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

[scavengineer]

Gadget's hanging out on one of the tables. It helps a bit to be somewhat closer to everyone's level. Plus, it means she doesn't have to dodge around anyone who might not be fully paying attention to where they're going.

"You're Australian? Based on the accent, I mean. My friend Monterey Jack's Australian. He's a mouse, though, not a very large rabbit."

An unnaturally large rabbit, although Gadget wasn't rude enough to bring that up. Bunnies were pretty big, compared to her anyways, but not that big.

"My name's Gadget, by the way."

[bringinghopewithme]

Now this is unexpected. And adorable. Gadget isnt the only talking mouse he's ever met, but she's clearly not Ratoncito Perez, and when he digs in his memory for other talking mice, nothing comes up.

He feels really strongly that something should come up. But he's been feeling that a lot about many things hes tried to recall today.

And then her mate from Oz's name does ring a bell.

"Monterey ... Jack," he repeats. A mouse named after cheese. All right. Some humans have stranger names.

He crouches down to speak to Gadget at eye level, his bad mood clearly a little bit appeased by the surprise of finding another nonhuman prey animal who can talk. The crouch is a much more natural stance for him to take than remaining stiffly upright against the wall, and that improves his mood too. "Good to meet you, Gadget. I'm the Easter Bunny."

Theres a plastic potted plant that looks, somehow, like it has wilted, despite being made of something that can't wilt. But its planted in some inorganic medium that has nevertheless just enough of a soil like structure to briefly support roots. Bunny presses a claw into the stuff, and up springs a single dandelion.

He hands Gadget the yellow flower. "They sure think highly of their hospitality, for people who didn't think to put out anything someone not human would like." He grins. "And yeah, I'm from Oz. Ever been?"

A single dandelion would be tasty to him, but not enough to satisfy. Gadget may get more of a meal out of the flower than anyone else would.

[scavengineer]

Bunny introducing himself as the Easter Bunny is taken pretty matter of factly. Gadget's seen stranger things, and his size is a pretty big point in favor of his claim.

She takes the dandelion gratefully. Normally she or other rangers would just using it as an ingredient in a meal, not eating it whole, but right now it's a lot more appetizing than the cake.

"Thanks. I wasn't exactly up for trying the cake. I haven't been to Australia yet, unfortunately. We're usually pretty busy back home, and we haven't had any cases or rescue missions take us down that way."

[bringinghopewithme]

"Yeah, I wouldn't bother. You're in search and rescue?"

That is the nicest thing he's heard all day. It takes courage and grit to be small and go out in the world to help someone else who's gotten in trouble. He'd know.

"What d'your causes usually look like?"

[scavengineer]

Gadget plucks a petal off of the dandelion, taking a quick bite. It's pretty good, especially considering what it grew out of.

"Mm. Oh, we've dealt with all sorts of things. Missing animals, missing people, kidnappings, burglaries, scams, piracy...honestly the Rescue Rangers are a little more like private investigators than search-and-rescue. We're still pretty good at it though, since a lot of our cases end up calling for it."

She's still pretty grateful for the day Chip, Dale, Monty and Zipper showed up in her home. If they hadn't, she's not sure what she would have done. Perhaps she'd have just kept building things without any real goal in mind, and that really didn't sound as fulfilling a life as it might have done to a pre-Rangers Gadget.

"Inventing is kind of a hobby of mine, so I build most of the gear we use for it."

[bringinghopewithme]

"So, smallfolk and large? That must take some wrangling. What's your team like?"

He's simply tickled. So far what shes described reminds him of himself, sans the superpowers.

"Glad to hear someone around here has a head for mechanics. That's not my strong suit." He holds up the communication device he's been given. "Can you make heads or tails of this?"

[scavengineer]

"There's Chip and Dale. They're chipmunks. Chip's our leader. He's really good at putting together plans. Dale...isn't so much. But he's got a pretty good sense of humor
, and he's pretty good at keeping people at ease when he tries. They argue a lot, but they're closer than brothers, I think."

"Zipper's a fly. He's small, but he's got a lot of heart, and he's really come through in a pinch when we need him."

"And I already mentioned Monty. He's kind of our muscle, and he's been adventuring longer than the rest of us have been alive."

"He's...was my dad's best friend."

Her generally cheerful demeanor vanishes for a second when she mentions her father, but she's right back on it in moments. If it's a little subdued, she doesn't seem to notice.

"Anyways. The communicator. Right. They're a little more advanced than what I'm used to," having come from the far off year of 1990, "but they're pretty much just portable computers with a touch-based interface. What were you having trouble with?"

[bringinghopewithme]

They're a little new as acquaintances for him to ask if her father was a recent loss. But he does note the mood shift - he'll remember.

"They sound top notch. Bet they're looking for ya, back home."

He bets his team is doing the same. Hopefully they'll have luck and not get caught themselves.

"First off, how's this inbox thing supposed to work - ?"

This could turn into a whole tutorial session, but he doesnt actually intend to take up all her time with it.