Fandom Island and Town

Something about the weather or the scent in the air or something had gotten Kathy really missing Chilly Boulder on the island today. It was the weirdest hankering, but it was a harmless one and one that Kathy couldn't see any reason to deny. So after classes let out for the day, ordered a portal and looked to The Best Boy Of Devil May Cry (sorry not sorry, boyfriends, it's true). "What do you say, boy?" she asked. "Wanna take a walk somewhere different for a change?"

Ronin, ever-responsible, grabbed his leash in his mouth and looked at his Service Dog, please don't pet signage. Kathy thought about it and shook her head. "Nah. Today's another good day."

There had been a lot of good days over the last few years, more good than bad. And while she made it a habit to have him wear it anyway around Limbo City to comply with no pet rules, she didn't think Fandom was gonna make a fuss about his presence either way.

"One Skywalker Special and a small cup of puppy peanut butter," she ordered, giving a smile up at the picture of her adopted siblings before paying and heading outside with her ice cream. "For you, sir," she says, setting down the peanut butter for Ronin. "Eat."

Magic word said, Ronin happily started on his ice cream while Kathy took a seat. She had no idea whether she'd know anybody on the island after so long away, so she sent out a handwavy text to everyone in her phone: Meet me at Chilly Boulder for old times' sake?

No idea if anyone would show up but who knew? And even if no one did, she'd had plenty of experience people-watching on the island that it would still be a good time. Maybe even meet new people!

The day was young and full of adventure.

[Open! Let's see if I remember how to do this!]

With the call from Alluka yesterday, there was no way Kathy was missing out on heading to the island to help tidy up. Poppy the giant metal chicken statue out front was getting polished and then bedecked. The outside of the building was getting power-washed (especially if she could convince Dante to come and help) and the landscape trimmed. And the inside was going to be so scrubbed down that even Barry could be convinced to eat off the furniture.

...Possibly.

[No OCD]

After a good day of lecture and discussion yesterday, Kathy was back in the brick-and-mortar Dite's today. The weather had her energized and now it was time for some spring cleaning - much needed considering how long the building had been shut up. The late spring air was nice enough that she had the door propped open, with retro pop spilling out of it. Right now Kathy was dancing with a mop to Elton John's I'm Still Standing, doing the choreography in the video as she made her way across the store, possibly with some Risky Business thrown in for good measure.

Don't you know I'm still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
I'm still standing after all this time...

"Ronin, to you for the solo!"

Ronin, chewing on his toy from the other week, just huffed at his owner like she was a weirdo and remained flopped down on his doggy bed.

"Your loss!" she declared, continuing her dance down one of the aisles.

Dite's was open, if not particularly sexy.

Kathy had thought she was doing the smart thing by coming in to check on the store the day before Halloween. She and the island on Halloween did not mix.

It knew what it did.

But she had stock to check and accounts to balance before the end of the month. And so she figured she'd pop in for a few hours the day before, then not think about the island at all until November had safely arrived.

Instead, she'd gotten to the island and realized that, yeah, the island and Halloween still had it out for her. The first clown that had attacked her had gotten a good swipe in before Ronin had knocked it down with a growl and a nasty bite to the clown's hamstring. The rest, she'd left as orange smears and vanishing bodies as she made her way to Dite's.

The last one had gotten clubbed to death by a giant, double-headed dildo right in the doorway of her store. So she was going to put the inventory and accounting on hold until she finished sluicing off the glass door and front stoop.

Fucking island.

[OCD free]

Oooookaaaaaaaay. This was not what Kathy had been expecting when she hopped out of the portal onto the island. She'd vaguely remembered dinosaurs from that weird weekend the reunion was supposed to have been, but this wasn't dinosaurs.

This looked like some creepy guy in a mask should be shouting about not getting addicted to water from way up high or something.

Dite's hadn't fared much better. It was mostly rusting metal plates making some kind of shack with weird, kinky bits of...armor?...on display? It all had a lot of straps and studs and leather and rubber anyway. And normally Kathy wouldn't judge that, but a) it all looked like it had been dragged down three miles of bad road and b) at least one of them came with severed hands that looked too withered to be anything but real. She was...just gonna avoid that one a lot.

