“Go away!” shouted Jake to the knocking on his office door. Had become quite adept at sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, a mark of any true leader. The door opened anyway and Leina, the receptionist he had met earlier, walked in.

“Hi Jake45,” she said.

“It’s Jake,” said Jake, unable to understand why everyone kept putting the number on the end of his name. It was quite irritating. “And I did say go away.”

“I bought you something,” she said. “I’ve been looking at your gamer-profile on Lapine Death Corps. You have lots of points, you must be really good!”

“Yeah, I suppose I am,” agreed Jake. Leina had chosen the right subject to bring up, his gargantuan number of gamer points was the only thing that Jake was really proud about in his life.

“They’re prawn cocktail,” she said, placing a multi-pack of crisps on his desk. “Your favourite.”

Leina smiled, her lips somehow pushing forward out of her chubby cheeks. Jake could see that she was drooling a little. He hoped that it was because she really liked prawn cocktail crisps too. He wasn’t going to give her any though, just in case it gave her the wrong impression.

“And I got you these.” She unrolled the papers she had under her arm, and threw Jake a pack of pins.

“Are they heavy metal posters?”

“Yes Jake45, all of your favourites.”

Jake was genuinely pleased. He looked up at Leina and their eyes met. Jake went instantly shy, and felt insanely awkward once more. He stared at her, in that uncomfortable way that feels like you’re saying aren’t we finished now? to someone that thinks we’ve only just started.

After a couple of minutes, Jake glanced down at the crisps that he was holding in his hand. How am I supposed to save time in an emergency, if she won’t go away and let me eat my emergency crisps?

“I think Green_Turtle_Boy was looking for you earlier,” he said, pleased that he’d thought of some excuse to get rid of her.

“Which one?” she said.

“Err ..369?” he answered. “Are there really that many of them?”

“Well there are actually 512 Green_Turtle_Boy brothers and sisters, but he is the only boy left.”

“The only one? That’s terrible!” Jake thought that maybe Green_Turtle_Boy_369 had a worse life than he did.

“Yes. Every time that 500 hundred children are born to a Crawkling family, all the girls and all the boys are made to fight to the death. The last ten surviving must then play strip poker and the last boy and girl with their clothes on win, and the others are conscripted to the army and renamed ‘Brutal_Army_Person’ followed by a number.”

“You’re joking,” said Jake.

“Deadly serious,” replied Leina.

“You’re a bunch of scumbags.”

“Thanks,” beamed Leina. “I should be fighting in a couple of months, my Mom’s up to 450.”

Jake wanted to say “I doubt you’ll have a problem” but he considered whether he would have a chance against Leina in a fight. He wouldn’t, so he just said “Oh, good luck.”

“Well I’d better go and find him then, shouldn’t I. Is there anything else you’d like?”

Jake’s brain began to whirr. “Can I have a copy of Lapine_Death_Corps installed on my computer?”

“It’s already there!” said Leina. “It’s the software we use to interact with the outside world, and the key to our spy network.” Jake had already stopped listening and had got under his desk to turn on his machine.

“Well, I’ll see you later,” said Leina. “And don’t worry,” she added with an obvious wink, “this is absolutely not the beginning of a completely unacceptable boss to employee relationship. That would make me really upset.”

Jake swallowed the vomit that had appeared in his mouth, weighed it down with a handful of emergency crisps and turned his hand to the most important task he would undertake in his new job as Crawk-King, Leader of War. Those zombie-rabbits wouldn’t kill themselves.