[MINGLE] Saints & Sinners Masquerade

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Corn field next to the inn
WHEN: 31 October, all day and night
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn as appropriate in your subject lines
NOTES: Please make sure you have read and understand the event details! If you have questions, drop them here. RECOMMENDED BUT NOT REQUIRED: Put your SCRUBS COLOR in your OTA subject line for folks doing bingo. Time your OTA for the harvest feast, the masquerade, or both. Costume matches and details for folks who did not get matched are here.

---

This morning, our intrepid villagers awoke to a surprise of the nicer kind: A bundle of clothing left at the foot of their bed, tied with a bow. There is also a note: Put on your new outfit and join the festivities in the corn field next to the inn.

You may be thinking, what corn field next to the inn? The one that sprung up fully-mature overnight, of course.

In the middle of the field, villagers will find an autumn feast: Tables piled with harvest time food and drink, warm and rustic decorations, the day's sunshine fending off any chill in the air.

Tuck in and enjoy, villagers, but take note: Things often look different in the dark, and you might be one of them.

Comments

Karen Page | OTA; Masquerade | Team Black

[digging]

There is a difference between being resigned and being realistic. The balance can be tricky, even when you've got experience stepping between the two. God knows Karen's had plenty enough with both, but funnily enough, it took going back home, at least mentally, for her to find a better distinction when it comes to this place.

She's at this party, even though they still creep her out a little and probably always will, and even though when the sun dipped past the horizon, the change of her outfit from lazy to lux was more than a little unsettling. Missing out on the food, the drink, the brief break from hardship, has begun to seem more pointlessly stubborn than even she can justify. On the bright side, at least she isn't dressed as broccoli.

She is, however, suddenly in heels in the middle of a corn field. Taking them off means the freezing of her feet, snuggly wool socks having switched to flimsy silk stockings, and leaving them on means walking on her toes all night to keep from sinking into the dirt. She considered breaking off the heels but couldn't bring herself to mangle anything so clearly expensive, even if they serve absolutely zero purpose in a place like this. Besides, it's easy enough to pop back home and, just now, reemerge through the corn stalks, massive skirt held up in both hands, hiking boots tromping solidly beneath.

[cryptoherpetology]

Alex is pretty sure he just saw the broccoli throwing up into the corn, which is turning him off most vegetables for a while.

The sight of a woman clomping through the corn (a thankfully vomit-free patch of it), he gives an approving smile toward her practical choice of footwear, and raises the one drink he's decided it's probably safe to consume in a casual, unspoken "cheers!"

When Karen starts to make his way past her, he perks up. "Oh, excuse me, you have some corn-silk-" he points helpfully toward the edge of the skirt where some of the cornfield has hitched a ride on black tulle.

[digging]

"Oh—" Karen pauses, twisting until she can spy the strand of silk, and then pulls her skirt around so that she can pluck it off and flick it away. It flutters to rest among the trampled stalks at their feet, and she pulls in a breath as she lets her dress fall back into place with a soft rustle of fabric.

"Thanks. I'm actually surprised there wasn't more, this outfit wasn't exactly made for walking through corn."

[cryptoherpetology]

"I- think there's some in your hair, actually," he says, squinting a little despite the glasses thanks to low light.

"I've seen my sisters in stranger and far more impractical things." The joys of having a ballroom dancer and a cosplayer in the family. "The boots are a great decision." Corn snakes aren't venomous, but they still have fangs capable of biting feet that get too close.

"Alex Price, by the way. Pretty new, but really only this awkward because it's a party." The extra-dimensional stuff is really more his element, to be honest. And the corn snakes.

[digging]

Instinctive fingers reach toward her head and then fall back to Karen's sides again with a little resigned slip of one hand. "You know, I'm not going to bother. Maybe it'll just blend in." Count that as an unexpected benefit of being blonde.

"Karen Page," she offers, and holds out a hand, only to softly laugh after. "I can never decide what feels more weird, here: Shaking or not shaking."

