redshiftlogs | 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

At some point, Ami notices that sketchbook and pencil and gets curious. "Hey, Poison. What are you drawing?" she asks. She's seen her in the act of drawing before, just in their travels, but hasn't actually gotten to see her artwork yet.

"Oh-- hm."

She looks down at the paper in front of her. It's covered in half-finished sketches of what's happening in the room. Some objects, some people - at least one of Ami herself. Poison shrugs and hands the sketchpad over.

"I like to draw. It's kind of like taking a photo."

Ami looks over the sketches with great interest. Even half-finished, Poison's renderings of the paper flowers and party guests are gorgeous. And there's even - "Oh, that's me!" she exclaims, delighted. It looks just like her!

Not content with one page, she starts flipping backward to see what else is in here. "You're a really good artist!" she says. "All I can draw are stick figures."

"Ah-- oh, yes..." Yes, it is indeed Ami, more drawn from memory than from her presence in the room. As she flips back through the pages she'll find more sketches of people, including a full page or two of ones that are just of Peter Parker. There are some drawings of buildings, the park, and further back still strange plants and scenery that are definitely not part of Anchor at all.

"Do you practice? If you don't, you won't get better at it."

"Haha, I guess you've got me there," Ami says. Yeah, maybe practicing more than not at all would help.

She pauses and points to one of the Peter Parker portrait pages (say that three times fast). "Are you and Peter like, a thing, by the way?" she asks. She did see them being pretty huggy on the couch earlier, and there are significantly more pictures of him than anybody else, by the looks of it.

"Oh."

It's not that she avoids talking about it, but she doesn't actively talk about it... and maybe she ought to? She clears her throat and smiles faintly.

"Yes, we are a 'thing'."

(Is that how the kids are talking these days?)

Eeeehehe, it's confirmed canon! Time to update the ol' shipping wall! ... Ami doesn't have a shipping wall. But she is genuinely happy for them. It seems love can bloom, even on a ~~battlefield~~ alien hellscape.

"Nice! That's cool." Ami hands her back her sketchbook, but also plunks down next to her on the couch. Speaking of actively talking about it, let's actively talk about it!

"Soooo, how long have you two known each other?" she asks, grinning.

She picks the sketchbook up, holding it against her chest like a shield. Since she was thrown into the multiverse she's been in relationships before, she's liked people in the way she currently likes Peter, but no on has ever really shown interest in her 'love-life' before now.

"Um... I'm not sure. We met in Hadriel." And what is time, again? It feels like years since she was there, and longer still since she was in the Box.

"Why is it important?"

Hadriel, right - Peter's mentioned that world to her, though she doesn't know anything about it besides the name. She also seems to recall him saying Poison has been to a world or two before this one, so that all tracks.

At the question, though, she goes a bit sheepish, ducking her head slightly between her shoulders. "It's not," she admits. "I was just curious. I-I'm not trying to be nosy or a gossip or anything, honest."

"Oh, hm..." Maybe she should go a little easier on her. Is it a normal thing for people to be interested in other people's love lives? She's sure Ami doesn't mean anything by it, so she clears her throat and shoots the other girl a crooked smile.

"He... helped me out of a situation, when we met. We just got along, right away."

Taking the answer as tentative permission, Ami smiles again. It's less that she's interested in the relationship itself - she knows next to nothing about the world of boys and dates and all that - and more that she's curious about Poison herself, who she also knows next to nothing about. The relationship's mostly a convenient segue.

"Haha. Yeah, that sounds like something he'd do," she says. Swooping in and rescuing her from danger! And also immediately befriending her, that's another thing he does on the regular. Peter Parker makes friends like a rabbit makes tiny poops: prolifically, constantly, and in the most unexpected places.

(She will refrain from voicing that comparison.)

"What was Hadriel like?" she asks. "I've heard of it from you guys, but..."

Ami might have been interested to find that Poison also knows very little about relationships and boys, and had assumed for a long time that she would never be interested in any of that kind of thing anyway. It's a peculiar place to start trying to get to know someone, though, so the next step in the conversation makes sense.

"It was... different. We were being hunted by a robotic race called the Null, and we moved planets a few times while I was there." It's easier to talk about than The Box. Less heartache. Less death. "The beings there were able to control and provoke emotions - they needed us to feel things to keep them alive. It... wasn't so bad, most of the time."

Ami tilts her head, curious but amused. "Heh! Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the term 'emotional vampire,' doesn't it?"

"Mmm... I suppose so."

But that brings up a whole other list of things, and Ami isn't to know what she's saying. Poison's been a vampire too, in all her adventures and wandering the multiverse, and... that wasn't a fun time, either.

"They were just trying to survive. I suppose I could sympathise with that."

"Yeah, I guess." Ami doesn't have any equivalent experiences to draw on, though, so her sympathy in that regard is mostly academic. And the only time she's been hunted by robots, they were just trying to do her nails. It's not really the same. Which leaves...

"Moving planets sounds neat, though. Like in a spaceship? I assume you weren't physically moving the planets themselves from one place to another."

"No, we weren't in a space ship. It was some kind of portal, but it would move the entire town at once."

She'd heard that long before she got there they'd been in a cave, and though the planets would change the cavern never would. Poison had not been sorry to miss that - the idea of all of that earth over the top of her makes her shudder.

"We were on a set of islands in the ocean, and then a forest. Before that, it was a desert, but I wasn't there for that."

"Oh! I see," Ami says, nodding. That experience, at least - waking up to find everything's changed - isn't as foreign to her. "My hometown had places like that show up around it once or twice, but it stayed on Earth, at least."

Let's partyyyyyyy! [open]

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