Chapter 27Flop-Sec20 March 2022Ace isn't sure what she was expecting in terms of their guests being introduced to them, but she wouldn’t have guessed that they were skipping that step entirely. They’ve been preparing all morning for the arrival of these guests just to find out they’re going to be promptly ignored, their sponsors and big sisters all too happy to bring the arrivals to their rooms as quickly as they could. No first year involvement required, it seems.

  The first guests to arrive was a somewhat older couple— by the standards of the manor, at least, which seems to just barely fit within the 18 to 34 bracket that Leeds City Council seemed so eager to reach when Ace still worked for them. Unsurprisingly, this older couple was immediately picked off by the eldest of the maids— the amount of hugs and happy chatter seemed to imply that Eira had a history with the two.

  The second couple arrived about two minutes ter: a cute ginger dy and her loud, rather excitable girlfriend. The tter seemed to be talking about everything and absolutely nothing simultaneously, with the former putting in the minimum effort of active listening that she can. Ace only knows this because Eira has been trying to make her practice active listening with Amy. Something else she can pick up due to her practice: the other girl wants to participate properly but is simply too tired to get that done.

  It's a long drive from Almsworth, hence why Amy warned the three of them that their guests would probably be tired when they arrived at the manor. They aren’t supposed to jump on them too quickly. Not that this stopped Jenny, having met her match and all too happy to lead the two of them to their bedroom. Feeling responsible, Vivienne quickly followed the three in what had to be a st ditch attempt at ensuring that anything productive got done over there.

  With Eira, Jenny and Vivienne now tending to guests; Kelynen busying herself in the kitchen preparing a rather rge-scale lunch for their guests; Rose off doing god knows what— Amy said Rose needs to check on the product, specifying that it wasn't drugs this time, then further specifying that it depends on your definition of drugs, finally ending on the admission that the orchard had produced too many apples st year and they needed to get rid of the surplus somehow; and her own best friend having disappeared into the aether (because of course she had), Faith and the three first years are left to pick up the pieces when the third set of guests arrive.

  Faith was the first one to untangle herself from Gwen's embrace once they got the message that the next guests were due to arrive in just a few minutes. Gwen quickly followed her. Aoife and Ace — knowing they don't have much of a choice in the matter — also made her way to the main entrance to the building.

  "Oh, um, hi!" Faith says, holding the door open for their guests. She's being as charismatic as she can possibly be, which is still quite awkward and shy but obviously trying hard enough that people can't really judge her for it. "Feel free to come inside, we can take care of your things if you want..."

  "No, no, it's okay—" One of the two, a cute brown-haired girl, insists. She looks rather busy carrying some cases up the steps into the hallway

  Gwen, clearly feeling guilty for her, runs outside to help their guests out. It takes a moment for Ace and Aoife to join her, if only because they feel really awkward standing around when both Faith and Gwen seem to be putting in some effort into this situation. There really are quite a lot of cases, though, even for a two week holiday on the other side of the country. Their guest seems to agree.

  "Paige, did you really need to bring all these things?" The girl calls out to the car, which her presumably girlfriend is getting ready to drive away into the garage.

  "Yes! They specifically requested we bring all this stuff along." Paige — an insanely pretty woman — responds before closing the car door and driving away.

  "Wait— you heeded Jenny's request?" Faith asks, a little surprised. "You, Christine, of all people, did what Jenny told you to do?"

  "No, no, Vivienne asked us to bring along some... stuff." Christine responds, looking over at the gaggle of early-transition girls for some reason as she does so. "Where is Jenny, anyhow? Is she avoiding me already?"

  "With Beth, who else?" Faith shakes her head.

  "Oh dear god." Christine says. "They put those two together? Is there any good that can come from that?"

  "She isn't that bad." Gwen joins into the conversation, having moved everything into the hallway. "Not since they let her have her fair share of weed. It keeps her manageable."

  "Who has her fair share of weed?" Paige asks.

  Gwen looks at Paige, then looks at her a little more, then looks at Christine, and looks at Paige again, blushing the whole way through. "Jenny."

  "She's the maids.zip one, right?" Paige asks.

