They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

[rememory]

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To reach the unreachable staaaaaaaaaar....

From the kitchen that she'd designated as the focal point for de and reconstruction, Sabine barked, "Mimi!" and then choked out a laugh that was half a sob. Man of La Mancha had always been one of Byron's favorite musicals.

"What? You can't build without music and you don't have a boombox!"

"No one has a boombox anymore. Don't make me regret manifesting you." She shook a finger at the showgirl ghost who was lounging on the back of the couch like it was a baby grand.

Unrepentant, Mimi went on singing,

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

"I love that line, don't you?" Mimi teased not just Sabine but Scott, even though he was out of earshot.

"Zip it, or it's Tsura's turn," Sabine snapped, cringing at the reference to their chaste, but far less than pure love.

"What was that?" Scott emerged from the next-door apartment through the hole he'd put between them to make testing the walls for support beams easier. There were two more like it in the filthy foursquare they'd chosen to turn into a community area -- for the time being.

"Nothing. Mimi was just asking your favorite musical so she could sing for you. Isn't that right, Mimi?" Mind-to-ghost she sent #Don't even contradict me.# Forbidding it with power was the simplest of her abilities, but Sabine didn't abridge her free will.

Mimi just laughed and laughed, sticking to Impossible Dream until the next person joined them Then she started in on songs from Annie:

It's a hard knock life for us!
It's a hard knock life for us!

Sighing, Sabine shot Scott and the newcomer an apologetic look then shrugged helplessly. "It's not like she's wrong."

[ooc: Gathering post! Sabine and Scott are clearing out a group of four apartments to start with to make a communal kitchen, dining, sitting area on level D. Mimi is audible and vaguely visible as a holographic figure of a showgirl with an indistinct face. She won't interact unless you ping me and ask for her. Will, Molly, Marie, Jack, Sebastian, Nick, Porthos, Maggie, all got a message inviting them for potluck and construction. Anyone else can have heard from them or have seen the 'excuse our dust' sign and stop by. Feel free; all are welcome. Tag Sabine with a note in the subject line; all other tags are top levels.]

Comments

[revisor]

"Oh, I don't think there's any doubt that it's very much by design," Scott said bleakly. "What bothers me is that it's not surface-level knowledge of us in at least some cases, which suggests... insight into our thinking." Psionics of some sort, was what he would have said if they were home. "Which opens up the possibility of any planning we do being subject to the same insight."

[wgraham]

Will looked from Sabine to Scott, could see the worry and caution in both their eyes. "I don't think we'll do ourselves any good letting ourselves get comfortable here," Will agreed.

"The entire thing seems to have a design to it, though so far I haven't been able to remotely discern what the end goal might be," he went on. "Why would someone bring us here and, essentially, give us the tools we need to live a life in this place?"

[rememory]

Sabine glanced at Scott and sighed then, turning her focus to Will. "The only answer I have is that they need us for something." She had discussed with Scott the possibility they were dealing with the Time Breakers or something similar, and he agreed it was a possibility. "It is an unusual group that came in around the same time as us."

[wgraham]

Will nodded, and though he didn't have much to offer aside from his bizarre empathy disorder, people like Sabine, Scott, and Molly had obvious benefits that a person could attempt to use for their own end, good or evil.

"In which case they're just holding us for now," Will speculated. "Just once it would be nice to be asked before being taken," he went on. "Considering we weren't, I can't help think whatever we're needed for isn't good."

[rememory]

"Probably not," Sabine agreed, but offered a hopeful, "If there's a need, perhaps they'll let us go when we've fulfilled it." That she wouldn't see Will again if they did had already occurred to her, and saddened her, but she -- and Scott -- both had bondmates worrying over them at home.

She reached a hand out to rest on Will's wrist. "In any event, there's little we can do about it today except to be on our guard for anything that might gain us a measure of stealth. Caros," she said, including them both. "Forgive me for abandoning you, but lunch is calling."