Session 143 - Party Rockers In The House Tonight

Previously, Across the Horizon...
The goal: Help Celeste become a full-fledged member of the Nanab Foundation.
The method: Have Yves spearhead a plan that involves social interaction with as many people as possible.
The result: Huge success.
Thalatte is no stranger to parties, and Yves is no stranger to chemicals that help people not be strangers.
With the immediate goal being the loosening of lips and the chilling of vibes, the party has achieved that and more with the good fortune to find their target on site; Lynn Fairband, considered the only real challenge to Celeste's spot, at least until the Foundation's Board decided that being attacked by militants was the fault of the victim, actually.
We join our brave adventurers as they try to learn more about what lies beyond the fog of war for their navigator...
**
Lynn Fairband tries not to giggle right in Linnet's face, but water trickling down the sylph's neck from underneath the mask is more than she can bear. "It's really great!" she manages. "I'm so glad my friends dragged me out for it!"
"So glad you're having a good time! I know the organizers put a lot of work into it." Linnet swipes ineffectually at the water. "I don't know why I thought that was a good idea. Closed dark spaces are never really my thing, though, and it gets very warm on the dance floor."
Zamarud produces a small towel from inside his third of a shirt. It smells like a spring day on a beach. "Dance floor?" he says, politeness all but forgotten in the heady anticipation of physical exertion.
"You haven't gone inside and danced yet? I'd have thought you'd be all over that. Whatever they did with the lights is just magical."
"Top priority has been Lynn here!" He hesitates, halfway up from his seat. "But... dance floor?"
"Dance, Zed," the third member of their group, Mogaret, says. "Bring me something fizzy on your way back."
Linnet chuckles and slings a (mostly dry) arm around Lynn's shoulders as Zed makes an expeditious exit.
Zamarud tries and fails to convince Bast, Orrey, Yves, and two other nearby people to go dance with him. At least one person watches him go with a wistful sigh, though.
"You look uncomfortable at the thought of a dance floor. Which I absolutely understand. You get most of my best friends in range of a dance floor and you'd think it was covered in scorpions. So what do you do when you're not letting Shirtless McGee drag you out to all-night raves?" Linnet remains casually bubbly while trying to gauge how loose Lynn's feeling under the influence of...influences.
"Work, mostly," Lynn says.
"We don't talk about work tonight," Mogaret says.
"It's all I do!" Lynn replies.
"I'll sing it at you again," Mogaret warns her.
"I already decided against the scorp...scoping out the dance floor until I'm done with drug distribution," Yves protests, sliding down onto the ground with his mostly depleted basket in his lap.
Zamarud's entreaties and departure seem to wake Bast up somewhat from his slumped-over contemplation of the fountain from his pillow. He speaks up, slowly and enunciating each word like it's a little island of its own. "Excuse me. But. Does anyone know what day this is?"
"Hm. So what's the prohibition on talking about work? Too fascinating, too confidential?" Linnet is all ears.
There's a suspicious person lurking around the fringe of the venue. Supicious because they're lurking, but also suspicious in their expression. They're dressed in a rather well-put-together, albeit bookish style, with sharply creased trousers cuffed above chunky heels and a cravat over the collar of their vest. With their hair up in a chignon and a pair of large round eyeglasses, it would take several moments for the crew of Starfall to recognize Luca. And almost no chance for anyone else to.
"I have this big deadline at the end of the week--" Lynn starts.
Mogaret visibly deflates into the bottom corner of the porch swing, her pompom drooping onto her chin. "Ugh," she groans.
"Hey, when there's something consuming all your waking thoughts, it's pretty difficult to change the subject," Linnet sympathizes with them both. "And I'm assuming the influences aren't doing it for you? Rather than more influences, why don't you tell a willing listener a little bit about it, and see if it's easier to relax?"
"Yeah, sorry, this stuff never really has an effect on me," Lynn says sheepishly. After losing herself watching a fast-moving constellation for a moment, she continues. "I'm at the Nanab Foundation, and I have a presentation to give in four days. And I really should be practicing, but--"
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh." Mogaret 's shoulders are lower to the ground than her hips.
Yves levers himself upright, walks over to Mogaret, and holds the basket out to her. "Cure for what ails you?"
