[ open ] This is Halloween, everybody make a scene

[princessvegas]

Julie has always thrown a good party. It was true in Kansas, it was true in Vegas, and it's true in the Horizon. And last year's party had been a smashing success by Julie's standards.

At that time.

See, the thing is, back then, Julie didn't understand exactly what she was capable of doing with the Horizon's powers. She had, without meaning to, limited herself to things that already made sense in the world she had previously known. But that's not the world she lives in anymore, and after a year of learning, she's ready to actually throw a Horizon-worthy party.


I | WAIT
For the vast majority of the Summoned, this will be the first time they've ever seen the pink neon that illuminates the edges of Julie's club go dark. The pink carpet and pink velvet ropes are gone; the big double doors are closed and locked. Those with keen eyes might notice that the door handles, normally in the shape of rising clouds of butterflies, are now swarms of bats. There is a small sign on a stand at the door.

All around the building, there's the loud, ominous sound of a grandfather clock's swinging pendulum, ticking toward an unknown time (well, it is known, as Julie sent out invitations). The wood of the doors bears long, ragged scratches, as if claws have been dragged down them. Thick fog gradually surrounds the building -- while not thick enough to obscure vision, it is nonetheless ominous and haunting.

The clock chimes nine o'clock; the sound is deafening. There is a long, pregnant pause, and just when it seems like nothing is going to happen, there is a sudden screech from above. An enormous, bulbous spider crawls atop the roof as if from the back, its body and legs so large and long that they span the building's width. It gives another great shriek as it leers down from the roof, fangs dripping, but it doesn't reach down from its perch. It remains above the crowd, menacingly.

At the same time, the doors burst open in an almost explosive manner, and the pounding music begins to pour out from within. More fog floats out of the foyer, carrying obscured green and orange light. The party has started.


II | CREEP
Walking through the front door, there are many details to be noticed, enough that it's easy to overlook most of them. The mist is a heavy blanket across the ground, thinning out for visibility only around waist-height. Where last year the theme was set in a barren forest, this year appears to be set in a massive, abandoned Victorian mansion. While the club maintains its normal shape from the outside, the inside is transformed to mimic long, winding hallways and spiraling staircases that seem to lead nowhere. The roof is high, in cathedral arches, and the fireplaces are dark. The walls and mantles bear various pieces of decoration: eerie black-and-white portraits in filthy frames, cracked vases full of dead flowers, jagged and broken sconces. Everything is covered in a vast, dusty coat of cobwebs, and the entire main hall must be traversed to reach the music that streams through the air.

Ignore the movements in the corner of your eyes. And be careful not to graze the walls -- lest you discover that the black pattern on the dark wallpaper is less of a pattern and more of an infestation.

Along the way, one might be inclined to open one of the many doors that line the halls and see what's inside. There are any number of strange scenes to find -- those familiar enough may recognize the haunting figures as Julie's clubgoers in costume. Interacting may have... unintended consequences.

Make it through the maze of haunted rooms and revolving doors, and you'll be rewarded by finding the ballroom.

III | PARTY
True to Julie form, the ballroom is fully decked out for only the wildest of parties. Spiderwebs stretch across the vaulted ceilings and between pillars, with lights hanging from their gossamer threads. Candles help illuminate by floating near the ceiling and around tables.

The bar, swapped for heavy Gothic design, is manned by Steven, as always. Despite being dressed as a white-eyed demon, he is as helpful as ever, and happy to make you whatever drink your heart desires. Two long tables flank the bar -- one boasts a huge variety of spooky snacks and bowls of candies, amongst other, more classic party dishes. The other holds vast quantities of... other goodies, should one be tempted to participate: bowls of pre-rolled joints and various pills, silver platters with small mountains of cocaine atop them, and even tiny canisters of whippits, for those with low tolerance. Be careful not to confuse the regular candies with their cannabis-infused counterparts.

The dance floor is large and lit in purple, orange and green. The music is loud enough to dance to, but not so loud that conversation is impossible. The resident partiers that weren't used to play roles in the scary scenes congregate here, in a wide assortment of random sexy costumes.

