Holly Perez and Fords' Golden Tour MirrorG Chapter 16: A Brief Tour of Fords’ Inventory Summary: In which Fords brings the tour group to an old wing of the complex. Once inside, a long hallway dotted with yet more doors stretched before the group. Unlike the modestly ornate wallpaper of the front offices, the Imagining Wing possessed a near blinding white painted uniformly across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Only a rainbow-colored pattern broke up the monotony. It traveled straight down the center of the floor, with some colors branching off to disappear under doorways while the rest continued along. Each door, then, had also been painted in the same color as its associated line. “Now, as you may have already figured,” Fords began, leading the group down the hall, “there is quite a bit of creative thinking that goes into looking after a complex like this. There are ideas to be had, problems to work around, and all manner of other creative endeavors that beg my attention from time to time.” “Seems like a lot of floor space to give to just finding a place to think, though,” Bridgette shrugged. “Ah, but space is the least of our concerns around here, Miss Grazeland!” “It’s the one perk of building so far out into the middle of nowhere, huh?” Azure guessed. Faye let out an amused breath. “You mean, the one thing aside from the area being absolutely gorgeous , right?” She looked from Azure to Fords. Fords, however, hadn’t been listening since Bridgette posed her remark. Finally, she snapped back into the moment with a realization. “You know, Miss Grazeland, it’s good of you to have mentioned that! If I may, allow me to show you one particularly important room to the creative process we’re fostering in this wing!” She trotted down the hall briefly before stopping at a door with a green stripe branching off into it. “This,” she explained, “is the Green Room, a staple of the Imagining Wing.” The ewe pushed open the door and stepped aside for the group to peer inside. Within, Holly found a room utterly coated in a rich, emerald green hue. Everything from the walls to the simple furniture within looked completely uniform in color. Without the light within the room casting shadows, Holly wondered how easily the furnishings could completely disappear against the walls behind them. A wolpertinger, sporting a green jacket and a minty color to her fur to match the palette around her, sat at a table within and waved to Fords as she noticed her. Fords waved back politely, but gave no explanation about what the group now looked at. Holly broke the silence with a meek chuckle at the bizarre sight. “Well, the name didn’t lie, I guess?” She looked up at Fords, and then over the room again in an attempt to understand it. Quickly failing at that, the doe instead asked directly. “Why green in particular, though? Is it important for helping you get particularly ‘imaginative,’ or something?” “Close, Miss Perez,” Fords nodded, “but it goes even deeper than that, you’ll find. I’m sure you are all familiar with green screens as they are often used for the sake of special effects in the movies, yes?” “Yeah, I’m sure you’re real used to working with special effects, around here,” Bridgette chuckled under her breath, just barely loud enough for Holly to hear. Fords took a couple half-hearted nods as a sign to continue her explanation. “You see, much in the same way that people who make movies can cut away the green to show what special sights they’d like to instead, this room being so green makes it easier for me to, in a way, ‘cut out’ what’s around me as it is and better imagine what could be, instead!” Azure rolled her eyes. “Oh, so it’s called the Imagining Wing because we’re just supposed to imagine something impressive happening? The room doesn’t actually disappear, does it?” “You’d be surprised at just how little of a difference there is, to the right kind of mind.” Fords said, and shut the door to the Green Room. From there, the group strolled down the hall for another moment before another idea struck Fords from the blue. “Ah, you know,” she said, looking around at her surroundings, “I believe we’re now quite close to a room that’s rather relevant to you all, in particular!” She took another moment to consider her directions, and eventually her eyes landed on one door in particular. She pointed it out, this one a golden yellow, before stepping over. “Here we are,” she said and pushed the door open with the tip of her cane. Inside, the sight of a cluttered art studio met the group. Easels, paintings, and materials for a dozen different mediums hung off of walls or simply lay scattered across the floor. One of these, a pink pastel, rolled past Fords’ feet and into the hall, which Azure effortlessly kicked back into the doorway. With the extent of the mess within, Holly failed to imagine any of them being able to even take a single step inside. Instead, they looked over the bits of art visible from the door. Most of the works featured designs for various Fords products and package designs. The rest came in the form of depictions of wolpertingers in a broad, random assortment of styles. Most visibly, a herculean marble figure with a simplistic wolp’s head atop it stood towering above the rest of the room in the back corner. Near the middle of the room sat a wolpertinger wearing a painter’s smock over her usual jacket, as well as a particularly askew beret which struggled to stay on her head with her antlers and ears in the way. Her fur and clothes, dotted with splashes of color, only gained more dots of stray paint as she worked on a canvas. After a while she acknowledged the group, turning about on her seat, an oddly large, yellowish block, and waved to Fords with her paintbrush. Chapter 16, first illustration. A wolpertinger in a messy artist's smock and beret waves from atop a large block. She sits an an eisel, and there is a marble statue resembling Michaelangelo's David with the head of a wolpertinger behind her. “Good afternoon, Delilah,” Fords said with a wave before returning her attention to the group. Holly blinked in surprise and checked her watch. Just as Fords had said, it was already shortly after noon, over three hours since they first entered the complex. “Now, Delilah here is the most artistically driven wolp I’ve seen in all my days. It was her, in fact, who came up with the design of those Golden Tickets you all found.” “ Oh ,” Faye said, cooing in wonder, “do you think she would be able to draw one of us, Fords?” “Well, I suppose you’d have to ask her yourself and see how fun she finds the idea,” Fords shrugged. “I’m surprised that she can get any amount of work done in there,” Azure added, “that bench she’s on sure doesn’t look comfy, either.” “Ah, that’s no bench, Miss Burle,” Fords noted, “it’s an ingot! All five of your Golden Tickets were taken directly off of that bar of gold.” “There’s no way that’s actually gold ,” Bridgette said, now gazing at the giant ingot incredulously. Holly tilted her head slightly to observe the golden glimmer across its surface, marveling at the bar the size of a refrigerator. “Good thing we aren’t here with Delouise, she wouldn’t be able to control herself around something like that,” Faye remarked softly, low enough that only the other three guests heard. Azure silently scoffed, but Bridgette smirked at the comment. “Miss Fords,” Holly said, “I knew that your company brought in a lot of money, sure, but how can you afford to have something like that sitting around?” Fords nodded. “Ah, right you are, Miss Perez, but this bit of gold in particular wasn’t bought with money from the business. The girls were simply lucky enough to stumble upon it in an old, tucked-away corner of the complex not long after I first came up with the idea for the whole contest, and we took it as a sign.” “Yeah, okay,” Bridgette added, “ and where do you expect us to believe they just had it lying around? I mean, why would they even want something like that, after their little song and dance about how much they hate money?” Fords scratched at her chin for a moment before responding. “Well, I suppose I would have to ask them when I get the time. We must have had some idea ages ago which required it, but I can’t quite put my finger on what… I suppose it didn’t pan out, in any case.” Holly blinked in surprise at the answer. “You mean you forgot? How many ideas have you all come up with together that you could forget about something as big as this?” “More than you’d think! New plans are dreamt up around here on a daily basis, you see. It can be tricky to keep track of them all, especially when not all of them make it all the way to production.” While Fords talked, Faye got several pictures of Delilah’s finished paintings. Afterwards, she turned her attention back to Fords. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll come back to you if you just give it a minute, right?” She waved off Fords’ concern. “Why, it wouldn’t be the first time, Miss Huffie,” Fords agreed, only for her eyes to light up again, “but, if you all don’t mind, we could also try jogging my memory more actively!” Without waiting for a response from the four, the ewe closed the door to the studio and trotted off energetically down the hall. The group hurried after her, and followed her as she made several sudden turns down side halls and around corners. With Fords’ lively gait, most of the group started to trail behind after just a minute of walking. “Miss Fords,” Holly called out to the front of the pack, “what is it exactly that you want to show us now?” “You’ll see in good time, dear,” Fords called back before stopping in front of another large, industrial door a moment later. Faye and Holly took a moment to catch their breaths after the brief sprint to keep up with the sheep’s wild directions. As they did, Holly felt the chill of Azure’s judgemental gaze rest on her display of exhaustion. Once she recovered, the doe glanced up at the metallic door before them, these coated with a deep blue. She turned to Fords. “Is this the way into another wing of the complex?” “A fine guess, Miss Perez! This is, in fact, the very origin point of the entire Imagining Wing,” Fords corrected her gently. “This better be good, then,” Azure remarked. Fords grinned at the fox. "I believe it just may be! So, allow me to welcome you to the creative core behind everything that happens in the complex: my Inventory!" The group entered the room, finding themselves in a dark forest of machinery. Massive contraptions weaved around each other, as well as pipes and conveyors. Countless display screens blinked cryptic signals and statuses, bathing the group in a multicolored light despite the metallic canopy preventing sunlight from the windows reaching the concrete floor. Every time Holly's eyes tried to track the shape of just one machine, she found herself growing dizzy from the sheer complexity of the system until she centered her focus back onto the other four. "An inventory? Like, for keeping stock of things?" She posed the question to Fords just to keep her focus off of the metallic maze around her. She wondered how anyone could keep track of any single thing in such a room, let alone some extensive factory's stockpiles. Bridgette voiced the same thought before her, however. "Just what can you keep stock of, here? It's a mess." "Why, Miss Grazeland," Fords nodded, "my Invent -ory is for keeping stock of ideas ! Every idea I've dreamt up for the factory floor began as a prototype here before being refined into more replicable forms. Everything you see here is the past, present, and future of Fords' Fantastic Fooderies." She motioned the group onwards through the labyrinth of passes and clearings. With no direction, though, Holly waited for Fords to lead the way. Azure peered down several of the cluttered side paths through the room as they wound their way around machines. After a while, she loudly popped another bubble. "So, got any good ideas to show us while we’re here, or are we just cutting through to get to something worthwhile?" The sheep paused for a second to ponder the question before tapping her cane decisively against the floor. "Indeed, there are quite a few things I could show you all about here that I'm proud of! As for something nearby, let me see," she considered several forks ahead in the clear trail before veering off to the right. "I have something in mind, and it happens to be just over here!" Holly glanced warily at the others before the group followed after the ewe again. Bridgette returned the look as they walked quickly and rolled her eyes. “She sure has a habit of running off without thinking about if we can follow, doesn’t she?” Azure stepped by her and glanced over her shoulder. “I mean, if you can’t keep up with someone as old as her? That’s on you.” “Okay, but ,” Faye began before yelping again as a wolpertinger suddenly fluttered by her from around a bend holding a comically large wrench, the hunk of metal scarcely missing her head as she ducked beneath, “is it really that ‘hostly’ of her? It’s like she doesn’t even care if we all get lost in here…!” “We won’t,” Bridgette noted, “but not because of anything she’s doing. I’ve been keeping track of our path, y’know, since just about when we got here. It’s not going to be if she gets us lost, but when , so I’m ready.” Holly nearly tripped over some wires lining the floor, but managed to keep herself upright. “So,” she asked, “how has she been getting us places so far?” “Luck, if I had to guess,” the bear responded simply. As they passed, the doe took a second to glance down the winding path that the wrench-bearing wolpertinger came from. Tucked away under a canopy of mechanical arms and thudding pistons sat a set of several heavy, metal tables. A wolpertinger stood at one, seemingly deep in focus. After a second, she shook her fist and suddenly cast forth a dozen different dice. She eagerly looked over the results of her roll, and set about collecting different flavors from bins and bottles around her and dumping them all into a single funnel built into the table. Holly supposed that it must be some way of inventing new, unconventional flavor combinations