through the pane just seconds ago. “TONE IT DOWN” now sat very boldly written in reverse, almost like a shriek against the clear glass.

And then a lot of things happened very quickly.

Sharon muttered “what the fuck?” very quietly to herself under her breath. There was a split second before Willam realised that the reason she’d heard her mutter it was because Sharon’s microphone had been switched on. Milk, partly in shock, stammered a choked apology, and then a hastily-tacked on link to the pre-recorded news. Ganja swore loudly, ripped off her headphones and stormed out of the room, presumably to find out from The Powers That Be how much the BBC was going to get fined this time, or maybe to find out how many complaints they’d received already. Courtney, who was frozen still, her mouth hanging open in shock, began to get a phone call. Willam didn’t even have to look to see who it was from. Becoming un-frozen and seemingly snapping back into a workplace android, Courtney looked at her phone, gave Willam a look that could curdle milk, then rushed out the room.

“Hi, Bianca- yes I know…”

In all the chaos, Willam had quite forgotten Detox and Roxxxy were in the room. They were both looking at her with punchable, smug smiles.

“Nice one, Willam,” Roxxxy smirked, leaning back against the wall calmly.

Willam didn’t even have a retort because, to give her her dues, Roxxxy was absolutely right.

***

“Oh, girl, I’ve got to give you credit. I haven’t laughed that much since…well. Probably quite recently. But it was an absolutely biblical shitshow.”

Willam rolled her eyes as she sat in the green room, Katya gabbing down the phone to her at a tremendous pace. “Yeah, well. We’ve got the last laugh because you guys have to field all the phone calls that must be flooding the department right now.”

“Are you kidding? This shit’s easy. No comment, no comment, no comment. Why do you think my smoke break’s been 15 minutes long? There’s nothing to do.”

“Well you could be listening to the damn thing.”

“Well what are you doing on the phone to me?” Katya reasoned, Willam hearing her taking a drag of a cigarette faintly down the line. She sighed. To be honest, she was just planning on hiding out in the green room until the whole thing was over. She’d been responsible for one of the biggest political fuck-ups someone could make, and she didn’t really feel she was in a position to give any political advice for some length of time. She didn’t know how Courtney was doing in there on her own. She didn’t really think to check on her. She didn’t want to make things worse. Christ, she was a fucking idiot.

Sitting in the green room had been interesting, though. During a break for sports news, she’d seen Detox and Roxxxy rush down the corridor in some sort of fury, and a kind of hushed argument had ensued. Roxxxy had been on the way to raising her voice in a furious crescendo, but had suddenly been cut off by something. Willam reflected on the situation. Maybe Detox and Roxxxy were fucking. Maybe this was what Courtney had meant those few weeks ago, about being more perceptive.

A sudden thought struck Willam. There was a correlation between that moment and when Courtney had started being weird with her. Why was that? What had happened then that had offended her so much? Before she could even think about it in any greater depth, she was jolted out of her daydream.

“Willam? Are you still there?”

Shaking her head, Willam tried to focus. “Yeah, sorry Katya. I was kind of in my own world.”

“Well, I guess I should let you go do your job. Love you lots. Try not to set the entire studios on fire as a grand finale.”

“That would be how this day would end,” Willam quipped as a sign-off, as she hit end call and tucked her phone back into the pouch in her bag. She supposed she should keep listening to the debate. From how it sounded, they were in the process of taking some phone calls and texts from the public. Always a great idea, thought Willam sarcastically. The pubic could always be trusted to have really great and sound opinions.

Phi Phi seemed to be answering someone’s phone call, her jitteriness now clearly back. The person who’d asked the question hadn’t seemed too happy, by what Willam had heard in the background of her phone call with Katya. Still, Phi Phi seemed to have done her best to answer whatever the question was, and now they were taking a phone call from,

“George in Tottenham Hale, let’s hear from you. I think you have a question for Sharon, is that right?” Milk’s voice came through the small speakers. What followed was a deep Ugandan voice, slightly tinged by what was clearly a couple of years in London.

“Yes, my question is for Sharon. It is a bit surprising to me to hear you are supportive of refugees and immigrants.”

Willam began to feel a sense of dread creeping over her. What the hell was coming next? She reached into her bag for her phone again, getting the horrible feeling that she might be needing it within the next few minutes. George continued on.

“I come to this country two years ago, I get a job with a cleaning company. We do big contracts and things, for big companies. And the government hired us to do the offices at Richmond Terrace, and the new offices of Sharon’s department.”

Suddenly, a harsh vibration from Willam’s phone made her heart beat of out her chest. A text from Bianca.

B: THERE IS A GLACIER OF SHIT ABOUT TO SINK US. I’M COMING IN. BE PREPARED.

If Willam was filled with horror before, then this only made her heart drop out of her stomach. As George carried on, Willam had to fight the urge to spew her insides out onto the green room’s floor.

“So we are working for the government, Sharon’s government, and she is here talking about the economic benefits of immigration, but they are paying us the very minimum wage, for five hours of work on the nightshift every day. So why does her government support this? It is cheap labour, and she is paying the company that supports our exploitation. She is exploiting us.”

A beat of silence was somewhat deafening on the speakers of the green room.

“Sharon Needles, how do you respond to that?” Milk spoke, obviously trying to inject some noise into the silence.

“Well. Um, that’s obviously a very serious accusation, and one which we will be working hard to-”

Willam never got to hear what Sharon would be working hard to do, as suddenly from the other end of the corridor came a dull yet frantic rumbling of high heels against a carpeted floor. Courtney was a blur past the glass of the green room until she came hurtling through its door, facing Willam with more urgency than she’d shown in a long time.

“We need to sort this out. This is a shitshow,” she gasped, hair all over her face. “You did hear that, yeah?”

“Yeah, Court, but the whole reason I’m here is because I fucked up,” Willam looked to the floor, a little embarrassed. “I don’t want to make things worse. It’s not my day, and you’re totally able to fix this. Alaska’s on the other end of the phone, just…I don’t know. Call her.”

Willam was shocked when Courtney took three little steps forward, fury written all over her face. For a moment, it looked as if she was going to slap her. She didn’t. Instead, she laid into her.

“Now, look! You’re Willam, god damn it! You can’t just give up because it’s ��not your day’, that’s not how this shit works!” she yelled, pointing a single manicured finger in her face. Seemingly calming down a little, she ran a hand through her blonde waves of hair. “Now Bianca’s going to be here in…fifteen minutes now. And she’s going to expect us to have some sort of plan for mopping up this hurricane of piss, and how else are you going to redeem yourself in her eyes than to be the ringleader of the whole thing? The party needs you. I need you.”

Courtney’s words shocked Willam into locking eyes with her. Seeming to realise what she’d said, a pink flush tinted Courtney’s cheeks and she opened her mouth to backtrack. “That’s not- you know what I mean. We’re a team. And you can’t…you can’t just give up because of one fuck-up. The Willam I know wouldn’t do that.”

There was a silence in which Willam tried to figure out how to respond. She was a little irritated with Courtney herself; the fact that she was insisting they were a team only now when it was convenient to her and the situation, all the amazing things Courtney was saying about her probably just being a front to get her to do something about this fuckery. There was also that little bump in Courtney’s telling-off, “I need you”. It would be easy just to question her about that, and shit, Courtney was actually really up in her face, really close to her face, and there was still some sort of tension in the air, and she still hadn’t broken her gaze and God, it actually hurt how much she couldn’t be mad at her for long. Blinking twice, Willam sighed deeply and rubbed a hand down her face, disregarding all her perfectly-applied makeup. Her mind began working at a hundred miles an hour.

