goneawayworld | SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

SHEET CAKE MEETUP

“Who the fuck is Linda?”

The question pops up every few minutes, a little tack of punctuation above the offensively-inoffensive music being piped in*. The room the hires have been ushered into is clearly just a conference room, with a layout that requires either sitting at awkwardly-spaced intervals around a giant table or milling and scooting around the smaller folding table, where the “big surprise” the corporate officers promised them is on display: a sheet cake.

A sheet cake that that still bears HAPPY BIRTH DAY LINDA in blue icing across the top, although someone has, at least, gone to the effort of writing welcome, to the team new hires in Sharpie on a purple flashcard and used a Popsicle stick and tape to plant it like a dismal flag right in the middle of Linda’s “DAY”. Dedication aside, the cake itself looks pretty suspect too, not as if it were poisoned but more like if it were salvaged. The cake part looks dry, and the frosting seems strangely...sweaty. No one’s eating yet, and yet there’s already a piece missing.

However, there’s no lack of enthusiasm around the room. A projector hooked up to a laptop casts an off-center, warped rectangle of WELCOME TO, THE BEST TEAM. NEW HIRES!! onto a wall. The many paper plates have a festive print, although they all seem to be Christmas themed. The table cloth looks as if it came from both 4th of July and potentially a war, given the scuffs and tears. The shot-glass sized paper cups are inadequate to hold a satisfying amount of sparkling cider, but at least they don’t leak. There are many more plastic knives than forks, which could prompt some hires to give in to their animal instincts and just use their hands, or perhaps start a barter economy for the better utensils.

“I’m so jealous,” a corporate employee keeps saying as she ushers hires into the room. “We haven’t had a good party in this office since Kelly’s baby shower, and that little girl practically has teeth now!”

(An eagle-eyed hire may suspect that the box of donuts next to the sheet cake might have come from said baby shower, on account of the fact that the few stale hunks of donut remaining have Pepto-Bismol pink strawberry icing and that there’s still the paper envelope for a gift card with ITS A GIRL written on it.)

Most of corporate slips out after the hires get set up - this is clearly an event for the hires to do some “team building” and work on “rapport” in addition to filling their bellies with cake that tastes remarkably like sand. There’s a karaoke machine in the corner, but hires are instructed not to touch it because, as an employee points out, last year’s Christmas party demonstrated that karaoke is the worst thing in the entire world for morale (“in any world! even before this one got eaten away by the bombs!”).

There’s an additional big glass jar filled with scraps of paper, which the hires are informed are filled with prompts for ice breakers and activities in case the party needs a pick-me-up. Any hire who investigates will find that most of the ice breaker activities start with three benign questions (“what’s your name?” “where are you from?” “what’s your favorite animal?”) and somehow, always a fourth question that feels a little invasive (“what are your feelings on unions?” “under what circumstances would you kill an innocent person?” “do you use the same passwords for all your accounts?”).

“Please enjoy yourselves and all the desserts Jorgmund has generously supplied you with,” one of the employees says on her way out, “and don’t worry about making a mess, janitorial gets paid too much to sit around as is.”

*All music that can be summarized as ’grocerycore’.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's the only thing I could think of to call a six foot three rabbit." Okay, that's possibly not even the rabbit's actual height, but Sam's seen that movie a few too many times. Especially given his own troubles with his mental health lately.

"And that 'better' should be in quotation marks. They might try digging up another cake. Or maybe ice cream." Whatever would pass for ice cream for them, that is.

"Why?"

Bunny waves his paws in warning. "Don't - whatever they give you that they call ice cream, just don't eat it. I'm calling it now. It won't be a good idea."

"Because 'Hey, Mr. Rabbit' sounds like the intro to a Trix commercial."

Sam watched entirely too much TV when he was a kid. It doesn't make it untrue, though.

"I know that. You know that. Most everybody in this room knows that." Except, maybe, the people who are actually eating the cake. And given how scrawny one of those guys is, Sam can't even entirely blame him. "But that wouldn't stop them from doing it in the first place to try to make things work better here."

He gives the rabbit a half smile. "I'm Sam. By the way."

A trix ... you know what, he could be asking questions all day.

"Alright there, Sam. I'm the Easter Bunny. My friends just call me Bunny."

That saves him having to explain that if he has another name, he can't currently remember it. The things he remembers so far all seem important, so a missing name can't be that big a deal.

"You seem calm about this." Many of them seem awfully calm, for mortals with death collars wrapped around their spines.

Yep. There it is. Something in Sam's head screeches to a halt as he does his best to get his head around that bit of information.

The Easter Bunny. First the talking mouse, now the Easter Bunny.

And the werewolf. Can't forget that.

Finally, he reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Sure. Bunny works." Just. Accept and move on. It's not like he has a choice in the matter.

The hand drops away a moment later as Sam shrugs. "I could say that this isn't the weirdest situation I've ever been in. I'd be lying, but I could. Weird shit is kind of the norm for me back home, though. You learn to roll with the punches."

Yeah, the death collar is new. But he'd spent at least 180 years in Hell (assuming the time in the Cage didn't run even faster). The death collar actually doesn't bother him that much.

It's kind of funny, watching Sam accept his identity.

Humans grow beyond the point of needing to believe in them, usually when they're ready to do in miniature what they do. Protect the small and the vulnerable. Add hope and wonder to the world. Cultivate those coming after them.

And then they dress their Guardians up so soft and gentle you'd never believe there was a fight they took on at all.

But here he is, so glad to be able to grind an adult mortal's mental gears to a halt. And yet -

"Oh yeah? Which part isnt the weirdest, a new world or the slave drivers?"

Really, Sam's usually had to accept three things that should be impossible by breakfast. At least today waited until after coffee for some of it.

Not that he's actually really had much coffee.

"Believe it or not, both?" Sam quirks half a smile. "I've been to a world where my brother and I are apparently characters on a TV show." Which explains the new world thing, but... "And I've seen a lot of corporate America. Pretty sure they'd actually put shock collars on their workers if they thought they could get away with it."

"They'd try it," agrees the rabbit that was there for the development of child labor laws.

"What do you and your brother do, to get yourselves a TV show?"

He doesn't watch TV, but it sure is all the rage these days from what he can tell by the occasional nighttime pass by houses.

This is where it's going to get...interesting.

Sam gives Bunny a considering look for a few moments. "We're Hunters." Did you hear that capital H? "In our world, that means that we go out and deal with the things that...target humans, mostly. The things that feed on folks, create holes in families that they never quite recover from."

Is there a note of bitterness in his voice? Maybe a touch.

"A lot of the things that are considered just stories to scare kids are real in my world, just hidden. There aren't actually a lot of people who know that they aren't."

Oh - oh.

"You're doin my job."

Bunny's demeanor is suddenly more serious. He heard that bitterness. Here heard that capital H.

"How'd you end up taking that on? Your Guardians oughta -" his eyes narrow in growing terrible understanding. "Who's fighting on your side? How'd it get to such a bad point you two ended up doing it as well?"

Sure, there are mortal adults in his world who might call themselves Hunters. Hanging out at battlefields and in olds sites of human horror with EMPs, looking for spectral sounds and yelling at cameras about ghosts that want to throw down.

None of Sam's demeanor suggests that.

Oh, they have some of those kinds of mortals as well. They generally don't know what's actually happening, either.

"We came to it the same way a lot of people do, unfortunately. We lost our mom and Dad went looking for what had done it." Still, Sam pauses and considers for a moment. "As far as i know, we don't have any 'Guardians'. Just not enough humans to protect the rest of the humans."

Still. The idea that the Easter Bunny hunts dark forces? That's...very interesting.

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject