A Countdown to Noddy - Zeydaan

Multiversal adventuring didn’t pay the bills. It was a simple, albeit frustrating lesson that Zeydaan had learned early on. After all the baddies had been blasted and the cosmic threats put back in their place, the true final boss made itself known: actually getting paid. Hashing out the details of work-time accrued and incurrence of additional liabilities… it was a whole lot of nerdy jargon that Zey preferred to leave to the more qualified individuals of their adventurers guild. But they knew well enough that after the local currency was acquired, there was even more hassle in finding methods to convert the stuff into a resource that could actually be spent in their home dimension. By the time all was said and done, what might’ve been a noble’s fortune in one world would be flushed away keeping the lights on for a week.

So that was why Zey had made a habit of being on the lookout for easy means of earning extra funds. If they could mow a couple metaphorical lawns while in-between adventures, then there seemed no reason not to. And for that very reason did the Wolf Witch find themself at, of all places, a television studio.

“Oh, you here to audition for that pilot program thing?” The blue canary woman at the front desk seemed wholly uninterested in Zeydaan. Which they weren’t upset about, per se, but it was a bit surprising. This company, Simul-new Entertainment Media, were the ones to reach out and contact Zeydaan after all. They surely knew what Zeydaan was all about, what they were capable of. And yet, without really looking up from her phone, the worker pressed a button at her desk which opened the inner door, allowing Zeydaan into the studio proper. The canary also slid a visitor’s lanyard and badge across the table, automatically configured with Zeydaan’s profile, pronouns, etc. lifted from the galactic info-feed.

Zeydaan casually picked up the badge and walked forward into the studio, enjoying the novelty of not having a reputation preceding them. The screens set into the flooring of the building lit up with arrows directing them to proceed past two hallways, down a stairwell, through another hallway (this one with a few exhausted employees mingling around a coffee machine), into an elevator, and finally into Studio Backlot X-37: Concept Prototyping.

The area looked very much like a proper film set, with all the black-painted alleys and hanging lights orbiting around a perimeter for the set itself. However, instead of an open-facing set, all the camera rigs and lighting banks centered around a giant cube of… well, Zeydaan wasn’t sure exactly what. A bunch of computer parts, tubes, blinking lights, and even a couple arcano-generators, plugged into the tech like batteries that funneled magic deep into the whole… whatever it was.

There was a young male badger seated in the director’s chair. Instead of professional business wear or some sort of fashionable Director garb, he was in cargo shorts, a plain white tee, and rope sandals. Tapping away at a datapad, the mustached mustelid glanced over at Zeydaan as they approached, and lit up with delight at the sight of the wolf dragon.

“Hey hey heeeey, there’s our new star in the making! Adam Evans, Founder, CEO, and Visionary behind Simul-new Media.” Adam reached out a paw to shake Zeydaan’s hand, making sure his fancy gold-plated watch was apparent. He may have dressed modestly, but that was probably just an act to hide the level of wealth he came from.

“The pleasure is mine. I’m ready to get right to the point if you are. I’m not really an actor, so… why bring me out here?” At Zeydaan’s pointed inquiry, the “visionary” got out of his chair and began walking towards the giant mechanical device in the center of the studio. As Zey walked beside him, Adam began a well-rehearsed spiel.

“Our start-up is pioneering advancements in dynamic sensory simulation and environmental immersion. We’ve received funding from XBC Studios to pioneer content production that implements our technology to reproduce the shows that XBC has in their vast catalog of intellectual property.” Zey was around enough technomancers to know when an ambitious inventor was pulling fancy words out from their tail.

“I’m not looking to invest, if that’s what you’re trying to sell me on. Or are you trying to ask me to test this new technology of yours?” Adam remained smiling the entire time, as if his casual grin were a well-polished accessory just like his watch.

“Test is a word we don’t use here, since everything has been so thoroughly number-crunched and researched. But yes, we want you to partake in a few recording sessions as a guest star. And of course, you will be paid properly for both your time and use of your image in our recording.”

Well, as strange as this whole situation was, the promise of pay was exactly what Zeydaan had come here for, so… “Yea sure, I’m game. But if anything goes wrong, my friends will know that something’s happened and come tear your studio to smithereens.” The threat was quite real, and Adam seemed well aware of that. “Rest assured, we’re taking every necessary precaution, and your safety is our top priority. In addition, the pay you’ll receive per episode is substantially increased compared to industry standard. Think of it as a… friendship-building investment.”

