"This is awkward," Purrsephone said as she just looked at Cleo's extended hand.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Cleo asked angrily.
"I really should have brought this up earlier, but I want our agreement in writing," Purrsephone said.
"Oh that's rich," Clawdeen began. "After everything you've done to us alongside Toralei, you have the nerve to not trust us."
"And I am sorry about that," the werecat said. "But look where I'm coming from here: while I do have problems with Toralei, I've also had some good times with her too and I'm about to throw that all away. More importantly, this is going to cause a rift between me and Meowlody who I'll have to continue living with when she gets back from Canada, so that's going to be tough. Fortunately, Uncle Jerry's emu ranch has no Internet and cell service so she's not going to hear about this for a while or send me mean spirited e-mails. To get back on topic, I just want to make sure that all the sacrifices I'm about to make will be worth it."
"Fine," Cleo said. All the girls went to Ramses de Nile's home office where Ghoulia quickly typed up a contract and printed up two copies. After the contracts were signed, the girls left the home office and sat down where they originally were.
"Before you tell us what information you have," Cleo began, "I have a question of my own. Back in my freshman year, did Toralei have anything to do with those rumors going around about me being a hater of Jews?"
"No, that happened all on it's own," Purrsephone clarified.
"I seriously doubt that it happened on its own," Cleo said. "Someone started it to make me look bad: the only question is who."
"Or maybe," the werecat began, "several people came to the conclusion on their own and spread it around. I mean, you do understand why people might think you're a jew hater: you're from a part of the world that's not very fond of the Jewish people and you were part of a civilization that enslaved them."
"Not my family specifically," Cleo explained. "Our slaves were black."
"You should probably keep that to yourself," Purrsephone countered.
"And if there's any religious group I do hate, it's the Muslims," Cleo continued.
"What did they ever do to you?" Draculara asked.
"They completely eradicated traditional Egyptian polytheism in the region," Cleo said with barely contained anger. "There's also the matter of how certain things done by some Muslims make everyone from that part of the world look bad, but I don't think we have the time to go into that. Though I'm surprised that Toralei had nothing to do with that since she's Jewish."
"She's not Jewish," Purrsephone stated matter-of-factly.
"Are you sure?" Cleo asked. "Because her name has the word 'Torah' in it which is the Jewish bible."
"The 'tora' in her name refers to the Japanese word for tiger," Purrsephone explained. Ghoulia moaned something in response. "Translation please."
"She says that she never would have guessed that Toralei is Japanese," Frankie said. "And I share that opinion."
"You can't really tell ethnicity with some monster species," Purrsephone explained. "I mean, I'm of African decent but the only way that manifests itself is as a family history of Sickle-Cell Anaemia."
All the ghouls looked at the dark-haired werecat oddly. "I did it again, didn't I?" she asked.
"Did what?" Draculara asked.
"I sometimes say very strange things," Purrsephone answered. "It's part of why this is the most you've heard me talk: I've learned it's best to hold my tongue around people I'm not super close to."
"And why does Meowlody not talk either?" Frankie asked.
"As a show of our sisterly bond," Purrsephone explained and then looked a bit saddened. "She's awesome like that sometimes. And those moments are going to be much more rare when she hears about this."
"I'm sure she'll get over it," Clawdeen said. "My sister and I always make up after our fights, which we've had a lot of, and neither of has ever done something like join in on the other's self-imposed vow of silence. It will take a while, but I'm sure you and Meowlody will patch things up."
"On the other hand," Cleo interjected, "Sister's can be petty, mean-spirited and unimaginably cruel."
"I'm pretty sure that has less to do with Nefera being your sister and more to do with her being a horrible person in general," Purrsephone countered.
"Probably," Cleo admitted.
"Anyway," Purrsephone continued. "Time for dirt on Toralei. Do you remember that story Spectra did on the three of us that involved Toralei being an orphan and my sister and I meeting her in prison?" Purrsephone asked and the others nodded yes. "All lies."
"Can someone go pick up that phone?" Cleo said with a smirk. "Because I totally called it!"
"You knew it was fake?" Purrsephone asked.
"I strongly suspected," Cleo explained. "I found it really strange that I never heard about Toralei being an orphan from the streets with a criminal record until Spectra's story came out. And as I mentioned earlier, I've never really considered her a source of factually accurate information."
"Moving on," Purrsephone said, "when she was eight, Toralei had this dream of being the first werecat to be an Howlympic swimmer so she tried to learn how to swim in defiance of our nature. Things went well for a while, but then she tried swimming in the deep end, had a panic attack and had to be pulled out by a lifeguard."
There was an awkward silence for a moment. "I never thought I would say this about any story that involves something bad happening to Toralei, but that's not funny," Cleo said.
"I never said it was funny: I just said it happened," Purrsephone said in her own defense. "Also, Toralei has a seething hatred of normies."
"What did they ever do to her?" Frankie asked with a hint of irritation.
"They killed her uncle in a lynch mob," the dark-haired werecat responded.
"Oh," Frankie said in surprise. She knew there was a lot of hatred against normies, but all she had seen of that was Jackson getting picked on at school. She knew that monster/normie relations were more complicated than that but she'd never experienced it firsthand yet.
"And now we come to the best part," Purrsephone said. "Toralei strongly believes in the existence of aliens."
The mummy and the werewolf started chuckling at Toralei's belief in such an absurd concept.
"It's not that funny," Draculara said. "If you'd seen have the strange things I have over the last 1600 years, you'd be open to the possibility of life on other planets. And is that really so farfetched when looking at the variety of life forms just in this room. We've got a vampire, a werecat, a werewolf, a mummy, a zombie and…," the pink vampire paused when she looked at Frankie and realized that she didn't fall into classical monster categorization systems. "Frankie," she concluded.
"She's a meat robot," Purrsephone said, attempting to categorize Frankie. Everyone else in the room did not enjoy her choice of term and expressed in their looks at the werecat, who then faced Frankie. "What? You were artificially created, you run on electricity, you were assembled from spare parts…..," the other girls' glares intensified on Purrsephone as she attempted to explain her reasoning. "Sorry about that."
"But it gets better with Toralei," she continued. "When she first met Scarah Screams, she thought that Scarah was an alien."
Clawdeen and Cleo started laughing uproariously with this new revelation. Frankie, Ghoulia and Draculara restrained themselves for about three seconds before laughing as well.
"Why would she think that Scarah was an alien?" Clawdeeen asked after she was done laughing.
"Because she looks a little like one of those cartoonish little green men," Purrsephone began, "and because TV signals travel into space after they're broadcasted, so if aliens existed they would just now be receiving decades old TV shows depending on how far away they are. Toralei thought this was a perfect explanation for why Scarah dresses like she could be dancing inside a giant bird cage at a Londoom nightclub circa 1967."
"What?" Clawdeen asked in puzzlement.
"She's talking about," Draculara began, "how Scarah dresses in a style that was very popular in the United Kingdom during the Sixties."
"That's what I said," Purrsephone said.
"She said it better," Clawdeeen said.
"Well," Purrsephone began, "I would have said that Scarah dresses like a backup dancer in a Bitealls music video but I'm pretty sure music videos weren't a thing back then."
"They weren't," Draculara clarified. "And even if they were, the Bitealls never used backup dancers."
The ghouls made some small talk for a while before Purrsephone said that she had to leave. She felt that this was off to a good start.