Foreman-964
Foreman-964 was a Clockwork Cherub and member of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, and the chief Head Construction Cupid of its Department of Construction.
Description
Physical appearance
Foreman had the appearance of a standard Mark X Clockwork Cherub with a mostly-golden body and orange wings with rounded slats. However, by December 2019, two replacement panels had been bolted to his bodywork, made of copper alloys from other Marks that didn't match his natural colouring: one in the top right of his chest, and one on the lower left side of his abdomen. He styled his light golden hair in points which jutted out from under the crimson hard-hat he wore at all times. (PROSE: Dandy and the Christmas Tree)
Personality
Foreman-964 was abrasive and antisocial. His only passion was in building ever larger and more numerous warehouses, which he considered an end unto itself, quite heedless of the use or lack thereof that the rest of the Crew may have for the finished products. Despite his eagerness to build as much as possible, as quickly as possible, he was committed to doing things “by the book”, refusing to let his team work without blueprints from the Department of Architecture in hand. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery) Foreman-964 had a “traumatic fear” of amphibians, which he claimed were the “one thing [he] hate[d] more than postponing jobs”. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet)
Powers & abilities
Having had his pain receptors removed, Foreman was incapable of feeling pain, which he considered an asset to work quick and well in construction. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Biography
By April 29th, 2019, Foreman had long been one of the Head Construction Cupids of the Department of Construction. His morning started on the wrong foot when he sprained his wrist falling down the stairs while yelling at a Mark XVII to get off his property. Heading to work, he found that, much to his frustration, work on a new warehouse that was to be the largest one yet was delayed by the blueprints failing to arrive. As was later uncovered, they'd been fraudulently intercepted by Philatel-426 of the Department of Postal Services, who'd caught wind of the fact that Foreman intended to raze the West Wing of the Post Office to make room for the new warehouse.
Foreman contacted Philatel, who told them that he'd put the Blue Feather in charge of investigating where the “missing mailbag” had gone. Foreman immediately had the case transferred to the more efficient Scarlet Wings taskforce, and contacted Blue Feather leader Acquaintanceship-982 using his two-way communicator to tell him he was off the case. Almost immediately afterwards, however, Acquaintanceship figured out the truth. Instead of telling Foreman or the Department of Discipline, however, Acquaintanceship elected to blackmail Philatel into letting the Blue Feather transfer their HQ to the West Wing. In exchange, they presented the Department of Construction with the site of their old HQ, which they found even more suitable for the warehouse project. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
The headline feature of Issue 1020 of The Cupid Courier concerned yet another warehouse that was to be built by the Department, which was projected to include “32 rooms, each the size of a sizable warehouse themselves”. Asked by the Courier to comment, Foreman was also told that Philatel-426 had registered his opposition to the project, still being of the opinion that the Department of Construction were building far too many warehouses. Taking his leave of Journalist-649, Foreman was subsequently seen chasing a frightened Philatel into the distance. (PROSE: New Warehouse To Be Constructed In The Homeworld)
When the Copper-Colored Council of Elders put together a Cupid Suggestion Box, Foreman instantly took the chance to put in a request asking that they authorise farther and more radical construction of warehouses, as he considered the three-or-four-a-week rate to which his Department was currently to “limited” to be insufficient. The Council ignored his request and, indeed, instead granted Philatel's request that Foreman be barred from skulking around the Cupid Post Office, whose West Wing he still hoped to raze, unless it was to pick up his personal mail. Outraged, Foreman put several two notes into the Suggestion Box until the Council decided to ban him from using it, placing some guards to make sure he didn't. Somehow getting past them, he later managed to send one last message, which was the final straw in getting the Council of Elders to withdraw the Suggestion Box altogether. (PROSE: The Cupid Suggestion Box)
Issue #1034 of The Cupid Courier included a classified ad for a recruitment drive for the Department of Construction, authored by Foreman. It specified “No stamp collectors allowed” in retaliation for Philatel's own classified ad in the same issue, which promised shipping discounts to Cupids who donated stamps to Philatel's collection, specifying that the offer did not apply to Foreman. (PROSE: Conspiracy-1263 Publicly Accuses the Gang of the Green Gorillas)
