Sadcat Manor mingle log

[yorisearching]

Who: Yori's new roommates, aka the Shepard-Undertale clan and adoptees, and anyone visiting them.
When: Probably all month, at least.
Where: In and around Sadcat Manor, in the Residential sector.
What: Mingle log! Tag each other, tag around.
Warnings: Discussions of trauma, brainwashing, coping badly by use of alcohol, hard to tell what else with this group. (Warn for anything graphic you expect in your individual threads, please.)


Setting up a household takes a lot of work from everyone; this is a catchall for things that don't quite fit the opening event log.

Visitors to the Shepard clan might want to plan ahead and let someone know to expect them, it's more polite, but anyone's welcome to find Yori out working on her ship!

Comments

Transporter Maintenance | OTA

[yorisearching]

An empty hallway near Sadcat Manor seems to have a little spaceship parked in it out of nowhere. Do you recognize the tiny shuttles from the Moira? You can ask about them whether you do or not.

This one's open to random wanderers!

Yori | still open!

[yorisearching]

The spaceship sits in a clear section just barely large enough for it and its open back ramp. There's no dust on it and no possible way anyone flew it to land there.

Someone sets a tool down inside with a clatter of metal. "How does the engine look?" a woman's voice calls.

A few personnel transporters from the Moira came with their three owners all the way to this new station, and one at a time they're being tended with affectionate care. The poor ships need it; they've been through quite a bit, and Yori suspects they might be called on at any moment.

Want to ask questions or say hello to Yori or help her out? Here's a good place.

[beautifulspaceraptor]

"Diagnostics are still coming back red," Nihlus calls back from the front of the ship.

He's taken a small break from the oppressive bowels of Avagi to, well, apparently do more work. That's what taking a break is like, right?

"I think it might be over-tightened now. Try half turn counter clockwise?"

Asriel | ota

[pleasereset]

Asriel is working on his own ship, now that he has a place for it. The Velocity Raptor really hasn't gotten much use lately, huh...?

He should give it new paint, at least. It looks a little worn. He should've guessed that the Pacdisk wouldn't completely protect it.

The loading dock is open to anyone curious enough to look inside, and if they do, they'll find Asriel has... converted it into more of a living space than for transporting goods. There's some makeshift beds inside, and a small pile of books and board games.

Asriel is sitting just inside the loading dock, on one of the makeshift beds. He's pawing through a maintenance manual, with a box of tools sitting out next to him.

"Where do I even start? Where's the section on engines..."

He's more experienced with piloting than he is with actually fixing up the ship, but he can't let his ship deteriorate any further. He'll just... figure it out as he goes along.

[yorisearching]

The manual is helpful, but not sufficient, in Yori's experience. She hefts her own set of tools up the ramp and into the back of the little ship. "Don't worry, Asriel. I've worked on these ships enough to know the routine."

Her smile turns a little sad. It was the Savrii at the ship garage Rinzler hired to look after the rest of his collection who had filled in quite a few gaps in her knowledge over the months she'd spent visiting them.

She would like to believe that the garage owners managed to fly some of their ships to safety, and not just for the sake of the computer systems in the ships. They'd always been willing to teach her when she could spare a day off work. Although in the end she stole both one of the ships and a number of tools to go along with it, the primary reason for that choice had been to keep her Savrii acquaintances safe from questions after the planned attack on the comm tower rather than because she didn't want to risk another betrayal.

None of that is relevant to the present, however, and Asriel's redesigned ship is. The appealing, comfortable space makes her all the more relieved he managed to hold on to this one in the chaos. "I like what you've done with this," she adds approvingly.

Visitors

[yorisearching]

Come knock on the door etched SHEPARD and see who answers. You might want to be careful you don't upset the Security specialists, though.

Security issues

[yorisearching]

Both hypothetical discussions and actual problems. Looking at you, Clu, you're not invited.

Kitchen

[yorisearching]

Talk about food? Eat food? Try to teach clueless programs how to make food for kids? Try to find out whether programs are clueless enough to let kids have a diet of all the sugar in the pantry? Up to you!

chara | ota, will match whatever format

[inconsequence]

Children should not be left in kitchens unsupervised. Particularly this one. The last time such a thing occurred, why...someone almost died. It might be hilarious to some - because they had laughed it off so cruelly, allowed the stuttering sound to echo out from their throat in a great rebounding, hideous ouroboros of noise they could not stop.

Today, they are doing no such thing.

Their sleeves are yanked low over their wrists. Their movements are slow and ponderous, as if each step requires a great deal of personal effort and concentration. But that does not change the fact that easily, deftly, they can pour hot water into an empty mug and begin rummaging in cupboards search of something that may pass for tea leaves.

They should not be unsupervised. Perhaps, after the first few times...breaking away had been too obviously foolish a ploy.

The kettle begins to boil, to the cadence of a child's even words, soft and well-remembered, like the dog-eared corners of an old book. They speak from Memory. They sound, to the uninitiated or unwary, like someone reading someone else a bedtime story.

"The place I like best in the world is the kitchen." A bright issuing of steam trickles out over the counter. They stick fingertips over the fountain of it before they turn the kettle off, and let the heat burn the pale skin red. "No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it's a kitchen, if it's a place where they make food, it's fine with me."

On and on they go. Preparing two perfect cups of tea. They set one on their side of the table, and the other on the opposite, to the seat unoccupied. Burned fingertips wrap around the mug. The words flow easily.

"When I'm dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen. Whether it's cold and I'm all alone, or somebody's there and it's warm, I'll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it's a kitchen, I'll think, 'How good.'"

They would have shared this, given time. They would have shared it with the one person who might have understood it.

But they were never interested in understanding. They were only interested in having someone to make them less lonely. Anyone. Anyone at all.

They could have been anyone.

[lavelly]

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Lavellan liked to wander through the complex for no particular reason than to pace without being interrupted, because shutting himself up in his room was making him go stir crazy. The problem with this is that, with Lavellan spending a good deal of his time sleeping, and there being no solar cycle on a space station, "the middle of the night" is often hard to gauge, and he simply instead waits to do it until the place is empty.

In this instance, he thought it was empty. He's so lost in thought that, despite his rather good hearing, he doesn't realize it's not until he's already in the kitchen, and realizes that the whole time he's been listening to Chara murmuring.

They don't seem to have noticed him. He can still leave, and retreat to his room, and avoid this encounter entirely. Considering what happened in their last one, it's absolutely for the best to turn back now.

In his haste, though, he catches his foot on a nearby ajar cupboard, and in stumbling nudges the pots inside. Not badly, not enough to cause a mess, but enough to make a noise. Loud enough for Chara to notice, if they're at all paying attention.

He could have enough time to duck around the corner, before they turn. But he doesn't. For whatever reason, he freezes instead, and then the window is gone.

[gainedlove]

It could have been anyone.

Frisk watches from the entrance to the kitchen as Chara prepares the tea, a ritual of it's own, that...they don't recognize. Months together, and there were still so many things they didn't know. Pieces of Chara's life they'd never looked for, never bothered to try and understand. Of course it's not until it's far, far too late that they even realize.

"I guess I'm just that replaceable."

But you're not. You never were.

They hesitate for several more long seconds before stepping properly into the room, bare feet near silent on the floor.

"...what's that from?" They're almost dread to shatter the moment, but...never could listen to what they've been told, could they?

[squadgoals]

[It's instant coffee crystals.

The worst, hands down, of any of the coffee supplements. Not that they didn't get the job done: caffeine was, after all, caffeine—and she wasn't going to turn her nose up at anything that Yori had brought in.

And even bad coffee was still coffee.

Stirring the cup as the crystals slowly dissolved into the hot water, she watches the thin foam on the surface, and lets her eyes close.

Rarely anyone else was up at this hour. It was one of the small pleasures of barely sleeping in the first place: reveling in the steam rising off of a hot cup in the early hours of the sleep cycle.

It's a rare vision: eyes closed, face wreathed in the rising steam, this is Shepard as relaxed as she gets.

But you probably want to use the kettle, huh?]

[notglitching]

[The kettle? No. The user, on the other hand, is just who Rinzler's looking for. Well, her or Nihlus. Or maybe Yori. But she's here!

Clearly this makes this the best time to drop in.

If Rinzler moves quietly, this particular ventilation grate does not. Shepard will have all of half a second to process the soft scrape of metal before a familiar red-glowing blur is falling from the ceiling behind.]

near the end of the month

[ascendit]

[Nate's paging back and forth through his journal as he enters, so he doesn't catch Shepard's presence in the kitchen until he puts the journal down to grab a glass from the cupboard.]

Oh - hey, Shepard. [His tone is far from the surly distrust he's had since his brainwashing by the intermediaries - instead, this is apologetic, more than intruding on her apparent quiet time probably warrants.] I can go, if you want.

[And he starts filling his glass with water to hasten his exit.]

[inconsequence]

[Maybe no one is supposed to be up at this hour. But along comes someone padding near-silently through the halls, having perfected the art of the silent creep across floorboards that do not exist in this space and the stiffening of shoulders and tilting of their head for the slightest creak of someone getting out of bed, for the hitch in the rhythm of someone's breathing or snoring that might indicate that they've awakened, that they've heard, and that someone will open the door and spot them locked there in the dead of the night where they're not meant to be.]

[They're making for the kitchen with a slender volume clasped to their chest with one hand, and something slender and pointed hanging at their side in the other. Let it not be said they don't come prepared.]

[It seems sleep has not claimed them this night.]

