Between the Sheets

He gets a call that he is wanted in Frater's office immediately, so he goes. He's not expecting his former Papa to light into him about "Learning to Drum with Mountain." He's been making these videos for a while now, so he isn't sure why, all of a sudden, it's a problem. 

"You can't be doing that, Mountain!" Copia says. Mountain deflates immediately, ears and tail drooping. Mountain doesn't like breaking the rules or being yelled at, so he definitely gets really sad when Copia scolds him. 

"We're off tour now! And we're off for a while, I didn't think it would be a problem! We're not secrets anymore!" Mountain tries to defend himself.

"I know, but there's still a level of - eh, how you say - distance that needs to be kept, yes?" 

Mountain nods, promises to take it down, and heads back to the den. 

The pack clocks his dejected attitude immediately and asks him what's wrong. He tells them that he has to take down "Learning to Drum with Mountain" because it's not keeping enough distance between them and the band. 

The pack jumps into action to comfort Mountain, cooking for him, doing his chores for him, letting him pick the movie that night. All the while though, Phantom and Aurora are hatching a plan!

The next day, Phantom and Aurora approach Rain, saying they need his help with something to help Mountain feel better. Of course Rain said yes, but now, sitting in front of a tripod with Aurora's phone set up on it, camera trained on his fully human glamoured form, Rain wishes he'd asked more questions. 

"Don't worry about it, Rain! All you have to do is read the cards!" Aurora had assured him. 

"Ready?!" Phantom calls out. "And action!" 

Rain reads the first card, voice monotone, even, bored, eyes unblinking, "Hi, and welcome to learning bass with Rain." 

"No, Rain," Phantom hisses from behind the cue cards. "It's not 'b-ace', it's 'b-ass', like the fish!" Phantom over-pronounced each word for emphasis. 

"Hi, and welcome to learning 'b-ass' with Rain." Again, he speaks in a monotone voice, this time pronouncing the correct form of bass. 

"Today we will be going over the…" Rain pauses and squints at the cards, "the fuck does that say, Phantom? I can't read your damn handwriting!" 

"It says —" Phantom flips the card toward himself. "— fuck, what does that say?" 

Aurora's behind the camera, just head in her hands. 

"Can we take this seriously? Please?" Aurora asks, getting annoyed. 

"We are!" Phantom says. Rain simply sits there, waiting for Phantom to figure out his own handwriting. 

The video gets done. Nobody cares enough to edit it much, but it gets put up. And before long, Copia is getting a call that there's another ghoul video online! This one was about bass fish. 

Rain gets called into Frater's office but when Frater tries to scold him with the "we need some distance" excuse, Rain just looks at him quizzically and says, "how do bass fish have anything to do with the band?" 

"Certainly you can see where the confusion might come from?" Copia asks Rain. Rain knows that Aurora edited the video enough that his own incorrect pronunciation of the word did not appear in the final cut, so he stares at Copia, blinking a couple times in confusion before saying, "No. One's a fish and the other's an instrument."

Copia throws his hands up in frustration, muttering to himself, "I'm going to kill this ghoul! V will just have to get a new Water ghoul!"