By the time of the Rabbit Invasion, Foreman-964 had been banned from participating in the Cupid Parliament's debates despite his status as a Prefect because of his inability to talk about anything else than the need to build warehouses and-or raze the Post Office, no matter the order of the day. However, on that day at least — the ninth of a protracted argument about whose responsibility it was to change the ink in Stenographer-123's typewriter — he had snuck back into the building, hiding under his old desk until Taskmaster-523, who suspected the truth, lured him out by loudly professing a belief that the job ought to be given to the Department of Construction. Leaping out from under the desk, Foreman tackled Taskmaster. He then also tackled Optimist-411, who attempted to cool things down, only to be tackled in turn by Philatel-426, who, without a trace of irony, shouted that he should stop tackling people as he did so. Before long, however, the fight was broken up by the appearance of the magic rabbits produced by the Hat, which drew a “shriek” from Foreman. The Cupids all evacuated to the Euclidean Plane until the Department of Problem-Solving solved the issue and called them all back three days later. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
After the destruction of the Cupid Parliament, Foreman was commissioned by the Council of Elders to build a new Cupid Parliament building. Asked to comment on this by Journalist-649 for Issue #1056 of The Cupid Courier, he noted his satisfaction at the Council finally being in need of his help. He also made it plain that he had no intention of honouring their request that the new building not be a warehouse. (PROSE: The Cupid Parliament Destroyed?)
Later, having been banned from making any more warehouses for the time being, Foreman set about blowing up and remodeling every one of the existing warehouses in the Homeworld. As his team got to one in which Marksmanship-522 had elected to take a nap, they dislodged him, forcing to try other possible hideaways to get some peace and quiet. After some misadventures outside the Homeworld, Marksmanship returned to the Homeworld just in time to find that the Construction Cupids were on their lunch break, and got back to bed in his own house, where the disturbance that had been at work there and had forced him to take refuge in the warehouse earlier had similarly abated. When he was startled by a shrunken Salamandyr which had followed him home, Marksmanship chucked it out of his window and it happened to fall directly onto the lunching Foreman, who was terrified of amphibians and ended up calling off all construction work for the day while he recovered, further guaranteeing Marksmanship his peace for the rest of the day. (PROSE: Peace and Quiet)
In December, after Celebration-665 began introducing the Cupids to Christmas via the “Festival of Giving”, (PROSE: The Frost King's Treasure) a reluctant Foreman was roped by Dandy-432 into flying with him to the Prime Earth to bring back a Christmas tree to decorate at Dandy-432's house, with Dandy needing Foreman's physical strength and acumen to cut the tree down. They found a tree plantation connected to a farm, which Dandy guilessly interpreted as a “Christmas tree forest”; it was only after getting Foreman to cut a tree (of suitable size to fit in Dandy-432's house), and dragging it halfway to the Ship, that the Cupids bumped into the owner of the premises and realised they were, in fact, committing theft. This did not deter them, however, and they made off with the tree faster than the farmer could follow.
However, taking advantage of Foreman's absence, (PROSE: Dandy and the Christmas Tree) Philatel-426 stole “all of [Foreman's] documents approving new constructions”. Foreman discovered this as soon as he returned to the Cupid Homeworld, and ran frantically through the Mainland Cloud, looking for Philatel or anybody who knew where he'd taken the all-important papers — notably accosting Larrikin-1029, who was busy transporting a Christmas pudding on behalf of Bibliophile-962 and had no inkling of the situation. (PROSE: Larrikin and the Christmas Pudding)
Foreman was one of the Cupids who submitted a question to the Courier's 1236th issue's educational Q&A about the Rifts with Doctor Sigma. However, like most Cupids in the Q&A, he simply used the opportunity to rave about his own personal hang-ups, in this case his ongoing rivalry with Philatel-426; it seemed that, by this point, Foreman was once more coveting the spot of the Cupid Post Office to build a new warehouse. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!) Foreman had a daily habit of rushing into the Post Office, causing as much disarray as possible, nominally to make an official complaint about something-or-other. (PROSE: Multiversal Mischief)
