Right…

Friday started all right. It was Peyton’s movie night, and Firefly was in, so I’d have a real chance to make progress. Plus, I’d put off telling Diamond the truth, for the low, low price of dealing with Batman and letting him use me as bait to catch Jinx. Cheap at twice the price. I collected the votes for Peyton’s movie night then replaced it with…shit I don’t remember. I’d originally intended to let her numbers fall where they may, but then I’d had a better idea…which I now can’t remember exactly.

Some ‘mobsters are just neighborhood protectors, with honor and a code’ bullshit movie. I inherited a bunch of them, because mom bought them to piss off dad, which they reliably did.

I hadn’t really got why until the first time I’d cleaned up after one of the fights between Two-Face and Black Mask. All the talk of the honor and protection and they’d sprayed down three storefronts with automatic fire and the killed three times as many civilians as they had each other. The mafia was just gangbangers with better press.

Oh, the Sabatino’s and remnants of the other older families made noises about how things were different in their day and so did some of the older folks in my neighborhood.

But given what my dad clearly thought about them…I thought that was bullshit. Oh, some folks had stories about gifts at Christmas, or letting them slide on protection when times were tight…when I was a kid, that had sounded good. But then you saw how they made their money and what they were buying for those pennies…

Which is a long-winded way of saying I didn’t care for the movie, but it should prime the pump. That was the plan at least. Take fiction and make it real. The app could do that, right? It had certainly turned my life into a porno…

Anyway, that was all for later. The morning, I was focused on Firefly and her own upcoming movie on Monday. The woman came in, and got the same spiel as the others and again, I walked her through voting. Only managed to get +3 SP (Firefly: +45) by giving her the same set of orders as Clayface, as she was eager, but not obsessive the way Clayface was.

With that done, we talked a bit about what movie she wanted to see and I tried to direct her attention to redemption stories. “Come on, those stories are lame! Don’t you have anything with some fire?” she asked, as she looked over the laminated list. “Or just stuff that isn’t fucking superhero propaganda?”

“There’s only like six superhero movies on the list! I told you it’s what bits of my movie collection made its way past the chiefs. But you’ve got good taste, a lot of it is crap I inherited from my parents. Still, there’s some classics in there. Groundhog Day, Green Mile, Schindler’s List, Dallas Buyer’s Club. Vote for one of those! Though I’m like 90% sure that most nights I’ll end up watching an MCU movie…”

She smirked, “And what’ll you give me if I do?”

“My undying respect.”

She actually blushed at that, then walked over to vote. +4 SP (Firefly: +49)

Not bad, but not good enough for a checkpoint.

The rest of my day until Peyton’s movie time wasn’t particularly productive, but it also didn’t involve any massive disaster’s so I’d take it. I viciously **** Peyton and everyone else to help me set up…which got me a mighty +1 SP (Peyton: +79), as we moved everything around, I spoke quietly to her and got confirmation that her surgery was scheduled. When she asked what the movie was, I told her and that Scarface had ordered me to fix the vote for her, because he wanted her to see it.

“Why?”

“He said something about it being a hint as to what his plan was…I don’t know if he doesn’t trust me or…”

“It’s a test. I’ll figure it out! And I’ll tell you and prove myself to him!” she was getting loud.

I hushed her and she looked embarrassed. +3 SP (Peyton: +82). But there was no time for more conversation, as the film was almost two hours and everything was set up. Again, I let them vote on talking or not. Again, everyone went along with the supervillain’s vote, this time to allow talking. I started the movie, then went to get the popcorn and handed it out, giving Peyton hers last, before I sat next to her with my own.

She excitedly talked all the way through the movie, but quietly enough that others couldn’t hear. Especially since she’d taken seats right in the front. I’d finished my popcorn and she’d barely started, so halfway through, I told her to share and managed to get another +1 SP (Peyton: +83), but apart from that, my only successes were making her help me clean up, including getting a broom to sweep up all the popcorn bits (people are messy!) which netted me +2 SP (Peyton: +85) and ordering her to only give me one guess what Scarface wanted her to realize based on this movie as I wouldn’t remember the twenty different guesses she gave me. She whined a lot about that, but finally made a guess. +4 SP (Peyton: +89)

“We’ve lost our way. We need to go back to being a true neighborhood protection organization.”

“I’ll tell him and let you know his response,” I said as we finished cleaning up.

And that was everything which happened Friday, except…