Chapter Text
When Jennifer got a call about a potential new employee, she had expected the applicant to be some broke college student who just got fired from their previous job for smoking pot or something along those lines. What she didn't expect was a ten-foot-tall fish person.
The call seemed promising enough, if a little bit desperate. The interviewee had heard about the open position from the newspaper and requested an interview later tomorrow night. No valid ID, driver's license, address, or references? Not like Builder Bros Pizza was getting that many applicants anyway.
Jennifer checked her emails as she watched the clock tick toward 8:30 PM. She could hear her employees chat about their days as they prepared to close up the store for the night.
She took a short break to check the news, just to be bombarded with the same old stories that had been floating around for the past three days.
“FORMER URBANSHADE EMPLOYEES SPEAK OUT AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS.”
“FORMER URBANSHADE SCIENTIST REVEALS INHUMANE EXPERIMENTS TAKEN PLACE.“
“We haven't had a moment of fucking peace since November.” Jennifer whispered to herself.
A loud yelp from one of the employees out front, followed by panicked yelling, shocked her out of her doomscrolling. She jumped out of her chair and raced outside to see what had gone wrong this time.
The scene that greeted her was worrying, to say the least. The delivery driver, Stacey, was borderline crying while pointing toward the front door at the opposite side of the store, crouching behind the register. The cashier, Bacon, held himself up tensely as he tried to console the blonde woman while tending to the register.
“Are you two alright? What the hell ha-” She stopped in her tracks as she saw what Stacey was pointing at. At the entrance to the shop stood a roughly ten-foot-tall half-fish-half-person.
Its torso was roughly humanoid in nature, with its lower half being a long, serpent-like tail that trailed out toward the parking lot. Even with its back hunched over, its height was more than enough to send shivers down everybody's spine. It drew its hands up defensively, trying to seem less threatening.
“Uh... I was scheduled for an interview with—“
“If you're going to be scaring my employees like that, get out of that stupid costume and never come back.” Jennifer scowled.
“Yeah, listen, lady. I'd love to take this off, but..."
Jennifer recalled the articles about the recent Urbanshade scandals. This... thing must be a result of one of their morally dubious experiments.
“Ah, well then... Come back to my office.” Jennifer checked behind the counter and saw Stacey climbing off the floor and watching the new applicant intensely along with Bacon.
Jennifer walked back to her desk and fell back into her office chair, attempting to give herself any amount of rest before attempting to perform the most insane interview she had ever done.
The fish-person-thing opened the door nervously soon after, moving the small wooden chair placed in front of her desk to the corner of the room so that it could pull the rest of its body inside the cramped space.
“*Sigh*... I would have preferred if you told me about your... deformities while we were on the phone. Or if you would have told me anything, for that matter.” While she tried to quell her fight-or-flight response, that didn't stop her from letting out some of her anxiety in the form of passive-aggressiveness.
“I hope you can see why that wasn't an option, then.”
“Right... So, tell me a bit about yourself, umm, sir...?”
“It's, uh, sir. Yeah, sir.”
Jennifer nodded and clicked her pen nervously.
“... My name is Sebastian Solace, and I just moved into town. I was hoping to settle down into a semi-normal life after the... whole Urbanshade thing, which I shouldn't need to elaborate on.”
Sebastian tried to put on a friendly facade, but it was painfully see-through. The way his hands scratched against each other while he tried to hold a friendly posture. The way his razor-sharp, off-white teeth glistened when he opened his mouth to give an inviting smile. The way his eyes twitched incessantly while maintaining full eye contact with the woman in front of him. He was a fish out of water, pun fully intended.
“N-no need to tell me anything you aren't comfortable with sharing. Can you tell me about some previous positions you've h-held?” Jennifer felt her nerves jump at the sight of the man's attempt at an easy-going front. The way he held himself made him seem less like an excited new interviewee and more like a chimpanzee bearing its teeth as a warning before it chews your face off.
“Well, I volunteered at an animal shelter when I was sixteen to eighteen. And then, uh... I haven't had a stable job, uh, ever, actually.”
“Can you explain the, uh... fourteen-year gap in your employment history, then?“
Sebastian responded with an even wider grimace on his face as he let out a high-pitched tea-kettle sound.
“... I'm sorry, I can't keep doing this. You can le—”
“Your ad said you'd hire anyone!” He proclaimed as he threw his arms out to his sides. His piss-poor attempt at friendliness was thrown out the window immediately.
“Yes, as in anybody who's an actual person—”
“I AM A PERSON!” He roared as his earfins pointed outward and his head banged slightly against the ceiling. His shoulders started shaking as his erratic breathing became audible. The woman's face turned to fear as she stood out of her chair and held her phone tightly.
Sebastian closed his eyes as he let in a deep breath and shrunk his posture yet again.
”How many applications have you even gotten?” The man growled.
Jennifer furrowed her brows at the serpent. She had just about had it with his attitude. She wasn't going to humor this venture anymore.
“Get out of my office.”
Sebastian sighed as he slithered out the door and didn't even bother to close it, not like it would be an easy endeavor anyway.
Jennifer slammed a fist on her desk in frustration, partially with herself. She didn't have the energy to reflect on her words and actions right now. She just needed some goddamn sleep.