Logs:In Which Some Mongrels Have a Very Productive Work Retreat

In Which Some Mongrels Have a Very Productive Work Retreat
Dramatis Personae Thing One, Thing Two, Crazy Train, Splatoon, Tian-shin, Wolfcub, Ion
In Absentia	2024-03-31 "It's a great day to be alive, I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes--"
Location <NY> Cayuga Lake
friday, march 29. 1:31 p.m. Maybe in summer it'll be teeming out here but this early in the season, this stretch of lake is remote and quiet. They're definitely not roughing it, though; the enormous lakeside cabin they've rented is luxuriously appointed, with spacious bedrooms, enormous kitchen, several large common areas, a truly immense wraparound porch with its own small private dock. Perhaps the Mongrels, loud and rough and still mussed from the road, don't look quite like they belong in this elegant accommodation, but who is here to judge? The house has rapidly filled up with eagerly raised voices, but by the time Stunt has made an exploratory circuit and joined the sharkpups where they're arranging supplies out on the dock, he's sounding uncharacteristically critical. "Yo, Things, I'm sure we can double up," he does not actually sound sure at all, "but you know we're a couple beds short, right?" "What? No, we're fine, we --" Shane is starting to reply, but he does not get as far as an explanation before -- SPLOOSH. The other smallshark has hurled her twin bodily off the dock and into the lake. "See? We got more room than all y'all." --- friday, march 29. 4:35 p.m. Hotshot is taking his turn at the presentation easel, where he's doodled a lot of circles and arrows in sports commentary fashion over the floor plans, along with slightly ambiguous emojis that represent his crew (he's 😎, obviously). "-- and then I pass the egg to Stunt, while he's in the air, right?" He's gesticulating somewhat unclearly with both hands while his floating marker points along the arc of the last arrow he drew, which shows 😐 soaring down a flight of stairs. "Except it's not actually the egg on account of Splatoon swapped it with a replica before we even left the exhibit hall." His marker zips back over to circle 🦑, way on the other side of the increasingly convoluted diagram. "Now, the real one..." He looks past the gathered Mongrels to the door. "Oh hell, now I gotta start over!" But he's breaking into a grin, not at all displeased at the prospect as his marker adds a 😵‍💫 to the board. "This a whole different heist if Madam President riding with us. Shit, we could pull this job for reals." Leaning against the doorframe, Scramble smiles wide herself as the rest of the club surges to their feet in enthusiastic welcome. She works her way through the hugs and daps and manly shoulder-claps to the mastermind of the heist under consideration. Her eyes skip around the diagram. Narrow slightly at the arcane loopy trails 😐 left in the mezzanine. Flick over to Hotshot. "Wait, are we riding through the Met on a fabergé egg hunt?" She arches her eyebrows. "Cuz sounds fantastic, but -- maybe not for reals this weekend." --- saturday, march 30. 12:19 p.m. The trees here have sprouted brightly colored splatters, bold and cheerful through this copse. There's been yelling in plenty, by turns triumphant and indignant. Just at the moment, Hotshot is outraged, a string of also-colorful profanity directed toward a large robotic dragonfly that has just peppered him with several splotches of lavender paint. "-- Motherfucking cheating-ass Thing," with an outflinging of telekinetic irritation, the drone is skittering off course to splat itself into a tree, its last shot veering off wild through the trees while Hotshot continues to rail at it's insolently staring camera-eyes: "you know that shit don't goddamn count, you show your creepy-ass demon face and you know I'd paint that smile whole new colors --" There's another barrage, this time splotched bold and blue all across his chest. Taylor has a gun in each hand and another pair in two spare arms and his smile is broad and bright and very unpainted. "Yuh mouth be writing a bigass check but I'm your damn teller." For good measure he's shooting the drone, too, as the robot insect starts to right itself. "That count enough for you, den?" --- saturday, march 30. 