“Right, make sure that Jinkx and her minions know the line. Of course, we don’t actually know what the line is because Bianca’s not here, but just tell them that we’re looking into it, stress Sharon’s commitment to fair employment for refugees and immigrants, and that this doesn’t affect her standing or the validity of her opinions. Should we make a donation to someplace?”

“Hmm, maybe not. If the press got hold of it, they could say it was just a reactionary measure. And the press are quite likely to get hold of it, given that we’re probably going to be under scrutiny for about a fortnight at least,” Courtney offered, biting her lip nervously.

“Good point,” Willam nodded, her heart swelling a little at how well they were working together already as Courtney began typing a message, presumably to Jinkx. Maybe Courtney had forgiven her for whatever she’d done already. Tearing a hand through her hair, Willam had to remind herself to focus on the matter at hand. “Okay, no donations. In the meantime, let’s maybe try to get some information about this guy, see if there’s anything we can use against him, anything that makes his stance void.”

Courtney stopped typing suddenly, looking up at Willam with concern in her eyes. “Willam that’s…that’s smearing.”

“Yeah, and?”

“That’s kind of Bianca’s domain. We don’t really do that unless it’s under her jurisdiction. Do you have any idea the shit you could get into if it got out that you instigated something like this?” Courtney mumbled, panic tinging her voice as her thumbs hovered over her phone screen. Pausing for a second to think it through, Willam could faintly hear Phi Phi’s smug voice laying into Sharon about what a hypocrite she was. That made her decision for her.

“We’re doing it. If it gets out, I’ll take the hit,” Willam said simply. Courtney looked momentarily as if she’d just been shot through the stomach, but dutifully she continued to type.

“Okay, so we’re going with smear campaign and promote Sharon. Am I sending this?” she sucked in a breath of air through her teeth. Willam gave a curt nod and with that, Courtney’s thumb hit a single button on her phone.

“God, it’s sent. Okay. Now what do we do?” she asked, fear written across her face. “Should one of us go back to the control room and keep listening to see if anything develops?”

“Right. You do that. I’ll let you know when Bianca gets here. Hopefully she’ll have a way to help,” Willam reasoned. Courtney smiled hesitantly, making to turn and leave for the studio. Seeing the worry on her face, Willam reached out and gently touched her arm. The softness of the action surprised both of them, and Willam drew her hand back quickly.

“Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine,” she finally said, managing to muster a confident smile from somewhere. To her shock, Courtney fixed her with the most genuine smile she’d seen from her in weeks.

“I know it will. You’re involved,” she replied, looking quickly to the floor and rushing out of the green room, leaving Willam at peak confusion.

The ten minutes before Bianca arrived consisted of firstly of just initial googling. There wasn’t much that Willam had to go on, other than “George from Tottenham Hale”, but with the right keywords she managed to find a second name, which she immediately forwarded to Jinkx. She wasn’t sure how they were all doing back at the department. She was a little afraid to ask.

When Bianca arrived, she knew about it. Along the corridor, Willam heard the thumping of a pair of very distinctive heels, and she could tell immediately that she was there. Standing up quickly and preparing for a roasting, Willam tensed up as Bianca entered the green room, dressed in a tailored blue suit and giving her a look that could’ve frozen lava.

“Where’s Australian Idol?” Bianca quipped dryly, setting down her Mulberry bag on the small glass coffee table and looking Willam dead in the eye.

“She’s in the studio keeping tabs on things. We’re currently trying to-”

“Nope! Not interested. Don’t want to hear from you. Go get her.”

Holding in a massive sigh, Willam trotted along to the studio. She had known Bianca was going to be mad at her, but she could only prepare so much for her disappointment. The main thing was, Willam reminded herself, that Bianca was here now, and if anyone could get this mess back in order then it was her.

Willam didn’t even have to say anything to Courtney as she stuck her head through the door of the control room. She immediately came running out, and they both walked in silence down the corridor to meet Bianca. When they got to the green room she was sat quite menacingly on the sofa, and had taken her suit jacket off and flung it over its headrest. She meant business.

“Right, any bright ideas from either of you about how to fix this fucking abomination? Because I’d love to hear them. I’m sure whatever it is it won’t be as good as Willam’s greatest hit from earlier, take a simple task and fuck it up to the point where Sharon makes one of the biggest media blunders a politician could make!” she barked, as Courtney and Willam stood in front of her like two disgraced schoolchildren.

Courtney began their defence. “Well, we thought that the line should be that this doesn’t undermine Sharon at all, she’s looking into it, and that delivering fair employment opportunities for immigrants and refugees is still one of her unwavering top priorities.”

Bianca seemed to relax only slightly. “That’s not bad. Good work, Courtney.”

“Actually it was mainly Willam’s idea,” Courtney said quietly, Willam raising her head to meet Bianca’s eyes. Bianca’s cold stare didn’t seem to have that icy edge anymore, but she supposed that hoping for praise was pushing things a bit far.

“Okay. Anything else?”

“We’ve…said to comms that they’re to look for information on the man that phoned in- anything that we could use against him, anything that we could put about, things like that,” Courtney said a little hesitantly. Bianca’s glare darkened.

“That’s fucking smearing! You both know that! That falls under my purview, I do the smearing, you guys get the information for me to make it happen. Do you have any idea the fucking river of shit you are going to have to stay afloat in if it gets out to the press that you are trying to run a smear campaign against this fucking individual? That’s not going to look so good for this party, will it?!”

Willam winced. “It was entirely my idea, Bianca. Courtney did point it out but we didn’t have much time to act and we had to do something.”

“Well here’s something to do for next time. Use your fucking brain cells,” Bianca hissed, standing up from the sofa and giving Willam a look that could wilt flowers. “Have we put anything out about this man yet?”

“No, that’s for certain. Last I spoke to Jinkx they hadn’t found anything on him yet. Willam found his second name, but that’s all we have,” Courtney confirmed, her stance like that of an army soldier as she addressed Bianca. Willam suddenly felt a vibration from her phone. Glancing at it, a text had popped up on her screen.

“Alaska’s just told me she has the name of his cleaning company. Maybe our tactic should be to smear them? Expose them for their poor wages?” Willam suggested, in the vague hope that Bianca would agree. Instead, she frowned and shook her head rapidly.

“Nobody is smearing anyone or anything until I give the green light, tell Alaska that for starters. Jesus, right. See if they can get more information about the company. Find out its boss, see if he’s hiding a lovechild in a fucking cupboard anywhere. Until then, we do nothing,” Bianca sighed deeply, seemingly much more relaxed now she was in control of the situation again. Willam did as she was told and began messaging Alaska.

In the few minutes that followed, there was a flurry of activity in the studios. Roxxxy, Detox and Phi Phi sprinted down the corridor, with a yell from Phi Phi which Willam could make out as “Why is Betty coming in?!”. Before she could even react to that information, Sharon appeared in the green room looking visibly shaken.

“I didn’t- I didn’t know anything about this. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” she babbled, looking frantically from Willam, then Courtney, and finally Bianca.          

“Might want to tone down the swearing. Didn’t seem to work out too well earlier,” Bianca replied dryly, severely unimpressed.

Courtney turned to Sharon and put her hands on her shoulders reassuringly, “It’s okay, we’re on it. In the meantime, try and keep pushing that new policy of yours; the housing one for refugees.”

“But-”

“I know it’s only in its preliminary stages,” Courtney shook her head. “But it’s the best we’ve got at the moment, and you need to redeem yourself. Just keep banging on about it until we can get something to cool this situation down.”  

