[open] welcome to the masquerade

[implying]

Date & Time: Friday the 7th, 4pm to midnight.
Location: Palace of Versailles, France, 1772.
Characters: anyone! Even characters not yet accepted as of when this log goes up. 8)
Summary: It's just some fancy masquerade dance with spiked punch.
Warnings: here be pictures, slow connections beware.


Welcome to Versailles.

The decorations are arranged, the food is prepared and laid out, the music has been rehearsed, and... most people have their costumes and masks ready. At precisely 1600, the Transporter machine activates, and a full room of people and all of their decorations, food, musical instruments, and costumes are sent back to 1772. The Palace of Versailles is in the height of its splendor, the weather is perfect and cloudless, and the gardens are in full bloom for the spring.

➣ Explore the Palace

Holy shit look at this, you have the chance to get your grubby little fingers all over history before it even becomes properly history. Do you know how many famous butts sat in all these plush velvet chairs? Or are going to sit in these plush velvet chairs? And they were all probably just talking the hell out of French, too. Wow. Go invade some bedrooms, poke your head into the kitchens (but no more than that, or territorial cooking elves might take offense), just. Touch everything. Everything. Just know that where ever you are, there's no escaping that beautiful music your fellow Transports are inflicting on you, that shit's just echoing all over the place tonight.

➣ Admire the Gardens

Jeez look at this, these people just had way too much money. But you get to benefit from it! You can basically just get yourself lost for hours here, so try not to starve or anything. Meet all the statues, go streaking through the fountains (please don't, no one wants to see that), get lost and desperately burst through cute little trees in your increasingly frantic attempts to find the exit. There's all sorts of fun you can have!

Just don't wander too close to the edge of the grounds, or you'll encounter (run into?) the invisible forcefield set up to keep wandering guests from utterly ruining history. That's probably a good way to get yourself a bloody nose.

➣ Enjoy the Banquet

There's tables and tables of this finger-licking good finery here, and it's all for you. And can you believe how fancy it is? Oh my god, those sausages have adorable little spears through them. And those spoons gently cradling their cheesy goodness? Yeah. They're made of crackers. And don't even get me started on these desserts. This is amazing. You've never eaten this good. And naturally, each drink (some of which are spiked, you're welcome) has adorable little frozen flowers in the ice cubes. Who even comes up with this stuff? Elves, that's who.

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Comments

[totallytrustworthy]

"Until they cut us off." There's something about misery that works like an unspoken link; he doesn't need to say it, and likely neither does she. Instead, her heel finds the base of the chair beside her, slides it out as an offer for him to join in. "What we have back home isn't even close to this. Not about to let it go to waste."

"And neither should you."

[ex_bandai157]

He raises his eyebrows a little at the unspoken offer, but he sits down after only a brief pause, letting the wine swirl in his glass before going for another sip.

"It's certainly much better than the selection we have in Exsilium."

Which he hasn't had much luck with. He's not much of a drinker, and it wasn't hard to forgo the odd nightly glass - for sleep, he'd maybe claim, not that it really helped much in more recent nights anyway - but going without was still something to get used to. It seems like there's always been some distraction or other to keep him from looking more closely, anyway.

It's something of a non sequitur, but it feels wrong not to add, "You look beautiful tonight."

[totallytrustworthy]

"You don't look so bad yourself." Is the response he gets, though she's not glancing his way when she says it. And while it might be taken as a rude gesture, in Chloe's mind he always looks as handsome as you'd expect any hero to be. Why would tonight be any different?

"How's your conscience faring these days?"

[ex_bandai157]

He doesn't really mind even if her response is just perfunctory; while not untrue, he'd mostly said the compliment for politeness's sake. Besides, it's better than the reactions of some people he knows to the accidental haircut (laughing at him to his face was a high point Kotetsu).

There's about half a second where he's about to ask what she means before remembering that conversation, back when he was relying on his hatred as a guidepost for his actions. The memory turns his expression rueful, and he pauses before answering.

(You talk about living your own life, but you're here a couple of months and you're already falling back into line, doing just what Maverick would have wanted!)

"Maybe I should be asking for your opinion on that, Miss Frazer."

[totallytrustworthy]

"Not really qualified to judge." Which is something she very much means for a change. With all that she's done, all she's capable of doing, passing judgment on even the lowest forms of human life are well off limits, in her opinion.

"I'd say you're as pristine as ever if we're comparing ourselves here," Chloe pauses long enough to pluck a few more cubes from a fresh glass, "but it's not really much of a comparison."

[ex_bandai157]

It's not a very surprising answer, given the last times he's talked to her, but there's something in her tone that has him glancing over at her out of the corner of his eyes. Still, it's not hard to see that she's unhappy about something - maybe recent, maybe not, certainly not really any of his business - so maybe that's all there is to it.

"I'm sure I've mentioned it, but being a Hero is a career in my city," he says, and if there's something self-deprecating underneath his cool poise it's because pristine seems laughable. "Being involved with that industry doesn't always have any bearing on what a person's actually like."

Maverick being, of course, the very best example of this.