redshiftlogs | Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Entry tags:

Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Who: EVERYONE.
What: A meet-and-greet party for everybody in Anchor!
When: early October
Where: the VR room lobby
Warnings: none yet
Format: go wild!

[ The day before, a wild network post appears, from the username @aa : ]

hi everyone!
i just wanted to let you all know
the meet and greet party previously discussed in this space
will be held tomorrow afternoon!

it will take place in the vr room lobby
and of course everyone is invited
refreshments and games will be provided
but if you would like a little extra challenge
please feel free to bring something to share!

attendance is mandatory!
(lol just kidding)
seriously though i do hope to see all of you there ;)

[ She's also posted handwritten signs to that effect in the mess hall and several of the staircases. Just in case! ]

The day of, a party appears in the VR Room lobby area, as promised!

Though it's not brightly lit, the lights there are are brightly colored, creating a chilled-out evening atmosphere like you'd find at a club. Plush chairs and couches are interspersed throughout the room, and there's been a solid attempt to clean the place up, or at least do something about all the dust.

A shortage of conventional party supplies has forced Ami and Cho to get creative, so the tables and parts of the wall are decorated with paper flowers, and the buffet table is presided over by a number of ... weird, pink, glitter-covered, vaguely animal-shaped sculptures made out of spare plastic pipes and stuff. With googly eyes. If nothing else they're a conversation piece.

FOOD: The main offering is barbecue! There's a pretty wide assortment of meats, all of which Cho has certified safe for human consumption, and also certified delicious. Chips, dried fruit, and a few different desserts are available, including homemade chocolate chip cookies that Ami made herself (wich Cho's help). All the trays are helpfully labeled, including allergy information.

Any and all potluck submissions are welcome as well! Just set it down over here and make a little card of your own.

DRINKS: Sadly, the coffee machine is still out of order. But there is a cooler stocked with ice and a few different choices of juice and soda. Alcoholic selections are limited to two types of pre-mixed drinks, which are intentionally weak on the alcohol, but at least they're not tequila sunrises. If guests want anything stronger, they'll need to bring it themselves.

ENTERTAINMENT: In fiddling with the controls, Ami got the overhead speakers to play some music, but couldn't figure out how to modify the playlist, so it's just one song on loop. Maybe if she keeps the volume kind of low, no one will notice. No live music is scheduled, but if anyone wants to bring a guitar and jam for a while, they will be more than welcome to.

And most of the arcade games are online! Anyone for Fruit Ninja? Air hockey? Dance Dance Retribution? Virtual Billiards? Or perhaps you'd like to try out a full-simulation game in the VR Rooms proper? Now's as good a time as any!

Oh, and don't forget to enter the raffle! The winner will be chosen randomly and announced a few hours into the party.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Patch doesn't really feel much like going to a party, which is a huge part of the reason she forces herself to go. She's sad, missing Diego, missing home, missing everything. Normally, she'd love the idea of a mixer, of creating a sense of connection within the group. She knows this, logically, and she hates that her first impulse this time is to skip it.

So she makes up her mind to go and meet people. Which turns out to be a little harder than a person might think. Conversation. She's out of practice. Has she spoken to anyone these last few weeks? She makes herself a plate, because it's what you do. When someone who has clearly been through the buffet already comes up next to her, she pastes a smile she doesn't feel on her face and nods at the trays. "What's the best thing you've tried so far?"

After the food, she helps herself to a drink, which is far too sweet and not nearly alcoholic enough. She can do this. She sits herself down near the edge of the activity and watches people, nibbles on snacks, sips her drink, and wonders when she's going to start feeling like herself again. Fake it til you make it, right?

Fake it til you make it indeed. And hey, there's someone Peter hasn't seen in way too long. He's glad to see Patch, but also he hadn't been actively trying to avoid being caught with booze until spotting her because she definitely gives off the most mom vibes out of everyone else in Anchor. Oops.

Ah well, if she decides to scold him, he'd totally deserve it, but he's still going to head over and see how she's doing. Maybe she'll think his drink is just juice????

"Hey, haven't seen you in a while. Keeping busy?"

It takes a long moment for a smile to break out across her face, but one does. Eventually. "Hey, kid-o." She's happy to see him. She really is. "I've been meaning to hunt you down. I had some, I guess engineering questions, that I wanted to run by you." Not now, though. She doesn't have her weird little informational booklet that she's been sketching in the pages of. She's going to have to make an actual effort to get back in the world. Later. Tomorrow, maybe.

