OPEN / bad and naughty scientists get put in the scrub wiggler to atone for their crimes

[tinyfood]

Who: Entrapta and anybody who trips over her I guess
When: May 12th-14th
Where: The Coven
What: criminal justice
Warnings: nothing except Entrapta's vexing lack of experience with housework

If you met Entrapta a couple of weeks ago, when everyone had just gotten here, her appearance now, at the Coven, might come as a surprise. This is partially because since then she seems to have hacked off her enormous pigtails, leaving an uneven mess of short purple hair sticking out from the back of the flipped-up welding mask she's wearing – but also because you definitely have not seen her at any other point in the last two weeks. You could be forgiven for having forgotten she was here.

She's been very busy, for most of that time: stealing electronics and machinery from private citizens, factories and warehouses alike, and basically living in vents and walls while she takes it apart to try to find out as much as she can about how it all works here. And now that she's been caught doing that and had all her purloined experiments confiscated, she's being punished with cleaning duty at the Coven.

You may run into her:

i] Outside the building, crouching behind a shrub and looking extremely furtive. Her mask is lowered over her face, but if she spots you spotting her, she'll make some urgent indecipherable gestures at you. Maybe she wants you to pretend you didn't see her? Or maybe she wants you to help with something. The fact that you can't see her facial expressions makes it pretty hard to say.

ii] Having given up on trying to escape her grim fate altogether after a day or so of leading the Witch and Puca tasked with keeping an eye on her on a merry dance around the Coven's main building, Entrapta is now attempting to do the impossible. She's currently in a hallway on the second floor, trailing tape measure behind her as she scribbles perplexed attempts at a floor plan in a notebook she's holding and muttering about how this makes no sense...

iii] Complete resignation. Scrubbing the floors. The inhumanity of it. The inefficiency. Surely they have magic for this!! But no. Here she is, in the main lobby, putting some elbow grease into it and looking extremely annoyed. It looks like she's been at it for a while.

NOTE: feel free to reply with brackets if u prefer, prose isn't mandatory, i am merely a creature of habit

Comments

iii but let me know if this needs adjusting

[topslug]

There’s something that someone who hasn’t scrubbed floors very often may not have realized: wet, they’re a hell of a fall hazard, especially to someone trotting around in Victorian heels. Needless to say, Yako certainly wasn’t expecting the main lobby of the Coven to have turned into treacherous terrain as she steps into it.

Even if there was anything like a sign, it’s entirely likely she would have missed it, occupied as she is with the massive bowl of freshly-made dumplings she’s carrying. Previously balanced as it already is, what happens next is entirely inevitable: a foot slips on a not-entirely dry patch of floor, Yako pitches forward with a yelp, and the bowl and its contents go flying out of her hands, possibly even onto Entrapta — certainly all over the floor.

“My dumplings!” The anguished wail that follows has very real despair, even as Yako promptly proceeds to eat dirt since she’s too busy trying to futilely reach for her bowl.

[tinyfood]

One of the dumplings definitely hits Entrapta in the eye with a wet plap, making her yelp in alarm and try to bat it off her face. She drops the scrubbing brush in the process, and she's reaching to pick it up when she takes full stock of the situation and her whole body sort of droops.

"Hey," she says, her voice a dismayed whine. "I just cleaned that..."

[topslug]

“I am so sorry,” Yako says immediately, and to all appearances, sincerely, wincing as she starts to pick herself off the ground. “I lost my footing for a second — I’ll help clean it up.”

Which, once she gets to her feet, is what she’ll proceed to do — even if it means plopping back slightly sudsy or dirty dumplings back into the bowl (and her mouth). The five second rule gets stretched out to more of a five minute rule, though about halfway through Yako speaks up.

“Do you have any signs we could put up to tell people to avoid this part of the hall until it’s dry?”

[tinyfood]

"Nnnooo..." She wasn't expecting those floor dumplings to get eaten, but also she isn't judging at all. "But actually, I think I don't have to clean it again? I already cleaned it, and if the point of having me do this was to make everything clean then they could have just done it with magic, instead of making me do it with my hands!"

The issue of other people potentially slipping doesn't really seem to be a priority for her, here.

[topslug]

Yako looks around. Dumplings aside, the floor is decidedly ... not clean, and she clears her throat.

“Er ... why are they making you do this? Cleaning isn’t something you’ve had a lot of experience doing before, is it?” she asks. She doesn’t mean it unkindly, really, but it sure is painfully obvious.