  "She's the maids.zip one." Christine confirms, groaning.

  "Do I want to know?" Gwen asks, her bout of blushing only having slightly lessened for the distraction. Ace is very gd that she’s being left out of the conversation for now.

  "Jenny put a 4.5-petabyte zip bomb on the Dorley servers in the hope that Elle would open it on her private ptop." Faith mumbles. "It worked. It was sort of funny. Sadly, there's also some very funny dies at the Hall who knew it was a zip bomb and extracted it regardless. One onto her own ptop and one onto..." She looks at Aoife, who still hasn't been fully disclosed. "...Christine's, uh, computer."

  "It took me a while to fix everything, yes." Christine nods, left with no choice but to lean into a very bad lie.

  "That does sound like Jenny." Gwen nods. She turns to Faith and vaguely gestures towards all the stuff their guests had brought with them today. "Um, should we..."

  "Faith and I will take care of it, I think?" Paige offers. "Christine here needs a break."

  "I've had a break in the car—"

  "Christine is here on holiday and I'm under strict orders to not let her do anything at all." Paige continues. "Or else Indira would get very cross with me."

  Faith gives her a look that indicates she very much believes some kind of shenanigans are afoot beyond the orders of this fabled Indira. "...Right. I'll take these two, you can take this case and these bags, and I'll lead you to your room, okay?"

  And then there were three. Or four, including their guest.

  "Um, so— Hi! I'm Gwen." Gwen tries in her best customer service voice, forcing herself through this awkward situation with an excitement Ace doesn't quite understand having. "This is Aoife," she points at a maid trying very hard not to look at her phone right now, offering their guest an awkward wave. "and this is Alice. We'll be your maids for the next two weeks. At least, some of your maids. We’re the junior maids— or what was the title? Apprentices? In training? I don’t think anyone takes it particurly seriously though, beyond the dresses… anyway. Hi."

  "Um, Christine." Christine says, vaguely gesturing at herself as if to say, yes, this is Christine. "Nice to meet you!"

  They stand there in awkward silence for a few seconds.

  "So... how about we find some pce to sit down and get you a cup of tea, maybe?" Gwen offers. "Should be easier to talk like that, I think."

  ***

  It was not, in fact, easier to talk like that.

  Gwen deposited the three of them in the tiny lunch room on the ground floor — used for meals when no one really wanted to prepare the much rger dining hall — and snuck off into the kitchen to boil some water in an electric kettle. They'll have to make do with the simple kettle and tea bag combination for now, as all of the maids capable of making something fancier are otherwise occupied at the moment.

  Christine rotates the mug a full 360 degrees and looks slightly disappointed. "Oh, you don't do the mug thing?" She asks.

  Regrettably, Gwen knows exactly what kind of mug thing she's referring to.

  "Oh, we do." She wants to bite her lip, but doesn't, remembering she has lipstick on. "It's just that Amy and Jenny made ninety percent of them, and there's... a pattern. I assume you wouldn't quite enjoy a mug with Hell yeah I'm A-Tea-P on it. Or one that just says Sissy Hypno with blue-pink-and-white swirls around the rim."

  What Gwen means in actuality is that she wouldn't want to be seen within a mile of those mugs with Alice around. Or within a mile of Amy if she gave Christine the mug Jenny had gifted Eira for her birthday st year, consisting of Gaslight in pastel pink capital letters and nothing else— she’s still slightly defensive of her de facto sponsor, insisting she’s never been lied to even once.

  "Sissy Hypno?" Amy asks, barely withholding a ugh. The words must have spawned her, somehow. "Who are we going to expose to that? Are we hypnotising Christine here?"

  None of the girls seem to be speaking up much in response to that.

  "Oh, come on. No fun." She pouts. "All three of you are going to try it someday, I promise. Whether you want to or not."

  It does sound like quite a lot of fun to Gwen.

  "I'll pass." Alice mumbles.

  "You'll go first." Amy insists. "Anyway, so I was listening in on your little conversation, and, well— I noticed that there wasn't much of one at all. Which is a shame, because I know for a fact that one of you had the task of trying to talk to people more," she points at Aoife. "And someone else could also really do with some socialisation rather than leaving it all to poor old Gwen here."

