SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

[goneawaymod]

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’.

Comments

[gautiheir]

Well, introductions are something Sylvain takes to easily, at least.

Thus, Adora gets a charming smile and half a bow from the tall redhead standing nearby. "Sylvain Jose Gautier, the pleasure's all mine - well, I'd like to hope at least some of it can be yours, as well."

[princesspower]

"Oh, hi-!" Adora flashes a smile that's not quite as big as it could be, considering where they are. he launches into - wait, is he... flirting? She blinks and her smile fades a little.

"I mean... it is? Even if we're stuck here."

[gautiheir]

Ah.

There are two kinds of women in the world, Sylvain has generally found: the ones who are delighted by his attentions (and, thus, usually the kind of women he finds he doesn't actually want anything to do with, because how shallow would they have to be to take that as a good thing?) and the ones who react with some combination of disgust, disinterest, or confusion (and thus turn out to be far less likely to be angling for a piece of the noble pie).

So he's not actually put off by her lukewarm reaction to his greeting (he might actually be a bit relieved). The smile stays put, but he does dial back the charm a bit.

"As bad as the situation looks, it does seem like we're in better company here than with...well, just about anybody responsible for dumping us here."

[princesspower]

Adora is, fortunately, a bit oblivious at times, so she doesn't really notice the shift that much. She's focusing on everything else, instead. Like being stuck here and the prospect of having another friendly face to talk to.

"I mean, true. But it's not that hard to be better than that," Adora responds with a wry smile, "So at least we have each other, right?"

[gautiheir]

"Nothing builds camaraderie like banding together to complain about the folks who got us here!"

Sylvain may be from medieval fantasyland, but he's already settling right into the philosophy of the corporate peon, evidently.

[princesspower]

Corporate peon, Horde footsoldier. There's not that much difference, is there? Adora actually manages a smile.

"Tell me about it. Did they shock you when you got here, too? Is that something they do to everyone?"

[gautiheir]

"Weeeeell, yes, but I'll give them that first one for free, since I suppose I may have earned it." Sylvain may be a horrible flirt, but he's fully aware of what a punchable trait that is (and indeed, often counts on it). "But I get the impression it doesn't take much to earn that reaction from them, either."

[princesspower]

"Yeah. Set one foot out of line and they like to remind you who's really in charge. Doesn't help that they trow terrible parties..." She folds her arms and glances at the room around them meaningfully.

"I'm honestly not sure what's worse - that this is genuinely the best they can do and they think it's effective or if this all deliberate to make us uncomfortable."

[gautiheir]

"Third possibility: they honestly don't care either way, so they'll do something just as a token display of effort, but they have no investment in the results or how it actually comes out."

He's actually inclined to say they don't care, more so than they're deliberately throwing a bad party, but there's no way to be sure, admittedly.

[princesspower]

"You know, I think I like the other options better. At least those mean they care one way or another. Apathy is just - I don't know how to deal with that," Adora admits with a sigh.

"It just feels so depressing. How are we supposed to live like this? Work in a place like this?"

[gautiheir]

"It's not great, but...honestly, I think it could be a lot worse." Sylvain shakes his head. "Apathy, I can deal with. I'd rather get no attention than the wrong kind of attention, know what I mean?"

[princesspower]

"I guess," Adora replies slowly. She's not sure she agrees, but she also knows that she and Catra would have killed for a chance not to be under Shadow Weaver's gaze for a little while.

"I just don't know how they think they're going to motivate us when the only thing that really makes us want to work for them is the... thing... they implanted in us."

[gautiheir]

"I'm not sure they expect anything far over compliance, which...is kind of sad, when you think about it." The impression he's gotten, even from the "real" employees, is that working on the rig is less a cause and more just a way to earn a living, no matter how much the management might claim otherwise. And it's not that he thinks it's wrong for someone to just be working to live instead of engaged in some higher service, but...

"For all their talk, it doesn't feel to me like anyone here has ever truly believed in something."

[princesspower]

"That's... I don't want to say sad. That's up to everyone t o figure out what they want, but... it feels bleak," Adora replies slowly, "Wouldn't living like that just grind the life out of you eventually?"

Today Adora meets corporate work-life. Thanks, she hates it.

