Carl's Unorthodox Sequential Spite

## Overview

> This saga recounts the story of a once sane man becoming unhinged, in which he started being poor metrialistically and ended up being poor morally.
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## Act List

* Act 0 - Days before CUSS
	+ Part 1 - Jerome Hall Drive
	+ Part 2 - Brotherly Love
* Prologue - Rookie Mistakes
	+ Part 1 - The Gambling Incident
	+ Part 2 - The Lottery Incident
* Act 1 - Barron Movie Rentals
* Act 2 - Corporate Expansion
* Act 3 - Trouble in False Paradise
* Act 4 - From Golden to Dark
* Act 5 - Beyond Redemption
	+ Part 1 - Pro Tem Prosperity
	+ Part 2 - Perpetual Pandemonium

## Characters

Primary characters
* Carl Barron (protagonist)
* Daisy Kinley
* Charlotte Merriwether
* Emile Giscard Forestier

Secondary characters
* Matthew Barron
* Oprav Ubezhishche
* Skorbya Ubezhishche
* Micheal Oxmaul
* Laverna Oxmaul
* Tyson Kinley
* Amber Kinley

Tiertary characters
* Teodor Rakočevic
* Jane Barron
* Quindarious Aycock
* Astra Carcinoncos

Important locations/entities
* Sharmont
* Jerome Hall Drive
* Aycock Productions
* YoY Cult
* Barron Video Rentals
* Carl's Ultimate Streaming Service
* Prosokroma
* CBS

## Acts

**(Act 0 serves as a prologue for the prologue lol)**

### Act 0 - Days Before CUSS

#### Part 1 - Jerome Hall Drive

It all started in a lost neighborhood named Jerome Hall Drive (JHD) located in Sharmont, New York, USA. This neighborhood was poverty-stricken with residents that are badly off due to poor communication with the rest of the city. The most prominent residences are the Meriwether family and the Barron family, who lived across the street from each other. The Barron family contains William Barron, the father, Laura Barron, the mother who has cardiovascular problems, Carl Barron the eldest son who is an aspiring comedian and his younger brother Jeffery Krabbz Barron who was the favored son despite him having self-confidence issues and suffering from severe loneliness, and last but not least the family parrot named Perry. They have lived there their whole lives after William left Yugoslavia in the early 60s.

The Meriwether family used to be an average family of 4 with two twins, Charlotte and Charmaine, before the married couple died in a car accident in 1972 while they were going out. This leaves the two children alone with their father’s unmarried sister named Lilith Meriwether who lives in Jerome Hall Drive.

The year is 1972, the Barron family decided to meet and greet their new neighbor, the Meriwether family. Carl Barron hit it off with the twins since they are the same age and possesses the same interests. In the following years, the three would go to the same school that was outside the neighborhood together. Since it was outside of Jerome Hall Drive, some students were affluent and arrogant so they would berate and belittle the ones who weren’t part of that category, including Carl, Charlotte and Charmaine. The bullying would get rampant but Carl would always try to fight them off... without wetting his pants. Despite this troublesome situation, Barron met a nice student by the name of Quindarious Aycock and found common ground between each other's interest in humor and TV shows; after this, Aycock was willing to help them with their struggles. However, in 1978, the bullying got so bad that three mentally deranged bullies followed Charlotte and Charmaine home with knives when Carl was sick. Charlotte went inside but Charmaine dropped her notebook which bought time for the bullies. They each stabbed her twice until she died, Charlotte witnessed the incident and called the police before the bullies fled.

Eventually, the fingerprints of the culprits were discovered to be that of the bullies which led to their arrest. The neighborhood wasn’t the same after that day and the entire community was invited to the funeral held by Lilith Meriwether for the passing of her niece. Carl attempted to lift the attendees' spirits by a few of jokes he saw on his favorite Television programs, but of course this would backfire at him thus resulting in no laughs but a couple of scoffs from his parents, snidely and loudly lecture him about not using comedy in a place dominated by tragedy.

#### Part 2 - Brotherly Love

It's been 2 years since the incident and Charlotte has gotten more and more reclusive, however, Carl, still sad about the death, became more extraverted and friendly while using humor to cope with the loss of his friend. One day in 1980, Charlotte got bullied once and again by an older bully, and once again Carl, in his usual milquetoast manner, attempted to scare off the bully off but this time his attempt failed and it cost him being shoved into a locker. This was witnessed by a red-haired girl who saved the pair by beating up the bully. She opened up the locker Carl was in and introduced herself as Daisy Kinley to them both before a teacher witnessed the battery and decided to give Kinley detention. She embarrassedly walked away from the pair while her face turned to the same color as her hair.

The next day they met in the hallways of the school during the class intermission, the conversation began with Daisy complaining about her detention yesterday and ended with the planning of a rendezvous after school. The pair hit it off with Daisy through their new found obsession: video games, and after two years of talking, Daisy and Carl started dating.

One day in the summer of 1983, the Barron family were out in a resort as a celebration for William getting a promotion at his job. Carl’s brother, Jeff Barron encountered a strange girl with dyed pink hair by the pool who seemed to be around his age if not younger.

“Hey. Do you want a flamin' hot smoke pack?” said the girl, holding a makeshift cigar created using a hot cheeto; Jeff was filled to the brim with confusion only for it to be negated through the preteen pulling out the aforementioned "pack" and showing it to him, she then states that "everyone is doing it and its how you can become mega super duper cool like me". Jeff, as an impressionable and very lonely young teen who was only told that he was "super duper cool" by his parents, decided without hesitation to grab the cigars, however the young girl forcefully grabbed his wrist in order to stop him and said "You need to pay for it first, dumbass." only for Jeffery to timidly respond with "B-b-b-but we spent all our money on the chalet!". "Hmmm... if that's the case... pay with your blood then. I can sell it to my grandpa he says its for... a big project or something" said the young lady with her previously listless facial expression being contorted into a more insidious-looking one complemented by a shit-eating smirk. Barron was torn: he could either slip the opportunity of gaining the cool points he always wanted from his hands OR he can be the popular kid he always dreamed of being by taking the matter with his own hands; and, unfortunately, he fell into his temptations and chose the latter option, but of course, little Jeffy would not think of harming himself since he was too afraid to do it, therefore he went to consult his brother on this situation.

Jeff told the mysterious girl to wait until he comes back from the family chalet where his brother was currently at. Jeff arrives and rapidly knocks on the chalet front door, Carl opens it only to be pushed inside by an enthusiastic Jeff who wanted to recount the conversation he had with the girl. At the beginning of the conversation, Carl thought that Jeff finally got a new friend which only fueled his jealousy towards him, since Carl has had the same 3 since for a long time, but continued to listen on and those sentimentally projected insecurities quickly shifted to concern. Carl offers Jeff an idea where he would go with him to confront the girl about this "blood trade" as well as selling contraband; unfortunately, Carl's dissent only intensified Jeff's desperation. This would devolve into an argument between the two that led to a breaking point in which Jeff pulled a knife from the kitchen drawer and, not-so-deeply plunged it into Carl's right hand out of the sheer motivation of Jeff wanting to gain friends for once in his life.

The mother who was discontented by the loud yelling and arguing came into the room and witnessed Jeff holding a knife above an injured Carl, which was enough for her to have another heart attack. The brothers sent her to the hospital. In the meantime, the doctors stitched Carl's hand together and blamed his brother for his mother's episode and his injury, yet the father, William Barron, who was in the hospital with them, disagreed with Carl and called him a "drama queen" and "jealous because Jeff is the better son", to which spiraled into an argument between the two.

A few hours later, Laura Barron passed away due to complications with her heart failure. Carl Barron decides that he has had "enough of this bullcrap" which prompted him to leave his remaining family and start life anew in a different neighborhood, named "Pluckington Oaks" in the same city while keeping in contact with his girlfriend, Daisy, and best friend, Charlotte. Maybe he can pursue his dreams of being a rich comedian there.

He didn't go to the same school as his friends anymore but after two torturous years, he was accepted into college, in which he will be majoring business in, he decided he can join drama and comedy clubs. Luckily this college had two of his favorite people there since Charlotte's aunt moved out a year after Carl did. In 1986, they accidentally bumped into a French guy named Emile Giscard Forestier who was aspiring to be the most famous automechanic; Carl was infatuated with his motivation and the trio hit it off well with him, thus being integrated within the friend group.

For his neighborhood situation, he was greeted the following morning of him moving in by a nice family of 3 Prosokroman individuals, the Carcinoncos family, a mother, father and a daughter named Astra. This family was as badly off as Carl was, if not more. So they decided to help each other out with their situations in order for them to move out into the city and live a better life. Carl became an older brother figure to Astra and got along really well with the parents. Barron's fondness of Astra was apparent when he decided to gift her a cow plushie on her 9th birthday in 1986 Unfortunately in 1987, Mrs. Carcinoncos was contracted with Burkitt lymphoma and they couldnt pay the hospital bills. Mr. Carcinoncos decided to go on business trips for more money as well as entering in the lottery. Carl worked nighttime jobs to help out as well.

One day in 1985, Carl got a phone call by his old friend Quindarious Aycock, who he hasn't seen in half a decade, to start a new business since he knows that Carl is still struggling, thus beginning Carl's unorthodox sequential spite (haha! he said it! he said it!)

### Prologue - Rookie Mistakes

#### Part 1 - The Gambling Incident

Before CUSS, Carl was a financially struggling college student and is a descendant of generations of poor and suffering ancestors. He tried to combat this with the help of his good friend from school named Quindarious Funkelfield Blorgo Aycock Jr. III (the name is too long to document). So, at the tender age of 18, on the 7th of October 1985, the two founded a short films company named Aycock-Barron Productions in Sharmont, New York, USA where they would invite their old classmates, to play parts for the roles in the stories that Aycock would write, including but not limited to, Daisy Kinley, Carl’s girlfriend at the time and Charlotte Meriwether, Carl’s childhood best friend; Carl still attends college with these two individuals.

Quindarious and Carl would, later on, catch the attention of multimillionaire film producer companies in 1986 where they would help the duo achieve the success they deserved, which means that they would make feature-length films with experienced actors, and so they did. They worked together phenomenally and they both treated the actors and actresses fairly. Despite, the company starting off with some budgetary rough patches due to the fact that the two founders were attending college at the time, it would later be resolved with the income of their first movie which would be an edutainment children’s movie since Aycock’s girlfriend gave birth to a baby boy that year.

This was all well and good until Carl decides to invite his good friend Quindarious to talk about the plot and setting of the new movie in front of a casino, in 1988, which was the year where he discovered the crime known as GAMBLING. After Quandarious left the scene, Carl looked behind him and found the Casino building which donned neon red lights that played the role of signs that convey the name of the establishment: “Ruhpsie’s Casino”. Since Carl was never taught how to be responsible with money, considering the fact that he didn’t have any, he decided he wanted to double, even triple, or maybe even QUADRUPILFY Aycock-Barron Productions’ budget. Thus, he entered the building. He just wanted to make his entrepreneur partner proud, yet he would learn that this would be the worst mistake he would ever commit in his life. Carl took 75% of the budget and decided to gamble them all on horse racing. And guess what, He lost. He lost all of the pain-stakingly earned money. He didn’t know how he would inform Aycock. He knew he would be kicked out of the studio but he decided he wouldn’t say a word. However, when he drove to the studio, he was met with a sense of large distress even Quindarious, who was largely laid-back, was also distraught. Aycock looks at Barron and yells: “YO MAN WHERE DID ALLA OUR MONEY GO???” Carl, despite having a high level of charisma, couldn’t fish up a good excuse or lie and decided to be honest and recount to his friend the whole gambling incident.

Quindarious was surprised, he got enraged at Carl, to the point where he would berate him for 10 minutes and call him a “fuck-up” and the final blow is dealt when Quindarious would give Carl the boot, thus cutting all ties with him. Quindarious would rename the company to just Aycock Productions where he would publicly announce Carl’s exile from the company. In the coming years, he would retrieve all of the budgetary loss and he would give birth to 3 more kids, most prominently, Youn in 1995.