[cryptoherpetology]

Alex takes her hand and shakes it with a polite level of firmness. "Alex Price. I spent enough time in academia to be used to formal greetings," he tells her. "But you're kind of right, they're- well, formal. Though maybe in that dress, it's-"

His gaze suddenly goes right over her shoulder, to movement among the corn stalks. "Uh. Hold on one second. And you might want to stand back. But this is gonna be really cool."

He's a field biologist at an outdoor party. This moment right here was an inevitability, and we all know it.

He disappears for a second back the way Karen came through the stalks, then off, rustling the corn as little as possible. When he comes back, he is quite confidently holding what looks like a snake... with leathery bat wings. "This is amazing. She must have come down looking for rodents. Though I bet they eat a lot of birds and insects, too," he says, with a sort of boyish excitement hidden under layers of dry professionalism. "You're a brave girl, getting this close to this many humans." Yeah, that part was addressed to the snake.

You know that person who always goes and makes friends with the dogs at parties? Meet the lizard version. Or mildly venomous snake version.

[digging]

Any tentative belief that they two might actually share the concept of what is and isn't cool evaporates the moment Alex ducks back out of the corn. He has silk in his own hair now, although that hardly seems to matter in the moment, given he's holding something that looks like it flew right up out of Satan's lair.

Karen startles — How could she not? — but manages to resist the urge to begin stepping backwards. He has a handle on it, she can see that now, and there's an easy competence in his demeanor that speaks to experience — Maybe not with this particular specimen, but others like it.

So maybe not cool, precisely, but interesting? She can allow interesting. And better in Alex's hands than lurking in the corn, waiting to flap out at someone like herself.

"That's, um," Karen begins, with a quick cant of her head. "This is something you do a lot, I take it."

[cryptoherpetology]

"Oh, yeah, don't worry, I'm a herpetoligst," he assures her. "And I've been doing wildlife rescue since I was a kid- wow, I think this guy's actually mammalian." He really can't help but keep getting distracted by the snake like bat in his hand. "He's definitely warm-blooded. Which is pretty fascinating since they are mildly venomous, or so I've read in the town hall records."

There is some unspoken apology in his posture, keeping the animal a bit closer to his own body, keeping its wings tucked in safely so it doesn't hurt itself struggling against him.

[digging]

There are a lot of town records, particularly since Mark moved copies of everything to a public place where everyone can add to them, and Karen is one of the people who keeps them in order. Even now, she's obsessed with looking for patterns in the chaos where she might find them, but her focus has almost entirely been on the people in the village, not the wildlife they encounter. Having had her own dubious run-ins with native species, she realizes now she should have known better.

"So when you say venom, what are we talking about?" she asks, because that thing had literally been in the corn she had just been walking through.

[blindninja]

The city boy almost looks completely out of place in a corn field. He'd probably get lost even if he could see.

It's been a few... days? Since he got here - he's lost track fairly easily without Siri or other people reminding him of his obligations to his friends, his clients, his city, and where he had to be at a certain time - but he actually seems more comfortable than he's ever been in a crowd. He can actually get through his days without feeling completely exhausted by lunchtime and his life is no longer a highly stressful shitshow defined by fighting off hostile people all the time whilst being overwhelmed by his hyperactive senses constantly being bombarded by overstimulation.

Still, that doesn't mean he's flung himself headfirst into the centre of the party. Matt hangs back a bit on the edge, hovering close to the last table clutching onto his makeshift cane courtesy of Alec.

He looks a bit like his former self out of those scrubs, wearing a plain long-sleeve shirt and pants. He doesn't even notice her coming, but he does tense up when he thinks he hears footsteps approaching, muted in the mud.

"...hello?"

[digging]

All this time knowing Matt, even before she understood what he was capable of or who he chose to be in the dark, Karen never fully appreciated his confidence until now. He'd claimed to be blind back then but hadn't been, not strictly and maybe not ever, and this place has plunged him into the stark reality of what he'd only ever played at before. It's clear that the loss of his sight has shaken his confidence a little, and that in turn has shaken her, even as she tries to swallow it down and behave as though everything's just fine. He'll find sure footing eventually — That she knows for a fact. But it still breaks her heart a little to see more uncertainty in him these days than bravado.

