A few year ago (plus a hundred years ago) two buddies went out to dinner with their lady friends. A double date to use the parlance of the time. The lady friends were meeting for the first time. As we all know this is a very delicate scenario fraught with peril and pitfalls. Two buddies having their respective booty calls get together for the first time? Very easily this can result in disaster of the highest order if not handled with the light touch that most men are simply horrible at. Usually their plane is to take the same approach as someone bringing home a new cat when there’s an incumbent cat, just toss them in a room and they’ll figure it out.
Guy number one had no job so to make ends meet he arranged for his lady to have sex with other dudes for money. Pimping they call that, but that term makes you think of a guy on the street-corner with a leopard skin hat and this guy was just some dingdong who couldn’t hold down a job. It started out along the lines of “hey my buddy Sid thinks you’re super-hot and we’re not going to make rent this month and I was thinking since he’s a good guy and wouldn’t ever do anything you didn’t want to do . . .” and then progressed from there.
Guy number two also had no job so to support him his lady friend did medical transcription and also worked on a phone sex line. This second job is the genesis of the issue.
The four of them were at La Casita Mexicana and everything was going okay. The guys were drinking and talking loudly to each other and mostly ignoring their dates and having a great time. The ladies were tolerating each other and not saying much. The problem started when lady one went to the bathroom. While she was gone guy two mentioned to his buddy that lady two was doing the phone sex thing. Guy one was super into that and asked her what kind of shit she said to the lame-o losers that call those numbers. Lady two was recalcitrant at first, but egged on by the two guys she gave them a little taste. By the time lady one got back to the table lady two was in full swing with her dirty librarian schtick.
Lady one did not like this. Not. One. Bit. I wasn’t just that her man was getting all horned up by another woman, what really stuck in her craw was that lady two just had to TALK. Just talk. All she had to do was talk. She didn’t have to meet up with any skeezoids in their dirty cars and make fifty bucks the hard way. All she had to do was talk. Lady two couldn’t believe it.
After dinner they go back to couple two’s apartment. A much nicer one than couple one’s apartment, which did not help the situation at all. The guys throw out a “joke” about some kind of swapping sexual scenario which is soundly rejected so they go out to buy more beer with the money their partners earn for them with their transcription and sex work.
At this juncture lady one knocks lady two to the ground and strangles her to death with an electric cord. When the police come to take lady one away and lock her up for murder she says that the guys should be arrested too as her accessories because they caused this whole thing to happen and they knew what she would do if they left her alone with lady two.
I’m going to invoke this same principle. What did everyone expect that I was going to do when they put me in a room with the Invincible negotiator and his smirking asshole staff? Sure, a lot of them don’t know me so well, but they know enough. Or they should have known anyway. Old Ela in particular, if she’s really me, should have known exactly what I was going to do. And sure again, Martialla says that not now clones work, but what does she know about it? Last time I checked she’s no biologist cloning expert. Far from it!
Truth be told I think Old Ela wanted me to do it. She hates Duke as much as I do, maybe even more on account of she actually has a motive to hate him and for me it’s more of a whim. I think she knew very well what I would do in that meeting and was glad of it. I think she wanted me to pick this fight so then she could sit back and point the finger at me as the wild card that ruined our chance for peace and then say “oh well, what’s done is done, it’s war so let’s get ready people”. Crafty old bitch. I’ll need to keep an eye on her.
I’ll say this about that, for a post-apocalyptic war horde the Invincible seemingly have a surprisingly competent ambassadorial arm. I figured they’d send some BDSM brute in a hockey mask to “leave now” speech us but the guy was fairly reasonable. Not too hard on the eye either. I mean, it’s all relative, even if you sanded those bumps off his head he still would have been an LA two, but he was a solid apocalypse eight before I shot him in the face. And still a soft three afterwards.
His pitch was, in brief, that there were way too many of them and not enough of us so there was no chance that we could win a war. And furthermore she pointed out that all fighting a war we couldn’t win would accomplish is getting a lot of people killed and wasting a lot of resources, either of which anyone can afford. He made some good points about unity and how things could only get better if we all worked together before I shot him in the face. If the Invincible were offering more of a “give up some freedom for some stuff” deal instead of a “give up all your freedom for maybe the promise of little bit of stuff later” deal they might get more takers.
When I jumped up on the table no one tried to stop me. What did they think I was going to do? Sing a little song? Do a little dance? Get down tonight? When I shot the consular in the face that was the super special signal for my new tribemates to hack the rest of the Invincible contingent to pieces. Which they did with commendable gusto. Even Dirt Tooth and Grease Gut got in on the action. I wonder if they thought that’s what their railroad masters wanted them to do, or if they did it because they were made on account of the Invincible have attacked them already, or just because of the pure force of my overwhelming charisma made it so they couldn’t not do it.
I should have said something cool like “the peace talks are over” or “meeting adjourned” but I just hopped off the table and left to get back to war planning. I can say that I said something cool like that though. Who’s going to know any different when this is a historical record of my great triumph? Nobody that’s who.
Rocket Cat 