Joe has to check his mysterious and nebulous back-story notes.  Okay, this isn't the continuity where he first met Autumn after stealing an airplane with Ariel and... uh, whoever else was there.

  He was also in no way hanging out on a tree branch planning on dropping into that leaf pile, Noooo.  That would be crazy.  Besides even if he was Autumn already did.  "Oh sure, just because her name is the same as the season assume she like that sort of thing.  Nevermind she's good at it anyways." he Jokes.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:05, Fri 02 Sept 2011.

Autumn pops out of the leaf pile like a frightened deer, ears perked, eyes wide. Then looks at Rick. She gets startled again when Joe speaks. But calms down. "Well I already started to write up some ideas. I thought an early costume party could be fun before we continue with Halloween."

"Hey now there's an idea," Rick agrees, "Sorry if I startled ya.  No idea what kind of costume I'd wear.  Ok well I've got several ideas to be honest.  Hey there, Joe.  What sorts of costumes you two have in mind?"

He makes with the raking.

  If he were one to absolutely shatter the 4th wall, would dress up Antoine in a convincing manner.  Then act like an insane James Bond/Batman combination.  'Ah have made out with all ze lovely ladies!  And now You will nevar take me, Antoine, ahlive!' *smokebomb escape*'

  Alas, Joe is not.

  "Probably something easy I guess.  I'd do Phantom Of The Opera but then people might expect musical numbers."

Autumn says, "We have musicians, but sadly no pianos..." she thinks a moment. "I think I'll be dressing as Queen Alicia."

If Joe added tte to the end of the name, the players would have to wonder how he pulls off dressing as a human girl. Even if she is taller than him due to species. But dressing as another coyote? Sounds easy at first, but he'd have to go without pants. XD

"I think you'd make for a lovely queen, Autumn, but I'm guessing they'll crown you queen of the fall fest anyhow so that might be redundant.  I was thinking of putting on a blonde wig and trying to pass myself off as Katy, but I imagine she wouldn't take it as a compliment.  I dunno.  Maybe Prince Elias?"

  "Yeah, I think going out as eachother tends to come with issues, even if we don't expect any."  Especially when you are drawn in a cartoon style.  "Unless it was something hilariously obvious, like Valin going as Shelly."

  Why yes, this giant Gorrila is your Seabear princess, we swear.  They glow and everything see?  No we did not hide glowsticks under their costume that would be cheating.

Autumn giggles at the idea. "I can't help but imagine Valin with Shelly's tail and a pair of round ears up top. Both being equal in size to Shelly's ears and tail so that they look small and silly on Valin."

Katy walks up to the group, buckets in hand. "What's going on?"

"Shelly as played by Valin," Rick chuckles, "Now there's a sight to see.  Or the other way around."

He resumes raking leaves with more vigor at the arrival of Katy.

"Good to see ya, Katy.  Just chores.  And talking about Autumn's idea for a costume party for the fall fest.  What kinda costume would you like to try out?"

  "The convenience of jobs that don't require your mouth and ears mean tend to mean they are free to do their own thing.  How's your nearly endless busywork going?"  Katy does seem to have a tendency to have zero moments to herself unless working.

Autumn waves to Katy and gets back to raking also. Katy says, "Hmm... Not sure. Either a ballerina or a fairy. I'll figure something out by the time the party arrives."

Autumn says, "Looking forward to your decision. I'm thinking of dressing as Queen Alicia. Joe's thinking maybe Phantom of the Opera style outfit. Rick's thinking maybe Prince Elias. And Valin might dress up as Shelly!"

Katy's eyes go wide at that last part as she gasps in an attempt to not laugh.

Rick smiles and giggles at Katy's reaction.

"I know, right?  Autumn was picturing a tail and ears the same size as Shelly's to add to the effect.  As for your ideas, why not combine the two?  I think you'd make for a lovely ballerina fairy.  Now I'm thinking of being an astronaut.  Or a knight.  Or both.  Come to think of it, I've always been fascinated with the idea of a knight who uses wizard magic.  I might go with that.  Could have arcane runes on the shield."

  "I am a very bitter and cynical person.  Full of delightfully silly ideas.  Sometimes Hypocrisy can be a good thing.  I'd suggest asking Sam for advice if you went with astronaut, but then you would probably get bogged down with accuracy details on how to make a 'proper' space suit."

