#cor masquerade

limited to 3 - 3/3

Rose lifted her water bottle to her lips and then lowered it. She'd brought it as back up -- just in case there weren't sealed beverages offered. As she lifted the cap to the bottle opening, it slipped from her hands. "Fuck." She hissed as she stooped to the ground to grab it. In an effort to retrieve the bottle cap, she bumped into someone, which caused her mask to fall from her face.

"No, no, no!" Rose's desperate plea rang out as she grabbed her mask to try to put it back on but the effort was futile. The spell was already broken and her identity was revealed. Still, she situated it onto her face, in hopes that it would help even if it only covered part of her face.

"Whoah, the suit. Oohnh." She says. The groan? Suggestive, yes - maybe purposely. She's been eyeballing Artemis since she got here. She doesn't want to crowd them, but she doesn't want to ice them out either. It's been... well, it's been fucking with her this whole time. She downs, what, flute number three? It doesn't matter, she hasn't really gotten properly drunk off of champagne in years. She hands it to some guy whose been yapping her ear off for five minutes as she decides to stop pining and start chopping wood. The guy looks at the flute shoved into his hands, and then to her, perplexed. "Figure it out, you're smart." She says, and gathers up her gown to close the space, weaving through the paper faces and tulle gowns and pleated pants until she's close enough to be heard but not close enough to jumpscare them; something she's learned to avoid since running into Arte where they work.

KEVIN MA — masquerade; august 2024

ARTE RYAN — masquerade; august 2024

He's a long ways off when the Reardon man makes his big display, gloving a man's hunter mark off and tossing him into the midst of a pack of hungry vampires. The scent of blood that fills the air afterwards is not lost on him, nor is it unwelcome, but, well, he's not about to fight his way into the middle of a moshpit like that.

Still; incredibly entertaining in the least, worth of applause, in both the literal and figurative sense, as much as he might hate to admit it.

"Fucking diabolical, that guy." He says with a clap, and leans over to whoever it is next to him. "Couldn't have done it better myself. That's how you send a message."

Every time she thinks she's okay she thinks about something else that just proves she isn't. Monsters. They're monsters! Is Morgan one of them, too? How many of them just watched? How many of them were licking their lips. And Laure. What was that? And the other woman, the other woman who instigated all of this? She can't even find her again - and what would she do if she did? Yell at her? She'd probably tell her to walk off a bridge, and clearly, Autumn'd just do it like she'd done everything else. And Aria. Aria is one of them. She's trying not to sob, because she's not meant to, not allowed to. It's only half working. They must have rented out the entire damned hotel for this stupid event, and she's too afraid to just leave, so she finds some quiet place and sits and wonders 'what next'. The Ball is very much still going on. She hears it, she sees people from whatever corner she's holed up in. She doesn't want to be here anymore.

It's infuriating, this fucking city and its little whirlpool melting pot of monsters. She misses her roadbound days of tracking down His cavalier and incautious flunkies, who did little to cover their tracks and less to keep her specifically from finding them. Port Leiry truly has presented an uninvited roadblock in so many ways. She's on the lookout for somebody, anybody that sticks out, from any of the photos she'd found on the dead pimp's phone. From any of the names she'd found in his little black book. Hollow comfort, the fact she has a place to squat for now, even if its only until his people realize he's not coming around anymore. Worse is the hangup on just how she can gather information at a masquerade where something is making it unusually hard to see past even the most flimsy mask. The full body's worth of vampiric blood she'd gorged herself on days prior is on its last legs here, and she feels fang itch and mind clouding. "Couldn't just be a normal fucking masquerade." She grumbles under her breath.