Kanan's warehouse- Wednesday through the day- NFB

[throughaphase]

Kitty hated this week. Her baby was a doll, her husband hadn't snapped out of it yet, she was still goddamn plastic, and she was pretty sure way too many people were suspicious of her. This was fine.

Caritas had far too many people loyal to the Toymaker around yesterday, so she changed the location while Summer had her normal shift and hoped word would get out to the right people and the right people only. Kanan had agreed to let them use his warehouse, so Kitty showed up at the start of the day in case people showed up, not sure what she'd find.

What she found was a warehouse full of oversized, brightly-colored plastic children's playground equipment that sort of reminded her of the 80s.

"All right, cool, I guess," she said, shrugging. "We'll all talk on slides today."


[Warehouse nodded with permission! Open to those who've been previously vetted, or if you'd have a handwavy reason to have gotten the okay! Or you can go to the decoy tea party in the regular Caritas post!

Team Bad Guy can hang around outside and probably isn't getting in, neener neener.]

Comments

[firstofitskind]

So the past couple days had definitely been...

Definitely been a couple of days that had happened, yep.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, Liam showed up. Verity had filled him in about the meetings, and also about today's change of location.

"Well that's... not what I expected this place to be full of," he admitted, looking around the warehouse.

[throughaphase]

Kitty instantly put on a big smile, just in case.

"Fun, isn't it?" she said brightly.

[firstofitskind]

"Super fun," Liam agreed. "Verity didn't tell me just how much fun it'd be, though."

There. Given that she'd been to the first of these meetings, hopefully that'd reassure Kitty that Liam wasn't here to be a snitch.

[throughaphase]

He still could be, but she was willing to drop the act since she was pretty sure he wasn't.

"She hasn't been here since we got plastic swings," she said. "And hate to break it to you, but we don't actually have tea."

[firstofitskind]

"The mice get suspicious when we're both out of the house for too long," Liam explained. "And right now I'm more annoyed that I can't drink tea even if there was any."

His hands had a hard time holding on to anything that wasn't appropriately soldier-y.

[throughaphase]

"The second this is over I'm going to all-you-can-eat sushi by myself and using actual utensils with my actual hands," Kitty agreed.

With Lexi, who she was never letting go of.

"So, yeah, welcome to the club. Hopefully we get more today."

[firstofitskind]

"That sounds amazing," Liam agreed. He wasn't actually a huge seafood fan, hadn't actually missed it last week... until someone had pointed out that's what was different. And then of course there'd been a craving.

Which he hadn't been able to satisfy because see above re: hands and also made of plastic.

Which was real, real fun when you had deep-seated issues about personhood to begin with.

"I heard someone else got taken to the Toybox." How did that simultaneously sound so weird and yet also genuinely terrifying?

[throughaphase]

"Regina. She's pretty new in town," Kitty nodded. "They're getting worse about watching us."

[firstofitskind]

"Whatever hold this 'Toymaker' has over the island is crumbling, he's probably feeling pretty paranoid. Maybe that's affecting those who are still under his control," Liam realized. It was weird, having two conflicting sets of 'memories'- the ones he'd woken up with on Monday, where Everything Was Fine and life had always been like this, and his actual memories, where he'd gone to sleep on Sunday night with a feeling of undefinable dread regarding what Monday would bring.

Sometimes he hated being right.

[throughaphase]

"Maybe. Though I don't know what he expected when his first move was publicly offing the dean. It doesn't exactly breed trust," Kitty said, taking a little plastic seat on a plastic swing.

[firstofitskind]

Liam used to work for someone who'd do things like threaten to nuke Earth from orbit if he didn't get his way. So it was a tactic he was pretty familiar with.

"You'd be surprised how effective fear can be at keeping people in line." Of course, Fandom as a rule tended to attract the kind of people who didn't fall in line easily. For some reason.

[throughaphase]

Pretty much.

"I believe the tactic works. This is a terrible place to try it, though," she said. "This isn't even my first secret resistance here."

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae had been passed a secret message at Nina's party. And even though she was not at all sure that this wasn't some sort of elaborate trap, she was here.

If it was some sort of elaborate trap, well. Then at least she wouldn't have to be panicked about getting caught anymore. And at this point, that sounded like it might be kind of a relief.

[throughaphase]

"Hi," Kitty said, brightly. "Are you here for the tea party?"

She might as well have winked and nudged.

[thishouseishaunted]

Um.

Mae glanced around. Was there tea? She didn't see any tea.

Not that she could drink it anyway, what with not having a mouth.

She shrugged (a gesture which, due to the scale of her head compared to her body, mostly involved arms) and nodded.

Sure. Tea party.

[throughaphase]

Kitty frowned, studying her. Vetting was hard like this.

"On a scale of one to ten, what kind of nightmare is this?"

Personally, being stuck as a toy cat without the ability to speak sounded pretty horrifying.

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae would have thought her fabric eyes were already as wide as they could go. It turned out, she was wrong.

She flailed her arms wildly, finally letting some of that internal screaming out into the rest of her fluffy body.

