-Des' teapot. Who would be good to talk to...or rather, who would be good to talk to who wasn't already talking to someone else...

Aha. Roman legionary, two o'clock. Perfect.

Despairing of the fact that she had come as Iroh rather than as Asterix or Obelix, Dawn made her way over to the tall, dark-skinned man in the Roman legionary outfit, and gave him her best imitation of Iroh's grin.

"Would you like a cup of tea?"

We'll be bringing this whole thing to a close on Saturday evening! See you all then; I hope you've enjoyed the RP!

-Alleb

Yet another extension to the RP! ^_^ The entire thing is going so well, I don't want to cut it off. Plus, I want to give everyone a little more time with the mystery. Since the "one day extension" didn't work last time, I'll leave this one a little looser; I'll post ahead of time when the RP feels like it's drawing to its natural conclusion. Does that sound alright to everyone? I apologize for flip-flopping on this; I've never run an RP before. But hey, I know what not to do next time!

-Alleb

Originally today would have been the last day, but it's going very well so we're extending it by another day. Have fun, guys! ^_^

-Alleb

It took Michael a minute or two to reach the stage again, but he managed. He climbed up and motioned for the band to quiet down, which caught most of the crowd's attention.

"Good evening!" he said, in his best Dracula impersonation. It didn't really fit with his costume, but hey, it was Halloween! There had to be a Dracula voice somewhere. "Ladies and Gentlemen, it is time for the Costume Contest! Write your name on the list at the base of the stage, and we will call you up at the end of the night to show off your costumes!

"Now, if you will excuse me, I--"

"Oooh noooo!" came a very bland "scream" from the food table. Mia stood nonchalantly beside the desserts, looking bored out of her mind and holding up the table cloth. Beneath the table was the Aviator, dressed as Princess Azula; her eyes were closed. "The Aviator is deeeeeead. Whateeever shall we dooo?"

Michael coughed slightly, then put on his best "spooky" grin (and no, it wasn't spooky) and resumed talking in his Dracula!voice "That is right, Ladies and Gentlemen! For tonight, we have not only a party, but a murder! It is now up to you, most distinguished guests, to catch our culprit and bring him to justice! All we yet know of the crime is that the Aviator was murdered and stuffed under the desert table with no witnesses, and not a mark on her. There are also several candy wrappers scattered around her, opened and bereft of sweet goodness. Who could have committed this atrocious deed, murdering the PPC's top agent and not even leaving any candy? That is what you must find out.

"Our suspects are three: Perhaps our killer is the famed Luxray Zeb, the Aviator's partner and best friend, who just so happens to know various electric moves that could kill someone without leaving a mark. Rumor has it that he and the Aviator had a recent falling out: perhaps anger bred violence?" he gestured towards the Agent, dressed as Zuko and caught mid-step holding two cups of tea.

"Or perhaps it was Chase Miller." Michael pointed at a young man beside one of the food tables: he was dressed as a lumberjack, complete with an axe, and was with a woman about his age with no obvious costume. "No one knows who this mysterious man is, but he looks very guilty, and the chocolate stains on his hands match the chemical composition of that on the chocolate wrappers found next to the Aviator’s body. Is he our killer?

"Last but not least is Amris: this little unfeeling Drone has a love of seeing insides come out, and he was seen near the dessert table just before the Aviator was found. Is he innocent in all of this, or did he just want to see for himself the famed double hearts of a Time Lord and was interrupted before he could finish the evil deed?

"Here is your task, party-goers: question these suspects! Find the truth! And do it before the night ends."

With a swirl of his cape that tangled around his legs and almost made him trip, Michael exited the stage. "Wow," he thought. "this stuff sounds a lot better when Alleb writes it down for me."

---------------------------------------------------------------

((In other words, hooray, murder mystery and costume contest! Reply directly to this thread with a description of your character's costume to enter the contest, and find and ask our three suspects questions to solve the murder! Post your final guess here as well. Don't take too long in your questioning, please: other people might have want to ask as well. Your character will be rewarded with massive amounts of candy if they win or figure out the mystery. ^_^ Enjoy yourselves!

-Alleb))

"Stephanie, WHY did you feel the need to bring me here? I have no desire to dance..." Chakkik tugged at the sleeve of his white shirt, and at the yellow tie decorating it. "And furthermore, why did you have me dress as that virtual singer? I am far too bulky."

Stephanie Podd was currently pale-skinned and blonde, with a big white bow in her hair. A yellow bow decorated her cut-off sailor suit, and her "legs" were currently black. "I'm too big to be Rin, but here I am. We're here to have fun, Chak!"

"Correction: YOU are here to have fun with CUPID, should he arrive. I am merely present to ensure that you stay out of trouble."