Well, that certainly sweetened the deal. And so, Zeydaan skimmed through and signed a few non-disclosure agreements and media contracts, then went along with the employees of Simul-new Media to prepare for this… was it an experiment? Or were they just trying to generate some publicity by having a member of the legendary Hawkmoths Guild star in a carbon copy of an ancient television show. Either way, it would be interesting to see what this thing was like… or whether this ambitious businessman was dealing with forces more powerful than he understood.

~~~

And soon enough, they were being led straight to the entry pod for the device that Adam had made sure to remind Zeydaan was known as an “Immersive Arcanorecorder.” By combining cutting edge technology and unrefined magical energy, they could make something that sounded to Zeydaan to be midway between a pocket dimension and a glorified sound room.

The technicians didn’t need to inject the wolf with anything, or have them don a special suit or the like. Adam again boasted, this time about how seamless the process was. “Think about it, instead of having to make due with recreating an old beloved show through watching the final product and trying to riff on it, we can allow actors to really immerse themselves in a long-forgotten story!”

Once the portcullis was closed behind them, the machine innards in the pod became obscured by a growing miasma, magic suffusing the mechanical room. Zeydaan vigilantly made sure no magic was trying to breach through their body, but soon their entire vision was shrouded in multicolored, static-like fog. Just as worry crept into the back of Zeydaan’s mind, the fog was pierced by a ray of light. Then another. Then more and more did bright sunlight push away the obscuring stuff, revealing what seemed like an entirely new location around Zeydaan, as if they had teleported. But being a veteran of translocation, the wolf witch knew that this was different. They were still at the same location, but that location had itself changed.

They were in a… plane? A really, really small plane, a red and yellow one-seater in the most literal sense. And Zeydaan felt the lurch as said plane veered downward towards the ground below.

“FUCK” was the appropriate response as Zeydaan reached for the steering wheel and yanked it upwards. The tiny red plane did veer upwards, but only just in time to turn what would have been a direct crash into the plane scraping against the grassy hill, teetering upright before flipping over and unceremoniously ejecting its new passenger. This was far from Zeydaan’s first bumpy landing, however; light glimmered around the wolf’s paws, green motes refracting as magic weaved through their mind. Briefly a pair of large spectral butterfly wings emerged from Zeydaan’s back, fluttering quickly to turn the violent arc of their ejection into a lofty, careful descent to the ground below. Zey dusted themself off as the faux wings vanished.

Okay, unexpected crash landing aside, this must be the world of the television show the studio was replicating. So their machine did work. And as Zeydaan looked around, it was clear that despite technically still being located inside that machine, the space was far larger than the technologic exoskeleton it was housed within.

The world around Zeydaan was, in a word, simplistic. If the film studio’s goal was to make an environment that was realistic, then they had utterly failed. Colors were lacking in detail, giving everything a peculiar matte appearance. A forest off in the distance was clearly made out of identical bunches of trees. It had the appearance of a pristine, idyllic summer day, but there was no wind, nor warmth from the sun above.

As Zeydaan walked along, the grass around them abruptly became shrouded in darkness. Like something above had just blocked out the sun! But to Zeydaan’s surprise looking upward, that’s exactly what had happened. The large light source above had become obscured by… floating letters? Big ones which formed a sentence, backwards from the point of view down on the ground.

It took a bit of focus to visualize right side up, but soon Zeydaan was sure what the words said.

Zeydaan Learns to Count

And then like that, they vanished, and things were back to that perfect sunshine. “Well… that was weird.” Zeydaan wasn’t incredibly concerned with what the directors of this studio had in mind. They had simply been told to “be yourself” and then some sort of “deep-thinking cerebral AI network” would adapt the environment to accommodate for their actions. “Seriously, counting? How old do they think I am, ten?”

The Wolf Witch heard a noise right above their head, and with the reflexes of a seasoned adventurer dropped and rolled to avoid the oncoming attack.

But… it wasn’t an attack. Zey dispersed the magic in their paw. What hovered above them was just… the number 10. In big rounded, colorful font, suspended in mid-air, but somehow always reorienting itself as Zeydaan paced around it such that it seemed flatly front-facing.

Poking at it accomplished nothing. Perhaps it was the same sort of… thing as those large letters? This was the weird sort of stuff that Zey’s colleague Alvis would be dissecting and studying. Zeydaan didn’t feel that sort of thing to be worth their time, instead shrugging and turning towards the only landmark within sight, and the dirt pathway leading towards it: a forest of tall trees and giant mushrooms.

~~~

This forest was populated by a large amount of tall oak trees and comically large mushrooms, although they failed to replicate a lot of what constituted a forest’s charm. There weren’t leaves on these trees, just green geometry that melded together where the trees brushed against each other. Not that they “brushed” either; the utter stillness of the forest was honestly a bit unsettling, at least so Zeydaan thought. Just to see what would happen, the witch focused magic into a small blade of energy, then ran towards one of the trees.

Zeydaan’s tried and true “Stinger Strike'' attack accomplished… nothing. The blade dissolved the moment it touched the fake tree, like an anti-magic forcefield.

Strange. Nothing about the machine on the outside would have led Zeydaan to expect anti-magic; that sort of thing stuck out like rancid sushi to spellcasters. So it was indeed bizarre that the simplistic world around them seemed impervious to magic.

The silence of the rigid forest was broken by the sound of a woman’s voice. It came from all around, no origin that Zeydaan could sense.

One day in Toy Land, our new friend Zeydaan was wandering the Toadstool Woods, learning about the importance of numbers. They came upon the house of the wise brownie Big Ears, and went inside…

And just as this disembodied voice alluded to, between the trees and mushroom stalks Zeydaan saw a small shack, one carved out of a large toadstool. For a moment, the adventurer considered doing the exact opposite of what this voice described, and just turning tail and leaving the forest. In their experience, following demands from disembodied voices was in the lower tier of plans that produced any good results. But… given how simplistic the forest was, Zeydaan could see very clearly that there wasn’t much else in this forest at all. So if they wanted an idea of what they were actually supposed to do in this acting gig… fuck it, into the mushroom house they went.

Aaaaand it was a glorified shack. The interior was just a single circular room, with exactly the basic amenities and nothing else. One bed, one table, one window. But… no person within, no sight of this “Big Ears” fellow. Actually, hold on, that wasn’t entirely true. There was a picture frame hung up on the wall of the mushroom (the literal only thing hung up on the walls), and there were two people depicted therein. A man who looked almost exactly like your typical garden gnome, and… a weird human kid, with a big round face and a bell on his cap, wearing large bulbous shoes that would have fit well on a clown.

The bottom of the frame had a bit of writing on a plaque:

“Big Nose and Noddy, taken during Season 1 - 9/9/1998”

So many nines…

Another noise above Zeydaan’s head, and at first they didn’t pay it any mind. But then something landed atop their head, and Zeydaan lept backwards, certain that this time something was attacking.

A colorful number nine floated lazilly up towards the ceiling, red and polka-dot. Zey looked left and right to scan for threats, but nothing- jingle jingle jangle.

The sound came from right behind their head. Raising a paw up, they realized that something was still stuck on their head. Pulling it up to eye level, it looked like a… hat? A floppy cone with a large bell affixed to the tip. It was an awful lot like the one that kid in the photo was wearing.

Zeydaan found what they needed at Big Ear’s house, and so followed the red-capped mushrooms out where their ride awaited.

Was this narrator voice perhaps one of the directors of the set? Some sort of in-character blocking for the actors? That seemed plausible. If they wanted Zeydaan to know about this Noddy character or wear their outfit, you’d think it would be easier to just give them a script or something before putting the wolf in the machine.

Well, with nothing else to do in this shack, Zeydaan did indeed leave and look around for red-capped mushrooms. There were indeed a couple here and there, heading off in a southern direction. And sure enough, these big red mushrooms had white circles on top, just like a child’s mental image of what a mushroom should be.

Speaking of childish… if this was a world akin to a children’s show, then maybe…

Zeydaan uttered an incantation, and a pair of prismatic butterfly wings briefly appeared on their shoulders. With a few well-maneuvered leaps and flutters of these magic wings, Zeydaan easily scaled up to the top of one of these red toadstools and thrust their legs downward.

Boing, boing.

Zeydaan laughed, their hypothesis totally correct. Of course these mushrooms would be bouncy! Tracing a path across the redcaps, Zeydaan rocketed through the forest, perhaps far quicker than whatever the narrator or director would have expected. The bell on their new hat jingled loudly as they jumped, the headwear staying firmly attached to their head.

The wolf witch was perhaps a bit too excited about bounding across the vegetation, such that they didn’t notice the clouds of spores produced by every trampoline bounce. Those spores settled into their dark blue combat pants and gray hoodie, staining them into different colors.

As Zeydaan reached the edge of the forest and their spectral wings petered out, they made one last leap and braced for a controlled landing on the ground below.

When they had looked down from above, the grass was empty. But hitting the ground, Zeydaan slammed against something that surely wasn’t there but a moment ago. Something hard and which let out a clang like metal as Zeydaan bounced off of it.

Internally, Zeydaan was a bit miffed. First the plane, now this. Had Lilith or Alvis been here, they would have enthusiastically taken up the opportunity to laugh at the blunder. Hopefully this was going to be cut from whatever content ended up being produced, else the whole cosmos could see how the famous Wolf Witch had ate shit on the landing twice now.

As they picked themself up, the number 8 hovered above Zeydaan beside the bright, colorful car that had appeared just as spontaneously. It was a rather old-fashioned model, painted red and yellow. It was while checking out the ride’s side mirrors that Zeydaan finally noticed the stark recoloring of their clothes. Their hoodie was turning a bright, almost lacquered cherry red, while their pants had lightened slightly towards the color of jeans. And as the number floated about in the air, it began to spin and circle around Zeydaan’ neck, softening into a yellow scarf with red polka dots, a color scheme which matched the idle vehicle.

Okay. If these were Noddy’s clothes, and the colors matched, then this must be Noddy’s car. And seeing how easy it was to just climb inside… in fact, it was a pretty tight squeeze for Zeydaan to get into the front seat, knees bumping against the leather wheel. But if they wanted Zeydaan to dress up like Noddy, surely that entitled them to take his car for a joyride.

Just as the wolf started to look for a key or ignition, the old car made a… peculiar sound in between a honk and a fart. Then with another sound much like a robotic honk (a duck’s rather than a car’s), it slowly rolled forward. Zeydaan didn’t even need to turn the steering wheel or press the pedals.

The car, either on an autopilot or possessing some mind of its own, just kept driving forward, up and down the grassy hills. Back and forth, rhythmically. Confused, a bit worried, and tired, Zeydaan leaned back in the slightly-too-small seat, and stared up at the perfectly pristine, still sky above. Those clouds were big and puffy in a way that no real clouds on any world Zeydaan had ever seen were. And it was so bright out despite the sun being nowhere to be found.

Despite it all, this artificial realm was quite comfortable, and soon Zeydaan felt themself slowly… nodd… off…

As the wolf slept and the red car sputtered along the road, their body slowly continued to change, becoming more in line with the aesthetic of the world around them. Their dark fur either flattened down against their skin, or vanished outright. And that which did stick began to change into a fleshy tan color. It wasn’t just that they were losing their fur per se; it was changing into something else, the same mono-colored, simplistic matter of the world around them. Strangest of all, Zeydaan’s jawline began to expand, upwards and outwards, bulging like they had been stung by numerous bees. But these changes were so slow and subtle that the wolf simply snoozed a little while longer.

The car came to a stop and made another strange blooping noise, jolting its passenger out of their slumber. Zeydaan sat up and scanned their new surroundings: back in those empty green fields, but with the outline of a city off in the distance and… oh what the fuck, were these clothes transmogrifying their body?

“To hell with this” Zeydaan said, readying the incantation to smash through the set using a dimensional doorway.

But then, the sound of that bell jingling above their swelling head, and that narration spoke again.

Oh, but Zeyddy is a good boy, and wouldn’t want to break the expensive thing that Mr. Evans and his studio had made.

Scowling as much as Zey could with how their face had deformed… they conceded the point. Trying to force open a dimensional doorway was just too risky. So instead, they should just… sigh, play along.