[tinyfood]

"Mmmm, no." If she's bothered by having this pointed out, it sure isn't apparent.

"Back home I have robots for that stuff... And they have magic for it here. There's really no need to do it by hand, but it's supposed to be, a punishment?" She makes a noise somewhere between a sigh and a groan. "I could think of way more useful punishments."

[topslug]

“Well, doing things with your hands is supposed to give you a lot of time to think...” Which was probably the point? But who knows for sure.

“And a punishment is supposed to make you not want to do something again.” Though she’s detecting a distinct lack of remorse here!!!

[tinyfood]

"Hahhh, well... I'm not going to get caught again," says Entrapta with a shrug, resuming scrubbing. "I'm just saying, they could get way more out of this by forcing me to do something more productive."

[topslug]

"What did you get caught for in the first place?" Yako can't help asking, curiously. Already planning to do it again isn't really working in Entrapta's favor as far as the Coven's concerned, she's sure, but as easygoing as the Coven has been in her experience and as relatively benign this punishment is compared to other options, it must be something minor yet sufficiently worth punishing.

[tinyfood]

"Eh... taking stuff." She doesn't look up from scrubbing, but it doesn't seem like she feels any amount of shame or contrition about this. "Nothing anybody was using when I took it."

[topslug]

"Well, I don't think they'd punish you for taking something nobody owned, so maybe they only looked like nobody was using them?" Yako ponders over that, but in the meantime, the resumed scrubbing gets her attention.

"Oh, it's going to be harder for you to get things clean if you do it like that. Here, can I show you...?"

[tinyfood]

Entrapta definitely doesn't think nobody owned them, but honestly? Yako doesn't need to know that she just thinks she should be able to requisition whatever she wants for her dubious purposes as long as nobody is actively looking at or touching it. Most people, in her experience, are just kind of stubborn about that whole area, so she's fine with letting the topic of conversation move to cleaning instead.

Also honestly she's a little curious about what she's going to be shown here.

"Oh, sure," she says, holding out the scrubbing brush with interest. "I don't do this kind of stuff a whole lot, back home I have robots for... pretty much everything!"

[topslug]

Yako takes the brush, and demonstrates as she talks, gesturing.

"Ideally, first you sweep the area you want to clean to get rid of any loose dirt and debris ... then you work from the edges in to avoid having to repeat areas. Use short strokes so you can control it better, and work in the same direction. Then when you're done, you can take one of those--" she nods at the cleaning cloth among Entrapta's other supplies.

"And wipe it all down. You hold it with both hands, like this--" She demonstrates, getting up and bending over with her arms out in front of her like someone preparing to take a dive. "--and just run to push it along. It can be pretty fun to see how fast you can go."

[tinyfood]

She does pay attention to this explanation, head tilted to one side a little and nodding thoughtfully, but that last part gives her pause.

"I think I could calculate my maximum speed pretty easily," she points out.

[topslug]

Yako grins. "It's not as easy as it looks. It might take a couple of tries to get the hang of it."

[tinyfood]

"Hmmm," says Entrapta. She reaches to take the scrubbing brush back. "So you said I should sweep first? That does make sense... They didn't give me a broom, though."

[topslug]

"Well..." She looks at the already-damp floor, handing the brush back over. "...It might be a little late for that. Maybe the next time you need to scrub something."

She pauses, thinking. "Since you said you've built robots before, though, maybe you can just find some workshop in the city to work for? The Coven doesn't seem to be big on technology that doesn't have some kind of magic involved."

Hopefully Yako hasn't just named Entrapta's next victims.

[tinyfood]

"Mmmm but it's the magic stuff I want to know about the most," she says with a sigh. "Or, well, I mean," she puts down the scrubbing brush so she can interlace her fingers to demonstrate, "the ways they combine magic and technology... But you think they wouldn't notice if I was only looking at the non-magic tech?"

INCREDIBLE, sorry for getting to this so late

[topslug]

Yako wrinkles her nose, contemplatively.

"I think, in general, if you take things owned by other people, someone's always going to notice," she offers, gravely. "... though I would like to know more about how they combine magic and technology, myself."

Another pause.

"Umm, so what's your name, anyway? I'm Yako."

i am literally still tagging people back on this same post because of how behind i am lmao SO,

[tinyfood]

"Huh? Oh! I'm Entrapta! Princess of Dryl," she adds after a moment's consideration. "And really if you time it right a lot of the time people don't notice at all."