for candy on the spot. At the same time, she supposed that the method didn’t produce winning combinations the majority of the time. Before she dwelled on it any longer, Bridgette’s voice pulled her out of the thought. “Hey. Keep up, Perez,” she said. At that point, Holly noticed how far she had begun to lag behind again. Bridgette had stopped to face her directly, while Faye looked over her shoulder but kept walking. Azure and Fords, then, carried on, both of them too far ahead to be seen. “Right, sorry,” Holly said softly before picking up her pace once more. The three hurried forward again, following behind the glimpses of Azure’s stark white tail around corners and bends to stay on the right trail, before finally catching up with Fords a minute later. The sheep had stopped to greet another wolp, this one seated at a drawing table with an array of remarkably small pencils. She waved to Fords before returning to her work, wielding two pencils at once and sketching away at schematics so intricate that Holly craned her neck and strained her eyes to make out even some of the large-scale details involved. “That,” she began, but stopped to take another deep breath, “is a lot to fit on one blueprint, isn’t it?” “I thought so as well, Miss Perez,” Fords said, “but the girls aren’t keen on being wasteful, so if they can take care of everything on one page then they’re sure to do it.” “I can’t imagine how long some of these must take to make.” Azure leaned to the side in an attempt to peer around Fords. “Longer than we’ve got time to wait around today, I’m pretty sure.” “I suppose so, Miss Burle, in which case,“ Fords continued, “how about I instead show you some of the contraptions the girls and I have been working on over the years?” She peeked ahead as well, and then motioned the group to follow her around another turn. “This one over here is a fun story, for instance!” The sheep pointed at an oddly-shaped machine. To Holly it almost looked like a Christmas tree made of dull metal, only with hatches and pipes branching off from it near its base. As the group approached, she also picked up the vague scent of something burning . Fords tapped it with her cane, and a hollow sound reverberated through the contraption. “This here is what happens when an idea gets a bit muddied somewhere between being dreamed up and being produced in the Inventory. Some of the girls thought they were building a ‘bauble’ gum machine for the holidays, and some thought they were making a ‘bomb-le’ gum machine for playing pranks. The end result that the machine makes? Not quite as good as the two ideas that went in.” She giggled at her tale. Holly stifled a brief chuckle as well, but a deafening silence from the other three quickly stole her mood to laugh at the story. “Of course, there have been many more practical ideas we’ve seen come to fruition in this room,” Fords shrugged, “so if you’d like, we can see some of those in action.” “Oh, for sure !” Faye nodded. “As fun as you can find, okay?” Bridgette shot her a bewildered look, but the rabbit simply beamed back at her. “Certainly, Miss Huffie,” Fords said, and led the group deeper into the metallic jungle. After effortlessly navigating a couple more forks in their path, they passed the sight of a wolpertinger fluttering over an old ironing board. She flattened out a wad of some sort of gummy candy, then pressed it into that shape with a clothing iron. “Azure,” she said, pulling the fox’s attention over to the scene, “you don’t think that’s where they could’ve made that snack you found your ticket in, do you?” “What? Oh,” Azure gave the ironing wolp only a brief glance, “maybe, I guess. Does it matter, though?” “I don’t know, I thought it might be interesting for you,” Holly tried to explain. “Well, then I’ll let you know when I start getting interested,” Azure remarked and stepped to the front of the group once again. The next time the tour group stopped, they found themselves in front of a metal table covered in chocolates and adorned with a number of rods sparking electricity. A wolpertinger with a frazzled lab coat and puffed-out fur fiddled with its sweet contents. “This here,” Fords began, but paused to think for a moment, “ seems to be an attempt to get properly in-character during preproduction of this year’s line of Halloween-themed candies.” “D’aww, she’s adorable ,” Faye cooed, stepping closer. “Just look at that little costume!” The rabbit rested a hand on the table as she got a better look at the wolp’s work, only to immediately yank it back as the surface delivered her a jolt back. All of her hair stood on end from that brief shock. Holly detected a grin from Azure, her first in a while, as well as Faye shooting a brief glare at