Acquaintanceship-982
Acquaintanceship-982 was a Mark X Clockwork Cherub of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids.
Description
Personality
As leader of the Blue Feather, Acquaintanceship was weighed down by the lack of respect his team got, as well as his difficulty in keeping his antics-prone underlings in line. He was desperate to be taken seriously by the rest of the Crew, and prone to throwing his all even to relatively minor endeavour, hoping each new trivial misadventure would be his ticket to destiny. Despite this tenuous grasp on reality, he was also capable of genuinely effective deductive reasoning if his wits were applied to a genuine problem. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Biography
The Blue Feather were originally housed in a derelict warehouse located on the opposite side of the Mainland Cloud, where Acquaintanceship had to use an upside-down crate as a desk. They weren't given missions of any importance, and indeed, it could be months in-between the missions they did get, disappointing as they were. For example, they once went months without any assignments at all after “the Great Grape Jelly Stain Catastrophe”, their grandiloquent name for the occasion upon which Marmalade-624 spilled grape jelly on his tablecloth and hired the Blue Feather to wash it off. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
On April 29th, 2019, (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish) they were hired by Philatel-426 for an unusually significant operation: locating a bag of mail that had gone missing from the Cupid Post Office. They unsuccessfully interviewed a number of “suspects” — otherwise known as people who happened to be glimpsed at some level of proximity to the Post Office on the day of the crime — but at the last minute, Acquaintanceship realised the truth and actually solved the mystery: Philatel had himself stolen the mailbag, which contained blueprints meant to be transmitted from the Department of Architecture to the Department of Construction so that the latter could begin work on a new giant warehouse. The construction would have involved the destruction of the Post Office's west wing, which was officially vacant, but which Philatel secretly used to store his stamp collection. Rather than turn him in to the Department of Discipline, the Blue Feather blackmailed him into letting them use the selfsame west wing as a new HQ, while convincing the Department of Construction to build their new warehouse on their old site instead.
Just as they were getting settled in, Colonel-028 rushed into their new office with a new mystery to investigate: the theft of a pie from his windowsill. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) Having badgered badgered the Cupid Parliament into authorising an official investigation, he set the Blue Feather on the task. Following a trail of pie-crumbs, the Blue Feather found a Rift leading to the Faction of the Fooling Fish's headquarters in the Prime Universe, where they briefly confronted the Faction for the first time. After fleeing back through the Rift, they got the Department of Rifts to close it. After the Rifts reopened and had to be closed a second time after a second Fooling Fish incursion, the Blue Feather were assigned to guarding the location of the Rift, in case it opened again. (PROSE: The Faction of the Fooling Fish)
Some time later, Acquaintanceship excitedly gathered the Blue Feather to tell them about their new mission (locating Investigation-464's misplaced coat). When the Cupid claiming to be Pessimist expressed enthusiasm at the prospect, Acquaintanceship finally realised that it was not Pessimist-242 but a cheap duplicate, and that the real article had gone missing. With the help of Pessimist's Fog Ship, they realised that he had been taken prisoner by the Drove of the Database-Compiling Dromedaries on the Prime Earth. Although the Ship briefly disappeared and stranded them in the Prime Universe, having been commandeered by Dromedary Head Assistant Researcher Darius, it returned almost immediately, having taken care of Darius with the help of Lord Thymon. The Blue Feather returned to the Homeworld and set forth in search of the missing coat. (PROSE: Pessimist and the Dromedaries)
When the Copper-Colored Council of Elders put the Cupid Suggestion Box in place, Acquaintanceship used it to leave a note suggesting that the Blue Feather be upgraded to replace the Scarlet Wings as the Crew's primary topics. When the Council rejected the proposal, pointing out the Blue Feather's less-than-impressive track record, Acquaintanceship tried to prop up its reputation by leaving an “anonymous” note praising the group, but the Council immediately saw through the charade and banned Acquaintanceship from using the Suggestion Box again. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