[And so when they slip into the kitchen, the lit-up tile is disconsolately blinding, and there's a tall silhouette situated in front of the kettle, and that instinct claims them in an immediate flash-freeze of catching breath, the surge of a fight-or-flight they're too startled to indulge.]

Living areas

[yorisearching]

Recreation! Decoration! Arguments! Wait, that doesn't sound fun.

danny devito's exclusive trash plant with special guest yori

[inconsequence]

They haven't named it. Why would they? They hadn't assumed its presence would be anything but an impermanent addition to an impermanent child's equally impermanent belongings. But upon emptying their Pacdisc, there it had been, snapping its leafy jaws eagerly, open and shut, as though no time had passed at all since its hasty, impromptu cramming into the disc and their inadvertent recollection of its existence.

They place it on the nearest surface. The flabby tendrils wave erratically on the tabletop in a manner that can only really be called "unsettling." They survey it only briefly before snatching it away from the table, and carrying it instead to yet another surface. There is a woman in the room they pass into, reading - but they bear her little mind. She is wholly unfamiliar, and apparently the proper, most aesthetically pleasing placement of their trash-devouring waste plant takes precedence.

COUCH COMMANDER

[squadgoals]

[It's a quiet night-- well, there's been nothing but quiet night since they arrived here. It's comforting, but also quietly upsetting, like waiting for the other shoe to drop—and if anyone had a sixth sense for something bigger waiting in the wings, it was her.

Still, there was nothing she could do about it, for the moment, as mildly infuriating as ever.

So, here sits Shepard, fiddling with her new ACE, running through a syncing procedure between the new tech, and her own omni-tool, displaying as its holographic haptic display just above her wrist.

There also appears to be a sudoku game open, which she swaps to whenever a particularly long procedure is running.]

i'm lavellan, he's rinzler, and welcome to jackass

[lavelly]

[It happens when he least expects it. When he's lulled into a false sense of security.

He's tired. He's ready to pass out for about twenty hours. And when he tries to open the door to his room he gets shocked.

What the fuck.

He just barely manages to suppress a yelp as he shoves his injured finger into his mouth; crude, but effective. He's pretty sure he didn't do that.]

Bedrooms

[yorisearching]

Where things can be at least semi-private. Probably.

That talk with Lavellan

[yorisearching]

There are maybe three things Yori knows about Lavellan: he's an ally of Shepard, he was involved in breaking the Ingress according to the gossip she'd heard at the time, and he's miserable about everything. It's hard not to sympathize with that last, even though his chosen coping tactic of poisoning himself daily looks counterproductive to her.

She knows a little more about the results of massive alcohol consumption, but mainly out of books. All her sources agree that water is a good treatment for the aftereffects.

Nothing has limited the water supply yet, and Yori doesn't even need it herself. It's easy to fetch a bottle from her stores and refill it from the kitchen sink.

Not wanting to intrude on his misery when she has no idea how to fix it, she's left such a bottle beside Lavellan's door for several mornings in a row. Since it disappears, she assumes he's putting it to use.

This morning she's running late...there's no shortage of distractions in her new apartment...but not as late as he tends to wake. She sets the water down against the door with a soft click.

OPEN sadsack robot

[redshitlord]

For the most part, Sideswipe hasn't... really been all that productive in anything. He's shut himself up in his room and parked. How in the world he fit in there is anyone's guess. But there he is. A cherry red car sitting beside a crate full of odds and ends.

Or, if you're lucky, you'll catch his holoform ducking into the room. Trying to look inconspicuous.

Romance talk with Rinzler

[yorisearching]

(Timing: evening of about the 16th? Before the item miniplot, anyway, which I hope will make things a little less confusing.)


It's been a busy day working on the new security systems, and the evening continues noisy as several of the small Users have figured out some sort of recreation in the larger common area.

As impressed as Yori is by the technical skills of all involved in the security design, she's been even more pleased to watch Rinzler doing something he enjoys in the defense of allies. Now that the urgent tasks are over, she smiles to catch his attention.

"Rinzler, would you come look at my room?" The private space is a long way from meeting even her own makeshift standards of decoration, but she's put the leftover stickers of stars and circuit lines in strategic places and it feels almost homelike.

The Users don't need them for now. Yori wants to be certain she doesn't miss the chance to have a quiet talk in something like safety. The drastic changes of the past few months have driven several recalculations about what she shouldn't risk missing. Rinzler has always been among her very highest priorities, yet she's not at all sure he knows it.

Things I missed!

[yorisearching]

Don't let me stop you.

CLEANING THE HOUSE

[squadgoals]

[Who the hell do you think has been cleaning your bathrooms? Your common areas? You think these toilets are cleaning themselves?

Armed with a bucket of cleaning supplies and a collection of brushes in an assortment of shapes, she moves from room to room, scrubbing down surfaces. By the end of the month, the damn place is going to sparkle.

The first month's free. The second month?

Chores rota.

In the meantime, enjoy your cleaning lady.]