“We’ve got five minutes til we need to be back in. I need to- I need to speak to Alaska,” Sharon stammered, worry thickly coating every word she spoke. Bianca and Courtney shared an odd look.

“Why Alaska?” Bianca asked swiftly, her eyes questioning. Sharon’s face suddenly drained of all its colour. Willam suddenly felt like she had to step in.

“Alaska’s the only advisor left at the department right now. She’s going to give us a perspective that we maybe haven’t thought about.”

Silently, Willam handed Sharon her phone, Sharon’s hands shaking as she took it from her. As Sharon left the room, she shot Willam a look of gratitude. Bianca gave her a side glance as she disappeared down the corridor.

“Okay, you two, keep digging. I’m going to make a few phone calls,” she said decisively, rising from her position on the sofa and leaving the room. Willam rolled her eyes a little. As long as Sharon was speaking to Alaska, she couldn’t really do anything. She began thinking about the three members of the opposition.

“Did I hear right earlier? Did they say that Betty was coming in?” Willam asked Courtney softly. Courtney furrowed her brow in thought.

“That’s weird. They must know something we don’t. Something must be brewing for them too,” she said slowly, realisation dawning on her. “They must be worried that we’re digging into this. They’re involved in some way!”

Willam’s heart leapt as Courtney began bouncing on her own seat excitedly. “We just need to uncover whatever it is they’re worrying about.”

About a minute later, the three girls from the opposing party jogged past the clear glass of the green room again. Sharon raced back into the room behind them and chucked Willam her phone back.

“Thanks girl. I’ve got about a minute to get back. You’ve got a text from Katya, by the way,” she said quickly, out of breath as she quickly ran back to the studio. A little confused, and more than a little disorientated at the pace at which things were moving, Willam opened up the text wordlessly. She could see from the outset that something was attached to it.

K: OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A screenshot of a text conversation. When Willam hit her thumb against the screen, the image became clearer- a conversation between Katya and Trannika, except only Trannika had sent anything.

“Holy fuck girl!!! Your man on the radio- I thought I recognised his voice and then it clicked! He cleans for us as well! George comes in on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and does the shadow offices. Bob & co are shitting themselves!! Betty is on her way in to Five Live to firefight in case anything goes down!! I’m going to need a strong fuckin whisky tonight I’ll tell u that for nothing xo”

“Shit!” Willam exclaimed involuntarily, prompting Courtney to crane her neck and read the text over Willam’s shoulder. “That’s it. We’ve got them. That’s why they were all running around the studio like chickens with their dicks cut off. Go tell Bianca!”

Courtney gave a little squeal, almost tripping over herself as she sped out of the green room to find Bianca. Willam was experiencing a sort of adrenaline rush. It was stressful at times, but this was what she loved the absolute most about this job; there was no better feeling than knowing you had the upper hand over the other party.

Bianca suddenly came storming in with Courtney, her face hard as marble, not quite seeming as overjoyed with the finding as Willam had been. Wordlessly, she held out an open palm in front of Willam.

“Let’s see.”

Obediently, Willam handed her her phone, still open on the screenshot of Trannika’s text. She watched as Bianca’s huge owl eyes darted across the screen, then as she almost threw the phone back into Willam’s possession. As she turned on her heel, she barked a “follow me” to no-one in particular. After sharing a quick glance, Courtney and Willam followed after her as she charged full speed ahead towards the control room. Bursting through its door, she instantly rounded on Detox. Willam had often heard the phrase “looked as if she’d shat herself” used facetiously, but only now could she with complete certainty say that this was the embodiment of Detox’s expression. Clearly she hadn’t encountered Bianca since she leaked information about Sharon’s DWI to Phi Phi, and by the looks of it she was frantically attempting to make peace with the fact that her death was imminent. She opened her mouth in an attempt to say or do something, but Bianca simply uttered one word.

“Phone,” she said calmly, holding out her open hand almost as a prompt. As Detox’s expression took on one of bemusement, Bianca simply followed her one word up with another, firmer and with an edge. “Now.”

Detox began scrambling to get her phone from her bag. As Roxxxy watched the exchange with nothing less than pure fear in her eyes, Ganja turned around in her chair, annoyance painted all over her face.

“Excuse me, what in the hell do you think you’re-”

“You turn the fuck back around in that chair and just concentrate on doing your job or I will loop my fingers round those fucking metal hula hoops stapled into your ears and do a Miss Trunchbull hammer throw on your imitation ghetto ass!” Bianca snapped without missing a single beat. Silently, as if she hadn’t quite yet processed the extent of Bianca’s wrath, the shocked producer swivelled back around. Near ripping the phone out of Detox’s hand, Bianca turned and left the control room, leading Willam and Courtney to the corridor outside.

“Watch my moves,” Bianca said, near out of breath, presumably as a result of her heart hammering in her chest the same way Willam’s was currently doing now. “What’s the number for texts to the studio?”

“08442,” Courtney reeled off without missing a beat. Catching Willam’s questioning look, she gave her a quick, amused smile. “I’ve been listening to this godforsaken debate for nigh on two hours now. That number’s practically engraved into my ear canal.”

Willam watched curiously as Bianca started typing, thumbs going like mad against Detox’s phone screen. Soon enough, she had a text waiting to be sent.

“Phi Phi is a hypocrite! The opposition also employs the same cleaning company as Sharon’s government and has them working more days! Know your facts before you start tearing others down! Julie in Brighton.”

Before Willam could comment on Bianca’s chosen pseudonym, Bianca had sent the text in, then gone to sent items and deleted it from history. It was as if nothing had ever happened.

“And that’s how it’s done,” Bianca finally smiled at the two advisors, some semblance of relaxed even though her frown lines were now engraved into her heavy foundation as a result of all the stressing she’d been doing for the past half hour or so. Willam shot a relieved smile at Courtney, who sent one back her way and consequently made her heart melt. Heart still hammering in her chest, Willam was about to compliment Bianca on her quick actions when a sudden voice from one end of the corridor made her jump.

“By ‘it’ do you mean stirring up a shitstorm for my party in the press which I’m now going to need to clean up?” It was a tall woman, some of her height coming from her impossibly tall electric blue heels. Her outfit didn’t exactly scream ‘politics’- black leggings with an electric blue fitted shirt and a crazy, floral patterned blazer- but then neither did her hair, which was white blonde with bright pink coursing through every other strand. Her makeup was wild and erratic, blue and black like her outfit, with a shocking pink lip pierced with a ring right through its centre. If Willam hadn’t known who she was, she would never have guessed that this was Bianca’s opposite number- “Acid” Betty Ruhren, so-called because she had a reputation for corroding anyone who happened to get on the wrong side of her via the media. Everyone except Bianca, that is, who she seemed to hold a kind of respect for. They were in the same game, and Betty seemed to recognise this, so Bianca had never ended up in the press. Now, however, she didn’t seem to look particularly happy. Decidedly acidic, Willam thought.

“Elizabeth, how wonderful of you to join us. Should I pile us all in to the control room? Your advisors are in there now, I feel it would really add to the party atmosphere,” Bianca smiled acridly. She looked as if she was making to add something, but Betty cut right in.

“Don’t give me that shit. You’re here to cause trouble.”

Bianca glared at her. “You’re here to save your own ass, and I know exactly what you’re trying to cover up.”

Betty’s eyes shot from Bianca’s face to the phone in her hand, the cogs clearly turning in her brain. There was a beat of silence, in which Willam could hear Milk’s voice from the studio.

