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The alarm had been sounded. The rainbow carriage had been drawn. The five most fabulous and homosexual people on the planet had donned their shades.
Somewhere, someone was in a crisis that could only be solved under the watchful eye of either a Scrybe or a queer. Luckily for that someone, they’d be getting both.
The four Scrybes—P03, Grimora, Leshy, and Magnificus—all piled into the carriage waiting for them on Monument Island. The Trader also got in. She wasn’t a Scrybe, but they needed five people for their side gig and the only other gay people they knew with enough relevance to stand among the greats were the Mycologists, who were way too problematic to add to their Fab Five, and the Bone Lord, whose only conception of fashion came from the shredded piece of a dictator’s shirt that he kept in his creepy basement suite. Also, he was too big to fit in the carriage anyways so fuck ‘im.
Helmed by Grimora, the only one of them responsible enough to drive, the carriage took off down the bridge. It was pulled by four majestic beasts: a skeletal horse, a unicorn with hooves of pure mox, a robot horse complex enough to make Michael Bay salivate, and a moose. The Trader didn’t have a steed to contribute but she did make cute little ear bonnets for each of them.
“Well now, my girlies,” Magnificus spoke, “what appears to be the situation for the week?”
P03’s monitor switched to a big block of text nobody wanted to read. “So basically there’s this repair lady on Central Island whose house is a dump and whose life is a slump. There’re some other important details, too, but literally nobody cares. All that matters is we get her life back on track before she embarrasses herself further.”
“Hmm, sounds dire indeed,” said Leshy, crossing his booty short-clad cervine legs. “It is fortunate we were alerted to this poor lady in peril.”
“Is she cute?” asked the Trader, who was dressed like a typical Canadian lesbian but with more fur. No, you’re not imagining enough fur. More than that. A bit more. Okay yeah that’s pretty accurate.
“According to her girlfriend, she’s very cute,” P03 said.
The Trader slumped down so far she vanished completely into her furs. “Dang it,” she said, but her voice was so muffled no one heard it.
The Scrybes all bantered gaily with each other until their carriage at last screeched to a stop in front of a run-down repair shop. The robot horse, which lacked legs, dropped to the ground like an anvil the moment it powered down. The five queers giggled out of the carriage and broke through the front door of the shop as one gay mass, startling the three robot customers who had come into the shop to bypass the long wait times for the bot walk-in clinics back home in spite of the fact that the owner of this establishment was not a trained robot physician. As the robots skittered out of the open doorway, the Fab Five struck cool poses and lowered their shades as a unit.
“Um,” said the owner of the repair shop, who stood behind the front counter staring dully at the five, “can I fucking help you?”
“Hello, darling,” said Grimora, smiling mysteriously. “We are here to help you.”
“It’s even worse than I suspected,” Leshy uttered, horrified. “She’s so stressed and overworked that her skin has gone green!”
“Alas, babes,” said Magnificus, putting a hand on his hip, “you may find that your complexion is, too, green.”
“Only under specific lighting engines,” Leshy shot back.
“Your name is Rebecha, correct?” P03 asked the woman, floating over and leaning homosexually on the counter to assert himself in a nonthreatening manner.
“What?” Rebecha’s glare was so powerful it made several of P03’s pixels go dead. “You know me. You call me up to fix the bridges every time you break them. As in, like, every month.”
P03 turned to look back at the other four. “Ooh, she’s spicy.”
“She’s a ten, but she’s taken,” the Trader sighed wistfully.
“Woof,” Rebecha groaned, putting her palm in her face. “It’s gonna be one of those days, isn’t it.”
“You will show us to your place of residence.” Leshy advanced on her until every part of him other than his glowing orange eyes and stylish booty shorts were in shadow. “Then we will repair your existence.”
“Oh, that’s very clever of you!” Grimora praised, clapping for him. “We shall repair the repair-lady! Your way with words never ceases to impress.”
Leshy turned his menacing stare on her, then smiled cutely and knocked his knees together. “You really think so? It took me the whole carriage ride to think up this bit of wordplay.”
“You’re literally a genius,” P03 said. “And hot.”
“And hot,” Magnificus agreed.
The Trader had seen better.
“Fine, fine,” muttered Rebecha, hanging up her leather apron and walking around the counter to join the Fab Five. “I don’t know what you Scrybes…and the Trader, apparently, hi…are playing at here, but if it’s my house you want to see, you can go take a look. Anything to get this bullshit over with faster.”
The Scrybes (and the Trader, hi) tossed Rebecha into their glimmering rainbow carriage, and after Leshy kicked the robot horse awake they were off. They circled the repair shop at top speed several times, then came to a stop in front of the repair shop. The robot horse went back to sleep in the mud.
