Chapter 15: The Real Housewives of Midgar 2: Just Between Us Girls, Right?

When the party ended around two-thirty in the morning, Chitose sent her drunken friends home with digital copies of the centerfold and strict, very strict, admonitions to fucking keep it to themselves. Don't even tell your spouses, she'd warned them several times. No one else could know. It was their special secret.

Of course, they all agreed. Wholeheartedly. They even meant it at the time.

Sharon

Sharon went into coma mode the next day. Her wife, stressed by work issues, didn't want to deal with the usual horrid, bad-tempered, post-drunken mood. She left her sweetie unconscious and drooling in the darkened bedroom and went to the office. She had to keep on top of all those two-faced, bootlicking toadies who badmouthed her behind her back so they could get her fired and take over her very lucrative and powerful position as a senior investment banking manager, and didn't have time to baby the cute idiot who knew better than to drink that much. When Sharon awoke that afternoon she took extra painkillers to become somewhat human. Later, over a light dinner, the couple shared the centerfold image amid a great deal of giggling. Both simply had to call one dear friend apiece with such titillating news, each starting her conversation with the phrase, "You will never believe this..."

Zara

Zara fell into bed as soon as she got home and rather regretted her recent divorce (though she didn't regret coming out of it financially secure for life). She almost always got horny when she drank, and she only had her dog Maximillian for cuddling. She woke up far too early in the morning and felt like the three-day-old corpse of some rodent that Max had dragged in from a ditch. Max whined at breakfast until she forced herself to move enough to leash him and stagger out the door for their morning walk. The air in Midgar was never fresh and so did nothing to help her headache or bleary eyes, but at least Max was happy. Feeling and acting like an absolute grump, she was a bad citizen and did not scoop after him. The day after that, when she'd recovered, she remembered that she had the score of the century on her PHS and immediately set up a conference call with her three very best friends—next to Chitose and her party friends, of course.

Katina

Katina managed to get to bed with her amused husband's help and immediately passed out. She woke late in the morning the next day. Like Zara, she felt like something that ought to be laid out on a slab. Unlike Zara, she had the sense to take at least five different hangover remedies and drink a quart of an electrolyte replacement solution, and so spent the second half of the day as a functioning human being. Liam listened tolerantly as she babbled about the previous night's party, the rare and expensive magazine, and even showed him the centerfold image she'd stored on her PHS.

Liam wasn't offended at all by his wife's gushing over a nude celebrity. He'd put up with the Keepers of Honor nonsense for a few years and tended to humor Katina. Fair was fair, because she also overlooked his own little diversions. "How much did Chitose pay for it, do you know?" he asked, because he liked everything to be put into financial terms.

"Forty-thousand gil, and it was a steal at that price," Katina told him. "The woman who sold it had no idea of its real value."

"Hmmmm," said Liam, who'd had quite a bit of bad luck in the commodities market lately and had kept the resulting financial insolvency hidden from his spendthrift wife. He wondered exactly how much a knowledgeable buyer might pay for that magazine, and if the amount could tide him over until he got back on his feet. He made a few calls later that afternoon while Katina took a nap. This armed him with the knowledge of the shocking price that the Barely Legal, Harvest Time Special! magazine could bring at an auction with the right bidders.

He made a decision and a few more calls, this time to some old contacts from his youth in the Midgar underworld. Chitose Lafferty didn't need to hide a fortune like that under her pillow, not when it could help renew his own financial health.

Blissfully unaware of her husband's perfidy, Katina ate dinner and kept her digital copy of the centerfold secret. No one aside from Chitose's party friends and beloved Liam would ever know she had it, she promised herself.

Daisy

Daisy was the type who never got a hangover, no matter how much she drank or how late she stayed up. She did, however, get insanely hyper and even more thoughtless than usual the day after a binge, and this time was no exception.