  "It's fine, they don't have to talk if they don't—"

  Amy shushes Christine. "Nope. They'll have to talk. I've decided. I'm taking responsibility for this sorry state of affairs and I'm going to make you all sit around the table and introduce yourselves properly to each other. Because this just won’t do."

  Amy walks up to the couch which Aoife and Alice had hoarded and starts gesturing at them to sit down with the two others. It’s an effort which somehow proved successful, if only because no one wanted to seriously challenge Amy today. She's on a roll.

  "So here's what we're going to do. We're going to go in turns and just introduce ourselves. Let's keep it simple: name, age, pronouns, favourite animal, favourite media and not one, not two, but three weird things about ourselves. Because we're all very weird people here.”

  "Three?" Alice asks, clearly terrified by the proposition. "Do we really have to—"

  "Yes." Amy says firmly enough to crush any possible resistance to her scheming. "Let's go clockwise, so starting with me, then Christine, then Gwen, then Alice and ending with Aoife. It’ll be good fun."

  "Is she always like this?" Christine stage-whispers to Gwen.

  "Yes." The three of them respond, to Amy's absolute delight.

  "Remind me to never let her and Dira team up, then."

  "So, is everyone ready?" Amy asks a very unprepared audience. "No? Then feel free to think about it whilst we go around the table. I'm Amy Finch — twenty-four years old — and I go by she/her pronouns. My favourite animal is the blue-haired Gensokyan Baka, my favourite media franchise is HDG, and three weird things about myself: I was an actor prior to my arrival at the manor, my grandfather was a member of the House of Lords though I would not have inherited his titles and I've published a few moderately successful stories online."

  "Oh, what are those stories about?" An extremely innocent Christine asks. Either she knows and is trying to make Amy embarrass herself slightly — unlikely, and it'd only turn her on anyway — or she doesn't know, and she's in for a minor revetion.

  "The one I published most recently would be an eggfic about a girl learning to discover her gender identity whilst living with a rather harsh and unaccepting family."

  That's definitely one way to describe the mafia kidnapping and pimping out a girl early in her transition because her ex-boyfriend ended up unable to pay the bills. It is a really hot story. Gwen would love to read more chapters of it, but has to settle for re-reading the recently finished Matron's Handmaiden for now— not by Amy, but still very exciting. Alice wouldn’t like it, though and she doesn’t know enough about Aoife’s kinks to know whether she would either.

  "Right, Christine, your turn." Amy quickly moves on from further inquiries as to her writing before she freaks Alice out too much.

  "Okay, so, um, Hi, I'm Christine Hale, she/her, I'm twenty-three years old, I don't have a favourite animal—" She's really doing her best, but it just isn't enough in the presence of someone quite like Amy.

  "No, no— you have a favourite animal. Surely you have a favourite animal. And if you don't, come up with one. Actually, now I want a justification too.”

  "Oh, um, I have a pink penguin plush, so, penguin I guess?" Christine tries, looking to Amy for divine guidance as to whether this answer is acceptable enough.

  "That's great! Loonie likes penguins too, I should put you two together someday so you can see her plushie collection, she has some really cute little birbs— anyway. Continue."

  "My favourite show is Star Trek, and three weird things about me..." She stares off into the distance, unsure quite what to say. "I'm Indira Chetry's adopted sister, uhhh... I know all of Taylor's songs by heart..." She looks around, truly unsure what to say at this point. "I was kidnapped and forcibly feminised in a torture basement?"

  "Sounds fun." Gwen whispers, if only to distract from the fact that she just said that around someone who is very much not disclosed as to the true purpose of Dorley Hall — all Aoife knows is that it's supposed to be a women's dormitory owned by the Lamberts.

  "Yeah, that seems like something Elle would have." Aoife nods, unphased.

  She does wonder why Aoife isn't disclosed. It's probably down to the simple fact that Rose is weird and Jenny quite embarrassed about her past, with everyone being a bit more careful about disclosure since watching just how badly it managed to scare the shit out of Alice.