"And yet you agreed to dress as Len."

"Don't push me."

((Yep, the DMS team is dressed as the Vocaloid twins, Rin and Len Kagamine. Both are way too big for their chosen character; Chakkik is six-four and built like a tank, while Steph is eleven feet tall and squishy.))

Mally yawned. Midnight was rather later than she was used to being awake, and she hoped she would be able to avoid falling asleep.

She tried to blend in with Zaddella, Jeremy and Basil so that no one would talk to her until she got her bearings. Looking around the crowded dance hall, she took in all the costumes. At the other end of the room there was a man in an impressive suit of blue armor. There were a few legionnaires, some brown- or blue-suited characters she didn't recognize, and many others. Her own merchant's costume suddenly seemed rather boring. She smoothed her skirts nervously.

A ballerina suddenly appeared and struck up a conversation with Basil.

"It's great to see you, Alleb!" Basil said as she adjusted her dilapidated pirate's hat. "These are the friends I was telling you about."

The Lethan Twi'Lek who was standing next to Mally introduced herself as Zaddella. "I'm not in costume," she said pointedly. "I wasn't told this was a costume party until this afternoon."

Basil cleared her throat and shot Zaddella a glance to match Zaddella's tone before introducing Mally, who waved awkwardly and mumbled something that she hoped sounded witty and interesting.

Jeremy, Basil's Assistant, fluttered just overhead in his parrot costume. "It's most exciting to be here! I've never been to a party before. This is wonderful! Is that punch? What are those people doing on that white mat with the colored dots?"

Jeremy chattered on, and Mally quietly excused herself to get some food. She almost bumped into a tall, robed figure with a death's head and put her head down as she walked to the table.

"I hope the punch is good," Zaddella said behind her.

Mally didn't realize Zaddella had followed. "I hope so too," she answered lamely as she looked over a promising cheese tray.

"We need to find something to perk you up," Zaddella said, picking up a paper plate. "You need to enjoy yourself. This is a fun party. I mean, look at these decorations- a dragon breathing fire! Hmm...do you think it was a good idea to make it out of paper? Anyway, this is a way more lighthearted party than some I've been to. Some of the ones I've been to end up with several casualties and all of us getting kicked out of whatever establishment we've taken over."

Mally rolled her eyes and held the tiny golden chains from her facial jewelry away from her mouth as she ate.

Heeeeere's what they look like:
http://irfrenchfries.deviantart.com/art/OCs-for-PPC-Masquerade-569407390?gasubmitnew=10%253A1446304702

"This is it, I guess," said Nick Jacobs (who was doing a poor job of impersonating the Tenth Doctor) as he and his band of friends entered the dance hall. There was silence for a few moments.

"What now?" rumbled Dirk. The prize-winning boxer was in a Link costume, for some reason. Nick couldn't figure him out.

"We might mingle," Chi-won supplied, tugging on the leather strap over his chest and skillfully bringing his ukulele into his hands. He was dressed as one of the hippie nomads from Avatar. "If we stick to 'Song of Storms,' we'll make some sweet lightning outside!"

"I would advise against that," Hasina said. She had opted for Cleopatra, and had spent over an hour getting all of her dark hair into tiny braids. "We are guests here, after all, and there is already a band playing."

All four of them turned to their fifth member, Skye, but found that she had already fled to the candy station.

"I'm going to get some food," Chi-won announced, letting his ukulele return to its normal place at his side. He then went in the opposite direction from the food and made a beeline for a gaggle of pretty girls.

"I think I will follow him," Hasina half-muttered; she took it upon herself to make sure that Chi-won didn't embarrass himself or others. The guy was a great ukulele player, but he had the social graces of a drunk emu.

Dirk followed Hasina without a word: Nick had noticed the two of them spending a lot of time together in recent days. He wondered what that meant.

"Well," he said to the empty space in front of him. "This is fun."

-Alleb

Despite being one of the tallest and most imposting figures present thanks to his powered armoursuit, Gaspard was sticking to the edges of the hall, casting furtive glances at the crowd while carefully loading his cardboard plate with food and treats with an oversized robotic gauntlet. Despite being bulky, blue, and making him stick out like a sore thumb, the CMC-300 suit made him feel safe and comfortable. People didn't look at him-- the looked at the armour and talked positively about it (unless they were right next to him, in which case "watch it!" was more often said than "check out those pauldrons!"). Being the centre of so much positive attention was a rather new experience for the Spy, and he was savouring every moment of it. He looked up again. Maybe he'd see someone he knew and strike up a nice chat. Or meet the gaze of someone who wanted to talk about his suit and also have a nice chat.

