lostcarnival | [open] bro bro bro bro

Entry tags:

[open] bro bro bro bro

Who: Rhys and you!
When: D48-D49
Where: Various Locations
What: It's time for Rhys to make himself at home (or more likely whine that he's not the boss)
Warnings: Probably low but I'll update if anything happens

[day 48 - all around the carnival grounds - what have i gotten myself into?]

Rhys doesn't regret the decision. He doesn't regret taking a deal from some shady Ringmaster (and he hates that he'd never thought of that as a nickname for himself) to escape August and Vasquez and a bunch of killer robots that would have surely ended his life.

What he does regret is leaving Vaughn behind. Fiona and Sasha less so. But, there's still a sliver of sadness that he's here and they're not. Hopefully, whenever this whole thing ends, he'll go back and they'll forgive him.

(Though he seriously doubts that. They'll either be dead or they'll kill him.)

For the first little while, he wanders. He gets his shoes dusty (a development that makes him frown) and his hair wind blown but what else is there to do but figure things out? His lodgings, a trailer in a park surrounded by similar metallic bumps, isn't luxurious but it's not a hole in the ground.

He'll take it. He'll whine about it later.

[day 49 - anywhere that needs cleaning up around the carnival - where's a loader bot when you need one?]

Rhys regrets the decision.

As soon as he reports for work and someone slaps a mop into his hand, he regrets the decision. Janitor. A janitor again. Somewhere, Vasquez is probably laughing his ass off. The only good thing, Rhys guesses, is that whoever's in charge isn't Vasquez and won't be making him run all over the place to do menial things.

He still has to clean though and the grimace on his face as he starts mopping a dirty floor is evidence of what he thinks about that. But, he tells himself it won't be for very long. He tells himself that time will pass quickly.

He tells himself that he can drown himself in his mop bucket if it gets too bad.

Mopping isn't a hard think to do but he still mops over various people's shoes instead of telling them to move and he steps all over his own freshly cleaned floors more than once.

The third time he does that, he curses loudly and then looks around, hoping no one's heard that. He hasn't memorized all the rules but he's pretty sure cursing on the job is frowned upon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Somewhere in his childhood, Rhys is pretty sure that one of his parents probably told him not to stare. But, that bit of parental advice has gone right out the window when he realizes that someone's heard him, someone's watching him mop, and that someone is stirring a liquid with her tongue.

"Why are you doing that?" Rhys can't stop himself from asking, a slight grimace on his face. "Don't they stock spoons around this place? Barring that, why not..."

He trails off and then makes a motion with his finger. Between the fact that she's apparently a giant and she's stirring whatever's in that mug with her tongue, Rhys is a little taken aback.

Guess it's good he has a mop since it'll be a good distraction if he has to toss it at her and run.

"HEH?" To that, her tongue promptly retracts. Stirring? Did it look like stirring? (The answer, is yes, but she's not even realized that's what he's talking about.) "A spoon?! Why would I drink my coffee with a spoon!?" she starts, only then catching the last moments of the finger motion.

"What?" ...Oh. Stirring. Well she'll ignore that anyway, adjusting her wings. Really, if it wasn't for these bird legs, she'd probably be shorter than him.... ....Gotta love what an extended pair of feet Does. "...Well whatever. It's just easier to drink this way-like a straw, you know?" And with that....it's back in the mug. "Th'o... ...'U nu?"

That would be, 'so...you new?', probably.

"You ever tried talking without sticking your....tongue in your drink?" Rhys asks, leaning against the mop and trying not to grimace. He's absolutely judging her though he's trying not to do it outwardly since she's the size of two of him and he really doesn't want to end up being kicked in the face with those...legs.

Rhys really regrets this decision. It's made and he can't go back on it now but what in the hell was he thinking? Is being CEO that important?

(Yes.)

After some careful parsing of her words, he finally figures out what she's asked him and answers, "Yeah, I'm new. The new janitor! That's me. I don't know why I'm doing this when I could be using my skills for other things but..."

But, he was mopping.

"....." Well, she just pulls her tongue back out, back into her mouth, and answers- "....I mean...you can just ask someone not to do that if you find it's rude, I'm not just going to ignore that..!" She just didn't think it was rude. She does this all the time, so clearly it's fine.

