HPN WW Lucky #13 - EMPLOYEES WIN!

[fuckles]

Thanks unblinking eye!

[The Unblinking Eye]

Ghostchat is open to all now if you're curious about mechanics.

[surly]

[mudd]

fun game to watch! well done guys

m

[werd]

thanks for figuring it out surly sorry I didn't trust you

thanks for running the game tue

well played everyone, tons of fun

[Catullus]

Sorry I totally blew <3 u guys so hard goons you deserved better

[grammatron]

Don't even be like that, Catullus. Ain't no thang.

[VHB]

Just happy to see you posting again, Cat.

[VHB]

Oh, T.U.E. had a little bonus for you guys there. No biggie, just one little adjustment to mine.


EPILOGUE I: Better Ingredients, Better Papa

"Papa..."

A voice. His name. He could hear. But he was...

"Papa John..."

The last thing he remembered was kicking the keys. Finding the bottle. He had found the easy way out.

"Papa John...awake. Come back to us."

Papa John Plainman's eyes sprung open and he saw himself in an emergency room.

"I'm alive? Where am I? Who are you?"

"You're safe now, Papa."

Was he? He was! He breathing, seeing, hearing, ALIVE! But he had lost everything. He had wanted to die. Blackness, everywhere, surrounding him. Oblivion. He had never known a sweeter embrace. Not even hers.

"What happened? I drank... that bottle was full."

Three X's and a skull and crossbones, with instructions on how to proceed if swallowed. It was enough to kill a man 20 times over. He had chugged it like the Mountain Dew he used to sell in a Papa's Perfect Meal Deal.

The blackness was fading. No, not entirely.

What hospital paints its walls black?

A light loomed over him. In it, a shadow. A woman's voice purred.

"Oh, Papa, you are truly blessed."

"Shouldn't I be dead?" he asked the woman.

"In your homeland, perhaps."

It was Alexandra Stan, the eternally beautiful Romanian pop singer!

"But you are in the old world now, Papa John, and here the older laws still rule. Forces older than you or I or humanity itself."

"That does not sound very reassuring, actually. Where am I?"

This is no hospital.

"You are home, Papa. Home and surrounded by friends."

His neck was stiff. No, sore. Like had sustained some injury. A dull ache... no, a stabbing pain. Two of them, close together.

"Your truest friend is here, in fact. I have invited her. We must always invite others into our abodes," Stan purred through crimson lips, and flawless white teeth.

Long, flawless white teeth.

He heard footsteps.

"Hello, John."

It was Sophia Moon, dressed to kill in a power suit, blood red with black pinstripes. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she swung a metal briefcase open with her left hand.

"Sorry about the Camaro. Actually no, not really. This is yours."

From the briefcase came paper. She slapped him across the face with it. It was a subpoena. The one he sought refuge from in a bottle of industrial strength rat poison.

"No... no!"

Sophie Moon and Alexandra Stan smiled at him.

Fangs!

"I'm Supposed to be dead! I never wanted this!"

"No," they said as one. The perfect harmony of their voices was the most terrifying sound he had ever heard. "You must live."

Sophie continued on. "Did you really think I would let you escape this? You've asked for this and more. Many times over. FIRE ME, WILL YOU?"

"You're rehired please just kill m--"

"Worm. So unworthy of the embrace. I have a way better job now. Paralegal. I make more money per hour than your entire shit staff combined."

Sophie's embracer, Alexandra Stan, laughed. It was as cold as the snow capping the Carpathian Mountains.

"Oh, right, it's not your staff anymore. Or your store. It's all here in this summons."

"I won't show! I'll die first!" he protested.

"Oh, silly Papa," Sophie Moon cooed through knife like teeth. "Check your neck. You can never die now. Not before the court strips you of everything that makes your life worth living. We have seen to that."

He screamed.

* * * * *

[VHB]

EPILOGUE II: Employees Triumphant

Marcus "Mr. Science" Narcenstein, Studious Minerva, Graham Atron, and Adderal Todd were all escorted from the premesis in handcuffs and without a shred of dignity. They all served sentences of various lengths for their poisoning/sabotage scheme. Marcus was set to serve the longest since, as his alias of Mr. Science implied, the poison chemical was his creation. However, he got a reduced sentence by turning informant on the other three. Despite this callous and completely predictable betrayal, they all resurfaced several years later and reunited at a Little Caeser's somewhere in the U.S., where the customers still puked blood, pissed themselves, and shat greenish-yellow diarrhea, but nobody noticed anything amiss because a $5 Hot-N-Ready will already fuck you up like that anyway. Their poison recipe actually increased sales, as it made Little Caeser's cardbord-ass dough taste better. This sales spike made them profit-generating superstars within the company and enabled them to advance up the corporate chain into regional management across the country. Their paths crossed again when they all made it into the board of directors, which opened up a whole new wonderful world to them: the world of embezzlement and insider trading.