[gautiheir]

"Bleak...yeah, that's probably a better word for it." Sylvain winces. "I've seen someone who thought he didn't have anything left to live for, and as awful as that was? It still seems better than just...existing without having ever had something mean that much to you. Because at least he used to have something. He was able to snap out of it when he realized what he still had, he just...needed the right reminder."

Sylvain didn't actually intend to get serious in front of any of his new allies this early. He hasn't even had time to build up a reputation of general worthlessness to be shattering! But damn, this place is just depressing in the worst way possible.

[princesspower]

"I think everyone's been there... sort of. We've all had days or moments where everything feels like it's falling apart, but we have to pick ourselves up and keep going. This? This just feels..." She waves a hand, failing to find a word that she thinks will actually work for what she's talking about.

"...look, tell me about yourself, I really don't want to keep thinking about how depressing this is."

[gautiheir]

"Your wish is my command. Ummm, let's see...I'm from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, which I gather means nothing to anyone else here, but we're one of the major powers in Fódlan. The northernmost one, so our glorious homeland is unfortunately an ice cube half the time, but you get used to it." If nothing else, it means the rig has been pleasantly warm so far, in his view, although that's likely to cross into unbearable once things get a little hotter.

"I'm the second son of Margrave Gautier; our family's always been responsible for holding the northern border. I like art, theater, long walks in the countryside, and board games."

It takes a bit of reminding himself to talk about himself. The stuff about his family and his bloodline comes to the tip of his tongue much easier, since that's what he expects people to care about...but nobody here even knows why they ought to care.

"How about yourself?"

[princesspower]

Adora listens attentively and curiously; she's used to kingdoms and nobility by now, but hearing about all of this from another world is sort of fascinating. What kind of magic do they have? What was their world actually like? She could think of a dozen different questions ready to be asked. Of course, he asked about her, so it would really be polite to respond....

"Me? I'm from the planet Etheria," Adora replies brightly, although she gets a bit less cheery as she goes on, "I live in the Kingdom of Brightmoon right now, which is... nice. Really nice, honestly. It's a beautiful place. I didn't exactly grow up there, though. And... things are probably about to get a lot worse. Maybe because of me."

She shrugs and frowns, gaze falling away.

"That's a long story."

[gautiheir]

"I'm always game for a long story, but if it's a long and uncomfortable one..." Which he's getting the impression that it absolutely is. "- well, I'm not about to press on anything you don't want to talk about."

He's no stranger to the awkward and uncomfortable backstory game, after all.

"I'm getting the impression that a lot of us have bigger things going on back home that we need to deal with. I wonder if that's somewhere in their hiring criteria."

[princesspower]

"Yeah, I understand... and honestly, if I'm going to share it, I'd rather do it somewhere that's not an awkward, terrible party," Adora sighs, "But... I'll let you know later, OK? Because there is absolutely a lot going on at home that I'm worried about right now, but I'm stuck here and I can't do anything about..."

[gautiheir]

"Here, there, now, later - do what feels right. I'm around if you want me."

For all that Sylvain used to work at cultivating a reputation for indefensible worthlessness, he's pretty decent when he forgets to pretend he's a louse.

"We were camped outside the enemy gates and about to start the battle that should finish the war back home. Whatever Jorgmund's bad at, they clearly have a gift for ironic timing."

[princesspower]

"Ugh. We just... well. We beat one enemy just in time for another one to show up! And then my friend got kidnapped and - well. Yeah. They don't seem to want to ask us if it was good timing or not..."

Adora shakes her head, "I hope that your battle ends well for you, though. No matter what happens here."

[gautiheir]

"It will. Even if they have to do it without me, I've got faith that they'll pull it off." No hesitation in saying that; Sylvain, for all that a great deal of his cheer is more put-on than people realize, does really believe in that. Dimitri's a force of nature even on his off days; Dimitri with renewed resolve and a reason to live and triumph is more than he imagines the Empire can handle.

"I hope things work out on your end, too."

[princesspower]

"But I don't know if they can! Or if they will! I'm not - I'm not She-Ra anymore, but they still need me."

If she cant help them, what good is she? Who else is going to be there for her friends?

[gautiheir]

She-Ra is a big question mark, but the rest of it rings much more familiar.

"If your friends are anything like mine, they're going to be hanging in there with everything they have, because they know you'll be back as soon as you can, and they've just got to buy you the time."