"Hey," she says, skirt dropping with a soft woosh of fabric, and then steps over to give his upper arm a brief squeeze. "I had to go home and change my shoes. The heels were definitely not cutting it out here."

[blindninja]

The tension eases away almost immediately when her voice cuts through his uncertainty. It's Karen. Just knowing that lets him breathe easier. Every small ounce of familiarity he can wring out of this place makes adjusting to life here a little simpler.

"You wore heels to a corn field?" he has to ask, a rare smile tugging at his lips. He seemed blissfully unaware that a lot of peoples' casualwear and even the table setting and everything had just changed at the drop of a hat. "You know, this is why us city folk get weird looks and derisive comments."

[digging]

"Yeah, well, you know me, I've always been a sucker for stilettos," Karen replies with a softly-huffed laugh. It's possible he wouldn't actually know; she's never exactly pinned down what he saw and what he didn't. She thinks, though, he might notice if she was regularly towering over him, sight or not.

"The clothes changed," she offers, just in case. "Or some of them, anyway. One more thing on the list of ways this place is weird and kind of upsetting, but it could be worse. At least there's booze to go along with the impractical footwear."

[blindninja]

Sometimes in the rush of their lives he doesn't get to dwell on the details, but he does notice - what she wears, how she smells like. He worries when she hasn't slept or eaten even if he doesn't say as much. He knows when she's gone to places she shouldn't go and talk to people she shouldn't be talking to in order to get her story.

But it's hard to draw that line between being a concerned friend and being overly protective and stalking her every move, so more often than not he finds himself drifting and saying nothing instead.

"I didn't know." This time, out here, he can't tell any of those things. He can't even tell if she's there or not if she's not talking or doing something noisy. "I could. Go fetch some shoes, or something?"

[digging]

Another quiet laugh pushes from Karen's throat, and she shakes her head before catching herself — It's an odd thing, to have gone from having to consciously remind herself that Matt can't see her, to not, to back again.

"It's fine," she promises. "I put on some boots. I don't know how well they go with the ball gown that replaced my jeans, but I'll just have to risk the fashion faux pas."

There's an empty table nearby, and she touches Matt's arm just above the elbow. "You want to sit down? Maybe get a drink? There's actual, bona fide scotch."

[blindninja]

He moves his arm a little when she touches him, still getting used to the fact that he can't perceive them coming anymore. Any other potential sign of discomfort that she might have read into him is offset by his smile.

"Yeah. Actually. Scotch sounds good." And he can actually have a drink for once without his senses going haywire.

"I am a bit of a lightweight though." Maybe just one finger or two, or she'll have to carry him home in those boots instead.

[digging]

"You're a lightweight?" Karen echoes with a soft scoff, and reaches for his hand so she can lift it to her elbow and she can guide them both over to the table. "Is this a new thing, a here thing?"

It's a little strange to realize, but she's never actually stopped to consider all of the myriad ways Matt's powers might have affected him. The seeing, enhanced senses, and taking a hell of a beating had all seemed like more than enough to think about.

[3ofswords]

He hasn't worn a pair of heels in, well--nevermind that there's a number to even attach to that. He certainly hasn't worn them to a fucking harvest-fest, and it's a bit of damper on his normal and healthy appreciation of a pair of red pumps to have them sticking down into the mud.

Ola Ray got pavement to walk on, even if she was being terrorized by a cat-man in red leather.

When he sees Karen stomping back in through the corn, he's only a little tempted to follow suit: you never know how long things like this are going to last, and there's some kind of dream being fulfilled by leopard-print denim, even if it links him inextricably to his ex's red jacket tonight. "I can't tell if you're no fun at all, or the best person I know," he says, admiring the juxtaposition and offering an arm.

For his own sake, at this point. "Between the chill and the price of fashion, I'm not going to have toes tomorrow."

[digging]

"I don't think I'm ready for the pressure of being the best person anyone knows, so I'll take being no fun," Karen replies, and accepts Kira's arm with a steadying one of her own, hand clamping against his shoulder through denim.

