Operation: Roll Out

[initiates]

Date & Time: January 31st - February 4th, Present Day Exsilium Time
Location: Neo Las Vegas, in what formerly was called Turkey.
Characters: All Transports!
Summary: Transports have been sent to Neo Las Vegas to gather information on the origin point of the United Earth and the UE AI. Conference sabotage and the rest is expected and invited!
Warnings: Gambling and alcoholic beverages quite likely! Please PM the mod account for anything else.

By day, the landscape isn't desert, precisely, so much as it is dry. Winter's settled in and found in the biting chill of the wind when it finds you standing on the street. Hovercars and taxis thrum down the cobblestone streets, cavorting and honking like a noisy crowd of inelegant, overweight geese. Men walk by on stilts half in make-up, on their way back to their stage for the next night. Walks of shame are taken proudly in this district, one of the few approved and sanctioned vacation zones in the United Earth.

Evidence of law enforcement can be found all around, but they seem altogether too pleased to be there too. Talk with any one of them about crime rates, and they're liable to laugh at the idea. Those who come to gamble know the house is rigged to win. It's not about making or breaking the bank -- people whose funds dip too low are politely escorted back to their rooms and given a set of normal playing cards -- but it is about enjoyment.

Of the flesh too, and it'd be difficult to find anyone working in Neo Las Vegas who suffers from modesty, or anyone visiting who seems unwilling to politely ask visitors and staff if they'd like to keep them company for the night. In fact, Transports may find themselves needing to turn down multiple such requests! The refusal is always taken well. These are people looking to have a good time, and that's all.

No chance taken, nothing gained, right?

At night, the city really comes alive, the lights in all the hotels and casinos turning the Neo Las Vegas Strip into a carnival of sensation. Drinks and recreational drugs are freely passed around, men and women engage in a variety of sexual and other hedonistic excesses without regret, and the beautiful interiors and ostentatious or playful exteriors of the buildings hide and reveal a rich tapestry of events, delectables, and desires waiting to be fulfilled.

Neo Las Vegas is a fun place, and it is a safe place, and it is Where the Conferences For Our Future Are Made. Playtime is on, gang.

Comments

[crocodilesmiles]

Collette did a slow spin around at the sound of her name, giving Kate a goofy grin and waving with one hand, her arms still held out for balance.

"Hey Kate," she says, managing to keep steady and from listing sideways like she'd been tending to over the course of the night.

"Gonna go Gotham on Vegas?"

It's a question filled with a disproportionate amount of curiosity.

[gevurah]

She begins her approach, extending an arm in the case Collette needs the extra balance. She figures Collette may decline the offer for understandable reasons, but she keeps it out regardless.

She snorts lightly. "Needed fresh air, actually." But there's the temptation to don her uniform. "What are you doing?"

[crocodilesmiles]

"Wishing," comes her reply, eyes focusing on Kate's arm. She bet's Kate is warm. She's warm right now, but that's the alcohol. "On a star. Like... that one."

Collette gestures toward the sky, where only planets really shine bright enough to penetrate the light pollution offered by the city.

She frowns, her lips pulled down into a mou of disappointment that's not long in sticking around. "It's not going well," she admits with a giggle.

[gevurah]

The closer she gets, the heavier the scent of the alcohol is in the air between them. She wrinkles her nostrils, unable to help a frown that's a mixture of concern and mild disappointment.

"I know I'm not supposed to ask, but what are you wishing for?" A beat before she adds: "How much have you had to drink?"

[crocodilesmiles]

"Safe passage."

For Blue. For all of them, really, but in the moment, it's for Blue.

Kate's question has her smile turning into a look of concentration. "Three," she says at last. "Two and a half, but three glasses. One was gross. I don't like gin at all."

She closes her eyes for a moment to breathe in, feeling balanced. She lists to the left, then rights herself. Collette looks like she's still engaged in a balancing act on the roof's flat surface with how she continues to hold her arms out, dropping them in centimeters as they alternate between being fine and feeling too heavy. "I don't think I like drinking much. No Vanadi!" She finds herself blurting out. "No Caesar, either. No punches?"