Gaspard paused, looked down, and went back to shovelling food onto his plate. No, that was a dumb thought after all. People just didn't cold-approach others like that-- this was real life. He'd better just stick to enjoying the food. There was less potential for social awkwardness that way.


-----

Another Roman legionnaire walked into the hall. Clad in sandals, a red tunic, and lorica segmentata, the Guardsman looked around the room and sighed when he saw Michael. "Great," he grumbled as he adjusted how his helmet sat on his head. "And I thought I was being original. Oh well."

The former soldier then noticed the massive amount of food laid out on the tables nearby. His costume woes forgotten, he made a beeline towards the nearest table and grabbed a plate. This was going to be a good night.

Dressed as Trainer Red and holding a Petilil in his arms sheepishly walks in. He wants so socialize with the oterhs but is quite shy.

Five women, all young, were arguing in the corridors of the Nouvelle-Caledonie section of HQ with the addition of one very definitely male young man. He was ostensibly there to keep the peace, but mostly what he was doing was glowering at a slightly charred map and muttering to himself about asking for directions from a damn plant.

"I can't believe this," came the same voice as before. It belonged to a small, wiry Goth who'd come as the Spectre Of Friedmanist Economic Structures, something that looked uncannily similar to a bedsheet with eyeholes and a load of currency symbols sprayed on it in multicoloured car paint. "We're hours late. Hours. We'll miss the midnight countdown at this rate!"

"Tess, deep breaths." This from a taller girl in a thrown-together witch's outfit, somewhat spoilt by the work polo-neck underneath with a nametag reading 'Hello! My Name Is Trainee Jo'. "It can't be far away now, can it? I mean, New Caledonia's not that big."

"Besides," came the Home Counties RP tones of someone who, with the inevitability of the passing seasons, rejoiced in the name of Araminta Twizzell-Pole (TwiZELL-Powell, she insisted, a pronunciation used by family members and precisely no-one else), "you're making an awful fuss for someone who didn't want to come, eh? Did this week's union not survive the first meeting?"

"Sod off, Minty, it was my study group and it finished early," Tessa grumbled. "And I didn't want to see you in a dancehall dressed as some sexist wazzock's idea of Aphrodite so you could flash your bits at any of the built ones."

"Y'know, if we join hands and chant in time, I'm sure we could call upon Mother Earth to guide us."

"Yeah, thanks for the input, Starlight." That came from Sam, the aforementioned very definitely man. His accent, one born of a Nigerian family and a Hackney childhood, was adept at making the word sound like 'earthworm'.

Starlight, as was her wont, just tossed her hair and wandered off, her enormous, billowing dress trailing seedlings of rare fruits. Jo caught up with her, the rest of the group wandering behind.

"Star, wait. That, that's actually not a bad plan."

"Thank you, Joanna, I know. Saturn is in the 8th house for the next fortnight, so my decision-making's getting a boost." They were the long, languid tones of someone who spent most of their days sprawled on a sofa listening to whalesong; the kind who thought thick ginger dreads looked really good against pallid skin.

Jo ignored the rest of her comment (ignoring Starlight was a skill one picked up over time) and concentrated, her hand on the floor of the corridor, arcane runes gathering around her in a maroon circle that slowly spread across the width of the corridor. She straightened and fished in a pocket for some herbs and, while muttering in Latin, blew them straight up into the air. When they fell, they formed bootprints on the ground... which promptly trudged off into the middle distance.

"Er, are we going to follow those?"

Tessa scowled. "No Minty, we're going to sit here and wait until it comes back with a chauffeur-driven bloody hovercraft. Jesus wept."

"Oh. But I thought you all didn't want me to ask Daddy for a lift-"

"We're following the footsteps!"

The six trudged off, Tessa in the lead. Jo could feel the pull of the spell like something tugging on her forehead, so she stayed at the back to make sure people didn't get lost. This meant she was next to the last member of the group, dressed as she was in a Dracula costume.

"Are you going to be okay, Sally? I mean, we've checked for allergies, and I can cast a detection charm for garlic, but it's more that... well, y'know... that I want you to have a good time tonight," she finished, rather lamely.

"It's fine," Sally replied. "One thing though."

"What?"

"Should the vampire have gone as Dracula?"

"You're not 'the vampire', Sally, you're my friend and you just have some problems." Jo's smile was bright and warm, and she accompanied it with a one-armed hug.

Sally's enhanced eyesight could see how shaky it was at the edges, and she didn't say anything.

"Aha! Got something!" Tessa's Northern twang cut through the quiet of the corridor.

"Tess, you okay?" Jo called. "What did you find?"