As they were now in America, where white collar crime is never punishsed, not even with a slap on the wrist unless you are overwhelmingly sloppy about it, they all became very rich and each bought their very own Senator and they lived happily and wickedly ever after.

That case was cracked, but the biggest mystery of all -- "who was Narc Blossom and what did heve even look like?" -- would remain forever unsolved.

Papa John actually lost control of the Transylvania location as the result of a Wrongful Termination Suit. [As it turns out T.U.E. made a genuine mistake on Night 5 and realized one hour after the fact that I actually picked the right pizza and shouldn't have been eliminated LOLOLOL.] So Peyton Manning took over Papa John's #666 [Transylvania & Wallachia] and eventually rehired every erroneously fired employee.

Except Sophia Moon, who had acquired a far superior job in the interim. She was a paralegal now and actually was the one who served Papa John with the papers for the Wrongful Termination suit. When Manning offered her her old job back, with the blessing of every employee looking on, she simply laughed, extended both thumbs as she proceeded to double middle finger every one of them in succession, informed them that as a paralegal she now made more money hourly than all of them combined, reminded them they were all imbeciles and concluded by furthermore stating that she hated them all. She also invited them all to proceed to eat her shit, which would (and I quote) "undoubtedly taste better than your cheap-ass pizza, you fuckers." It is perhaps noteworthy that none of them voiced any actual disagreement with her.

Connor did eventually get out of the freezer and went on to win a gold medal in Halo (Xbox division) at the Gamer Games, though he would forever flash on anyone who dared joke that "Frozen" was his favorite animated film and future Halo opponents would use this fact to their psychological advantage.

Kyle got rehired and, in tribute to his randomized CIFOM-busting scheme that he once laid down his own job to establish, had a giant 20 sided die erected in the arcade area in between the Tekken and 1942 machines, and next to the fucking rip-off rigged-ass thing where you try to grab shit with that claw and never do. He eventually decided he had had enough of his mom's asshole behavior (including but not limited to such emasculating offenses as: cooking dinner for him every night, letting him live in the basement rent-free, subsidizing his high-speed internet connection so he could pwn at Counterstrike, and expressing unending and unconditional maternal love for him no matter what he chose to do with his life as long as he was personally happy with it. What a BITCH, right?) and he moved out. The final straw was when her super rich uncle died and she offered to spend her share of the inheritance on a new house for Kyle in a neighborhood of his choosing instead of on herself. He cussed her out and moved into a studio apartment.

Corey "Kaputt" Calderwood recovered his Magic: The Gathering card collection in total and won the tournament at the same Gamer Games that Connor won the Halo competition at.

Connor and Corey both got plaques hung on the wall of glory at the Papa John's #666 along with all the photos of the staff posing with every celebrity who ever actually came in. Except local pop star Alexandra Stan, who came in to Papa John's #666 regularly but always refused to pose for pictures. Or stand in front of a mirror. And who never showed any ill effects even on the days when the poison pizzas ended up being served. And who hadn't shown any signs of aging since the great supernatural war for Transylvania's future fought between humanity, werewolf, vampire, bogeyman, necromancer, and even a fucking MUMMY, several years past. Which she survived with nary a scratch. Hmmm.

Geoff's flow charts spread like wildfire through the corporation and improved efficiency world wide. HE also eventually established his union, though it was short-lived as the attempts to elect a Union Leader always ended in a 3-way tie.

The Latrine Inspector, Hound, stayed on despite getting assigned to clean the bathroom way more often than anyone else. Many were the days where he warned everyone that they were out of toilet paper and that pink hand soap and they needed to order more from their facilities supplier, but everyone just yelled at him and called him an idiot who didn't know how to restock the bathroom. When customers inevitably complained about the state of the bathroom later, the staff made transparent excuses and tuned out Hound's every shout of "I told you so". Nobody ever listend to Hound. Ever. Especially when he was right.

