“Yesterday sure was a lot of high energy activity, wasn’t it?” Chorus approached the group sitting at the breakfast table on the third day. They’d been specifically directed to eat breakfast together around their dining room table in the mansion instead of at the restaurant, to get a good shot of them looking like a found-family.
“But time off isn’t always about going out and doing things. Sometimes you just need to stay in and relax. So that’s what today is all about—fun at home. When you’re done with your food, we’ll be doing something very casual. It’s just putting together a jigsaw puzzle.” They held up a box with a picture of the Prosper skyline printed on it.
“Oh, I get it. We’re going to race to see who can complete their puzzle first,” Xard surmised.
“Nope, you’ll all be completing the puzzle together.”
“Ah, then my guess is that we’ll be competing against Rusa to complete our puzzle first while she completes some crazy hard puzzle that’s all one color or something!” Kada shared her speculation.
“Uhh, no,” Chorus looked confused at the idea. “You’ll just be putting together a normal puzzle in a normal way.”
“Seriously, no catches or twists?” Phon was quite doubtful. “It’s not going to explode in our faces if we don’t complete it in time?”
“Just a regular puzzle that you all can do at a leisurely pace.” The more Chorus reemphasized it, the more unreal it sounded.
“And people would really find that interesting enough to watch?” Drim had his doubts.
“Yes, of course!” Chorus reassured them. “We’re going for relatability, remember? Just some friends hanging out and having fun together is the peak of that. And it will be infinitely more interesting if you chat while doing it. Whatever you want to talk about, whatever comes natural. Juicy gossip would be best, but I don’t have high hopes for this group, maybe Kada. But feel free to drop any scandals.”
Once the dining room table was cleared, they got to work on the puzzle. It was a massive 5,000 piece puzzle, so it would take them a while, but the Greaters each quickly fell into their respective roles. They hadn’t actively assigned a task to each of them. It just happened naturally. Drim was finding all the edges, Kada was sorting all the pieces by color, while Phon and Xard were actively putting the puzzle together.
They were focused and quiet for a bit, only really discussing the puzzle itself, but the conversation did shift at some point. “We’re supposed to talk about gossip, right?” Kada broke the ice. “So I saw Andi and Farian driving off together somewhere the other day. Think it was a date?!”
She only got blank stares in return. “I mean, they spend so much time down in the lab together all by themselves. Who knows what could happen? But who else do you guys think would make a good couple?”
Xard’s eyes went blank at the statement, prompting Drim to plead, “We had to deal with that topic a lot recently. Maybe we should table that for a while.”
That killed the conversation for a bit, smothered by awkwardness, but Xard pulled them out of it once he worked past his recent trauma. “You know, I’ve come across quite a few strange things in my travels, a lot of it Fiend related. I check out pretty much all of it, just to make sure there isn’t something we need to monitor. A good amount, though, is scams or people trying to peddle their wares.”
“One of the weirdest ones I came across was a roadside attraction where they claimed that a Fiend could invert rooms. Really it was just a bunch of complicated mechanisms that caused the room to rotate and all the furniture was nailed down. I got them to promise to remove the Fiend branding, or I’d report them to the business bureau.”
“As for merch, there’s been clothing like we saw, toys, posters, a whole bunch of themed jewelry and accessories. A lot of it was just cheap cash grabs, but there was some really well made stuff too. Say what you will about Chorus’ crazy and intrusive practices, but Fiends are certainly a craze in every aspect of society.”
“You’ll bring a tear to my eye,” Chorus sniffled from off camera.
“Oh yeah, and there was one small village that basically treated us like folk legends,” Xard added. “Each of us was reimagined as an animal, and someone was selling hand carved and painted wood sculptures. So I bought them and meant to give them to you all, but forgot until now. Be right back.”
He briefly left the table and rushed up to his room, returning a few minutes later with four figures in his arms. Everyone else took their respective carving and admired it in awe. Phon was a white owl, wearing her usual purple cap. Drim was a green fox, draped in his cloak. Kada was a silver seal, her vest around its flippers. And Xard was a red bear, his golden banner dangling off its waist.
“Well, if we want to get back to gossip,” Phon re-steered the conversation to everyone’s surprise. “I guess I have a few things I can share. Not that it’s something I can help, but I see a lot of stuff that probably shouldn’t be seen around here—a few little quirks and habits people have that they only do behind closed doors.”
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“Hopefully, no one will mind some of these getting out, and I won’t say some of the worse, reputation-ruining ones. Let’s see, for starters, Rezin curls up into a ball in his chair when he’s gaming alone in his room. Nathym asks Ahvra to hold hands with him every few days in her adult form to try and get over his gynophobia.”
“Niloy often forgets or is too lazy to remove her makeup before bed and ends up staining her blankets and sheets with it. She has more laundry than anyone else as a result. Deborah often makes fake accounts on a work review site to flame her last place of employment. Victori is an outright slob.”