“…and has them working more days, know your facts before you start tearing others down. Phi Phi O’Hara, quite a serious accusation there from Julie in Brighton-”

Bianca gave a small smile of satisfaction as Betty’s face darkened.

“Julie from Brighton. Is that what you’re going by these days?”

“I don’t know. It’s a whole lot better than having the same nickname as a main ingredient of bile,” Bianca shrugged, whipping her head round quickly as the door to the control room swung open and Detox and Roxxxy flew out.

“Betty, we didn’t think it would get out as fast as it did,” Roxxxy began, her eyes wide with panic as she addressed the spin doctor. Bianca nonchalantly handed Detox her phone back. Guiltily and silently, Detox slid it back into her bag, at once knowing full well what had happened. Completely oblivious to the exchange, Betty addressed Roxxxy calmly.

“It’s under control. Just go back in and make sure Phi doesn’t choke on her own tongue or some shit like that. I’ve got business out here to attend to,” she said forebodingly. Roxxxy cast a side glance at Willam before slinking back into the control room, Detox following behind her like a disgraced puppy. The door swung shut behind the two advisors. At once business-like again, Betty took one large step towards Bianca.

“You know what would go down horribly on your end? If I go to the press about the prostitutes that lovely John from the Ministry of Justice has been renting out like fucking Blockbuster DVDs every Saturday night. Somehow I think that would kick up a bit of a fuss, don’t you?”

“A man taking his sister out for dinner on a weekly basis- yes, his sister!- is actually a lovely wholesome tale that I’m sure the press would consider a non-story. What wouldn’t be considered a non-story is your not-so-lovely Anthony from your education department getting a bit too enthusiastic slapping his wife about, fucking gave her a black eye?”

Betty bristled as Courtney’s expression grew horrified. “That was a domestic accident, Bianca, and you know it.”

“Domestic accident, oh what, because he’s got hands the size of fucking flatpack wardrobes?” Bianca shot back incredulously.

“Yes, a domestic accident. What about Jade Jolie’s domestic accident, the one she got from sleeping around a little too much over at Richmond Terrace? Three potential Dads, but none of them her actual fucking husband, I reckon that would be a bit of a PR disaster for your party!”

“It wouldn’t be a PR disaster because- that is a fucking crock of shit!” Bianca laughed, rolling her eyes. Willam was in awe. It was as if the two spin doctors had quite forgotten she and Courtney were both there, and now here they were, caught in the crossfire of some form of smear war. Bianca was still going. “However, I have a photo, that I can get blown up to canvas size, of your shadow defence minister coming out of the toilets at Nobu with his nose covered in cocaine! What’s your defence to that going to be, eh? ‘Oh well you know Nigel, he’s just a really keen baker!’”

“I have tweets I can take down to Snappy Snaps and get blown up to fucking charity cheque size, from the account of your foreign secretary, except he doesn’t really seem to like foreign people all that much judging by the incredibly unironic use of the n word like punctuation in every 140 characters!”

“Your party’s been getting a lot of positive coverage by the Guardian recently, does that have anything to do with the new editor, you know, the one with the huge hair and the eyeliner? I’ve heard stories of you skulking around Camden recently, Betty, and I never really thought that was your scene? Or am I wrong?”

“DON’T FUCKING-” Betty raised her voice very suddenly as she momentarily forgot where she was, clearly having had a nerve hit. Darting her eyes from Courtney to Willam, she gave Bianca a sheepish glance, who in turn was looking at her as if she’d just won a third world war. Betty took one very laborious breath.

“Look,” she began, her voice much quieter. “How about this. We both issue a statement, saying that neither of our girls were in full possession of the facts. But both parties are in the process of employing a new company, and we’re going to be focusing on our stance towards a fairer working wage in the coming weeks.”

Respect seemingly regained, Bianca seemed to become less tense. “You carry on like that and I might not find you so grossly fucking reprehensible.”

Sniffing and then giving a little nod, Betty let go a breath she had been holding. As the atmosphere quietened, Willam became aware of Milk’s theme song playing, signalling the end of the programme. The studio door opened and out emerged a wearied-looking Dan Donigan, a Phi Phi with a face like thunder, and a Sharon that looked as if she’d been put through a wash and dry cycle. Ignoring Bianca, Willam and Courtney, she simply turned and walked towards the lifts.

The only thing she said into the echoing of the corridor was simply, “I need a fucking bath, my vibrator, and fifty tramadol.”

Same, was Willam’s only thought, as Roxxxy and Detox skulked out of the control room and off down towards the exit. They seemed to be holding hands, and Willam thought briefly about her theory from earlier.

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Bianca raised her eyebrows sarcastically, making to head towards the green room. “Good work today, Courtney. Willam- step your shit up.”

Willam wanted to kick herself as Bianca walked off towards the exit. Turning on her heel, she slowly made her way towards the bathroom and couldn’t help but wonder if the sinks would be big enough to drown herself in after this utter turd of a day.  

***

As Willam slung her bag over her right shoulder and winced slightly under its weight, she turned to leave and jumped a little when she saw a silent Courtney in the doorway of the green room. She looked a little embarrassed and slightly nervous about the fact she was there. The gentle hum of the omnipresent radio in the background and the quiet tick of the clock were the only ones to speak.

“Hey,” Courtney began nervously, smiling slightly as she took one small step forward. “That was really great, what you did today.”

“What we did,” Willam corrected her, not really sure what tone to take so deciding to keep things neutral. For a moment Courtney was silent, tucking a little strand of hair behind her ear awkwardly and exposing a hint of a pink blush.

Finally she let out a big sigh and began talking. “Look Willam, I’m really sorry for how I’ve been acting recently. I’ve been a massive dick for not really much good reason and it’s not okay.”

The first reaction Willam had was one of total, complete, all-encompassing relief. Courtney wasn’t mad at her anymore, or was never mad at her to begin with. She still wanted to be friends, maybe even something more. Well, Willam couldn’t really get her hopes up all that high, but she was still slightly euphoric that Courtney was finally okay with her again and right now anything seemed possible. Noticing how Courtney was still shyly waiting for her response, Willam broke into a smile.

“C’mere, you stupid bitch,” she snorted, opening her arms in a hug whilst deciding she couldn’t break free from the platonic realm just yet. With relief washing over Courtney’s face, she stumble-ran into Willam’s arms, hugging her tightly in a way that made Willam’s heart swell. All at once she knew the old Courtney was back.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured again into Willam’s hair, and Willam privately thanked God for this little moment of reconciliation.

“Come on, you know I don’t hold grudges. Well, not against my friends.”

“You have every right to, though.”

“Well, I’m not going to. So stop worrying,” Willam muttered back, acutely aware that Courtney hadn’t yet shifted from Willam’s arms, seemingly not going anywhere anytime soon. “Are you alright though? Anything you want to talk about?”

Suddenly Courtney became unstuck and pulled away from the hug, pulling the sleeves of her jumper over her hands self-consciously. “Yeah…no, I’m fine. Just was struggling with something for a couple weeks. You know, a kind of inner battle?”

As Courtney laughed awkwardly, Willam indulged her with a nod, still not entirely sure what she was referring to. She was happy, though, that whatever Courtney had been struggling with was clearly over. She decided to change topic altogether.

“So, Alyssa’s next week. You still going?”

Courtney smiled. “Yeah, ‘course. If only to stop Sharon getting completely wrecked and vomiting on the shoes of the PM’s wife, or something equally Sharon-esque.”

“I think it’ll be fun. Running around after her and cleaning up her mess like she’s a toddler. How else would you want to spend a Saturday night?”

