not_a_goddamn_princess | MASQUERADE PARTY, 33 Apocalypse Ave, Friday Evening

Party night. The best of nights. An ornate sign on 33 Apocalypse’s door invited all to knock and make themselves known.

The space inside was bigger than it looked from the outside, stretched and displaced by magic. The wallpaper was green and textured, hinting at the English countryside. On one side of the room sat a significant bar offering food and drinks, while the other gave ample space to sit. A large Jenga tower held prominence in a corner.

It was easy to miss it, though, in favor of the little streams of water that ran across furniture and floor. Tiny glass gondolas, animated by magic, made their way back and forth across each stream. The gondolas were real, though the water itself was an illusion. It called attention to the ceiling, doubly enchanted: both to draw all cigarette smoke to itself so it wouldn’t blow in anyone’s face, but also to mimic the starry sky above Venice.

You could watch the stars twinkle, or see the occasional cloud go by. Magical fireflies added to the illusion, dancing through the air like tiny lights. If you listened closely, you could hear the sea rolling in across an invisible beach. Even the air smelled faintly of it: the sea, warm food and good wine.

Welcome to Eliot and Margo’s pad, people. They’d make damn sure you had a good time.

[ocd up, come party!]

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Miguel rolled his eyes. Hey, a flask was still classier than drinking from the bottle.

He filled the tumbler and downed it with a grimace, then did it again. Then waited a few seconds until he could feel it start to work. He poured another glass and sipped at this one as he spoke, keeping up enough of a buzz that, combined with the times he'd told this story before, muted it a bit.

"So, I was a dick, right? I mean, I kind of still am, but - a bigger one. Trying to build superspies for the nasty megacorp. Boss decided on human trials. Wouldn't listen we weren't ready. It was...bad. Super shocked...fucked up."

“Did people explode? That happens sometimes.”

Eliot was definitely not thinking about how he and Margo had experienced his own fucked up failure at jacking up their power. . . .

He was definitely tucking his flask away again though. Just in case.

Miguel looked a little green. "Less exploded, more..." he gestured, "melted. Still alive. For a minute." He shook his head and downed a little more vodka. "So, I went to my boss, and I said I quit! Not doing that anymore, leave me out."

Eliot nodded. “A valid course of action.”

"Right?" Miguel gestured with his vodka and refilled the glass. "And he said, 'Great! No problem! Only I've just dosed you with this great drug that binds to your DNA and is instantly addictive, and oh, yeah, we're the only legal supplier. Why don't you go home and think about things?' Shocking asshole."

Eliot opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“. . . Well shit.”

At least Eliot had been allowed to come about his various addictions the regular way.

"Yeah." Miguel took another drink and a deep breath. "So, I figured - the drug is genetically addictive. Like, in your genes. Except that rewriting genes is what I do, and what kind of overconfident asshole would I be if I wasn't using my own DNA as a template for things, right? So I'll just sneak into work, load up my non-addicted template, rewrite my current DNA with the original, all is good. What could go wrong?"

It was Marvel. So, so many things.

“. . . I can think of a few things.”

There was a reason magicians in Eliot’s world usually only used illusion magic on themselves. And why healing magic wasn’t anywhere near as miraculous as it was always portrayed to be in media.

Miguel snorted. "Sure, you say that now. But the alternative was...well." He gestured to try to encompass 'being addicted to hallucinogens and controlled by your evil boss to keep melting people alive'.

"You're fucked either way. I'm familiar with the sensation."

"Right." Miguel nodded. "So, better to be fucked on my own terms, right? So, into work, load my own DNA, get in the chair, start it all up."

He nodded. "So, all those ways you could think of for it to go wrong, do any of them involve a jealous coworker and about fifty percent spider DNA?"

". . . No, they mostly involve aggressive cancers and possibly your skin melting off."

"Nah, most cancers are curable in my time. Skin melting was valid, though." He finished off his drink and set the glass and empty bottle down, now the nasty parts were over.

"So it hurt a lot. Probably goes without saying. It did cure the addiction, though! So that was good. Just ended up with a lot of other things, too." He grinned and pointed at his fangs. "Oh, and I'm venomous. Also still just a little drunk. I'll have to remember that stuff."

"You're . . . venomous." Eliot nodded slowly. "That must make life interesting. And you're welcome. Always glad to help someone get a little tipsy."

Edited 2021-10-24 00:31 (UTC)

Miguel shrugged. "Have to mumble everywhere but Fandom, but other than that, you'd be surprised how little biting people comes up as a problem. At least it's hard to do it on accident."

"Well, it does limit some options in bed," Eliot said.

"Oh, I can bite without the venom," Miguel assured him. "They're not the biggest problem, anyway. Didn't take long to get used to them, comparatively."

He set one hand on top of the empty bottle to keep it from moving, then wrapped the other hand around its middle and did a quick flick of his wrist. The top of the bottle came off, cleanly cut from the rest. "These were the challenge." He held up his hand and wiggled his fingers.

Eliot flinched back, ever so slightly.

“And yet so useful for bottle dismantling.”

"Bottles, cars, people, buildings..." Miguel shrugged. "Shredded my sheets and clothes. Hence the outfit. Only non-shreddable thing I owned." He snickered. "I went to visit a friend. She had some weird bed with water in it. Startled me, I dug in. Put holes right through it."

“You . . . popped a waterbed. Troubling.”

Miguel laughed. "Hey, I'd never seen one of the stupid things before! Apparently it's some weird twentieth century artifact. They don't still have them, do they?"

"I'm sure some severely tacky rich mogul somewhere still has them. I believe they were one of many mistakes of the 1980s."

"For fuck's sake, why?" Miguel asked. "I mean, okay, I'm assuming most people don't puncture them, but still."

MASQUERADE PARTY, 33 Apocalypse Ave, Friday Evening

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