Really Strange Stuff

=::= Callie's PoV =::=

Serenity addressed the camera, "Despite all the complaints we have about the Council -"

"And we have a lot of them!" I interjected.

My cohost agreed, "We do. But as I was saying, despite all those complaints, it turns out there were at least a few occasions where they may well have been the good guys? A perfect example of that is the case we're going to look at in tonight's episode."

"That's right Sere," I took over. "Tonight we'll be turning the clock back to the nineteen seventies, as we look into to a series of incidents that took place right here in America's heartland. I'm talking about, uh... something... someplace... somewhere..."

My voice trailed off as I drew a complete blank on the rest of my lines. Then my ears drooped as I asked my girlfriends, "What the heck was I talking about? Where did this case happen again?"

"Cut!" Bailey finally spoke up. "It was in Cincinnati, Callie. How could you possibly forget that?"

"To be fair Bailey we're talking about Ohio," Serenity joked. "You can't get much more forgettable than that."

Meanwhile my ears were still drooping and my shoulders slumped as well, "Sorry Bails, I don't know what happened? I just drew a blank on the whole thing."

Our foxgirl girlfriend frowned, "Maybe we should go ahead and buy that teleprompter after all? I know you two are pretty good when you ad-lib stuff, especially during the live shows? But for these scripted segments it would sure come in handy."

"Hey I'm not that bad!" I protested. "It was just a one-off slip-up."

Serenity smiled, "I know Callie. Maybe instead of a teleprompter what we really need is a break?"

"And I hate to say it," she added with a grimace, "But I think we've already spent enough money on new equipment this year."

I sighed, "Yeah true enough. It's going to take us a while to pay all that off, and in the meantime we don't have an emergency fund anymore."

"A break sounds like a good idea," Bailey said, focusing on our girlfriend's first point. "Actually it's late enough we should just call it a day. We can start over fresh tomorrow morning."

As much as I wanted to dive in and keep at it I knew they were both right. "Yeah ok. Sorry Sere, Bails. I guess jumping straight into filming after all the research and writing we did today probably wasn't the best idea after all."

My tall hot cohost pulled me into a hug as she responded, "It's fine cutie. We're all excited about another episode, and painting the Council as good guys this time gives this one a different feel? That brings back some of the excitement of doing something new, at least for me."

"Yeah same," Bailey agreed. "I'm honestly not sure what's weirder? That the Council were the heroes this time, or that Cincinnati was home to a coven of vampires."

Serenity shook her head, "They're both pretty strange concepts."

"And I'm not sure I'd want to call the Council heroes regardless," she added as she finally let go of me. "Their case notes paint them as the good guys on this, but I really wish we could have found some eyewitnesses to interview."

I sighed, "Same. But the nineteen seventies was fifty years ago Sere. According to the case notes the lead investigator was in his forties at the time, so even if he's still alive he'd be in his nineties now."

"And it's not like we can interview any of the vampires," Bailey pointed out. "Considering the Council wiped them all out. That just leaves their victims' families. And like Callie said, we're talking about almost fifty years ago. Anyone who was around for that is probably in a nursing home by now. Even if we could find someone who remembers that stuff, they might not want to talk to strangers about it. Especially on camera."

Sere nodded, "Yeah I know. At least we found some of the old newspaper articles reporting the Council's cover story. I just hope we're able to turn that and the case notes into a compelling episode."

"We will," I stated confidently. "That's what we do, right? And the three of us are good at it too."

"As long as I don't keep forgetting my lines," I added with a blush.

That got both my girlfriends smiling. Then Bailey suggested, "Why don't we shut things down for the night? Then we can go relax and figure out what to do with ourselves for the rest of the evening."

It took the three of us a few minutes to get all the cameras and lights and everything else turned off, then we all headed upstairs together. It was nearly six o'clock Monday evening, this was the third of April and it felt like the past couple weeks had just raced past.