That or people just really want her to make clothes. But hey. She seems encouraging enough, the light coming off of her growing a little brighter as she smiles. Mopping? Clearly nothing to worry about! "Mnnh~ Well, everyone starts somewhere~! Maybe the Ringmaster just needs some proof of your skills? We're being more careful about who's hired these days!" she adds, nodding furiously. "Even the debt conditions have changed!"

Now, this is more interesting. This is information that he can actually maybe use to climb the corporate ladder, so to speak. This vaunted Ringmaster can't be any worse or any scarier than Handsome Jack and Rhys had handled him pretty well. Jack had chosen his head to download into so that was proof of his worth, wasn't it? Rhys thought so.

"What's with the caution?" Rhys asks, mopping at the same spot over and over again under the guise of working while he listens. "Why would you be stingy about who you hire to wash your floors and toss your trash out?"

He realizes that he's inadvertently insulting himself but he tries not to draw attention to that fact. "What do you do? Are you the official dishwasher? You do that with your tongue too?"

"Oh, not that part~!" Carly laughs, waving a hand. "It's a matter of not wanting to force anyone into a debt when we're being chased around by court fae, you know? It's too dangerous to just bring anyone who broke a game-stand in for a year of cleaning duty..! Let alone performance, or treasury, or..."

...And just as soon as she starts, she quickly clams up, going quite cold. He might have gone just a bit far with that last remark, given how swiftly the humor and joy drains out from her voice. "Hardly," she starts, frowning. "...Are you this rude to everyone you meet? I bet that if you were this rude to the Ringmaster, that might have actually been behind your assignment."

She's a bit touchy about what her tongue does or does not do, apparently.

Rhys doesn't even have time to process the fact that she's just told him that, in the past, someone who broke a carnival game was made to do manual labor to make up for it. That sounds unfair, cruel, and exactly like something Jack would have enforced back on Hyperion and something Rhys would have agreed with especially if he wasn't one of those being forced to work.

He doesn't have time to think too much about that because her whole demeanor changes and Rhys arches an eyebrow at the sudden change. "What was rude about that? It was a simple question. I'm trying to learn."

He just wasn't the world's most sensitive person. Maybe he needed to work on that. Maybe this would be the change he needed or maybe he'd just keep on being an asshole.

"I'm curious," he admits. "I haven't seen something like that before."

"You just asked if I use my tongue to clean people's dishes..! What part of that isn't rude!" She does have at least a slight point. Maybe. Dishes for people are probably (?) different than just drinking her own coffee.

But he...seems? Eager at least? Carly honestly can't totally tell, so she'll try and give him the benefit of the doubt. "All I use it for is drinks-it's like a hummingbird!" And, as for the other part.

"I'm the Wardrobe Manager." A beat passes, and she frowns. "....I'm in charge of your clothes; everyone gets a set for outside work, and during work, as they need. Most of you are only coming in with what's on your back after all!"

"You're in charge of clothes?" Well, Rhys makes a note to be nicer to her because clothes are one of his vices. He likes a well fitted pair of trousers and a nice vest. He wants to look good even if he's stuck mopping floors like a common...janitor.

Which he is. Rhys internally sighs. It's nice not to have killer robots trying to kill him but he really hates starting at the very bottom of the damn ladder. He doesn't even know how he's going to get himself to the top at this point.

He needs to learn more about this place and make friends in the right areas.

"Do you take requests?" Rhys asks hopefully. The clothes he'd come aboard with weren't bad but he doesn't want to wear the same thing over and over again. How boring would that be? How dull and unfashionable.

"That's right~" All of the clothes. Sort of. She has a team of tailors, after all. Who knows, maybe he'll...end up in another department one day?

One good thing about the bottom, is there's a heck of a lot of 'up' directions to go in, at least.

Carly nods at the question, answering with ease. "Most of the time! It's best to have something as close to comfortable as you can get, right? It's generally complicated patterns, rare fabrics, metals...those are the things we have to ask for some compensation on. We're not bottomless on supplies after all..!"

"No, I guess you wouldn't be considering the...circumstances," Rhys says, glancing around. This place isn't run down and he hasn't seen cockroaches or other types of bugs scrambling around, putting their dirty bodies all over his recently mopped floor.

"Clothes are a bit of a hobby of mine," Rhys admits, glancing down. The clothes he's wearing are still the ones he was wearing when he ended up here and though they're a bit dusty, dirty and damp with mop water, they're still loads better than some things he's seen here.

