Belly Literary Universe (part 2)

Cozca's Devils part 8: Preparing Veera

"Alright hun, we gotta talk about the wings..." Camilla said, helping Valerie pin wires to the back of Veera's dress.

Valerie and Veera gathered at Camilla's converted sawmill clothes shop to work on their part of the reverse heist. The idea was to have the flat and semi flexible speakers mounted on a pair of wings. At the start of the performance, Veera would open them up to give studio quality sound for all to hear.

Aside from minor technical decisions, there was disagreement between two designs. Either the wings would be run along the bottom of Veera's sleeves, or they would be attached to armatures on her back, allowing her hands to move freely while the wings remained fixed.

Veera just shook her head.

They were quiet.

Valerie broke the silence. "Beside that, we need to make other equipment decisions - where are the batteries and processing unit going to go. They're not bulky, but they have to be somewhere. And you're adamant that they're not visible."

"Uhhh," Veera thought aloud, taking the opportunity to talk about something else. "Like, strap them on the inside of my calves."

Valerie took a step back and looked at Veera. "Okay I guess. Probably won't be comfortable, but it could work."

"Then that's what we'll do," Veera decided. A moment later she deflected further. "So Valerie, I saw some tension between you and your girlfriend. Is everything alright?"

Valerie's face didn't change, though she did shift from foot to foot a little, betraying some discomfort. "We're alright. Just some roughness. It's about all this. Not the mission, but all the fat stuff."

"Really? She's not that into it?" Veera asked, turning around, and putting her hands on her hips.

"It's more than that. She started trying to date me because she was looking for information about Cozca and the Secret Advisor. I knew it and I let her because I thought she was cute and the Secret Advisor seemed to think I could convince her to get fat with me."

Weirded out, Camilla turned away and made a face.

"I can totally see how that would cause some tension... But things are okay now?" Veera asked with puppy dog eyes.

Valerie sighed. "She's agreed to help provided that Kelri gives her a bunch of the information she wants. But. We've patched things up a bit. Just some roughness left..."

Camilla composed herself and turned around. "So is that why you joined Valerie? To have more info to trade?"

Valerie answered. "No. I joined the mission because I like what Cozca is doing. That's it."

Camilla grunted then looked at Veera. "What about you. I don't mean to pry so much into y'all's personal lives, but you're a big name celebrity. Why did you join this little group?"

Veera smirked. "You first? Like, you don't seem like you like all this fat stuff, so why are you involved?"

"I don't. I mean, I make clothes for women with bellies. But up until a few months ago that was just pregnant women. The whole fat part of the business is strictly a tit for tat relationship. And well, I hate to admit it, but Cozca offered a lot of tat."

Veera smiled. "Yeah, I understand. I joined because Kelri asked. And well, It's to help my friend SA. He's helped me so much that I thought it was only fair to help him too."

Camilla let out a pained grunt. "The Secret Advisor? He seems a bit Intrusive for me to talk about him with any kind of fondness. He's manipulative - sorry to speak ill of your friend - but the good things I've gotten from him have come with strings."

Valerie shook her head. "I haven't experienced that."

Camilla shrugged. "Maybe y'all just got lucky then."

Veera shook her head as well. "He's always been a friend to me. But beyond all that, I'm with Valerie. I also like what Cozca is doing."

"With the fat and the bellies?" Camilla asked. "Makin people like them and all that?"

"Yeah," Veera said, clearly looking pleased with herself.

"Well alright, Darling. Whatever floats your boat," Camilla said. "But really, we need to make a decisions about those wings."

Veera grunted.

Valerie sighed. "Here, think of it this way - you're going to be singing and using the speakers to project backup music along with your voice. So having the speaker-wings attached to your arms means that the sound is going to be erratic as you move around. As cool as your songs will be, it will distort all the sound. It'll bounce everywhere and become a muddled mess. You'll scare people away and not attract them. I mean, unless you just want to T-pose for the whole performance."

"What's a T-Pose?" Veera asked.

Camilla replied. "Uh, 3d artists make human shaped models put their arms out to the sides - like the letter 't' - so they can paint everything on it better."

"Oh," Veera said. "Well my big thing is that I don't want to look like a crappy Christmas ornament with semi circle wings - you know - like half paper plate wings taped to the back of a doll?"

"Honey, we're just talking about the functionality right now. If you want fierce wings, I can make fierce wings. How would you want them to look?" Camilla said.

"Dramatic. Striking."

Camilla sighed. "That's not much to work with. But can we agree that the back mounted speaker-wings are what we're doing?"

Veera sighed with her whole body and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Yeah I guess. Fine."

"Great. We can talk about the theming once the structure are in place."

***