goneawayworld | SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

Entry tags:

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

"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."

"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."

"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.

"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.

"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."

"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?"

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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?

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."

"But what happens if I don't make it back in time?"

Adora is probably overthinking this. Like she tends to do.

"You believe in them, right?"

"Of course I do!" Adora responds, "But I'm - I was - She-Ra! They still need me! Who else is going to do it if I can't?"

She has a savior complex, unfortunately. She proves her worth by saving people, by jumping into the thick of the action. And maybe a part of her hopes that one day she'll die doing it.

"Then believe they'll hold out for you, no matter how long they have to." He shakes his head. "Look, I was one of the guys waiting for our prince to get himself together and be the light we needed. Trust me when I say, if it's your job to be the light, everyone else knows it's their job to hold out and give you the room to do it."

"If I'm not there to be the light, what does it matter how much room they give? They can't hold out forever!"

Adora is really hung up on this, apparently. It's evident in the way her eyes widen and she paces back and forth, full of nervous energy.

"They need me."

Very hung up, Adora. Very.

you're killing him, smalls

He rubs his temples for a moment, like he's warding off a headache. "Okay, then...let me put it this way. If you trust in them to hold it together, then you can put everything you've got into figuring out how we got here and how we get back from here...or, you can drive yourself into the ground worrying about the stuff that's out of your reach."

"I mean - yeah. Yeah, you're right," Adora finally says with a heavy sigh, one hand rubbing at the opposite shoulder.

"I just... I don't like sitting around and waiting and not having a plan. It's not... me."

"I get what you mean. This is a pretty crappy situation no matter how you slice it, honestly."

Sylvain shakes his head. "But with this many of us, there's got to be something we can do about it. We just have to be careful about how we go about it. Those shocks hurt, so if that's what they're willing to do when someone mildly offends them..."

Somebody got himself zapped during the interview, yes.

"They might try to kill us if we actually fight back," Adora finishes the thought with a scowl, "But there's got to be a way. There's always a way and I'm not going to just sit around and wait. Even if we do have to be smart about it."

"Wonder if we have a good strategist in this bunch," Sylvain muses, taking a look around the room. He's not a slouch, exactly, but it's not an area of expertise, either.

"I'm pretty good at strategy and tactics," Adora replies with a frown, "I just... I need more information. I can only plan so much with what I know."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

SHEETCAKE PARTY #1

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject