Spooktober 2021!

[Ironsmith]

[Snack Table]
Siana shakes her head. "This is worse. Way worse. If I only did mercenary work and he found out, my uncle might ground me. But I did something really, really bad, and I have a library's worth of stories that tell me he might very well kill me, no exaggeration, if he ever finds out. And he'd only need a glance." Siana's hand goes shakily to Jade's shoulder, giving it a frightened little squeeze. "He'd never understand. So I can't go back. And I can't tell anyone who might tell him." Even if she personally liked them.

[bc56]

Snack Table
Jade can tell Siana needs a hug. But that would attract attention. So she looks around, gently grabs Siana's shoulder, and starts walking towards the edge of the room, keeping herself between Siana and the wolf dude. "Follow me, I have an idea." She's going to try to slip the two of them into an unoccupied adjoining room; that seems like a good place to hide.

[Ironsmith]

[Snack Table => Side Room]

Siana... would do as Jade asks, but her rig makes it pretty easy to just wheel her out altogether. So really, the most she has to do is just not resist, which of course she doesn't.

Siana lets out a sigh of relief as soon as they're out of the room. She didn't think Codebreaker had seen her, and the odds of hin accidentally stumbling into this particular room were pretty small. That meant she was safe for the moment.

[Zefir]

[Squeek Miranda]

"Well, I'd love to take credit for it, but that wasn't really my idea." Miranda says with a little shrug. "Two members of my team went off to do their own thing pretty early on, so we formally disbanded shortly afterwards. But, it turns out, most of them still like the idea of doing good in the world, and so joined up with other organizations that will help them do that. So now we've got five people in various orgs who are still somewhat-closely related and can work together when the need arises, which is useful. I wish I could say I planned that." She frowns. "What's AMEN, though? I've heard it mentioned in passing, but no concrete details..."

[Squeek Miranda]

"It may Squeak be that your groupe Squeak can make connections Squeak which never hapnned before. Squeak" Mouster C says and starts eating the snacks. Every time he eats something bigger then him (Near every snack) his body takes the snacks shape just like in a cartoon befor he turns back a moment later.

"AMEN, Association of the Malicious, Evil, and Nefarious.
They happened to be the worst of the worst, even thought they were partly a joke. Most of the big people who were part of it disapeared. Some still remain like Magtok, Illophen, Gordon... . Those aren't part of AMEN anymore and mostly abondend all their connections or just disapeared. In the past they caused a ot of apocalypse and mayham. Right now they seem to rest. There was a time were they fought each other for the lead. I think the current leader is Zefir if that is still true. He didn't do much, but on top most people in AMEN disapeared. There is more, but I think this is a good Summary Squeak!"

[Fenric]

Snack Table

Wow that would be the biggest yikes you could really get at a party.
"I'm herbivorous." Mina says simply.
"And most of what I can and can't eat has been trial and error, I admit. Most minotaurs are omnivores so it's hard to find information." she explains.

Izanagi nods

I can see that being quite challenging - so very many common foods are a mixture.

The arch-devil looks quite bored by the thought of a vegan diet, and peers around to see who else of interest might be present.

[bc56]

Side Room

Jade relaxes and finds herself a seat, preferably one that will accommodate her tails. Now that they're out of immediate panic, she's starting to think over what Siana said. "So you think you're in danger from your own family, to the extent that if they see you, they might try to kill you." So her appearance must have changed, but not so radically as to make her unrecognizable. Which means... "Those aren't costume horns. Are you okay? Do you mind talking about it?"

[Ironsmith]

[Squeek Miranda]

"It may Squeak be that your groupe Squeak can make connections Squeak which never hapnned before. Squeak" Mouster C says and starts eating the snacks. Every time he eats something bigger then him (Near every snack) his body takes the snacks shape just like in a cartoon befor he turns back a moment later.

"AMEN, Association of the Malicious, Evil, and Nefarious.
They happened to be the worst of the worst, even thought they were partly a joke. Most of the big people who were part of it disapeared. Some still remain like Magtok, Illophen, Gordon... . Those aren't part of AMEN anymore and mostly abondend all their connections or just disapeared. In the past they caused a ot of apocalypse and mayham. Right now they seem to rest. There was a time were they fought each other for the lead. I think the current leader is Zefir if that is still true. He didn't do much, but on top most people in AMEN disapeared. There is more, but I think this is a good Summary Squeak!"

[Squeek Miranda]

"Now there are some names I've heard." Miranda says with a little nod. "Even met a few of them. Like that Magtok guy. He seems..." She pauses a moment, trying to find the right word. "...Less evil than you would expect from an honest-to-God supervillain."

Side Room

Jade relaxes and finds herself a seat, preferably one that will accommodate her tails. Now that they're out of immediate panic, she's starting to think over what Siana said. "So you think you're in danger from your own family, to the extent that if they see you, they might try to kill you." So her appearance must have changed, but not so radically as to make her unrecognizable. Which means... "Those aren't costume horns. Are you okay? Do you mind talking about it?"

[Side Room]

"What? I..." Siana looks a little flabbergasted that Jade figured it all out that quickly. But she quickly recovers, reminding herself that she's talking to someone she regards as a genius; of course she figured it out.

For a moment, Siana just goes quiet. Should she tell Jade? As nice as she was being, Siana barely knew her. It wouldn't exactly be prudent to spill her guts to someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger.

But on the other hand, screw prudence. Jade had offered her a rare opportunity to talk about this, she wasn't going to waste it.

"No, I'm not okay." She says finally. "I got these horns, I don't know how, and among my people they're supposed to mark the worst of the worst but I don't know what exactly I did wrong to get them and I feel like I'm getting worse all the time and I want to go home but I can't and I don't know anyone who can help and I'm scared out of my mind and I just don't know what to do!" She blubbers, her composure steadily devolving as she talks. "I mean, I've got a job and a place to sleep but that's basically it. I don't know how I'm supposed to get my life back on track."

[bc56]

Side Room
Jade mutters something possibly unexpected: "You can't be worse than I was." Her expression barely wavers. "You're still you. It doesn't matter if you've got horns or not. You don't know what you did? It could be random. Or recessive genetics. The bit about evil could easily be superstition." Jade looks to Siana to see her reaction so far.

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Siana shakes her head. "It's not. It's really not." She whines. "Magic is real where I come from. Everyone knows you can only get horns from heart-eating there." Not that she'd done anything of the sort herself, at least as far as she knew. "There's never been a good fiendling. Never." She sniffs.

[bc56]

Side Room
"You know that's not true. It can't be. You didn't eat hearts, but you have horns. I did eat hearts, and I don't." Jade attempts to give Siana a hug. "There'd never been a good kumiho either. There's a first time for everything."

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Siana accepts the hug... at first. It takes a moment for Jade's words to sink in. True, Siana hadn't eaten any hearts (that she knew of, her memory of the incident preceding her horn growth was fuzzy), but Jade just confessed that she had, and that her kind were similarly reviled. She hadn't realized it at first, but she'd walked straight into the arms of what might as well be another fiendling and confided in her.

Last time she met someone like that, Siana pulled a weapon on her, immediately. But this time, she hesitates... not just because the only "weapon" she had was purely ornamental and needed reach to be effective anyway, but also because of the parallels Jade had brought up. They weren't different enough for her to have such an immediately hostile response.

All the same, she's shaking in Jade's arms, as much because of Jade herself as her situation.

[bc56]

Side Room
"Shhhh. I won't hurt you." Jade replies. "I didn't choose to become a kumiho, just like you didn't want to be a fiendling." In Jade's case, the transformation was forced on her rather than accidental, but the comparison stands. "I'm done hurting people." Jade's stumbled on someone with similar experiences to her; she just wants to help Siana get through this.

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

...She seems sincere.

Siana's grip relaxes a little, before tightening again as she hugs Jade, clinging to her like a child might her favorite blanket. Maybe there would be reasons to doubt Jade in the future. But right now, she'd found a girl who was suffering and went out of her way to comfort her, appropos of nothing else. That had to count for something.

After a few minutes of crying into Jade's shoulder, Siana pulls away and wipes her eyes on her sleeve, clearing her nose with a loud, undignified snort. "T-thank you, Miss Fisher..." She manages to say, shakily.

[bc56]

Side Room
Jade cries into Siana's shoulder too. She doesn't want to see this young woman make the same mistakes she did. She's never met someone with whom she can really commiserate with about the whole "turning into a monster" thing. After all, the other kumiho she'd met had no qualms about what they did.
The hug ends, and Jade also sniffles. "Call me Jade. I'm not that much older than you."

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Wait, really? Siana looks over Jade again, trying to determine the woman's age. She had to still be well above Siana's 15, right?

Not that it mattered. "O... okay." She gives a little smile. "Thank you, Jade." It felt a little weird talking to her that informally, but then, she was in a (haunted?) castle, dressed up as a demon to hide the fact that she was actually a demon, being comforted by a nine-tailed fox lady dressed as a swashbuckler; not-quite-appropriate forms of address would be the least weird thing about this situation.

[bc56]

Side Room
Jade looks nebulously in her 20s. It's hard to say what her exact age could be though.
Also, Jade isn't a very formal person at all. So she's fine with being called Jade. "Feeling better now?" She asks. She's not sure what will happen next.

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Siana pauses a moment, considering the question. She wasn't really much better off than she was at the start of this conversation; Jade hadn't exactly solved all her problems for her. But she at least had something of an outlet now; that had to be worth a nod.

As for what to do now? She had no idea. But they could always meet up again after the party. Which would require that they be able to find each other again. With that in mind, Siana produces her phone from a hidden holster at the waist of her dress (handy, but she wasn't really sure why it was there). "...We should meet up again." She explains.

After they exchange contact information, she heads for the door, but then stops and facepalms. "Stupid! No, I can't just casually rejoin the party, he's still here and could still spot me." Even in costume, she was still recognizable. She'd be lucky to get back out the door unnoticed.

[5a Violista]

A woman enters the spooky castle, showing up fashionably quite late to the party.

Why did she even agree to wear this?
It basically looks like it's a one-piece swimsuit, except with a massive boob window (which would be much less embarrassing if she actually had anything there to show off...) and a high collar that's got an oversized zipper on it. Not only that, she's wearing boots that go up for days, and long opera gloves that are missing the pinkie and thumb.
Well, she seems confident enough. Nothing stopping a redhead from acting confident when she first enters the spooky castle. She can worry about being embarrassed after she makes an entrance.

Anyway.
Well.
Spooktober.
Her first time celebrating this.

[bc56]

Side Room
Jade enters Siana's info into her watch and gives the fiendling her own number. "The easiest thing to do is to just wait. Once the party dies down, you can leave easily." Jade doesn't want to leave Siana alone though. "Or we could try to change your costume to hide those horns."

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Siana nods. "Costume. Definitely costume." She says. She has no idea how much longer this party will go on, or that Codebreaker is the only unexpected guest, or how long it would be before he left. She could be stuck here for hours in any case, and discovered in all that time. A more proactive approach seemed appropriate.

[Morty]

[Starward Swords]

"Hm. I'm not sure how I'd sum up my people, honestly. Back home was kind of a vassal state sort of affair, and I think the culture of the Ascendancy ended up defining my life more than anything else." She shrugs. "Very... meritocratic? You earn your worth and strive to elevate higher. Not a lot of honor to it, but I guess there was something simple and clear-cut about it."

Blanche seems to kind of linger on whatever thoughts those musings dredge up, silent for a beat or two, before brightening up."Well - er, this is a party, and it looks like there's a few things to do around here - anything, uh, catch your eye?" All this work-related talk is starting to feel a little bit like the wrong way to go about things if she wants to get to know the Comman- er, Wenomir better. Only thinking of him in terms of career and command won't help break down the way he's existed as mostly more of an icon or presence in her life thus far - and truth be told, Blanche can't help but be a little bit curious of what it is about him that Anika finds so compelling.

