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

[tinyfood]

"I have no idea!" says Entrapta. "But they have to sooner or later, right?"

[sing_for_me]

What an optimistic thought.

Alex looks her over again thoughtfully. "What if you put on a disguise? They might have a harder time that way?"

The mask stood out, for one.

"Do you have other clothes? Or maybe we could change your hair style?"

[tinyfood]

A brief pause.

"I definitely do not have any other clothes," she says. "And I already changed my hair once! But I guess they already know about that. You think I should... make it a different colour, or something?"

[sing_for_me]

"That could work.."

But now it's her turn to pause.

"How..bad exactly was the thing you did...?"

Changing one's hair color was a bit more drastic, like if you were trying to assume a whole other identity kind of drastic.

She had mentioned clean up..did she mean cleaning up a body!?

[tinyfood]

"Mmmm... I just took some stuff, I guess I wasn't supposed to take it," (she sounds pretty grudging about this point,) "but no one was using any of it when I took it."

[sing_for_me]

"You wha...Maybe returning it might help stop them from hunting you down?" She sure didn't sound sorry or regretful. It didn't seem like she had any malicious intent though.

"What did you take anyway?"

[tinyfood]

"Just, y'know... some machinery..." She frowns. "But they already took it back! They're trying to make me. Clean. As a punishment."

[sing_for_me]

With what she now knows, Alex was left rather puzzled.

"If..the items were already returned, wouldn't it just be easier to clean? That doesn't sound too bad to make up for stealing." If that's all she had to do, that was quite the deal. It would be easier than having to hide out for who knows how long.

[tinyfood]

"Ughhh but I really don't wanna," says Entrapta, slumping forward. "The interior of this building is totally non-Euclidean and it's gonna take for ever. Literally!"

[sing_for_me]

Maybe you shouldn't have stolen then?

Is what Alex would like to say, but it didn't seem like she was feeling guilty about it.

"Then, what if I help you a little bit? Maybe they'll allow it."

[tinyfood]

She perks up for a moment – then un-perks, shoulders kind of sagging. "Naahh," she says. "Like I said, the inside of the building makes no sense, there isn't a logical 'end point' you could help me reach!"

[sing_for_me]

[ What she was saying made no sense. How could something not have an end? ]

That seems a little..much.

[ Was she just exaggerating how much work there was? ]

Why would they punish you with an impossible task? That doesn’t seem fair.

[tinyfood]

"I don't know," she says, and it's pretty obvious she has indeed not given this much thought. "Why does anyone do anything?"

[sing_for_me]

......

[ It wasn't....a bad question.. ]

Have you considered that they might make your punishment worse if you keep running away?

[tinyfood]

[ Entrapta looks uneasy. ]

You think they would...? I guess that'd make sense...

[sing_for_me]

[ Oh, this was the first that she looked unsettled like that. ]

Maybe if you apologize? Ah--what if you offered to make it up another way?

[tinyfood]

[ She shrugs lopsidedly. ]

I already made some suggestions, but they just wanted me to do this. I guess it'd be pretty time-consuming for me to learn all the stuff about this world's magical physics I'd need to do something really useful for them, but... Y'know, I think in the end it'd be worth it!

[sing_for_me]

Then it sounds like cleaning would be the easiest way..

[ And probably the only way if nothing else she offered worked. ]

If you really believe that though, maybe..you could make it more official? Maybe if you sign a contract or something..they'd see you're really serious about it? Otherwise..

[tinyfood]

Ooh, a contract? [She seems intrigued.] I don't know much about, ah, contracts, what d'you mean?

[sing_for_me]

It's..well..Usually you agree to do something in exchange for another, and it's written on paper to make it official. So you're sort of bound by it until you complete the deal. But maybe that way, they won't mind if you take some time if it guarantees they get something out of it?