open post ● we're about to get up and burn this floor

[boomvox]

Who: Everyone.
What: The Grand Re-Opening of the Gravity Falls Station.
Where: Babylon.
When: Veerdi to Sukkardi.
Notes: Party post!!! Go nuts y'all.
Warnings: Probable alcohol (and drug?) use. Flag stuff in subject titles if it needs a warning and I'll edit it up in here.

It's clear from the first moment anyone even gets on the Skyrail tonight that the Stratosphere Entertainment Group's pricey investment is going to pay off - every rail car is crowded with people decked out and excited for the event. To natives of Baedal, the idea of a holiday is days off work, maybe some camping - escape is alien, a little frightening, and completely thrilling. Even when the Gravity Falls station had hosted other venues, it was nothing so ambitious as to capture the imaginations of the city as a whole. And to immigrants to the city who no longer have the luxury of even simple trips out of town - well, it's priceless. A bittersweet but suddenly vital excursion.

Doors open just as the sun begins to set, the light reflecting off the water of the ocean illuminating the great floating platform as if the entire sky was on fire, before slipping into deep purple then black, the ceiling of their experience dotted with brilliant stars. Staff members wrangling the hazards of the first night are anxious but excited, kind and helpful even if they end up frazzled by the overwhelming turnout. There is security, all sporting neon purple shirts with lion logos, but even by their own admission, they're only there to breakup fights - and even they're smiling all night, too.

Comments

[captaincocksure]

Jim's grin widens at her observation, and he shrugs, the rest of his face falling into a what can you do? expression.

"It is, yeah," he replies, shifting the towel to quickly dry his right hand, arm, shoulder. "But maybe I'm the ridiculous one to expect I can actually get in some exercise in the middle of a party."

And then the reason for the hurried drying-off becomes evident, as he offers his hand. "Hi. I'm Jim Kirk."

[andyoullmissit]

She laughs and takes it, grip firm but not competitive. "Clarice Ferguson. Most people call me Blink. And it looks like you made the most of it." The exercise, she means.

[captaincocksure]

"Yeah, I think I did all right, all things considered."

He wraps the towel he'd been trying off around his waist, and he drapes another over his shoulders. And then he lowers himself beside her, also dangling his feet into the water.

"Have you checked out the rest of the club yet?"

[andyoullmissit]

"Just to walk through. I'd love to come back when it's not so crazy, sometime - I don't generally mind people, but I'm not used to so many in a concentrated space." She smiles a little, though, seemingly at ease anyway. "How about you?"

[captaincocksure]

"The same." He scrubs a bit at one side of his head with a corner of his towel. "I just walked through. I didn't even get all the way through, once I got here I stopped. I'm glad the club rents suits if you didn't bring one. I might go check out the rest of the place once I'm dry. Care to join me?"

So many guys might make that last question creepy, pushy, or an assumption, but in Jim's case it's clear it's a friendly, no-obligation request. If she'd like some company, he's happy to provide, but if not, no harm done.

[andyoullmissit]

She tilts her head, then makes a choice. "If you're sure - yeah. That'd be nice." He's friendly, and clearly not nervous around xenians, and there are worse starting places. "I may rent a suit later, but I figured I might wait until things had started winding down a little so you don't have to throw elbows to get any space."

[captaincocksure]

He nods, pleased that's settled.

"You know, that's not a half bad idea. Maybe I should've waited for later in the evening to swim. Maybe I still will, depending on how late it is."

[andyoullmissit]

"We can play it by ear," she says, lightly amused. "I remember when I was a kid, they used to tell us to use the buddy system, right? Don't go in the water without someone to watch your back."

She might be teasing, just a little.

[captaincocksure]

"Right, right, I remember," Jim says, grinning. She's teasing but he doesn't mind. "They also said no swimming for thirty minutes after you eat so you don't get cramps, but I don't recall any warnings about drinking after a cocktail and dancing. We may be all right yet."

[andyoullmissit]

"Maybe," she says, laughing a little. "We'll just go light on the little bits of cheese on crackers, then."

Fancy parties were really not part of Clarice's life at all before Baedal, and she's still guessing, sometimes, how to act at the few she's found herself attending.

[captaincocksure]

He laughs too. "Sounds like a plan."

But for now he doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry to join the party inside. "Have you been here in Baedal long, Blink?"

[andyoullmissit]

"I guess it's relative. About a year?" It feels longer, sometimes, but she suspects that's mainly a function of how radically different it is from where she came from. "How about you?"

