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

[miss_vas_normandy]

Tali smiled and blushed, though her darker complexion hid it a little. "Well. I don't usually look like this. Quarian anatomy is a little different. Two fewer fingers, three fewer toes, and the lower portion of our legs curve--I still have trouble running, I always feel like I'm about to topple over. But, ah, thank you, I think."

[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?"

[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."

[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?"

[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."

[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?"

[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."

[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."

[rangerbecket]

"Weird, that there can be more than one," he says, thinking about how when he was a kid he would have never imagined that was possible.

[miss_vas_normandy]

"Very," Tali agreed, finding the idea strange but interesting. "It makes me wonder, is there another Rannoch, too? Maybe the history of my people is different somewhere else."