As for Carl, he felt guilty about the incident, so much so that he decided to send an entire college loan to his ex-entrepreneur partner but the latter refused. Carl was impoverished, thus, he decided to invest more time to get his business major and even more time with his 2 best friends and his relationship with his girlfriend for 5 years.

#### Part 2 - The Lottery Incident

On the 16th of November 1989, Carl sat depressed in his run-down house, not having plans for the near future. He heard a knock on his door. He opened the door to see who it was and saw the daughter of his terminally ill Prosokroman neighbor whom he was helping out, named Astra Carcinoncos, standing in front of him holding a lottery ticket. She said “Good evening, Mr. Barron! We won the lottery!! Mommy wanted you to go and submit this paper in a grocery store somewhere cuz daddy is on a work trip and you know about mommy…” He was ecstatic for them. He believed that this money could help her mother get better treatment for her lung cancer, so he happily obliged.

Despite it being 9 PM, he decided to walk to the store since starting up the car wouldn’t be worth it considering the fact that the convenience store was a 5-minute walk away from the suburban neighborhood he resided in. So he walked for 5 minutes, then finally, he was a few steps away from the grocery store. However, he heard a strange robotic, and unnatural voice coming from a dumpster in the alleyway that separated the convenience store and a furniture shop on its left.

Carl thought it was gibberish at first, however, after listening more carefully, he can decipher these words being repeated incessantly, almost as if it’s waiting for his response: “Do you want to be rich?”, Carl comprehends its words and decides to remain silent due to confusion. He then observes the owner of the unsettling voice emerge out of the open dumpster; it was a green floating head with big black eyes. Carl was slightly intimidated and confused since he has seen nothing like this before. It chuckles and tells Barron “Hey, broseph. Did you know that those neighbors of yours are lying to you right, my guy? Like, the mom doesn't ACTUALLY have cancer, they just want the money to move out and have a better life while leaving you to rot in the dust.”. Carl did not believe it, he couldn’t. “You’re k-kidding, right? Carl quietly muttered in shock. “I don’t lie, dude. You’re not gonna give those frauds what they want, right? I say you do what they DON’T want you to do and claim that ticket as if it’s your own. Trust me, it’ll go a long way. Spite them before they can spite you, man.” Carl hesitated; how could they have taken advantage of him? In his mind, doubt reigned, however, he remembered the reason he moved out in the first place: betrayal. He was betrayed once before by people he thought he was close to before, his brother and father, so it isn’t impossible that it couldn’t happen again… so he was convinced. “I’ll take you up on that offer…”, said the college student, “I need the money anyway.”. As soon as the creature shook nodded and smirked dubiously, Carl heard the phrase: "Who are you talking to?" coming from his right, and so he looked in that direction and found an bespectacled elderly man wearing a trench coat and a paddy cap, Carl swore that the man looked familiar, as if he saw him on television but the answer ultimately resided on the tip of his tongue for the time being. Carl was overwhelmed and did not know what to answer so he said "NO ONE!!!" in a haphazard manner and dashed into the convenience store on his left in order to avoid "spilling the beans".

After the strange string of events he just experienced, he decided to put the lottery ticket in his name. He realized that he was apathetic towards the fact that he did this, which was peculiar since he would usually never forgive himself if he would commit such actions, however, this alleged betrayal made him numb to the people he helped for the past few months. He entered the grocery door, then went to the clerk’s desk then slammed the ticket on it, and said “YO CHECK THIS I WON!”. The cashier, after hastily cross-examining the paper with the results, confirms that he won the lottery. An hour later, he received the cash prize of 1 million 224 hundred thousand 20 thousand and 12 dollars and got interviewed for it on TV. He announces that he deserved all the money since he was poor and he needed to pay his own college debt. He followed his reasons by a speech that consisted of him telling the audience of the interview to not submit to people who want to take advantage of them. He ended his speech was a mic drop and suavely exited the scene.

Later that night, Carl Barron decided to exchange his run-down car for a new, fast and expensive car, so he walked to the car dealership that was also nearby. Despite it almost being 11 PM, the car shop was still open with an employee and... a group of five weirdly dressed people. Carl entered the radiant shop and was met with the employee who was a woman with a British accent that introduced herself as Clara Corniston-Bentley and as the sales associate. After 10 minutes, Carl had chosen the latest version of the Chevrolet Corvette for 31 thousand dollars. The group of people was still there, talking in a circle, Carl was getting concerned so he asked the employee "Hey you know what these guys are doin' there?", to which she replied, "I don't know, I-I told them to leave multiple times for the past handful of hours yet they are still present.". Carl shrugged this off and after a few words with the lady, he left the store with a chipper goodbye. As soon as he entered his vehicle, there was an unexpected knocking on his window, he got startled and looked to his left instantaneously. He found the same five people in green with the one closest to a window was a bald man he presumed to be a quadragenarian. He heard the man say "Lower glass" in an accent which he recognized had a slavic flare to it, he said that while signaling with his index finger to lower the automobile window, and so Carl did.

The more the glass of the window descended, the more Carl anticipated something horrible to happen to him; and as the window is fully open the bald man looked around him then quietly said: "khAre you guy who talk to YoY?", Carl was confused as to who YoY was since he never heard that name before in his life: "I uh... I don't know what- I don't know who that is, s-s-s-s-s-s-sir." The bald guy replies with: "Cam aaaan! Zat green guy he talk wiz you like an hour ago.", Carl immediately recognized who that was, it was that green fella who saved his skin. Carl affirms that he in fact is the person who they were looking for so the vocal guy introduced himself as "Teodor Rakocevic" alongside proposing a meeting: "Meet at building in grass place there at 20 Oh clock if you not come, somesing bad would khappen. khOkay? kHaha bye!" Teodor said both menacingly and cheerfully before disappearing into the night with his four other friends.

Welp. I guess I've been dragged to whatever this shit is now, \*sigh\* fuck me..." was what Carl said to himself before driving his Corvette back home.

### Act 1 - Barron Video Rentals

It was a long night, as soon as he got home, his girlfriend and two close friends congratulated him over telephone, however, his father, William Barron, and brother, Jeff Barron were displeased to the fact that Carl didn’t send them any money in their personal financial crisis. Carl didn't care about them anymore, anyway. They were merely the spirits of his past to him, especially after his mother’s death. Moreover, even Quindarious Aycock, Carl’s old business partner, who has not called him since the gambling incident, congratulated him while jokingly saying “Don’t go gambling it all now, hah! Just kiddin’ man, I know, I’m past that.”, Carl felt a slight amount of resentment towards him when he said that. Carl felt that the reason why Aycock, after years of not talking to him and leaving him to rot after, in Carl’s perspective, a “simple” mistake, decided to call the former was in order to either simply mock him or rekindle his association with Barron UNIQUELY due to his newly found “status”. Just as Carl was about to say something hurtful towards Quindarious, the latter said: “Yo, sorry I couldn’t talk to you before this by the way, its just that after we lost all the money I way busy trying to repurpose our studio into a lab and I think its coming along nicely!” Carl wanted to say something but all he did was create 5 seconds of silence before disrupting it by furiously slamming the telephone ringer into the dialer, almost breaking it, thus hanging up the call abruptly. Carl was so furious... did he call just to mock him? In Barron's eyes, that is without a shred of doubt a possible reason. He decided to sleep his anger off and get prepared for his life of freedom and luxury starting the next day.

Carl woke up the next day at 10 AM, November 17th 1989, he decided that today was a lazy day since he was already late, therefore he didn’t attend college that Friday since he wanted a long weekend and he didn’t feel the need to attend anyway. He was majoring in business, yet he had already achieved one of his two life goals, being a millionaire, so why pursue a career to obtain something he already possesses? At this moment in time, he did not feel very motivated to pursue his second life goal of being a comedian, therefore he decided to not take initiative for today, part of the reason for this is that he did not know how to. Besides, he had a meeting booked with those enigmatic people in that abandoned brick building, so he didn’t want to show up exasperated there.

He went to his living room and turned on the television and channel surfed until he saw his favorite show airing on CBS: Family Feud; he always adored this show since he was a young adolescent due to the fact that he always found people’s dumb answers amusing. During the commercial break between the final face-off round and the fast money round, Carl was pondering something: “Why not make my own game show? I mean, I have the money now, and... I can host this show and ultimately, i can jumpstart my comedy career from there! hell yeah! good thinkin' carl!”. As soon as the commercial break ends, Carl watched 3 minutes of the fast money round and the contestant chosen is answering all the seemingly easy questions incorrectly, this confirms his thoughts about hosting a game show, he also wanted it to air on CBS as well, yet he contemplated on how he will manage to do it. After digging into his memory, he remembered that in the introduction one of his old classmates from high school he stated that he lived in New York City in a building next to a CBS station, so he can go there and pitch his idea.

Therefore, he turned off the television, got dressed, and got in his newly purchased Chevrolet Corvette in order to drive to New York City. While driving to the major American landmark, he thought of what he wanted the show to be, until an idea struck! “Why not make a game show in which the contestants are undeveloped little kids?”, Carl thought enthusiastically. The only reason he watches game shows is that he gets to cackle at the wrong answers of others who humiliate themselves on national television; and who are the biggest ignoramuses this world consists of? Children! He also has the grand idea of giving these kids difficult questions that uniquely a handful of people in the world know, will surely get a laugh out of him and the audience. Barron also is thinking of making a dance competition between the contestants which will DEFINITELY raise ratings and laughter! He can also commentate on the ridiculousness of the answers and performances with witty quips that will surely move the hearts of the audience, this can give him a brighter chance for a brighter future for his brighter goal... Carl will become so popular... That'll show HIM and EVERYONE ELSE.

Finally, after a 4 hour long search, he had finally found the CBS station that his former classmate talked about. Carl got excited, he can now once and for all accomplish his life long dream! Anyway, he parked the car in a private parking lot and entered the building, there was an armed man there in a security uniform who asked for his ID, Carl frantically checked his wallet and pockets and found absolutely nothing. "Uhhh, hey uhhh... I d-don't fu- uhh h-have my ID but please i have a lot of money \*shows him a thousand dollars\* and i'll p-pay you to let me in!". The man pondered for a few seconds and hesitantly accepted the offer, ultimately letting him in.

He found his way into the main office and knocked on the door, it opened and saw a man in black gazing at him in confusion: "Who are you?", to which Carl responds: "Uh.. I'm a... college student and I want to pitch an idea for a sh-show where some kids like yknow d-d-d-dance, an-and uhh... play... by like... uhhh answering... stuff and... someone will win... i guess...", the man's once confused face contorted to a concerned one. To make the situation less awkward Carl needed to say the genre of the show since what he previously said can put him on a watchlist: "Uhh.. its like a game show.. like family feu-", Carl's justification was interrupted by the man ordering him to leave. Carl refuted his order and tried to bribe him like he did the guard but that obviously didn't work so the man asked security to escort Carl out of the building and now he is no longer allowed to enter the headquarters.

Welp, at least he tried... kind of... Carl depressedly got in his car and wasted another four hours of his life to get back to his home in Sharmont. After a long road rage episode, Carl had finally arrived at his domicile at 6 PM, and to his surprise, his girlfriend, Daisy Kinley, was knocking on the door, perfect timing. Carl exited out of his car quietly, walked up to Daisy, and tapped on her shoulder, she jolted and looked behind her rapidly only to find her loving boyfriend there. She was both relieved yet mad at him due to his abscence in college that day: "Dude! Where the fuck were you?! Ya missed out on a whole ass lesson and we have a friggin' quiz on monday!".