The biggest surprise was the back room, which had been emptied of normal merchandise and filled with metal shelving that was absolutely covered in weird drugs. Jet. Psycho. Mentats. And a truly ridiculous amount of alcohol, some in old, sealed bottles, other just jars of straight up moonshine.

There was clearly only one thing to do. Kathy poked at the old timey jukebox now in a corner, flipping through songs until she found a good one.

Looks like today she was a purveyor of sex, drugs, and a little rock and roll.

[No OCD]

You know what was awful? Working at Dite's during this week. There was nowhere safe to look. Her whole store was full of things meant to delight and titillate on a good day. Which today was not, thank you. She wasn't sure if it was better or worst to have an ethereal being in a meatsack body for a boyfriend this week. It meant Dante was immune to the effects of pollen, but it also meant that Dante was immune to the effects of pollen.

You know what? She was just going to collect a huge supply of safer sex supplies and put them into a tub outside of the store with a sign that said Free! Use them! and dwell on her complicated relationship with proms instead. Much better plan.

This seemed to be the place.

The girl gave the giant metal rooster statue a confused glance and then set about to trying out all her keys until she found one for the door. The phone she'd woken up to had popped up a calendar event called "Work at Dite's." She still didn't know the passcode to unlock it - wasn't even entirely sure it was her phone, but the lockscreen had a picture of a bunch of people at Korean barbeque and her face was in the middle, so...probably? Hopefully? Otherwise, maybe she'd meet whomever was supposed to be working at this place today and maybe they could give her more information about who she was, where she was, and what she was supposed to be doing.

The fourth key worked and the door clicked open. "C'mon, Ronin," she said, grateful that the dog's tags had his name on them (and an address, but in a city she'd never heard of and a state almost a thousand miles away from where she was now) and that he seemed well-behaved and content to follow her. "Say, what kind of store do you think Dite's Decadent Delights is, huh boy? Maybe fancy chocolates?"

She took three steps inside and discovered, that no. These delights were very much not a confectioner shop. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh," she said, eyes wide. "Ohhhhhhhhhhh. Um. Okay. We can do this. Um. Can't we?"

Here was hoping the cash register wasn't password protected, too.

[No OCD!]

Ahhh, good old inventory season. With all the 2019 models scheduled to be coming in over the next few weeks, Kathy needed to make some space on her shelves for all the new merchandise. So cue a day of cleaning and reorganizing.

...Well, after she redecorated the six-foot metal rooster statue outside, of course. She'd dressed Poppy in cutesy Christmas lingerie right before the holidays and it was high time for something more fitting!

Classy girl Kathy was, she dressed the statue in workout gear - albeit the workout gear she stocked which wasn't meant for public gyms. Or real workouts.

But it was funny because it was January and ten thousand jokes about resolutions and, okay, Kathy's sense of humor had always been a little off.

!!CLEARANCE!!
Start 2019 off with a bang!
50% off all regular merchandise
75% all holiday-themed merchandise
New students: WE ARE YOUR SAFER SEX SUPPLY HOOKUP! Come inside for condoms, lube, dental dams, and more!
*All genders, orientations, and expressions welcome*

There was a playground in the park. Little Katherine Li hadn't really been to many parks; most of the parks in Koreatown were either contested territory between the Seventeens and the MS 13s, or firmly under the thumb of the Seventeens. There was a small playground in the lot outside their apartment building that was was allowed to play on during the daytime when her mommy and daddy were awake, but even there she had to come right inside if any big kids came over, especially if any of them were wearing green or had tattoos.

There didn't seem to be any big kids there, though. Not scary ones, anyway. And it was day time. So maybe she was allowed to play on this playground?

She was still gonna hide behind a tree and watch for a bit, just in case it turned out that this wasn't a playground she was supposed to play in. She didn't want to get in trouble.