"Something on my scanner. Alcohol concentration. Been scanning for it since we arrived; big Halloween bash with students going? Got to be booze about. Long range, but we're closing in on it. Wouldn't have picked it up without your spell, though."

Jo preened a little, despite herself. "Thanks, Tessa."

About ten minutes later, and amidst plenty of chatting, the Southeastern University Amateur Heroics Society (minus faculty rep, who was attending a lecture on the importance of flans in Early Modern European warfare) arrived in the dancehall, just in time to see Michael's announcement.

"Ooh, he's yummy," Minty whispered, and tried to make a beeline for him.

"Make sure you use protection, Minty!" Tessa yelled. "You don't want to give 'im that weird rash you've got!"

"Thank you, Lenin, always an unutterable pleasure," grumbled a beetroot-red Minty as she came right back.

Sally tapped Tess on the shoulder. "Please not with the shouting, Tess," she said, "enhanced hearing over here." And with that she returned her hands to their position over her ears.

Jo decided to take charge of the situation, trying frantically to remember how the article she'd read online had said to do so. "Look. We know why we're here. We know that we're here. Let's just do what we came to do and-"

"Get plastered?" Sam cut in.

"... Yeah. Um, yeah, that."

And so the six made their way to the bar, whereupon Sam found they didn't have any lager and accidentally set fire to his nun costume.

"I'm just saying, it seems kind of unbalanced that we're both dressed as characters from your home continuum." He was currently wearing a short red wig and a tan Japanese school uniform; his conversation partner was a rather androgynous-looking man with dark skin and white hair, dressed in black body armor and a red overcoat.

"It was better than any of your ideas," "he" replied in a decidedly forced baritone. "I did say we could dress as Survey Corps members, but you shot it down."

"I get enough of that on missions, Nat," Aaron said sourly. "There wasn't anything wrong with my Firefly suggestion."

"There wouldn't have been, if you'd been willing to go as Mal. Simon and Zoe isn't a pair costume, it's just two characters who happen to be from the same show."

"I guess I just don't see how Shirou and Archer are any different."

"That's because you haven't got to Unlimited Blade Works," Natasha said firmly, reverting to her natural alto range. "Now come on. Let's enjoy ourselves."

A slender young woman gently elbowed the man next to her in the ribs. She was pale and almost everything she had on her was black: the coloured contacts, the lipstick, the tank top, the jeans, the boots. The only exception was a silver Ankh pendant on her neck and silver brads on her belt.

"Will, I didn't believe you, when you said you had this in your wardrobe," she said, looking at the man, "and I still don't believe people would actually wear this on a daily basis."

"Whatever, Elvira," William replied. For the sake of the costume, he used Glamour to add more colour to his skin and turn his hair black. He was wearing a black Ulster coat with cape, and a three-piece suit underneath it. The entire outfit was completed with a top hat on his head and a fake carving knife in his hand.

He looked at VJ. "Besides, it was your idea. You kept asking me about Victorian era clothes."

"Hey, my idea was brilliant! Come on, can't you see it!? Jack the Ripper and Death?" she said, pointing from William to herself. "That's like the greatest combo ever! Even better than jam and bacon!"

William raised his eyebrow. "...Don't you mean eggs and bacon?"

"I know what I said. Now, follow me, Jack!" VJ faced her partner and took a comically exaggerated bow. "I shall point you towards your next target."

"You mean towards food?" The warlock rolled his eyes but smiled nonetheless; she was having fun, who was he to deny her that. He followed the perky goth to the savory part of the buffet.




((The clickable names show you Will and VJ before and after putting their costumes on.))

...wandered in several minutes after Michael's announcement. They were dressed in the red and black armor of Fire Nation royalty, and the taller male agent had a nasty-looking fake scar over his left eye.

"Ugh, this itches so much," he complained, reaching up to scratch at it.

"You're the one who wanted to go as Zuko," the woman beside him replied. "And stop picking at that, Zeb, I'm not helping you reapply it when you scratch it off."

"I'm not Zeb," Zeb said, drawing himself up to his full height. "I am Prince Zuko, heir to the throne of the Fire Nation, here to regain my honor! And you, Azula, shouldn't get in my way!"

The Aviator blew a strand of hair out of her face and rolled her eyes. "Sure, Zuko. Whatever you say." She looked around and sighed. "Let's get this over with."

"Wow, Azula, and here I thought I was the grumpy one," Zeb said, elbowing her.

The Aviator gave him the stink-eye. "I'm only here because you asked."

"You'll never have fun with that kind of attitude. Come on! Aren't you looking forward to the thing later?"

The Aviator shrugged unenthusiastically.

Zeb looked around and gasped when he spotted the food tables. "POFFINS!" He took off, dragging a resigned Aviator behind him.