Chapter Text
You are Jade Harley and you have just gotten some bad news.
You are broke.
Nothing like this has ever happened to you before. Money has never really been something that you've had to think about. You can't even remember the last time you've held a physical bill in your hand. Grandpa was one smart cookie about everything but locking up his guns; you have been kept clothed, fed, and connected to the internet all thanks to your Grandpa's foresight. All of this has been running relatively smoothly for close to twenty years, despite his untimely death.
Unfortunately, even he couldn't plan for everything.
One of your Grandpa's many investments has just erupted into a major scandal involving embezzling, fraud, and money laundering. The stock is in absolute free fall. And even worse, the criminal responsible used your account as a smokescreen. You know you didn't do anything wrong, but to the lay person it sure looks like you were involved in some shady stuff. A lot of people are very angry. Until the full extent of the damage is uncovered the government has decided to freeze most of your assets.
Your lawyer on the mainland assures you that everything will be sorted out soon. Eight months at the most.
Eight months.
You find that you are a nineteen-year-old orphan with no money, no experience, and no employment opportunities within a hundred miles.
You try to take an optimistic view of the situation. It's not as bad as it could be. It’s not like anyone’s going to repossess your island or anything. Thanks to your extensive greenhouse upstairs you're not going to starve to death. Hell, you could probably live on the ancient canned beans in the back of your cupboards and the stuff that grows wild around the island for a good chunk of time. It would be uncomfortable and bland, but you could do it.
However, there are things that you do need from the outside. Things that would be extremely uncomfortable, or even dangerous, to live without. Toothpaste, medicine, batteries, water purification tablets - not to mention every damn thing in your house with moving pieces needs replacement parts on hand for when things inevitably break down. The list goes on and on and you are just now realizing how much you depend on those little packages from the sky.
Even your internet connection costs a bundle. And there's absolutely no way you can go eight months without the internet.
Time to get serious about this and figure out just how badly you are hurting. You open your lunchtop and make a list of your monthly expenses versus your meager liquid assets. Your frown deepens with every new line you add.
There's a lot of red.
You lean back on your elbows and stare at your wiggling toes as you think.
Ugh, if only you could just sell one of the many chunks of uranium you got stored away, but that would probably just get you into deeper trouble.
You're going to need some more money to make ends meet. There is no escaping that. If you could just go out and get a job the gap you need to cover would be doable.
Your two most marketable skills are your affinity for gadgets and your knack for understanding nuclear physics. Too bad both of those mean fuck-all when you don't have any documented experience or accreditation. Geez, why can't people just trust you with their nuclear reactors?
You guess your income source has to be something that you can do over the internet. But what can you do? You're not a very talented artist, or writer, or coder. You can't even auction off some of your Grandpa's gross mounted animals due to the unpredictable nature of shipping to and from your island. What else is there? You don't even know anybody that makes their living from the inter-
Wait.
Yes you do.
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You've been chatting with Dave for almost twenty minutes before you finally bring up the reason for your pestering
GG: i have a favor to ask!
GG: is your brother home?
TG: yes
TG: why?
GG: i want to talk to him
TG: seriously?
TG: weve been friends for like seven years now and youve never once asked to talk to bro
GG: but i would like to now!
GG: :D
TG: so this is it
TG: i knew this day would come
GG: what??
TG: you are throwing me over for my brother
TG: decided you want to be best bros with a middle aged man i get it i understand
TG: before i leave your life forever in a storm of tears and sorrowful piano music i have to ask
TG is it his shades?
TG: are they cooler than mine?
GG: just put him on you ass!!! <3!
TurntechGodhead abruptly goes grey in your chumroll. After a moment of bobbing your head to the music in your head, someone with the chumhandle timaeusTestified pesters you. You can guess who that is.
TT: Hey.
GG: hello daves bro!
GG: um i mean
You realize that you have no idea what this man's name is. Ugh, Way to make a good first impression!
TT: Just Bro is fine.
TT: So, what did you want to talk about?
GG: well......
GG: promise you wont tell dave?
TT: Yes.
GG: i need to make some money
TT: Okay. Are you alright? Do you need help?
GG: no! it's nothing like that
GG: i just need to make ends meet for a while
GG: and i was thinking.......
GG: maybe i could be a camgirl?
TT: A camgirl.
GG: yes. i was thinking over my options and i think this might be a good solution!
GG: but i don't really know how to get started or what i should charge or how to keep people interested or anything like that
GG: i, um, thought maybe you could give me some advice since you have your own sexy website and support yourself
TT: Well, my first piece of advice is: are you sure you want to get into this?
TT: I hate to sound like an after school special, but once you put up that first video, bam! Some random guy in Sioux Falls or whatever will have it downloaded and backed up on six different hard drives.
TT: These things have a way of popping back up when you join the workforce. Normal jobs look down on this type of thing.
You think of your lack of schooling, your isolation, your interest in extremely advanced robotics and physics.
GG: i don't think I am ever going to have a normal job!
TT: Alright. And I know you are worried about Dave and your other friends finding out about this, and I gotta say, it's a possibility. Kids your age are insatiable porn vacuums and it's not unheard of to be discovered by a friend during one of their endless erotic quests.
You pause with your fingers above the keyboard. You are not too keen on the idea of Rose or John or Dave finding out about this. It would make you a little uncomfortable knowing they were watching, but even worse, you think it might make one of them really really uncomfortable. You have been isolated for many years, and there are times when human society seems like a faraway dream, but you are aware that what you are planning to do is generally looked down upon. You don't feel guilty about taking off your clothes for strangers, but the idea that your friends might find you... shameful is pretty awful.
However.