[Open]

Like Dante at the music store, Kathy was also throwing herself into something completely unrelated to stop from thinking about the guys moving out tonight. Her distraction of choice was once again her stupid phone dress-up game--which had obliged her by going totally bananas. Now there was a war and you had to choose factions and creepy murder!doctor had set up a clinic on the battle lines and--wait, there was an assassin now?! How was she supposed to concentrate on collecting cherry blossoms for the newest outfits when she had to pick a faction and learn about the new invasion plans for the looming war?

Yeah, nothing of value was getting done today. Not here anyway. But in faraway Dressup Land? Kathy apparently had a war to fight.

With outfits.

[Inspired by Love Nikki's newest event and no OCD]

There was a book in today's shipment called Sexy Yoga: 40 Poses for Mind-Blowing Sex and Greater Intimacy. Flipping through the pages made Kathy snort; most of the poses were too advanced for people just picking up a book to spice up their sex lives and the rest looked damn uncomfortable to hold long.

Still, there were a few that looked like they'd be fun just to try out. So she swapped into a set of yoga clothes she kept in the back and started to stretch. Okay, next up: The Forward Hero's Pose.

Yeah, the irony was not lost on her.

There were cakes everywhere when Kathy came into the store today. Dirty ones. Some were in naughty shapes, some had dirty decorations, others just had suggestive things written on them, but on every available surface, there was some kind of improper cake, along with paper plates and plastic forks.

The plates and forks were a normal, plain white at least.

There was nothing for it than to go around and try a sliver of every cake she could find, just to know what they all were. And then she was putting up little signs so interested customers could grab a slice of whatever cake caught their fancy.

Yup. Just another day in Fandom. With cake.

Buy anything, get a free slice of cake!

[No OCD!]

Out of respect for the shier students, Kathy had made a pyramid of books right on the counter, so they could be seen from the doorway and no one actually had to look around and see more than they might be comfortable with. A beeline, back and forth, where they could grab a book, run back outside, climb on Poppy, the eight foot tall metal rooster next to the door, and read their chosen passage aloud. She'd even left a basket there for the books, so no one had to make the trip twice--and a 'Free, Take One!' bucket of lollipops next to it, in case someone wanted a quick rush of sugar while running around.

Okay, the lollipops were shaped like boobs (and had condoms and dental dams taped to them, because safer sex was a thing, okay?) but this was an adult store. Kathy only had so much to work with and she wasn't going to run out to Wonka's for candy when she had some perfectly good--if inappropriately shaped--candy right in her own store.

[Both links SFW, the link in books goes to a site with books available to read online. Don't worry about actually finding page 33, just scroll down and grab a line if you'd like. No OCD.]

Did gremlin venom cause hangovers? Because Kathy felt like she had a hangover. Or maybe it was an embarrassment hangover, caused by all the blood rushing to her face and staying there.

A Southern belle. She'd been some kind of antebellum Southern belle. That had been--something else. The next time one of these summer camp things involved gremlins, she was noping out of the activity entirely, just watch her.

At least today she had a task that would keep her busy and not thinking about asking the new Korean doctor about the 'mystical far East.' They'd gotten a new selection of books in and Kathy was going planning on giving the book shelves a whole reorg. She'd shelve by genre, then by pairing, then by potential kink. Or should it be by kink then potential pairing? Eh, she'd figure it out, right after she gave all of Chuck Tingle's books a prominent place on the endcap display.

Well, it was nice to see that her store hadn't gotten trashed this invasion. Nothing had crashed through the windows or slammed into the building. That was good. She'd budgeted a lot of today to cleaning up after whatever messes and to find out that she didn't need to was actually pretty great.

So instead, she decided to spent the time doing something a bit whimsical instead and started cleaning and redressing the giant rooster statue outside. Poppy was the icon for the store's various social media accounts and could stand being updated every so often. Maybe skip over springtime and go directly to summer? That seemed like what the weather was trying for anyway.

And if she were singing a song about the first of May that was a little dirty, well, that was only appropriate, right?

It was a little cloudy out and a little cool, but still decent enough weather for a picnic. And so they'd set up an assembly line in the kitchen to make a bunch of sandwiches, packed backpacks full of books and cards and toys--except for Tristan, who grabbed Kathy's guitar to practice with, but only after complaining it wasn't electric--put on heavy sweaters because Kathy was convinced they would all catch pneumonia and die in 45 degree weather, and headed out to the park.

