The Bar, Let’s Play Francine’s Drinking Buddy.

In retrospect, this was obviously a dumb idea. I knew she was a drunk, I knew I barely drank. I wired myself up, just in case I overheard something. I wasn’t looking forward to scrolling through a long recording, but when I woke up the next morning, feeling like **** and remembering nothing, I almost panicked. I didn’t have any announcements, I wasn’t locked up, or dead, so it couldn’t have gone that bad.

Or she was so drunk she hadn’t reported me yet.

Shit. I quickly opened the recording.

The last eight hours was just me sleeping, and occasionally snoring. I skipped through that quickly. Then a drunken conversation with the cabbie, which didn’t consist of much of anything except the fact that we both agreed that the reporter talking on the radio, Summer Gleeson was fucking hot and we both liked redheads. Which devolved into me drunkenly explaining to the cabbie that I wasn’t racist. I liked black girls, Latin girls, Asian girls too. All hot girls were welcome in my bed.

That was…mortifying. But not actually damaging. Maybe if I’d still been a cop, someone might have been interested in clipping that and posting it, but as it was, that wasn’t a problem. Probably.

I scrolled back. And started it playing. Some bits of the night did come back to me as I listened. The walk in, seeing her, that I remembered, she looked hot outside her uniform:

Then an introduction to the bartender, a fat little retired cop named Jimmy. He’d said that any friend of Frannie’s was a friend of his and given me my first beer on the house. I wasn’t that stupid, so it fit my plan, to stick with beer. I happily took it, especially pleased as ‘Frannie’ was a few drinks ahead of me.

That had been an opportunity, I took a seat next to her and teased her a bit about the nickname, which she refused to let me use. Until I offered to buy the next round. She’d ordered a very expensive bottle of whiskey for us both. That had put a bit of pain on me, but the week of overtime would cover it, with quite a bit left over.

And I got her to agree I could call her Frannie when we were at the bar, which came with a +5 SP. I tried to push for a ‘thank you’ too and got shot down.

Then there was a lot of bitching about Alyce, but nothing actionable. I might be able to edit the clips and get her in trouble, but that wouldn’t actually help. Especially since I’d joined in on the bitching.

She kept pouring from the bottle and the conversation changed.

Last Night.

“What I wouldn’t give to make her kiss my ass for a change.”

“Such a wuss, I’d want her to at least lick my clit. In fact, I do want that. She’s a cunt, but a hot cunt.”

I laughed, “Which way does she swing?’

“Does it fucking matter? Get a bitch on her knees and she’ll lick or suck whatever she has to to get out of it.”

I smirked. “Which I guess says which way you swing.” Interesting, but not really useful, the city was an equal opportunity employer. In fact, it would probably be glad to brag about a ‘senior LGBTQ+ employee in law enforcement.’ Might have been bad if she was still rank-and-file GCPD, but not as a supervisor at Arkham.

She snorted, anger leaking out. “Bitch has no gender. But the union and partners get all weird about it if you put a man on his knees, or bend him over your squad car. Carry a strap-on in your glove compartment to split open some sorority slut trying to get out of a drunk driving beef and make her your little toy and you’re just one of the guys. Do the same thing to a fraternity bitch and suddenly you’re a psycho.”

Well…Christ, that could be useful, if I could prove it. But I wasn’t eager to try to **** a **** who liked **** men…not until she was a lot more obedient than she currently was. Especially since she must have successfully covered it up at least once to get the Arkham job.

Especially since my drunk ass had responded with what was clearly a toast to “Bitch has no gender!”

“Except Alyce,” I’d added as a joke, but Frannie had caught my arm.

“She’s no bitch. She’s a cunt, but she doesn’t bend over for anyone.”

My stupid ass had responded, “And what about you?”

“I’m a bender, not bent,” she giggled drunkenly, as did I. “But I don’t even know if she’s a bender. Never touches the inmates. Doesn’t let me either. Shit, when I was hired, she told me to ‘redirect your proclivity for defiling the **** away from our inmates.'”

I laughed, “And did you knew what that meant?”

She slapped my arm. “I did after I looked up those words in a dictionary.” And I remembered getting +3 SP from that, which was odd, as it hadn’t exactly been an order. Maybe questions she didn’t want to answer were implied orders? Hmm… “We ain’t all library nerds!”

“Hey!” I could hear myself flexing, which was an embarrassing thing to remember, “I’m a library jock, thank you very much. Don’t confuse me for a nerd!” That was sort of a lie, but I’d learned a long time ago you didn’t want to be a nerd amongst cops, or ex-cops.

“Definitely won’t make that mistake again,” I thought she was teasing, but my memory said I got a +2 SP from it, so maybe not.

“How’d she know?’ I asked, transparently changing the topic.

“How’d who know what?’

“Alyce, about what got you chased out?”

“She’s got contacts.”

“So do I. I asked about you before I took the job, and didn’t hear shit.”

“Guess she got better contacts than you. No surprise, if you drink like that, you’re falling behind. Wouldn’t want me to think you’re a bitch.”

Unsurprisingly, there was then quite a bit of drinking and some talking about how everyone she’d ever made a bitch came crawling back to her for more, with some hints that that was more about **** than anything else. Some laughter, then the bartender deciding it was time to call me a cab, and some whispering to herself, “Next time we’ll do this somewhere private. Jimmy’s on to me. Too many newbies not coming back, or coming back walking funny and not able to look at me…Alyce only said to keep my hands off the inmates and once I got vid of me breaking that ass in, you’ll do anything I say to keep it quiet.”

Present Day

Jesus Christ…wait, if she wanted that, why hadn’t she gone after some other employee?

Maybe she had.

Or maybe I was the only one dumb enough to come near her off duty.

Oh, no…something else was coming back to me. I flicked back through the screens, a memory had just come back, I’d been in the cab, drunk and talking about Latin women and the app had brought her up. To my surprise, there’d been something glowing on -25, which she’d just passed to -24 SP. Not the gold of a checkpoint, but a strange pulsing red.

No helpful hint this time, it simply re-opened the prior screen for me, intuitive indeed:

Challenge Reached: Francine Boles: -25

Achievement Unlocked: First Challenge Reached
Congratulations, you’ve got some disobedient cunt up to one of the challenge thresholds. Unlike checkpoints, challenges are optional. Challenges will usually increase the difficulty of additional point gain, at least while the target has a negative submission score, but they will have unique benefits as well, especially once a positive submission score is reached. Reward: Additional threshold choice. Note, challenges and checkpoints share these, so you now have two total.

And another one:

Lightweight, Perk
A girl drank you under the table. Pathetic! Until you complete Drinking Challenge, or buy the Stomach of Iron perk, one drink will get you drunk and two will make you pass out. This is true for any drink generally classified as alcoholic.

Not good. But, Stomach of Iron wasn’t that expensive. Four credits, and a quick check confirmed I already had two. I could get another couple pretty efficiently…probably. Diamond was close to the limit, even maxing her wouldn’t get me there, even if could from this distance. Asa was with Andre for the rest of the weekend and though I might get a few things if I focused there. I might even be able to get them broken up, but that would definitely get Andre’s attention and I had no way of dealing with him.

Drinking Challenge, Mission
Drink ‘Frannie’ under the table. Good luck and watch your ass! Reward: Besides getting Lightweight disabled, ---

Oh, and my fucking actual phone had a bunch of normal alerts on it.

Goddamn it!