Ah, shit. Oh yeah, nevermind, he doesn't need college anymore, but he doesn't know how to tell her this: "H-heh, well ACSHUALLY, I don't need lame ass college anymore cuz I am rich as HEEEELL now man!", Daisy detected that Carl was acting out-of-character therefore she said: "Nah babe, that's def bull and you know it. Weren't you the homeboy tellin' us that "Ohhh! College! the holy grail for our future!" or whatevs.", Carl felt something tugging at his neurons, it's that same sentiment he felt in the call with Quindarious: abhorrence and a feeling of being mocked. He felt the urge to punch her but instead, he yelled out this to soothe the disgruntling sensation: "WHY DOES NO ONE TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!?" followed by a large groan. Daisy, taken aback by the sudden outburst, thought he was having a mental breakdown or something akin to that, therefore she slapped Carl in order to snap him out of... whatever that was.

Carl in a dazed state apologetically says: "Oh shit, terribly sorry babe, I don't... know what that was, man.", well that worked. "Yyyyeah, you were actin' hella weird, dude. Anyway, so like, Emi and Charlie invited us to veg out at Trunk's Bar, here's the address \*hands piece of paper with the address written on it in black sharpie\* so yeah you down for that, you good with that?", since Carl was extroverted, he would be pleased to do such activities, therefore he accepted.

They both got in the Chevrolet Corvette, which looked impressive to Daisy, then drove to the address and found the bar. They got out of the car and entered the building where they were immediately recognized by their two other friends: Emile Giscard Forestier and Charlotte Merriwether. The latter whispered loudly "Hey! Guys!" and waved her hand to signal where they are; the pair found them sitting on a booth seat next to a window with the one in front of them being vacant; the couple sat down on said vacant booth chair thus a conversation began.

Charlotte, like Daisy, questions Carl about her absence since she always knew that even when he was sick, Carl was always prompt and showed up with a mask so she was pretty worried about him: "Hey Carl... umm...w-why were you absent today? You always arrive the first in class yet you weren't... there earlier.", Carl was already getting sick and tired of this question but decided to calmly answer her question: "Look, Charlie. It’s simple. I just don’t need college anymore. Now can y’all annelids stop asking me this question, please?", Charlotte detected Carl’s strange change in demeanor and behavior but disregarded as him having a bad day and thus, they swiftly moved onto a different conversation.

After a 10 minute rendezvous, the conversation landed on a complaint by Emile on how he can no longer view the shows he once watched in France, especially since the episode of one of his favourite shows he last watched ended on a cliff-hanger; he said he wanted to buy it from a store but it was way too expensive. As he listened to this, Carl’s mind lit up like a light bulb:

“Why not buy a whole bunch of VHS and cassette tapes from a movie store, probably even make a company about it and sell them? I can later make my sho-... wait no, no, no... this doesn’t make a tad bit of sense... Hmmm... Oh,! I got it! How about I build... or pay someone else to build... a system, like a VCR or something like a Nintendo... and it has any show anyone can desire on it! It... it’ll be preloaded on it and... a-and I can make my game show, which in turn can make my dream of being a comedian a reality!”

Emile noticed Carl spacing out so he tried to snap him out: “Carghl!... Carghl!, no answer. Daisy decided to intervene and slammed the table loudly so he can hear it “CARL WAKE UP DUDE!”, Carl was brought back to his senses by the sudden and loud noise. “Yo what’s it with ya today? I kid you not ever since ya won the lottery you’ve been actin’... yknow... a little... space cadet-y and... rude...”, Daisy anxiously asked. Carl ignored her question and directed his attention to Emile: “Emile. You’re majoring in mechanical engineering, right?”, Emile answered bewilderedly with: “Yes? You know me for 3 yearz, why agh you asking zis, you know zis alghedy...”. “Heh, I need you to build like a- like a machine that has all TV shows and movies in it”.

The trio glanced at each other in confusion, Charlotte said: “C-carl sorry to say this but like... that sounds pretty ridiculous...”, before he can agree, Carl desperately said “Please man I need to be happy for once!”. The confusion remains, yet Emile cuts the tension: “Alghite I will see what I can do.”. Carl thanks him for his cooperation and the quartet continue their banter until the clock hit 7:30 PM.

They all said goodbye to each other and went to their respective homes shortly after, not Carl though. The time was 7:42 PM, he had already driven Daisy to her house and now he is heading to the building that the men in green talked to him about the day prior. Carl drove to the field, parked his car in the nearest parking lot and then walked in the grassy opening to find the fabled rectangular structure. Despite it being dark, it didn't take long for him to finally find the building, how inconspicuous; it’s just a stroll away from the highway. Anyway, Carl knocked on the metal door and it shortly after was opened by the same enigmatic, Teodor Rakocevic. The latter invited him in the strange rectangular structure with a warm and endearing welcome with a slight menace factor.

The building, or "hut", was nothing to call home, Carl looked around in the interior and there were uniquely 3 other guys, a lantern, a table with some soda cans, empty chip bags and broken almond hulls. Oh, and that weird green floating head creature Carl saw yesterday, he was chillin' in there too. “Hey, so... thanks for inviting me... i guess... Why am I here again?”, Carl asked. “I tell you yesterday. You talk to YoY”, Teodor responded.

“Listen, man. I don’t know what freaky deaky shit you suckas are up to in here but for the love of Y- for th-... leave me out of it, alright? I already have a girlfriend”, Carl pleaded. He was ready to bolt out of there like a... well... a lightning bolt.
As soon as Teodor opened his mouth in order to say something, YoY decides to intrude in their discussion: “Yo, broseph, this is like, a nice little hangout group man. \*gets closer to Carl and whispers\* and between you and me you already joined it, we formed a pact remember? You can’t leave us now. \*moves back\* and if you try to leave... you won't like what'll happen. Welcome.”

Carl, concerned for his liberty, replied to YoY’s foreboding information: “GODDAMMIT! Okay dude, is there a way I can like… NOT be here?”, one of the other individuals asked: "Wait what we can’t leave?", YoY thought of a million lies to say, yet the only thing that escaped his mouth was “Uhhhh…” Carl frantically says: "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENI-!?!?!?", to shut him up, YoY played a song in order to pacify him: "Alright, my mans. Just so you know we haven't had a spike in new members since like 10 years ago dude... and if you want to “leave” while keeping your mullah you have to convince a lot of people to join our cute little posse." “\*sigh\* I don’t know, man… this feels wrong… look can I just keep my money without, you know, contributing to whatever this is?” the young man questions the entity. Carl’s skepticism angers YoY, yet he decided to remain calm in order to not scare off this new opportunity. “Look, dude. You know what. Remember your life before I met you and just make your decision based offa that, aight?” asserted the creature. Carl remembered all of the years of suffering and agony he was forced to be acquainted with and couldn’t help but feel a combination of hateful aversion and disdain, he did not want to return. Therefore, he nodded in compliance, to which YoY reciprocated with a smirk.

Carl saw the protentional and used one of his ideas to help spread the "posse's" influence for the sake of his own preservation: The movie store idea. He accepted this quest and went to bought the entire stock of betamax and VHS cassette tapes of three different stores, it was a pretty expensive quest yet he still maintained his millionaire status after thoroughly checking. He drove back to the hut with five bags of films and shows contained in them; he looked at the hut and saw its potential in it becoming the building for his store since it was big enough for it, so he got Teodor and the three other people to help renovate it to match Carl's expectations, which also costed a lot of money, a lot of paint buckets were needed.

By 10 PM, the renovation of the hut has been accomplished, the store has been renovated with a green and white exterior (carl's favorite colors), new windows, glass doors, light sources, shelves, a register and other miscellaneous items; there was even pavement from the highway to the store itself. The reason it didn't take long to set up is that YoY helped speed up the process, for the sake of the pacing, all meanings of that word apply here.

The final touch: the sign with the words "Barron Video Rentals", the name of the store, drawn with green paint placed on top of the structure with lights shining it at night. Carl flipped the open/close sign to open, thus beginning its nocturnal debut...

And the beginning of a new era for the YoY friend group posse friend friends homies.

### Act 2 - Corporate Expansion

Despite the fact that Carl's video rental store has been operating for merely a month, it has already become the most popular of its kind, even somehow coming close to Blockbuster Video and Hollywood. It has become so successful that he even won a Nobel prize for it. The prize of best distributor. Carl became richer than ever before, he procured an impressive three-million-dollar net worth just from his store, however, the widespread popularity had a mutually symbiotic relationship with the YoY therapy club which saw an unusually large influx of members who were lured in by music playing in the background of the film. Carl worked as a manager for the store and employees who were either high-school and/or college students alongside YoY club members. The shop also expanded in width and largeness with a nearby parking lot being assembled, and also there seems to be plans for construction of a second floor for more stock and the basement for... “employees” only. Unfortunately, the ever-expanding fame of Barron Video Rentals is inversely proportional to Carl's time spent with his friends, especially his girlfriend. Another forlorn predicament Carl is facing is that he never had the chance to make his own show that he dreamed of making thus nearly neglecting his objective of being a comedian.

However, that changes on 9:27 AM of Christmas day in the same year; as soon as Carl was preparing his shop for opening at 10, he heard a knock on the glass door. He went to check who it was and it turns out it was his foreign friend, Emile Giscard Forestier holding some sort of small square metal box with a few buttons on the top with a VGA cable. Carl opened the door slowly, to which Emile rushed inside the building and deposited the machine on the nearest table: "Zat was heavy! Meghy Cghistmas, by za way!", he proclaimed. Emile looked back at Carl and greeted him and asked how he was doing.

Carl gave a small and concise answer to his question: "Yeah I'm doin' fine, man, whatever.". Emile noticed how aloof Carl looked which is unusual for him, he decided to shrug it off and display the machine that he showed up with: "Ok so, zis iz da machine you asked me to build… it wasn’t cheap… and I asked a WHOLE lot of people fogh help…". Carl's austere expression quickly shifted into a more exhilarated and ecstatic one, he had been waiting for over a month for this day to come. He began repeatedly thanking Emile for his cooperation and asked him about how it worked. Emile plugged it into the store's Television and it showed three squares on the screen: The one on the left was labeled "Movies", the second "TV Shows" and last but not least, "Home Videos".

Emile showed him that the two red buttons on the top moves the selector from one category to another and the green button labeled "select", well, selects the desired category. Emile selected "Movies" and scrolled down through a stately catalogue of what seems to be a hundred movies, this impressed Carl beyond belief, therefore he closed the shop for the day and went to his car with Emile to "show this to investors". Carl drove for about 20 minutes to one of the investor's houses, this person apparently helped advertise Carl's rental store. Carl knocked on the door and thus it was opened by the man he expected, Carl showed him the machine Emile made. The investor took minutes to test it and told Carl that he would want it to be manufactured and to invest in its sales but the machine needed a name.

Carl looked at Emile and looked back at the investor and said the following while stuttering: "Uh... C-Carl's... Ultr-Ultimate... Serv-Uhhh... S- \*looks at a river near the location\* Str- STREAMING... streaming? … yeah… streaming … uh... service. Yeah." Emile buried his face into his hands in second-hand embarrassment, Carl knew that the name was pretty nonsensical. "Alright, that's a deal. I will contact some people in Caterpillar to mass produce this machine. You, sir, just invented the greatest item mankind has seen yet.", said the investor with a congratulatory tone of voice. Carl and thanked the investor profoundly before going back to his car with Emile. However, the latter, was fairly upset, since Carl took all undue credit for his creation, well his (Emile) and his classmates' creation.

"Caghl. You gheally changed, didn't you?" "Wha- What do you mean man? I'm still the same old Carl! Snarly Carly haha!" "No, evegh since ze fighst time you got ghich you became a putain to us all!" "Ohhhh, I see the problem Emi. You're just jealous that **I** became successful and you're all just financially squirming around and wasting time in that shitty fucking college, huh?" "No, no, no, its zat today is cghistmas and you didn't even talk to me, daizy ogh chaghlotte or wish zem a meghy cghistmas, last time you had conversation wiz zem waz at ze bagh a mons ago! Tyson is getting real mad at you becuz of zis". Tyson Kinley, the brother of Carl’s girlfriend, is an aggressive, yet loving family man who is also a bodybuilder meaning he is infinitely brawnier than Barron who is built using popsicle sticks, therefore he knows not to upset Tyson, or else his fragile existence will be shattered. Therefore he come up with a lie in order to not cease his existence: "That's fucking bogus and you know it dude. I talked to Daisy yesterday and she said she still loved me. Plus you're not the one who's my girlfriend so yeah i dont have to talk with YOU every day, you friggin’ annelid." "Well yeah but you need to spend time wiz us, becuz zat's what fghends do...". "Ok, ok alright, man... Hey you know what! Since the machine is gonna give us a lot of money... why not... expand our company? I can found it again and you can be the-the-the co-founder! An-and Charlie and Daisy will be... very high ranked employees! I see this as a win-win dude. You guys will help- uhhh I mean- I'll get to spend more time with you guys and YOU will earn a butt load of money, alright? Sounds like a deal?" "Mmm... i dont know... sughe why not?" "Heh, thats what i like to hear!" And so, he drove Emile back to his home and himself back to BVR and fulfilled his day shift.

