[ open ] HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA (not you abraxas)

[princessvegas]

Who: Julie + Dean + open
When: July 4
Where: Julie's club in the Horizon
What: June sucked, it's time to party patriotically 🇺🇸 Dean's invite here 🇺🇸 no, the Americans don't care that it's not America, they're doing it anyway (just like real life)



[ Approaching Julie's club on this particular day, you can tell from the outside that something is going on. The pink neon has been swapped for red, white and blue, the pink carpet and velvet ropes changed to the good ol' stars and stripes. The front doors are wreathed in an enormous and very patriotic balloon arch, and they're wide open. American flags hang across the walls of the entranceway, and the music is what most Americans would recognize as July 4th standards.

Inside, Julie has obviously been incredibly hard at work, and the club has undergone its most massive changes to date. The entire first floor has been modified -- where there was once a dance floor and seating, there is now an Olympic-sized in-ground pool, dotted with a variety of American themed floats and balls. The glittering quartz flooring is all gone, now replaced with lush lawn grass, and sensible concrete wrapped around the pool itself. At one end, a truly enormous inflatable water slide can send you flying down from fifty feet in the air, just to land with a splash in the water.

How has she managed that height? Well, where there's ordinarily a roof, there is now only open sky, blue and picturesque with puffy white clouds lazily floating by. The sun is bright but never too hot, and incapable of burning anyone's skin. The only thing between the sky and the building are dozens of red, white and blue decorations, strung from the balconies to overhang the pool.

Don't worry if you weren't exactly prepared for a pool party! Julie, queen of not only parties but also wardrobes, has helpfully converted the warehouse part of the building for this very problem. Racks and racks of bathing suits and beach towels are available for use, with every conceivable style up for grabs. Trunks, one-pieces, string bikinis, banana hammocks, she's got it all! While many match the red, white and blue theme, all types of colors and patterns are present. Grab a towel from a stack, hop in one of the striped changing cabanas, then get to swimming. Don't forget your red, white or blue flip-flops and sunglasses!

Hungry? Well, Dean has you covered. On the lawn, Julie has provided him with a wet dream-inducing grill and every imaginable kind of meat to cook on it. Also in this section are tables and tables full of snacks, desserts and drinks, along with the full bar that is always present. The bartender, Steven, is always ready to make anything you could want. (He is dressed in what is best described as "Sexy Uncle Sam" -- in that it's a star-spangled wrestling singlet, a glittery red white and blue bow tie, an Uncle Sam hat and a small, fake white beard.) Plenty of picnic tables are present to eat at.

As the afternoon passes, the sky will gradually darken until it's black and clear, with a wide expanse of stars, the way Julie remembers seeing night from the empty prairies of Kansas. Between Dean and Julie, there is no shortage of fireworks; as proud Americans raised in places where there's little else to do, they are experts at blowing shit up in creative ways. The tables disappear and are replaced with blankets on the grass, meant to be laid on and shared. An incredible fireworks show rounds the night out, and only once the sky is calm again are people expected to leave.

Or pass out. Getting completely wasted is also an Independence Day tradition. ]

Comments

Julie [ ota ]

[princessvegas]

[ If there's anything that the Summoned of Abraxas need, it's a big blow-out party. As the resident master hostess, that is Julie's official judgment on the topic, and she decided that it was up to her to fix. It was just lucky happenstance that, while drinking downstairs in the tavern, Dean had realized it was the Fourth of July, and between the two of them, they'd pretty quickly managed to throw together the idea of a proper, American celebration. Two American idiots like them have more than enough experience to really drive home the spirit of America, which is mostly explosions and alcohol and forcing everyone else to celebrate their traditions.

The set-up is a scaled up amalgamation of various backyard cookouts and pool parties that Julie has been to, though everything is much nicer than anyone in her life could have ever afforded. The resident clubgoers, all dressed in an assortment of American flag inspired bathing suits and tank tops, swim around in the pool and toss beach balls between themselves to the sound of pop and country music. Most songs somehow work in the word "America" multiple times.

Julie, with the exception of her actual hair, is red, white and blue from head to toe, and can be found in the pool for much of the day, where she alternates between monopolizing one of the floats and sailing down the water slide with a truly impressive amount of speed. But she is still the hostess, and can just as often be seen flitting from person to person (still bikini-clad but with the addition of the shortest pair of denim cutoffs you've ever seen), bringing new drinks and towels and a huge smile with her whenever they seem needed.

Once Dean gets the grill truly going and people actually begin to eat supper, she's on one side of the big buffet table, helping fix plates and explaining all the different dishes to the unfamiliar. Julie herself is an absolutely shit cook, but that's not an issue here in the Horizon, where she produces endless replicas of her large, Midwestern family's classic recipes. Potato salad, macaroni salad, slaw, baked beans. Deviled eggs and succotash. Melon balls marinated in honey and mint. Pies and cakes all decorated in different red and blue berries, with whipped cream stars. Steven mans the bar, but there are also big pitchers of non-alcoholic options, lemonade and sweet tea and fruit punch. And of course there are multiple coolers full of canned beers (only the finest of America's classic, terrible choices for these fine folks) and Coca-Colas. The options seem endless, and they're all good -- Julie's aunts and grandmothers and cousins were all very talented in the kitchen.

