Tense atmosphere

Iori smirked as Clifford begrudgingly awarded her the spoils of her victory.

"I haven't been this badly thrashed since I played THOSE two," Clifford mumbled under his breath as he stormed away.

He was so frustrated by his loss, he completely forgot about Carol's presence, simply seeking to leave as soon as possible.

"Well that was easy. One douche down, 6 to go," Iori snickered.

"Oi, not all of us are idiot hippies. Some of us here are good ole American Ratiocinatio voters. I'm Hazel Hemmings and I’m from New Orleans. I coach various sports and am a SPCM to boot. Sorry for the ruckus earlier," the woman with short pink and orange hair smiled.

The others took the que to introduce themselves as well.

"Name's Sandy Shores. I hail from Los Angeles. The guy your friend beat was Clifford Glassblower from DC," the blonde-haired girl smiled. "I'll also introduce Katie Knoxx from Dallas, as if she did her own introductions, she'd talk for an hour straight."

"I wouldn't! Like, my shortest conversations are like, 100 words on average which is-"

"Yeah, yeah, see my point? You already met Mariano and Sheila. Sheila's actually from St. Louis, the chess capitol of America, so I'd recommend not harassing her too much if you don't want to get banned from playing in tournaments in St Louis."

"Why would that matter?" Iori scoffed.

Mimoko shot her a glare and explained that St. Louis hosted some of the world's most prestigious tournaments both nationally and internationally.

With the lecture out of the way, all eyes turned to the girl with long multicolored hair.

"ALOHA! My name is Mililani Paina, but call me Sherbert! I’m from Hawaii and film wholesome nature videos!"

Iori and Carol blinked as they recognized the name.

"YO! It's batshit insane Sherbert! We gotta collab! Loser downs hot sauce wasabi and shaves her head!"

Sherbert quickly backed away and hid behind Katie. "Sorry, I only do wholesome videos."

"You call surfing down volcanos topless wholesome?"

"I DELETED THAT VIDEO! Th- That was when I was stupid and de- degenerate."

"And? No shame in being degenerate. Me n' Iori got our nudes online," Carol grinned.

The statement caused Sherbert's face to go redder than a tomato. It also caused Katie's face to go red with anger as she crushed the glass she was holding in her hand.

Curious as to what the buzz was about, Mimoko looked up Sherbert's channel. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as all her videos seemed to be relaxing nature treks. However, as she did a Ewetube search on Sherbert, a video uploaded by a different channel popped up, featuring a topless Sherbert, sporting a fiery mohawk, surfing down a volcano in the thumbnail.

Thinking the thumbnail might be fake, Mimoko clicked on the video, but to her shock, it was real.

"YEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAA! WE RIDIN' LAVA MOTHAFUCKAS!" the Sherbert in the video laughed as she gleefully surfed down real flowing lava.

"DELETE THE VIDEO! DELETE IT!" Sherbert cried as Katie rose and angrily stormed towards Mimoko.

Daria quickly blocked her path and ordered her to calm down, however, Katie didn't seem to back down.

"You know, I heard Manny say your daughter was like, super heartless, so I think we need to lock her up in prison for a bit so she can't hurt good girls like Mililani or anyone else!"

"Mimoko has committed no crimes. Now cease the hostilities, or you'll be the cooling your head in the WWCF's holding facility."

"Not true, her and all her friends are guilty of illegal entry," Sheila snarled as she stared at her phone.

"Um, we were KIDNAPPED!? Not our fault we ended up here. Heck, we'd love to be deported back to Japan!" Carol glared.

"Well too bad for you then, because you're an American citizen."

"I renounced it."

As tensions seemed to flair, Sandy once again stepped in to ease them. This time by ordering a lavish steak dinner for everyone.

Everyone accepted though tensions remained at the dinner table. While Katie's animosity towards Carol had subsided, it was now directed more at Mimoko.

"Seriously, why am I being singled out?" Mimoko mumbled.

"Probably because of how heartlessly you killed your brother for the sake of victory," Sandy scowled.

It was a shocking twist of events for sure; the peacemaker was seemingly igniting tensions as now not only Mimoko, but Daria were shooting her death glares.

"Please, I could care less about that. Manny says she's heartless, she's heartless," Sheila glared.

Katie chimed in, going on a tangent about how selfless and compassionate Pewelr was.

"...Manny like, totally makes politics rad and hip and gets you all hyped up when he leads a march or rally. I went to a rally once and it was like so- Mmph!?"

"Your dinner's getting cold. We all know Manny's a great guy, but sadly these idiots will never see that. I should call him and ask how to handle this," Sheila glared.

"Chill girl. Manny's a busy man. While he said we can rely on him for everything, we should show him some compassion by lightening his workload," Sandy warmly smiled.

"I honestly don't get how you're all enamored with such a man," Mimoko grumbled.

"It's simple. They only know his good side. We've seen his true bad side," Carol stated.