"Or take her dancing with Shirts Optional," suggests Linnet, winking. "Is this 'I've practiced so much I can do it in my sleep' or 'I can't bring myself to practice'?"
"I'll take two," Mogaret replies. "Just dump 'em on me."
Yves presents Mogaret with one sealed little cup. Then opens a second, and ceremoniously pours it over her. Into her mouth, onto her face, kinda depends on how she angles her face, really.
Bast starts to raise a finger in the air as if to get the generous viera host's attention, but seems to get distracted partway by the fact that he has fingers.
To Linnet, Mogaret says, "It's all she's been doing for weeks now. Zed wasn't in town she'd still be going through it. Yeah, yeah, biggest day of your life, sponsor says it's so important, you don't want to forget anything--" she pauses to swallow, then hiccup, then make a series of faces before settling into droning torpor. "We get it. You're gonna fuck up if you don't relax. So put something up your nose and relax."
"Different smokes for different folks," opines Linnet, notwithstanding that very little of tonight's banquet is smokable. "Hence, proposing a different listener so you can take a break. Possibly with one very handsome lop-eared couerl here." Linnet ruffles Yves' ears in a very dignified fashion.
Yves sits on the edge of the fountain, and squints into his basket. "Okay, try this one," he decides, offering Lynn a paper twist full of a sparkly purple powder. "Should work better for your physiology than the drinkable ones." He grins below his mask--it only covers the upper half of his face, tied in place at the base of each lop ear--at Linnet. "Don't ask me to make couerl noises, they do not sound dignified."
"Dignity is optional. Especially on a night like this."
Yves also slides a cup identical to the ones delivered (variously) to Mogaret over toward Bast. For actual drinking or just part of the display. Either way.
Bast looks at it for a moment, then raises it briefly to touch it to his forehead, leaning forward in a slight bow, before settling back down with hands curled in his lap around the unopened cup.
Lynn examines her strange powder before finally charging forward into the breach. "It's this big presentation at the Nanab Foundation," she says. "I'm up for membership, and so long as I don't screw up the presentation my patron says I have it guaranteed. But that just means I'm going to mess it up and disappoint him! I can't do that!"
"How big of a mess-up are we talking? Like, mispronounce one name, or set the building on fire?"
Yves contemplates the listed options. "Maybe if you bring drugs for everyone at the presentation, they won't notice if you mispronounce a name. Or, depending on the drugs, if you set the building on fire, though in that case, maybe bring drugs and some, huh, hoses or something?" He waves a hand vaguely.
("Excuse me," says the bookish person to the first elbow they could grab. "I'm looking for a viera. One ear like this, lots of piercings?")
("I think over by the fountains? They have such a good mask on. Go check out that mask! It's so good!")
("Thank you so much!")
"The last girl set the building on fire. Basically," Lynn says. "But she's so much smarter and more well-traveled than I am. She deserves it more than I do."
"...well, I thought I was kidding. Is this a once in a lifetime sort of presentation, or are you just waiting another year if something goes horribly wrong?"
"I'd never get another shot," Lynn laments.
"I've never set a building on fire," Yves says thoughtfully. "I mean, not during a presentation. That I recall. It must take some real effort to present your way into flames. Maybe if I was presenting on arson techniques and did a live demonstration?"
"It wasn't a literal fire," Mogaret mumbles. She's much more relaxed now. "Just nearly got killed, is all."
"I guess I just don't see the appeal of anything that horribly constraining and competitive. They better be a really prestigious bunch of persnickety so-and-sos, to be worth putting yourself through this."
"Oh, well... That I've done during a presentation or two," Yves admits. He idly opens up a cup from his basket, and downs the contents. "They asked me to leave undergrad, but it wasn't because of that presentation, so I'm sure you'll be fine, so long as you don't actually die while presenting. I mean maybe they'd still admit you at that point but it wouldn't be very satisfying, so try to avoid that too!" He sounds so earnestly supportive. Maybe he even is earnest about this.
"... sweetheart, stop helping."
"Oh no!" Lynn turns (slowly) to give Yves her full attention. "What happened?"
("Hi, I'm trying to find my friend? Long braid, smells a bit like pie spice, doesn't touch the ground?")
