She's not gonna make me sign anything...

"Stay with me, Brent. Seriously. Stay... here..." Eris kicked her feet out again, allowing the sight of her legs to come more fully into view. The skirt had split up both sides, dangling between her legs seductively, and allowing me to see the full length of her leather boots which elegantly hugged her calves. "There we go... just, keep thinking about that. The fact that I'm part of this. As long as you can stay with it... believe it... you can make this happen. The second you start doubting, it ends. And there you are, walking on a path with five women, and about to go into quarantine."

"What? There's nothing going on with a quarantine." I argued.

"And let's keep it that way. Please don't look at your phone," Eris nodded, "Ok, so best way I can figure it we need to use that ten chapter penalty to our advantage. We can get you right up to the sex scene between you and Joan and we can skip the lengthy explanation beforehand. But there's a bit of a problem."

"Why can't there ever NOT be a problem?" I sighed, watching Eris cross out several more boxes that seemed to consist mostly of people walking or driving from one point to another.

"See, Artemis... that's who was SUPPOSED to be playing Joan, took one look at the tags and refused to come anywhere near you. So... we have to figure out a way, in less than ten chapters, once we go back time in... how we can both get her here AND get her laid BEFORE the scene with me."

Eris jotted a few marks on her notepad, scratching out several lengthy chapters which were extremely heavy on the dialogue.

"Wait, what? That sounds kind of awesome..." I objected.

"Maybe to you, Brent, but trust me, the audience will be bored. People won't even sit still for a training sequence these days, so, If they really want to we can always go back in and live a flashback after the ending. So... "

"Wait, we can just live it after the ending?"

"Yeah, it'll work fine. I do this kind of shit all the time. Trust me, I'm a professional."

"Why do I feel like I just handed you the keys to my Ferrari?"

"Hush, no more fan service. Ok, so we skip the scene before the **** where she runs off into the woods, and four hipster drift racer rapists show up, who you of course defeat using a combination of improvised weapons and everybody working together in a glorious scene of friendship which would cause a diabetic to immediately go into ketoacidosis. Then you chase after her. "

"You gotta be kidding me..."

"Fuck the musical number, that's just annoying and people never click on the link anyway Although yes, a Bollywood style Orgy scene with a hundred girls would be awesome, but we don't have the budget for it... And no more shitty poetry... seriously, that was just... ugh... talk about your self-indulgent bullshit..."

Eris continued to jot notes on the paper, and she began to make marks that looped back to earlier points at what she called the map. As I thought of it as a that, I noted that the map was made of parchment in fact, and Eris was using an old fashioned quill to make marks on it.

"Yeah, see, if we jump this point here... to here... Brent... you're changing your image of what I'm doing, stop it. It still makes sense, but I have to wrap my head around what you're thinking to make the changes. Think Military, it's like changing your sight picture while trying to zero a rifle. Can we go back to the notepad, please?"

I looked down and noted that the small notepad was a confusing mess of scribbles that made little to no sense to me, until I concentrated on it clearly. I remembered what she had said about it being decisions, and again the strange boxes and lines connecting them flowed into view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQZjeG4GjHs

"There we go... You got it. Thanks. This helps. Ok... so... jump to this point, and... dammit, Brent, I can make it work, but you're going to have to trust me. I'm going to need to you make a decision you aren't going to like. But... sometimes... the team is up against it, and the brakes are beating the boys, you have to go out there and give it all you've got, and win just one for your zipper... Don't know where I'll be then, but I'll probably be knocked up, considering how this world is tagged, that's for sure."