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

[credit_not_blame]

A nine-foot wolf-person suddenly appearing in the middle of a party has a way of catching the eye. Even when the wolf-person shrinks down to become a five-foot girl with a bloody arm, whose Jorgmund-provided jumpsuit has split at the seams like an over-stuffed sausage casing.

The giant rabbit seems to have first dibs, though.

[garmr]

Here is Guts, very silent wallflower, observing this entire turn of events without lifting a single finger to stop them. The surprise wolf monster put him on a razor’s edge, but when it looked like she was splitting up the fight rather than trying to eat them alive, his nerves settled.

“He’d probably learn faster if you let ‘em sort it out,” he adds helpfully.

This is how he learned things as a nasty feral teenager with a sword. Clearly this is how you take care of things when the kids start fighting.

[credit_not_blame]

"He wouldn't learn anything if he'd died," she counters, dabbing at the blood on her arm with a wad of paper napkins. "And even if he didn't, she might have gotten in trouble for 'damaging company assets' or something. Better to let them have it out in a supervised fight instead, with rules and a referee."

If it's good enough for Pissed Off Wolf Warrior society, it's good enough for the Rig. She gives the man a sidelong glance.

"If you're here to check in on me, I'll heal up pretty quick. No permanent damage."

[garmr]

"Sure..."

He seriously doubts that this spat would have lead to actual death - not that it'd be a pleasant day for the non-clawed loser of the altercation. Nothing some bandages and a lot of time for reflection wouldn't take care of. He isn't here to argue with her, though.

She expertly catches him on the real reason he'd bothered to get closer. She may be some kind of monster, but she had a sound head. The wound looked like a painful one.

"Hope he appreciates you spilling blood for him."

[credit_not_blame]

"If he's not," Stacia says wryly, "I am experienced in pouting, whining, and complaining to remind him that he should be."

Her siblings are eight and ten years older than her, respectively. She has a lifetime of experience being an annoying little brat.

[grimbiker]

Sirius started violently at the sound of the growl and jumped to his feet when he saw Stacia... change. Was it full moon? It couldn't be and yet he saw the shift happening, faster than he remembered. Different. Larger. And she stood upright.

They always said I was the life of the party, now I'm going to be the death at one, Sirius thought as he was about to change into his animagus form. It was probably too late to stop two murders but there was a crowd of people here. He had to buy time for--

But Stacia did not attack. She acted intelligent.

Sirius froze and watched. And then he waited to approach until after things were calmer and others had already spoken to her.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said although he'd chosen what he hoped was the least intrusive time. "Your control is-- extraordinary." Sirius's own control seemed lacking. The adrenaline surge had faded and the result was an odd, jittery mix of being drained while enduring a sugar rush.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia looks up at the man when he speaks, blinking in faint surprise. He looks like hell, and like he got rattled badly as soon as he'd dragged himself back out. Though she supposes seeing a Crinos Garou would do that to you, even without the Delirium.

"Thank you," she says, "but I think we might be working off of two different sets of werewolf expectations. Not being in control of it would be really unusual, for me."

[grimbiker]

"I think we are. I've never seen any who look the way you do in that form." Sirius's mind whirled. A werewolf who could stay in control? Now he had to know more. If Remus ever talked to him... Or Sirius could send Stacia his way. "None of them can keep control of their minds. Is it something you can teach?"

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.

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia thinks for a moment, pursing her lips. "I've never tried to teach it before, but I'm not opposed to taking a stab at it. Is it an emotional state for your werewolves?" She raises an eyebrow. "Or should I be asking that of the werewolf you know that's here?"

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.

[grimbiker]

"It's--" Sirius hesitated. He knew what he'd studied and what he'd seen, but Remus had, understandably, never told him all the details of what went on his mind during it. Sirius had never asked. "I think it's mostly instinctive. I don't know it's something that can be changed, but some things can help it. Having friends with them can, as long as those friends aren't human." Or it did with one person.

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."

[credit_not_blame]

"People are jerks about something that other people can't control? I'm shocked."

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."

