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

[mayqueen]

It's a need for reconnaissance that brings her out, mostly. It sure as hell isn't any desire to mingle, or to admire the view - being this far above the earth simply makes her uncomfortable. Disconnected. But she suspects that the sort of social events that will bring together any number of her cohort in one place are few and far between; though she's still a long way from actively seeking out conversation, she can play the part of the wallflower for a while. Gather faces and names and an idea of what social structure might have formed in this mass of former strangers.

This is also the event that finally prompted her to buy some clothes. With the chlorophyll in her skin suppressed and her hair brushed back into a loose chignon, she doesn't look like a rampaging forest spirit in the least; apart from the spark of an unusually bright green in her eyes she doesn't look even remotely inhuman. Her scent (clean sharp mint and sweet lavender) could be attributed to perfume. Probably.

She's taken a turn in the club - too crowded for her tastes, though it was difficult not to take a warning for psychoactive pheromones as a direct invitation - and now she's wandering the gardens barefoot, drink in one hand and shoes dangling from the other, an ear open for gossip from the garden plants and anything else she might catch. After the heat and noise of the club it's utterly calm here.

[lazarusrisen]

It's been a long time since anything has deeply impressed Adam. But this place has managed it tonight. It's like nothing he's seen in all his years, actually leaving him marveling at so many things.

It's far more quiet out here, the din and crowding inside nearly too much for him. He's uncharacteristically occupied with studying the gardens as he strolls through them, his guard down, and so if there was any sound or clue to alert him that someone else was approaching, he misses it entirely.

He steps out onto a path, nearly directly in front of a lady. Immediately he turns to face her, retreating half a step to avoid a collision, offering her a slightly sheepish and entirely polite little smile.

"Forgive me, I didn't realize anyone was so near."

[mayqueen]

Given that she hasn't had a real conversation with anyone bipedal yet, she hasn't settled on a persona for the evening; when she's not strictly being Ivy she usually gravitates toward something like her, cold and detached. But for purposes of information-gathering that doesn't really work, and she has a degree of caution about using her pheromones to loosen the tongues of partygoers who for all she knows might be less human than she is.

(There is a slight sweet-scented chemical haze around her - a gentle pressure, just enough to pique interest - but that's Ivy at rest. All she's doing is not making the effort to rein it in.)

So she smiles, and lifts her shoulders in a 'no harm done' sort of a shrug.

"Nothing to forgive. Something of a maze here, isn't it?"

[lazarusrisen]

He bows very slightly, a brief incline of his head. "You're very kind. Thank you. And yes, it is. It's lovely, though. Makes for rather a nice change from the party inside."

He smiles again, a bit warmer this time, offering a hand. "I'm Adam."

[mayqueen]

She suppresses the toxins in her skin and reaches out for a handshake, firm but not aggressive.

"Paula. Newly arrived to the city, so I apologize in advance if that makes me a bore."

[lazarusrisen]

"Paula. It's a pleasure." And he shakes his head, offering a sympathetic little smile. "Please, no, I won't find you a bore. I haven't been here that long myself. Not even two months. Are you all right?"

He spreads his hands slightly. "Forgive me if I'm prying. Others were helpful to me when I arrived, I feel the least I can do is offer the same. Are you still at the inn or have you found somewhere else? And work?"

[caballero]

Bruce really, truly did not intend to go tonight - he took one look at 'party' and then 'remote dangerous location there is only one way in and out of' and every paranoid fiber of his being went Nope!, but then he ended up with a half dozen pairs of sad eyes turned on him. The biggest problem with doing pro-bono security work for girls at the Vault isn't the risk of bruises, but trying to slither out of social gatherings with said girls after. Not that he dislikes them, but in any incarnation, Bruce just isn't very good at being social. Alas, some people find the awkwardness cute. (Sigh) It's a deceptively familiar sight; Tom hanging out with xenian exotic dancers and escorts at a club is a very different thing than Bruce Wayne hanging out with models at a fund raiser - despite the similarities on the surface.

In between drifting through people who know him (most are pleased, despite one frazzled-looking politician who does a sort of involuntary irl grandpasimpson.gif when he sees him), Bruce notices Ivy. The double-take he does isn't obvious, but he does meet her eyes in a brief, wordless Hello without drawing any attention to it. He doesn't want to bother her, and he figures if she feels like chatting with him, she'll seek him out on her own. So he says hi from across the path, and carries on with his oddly quiet practice of slipping between companions - though, if she watches, he has a slightly more significant exchange with a particular blonde woman not long after he comes across Ivy.

[mayqueen]

Well. It's not as if she'd discounted the possibility of his being here. Bruce certainly would be - but then again, maybe not; in their more private moments she's gathered that the bumbling socialite is either a gross exaggeration or simply doesn't exist. She's not sure how much (if any) of that persona he's wearing here in Baedal, when there's no call for him to maintain a high-profile public image.

Never mind who he's attending with. She's already discovered the Vault.

She maintains a holding pattern of sorts, engages a young man in idle chitchat and holds him in place with an inobtrusive cloud of pheromones - though from the way he was looking at her he wasn't likely to wander off. It simply makes him easier to dismiss when she's done with him and Bruce/Tom is moving again, and she drifts in his direction with just a touch too much purposefulness for it to really be drifting.

[caballero]

By the time Ivy is creeping up, Bruce is sitting in a garden alcove with a dark-skinned woman sporting a crop of neon blue hair, one of the usual suspects in his company tonight. She gets up and leans down to give him a hug, being beckoned over by her other friends to hit the dance floor - something everyone's given up on trying to drag Tom into.

Alone again and being joined by - not Pam, not even looking like that - a familiar face, Bruce sits to one side of the alcove and nods in greeting, inviting her to sit down if she'd like. (Or loom over him, it's cool either way.)

[mayqueen]

Ivy would loom. Her alter ego for the evening sits down next to him in the alcove and carefully brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

(Ivy hates masks, but her secondary superpowers involve hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.)

"Attending with friends?" The question of someone who knows the answer and has a generous definition of 'friend'.

[caballero]

"If you like." Not a correction, but not really an agreement, either. He showed up at the behest of others, but he's still a free agent, and one that isn't into the club scene. (At least the view is nice, enough to remind him how much he likes heights; the magic barrier means he's not tempted to jump off just to see if he'd be able to find a way to survive.)

"Casing the joint?" Which is actually a joke, but Bruce isn't very funny.

[mayqueen]

"If you like." It's said offhandedly enough that it could be humor, but it's mostly true.

"Paula," she adds after a few silent moments. Might be nice if he knows to call her by the name she's been trading on all evening, in case they're interrupted.

[caballero]

"Paula." A faint smile. (It's like all of his real expressions barring 'pissed off' are faint. Huh.)

In contrast to the off-beat, terminal awkwardness he can display while attempting to be social without the playboy front, silence in Bruce's company is anything but awkward. He seems at ease, and unexpectant of anyone around him. He's got questions, sure, even if the hypothetical answers (if she'd give them) are ultimately meaningless and only the product of his compulsive want to know things - for now, it's fine to be quiet. It's a good place for it.

[asklepios]

Ivy may recognize the woman coming towards her now - barefoot, carrying her shoes, her hair more tousled than it was earlier in the evening for perfectly innocent reasons of 'hurling herself bodily off the platform to see what happens next', smiling - from the brief, significant exchange she had with Bruce just after he noticed Ivy's presence himself. She seems far more at home socially here than he does, sliding between moments with a natural ease, understated and encouraging familiarity without courting the center of attention.

(Despite the dress, yes.)

“I hope you don't mind,” she says, her English accented - Hungarian and French blend, with subtler elements that are nigh-impossible to discern for even the most studied listener (she irritates Mycroft Holmes no end just by existing) - and her manner friendly without presumption. “We have an acquaintance mutually, who thinks perhaps we will get along? My name is Vanessza.”

--Bernát, increasingly recognizable philanthropist doctor and a Vault patron as well, actually.

[mayqueen]

"Our mutual acquaintance doesn't know nearly enough about me to be making those sorts of judgements," she says mildly, but she supposes that whoever Tom feels the need to nudge in her way might be proof of his intentions (or whatever he wants her to believe his intentions are). Either way, tonight isn't a night to be burning bridges.

"Paula Irving." Or she is tonight. She doesn't doubt that her day-to-day identity has already been shared, though.

[asklepios]

Benevenuta doesn't blink at the alias; there are certain kinds of hypocrisy that she indulges in, but startling at pseudonyms is not one of them and would be a little bit too precious of her, with her own lengthy experience. Pleasant as she remains, though, she dials it down a notch in light of Ivy's mildness- 'pushy' is not what she's known for, taking her cues from the people around her.

“He has a gift for presumption,” she says, a little glib, wryly and casually affectionate. “But maybe he only means I am the more likable, of he and I - Dr Vanessza Bernát, properly, with the Thames Foundation and Madrasati.” The former being in essence a passive aggressive middle finger raised to the local establishment by way of bureaucracy, which might have something to do with Bruce steering these two women toward one another. Potential common ground, at least in the two of them both already having painted targets on their own backs.