“Okay, dumb living car. Let’s go into the city.”

~~~~

These roads were utterly ridiculous. Not a single one of them was straight. Instead of driving directly to the town off in the distance, Zeydaan had to follow a circuitous path up and through more hills and around the edge of the buildings before the crest of a hill guided the road inwards. All the while, Zeydaan had to just stare at their slowly shifting face in the side mirror.

A large colorful sign welcomed visitors to this place which was known as Toytown. And sure enough to the town’s name, a lot of the buildings looked quite childish. Like building blocks stacked together. “Hello, omniscient narrator lady? Gonna tell me where the ffffffffunky monkey to go next?” That… wasn’t what Zey meant to say. But the phrase befit the very peculiar person on the sidewalk nearby.

“Is that you Noddy? Hello Noddy!” The car came to a slow stop in front of a small circus monkey wearing a gaudy vest, bouncing along down the sidewalk like a wind-up toy.

“Good day, good day, I’m glad you came my way Noddy! I’m expecting a delivery…” The monkey looked towards the back of the car, clearly expecting something.

“Oh! Sorry man, I think you’ve got the wro-” the car blurped loudly and bucked like a horse, nearly tossing Zeydaan right out of the driver’s seat. The trunk of the automobile popped open, and in a way unexplainable by physics, a whole pile of brightly-colored wrapped boxes flew into the air and into the backseat of the car.

In a perfectly organized stack, no less. Utterly ridiculous.

“Ah, thank you kiddo! I believe it's that one there, the flat brown one.” The monkey pointed towards a box on the top of the pile. And just to get out of the awkward situation, Zeydaan reached to the backseat and grabbed the box, then leaned over to hand it to the monkey.

“Oh, thank you thank you!” The toy monkey hopped in place and quickly opened the box, pulling out a pair of hand cymbals. The car honked, as if in satisfaction, before continuing to drive forward down the road.

Once they rounded a corner and were out of sight from the monkey, Zey let out a sigh. When they had signed on to this acting thing, they were expecting an excuse to let loose with some well-choreographed action, or using their magical powers to save the world or such. So delivering presents? Heck no. Darn no. Wait, why couldn’t they… argh, flim flam dagnabbit? These words weren’t the ones they wanted to say. But those ones kept slipping just out of reach, filtering out in their mind, leaving only these softened, family-friendly substitutes.

Just as Zeydaan considered doing something dangerous and off-script, like jumping out of the car as it drove towards another patient pedestrian, the seatbelt extended all on its own to buckle the wolf into the seat. Just in time for a rotund police officer, one with an uncanny, perfectly spherical head, to walk up to the side of the car and reach for another package.

“You’re the best, Noddy!”

As the man waddled away, Zey felt their face once again swell outwards, like a balloon being filled with air. Fur and hair alike vanished, save for a small patch of brown hair poking out from their hat. The bizarre nature of the changes made Zeydaan’s head swim. Normally physical changes hurt, or were at least of a peculiar sensation. This felt like almost nothing at all! They did feel a bit top-heavy now, with such a big round head and a slowly shrinking body.

This wasn’t a time for dilly-dallying, for Zeyddy had a lot of presents to deliver to the rest of his friends in Toyland!

As much as something was clearly wrong, Zeydaan couldn’t just… not do something about these boxes. They were just right there in the back, after all, about… Seven of them. Oh gosh… why did Zey feel such a wave of satisfaction for doing something as easy as telling how many boxes there were? They needed to stop thinking about the numbers!

And so, every time some strange person came up to ask for a delivery, Zeydaan just nodded along and handed it over. For every package, another change to their body. After delivering a pair of high heels to a large elephant lady, Zeydaan’s hind paws bulged outwards, turning into the great big, clown-like shoes they’d seen in that photo. Their pants slowly rode up their legs, turning fur into skin and ending up as nothing more than a pair of shorts.Even their… nope, can’t say that word. Their… something to do with Six subtly changed, and he was pretty sure that was different now too, not that it was of great concern to anyone in Toyland. Wait, shoot, he’d done it again!?

“Always good to see your smiling face, Noddy!”

After that girl took her box, Nod-er, no, Zey… Zeyddy’s mouth widened out into a rosy-cheeked smile, and despite his best efforts, he just couldn’t stop! Not because it was physically stuck in place, but… any attempts at thinking of a sad or negative thought just… didn’t happen. Something would distract him, like another delivery or the car making a funny noise, or even the jingling of his hat’s bell. And then that worry was… gone!

Less worry, more packages. And whereas he’d previously been a bit despondent with these toy people, the changing boy found it easier and easier to strike up conversations, and answer questions.

“Where have you been, Noddy?” Asked a bear in a bonnet, to which Zeyddy easily responded in a new, more juvenile voice. “I was… on a vacation, but now I’m back. I didn’t think I’d miss doing my job so much… but I’m having loads of fun!” That wasn’t entirely untrue. Although it was getting harder to remember exactly where he’d gone. The boy let out a “hmmmm” to nobody in particular, putting a hand up below his face to make a good “thinking” pose.