  Then she remembers something. "Oh, fuck, it's my turn isn't it? Well, uh, hi, I'm Gwen Davies — yes I'm one of those Welsh people with one of the two permitted st names — 19 years old though turning 20 soon, she/her... Faith keeps insisting I'm a cuddly puppy, so I guess that... My favourite show is Doctor Who..."

  She tries to think about three weird things about herself, which proves to be much harder than she had ever guessed would be possible. She can think of a lot of weird things about herself, it's just the question of whether she would want to actually say them out loud— a lot of them are highly concerning, after all.

  "I'm the only actually Welsh person here... uh, I met Mark Drakeford once, with my... you know who. That cunt. I signed up to be forcibly feminised in a basement but they've refused to do so as of yet? Like, what the fuck is up with that, Amy?"

  "Eira said we’re not allowed to." Amy shakes her head very disapprovingly. "There is like, a power dynamic, so it's not allowed because there's no fun allowed ever. Because we might hurt you. Apparently."

  Gwen cannot help but feel a little bitter towards that expnation: as if she doesn't know exactly what she enjoys. She knows there's no chance that Faith will do such a thing for her, but Amy or Jenny might— why not let the three of them do as they please?

  "Um... who's Mark Drakeford?" Alice asks rather shily in a somewhat obvious attempt to dey her own turn at introducing herself.

  Gwen isn't even going to answer that question though, as Alice really doesn't have an excuse not to know the answer in the first pce. It's the bloody First Minister of Wales! One of the four devolved nations of the United Kingdom! It's like admitting you don't know who Boris Johnson is. Or the president of the United States. Or the Pope. Instead, she settles for a rather simple but deserved "Saesnes waedlyd."

  "What?" Alice looks at her rather confused, not realising she was just called the single worst slur in the Welsh nguage.

  "She's calling you English." Amy comments. Gwen had forgotten that the fourth-years had gotten a crash course in basic Welsh for when they needed to go out, as the area surrounding the manor is one of the only majority Welsh-nguage parts of the UK. "It's your turn, by the way."

  "Oh. Um." Alice looks around the table, blushing incredibly deeply in the process. "I'm, um, I'm Ace—"

  "Alice." Amy corrects.

  "I'm Alice Howells. I'm, um, 21 years old, she/her. Um. I like— I like cats?" She looks to Amy like she's trying to see whether the answer ‘cats’ would be permitted in this very silly game, which it was. "My favourite media is um... I like Harry Potter, but I hate J.K. Rowling, and um—" She looks to Amy again, who simply smiles, nods, and reaches forward to take her hand and reassure her. If she can't make it through the favourite pet stage of the introductions without feeling like she needs approval, there's no way she's going to make it through three weird things without some more help.

  "I'm, um, I'm English?" She offers to the group.

  "I'm not sure that's weird." Christine questions.

  "That's cruel and unusual." Gwen chimes in. "We count that."

  "Okay, um, I'm a maid? And, uh... Amy's my big sister?"

  "I definitely count as weird." Amy nods. "I'll take it, though we're going to have to work on the fact that you think being a maid is weird and not the best thing ever."

  Sounds like Amy has more torture in store for the three of them. Gwen's only slightly excited for this prospect, if only because she knows Amy would never push it too far. For her, that is— Alice looks like she needs multiple weeks worth of breaks already. Poor girl.

  "I guess I'll finish up then?" Aoife offers, ready to show everyone the benefit of coming st during introductions. "Hi, I'm Aoife Quelly, 21 years old, she/her. I love ferrets. My favourite shows change a lot because I get special interests but right now I'm pretty deep into Love is War. Three weird things about me would be that I'm the only one here born outside the UK, I'm a maid — a permitted answer — and I am, apparently, involved in organised crime, and not just because my sponsor has some special pnts in the greenhouse out back."

  "I think you'll find organised is an overly kind description of what we're doing here." Amy says, causing Christine to roll her eyes in what seems to be rather pained agreement. "See, girls? That wasn't so bad. Don't we all feel like we know each other a bit better now?"