Rebecha led them up the obvious stairs that went up the side of the shop to the second floor where she lived. The moment the Fab Five stepped through the doorway into the modest but kind of messy home, they immediately scattered in different directions to sniffle around for truffles and also things they could embarrass Rebecha about. Rebecha was more unsettled by the fact that her girlfriend, Amber, was sitting on her couch waiting for her.
“Sorry about these guys,” Rebecha started as Leshy raided her fridge and threw produce across the room, “they ambushed me at work and, well, you know you never say no to a Scrybe…”
“Actually, I was the one who nominated you for Scrybe Eye,” Amber admitted.
Rebecha blinked and shook her head in disbelief. In the distance, she could hear Magnificus drinking all of her shampoo.
“Scrybe Eye? What?” She sank down onto the couch next to Amber, baffled. “Why did you…?”
Amber took her hands and looked deeply into her eyes through the slots of her metal visor. “I’m sorry, I had to. It was the only way.”
“Okay, girl,” said P03, floating up to the couch and karate-chopping their hands to make them stop being all tender with each other, “where the fuck is your wardrobe?”
“I don’t have any extra clothes,” Rebecha said.
“What, not even a million copies of your default outfit?”
“Look, Gameworks only sent me over here with the one fit and I happen to like it.”
P03 literally scanned her. “I hate to break it to you, but it’s ew. Especially that hat.”
Rebecha patted her hair, confused. “I’m not wearing any hat.”
P03 synthesized the sound of sucking in air through one’s teeth. “Yikes, Mags is gonna have a field day with that. Anyways, your house fucking sucks. Just thought you should know.”
“Thanks. That’s really helpful to know. Really.”
From the kitchen, Leshy called, “Which of you is it that cooks in this house?”
“I do,” said Rebecha, a little proudly. She’d learned everything she knew from Chef Bryce during their shared time in Combat Arena X and she was quite satisfied with her skills.
“Perhaps you can tell me why, then,” Leshy continued, “every piece of leftovers in this fridge is a pie of some variety.”
Rebecha never claimed Bryce was particularly diverse in what he cooked.
“Not all of them are sweet,” Rebecha pointed out. “You can have a slice of the frittata pie if you’d like.”
“Why not simply make a frittata? Why the pie?”
Rebecha, who did not know how to make a non-pie frittata, remained stubbornly silent on the matter.
Magnificus was the next to swagger up to the couch, blinding the two girls with his dangerously reflective sequined flapper dress that barely provided any support to his big naturals. Even the brightest scientists have yet to determine how much of Magnificus's bahonkers are actual boob and how much is just hair.
“I have consumed every foul product in your pathetic little bathroom,” he announced, “and they tasted like 13-in-1.”
“It’s just more convenient to have multi-purpose products,” Rebecha argued. “You’ll just end up using your shampoo as body wash, anyways, and while you’re at it you might as well use it as deodorant and mouthwash, too.”
Magnificus made either a gagging sound or a wheezing sound. “No wonder your unfortunate hair is caked into the shape of a stylish trapper hat.”
The Trader popped up through the floorboards like a mole. “Did someone say pelts?”
“No?” Magnificus answered.
“Nobody said pelts,” Rebecha said.
The Trader stared at her long with an inscrutable and cryptic expression. “You will soon.”
She vanished back underground and there was the distant sound of someone falling painfully to the floor of the repair shop below.
Rebecha turned back to Amber. “Why did you invite torment into my life like this? How much do you hate me?”
Amber shook her head sadly. “I love you, Rebecha, but trust me, you need this.”
“And YOU,” Magnificus cut in, jabbing a finger at Amber, “need to return to your studies! Back to the Tower with you at once!”
Amber leapt to her feet. “Apologies, Master Magnificus! I will return post-haste!”
Magnificus waved his paintbrush at her and in a shower of rainbowy magicks she was transformed into a head impaled on a pike.
“Now get out of here, you silly,” Magnificus added with a giggle, flapping his hand at her.
“Yes, sir!”
Then Amber hopped out of the house and tumbled all the way down the stairs outside. Rebecha winced.
“Hello, my dear,” said Grimora from the spot on the couch where Rebecha’s girlfriend had been just seconds ago. Rebecha screamed then felt silly for screaming.
Through gritted teeth, she said, “What.”
“I happened upon your personal diary in your underwear drawer,” Grimora said, holding up the book in question, “and it would seem that you have many a problem indeed.”
“What were you going through my underwear drawer for?!”
“Well, it seems the obvious place to keep one’s diary. Now, you have many grievances written in this little book here, such as the difficulty of running a repair shop in an economy that uses foil trading cards as currency and the way Challengers keep coming to you to ask how to woo P03, but I’d like to hear directly from you what you think your biggest difficulty in life is right now.” Grimora smiled pleasantly at Rebecha. “Go on, dear, be honest. I’m here to listen.”
Rebecha thought about it, then said, “I think my life would be a lot easier if you Scrybes stopped breaking the bridges every other week and calling me up about repairing them. On my own. With no help. Because apparently nobody else on the planet knows how to do it. I’d say that kind of fucks with my schedule.”
Grimora’s expression didn’t change. “Hmm, I don’t think that’s quite it. Tell me, dear, what is your relationship with your parents like?”
Rebecha put her face in her hands.
“Okay, I’ve done a thorough sweep,” P03 said, floating back over to the couch, “and I’ve determined the problem with your house is that it’s stupid. And ugly. And messy as hell.”
“That’s because you people literally started throwing my belongings across the room.”
P03 put his claw on his hip. “Hey, don’t go blaming others for your own cleanliness deficit.” The simple but stylish open suit jacket he was wearing shifted slightly, and Rebecha realized for the first time since he entered the shop that the shirt he was wearing under it read CANADA, not ANAL. She got the funny feeling this wardrobe malfunction was probably fully intentional.
“Okay, Fab Five!” At P03’s words, the rest of the members of the band of idiots rapidly ragdolled their way to the bot’s position and flopped uselessly on the floor for a moment before their polygons reassembled themselves. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, girlies,” P03 went on, “but together we can take this unfortunate miserable human-thing from drab to fab.”
“Or you could leave my house and never come back?” Rebecha offered.
“Well, we are leaving your house now,” Leshy said, “but we will return before long. And we’re taking you with us now.”
“Oh, great,” Rebecha said dryly.
They once again kidnapped Rebecha into their carriage and drove haphazardly around the islands with her, occasionally crashing through bridge railings and knocking loose its boards under the powerful hooves of their steeds. Rebecha sat staring forlornly out the window, tallying up the damage in her head and calculating how many weeks it would take her to undo it.
“First stop!” Grimora announced, halting the cart outside a huge building on Resplendent Bastion. Leshy tossed both Rebecha and P03 out the window onto the metal pavement before the carriage swerved dizzily away, knocking over several robots who would probably be lining up at the repair shop in the next few days.
P03 momentarily grew a pair of sexy robotic legs in order to get up from the ground, then promptly sucked them back up into his body. “So like I said, your house is trash. I’m going to completely remodel it without your input, but you can pretend to influence my decisions by telling me what furniture you like in here.”
Rebecha picked her bruised body up and stared up in wonder at the bright neon sign affixed high on the building. They were at the mythical store known as “IKEA”.
“Wow,” Rebecha said once they were inside, hands on her hips, “this sure is an IKEA.”
“Yep,” P03 agreed. “This is the most IKEA IKEA I could find.”
“Hope we don’t get lost in all this furniture and home decor.”
“We already have.”
Both of them looked back and saw the front doors they’d just walked through had been replaced by a sofa.
“Okay,” said Rebecha.
They floundered randomly down the isles for the next few hours, disagreeing viciously about what furniture Rebecha’s house was clearly crying out for.
“This chest is nice,” Rebecha ventured, gesturing at a chestnut storage chest while eating the Swedish meatball she’d received from a mysterious store attendee who had vanished as quickly as they’d appeared and whose ominous chuckling she swore she could still faintly hear.
“This chest is an embarrassment to chests everywhere,” P03 replied, shoving his meatball ineffectually at his screen. “How about this one?”
The chest he was gesturing at was made of cold metal and seemed to be leaking motor oil.
“No. God, no. Why do you keep countering everything I like with a worse robot version of the same thing. I will never want a worse robot version of any piece of furniture.”
“Who’s the interior designer here? Little Miss Objectively Perfectly Average House or me? My plans for your new and improved home will not be ruined by your terrible taste.”
“Can’t I at least—”
“Oh look, an AI-powered countertop.”
You get the picture.
Some time later, the exit doors rematerialized in a display bathroom and both P03 and Rebecha desperately threw themselves through them. The carriage roared to a stop in front of them. The unicorn seemed to have impaled Plasma Jimmy on its horn at some point and was looking thoroughly unbothered by this. The gun-bot was squirming grossly in a way that made everyone think he was in terrible agony instead of the hedonistic pleasure he truly felt.
Nobody made any effort to get him down either way.
Rebecha and P03 rejoined the gaggle inside the carriage and were whisked off back across the bridges, though P03 bailed halfway through on Central Isle so he could begin work on remaking Rebecha’s house in his own image. The next stop was on Wild Isle, where Leshy led Rebecha off into a cabin she might have expected to get murdered in if she hadn’t been in there several dozen times already to fix its permanently leaky roof. Leshy brought her to the storage closet, where the Trader was waiting. He frowned at her.
“Oh, am I not supposed to be here?” she asked genuinely. “Sorry, force of habit. If you pay me three foils I will leave.”
Leshy picked her up, then threw her straight down through the floor. She fell through the shattered floorboards down into the dark abyss below and the floor sealed itself back up behind her. Rebecha opened her mouth to ask a question about this series of events, then decided she didn’t want to.
“Now then.” Leshy turned to Rebecha. “We must do something about your cooking habits.”
“Woof, yeah. I know they’re not great. All I can make is pie.”
“Then I think it is time we diversified your skillset. I will teach you to make…” Leshy stared intensely down at her. “...a cake.”
Rebecha blinked. “Cake? I mean, not that I’m opposed to it, but I’m already pretty good at making sweets, so it might be more helpful to—”
“Meat cake,” Leshy interrupted.
“Huh?
Leshy reached behind a crate and slowly pulled up a dead deer by the leg. “Meat cake,” he repeated.
“Oh god,” said Rebecha.
Leshy raised a knife and, without breaking eye contact, began to
[This section has been redacted for your reading pleasure.]
and at last both sat at the table, vacant stares on their blood-splattered faces as they looked down at the [redacted] piled on each of their plates.
“Go on,” Leshy broke the silence, “dig in.”
Rebecha raised her fork in a shaky hand, catching as little of the [redacted] on its metal prongs as possible, then, with phenomenal reluctance, lifted it to her mouth. She chewed with her face screwed into a grimace and swallowed thickly, then said, “Hey wait, this is actually pretty tasty.”
“I know, right?” Leshy kicked his hooves happily under the table as he grabbed a handful of his own [there’s no way to censor the food without making it sound like he’s eating his own [redacted] so please give me the benefit of the doubt here] and shoved it in his mouth. “I always make it for my Challengers, but for some reason they never want any. Such a pity.”
“Woof,” Rebecha agreed emphatically.
“Do you feel like you will now be more confident in the kitchen?” Leshy asked her.
“Definitely. This is the perfect weeknight meal—besides all the [redacted] and [redacted] business, it’s so quick and easy to prepare.”
The moment Rebecha was done eating, a cloud of magickal sparkles surrounded her and she found herself sitting on a wooden stool on the top floor of the Temple of Magicks. Before her stood Magnificus next to a blank canvas. Magnificus took in her appearance and made an expression that didn’t pass through the veil of green hair covering it.
“That viscera and gore coating your face and clothing tells me Leshy taught you how to prepare meat cake?”
“It tastes better than it looks.”
Magnificus gave a disdainful sniff and muttered to himself, “Always with the meat cake, that Leshy. If only his ass weren’t so intimidatingly fat and delectable, how I would show him…”
“What?”
“Ah, yes, I must focus on turning you into a thirst trap to rival even Leshy,” said Magnificus. “This means transforming your hair from reprehensible to presentable.”
Rebecha touched her hair protectively. “I like it as it is.”
Magnificus put a hand on his hips, which looked very wide and sexy thanks to his hair, which was trimmed selectively to accentuate his assets. “Alas, girl, your hair has the exact look and texture as that of a Polly Pocket circa 2007. How many a comb have you broken attempting to brush it?”
Rebecha glared at him. “Only enough to severely unbalance my finances.”
Magnificus nodded gravely and put a bony hand on her shoulder. “Do not worry, my sweet child. You are safe here. Once I am done with you, not one more hairstyling implement shall betray you ever again.”
Then he walked over to the canvas and started painting.
“Hey,” Rebecha protested. “I thought you were going to cut my hair.”
“Cut it?” Magnificus echoed, leaning to look at her around the canvas. “Why would I do such a thing? Now keep sitting there and try not to move too much.” He went back to painting.
Rebecha pulled out her phone and watched Subway Surfer/Minecraft parkour/soap cutting/sadboy Breaking Bad compilation videos.
An hour later, Magnificus spun the easel with such force that it whirled wildly through the air like one of those spinny flying fairy toy things before it landed gently in front of Rebecha. She looked up from her sensory sludge and squinted at it.
“You just…painted a picture of me with slightly better hair,” she said slowly. “Is this a template for you or…?”
“You foolish thing,” Magnificus said, “what I’ve painted is a mirror.”
Rebecha tilted her head to the side and the her in the canvas failed to follow suit. “It literally isn’t.”
“Touch yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean your hair!” Magnificus huffed. “Thoust nonbeliever!”
Rebecha touched herself (her hair) and realized it was no longer as firm as a brick but silky-soft. She even had a sneaky lesbian undercut now.