[captaincocksure]

"Yeah, me too," he says, "on both counts. It's been... a little bit more than a year, for me, I think. Time flies, huh?"

So much has come and gone in that year. Jim wonders, sometimes, if he's changed too.

"I'm sure you've found work and a place to live, by now?"

[andyoullmissit]

"Yeah - well. I'm in the foghunter's guild, and I get paid, even if it's not really a 9 to 5 thing. I don't think I'd be very good at that anyway. What do you do?"

This, she thinks absently, must be what normal people do when they go to parties. She almost laughs, but doesn't, catching herself before she has to explain what's funny.

(Inexplicably, she misses Sydney, thinking how much he'd enjoy a place like this.)

[captaincocksure]

"The foghunters' guild." Jim nods. "I've heard of you guys, and some of your exploits. I'm in another guild, the Guild of Preternatural Horrors. Well, on a consulting basis. I do crisis management for them when I'm needed."

And he kind of quietly creeps around the city doing his own thing--but dutifully reporting on it to the guild's matriarchs--when he's not needed. There's still a small part of him that won't let go of the idea of finding a way out, a way home.

A way back to his ship, his crew, his best friend.

"It was about the closest thing I could find, quickly, to match my skill set. But I enjoy it. What about you, do you like what you do?"

[andyoullmissit]

"It's okay. I mean, it feels as close as I get to normal, I guess? It's dangerous and it's active. I get restless if I can't keep moving, sometimes." She wasn't claustrophobic, but no one likes to dwell on being trapped.

"I think I've heard of you guys too. Hellsing, right? Hellboy let me out when I very first got here." She'd meant to look him up, after, but time got away from her.

[captaincocksure]

"I know that feeling," Jim says, nodding. "I can't just be still. I never could be, but especially not just before I came here. I had a ship, I was used to being able to go places. One city just feels too small, too tight sometimes. Hellsing's helped with that, giving me some purpose and activity."

He breaks into a warmer smile. "Hellboy. He's a good man."

[andyoullmissit]

"I've fallen out of touch, but he was kind, when I met him." She softens a little at the memory. It had been a hard day that he'd made better by helping her out.

"What was your ship like? Large?"

[captaincocksure]

"I'm sure he wouldn't mind you getting back in touch."

Jim nods, wistful. "Yeah, she is. About three hundred seventy meters. She's the Federation's flagship, with a crew of about eight hundred. And I'm the captain."

Except he's not there, and if Bones' report after his first departure from the city is anything to go on, they don't even know he's gone.

[andyoullmissit]

Clarice whistles. "800? That's impressive." She tries to picture it, but is unfortunately picturing a ship for the sea, so it's far from accurate.

"You sound like you miss it."

[captaincocksure]

"I do," he admits. "At the risk of sounding very full of myself--"

Oh, Jim, it's hardly a risk with you, sometimes, and more of a certainty. But--

"--I was pretty much made to be out there among the stars. Being earthbound like this doesn't suit me much."

[andyoullmissit]

"Oh! Sorry, I just... a starship? Wow."

She's been to the moon once?

"It must be nice, though. Having something you're made for."

[captaincocksure]

"Yeah, a starship. And yeah, it is nice to have something you're made for."

Until you're torn from it.

"What did you do, back home? And where is home for you?"

[andyoullmissit]

"Earth," she says, "one of them. It was, um, the USA when I was a kid." Then it... wasn't. She tucks some hair behind her ear, making a quick judgment as to how much she wants to talk about home with a good-looking, friendly stranger at a party.

The verdict is "not much."

"Really long story for a night that doesn't have so many drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. But I was a resistance fighter, I guess you'd say. It still feels weird, sometimes, being out of all that." Baedal isn't utopia, and the government rubs her all kinds of wrong ways, but on the other hand, there isn't open genocide going on.

She's gone a bit distant and closed off without realizing, thinking about home. That place doesn't exist anymore, anywhere. And she knows she should be glad.

[captaincocksure]

He listens, giving her a sympathetic nod when she finishes. "I can imagine it must be, yeah. When something's a part of your life for so long, not having it feels weird, no matter what it is."

That is one of the terrible things about this place, the way it tears people from their lives and everything they were. He supposes it's a leveling of the playing field, too, but the way it throws everyone off their game has to be an advantage for the city.

"I'm from Earth, too," he offers, "even the United States of America. I'm from Iowa--a town called Riverside that you've probably never heard of unless you're from my Earth in my time and you know where starships are built. I enlisted in Starfleet--that's the peacekeeping and exploratory arm of the United Federation of Planets--and I just became a ship's captain about six months before I got to the city."