Gathering: Halloween Gala

[concierge]

A large, decorative sign situated prominantly in the lobby reads:

The Nexus Hotel
proudly presents its
ANNUAL HALLOWEEN GALA

Formal Reception
Nexus Dining Hall
6 PM - Midnight

Monster Mixer
Nexus Basement
8 PM - 2 AM

Masquerade attire recommended for all guests

Most of the chairs have been removed from the Dining Hall to allow for ballroom-style dancing to the orchestra set up on the far end of the room. A polished cherry wood open bar is aligned along one wall. The adjacent Bistro is open for the duration of the formal reception, serving gourmet hors d'oeuvres.

Downstairs, the basement's largest storeroom has been converted into a spooky nightclub, complete with DJ, dance floor and cocktails.

Comments

[notgivingyourmoneyback]

He waves a hand. "I'll let you lead, since you seem to have some idea." Though he's a little taller than she is, he can't really see much with the mask and the hat.

[rangerbecket]

"Sounds cool," Raleigh says, honestly interested. He's never going to be a science guy or anything but he likes to know about the kaiju before he kills them. This is different still, since Tali's race is apparently human-friendly.

"So uh, are all the aliens friendly where you come from?"

[not_lost]

Fiona ducked her head with a quiet little laugh, tucking her hair behind one ear. The impulse to flirt came naturally to her, but real flirting—The preemptive kind that didn't include the safety of the bar between them—that felt a little weird. Not to mention that she wasn't sure she should have made a joke out of those giant lizards.

"Yeah, well. What can I say? My family depends on me," she replied, and looked back up to Raleigh. "But obviously everything is okay with the getting back and forth, so no need to stay away, right? Unless you just really want to hop into a giant robot, we've all got our kinks."

[rangerbecket]

"Yeah not so much. I like it better here for the most part," Raleigh says. Knowing he can go back and forth makes him feel a hell of a lot less guilty about taking that option.

"Have you managed to be able to bring anyone from home back through with you? I tried but I can't."

[kuno_ichi]

"Her more than me," April replied, relieved that whatever hiccup her costume had caused was apparently past. "I don't think I could stand shooting a defenseless animal like that, even if I knew how to use this thing," she added with a motion of the bow strapped to her back.

"You're an octopus, right?"

[digyourman]

"Yeah, of course," Larry replied with a nod. His eyebrows had pulled together in confusion, but the amiable smile remained. "Is this going to be a story about your teacher's ass? Because I'm not sure I'm ready to hear about that," he said with a laugh.

[legendthatwas]

"No, I swear, it's just about Springsteen's. I couldn't help but stare at that poster in class, because you know, I was a teenage girl. Totally developed a crush on Springsteen...or maybe just his arse, which I couldn't tell my friends about because the 80s? Not cool." Martha rolled her eyes a little at the memory.

"So I was doing this presentation, on Appomattox." Because of this, she therefore hadn't been able to block the US Civil War from her memory, for whatever good it had done her (not much). "And I'd stayed up way too late, I'd rehearsed too many times, so I was facing the poster, running on autopilot...and started talking about arses in front of the entire class."

[miss_vas_normandy]

"Definitely not," Tali replied, making a bit of a face. "There's the reapers, the collectors...my own people were at war with the geth--an artificial intelligence that we created hundreds of years ago. Then there are the batarians, the vorcha, the krogan...none of them are very friendly. The volus are mostly benign, but they'll rob you blind if you allow it. What you would likely consider the friendliest races would be the asari, the elcor, the hanar, the salarian and, well, the quarian. Your own people had a conflict with the turians shortly after first contact, but I think everyone's had a conflict with the turians, at some point."

[trulyoracular]

"Incorrect," Olaf says, but it's with a warm smile now that they've put their differences between them. "I'm a kraken, from old mythology. And you don't want to wake the kraken," he warns, gesturing one abnormally large sucker around for emphasis.

[rangerbecket]

"I couldn't imagine being on a speaking basis with that many different species," Raleigh says, amazed at how far advanced her version of the universe seems to be compared to his. They don't have anything but the kaiju and they're not exactly talkers.

"What's your job, then?"

[digyourman]

For a tick, Larry waited for the inevitable grin or poke in the ribs that signaled he'd been had. When it didn't come, he reared his head briefly back and scratched at the back of his neck in a show of sympathetic awkwardness.

"I don't know, I'm thinking you probably improved on it," he replied with a laugh.

