Season 2 synopsis

OVA: "Umi Da 2: Da Harder"

One summer afternoon, Ms. Renee Denise Carte came home from an academic conference whose organizers had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Renee, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one David Darkbloom, a California software mogul who had once lost two billion dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Renee stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of her PC monitor, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work.

We open a year and a half into Alabaster and his harem's island seclusion. We learn that Ms. Carte and Vivian have moved back to the states, after Ms. Carte accepted a teaching position at UC Berkeley.

This OVA would be more or less nonstop fucking -- various positions and combinations of haremites.

Alabaster begins to receive letters from Ms. Carte, but Mom and Cerise take turns preventing Alabaster from reading any of the correspondence. Ms. Carte's letters become more persistent, until they're arriving with such frequency that they spew from the mail slot and down the chimney in torrents. Parody of Harry Potter, of course. And like Harry Potter, the sequence ends with Alabaster finally getting one of the letters open -- it's his admission  to Berkeley. Damon breaks into the house and delivers the OVA's closing line -- season 2's hook:

"Yer a wizard, Ally."

Season 2 kicks off in earnest. If the watch-word of season 1 was "science" then the watch-word of season 2 is "magic."

Episode 1: "Late Registration"

Alabaster's exploits on national TV have made him a minor celebrity. Season 2 opens with Alabaster walking down the street toward the campus at UC Berkeley. He ponders to himself:

What mysteries, you wonder, lie in the heart of man? What makes one man choose love, and another power? Is it possible to have both -- could you ever have had both? Why is this dichotomy--

"Hey!" comes a voice warped by the doppler effect. You glance over your shoulder and see an upperclassman in a tanktop leaning from the open window of a pickup truck. He chucks a plastic cup at you.

Bullseye. Half-frozen, neon-red slush runs in rivulets over your head, neck, and back. As you stand there shocked and shivering and coated in the sugary beverage, the upperclassman shouts:

"Welcome to Berkeley, quiz-faggot! Haha!"

You already miss Palau.

Moving into the dorms, the reader learns the status of our old harem. Whitney attends Berkeley on athletic scholarship, technically majoring in sexology. She shares a room with Rose, who dual majors in political science and law, with a minor in gender studies. Cerise has a dorm to herself, and majors in either electrical or electronic engineering. Mom and Dad are back in your (unnamed) hometown, living in the newly-rebuilt family home. Ms. Carte lives in one of Darkbloom's old properties with Vivian.

It turns out that Ms. Carte's letters in the OVA weren't sent by magic: she was just being REALLY persistent. Alabaster feels silly for ever believing it was supernatural.

Alabaster meets with his academic advisor to declare a major. The list of choices:

[ ] English
[ ] Art History
[ ] Communications
[ ] Psychology

(Probably some others, too)

Each of these choices would offer certain buffs for the combat system subsequently unveiled.

Depending on the choice of major, Alabaster meets Kim O Chee, Sable Guiteau, and Ebony Anaphora in varying orders. The meeting with Ebony is the only one I planned at all:

Your next lecture is LING1000 -- introduction to linguistics. Vivian is the TA for this course, and sits in the front row. You're relieved to see a friendly face for once. You sit next to her.

"Alabaster," she says, not taking her eyes from the professor. "How nice of you to make it."

"Here's some linguistic theory for you. Has anyone ever told you that it's creepy to talk to someone without establishing eye contact?"

Vivian begins to say something in turn, but the professor calls the rowdy class to order, and Vivian shuts her mouth.

"Welcome to LING1000," the frazzle-haired professor intones. He turns and writes his name on the blackboard in huge block letters: Dr. Matthius Ross. He delivers a droning introduction about his credentials and you start to zone out in record time. But soon he says something that brings you back into focus:

"This is a very special class. Here today we have Berkeley's youngest current student! One of the youngest in this institution's history, as a matter of fact. She's a very clever young woman, indeed." He extends his arm, continuing, "As long as she doesn't mind the attention -- I'd like to introduce you all to this spectacular girl--"

Vivian is smiling -- rare sight. She flutters her eyelashes and scoots her butt forward in her seat, preparing to stand up for when the professor says her name.