We finally put the whole supernatural hacking thing behind us and got back on track with the rest of our plans. We wrapped up all the recordings for episode six of our Council series last week, now Bailey would be editing that together over the next week or two. Meanwhile Sere and I finished writing the script for episode seven, but thanks to my brain-fart we weren't going to start taping any of it until tomorrow.

I suddenly realized how hungry I was when we got to the top of the stairs and entered our kitchen. And that in turn made me realize the three of us all forgot to stop for lunch today. So I looked to my girlfriends and asked, "What do you y'all want to do for dinner? We could go out someplace, or stay in and get delivery?"

Bailey headed for the fridge as she replied, "Since the topic of money came up earlier let's take the least-expensive option? We've already got food in the house, so I'll make us something."

"Ok Bailey, thank you!" I said as my ears drooped again. Then I asked, "Are we really that strapped for cash? With all the support and everything lately I thought we were doing really well."

After our foxgirl moved away from the fridge Serenity reached in and grabbed herself a drink. Then the tall ravenette replied, "Our monthly revenue is way up from last year Callie, but like I said earlier we've already spent a big chunk of that on all those changes and upgrades to the studio. And you said yourself, we don't even have an emergency fund anymore."

"Right," I sighed as I slumped down into one of the kitchen chairs.

Then a few seconds later my mood picked up as an idea came to me. My ears and tail all stood up in excitement as I suggested, "You know that's probably another thing Cassandra could help us with, if we go ahead with the whole prophet thing? Especially considering we bought most of that gear specifically so we could do a professional job interviewing her."

My girlfriends both exchanged an uncertain look then Serenity asked, "You haven't forgotten what Mei said in our group chat, have you? Or the conversation the three of us had after that? We wanted to try and split our efforts between some traditional back-to-basics work and the new stuff."

"Not to mention the whole thing where mortals really don't want to get caught in the middle of a dispute between a couple gods," Bailey pointed out.

Serenity agreed with the foxgirl then added, "On top of that, if we start taking financial support from Kid Chaos that could compromise our credibility. And becoming her prophets might also compromise our ideals."

I protested, "You don't know that! And if we were her prophets I'm sure that'd keep us safe from whoever's trying to stop her. We'd have her divine protection."

Bailey shook her head, "We don't know anything for sure yet, since she still hasn't got back to us about it. If or when we hear back from her, we'll need to be very careful about whatever details she shares. And we should ask plenty of questions too. We can't just dive into this without thinking it through, Callie."

My ears and tail all drooped again, "I'm getting the feeling that neither of you really want to do the prophet thing? What if it keeps us safe though? What if it means we can keep doing all our work without having to worry about being hacked again? I don't mean just the chaos stuff, I mean everything. Basics, new stuff, whatever? Having real divine protection and backing would open so many more doors for us."

"That's why we need to be careful and get all the answers and information first," Sere stated. "Like Bailey said."

The tall ravenette had a sip of her drink then added, "I'm not ruling anything out, ok Callie? I'm also not agreeing to anything yet either. I'm just saying the same thing as Bailey, we need to go into this stuff with both eyes open. We need to do what's best for the three of us, and for our channel and our viewers."

Our foxgirl girlfriend nodded in agreement from where she was standing by the counter, "That's the best way forward. The three of us are here now because of Really Strange Stuff. We shouldn't let ourselves forget that."

"Yeah ok," I sighed. "You two are right. But it's not like I'm forgetting where we came from or how we got here. I'm just saying, think of how much more we could do and how much further we could go if we had that extra push backing us up."

After a moment I added quietly, "And I hope you two haven't forgotten everything else she's done for us? You seemed pretty grateful during the interview Sere, when you thanked her for the magical transition."

Serenity's ears drooped slightly as she shook her head, "Of course I haven't forgotten that Callie. I give thanks every single day that I get to be my true self."