"The topic I was supposed to present on was really boring, so I decided to jazz it up a bit and show how the whole process could be so much cooler if we deployed some new experimental magitech tools in the laboratory, and then I forgot that the table at the front of the classroom was made of a completely different material than the one in the lab, so it didn't have the strength to--I mean, I didn't get that near death, pretty much it's just that the podium collapsed and there was some shrapnel, and, you know, it wasn't so bad," Yves says, still perfectly sincere. "I got a job right after that even without a degree, and that's after I said some very honest but not very politic things to the discipline committee. It worked out really well in the long run!"
"...this may not be the person you want to go to for advice on presentations. Or people skills."
("Hmm? Oh yeah, her, she's -- you go down there, then left there, down over there, then through there and you're there, something like that.")
("Oh, you're a lifesaver. Thanks!")
"I'm better at parties than academic presentations," Yves admits. "Just a matter of finding my, uh, niche, you know?"
"That's it. Maybe we've all got a niche we need to find. Twelve know I haven't really figured out mine yet."
"I'm so glad you're still working in a field you care about," Lynn says sincerely. "I just need to make sure this goes smoothly. I really should -- I really should go practice. Tell Zed thank you for me, Mogaret!"
Mogaret is too blissed out to formulate an effective rebuttal.
"Wait, before you go...I just want to make sure you have a backup plan. If you do everything right and this group decides they don't like the color of your blazer or something and don't let you in. I don't know. I just...I worry about single plans getting derailed and then finding yourself lost." Linnet looks abashed.  "I realize we've just barely met, but you seem so passionate about what you do and I just hope there's multiple ways it could work out."
("Hey, sorry to butt in. Purple hair, probably sketching something, seen him?")
Linnet hugs her knees and looks a little deflated. "I worry about pinning your life's plans on the will of faceless unknowns."
("You know him? Can.... can you introduce me?")
Lynn blinks twice. "A backup plan? Y-yeah, I have one. Of course I have one." She laughs awkwardly. "Nice meeting you!" She then hurries off, veering ten degrees to the left until correcting it at the last moment.
"She seems nice," Yves says blithely. "I hope her presentation goes really well."
Linnet puts her head on her knees and sighs. "That stupid Foundation is going to destroy them both. Mogaret, right? What's your take on this group your friend is applying to?"
Twenty-three seconds later Mogaret's eyes focus on Linnet. After another six seconds, "seem nice."
Linnet pats Mogaret's knee and hears a familiar voice. Upon searching, there's no familiar face, or blade, to go with it. Finally, she zeroes in on a thoroughly costumed..."That can't be..." Unfolding herself from the edge of the fountain, she glides through the crowd toward Luca.
"Um, sure, I guess? Did you want to meet him for..."
"Why would anyone not want to meet our charming artiste? Come, I'll bring you both to him." Linnet takes Luca's arm and whispers, "Nice wig."
Luca is pulled along, conspiratorially. "Wig? Hey, what's with the party?"
"Just go with it. We need to get you a mask from somewhere."
"If they were nice people, they would admit everyone who was good enough, not just one person at a time," Yves tells the stoned moogle. Also possibly the pseudo-stoned moogle. It's a general statement to people at the fountain.
A charming young man engages Orrey in eager conversation off to the side. Two onlookers start debating whether or not the artist can detect flirting, based on how the conversation has started.
(Linnet interjects a brief "no.")
Luca looks around, counts the masks, sighs. "I left all mine back on the ship. Is there an Ochu?"
"Ask Yves, I think he's best equipped." Linnet glides back to the conversation. "Found us a friend. Or several! And now Orrey's started a public spectacle over whether he ever knows he's being flirted with." She sighs. "I promise I was just trying to help, but there's something about this foundation stuff that just sucks people in. Maybe I'm just an insufficiently motivated adult person, but...it's a little creepy."
"He does, but he acts like he doesn't, because that works for him," Luca offers as a theory, then waves. "Hi!"
"I really wasn't trying to destroy either of their dreams, just...set up something else to do if they miss that one goal because a bunch of stuffy jerks in bow ties decide they're insufficiently stuffy and jerkish."
