WHAM!

Lulu slammed the mug down on the table and kicked up her feet onto the chair next to her as she leaned back in her chair. She was smiling as she stretched before folding her arms behind her head.

Ted was sitting at the table with her, and he had his head in his hands. Sid was the only other person in the room, and he was at a booth working on a new rope.

"Solid place you got here," commented Lulu. "Nice and cozy. Hey! Is that a fireplace? I bet that keeps ya nice and warm in the winter, eh?"

"Lulu. Just...why?" Ted sighed.

"Hmm?" she said absentmindedly as she continued to glance around the room.

"Why put us through that whole thing?"

"Huh? Oh, are you still on about that tiny, little, scam?"

"I wouldn't really call that mess at the carnival just a little scam."

Lulu smirked as she quickly slammed her feet down and rocked her chair forward onto its front feet for a moment before it landed back on all four. She pulled out a coin and twirled it between her fingers as she looked at Ted. "Then you're not thinking big enough! That was just small potatoes compared to the next one we're going to pull."

"Come on Lulu, don't...wait, we?"

Lulu leaned back and nodded. "Of course, I mean, you don't expect me to handle everything on my own do you? I'm much more of a...planning girl after all. I need someone else to actually get their hands dirty."

Ted dragged his hands down over his face and off onto the table. This girl was bad news. Not to mention her whole Jekyll and Hyde problem. Even Ted could tell that she would be running from one get rich quick scheme to the next. The only problem was, none of them really had a use for money at this point. Which was probably why Trizel had so much to lose to her scams.

Lulu put a hand over her chest, and feigned hurt. "What? You don't trust me?"

"It's not..." Ted fumbled with his words as her accusation caught him off guard. "I mean, of course, but..."

"But nothing, are you saying you do trust me?" she said with pleading eyes as she leaned forward.

"It would be unwise to trust you," Sid stated from across the room. "You have shown yourself to abuse trust placed in you."

She waved a dismissive hand towards Sid. "Ah, don't listen to him! You know I've really got a heart of gold, don't you kid?"

Ted's impulse was to say yes, but that didn't feel right. Sid was right, he knew she was just one scam after another, but something about her smile. It just felt so genuine. He couldn't outright say he trusted her, but he definitely couldn't say he didn't trust her.

"Alright, how about you help me with something first, and then we'll see?" Ted suggested.

In the background, Sid shook his head, but Lulu rubbed her hand against her chin. "Hmm," she contemplated.

After a few seconds, she finally nodded and jumped up onto the large table. She walked across and stopped in front of Ted, where she spat into her hand. She held her hand out as she said, "I'll help you once, and then you'll help me once, deal?"

Ted hesitated, but her reassuring smile convinced him the rest of the way. He nodded. "Deal."

But, as he reached up to shake her hand, she pulled it back. Lulu wagged a finger at him. "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Gotta spit in your hand too. It's tradition."

Ted looked down at his hand and shrugged. He spat into it and reached up towards her. She happily pressed their wet hands together and gave him two firm shakes.

"Pleasure doing business with ya." she said.

Lulu jumped down from the table and stretched her back. "I didn't have so much that I'm too drunk to work. So, want to get started?"

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Ted wiped his hand off on his apron and stood up. "That's perfect. Especially since we're going to need a lot of those honey packets."

"Honey packets?" asked Lulu as she seemed to be more and more intrigued by the second. "Well, well. Seems you may have roped me into something rather interesting, eh?"

Ted nodded. "Yep, we'll need about one hundred and twenty pounds of it."

"Ooh, I can't wait this sounds so...wait, one hundred and twenty pounds!?!"

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

"I thought I told you," complained Lulu. "I'm the idea girl, not the manual labor one. Wouldn't this be better left to that big guy."

"Trizel?" replied Ted as he held a basket full of tiny sauce packets of honey.

"Yeah! That's the one. He seemed much more suited to this kind of manual labor."

"Fair enough. He does carry the barrels back and forth from the cellar." Ted shook his head, "But he can't help with this."

"Well, why not?" She complained as she slumped her shoulders forward and exaggerated how heavy her basket was.

"Well, the only reason he isn't still giving you an earful, is because he finally got a chance to yell at Sentenza about everything he did." Shrugged Ted. "They all should be resting, but he didn't want to delay it any longer or something."

"That's why the three of them left?" Lulu tried to glance over her shoulder, but the fog hadn't gone away, so she couldn't see much. "I thought it was for some secret club no one else was invited to."

"Nope. Just a chance for an extended session of berating Sentenza for shooting people." Ted sighed.

"Good thing I didn't attack any of you."

Ted turned back to look at her. He had missed most of the attacking, but even he knew about the knives.

"What? That wasn't me. I have no control over what she does," Lulu said as she tried to dodge any responsibility. "I'd take money. But a life? Not my style."

"How does that happen anyway?"

"What. the changing?"

"Yeah, how do you turn into Pockets?" Ted asked as they continued to walk forward with their full baskets.

"Well, it's not really by choice you know," she said. "Every now and again, she just sort of takes over."

"But how?" reiterated Ted.

Lulu shrugged.

"That's not a satisfying answer you know."

Lulu shrugged again.