Hopefully, you've arrived in time to see Julie's grand entrance.

Comments

[itookashot]

"It's like the Free Cities then, but on a much larger scale." Free Cities is made up of a few cities that govern themselves and have representatives, etc. The seeing them as separate countries does make sense, and they're all on top of each other too which must be insane.

"Could be they're similar. They're very interesting people and incredible entertainers, they have their own religion and culture, but people treat them like shit. I think it's mostly uncertainty on how people can enjoy their lives being permanent wanderers." Jesper is a straight shooter, if he thought they had a bad reputation, he would say so, even with Inej as his friend. As far as he can tell it's a whole lot of strange prejudices. "Unfortunately there aren't good protections for them, so when she was taken by slavers overseas, there wasn't really much they could do."

Kaz found her parents and reunited them recently, but it was a terrible situation in every conceivable way. "She's an incredible acrobat, a tight rope walker, maybe you'll get to see some time. That's what her family did." Jesper knows that the two of them don't really engage for one reason or another, but maybe a part of him hopes that could change. He loves them both so much.

She laughs about the tank and so does he, that is actually a great story. "It was back home. The Fjerdans, our enemies, are absolutely the worst heinous psychopaths out there, but they can make technology so well. We broke into their ice court to steal someone from right under the military's nose, and on the way out, stole a tank and literally burst open the wall to flee." Jesper grins ear-to-ear, it's a fun story. Yes there's madness involved and no small amount of violence, but how many times do you get a chance to steal a tank and wreck a castle? Good times.

"My dad's a good sort, he means well. I suppose in a way we were both disappointments to each other, but it could've gone worse."

[princessvegas]

"Yeah, sorta. Just better organized and bigger. And 'cause it was all one country, there was free travel between the states, and it was easier to transport food and stuff around." There were, of course, many differences between the Cities and her USA, but the Free Cities has been the most familiar place she's wound up in Abraxas -- that's why it makes her so nervous to live there. There's too much that's too similar. She keeps waiting for them to slip up and destroy all life with their ego.

She nods sympathetically, takes a drink. "My whole country was pretty much built on slaves. We didn't have 'em in my time, it was close to two hundred years since they outlawed it. But there was a war over it, and the country almost ended. I don't know. My world was real big and advanced, but people hatin' other people for the color of their skin, or their religion or who they like to fuck or whatever else... those were problems we'd had for thousands and thousands of years."

And Julie might be a terrible person, but she was never a racist. She knew plenty of people who were, and she probably has some fucked up perceptions from living in white Midwestern hell, but she had always thought it was disgusting to be a racist. There was a whole rainbow of dicks out there, and she was interested in all of them.

Her eyebrows raise as she listens to his story. How can there be tanks in his world but cars are still a mystery? It feels like inventing space travel before even conceiving of airplanes. It's still a good story, though. "Make me sound borin'," she says lightly. "I never had the chance to steal anythin' that good. Most I ever got was a joyride in a souped-up Caddy my cousin was supposed to drive to Tulsa."

For a moment, she's quiet. Thinks about her own parents. She can barely recall them past the enormity of her final memories; them lying dead, side by side in bed, swollen and pale and already beginning to rot in the summer heat. How, in the end, all she could do was walk away from the house because she wasn't strong enough to move them into the grave she dug.

"I think my parents wanted me to be... less like them. Or at least better. But I don't think they ever believed I was."

[itookashot]

"If only that part was the same. I am used to living in a city where it's easy to get anything. I miss all my connections too, I was a man about town in Ketterdam, big fish in a small pond." To be fair, Jesper does fairly well for himself in Cadens too, he's hardly ignored here. He has a good business, merchants don't utterly despise him, he knows a lot about everyone in his area. He's the info guy, it's his natural instinct to be popular wherever he goes.