They settled on a big blanket not far from the playground, Kathy setting up while Aidan, Imogene, and Tristan played some kind of game that involved a lot of running around and yelling, which she didn't understand but was assured was absolutely crucial. They were all speedsters and bouncy and full of energy and Kathy hoped her other selves appreciated that they were getting it all out of their systems now, before they had to go home.

It did make for some interesting 'Things-I-Never-Thought-I'd-Say' moments.

"No, Tristan, don't jump from the swing that high, I don't care that you'll bounce!"

"Imogen, you are not allowed to try to fly Aidan like a kite. No, tying a string to him is not proper safety equipment!"

"Aidan, what did I just say about running across the surface of the duck pond? Nobody on the island will believe you're Korean Jesus."

"Tristan, what did I tell you about roasting marshmallows with your hands? Now you're all sticky!"

"I didn't do it!"

"Fine. Imogene, what did I tell you about roasting marshmallows with your brother's hands?"

"Technically nothing!"

Kathy pinched the bridge of her nose, just as there was a giant splash from the duck pond. She was going to need more handwipes. And towels. And alcohol.

[Open!]

Kathy really, really wanted to be home right now. Especially considering that the six hours she spent in Baltimore this evening weren't going to be the respite from pollen she'd thought it would be, considering how it clung to pretty much everything. In a fair world, she would be able to spend the day in bed with her guys (both of whom were unfairly sexy, but that was a level of unfairness she could live with) and then spend the evening...

Well, she'd be okay spending the evening there, too.

Instead, she was setting out bowls of free condoms and sample-sized bottles of lube and giving Dite's a thorough scrubbing from top to bottom. That was a poor choice of words, dammit. Anyway, it was either spend all that manic energy cleaning or something, or start giving in to her idea of stress-testing, well, damn near everything in the shop.

Anytime she found herself excessively fondling the packaging of one of the toys on the shelf, Kathy made herself go back and rescrub the floor. She was going to end this day exhausted, frustrated, and sweaty, but with the cleanest floors in town.

...And hating herself for realizing that if she'd just stayed home, she could have ended up being exhausted and sweaty but with much less frustration.

[No OCD]

Kathy had signed up for an intensive EMT training course in Baltimore that had started last week and it was kicking her ass. Six hours of classes every day, Monday through Friday, from six pm until midnight. And then this past weekend had been full of workshops and seminars which hadn't been mandatory or anything, but her instructor had promised they'd be useful and that the class should strongly consider going.

So of course Kathy had. Because of course.

Still, it had been a really long time since she'd been a student and she'd discovered that sitting still for six hours cramming information into her brain was a skill that could get rusty, just like anything else. She had a small headache, right between her eyes from concentration and she was just so tired. Get up early to run, open the shop during the day, then close down and head out to Baltimore. It almost felt like high school again, except she distinctly remembered having more free time back then. She felt like she hadn't seen her housemates in days--compounded by deciding to crash alone in her room over the weekend so she wouldn't bother the guys by getting up early and getting in late.

And today, the very Mondayest of Mondays, Kathy had gotten out the books to go over her accounts and had barely started checking the math before her vision blurred and she nodded off. At least she wasn't drooling on the books?

[No OCD]

As much fun as it had been to freak Anders and Dante with the wedding magazines, Kathy really had taken her task seriously. She'd been asked to make several baskets of toys and supplies for a bachelorette party as a potential product to sell online. Being the girl she was, Kathy had gone overboard, drawing plans up for a basket for a honeymoon and another basket for new parents looking to reignite their intimacy. And she made several versions of all three; she wanted baskets that appealed to couples of all genders and sexualities, not just the cis-het ones that were usually featured in the magazines.

She'd drawn up lists of items she'd thought to add to each basket. Now she was collecting them from the shelves, setting them them all up. She had baskets and decorations she'd bought from Hobby Lobby; her entire afternoon was going to be devoted to arts and crafts.

As one would expect from a sex toy shop, obviously.

[No OCD]