6:17 p.m. This was supposed to be a simple meal. Tian-shin pored over the recipes and the back-up recipes, making sure there were ingredients for all of them in anticipation of false starts. The false starts happened, sure enough, but her partner took care of those...temporarily. The extra ingredients became extra side dishes, and now the pressure cooker, the air fryer, and the kitchen smoke alarm are all beeping at once. "Can you get the bao?" Tian-shin calls out from where she's trying to stir the rapidly congealing stir-fry. "My mom said to put it on 'natural release', but I'm not sure what that--" She looks down in dismay at the mass of beef and broccoli in her wok. "Oh, no I put too much corn starch in the sauce. Again." "Not to worry!" Scotty has just "fixed" the smoke alarm and turned the air fryer off, and is now skidding to a stop beside Tian-shin at the stove. "'Natural release' is what you need to do with your stress! See, the baos are fine!" He opens the lid on the stock pot on the back burner, which he'd improvised into a steamer. Tian-shin cranes her neck to peer into the pot. Whether the bao are "fine" is perhaps debatable, given they have expanded so much they have joined into one large bao. "The texture looks good, at least," she hazards. "I guess they could be pull-apart bao, but..." She looks up at him with wide eyes, then slowly toward the source of the ominous beeping. "...what's in the pressure cooker?" --- saturday, march 30. 1:11 a.m. The lights are down, the volume is up, and the music video playing on the huge flat-screen TV is a puzzling montage of Travis Tritt performing onstage in front of jumbotrons that are playing footage of Travis Tritt performing on various other stages, interspersed with clips that are just a little too on the nose for the lyrics scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The uplifting violin frames Nick's off-key belting to strange but enjoyable effect: "it's a great day to be alive, I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes--" Cue shafts of sunlight cutting through clouds in the music video within the music video. "--there's some hard times in the neighborhood, but why can't every day be just this good?" When the lyrics prompt "Ah-ooooooh" from him he one-ups the clearly inferior human version happening on the screen and actually howls. On-key, no less. --- sunday, march 31. 11:15 a.m. The group is approximately evenly split between enormous appetites and those too hungover to be contemplating serious food, but nevertheless the remnants of a large breakfast are slowly but steadily dwindling on the table. Kouto is obnoxiously solidly in the former group, cheerful as he (gently, at least) taps his spoon against the side of his juice glass to call the group to attention. He has a hand resting on a very brightly but inexpertly decorated cardboard box, fingers drumming on the top. "Okay okay okay my dogs, I hope ye all can follow directions, all have put ye words in the compliment box because some ye look in big-big need of a pick-me-up, huh? Now --" But here he's interrupted by Ion (who has almost assuredly not followed directions). He's bounded to his feet, snatched the box away to set it aside and sling an arm fierce and jostly around Kouto's shoulders. "Nah nah nah bro. Love your color, love your energy, you the damn pick-me-up for all us," maybe he is getting a jumpstart on this compliment thing but it seems fully inadvertent as he continues on to: "but we do this love-fest the right way huh? I ain't hide behind no anonymous paper." His hook thumps firmly against his chest. "I'm stand up and own my compliments like a man." --- sunday, march 31. 3:45 p.m. For the rowdy night that's been had here, the place looks immaculate when they are getting ready to head off. It's partially the efforts of a small battalion of cleaning drones but largely the stern direction of the Things, channeling more than a little bit of their father as they cat herded the Mongrels into tidying. But now most signs of the chaos are vanished, save for the bright paint splotches on the trees that will run with the next rain. At the moment they're waiting for a pre ride safety check to finish, their Road Captain over re-tensioning Longshanks' chains. The hoverbikes are solidly ground bikes today, lined up with the others and ready to go. There's a sharkpup perched on each, idly passing a bag of venison jerky back and forth between each other. "{Admit it,}" Shane is saying, waggling a strip of jerky at his twin before gnawing off a piece. "{Sometimes you actually like people.}" B snorts, but the slow flutter of her gills is contented. "Nah. Do love dogs, though."