Everything's Coming Up Popsy
"Akagi!"
Slam slam slam slam. The sound hammered Akagi's skull from inside and out. Her alcohol-dried brain felt like it was rattling around like the clapper in a bell. If they kept knocking that hard they were going to shatter that worn down old door.
Well, let'em.
She stubbornly burrowed herself deeper into her sweat-and-beer scented mattress and crushed her pillow over her head.
Her bloodshot eyes snapped open in the muffled, downy dark at the sound of wood splintering. Then they squinted away in pain from the evil glare of terrible late-morning sunlight squeezing dustily through her yellowed window blinds and a crack of pillow fold.
She had just barely gotten herself to squirm into an upright seating position when her bedroom door swung swiftly open. Akagi's pet rat Janna flattened herself against the ground at the intrusion. She gnashed her teeth and twitched her tail! Sadly, none of the humans noticed her intimidating display.
Ryusei rubbed the stubble on his chin and glanced back over his shoulder from the doorway.
"Sorry about that door. I think it's rotted."
Popsy slapped her hands to her cheeks and dragged down, causing her eyelids to stretch open. She frowned in concern. "Oh no, my termites! You didn't hurt them, did you?"
From below Ryusei's arm, another face shoved its way forward. It was a young woman with a smile fixed on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes, that instead displayed a strange mix of worry and star-struck wonder. The girl's face was done up with white face paint and bright red lips, with a black four-pointed star beneath each eye. A very different style of clown than Akagi's alter ego Popsy, though the laymen wouldn't know the difference.
This was Folly, the new sidekick hired by her new agency. Akagi had barely said three complete sentences to her so far, and yet here the girl was in Popsy's homely hovel. Akagi hurriedly stuffed her blanket more tightly around her hips to retain some of her sleep modesty.
Panic must have shown on Akagi's face, because her old pal Ryusei was filling the air with explanations.
"I can't let you do this to yourself, not this time. Not on the first day. It's a real chance!"
Akagi widened her eyes in stubborn denial of her hangover and flicked her eyes very meaningfully at the girl three times with increasing emphasis. Ryusei opened his mouth to speak, but Folly cut him off.
"Let's do our best, right? It felt a bit awkward to be at the office without the headliner of our circus, so..."
"So you broke into my apartment?"
Ryusei cleared his throat. "Is it, though...? There's the penthouse, now..."
"I thought this would be more private! And all my stuff is here!"
Akagi waved her arms around to gesture at the room. The limbs became a little more rubbery in her motion.
Ryusei and Folly looked all around, at old beer cans and dirty clothes and sun-faded wrestling magazines and all the other detritus of Akagi's long depression. Folly's gaze got stuck on Janna in particular.
"...rat." She blinked rapidly in quiet shock.
"It's a pet," Ryusei supplied in an aside, and strolled into the bedroom as casually as he goes into his own. He opened a closet mostly empty of clothes and began pawing around the everything-else, looking for something that Akagi could maybe be photographed in.
"I don't want to do this!"
"It's too late for that."
"I changed my mind!"
"Popsy-sensei, we are under contract."
"Gyah! Not you too! That honorific is going to make me break out in hives!"
"Look," Ryusei cut in, and sniffed something on a hanger then grimaced. He kept looking. "After the kaiju, and the bigtop, and the gangs, and the whole thing with The Asset--"
Akagi tried to interrupt. "That was all those damned kids!"
"--what did you think was going to happen?" Ryusei threw some clothes in her face and bundled the kit for her costume under one arm. His voice shifted to a more gentle, sympathetic tone. "You of anybody should understand how the media cycle is. You have the It Factor, Akagi. When Popsy's down, she's way down. But when she's up..."
Akagi sighed and looked forlorn at the jeans in her lap. Janna looked up at her owner and laid a gentle paw on one of Akagi's fingers.
"...I'm going to screw everything up again."
"Probably," said Ryusei perfunctorily.
Akagi winced. Ryusei smiled.
"But it'll be a hell of a show."
That got one corner of her mouth to lift up. Folly grinned down a squeak of excitement and clapped her hands. Ryusei brushed Folly out of the room in front of him, and turned halfway to say one last thing to Akagi.
"We'll be waiting out here. Please hurry. I have a new job, too, you know."
Akagi rushed into the elevator of her agency's lobby and started jamming the Close Door button again and again. The afterimage of all those camera flashes still floated in dazzled negatives across her vision. For the first time, she was actually glad Folly had been there, so that her sidekick could be thrown to all those wolves. The poor kid was actually happy about it, too. Her and a stuffed suit were giving the reporters a well-decorated pile of nothing.
It wasn't until the elevator doors had narrowed to a crack that Akagi relaxed with a "Phew!" Then the polished brass tip of a walking cane pierced between the two halves of the rubber seal and the safeties drew the elevator doors apart again.
They revealed a tall man in his forties with slicked back hair and round, red-lensed glasses on. He had a tight-lipped smile, the kind a frog has when it spots a tasty bug. Somehow, his tailored suit remained stiff and crisp as he loomed his way into the elevator with Akagi.
She recognized him, too. It was Negaigoto-san, the president of the enterprise that footed the bill for this whole operation. That corporation kept talent like her in his pocket on one side, and represented the desires of the various marketing teams from her sponsor companies on the other. Popsy's sudden return was, in Akagi's mind, basically his whole doing.
And it could be her undoing, too.
"Stuck in traffic?" His voice was a panther's, teasing the prey in his claws. Without looking, he twitched a hand back, and pressed two of the buttons.
"Something like that." Akagi looked up at him and didn't step back to make more room. She also didn't burp from the morning drink. Barely.
"Let's not make a habit of it. Jitters about the media blitz, right? Nothing to worry about."
"Sure."
His smile disappeared, like turning off a light switch. "Say it."
A pause, while Akagi reminded herself how much she'd be on the hook for if everything collapsed overnight. Not to mention how the shame of not even lasting a day would haunt her to her grave. "Nothing to worry about."
"Good. Having gotten you into the Top Ten is fine, of course, but with a little bit of diligence, proper heroics, good effort, we might even keep dragging you all the way into the Top 3." The elevator dinged, and he simply stepped back, clearing the passageway but blocking her from leaving. "We're filming Popsy-O's at 1. Be sober."
The last thing Akagi saw was him, stone-faced, eyes hidden, leaning hard on the mahogany walking cane. One hand folded over the other, the underhand clutching hard on the brass knob at the top hard enough to make his knuckles go white.
She really needed a fucking drink.
Across town, a certain man with the gorgeous plumage of an owl sat in his plush office and lounged glamorously in his designer chair. Another man's voice - from one of his loyal servants - emanated out of a bespoke speaker emerging from a hinged recess set into the top of his flawless desk.
"She was seen by at least a dozen outlets going into the building, and we've got the entire day scheduled - and then some. Everything is proceeding as planned."
"Isn't that lovely? I'll be letting you go now, but I appreciate this good news. Make sure you lift her as high as possible. It will be all the more beautiful when she goes crashing down to Hell."
With the push of a button, the speaker disappeared flush back into the desk. It made a very satisfying click. Tatarimokke began to laugh, and his voice ignited the sound wave of that click in the air, bursting into a spectacular flame. It erupted into an echo of his laugh and joined him in his sadistic mirth.