Manning's gimp arm eventually got too bad and he had to retire. He had to, really, now that everyone knew he was abusing HGH and he'd have been outlawed from all competitive Pizza Production anyway. He offered to sell the business to Feral Wendy, who he had happily rehired (a very popular decision) and instantly re-promoted to Store Manager (an even more popular decision), but she refused. After all, she had that side pizza business based out of the basement where her cousin's remains were interred, fueled by Papa John's product she either lifted herself or cajoled Lemmy Trask into stealing on her behalf. Funny how she basically told everyone she was competing on the side and stealing product but everyone just forgot or didn't care because they just really liked her anyway. Or maybe they were just intimidated by that creepy fireax she brought in with her every day. That ax had a spooy aura. One could almost... hear it. Celebrity customer Alexandra Stan was especially offended by it, and would hiss angrily whenever she saw Wendy or the ax, and she would always leave without paying -- or even placing an order -- through the front door when she saw Wendy come in through the employee's entrance on the opposite side of the building.

Anyway, when Feral Wendy refused the business, citing her poor skills at accounting specifically and mathmatics in general (for which she blamed her feral upbringing), Victor Von Doom was only too happy to buy the business at a fantastic discount. He installed a vending machine in the arcade area that sold Hot-Wheels for some bizarre reason. Also under his ownership, the store was officially renamed Latveria John's #1 and any one who ever used the forbidden trigger phrases "Grimm" "Torch" "Fantastic" or "Invisible" was written up for the first offense, fined for the second, and fired for the third. Outside of these changes, the business went on as before, only more efficiently. Especially when he co-opted Geoff's union.

Due to a computer glitch stemming from the goon sabotage plot, Kenny L. Record had to repeat his Orientation at the Bucharest Papa John's about 9 times. This mess eventually got cleared up and he was compensated for all 9 employee orientations, but he spent it all on weed and Kratom, which he shared with Sophia Moon because she had that really sweet piece and since he hadn't been around to falsely fire her like everyone else, the supply of herb was enough for her to tolerate him.

As soon as he was officially on the schedule, he started taking something like 37 sick days in a row. He never even showed up long enough to officially quit and thus it was nearly a year later before someone finally remembered him long enough to go through the formality of firing him.

With Kyle rehired, Ankh had a lot more opportunity to take days off and practice with his band. Not that they actually did practice, mind you, but they could have. They never got any more proficient, but they did get more popular, and almost every off day from the pizza parlor ended up being a day on whatever stage he could book. He was able to ultimately retire from Papa John's #666 when an aspiring American hip hop artist going alternately by the monikers Jey White and A Lucky Devil sampled one of Ankh's bass lines without permission for a track entitled "Life After Debt." Ironically this plunged the rapper into perpetual debt when Ankh sued Jey White and effectively seized the entirity of White's trust fund.

Ronald Gabor made a pretty penny off of remodelling the break room and installing all the new arcade features. Literally. He made a penny. A new one that was still shiny. The unsellable family orchard and distillery had racked up a massive debt over the generations and paying this off consumed virtually all of his profits. Once his family was out of that financial hole he was, however, able to eventually get to America, which he enjoyed very much.

But what about young Mr. Trask, the shy, short, broad-built lad who so often suffered in silence, constantly waging a war with his own emotions that his teammates barely noticed?

I'm glad you asked!

* * * * *

[VHB]

EPILOGUE PART III: Sappily Ever After

"Meow?" That stray orange cat that always lingered around the dumpster, an unofficial store mascot that the staff had dubbed "Eldritch", whined for his attention and received none as he tossed another full garbage bag into the dumpster.

"Sorry, kitty, I wouldn't feed my worst enemy this shit."

He slammed the back door shut behind him as he re-entered the building. It was loud. Violent. And cathartic, though not nearly enough of the latter to soothe what truly ailed his heart.

Young Mr. Trask, known to his co-workers and clients alternately as Lenny, Larry, and Lesley (even though his name was actually Lemmy), paced frantically through the freshly remodelled employee break room of Papa John's Location #666 [Transylvania & Wallachia]. He was feeling as though he had been incredibly stupid. Stupid and cowardly. His Anger Management Coach had told him to not be so hard on himself, but he could not help it. Not being able to do what he knew was right made him feel weak, despite his stocky, muscular, low center of gravity frame. And this sense of weakness made him angry.

