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It was fairly well known within the first few days of Cassandra working at The 4th Wall that she usually was there before or after her shift in the Employee Game Room making her way through about 10 years worth of horror games. Rather, she was still making her way slowly, but surely, through Demon's Souls. Anybody who had not been there since her shifts had started, however, would not have quite been as informed of the uh...


Long stream of angry screams that came muffled from down there every time she died for what she considered a 'cheap' reason. Like having four magic users shove glowing balls of energy up Ted (her character was named Ted, despite being a female)'s butt.

"A R E Y O U K I D D I N G M E???????"

She nearly tossed the controller before 'It's not yours' stayed her hand. She took a deep breath, set the controller down, and then quietly walked away from the game to head up the stairs, Ted standing dumbly in the Nexus as Cass took a much needed break from the madness. She had probably 15 minutes until her shift started anyways. Time to destress.

Time to regain her being as a not-angry-gamer Cass. HooOOoooooo boy. Her first step would be to find the person she was taking over for, thus she started wandering the aisles.

Around another corner to continue her quest to find the only other employee in the store.

And there he was.

Coon boy.

The coon boy who turned into a real boy because of her chinese food. From the way he was holding things awkwardly, however, it was obvious in a moment: "So I guess I'm taking over for you here in a few." It made as much sense as his greeting to her had. If Oliver was awkward, however, Cassandra most definitely wasn't. It wasn't as though she'd said she was going to order lunch and had come to ask if he wanted to split some Chinese food with her.

"So." Looked like they would be seeing more of each other, but she didn't point out the obvious, "I found your wallet at my place and gave it to....Eli? Did that get back to you?"

"I liked Pascal though." Oh, she'd loved Pascal. Belly rubs and everything. Yes, such a good dog.

She glanced back towards the game lounge then shrugged innocently. "Guilty as charged. Cid felt I have a lot of games I need to catch up on. He....he nearly had a fit when I told him I've had a media blackout since about 2008 - " okay, that meant about 8-9 years behind. That was actually significant, " and the last game I'd played was Dead Space....the first one I guess? There are sequels now?" Her inquisitive tone seemed to ask for confirmation even though the games were physically on the harddrive in the basement. She'd seen they existed. "So he kind of handed me a stack of things and told me I should get through them all."

Cass trailed off then shrugged, "So I started with 'Demon's Souls'. And I keep dying. A lot. Sometimes for reasons that are dumb." Which was her way of explaining that the screaming was her gamer rage she had never known she had kicking in. Cass handled fright easily. She'd be the person you wanted in the driver's seat while playing scary games.

She did not handle repeated frustration as well.

An almost sinister smile formed on Cass's face. "Oh, if I told you my life story, I'd have to leave you half gutted on a pig farm." She...she was joking, right? She held the expression for far longer than was comfortable at least. Either way, if she was meant to be offended by his comment, she just took it in stride.

Finally she just shrugged, the entire air of 'I could shank a b***h to death with a paperclip' leaving her demeanor in an instant. "The bottom line is I have a lot of required catch up on my plate at Cid's behest and some of it is a b***h." Though it sounded like Cid had made a special exception of this homework on her, since Oliver had no idea what she was talking about.

"Apparently the game is known for it's difficulty level and I'm just being greedy with my progress."

She laughed when he told her she could keep her story to herself. Of course she could. "I technically have to," she said, then easily dropped the subject entirely.

"To be honest, a lot of what I do probably isn't good for my health," like feeding wild animals. She watched him as he sorted books, a mild look of interest on her face. She'd probably be doing something similar in a few minutes herself, once her shift was actually started. Yet it was obvious that her presence just made Oliver uncomfortable. Hmmm, what did she do about that. . . .

She decided she didn't care. The two weren't exactly friends in the first place and it wouldn't be the first time she renegotiated a conversation in her head to distance herself from it. "I'll just head back to the front desk then," it could have been considered startling how quickly her attachment drained from her voice, "let me know if you need anything before your shift ends."

She'd detached herself from so many people in her life that the skill to just let go was perhaps one of her more practiced ones. She'd simply made the guess that this was the course of action now needed. The beautiful novel that would endear all lo mein loving children to raccoons would never be written.

Cass looked at the shelf with a bit more interest, idly reading the titles of the section.

"It's not mysterious. I'm a fairly normal person, I just have things I'm not allowed to talk about. I'm sure you have your own." Her voice was still flat, but she'd at least somewhat re-engaged in the conversation.

Cass shrugged. "Not most of these sections," she admitted, tossing the previous topic aside. They both had baggage, she'd ignore that it had ever been something they'd glanced over. None of either of their businesses. "I'm more of a horror junkie myself. Anything I'm really reading up on is because Cid had a heart attack when I said I hadn't."

So much Sailor Moon.

"Most of this stuff doesn't really look interesting when you read the back covers anyways," she pulled a volume of something-or-other off a shelf and browsed the back of it. Her expression remained impassive.

"Yeah, they're a little pricey. This one's like $8, but that's still $8 for something that takes me 30-40 minutes to read." Cass agreed as she slid the volume back into it's place. "At least I can just...read stuff while I'm here and not worry about having a stack of books, this tall," she implied a height with her hand that was up to her neck, "that I need to find places for."

She had like 6 actual books to her name and she still barely found space for those (and one was only there because she'd read one enough times for the cover to fall off).

Cass perked up when Oliver mentioned what seemed to be pet names. "No! I met Pascal," by 'met' she meant 'if I hadn't been handed coffee I would have just pet that dog for about six hours', "though. Lil' guy nearly bowled me over to get some attention. Awww man, I missed out on more fuzzy faces?"

She was legitimately disappointed.