The next day, December 26th 1989, as soon as Carl was getting lunch the investor entered the building and said that he was informed by Akram Malek, US senator as well as the founder and leader of Malek Anti-Lawbreaking Crook Organization (a crime-fighting organization), to bring the offer to court and make a judiciary decision on the matter, which was happening at 5 PM that day. Neither Carl or Emile were thrilled to go to court for this and were actually stressing out, however, after spending the whole day breathing into paper bags, they dressed themselves and went to the Sharmont Court of Justice where the conversation of the offer will be held.
It was 5:15 PM, Carl appeared on trial with Emile by his side to testify to why he would like their creation to be invested in, however there was a huge problem… “Where’s your lawyer?” asked Senator Malek. Emile and Carl looked at each other in trepidation only to be followed by Carl saying: “Crap! W-w-w-we were supposed to bring lawyers?”, “Brother, this is a court of law! Of course, you should have brought a lawyer!”, answered the prestigious senator. The awkwardness of the situation led to silence prevailing the courtroom, only for that void to be filled by the sounds of echoing chuckles from the jury bouncing off the high walls of the court.
In an attempt to break the silence, Carl wanted to get to the meat and potatoes of the case and asked right out the gate “A-anyway, so we just wanted to ask ya about-“, “I know what this is for, Barron. And no, I will not allow you to develop this scheme.” Malek forebodingly asserted. Carl and Emile opted for a rebuttal only to, once again, get caught off: “Bu-“, “No, Mr. Barron! Remember the man you saw on the sidewalk a month ago, right before you budged into the store? That was me. I know who you talked to in the alleyway, Barron. I saw him… it… whatever.” Carl tends to forget minute details of his daily life, therefore he took a little bit of time to remember… it was actually him… the man he saw after his initial encounter with YoY. “I’m not taking anymore chances with these predicaments anymore. I sincerely apologize, Mr. Barron and… your friend \*Emile interjects to remind him of his name\* right, Mr. Forestier, I’ll have to detain you both until further notice. Bailiffs!”
As Malek called for the bailiffs as if they were armed knights of a kingdom, Carl and Emile received a high adrenaline rush which led them to dash to the nearest exit as well as continuing to run for their lives on the bustling streets until they lost the stout guards. Are they even allowed to do that? Was that an example of criminal-law corruption? Who knows?
However, what Carl knew is what he had to do, he decided to pursue his business under wraps, he wanted to be inconspicuous just so Malek and his company MALCO do not end up investigating him, therefore he changed his name to Carl Chris Mastree and Emile will now go by “Drew Peacock”. Yup. Furthermore, he called up his friends and girlfriend and invited them to BVR in order to expand the company to its full potential while being discrete. Moreover, seeing as he couldn’t gain the investment money to manufacture the system, he just hired a team of professionals to manually build the CUSS’s from scratch, and by professional Carl means REAL professionals… As in the first people he saw on the street near his shop… He’s gonna be so successful!

In about half an hour, Carl and his three friends all arrived at BVR. He decides to rename the store to "Carl's Ultimate Streaming Service" (CUSS), a reference to its titular product. Not very smart considering he’s trying to escape the law but alright. Carl “Chris Mistree” names himself as the founder and CEO of the company, Emile the co-founder and COO since he created the machine, Daisy the CFO and Charlotte the CIO, which is strange considering that their COLLEGE STUDENTS… but alright. Carl also planned for the building to expand to house more employees and maybe even an industrial area behind the store so they can mass produce the machine themselves.

Fast forward a few months, it is March 2nd 1990, Carl has been coronated as the leader of the “YoY wholesome friends group” after the unexpected decease of its second leader, Teodor Rakocevic. Everything is going better than expected for Carl and his friends. Daisy, Charlotte and Emile, despite being skeptical at the beginning of their careers for not even having a college diploma, have had their job grow on them and would inevitably enjoy it since it aligns with their respective aspirations quite nicely. The CUSS Headquarters itself has expanded to have two new floors with a section of the fourth floor being residential in which Carl and several employees reside in, a larger basement for... you know, and a basic industrial region for manufacturing the CUSS Systems where Emile is in charge. No updates from Malek or his organization MALCO meaning they probably are not aware of the company. This was good for Carl since CUSS was originally a front to resolve his little dilemma that was bestowed onto him by YoY, who is living in the shadows of the basement, had already cured him; Carl continues his conquest. Besides, the trio, especially Kinley, are once again happy that Carl is spending time with them despite him being slightly more agitated.

Carl woke up on the aforementioned day. It's the day that he starts to plan his gameshow that he has been fantasizing for approximately four months on, he's been procrastinating, but NOW he is done messing around.

First of all, no game show is complete without a host, so Carl filled in that role. This is what he’s been waiting for all this time… he does not care about anything else, not about YoY’s “group”, the CUSS system, nothing. This was all a build-up to this. This is his chance to show the world and the people who spited him in the past to show that he is at least worth a damn… and maybe to become way better.
Carl, who is the host with the least, and a few of his higher-ranked employees planned the game show to take place in an abandoned warehouse near the CUSS headquarters. He came up with the name “Dance, Play, Win!” and settled for the show to have a target audience of young children. The aforementioned warehouse was repurposed with a stage, in which had tables with buttons them for the contestants, chairs for a live audience, and a backstage for staff-exclusive purposes. the first episode of the gameshow would set to premiere on July 12th 1990 on CUSS Systems featuring our good friend Mr. Barron as the host. The first episode consists of 10 children competing for a grand prize of 100 thousand dollars, since Carl wipes his ass with that “insignificant” amount of money, and to ascertain that, the children would be going through a 3 round game: the first round “Round 1” is answering slightly difficult, all the while still possible-to-answer questions, the second round “Semi-Finals” is where the kids dance and the one with the two highest ranking dance moves rated by the two hosts wins, which may sound creepy but remember, Carl only organized this game show to ridicule the contestants and revolutionize the entertainment industry. The final round, “Finals” would consist of a dance battle between the two remaining contestants, which obviously was made for the goofs and laughs and was all coated with not so safe humor from Carl who drew a beard on his face with a red sharpie to conceal his identity from any risk of espionage. It was ready.

However, as the first episode of the show concluded, it was met with an overwhelming influx of negative feedback to the chagrin of CUSS and especially Carl. It turns out the criticism was not towards the show or the concept itself but there’s a consensus that the host himself, Carl Barron, was to blame for sullying the show, mainly due to his crude humor that was extremely unsuitable for the young target demographic that he set out to entertain. Barron’s pride was shattered and cried himself to sleep on multiple nights after the reviews came in. If he wanted the show to continue, he would need to step down his role as host and pass the torch to someone else with a more child-friendly approach to the role. He did not want to do that since he would tarnish this opportunity for him to become a comedian but after consulting with a few high prestige employees, he was convinced to change the role to someone else. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and he failed to capture it, leaving him to be bitter for the rest of the week.

Carl advertised this profession as a commercial on local Sharmont television, surely, SOMEONE ought to accept this. In the commercial, Carl states that the three only requirements for the job are to not have a criminal record, not to have offensive humor, have a great and entertaining personality and you have to be over the age of 18.

By 4 PM the next day, a sum of approximately twenty people arrived and applied, yet none of them successfully acquired the job. Among the twenty people were college students, hillbillies, depressed office workers, and many more; not a single one of them met Carl’s third criteria of having a dynamic personality despite meeting the first and only a set few not complying with the second. Carl complained profusely to Charlotte, who was by his side, that he didn’t enjoy the sluggish atmosphere the applicants gave him, that was until a man, a woman and a child were invited into the office and sat down on the chairs across the desk from Carl.

There was something particular about these people, the father had… blue hair? So did his daughter, however the mother had normal blonde hair. The man introduced himself as Oprav Ubezhishche, his wife named Skorbya and his daughter named Proklya. Carl languidly asked about the man’s unnatural hair color, “I do not want talk about it…”, the latter reluctantly responds in a strong Slavic accent. Shrugging that off, the interview goes as usual, yet the couple tells a sentimental tale about how only two weeks prior, they were suffering in the ruinous Ukrainian republic of USSR, which was at that period, economically and socially undermined from within. They couldn’t afford feeding their daughter there, thus they resorted to immigrating to the United States and seeking refuge there; unfortunately, after staying in the place where they thought the grass were greener; they were quick to realize that the grass wasn’t even there to begin with. They were subjugated to the same depressing climate in the ever-collapsing Soviet Union, but multiply it to a factor of 10 due to the unfamiliarity that accompanies neglectful nature of the American streets. However, when they were exposed to Carl’s advertisement on the television of the hotel, they were staying in for only a week, they knew this profession could be a turning point for them financially, since they were in their mid-30s and used the last of their rubles to travel here. This could be the start of a beautiful life, not only for them, but for their innocent daughter too.

Despite Carl’s newly found trust issues with foreigners due to his past experiences, he was captivated, not only by the misty-eye inducing story of the married couple, but also by the sheer passion and energy they imbued onto their cadence and storytelling; after going through all those previous boring applications, he finally found the diamond in the rough, this is the silver lining he was searching for in order to steer his show to success. Charlotte seems to concur Carl’s decision; although, it was out of pity of the couple. Barron decided to accept them, they were ecstatic. Carl only needed one host, but two was fine; the more the merrier after all.

In the course of the next month, Carl did nothing but plan the suits of the two hosts and the location they wanted the show to take place in, since Carl wanted to target a young demographic, he wanted to steer away from the typical formally dressed man as a host, and decided to go for a fuzzier and more comfortable host to attract kids in order for them to watch the show; adults are welcome to watch as well, it’s more money in the pocket after all… and more means to not go back to the hell hole he was once subjected to.

It took a little bit of time but Carl and a few personnel have finally designed the appearance of the two animal suits Oprav and Skorbya will wear: Oprav will wear a blue bear costume, with green gloves, green shoes and an orange vest. Skorbya will wear a yellow bear costume, with an orange bow tie on its head, blue and pink vest, green gloves as well, a green tutu and a pair of shoes with different colors, the left one being red and the one on the right being blue. And so, on July 23rd of 1990, our Russian friends would have millions of eyes set on them in their respective suits and, fortunately they received high praise for their personalities and overall friendliness to the children in the show.

Finally. After months of planning, he can finally show that ungrateful bastard who’s the better entrepreneur, that traitor will regret ever terminating his ownership, hahahhahAHAHAHAHAH.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Since Carl was so enamored that he had finally accomplished his aspirations (he said it he said it there it is the title!!), he decided to reward himself by proposing to his long-time girlfriend, thus on April 20 1990, Carl bought a zirconium-made wedding ring for her and Carl kneeled to her on the CUSS HQ roof in front of the entire personnel and formally asked “WILL YOU F-MARRY ME?????”, to which Daisy honorably accepted. They planned to marry on June 9 1990, since they didn’t want to waste any time, how terrific.

### Act 3 - Trouble in False Paradise

The day of the marriage has arrived, it was held in the local church near the neighborhood Carl grew up in. Everyone was invited, Daisy’s brother, Tyson Kinley, who supported the marriage, Charlotte’s parents, all the YoY cultists disguised as CUSS employees, and even YoY who was hiding inside a bush; the only ones who weren’t invited were Jeff and William Barron and Emile’s family since they were overseas.