[not_lost]

"Just my youngest brother," Fiona replied. "He's two. I tried with my best friend and my sister, but it didn't work, and eventually people just start thinking you're nuts, trying to pull them through random doors. I talked to the front desk people, I guess only getting little kids through is common, which I think is weird, but at least I can avoid leaving him alone."

[legendthatwas]

Nope. It was all true, and Martha looked very sheepish. "Really happened, and I was called Bobby Jean for the rest of the year. But I swear I'm not going to subject you to Ulysses S Grant," she said, lifting a finger to make her point, and winking at him. "Or my off-key singing, I'll leave that up to you. But that's where my mind goes, with Springsteen. Pavlovian response."

[miss_vas_normandy]

"I can't imagine thinking you're alone in the universe," Tali admitted with a shake of her head. "But so many people here really seem to think that they are. Maybe they're right. That seems strange to me...and a little sad, and lonely."

Since her system seemed to be all right with it--no breaking out in a rash, no constriction of her airways or churning stomach--Tali ate another bite of sushi. "I'm an engineer," she replied after she'd chewed and swallowed. "Specifically starship engines. It's an important job, when your people live exclusively on ships, so quarians have a lot of engineers. I haven't really figured out what to do with myself here. There aren't exactly a lot of drive cores that need to be cleaned up. What about you, what do you do?"

[rangerbecket]

"Break shit that engineers build for me," Raleigh teased, flashing her a broad grin. It wasn't far from the truth.

"I'm a jaeger pilot. It's a kind of giant robot, if that makes sense at all."

[rangerbecket]

Raleigh tries to imagine what it might be like to have Yancy back for half a second before it's too painful to contemplate. He thinks he was better off when he had no hope at all.

"Good, it's not just me then. Do you bring the little guy often? Or just the couple times as an experiment?"

[miss_vas_normandy]

"Like a mech?" Tali asked, her interest piqued. "I've never heard them called a 'jeager' before, but I suppose you could consider the words 'mech' and 'robot' interchangeable. How do you pilot them? How large are they, exactly?"

[not_lost]

"Not that often, because I work," Fiona replied with a shake of her head. "Mostly it's because I'm paranoid. Every time I go back home, no time has passed at all, but if there isn't somebody else there to watch him, I don't know. My big sister instinct just won't let me leave him like that."

Raleigh's interest in her family seemed genuine, which was… well, not weird, really, but inconvenient. The acknowledgment that Fiona's life existed beyond their mutual attraction was nice, maybe too nice, and set off an alarm in her brain. Things were easier when kept simple, and she may have appreciated the gesture a little too much.

"Hey," she abruptly continued, and flicked a glance toward the door. "You wanna get out of here?"

[rangerbecket]

"We use a neural interface," Raleigh explains. "And as far as size? As big as a skyscraper. They're huge but so are the kaiju, so we need to match them for height and weight."

[rangerbecket]

"What? Sure, yeah, absolutely," Raleigh says. He's a little surprised she's making the overture, if only because he's never been good with women and especially not lately. Besides, there hasn't been time with the end of the world to contemplate anything.

"Lead the way."

[miss_vas_normandy]

"Is that not dangerous?" Tali asked, remembering Cerberus's Project Overlord, and the boy that had been turned into a hybrid of man and machine. Then she huffed a soft laugh. "Though something that large, well--we could have used something like that against the Reapers. Are these kaiju organic lifeforms?"

[rangerbecket]

"They are, but only in the sense that they're alive. They're genetically engineered, I think. At least, that's what our scientist says. Who knows if that's the truth." Raleigh isn't a scientist by any stretch.

"His name's Newt. I've seen him in the hotel a few times. Nice guy but a little...twitchy."

[miss_vas_normandy]

"I wouldn't doubt it if it was true. Did your own people engineer them?" That was something Tali could understand very well, given the quarian's history with the geth.

"I don't think I've met him...then again I haven't met that many people yet."

[rangerbecket]

"No, another species did," Raleigh explains. "They travel here through a rift in our Pacific ocean. There's a little tear in the fabric between worlds, as much as I understand it, and it allows cross-dimensional travel."

He laughs a little, awkward. "I'm no scientist. I'm not explaining it well."

[miss_vas_normandy]

"I'm not either," Tali assured him with a quick grin. "So as far as I can tell, you're explaining it just fine. I think you must be from a different Earth than the one that I know of, I don't remember anyone mentioning that bit of human history."