When the sky is dark and the pool is mostly empty, Julie claims the blanket she deems to be the most prime fireworks viewing spot. She's swapped into drier but just as patriotic clothes, and she quickly fills her blanket with a bunch of pillows to recline in. Dean may be in charge of fireworks, but she occasionally adds in a shape of her own, just for entertainment. People she knows might catch simple symbols associated with themselves in the sky. ]

[frontlinetitties]

[So maybe she has only an ill-defined knowledge of what constitutes America, and clearly didn't get the memo on the dress code. Ultimately that means sweet fuck all when she's managed to have herself a good time. She must have tried at least one helping of every pie and cake on offer, not to mention a couple of piled platefuls of Dean's noble contribution to the party. So maybe she still doesn't quite get the red, white and blue thing (something akin to official House colours, maybe?), but if it results in feeling full and pleasantly buzzed then America can only be a good thing. Right...?

Whatever. She's managed to hold off on getting totally wasted for one reason and one reason only. The main event, the moment she's been waiting for with hot and sparking anticipation-- the fireworks!! Fucking loud, and colourful may be all she's managed to gather about them, but this description alone is enough to tip her off to the fact that it's gonna be good.

To this end, she's snagged herself a pretty prime location for the viewing, winds up close to Julie. As she settles into a cross-legged position on her blanket and cracks open a beer, she's hard-pressed to contain her excitement. The space around her, it practically crackles with eager tension.]

I'm like, totally psyched for this, not gonna lie.

[princessvegas]

[ If it helps her understanding, there are flags fucking everywhere. Including on Julie's body, as every piece of clothing she has touched today somehow seems to incorporate the stars and stripes. All of her clubgoers are also decked out, and many of them are actually holding small flags on sticks.

Julie is curled up in a heap of her pillows, drinking a cocktail that matches the theme through a silly straw shaped like a star. She turns to look when she's spoken to, and nods through a mouthful of vodka and blue curaçao. ]

You should be. Fireworks are how we celebrate everythin' important back in my world. In America, we do 'em for Fourth of July, New Year's Eve, when you win important ball games, certain days at Disney World... they're just the best.

[frontlinetitties]

[The fact that she hasn't heard of even one of those celebrations causes her no surprise. Who knows, maybe they have shit like that at some of the other Houses, on planets less remote and desolate than the one she'd been cursed to grow up on. But the House of the Ninth isn't exactly known for it's parties. Not unless you consider a bunch of old ghouls hunched horribly over the dull clacking of their prayer-beads, which she decidedly does not. It's the fact that Julie's list is quite long that has Gideon's brow hiking toward her hairline.]

Man, it sounds like you guys had a hell of a lot to celebrate. Sometimes I swear I have the worst luck in like, the whole fucking universe.

[She's soon shrugging like it's nothing, though. Takes a swig over her beer.]

Obviously that means I'm gonna have to make up for lost time while I'm here.

[princessvegas]

[ To be fair, Julie has a very America-centric take on fireworks as well. Most of what she listed is, in fact, pretty isolated to just her single home country. But this is a whole party for said country, so she figures it's fine. When you spend your whole life in one place, it sort of gives you blinders. Especially if that place is large and important on its own merits.

Julie snorts very loudly and derisively, tipping her head back to drain her cocktail. It's almost comical to her, the idea that anyone here might have worse luck than she and Nadine did, at least when it comes to worlds to have been born into. ]

Yeah, trust me, your luck ain't that bad. No reason to not live it up now, though.

[frontlinetitties]

[Gideon makes a decidedly rude noise with her mouth at that, something that sounds kinda like pvvvfft.]

Nah, trust me. Reaaaalllly shit luck. But hey, at least I'm hot and I know how to swing a sword, so it could be worse.

[Again there's the dismissive shrug. An easy letting go.]

It's not like I'm trying to win some kinda I've had a shit time sympathy award. It's almost like they decided to bring in a whole bunch of people who're used to like, massive amounts of shitness. Wonder why that might be.

[There's the conspiratorial spike of her eyebrow, and she takes another pull on her beer.]

But fuck it, right? We're having a party. And if I'm honest I actually kinda like it here.

[princessvegas]

[ There is a flicker of something across Julie's face that indicates actual annoyance -- she rarely tells people what happened on her world because it's so upsetting, but it gives her jimmies a true rustle when other people are insistent that their world is so bad, much worse than hers. She has gone through multiple apocalypses now, comes from a world that is now nothing more than the death throes of humanity. But a world without fireworks, well, just give her a moment to her clutch her pearls, why don't you. How can virtual extermination ever compare to life without Christmas?

Give her a fucking break.

Lying back in her pillows, Julie reaches into her top and produces both a joint and a lighter from somewhere in the vicinity of her right boob. She lights up and takes a long drag before responding. ]

I'm sure they'd like us to believe it's just a big ol' coincidence. Or maybe it's just some shit about buildin' character through strife. Who fuckin' knows?