Eleven, Kitty. Eleven thousand. There was not a scale in existence that went high enough.

[throughaphase]

"All right, you're definitely not brainwashed," Kitty decided, based entirely on that reaction. "Well, welcome to the secret club of those of us who are tired of being toys."

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae hopped up and down, her feet squeaking with every impact with the floor. She kind of wanted to hug Kitty right now.

Ironic, since the horror of being hugged was what had broken down her conditioning in the first place.

[throughaphase]

"There's a decent number of us," Kitty told her, "and we're pretty good at taking out bad guys. So we'll fix this, if you want to help."

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae stopped jumping and nodded quickly. She made little smashing motions with her paws.

Her soft, padded, squeaky little paws, that hadn't even been good at holding a plate for breakfast on Monday.

She looked down at herself and heaved a heavy, voiceless sigh. She'd probably be more help with something that didn't involve smashing, this time.

[throughaphase]

"We'll figure it out," Kitty said. "I think half the people here don't have legs that bend."

[thishouseishaunted]

Mae's nose twitched, which was as close as it could come to wrinkling.

Not having a voice was bad. Not having a full range of expression to make up for the lack of voice was just mean.

She nodded and waved her arms, trying to get some enthusiasm going again. Honestly, she mostly just wished she could go lie on a couch and mope for a little while.

[throughaphase]

There was... one of those swings you could sit two people on like an elevated see-saw?

"Yes, exactly!"

...Look, she didn't know what that meant and she was not perfect.

[thishouseishaunted]

That lack of proper communication was exactly what had saved Mae so far, so she couldn't even hate it properly. Instead she gave Kitty a tired thumbs up and toddled off (squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak) to go flop onto a swing.

[uncertain_dume]

"... Great, I always wanted a swingset," Kanan sighed as he clunked his way into his warehouse. "Why not?"

He wasn't even going to check to see if his weapon stash was still up in the rafters. At this point it would probably just be pool noodles or something.

Besides, his hand was still fused to his lightsaber and now maybe wasn't a great time to experiment with Jar'Kai anyway.

[throughaphase]

"All we do is have fun, fun, fun!" Kitty said with the fakest smile possible. "At least you won't get bored in here."

[uncertain_dume]

"Boredom wasn't my biggest concern," Kanan replied, sighing and shaking his head. He glanced down at his feet. There was now a sizable dent in one boot, paint scuffed away in that area.

It was still stuck to the damn base, though.

"They got someone else yesterday, didn't they?"

[throughaphase]

Kitty nodded. "Regina. The girl from my radio snagged her out of the bar. I wish we'd moved earlier."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan frowned a little. Girl from Kitty's radio.

"Sabine," he supplied. "She's one of my students. Been my TA for a while now." His jaw tensed slightly, which was quite the trick for a guy made out of plastic. "She's a good person. Usually. Hell, Kitty, at this rate it's a toss-up if we'll manage to get people to snap out of it or if we'll all get hauled off by the troopers, first. We can't keep going like this."

He stayed on the island to avoid this.

[throughaphase]

Sabine would feel so bad later.

"So we'll have to go after him with who we have," she said. "The thing about being here as long as I have is you get really damn confident about beating the bad guy, it's just not easy to do it when you're being watched like a hawk."

[uncertain_dume]

"Yeah, the watching doesn't fill me with great feelings," Kanan sighed. "And we still don't know how we all wound up brainwashed in the first place. Or if it can be re-done once it's been shaken. Hell, the cameras cut out. Who the hell knows what they're doing to the people they take into the scrapyard?"

He shook his head a little.

"I have half a mind to try to get in there to see. That's Hera's turf, damn it. That's insult to injury. But that's probably not the smart solution here."

[throughaphase]

"Nope. Rescue has to come after a plan," Kitty agreed.

[uncertain_dume]

"And a plan has to come after answers," Kanan mused. "Does anybody even have the faintest clue as to where to start looking for those?"

[throughaphase]

"Working on that part," Kitty admitted. "I'm kind of hoping someone who wakes up might have a better idea of it than those of us who snapped out of it early."

[uncertain_dume]

"There is that," Kanan allowed. "The longer they're in the pocket of this 'Toymaker,' the more they stand to learn about who or what it is we're dealing with."

[throughaphase]

"Crossing my fingers for it," she said. "I'll admit between coordinating secret meetings and trying to figure out if several days spent as plastic is going to wreck my baby's development, I'm a little distracted."

[uncertain_dume]

"All the more reason for us to figure this out as soon as possible, hm?" Kanan smiled wryly, and then sighed. "This is it, isn't it? What this whole damn summer's been bringing us to. Brainwashing and summary executions. What I have and haven't been able to feel out has been touch and go but I have this crazy notion that just waiting for Monday isn't going to cut it this time."

[throughaphase]

"If there's something after this, I'm phasing down into the island and punching her," Kitty said firmly, and very, very seriously.

[uncertain_dume]

"... I can get behind that."

Really, though.

Really.

"I'll stay up here and kick it a few times for emphasis. It'll be great. Moving my feet independently of one another, I mean."