Willam delighted in the way Courtney’s face scrunched up as she laughed, concluding that it was probably the thing she’d missed most of all about her. Glancing at the clock, she realised that it was past nine.

“Listen, it’s getting late. Do you want to share a cab back? I think Sharon was so done with today she’s probably just taken the car and fucked off,” she laughed a little, holding back a quip about Alaska after remembering yet again that that wasn’t public knowledge just yet. It would be eventually, of course. Nothing could stay secret forever. Looking back at Courtney and her face all lit up in a smile, she reconsidered. Maybe some things could. As Courtney simply nodded twice in affirmation, Willam walked forward and, deciding to fuck platonic intent to one side, threaded an arm through Courtney’s. She didn’t pull away, and as the two made their way to the exit of these godforsaken studios, Willam realised she was leaving work without a heavy heart for the first time in over a fortnight.

[ciathyzareposts]

The Legacy: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

                   The Legacy

United Kingdom

Magnetic Scrolls (developer); MicroProse (publisher)

Released 1992 for DOS

Date Started: 3 June 2020 Date Ended: 17 June 2020

Total Hours: 25 Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5) Final Rating: (to come later) Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

           Summary:

A first-person adventure game set in a haunted house, The Legacy tries to blend point-and-click adventure gameplay, with inventory-based puzzles, with the tiled movement, real-time combat, and character growth of an RPG of the Dungeon Master line. In the end, some design choices make the game not work very well as an RPG, and it has a frustrating interface. I still slightly recommend it for the satisfying story.

            *****

          For me, adventure games usually start out fun. They tend to have more immersive settings than RPGs (at least of this period), so I enjoy absorbing the backstory and lore. I start exploring and mapping. I solve a few light puzzles and begin to feel good about myself. But there almost always comes a point in which I start to find the game increasingly unwieldy–a point where it has too many rooms, too many objects, too many puzzles, to the extent that even if I’m not technically blocked, I still start to feel mired.

I reached that point with The Legacy shortly after the last session. I can point to nothing technically wrong that the game did. It just kind of exhausted me. In particular, knowing that I was going to have to travel to other dimensions started as a mildly interesting prospect, then an annoying one, then an (illogically) enraging one. I mean, this mansion is already the biggest goddamned mansion in the entire world. Seven floors of it weren’t enough?           

By the end of the game, Irene was wearing a skirt, samurai armor, and a demon mask.

         I don’t often get the same feeling with RPGs, which is why I’m tending, towards the end of my experience, to think of The Legacy as more an adventure game with RPG elements than a true hybrid. The problem is that while The Legacy does feature experience and the associated development of skills based on that experience, none of the skill-building seems to really matter. Enemies don’t get notably easier as you increase your skill with weapons. As for other skills, there’s rarely a threshold above which you must build a skill to accomplish a task. Instead, each task has a slightly higher chance of success the higher the skill. So doubling your “Mechanical” skill means you only have to try five times to unjam that weapon instead of ten. RPGs tend to feature characters that grow more markedly in power. Aside from having more resources, my Legacy character didn’t seem that much stronger at the end of the game than at the beginning.   There is one exception to that statement, and that is in the area of spells. The spellcasting system in The Legacy is so flawed that I can’t believe the developers let it out the door. The basic problem is that they’ve populated the game with about 20 interesting and useful spells, and then they make you paranoid about casting any of them by making spell power a precious resource, reclaimable only (or almost only) through the use of a limited number of magic crystals.

There are times in the game that it seems like you have way too many crystals to ever worry about running out. But then you reach the lower levels of the basement and find a dozen or so magically-locked doors that will only open to “Key of the Shadow Lord”–and not just one successful casting, but sometimes multiple castings at the highest power. There were times that a single door wiped out my entire magic bar. The paltry two crystals that I’d saved “in reserve” turned out to be laughably inadequate when I started encountering these doors. Soon, I was wishing that I had never cast a single spell the rest of the game–that I had saved all my energy for those damned doors, and all my experience for improving my skill with the spell. When I ended the game, I didn’t have a single crystal remaining–that’s how close I came to not being able to win at all, despite your warnings and despite playing (I thought) conservatively with magic.    The annoying thing is that there are some great spells, offensive and defensive, that would have been useful throughout the game. A few tweaks would have created an adventure game with an excellent RPG-style magic system, such as allowing spell points to regenerate over time, or allowing the character to rest more often to recover both health and spell points. Instead, they made a game that would put a large percentage of players in a “walking dead” situation in the last tenth of the game.       The resting system is so bizarre, in fact, that I think it must be bugged. In 25 hours of gameplay, I only got explicitly tired once, and was only able to rest twice. It’s like there was no difference between game time and real time. Similarly bugged is the food system: I was able to eat maybe four or five times, leaving a dozen or so unopened food items. I didn’t particularly want to have to eat more often (especially since food is finite), but resting is a key method of health and mana recovery in most RPGs, and a true hybrid would have been more lenient.

The story didn’t develop a lot from the summary I gave last time. The builder of the house, Elias Winthrop, made a deal with the dark god Belthegor to bind his family to service. Over the centuries, descendants of Elias, mad or evil, expanded on the house, made deals with lesser gods allied with Belthegor, and ensured Belthegor’s return to the material plane every 50 years. This event was meant to be special, with the last descendants of Winthrop’s slated for sacrifice so that Belthegor could enter the plane permanently.             

The areas of The Legacy

            The game ultimately consisted of ten 20 x 20 areas, a reasonably sized “dungeon” even for an RPG. You have a lot of latitude in the order of exploration, and given that you find items in all areas useful in others, I don’t suppose there’s a single “right” order except probably to clear the ground floor and upper floor first. In short:            

The Ground Floor introduces you to the game and its conventions, including your first crude weapons. Zombies roam the corridors; they’re easy to kill, and you find a fetish that allows you to walk past them with impunity.

The Upper Floor starts to deliver more information about the setting and its story. The area is crawling with ghosts, who can be addressed individually or en masse through the burning of the painting that binds them.

The third floor is somewhat nonsensically an Asylum with sterile hallways and padded cells. You encounter a lot more trouble with locked and secret doors on the level, which is prowled by blobs of fire, giant floating two-headed leeches, and an insane relative in a straitjacket.

The fourth floor is a Museum (though not public) of powerful artifacts. You learn here the rituals that you need to banish the dark gods, and you acquire some of your most powerful equipment. There are many puzzles that must be solved by returning plaques and items strewn about the mansion to their proper places in the museum. Enemies are floor slimes (almost impossible to step around) and these disgusting crab things, the latter of which can be destroyed en masse with a ritual involving statues.

          Returning plaques to the museum pedestals allowed me to take items on those pedestals.

            The Mausoleum is full of secret doors and has the bodies of former residents of the house, most alive and animated as skeletons. Kill one, and it rises again the next time you trespass on its bones unless you use “coffin dust” (which is in limited supply) to destroy it permanently. You have to kill all the enemies to get the Golden Torc, an artifact necessary to win the game.

              Cutting into a skeleton with a chainsaw.

            The Egyptian Tomb is full of magically-locked doors. The primary goal is to summon and destroy the Karcist–the transformed spirit of the house’s builder, Elias Winthrop. You have to fight your way through “sonic mummies,” capable of damaging you even through doors. You have to summon the Karcist with the “Chinese Coins” you find on the Asylum level, and once summoned, you can kill him in regular combat or by first finding his heart and destroying it in front of him.

            Old Elias changed his tune quickly once I showed him his heart.

         The Basement has a variety of demons and supplies you with information and weapons necessary for the lower levels. One important chamber lets you create an artifact necessary for the final level.