All was well and good until the moment where the couple is supposed to kiss, Carl can hear YoY leave the bush, he thought that the demon is going to crash the party, however Carl looked back to the bush YoY was in, as Daisy was leaning, but found nothing. This led to a humiliating moment for the couple where it looked like Carl refused Daisy’s kiss, however this was remedied by an explanation that he heard an intrusive noise behind him, thus restarting the vows, ending with a normal kiss.

After the enormous party, Carl and Daisy decided to go back home (the 4th floor of the CUSS HQ), however, when they arrived, they were welcomed with a grotesque site on the side of the building: a blonde woman who seemed to be in her 30s, was being masticated by a green ball of terror, YoY. The lady was holding a crying infant and, in the vicinity, a toddler also crying and shouting, distraught at the site she’s exposed to; no one was around to help. As soon as they were exposed to this putrid scene, Daisy’s initial raw reaction was physical: she vomited out of disgust. However, Carl’s reaction was odd, he was clearly appalled by the situation but remained calm, it is as if he is accustomed into being thrown into these types of conundrums. Carl walked to the mean green: “Yo dude what the f-FRIGGIN HECK are you doing??”. “Come on man that was a total snoozefest, I had to do somethin’ rad and fun. Plus she didn’t accept man! Also you should do somethin’ ‘bout these kids man shut them up”, YoY said before disappearing into the night, quite literally.

“Dude what’s going on?! What was that THING?! WHAT DID IT DO TO THAT CHICK???!!”, Daisy frantically asked in a state of shock. Carl shrugged impatiently as a response to her question and subsequently approached the eldest living child, he asked if she was okay and what her name was, to which she replied: “I-its Laverna Ouxmal a-and my liddle brother is Mike.... a-and N-no s-sir, im not okay! Mama is sleeping forever!”, which was followed by a gut-wrenching sob. Carl looked at the woman’s corpse holding Mike and looked back at Laverna. “Alright, I’ll call th-the cops ok? J-just wait.”, said Carl reassuringly.
And so, he had fulfilled his promise, went to his room swiftly while bumping into a few desks and dialed 911. After a brief explanation of the scene, the police state that help will be on the way, thus ending the call. Carl returns to the rancid scene, however Daisy seemed sullen: “Carl. What the fuck was that shit, man? W-why are you so damn calm and why did you talk to... that thing as if you were homies with him?!”, she demanded. “I’ll tell you after the police leave.”, Carl said calmly.

“W-what?! Bro don’t tell me ya know something we don’t!”, Daisy exclaimed. Carl recognized her suspicion, yet he can’t afford to confess about the reality of the company they have built from ground zero, thus he aggressively stated: “Man do ya really want me to sound like a broken record or what?”. Daisy had no choice but to loosen and stay quiet, she doesn’t want to hear him shout anymore, especially with the scarred orphans besides them.

After twenty minutes, the police had finally arrived. One of the three officers took note of the scene and asked the two witnesses what they witnessed. Carl told them about everything, the wedding, the sound he heard before they kissed, and the discovery; he decided to tell them about YoY and called him “a weird green... anim...aaal?”. The officers were suspicious and state cautiously: “Sir are you or the lady in possession of contraband? Like, y’know…substances? Sharp objects?”. Carl rolled his eyes, “Alright, officer, no disrespect to ya, but why the heck would I call the police on myself plus lie about it? Do you think I’m an annelid?”. The officers stood in silence trying to rationalize the situation, until the quietude was broken by Laverna: “H-he’s saying the truth! It was a green ball that hit mama!”

This sole statement sparked intrigue and confusion within the three authority figures, therefore they needed more information on how this irregularity has occurred. They put the woman’s gory cadaver inside a body bag and deposited it in the trunk of their vehicle for an autopsy. However, before they drove off, Daisy stopped them and said: “Wait! Mr. Officer dude, we wanna adopt these kids! I don’t want them to, like, suffer in a lame orphanage... or somethin’.”. “Meet us at the Sharmont police station tomorrow.”, the driver said before they drove away.

The pair entered the building after the whole ordeal, yet Daisy still isn’t satisfied. On their way to their room, she asked Carl about that green entity and how he approached it so colloquially. As he promised, Carl very hesitantly recounted all the experiences he embarked on since the fateful night he first encountered it in the alleyway, from the lottery incident all the way to the failed marriage kiss and everything in between; this, unsurprisingly, surprised Daisy; in fact, she was rightfully dismayed. This conversation sparked the apparition of YoY which had terrified our unsuspecting friend. Carl obviously couldn’t let her walk away with such undesirable information; therefore, he did what he thought would cover up his tracks and let YoY play his “splendid” tunes. Similar to a previous wedded couple we had the pleasure of exploring, the wife could not fight against her husband due to being soothed by YoY’s “marvel”; she’ll forget about it.
However, Carl is, more-or-less contemplating about some issues about this YoY creature. Did he ever question what species YoY even is? Why does YoY malignantly murder random civilians like this random lady? Carl was surrounded by evil scum who target the weak-minded like him, until he was saved by YoY, so the logical conclusion would be that maybe the woman he killed tonight was… ah, of course! A barbaric mother who abuses her two children! Maybe that would be the case. It would be quite uncharacteristic for YoY to attack an innocent woman considering He runs a “wholesome friend group”, then again, Malek did think something was up with Him, considering he wanted to arrest us and all that… who knows anymore…? You know what, he’ll just assume from here on out that YoY is a benevolent entity that uses chaotic evil means to get rid of the world’s evil. It would make more sense considering all the evidence, however he’ll stay skeptical just for a bit. Carl decided to go to sleep after having all these thoughts race through his mind.
After waking up the next day, the two decided to go to the police station to adopt the two new additions to the Barron family, or Mastree… whatever Barron sounds better. After a long drive and a boringly extensive compilation of legal paperwork, at the end of the day, they had successfully managed to adopt them both, thus officially and legally renaming them to Laverna Barron and Michael Barron.

Let’s fast-forward to an important date, March 24th 1991, Carl told his children about YoY’s “formidability” and how he helped him on his exploits by eliminating egestion wastes from his life; he jokingly asserts that the moral of the lesson is “to always let a green goblin head fix all of life’s problem’s for you” which was followed by him belly laughing. This did not have a substantial effect on Michael since he was too young to comprehend the nature of such pleasantries, however, it seems to be exponentially effective towards Laverna, who seemed to be the obedient type, took the joke way too seriously to the point where she actually consults YoY at times where she verbally squabbles with her brother, leading to YoY telling Michael in a rebuking tone: “not cool, lil bro :(“, this makes Michael feel less motivated to be a “good boy” to anyone. Nevertheless, the matrimonial couple did not notice these discrepancies so they were so enamored by their adopted kids to the point where they thought that it would be a great idea to give birth to a biological child. And so, that night, they tried for a baby. In the following morning, after much anticipation, Daisy’s pregnancy test came positive. This caused a great celebration in the company, but especially by her parents, brother, and her two close friends… and Aycock.

These following nine months were akin to something out of a dream, the company has seen unprecedented growth in income, Daisy and the fetus have been healthy, the YoY friend group is culminating a large quantity of members, the pregnancy is going great and Laverna and Michael are beginning to submit; the game show, “Dance, Play, Win!” has become one of the most popular game shows of all time due to the unparalleled and hilarious challenges the contestants would face, the show’s success was also aided by the bubbly and cheerful personalities of the host, nonetheless Carl, in these months, was bottling up sentiments of severe envy from the two hosts stealing his spotlight, he opted to try to really hard to forget about his life goal of being a comedian, yet he just couldn’t, they got all the money and fame for HIS role, how could he even TRY to forget this?! Despite all of that, this was the golden age of CUSS, yet the dark age of television, since why bother with cable, in which you wait hours for your favorite show to air, but with CUSS you already have it at the palm of your hand!

(I know I’m skipping time a lot but nothing important happens between these events.) Anyways, it’s Christmas eve, December 24th 1990. As he was washing his face after waking up, thoughts about failing to seize the opportunity of achieving his true dream have failed to cease. Carl shamefully looks at himself in the mirror, he built this empire for this very purpose, that’s all he cared about. He knew he was inept at most things yet he didn’t know his inability would spitefully follow and hound him this far. This incompetence from him only birthed an illusion of a happy life: a wife, two, eventually three children, a successful company and bottomless wealth; yet, despite possessing all of these materialistic values, he could not ignore that soccus-shaped void in his heart, to make the feeling of worthlessness go away, he needs to suffuse meaning into that hole, filling it up, no matter what it takes.

Daisy woke up while screaming in pain, Carl’s chain of thoughts was broken by this and rushed into their bedroom. As soon as he entered, he saw that the bed was wet and Daisy said that “it was coming out!” to which he assumed it was the baby. Therefore, he drove to the local hospital and checked her in there. Carl spent the whole day waiting and waiting, he was sadly subjected to the anguish and painful screams of his wife, however these gut-wrenching screams were being drowned-out by soft classical music; how considerate of these doctors to play her music while she’s suffering! Until noon, where the screaming and crying was suddenly replaced by those of a baby. He was excited; he can finally lay his eyes upon the heir of CUSS, however, when he entered the room he was met with an unfortunate occurrence.

The doctors were all encircling the hospital bed in which Daisy is laying on, with nothing but the sound of their confusion as well as that of the shouting infant. they heard his footsteps and looked back at Carl, they inconsolably told Carl what had occurred, Daisy is dying due to complications of giving birth to the baby boy, Carl dashed to her side angrily and she was holding the infant and a birth certificate with the name “Matthew Recyde Barron” crudely… she whispered into Carl’s ear, in her final breath, she said: “Please, Carl, this thing… that… DISGUSTING thing… make… him… suffer for me… please…” before looking into the baby’s eyes and succumbing to her terrible fate.

Carl could feel something particular in the inner-machinations of his brain; it is as if it was imploding. He looked at his wife’s carrion than looked back at the crying baby boy and held it in his two hands; she wants the infant to suffer… now Carl was no longer thinking rationally.

He wanted to fulfill her final wish.

No matter what it takes.

### Act 4 - From Golden to Dark

In the coming months, after his late wife’s funeral, Carl would isolate himself in his 4th floor home in the CUSS HQ, the only company he had was not his company, but it was his children, Laverna, Mike and Matt. Carl didn’t want to end his biological son’s life after what the former thought the latter did, not out of the good of his heart, but he wanted nothing but to give his “bastard son” the worst life possible; he wants to make it long, tormenting and torturous, it’s what she would have wanted. It was not only Matthew who has been pissing him off, but it was also his adoptive son Michael. The reason for that is, unlike his sister, Mike is getting roudier and roudier, it seems as if his behavior is getting worse by the second and Carl just isn’t equipped with the knowledge and the know-hows to iron a wrinkly piece of cloth, therefore the only child he is fond of is Laverna who is obedient and still is, unbeknownst to Barron, accepting YoY in her life and even started to have deep and meaningful conversations with Him. But for the other two, he wanted to make them suffer and show them what its like to be a traitor, an inconvenience, scumbags who were supposed to be a source of comfort and affection to make Carl feel better only to end up being in the same realm of malignance as his brother, father and old neighbors. He, to teach them a lesson in being nicer, started off lightly though, such as barely feeding them (which is still bad), yet gradually, the infants’ turmoil would proportionally increase with time.

Charlotte and Emile, unbeknownst to the malevolence of Carl’s actions inside, would frequently check on Carl, his son, and both of their well-beings; they would do that by ringing the doorbell to the 4th floor. Carl would occasionally answer and say that they are both doing splendidly, despite them knowing that its far from the truth. In one of their visits in February 1992, Emile reluctantly asked Carl if one of the two of them could become the CEO of CUSS, “FRIGGIN’ NO!1!!”, Carl shouted in rage. Carl shook his head in dismay and regret of what he did and remedied his brief yet effective verbal attack: “I’m sorry, man… look alright you’re both in charge now just fuc- leave me alone…”. “Carl, no, we need an active CEO ‘cause we need money bro we are, like, in a deficit now! And you sulking and moping around isn’t helping at all!”, Charlotte argues.