"I'm grateful too," Bailey added as she continued working on dinner. "For everything she's already done for all three of us, and for what she did for Jasmine and Heather."

"What we really need is to come up with a way we can work more closely with Kid Chaos, but without compromising our channel or our ideals," my ravenette catgirl girlfriend sighed. "As much as I want to work more with Cassandra, I agree with Mei that we don't want RSS to turn into some sort of Praise the Chaos channel. Even if that could be fun or rewarding, that's not what Really Strange Stuff is meant to be."

"Yeah I get it," I nodded slowly.

She had a point there, and while I was positive having Kid Chaos providing divine support would help RSS I didn't want to alienate any of our long-term supporters by changing the format of the channel into something different.

After another minute or two Bailey let us both know that dinner was almost ready, so I got up and got out some plates and cutlery while Sere asked what Bails and I wanted to drink. Soon enough the food was served, but rather than eat in front of the TV in the living-room the three of us decided to just stay in the kitchen.

"Thanks Bails this looks great!" I smiled as we all sat around the table with our plates.

Our foxgirl girlfriend had made us all some pan-fried pork chops, topped with fried mushrooms. And we had a tossed garden salad on the side.

Sere agreed, "Thanks for making dinner Bailey."

Bails smiled as we all got started on the food, "You're welcome."

As the three of us ate we ended up talking about our next live stream, which was scheduled for this coming Friday. We got the idea after that meeting with our moderators, to make this month's stream a sort of offset or counter-balance to the big interview reveal of the March stream.

"It's too bad we can't get him in the studio," I commented. "Now that we have the guest chairs and extra cameras, it'd be nice to keep using them."

Serenity pointed out, "It's not like we can afford to pay his air-fare to get him here. And we certainly couldn't ask him to foot the travel bill. That's even assuming he'd have time to make the trip? We're lucky enough to get him on for a live a video-call, considering the timing."

Before I could respond she looked to Bailey and asked, "You figure we should be able to stream the interview ok, right? No technical challenges with this?"

"There won't be any new technical challenges," our foxgirl producer replied. "We'll have the usual ones to contend with. We don't control his internet or bandwidth, so there's nothing we can do about any trouble at his end. On our end it's not that hard to route his video and audio into our stream. I just set it up as another input, then I can switch between him and you two."

After another bite of her dinner she shrugged, "It would be a lot easier if we could record the interview in advance. Probably easier for him too, since we could do it at a reasonable time for him? Then we could edit out any glitches with the connection."

"It's supposed to be a live stream," I frowned. "Playing a pre-recorded interview isn't live, and breaks the format of the show."

Bailey nodded, "I know Callie. So we'll do it live like we planned, and hope there aren't any technical problems with his end of the connection."

After that we went on to cover a few more points about Friday's show. By the time we finished eating we'd pretty much addressed all the potential problems we might face on the next live show. Then as I collected the dirty dishes my thoughts drifted back to our earlier debate.

"I wish we could solve our issues with the Cassandra Chaos stuff so easily," I sighed as I moved over to the sink. "Like there must be a way we can work more closely with her, without alienating some of our current viewers. I haven't forgotten what you said Sere, about not turning RSS into a 'Praise the Chaos' channel but -"

Suddenly my eyes lit up as it hit me. My ears and tail stood up and I grinned, "That's it! That's what we'll do! We don't have to change Really Strange Stuff's format, we just set up a whole new separate channel. And we'll call it Praise the Chaos! We can cross-promote it with RSS, so existing viewers can get on board right away if they're interested. But apart from that we keep the two separate. Different content, different themes. What do y'all think of that?"

Serenity and Bailey exchanged a look, then they both smiled.

"That's not a bad idea," the cute foxgirl nodded slowly. "It'll be a lot more work though, especially at first while we're getting it established."

The tall ravenette catgirl added, "And we'll still need to be careful not to flog it too much on RSS. But yeah Callie, way to go. It's a good idea."