  He considers the runed shield thing for a bit, then says "Would they be runes of 'explosion whenever someone hits this shield'?... Actually that could get out of hand if you were trying to protect someone nearby."

Autumn giggles again. "Not like any of us knows magic, Joe."

Katy looks at her backside over her shoulder in a girly check-self-out kind of pose when Rick mentions combining fairy with ballerina. When he mentions she would be a lovely one, Katy huhs? blushes lightly and says, "Thanks, Rick."

Just then, a husky runs up to the group from the direction of Aquarius. It's Marble, the one rescued guy who couldn't decide who to stay with, so he decided to stay with both and be their gopher. He says, "Hi, Katy. Shelly said she completed what you asked for and it's all here." he hands her a scroll.

Katy nods to him and says, "Go take a break upstairs. Lunch should be ready soon."

Marble bows lightly and runs off towards the elevator. Katy begins looking through the scroll.

"Good point, Joe," Rick answers, then to Katy he adds with a smile, "You're welcome!"

To the doggie gopher he waves.

"Heya Marble.  Fall festival comin'.  May be a costume party.  Be thinkin' of what ya wunna wear.  But lunch comes first, of course, heh."

He looks with curiosity at the scroll Katy's looking at.

  "Many lunches would come first before that party turned up, but see your point."  He considers Katy, hopping down from the low branch.  "So, I figure we'll find out soon enough what the latest mail delivery is about.  Unless it's not something we should worry over of course."

  After all, half the point of getting messages regarding Doom is the revelation of said Doom.

Katy nods and says, "Actually, it isn't anything to *worry* about. Rather, something to celebrate. Let's follow Marble to the Dining Hall. I'll have an announcement to make."

Autumn says, "Good news? How often we get *that*?" she follows along. She'd offer to race the others, but that wouldn't be fair. A) Sprinting is the only thing she's good at unless you count being easily startled. B) Joe would beat her there anyway because he has a grappling hook arm.

Rick would decline the challenge anyway.

"Good food and good news!" Rick chimes, "Lookin' forward to it!"

He of course brings his rake with him.

  Indeed, Joe can beat people in a footrace by skipping the footrace part...  There seems to be some kind of flaw in this logic that does not seem fair.

  "Ah, good news.  The favorite kind of many sane people."  He wanders after the others, wondering if it's 'Julian finally chocked to death on a porkchop' good news, or 'We wont starve to death this year either, wheee!' good news.

More likely "we won't starve to death" considering a dead Julian would get Katy either jumping for joy and not containing herself as she cries it out immediately... or Katy keeping entirely quiet for months to make sure the guy is dead before even saying such.

When the group arrives at the Mess Hall, Katy waits for people to gather. Then says, "Alright everyone... I have some good news. The seabears have their own language and Shelly dug it up to share with us. Our local linguist, Emerald, will be studying it carefully and between the Seabear language, our own, and a few other languages Emerald knows, we will be coming up with a code to speak in. No more being afraid of Robotnik picking up what we say over the radios or on missions."

Emerald looks excited to look the scroll over.

Autumn says, "Communication without interference... sounds good."

Katy says, "It's vital."

"Interesting," Rick says, "I've always been curious about constructed languages.  Considering it's been done before by single individuals, it should be possible with a team working on it.  So does the seabear language already have a prescriptive grammar or will one have to be built?  I'd be especially excited about a priori project.  It could be fun to try to imitate natural processes of phonological, lexical, and grammatical change."

  Joe considers the decent idea, then manages to refrain from facepalming at a realization.  "Uh, am I remembering wrong?  Or didn't Shelly's kingdom go downhill when one of her own betrayed their king and got put in charge as robot dictator standing for Julian?  Does being roboticized make you forget your language?"

Katy answers Joe, "No, it doesn't. But as I said, it's going to be combined with our language and a few others into a brand new one. There is no way for Robotnik to have possession of our code because it hasn't even been made yet."

Emerald says, "I'm mostly using the Seabear language as extra resource."

"Yeah we wouldn't want to rely too heavily on any one language," Rick agrees, "Come to think of it.  If we want to be really off the wall.  We could ask Sam if he knows any alien languages.  Borrowing from off world will really be fun."

  Joe nods,  "Considering your making it up from mostly nothing then, sounds like it has better odds of working yeah.  I'd figure the main difficulty then would be getting enough people to learn the side language after it's made to be helpful, but not enough that every third person caught has all the answers."