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]

"Do they have to stay that way?" She has to ask. Collette will always have to hope.

[gamora]

The only reason she's talking about this is because she's more than slightly tipsy. That's the only reason.

"I don't know." Another drink, because approaching this topic completely sober is out of the question. "Adam died when he was the Magus, Quill is trapped in a dying universe if Thanos doesn't get to him first."

People don't stay dead in her universe. But not always, and for how long they're gone - well, no one knows. You either change so much when you return that nothing is the same or you either cling onto their memory and hope against hope that they come back.

You just-- go on. Like she always has.

[crocodilesmiles]

She scoots closer to lean over and touch her shoulder to Gamora. "Mora, are you going to be okay? I don't want you to be lonely if we ever figure things out enough to get back to our worlds again. I want your friends with you." Sh wants to be with everyone, too, but that's not entirely the same emotion.

[gamora]

Is she going to be okay?

"I'll be fine. Always am." Because she can't stop - she has to keep moving. If she stopped for one second, one moment, Gamora knows she'd be lost. To self destruction and whatever else she can come up with when you've hit rock bottom and there's nowhere lower to go. "They have to die."

Not because of some idiotic idea of preserving the time stream, no. Because that's just what they do, and she knows no one will ever consider a different option. Not like there is a different path for them to choose.

[crocodilesmiles]

"Why?"

She has to ask. As someone who died, and is never coming back, Collette has to ask.

"If they've died already, will that have to always be the way?"

[gamora]

"You don't know them." Because they're good people, the sort of good that Gamora isn't. Noble, human. Well, except for Adam - but he's always been the exception to many things, why stop now. "If it meant saving the universe, they'd do it as many times as it takes."

[crocodilesmiles]

"Sounds like some people I know," she admitted. It's always going to come down to that, in the end. The people willing to die for what they believe helps others.

She can't honestly face herself and say she wouldn't do the same. Collette knows she would.

[gamora]

"It's obnoxious." And perhaps she's definitely nearing the amount of alcohol where she starts to make incredibly poor decisions. More than normal. "They go and die and they leave--" Her. They leave her.

"It doesn't matter."

[crocodilesmiles]

"Right," Collette said, sounding chipper. "It doesn't matter, and it won't make us upset or feel alone at all. Nope! Or at the least, we won't stay down."

She smiled with a certain edge of understanding, perhaps even a hint of amusement following on remembering what it felt like every time someone left, or was lost, or went places she couldn't follow. It hurts.

"You keep caring for them anyway. And caring for others, too. Being lonely's not a way to live forever!"

[gamora]

"Caring for others," Gamora began, with the sort of certainty that comes with age, experience, and plenty to drink, "only brings pain."

It's why she doesn't. Or attempts that she doesn't, and it occurs to Gamora that Collette would, and probably will, call her out on it. More directly than she already has, and sends the other a look that states 'don't argue'.

While ordering another drink.

[crocodilesmiles]

When has that look ever worked on Collette? She snorts, amused, and gave a shake of her head. "You care anyway. When there's pain involved, how's that different from stuff we run into in life as it is?" Pain without any gain sounds silly in her mind.

With the smile never having left her face, Collette gives Gamora a thumbs up. Why? Because she has thumbs, that's why! (She has no idea. It felt right in the moment!) "What're you ordering this time?"