Closed RP And Coffee, Friends

This RP is currently closed.

Containment

Leviathan
Staff member
Hope kept her group in the foyer as her two fellow managers walked away. Mostly, she wanted to give her group time to adjust to their surroundings, and to each other. She turned back to Matsumoto as Eloise spoke up, the same elusive smile on her face.

“I’ll be able to provide coffee from my office, Eloise. Or hot chocolate or tea, if either Mr. Takei or Jamie would prefer. No cost, as promised.” She turned her head to Jamie next. Curious, this one. If they didn’t already have Pepper for the team, she’d seriously consider her for the field researcher position. She still was, in a way, but there was a little bit of sternness in her smile. “You’ll need to give me some context for your questions when you want them answered, Jamie. I try not to read minds. It’s considered a bit rude where I’m from. To answer what I do understand, though: I learned it from my mentor. Mr. Takei will probably be happy to know it’s not a requirement, though it isn’t uncommon to have some familiarity with what I like to call ‘the arts.’ Most people prefer the use of anomalies or the sciences, and even my mentor puts a lot of emphasis on intent rather than impact. But my specialty is the Word, both as Secretarial Manager and as an artist.”

Then, she turned to Matsumoto, a glimmer in her honey eyes. “Not understanding is par for the course here, Mr. Takei. I trust you checked the powerpoint Dr. Redd sent out? The anomalous is our field. The unknown is our vision. Things like what I just did are explicable. They follow rules and are defined by patterns. Just ask your new coworker Jamie! But most of what you will see in these halls, that you will encounter in our records, are beyond imagination. Take Eloise, as an example. Eloise, please tell Mr. Matsumoto, how long has the Foundation been trying to understand your composition and function?”
 
"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Slow down, Jamie understood: You have to unpack, you can't just say whatever pops into your head whenever it pops in there. She'd heard it before, just like all the rest of it.

You have to focus. You're all over the place. No one knows what you're talking about. We're talking about something else right now. Can you try to pay attention to what we're actually doing?

You ask too many questions.

You're too wild. You're too much. You're too far out there.

You have to tone it down.


Okay. Okay. Tone it down. Professional Job Applicant Jamie, right? 'Slightly better, dear. Still does not meet standards, but -- amenable,' Eloise had said, when her eyes were blue.

They were gray now. Safe, neutral, boring gray. Hair less sun-bleached platinum, more honey-colored - sweet, amenable, right? Unremarkable, just like the shirt he was wearing - navy blue polo with thin gray stripes that matched his eyes, but not in a way that drew attention to them. Classic style light-khaki pants, normal office shoes. He hated office shoes and always had, but sometimes you just have to deal with what other people expect. Average height for a guy, maybe a quarter-inch shorter than Matsumoto, in case he was the sort that got upset about that sort of thing.

Safe.

Unremarkable.

Very proper.

Demure.

Mindful.

Sure. Right. None of those things were Jamie, but he knew enough that he could at least fake it for a while. "Coffee would be nice. Thank you."

It helped keep him calm, he'd noticed, at least a little bit.
 
୨୧


"Ah! Delightful -- delightful. I am -- always grateful -- for your hospitality, dear."

Poor Mr. Matsumoto seemed to be taking the present situation as some sort of joke, or, perhaps, a ruse. Certainly not with the proper seriousness such matters entailed. It was a stance Eloise was unused to encountering. Most people in the facility tended to take things at face value, as common upheavals to their understanding of the world were, and did not hesitate to adjust beliefs in kind.

Reassessing. Jamie had changed again. Now, they seemed much more the kind to adapt and take things in stride, both mentally and physically. Admirable qualities. Idly, Eloise wondered how fine-tuned that changing was. Until this point, it had seemed to come and go at whims, but if it was a conscious effort - oh, that would be delightful. It would make for a lovely accent to any aesthetic collection. No matter the clothes, the room, the season, the mood --

Well, it was second only to being able to adjust them herself, but the foundation staff were very keen on preventing her from doing so to living creatures. A shame, really.

"Several decades," Eloise answered to Miss Phillips, with the faintest hint of pride. "I am quite complex, and my functions exceed -- my base purpose."

She worked a thumb beneath a glove, slipping it off - a breach of etiquette for the purposes of demonstration, only - and rolled up the sleeve of her dress. Segmented pieces of wood curled in place of fingers, wires running between them, holding them together like a haphazardly articulated doll. Flexing her hand, she tilted her head, mask unreadable.

"Though my -- material foundation is -- not particularly complex, its cohesive whole -- in mimicry of your existence -- is elegantly enigmatic. I am, to say -- a lovely and curious device."

A definite twinge of pride, now, almost arrogant. She replaced the glove, adjusting the hem slightly.
 

Matsumoto was ready with his reply he believed in the question and the answer. The question was simple "What could science explain?" The answer was simple "Everything" so even as he turned his head to watch Eloise he said, "Of course Ms. Hope but that's the issue at hand isn't it? If you and this organization are saying anomalies exist, clearly something is wrong. Even if we lack a human ancestor science doesn't throw out evolution. Suggesting that something is unexplainable and calling it an anomaly is...."

That was when he heard it. Something he couldn't explain. This time he couldn't explain it away or look for some kind of excuse. Matsumoto wasn't just hearing it as he stared at Eloise she explained what he couldn't. He watched as her segments clicked and the unmistakable movement of gears inside her body caused her to stutter and grind.

Takei in this moment would reach out and try to touch Eloise with his hand. He couldn't truly process something like this. Something he couldn't process by thought alone he tried to do with a touch. He remembered the PowerPoint even if just moments ago it was useless bunk.

