Survival Of The Fittest

((Dave Dearborn continued from Bible Discussion Study Meeting))

Hank J. Wimbleton was a mercenary of death. The hero-in-name-only of the faraway state of Nevada, he'd materialized in Salem for the briefest of respites from his ultraviolent quest. Dark eyes peered through goggles with crimson lenses. His clothes were black as the night, tied together with dark leather belts and a cloth mask seemingly prepared in advance for the COVID catastrophe. The Auditor would never find him here. Nor would the monstrous clown under his employ, green-skinned and grinning as it thrust its mighty stop sign through Hank's chest in a spray of poorly animated blood.

Parties were little more than painful reminders to Dave, yet here he stood: the doors to Danielle Bird's magnificent mansion. He'd forced himself here for his own sake — what good was high school if you didn't at least try to socialize, after all — but he'd be lying to himself if he said he wasn't drawn to the glitz and glamour of it all. That Halloween, despite its decidedly unholy, witchy reputation, had fallen on a Sunday this year didn't hurt either.

It had been five years, five months, and fourteen days since that fateful night. Standing out in the cold, dressed as the star of an infamous Newgrounds animation, Dave suddenly felt as though he were the only person in the world. Melissa was gone now, and neither she nor her friends would be there to urge him inside. A chill terror gripped at his heart, and he gritted his teeth in a rictus. The red goggle-eyes of Hank J. Wimbleton peered up at the skies above for guidance. He let out a breath filled with tension.

No. No, he couldn't. Everyone would be there. He needed to prove he could face his fears alone. Muttering a brief prayer under his breath, he reached out to grab the door with his fingerless gloves and threw it open.

Dave stepped inside to find, well, madness. He couldn't have chosen a more perfect costume for the occasion.

((Taylor Thorne continued from Taylor Commits A Time Misdemeanor))

There was this tumblr post, right, or maybe a tweet, it didn't really matter and there was barely a difference between those two anymore anyway. Tay was going to go with tumblr post, because it was the first thing they'd thought of. It was just a shitpost, anyway, and it went like this:

*me vibing at a party* Woo, this beat is... this beat is dandy!

Maybe they'd ad-libbed that a little. The point was! This beat, right now in real life, was dandy.

Taylor had taken up residence right near the entrance of Dani's house, kind of unofficially manning one of the tables where drinks were located. They'd been carefully concocting some Red Bull... concoctions. It kind of went against their brand, or whatever, but regular Red Bull tasted like basically nothing, which made it a better mixer than a lot of other energy drinks. They hadn't been asked to provide this service or anything, they'd kind of just gone for it because someone had to, right? And somebody had to keep an eye on what was being mixed, so two birds with one stone right there! Basic math!

They had gone for a twist on the classic witch for Halloween, mostly because it was easy, comfortable, and wouldn't stain if anything spilled. Taylor had been around the party block a time or two or five or five dozen, they knew how it all went down. They looked kind of dapper, if they did say so themselves (and they did say so). Black button-down, glittery silver vest, black pants, black pointy hat with a nice silver buckle to tie the whole look together. That was two whole colors coordinated, which was one more than Tay usually bothered with.

Along with playing bootleg bartender, they'd also been playing Walmart Greeter in between mixing drinks and sampling the mixes, bobbing and swaying in place along with the music that throbbed through the house. When a new figure slipped in the front door - all black save for the red goggles, nice, nice, nice - Taylor waved.

"Over here bro, come get y'all juice!" They giggled at their own non-joke, which was a sign that they were a liiiittle tipsy at this point. They planned to get a lot tipsy, and then probably closer to wasted than tipsy, so that was fine. The night was young, and all that.

Janice a new boy coming from outside. She mustered him and tried to figure out who the boy was under the costume. She couldn't really recognise him, but he looked buff.

Janice decide to approach him, in an attempt to figure out his identity. The witch hat approached Dave. She pointed her extended finger at the costume of the boy.

"Ooh, Star Wars, right?"

The music thrummed in Dave's ears as a pair of witches greeted him right at the door, the shorter one sharply dressed in a makeshift suit. The taller one got the source of his costume completely wrong, of course, but it didn't stop him from agreeing to save face. "Star Wars... yeah, that's right," he lied. Holding his gloved hand up to his masked mouth, he made a few exaggerated Darth Vader breaths.

Dave's eyes flitted over to the well-dressed witch and their mysterious fizzy drinks. Upon closer inspection, the contents of each cup looked like...

...Red.

The whole party was red, of course. Just one unfortunate side effect of Hank's goggles. The other, Dave soon found out, was a blatant suction mark they left around his eyes as he lifted the lenses onto his forehead.

Now able to see in full color, he could inspect the drinks: a warm, faintly fizzy amber, like the freshly pressed apple cider he loved on Thanksgiving. He was curious, of course. Was it truly an apple cider? Apple juice, its sickeningly sweet cousin? Was it witch's brew? Or, perhaps, something more sinister still?

Dave lowered his mask and flashed the two an easygoing, gleaming white grin. "Do either of you know what this is?" he asked, reaching over to pick up one of the unused party cups.

((Jennifer Farrow - Pregame Start))

Stepping out of the car into the presence of Dani's large mansion of a house, the first thing Jenny did was whistle to herself. Not bad. She never really visited Dani's house before, but a night to unwind would be a good idea. Not every day she gets to go to a party, after all.