"--Ebony Anaphora," Dr. Ross says. "Please, stand up. Let the class see you."

Vivian's smile collapses like the World Trade Center. A couple rows behind her, a swarthy little girl stands, wearing a short sundress and gold bangles.

"H-hello everyone," she says, excitement melding with anxiousness in her voice. She turns in a little semicircle, making tiny bowing motions to everyone in the hall.

"Ebony is only 11 years old," Dr. Ross says. "And yet she's already in her second year at Berkeley. Remarkable. Simply remarkable."

"L-let's all do our best this semester," Ebony says. "I believe that if we try our best, we'll all succeed!"

This draws raucous applause from the other students. All of them except for Vivian. Her porcelain-pale face simmers with loathing she doesn't bother to conceal.

Later we run into Stackleford. He's a changed man. Instead of the doughy, pre-diabetic hamplanet we once knew, Stackleford is now a nicely-muscled /fit/izen and dudebro -- albeit he still manages to fuck everything up:

Stackleford is sitting on a bench in the quad, underneath the shade of a cypress tree. He has a giant tub pressed between his knees, eating white powder by spoonfuls. His lips are gummy with paste.

"What the fuck are you doing?" you say.

"Gaining," he says, his voice muffled from the viscous and slimy white gunk coating his tongue.

"Gaining what? An SSI mental disability check?"

"Mass, dude." Stackleford forces himself to swallow, with some apparent difficulty. "I'm eating protein powder to bulk up."

You wince. "I am almost certain this isn't how you're supposed to use that stuff."

"Shows what you know," Stackleford says, pointing at you with a heaping spoonful. "Maybe if you knew about fitness like me, you wouldn't be so scrawny."

He takes another bite and laughs. But with his mouth full, the laughing chokes him. A vapory cloud of the protein powder spews from his lips. He hacks and sputters for half a minute or more -- then starts burping uncontrollably, the protein spilling in dangly strands from his lips as he doubles over and clutches his stomach. You feel like vomiting, yourself.

Stackleford wants to join Berkeley's chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda, a fraternity house. He cajoles Alabaster into attending a pledge week kegger with him. At the party, he approaches Alabaster, frantic:

"Alabaster, you have to help me. Do you know how to play beer pong?"

"What? Of course not. What do I look like, one of your addle-brained jock buddies?"

"Come ON, man. You're the smartest guy in the universe! You HAVE to know something. I can't look like a loser in front of these guys. I have to--"

Stackleford's eyes go wide and he releases his grip on your shoulders as one of his prospective Lambda Lambda Lambda brothers passes by. It's the asshole who threw a slushie at you on your way to campus.

"Chad," Stackleford says. "S-sup, my nigwad?"

"Hanging out with the quiz-faggot?" Chad says. "I thought you had better taste than that, Stacks."

"Well--" Stackleford begins. "--Well, we're actually -- we're an unstoppable beer pong duo."

You and Stackleford attempt to play (and completely bungle) the game.

Chad tosses the ping pong ball. You and Stackleford dumbly watch its transit as it bounces, once, off the tabletop. It arcs perfectly into the air and lands with a plop in one of the center cups. You look back up at Chad.

"Do we drink now?" Stackleford says.

"Uh, if you want. Anyway, that's two. Why didn't you try to block it, bro?"

"We can block it?" you say.

Cerise and Ms. Carte show up to the party, already hammered. They play on a table adjacent to yours, and utterly dominate the competition. This is the first glimpse of what becomes a long and deep friendship between the two haremites.

Later, a tipsy Stackleford is "lured" into a bathroom by an androgynous seducer named Alex. You wait with interest, thinking Stackleford may finally lose his virginity; but soon he runs screaming from the bathroom, out of the house and down the street. Alex steps out, saying: "I guess I confused him..."

