Episode 9

"ETC" is the ninth episode of Paranoia Agent.

Plot Summary

Four housewives share their gossip that they have heard about Lil' Slugger. Their first story is of a teenage boy desperately trying to prepare for his math exam. In the exam, he sneezes out a math equation, runs to the toilet where he sneezes out masses of them, he ignores knocks on the door, then looks up to see Lil' Slugger peering down. A teacher enters to find a sea of equations. The second story is of a young wife stuck at home with the mother-in-law from Hell. Her husband is away on his wife's birthday and she gets a cookery kit from her mother-in-law (a sly dig at her lackluster meals). Enraged, the wife flies at her, then hears a knock on the door. Both rush to it, thinking it's the husband/son, but it's actually Lil' Slugger, who knocks out the mother-in-law. The third story is of a doctor whose nurses mess up an in-vitro fertilization procedure so the baby's unrelated to either parent. The mother-to-be comes back in agony several months later, and an ultrasound shows the fetus is a miniature Lil' Slugger. The others make fun of Kamohara, who is the youngest and newest to the area, for this story. The stories grow ever more implausible. Kamohara returns to her husband (a script editor/writer) to find him on the floor bleeding from a head wound. He asks her to call a doctor, saying it was Lil' Slugger that attacked him. She's delighted and demands more details, but makes no visible attempt to call for an ambulance. A visual pullback reveals the apartment complex in the shape of the letters "E", "T" and "C", "etc".

Characters Introduced

• The Neighborhood Gossipers