By Moe Lane
Man, is it nice to get out from under Kobal's thumb.
That geezer has no semblance of a clue anymore.
Penemue is unique for several reasons. First, she's a
she, which isn't too common among Calabim; second,
she's possibly the highest ranking demon to defect to
Hardcore and make it stick; and, third and last, she
actually managed to survive Kobal's service with a
sense of humor that isn't totally divorced from
reality. Even some angels find her performance art
funny: this is good, because she's soon going to
discover that she needs all the help that she can get.
It was pretty simple, really: Furfur was ready to pay
- big - for Word-bound, and Penemue was on the fast
track for one. The only problem was that the Calabite
was sure that once Kobal would come down on her like a
pile of rubber chickens if he got even a hint that his
erstwhile Servitor wanted to jump ship. It was a
tough call: stick around until the Word came through,
and risk death ... or go now and kiss goodbye her
promotion. Penemue wanted to do both, but that was
impossible, right?
Wrong. The Calabite's a gambler, so she decided to
roll double or nothing. Throwing caution to the wind,
Penemue threw all of her resources on a spectacular
display of twisted-but-real comic justice ... and when
Nybbas and Furfur (who had been two of the three
Princes given front-row seats) were still laughing,
announced her desire to be a Word-bound of Hardcore.
The two stopped laughing, and looked worriedly at
their third colleague...
... and then looked shocked. It almost looked like
Kronos was smiling.
Must have been a trick of the light: still, three
weeks later Penemue was the Demon of There Isn't
Anything Degrading or Stupid Enough that You Can't Get
a Rich Idiot to Do It (it's one word in Helltongue.
Angelic, for that matter). Amazing how those things
happen, no?
Unfortunately, getting Kronos on your side is probably
not cost-effective, in the long run - heck, the short
run. You see, about fifteen seconds after Penemue got
her Word, her opposite number (Stephanie, Elohite
Angel of Smack Downs) knew ... and was already making
plans to handle the situation. Permanently. Needless
to say, said handling would be done in an appropriate
manner.
Probably now would be a good time to explain precisely
what Penemue had managed to do. Well ... it's like
this. If there's anything that a female Calabite
hates, it's humans. Stuck-up humans. Stuck up, rich
humans. Stuck-up, rich female humans. Stuck-up, rich
female humans with absolutely no purpose in life (even
by the standards of your average talking monkey).
You know. Debutantes and Society matrons (as opposed
to women who happened to have a sh*tload of old
money).
Anyway, what better way to get a good laugh going by
encouraging them to make fools of themselves in
public? It was real easy, too: the boredom level
among that particular social class went past
saturation level years ago. Now, at first Penemue
thought to get the code duello reestablished among
them (hey, she wasn't suggesting anything that they
wouldn't have embraced with open arms), but that
wasn't nearly degrading enough. Mud wrestling, now
that was the ticket: but that was too lower class to
work.
Yogurt, though...
It's the scandal of the upper crust: there's discreet
clubs now where respectable society girls and women
gather to get dumped with various flavors of yogurt as
a prelude to doing their level best to rip out each
other's spleens. Unfortunately (depending of your
point of view), the practice of rejuvenating the skin
by bathing in yogurt is also one of the latest fads,
so nobody's really sure who's actually participating
(they wear masks, you see). Penemue's delighted: the
level of incidental violence among the upper classes
has risen by over 45% in the last two months. She's
also getting plenty of opportunities to beat up her
least favorite talking monkeys under the guise of her
Role (Penelope Fawkes, prettiest and seemingly most
useless debutante of them all). Besides, Furfur's
actually /letting her work without interference/.
Stephanie, alas, will not. One hopes that the obvious
response is clear, correct? This scene must be
infiltrated, and a stalwart ba... group of heroines
must advance in the tournament circuits until they
face off with Penemue's Inner Circle. No rules, no
mercy, no nose plugs. If the way is cleared,
Stephanie will eventually face off with the Calabite
and certainly kill her: that scandal will scupper the
fad (stop pouting) and things can go back to ... well,
as normal as any campaign that lets this sort of thing
happen.
What do you mean, I haven't told you how to portray
the mood and setting? In the Name of everything that
is holy, haven't you */_SEEN_/* Fight Club yet?
I know, I know, the First Rule...