Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery

Cover given to the story in “The Quintessential Cupid”.

 ***Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery*** is a written story by Lupan Evezan, illustrated by Aristide Twain. It features Thymon, the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, and specifically the individual Cupids Acquaintanceship-982, Philatel-426, Colonel-028, Marksmanship-522, and, in their debuts, Pessimist-242, Larrikin-1029, Dandy-432 and Ally-1243, (who, with Acquaintanceship, make up the rest of the Blue Feather), Excavator-1642 and Foreman-964. Marmalade-624, Doc-012, Valerius-1497 and Bibliophile-962 are mentioned.

## Description

The Blue Feather, Acquaintanceship-982's not-so-elite backup taskforce in the Cupid Homeworld, seems on the brink of getting its big break when Philatel-426 of the Department of Postal Services hires them to investigate the disappearance of a mailbag. Chaos and bumbling ensue — but to be fair to the Blue Feather Cupids, the culprit is the last person they'd expect…

### References

* The Blue Feather's headquarters building is a drafty warehouse with empty crates as furniture.
* Trying to explain Pessimist-242's peculiar disposition, “amateur researchers” from the Department of Cupid Anatomy suggested that Pessimist might have, instead of a positronic brain, have a *negatronic* brain, a term which “was dismissed by the Department of Physics as ‘ridiculous and entirely unscientific’.”
* Dandy-432 speaks in a “posh, refined, and entirely unplaceable accent”.
* Thymon claims to be able to “show [people] *exactly* what evil lurks in the Gemstone Hearts of Cupids”.
* Larrikin-1029 always carries a burlap sack on his person.
* The Department of Construction is headed by several Head Construction Cupids, the Prefect being Foreman-964. Excavator-1642 is the newest member of the Department.
* There exists a Department of Permits which must issue permits before the Department of Construction can proceed with the implementation of the blueprints prepared by the Department of Architecture.
* All members of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids possess a Two-Way Communicator which allows any Cupid to contact any other across Time and Space; however, calling a particular Cupid works by slowly going through the entire list on a small dial to pinpoint the intended target, which makes their use impractical.

### Continuity

* The story references the events of *Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race* (2019), in which Marksmanship-522 made his debut.
* The end of the story leads into the Blue Feather's encounter with the Faction of the Fooling Fish in *Cupid Fact File No. 444 — The Faction of the Fooling Fish* (2019). That story dates the pie-stealing incident on which it opens (and on which *Acquaintanceship-982* closed) as being April 29th, 2011, suggesting this story took place that year, and, by extension, that the three previous Cupid tales took place around that time.

## Behind the scenes

This short story was released in May of 2019 on the *Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids* website and later collected in *The Quintessential Cupid*. It was the fourth fully narrative short story released there and the second by the Cupids' own creator Evezan.