Jenny walked to the door, clad in her Halloween outfit. Her face was painted almost full-white, like a skull, and she wore a black scarf along with a tight black cotton suit covering her entire body. The paint was the harder part. She was never good at any of that stuff. She was dressed as Harrow from Gideon the Ninth, which she just finished reading over the past month. Probably not something most people would know, nor would it be something people would expect her to wear. Oh well. That suits her. If she were going for recognition, she'd go as someone from a bigger franchise... like Star Wars or something.

As soon as she entered the mansion, one of the first groups she saw was someone dressed almost like a serial killer, clad in red goggles. The group looked like they just arrived too. Then she heard someone who said something about Star Wars. Even though she was pretty sure that was wrong.

Okay. You can do this. Just talk to them. Relax.

As casual as possible, Jenny walked on over to Goggles Boy. No idea who he was, but might as well start somewhere. He asked a question to the two that approached him, so Jenny decided maybe butting in with an answer might be as good an icebreaker as any.

"Probably something with a kick, right?" Jenny said with a smile to all three of them.

"You betcha," Taylor said, finger-gunning at Jenny as she appeared by Janice and goggle guy's side and commented on the drinks. Now that they could see slightly more than 5% of the guy's face, they, uh... no, actually, they still came up blank. Voice sounded familiar, big bulky guy, brown eyes, lacrosse player? Maybe. Girls were so much easier to identify. Maybe everyone could just go around and do introductions in a minute.

No wait, that was dumb. This wasn't the first day of class, everyone just wanted to drink and chill, not go around in a circle and share their name and like, two truths and a lie or whatever. They'd just have to hope it either came to them or someone else addressed him by name. Anyway!

Tay pointed at the drink that the guy had picked up. "That one is, uhhhh, Red Bull and sparkling cider? It tastes pretty good, it's all... apple-y. I had some earlier. Not from that cup, obvs, don't worry!" They gestured to the other cups spread out in front of them. "I've also got fruit punch and Red Bull and like... I dunno, something harder? I forget which thing. We've also got beer, but I haven't mixed that with anything, because beer is kind of nasty. In my opinion! You do you, if you like beer, but you're gonna have to add your own mixers."

Taylor's voice gradually picked up speed as they went, until they were back on their usual mile-a-minute pace, barely aware of how they were speeding along. They shot another glance at Jenny and her skeleton costume. It looked a little familiar. Hadn't they seen art like that while scrolling through Twitter the other day?

((Janice Cresner continued elsewhere))

Dave put the party cup to his lips and took a preliminary swig. Red Bull and apple cider sounded like a harmless enough combination — certainly, when his classmates were blatantly guzzling down bottles of beer! (Surely they understood the ramifications!) It never occurred to him that the sickly sweet concoction that passed his lips was just as alcoholic and ten times easier on the old taste buds.

"Kick, like... fizz?" he asked, rather stupidly, after having downed the entire cup.

The new girl was dressed like some sort of skeleton nobleman, if Dave had to guess. Between her and the stylish, androgynous witch who'd served the cider, he was beginning to feel a bit underdressed in the guise of the mighty Hank. Should he have gone as a more stereotypical vampire? Perhaps a demon. Or a king. Or a demon king.

(...No, his father would never approve.)

"Something like that, I imagine." Jennifer grabbed one of the fruit punch ones and started drinking. This was a chance to kick back and relax, but the last thing she wanted was to get so smashed that she'd do something she'd regret or something like that.

"Taylor, right?" she asked them. She recognized them vaguely, but Goggles Boy? She still had no idea who was underneath that mask, even as he spoke.

She wanted to talk with Goggles too. She probably should talk with him. After all, this was her chance to get out of her comfort zone and actually talk to people she wouldn't normally talk to, but Tay was pretty drunk themself. That meant if Jenny made some faux-pas, Tay would forget all about it in the morning, hopefully. The crowd around them at least made it a lot easier to just start talking with people. While the boy was a lot more sober... for now.

Jenny found herself staring just a little too long at him though, trying to figure out what to say to break the ice. Realizing this, she quickly shot another question at Taylor. "How long have you been here man? you look like you were smashed yesterday," she said with a chuckle.

"Naaaah, I haven't even had that much!" Tay waved away Jenny's comment with a little too much hand flapping to make their denial entirely believable. "It's only been, uh... what time is it?" They patted their pockets for their phone and stole a glance at the time once they found it. It wasn't that late. Definitely not after midnight, which was the only way they could have been "smashed since yesterday," at any rate, but it was a little hard to put that rebuttal together coherently at the moment.

"The cider gives it the fizz!" They explained grandly, spinning back to face Star Wars Guy and slapping their hand down on the table for emphasis, the previous point they had been making left unceremoniously in the dust. "I can make you something spicier though if you want, know what I mean? I saw this cinnamon liqueur in one of the cabinets, and I'm down to do science to figure out what that goes well with. Any takers?"

Huh, Janice had wandered off. Well, that left them with two potential guinea pigs, still. Taylor wouldn't have been living up to the witch bit if they didn't brew some goddamn potions!

Dave was beginning to remember why he didn't attend the big high school parties. He was already caught in one of those awkward social situations that tied his tongue. The skeleton girl wasn't faring much better, he thought, from the way she stared up at him before she spoke. He'd played his part too well, he surmised: Hank J. Wimbleton was large, intimidating, and not much for conversation.

At least Taylor — the androgynous witch's name was Taylor, he noted — seemed lively enough for the both of them. They slammed their hand on the table like a real-life Phoenix Wright, and they offered Dave "something spicier" with zero thought for the consequences. Skeleton Girl claimed Taylor was "smashed" yesterday: never a good sign. Drunkenness was a hellish ordeal. "I'm alright with this level of spice," he replied.

2 Timothy 1:7. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.