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

[likeits1999]

Kevin hates this party, the aggressive artificiality of it all reminds him way too much of other bad parties he's been to. These guys may not be vampires and he hasn't quite worked out the better-worse math between Jorgmund suits and the New York Camarilla just yet, but anything comparable to vampires is already a bad scene.

For now, he's just been putting on his most unobtrusive body language and pretending not to be here. Trying to figure out who the hell is all over this playlist when you're a decade behind is at least keeping him busy, up until-

"Oh my god, you're telling me not even the end of the world could get rid of Viva la Vida? Jesus, dude!"

The outburst isn't loud, but the suddenness and genuine anguish make up for it.

[heterochrocatic]

"Get rid of what?" Catra looks over towards the outburst, ears pinning back a little. Guy, you are being too loud about something that she doesn't get and that makes it annoying. She grumbles, eyes narrowed in a glare.

"What are you talking about?" Sorry, she doesn't know your silly Earth pop music.

[likeits1999]

"This song, dude. I been drowning in this thing for a year and a half," Kevin explains, wincing both because he is continuing to be told about Jerusalem bells ringing and because of the glare. "You don't got Coldplay where you're from?"

It would make sense, they don't got cat ears where he's from.

Well, usually. Probably. Shit, that might be a whole other thing that's out there that he just doesn't know about. Kevin is briefly troubled by this thought.

[heterochrocatic]

"Cold what? No. We don't have it, whatever it is," Catra says, scowling. "What's wrong with it? Just heard it too much?"

[likeits1999]

Okay, maybe this sounded silly without any context. Kevin tries to take himself back to a pre-Viva la Vida place in life. ...Unlife.

"Yeah dude it's just... everywhere. Forever. And then people will randomly be like hey dude you know that song? That song you heard about four thousand times cause nobody gave you any choice about it? Isn't it good? And it's just like, a last straw of some kind. But you can't lose your entire cool over just a song, that would be dumb."

Which he just did.

Um.

"...The point is I kind of thought that if the whole world got blown up, I would maybe not have to listen to Coldplay telling me about rulin' the world again. And maybe I hadn't thought about that, but it was kind of an upside I'm finding I'm way disappointed about not getting."

[heterochrocatic]

"Oh. Is Coldplay the person singing?" She looks at Kevin, not sure if she comprehends everything he's saying. The song is apparently played way too much. It sounds kinda catchy though, not that she ever has time for this kind of thing, normally.

"Sorry the song still exists?"

[likeits1999]

"It's the band," Kevin confirms, sort of.

He sighs, embarrassed, awkwardly hooking a hand around the back of his neck. "It's not a big deal. Just.... just a lot has been going on, I guess. Like, the whole rest of this. And I'm bitching about radio overplay."

[heterochrocatic]

"Band of what?" Catra just looks confused at that and crosses her arms. People here? Weird. Very weird. They say things she doesn't quite understand, but they seem to expect her to know.

"It's just music," she finally adds. "Should probably get it together before they decide to zap you."

[likeits1999]

"Um. A band? You know, people get together and play music and stuff and get famous and on the radio a lot? It would be a dumb thing to get zapped over I guess, but also like. Probably not a bad zap again."

He mulls that over.

[heterochrocatic]

"Oh. No, I dunno. I've never heard of that before," Catra says honestly.

"I haven't got zapped yet. Kinda waiting to see what I gotta do to get it, just so I know."

[likeits1999]

Kevin winces a little. "I don't recommend it. I kind of lost my shit a little when they got me here and they did it to me a bit and it sucked."

A pause.

"I could also just talk about what bands are instead, I'm not sure how much depressing real shit you're feeling right now."

[heterochrocatic]

"Honestly? I'm used to getting zapped. Happened to me all the time when I was a kid." Catra, you are eighteen, you are still a kid. She crosses her arms. frowns.

"But, uh. Yeah. Sure. Tell me more about bands."

[likeits1999]

"Alright," says Kevin. He just... is going to stick a really big, colorful pin in "I'm used to getting zapped," because she's obviously a kid and that's... wow.