Yeah, she knows that much is true. One one got punched tonight.

i... forgot to mark it as option iii BUT YEAH

[gevurah]

Kate's gaze drops momentarily before it lifts skyward, trying to find the stars above them. It's difficult in cities with heavy light pollution, but she's able to spot a few that refuse to blend in with false lights.

"It's not for everyone," she says quietly. She stays close to Collette, canting her head to look at her again. "Are you staying in a room? Let's go back there."

oh my gosh how could you !!!

[crocodilesmiles]

"I think so," she says, chin tilted up, eyes scanning the light-bright skies. "Somewhere."

Hard to say where right now. Was she staying with Caesar? Or someone? Anyone?

He saved me from my nightmares.

Her eyes water, prickling and hot. Tears slide out at the corners. Collette doesn't seem aware of the fact she's crying.

how will we ever know what's going on

[gevurah]

Almost immediately she freezes for about a second before she's reaching over, gently laying her hand over Collette's shoulder. Her voice drops, along with her frown, donning a more troubled expression.

"Collette? What's wrong?"

Collette's never struck Kate as the weepy drunk type.

i think if we close our eyes and imagine neverland we might just make it

[crocodilesmiles]

She brings her chin back down, blinking once, then twice, then a third time as it doesn't clear the water from her eyes. She lowers her arms entirely, one hand coming back up to pat her own cheek. She doesn't entirely feel it; mostly a numbness against her teeth.

Ah. So she is crying.

Collette swallows, feeling her chest tighten. The unfortunate tendency of alcohol to partially exaggerate the emotional state of people partaking in the activity made her break from her norm difficult to disguise. "Blue," she says eventually. There's not much else to say. What's wrong is Blue. And now he's gone.

She wipes at her eyes with the fingers of her hand, giving up and using the back of her wrist when all it does is make her eyelids as wet as below her eyes.

[gevurah]

While she doesn't have to say anything more, Kate's breath stops short in her chest and her throat tightens for the briefest of seconds. She doesn't allow herself to think too hard or long with her heart, remaining rational and steeling herself for whatever comes next.

"What happened to him?"

Her other hand drifts around her shoulder, closing the distance between the two.

[crocodilesmiles]

Collette shakes her head, leaning into Kate's touch. She doesn't want to say what will make it real yet again, the inevitability she'd cried about and said she loved him for while he'd still been with them all. "Blue's been sick for a long time," she gets out after swallowing empty air, clearing her throat at the end. "He's gone. They can't -- he died. Yesterday."

The tears keep falling, regardless of how she tries to brush them away. She knows she shouldn't go on like this, that it's never a singular pain -- many people loved Blue -- but she can't quite get them to stop. Collette hurts, and she shows it. It's part of the honesty in her that doesn't often see the light of day.

[gevurah]

Sick for a long time.

It's like Charlie all over; sacrificing time and energy to ensure what they started gets finished. She pauses again, eyes widening a fraction before she lets it all sink in.

Her fingers brush along Collette's cheek, reaching up to wipe away her tears.

"Collette, I'm so sorry." She bites back her frustration at Blue not warning her their conversations would be their first and last.

[crocodilesmiles]

She turns her face in to Kate's fingers, her own fingers curling into a fist that comes to rest over her collar bone, close to the center of her chest. "Why?"

Sorry for what? Kate hasn't done anything. "He's been dying for a long time, Kate. It just... he just got worse in December. And January," she adds, voice shaky, snot dripping from her nose.

[gevurah]

"It still hurts, doesn't it?"

From her own experiences, it never stops. It dulls eventually, but it remains there like a phantom pain. A part you can't tear from yourself no matter how hard you try.

[crocodilesmiles]

"Loss tends to," she admits, sniffling hard. "But it's not all there is. It's just -- it was yesterday --"

She'd said goodbye. It just wasn't enough.

