fandomtownies | Empire Records, Late Wednesday Morning

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$groovy tunes

Empire Records, Late Wednesday Morning

After taking a limo to the causeway and then a rickshaw cab to the store, Melody was practically bursting out of her skin with excitement. She jiggled the key Maureen had mailed her in the lock and walked into her very own store for the first time.

It was clean -- at least someone had been working there -- but a little ... plain. But she could fix that! She released her three cats from their carriers to wander around, then tied her hair back and started painting the back wall palest pink with some paint she found in a storage closet. A little glitter, a few more fuzzy things, and the store would be even more awesome than it was already.

She was singing along to the Bangles loudly as she worked, and the store was open if you don't mind the smell of paint.

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Chad came over to open Empire today. To find out that...it was already kind of open.

Okay, that was...weird. And that was definitely paint invading his nostrils. He cautiously stepped in. "Uhhh....hello?"

"Hi hi!" Mel said, wiping her hands on her coveralls and stepping away from the paint. "My name's Melody and I just bought the store. Can I help you?"

Chad's head tilted. "Uh...yeah. My name's Chad, and I work here..." He looked around a little at the...remodeling that was happening. Pink?

Wait, he liked pink. So that was cool. Plus? New Boss was even cuter than Old Boss. It was just all so sudden...

"I get employees? That is so cool," Melody said, enthusiastic as she was about almost everything. "The people I bought it from weren't really sure if anyone still worked here or not, but I am so glad I don't have to completely start over."

She leaned against a rack of reggae. "How's business?"

Melody's words had Chad stopping to think for a moment over his fellow employees...the ones he actually thought were still fellow employees, but, yeah, they all left now, didn't they? And Old Boss seemed to drop off the face of the earth.

...How in the world was he getting paid these past few weeks?

Last surviving Teal Dear. Last surviving Empire employee. It made him feel strong. And it made him want to break out into that Aretha Franklin song (that he still felt Cake covered best).

He shrugged. "S'good. Kinda slow..."

"We can fix that!" Melody said. "I'm going to paint it, and bring in a glittery rug, and my kitties, and ... I think I'm gonna change the name. Empire Records is so, so blah. We'll make it a place people want to hang out!"

And spend money.

Chad was torn. Kitties were good, but Empire...was Empire. "People hang out lots," Chad assured her, and then thought of kitties some more, and figured, yeah, name change could be feasible. He looked at all the paint, on the walls, in the bucket, on Melody's coveralls and offered, "Want some help?"

He was, after all,employed and supposed to work today. Plus, he could reach a lot higher than Melody could.

"That would be great," Melody said. "Wanna paint the other wall? And I'm thinking about doing a rainbow mural on one wall -- how do you think that would look?"

She grabbed up a passing cat. "This is Flopsy. The others are Mopsy and Cottontail, even though they're kitties and not bunnies. Watch and make sure they don't drink the paint."

...Chad glanced over toward another to consider how a rainbow mural would look, and if there could possibly be anything gayer than him painting on on there. He'd...leave that one up to Melody. He nodded toward another wall. "What do you wa--"

And that's when Melody had swept up Flopsy and Chad stopped because holy crap, cute kitty! "Can I...?" he held out his hand a little, nodding toward the cat in an unfinished request to pet it. He didn't want to be rude by just going ahead. Even the thought of it drinking the paint was kind of cute, if you didn't think about it too much because the aftermath of that would be...not so cute.

"Sure!" Melody said. "They're only six months old.I gave away the rest from their litter, but I had to keep these three."

She grinned. "I'm not happy without cute furry things around."

Chad grinned a little as his massive index finger lightly nuzzled against the fluff of Flopsy's head. "I like cute furry things, too," he admitted, although, really, like was much too weak a word; his insides were all melty with cute furry thing overload.

He should get a cat...

"These guys gonna be at the store a lot?" Chad asked. Having kittens around would just make work hundred of times better than it already was. Kittens and music? Talk about heaven.

"Probably," Vi said. "I used to be a Pussycat, so they could be, like, store mascots. Plus I don't know if I'll be allowed to have them wherever I end up living." She had no idea that her statement about being a Pussycat could be taken literally in Fandom.

She scooped up Mopsy. "There's an apartment upstairs, but I get lonely living alone."

Very literally, especially since Chad's old frontman (err, front person. He had a feeling Zero might kick his ass a little for that) was wont to becoming a cute little pink kitten all the time. And now Chad was imagining what Melody would be as a kitten, and decided that this made Melody the bestest, cutest, coolest boss ever.

"Good luck finding a place, then," Chad said. Since he was sure he'd be seeing a lot of the kitties, he figured he should probably get back to helping. "So what colour you want that wall?"

"Yellow?" Melody suggested after what appeared to be deep thought. "That would be all pretty and sunny."

Chad nodded, grunting in agreement, and looked around to locate the yellow bucket of paint and a brush.

Melody went back to work on her wall for a moment before running up to change the CD in the battery-powered player. "What kind of music do you like, Chad?"

Chad considered how best to answer this, because he liked a wide variety, really, but, after thinking on it, he decided, "Put in somethin' with a good beat. Set the pace of the painting."

Melody nodded and selected a DuJour CD, the dance remix one. "Backdoor lover..." she sang softly as she went back to her painting. The pink wall was almost done.

Somehow, Chad was not surprised that Melody would pick something like a dance remix, but it wasn't so bad, and he went about finding the beat and painting along with it. He could totally dig this.

After his workshop, Robin went out to explore the town some more. "Hello?" he called out, entering the shop. Ooh, the Bangles!

Melody had finished painting for the moment, and was sorting through a rack of music. "Hi!" she said, delighted to have a customer. "Are you a frog?"

"I sure am!" Robin nodded. "I'm Robin, pleased to meet you." He hopped up on the counter for a better vantage point, and extended a flipper.

Mel took the flipper and shook it politely. "I've never met a frog before," she said. "But I'm a vegetarian."

"I don't think most people in Fandom have." Robin said. "And good for you. Is it for health reasons or morality issues?"

"It's 'cause animals are people too and I don't wanna eat anything with friends and a mommy," Melody explained. "Are you one too?"

"That's a very good reason." Robin nodded. "Well, I do eat flies. I am a frog. But other than that I tend to steer away from animals."

Melody wrinkled up her face. "Insects aren't cute, anyhow," she decided. "So can all frogs talk, or just you?"

"Well we all talk, but only Muppet frogs can speak English. All the rest only speak frog."

"So you're bilingual or bicoastal or whatever the bi is," Melody supplied. "I'm not bi anything."

"I think it's bi lingual." Robin nodded. "Though I've lived in the Everglades in Florida, and in Los Angeles so maybe I'm bi-coastal too."

"We went to L.A. for the Grammys," Melody said. "It was soooo sunny. And loud."

"You went to the Grammys? Oh I'm sooooo jealous."

"We lost, but it was cool, 'cause I got to wear a sparkly dress and we had champagne in the limo," Melody explained. "And John Mayer said I was his favorite Pussycat."

"Oh I didn't know you meant you were a nominated band, that's neat!" Robin enthused. "What's your band called?"

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Empire Records, Late Wednesday Morning

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