the fox’s obvious pleasure with her situation. “Okay, so,” Faye said, quickly patting her hair back down into shape, checking herself with her phone’s camera to make sure it worked, “what next?” Bridgette lagged behind the group with Holly again as they set off. “Who needs that much power for some little Frankenstein costume? If Fords gets any more into her little ideas, things are gonna get dangerous for all of us,” she said in a low tone. Holly glanced between the bear and sheep. “You, uh, don’t think she knows what she’s doing?” “I know she doesn’t,” Bridgette responded. “This can’t be how she makes anything here. What I didn’t expect was her trying to make her little setpieces so elaborate. It’s like she can’t even tell the difference.” “Is,” Holly stepped over a low-lying pipe, interrupting herself briefly, “is there supposed to be a difference?” “Of course there is,” the bear remarked, “just think about everything so far. It’s all staged little scenes, like a theme park. You should know this.” She looked down at the doe. “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, twenty-something?” Holly chose not to correct her age to thirty. “Right, sorry,” she said under her breath and pushed further ahead. By the time Holly and Bridgette finally caught up with the rest of the group, they had all stopped again to look over another machine, too engrossed in the odd sight of it to notice the pair’s momentary absence. Now, they stood in front of a large, polished ring, mounted on a stand with colorful, pint-sized jars bound to its outside. Wolpertingers dutifully added drops of flavor to and scooped the contents from the jars, before suddenly all fluttering around it in loops. They bobbed in and out, each time pushing on the ring to spin it faster until it twirled about violently, rotating on its axis with the stand and humming audibly from its speed. “This rather dramatic device,” Fords began, “is an ingenious method the wolps have put together for perfecting our new recipes. It allows for precise control not only of what flavors we put in, but the exact rate and length of mixing that it all undergoes! If you recall the ice cream flavors I discussed earlier, this machine allowed us to find the perfect mixtures for those flavors, and more! It’s quite the versatile thing, too. Not only can it be retooled for any kind of mixing the complex might need, but it also serves as a fun bit of sport for the girls.” “Sport, huh?” Azure remarked, looking over the machine as it spun, “doesn’t look like any kind I’ve ever seen.” Chapter 16, second illustration. Azure and Fords speak to each other in the foreground of the image. In the background, a centrifuge atop a large base is spun by a group of wolpertingers. One wolpertinger is running on the structure, desperately trying to not trip. The rest of the background is cluttered with odd machines and catwalks. Fords shrugged in response. “Well, I call it that, but it’s perhaps most accurately a game the girls like to play with each other, seeing how fast they’re able to make it spin, how they can break their old records, that sort of thing.” Azure raised a brow at the explanation. “Yeah? Who’s the record-holder right now, then?” “Well, it isn’t just the one,” Fords noted, “they enjoy the collaborative effort of it, so they tend to work together to find ways to push their record higher.” The vixen stepped back to get a full view of the wolps as they shifted between formations and pushed the machine faster. “No teams or anything, huh? No leaderboard or anything?” “Not unless you consider them all to be working as one big team, I suppose,” Fords chuckled, gazing up at them at work. “Thinking on it, I don’t suppose I’ve seen any wolpertingers who are quite so competitive in the way you may be used to.” With Azure’s questions answered, Fords turned back to look over the rest of the group with a grin. At that moment, Faye was in the middle of typing on her phone. She stopped when Azure once again popped a disinterested bubble by her long ears. " Right ," the vixen remarked, gazing up at Fords with an unamused expression, "so, you said we were going to get to the part with the stuff that’s interesting to us soon, right? Was that supposed to be it? Half of those just felt like weird things I’d come up with in my sleep. Only difference is that I wouldn’t bother to remember them after waking up." Fords matched Azure's gaze once again, though the ewe now looked so deep in thought as to be gazing straight through the fox. Finally, her eyes lit up in realization. "Ah, of course! Right this way, you all. I've remembered just the idea that may capture Miss Burle's imagination." With that, she trotted off deeper into the Inventory with renewed speed.