This is our first encounter with Alex Best, trap extraordinaire. Alabaster befriends him, and Alex asks Alabaster to accompany him home. (we can decline or accept, but who would resist the possibility of plundering that boy butt?)

Episode 1 ends with Alabaster having a nightmare about David Darkbloom.

"Did you really think you could defeat me so easily? I will destroy you yet, Alabaster."

At some point in this episode, there's smut (duh). It would likely be something involving Whitney and Rose during dorm move-ins. We get a revised fuck counter at the episode's conclusion:

END OF EPISODE 1
GIRLS FUCKED: 2/10
GUYS FUCKED: 0/1

There is much work to be done.

Episode 2: "A Certain Magical Codex"

In episode 2, Alabaster has a problem ordering textbooks online. When he calls tech support, he gets connected to an outsourcing center in Istanbul. He learns that his helper, "Denise," is actually Fazil's imouto, Fadime.

"We get this shit fixed for you, no worry. Any friend of Fazil is also a friend of me!"

There is some suggestion that Fadime is being sexually pleasured during the call, and we can all guess who it is. This would probably be Fazil's last "appearance" in the series.

Unfortunately, Fadime cannot fix the problem and Alabaster's textbooks are going to be several weeks late. The next day, he wanders around town looking for copies locally, and stumbles across Bosphorus Rare Books. Here he meets Olivia Bosphorus, last member of the new harem.

"Hello?" you call into the musty store. In the grey light and amongst all this clutter it's difficult to tell whether someone might be hiding out in here. You peek around a stack of leatherbound tomes, down a row of shelves that leads to an oaken checkout counter. "Is anyone there?"

From underneath the counter comes a rustling like papers being trampled underfoot. Then comes a muffled "hmm?" You move closer. The floorboards creak with each step.

"Yes!" says the voice, "Hello! Welcome to--"

From underneath the counter, a woman stands -- or rather, attempts to. She bonks her head on the way up, so hard that you feel the reverberation of it from several paces away.

"Oww!" she yelps, stumbling backward. She falls sitting on am upholstered swivel chair, rubbing the bump on the back of her skull, her eyes rheumy and squinting.

"Are you okay?" you ask.

The woman notices you again. She reacts as if it's the first time. "Yes! Hello!" she chirps, sitting straight. "Welcome to Bosphorus Rare Books. Bosphorus Rare Books: rare books are our business! If it's a book and it's rare, Bosphours Rare Books will find it for you! I'm Olivia Bosphorus! I deal in rare books!"

She delivers her monologue with sincere energy, but also the obvious air of someone reciting memorized lines. "Do you go through that spiel for every single customer?" you ask.

Olivia tilts her head. "Err-- why shouldn't I? Don't you enjoy that sort of courtesy?"

"It's just a little-- wordy. And redundant."

Olivia blinks. You can almost hear the cogs in her brain squeaking. "Redundant. No one's ever told me that before. I suppose it is a little redundant, yes. Have I been alienating my clientele? Do you feel alienated, young man?"

You feel like she's probably hit her head on that desk a few too many times.

Alabaster strikes up a friendship with Olivia. He soon learns that she has an interest in black magic. She's searching for a tome called the Codex Futuo, a Latin text that tells a revised history of mankind's creation.

Olivia begins to insinuate that Alabaster has untapped magical potential. Simultaneously to this development, Whitney receives an invitation to a secret society -- the Society of the Golden Rose. Episode 2 ends roughly at this point.

Episodes 3-13: The Rest of the Season

Planning for the rest of the season is necessarily a little vague and fluid. Alabaster joins at least one extracurricular club, from a list of several options.

Berkeley Tabletop Gaming Society
Dungeon Master: Thad Guy
Roll for fun and score a critical success! Explore the magical realms of sci-fi and high fantasy with your fellow questers. We meet every Friday night at 6 PM to play such well-loved pen-and-paper RPGs as Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, and FATAL.