"Before the world ended you'd get bands making music and they'd get so famous people would know 'em all over the place, and they'd go on tours to a bunch of cities so people would get to watch them play songs and sing and stuff. It could get real big and crazy, people would get hella pumped about it, kinda fun." It turns out that 'sneaking into concerts' is a really good use of vampire powers, and one of the ones that the city's other vampiric youth would sometimes take an interest in too.

"...I wonder if that's even a thing anymore here. Maybe not." He shrugs.

"How do people do music where you're from?"

[wheyoftheadept]

"Hey, I like this song," Saturday objects mildly. "Never heard it before. Kinda like, melancholy and stuff."

She recognizes him vaguely from processing - the one with the really locked-down body language, not in a "'bout to flip my shit" way but in a "don't make any sudden movements or you might crush someone" way. Which had been odd to see on a skinny teen.

"Kevin, right?"

[likeits1999]

"You stop having feelings like that after about time a billion," Kevin replies, his expression faintly haunted, then sliding right along into recognition.

"Oh hey. Saturday from Magic Seattle, right?"

As opposed to regular, boring Seattle.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Magic Seattle, that's right." She seems charmed by the descriptor. "And you're trying to stop the end of the world, I think?"

Now is a germane time to note that Saturday is wearing one of the provided party hats. It is purple, silver, and gold, and says Happy New Year!!! 1998.

[likeits1999]

"Yeah, pretty much," Kevin confirms with more cheer than the subject deserves.

"I see you're all set to party today," he says, eyeing the hat significantly. Fuck, 1998. That's memories. "Kinda outta date though."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Well, you know, you can fight a situation or you can embrace it." She takes off the hat, looks at it, then puts it back on. "God, I wasn't even born then. Dunno if my parents were even born then - wait, no, elves, probably were."

The elastic string has lost its elastic. She pushes it back up on her head.

"How's the rig treating you so far?"

[likeits1999]

"It's a weird future, bro," Kevin says. "Mostly so far I got to help beat up a table. So that's like, new, I guess."

He looks toward the "refreshments." "We finished smashing up those and all the other weird stuff from this morning but I don't know, I think that cake is scarier."

[wheyoftheadept]

"The furniture wasn't gonna kill me. That cake just might." She settles into a lean against a convenient chair or table; she seems to have trouble just standing still. Wants to move, pace, gesture, doesn't feel safe doing so. Not here. "You know, the last time I was stuck at a party hosted by my enemies, at least the snacks were good."

[likeits1999]

"The last time I was at a party..."

His memory flashes quickly across several images from the last nights of New York: sticking tight with Tommy and Grace — Qadir barely holding his anger outside — the crawling horror of the Eldest rising up while he scrambles across a panicking room with his dog running flat out ahead —

Kevin doesn't want to think about the last time he was at a party, he finds. He shakes his head a bit. The pause was too long.

"It was real bad," he summarizes. "So I guess I will take shitty radio."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Can't be worse than this party unless someone died," Saturday says cheerfully, not quite catching his tone. Despite everything, she is kind of, horribly, enjoying herself. Everyone is as pissed off as she is; not a quisling in sight, even if some of them have questionable manners. And she got that kid Catra talking to her friend, which gives her a kind of a warm fuzzy feeling.

"So what is the deal with your apocalypse, anyway? If you don't mind my asking."

[likeits1999]

Kevin makes eye contact for a moment, and she's able to see some kind of gears turning in there before he answers.

"Well, uh. It kinda started with the last party I was at, so it's not been great. Mostly it involves vampires. And God I think? But also there's werewolves, I guess, but they all died except two and um. Yeah."

[wheyoftheadept]

"...oh, jeez, man, sorry." Saturday hadn't meant to flippant herself into a gut wound here. Then she blinks.

"Wait, vampires?" He's not from the sixth world, so he can't mean HMHVV pos folk. "How are vampires a thing where you are?"

[likeits1999]

"We've kinda been a thing since pretty much always, at least I think?" says Kevin. He's accepting that apology and recovering quickly, it's not like she meant to bring up bad memories.

Oh wait. Back up. He hasn't mentioned the vampire thing.

"...I'm kind of a vampire," he backtracks. "I've been meaning to tell people but also there's been a lot going on."