Yves produces a backup mask from below the drugs in the basket. It's just a black domino, but it does count, on a technicality. "Hi! You wear glasses?"
Luca trades the glasses for the domino. "It'd be really weird if I just put them on to make people misremember my face, wouldn't it."
"Yeah, it'd mess with your vision and everything." Has Yves had some of his own drugs, or is he just like this at parties? Some sort of study with more data points would be required to be sure.
"Right? Super weird." Luca looks around, and selects Mogaret. "Oh no! Are you giving a proposal? No wonder you look so miserable."
"Nah," comes the eventual reply. "I'm in a band."
"Oh, buddy," Yves says sympathetically, and lines up two more little cups beside Mogaret before standing up. "I should circulate," he says, nudging Linnet with a knee on the way.
"Oh," Luca replies, trying to hide their disappointment. "That would explain it too."
Bast looks at the cups, makes a faint thinky noise, and slowly puts the one Yves gave him earlier next to them.
"Wait, it would? You don't happen to know Falcom One, do you?"
"Opened for them eight months back," Mogaret replies.
"Uh, of course I do...oh you weren't talking to me," Luca says.
Yves does not so much circulate as seek out a relatively private nook where a group of people could have a quick conspiracy chat while looking casual about it. Which is to say, pretty much the same sort of private nook he'd find for doing a drug deal at a party that was a bit less chill about said things.
Now cupless, Bast looks around for some explanation to his presence here. Not finding one, he mutters to himself "...did I forget the fish...?", slowly finds his feet with a firm hold on the lip of the fountain, and makes his wobbly way inside the house.
"Sorry for getting your friend talking work back there; I was honestly trying to help, but I'm not sure I did much. How'd you two get together, anyway?" Linnet takes her seat again next to Mogaret.
"Uni," Mogaret says. Whatever concoction Yves gave her is stretching her vowels out. She's not going to be a pleasant conversation partner until this passes.
Linnet curses under her breath. "All right, let me keep track of everyone. Purple Hair's the center of attention over there, Gloombunny is distributing more samples, the Cap'n seems to have wandered back inside...I should go after him and make sure he finds his feet okay. You gonna be okay out here?" That last is directed at Luca, so far nicknameless.
"Oh, I'll be fine. I'm going to go find my friends, I've got some news for them but got a little distracted by the party."
"Parties will do that." Linnet follows in Bast's unsteady footsteps.
Luca waits a minute or two, for pretense, before wandering in that direction as well.
One cramped, smelly broom closet later...
Luca can't hold it in any longer. "GHOST. TRAIN."
"I don't want to destroy that presentation," Yves says, "now I feel bad about it and also like maybe this whole institution is dubiously ethical, which means--" This line of discussion is derailed entirely by Luca's outburst. "What, another one?"
The chocobo mask probably approximats Bast's expression reasonably well as he looks at Luca. "Explain?"
"...how much of Yves' concoctions are you two on?"
"Another one? The one! The Phantom Train! That's Fairbrand's presentation, she claims she's found it! Where it lairs."
"I've only had one drink," Yves protests. "(Also a few candies and three completely undoctored cinnamon rolls, those pretty much cancel the rest out.) --wait, the ghost train that kidnapped Orrey's dad?"
"...I have so many questions. Most of which involve expletives. So. How are you planning to use that information?"
"That was...ghosts? Or is this another train entirely?"
"I don't know if it was ghosts! I thought that was the mysterious train that--" Yves waves hands around. "How many weird evil trains do we have traversing the land these days anyway? Is it a whole trend that I just hadn't heard about? Is that where that poor tonberry who didn't die properly went? I don't know anything about trains! I just ride them, I don't hunt them!"
"Wait what?"
"Orrey's dad was kidnapped by an evil train," Yves says. "...or did you mean the undying tonberry? Still not sure what was up with that. I have no idea if he was involved with trains, ghost or otherwise, before or after that point."
"Explanation for another time. Seriously, though, what are we going to do with that? Wait and see how the presentation goes? Use the information against her somehow? Discredit it? Give Celeste an even more world-shattering schpiel than that one?"
"I think the stated problem with Celeste's first schpiel was too much shattering," Yves mutters.
