Just looked on the older books for refs of Thea and
Boi Curse of the Cheese Pyramid is insane
It literally starts with G heading to work on time at 9, but William comes in like "BOI YOU'RE SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY ON THE GAZETTE YOU HAVE TO CUT DOWN THE BUDGET" (Imagine this screamed directly into Geronimo's ear)
Obviously William's definition of "cut down the budget" is this
TW: Spoilers for Curse of the Cheese Pyramid, William behavior, do not click on if you don't want a spike in blood pressure
If you choose to turn away now, the following fume was just an intermission for finding this picture lmao
He pawned over everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in Geronimo's office, from his desk to his armchair to his carpet to his book collection to his art collection, and replaced it all with a single plastic chair and desk ("All you need in an office is a desk and chair!")
He fired ALL THE STAFF and decided that only family members will be working for the paper (because family members don't need to be paid as much probably (if at all) when working for a family business-- they all share their finances with each other, anyway maybe (it's not clear what their salaries are gonna be (wanna bet G is paid minimum wage while Thea is paid 50% of the Gazette's monthly expenses after this clean sweep))). The only person spared from the firing spree was Shif T. Paws, the Gazette's sales manager, who apparently offered to work there for free.
He delegates all the work of the Gazette to four people-- G does all the office work (taking calls, building maintenance, writing, editing, printing, clientele stuff), Thea does all the interviews and field work stuff, Trap does all the cooking, and Benjamin is "William's personal assistant". Lord knows what that last position means for little Benji. (Okay reading ahead Benjamin seems fine, but he does say that William is "a bit pushy".)
He sends G out on a work holiday thing and he overworks the crap out of everyone, to the point where even Thea is sick of William's senile old-fashioned ass, and it seems that the Gazette was also going downhill because of this mouse furry ripoff Daniel Dancer. (To give a preview of what he did in the working perspective, he basically had Trap work seven days a week)
He was planning to have staff give use old newspaper instead of toilet paper (T&B expenses), make a 30-second time mechanism for the restrooms (to maximize manpower efficiency and possible humiliation for anyone going number 2), and was considering cutting all electricity to the building and just have staff work on typewriters "just like the old days".
This man's senile ass--
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Odd things in Shou's room. #1
Shou's room doesn't look anything out of your regular teenager, stray clothes, posters on the walls, gaming consoles and unorganized school books, with a touch of his hobbies here and there, painter tools, sketch books, large canvas frames, drawings on papers sticking out from between school notes and manga magazines, but never any art on the walls. A quick in and out wouldn't give you an impression of anything out of ordinary, but once one makes their place in Shou's life, once he allows them in, they get to notice relics he isn't exactly proud of, marks that Claw left, ironically.
Under his bed and out of sight, there is a bunch of notebooks, old worns out colorful notebooks, completely filled with notes collected from his last three years of work with Claw, his job as his father's "errands boy" paid off in the form of rich intel that he made sure to jot down to remember. His job technically involved keep an eye on the various Claw divisions, and since he was planning to tear down the whole thing to the ground, he made sure to get valuable information with each visit, ie; location of the bases, names of their scars and their division leaders, their powers, their sponsors, from where do they get supplies and where do they keep them, their various connections to businesses, contractors, black market dealers, and even state employees who were paid to look the other way while Claw did their things, and many many other things that even Claw's boss wasn't aware of.
The notes are difficult to make sense of for anyone who isn't Shou, scribbles in his terrible handwriting and 40% inaccurate kanji, there's no date of eneries to organize anything unless it's specifically important, and everything is rather ordered by themes and events related to each piece of information. There are also personal notes accumulated by times, alongside newspapers snippets for evidence and sacred files he got his hands on and attached them to the notebook accordingly. On the margins, doodles can be found, of his first hamster, of Fukuda, then Ootsuki, and then all three of them as Higashio joined on the latest of his notes. There are drawings from nature as well, miserable seagulls from a stormy day he spent at the beach, careful rabbits from a snowy day he spent on the mountains, the amount of personal art is actually embarrassing to him, he isn't comfortable showing his notes to anyone.
When Claw was dismantled and the government went on a spree of scoping up targets and victims, Shou spent the night before his interrogation with government agents in organizing his notes as much as he can, going through everything from start to finish, adding more details as he remembered, and highlighting what he recognized as anything the government would deem useful. After making sure his precious notes were ready, thoughtful and determined and tired, he started making a list of names, jotting down as many as he remembered, leaving it for a while because he was suffering meltdowns because holy shit a lot was happening, then coming back with more and more names, it didn't take long for the list to accommodate several papers.
These were the names of everyone who has stumbled into Claw by accident, or were kidnapped by force, anyone who wanted out and couldn't just simply leave, people just like himself, who would have happily helped annihilating Claw if they had a chance. Like his lackeys who actually helped, or brainwashed children like Mukai, or older people whom he knows had good intentions but little to no say in anything, acquaintances from whom he learnt miserable stories, people who wanted to live their lives and wake up from the Nightmare that was life with Claw. People who certainly didn't deserve to be put in jail after Claw was over.
Despite being repeatedly told that his interrogation wasn't one for negotiating, Shou refused to speak a word of anything valuable unless every single person in his list is confirmed to left alone and safe, the agents claimed such a thing wasn't plausible, and Shou wasn't having it, a lot of things weren't going his way lately, he certainly didn't have patience for yet another situation he can't control. He put his notebooks on the table, and after making sure the government became aware of how they really need such information (he made an example by giving them everything he knows about one of the divisions), he threatened to burn everything right then and there and claimed that they'd have to torture him if they wish to get anything, if they can defeat him at first, that is.
Shou might have failed to actively take down his dad, but that didn't stop him from doing everything in his power to save whoever he knew was innocent, at the end the government had no choice but to accept the trade, with the condition that Shou would be available to help identifying people, which he gladly agreed to.
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