The only thing that's off is the fact that he's had to wear two different boots. He still mourns his lost boot. Skag skin was not easy to find.

"But, I don't really know what a janitor wears either," he admits, shrugging. They'd had robots for that on Hyperion. "Humans didn't clean stuff where I come from."

She's not going to ask about what the circumstances, but she is going to look him over with something of a discerning eye...and sure enough pauses at the boots.

"...Hmmm, maybe not the choices I'd make, I guess..." she mutters, before jolting herself from her train of thought. "Oh-! For janitorial, it would be a matter of function over form! It's not something you're going to be wearing outside of work after all right~? Though I'm surprised you qualified for cleaning over the other jobs, if that was a mechanized one in your world..." Wouldn't...you not really know how to do all the heavy cleaning??? There's so many safety measures and cleaning solutions, she's certain!

Rhys doesn't really want to talk about why he might have been made a janitor. He doesn't think Vasquez somehow got a call out to this place without him knowing but how can he be sure? Hyperion was a powerful corporation and Vasquez was given the reigns to the company without any sort of safety measures to make sure he didn't go nuts.

Maybe he had figured out where Rhys was going and had called ahead to let the Ringmaster know the perfect job for him.

"It's a long story," he says because he doesn't want to get in it and relive some of his worst memories. "It was mechanized but people still needed jobs, didn't they? Not everyone could be the CEO of a big time company."

If this works out, Rhys hopes that maybe he'll be able to cross his name off the list of non-CEO people soon.

"I'd still want to look decent even if I have to clean up after everyone," Rhys says, wincing. He just hopes people here are courteous.

"....Wouldn't...automation give a good reason to just not need jobs..?" Does this mean you people still have poverty or something (Oh, Carly-)-

Well, she shakes her head, sighing. "Mmnn...we could definitely go over some ideas when you have time off..! I'm surprised you're working already if you just got here, actually... ...normally there's a sort of...'grace period'!" she explains, making a gesture between her hands. "A bit of time to settle in first..! Though I guess we are pretty early in the performance week..." she mutters to herself again, frowning.

"...We'll do what we can! The important thing to keep in mind, is that Janitorial clothes are made to get dirty, so that the rest of you, and the stuff you want to wear, doesn't!"

"Hyperion's a weird place," Rhys says like that explains it. Hyperion was weird. Its legacy was tied right in with Handsome Jack, a man whose hands soaked in blood but who did his best to trick people into thinking that blood was beauty.

"And if there's a grace period, no one told me that," Rhys says, almost pouting. With that in mind, he tossed the mop against the wall and left it there. He'd come back to it when he was supposed to be working.

Sticking his hands on his hips, Rhys rubs at the wet flood with a boot and then sighs. "Suppose you're right on that one. But, I'd still like some nice clothes for off time. I hate being out of fashion."

"Mmmm, to be fair, I'm not your supervisor... ...it could be that they wanted to throw you in the deep end in this case..." Considering it's janitorial, that would not be surprising. She shrugs. "...I guess, we also haven't really had a new hire from outside the departments for things like ride management, or entertainment though. It's hard to do those jobs on an off week!"

Sucks.

But, she does grin quite widely. "Then your wish is exactly what I'll work on~! What time are you off? We can set that up right away~!"

...

A pause. "...Er. Right away from. That time. Obviously ahehehehe..."

She's not entirely all there.

Rhys is really wondering if something's a little off with Carly but it's the nicest someone's been to him since Sasha. Or Vaughn. Not Fiona. Fiona always seemed to dislike him. Fiona liked Sasha and her hat. Everyone else was expendable.

"Uh, I guess I'm off at the end of the day when everyone stops working and therefore stops making a mess? I haven't really gotten into a set schedule yet so it's all kind of new. Maybe I'm off when whoever the boss was -- "

Rhys hoped that it would be him soon enough so he could set his own hours.

" -- tells me it's fine to go. So, yeah. About then."

Off? Maybe. Nice though? Definitely, so long as no extra buttons get pushed. It doesn't help that she's more often than not in her own little world when it comes to matters beyond the department she's in charge of however. The woman nods as Rhys explains and answers, crossing her arms for a bit. "Hmnnn... ...Well, in that case...I'll be in the Wardrobe tent until fairly late-it's at the back of the Big Top," she adds, nodding. "So you can just turn up there whenever."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[open] bro bro bro bro

Re: DAY 49....

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