           Making the Eye of Agala in a basement room.

          The corridors of the Sub-Basement are patrolled by the dark god Alberoth. You have to use an astrolabe (from the museum) in an observatory in the Egyptian tomb to banish him. There are also burrowing worm creatures to kill.

The Sea Demon Caves are the home to walking fish creatures that demand human sacrifices, and their humanoid “servitors.” You have to get past the dark jellyfish god Melchior (I don’t believe you can kill him, but you can get him to ignore you with the Golden Torc). There are a number of teleporters, including an annoying one that takes you all the way back to the ground floor, but ultimately you find the exit to the Astral Plane and the final battle.

          One of the sea demons, which hopefully you can see better than I can.

            It’s notable that the game gives you several approaches for conquering each level. I adopted a more classic RPG approach and insisted on killing every enemy that could be killed, and this wasn’t much of a problem after the first half of the game. I ultimately exhausted the ammunition for most of the firearms, but on a lower level, I found a chainsaw that never seemed to run out of gas (I was mindful to turn it off after each combat, which helped)–and there are three or four gas cans in the game. The chainsaw got me through almost the entirety of the mausoleum and museum. I then followed some instructions in the museum to perform a ritual that made the ancient spirit of a samurai appear and embed his two swords with magic. His katana served me the rest of the game; few enemies survived more than two hits with it. On the same level, I also found a suit of samurai armor that served as my primary protection from then on, plus a demon mask that made me look like a lunatic but also strengthened my attacks.           

A little ritual provides the best weapons in the game.

        But the game also gives you a way around most enemies. Sometimes, they can simply be avoided, as in the sonic mummies, which will leave you alone if you find and carry the “boom box” (remember those?). Sometimes, there’s a puzzle you can solve to destroy them all at once, and sometimes there’s a weapon to which they are uniquely vulnerable. For instance, the worms in the sub-basement die quickly from blasts of rock salt from a modified shotgun. But by the time I reached this area, my katana was cleaving through everything so nicely that I barely bothered.             

Instead of fighting this servitor, I can make myself look like him by wearing his robes and putting a squid on my head (seriously).

         While you get some experience for killing individual monsters, you get more from solving puzzles, so the game doesn’t encourage you along an RPG mindset.

I misunderstood the nature of the Ethereal Plane until almost the end of the game. While I’d been seeing doors to it throughout the house–and you can open more by casting “Dimensional Portal” wherever you see a glyph on the wall–I wasn’t sure what its purpose was. I wasn’t even sure that all the portals went to the same place. I assumed it was some place I’d have to visit for a penultimate or ultimate showdown. Instead–although it has some monsters and one NPC–it’s more a method of fast travel around the game. If you take time to map the exits (which look like cubes), you can quickly get from, say, the sub-basement to the museum without having to find all the stairways. I was only an hour from winning when I realized how the plane worked and I thus missed its benefits for most of the game.         

The Ethereal Plane with one of its monsters and a portal to its left.

          A few notable encounters and puzzles:      

A “Magician of the Right Hand Path” named Charles Wenlock approached me in the Ethereal Plane. His “inner self” had been trapped there, and he needed to draw on my energies to escape. I said yes, even though I didn’t exactly have a surplus of magic power. In return, he gave me some advice for surviving the Astral Plane and the final confrontation with Belthegor, plus a spell. The spell was automatically “implanted in my mind,” so I didn’t notice which one it was.

            One of the few “role playing” choices in the game.

      In the Sea Demon caves, there was some kind of altar on which a stone was surrounded by a glass shield. Fiddling with the shield produced a message that it resonated with a particular note. This was a clue to use a flute that I’d previously found to play the same note, shattering the glass. It was still difficult to take the stone; electric tendrils going up and down two columns zapped me if I didn’t time it just right.

          Something feels Lovecraftian about this level.

        A juicy diary entry indicated that Josiah Maitland (grandson of Elias Winthrop) was poisoned by his wife for somehow “tricking [her] into marriage vows.” 

A note indicated that an entire Boston Police squad was killed when they tried to investigate the sea demon caves in the 1920s.

              The final confrontation takes place on the Astral Plane. Fire blobs are back, and you probably don’t have a fire extinguisher by this point. Even worse, teleportation cubes roam the hallways and transport you to other levels if they hit you. There are also energy barriers that require an artifact called the Eye of Agala, which you have to make in a ritual in the basement. Finally, Belthegor himself is behind an illusory wall. My magic was so low that I couldn’t explore the entire level. I had to take a save at the beginning and keep staking out in different directions, reloading if I didn’t find anything interesting, until I finally found the way to Belthegor.           

From the Sea Demons’ caves to the Astral Plain.

         Belthegor can kill you instantly if you don’t have the Golden Torc from the mausoleum. Even with it, you want to load up on all the magic resistance items and spells that you have before you enter. I don’t know if he’s immune to regular weapons or just extremely resistant, but I was only able to kill him with spells. Fortunately, the final battle is otherwise easy because your mana bar suddenly becomes inexhaustible. You just need to keep casting offensive spells (I alternated “Flames of Desolation” and “Obsidian Shards of Annihilation,” which is perhaps the greatest spell name ever) and pound away at “Elixir of Health” if your health gets low.         

I ended up fighting Belthegor three times because the game kept crashing during the final cinematic. This was the easiest of the battles. I didn’t even have to cast “Elixir of Health” once.

          Once Belthegor is defeated, a brief cinematic brings the game to a close. A storm gathers over the mansion, and its ghosts are freed or sucked up into it, depending on your interpretation.       

This is the brightest shot I could capture.

          Demonic eyes and skeletal faces appear in the clouds. Lightning bolts and tornadoes pummel the mansion until it is all destroyed or sucked away. A newspaper front page closes the game, suggesting the character was able to sell the property and finance a lengthy cruise. As the DOS prompt appears, you’re given instructions to give a special name to the final save, perhaps anticipating a sequel.

        I think that’s a little unfair to the police. It’s not their responsibility to explain the noncriminal destruction of property.

                 When I was done with the game, I reviewed some walkthroughs for what I missed. I never finished returning all of the items to the museum, including a plaque for a shuriken and a demonic skull, but it doesn’t appear that would have done me any good. The “Hand of Glory,” lit like a candle, would have kept the slimes from attacking me on the museum level. Oh, well. On the Sea Demon level, I could have gotten the servitors to avoid me by dressing like one of them, and I could have gotten the sea demons themselves to avoid me by burning an incense. I actually intuited both of these puzzles from the available clues, but by this point I was having fun just slashing everything with my katana.

          I wasted a lot of time reloading on the Astral Plane because I forgot to put on the crystal glasses Charles Wenlock gave me; they would have prevented random teleportation. There are rooms on both the Upper Level and Asylum level that I never was able to enter. I never found the spells “Iron Fist of Agatta” or “Swift Limbs of Mercury.” And I didn’t unlock most of the glyphs with “Dimension Door.” I think it’s a measure of a good game that you can skip some content and still make it.

        In a GIMLET, I give the game:

      6 points for the game world, perhaps the best part of the game. The mansion is suitably creepy, the backstory (while a bit derivative) suitably detailed. I like the way that you slowly learn the mansion’s history through scraps of notes, diary pages, letters, and so on. 

           The game’s epistolary revelations never get old.

            4 points for character creation and development. The mechanics are sound. I like that you can choose among multiple defined characters or create your own. I like that you can spend your experience directly on skills. I don’t like that the latter stages of the game require magic and thus punish you for not having invested heavily there, nor that development in other skills isn’t well-reflected in the game. This is not Quest for Glory, where you can choose your strength and role-play that type of character. With just a few tweaks, it could have been.

