goneawayworld | 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’.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Steven has been at this event long enough to already have his piece of cake at hand, plastic knife to pick at it with and all. The fact that he's in close vicinity is less to do with enjoying the view and... more to do with the fact that there's not a lot of other space to be occupying in the first place.

But that's fine. He's rallying for his second wind of fineness, so he laughs a little.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's something." Who is Linda? When was this cake spawned? What happened here? "Sometimes the trick is to just-- think about how much worse it isn't."

There definitely isn't much room to move, and Remus isn't exactly a big guy. On the taller side of average, but skinny as a rail.

He looks over to the new person and offers a half smile. "I have seen some foods that were very much...not the sort of thing most people would eat." He had no idea where half of the recipes in the wizarding world came from, but they'd been strange to his mother. Very strange. "I'll refrain from thinking about it being worse, though. It already looks bad."

He can't help a chuckle.

"Guess that advice can't work for everyone." Just another one of those if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs things.

Steven's gotten more mileage out of using that as a mantra than maybe any other saying he's heard in his life. Goes to show the vibe that the Rig has been putting out.

"I'm Steven. First, uh. First corporate party. How about you?"

Well, he would at least get the hot dog reference. He'd been in and out of the wizarding world for years, after all. And they did have hot dogs in Britain.

"Remus. A pleasure to meet you, Steven." The smile widens somewhat. "Definitely my first corporate party. I'm far more used to the parties we had at school. Which were less..." He pauses with a look around. "Cozy."

"Cozy's a good word for it. Definitely cozy." And on the sliding scale of descriptions he's heard today alone, one of the most polite words for it. It's the little victories that get a person through the day sometimes.

Steven gives up the ghost on his untouched cake and sets it back down on the table. Well past time to bail on that thing.

"I'm not really in on school events, but I can't think of a school that wouldn't take up more space for a party. Even when it's just a little get-together, Beach City's big on open concept and... well, beachy."

Remus does tend to be more polite than he needs to be. It's part of the bit about turning into a scary, mindless monster. Or it is once people find out about it.

He finds himself chuffing out a laugh involuntarily at the teen's description. "Well, I'm a little more used to it because so many homes back in the UK have small rooms. Easier to heat, perhaps, but not given to having much in the way of parties unless you really like all of your friends."

"And if you don't need much personal space." He can usually give or take it. The past couple of months back home, he was starting to see the appeal.

But no one gets by in life on shoulda-coulda-wouldas. If he's rubbing elbows with people, he's glad the people here haven't been too bad so far.

"I've never been to the UK! Weird how there can be so many places you just don't get to. Do you like living there?"

"Yes, well. I went to a boarding school. You get used to having slightly less personal space, but not that much less." But his lack of personal space had tended to have more to do with his room mates and the fact that neither Sirius nor James had much personal space themselves.

He laughs softly. "Well, it's the only place I've ever known to live, so I suppose I like it well enough. I've travelled to the continent some, but not a lot. And never really more than for a few days."

"That's fair. Getting around can take a lot of doing."

Whether by plane, train, or automobile. It's a big planet. Usually. He hasn't really asked people about Earth sizes.

"I mean, back home we, we do have warp pads? They're nice for fast travel, but it's a lot more about space than Earth."

"We have portkeys," Remus replied. "Really only used for groups, honestly. Or when you want to get people someplace you want to keep somewhat secret. Most wizards prefer to Apparate instead."

Not that Remus COULD right now. He'd tried that before and it hadn't worked. But, then, he didn't have his wand, either.

"Whoa, wizards?"

If his interest weren't already 100% piqued, that would do it. No one is truly immune to the effects of... wizard.

"Gems are magic and all, but they're not really like, magic-magic. You know, with spells and stuff. More like magic aliens."

Remus can't help but chuckle. He'd know a few Muggleborn wizards who had reacted similarly, after all. The new batch of Hogwarts students was great for seeing that look.

"Not that I have a lot of magic-magic at the moment." Since they'd taken his wand away and a lot of the spells he could do wandless weren't taking. "Something about this place seems to be stopping it."

"I know what you mean. Something here is... different."

Plenty of people have been mentioning something along those lines. Things not working like they should or feeling like they should. He hasn't gotten a chance to go over his full powers checklist yet, with a lot of them being more fighting-based. There'll be time for that.

"I'm honestly not sure if it's a Jorgmund thing or a world-hopping thing yet, but it's inconvenient either way."

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

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