She jabbered nonstop to her long-suffering husband William about the party and the centerfold, going on and on about her favorite crush, SOLDIER First Class Angeal Hewley. She even demonstrated her complete lack of sense by showing William the picture on her PHS, gushing the entire time about "dreams, pride, and honor" and the fan club. She planned to do a special article for the club newsletter, even if she couldn't ever tell her fellow Keepers about the centerfold or the magazine. She was still deciding on a suitable topic, but by golly, she would write an article.

She was so jealous that Chitose had acquired a copy of Barely Legal, Harvest Time Special! It just wasn't fair. She was the club's treasurer, and why hadn't that Mary person contacted her? She'd have bought the magazine in a heartbeat. Chitose should have bought it with club funds, too, so everyone could see it. But no, Chitose was keeping the magazine all to herself.

At least Chitose had shared digital copies of the image with her best friends, even if she did make them swear not to tell anyone about it. And that was totally unfair, too.

"Oops," Daisy said, touching her hand to her mouth. "I don't think I was supposed to tell you about it, either. Oh, well, now you know. Anyway, isn't this a great shot? I love the lighting and the pose. Isn't it amazing?" And off she went on another motormouth spree.

William ground his teeth and prayed for a lightning bolt to zap that stupid PHS right out of Daisy's hand. Unfortunately, he had neither materia nor the skill to use it, so the device remained regrettably intact. He had lost patience with all that Keepers of Honor bullshit a long time ago, and now Daisy had gotten her claws on a picture of that Hewley bastard posing in the Gaia-damned nude?

He adored his wife, but her ridiculous obsession with that wretched SOLDIER drove him to the brink of insanity. He despised Angeal fucking Hewley with all his heart, and he'd never even met the man. Not that he wanted to. If he ever suffered the misfortune of being in the same room as Hewley, he'd turn right around and walk out without even a cursory greeting. There was no way he'd be caught dead breathing the same air as that uptight priss who constantly bleated about pride, dreams, and honor—assuming his wife's fan club could be believed.

And the man was a fucking hypocrite, too! All that preaching about honor, and he'd posed nude for a dirty magazine! That little detail sure wasn't listed anywhere official by Shinra.

William hid all his anger from his wife and nodded at every single stupid thing she said. Finally, Daisy ran down. Out of words or out of breath. Either way, she stopped talking and set her PHS down on the coffee table.

"I'm going to make a sandwich, love. Is there anything you want?" she asked.

"Whatever you're having is fine with me," he said, barely keeping his eyes off the PHS.

"Okay," she chirruped and bounced to the kitchen.

Now was his chance! His chance to get even with Hewley by taking him down a peg in the whole world's eyes, and with luck also screw over that stupid fan club. He snatched up his wife's PHS, looked in her images folder and selected the picture, and sent it via email to his own device. He then quickly deleted the evidence from the sent folder and purged the history of his activities. Daisy wasn't technical at all. She'd never even know what he'd done.

He then enjoyed a nice vegetarian sandwich and some kono juice with his wife.

Later in the evening, he took his own PHS into his private den where he could work uninterrupted on his vengeance and showcase Hewley's hypocrisy to the entire Planet. He already knew how to do it. He wasn't going to just post it on a few social media sites like some damned teenager or jilted lover pulling a revenge-porn stunt and then hoping it might go viral. No, he wanted something guaranteed to be really damaging.

Everyone knew the very worst, the sleaziest, the most sensationalistic and widely-read tabloid in town was The Midgar Mirror. It was perfect; they'd never miss an opportunity to run a story to a celebrity's discredit, especially such a lurid one. William browsed to the tabloid's official site and checked for the reporter with the most byline credits to his or her name.

It was an easy bio search. Lana Vale. She even had official contact information listed—the better to gather dirt, he assumed.

He began a new email and attached the picture to it.

"Want an exclusive?" he typed. "Thought you people might be interested in this. It's the real deal, not a manip. It's from an old copy of Barely Legal, Harvest Time Special!"

He used his favorite and very professional anonymizer and clicked the Send button.

That'll fix him, William thought spitefully.