            Irene’s skills at the end of the game. Very few reached 50% on their bars and a couple never did anything.

           4 points for NPC interaction. Again, the mechanics are good, and I appreciated the dialogue options, but there are only a few people with whom you can interact.

          Dialogue options with an explorer in the Ethereal Plane.

          6 points for encounters and foes. This was another strong part of the game. I particularly liked that you could intuit the solution to most puzzles, but if you had trouble, some document or NPC dialogue would eventually spell it out for you. The puzzles were varied and fun, though not as much as some other adventure games I’ve enjoyed. The monsters are well-chosen for the setting and have their own strengths and weaknesses you have to figure out.

3 points for magic and combat. Combat is nothing special–hit or aim. The magic system could have been special if it hadn’t been so suppressed by the game’s miserly approach to magic points. 

          Slashing mummies on the Egyptian Tomb level.

        3 points for equipment. Most of it is puzzle-solving. You get two pieces of armor, a couple of magic upgrades, and far too many possibilities for weapons. I would have preferred the game content itself with one firearm than to lead so much specialized ammunition scattered around.

0 points for no economy.

3 points for a main quest with some side areas.

            Attacked by the dark god Melchior.

        5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. It gets almost all of those for graphics (good enough for what the game was trying to achieve) and sound, including (though I rarely rate it) a decent music score that accompanies the game rather than overwhelming it. The interface was mostly awful. Half the time you go to click on something, the game either ignores you or clicks on something else. The act of putting down a gun and equipping a spellbook sometimes took several minutes of fruitless clicking, often while an enemy was attacking. The limited inventory discourages carrying alternatives to most weapons or armor. Ideas like “document wallets” are only good if there’s enough space for all your documents. Having movable/resizable windows isn’t a bad idea, though I didn’t make much use of it. Really all I liked from the interface was the automap.

5 points for gameplay. It’s about as nonlinear as a game with “levels” could be. As with most adventure games, I’m vaguely curious to play it a second time as a speed run, but otherwise I don’t see it offering rewards for a second pass. The challenge level (aside from the magic thing) and length were just about right.

      That gives us a final score of 39. That seems about right. I definitely recommend it for its story, atmosphere, and encounters, but in the end it’s hard to call it a true “hybrid.” Its RPG side is simply too underdeveloped, and some key choices that would otherwise mark it as a good RPG turn out to be illusions. 

               There is nothing corresponding to that lower screen capture in the game.

            Andrew Greenberg (not the Wizardry co-creator) covered The Legacy in the October 1993 Computer Gaming World. His review is mostly positive, though his conclusion is an unremarkable statement that some may like it and some won’t. If you get a chance, take a look at his review (starts on Page 30). It strikes me as an example of awful writing, but the kind where it’s hard to explain exactly why it’s awful. Every sentence has an awkward or uninspired word selection, an awkward use of the passive voice, a joke that doesn’t quite work, or more words than are necessary. I don’t know; I may just be in a mood. The bigger issue is that Greenberg clearly isn’t as familiar with genre conventions as Scorpia and thus somewhat misses the point of The Legacy, which is that it’s a hybrid that manages to be a hybrid better than, say, B.A.T. but not as well as, say, Quest for Glory.

         European magazines rated it in the 70s and 80s. The best review from the conventional selection of magazines comes from the December 1992 PC Joker, which praises the interface, the sound and spell effects, and the overall attempt to hybridize the two genres. A few magazines compared it favorably to Elvira, which I would agree is probably its closest “competitor.” One German review (April 1993 Play Time) argued that too many items are scattered randomly in the house, hurting the game’s realism. I hadn’t thought of that, but in retrospect I agree. The point was made well in a more recent review by blogger Roland Zarate on “Late to the Game”: “The mansion makes [little sense] as an actual house. There are hundreds of rooms but no kitchen, the only bathrooms are on the east side of the second floor, and a fair portion of the rooms have literally nothing inside them.”

        MicroProse bought and closed Magnetic Scrolls the same year that The Legacy was released, so there was no sequel. The manual credits Jim Bambra for the “RPG system design” of the game; he later co-formed Pivotal Games and worked on mostly action titles, his credits ending in the early 2000s. Stephen Hand is given credit for the “plot design” and “adventure design.” His further credits, from several companies, are mostly action and racing games, with the notable exception of design credits on Warlords III: Reign of Heroes (1997) and Warlords III: Darklords Rising (1998). Just a few years ago, Magnetic Scrolls founder Hugh Steers co-founded Strand Games, which has re-released several Magnetic Scrolls titles for mobile devices, including The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, and Jinxter. Whether The Legacy is on their list is anyone’s guess.

          As for my list, we move on to Amberstar while I devote occasional time to finishing Final Fantasy but most of it to finishing The Black Gate. A Japanese eroge titled Mad Paradox just appeared at the bottom of the list, bringing us ever closer to finally finishing 1992.

     source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-legacy-won-with-summary-and-rating/

[puttingfingerstokeys]

the shambling deceased

Nanowrimo day 23 Featuring an unnamed narrator Post-apocalyptic setting, zombies Zombies, death, body horror Finished and unedited

Human olfactory senses are not meant to become accustomed to the sweet stink of death. I don’t care how many television programs you have consumed over the years, where the heroes don’t notice the shambling threat until it is far too late. If the noises these revenants make are not enough to alert the characters in the show, surely the stench of rot and decay would catch their attention, right? Depending on the dramatic needs of the program, it may or it may not. But I am here to tell you, point blank, that the dead—they stink. They stink bad. They stink worse than the ugliest most odious smell you have ever experienced, bar none. A skunk cannot compare to the smell of death, though it certainly tries. The smell permeates, sticks, clings, and drags on you until you are well away from it.

And if the dead are the pursuing kind, rather than the sort who lays on the ground like a corpse really ought to do? Well, you do the math. They are not what anyone might call “quick”, but if the wind is right, the smell will do you in but good. It is rot, decay, and wrong. The smell is actually alarming, if you can believe that. Trust me when I say this: you never want to experience it if it is at all avoidable. Most people, in their lifetimes, smell death once or twice, usually when an animal has gotten itself up under their home and done the indecent thing, dying there to stink up the house and the surrounding area. They always seem to do this on hot days, too—it’s in rather poor form. Regardless, this stench only mimics what the shambling dead bring with them when they rove through an area.

That they move in herds is something the old shows used to get right, at least. I genuinely have no idea what, precisely, attracts them, though I think it might be sound. The dead, you see, don’t have lung capacity; their vocal flaps are generally decayed beyond use as it is soft tissue and, as a result, are unable to produce sounds like the groans you might think they would make.

I guess that might be one thing the television would have had right, about not being able to hear them, except those ambulating corpses would always moan and snarl and make all kinds of animalistic sounds. It was as if they were begging to be discovered. Real ones are hardly apex predators, but at the very least, they do not alert their prey of an incoming attack via audible means. It would really be embarrassing to be killed by a loud, stinky corpse.

It is still incredibly unclear what exactly animates these things. They do not appear to have normal blood flow or brain function; nothing beats or moves and they are decidedly lukewarm. Something is still firing up in their rotten noggins, but it certainly is not what you would call “proper” function. It seems to drive them toward the base urge to feed. I don’t think their bodies process the flesh they consume, however. The stuff probably sits in their guts and ferments—that’s where you get the explosive ones. We haven’t really bothered naming them anything fancy or cutesy. They’re shambling, bloated corpses and honestly, flippant as this commentary has been, there is absolutely jack shit all that’s funny about seeing once-living humans reduced to … that.

