kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

[headandhand]

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The RoCocoa Cat Cafe
WHEN: Aug. 10-14
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!


Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces, but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

This month’s event is held at the brand new RoCocoa Cat Cafe, a sparkly new establishment that caters to children and the young at heart with iced and hot cocoa drinks of all kinds, delicious pastries, age-appropriate live music, and of course many friendly kitties who love to lounge in laps. The cats are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including some who may look a little different from what you expect, or may look like an ordinary cat but are actually anything but ordinary underneath that adorable fur coat. All cats in the cafe are adoptable, too, if you meet a new furry friend and just can’t bear to go home without them!

So pull up a chair, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a sugary treat or two with the resident furbabies. You might just meet your new two- or four-legged best friend!

Comments

[skyward_eyes]

Well that is a strange thing to happen in stories.

“Since June,” Nida admits. New rule. Introduce self with how long he has been here. “Got lucky and arrived with friends. What about you, Alex? You new or an old hand?”

[11calls]

"New!" The word is chirped, but there's a forced sort of chipperness in it. Alex isn't thrilled to be here for several reasons and one of them happens to be: "I wasn't quite so lucky. It's just me." Of course that's just one of the reasons, but that's neither here nor there. There are things to do back home, and none of them have anything to do with sitting in a cat cafe petting the large orange cat like she's some sort of Dr. Claw-clone.

"How have you found it here?"

[skyward_eyes]

There is nothing wrong with being in a cafe, having tasty caffeine, and petting a cat in a sinister manner. Could be worse. It could be a chicobo cafe. Then Nida would be dead.

"Relaxing, compared to my last place. There were rabid dopplegangers that attacked the village and tried to basically kill us. Succeeded in killing my brother. Don't worry, he got better. Once we got here."

Months later. But Nida's forcing a pleasant smile.

"Oh, and the getting forced to room with my former boss is delightful."

[11calls]

"The last place? Do you mean somewhere like this before? Or do you mean back home?" Because this place was definitely not like home for Alex, not really and she definitely didn't think that he would have mentioned 'the' village if it was Nida's own home village. It would have been something else like 'my' village instead. Leaning forward on the table, but taking care to not bother the cat too much, because well, you know cat. Still, it's definitely very much an Alex Reagan asking questions movement, if nothing else.

Still, her brows are almost at her hairline when she asks: "they're making you room with your former boss? That sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me!"

[skyward_eyes]

"Nexus world," Nida shrugs. Can he call it that? Are they that? It's all a messy question. But he doesn't know how to explain it other than that.

"I"m from a different world, but was pulled into another one. And from there to here, just before I was going to follow my boyfriend to Earth. And... I mean, we did go to school together. Things related to home tend to be complicated these days."

[11calls]

"A nexus world?" The question is in her voice, before she adds, "so there were a lot of people from a lot of worlds there? Like here?" Which is something that Alex is rapidly figuring out as time goes on, honestly. Just talking to people is an exercise in that sort of thing, and Alex has always been an eager student to get a crash course in that sort of thing.

"So there was a way for you to travel from your world to Earth? Or was it just because of the nexus world thing?" Because it sounds to Alex that something like a nexus world would have ways of traveling from world to world, if only to collect other people in any meaningful sort of way.

[skyward_eyes]

"Yeah. I worked with a guy at the dojo who was from, like, the 2500s of Earth. And on the other extreme there is a, what's the word they used? Viking? And a cowboy."

And plenty of people not from that world. A Qunari and an elf. An android. Lots of people that didn't seem to fully belong.

"The place said it was ending whatever it was studying us for. It was going to send us wherever we wanted that someone was from. Instead..."

He gestures around them.