"What in the hell are you wearing?" she asks, sweeping a look from red patent leather up to impressively-coiffed hair. There's a vague familiarity about the outfit she can't quite place, but she knows for a fact that she made the better decision of the two of them when it came to footwear, fun or otherwise.

[3ofswords]

"I'm the girlfriend from the Thriller video," he explains, counting himself lucky he didn't get the more generic Mary Janes and poodle skirt. "Somehow on par with angels and--broccoli, I guess." The theme of the evening is a bit muddled, until you get down to the people in black and white.

Much like the universe itself, Kira is accepting that he'll probably never understand the through-line of natural disaster, blood vials, and themed parties with clothing tricks.

"Three guesses who got the red leather jacket, and the first two don't count," he adds, nodding at the bit of red in the crowd. "I'm a little surprised you dropped by at all, much less came back. Can't resist free food and the ambiance of--corn?"

[digging]

"It's more the alcohol, actually," Karen corrects with a cant of her head. "Not to disparage your fine efforts, of course. Sometimes a girl just likes something a little more mellow than paint thinner."

That in mind, she tugs them gently toward the table crowded with bottles, careful of Kira's inconvenient pumps. "I don't know, I just think with everything... It's not giving up, really. It's just knowing when fighting doesn't do anybody any good. I don't know if my little download is stuff that actually happened or not, but I just feel more..." She pauses, casting for the appropriate phrasing. "Settled, I guess? Which isn't the same as resigned, for the record. Just less likely to have an emotional breakdown over the possible blood of a guy who, by the way, is here somewhere."

Reaching for a glass, she glances back out over the crowd and then back to Kira. "You tell him yet?"

[3ofswords]

Ah, the infamous MM appears - the traginine, as Kira has decided to shorten it, LL to Karen's reporter wiles. "Is he hot," is his immediate and blankly delivered query, for all the he knows that has nothing to do with any reaction to the guy's presence. Maybe just his own.

Finding his footing at the table, there's nothing that can offend him in the presence of enough Grey Goose. "Well it's not even Christmas yet, so no. Did you settle enough show Matthew," he says, over-pronouncing the name in a way he's decided he's going to forever, even or especially to the man's face, "your memento of him?"

Which is more offense than defense, and in his: "I did have a lovely time talking him down from that list that implies I died once when nobody was looking."

[digging]

One hand on a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, the other on her glass, Karen pauses, focus on the table, and bites against her bottom lip with a slight shake of her head. "You're in fine form tonight, I see," she finally replies, resuming the business of pouring out a finger of bourbon.

"No," she continues, blithely capping off the bottle and lifting her glass as she turns back to Kira. "I haven't gone full Angelina Jolie. I would have taken it back to the bunker by now if it didn't take all damned day to get down there and back."

It doesn't escape her that she could just get rid of it — Dump the blood down the sink, pitch the vial — but can't quite manage to care that little about the possible consequences, even with Matt in front of her daily.

She takes a slow sip, regards the crowd again as she swallows, and then slides a glance back to Kira. "Is being upset about you having been dead a bad thing, though?"

[3ofswords]

He shrugs - it wasn't really his form he was asking after. "If you ever want it hand-delivered, I still take shifts by the tubes." And if she didn't, well, he has more than enough coats to justify burning the old parka.

Pouring none of the vodka into a glass, he sniffs the open bottle just to remember what it's like, not inhaling paint thinner before a direct sip. In this weather, it's well-chilled and tastes like starchy, burning clarity - of which it provides none.

"It's an annoying thing, when I'm here and alive right now. And it's just - more wood on the already burning pile. I don't want to add the past to the present mindfuck."

[digging]

"If you're already going down there, yeah. Just stick it back on the shelf for me." Even shoved in the back of a drawer, having that blood around is just asking for an awkward confrontation.

Licking the bourbon lingering at the corners of her mouth, Karen leans back against the table and considers the crowd as she picks apart the bigger picture of what Kira's said. "I guess that makes sense, but you have to know he's not going to thank you for it." They never do, in her experience. "At least you know he cares. Maybe he's using your possible death as the thing he fixates on while he processes the whole clone thing, because that's moderately less of a mindfuck, even if they're technically connected."