Wenomir chuckles.

"It seems both of us are people who have a hard time knowing what to do with ourselves when we're not working. Or talking about work." Wenomir takes a look around, then seems to notice something that suits him. "Looks like there's a game over there, where you throw bean bags into bigger or smaller carved pumpkins. Care to try?"

[bc56]

Side Room
"I don't have a spare hat on me, but you could borrow this one," Jade sweeps her broad-brimmed black hat off her head. It has slits in it for fox ears, but it would probably cover Siana's horns.

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

"Well... should be better than nothing." Siana says, trying the hat on. It does indeed cover her horns, but not for long before it flops down and covers the rest of her face. She giggles a little and pushes it back up, adjusting it so that the horns poke out and hold it in place, but the brim of the hat obscures everything between her forehead and chin. "How's that?" She asks, with a barely-visible smile.

[bc56]

Side Room
Jade laughs, "I can't see your horns. Or any of your face. Can you see all right?" She doesn't seem too concerned though. "I don't think anyone would recognize you like that.

[FireFox]

A woman enters the spooky castle, showing up fashionably quite late to the party.

Why did she even agree to wear this?
It basically looks like it's a one-piece swimsuit, except with a massive boob window (which would be much less embarrassing if she actually had anything there to show off...) and a high collar that's got an oversized zipper on it. Not only that, she's wearing boots that go up for days, and long opera gloves that are missing the pinkie and thumb.
Well, she seems confident enough. Nothing stopping a redhead from acting confident when she first enters the spooky castle. She can worry about being embarrassed after she makes an entrance.

Anyway.
Well.
Spooktober.
Her first time celebrating this.

The arriving redhead may run into the recently arrived redhead. Or one of the latter's planets could run into her. Unless avoided, the outermost metal orb slowly bumps into her, causing the illusion painting the object a deep blue color to flicker. If that will be the case, Neptune hesitates and then reluctantly breaks orbit to try and find a way past the obstacle.
"Oh! I beg your pardon, dear. I stopped to look around too soon and the things... well, eight planets take up rather more space than I thought when I had this idea."

[Ironsmith]

Side Room
Jade laughs, "I can't see your horns. Or any of your face. Can you see all right?" She doesn't seem too concerned though. "I don't think anyone would recognize you like that.

[Side Room]

"Well, yeah, kind of." She holds out her hand to about Jade's shoulder. "Everything from here down, at least." Siana smiles. "It'd probably be best if I just left the party entirely. But, I'll, uh, get the hat back to you as soon as I can."

[bc56]

Side Room
"Easy. I escort you out, you can give me my hat back once we're out of eyeshot of the party. Okay?" That seems reasonable to Jade. Nice and simple.

[Ironsmith]

[Side Room]

Simple. Right. What could go wrong between here and fhe front door?

...A lot, actually. Fortunately, there's a large disparity between what can go wrong and what does go wrong. It's not like the whole party is going to gang up on her. Maybe an unfortunate guest or two, though...

[bc56]

Side Room -> Sneaking Through
Jade is also there, mostly making sure Siana doesn't bump into anyone. But will anyone take notice of the odd pair?

[5a Violista]

The arriving redhead may run into the recently arrived redhead. Or one of the latter's planets could run into her. Unless avoided, the outermost metal orb slowly bumps into her, causing the illusion painting the object a deep blue color to flicker. If that will be the case, Neptune hesitates and then reluctantly breaks orbit to try and find a way past the obstacle.
"Oh! I beg your pardon, dear. I stopped to look around too soon and the things... well, eight planets take up rather more space than I thought when I had this idea."

It's pretty simple to not run into another person.
Avoiding a planet, however, is not such a simple matter.

The second redhead's hip bumps into Neptune. When the planet starts to go off course, she starts to wonder how much she messed up the display, but...

"Oh, um. Sorry," she replies. "It's okay. Um. Your costume looks pretty nice. Must've taken a while to get it set up."