A/N: I lied. I lied like a dog. I can't say no to you people, can I? Even if you suck at South Park (it was Chopper's line about "Whatever! Whatever! You don't know me! I do what I want!" by the way).

Er. That is to say: I got a phone call from the network saying they wanted to overhaul Pirates due to low ratings. I tried to explain to them that I had originally intended it to be a one-shot, but they didn't seem to understand. They demanded a revamp.

The characters present in this chapter are, shockingly, mine. I'm not at liberty to divulge the network for which these two work due to legal reasons, but the call numbers of their closest affiliate are WHAT, simply because if I lived east of the Mississippi and owned a TV (or radio or whatever) station, mine would totally be WHAT (KHAT does not have the same je ne sais quoi).

Oh, also. Did you know that manila could be spelled either that way or with two ls? I didn't. Amazing.

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The door is three feet by seven feet, made of cedar. Right at eye-level is a plaque that reads, "Uno Marionette" (it was... Italian, or something). Uno's assistant stood outside the door, her hand poised to knock.

"Come in," boomed a voice from within.

The assistant sighed. He always seemed to know when she was there, especially when she had bad news. She turned the knob and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her.

"Come in, come in," he boomed again. "Boom" is no exaggeration, by the way; Uno was quite a large man and had the lung power to do so if he wished (and he often did, because it made him very intimidating). He took up most of the space behind his large desk, blocking a good portion of the view from the windows behind him.

Slowly, reluctantly, the assistant crossed the room to the desk, putting a manila envelope down in front of him. "The ratings for Pirates have been dropping considerably. The network execs want to revamp."

"What?" His incredulity was apparent, even around the giant cigar dangling from his lips.

The assistant coughed. "Uh. Sir. Please. I have asthma."

Uno rolled his eyes, but doused the cigar in his oversize ashtray. "You say that every time. Aren't you over that yet?"

"It's... it's a permanent condition, sir. It's not exactly something that goes away."

"Bullshit. Don't be a sissy." He reached out and grabbed the manila envelope, then extracted its contents roughly. His eyes crossed over the page impatiently before he looked back up at his assistant. "This can't be what they want."

"I'm afraid so." She nodded. "I got it directly from the execs."

"But the target audience for this type of show is completely different from the target audience of a soap opera!"

"It's what they want, sir."

Uno sighed, stuffing the memo back into the envelope and handing it back to his assistant. "Get it to the writers ASAP, then. They'll have a better idea of what to do with it than I do."