GG: i guess ill just have to risk it!
TT: Okay. Well, other than that I'd say that you're actually in a pretty good position for this line of work. You're young and independent, don't have to worry about discovery by a boss or parent, and I think you're pretty safe from the internet crazies out there in the middle of the Pacific.
TT: As for the technical stuff, here's a link to a good camgirl site. The take-home pay percentage is pretty high for the girls and they are serious about your privacy. If you get enough of a following then you can break away and set up your own page and keep all of the revenue. I can help you with that later, if you want.
GG: thanks!!!!
TT: You know, if you incorporated some kind of puppet act I could put a link up on my site. You might get some decent traffic from that.
GG: uh
TT: Ah fuck it, I'll do it anyways.
TT: And don't forget about lighting, that's a common amateur mistake. Good lighting will make or break a video.
GG: I won't forget. And thank you so much!
TT: No problem. Good luck, kiddo.
GG: (:
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Bro turns out to be an amazing fount of knowledge, and over the next couple of days he sends you a flurry of additional emails that give you detailed reviews of the different camgirl sites, electronic payment setups, and a bunch of miscellaneous advice that ends up sparing you a lot of headaches.
You manage to whip up your own homemade camera pretty quickly using one of his schematics - it turns out he's something of a tinkerer as well. You’ve got a lot of spare parts lying around, and in comparison to a lot of the stuff you've built it's pretty easy.
You make sure to follow Bro's advice and assemble a serviceable lighting rig and light meter which you hope to do the job. Your room is pretty messy so you clean it up, along with anyplace else in the house that you think you might film in.
The only thing left to do is get started.
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You are Dave Strider and you are getting suspicious.
You know that Jade and your Bro are talking, but you have no idea about what. Sure, you have your Bro's computer password, but that won't get you into his private email or pesterchum account or anything like that. You can't figure out the situation at all.
And it's driving you crazy.
One sweltering afternoon, you finally just flat out ask Bro about his conversations with Jade after you've exhausted every other option (short of asking Jade herself). You save this option for last for two reasons: it's embarrassing that this is even getting to you, and you doubt that you'll get a straight answer anyways because a dozen levels of obfuscating verbiage is the standard of communication in the Strider household.
Sure enough, when you actually swallow your pride enough to ask him he nimbly dodges every word like they are half-deflated rubber balls thrown by chubby nerds in gym class. Doesn't even give you a hint in the form of an over extended metaphor. The most you can get out him is that you should leave Jade alone about it. What horseshit.
It's not until months later that you actually get clued in.
By this point you'd basically resigned yourself to never figuring out this particular mystery. You're fucking around on your bro's computer for a completely different reason when you stumble upon a bookmarked puppet porn forum (yes, those exist) that is having a heated discussion about your bro's site.
Amazing. You honestly have got to know what could possibly stir up controversy amongst puppet porn aficionados. What is it - marionettes vs. hand puppets? Who's hotter, Miss Piggy or Elmo?
You're disappointed when you open the thread. Apparently it's just an argument about whether Bro's site is becoming too mainstream. Yeah, you're sure that Bro's latest video of a smuppet being drawn and quartered in a disturbingly sexual way is definitely going to become the next Debbie Does Dallas. Anyways, you're about to exit out when a certain string of words catches your eye.
Apparently one of the points being put forward as evidence of mainstream conformity is a camgirl link in the 'affiliates' section of Plush Rump. One commentator even complains that the girl won't even do anything puppet related, she's just some "nerdy little girl on a jungle island".
For no particular reason, this interests you. You click the link.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
It's Jade.
Stretched out on her bed in a bikini top and an impressive pair of daisy dukes; she's rubbing lotion up her strong legs and letting her wild dark hair fall over her shoulders and stray across her chest. When she squirts a line of lotion out across her thighs you jump a little in your seat.
You cannot believe you're seeing this.
There's a group chat window at the bottom of the screen, but you barely notice it at first. You lose a good chunk of minutes just sitting there with your jaw slowly falling open like a chump watching the muscles in Jade's long legs as she stretches them across her blanket. Finally, the incessant dinging of the chat brings you out of your stupor.
dudedudedude: hey wuts that on ur leg?
Jade glances at her leg and looks confused for a moment, then she runs her hand over a finger-length scar right below her knee.
"Hmm? Oh, this. Remember when I said I used to fall asleep alot? Well, one time I was carrying a glass vase and I just conked out all of the sudden! When I woke up there was broken glass everywhere and I was bleeding from my leg pretty bad."
Jade traces the meandering line of her scar. You ghost your fingers over the same spot on your own knee; she'd never told you about that.
"It looks kind of funny because I was not very good at patching myself up yet. My stitching was so bad! Anyways, it happened a long time ago, and I am much better at it now. Check this one out!"
She folds one of her arms back behind her head and shows off a much smaller, much straighter scar in the vicinity of her elbow. You try not to notice the way her breasts move with the change of position.
"See, this one is much newer and it's already starting to blend in. Pretty good job, if I do say so myself!" She gives a wide smile to the camera that shows off her buckteeth and scrunches up her eyes. It is heart-meltingly adorable and you are not immune to this saccharine display.
dudedudedude: you stitched up urself thats fucking hardcore
oboe24: got any scars on your tits???? cause i can check them out for you
She wiggles a finger at the camera. "Come on, you know the answer to that. Nothing exciting 'til you buy some minutes."
oboe24: don't be such a bitch.
You get pissed and close the window with a too-hard click of your mouse which probably shaved a week or two off its product life. You stew in your chair for a moment, looking at your cluttered desktop; though you really can't say who you are angry at: oboe24, Bro, or yourself.