"I think you misspoke, snake. The correct way to phrase that was, "They only know his good side, while we only have a limited and biased perception of him due to that heatless asshole Wiley Frisch!"!"

Mimoko could no longer hold her tongue and decided to ask Sheila what her beef was with Wiley. Sheila however refused to answer and left in a huff.

Deciding it was the best course of action, Sandy explained how Sheila had a rough time in college due to her being Wiley's granddaughter. As such, she constantly tried to distance herself from him, and sought to become a prominent Pewler supporter.

"To be honest, I feel like her support for Manny is less rooted in her truly being enamored by his compassion and policies and more so to do with her trying to prove she's not a heatless douche like her grampy."

"If that's the case, she shouldn't be forcing herself to support and idolize him."

"It's not so simple. She probably hates her grandpa from the bottom of her heart and is ashamed to share his blood. Politics can easily tear families apart, just look at history. Whether it be succession issues or tribalism, politics always finds a way to tear people apart," Carol somberly stated.

Sandy went silent and somberly smiled, unaware tensions would heat up once more.

"No way! Politics aren't evil! They're cool! That's what Manny says!" Sherbert pouted.

"Yeah, since Manny is cool, anything he supports is cool and anything he doesn't is like, not cool. Like, stripping, cussing, and doing degenerate stuff is totally heartless and not cool. We gotta like, be compassionate to spread world peace-"

"Yeah, I say "fuck" if I want to," Iori snickered as she flipped off Katie and Sherbert eliciting a horrified gasp from Sherbert.

"Th- That's a big meanie no-no. Not wholesome!"

Sandy quickly attempted to clear the air by asking everyone to join in a mini non-alcoholic toast.

"Yay, alcohol’s not cool. We should bring back Number 18!" Sherbert cheered.

"'Number 18'?" Mimoko asked in confusion.

"The 18th amendment of the US constitution. It prohibited the sale, importation, and made production of alcohol illegal, however, it led to economic turmoil and was eventually repealed via the 21st amendment," Carol stated.

"Americans banned booze? Guess they were afraid they'd turn into pervy drunks," Iori shrugged as everyone raised a glass of soda.

As everyone began drinking, Sherbert suddenly spat out her soda and began screaming. "IT'S SPICY MY TONGUE BURNS!"

"Whoops? Guess I slipped some ghost pepper spice in your drink," Iori snickered as she offered Sherbert a glass of water.

Before anyone could say anything, Sherbert grabbed the glass and gulped it's contents down. "Phew, I fell so much- Hic."

Everyone stared in shock as Sherbert began to woozily smile and sway back and forth.

"YO Sherbet, feel like stripping?" Iori snickered as she pulled her phone out of her breasts.

"Yeah! Fuck clothes! I nude luau!" Sherbert cheered as she began chucking off her clothes.

"Wha- Wha- Wha- WHAT'S GOING ON!? Like, Sherbert's drunk and like she's cussing and stripping and being unwholesome!" Katie cried.

"Iori-chan, that WAS a bit too far," Mimoko glared.

"Nah, I was just exposing our little perv here. Guess she never really changed after all."

Eventually, Sherbert sobered up. Her face turned redder than a cherry as tears welled up in her eyes as she was made aware of the state she was in.

"Now, why don't we do a nice normal collab, assuming you don't want your nude luau dance going viral," Iori snickered.

"B- But that's blackmail!"

"And? You said politics is fun right? Well blackmailing's a core component of behind the scenes politics."

Sheila angrily clenched her fist and turned to Carol. "The hell are you smiling for too? Blackmailing should be against your moral code!"

"Reap what you sow," Carol snickered as she flipped Sheila off.

"Now chill out. Iori-girl, just be nice and delete the video. Apologize to Sherbert and we'll all get along nicely," Sandy sternly glared.

"Yeah, I'm sorry... PSYCH!" Iori sneered as she uploaded the video.

"WHAT THE FUCK! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?" Sherbert cried.

"Huh? 'What's wrong'? I'm just embracing the spirit of politics. Didn't you say politics were cool?" Ioiri glared as her tone became more sinister.

"Wh- Wha?"

"Huh? Are you THAT stupid? Backstabbing is politics 101. Guess you learned that the hard way. Not so fun now is it?"

Smash!

Everyone turned to see Katie angrily clutching a broken glass. "YOU BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH, BITCH! SHERBERT'S LIKE, THE MOST WHOLESOME GIRL IN THE WORLD, AND YOU DID SUCH HORRIBLE THINGS TO HER! YOU REALLY ARE HEARTLESS TRASH WORTHY OF DEATH!"

Everyone went on guard, however, Katie didn't make any sudden moves.

"Violence is bad, but threatening force is like, justified to make a point. Now, full apology, delete the video, delete any trace of the video from the internet," Katie snarled.

"Well, guess the mask came off. Wanna get reckt, in chess?" Iori snickered.