"Really, what is it about this Foundation that makes people willing to..." (Linnet trails off grumbling about academic exclusivity and people who wouldn't know their arses from their elbows outside their particular ivory towers.)
"...hey wait do you think if a lot of the board is forced to retire, they'd need more recruits and would accept two people? That way we could be ethical about it, and everyone wins."
"...are you thinking Lynn and Celeste, or two of us to approve Lynn and Celeste?"
"Lynn seems nice, and she's got a ghost train, which seems neat," Yves says. "They should both get into the institution! And then burn it down." He absently opens one of the cups in his basket for a sip, and offers another to Luca. "Metaphorical burning, not actually setting it on fire. Change the whole system from the inside. What kind of ghost is this ghost train, Luca?"
(There continues a steady stream of muttered subvocal comments about "mortgage your soul" and "stuck-up over-tenured sticks in the mud" and "insufficiently fireproof building.")
"The phantom kind. Look, her advisor, this Osvald? Probably a phony. Definitely micromanaging her proposal. So there may be cracks that could be poked and prodded at there."
"So, get him in here, stone him off his tail, and stick him in a closet until it's over?"
"Mm this doesn't seem like his sort of event..."
"Anything on Celeste's advisor? Could we just get the two of them to cage fight it out? And sell tickets?"
Yves downs the rest of his chosen tiny beverage, and drops the empty cup in his basket. "Okay, but is--has our goal stayed the same? Is our purpose still to get Celeste into this place instead of Lynn? Because. I. I mean, I feel bad about this now? I'm not sure if I should, but I do? Not about doing bad things to the people already in the institute, a lot of them seem terrible, all for pulling apart her advisor, but what about all the work she did that's legit?"
"Look, my goal is to make sure both of them have a life where they can pursue their chosen fields, and this doesn't feel like it for either of them, but when I tried to mention that to Celeste she stormed off. Which is fair, I wasn't very diplomatic about it. I should take part of tomorrow and pry into their archives, see if I can find something in the rules that lets both of them in. Because this is just setting them up to sabotage each other, and that's stupid. And I don't want to encourage that sort of practice in academia any further than it's already entrenched. Twelve above, no wonder my brother bailed on Saine as soon as he got the chance."
"Maybe we could just talk Lynn into joining our crew and go off to investigate the ghost train with her," Yves says wistfully. "Maybe the ghost train is actually an Esper or something, who knows? We could talk to it, see what's up with... whatever it does, I'm still actually really unclear on that point? What makes that train ghostly?"
Luca thinks about this for a moment, and then shrugs. "If I'm being honest, I don't have an outcome I'm invested in here. I like Celeste and I'd be happier if she were happier, but I don't really care how that happens." To Yves, "No clue! I couldn't poke too hard at her proposal because that was talking about something that wasn't Osvald and that just would not stand."
"...as in, she worships the ground he walks on, or she's scared stiff of him?"
"As in, he's a thundering egotist and anytime I tried to change the subject to something other than him, he dragged it back."
"Oh, wait, you were talking to him. My sympathies, and my renewed cage match proposal."
Yves wrinkles his nose. This is not visible, on account of the mask. "Ugh, one of those types. New subgoal, let's destroy him regardless."
"I will do what I do best and pore into notes, but the rest of y'all should do something outside the library. Possibly involving inspecting the Foundation building for weaknesses, or the board members. Same idea."
"He probably deserves it," Luca agrees. "I'm like three-to-one that he's running a scam on the whole institution. Or at least working an angle."
"Are we actually going to set the building on fire?" Yves asks, in a tone of general curiosity. "That's probably easier than the scorpion launching plan, but I'm not sure it gets Celeste the gig."
"Not sure digging up whatever Oswalt's into does either, but I can look into it. We got anything on the Board so far?"
"Try his family. His wife's been dead for years, and he says he has no kids, but he also mentioned taking care of his family."
"...it might be a decent idea to get Celeste's take on the board in general and her advisor specifically, but one of you people who hasn't recently pissed her the hell off should do it."
"No board info yet from me, but I can mingle now that everyone's high and chatty," Yves says. "It's so much easier to talk to people who aren't sober."
"Who they are, what people know about them, what sort of rumors people have heard, anybody else they might have pissed off lately. Should be enough to start with."