It wasn't Ronald Gabor's fault. Lemmy didn't want to take it out on Gabor's hard work to spruce up the break room. But it was time. Enough was enough, something or someone had to pay, and the goons were all purged.

As he shook, his head turned towards the employee lockers. SHE was gone, but HER fireax was still there. Even if it wasn't the only fireax around, anyone would know it was HERS because she had written "Wendy" on a piece of paper with a colored pencil (blue) and taped the hastily made label to the handle. Trask grabbed the ax, and thus he crossed the Rubicon (or Danube, in this case, since its Eastern Europe we're talking here).

He grabbed it with both hands. The weight felt good: light, balanced. It would swing well.

As he lifted it, he heard it too. The ax sang to him, as with the chorus of a myriad of young female voices.

Kill them... Kill the Shit men... Kill them... All the shit men... The unholy immortals...

"Kill? Yeah I get mad but, killing someone?"

"LET US DRINK THE BLOOD OF THE BLOOD DRINKERS, SHIT MAN, AND WE WILL GIVE YOU PEACE OF MIND. KILL FOR US, SHIT MAN, AND WE WILL MANAGE YOUR ANGER FOREVER."

"Wait, you can help me with my anger issues?"

"...UM...SURE WE CAN! ABSOLUTELY! YES. BUT FIRST KILL FOR US, SHIT MAN. LET US BATHE IN THE BLOOD OF THE NIGHT CHILDREN. IT EXFOLIATES THE PORES."

"Oh, okay then. Who do I kill?"

"SHIT MEN. VAMPIRES. EVERYBODY. WE ARE DRY AND DIRTY AND THIRSTY, LEMMY. GIVE US OUR BATH."

"Yes... yes... kill... I will kill..." Lemmy said to himself, flatly, a hundred kilometers away from himself. "Kill them all. Kill all the shit men."

"DUDE. WHAT THE FUCK?"

The spell was broken by a much different female voice.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were fired!"

"MINE!" Feral Wendy howled, grasping for it. Dumbstruck as he invariably was in her presence, Trask surrendered it without a fight.

"Singing Boss rehired everybody before he sold to Victor, DUMMY. And It's a one hander. You idiot. Ughhh!" her prescription shoes emphasized her grunting as they squeaked on the floor.

She overturned the table, flipping it by using her fireax as a lever. Then she hacked wildly at one of the legs, hurtling splinters in every direction before it finally came loose.

"See?" She spun on her heels with one final gym floor-like squeak and pushed her way through the door to the Front Of House.

Trask punched the lockers. Idiot. Loser. Coward. There she was, walking away again and he still wasn't saying anything.

He saw her punching out on the timeclock to end her shift. For some fool cost-cutting reason pandemic to food service, clocking out had to be done on the computerized cash register, so customer orders were temporarily impeded. Several customers whined. Victor, the new Owner and Manager in one, chided their lack of manners in his customary loud voice and excessively flowery language.

Soon she would be gone again. What if it was finally for good this time?

Something in him finally cracked.

"WAIT!" a voice that sounded like his bellowed.

Some force compelled his legs to run after her. He felt out of his body, somehow, as he caught up to her just before she pushed her way through the front door.

"Um...Wendy?"

She stared at him, bemused. Most people didn't get in her way when she had her ax in hand.

"Um....uh...nevermind."

She frowned.

"No wait um I mean, uh, Ankh's band is playing tonight. And, uh, we're both off tomorrow."

There was a long silence. Nobody moved.

"....iwashopingmaybeyouwouldwannagowithmeandwatchhimplay."

Even the dine in patrons (many of whom were regulars and remained leal consumers despite the recent rash of tainted pizzas, and who also recognized Feral Wendy due to her excited animalistic yelps she would make while flipping pizzas out of the ovens and onto serving platters) let out a collective gasp.

"...imeanidon'teventhinkheandhisbandareanygood, butiftheysuckwecouldatleastlaughathimtogethermaybe?"

Wendy didn't say a word.

"Oh. Sorry to bother you Wendy." Trask began to turn around.

Feral Wendy set her ax leaning against the front door. Turning around to face Trask, she smirked at him. With a crazed glare in her eyes aimed like laser blasts solely at him, she started running her fingers through Trask's hair. Not gently, this was no handy caress. But methodically, pinching it with her fingers, one strand at a time, as if she were searching for something. Periodically she stopped, seeming to find it. At these points she closely examined her own fingers and squeezed, crushing something, after which she resumed going through Trask's hair.