"Slavery is typically frowned upon, so they call it indentured servitude once you get to Ketterdam, but it's the same thing. Inej was sold to the Menagerie ... where pretty women are held regardless of age." The implication should be clear. Jesper doesn't often speak about it with her because obviously it's such a harsh subject. But Inej came out of it with a big heart despite all that, she's the strongest person he knows. "Kaz bought her contract and that's how she came to us." It's also why the three of them are so close. Their protective urges over one another are specific and made from trauma. "Back home though she recently became a pirate who specifically goes after slave ships, so at least there's that."

He thinks it is probably the sanest thing she could have done once given the freedom and power to make her own life. Rescuing slaves and changing the entire industry. People will soon be afraid to bring slaves anywhere near the area. Which is exactly how it should be. "As for wars made for that, we're going through one where the tank people are fighting in no small part to murder every one of my kind that exists. They want us extinct. Seems like people are terrible no matter where you go. But not all of them." There's them, after all. Not too terrible.

"Maybe I'll make the tank in the Horizon when we're feeling like making things we want to smash or drive over." That could be really fun, and since it's in a safe space, just good to get it all out. With her parents though he nods, he kind of gets that. Only his dad did believe in him. He was lucky that way.

"Not sure my mother would've approved of me becoming a criminal, but I do think she would have approved of me following my heart no matter what places that led. Hard to say though, she died when I was six."

[princessvegas]

"You're still the biggest fish to me," she teases gently, pinching his cheek. She actually thinks it's not a great idea for any of the Summoned to make a name for themselves in this world, that they should all blend in and just get by. Attention from the public, from the merchant class, from the city guards, it all leads to attention from the government. And that scares Julie. She doesn't want eyes on the people she cares about, and especially not on herself. It's bad enough that they're already easy targets, but with it turning out that some of them have a special connection with the Singularity... she can't help but think of Relena.

The Summoned will never be people to those who bring them here. They're resources to be used, at best.

"Yeah, we had the 'exterminate a whole race' war, too. More than one throughout history, I suppose, but about fifty years before I was born, there was a war that was so big, practically every country had a stake in it. World War 2. My country was on the right side of history for that one. We got to be the good guys." Kind of. Even Julie knows it was more complicated than that, but she can't currently be assed to think about that or recall anything other than America, fuck yeah!.

She's quiet for a minute after he says his mom died. Julie almost never talks about her parents, not in detail. But she is realizing at this moment that it's getting hard to remember anything except those final days. She doesn't want her past to slip through her fingers; it's already been completely erased except in her memories. If she loses those, then it's like it all happened for nothing.

"My parents died on the same day," she finally says before draining the rest of her glass. "I'm sure they thought of me as a let-down."

[itookashot]

Jesper laughs and puts his hand over his heart. Over the dress he's wearing that was intentionally mirrored after her look. "Aw, thank you. I can swim with the best of them with your support." Even if the hunters wouldn't let him work with them in the start. They probably would now that he's proven his competence, but it turns out he is fine for now, making things and surviving day to day.

The truth is he doesn't really want that much attention either. He makes his trinkets and he volunteers for things when they come up, but that is more to get himself out there and lose his hyper energy. Jesper is a career criminal, and despite the fact Ketterdam mostly was run by criminals and they all knew it, it was all within reason. Reputations were one thing, getting the attention of the authorities were another. He is content with where he is in terms of Cadens. Getting famous would just get all the eyes.

"Wow, a world war, with America only being one giant country, that must have been huge." It's good to hear though that her country was on the side of not-genocide. "The Fjerdans are real bastards. No one is really going to help fight them off though, which is a bad idea, considering I doubt they'd stop at conquering one other country." Jesper is positive that as long as Grisha exist, they will try to kill them, in any place they're born. Ravka is the obvious first step.

He knows bringing up parents can be a tense conversation. It used to be for him. He used to feel grief just thinking about his mother. Opening his mouth and putting words to her only happened after he relived memories and had others come along with. It hurt because she was beautiful and wonderful and maybe most people think good things about their dead parents when they are six, but he still thinks it's true. Julie doesn't sound like she had the same experience.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that." Both parents at the same time. He knows some bad shit went down in her world, she's told him bits and pieces. "They were wrong if they thought that. You're Julie, you're the best."