Redline Club
President: J.P. Stigley
Shift into top gear and let the engine roar! The Redline Club sponsors racing events of all kinds, from off-road, motorcross, to Formula-1 and drag racing.

Berkeley Skeptics Society
Chair: Dr. Renee D. Carte
Co-Chair: Vivian Carte, Ph.D A.B.D.
We are a group of thinkers who shine light on the dark corners of superstition and religious hokum. We sponsor speaking engagements and other events on campus aimed at promoting rationality, logic, and the scientific method. This semester, we have invited noted skeptics James "The Amazing" Randi and Penn & Teller to guest lecture! Berkeley Skeptics Society: become enlightened through the power of your own intellect.

Young Republicans
President: Kim O Chee
We are a group dedicated to conservative values and activism. Through initiatives, pledge drives, campus events, and phonathons, we campaign for Republican candidates in races from local to national. We also host speaking engagements and similar events for all students. The Berkeley Young Republican platform is available on our E-board page, and outlines our staunch belief in family values, supply-side economics, and the sanctity of marriage. If you are concerned about society's slide into moral degeneracy, join today.

(Several other choices would be present in a real version)

The choice of club would grant certain buffs to Alabaster in combat.

Not long into the season (episode 3, most likely), Alabaster would begin to display magical powers. Olivia, Rose, and Rose's parents would all help Alabaster understand these powers.

The basic unit of magic is mana. Use of magic consumes mana. A human body cannot store a great deal of mana, so most people do not have access to their full abilities; but some adepts, like Alabaster, can store excess mana in physical form which can be utilized at a later time. Rose is another person who can do this; the hoopla during the Palau arc in season 1 involved Rose producing mana in this fashion.

Olivia believes that Alabaster's existence and his aptitude for magic has been prophecied by the Codex Futuo, of which she has a few fragments:

Olivia reads aloud, translating the Latin text on the fly. "A self-made man of iron becomes master of the trivium, twice defies death, and makes the past the future."

Olivia glances up. "I always thought the Codex meant 'trivium' as in 'crossroads,' which is the Latin meaning -- but now I think it must mean 'trivia' -- general-knowledge factoids. Quiz bowl..."

Alabaster is an eromancer -- his magical powers are rooted in sex and sexuality. Or in other words: by fucking, he produces mana. Additionally, if two people he has fucked fuck one another, it produces mana. We thus have access to a great deal of magical energy.

Rose's father Saul informs us that the use of mana is strictly regulated by an underground world government, and storing large quantities of mana will draw their ire. He introduces Alabaster to an illegal magical battling arena.

"It's back-back alley... sort of four-dimensionally intersected with the back of an actual, three-dimensional alley. Does that make sense?"

In this circuit, bettors wager mana on the outcome of fights. With Alabaster (and potentially some other haremites) competing in this circuit, Saul launders our mana for us.

Throughout the early parts of the season, Alabaster has persistent nightmares about Darkbloom, and we are led to believe that he will somehow return as the season's antagonist. However, it turns out that these nightmares are being  controlled by one of the battling circuit's top competitors, a mage who can telepathically manipulate fear. As Alabaster climbs the ranks of the fighting circuit, this mage will be one of the chief obstacles.

In a concurrent plot, Rose wishes to join the Society of the Golden Rose, but is blocked at all turns by Kim. Rose seeks help from other members of the harem and from Alabaster himself:

Rose stomps her foot. "These people are hate criming me. I'm being hate crimed, Alabaster. Do something!"

Cerise, Vivian, and Sable all receive invitations to the Society. Kim is President and Ebony is Vice-President. The involvement of seemingly every single haremite but her drives Rose up the fucking wall, and then some.

Rose finally butts her way into Society affairs by using Alex as a pawn: she has Alex petition for entry, and then raises a fuss when they deny his application on basis of his being a male. Rose stages a massive protest during the campus-wide "Take Back the Night" event and forces the Society to accept Alex's application. Rose eventually joins him. This causes Kim to suffer a nervous breakdown, more or less.