“Itsy often looks at girly clothes in online stores but never buys any. Tize paints military minifigures and acts out fake battles with them. After her killings came out, Kaizu started sending anonymous letters to the families of all the people she’s killed so that she can get closure.”
“Roque is actually the leading anonymous donor to almost every charity in the world. Nachi does crunches in her sleep. Crucion often falls asleep standing up in the middle of sweeping. Gatrim will stare at himself in the mirror in just his underwear and spout insults to try and motivate himself.”
“This is pure silver, Phon dearest. Keep it up!” Chorus encouraged her.
“Despite all their big talk about content and what people want, Chorus almost exclusively watches the worst and trashiest reality TV.”
“Okay, that’s quite a lot, Phon,” Kada’s mind was blown trying to process all that information. “Maybe you should stop now. A lot of those are pretty funny, though. I bet they feel totally embarrassed.”
“I have plenty for people living in this mansion too,” Phon stared Kada dead in the eyes. And before the ocean-haired girl could try to stop her, she spouted, “Kada often accidentally drinks her paint water cup. But sometimes she tries it on purpose if it makes an interesting color.”
She then targeted Xard who couldn’t help but snicker at that fact. “Xard spends more time on his hair care routine than anyone else to try and negate the damage from flying around.”
“Drim will sometimes wear his cloak backwards when it’s fresh out of the laundry with the hood up over his face. Then he’ll lay down and take a nap while it’s still warm.” Her brother glanced over to her, shocked, like she’d betrayed some level of trust. “Sorry, that just came out. I said too many that I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Phon gets so upset anytime she loses a cooking match to Mallea that she obsessively toils in her kitchen until she can perfectly reproduce the dish,” Drim spouted back at her, a satisfied smirk left on his face. “There. Now we’re even.”
“Speaking of Mallea,” Phon pressed forward. “In private, she’s basically an entirely different—” The woman didn’t get to finish her sentence. A perfectly polished fork whizzed from somewhere indiscernible in the mansion, the prongs just slightly embedding themselves into the brim of her hat.
“Oh yeah, I randomly started getting letters from Alk a while ago,” Kada brought up suddenly when she finished putting together the section for the Postmaster building.
“What does she write about?” Drim was immediately interested
“Oh, mostly jobs they’ve been going on and stuff they’ve been doing,” she elaborated. “Not much that we don’t already know besides some small details. But she’s also been telling me some personal things like issues she’s worked through with her past and dad and forgiving herself. Won’t give those specifics obviously, but I’m really happy for her.”
“I’ve been writing her back too with similar stuff. Talked to her a lot about my own family issue, and she’s been surprisingly supportive. Having a sudden pen-pal has been kind of awesome. I’d definitely recommend it. Just send out letters to people you want to be closer to and see if anyone bites!”
“Oh yeah, that reminds me. I got a letter from Jaid just the other day.” It was now everyone else’s turn to focus their attention. All of them stopped moving their hands to look over at Drim. Even Chorus literally focused in the camera, framing him alone.
“It’s nothing special, really. She was just thanking me for sending over that assassin. While she wasn’t able to get much information out of her that she didn’t already know, it let her get some closure.”
“Oh, and there was also a signed release form for some of that footage of her time as a spy, Chorus.” Drim pulled out his tablet and sent over an attachment. “They marked down all the times of the raw file that you’re allowed to show. Clearly it went through the CPs PR team. She also included a note that if you ever bother her about it again, she’ll ‘Hunt you down and fire bolts of lightning directly into your eyes.’”
Chorus looked through the email and their face lit up giddy with glee. “Of course they’ve cut out all the best parts, but I can damned sure make a compelling narrative from this still. It will be my masterpiece! I’ve suddenly lost interest in this puzzle nonsense, so go ahead and wrap it up so we can move on!”
The group was already fairly close to finishing at this point, only a few spots left to complete, so they worked quietly towards the end. That is, until it came down to the last piece.
“It won’t fit,” Xard grimaced as he tried to smoosh it into place.
Phon picked it up and examined it thoroughly, “Yeah that’s definitely the piece for this spot. It’s even the right shape, but it looks like it’s been miscut a little too big.” She then tried to mash it into place, even slamming into it with her fist, but it didn’t budge.
“Of course it’s the last piece, too,” Drim leaned his lead back in disappointment with a groan.
“No, we won’t be defeated by cheap cardboard!” Kada decreed. “I’ll take care of it.” She took the piece and then melted it into place. But then it didn’t look right, so she melted the entire puzzle and stretched it ever so slightly, also sealing up the seams to make it into one solid picture.
“Now that’s satisfying!” They all agreed, enjoying the picture of the Prosper skyline that they’d later hang up somewhere in the mansion.