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

[garmr]

"Kelp ain't the worst kind of medicine..."

Seriously though, 'health smoothies'? He is already losing track of what she is talking about. Sorry Nora, Guts is grumpy in a party setting and he's going to do what he always does in this situation: unceremoniously walk away. He is just going to casually take off without saying goodbye or giving their conversation a closer.

The girl has her cake. He did his good(ish) deed. Now he can go, and hopefully won't be followed by the thing he was trying to get rid of.

Hopefully.

[valkywhee]

"Not kelp, kelp is fine, I love Mistral food!" Nora tags after Guts, cheerfully failing to notice he was attempting to make an escape. "I'd have to, I lived there for years. Ha! Speaking of which, I could go for a big bowl of ramen right now."

You're trapped, buddy.

[garmr]

Hm.

This isn't turning out the way he planned. Guts will just kind of... keep walking. Quietly. Hoping his brisk pace with longer legs will get her to be tired of following him around. First he makes a pit stop at the cider zone (wrinkling his nose and picking up nothing), weaves around the karaoke, and barrels straight past the icebreaker bowl.

It isn't working. The room is too small to make any meaningful distance. His silence doesn't seem to be dissuading her at all, either. Who is this girl???

[valkywhee]

Did Guts want to know about the culinary options available in this 'Mistral' place? Because now he does.

"Anyway, now I'm banned from hot ramen challenges in three out of four kingdoms." Nora concludes her story of triumph. "Wait. I never introduced myself. Wow, rude! I'm sorry. Hi, I'm Nora Valkyrie."

She sticks out her hand to shake, grinning. Fifty-fifty whether she's even noticed he's short a limb.

[garmr]

Nope. Wrong hand. Not that it'd help much if it were. He isn't really the type to start off so friendly right off the bat. He stares at her outstretched hand, wonders how the hell he got into this situation, and finally resigns himself to answer.

"Guts."

There. She has a name. Is she happy now? Will she top trying to talk his ears off?

[valkywhee]

Yes, she's happy. No, she won't stop. Undeterred, Nora lets her hand fall back to her side unshaken.

"Nice to meet you!" Don't worry, she's happy enough about it for both of them. "The circumstances could be better, of course, but I met my partner under worse ones than this and that worked out great, so you never know!"

[garmr]

Nora will need to carry the bulk of the enthusiasm here, because he looks about as pleased as a cat being given a bath. What is it going to take to eject himself out of this problem he's created?

"I don't take partners," he grumbles.

A big fat lie - but maybe she'll finally get the hint.

[valkywhee]

Hint ignored. Use your words, Guts.

"Oh, wow, that'll get you in trouble one of these days." Nora shakes her head, concerned for hypothetical future Guts's safety. "Having someone you trust to watch your back is important."