Kim shakes with anger. "I hate Rose... SO much... it's-- flames. Flames, on the side of my face... breathing, breathless-- heaving breaths--"

An important side plot in the season involves Sable's split personality. Due to her experiments with particle accelerometry, Sable is "oscillating" amongst alternate worlds, and her demeanor is unpredictable. Alabaster seeks to make her whole again by combining science with magic.

Sable's cameo in season 1 is actually the climax of this season 2 plotline. Alabaster's spirit guide through Interlewd 5 was Alabaster himself, from the future, directly following a catastrophic accident with a particle accelerator. This fulfills the "twice defies death" stipulation of the Codex prophecy. The accident doesn't kill Alabaster but it badly scars his face. He takes to hiding it while in public.

Throughout the course of the season, Alabaster and the growing harem learn more about the Society of the Golden Rose and their aims. The Society's aims hinge on a redacted version of the Biblical creation myth suppressed by the Catholic church, as told in the Codex Futuo:

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the Earth.
From the Earth, God created Man and Woman.
He called the Man Adam and he called the Woman Lilith.
Adam and Lilith were created as equals.
But Adam grew jealous, and wished for a woman who would serve him.
So God said to Lilith: "Leave Paradise forever."

Lilith retreated to the wilderness, wailing and gnashing her teeth.
To spite God, she renamed herself: Lamia.

From Adam's rib, God made the woman Eve.
Eve served Adam as her master, and Lamia hated her.
Lamia's despair grew with time, and she became a succubus.

From this it can be said that no human man who lies with a human woman is having sexual intercourse.