Right now, she shifts a bit to the side on the ledge she's sitting on, and pats the space next to her. "Sorry I've been scarce."

Peter grabs a seat on that ledge, giving her a little shrug.

"It's fine, I mean, everyone's been busy lately with all the weird stuff going on. I haven't really been the most social person either. Like honestly, I almost didn't even come to this thing. Figured I should at least try to relax, wouldn't wanna give myself wrinkles this early."

It's bad enough he's already developing dark circles under his eyes, wouldn't want to add to it.

"Oh yeah." Patch gives him a deadpan look. "You're really one wrinkle away from totally hideous." Says the woman who definitely has the faint beginnings of smile lines on her own face. She should probably be nicer, knowing how easily he gets flustered, but she does like messing with him.

She nods her head at his drink. "How is that one? I haven't tried it yet." She reaches for his glass, intending to taste a sip. Partly because she wants to see if she likes it any better than the one that she has, and partly because she wants to see how strong it is, so she knows if she wants to be concerned about this development or not.

Peter's just a little too buzzed to get flustered this time. He chuckles and doesn't even think twice about letting her take his glass. Have at it, this isn't suspicious at all.

"Not too bad, maybe a little too sweet. It's free though, so I really shouldn't complain."

Patch takes a small sip, and is relieved to find that his drink is just as weak as hers. So the drinks aren't a weak one and a strong one. Seems to be more one citrus-y one and a one kind of almost tropical one, both sweet, and both low on the alcohol. Good.

She hands Peter's glass back to him. "Our situation is really messed up. You can complain about it as much as you want. Just don't let it drag you down." Plenty of ways to be dragged down, and she's seen the end result of almost all of them. "Do you do this at home? Drink?"

He's had like five of them already, but also he's got a crazy metabolism. They're hitting him, but not too hard.

He huffs, nodding in reply to her first statement, "I'm really tryin' not to." He's a sturdy dude, but he's starting to realize that maybe even Spider-Man has his limits. Too bad he's been pushing himself past them for a while now. "I think this is the first time I've had anything to drink in... gotta be about a year, now. I don't really like alcohol, don't like to have my senses dulled. I just didn't... really know how else to relax for this thing, though."

Patch nods, sips her drink, stares ahead of them both, out at the party. "All right," she says, speaking clearly and quickly. "I'm not going to mother you or police you. You're a sharp young man with a decent head on your shoulders, and trying to tell people your age what to do never works, anyway. I will say that the sugar masks the alcohol, so they're probably stronger than you think. Pace yourself, let each one hit you before you have another one. I figure, if you're old enough to save the world, you're old enough to have a drink. You're my friend, though, so if you get stupid about this at any point in the future, I'm going to become a very un-fun friend. I'm a huge pain in the ass when I'm the un-fun friend. I want to trust you to make good choices, so be someone trustworthy."

Only now does she cock her head to the side and look at him again. "Sound fair?"

The sugar masks the alcohol, he had not considered this. He stares at one of his hands, flexing his fingers a bit like ah yes, that explains why my fingers feel numb, but doesn't vocalize this.

"I think what you're describing is actually called a mom-friend, but yes. That sounds fair to me."

"You know, part of me wants to refute that... but I think we'd both know that's a load. I'm totally the mom-friend." She tips her head back, looking at the ceiling and letting out an explosive sigh. "Not really sure how that happened. Doesn't the oldest sister usually end up as the mom friend?" How often is it the baby of the family who takes on the mantle?

Of course Peter is grinning like a total brat, but it's a friendly total brat sort of way.

"Dunno, I've never had any siblings, or had too many mom-friends. Or maybe I was the mom-friend all along?" Not quite, but he was definitely the super hero friend, which is almost the same thing.

Patch raises one eyebrow delicately in Peter's direction. "Kid-o, I say this with genuine affection for you, if you are the mom friend of your group, I'm amazed any of you survived grade school." Peter is a great kid, but he's a very different kind of reliable. Still important, but not quite the same. Considering that he forgets to eat and perform other basic acts of self-care, and he knows it, she's pretty sure he's kidding.

Ami is definitely here for seconds, if the dirty plate is any indication. She doesn't really want to seem like she's pigging out, but she's a growing girl, she can't really help it. She meant to talk to this lady regardless, but it's nice that she doesn't have to come up with the smalltalk herself.

"Oh, the pulled pork, for sure!" she exclaims, adding a good-sized scoop of it to her plate. "Cho really pulled out all the stops with this stuff. It's amazing." She also points to a plate of chocolate chip cookies - "I made those, though! Mostly. But I think they came out pretty good."

Patch looks at it for a long moment, and then nods her head once, decisively. "You know what? I'm making a conscious choice to not ask where the pig came from." Then she helps herself to a scoop. "Which one is Cho? I don't think I've met them yet." She also puts a rib and a scoop of potatoes on her plate, and then reaches for a cookie. They're a little lumpy, but the taste is good. "Nice. I like a good chewy cookie."

Yeeeah, not asking for the meat's origin story is probably for the best. Ami smiles, though, glad that the cookies she made (albeit with plenty of help) are proving to be a hit.

As for Cho - "Oh, she's the one..." She looks around the party for a moment, and finally points when she spots her. "She's the girl over by the stereo with Mr. Qubit. She runs breakfast and dinner service, so you've probably seen her if you eat food."

Patch nods her head when she catches sight of the smaller woman crouched near some equipment that goes entirely over Patch's own head in terms of basic understanding. "I have, yes. She's... very high energy." Coming from Patch, that's saying something. "Sweet, though." She doesn't think the young woman is happy to be here, exactly. That's not it. She's just made up her mind to be happy in spite of it. Something like that. She's also wearing different and carefully put together outfits every day, hair and make-up done. Everyone has a different way of coping. Patch can't relate to Cho's, but maybe she understands it a little.

"Well, you guys did an amazing job. This was a really good idea, the food and the games and the-- music." Maybe not so much the music. "With everything that happens here, it's important to remember that we're not just surviving."

High energy, but sweet... yeah, that sounds about right for Cho. If nothing else, she's certainly got her shit together. This party wouldn't have been half as good without her help. It's almost intimidating - but then again, like Carlisle said, the party wouldn't have happened at all if not for Ami, so she doesn't feel too inadequate.

"Thanks! That's what we were going for," she says, smiling. "Just to, you know, give everybody a chance to relax, and make friends, and have a good time."

At about that moment, though, the song starts its familiar lead-up into the drop, the part where it's just the same note in rapid succession for like ten bars. Ami glances up in the general direction of the speakers, her face giving away the low-key embarrassment she's been feeling all night. She was kind of hoping nobody would notice, but she's pretty sure everybody has noticed and is just too polite to say anything about it.

"... I'm really sorry about the music," she says at last, sheepish. "I tried, but I literally couldn't get it to play anything but Darude Sandstorm."

"Well, the rest of it is really nice. And there are probably people who like this music. Someone must, for them to go through the trouble to record it in the first place, right? You still did a great job. I'm Patch." She puts down her fork and holds out her hand to Ami. She hasn't been a huge presence on the network, and she doesn't want to assume that Ami's seen her.

Ami has not in fact seen her before this party, except in passing. But she appreciates the reassurance and the compliment, and shakes Patch's hand with enthusiasm.

"I'm Ami! Nice to meet you," she says. "How long have you been in Anchor?"

"About three months." Patch was in the first group to arrive, the chaos of the flickering residual conflict in the shift, the horrible malfunctioning fireworks robot, the total disrepair and confusion. It's gotten better. Much better. Still a long way to go, though.

"You?"

"Two months here." So Ami's seen her share of chaos, too, but about one-third less.

"So you must have been one of the first people who came through, huh?" she infers. Peter was one of the first, too, and he's only been here a month longer than she has. "That must have been nuts. I don't know what I'd have done if I'd showed up and nobody knew what was what."

Patch nods. "This place was in even worse shape than when you turned up. There were, I don't know, echoes? That might not be the right word. Non-corporeal ghost type beings, that everyone could see, playing through their last moments in some huge awful battle. It was intense, and kind of scary, and weirdly emotional for... unrelated reasons."

She clears her throat, and then takes a big bite of the cookie. "I'm sorry, I don't know why that--" It's hitting her strangely. A little fish hook caught in her ribs, tugging painfully. "Do you want to play a game?" It's an abrupt change, yes, but Patch's smile is warm and friendly, and her query is totally genuine. She's not trying to brush Ami off. She'd like to keep talking.

Just maybe with the buffer of something a little more lighthearted thrown into the mix.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

Eudora Patch | ota

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

buffet

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject