Let's Make A... Thing! | Arty + Melvin | Furniture Car

Arty Takenaka

After wandering for a good while, Arty has to admit that she has zero idea where she is. Perhaps trying to navigate this place all on her own wasn’t her best idea, but in fairness to her, she’d figured the giant arrows on the ground (in addition to the plentiful maps) would be more than enough to keep things from getting too confusing. Somewhere along the line, though, she’d lost track of where she was headed, and now she was deep in the labyrinth and pretty sure that every single path was taking her somewhere she hadn’t been before. How was that even possible?

With a sigh, Arty gives up on purposefully navigating the area in favor of aimless wandering. It’s not much longer before she winds up in the furniture storage area, where the partially-assembled projects catch her eye.

Now things make more sense to her. From what Arty’s concluded so far, it’s not about getting caught up in all the details of each car’s setting; it’s about finding a way to progress. Solving the puzzle. Chances are, assembling the furniture pieces is the way to move forward here. And that is great news for Arty, because this is her trade. She should be able to do this no problem.

So without further ado, Arty kneels down and gets to work. She looks at the instructions only to see what the product is supposed to look like at the end, bypassing the text and step-by-step guides entirely, then tossing the whole thing over her shoulder. Next, she starts to sort the pieces. The larger planks of wood are quite heavy, though… she’s clearly struggling a little to move them.

Melvin Greene

Well, here we are again. Wow, feeling completely directionless? Been there, done that, moving on. That it were so easy. Melvin had managed to stop feeling like it was completely unfortunate and begrudgingly accepted that friendship puzzles were the way of the future. As previously observed, it wasn’t like it was anything dangerous. Just boring, for the most part, but he could do boring. He’d been doing boring for more years than he’d care to admit. At least now he didn’t have to spend money on food or gas, just giant gacha machines.

… Yeah, nah, not much of an upside. It wasn’t the nicest or anything, but he still missed his car, dammit. He was probably never getting it back. Actually, what had happened to it by now? Was it just sitting where he’d left it? Shit. It was probably gonna get lumped into a missing persons case folder. Maybe at least they’d find where he dropped the stupid keys and return them together if he ever got outta here. Haha. Yeah right. That would be nice. Nice things don’t happen to him.

Enough of that, though! There’s that kid. From the ice. Cool. She’s working on something. He still had zero clue what all that mistaken identity stuff was about, but people look like other people sometimes, it happens. It also happens to look like she’s setting up some kinda Project. Or at least trying to. Hell if he knows what it’s supposed to be. You think he buys that much furniture? I’m pretty sure there isn’t even an IKEA in Iowa. And when you don’t know something, ask!!!

“Whatcha working on? Looks like it’s kind of a pain.” It’s a roundabout lead-in to offering a hand without actually saying as much. Sure, she looks like she could use a bit of help but if she really doesn’t want it……….. Well. Y’know.