As Carl listened to her argument and his eyes shot up, the company not making any money? That’s ludicrous! He told them to leave and that he will be with them in a second. After a long train of thought, Carl decided to walk out the room, leaving Matt there, and took back his position as chief executive officer so that the company can have a positive monetary influx once again.

A few months has passed and something has changed within CUSS. No, the company is making money again, the gameshow is going strong and better than ever, yet the employees couldn’t help but detect an irregularity within the chief officers: Carl Barron’s demeanor. Carl was always viewed as an uptight and strict authority figure yet as of recent, he has become infinitely more hostile, aggressive and confrontational. It also note-worthy that the general employees’ wages have been docked and severely reduced unjustly, the Russian game show hosts are not excluded from this plague. Moreover, the employees also witnessed Carl mistreating two out of three of his children, Michael and Matthew; he was clearly favoring Laverna and treating her as if she is royalty, yet he is neglecting his other two younger children. The employees were acutely aware of his wife’s passing and thought that his rage was a grieving mechanism, yet no one had the gull to confront him about his radical personality alteration, except for two unsuspecting hosts.

Oprav and Skorbya allocated all of their salary earnings to the schooling of their daughter, thus rendering them impoverished and unable to live in these dire conditions. After months of monetary foraging and tumult, they accumulated the confidence to confront Carl Barron, which they would eventually regret. On July 16 1992, a whole week prior to the 2-year-anniversary of Dance, Play, Win! Oprav and Skorbya ascended to the 4th floor by the means of the CUSS HQ elevator and knocked aggressively on the door. After a little bit of waiting, Carl opened the door and they found him holding a somewhat malnourished infant, “Salutations, my dear employees, what th- what is it that you need?” he uttered in a rather blaring tone. “You not give me enough money for daughter! We cannot love in condition!”, said the desperate man. Skorbya notices that the baby that Carl is holding is physically unhealthy and points it out to him.
Carl: “Oh so you haven’t milked me dry enough? Ya stole my dream and you’re over here cryin’ about it!”
Oprav: “But you give us job!”
Carl: “AAAAAAAALL I wanted was to impress people with my jokes and YOUUUUU stole my chance away from me! Making money off of MY dream, huh! ‘Oh! Me no money me commie me daughter no schooling’ oh FUCKING BOOHOO! COPE!!! SKILL ISSUUUUUEE!!!!1!”
Skorbya: “Nevermind that! What is wrong with baby!?”
Carl: “This… disgusting thing? Do you really care about murderous annelids like him?”
Skorbya: “M-m-murderous? It’s baby!”
Carl: “It KILLED my wife! How do children betray me?? CHILDREN!!!!!!!!”
Oprav: “B-but that not how biology work… no need for starving.”
Carl: “St-sta-HAHAH-st-WOOOW I see how this is! You’re just like everyone I trust!”
Skorbya: “W-wh…?”
Carl: “First you steal my dream, next you ACCUSE me of starvation??? You’re just trying to frame me!”
This back and forth between the couple and the man who lost it all continues on for a long time. Good thing Laverna and Micheal were playing with YoY in their bedroom so they wouldn’t have to see or hear this. He doesn’t want to argue with them anymore and he needs to end by any means necessary, therefore he took the matter to his own hands and dropped Matthew on the ground, this sparked shock among the two employees, and subsequently ran inside his bedroom and returned with a pistol.

They both raised their arms up in surrender, yet that wasn’t enough for Barron’s mercilessness. Carl fired a bullet into Oprav’s skull, killing him in a matter of femtoseconds. Skorbya looked down at her late husband whose death she lamentably witnessed, she kneeled down on the ground and sobbed, since Carl didn’t want any witnesses he shot her as well thus rendering her as deceased. He did not regret it, this generated a sentiment of relief. Carl told YoY, who was excitedly watching the altercation, to use his “benevolence” to erase his fingerprints from the corpses and to blame it on a random employee.
“I killed scummy annelids, just like you do. Are you proud of me?”

In the following hours of the day, this incident became widespread information since the two hosts of the most popular game show on television and CUSSES were found murdered in the office of an employee named Phineas Gonzalez who was incarcerated after the analysis of compelling evidence, such as fingerprints on the murder weapon and the victims. Gonzalez pleaded for the police not to send him to prison since his parents needed retirement money and how someone named “YoY” will curse them for eternity. Due to this double murder, the “Dance, Play, Win!” show has been cancelled and all of episodes were taken off of store shelves and will no longer be played on CUSSES and national television, which took a large beating to CUSS’s stock. A large funeral was planned throughout the entire rest of July and August for the two hosts so they can honor them conscientiously. It took place on August 30th 1992 and was attended by the CUSS employees, the avid viewers of the game show, and even Laverna and Micheal Barron. However, it wasn’t attended by their daughter, for some reason, and Carl Barron, the CEO. That was one problem solved.

During the funeral, Carl was laying down on his bed as he satisfactorily listened to the incessant weeping on the other side of the window. The phone on his night stand rung, knowing it was Tyson for the millionth time; Carl decided to answer the phone just to see what would happen. As he expected, he was bombarded with the same, oversaturated, threats and guilt-tripping, which was followed up by “MEET ME AT MY HOME BITCH I’LL FUCK YOU UP!!! IF I WIN I’LL CALL MALCO TO INFORM THEM ABOUT WHAT THE FUCK YOU’VE BEEN DOING” to which Carl eagerly “declined”, yet he has other plans in mind.

If Tyson and Carl got into a physical battle, the latter would instantly lose due to the former’s herculean mien. Therefore, he planned on going to their house uninvited for a very very VERY special surprise. And so he did. He said goodbye to his two adoptive children and went into his vehicle to Tyson’s family house. The ride didn’t take an ample amount of time since Carl memorized the route he needs to go on since he and Daisy would visit his brother-in-law, the latter’s wife,their four kids and their foster kid often, and since that day was a Sunday, he assumed that they all would be home, ready for his brother-in-law’s last visit.

Carl, who wore a black hoodie to be inconspicuous, had brought with him a canister of gasoline and a lighter, therefore, you can infer what he is about to do, and it doesn’t help that the domicile was wooden. In the middle of painting the house with the combustible fluid, he was caught in the act by one of Tyson’s daughters, Amber Kinley, who was playing outside with her foster brother turned best friend, a 13-year old boy named Jude Escargot, in their backyard: “Oh! Hiii! Are you the gardener that mommy hired? She told me to to tell you your job! Do you want me to go get her?” Amber said. “Uh, no-no-no, I’m fine on my own… uhhh… what did she want you to tell me?” Carl replied with a deeper pitch in his voice in order to sound like a different individual. “Oh oh! You need to water the flowers in the backyard not the front yard, haha!” she responded. “Uh. Y-Yeah okay.” Carl said to affirm his comprehension. It’s a miracle that she didn’t recognize him, this led to him slowly traversing to the opened backyard.

However, as soon as he was going to fade from the girls’ vision behind the house, Carl heard Amber loudly shout “OH! YOU LOOK KINDA LIKE UNCLE CARL! He’s daddy’s old friend! I don’t know why he doesn’t visit anymore… When I ask daddy he says that because he’s a meanie but he was really really nice to me…”. “UHHH NO! My name is… uhhh… J-Jon-JONATHON ermmm… Gooch? You know what frig it, nevermind.” Carl gave up on preserving this façade and through a burning matchstick on the house which caused the entirety of it to be set ablaze. Carl ran through the screaming child, accompanied by a bewildered Jude, dashed into his car and drove into the immensity of the city. Mission accomplished, now he can no longer be harassed.

An hour after the premeditated house fire, the TVs of every American individual would be blasted with the words “BREAKING NEWS” followed by a re-telling of the story: “On today’s news, we had a house fire at [REDACTED] where 4 out of 5 family members died in. Furthermore, Jude Escargot, their foster child’s body isn’t found and he is suspected to have escaped the scene. More on that with Emma, Emma? Yes, thank you, Josh, alright, we are here at the house the fire took place in. Police are officially calling it the Sharmont Blaze Incident, in which the entire Kinley household, who were inside, would succumb to the flames, except for one right here, Amber Kinley. (\*whispers\* Hey honey you wanna be on TV? It’s ok we’ll help you just tell us what happened!) \*Amber takes the microphone and starts speaking in a crying and frantic tone\* Y-yeah, hi my name is Amber and-and what happened was \*sobs\* I was playing here with my foster bother \*snuffle\* then was this man who came and he looked \*snuffle\* weird. He was watering the \*snuffle\* plants just like how \*almost starts sobbing\* mommy asked him to. \*regains composure\* And he took a stick with a fire in it and dropped it and it burned all of our house AND KILLED THEM! \*starts weeping\* AND MY BROTHER IS GONE. \*Reporter takes back the microphone and whispers\* (We’ll give you the help you need, ok? You’re super brave for telling us!) Alright so the firefighters behind me informed us earlier that there was a smell of gasoline emanating in the air so the “watering” could very well be a case of arson. We will probably update this story later, idk.” End of broadcast. The only lead they have to go on is that the culprit is male and that they drive a subpar car that could be a burner car.

The next day, Amber, now homeless and alone, would wander the streets of Sharmont for the objective of finding her foster brother who was outside with her, she traveled from the suburbs to the city on foot, which was an exasperating and demanding task. So much for the “help” the police department promised. This search would span three days where her foraging was unsuccessful, however she did undergo some novel experiences such as sleeping on the ground using a newspaper, escaping gangs and creepy people alongside almost being chased around the downtown area by a rabies-ridden dog; claiming that she was suffering would be an understatement. On the fourth day, she woke up at 8 AM, tired and anxious, she didn’t want to continue this anymore. Therefore, she sat on the blazing asphalt of the road she woke up next to and waited. It did not take long for a vehicle, specifically a truck, to arrive; she embraced her fate.

As the beeping of the truck got louder, so did her heart, which she could her beat rapidly as if an alarm clock was taped to her ear. The loudness was overwhelming and yet a third sound broke through the mold, a man’s frantic screaming as she felt a sweaty palm grab her forearm and pulled her with a robust might onto the sidewalk. Her eyes were closed the entire time yet when she opened them, she was lying on the ground looking directly to the sky and with the sun 90 degrees above her, it was so bright. As she was blocking the sunrays with her small hands only for a dark figure to do it for her instead. This silhouette, blocking the sun with their head, asking if she was okay in an overwrought tone, Kinley would confirm that she is fine.

The silhouette gets her back on her feet, it is revealed that the silhouette is that of a man, who appeared to be in his twenties, he introduced himself as “Andrew Bishop” and asks if there is a place for her to go, to which Amber says no. Bishop says that he is part of the Malek Anti-Lawbreaking Crook Organization (MALCO) and they are willing to take her in, which was a kind gesture that she accepted.

Anyways, as for Jude, he was not very fond of the Kinleys and only liked Amber. When Carl set the house afire, his heart did too. Jude only saw fire through the house’s chimneys and it seemed like playing with it would be entertaining and Carl did nothing but confirm that in his act of arson. So, as soon as the fire spread to the second floor of the house, he knew he had to find the man who caused this, so he ran to the city in an attempt to find the vehicle which the person drove.

On the fourth day, the same day Amber Kinley was found by MALCO, Escargot found the exact car that he was searching for after wandering the city for hours, apparently, it was parked behind a corporate office building belonging to CUSS, pretty dumb but bold move of the perpetrator to literally park that is connected to a criminal case right in public view. Jude decided to enter the building in hopes of finding the man and after going up a couple of floors and knocking on every single door, he found him. After a string of failures on the third floor, he decided to go to the fourth and final floor where there is merely a singular green door that is waiting for it to be knocked, and so he complied to its knock-ibility. A man, who seemed eerily familiar, responded to the knocking and opened the door… Jude could recognize that scraggly bear from anywhere, it’s the man that set the Kinley household on fire.

Carl was afraid to see the child, since he was mostly afraid of his past, aka 4 days ago, coming back and biting him in his swamp ass. Carl told the child to leave and to not report him, so he complied with the second part of the sentence but not the first. Escargot thinks was really entertained by his act and wanted to be friends with him and after a small back and forth between the two individuals, Carl gained an acquaintanceship with the child that witnessed his crimes and decided to take him in, which was a kind gesture that he accepted.

Despite Carl having one more child to confide to for moral support, generally, things are not looking up, they're looking down, CUSS has been losing a lot of their money due to the passing of the Ubezhishche couple and the cancelation of Dance, Play, Win! In addition to that, CUSS has been receiving threats from MALCO strangely right after he met Jude, but Carl decided that ignoring them would be the best course of action. During the final days of 1992, people are realizing that Carl is becoming more and more unhinged ever since the death of his wife. All of the employees are starting to become tired of his callous autocracy where wages get docked, people get fired when they commit the slightest of mistakes alongside the fact that Carl puts little effort into moderating the higher-ups who are all notorious for sleazily harassing female employees sexually; this was all wrapped around the fact that Barron is singlehandedly killing cable Television due to the mass amount of CUSS users. Consequently, the employees turned to the COO, Emile Forestier, for help and leadership, they were hoping that he would be the lead a revolution to overthrow Barron because they figured that, since he is French, throwing coups and leading insurrections must be a specialty of his.
Emile would be flattered that they chose him, hence, he decided to help them with their ideas of mutiny since he too could not withstand Barron’s baseness, he settled on making Charlotte Merriwether be his right-hand-man, or rather right-hand-woman, since the sentiment about Carl is mutual. While Emile was more concentrated on serving the people and bringing them what he and they wanted, Charlotte was, more or less, thinking about other matters. She did want morale to increase, however, she just wanted the old Carl back. She missed him. She missed his funny jokes that come in, sometimes, at inappropriate times but that still gave a rise out of her. She missed his charisma, his determined ambitions, his tenderness, his willingness to help his friends against danger despite being a poltroon. She missed all of these good qualities that all just degraded into nothing but a shell of his former self, a barbed envy-ridden shell who thinks the world is against him. She believed she had the power to revive the old Carl back by making him resign from his role as CEO since she believes that this is the source of his distortion.

The mass of employees was ecstatic to have Emile be the potential gatekeeper for a future that depends on everyone’s best interest, despite that there was a vocal minority who saw Emile as nothing but a mere tool to take advantage of in order to get what they personally want: demands, money, shelter, food and other commodities that would be hard to personalize, and funny enough, most of the people demanding these qualities are well-off. Remember that a small percentage of a large number will end up being a big number as well and since the employee base of CUSS is massive, of course there would be a large amount of people being needy. Emile thought nothing of it, he would help these people in order to receive what they ask for, however the more the requests he completes, proportionally, the more come in. Employees who weren’t part of the minority thought that it would be unfair that some people receive treatment while others are left to rot, so they would file in requests as well, this would, undoubtedly overwhelm Emile to the point of spending the last days of 1992 having nothing but mental breakdowns.

On New Year’s Day of 1993, Emile would ask Charlotte who was always by his side for a way out, to leave this hell he helped create. She tried to reassure him and tried to convince him to continue his career but he just snapped at her and said “LET ME OUT OV HERE!!”, Charlotte was startled by this spontaneous response so she frantically told him “You can always resign!” to which he came up with an idea on the spot. How about… a fake suicide? He knew he could not just up and leave since the employee-base has some bad apples that can track him down and possibly kill him for treason as if they were stuck in medieval times, so that is his only escape plan that he can successfully pull off, and maybe these ungrateful sacs de merdes would learn a lesson or two. He told her his plans to fake a suicide to escape to which she, surprisingly, was willing to beg him to stay at first but completely understood why it needed to happen. Hence, after a little bit of planning Charlotte gave an announcement that Emile was found deceased by hanging in his home, but in reality, he simply took his car and drove to the nearest airport to go back to his family in France after a final goodbye to Charlotte. The employees were emotionally shattered by this “tragedy” as not only did they lose their bolt cutters to break their chains of corporate captivity, they also lost a great person, who in their eyes, was a very generous and charitable person; hence, the employees believed that Carl was responsible for the death of the Frenchman in one way or another.

Carl was made aware about his foreign friend's death and, despite being extremely annoyed by his prying and visits, he was truly devastated because of it maybe even more than the worker base. A "burial" for Emile was organized by Charlotte to which Carl attended this time; but, in reality, it was a burial of a mannequin they bought from a random warehouse with a blond wig put on top of it. Charlotte remains the CFO of the company and confirms that she doesn't want to leave yet for the sake of her best friend, she knows that his demeanor changed drastically since the founding of BVR, yet she will try all she can to right his wrongs and make him return to his once prudent, humorous and level-headed self. Besides the company lost two of its primary chief officers in the past so someone has to stay.

On January 11th 1993, CUSS would take another serious blow due to allegations by a person that Carl used to know, a person that he used to live next to whose mother passed away due to cancer, it was his old neighbor from the Carcinoncos family. Astra Carcinoncos would see Emile’s suicide and her personal circumstances as an opportunity to reveal to the world that Carl Barron indirectly murdered her mother due to the fact that Carl stole their lottery money, which is the reason why he is so immensely successful today. After this predicament, CUSS lost a lot of supporters to the point where not only are people cut their support to CUSS but they are destroying their CUSS Entertainment Systems as well. Carl’s resentment for this family as well as his distorted views on the world was only fueled by this. After going on a mindless rant to himself about how self-proclaimed-ly terrible his life is, Carl was found by MALCO and proceeded to be arrested later that day for fraudulence and theft, but due to the mass amount of money he possesses he was able to win the case with the most sophisticated lawyers in the hundreds, therefore, he now walks a free man a week later to the chagrin of Akram Malek. He procedurally donated a million dollars, money he can carelessly wipe his ass with, to Cancer Research in order for the public to respect him again and to reinstate his tarnished reputation. Due to this incident, Carl wanted to get back at Astra, he wanted to spite her before she can spite him further so he made a public statement on CUSS systems and to the two people who still watch television that would consist of him berating and slandering ALL of the Prosokromans in America and stating that “they are all liars and frauds”. This indirectly caused Americans to be racist towards them, thus becoming another oppressed race. By the same token, the YoY “friend group” became xenophobic and use the Prosokromans as… “martyrs”.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), Carl spent half of the company's vault on the attorneys and with the mass supporter loss, CUSS has entered an irredeemable dark age.

### Act 5 - Beyond Redemption

#### Part 1 - Pro Tem Prosperity

After the inevitable and ineradicable death of cable television in September of 1993, people were forced to look to CUSS, therefore the company was inevitably increasing in revenue once again, which made Carl content. However, after a little while, Carl started to feel depressed since only one half of his children, Jude and Candice, are adherent to his rules; however, he is glad that these two are hitting it off nicely. Plus, Jude attained a new hobby which is programming. He thought about his dire state more and realized that only one of his three closest friends have stuck with him. It was just him and Charlotte remaining, just like the “good old days”, as she calls them. Well there’s a missing sister, but yknow. He can see that she noticed how miserable he is and that shes trying to remind him of their childhood, his old self and her late sister that Carl had almost forgotten about.

It’s good that Charlotte was talking to him outside of her check-ups, since he is vigorously desperate for companionship other than two of his children therefore, on one of their rendezvous’ Carl asked Charlotte if she would want to go out with him, to which she accepted in a disinclined manner. He believes that she only wanted to date him out of fear and not love, but at least he won’t be alone anymore.

Fast-forward a year and the relationship has been going really well to the point where Charlotte noticed a slow yet immense progress in Carl’s behavior and how he is returning to form to YoY’s displeasure, he is even treating the employees and ALL of his children fairly after a series of conversations with Merriwether convincing him to do so, he even gained the courage to apologize to them and to compensate. Overall, Barron is becoming way healthier. He even congratulated his old business partner, Quindarious Aycock, on his wife’s third pregnancy and check on his father and brother, William and Jeff. The higher-ups of CUSS even decided to make three new kids' shows that would be more popular and successful than “Dance, Play, Win!” ever was. YoY noticed Carl’s stark change in behavior but decided to let it slide since they are still “spreading the influence” efficiently. MALCO was bribed by Carl but Malek didn’t want to stop investigating. Moreover, as Carl’s life quality increased, so did his motivation to finally accomplish what he set out for, becoming a comedian; and he did just that. Carl started performing in places and even shows that are actually NOT targeted to children and instead opted to those with more mature audiences; relative success was found with this. Charlotte alone dragged CUSS out of the deep waters of failure back to the holy light of success and the general public is seeing it in a positive light once again.

More developments include the addition of 3 new floors for studios and offices and the refurbishment of the 4th floor from an apartment to another studio. Carl hired thousands of people to construct a huge mansion next to the CUSS building that he fondly named “The Barriwether Manor” which is a portmanteau of the surnames of the owners; the construction of the new floors and the mansion were finished on August 31st 1994 where Charlotte, Carl, and his children moved in permanently.

After Carl was informed about the finalization of the mansion, he wanted to surprise Charlotte by proposing to her in front of it, which is why he went out the day prior to its completion to buy the most expensive ring from the local jewelry store. He waited until the evening for the shifts to end and invited her outside the manor to surprise her, and so she came. She was happily flabbergasted at the mansion’s exterior appearance, that was when Carl kneeled and showed her the ring before saying some cheesy cliché shit that ended with “Will you marry me?”, to which she happily accepted in an INCLINED manner. They planned to marry on February 2nd 1995 because 2 + 2 = 5. Until that day, the couple and the children profoundly enjoyed their time in the manor which had 6 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. The CUSS exclusive shows were doing great and everyone in the family-friendly friend group as well as the company was content. Now it’s the fabled day, February 3rd ’95, everyone, including Quindarious and his family, Laverna, Michael and Matthew were all invited, he was not very courageous to talk to William and Jeff since he was too afraid of rekindling interactions with them. The marriage goes better than last time and everyone had a great time.

That’s all for the two as of now, we will now take interest to their old “dead” friend on the other side of the pond, Emile Giscard Forestier. He is currently residing in Lyon, France in his parents’ home since it’s almost been a decade since he last saw them. He wanted to satisfy his true passion of being an auto-mechanic and not the right-hand-man of a disturbed tyrant of a megacorporation; he wanted to let that profession of his be behind him and only live in his past.

However, he had only Carl Barron and CUSS to thank for helping him with his mechanical skills and giving him enough money to fund the foundation of a niche auto mechanic business in his home city named “Atelier de Mécanique Automobile Forestier” (Forestier’s Automechanic Shop) in February of 1993, a month after he left the United States. He thought to hire his younger brother and subsequently advertise employment on a newspaper to which three people qualified, however they weren’t very experienced, unlike their employer, which opens a large room for mistakes.

Five months after the beginning of the establishment, it was relatively successful yet it wasn’t perfect with a lot of amateurish errors being committed. A prominent incident that happened is that one of the employees misdiagnosed a customer’s car problems, and after an hour of treating the wrong part of the car, the customer said that she will “speak to his manager”, to which the young employee complied into bringing him to the scene.

Emile appears and the lady automatically felt attraction towards him and asked for his name, to which he replied with: “Errrrm… je m’appelle Emile Giscard Forestier, c’quoi ton problem, eh?”. (Um… My name is Emile Giscard Forestier, what’s your problem?” “Rien rien, mon amour. Est-ce que vous pouvez réparer ma voiture correctement, s’il vous plait ? » (Nothing, nothing, my love. Can you repair my car correctly, please?) she responded romantically. Confused by the suddenness, he agreed to help repair the car in order for her to leave as swiftly as possible.
He replaced the vehicle’s rotor arm and gave the customer a request for 100 francs, to which she transferred but with a small sticky note in which her phone number was inscribed on it, she introduced herself as “Laudine Noire”. Score? When he got home after the shift, he decided to dial her number due to curiosity; after a little bit of flirting, she invited him to dinner, without saying it was a date, in a restaurant in the upcoming week so that they can get to know each other a little better; weirdly sudden but alright.

During the dinner, they told each other their hobbies, aspirations, favorite shows, etc. Emile noticed that he and Laudine had a lot in common in terms of interests, she even said that she likes cars; when they first met at his repair shop, Emile didn’t feel anything towards her, but now, he feels very attracted to her to the point where, just before they were about to leave, he asked if she would like to date him to which she accepted, thus officially making this dinner, the first date, a success. How instant.

Emile does miss Charlotte and the old friends he made at CUSS, and even the old Carl, but had he been staying there suffering and being unhappy, he would miss out on this opportunity, all he needs is Carl still believing he’s dead and everything will turn out okay.
Everything will be okay.

Everything.

Is fine.

Right?

#### Part 2 - Perpetual Pandemonium

As presumed, everything was fine for three years. CUSS developed, without the help of Forestier, a video game console named CUVGS in 1996 (Carl’s Ultimate Video Game System) in which has 10+ original games pre-loaded within it. Carl is also accepting more of his non-abiding younger children, Matthew and Michael who still haven’t “pled allegiance” to YoY but Carl and Charlotte, who still are unaware of YoY, still love them dearly, yet he still favors Laverna and Jude. Furthermore, the love between Carl and Charlotte was so strong to the extremity where they had a baby girl who they named Jane Barron on July 10th 1998. However, YoY is no longer so fond of this “new” personality Carl has adopted these past 5 years and didn’t find this crap entertaining; now he needs new opportunities to bring back Barron to his full glory.
As for Emile Forestier, he became one of the most successful auto mechanics in the whole of France and expanded his skills from uniquely repairing cars all the way to building them. Furthermore, it didn’t take him long to marry Laudine Noire (now Laudine Noire Forestier) in 1995, before she gave birth to a girl named Rosette Victorine Forestier in 1994, then a baby boy in 1997 named Guillaume Blaise Forestier and finally Laudine became pregnant for the third time on October 26th 1998.

Emile got so successful that he has been placed 21st in “the hall of fame” section in the American newspapers of July 1998, which showcased the most talented, skilled, and successful people from all around the world. On July 19th 1998 A “friend group” member brought the newspaper to YoY’s attention, “he never died”, the friendist stated ominously. Finally, YoY found a new opportunity to reverse Carl to the mean green machine that he once was; he snatched the newspaper from the cultist’s hand using his teeth and swiftly teleported to Carl’s bedroom in Merriwether Manor where he was hanging out at.

YoY threw the newspaper at Carl who grabbed it on time, “Turn to page 21 and read it, bro, you’ll be surprised.” YoY ordered. Carl abided and turned to page 21 and saw… a picture of Emile. “He can’t be alive, right? Maybe they’re honoring his passing.” is what Carl thought. But the more he read, the more he figured out it wasn’t the case: It didn’t state a death date, it had a functioning telephone number for HIS company and it cited his achievements that are post-1993, his year of death, that weren’t related to CUSS. “M-maybe that’s his twin or somethin’, man?” Carl said trying to rationalize the situation, he looked to YoY than to Charlotte, who was holding Jane in the same room; she looked away fearfully.

“Nah, broseph. That’s totes him, man.”, YoY replied. The only response Carl had to that mind-bending thought is, well, his mind bending. He looked back at Charlotte, and wanted to ask what the hell was going on. Charlotte tried to make excuses such as “maybe the year is wrong” or “maybe that’s a look-a-like”, however Carl was NOT buying it; she was cornered, she had to tell the truth: “He faked his death so he can leave.” Carl felt betrayed once again, now both of his remaining friends are conspiring against him? He couldn’t trust the world except for these two but now all the people he can confide to decreased to almost Jude and Laverna. Carl has had enough; the final straw has broken the turtle’s back. He allocated all of his rage to his hand and proceeded to punch Charlotte in the face; due to the sheer force of the assault, Jane was dropped from her arms and hit the floor on her bottom, which made her cry “YOU FUCKING LIED TO ME, BITCH?!” Carl barked and bit. Charlotte picked up Jane and tried to explain herself but Carl refused to listen. This altercation went on for the entire night until Charlotte declares that she wanted a divorce as soon as possible.

In the following morning, Charlotte and Carl decided to go to a courthouse to settle a divorce which took almost 4 months of needlessly long paperwork, during it was a bad household life full of pain and misery. Matthew and Michael noticed that their father is completely unrecognizable and started treating them horrendously again, while heavily favoring Laverna and Jane. However, this period of dread comes to a well-needed end on the morning of November 8th 1998, where it has been settled that they split their belongings in half, including their children. Charlotte keeps Matthew and Jane while Carl keeps Laverna and, unfortunately, Michael, and also Jude stays because he was technically never adopted; Barron decides to stay in the mansion however Merriwether moves into a remote suburban area in North Carolina named Effugia, moreover; she is now in possession of half of Carl’s belongings. He would usually believe that she was waiting for an opportunity to divorce him for the money with how quickly she wanted to dump him after a singular argument, but Carl is doubting this intrusive thought and he wants to think otherwise and believe in the person that confided to him all his life… “Nah fuck that bitch she betrayed ya luhmaozedong”

Just like YoY predicted, Carl is relatively back to his less than flattering self, berating employees out of anger and then some. All he needed to do was show him a newspaper article… he didn’t even have to lie this time. However, this time, YoY noticed that Carl is being more… introspective about his circumstances. “Why did they do this, man? All of this because of a shitty way to escape the company, Carl recognized the reasons why he left the company but seeing as the circumstances changed and his shoddy behavior lessened. It wasn’t as bad before, right? I’ll bring him here and apologize to him, then maybe he will come back to my company… I don’t want to be alone anymore.” Carl monologued.

And so, Carl called the phone number inscribed on the same newspaper that devastated him a few months ago. The person who picked up seem to be a random employee so Carl said gloomily: “Can you redirect me to your boss, please.” It seemed as if the man behind the phone couldn’t comprehend what Carl was saying so, inevitably, a familiar voice jumps in: “Allo?” it was Emile. Carl’s heart jolted as if it was going through cardioversion, he nervously said that there was a special repair offer and that he will give him a “mountain of money” if he completes it accordingly. Carl gave the address of his mansion, which was impulsive of him since the house is right next to the CUSS headquarters and Emile knew the latter’s address. Emile obviously was not fooled by this “offer” and knew immediately it was the sound of Carl’s voice; was he even meant to fall for it? “I know its you Caghl.” Emile said disappointedly. Carl did not even try to go forward with a rebuttal and immediately decided to tell him what his true intentions are: he wants him to return to America so he can have a nice chat and

Carl has been waiting for the entire day in the kitchen of his mansion. By 9 PM, Carl saw a bus stop in front of the house with Emile exiting it, perfect. Emile marched towards the house and found Carl standing in front of the mansion in which the meeting will occur. Carl invited him in and they sparked a conversation in the mansion’s kitchen about the incident.

Carl: “Why did you fake your death, man? Everyone was devastated… including me!”

Emile: “Yeah right, you only cared about me because the company lost a lot of money when I left, huh? You lost all the brainpower and were left with nothing but a mass of nagging babies with no qualifications.”

Carl was surprised by Emile’s newly found fluency but also by his words.

Carl: “No man it’s because you were my friend! And f-fr”

Emile: “Friends? Huh. Well, at some point we WERE friends. Before you won that damn lottery ticket. Now you are nothing but a shell of a man I once new.”

Carl: “…”

Emile: “Actually, it completely surprised me how it turned out YOU didn’t win it but a poor family where one of the members had cancer.”

Carl: “They were faking-“

Emile: “No they weren’t Caghl. The woman died of cancer, Caghl, the day the allegations came to light. You know, if it wasn’t for my ‘suicide’ the story wouldn’t have come out, and now the whole world is against them because of the lies YOU told.”

Carl: “But He told me that they were…”

Emile: “No Caghl, stop blaming everyone and everything BUT yourself! THIS IS WHAT YOU LED YOU DOWN THIS PATH!”

Carl: “Look, man. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry about all of this.“

Emile: “No. I know you’re not sorry. If you really were, you would just stop what you were doing and stop the operation, but no, you needed Charlotte to convince you to do it since you were too much of a coward. You know, I have a feeling you’re behind Daisy’s brother’s house burning down too, I bet. Pretty weird how you openly complained about spam calls from him. Oh and the murder of those two hosts? They were last seen heading towards the highest floor, which was your floor. Oh yeah and the rumors of child abuse? I won’t get into that… You already know.”

Carl: “LOOK MAN PLEASE I JUST WASN’T IN A GOOD HEADSPACE PLEASE IM SORRY IM SORRY FORGIVE ME!”

Emile: “Did you say sorry to the child of the two innocent hosts for making her lose her parents? How about the girl whose entire family and home was burned due to you getting annoyed by the ringing of a telephone? The latter got adopted into the Malek household yes but how about the poor Russian girl? Do you not realize that she will spend all her next birthdays alone with no one to celebrate it with because of what YOU did? Oh and don’t get me started on your treatment of Matthew, you want me to believe that Daisy of all people told you to torture a child for something he had no control over? Death due to complications with birth is not all that uncommon and can happen despite it being NO ONE’S fault, yet you tortured him in the beginning of his life for it? You told me when we were friends that you used to fail all of your classes in high school and now, I see, due to this needlessly ruthless response to a natural death, that it is true. Same for Michael, same treatment, all because he was a little bit of a misbehaving kid? He is a CHILD, un enfant! You are supposed to teach him manners…”

Carl: “W-w-what…?”

Carl from here on is trying to suppress his anger from within.

Emile: “What do you mean ‘what’? Did you fail to realize? That you are an uneducated, envious snob of a man who used to be a great person but lost himself due to his success, due to his paranoia and jealousy. In fact, you’re a coward who tramples on others’ lives while snuffing out their futures only for to further your own, all of this done without any regret right! I bet you think you’re the world’s protagonist, huh? A hero? You? Quelle blague! Now… I called MALCO on you. I’m sure you would want this… and so do the victims.”

Carl knows he’s right but he just feels so distraught at all of this. A lot of the stuff he went through turned out to be lies… he caused people trauma only to satiate his needs, so he deserves to be caught by MALCO at this point… but his impulses acted before his rationality did. As Emile was awaiting a response, Carl repeatedly slammed his head onto the counter causing a gashing wound to appear on his forehead and inevitably, his demise. Carl realized what he has done… he felt terrible. He realized everything Emile said was true an yet he bludgeoned him to death anyway… maybe he should wait for MALCO… Nah… he can’t get arrested… he has to atone his own way.

As MALCO arrived on the scene, they went to investigate in the CUSS building to find Barron for his arrest but also YoY, this is what they really set out for. The investigation proceeded as they located and arrested multiple YoY “friend gr-…”, we mean, cult members and found evidence of previously unsolved cases. They found dry blood stains hidden under a water cooler, they identified the blood belonging to Skorbya Ubezichshe, right beside the stain, and they found three fingerprints all belonging to Carl Barron. Not only that but they also found an empty orange canister in the back rooms of the same floor, it was ridden with Carl Barron’s fingerprints. Amber Kinley, who was a previous victim of a house fire, who wanted to be brought along in the investigation noticed that the canister resembled the exact same one she saw 6 years ago, she alerted the agents therefore they immediately connected it to the 1992 Sharmont Blaze Incident. The police were had no doubts that Barron was guilty of these two incidents, yet they could not find him, his step-children, or YoY anywhere, not even in their mansion, their whereabouts were unknown and it seemed that he ran away after the incident with Forestier. Furthermore, Phineas Gonzalez, the original suspect and convict behind the Ubezhishche murders was released from prison with a million dollar compensation and is a free man today.

On July 26th 1999, a girl named Rena Sérène Forestier would be birthed into a loving family including her mother, brother, and sister. The Forestier family, as so the public, are unaware of why Emile never returned from his trip to the United States, it will all remain an unsolved mystery.

All of this because of flamin hot cheeto flavored cigarettes.