The Luckiest Girl In The World

Raven had adopted her formerly habitual blonde look for the trip, not being sure how many non-Fandom civilians might be there, and not really wanting to deal with stares today.

Also, she hadn't done it in ages, and she kind of wanted to practice.

"I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that you could actually live in one of these stores," she said. "Like . . . comfortably."

From:

"I'm pretty sure this store could comfortably house an entirely neighborhood comfortably," Kathy declared, trying to find the back wall and failing. "Wanna skip the apartment and just move in here? Meatballs for life?"

Which she wouldn't be eating, thanks.

From:

"I do like a good meatball," Raven said. "But it'd get pretty irritating, after awhile, constantly having all these house guests wandering around and trying to test the sturdiness of the furniture."

From:

Ringo had dark circles under her eyes, but was sort of hoping that sugar and caffeine would give her enough energy that no one would notice. Or at least no one would comment on it. Some part of her was making a little note in the back of her head that maybe she should practice more make-up stuff since she didn't really know how to, you know, make it less obvious.

Still, now she was out with her friends, and they were going to shop and celebrate that everyone was back safe and settling back into life on the island. So that was all good, right?

Also, she'd never actually been out to Ikea, and her eyes were huge. "This place is crazy," she murmured, clearly impressed. She was wondering how hard it might be to get in at night to do an AT run.

From:

Ringo shook her head. "I totally believe that." She grinned slightly. "And that you could get lost and have to live in there."

From:

that_oldsaying

Alluka clapped her hands together around her elephant (it had seemed fitting to bring, since Kathy had given it to her) and laughed delightedly at the size of the store.

“Just think of how many friends could hang out if you bought everything in here!”

Did she mean toys? Or people? It was hard to tell!

From:

"Having to swap beds whenever they decide to change out the floor models," Kathy agreed. "I read a book like that once where the mannequins came alive or something. Which is definitely something we'd need to worry about in an Fandom-affiliated store."

From:

Whereas Ringo might notice that Kathy's makeup was a little heavier than usual and for entirely the same reason. The only difference was, Kathy had learned to do her makeup from her mother, who had celebrated Kathy's 10th birthday with 'makeup to make you beautiful!' and had honed her skills covering up bruises from Banzai scuffles.

"On the off-chance anyone was worried that we'd have to go somewhere else to find something today, I think we can cross that concern right off," Kathy said, shaking her head a little bit. "How much custom does this place get?"

From:

"There isn't a house on the island that could fit all this stuff," Kathy said, smiling down at her. "We'd have to tuck everyone into the nooks and crannies where the furniture was wedged together and hope it fit!"

From:

". . . I would be so surprised if that never happened on Fandom before," Raven said. "Were they evil attack mannequins? Because in Fandom they'd definitely be evil attack mannequins."

Which would probably then turn people they bit into evil attack mannequins and oh my god Raven was so sorry she'd started thinking down that road that was horrible.

From:

"I bet the employees have to undergo search and rescue training," Raven said. "Just to avoid people doing that."

From:

Kathy appreciated her not going into additional detail about bite spreading the evil mannequin disease. The original image was bad enough.

"Not in the book. They were just kind of dicks in the book. But on Fandom? Absolutely," Kathy said. Fortunately, her mind had gone to Doctor Who and not zombie mannequins.

From:

She probably should have noticed, but Ringo's image of Kathy had faded more than she'd like to admit, so she didn't really register it.

"I don't think I was worried about that," Ringo grined. "Though, um, now I'm wondering if we should worry about being trapped in there forever?"

From:

So they'd just abduct people and replace them with mannequin doubles. Less body horror, but still potentially extremely traumatizing.

Sounded like Fandom.

Raven leaned in closer to Kathy, giving the ferry dock a suspicious look. "Do you think Fandom can hear us from here?"

From:

that_oldsaying

"It'd be amazing if we could manage it, though," Alluka insisted, giggling. "Some of the stuff could go outside! We could put tables on all of the stairs and slide around the island."

That was a terrible idea, really, but it sounded fun.

From:

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."

She looked at the building again. "I wonder if employees get lost in there. Maybe they all have to have GPS locators or something."

From:

"No way. You probably have to complete a three day obstacle course before they let you on the sales floor by yourself." Raven was getting into this Ikea worldbuilding they were doing. "I hear there's all sorts of secret little passageways from one section to the other. I bet they have to have them all memorized. Like London cab drivers."

From:

Ringo giggled. "Where do you get all this information? Are you tapped into their secret online chatrooms?"

From:

Raven shrugged. ". . . I kind of stayed up all night reading about it. I was just going to go see what sorts of stuff I might want to look for but then I found all these home decor blog posts about it and I kind of went down a rabbit hole."

From:

Well the was horrifying and now the narrative well never get any sleep again. Thanks for that.

"Do I think that our island across the inlet there can hear us talking about potential ways to terrify us for funsies?" Kathy gave Raven an incredulous look. "Umm, obviously."

From:

"Then stop giving it ideas," Raven said. ". . . So, what color kitchen towels do we want?"

See, Fandom? Their conversation was totally boring. 100%. Nothing to see here!

From:

"If we really get lost, we can have Raven transform into a giraffe or something to spot our way out," Kathy reassured her. Or maybe 'reassured.' "The bigger danger would be having to fight our way through this place. Too many places to get split up or overrun."

...Yeah, definitely not reassuring at all.

From:

"Anything to make those stairs less ridiculous," Kathy said with a nod. "Though we should put big mounds of pillows and blankets on the bottoms, just for safety."

Like anything involving riding tables down stone stairs could make it 'safe.'

From:

"Depends on if you're going to let me get away with painting it yellow!" Kathy asked. "A nice, sunshiney yellow with white trim and accents? Or, at least the back walls. We may need to find another option for the long wall that it shares with the living room, because having the living room yellow would probably be too much."

Probably.

From: