lucetilogs | and the bass keeps runnin runnin

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and the bass keeps runnin runnin

Who: Anyone who heard the announcement, caught a flier in the plaza, of heard by word of mouth. Everyone's welcome!
What: A rave! Well, "rave." Luceti makes everything a little different.
When: June 21st, nightfall to early morning
Where: the beach near Adele's house
Summary: It's the first day of summer! This calls for bonfires, naturally, but why not spice it up with loud music, flashing lights, drinks, dancing, and a conspicuous lack of curfew?
Rating: PG to PG-13, please move anything steamier to appointments ~~or Adele will take the hose to you~~

Getting all the firewood, food, and drink out to the beach had been, honestly, the hardest part of preparation. Whatever else one might say about running things on magic, it certainly did cut down on the trouble of constructing edifices and machines to run the entertainment side of a party. As it stands, the setup is labour-intensive but otherwise minimal, and there's not much to do by sunset. Escape the house before Max and Zevran, the culture-displaced madmen, can put any more eyeliner on him. Arrive at the beach. Light the bonfires. Make sure the bonfire-cooking-compliant food is set out. Put up a table loaded with bottles, cups, ice, and permanent markers. Thank the resident doctor and quartermaster once more. Plug in the stereo system.

The speakers and light show have been with him since he left his house, in the form of the resident god of mischief, and they confer over sheets of paper with track names and times written on them for a little while just before the start. That's the last of it, and by the time the sky above the mountains is beginning to darken into twilight, the first thumping, trilling strains of dance music begin to echo out across the sand.

It's the shortest night of the year. Best make every second last.

[OOC: Feel free to post your character for mingling, since this entire event is very free-form anyway. For everyone's enjoyment there is a drinks table, food, several bonfires, the ocean (lifeguards not on duty, splash drunkenly at your own risk), and of course a dancing area with lights and music. Music will probably be primarily EDM with a heavy bass line, but occasionally wander into the territories of electro-swing and the like to give even less modern partygoers a chance to show off. The light show as well will stray out of the typical at times, with the expected abstract wheeling and flashing lights giving way to more complicated illusions. Don't be surprised to find yourself and your fellows occasionally dancing in a forest glen or a Rivendell look-alike for a few minutes at a time. Loki is working the tech booth, after all.

The party will go as long as people stay and are enjoying themselves, so have fun and tag around!]

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[For Elizabeth, she wants, desperately wants, to be normal. To not be looked at like some creature or animal, to be treated as a person. In Luceti, fortunately everyone has treated her like they would anyone else. She's quite at ease, despite the fact that she's trapped. At least she's trapped with things to learn and good people to meet.]

[She's engaging in both those things now--so maybe she doesn't know Gai well enough to make a call on his character, but she doesn't back away when Gai puts his hand on her waist. Someone initiated contact with her. Someone was touching her and not to hold her down while they put on restraints.]

[Elizabeth looks up at Gai, expression a complete whirlwind of surprise and trepidation and gratitude and curiosity. Her hand goes back up to his shoulder and she just... stays there for a moment.]

Last time when I didn't know a dance, someone led me. Can you lead? [She smiles, realizing that maybe she should take a break from her wild dancing style.]

I wouldn't have made the offer if I didn't plan on it.

[What he isn't saying is that he'd initially planned on doing a lot more than just dancing if she'd been amenable to it, but now... now it would just feel wrong. He can't take advantage of someone, especially not someone as innocent and inexperienced as Elizabeth. And even though she's eager to learn, it WOULD be taking advantage of her to want more than just a dance, and he knows that.

So he shelves his plans of doing anything beyond dancing tonight and smiles at her, pulling her a little closer.]

This'll be a rock-and-roll number.

[But he knows she won't mind given how enthusiastically she was bouncing around. Hope she doesn't mind him launching right into an equally energetic dance, although this is more a modified version of swing than anything else.]

[Elizabeth is about to ask what that means when Gai pulls her into something very spirited, and very fun. She struggles to keep up for the first minute or so, but then figures out how fast Gai expects her to move and how he indicates where she should go.]

[Then they're off. Elizabeth has never had so much fun dancing before--it's fast and Gai is moving Elizabeth effortlessly across the sand in ways she'd never seen or read about before. And when she doesn't think she can't be surprised again, something changes and Gai is going in a different direction. It delights her and she doesn't stop following him until she finally trips and collapses against Gai when she can't move quickly anymore. She's laughing as she straightens up.]

Come on, let's sit for a minute--I need to breathe! [She laughs again and pulls on Gai's hand to lead him away from the dancing crowd.]

[Gai is fast on his feet and agile, things he has his martial arts training to thank, although she might not think quite as highly of his agility and footwork if she had any idea what he usually uses it for. To her credit, Elizabeth is keeping up quite well as he whirls her around, a fact made even more impressive by the fact that he's sort of just making a lot of this up as he goes along. It's a little bit of swing, a little bit of martial arts kata, and a lot of just plain moving to the music.

But they're both having fun, and that's all that matters.

When she trips against him, he's quick to stop, silently grateful for the break. As much as he tries to ignore the virus' effects, that doesn't make them go away. He needs the break about as much as she does right now.]

I'll let you lead for this.

[Which is a bit redundant seeing as she's already dragging him off, but details.]

[Elizabeth casts another amused laugh over her shoulder and leads them both to a log pulled up to one of the bonfires. She leaves Gai there with a quick 'I'll just be a moment!' and brings back something for them to drink. Of course she knows what beer and hard liquors and wine look like... what she brings back sure looks like soda to her....]

Which one? [She holds out two options for Gai to pick from.]

[It takes Gai a mere second to reach for the limeade; he's more of a beer and hard liquor guy himself, but hey, a drink is a drink, even if it is ridiculously colorful and girly.

And hopefully mild enough that she won't be keeling over midway through, as entertaining as the mental image may be.]

I haven't seen one of these since the last time I was out of Japan.

Really? [Elizabeth sits down next to him, at a respectable distance, and twists off the top of her strawberry 'soda'.] I haven't seen anything in this color before, so I grabbed it. [She shrugs a shoulder and takes a sip--]

[And her eyes widen slightly.]

[She swallows and looks as surreptitiously as she can at the bottle, licking her lips as though second-guessing what she's tasting in this drink. But now that she's taking a moment to read the label, it does have the word 'alcohol' on it. Right there.]

Where I'm from, it's 1912. I've never seen... this, ever. [Somehow, this is supposed to explain everything. She takes another sip from the bottle--it tastes good, at least.]

[That explains a lot of her culture shock right there. Her dress and manner of dancing had hinted at her being from an earlier era; what he hadn't known was just HOW much earlier. Almost a century and a quarter, to be exact.]

That's because drinks like that weren't invented until the late 20th century. I'm not sure of the exact date, just that it was a few decades before I was born.

[He pops the top off his own to take a sip before adding:]

It's 2039 in my world. Saying things are different then would be an understatement.

2039... [Elizabeth's eyes go wide. She'd already accepted the fact that some people were around a full century after 1912, but 2039?]

I would imagine... And asking how things are different probably wouldn't mean much to me, would it? I used to think Jules Verne was technology far-advanced. [She laughs and raises her eyebrows.] Then a few weeks later I was flying a spaceship in one of the simulator rooms.

[Rather than answer that, Gai decides to show her. With his free hand, he reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small device and, with a flick of his wrist and the press of a button, pulls up the holographic screen.]

This is what phones look like in my era.

[He knows that phones existed back in 1912, so it's an easy visual comparison to make.]

[Elizabeth leans in when the holographic screen opens up. It was clear, like a window. But it was a phone?]

[She gives Gai a wry smile and holds up her thimble-covered, severed pinky.] This is what passes for cosmetic surgery in my era. If I needed a phone in my pocket, I'd need a very long cord first.

[Gai doesn't even bat an eye when she shows him her pinky-- he's seen far worse things in his line of work than that. He'd noticed it while they were dancing but hadn't thought it prudent to bring it up. Maybe he'll ask about it eventually, but right now...]

It's a lot more than just a phone.

[He's scrolling through files on the screen now, looking for one particular one. At last he finds what he's looking for, and with a press of his finger, a video begins to play. He needs to turn the volume all the way up for it to be heard over the music of the rave, but it should be audible enough.]

[This she's seen before. Not the contents of the video, of course. But she's managed to see 'video' on the network, though she prefers solid audio or written methods. The fact that it can play on such a tiny device though, is fascinating.]

[Elizabeth leans over him, watching and listening. She has a million questions, of course.]

This music... [Somehow, it's pulled her away from the upbeat thumping she and Gai were dancing to earlier. She isn't smiling anymore, instead she looks almost sad. But music has always moved her, and she's always appreciated its influence.]

Do you like it?

[The video isn't what Gai is watching right now-- instead, he's studying Elizabeth's face to see her reaction to it. He knows the video (and the song) by heart now. And if it's making her feel sad, then it's doing its job, as that was the emotion he was going for when he wrote it. He'd spent hours tailoring the lyrics to get just the right message across, scrapped countless drafts, and he's still not entirely sure that he's satisfied with the final result.

Elizabeth seems to have no such reservations, however.]

[Once the song is over, Elizabeth looks back up at Gai. He was watching her... ]

[But that she can brush off. And she does.]

It speaks to me. It reminds me of a song I sang once.

[She looks back down at the phone, then back up at Gai. There are thousands of emotions behind her wide eyes, one song having opened the floodgates. There's more behind her smiles, so, so much more. One song and everything is toppling faster than Elizabeth can stop it.]

[She tries to smile again.]

Some things are the same, then. Some things I can understand.

I wrote it.

[And he can't deny that certain bit of pride in having induced such a torrent of emotion with the song. He's never been good at expressing things through words or actions, never been taught HOW to do it. Oh, sure, he's picked up basic social interactions and cues just by virtue of being exposed to the world, but actual emotions are still a foreign concept to him and he knows it.

He knows how to manipulate people and how to play with other peoples' emotions. He doesn't know how to deal with his own.]

You wrote it... [Elizabeth doesn't sound surprised, just nearly reverent. People did write music all the time, and it wasn't as though Elizabeth didn't think Gai could write music. But this is the first time she's met someone who could write music.]

[She looks down at the phone again, and back up again. And now there's a certain sharpness and knowing to her eyes.] What made you so sad, that you could write something like that?

Probably the same things that make people sad in your time. I doubt humanity has changed that much in a little over a hundred years.

[His own eyes are distant as he thinks back on his world. Quasi-military rule, the feeling that Japan wasn't capable of taking care of itself and needed someone better, someone stronger to guide it. The cycle was always the same: the strong adapted and survived, while the weak were selected out.

And through it all, they fought. That was the one unchangeable truth Gai had grown up with.]

[Elizabeth watches Gai for a moment, quiet, wondering. What really, truly made her sad?]

Most of the people I met after I escaped were either angry or afraid. The one person I met who was sad... was sad because he was alone. [Elizabeth takes the glowing necklace off of her head. Her heart isn't in that place right now.] And so was I.

[Sad, and alone.]

Edited 2013-06-26 06:57 (UTC)

Escaped?

[There's more to what she said, and this probably isn't the right part of her words to be focusing on. He knows that. But it's such an unusual choice of words that he can't help but be curious about what she means by that, in no small part because it resonates with his own experiences.]

[Elizabeth turns the necklace over and over again in her fingers, silent for a minute. It always came back to this, and it always would. She was at a party for God's sake, and it still came back to this.]

I grew up in six rooms, with no one talking to me or coming to see me. No one even came near me unless there was glass between us--and they could see me but I could never see them.

Then one day, a man fell through my ceiling, handed me a key... and I found out why I wasn't allowed to leave. They were afraid of me. And so they were watching me and praying I wouldn't get out.

[And Gai is silent for a moment in return. Not out of pity, as she most likely thinks, but out of understanding. A life like that is no life at all, as he well knows.]

I spent part of my childhood in a prison cell. They only took me out when they wanted to perform experiments on me-- I was unlucky enough to be the one who responded best to them. The unlucky ones didn't last long. [There's a decidedly wry edge to his smile.] I was Keido's pet, yet pet dogs are treated better than I was.

Eventually I'd had enough and escaped. I wasn't as lucky as you were to have someone come to my rescue.

[He says it as calmly as if he were discussing the subjects he took in school as a child. After all, the past is the past. It isn't something he can change.]

[Phones had changed. So had clothes, and marriage, and music, and transportation methods... how had her story still persisted over one hundred years later? How had Gai been pulled into her sad, terrible story? How had the lesson of her rebellion been lost or left unheeded?]

['The Lamb shall sit the throne, and drown in flame the mountains of man.']

I should have just burned it all to the ground.

[Mankind is truly a disease that slowly devoured itself. Comstock, Daisy, Fink, and this 'Keido'... They destroyed lives--and for what? For their 'visions' of the world? Humanity was filled with those self-serving who would destroy the lives of those who couldn't push back, and the rest wouldn't stand up against it.]

[The music feels loud now, feels like it's reverberating off of her organs. The glowing necklace is bending in her hand, reasons to raze everything below Columbia are piling up, she can hear Comstock's voice in her ears, preaching, demanding, FORCING her to listen. There's a blue crack of light hovering next to her shoulder, sliding open and shut like an eyelid blinking, like it can't decide whether to be open or closed.]

And then what? Do you really think that would have ended the cycle that's existed since humanity's birth?

[He's more than aware of what humanity is capable of-- he's seen and experienced the worst of it firsthand, been through things that he's never shared with anyone else and probably never will. Humanity is cruel and selfish, that much is truth. He'd be the last person to ever deny that. And, in truth, it probably makes him more than a bit of a hypocrite to have such distaste for humanity while fighting to save it. But one thing he has also learned is that there is good in people as well, and while it might not be as common as the selfishness and cruelty, it's something worth saving.

However, the rest of what he was going to say gets forgotten when he spots that strange blue light near Elizabeth's shoulder. Even though he has no idea what it is, his soldier instincts kick in almost before he's even aware of what he's doing.]

Get down!

[His movements are too fast to follow as he drops his bottle of limeade and springs at her, intent on getting her out of the way of whatever this bizarre blue light is.]

It might have. [Elizabeth's tone is bitter and torn while the tear over her shoulder continues to flex its muscle. She doesn't even notice it's there.] If there was no one left--

[For such a heavy topic, Gai's sudden shout startles Elizabeth out of her dark corner. Before she can ask why, he's knocked her over the log and onto the ground. Elizabeth gives a strangled cry as she and her bottle upend into the sand. The tear manifests the same instant Gai shouts at her, depositing the grainy, blue afterimage of a large wrench in the sand right next to her head.]

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