Aw. Poor kid.

Not even trying to be optimistic. So sad.

(… She's not sure why she's in a bitchy mood right now, but apparently she is.)

"Don't you worry, Matt, I am absolutely sure your family and friends will be taken care of. Now it's your chance for a new beginning, in the exciting City of Angles!"

"Yeah," he says.

… Apparently that's all he's going to say.

"… Okay, so should we maybe learn some stuff about this exciting City?" asks Rachel, trying to seem helpful (but really actually just wanting to do some orientation rather than boringly explaining their very generic life stories, thanks).

Sarah looks like she's not quite ready for that, yet, and even Jayden looks a little green around the gills, so Hollister says,  "Right. Okay. I think we've all got some culture shock, and really, that's totally reasonable. Personally, I think the standard orientation course throws you into the deep end too soon, you know? There's no rush. I've got binders you can bring back to your rooms and study at your leisure. We can pick up tomorrow, nice and fresh. And today? Just focus on resting, relaxing, getting used to things. You need anything, anything at all, I'm staying in room 3F. Just down the hall from Sarah's room. Okay? Okay. I'll drop by with your binders in a bit. And hey—I'll find you all swimsuits, 'kay? Enjoy the pool." And off he goes, shaking hands with a dazed Sarah and a suspicious Jayden before making his way back into the building.

"Uh..." says Jayden eloquently, and Sarah shakes her head slightly and starts making her way back inside, too.

Binders. Cool. Hopefully he'll get them to them at some point. Apparently the whole group thing is a 'no'.

She looks over at Matt. Any chance he seems up to talking?

Not really! Maybe. Maybe not.

Wonderful. And Jayden?

He looks pretty tempted to go back to his room and seems to be only hanging around due to Rachel and Matt's presence there.

In that case… Rachel thinks she'll just say goodbye and go to her room.

Matt will probably go to his room shortly too.

Hollister will soon show up to give people their binders!

Rachel will take her binder and read through it gradually! If it's really information-dense and happens to be super thick, she'll probably take a break to… something. But for now, she's totally just going to read through the stuff in the binder.

It is super thick, yes, but not very information-dense. It tries and fails to be reassuring and soothing, and the end result is just creepy and somewhat off-putting.

… But it contains information about the city, hopefully, so that she won't be quite so totally lost when she finally gets out of this place?

It has lots of information about the city, in different confusingly organized sections!

This makes her think that the government really needs someone to look at this sort of thing, but she encountered plenty of stuff like this back before she got imported, so she's used to it.

Will it take her long to get through it? Are there lots of 'helpful diagrams' she can skip past quickly? Or will she get hungry and decide to go get some more food first?

She will get hungry and decide to go get some more food first, for sure.

Food it is.

She'll go down to the burger bar thing then. Is anybody else there or is she going to be alone in eating?

There's no one else, she's alone.

Except for that Sideways feeling.

Nnnnnngh and why is the Sideways feeling disturbing her again?

If she looks around, is that guy from before there? Is there some weird messed up monster?

Nope! No one other than the emplo—

"Hi, there," says a familiar voice, in a familiar body, standing right by her table in a position that suggests he could've come from the toilet.

"Whaaat are you–" she starts, rather startled, then stops. "Um." She blinks. "Hi, um."

"How've you been? Can I sit?"

Sideways-y feeling! But... different? Yes, different. Maybe it wasn't a Sideways feeling but rather a Sadde-feeling that she associated with Sadde because she met him in the Sideways? It's not obviously negative, but then again, neither was the Sideways-y feeling.

"Uh. Yeah, sure, sit," she says. Then, trying not to seem too guarded or anything, she continues, "I've been mostly okay."