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 just happen to have a shitload 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...