Because Eve, who was formed from the rib of Adam, is Adam.
Therefore, if a man lies with a woman, it is only masturbation.
But Lamia, who is a succubus, is of the Earth, and not of Adam.
A succubus is the only intercourse.

~~~~

From her own rib, Lamia formed Cain.

And Cain was an incubus.
Lamia and Cain were equals.
But their intercourse, too, was only masturbation.
Cain grew unhappy, and despaired of his lot in life.
With Lamia's blessing he sneaked into Paradise, desiring human women.
But he was caught, and expelled.

Cain returned to Lamia feeling immense shame.
Lamia said to Cain: "let us wait with warmth in our hearts."
They reared many children, succubi and incubi, and then they passed.

Though dead, Lamia and Cain continue to wait.
They have waited for 2000 years.
They will wait for 3000 years more.
And then their time will be at hand again.

The Society seeks to find human vessels in which to reincarnate Lamia and Cain. By bringing the first succubus and incubus back into existence, the Society hopes to make humankind "complete" once more and reinstate Paradise on Earth.

Ebony and Alabaster are being groomed to become those vessels.

Moreover, it turns out that Kim is half-succubus; and -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- Whitney is, as well.

Alabaster learns his mana production is stronger if he is married to the people he fucks. The solution, then, is simple: he will marry his entire harem.

"There's nowhere you can marry nine women and a guy at the same time," Sable says.

"Oh sure there is," you counter. "Utah."

Alabaster and company travel to the compound of a schismatic Mormon congregation and pretend to be converts so that a priest will perform the ceremony.

As the season progresses, Ebony's initially cute facade fades, and her personality twists into something much more sinister. Ebony is essentially a reverse Vivian. Ultimately, she is the second season's antagonist.

At the climax of the season, Ebony reveals her plan to become a vessel for BOTH Lamia and Cain, cutting Alabaster out of the equation entirely and disbanding the Society. She intends to rule the planet as a tyrant-queen. She takes Alabaster to the desert and reveals this in a way that may sound familiar:

Your mouth twitches. "You... you can't--"

"If you try to interfere," Ebony says, "this becomes a much simpler matter." Her eyes narrow and her voice goes deeper. She takes special care to enunciate every syllable. "I will kill your wives. I will kill your mother. I will kill your older sister."

Alabaster races to Mr. Mallory's office, looking for a way out. Saul suggests a mage who can hide Alabaster and the rest of his harem in the distant past, where Ebony can never find him.

Mr. Mallory hands you a business card. Emblazoned on the front in stencil lettering is "Haji's Quick-Vanish," with a phone number and a graphic of a genie pouring like smoke from a lamp.

"What is this?" you ask, turning the card over.

"That's the guy," Mr. Mallory says. He turns and goes back to packing his bags. "What did you expect, a vaccuum repair shop? Call that number and leave a message saying that you want a #2 Deluxe Outer-Temporal Escape Package. He charges 300 units of mana -- that's per person. Be ready to go within an hour of placing the call."

Alabaster returns to his family home to retrieve the mana from where he's been storing it in a crawlspace, but to his dismay he finds most of it is missing.

"Where is it?" you say.

Cerise shakes her head, lips trembling in horror.

"The mana, Cerise, where is the rest?"

"I... I..."

"WHERE IS THE MANA?!"

Cerise closes her eyes. "I... gave it to Stackleford."

"You-- you did what? You gave our mana... to Stackleford..." You let your head fall back against the ground.

"Please, PLEASE, just hear me out, Alabaster. I had to... for us, for our harem..."

"AAAAHHHHHHH!!!" you wail, clutching at your hair, rolling side to side in despair. Cerise falls silent, tears rolling down her cheeks, and watches you.

It starts quietly at first, but soon grows in volume. The cloying insanity of hopelessness has broken something deep inside of you. You begin to laugh.

Alabaster realizes that he must face Ebony directly. I don't know what the details of the confrontation might be, but it ends with Alabaster literally fucking Ebony out of existence. As in, he fucks her so hard that she stops existing in all possible universes and time-frames. This would be the end of Episode 12. The final episode is about Alabaster banishing Cain and Lamia -- now unleashed upon the Earth and without a vessel -- back to hell.

To accomplish this, Alabaster must sacrifice his life (because of REASONS). He bids a tearful goodbye to his harem and does his duty.

Because of additional REASONS, an entity (God? Lamia herself for some reason? I dunno) grants Alabaster three wishes. He uses the first wish to set the world right again. The other two wishes are reader choices.

PICK ONE FROM EACH:

>New Harem
[ ] I wish for Kim to fulfill her dream of becoming President.
[ ] I wish for Alex to become a girl.
[ ] I wish for Olivia to find the Codex Futuo and reveal it to the world.
[ ] I wish for Sable to have a single, coherent personality.