[gevurah]

The hand she's been using to wipe her tear away not settles atop of Collette's head, fingers gently weaving through her hair. There are no words that will ease the pain of loss, not one so recent, especially. There's probably nothing more to be said; it is what it is.

She only wonders about the resurrection technology and whether Blue will return at all.

"Did you get to see him before?"

[crocodilesmiles]

She nods her head, feeling miserable, but aware that it was because of the good things that she felt the bad so keenly. "Not long after I got back. I spent most the day with him. He wasn't doing great then, either, but..."

Going back again and again had been difficult, nigh on impossible to contemplate. Watching a slow decline was like watching her mother all over again, only without the burn of ammonia in her nostrils, or the beeping of the heart monitor watching her pulse.

"We got to talk. It wasn't enough," she adds, feeling Kate will understand. Collette wipes under her nose with the back of her wrist again, grimacing at the wetness and how cold it is in the night air. "I'm a mess," she announces, laughing in a bubbling way, difficult with the snot in her throat and the thickness of her own saliva.

"Just a total mess right now."

[gevurah]

She gently nudges Collette's frame in the general direction of the staircase down, to get off this rooftop and somewhere private.

She does understand; one of the last conversations she had had with her own mother was yelling at her over something Gabi couldn't control. It had been the twins' birthday and they locked themselves into a separate room, upset their father would not be around again to celebrate it. She remembers telling her mother she hated her when the movers came, when they were still in America.

"Let's get you inside to warm up," she says quietly. She places her hands on Collette's shoulders, squeezing softly. "It might not have been enough, but I'm sure you provided him some peace of mind.

[crocodilesmiles]

She nods her head, not wanting to speak past the knot in her throat. Tears threaten fall hot and fast down her cheeks, and she breathes in, shaky and close to letting out another sob in an attempt to calm down again.

Her reactions in the moment of her strongest emotions are always hardest to control when they come around to grief. She knows she needs to stop before she starts. She'll get worn out otherwise.

"Mmmkay," she agrees, turning toward the stairs she'd stumbled up to get here. It's only a flight and a half, and then it's the normal halls, with the luxury of elevators on the inside of the hotel. ""You really think so?"

[gevurah]

Kate slows them down as she approaches the stairs, moving Collette as close as she can to the rail. It would be easier to carry her down on her own, but it feels like it would be rubbing salt in a different wound.

"I do," she remembers Renee's grief as Charlie withered away in bed, unable to recognize the people who cared about him. She remembers Renee's doubt and guilt and how she had to remind her she had done all she could. "I'm sure you did everything you could, Collette."

[crocodilesmiles]

It's a good move on Kate's part: Collette's hand seeks the rail after her hip finds it, grunting and gripping the cool metal. She pauses to collect her thoughts, much as she can, and organize herself for the effort of climbing down.

"Wasn't enough." It's usually not, and that's outside her control. She knows that. Still hurts like heck.

[gevurah]

She keeps a steady hand on Collette's shoulder.

"You've had too much to drink. I'll order some food when you're back in a room."

Grief and anger, coupled with one too many drinks, is a recipe for a wreaking havoc on an already vulnerable heart and mind.

[crocodilesmiles]

"I don't think I like drinking," she confesses as they move downward, grateful for Kat's steadying presence. It's simpler to focus on what she says than the emotions that are still too raw, without something more immediate to press her into service.

"What kind of food?" A pause. "Which room is mine?"

[gevurah]

"It's not for everyone."

She pauses herself and sighs, not up for walking her from door to door to figure out where and who she's staying with. She mainly wants to get her to lay down and eat something and have a hangover remedy ready by morning.

"I'll take you to my room."

[crocodilesmiles]

The offer makes Collette giggle, an altogether absurd reaction. "Ros won't mind?" is all she asks, continuing her steady walk down the stairs. If she alternates between leaning into Kate and leaning into the wall, it's only to maintain her balance overall. She promises.