How many fingers was Zeyddy supposed to have? Because right now, with their hand midway between a purple paw and small fleshy digits, it was hard to tell. But… Zeyddy was a good smart boy, and he could tell that he had Five!

The narrator finished the thought for him, just in time for another pretty number to appear in the air. And… yeah, the narrator was right! The paw digits joined his more human-like fingers and thumbs, and that was the last of his purple fur now gone.

Soon there were no presents left in the back of the car, which Zeyddy felt an urge to pat on the dashboard like it was a pet.

“We… made a lot of people in Toytown happy today, didn’t we Car?” Zeyddy had taken a liking to the vehicle, so naming it seemed a good right thing to do. And it was a car, so the name Car was fitting! A little bit of his mind felt like that line of thinking was utterly trite and silly… but really, everything here was silly. So being a bit silly, and having such twee thoughts, it made sense, in a way! That’s why Zeyddy was grinning from ear to ear (they were so round now!) as he took another turn and carefully parked Car in front of a yellow house with a red roof. The doorway was made out of simple shapes, almost like giant building blocks.

What… what was he even here for? For… f-f-four! The number appeared, and Zeyddy understood on an unspoken level what to do next. Like there was a script buried deep somewhere in his head, simple and easy to follow. So… why wouldn’t he follow along, and go inside?

Zeyddy went inside his house, where a special surprise awaited everyone’s favorite friend in Toyland…

Opening the door, the interior of the house was dark. But Zeyddy’s ears, still pointed as they had been but now entirely furless, pulled outwards and downwards to the most elongated sides of his face, picking up the sounds of movement in the house.

Then, the lights flicked on. And standing inside the room was… everybody! All the people Zeyddy had helped out today!

“Three cheers for Noddy, everyone!” The mayor began clapping, even though he lacked real hands to do so, and the group joined in.

Zeyddy couldn’t help but blush, his rosy cheeks reddening further. Gosh, he… hadn’t expected any sort of reward for doing his job! Humbled, he joined the group around the table, where a large cake sat with candles lit.

“Golly, thank you all so much!” Zeyddy finally spoke up, giggling slightly at how soft and… surprisingly British his voice now sounded. Of course, what else would he sound like?

He jumped atop his chair to get a good look at the cake, all excited to blow out the candles. But… everyone seemed to stare at him, waiting for… something. Not the blowing out of the candles, something more…

Oh, of course! What a silly billy, how could he have forgotten. It was the end of the episode, after all… and that was when Noddy was supposed to say what he learned today!

“I’m so glad that I got all of my friends good souvenirs from my time away from Toyland. But now I’m back, and I missed home more than I thought I would!”

Satisfied, everyone let out a great big “hoo-ray!” and proceeded with the last shot of the script, something they all understood how to follow, on a subconscious level.

“Three…”

Briefly, a voice in the back of his head whispered to Noddy. A reluctance, a resistance, a push back against all this cloying positivity. But that voice was entirely unable to penetrate the adherence to this script.

“Two…” He couldn’t be U-rated! Hidden underneath layers of Standards and Practices, censorship and adherence to moral lessons at the end of each episode. What was the point in that, living some artificial, scripted life?

…

Oh, that’s right. The paycheck was the point. And da… darn tootin’ was it a fat one!

“One… Welcome home, Noddy!”

As the numbers danced around his head, Zey-no, Noddy blew out the candles, at peace as the last remnant of some other person, a nub of a wolf’s tail, disappeared under his blue shorts. His eyes blinked heavily, turning from terracotta red to a pristine, innocent blue.Finally, everything felt right in Toyland. The toys dug into the great big cake as the “camera” panned out and away, fading to black.

~~~~

Adam Evans was ecstatic over the success of his newest VC-funded tech startup. The previous four had gone bankrupt before making a viable product, so it was nice to finally have a real unicorn success under his belt.

The Simul-new Media Content Replicator System was humming along, churning out recreations of some old Earth show called “Make Way for Noddy!” The rest of his company had moved on to the all important merchandise and content distribution contracts that would bring cash and credits rolling in.

Of course, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that threat from the last one of the actors was a hollow one… the Hawkmoths, was it? Evans had made sure to send a representative to their base to hook them up with a free subscription to the XBC Studios stream-feed. Of course, it would help his company keep tabs on theirs, in case things were to get… heated.

And more to the point, it wasn’t like he wasn’t paying Zeydaan for their time. That was the whole purpose of the agreement. Becoming the main character was hard, and the pay rate reflected that. Once the Hawkmoths saw their accounts go swiftly into the green, Adam hoped they would let him continue with the production.

Truthfully, were Zeydaan able to speak past all the saccharine twee thoughts in their embiggened head, they’d probably give two paw-thumbs up at the whole thing.

This was, to an extent, one of the easier paychecks they’d earned, and had no plans to let the opportunity pass them by!