[ ] I wish for Ebony to be reincarnated as the girl she could have been.

>Old Harem
[ ] I wish for Rose to fulfill her dream of becoming President.
[ ] I wish for Dr. Carte to take over Darkbloom Enterprises.
[ ] I wish for Cerise to find a job she's happy at.
[ ] I wish for Mom to become coven Matriarch for the Society of the Golden Rose.
[ ] I wish for Whitney to become a pro soccer star.
[ ] I wish for Vivian to be fully human again.

(The exact wishes would probably be different based on what's going on in season 2).

Due to exploding macguffins and corroded plot armor, the magical energy released by these wishes annihilates Alabaster, body and soul. Or does it?

After being consumed by a blinding white light, Alabaster wakes up in California, circa 1994. After some frantic attempts, he realizes that his magic powers are all dried up and that he's stuck permanently in the past. He sits down under the shade of a tree on UC Berkeley's campus to sulk.

"Hey mister, you lost?"

You look up. A spritely woman in jogging shorts and a tank is standing over you. Her head eclipses the sun, casting her face in silhouette.

She offers you a hand. You take it.

With a heave, she helps you to your feet. You finally get a good look at her.

It's Mom.

She's much younger, naturally. If this is 1994, that makes her... 18? You've seen pictures of her from "back in the day," but the effect is wholly different in person.

She looks rather like Whitney, now that you think of it.

Or maybe it might be better to say Whitney looks like HER, given the flow of time.

"So what's the deal?" she asks. "Are you lost?"

"Sort of. I'm new in town."

"Are you a student here?"

"Not anymore, I don't think."

She looks at you strangely.

"What about you?" you ask. "Are you a student?"

She rubs the back of her head. "Yeah. I'm just a freshman, though. I barely know my own way around. Maybe I'm not the best person to ask for directions..."

She gives you another strange look. "Really, what's wrong?" she asks. "It looks like it's something more than bein lost. You look sad."

"It's just--" Where to begin? "...The scars don't put you off?" you ask.

"Huh?" Mom asks, genuinely confused. "Why should they? Actually, they're kinda cool. ... Did you say you used to be a student here? What are you doing now?"

You shrug. "I think I'm studying to become a pilot."

"A pilot? Like an airplane pilot? That's so cool! What made you decide to drop out and do something like that?"

"The space-time contiuum, I guess."

She laughs. "You're kinda weird, aren't you?"

"You have no idea."

She holds out a hand to shake. "The name's Scarlet Soliloquy," she says.

You return the gesture. "Ala-- err--  Alexander Soliloquy."

"Another Soliloquy!" Mom slaps her knee in surprise. "This family's so big that I lose track. Hard to believe we never met. Well, it's nice to meet you!"

"Say-- I'm free right now. Do you want to get some coffee?"

"I'd love to, Alexander Soliloquy."

END OF FUCK QUEST: RELOAD

Of course, that's not the end. In a final post, we get the coda that ties the series off with a bow.

MEANWHILE...

By your calculations, it should be time.

You quickly approach the church on the hilltop. Professor Carte's red corvette parked outside and glinting underneath the morning sun gives away the script before you even get inside.

You made it.

The wake is well in progress when you arrive. You burst through the double doors just as Cerise, standing at the dais and wailing, says something about "the best brother anyone on Earth could ever have asked for..."

All eyes turn to you. Everyone is here: Cerise, Whitney, Vivian, Rose, Mom, Professor Carte -- Alex, Olivia, Kim, Sable.

"Mr. Soliloquy...?" Whitney says, confused.

"A little fucking late for your own son's funeral!" Rose cries, indignant. Her eyes are puffy and red with sorrow.

"Don't be too hard on him..." Alex chides, handing Rose a tissue. Rose snatches it from him and blows loudly.

From her pew, Mom smiles, wan and knowing, palm to her cheek. She's the only one who doesn't look surprised.

"It's all right," you announce to everyone in attendance. You take off your cap. "Daddy's back."


---

Odds and ends:

-"Wait, if Alabaster's face is scarred, and Alabaster is Dad, why isn't Dad's face also scarred?" Good question, you little shit. The answer is plastic surgery. This also explains why Mom never realizes who Dad really is -- until the accident that scars Alabaster's face causes her to connect the dots. She doesn't say anything, though. Space-time continuum and all that.

-Vivian is working on two doctoral theses concurrently:

Time Regained, Paradise Lost: Lapsarianism, Sin, and Edenic Symbolism in Proust as Presagement of the Fall from Grace of Modernism

Toward a Grand Unified Field Theory: Large-N Expansion of Gluon-Photon Interactions in a Lattice Quantum Chromodynamical Framework with Yukawa Type Modeling: A Renormalizable Solution

-Whitney gets a free pass in academic matters because she's a star of the university's athletic program. At one point, we get a first-hand look at how ridiculously easy Whitney's course load is. She's in a US history course that requires nothing except a final paper at the end of the semester:

