Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2020-04-17 08:20 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2020-04-17 08:20 pm
Entry tags:
- #rig logs,
- +intro log,
- +sheetcake party,
- adora,
- alloran semitur-corass,
- brainiac 5,
- bunnymund,
- catra,
- dave strider,
- gadget hackwrench,
- guts,
- jack spicer,
- nora valkyrie,
- robbie baldwin,
- ronald mcdonald,
- ronan lynch,
- sam winchester,
- saturday,
- setsuna higashi,
- stacia novik,
- ✘ cayde-6,
- ✘ ciaphas cain,
- ✘ doreen green,
- ✘ elsa,
- ✘ emily grey,
- ✘ kevin ingstrom,
- ✘ peter parker,
- ✘ phosphophyllite,
- ✘ remus lupin,
- ✘ ryotaro dojima,
- ✘ saint-14,
- ✘ sirius black,
- ✘ steven universe
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’.
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Sirius didn't realize how unnerving he must look. He was always a passionate person but after Azkaban, the way his eagerness lit up his otherwise empty eyes looked haunting.
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She'd thought maybe he was a werewolf, considering his haggard state, but he'd said "none of them" kept their minds; and considering that they seemed to be stuck here for the foreseeable future, his excitement seemed to indicate that there was another werewolf around.
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He shouldn't reveal who he was talking about. Remus would be even more furious and he would know who told her. But what the hell was Remus going to do when the full moon came? Were the walls and locks sturdy enough to take a werewolf?
...And of course if it was just Sirius and Remus here who were from the same world, she would know immediately which one was the werewolf. He messed up again. That was all he could do now.
He had no idea if he could trust Stacia. All she had going for her right now was she broke up a fight instead of encouraging it. More maturity than Sirius had at her age could only be a good thing.
As all these thoughts crossed his mind, he forgot that he let slip something important: as long as they're not human.
"I don't know what it's like with you, but wizards have a very-- prejudiced view of werewolves. It's something that's best kept a secret."
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She's really not, if he couldn't tell by the deadpan. The comment about friends who aren't human gets tucked away for further examination later.
"If it even is something I can teach them, I definitely can't do it through an intermediary," she says. "You don't have to tell me who they are, though. Just point them my way. I won't even ask who sent them; technically there could be any number of secret werewolves here. It's not usually something I parade around openly about, either."
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"I don't expect he'll listen to me anymore but... I will see what I can do. He might approach you on his own." If there was anything he knew it was that word traveled fast wherever you were. Even in Azkaban, he could hear...
He swallowed and when he spoke again, his voice was lower. "If he does find you, I'd appreciate if you can help him... My name is Sirius, I don't know if I mentioned." Remembering niceties was not easy.
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That sounds like a shortened Deed Name, but that can't be right.
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"Sirius like the star. Common mistake." Common joke too, not that he minded.
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If you're the child of weirdos or, apparently, wizards.
"At least tell me your middle name isn't 'Lee'."
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"No, but that would be better." He'd learned to be at peace with his middle name, considering his namesake, but that was before Azkaban. "Orion. My family was too fond of their stars," said the man who liked to stargaze. "And what name did your parents bless you with?"
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She laughs. "The name they gave me is still longer than I am tall. But I go by Stacia. It's nice to meet you Sirius, wish it was under better circumstances."
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"And it's nice to meet you, Stacia. I'd say it could be worse, but I don't want to tempt fate too much." He stepped back. "Don't let me keep you from having more fun."
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That's a surprisingly normal-sounding surname, considering the rest of it. But then, maybe it's less common where he's from.
She grins and lifts her bloodied arm in a little wave. "Yeah, 'fun'. I'm gonna finish healing up and see if they'll requisition me a new jumpsuit. See you around, I suppose."
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"Ah, sorry. Normally magic doesn't help werewolves, but can I try a quick healing spell?" He wanted to reach for his wand, even after all this time, but that was just something he'd have to live without. "It shouldn't hurt."
It was not a spell that worked well at all on Remus's wounds. Cursed wounds required entirely different spells. But they'd already established that Stacia was very different.
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"I suppose now with a minor wound is a better time to test whether it works than when I'm really badly injured. Give it a shot."
There aren't any healing talens here, right now she's on her own. May as well see if Sirius' magic could keep her alive.
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If all went well, the skin should knit back together quickly and painlessly.
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"Looks like it worked just fine!" she said. "I hope it was supposed to tickle, because it did."
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After that spell, he felt more like himself than he had since the night his friends died. He'd also forgotten how good it felt to help someone, even if it was just a flesh wound.
no subject
"Hasta luego, Sirius."