[grimbiker]

Sirius winced. He could imagine how well Remus would take any of Sirius's suggestions. If he said anything, Remus would avoid Stacia completely.

"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.

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday arrives on scene just a second too late - Catra's already scampered off. She raises an eyebrow at Stacia, instead.

"Everything okay?"

[credit_not_blame]

"Well, my hideous jumpsuit is toast, and I have to figure out where to dispose of biohazards, but everything else will mend," Stacia says, trying to wiggle out of said jumpsuit without getting any more blood on it. Her arm doesn't look anywhere near as bad as it ought to, considering Catra's claws.

[wheyoftheadept]

"And the other two?" Saturday asks, looking worriedly after Catra. She glances at the wound, of course, but noting that it's fine, carries on. "What the hell happened?"

[credit_not_blame]

"I don't know the details, it was already heated when I got there." Stacia makes a face. "The guy pushed the girl's buttons and she went for him. Frankly, if I knew he healed like I do, I'd have let her maul him a little. But I don't, and nothing poops a party like someone getting their face shredded and someone getting shocked for it."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Catra does have a lot of buttons," Saturday allows, in the way a philodox might speak of a beloved but problematic packmate. "I'll check in with her later. You gonna be all right? Looks like you got tagged."

[credit_not_blame]

Her name is Catra? Wow, no wonder she's on edge about being treated as lesser-than. Little on the nose there.

Stacia bares her teeth in a grin. "I'll be fine. I heal fast when I'm shifted. I just wanted to get the jumpsuit off to minimize the damage, on the off-chance Jorgmund decides to make me repair it and wear it."

[wheyoftheadept]

"Well, now that you've said it, the brass listening in probably think it's a great idea."

She cocks her head to one side. "Can you pop that wolfwoman shit any time you feel like, then?"

[takenalive]

Alloran sees the dispute from a distance, and Stacia stepping in. He almost, almost says something to her then, but catches himself. It's possible to talk to someone at some remove more easily with his native thought-speech than with most vocal methods, but it's also a bit intrusive, and not really called for here.

He waits for a pause in the flurry of interest from other parties but forgets about actually approaching to within a few feet before saying his piece. <That is faster than I could do it, and less appalling to watch. Perhaps with as much trouble with artificial skin though.>

[credit_not_blame]

Stacia laughs, even as she tries to escape of the remains of her jumpsuit without getting more blood on it.

"That's the first time I've ever heard that term for clothes, but I guess you're not wrong," she says. "I've never shifted in front of a mirror, but I guess it goes fast enough that the horror of 'what is happening' is replaced by 'what is that."

[takenalive]

<Don't transform in front of mirrors, even if yours is a smoother process,> he says dryly, drawing closer. <It is not comforting.>

He'd bring up how long it would take him to morph something of a roughly similar shape - there are options, though none particularly wolflike - but now he has a better view of the blood. <Morphing doesn't heal you?>

[credit_not_blame]

Ooh, more information on his 'morphing'.

"Shifting itself doesn't heal me," she says. "But I do heal really fast when I'm not human-shaped. Human-shape, human healing. I'm going to shift back, I just didn't want to destroy this jumpsuit any more than I already have."

She cocks her head. "Morphing heals you? How fast?"

[takenalive]

Different terminology, he notes. <I'm no expert, but that doesn't look much like a salvageable situation.>

<As fast as the flesh changes,> Alloran says, talking about it as if it isn't his. <When in a particular morph I only heal as quickly as it does, but the morphing itself makes that irrelevant. If my brain is relatively intact and it's possible to focus, no injury matters. Not for long. The technology was developed for healing originally, I think. Then biologists took an interest.>

[credit_not_blame]

"It probably isn't, but I'm hoping that if I at least show a willingness to minimize the destruction, our overlords won't make me prove that it's impossible myself," Stacia says.

She whistles at his description of the kind of healing morphing can do. Sure, she could theoretically bounce back from actual brain death if she explored her Rage enough, but morphing sounds like more of a certainty. "Sounds like it doesn't even leave a scar."