Trask blushed, for he had watched enough nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel to realize what this meant.

The dine in patrons and the rest of the staff, all of whom were now looking on, knew what it meant in light of Wendy's feral upbringing too. Everyone began to hoot and holler and cheer and whistle and not worry in the slightest about the implications of a pizza cook having lice and not wearing a hairnet, which they really should have but in really touching moments like these.

Only Alexandra Stan seemed unhappy, hissing and fretting and pacing back and forth as though she wanted very much to leave, but could not approach the front door for some reason. As she fidgeted, her eyes never wavered from that ax.

Satisfied with the state of Lemmy's hair, Wendy smiled more broadly than she had since the day she seized Todd's adderall stash and gotten his goon ass fired and started selling his supply herself. She squatted to pick up her family heirloom with one hand, and as she stood back up, grabbed Lemmy Trask's hand by the other.

And so they left: boy, girl, and magically vengeful cursed fireax, just like it always is in the fairy tales.

Later on at Ankh's concert, during the finale, which was a particularly terrible and uninspired rendition of a song that sounded like Pantera's "Walk" but was being played too sloppily for anyone, possibly even the band, to be certain, Lemmy and Wendy were minding their own business rolling their eyes at the band when they were jostled by the idiots trying to mosh, and their faces pressed together. They quickly decided they liked this arrangement very much.

They did it again and again and made sure, with obnoxious certainty, that everyone else in attendance saw them do so, on their way out of the venue.

As they left, hand in hand in axhandle, Lemmy Trask caught something -- someone -- familiar out of the corner of his eye. Someone who was an even worse singer than Ankh.

Older, balder, fatter, right arm even more atrophied than before, but it was still unmistakably his old boss, Singing Peyton Manning, pointing at him (with his LEFT arm) and nodding in approval, a sly smile on his face.

Trask almost started to move towards him and drag Wendy along for the ride, but the old boss stopped him with a quick shake of his head.

"Don't worry about me, Lemmy. Landed on my feet. Always do. Got bored with all my idle time after selling the store to Victor. Found a new job."

And with that he whipped his old throwing arm one more time, flicking a tiny, velvety box, and since Lemmy was well within 20 yards, the throw was right on the mark, and Trask caught it with his free hand easily.

Every Kiss Begins With Kay!

"Got a feeling you might need this soon, kid. And I'll be in OMAHA! OMAHA! OMAHA! by then."

Trask slipped the little box into his pocket. Wendy noticed the commotion and turned to look at what had managed to divert Trask's attention from her own self.

She saw the old boss and, as was her way, flipped him off. And then waved at him with a big smile. She never saw the little box.

Well, not for another year or so, anyway.




FIN.


Thanks to the players for playing, the mod for modding, and to the non-players for popping in and egging us on

[fuckles]

beautiful

thanks for writing that VHB!

[palmer eldritch]

holy shit vhb

[adamtrask]

Omg vhb <3

[Geoff]

thanks Tue!

And all others who played the game.

Sorry to all I caused unnecessary horror to with my risky voting choice before I was fired!

[The Unblinking Eye]

Wall of Fame

Day 1


Day 2


Day 3


Day 4


Day 5


Day 6


Day 7


Day 8


Day 9


Employee of the Month was chosen by whoever got the highest random number between 0 and 1 adjusted by +.15 for each pizza successfully inspected and -.3 for taking a sick day.

[The Unblinking Eye]

Also, had this to eat yesterday, so if you don't hear from me...

[wendy]

Good luck with not dying, TUE

Amazing epilogue, VHB. I'm pumped for Wendy and Trask

[kit fox]

omg vhb

jesus I missed the whole end, good job team

[VHB]

EPILOGUE IV:

Denver 24, Carolina 10


Holy shit you guys, I won!


"I attribute my success to the fine taste and filling nutritional value of Papa John's. Better ingredients, Better Pizza, Better Performance!"

[The Unblinking Eye]

Wow, just goes to show you what kind of doors a part-time job at Papa John's will open for you! One day this guy is cleaning viscera off of the pizza ovens, then mere days later, he owns the whole business and wins the Super Bowl! Congrats to Petru Mănescu and the Deva Broncos!