"Really? You don't have any sort of idea at all?" Ted was determined. She had to know something about it. At least, that's what made sense to him. Otherwise, she should be more worried about randomly turning into a clown. At least, that's what Ted would worry about. Constantly. Now that kind of thing happening would definitely kill your social life in one fell swoop.

"Well..."

"Yes? Yes?"

"It's just sort of happened to me as long as I can remember." Lulu shook her head. "Nothing I can do about it. Besides, a girl needs to have some mysteries, right?" she winked at Ted.

Ted was frustrated. He wanted to know why it happened. How it happened, and Lulu seemed like she was just being obtuse on purpose. It was frustrating. But they were alone in the carnival surrounded by mist. Even if he didn't know why, or how, he felt like he could at least trust her with his life. Which, was not his smartest decision, but he's made plenty of dumb ones before. And he'll make more dumb decisions in the future.

"Why do you need so much honey?" asked Lulu.

"To make a mead of course."

"Yeah. but why do you need so much? one hundred and twenty pounds is a lot for just the two of us to carry. Especially using these tiny sauce packets."

"Well," Ted explained. "That's the only real access to honey we have, and Sid is too busy remaking his new rope since your other half ruined his other one."

"I mean, how much honey does mead need? Couldn't you do with a little less? Like...however much we have in these baskets now?"

Ted let out a chuckle. "Maybe if I was making only a tiny bit, but I was planning to do a full barrel at least. That's about 42 gallons, right?"

He turned to look at Lulu, and she just shrugged.

"Yeah, pretty sure that's right." he nodded. "Well, you need two to three pounds of honey per gallon of water to make mead. so that's one hundred and twenty pounds."

"What about eighty-four pounds?" countered Lulu. "That'd be just enough, right?"

Ted tilted his head back and forth as he thought about it. "That'd be a pretty dry mead. I was thinking of heading to the sweeter end for one that's pure honey. Although we could always backsweeten it, but then we'd still need a lot of honey to flavor the finished stuff."

A smirk slowly crawled onto Lulu's face. "Hmm, I mean backsweetening sounds like a much better way to do it, but then again, what do I know. You're the alcohol guy, right?"

"It'd just be harder to carbonate that way too." added Ted as the gears in his head began to turn.

"I mean, if it's a sweet drink, does it really need to be carbonated? It's liquid honey, and you don't see bubbles in that stuff naturally, do you?" she countered.

"Uh..."

"I mean, you're trusting a lot to this yeast stuff, aren't you? Why not cut them out, and rely on your own measurements to add the sweetness?"

Ted paused and slowly nodded. "You know, I think you've got a point."

"Exactly, so we only need eighty-four pounds of these packets, right?"

"Well, at I'd say at least ninety pounds. At least that much. But we'd need a lot more to backsweeten it once it's done fermenting. Which won't be too long using the time machine." Ted thought about it in his head. One hundred and twenty pounds of honey to hopefully keep enough sweetness after fermentation. Without that, they'd need to be sure the yeast was dead. But without any of the chemicals to do that, the closest option would be keeping it cold. Eh, he figured he would worry about that later. Besides, it's not like a single barrel of alcohol would last too long.

"We'd need at least one hundred pounds. No, maybe one hundred and five."

"Ah, you're overestimating it. Ninety would be perfect. I know it." suggested Lulu.

Ted shook his head. "I'm just not sure. I've only made mead by the gallon. But that sounds like far too little."

"Well, how did you make it back then?" she asked.

"Well, I backsweetened it..."

"Ah, see? I knew it was a good idea."

"Well, I did it by the bottle, not even the entire gallon at once. I even had the right chemicals to kill the yeast and all that." Ted smiled as he reminisced a bit. "I remember my uncle said if I was making mead with cheap honey, to backsweeten it with something a little fancier, and it'd make the flavor really pop."

"Hmm? Why would that change anything? Honey is honey, right?"

"Essentially, but there can be some differences. It's just easier to tell if you taste one after the other. But a lot of stuff when it ferments, especially fruit, the sugars that turn into alcohol were the ones with the most flavors. So, you can lose a lot of that when making something into alcohol. Honey is one of those things. It just turns to alcohol and can lose a bunch of its mellower flavors in the process. But, if you add a little flavor after everything is done, well then, you're sure to still taste it."

Lulu seemed to think for a second, and then nodded in approval. "Ah, I see. So, you make it from cheap material, and then dress it up to look all fancy."

"I don't...I wouldn't have put it that way," coughed Ted. "But I guess so?"

"I like it! It makes good business sense."

"Anyway," said Ted as he tried to turn away from how his techniques were sort of like a scam. "I guess we'll go with a flat one hundred pounds for now. We can just come back for more if we need it, okay?"

Lulu winked at him. "You're the boss. But uh, just how many do you think we'll need?"

"Of the packets?"

"In number, not pounds of them." she clarified.

"Well, each of these has what, half an ounce of honey?"

"Wait, half an ounce?" Lulu gulped.

"Mhm, oh wait. We probably can't get every drop of the honey out of each packet. So, we'll need to go a little heavy on the honey to be sure we have enough in." Ted thought aloud. "Maybe it'd be safer to do one hundred pounds for the fermentation, and another twenty for the backsweetening?"

Lulu gulped. "Wait, no...that's too many."

"Huh? How many packets is that?"

"A hundred pounds? That's...that's...three thousand two hundred packets!" Lulu cried out in despair.