They cannot help it. There is no malice in them. There is nothing in them. They are husks, which is as good a name as any. Zombie has always sounded kind of silly to me, even if the implications are always fairly dark and dire. Husks better describes the hollowness of them, I think. So “the undead” or “the infected” work, but “husk” is a better term, given that we do not actually know if they are infected with anything or how they got that way and when you call something undead, it makes the thing somehow spookier than it has to be, lending it some sort of power. We should not fear these things. We need to dispose of them quickly; it is the absolute least we can do.

As far as corpses go, they are just as brittle and easily-perforated as what you might expect a half-decayed corpse to be. The hardest part, to be perfectly honest, is the clothing. Most people did not turn whilst also happening to be nude, unfortunately. Piercing clothes with a stick or any other blunt instrument is a lot tougher than the television shows always made it seem. You are best off with a machete or even a bat. Cutting off brain function stops ambulation. I… do not know if it stops brain function entirely unless the brain is vaporized. No one seems inclined to hang around husk-infested areas long enough to find out.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I was (partially) wrong about the events of a so-called “zombie apocalypse”. I had always theorized (during slow times at my job, mostly) that no society with known zombie-based media could fall victim to the idiotic happenings of your average zombie show, that the zombies could not last much longer than a few months, at most in, for example, a densely populated city, but that in the country, the problem would be solved within a week. There is simply more space way out in the boonies to see things like that coming—people are more armed, too, and not necessarily even with firearms. I am referring, of course, to basic farm implements: pitchforks, shovels, a literal tractor, splitting mauls, axes, actual logs—I could go on.

I was foolish, thinking it would be easy to simply go out and strike down things which had formerly been human, because I would know that they were not. What they don’t usually show in zombie shows—or didn’t; I doubt anyone will ever produce another, assuming we get to that point—is that when someone is freshly dead, they still look… human. Not just humanoid, mind you, but like a sick human being.

Okay, so remember when I said the husks don’t make noise? The old ones don’t, that’s true. But the fresh ones… sometimes it feels as if they are trying to communicate in some way. It definitely is not the growling-hissing sound you get from a movie or whatever. It feels like speaking to a person with a severe speech impediment, who is also deaf, and has some combination of Alzheimer’s and dementia. That is to say, you are not speaking with them, so much as listening. I have no idea what they are trying to say and I have only seen a fresh one a few times; thankfully, by the time they reach our home base, they have deteriorated thoroughly enough that there isn’t any more of that half-talking thing. It gives me the shivers even considering it. Do they consider what they are doing? Can they feel it? What part of them is left—if any?

I am one of those people who hopes that whatever they feel is rudimentary, pure instinct, that there is nothing of the soul who was once occupying the body—yet another decent reason to call them “husks”, rather than zombies.

They are chilling to behold, more than any George Romero film could attempt to portray. As a matter of course, anyone who has ever owned a zombie film or series has tossed it summarily out into the gutter, so to speak—though in some cases, literally. I have genuinely witnessed people with whole collections, tossing them out into our now-defunct trash bins. The gesture seems more symbolic than anything else; the only garbage truck I have seen in the area is the one the former “rogue garbage man” (a story for another time) had used to make his living, except this thing was ass-over-teakettle in a swamp. Whether it was a group of husks or just some of the run-to-riot wildlife in the area that drove him off the road, I guess I’ll never know.

The village I call home is a small place, a five-by-five mile square with probably five hundred people, total. The cop shop doubles as the library and town hall, if that gives you any idea of the scale of things. We have a four-way which is the biggest attraction in town and isn’t even a stop—traffic on the old highway zooms right on through. We have the essentials, a bar, a hardware, a convenience store and two churches, one Catholic, the other non-denominational, the church equivalent of “Original” and “Spicy”. I’m not entirely sure which one is which, but since the Catholics serve wine, I’m going with Original Recipe—they’re the ones who own the one graveyard in town, which I am pleased to say has expelled none of its residents. It probably isn’t feasible to rise from your grave when you are encased in cement and filled with formaldehyde. Who knew that our uncomfortably Egyptian burial practices would come in handy? There are a few cross streets here and there, but they either lead to dead-ends or a twisted mass of nonsense roads that curve and twist and transform into other roads as they hit county lines.

Everything that is not a house or trailer is a field, woods, a swamp, or some combination of the two.

For having so much farmland, however, there are very few farms. In recent years, times have been tough on anything that is not a massive, factory farm and, needless to say, anything called a “village” does not have the consumer base or, likely, the location to support such a thing. The government has been doing what it does best: making it hard on the little guy. I wish I could tell you it was because of this regime or that, red or blue, but to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure the agenda changes much across the aisle—not where regulatory licensure is concerned, anyway. Farmers just cannot keep up with government subsidization if they aren’t an approved recipient and then they lose their farms, plain and simple. It isn’t the best explanation, nor is it a terribly sympathetic one; don’t think me cold for this, but I recognize that there is plenty about the world I cannot change and, when the dead are walking, you quickly learn which battles to fight, which passions to chase, and which issues to leave behind in the dust of a previous age. I’ve shaken that particular blend of mud from my shoes.

My family is one of the fortunate few who had a “hobby” farm before this whole thing went down. I don’t know who decided to call it that, but this thing is no hobby. It is absolutely, without question, a full-time job taking care of the animals. We have the staples, chickens and hogs, like you would expect in the rural Midwest, but rather than cows, my family long ago elected to raise, breed, milk, and butcher goats. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it, my friend; goat is good eating. The milk is creamy, the cheese is exquisite, and they are friendly, mid-sized beasts who can be pushed and pulled where you need them to go. Sometimes, we lament not having at least one cow, but upon reflection, the sheer size of any bovine is enough to stop that thought quickly; they eat a ton and if they do not want to cooperate, they simply won’t. There is little a human can do without a cattle prod (or dogs) and we’re fresh out.

We are fresh out of cattle prods, that is, not dogs. We have dogs. Everyone around here has at least one dog. It’s just something you do in the country. You have dogs. We have four, actually, and right now, they make for excellent guards, alerting us to the presence of the undead with quiet barks—we call them “low-commitment”, because it isn’t a full-on bark, but it’s loud enough to let us know something is up. It’s as if the dogs understand that the dead are attracted to sounds. Now, if a human being wanders by the fence, the dogs go all out. They’re really the epitome of “a bark worse than their bite”, but nobody else knows that, so they keep the riff-raff out. By riff-raff, I mean drifters, thieves, those who are not committed to survival by hard work, but by capitalizing on the work of others. Around here, there are plenty—or there were. Needless to say, that behavior does not win you many friends during a crisis like this one. My family is generous, but we are not soft, nor stupid. Telling the good from the bad has never been difficult for us… or the dogs, actually.

So there you have it… “hobby” farm with doggy security system. We have ham, goat, and chicken a-plenty; we have eggs, milk, and cheese. We are very well-outfitted for this “apocalypse”, if you want to call it that. I think it might be a bit overblown, but nobody asked me, did they? There are plenty of people and families out there who were not so fortunate. It did not take long to realize how well-positioned we were (and still are) to survive and even to thrive in these new dark ages. Oh, but I guess I got ahead of myself again—or maybe behind… again. You probably aren’t here for logistics or whatever. You probably saw the opening monologue and thought “shit, she’s going to spill it all; we’re going to get a real juicy story”. You want to know how it started, or at the very least, how it started for me, don’t you? Well, strap in. This is a long one.