Object? No. Low-grade household anohumanoid. He knew at this moment the truth and then he heard a new voice roughly from where Jamie the other applicant had been. He turned around as if brought out of a trance. At that moment he didn't see her.

At this moment he no longer sought confirmation. He understood part of the truth.

WHAT IF JAMIE NEVER EXISTED?!

THE POWERPOINT SAID SOMETHING ABOUT REALITY WARPERS AND DEITIES!

At this moment a new truth settled upon him.

HE WAS THEIR PLAYTHING!

Matsumoto Takei began to scream backing away a few steps and stopped. He didn't run away but he began to think on the use of diety. It meant they had found a diety or diety-like entities but not just one. The way it had been used could only mean...

Matsumoto stopped screaming and began to wonder. He bent his knees lowering himself to the floor and began to rock back and forth.

He started asking the question audibly in Japanese, "Do the Kami exist?”
 
Oh, Hope’s mentor would’ve gotten a kick out of this one.

Not out of Jamie, at least. Hope had noticed the shift from the corner of her eye, so it wasn’t a ‘she had always been a he’ situation. A changeling belonged to a set of rules foreign to the current plane of existence, yet still followed rules all the same. Rules that could be understood, categorized, and sorted. She wondered just how often Jamie had been constrained to rules, judging by his attire when she suggested he slow his questions down.

For the field cataloguer, that wouldn’t do at all.

But she had a bigger problem to handle; she could address Jamie’s change in behavior and in dress code later on. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a new recruit break the moment he realized there was something bigger going on. He may have assumed Dr. Redd’s powerpoint was a joke of some kind, or perhaps just hadn’t read through it properly. Those were both common errors new people made. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t Eloise that had completely broken him. Strange and lovely as her devices were, he actually seemed to take those in stride at first glance. That was why she’d asked for Eloise in her group, after all, even if bringing her right down to Guy would’ve been a wiser choice.

But, no. He turned back to Jamie first, and the Jamie he knew was no longer there.

Most Christian-raised personnel would’ve asked about the Judeo-Christian capital-G God; most neopagans might have asked about gods, or the gods. But when the screaming subsided, Matsumoto fled into what was familiar to him. Both the language, a tongue Hope and quite a few unexpected personnel understood, and the culture. He collapsed to the floor, and in a few steps, Hope was beside him.

“<From our research, yes.>” She knelt down on the ground beside him, eyes flickering back to Jamie as she answered him in very slightly stilted Japanese. Her hand reached for his shoulder. “<But they are not here, and they are not our concern. ‘Above our payment grade,’ we call it. But this? Is not Kami.>”

The last part felt awkward, but it was the best she could manage before switching back to English for the benefit of the other two new personnel. She looked at Jamie – at the change. At the polo and brown hair and gray eyes. Her own goldish eyes, her own violet suit, stood out in comparison, but her smile was genuine and gentle as she phrased a request:

“Jamie, do you mind shifting back for a moment? I’d like Matsumoto to see it happen, so he knows what to look out for in the future.”

In English, this time, a language they all shared. She wanted to be clear that it was a request and not a command, and that she was intent on following through on the protocols she’d laid out for herself in her bindings. Mend what had been broken, and help to weave the team together a little more tightly in the process. Hopefully, Matsumoto would recover quickly. They had an interview to get to, after all, and unlike her mentor, Hope actually liked seeing her personnel in working condition.
 
Well, at least someone was happy with themself. Jamie actually appreciated it. Eloise could have just as easily been one more messed up existence, lamenting her whatever-ness. Seeing her actually being okay with what she was... he didn't really know how to explain how that made him feel, but it definitely made him feel something. Maybe he'd figure it out later, once the screaming stopped.

That was definitely unexpected. Maybe Jamie should have expected it, but he had thought - well, this was the ACF, wasn't it? He'd read the powerpoint, he knew what the others were supposed to know. It wasn't like he changed himself in front of random people on the street, but he'd figured it would be fine here.

Hope hadn't seemed bothered by it, anyway. She'd given Jamie a look that was more analytical than anything else, the sort that acknowledged what had happened, categorized it, and filed it away wherever it was supposed to be filed. Eloise hadn't really seemed bothered, either, but then again, she was apparently a lovely and curious device.

Well, that was all right. Fortunately, Hope also seemed to know what to do about the screaming, crouching down and talking to Matsumoto in - what was that? Japanese? Jamie thought it was Japanese, but he wasn't completely sure. What if it were Korean or something? Would he even recognize Korean? There were actually a ton of Asian languages, some of which didn't even sound Asian at all. Matsumoto had said he was Japanese, but that didn't mean he didn't speak Korean, right?

Oh, Hope was speaking, in English. Well, at least Jamie could respond to that. He was... actually not sure how to respond to that. Ideally he would have said something like no, I don't mind, but that would have definitely been a lie, so that wasn't going to work. Instead, he shifted his answer sideways, to the clear-and-factual: "I can do that."

Because of course she could; she'd been doing that since she was little, after all. Shifting her looks back to what they had been was the effort of an instant, or maybe not even an effort at all. It was just a thing that happened, like raising her arm or taking a step forward. Sure, there was probably some degree of work involved, in the sense of physics - did it matter if she changed her appearance while she was moving uphill versus downhill? Assuming a standard Jamie on an inclined plane of thirty degrees, moving at a static velocity of two miles per hour, where had she been going with that?

Oh, right, Matsumoto. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to say something that would help, or if there was anything that she could say that would actually help. "I'm... still me." Did that help? Jamie looked to Hope, to see if this was on the right track or not. "I just don't always look the same."
 
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