“Okay, fair,” she said. “You even painted away the blood—hey, you forgot my freckles.”
Magnificus stared, then quickly flicked his paintbrush at the canvas, splattering freckley specks all over painting-Rebecha’s face. “No I didn’t.”
“Well, uh, thanks for this,” is what Rebecha would have said if Magnificus hadn’t unexpectedly kicked her stool so hard she fell backwards through the big fucking hole he had in his floor for some godforsaken reason. She landed in a crumpled heap on the first floor before accordioning back up, then looked around. Nobody was down here with her.
“Sooooo…” she said aloud to nobody. “Do I just leave…?”
“Psst,” hissed a voice.
Rebecha looked to her right to see the Trader was beckoning to her from the doorway of the side room. Oh, right. The Trader was with these lunatics, too. She didn’t know how she kept forgetting.
“Psst psst.”
“Okay, I’m coming.”
“Pspspspspsps.”
“Stop that.”
The Trader closed the door behind Rebecha, leaving them standing alone in the dark, candlelit room.
“So, uh,” Rebecha began, “what’s your deal? P03’s the homewrecker—I mean, interior decorator, Leshy’s on food duty, and Magnificus cut my hair…sort of. What are you going to be doing?”
Wordlessly, the Trader took her hands in a very gay sort of way. I’m talking Sam holding Frodo’s hands kind of gay.
“Er,” said Rebecha, blushing despite herself at this gay gesture, “I already have a girlfriend, and I’m not sure if she’d be okay with—”
Then the Trader threw them both down through the floor and they fell down through a tunnel of blackness for about thirty screaming seconds before landing in a nice foam pit. Rebecha swam her way to the surface, gasping for air.
“What the FUCK,” she demanded.
The Trader did a backstroke to the edge of the foam pit and pulled Rebecha out in a way that continued to be super gay.
“Welcome to the underground,” the Trader said, gesturing to the vast dark cavern they were now standing in. “How was the fall?”
“Sans Undertale,” said Rebecha, her eye glowing blue.
“This is how I get from island to island so quickly,” the Trader explained, leading Rebecha by the hand through the chamber. Seawater trickled through cracks in the ceiling in thin rivulets and random objects lay scattered around the stony ground. “Down here, distances between each island are much shorter than they are in the aboveground. Just like the Nether in—”
“—Minecraft,” Rebecha finished for her. They stared soulfully into each other’s eyes for a moment. Then Rebecha noticed something over the Trader’s shoulder.
“Hey, isn’t that the OLD_DATA on top of that pile over there?”
“Yeah, it is. Don’t worry about that.”
They ended up at a single store in the middle of the void. It was a Hudson’s Bay Company outlet.
“Why is there a Hudson’s Bay Company down here?” Rebecha asked.
“It’s my own company,” the Trader said proudly. “Named it after my great-grandpappy Hudson, who was buried between the Thumbandforefinger Bay on Death’s Hand.”
“Don’t expect you get a lot of business down here.”
“The Bone Lord is something of a regular. He says he likes the taste of my clothes.”
“Hm.”
Inside, Rebecha made the frankly unsurprising discovery that every piece of clothing was made exclusively of pelts and pelt by-products.
“No offense,” she said, “but I’m not really a fur person.”
The Trader put a finger over Rebecha’s lips before she could say more. “You will be.”
They then had a fashion montage set to She Wolf by Shakira, complete with cosmically improbably terrible pieces of clothing that the Trader had genuinely no clue about the origin of. At some point in the montage they inexplicably found themselves having a pool party in the foam pit clad in only leather bikinis with cinematography that was intended to be hot specifically to lesbians but unfortunately used long-established male gaze techniques that muddied the message the filmmakers were going for. At long last, the song ended and they emerged relatively unscathed and with a series of outfits Rebecha actually didn’t hate.
“Wow,” she said, fixing her mussed-up hair, “I didn’t think I’d make it out of that montage alive.”
“Sorry, they can get pretty crazy sometimes,” the Trader replied while pretending not to notice the sexy lesbian undercut Rebecha had. “Anyways, let’s get you back to the surface.”
They exited the store and positioned themselves in another ball pit, where they were sucked up into the ceiling like peas through a straw and broke through the stone tiles of Grimora’s crypt. They lay concussed on the floor for several minutes.
“Ah, you’ve arrived at last,” said Grimora, poking her head through the doorway of her storage closet. “Right on time, too.”
Rebecha did not move or give any reply.
“Quite alright,” Grimora said, squatting on the floor next to her as her dark cabaret dress slowly morphed into an Adidas tracksuit. “We can begin to discuss your deep psychological issues right here. So, I heard all you said about your parents and I’ve taken the liberty of calling up your father. He’s right in the next room.”