"It's a sure thing!" Whitney insists. "I basically can't actually fail, probably!"

And what is the paper she submits?

How Going to the Moon Changed History
Whitney Price
HIS103

In the cold war, America and Russia were at war. So the space race happens to prove who was the best country at science. President John JFK made a company called NASA to build rocket ships. He promised that we would get on the moon by no later than 1980. When John JFK got shot by John Wilkes Booth, everyone was sad and decided we should go to the moon even sooner to honor his memory. In July 1969, over 20 years ahead of schedule, Lance Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finished building the first ever rocket ship. When he stepped on the moon Buzz Armstrong said his famous words one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind. Some people think the moon landing was a fake but thats retarted. Ever since we got to the moon, the world knows America is the best and democracy was saved. The End.

Scrawled on this "essay" are the professor's comments:
>Remember to cite sources. Some spelling mistakes. Do not use the word 'retarded' in an essay. Othwewise, good! B+

-Back in season 1, I wanted to include a scene where Alabaster gives Ms. Carte oral underneath her desk during the school day. Unfortunately Ms. Carte left for Palau before this happened. I included something similar during the beach arc, but I would revisit this concept proprly in season 2. Poor Ms. Carte would be squirming in a lecture hall of several hundred students.

-The order I anticipate we'd fuck the new harem in -- while not set in stone -- would probably be something like:

Olivia -> Kim -> Alex -> Sable -> Ebony

Sable, I think, would be the season's "Cerise" -- leading in popularity but hard to seal the deal with.

-Naturally, there are some time travel hijinks. Alabaster at one point goes back in time to meet his distant ancestor, Charlemagne. There, he comes across Charlemagne's "consort of ten concubines and a single catamite."

-The Codex Futuo's prophecy that Alabaster will be the world's savior is completely fulfilled. Fathering himself satisfies "self-made" -- his augmentations satisfy "man of iron" -- he defies death twice, masters quiz bowl, and bends the laws of time.

-There is much family intrigue in Season 2. Alabaster, as noted above, is descended from Charlemagne -- the entire Soliloquy line is. Whitney is descended from the Soliloquy clan's ancestral squire-servants; her surname Price is a corruption of the Frankish "Prix."

The conflict between the Soliloquys and the Mallorys stretches all the way back to the Norman conquest of England; the Mallorys are descended from Celtic druids that tried and failed to defend the islands. Kim is related to the Goryeo dynasty from ancient Korea; and Ebony is a direct descendant of Mayan emperor Yik'in Chan K'awiil. (I promise I did not make that name up)

-Season 2 would introduce plenty of additional side characters. Amongst them would be Sammy and Tammy, "fraternal Siamese twins" who race in a modified car in the Redline club and fight in the magical battling arena. Ms. Carte is appalled at the suggestion that fraternal twins could also be conjoined, and becomes obsessed with proving that they're faking it, at one point trying to pull them apart by force. But they're the genuine article. Other side-characters would include Ebony's PhD advisor (who is colluding with her world domination schemes), some of Stackleford's frat buddies, and various professors, students, and club members.

-Kim is set up as the opposite of Rose, of course. To the degree that I had fun with tumblr/SJW stereotypes in season 1, I'd play with /pol/ style redpilling in season 2. Kim is a proud East Aryan. But just like her nemesis, Kim is a bit of a hypocrite. Despite being outwardly moralistic about sexual propriety, she's actually an insatiable pervert who would give Rose a run for her money -- on par with Whitney, owing to her succubus heritage.

-Alex is just the cutest. Rose, Alabaster, and the rest of the harem can't resist him. If Vivian is a turbo-sub in the "please hurt me more" sense, Alex is a turbo-sub in the "literally doesn't understand the concept of pain" sense. He takes rough treatment with a warm smile, happy to be of service.

Midway into the season, we receive a revelation about Alex: he's actually much, much more intelligent than his somewhat childish bearing would suggest. As in, he's a world-famous mathematical prodigy. Currently, he's working on finding a closed-form solution to the Navier-Stokes equations (and constantly receives death threats from rheologists who will be out of work if he finds it). Sable and Vivian consult his genius in the course of their own research.

-Olivia is a complete ditz. Total cloud cuckoo lander. This attitude carries over into the bedroom, where she'll try anything you suggest, just to see what it's like; and much like Alex, very little can faze her. If Kim is Rose's opposite, Olivia is Ms. Carte's opposite. Despite that, she is a force to be reckoned with -- her knowledge of magic forces is unparalleled. When she gets serious, she's a scary sight indeed.