[princessvegas]

"America had the biggest, strongest, richest military in the world," she says. "We fought a lotta wars, and most of 'em were pretty bullshit on our part. But World War 2 was the last time any battles were fought on our turf. But we didn't need war. Everythin' was shit in our world anyway. And then countries sort of stopped existin'."

It gives her an odd feeling, talking about the pros and cons of her home. She knows that, in the grand scheme of things, Americans in her time had it better than basically anyone else ever. Only a few countries were better off. And that American propaganda machine had been working on her since she was a toddler; she was taught a lifetime of national exceptionalism, that she was lucky enough to be from the greatest culture in the history of humanity. Having all of that undone in the blink of an eye was hard, and now she is separated from it forever, so she wants to love it. Love the only place she ever knew until Abraxas.

She shakes her head a little, folding her hands together. "Nah, they were right. To them, I was a let-down. But I never would have wanted to be what woulda made 'em proud. That was never me. The only thing we ever both wanted for me was to not worry about money, and the only way that happened for me was for money to stop existin' for a while."

If society hadn't fallen apart, she doesn't know that she'd even be here. She thinks she would probably still be back in Kansas.

[itookashot]

"Your country is just constantly fascinating to hear about. Sam and Dean and some of the others lived in America, but in different versions of them, right?" Meaning structure is the same, apparently main parts of them are the same, but what happened to her world hadn't happened everywhere. Jesper does think it's interesting that multiple versions of her America exist, but it also sounds extraordinary in the way she explains it.

"Technically there's a second version of mine, one in which I was friends with a Saint. I didn't get to learn much about it because she left. Alina Starkov." She was hot too. He liked her, she had fire. Nothing like the Alina he's heard about in the stories though. It was strange to be shaken by someone who was basically a fairytale, but fun too. It's the only time he's seen that though. He wonders how many more there are.

He's not going to argue with her, she knows her parents better, if that's what they wanted, that's what they wanted. He nods in understanding. Parents can want all kinds of things for their children, but they can't actually live their lives for them. "I feel like I'd miss money, I love money." It's important here, as it always is. Who is he without money? Would he still collect it in the apocalypse? Possibly. "Money and merchants are what ran my life before this. What exactly did you trade instead of coin?"

[princessvegas]

"Sorta. I mean, it gets real weird tryin' to figure it out, 'cause some of us, everythin' was the same until one specific time. Some of us always had somethin' different, like magic or demons or whatever, but a lot of big stuff matched up real close. Like Sam and Dean, their worlds had the same cultures and basic history as mine, but then the differences made huge changes in the timeline. Like, for Sam and Wanda and everyone else from their world, they had magic and superheroes and aliens and shit, like a comic book. And for them, all of that lead to the blink-y thing they talk about, where half the universe just disappeared." She almost wants to make a chalkboard to better illustrate where the timelines branch. "For them, that happened in the year 2018. Then they all came back to life a few years later. In my world, it was 2020 when Trips got out. 99% of people and animals died, or somethin' like that. But our folks ain't comin' back."

It's confusing and it's hard, and it makes her furious sometimes. That there's a universe where these things can just be undone. That they get reset buttons, and she never will. There's no justice. In their world, they got the satisfaction, they got to kill the bad guy, didn't they? And no vengeful God rained fire down on them for just trying to survive.

Fuck that old witch in Boulder.

"We didn't need money anymore. Money is just paper and metal. In my time, it usually wasn't even that, it was just numbers in a computer somewhere. We needed supplies, food and water and stuff. And in Vegas, we had everythin'. Vegas was one of the richest places in the world 'fore the superflu. Think of all the most expensive food and liquor and everythin' else you can dream of. Whatever it is, the nicest, best version. That's what Vegas was, all the time, and they had enough of it for millions of people at a time. People travelled the world to visit Vegas. In the end, all that stuff was just sittin' there, and there were only a few thousand of us. Only a few hundred of us had permission to take whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it, but everyone else got their stuff without money too. They just had jobs and didn't get to go pick it out themselves." She mimes pointing at multiple invisible items. "But me, I got to be a princess, basically. I'd just choose clothes and shoes and everythin' else I wanted, and I could have it. Stuff that, before, woulda cost thousands and thousands of dollars. I'd drink two thousand dollar champagne for breakfast. Oh, two thousand dollars there is like... mm, a hundred gold? Hundred fifty? Somethin' like that."

