goneawayworld | SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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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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As out of place in this situation as anyone else here was, Saint-14 felt especially awkward without his armor. He was a Titan, after all, he practically lived in his armor, but apparently that had been confiscated along with his weapons and other belongings when he arrived here. All he had were the clothes given to him by his captors and his Ghost, Gepetto, who floated politely by his shoulder.

Playing nice with a company like Jorgmund didn't sit right with him, but given how many people they had essentially taken hostage, Saint felt he could do more good protecting them than fighting something faceless and not-punchable like a megacorporation.

So while he normally would have found an office party like this almost insulting given the situation, he decided instead to make himself helpful and started cutting pieces of cake for people who seemed brave enough to give it a try. Of course, the unpleasant crunch that sometimes emerged when he cut a piece caused him to be slightly more grim-faced than someone cutting cake should be.

"This is like the worst Dawning party ever," he sighed, speaking in a thick Russian accent, before forcing a smile in an effort to be friendly.

He held out a paper plate with a piece of cake (which looked like he had managed to scrape off the more unpleasant bits) towards the nearest person.

"Cake?"

"...no, thanks"

Dojima seems to have his eyes locked on the rest of the cake, like he expects it to morph into something unpleasant.

"That can't even be called cake"

Saint looks down at the plate in his hand and sighs.

"Probably the right choice," he replied. "At least the drinks are...drinkable. If tiny."

Drinkable, barely drinkable. Barely edible cake, barely tolerable parties, and barely pleasant ice breakers.

"It's like this entire party was designed to make the least amount of effort possible"

Dojima turns his head, seeing who he's talking with. Huh. All kinds of people comes from all kinds of worlds, he supposes.

"That has to be an achievement of some sort"

"What would you expect?" Saint responds with a hearty laugh, "This whole place seems to be run by penny pinchers and pencil pushers! They wouldn't know a good party if it bit them!"

How they all got captured by said penny pinchers and pencil pushers, he didn't want to think about.

The laugh gets Dojima to smile a little. Oh, you speak truth, Saint. You really do.

"The karaoke machine would have been a saving grace if it worked. I wouldn't be using it, but it'd have been the high point of this entire party"

"I would say to kick it, since that usually works for me, but, well..."

He tapped at his neck, where the shock collar had been implanted (or installed, in his particular case).

"I don't think anyone wants to risk this just to hear the dulcet tones of my magnificent singing voice."

Judging by his regular voice, he quite very obviously has neither 'dulcet tones' nor a 'magnificent' singing voice.

"I am Saint-14, by the way," he added, trying to recover from what he realized was something of a downer statement.

The reminder he has a collar implanted in his neck makes him want to kick something from frustration, alright -- but yeah, that's not going to achieve anything but a shock. The demonstration he got not that long ago...it really makes clear the collar is no joke.

"Dojima, with no number. Is the number something they assigned you?"

He failed to consider the possibility it was something he had from before -- yup, at this point he hasn't gotten to introductions with the rest.

Saint laughed as soon as Dojima said 'with no number'.

"No, no, that is from before. I am an Exo. Human mind, robot body. The number is how many times we've had to be...'reset'. Not always pleasant, but necessary."

He shrugged.

"So they tell me. Thankfully as a Guardian, I don't need resets any more."

"If that's the logic then it's appropriate I don't have a number anyway"

Well, unless you count the times when he almost dies, in which case...maybe he'd have a 1 right there on his name. That counts as a reset? Probably not.

Still, that's certainly an explanation, and one tidbit of information that adds more mystery to the entirety of Saint. It's going to be so hard to understand his existence as a whole...even more for someone like Dojima.

Such is the curse of being a typical everyday person! At home, at least.

"So where does the...floating drone fit in that story?"

The Ghost, he means. He glances at it, really unsure how to refer to that.

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"Yes, please!" Nora outright chirrups, holding out her empty plate, stained with telltale frosting remnants indicating she is coming for seconds, apparently of her own free will. "Can I have one of the roses?" she continues, doing her best to look cute in the hopes of maximizing the chances of getting her request granted.

Well, at least someone seemed to be enjoying the cake. And seeing as not many others were as...brave...as Nora, there seemed to be plenty of icing roses left for him to manage to scrape out an edible piece with one on it.

"There you go, young lady," he said as he handed her back her plate. "If you're back for seconds, it looks like you've got a stronger constitution than almost everyone here! ...And probably even more than some Titans back home..."

At least the cake wouldn't be going to waste...such as it was.

"Pfft, I've eaten way more cake than this in one sitting before," Nora says, missing his point as she maneuvers the frosting rose onto her fork. She pops the entire thing into her mouth and does not immediately make a face of disgust.

Well, at least she's enthusiastic.

"Help yourself then, there seems to be plenty."

Mostly because people seemed to be actively avoiding it, but still. He moved out of the way to let her have at it.

"I don't want to take it away from anyone else," Nora says with commendable generosity and questionable observational skills.

"I...do not think that will be much of an issue," he said, doing his best to hide his concern over this girl's health and wellbeing. "It seems like most have already had their fill."

It wasn't a lie, since it seemed like everyone else was quite done with it after the first bite.

"Okay!" Saint doesn't have to tell her twice, and she stuffs a forkful into her mouth. "Hi, Gepetto," she says belatedly around her cake, though it comes out more like "Ay Eh'etto."

"Nope."

Sam had his arms crossed, leaning away from the cake. "There is nothing on this green Earth or any other that will make me take a bite of that cake." Even with the worst of it scraped away.

The robot thing didn't bother him. The flying thing...kind of did, but Sam was pretty certain that it was all real. Life had just gotten really, really weird.

"Well," Saint replied, "I suppose that's for the best."

He sighs.

"At least the drinks are...okay. Probably why they are so small."

"Yeah, that looks like the drinks are safe enough." Sam did move to pick one up. "This is all just...I mean, you see things like this on sitcoms back home, not actually participate in one." He picks up a cider. "Want one?"

"Ah, thank you," he replied, taking the offered cup. He holds it up in a joking attempt at a toast. "Za Zdarovje!"

Even trying to gingerly sip the tiny cup left him only with a single gulp, but hey, it was better than nothing at this point.

Not like Sam's having much better luck, but it's a bit easier for him to take small sips. "Ah. Skol, I think." He raises his hand in return, grinning slightly as he takes a sip. Which probably leaves about half the glass. They really are small. "This is all very strange."

"That is one hell of an understatement, friend."

He finishes his drink in a disappointingly short amount of time.

"I am Saint-14, and this--" he points at the little drone floating near his shoulder, "--is Gepetto."

The little drone bobs politely.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," it adds.

"That's me. Master of understatement."

It's not even slightly untrue.

Sam watches the little drone, then looks back to the robot. "I'm Sam and...the pleasure's mine? I think." Well, the drone is real and it talks. So that's a good start. "I have to admit, when I went to sleep last night, waking up here was not what I expected."

"Believe me, I doubt anyone here was expecting the same thing."

He sighs.

"I would say this is better than being stuck in the Infinite Forest, but at least the Vex did not try to make me go to awkward parties with bad cake. They just shot at me. Shooting, I can deal with. This? This, I cannot."