Rebecha sat up suddenly. “What? I don’t have a father. I’m a video game construct.”
“No, I’m quite certain he is your father. He told me he birthed you himself.”
Rebecha’s face shrivelled.
Grimora dragged Rebecha out of the closet and propped her up on a tombstone. Sitting on the tombstone opposite her was a smugly smarmily smirking Irving.
“Hello, daughter,” he said smilingly.
Rebecha stared dully at him. “Oh. It’s you.”
“That’s right, my direct descendant. Person who is related to me by blood.”
“Why are you here. Haven’t you tormented me enough by reassigning me to this godforsaken place.”
Irving’s smirk was so wide it went right off the sides of his face, like he was the Joker or Jeff the Killer or some shit. “Is that any way to talk to your dear old pops?”
“How sweet!” Grimora said, clapping her hands together and looking from Rebecha to Irving. “Family bonding time always warms my cold decomposing heart!”
Rebecha pointed at him. “He’s not my father. He’s fucking with you.”
Grimora hummed thoughtfully. “I see. It’s your deep-seated emotional trauma that’s causing you to act out this way towards your father. Would you like to elaborate upon it?”
Rebecha gave up.
“Dad,” she said through gritted teeth, “my deep-seated emotional trauma is all the bridges I have to keep fixing on my own because I’m the only NPC who was programmed to know how to do it. I would stop acting out if there were a few other NPCs who knew how to fix bridges and were willing to do so.”
“That’s so sad,” Irving said with a smile that was now curving up so far that it threatened to pierce back through his blue head. “I’m really and truly sad to hear that.”
“Problem solved, then!” Grimora said. “I’m so glad the two of you were able to talk like this!”
“Hang on,” Rebecha cut in, “the last three of the Fab Five actually kind of helped me in the end. You can’t just break the cycle like this.”
“Hoo hoo hoo!” Grimora hoo hoo hooed. “But you see, my dear, breaking cycles is what I do best!”
The sharp corners of Irving’s mouth poked the sides of his face and he popped like a balloon. Rebecha stared blankly into the camera.
Suddenly, the rainbow chariot broke through the ceiling of the mausoleum and nearly flattened Rebecha and Grimora both. Leshy kicked open the door and yanked them in using his prehensile hooves, then they took off again, causing massive damage to the entirety of the bridge leading back to Central.
Oh well, Rebecha thought as she watched a monumental quantity of wood fall into the sea below, this was all equal exchange or whatever they called it in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
The carriage crashed down in front of the repair shop, which looked completely unchanged from the outside. The four of the Fab Five who weren’t P03 picked up the limp and noodley Rebecha like she was a floppy battering ram and stormed up the stairs into her house, then set her down carefully inside.
“Surprise,” P03 said, doing jazz hand. “I fixed your shitty domicile.”
The house was completely unrecognizable. Exorbitantly expensive yet homely furniture filled each room, which had been given swanky new flooring and lighting fixtures. Best of all, there was no hint of robot furniture anywhere.
“Of course,” P03 went on, “it could’ve been so much better if you had better taste, but whatever. I guess this is fine. And before you ask, yes, your house is now bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It’s not a fucking Doctor Who reference either. I’m more of a House of Leaves kind of bot.”
“This is amazing,” Rebecha admitted at last. “Though…did you really have to paint every wall white? That kind of gives it a corporate feel.”
P03 got all up in her face. “If you try to paint the walls any colour other than stark white, I will scream and cry and shit myself.”
Rebecha mentally filed this information away for future reference.
Leshy clip-clopped up to the icebox and opened it for Rebecha. “I’ve put a three-month’s supply of big game in here so you may make as much meat cake as you like until you learn to use the compound bow hanging over the fireplace and become capable of hunting for yourself. The cabinets are also stocked with the eleven secret herbs and spices that make my recipe so finger lickin’ good.”
Then Magnificus grabbed Rebecha by the wrist and pulled her into the remodelled bathroom. “I have devised a new magickal potion for your future use and stocked your cabinets with it. It serves as a shampoo, conditioner, body wash, facial scrub, hand soap, toothpaste, eye drops, whipped cream, marinade, energy drink, engine lubricant, regular lubricant, laundry detergent, and pancake batter.”
“Wow,” said Rebecha, awed, “that’s one more use than my previous shampoo.”
“Precisely! Knowing your love for practicality above functionality or ethics, I’ve formulated this perfect all-in-one to meet most of one’s average everyday needs!”
Rebecha sniffed one of the bottles and looked up at Magnificus. “You know, this smells exactly like AXE’s Sneakers and Cookies body wash.”
The sound effect of breaking glass played.
“That…that cannot be…” Magnificus uttered, but Rebecha went on.
“No, no, it smells exactly like it. It’s uncanny.”
Magnificus pulled at his face, despairing. “No, I would never make…something that smells like anything from that foul company…”
“Don’t worry, that’s my favourite AXE scent. I’m not mad or anything.”
But Magnificus had already melted into a puddle of hair on the floor. Rebecha stepped over him and left the bathroom.
The Trader was waiting for her outside in the hallway and scooped her up in her powerful arms before sprinting into the bedroom. Rebecha’s embarrassing kiddie race car bed had been replaced by an adult truck bed—as in, a bed in the shape of a truck, not the bed of a truck. In a bed this big, she could get up to all sorts of crazy NSFW acts with her girlfriend, such as cuddling or whispering promises of a beautiful future into each other’s ears or even falling asleep with their fingers laced together. Rebecha was getting sleepy just thinking about it.
Then the Trader set her down and said, “I put all of your new clothes in your new closet, but by contractual obligation you have to try them on now.”
“With you standing there, or…?”
The Trader blushed fiercely and turned away. “Of course not. I wouldn’t look upon the beautiful body of a lovely woman who already has a girlfriend.”
“Right,” Rebecha muttered, scratching her arm in a way that communicated her remorse. Of course they couldn’t be together, not when she already loved Amber so much.
Rebecha hopped up and spun in the air like a Sim to change into her first outfit, a fur-lined jacket with apple bottom jean-styled hide pants and boots edged with fur, then on the Trader’s instruction shuffled over into the living room where the Scrybes were waiting for her, all of them piled onto the couch like this was the F.R.I.E.N.D.S AU instead.
“Yesssssss, queen,” cooed Leshy.
“With an outfit like that, you could very well turn the heads of everyone in a club,” Grimora added.
“Kind words, praise, etcetera,” said P03.
The Trader swept Rebecha back into her room to change her into a second outfit, and in the mean time the front door opened and Amber, still just a head on a pike, hopped into the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, “I was doing stuff.”
Everyone waited for Rebecha to appear and say “I’m stuff” to complete the joke, but she was too busy yelling in bewilderment about how her underwear drawer now had a lock on it. Besides, Rebecha had, regrettably, been too busy this afternoon being pingponged from island to island to have had time to get pegged by Amber.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Amber said after Magnificus had swapped out her pike head model for her human being model. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve done with Rebecha.”
P03 turned to his fellow Scrybes and muttered under his breath, “Between you and me, I think the Trader eroded that girl’s sense of style.”
“I concur,” murmured Grimora. “Such a pity she’s agreed to be clad entirely in pelts.”
The Trader burst forth from the living room floor like a Coke and Mentos rocket with a vindictive gleam in her eyes. “WHO’S SHIT-TALKING PELTS?”
Everyone cowered away from her except for Amber, who found her passionate dedication to the skins of dead animals admirable and kind of hot.
“And anyways,” the Trader said, malice gone from her voice, “I’ve lied to everyone.” She looked directly at you. “Especially you. During our shopping montage, Rebecha and I found ourselves briefly in the store of a rival chain which by some astronomical coincidence was also called Hudson’s Bay Company and we stole all the jean jackets and flannels we could before the scene could shift.”
“Smart,” said Amber, nodding her approval.
“Alright, Rebecha,” the Trader called, “come on out!”
Everyone made politely affirming gay noises at Rebecha as she walked very normally down the hall wearing a knee-length tan dress with a jean vest and a trapper hat suitable for the long Canadian winters. When she realized her girlfriend was among the group of queers, she quickly hurried over and removed her from the horde before their madness could rub off on her.
“You look fantastic!” Amber said, clutching Rebecha’s hands. “Oh, so that was a hat on your head all along. I’d always wondered about that.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Rebecha pulled off the hat and shook her hair out in glorious slow motion. “It was………hair.”
Amber gasped.
“Amber, I honestly can’t thank you enough for this,” Rebecha said. “Against all odds, I think I’ve learned something about myself, and that’s that…” She paused for a long while, then shrugged and said, “Eh, it’ll come to me in like an hour from now.”
Behind Amber, Rebecha noticed the Trader looking all sad and scrungly and sopping wet as she tried not to look at the happy couple, and a brilliant idea unforeseen to anyone except those who read the tags of this fic came to her.
“Hey, Amber,” she said, “would you be open to getting into a polycule?”
Fear flashed in Amber’s eyes so brightly that the rays bounced back and forth under her visor before beaming out from the holes and right into Rebecha’s eyeballs. “That depends on who you had in mind.”
Rubbing her blinded eyes, Rebecha mumbled, “Well, I think I may have a crush on the Trader…”
“Oh thank fuck,” Amber said, sagging in relief. “For a second there I thought you were going to say Grimora. Trader, want to join our lesbian polycule?”
The Trader shook herself like a dog to get rid of her wetness quality, splattering the Scrybes on the couch, and perked up also like a dog. “Oh, boy, would I ever!”
“Come make out with us,” said Rebecha, and the Trader zooped right over to suck face with both of them at the same time. It was so hot, you have no idea.
“Okay, that’s enough,” P03 snapped, wiping himself off onto Magnificus. “Trader, get back over here. We’ve got to move onto our next victim—I mean contestant—I mean subject—whatever.”
“Nah,” said the Trader while tongue kissing her two girlfriends, which was a very impressive skill that all Scrybes with at least two arms gave some begrudging applause to.
“Do not forget,” Magnificus said, “you have a contract with us. You must join us on our next conquest.”
“Nuh-uh,” said the Trader.
Nobody could argue with that airtight defence. Grimora threw her paperboy cap to the ground in disgust.
The Scrybes walked sullenly out of the house while the three girls migrated their makeout sesh to the truck bed (bed that is a truck) so they could move on to more lewd actions, like getting into a pillow fight while going teeheehee. Leshy and Magnificus sat themselves down on the bottom steps of the house, propping their heads up on their hands, while Grimora sat on the bone horse and contemplatively drank from the tea cup she’d pulled out from somewhere and P03 joined the robot horse face-down in the mud.
“Well,” Leshy said at length, “I suppose we could accept the hit to the ratings and bring on the Mycologists as our fifth Fab Five member.”
“And sixth?” Magnificus countered, slapping Leshy upside the ass. “Foole!”
“I push away friends and acquaintances with my reserved and impersonal nature,” Grimora said, like that was in any way helpful.
“Our gay squad is so over,” P03’s vocal processors said to the dirt.
Plasma Jimmy, still speared on the unicorn’s horn, squirmed around sympathetically.
“You!” Leshy said suddenly, leaping to his hooves so fast his voluptuous butt jiggled madly and sent ripples all throughout the time-space continuum. “You strange gun thing! Will you join the Fab Five as the fashion expert?”
Plasma Jimmy wiggled in assent.
The Scrybes all cheered and took the gun-bot down from his painful situation, which made him a little sad, but then they all went out for celebratory margaritas and sorted out a fantastic new deal before all five of them passed out drunk on the dancefloor. Meanwhile, Amber, Rebecha, and the Trader had finished playing a sexy sexy game of Apples to Apples and were all lying fully clothed in bed while each pretending to smoke a candy cigarette. One of them was actually a real cigarette, but I’m not saying which one. Tell me in the comments which of them you think was the one sending the negative message to the audience that drugs are okay, and don’t forget to like and subscribe and hit that notification bell to—wait, this isn’t Dailymotion. My bad.
“All in all,” said Rebecha, “I think today went pretty well.”
“Me too,” Amber agreed.
“Me too,” the Trader agreed also.
“It’s just a shame those Scrybes didn’t sort out the one real problem I had with them. Tomorrow I’ll have to get out there and fix the bridges they wrecked up, and it’s gonna take forever, arghhhh.”
The Trader smiled a sly little smile, sidling up to Rebecha sneakily. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, babe. Now that you two are dating me, you have access to the most powerful relic in this entire game.”
“The foam pits?” Rebecha asked.
“The underground Hudson’s Bay Company?” Amber asked.
“Oh shit yeah I forgot about those. Three of the most powerful relics in this entire game,” the Trader corrected. “But, like, I’ve literally had the OLD_DATA all along. Every once in a while when things get too boring around here, I let one of those Scrybes’ subordinates have a teeny tiny piece off it, but I basically control the whole world. It’s crazy how irresponsible I could get if I really wanted to. But I don’t want to because I’m just so chill about it.”
“You really are,” Amber said. “Just one of your many attractive qualities.”
“Hell yeah,” said the Trader, leaning back on the pillows and eating up her either real or fake cigarette.
The other two also ate their either real or fake cigarettes. This was distressing to nobody but you and I.
“Now that that’s sorted,” Rebecha said, putting her arms around her girls, “what do you say we get really serious and use this bed for what it was made for?”
The other two blushed hard.
“You don’t mean…?”
“Are you talking about…?”
Rebecha grinned. “That’s right. Let’s make truck noises with our mouths and pretend we’re delivering vital goods across wintery Canadian highways.”
“Ooh Rebecha ooh,” swooned the Trader while Amber recited mantras about being a chilled beet soup in order to cool herself off from these hot hot thoughts.
And they went brbrbrbrbr all night.