Chapter II- How To Get Things Done

If you were to ask any employee of the Dethklok franchise what Charles Ofdensen's job was, boy, they'd tell you: He's the manager of the band, their legal counsel and Chief Financial Officer. Because of his guidance they have been able to flourish into the empire they were today, and it was his perspective that kept them flourishing and safe from the greedy, avaricious outside world.

If you were to ask him, though, in a private and casual setting, and assuming he'd give you any answer at all, which he wouldn't... Anyway, he'd glare at you from his seat, slouching with his head on his hand, and say, "Manager? I'm their (riff)ing babysitter." He'd remove his glasses, take a long drink, and then straighten up and get back to work. Truth be told, he'd been their manager for a long time, and it was wearing on him.

It was just so hard to protect people who didn't seem to want to be protected. They loved being obscenely rich but didn't want to do anything that made them that way. Getting them to the recording studio or on stage at a concert was like pulling teeth. They wasted money like there was no tomorrow. It took a military worth of protection just to keep the outside world at bay without idiots on the inside refusing to believe that the laws of physics and logic applied to them.

Ofdensen was one of the most powerful men in the world, and he was tired.

Dethklok wasn't tired. They had no idea how much work it took to keep them alive. They actively seemed to be killing themselves, doing dangerous things and drinking their bodies to death.

Three hours earlier he had gone into the lounge, where Dethklok was instead of the recording room. Toki was playing a shooting game on one of the arcade machines. Murderface was passed out in his underwear on the couch, and Pickles and Nathan were drawing on him with a Sharpie. Skwisgaar was noodling on his guitar, oblivious to everything but hollow, steel music he was making.

Ofdensen had been holding a stack of papers. "Guys, can I, ah, talk to you?"

"Nah," said Pickles.

"It's really very important," Ofdensen said.

"Yeah, we're busy," Nathan told him. Nathan was busy, all right, writing I HAVE A GAY DICK on Murderface's outer thigh.

Conveying priorities to the boys was never easy, but it was his job to try. "Look," he said, "we all have to do things that we'd rather not. I think that a few hours each day doing something you seem to otherwise enjoy is a fair trade for the life of... excessive luxury you seem to enjoy."

It went in one ear and out the other.

"Dood, check this out." Pickles began to doodle something on Murderface's face.

"You do realize that this is where your money comes from, don't you?" Ofdensen continued. "You know, performing? Recording? Playing the, ah, guitar?... Guys?"

He was being thoroughly ignored.

"Come on, let's go. Right now. Into the studio. Let's go."

No reaction.

"I have seven feet," he announced in the same tone of voice.

"Yeah, after this," said Nathan. He drew a tic-tac-toe grid on Murderface and took the first move.

Ofdensen sighed and left the room. He hadn't really expected them to give in without a fight, and he wasn't in the mood for one. He leaned on the stone wall of the hallway and looked at the wall across from him. "So, wall," he said, "How about moving a few inches backwards? Hm? Wall?"

There was another reason that he was so tired. There were people in the world, an underground organization- or perhaps many organizations- who wanted Dethklok stopped, wanted them dead, and the more he learned about them, the less sure he was that he could protect his boys.

Meanwhile, back in the lounge, they had grown bored of drawing on Murderface. Now they were just sort of there, trying to figure out what awesome thing they wanted to do next.

"Oh, hey, guys," Nathan said, out of nowhere. "He's right, actually. We, uh, we need to... about the concert, you know?"

"Ja, we gets to it," said Skwisgaar.

"No, I mean, I was just on the Internet, like, yesterday, or last week, or something," Nathan continued. "And there was totally something there that I thought would be, like, the most brutal thing ever for us to do at the show that's coming up."

"Like, what kind of brutal?" Pickles was skeptical. "Like, guts-ripped-out brutal, or eternal-darkness-cavern brutal, or, like, your ex-girlfriend Rebecca brutal...?"

"No, like, even better. I figured out how to summon creatures from another dimension. We could totally get a whole bunch of monsters to be at our next concert. No band has ever done that before. We'd be the first."

Toki's eyes widened. "You learns to do dat on the Internet?"

"Yeah, no, they have, like, everything on the Internet now," said Pickles to Toki. "Like, I was on there yesterday and I saw everything. The whole Internet."

"Wait, really?" said Nathan.

"Yeah. Whole Internet."

"So did you see my livejournal?"

"No," said Pickles. "I did not. Because your livejournal sucks ass."

"It does not! It is the most brutal livejournal on the whole livejournal... site... thing."

"Nah, man, Cornerstone 54 has the most brutal livejournal."

"What? You just made that up."

"Hand to Gahd, it's true."

"Nuh-uh."

"You're lying."

"Yes, I am. Dood, I didn't see the whole internet. That's, like, physically impossible."

"Wuh-" Nathan was shocked. "I can't believe you would just lie to me like that. That's a major blow, man, I might need a minute with that."

Pickles shrugged. "That's how it is."

Meanwhile, Skwisgaar, staring at his fingers moving across the frets of his guitar, now scoffed. "Ja. You don'ts see the whole insternet, and Nate'ns can't summon thingies from other dim-enst-skons. Both of dems is unpossibles."

Nathan stood up. "No way! I even tried it! Only, actually, no I didn't. But I'm going to. Right now."

Toki stood up too. "Can I come watch?"

"No. You have to stay here."

"Dood, can I come?" asked Pickles.

"Sure."

"Awesome."

"How come he gets to go and I has to stay here?"

"Because you suck," said Pickles.

"It's trues," said Skwisgaar. "You do sucks pretty bads."

Toki threw a tiny little hissy fit and stormed out. Skwisgaar chuckled. "Now he cries likes de little baby and runs away to his room. Run away, littles baby, dere is no place for crybabies in this world."