[itookashot]

Jesper listens to her explaining the differences in their worlds and yet somehow similar landscapes, in terms of country and all, and the names of the states, he's heard plenty of them. Some of it was explained to him at the 4th of July party too, when he just rolled with the red, white and blue motif, and learned about America. He does remember hearing about the blink, but didn't know how many people died all at once.

"Half a universe? And they could just snap it back? Fuck. Not sure I've heard of anyone getting a redo like that." Not that is downplays the trauma of whatever happened, he knows that there was a gap of time in-between, half the universe still did die. "I know Wanda and Sam got screwed over by it, but still." Imagine being able to reverse the worst thing that ever happened. It must have been something wild.

And he knows that Julie's world definitely didn't get that, so he would see that as something kind of rude. Unfair. The universe is unfair though. Some things can't be reversed.

"Ahhhh okay that makes sense. The things you need to survive matter more than the coins." Jesper would probably have adapted to that easily too, even if he missed the coins that became his entire life. He's good at surviving, always has been. He smiles at her. "Princess Julie. Milady." He playfully bows toward her. He'd curtsey but he'd have to get up and maybe will fall over on his platform shoes. "Do you ever miss that part of it? Not the rest."

[princessvegas]

"Yeah, but it's not the same," she says, and her voice is low, steady. She doesn't want to minimize what her friends went through, but it simply isn't the same. The people they lost for those years simply stopped existing. They didn't slowly die in their beds, gasping for breath, surrounded by their other family members doing the same. They never saw bloated, rotting corpses of infants in the crib, of dozens of people in churches who died begging for help from a God who didn't give a shit about them. Those who survived the snap weren't left standing amongst the dead, helpless and alone and with questionable access to supplies. Half the population gone is so much less than almost all.

Every time she's told her story to someone from Sam's world, they immediately shut the fuck up. Julie and Nadine are forever doomed to always win a "worst world" competition.

The pain of having recently been isolated again begins to register again, at the periphery of her consciousness. Without noticing, her face has completely fallen. She could swear she hears that roaring chaos again, like an echo in her head.

Without Steven's intervention, or any movement from Julie, her glass entirely refills, and she throws the entire thing back in a short chug. "I miss that part every fuckin' day," she responds as she swallows. "This, this place is like that. 'Cept with less people, and I didn't put in some of the more extreme stuff. The whole casino, the fight pit. I like it better without that stuff anyway. But this is how I lived, for those months."

Maybe can wrap on this here or on yours!

[itookashot]

Jesper is a very perceptive person, and he happens to be particularly perceptive when it comes to Julie, who he enjoys talking to and looking at and caring about all the time. He can see her face fall which was the opposite of his intention when he decided to make her laugh with his Julie costume and have a drink with her aside. They've all been through some shit, in their world and here, but yeah, she and Nadine will always win the "worst world" competition.

He reaches out to snag the hand not with a drink in it, threading their fingers together. "Then let's live in it again. You don't have to miss it tonight." Jesper stands and gently tugs her to come up. He's still in his platform shoes and bright clothes, the Julie wig tumbling over his shoulders, and his eyes are loving.

"Dance with me. Let's forget everything else, if only for a little whie."

sounds good!

[princessvegas]

It's not his fault -- even Julie doesn't always know what topics will have buried landmines to watch out for. There's no guide to living through what she has, and she's only learning as she goes. And it's not a normal time, either, not with everything that's happened recently. Anything could set her off right now. This is really not that bad in the grand scheme of it all.

Jesper takes her hand and she laces their fingers without thinking, looks at him with her big, blacked-out eyes. Every word he says pulls on her heartstrings, without his knowledge, and she nods, blinking a few times quickly. The music changes as they move toward the stairs.

Yeah, this she can do.