!★! Happy Halloween!

[beautifuldreamermods]

⭐ Who: The Dreamers of Yumemigaoka!
⭐ When: Forward dated to October 30th
⭐ Where: The Dreamer Union & the Slumbering City
⭐ What: The promised Halloween party! The DU

YUMEMIGAOKA

Thankfully for everyone's nerves, despite the increased activity in the Dream Sphere that's typical of spooky season, there's been no major emergencies for the Dreamers of Yumemigaoka to attend to for the month of October – which means that when the company Halloween party comes around, there's nothing to interrupt it!

Similarly to the anniversary celebration, the party is split into two halves, with the first leg of the party an all-ages event starting at noon and hosted at the Dreamer Union in Yumemigaoka, with an open invite to all employees and registered Dreamers. Everyone's encouraged to put together a costume just to get into the spirit of things, but while the HR department who set all this up might give you a woeful look of disappointment if you opt out, it is still technically optional.

Of course, with this many Dreamers in one place, things are definitely going to be a little busy, but the whole building has been decorated with some truly spooktacular vibes... and there's a few quiet rooms here and there that have been relegated to letting people catch their breath with some spooky movies if the scariest thing about this party is the prospect of socializing.

There's all sorts of candy and seasonal food to go around as well as a healthy supply of regular-ass food that's been dressed up and served to look spooky – riceballs wrapped with seaweed to look like mummies, crab dishes with the legs arranged to look like spider legs, spicy snacks with sauce globbed on to look like blood... someone was really having fun with this, huh?

For the most part, this is a pretty low-key event, despite the huge guest list – there's some chill games, like a beer pong setup with a fake eyeball and a pretty chonky pinata that's taking a shocking amount of blows before breaking open but for the most part, this just seems like an excuse for everyone to come together and blow off some steam. Of course, that's probably because for some of you, the party's only just begun!

THE DREAM SPHERE

The all-ages get together in Yumemigaoka was only one half of the Halloween festivities and once that party wraps at six, the real chaos begins! A 21+ only afterparty springs up over in the Dream Sphere, taking over the Slumbering City's DU office and spilling out into the plaza outside as well. Of course, this is just in the Dream Sphere, so if you're really determined to sneak in and see what the grown ups are up to, there's nothing stopping you...

Like Yumemigaoka, the DU office in the Slumbering City has been decorated nicely and the city itself is contributing with a nice and moody purple sky outside - though pleasantly enough, the weather is unseasonably mild so you can hang out in the plaza without freezing to death. While it is still a work party on paper, things are definitely a little rowdier by design. There's booze for one and a much more implicit encouragement to let down your hair and bust out a really goofy costume – this is the Dream Sphere, after all, so the sky's the limit!

That philosophy seems to have applied to the food as well and again, much like the anniversary, there's a whole buffet of totally impossible foods. Among other things, there's...


⧖ Cauldron-shaped cupcakes with bubbling 'potion' fillings that fizz and pop when you take a bite.
⧖ Cotton candy spun into intricate spiderweb shapes and adorned with gummy spiders.
⧖ A bubbling cauldron of some hot and savory stew that changes color with each stir and releases tiny puffs of smoke.
⧖ Pizza topped with ghostly white cheese and spicy phantom peppers that live up to their name and vanish from your hand once you're down to the last bite!
⧖ Corn on the cob made entirely of candy corn kernels.
⧖ A franken-fruit salad, with a number of confusingly flavoured fruits - apples that taste likes cherries, cherries that taste like bananas, bananas that taste like... salted caramel?!?


And if you're looking for games, the office itself and the plaza outside seems to have been set up with a whole bunch of them!


⧖ A number of apple bobbing cauldrons that look to be full of slime and various other unpleasant things... but if you're brave enough to go bobbing, you'll see it really is just water.
⧖ Enchanted pumpkin carving! Using anything they have to hand (maybe even their Sandglass??), Dreamers carve pumpkins that have unique properties, such as changing shapes when they're cut into or spitting sparks into the face of the poor person trying to carve them! You have ten minutes and a guide to follow, with the winner determined by whoever got the furthest along with their pumpkin fighting them the whole way.
⧖ A floor in the DU office has been turned into a mini haunted house walk! As well as traditional scares, a little trick of dream magic has been set up so that the floor will also pick on a Dreamer's own personal fears. For the most part, these will be pretty surface level and occasionally silly – a Dreamer with a fear of spiders might be faced with a room decorated with spider webs and the odd spider – but when multiple Dreamers pass through at once, the floor might dig a little too deep and show off something just a bit too personal...
⧖ Stuck without a costume? No worries! A floor of the DU has been set up with 'dressing rooms' to help you with that. Just step inside and your Dreamer costume will be reformed instantly into something more appropriate for the party and you can jazz it up however you like!


The party lasts through the Dream Sphere's night, with everyone dropping back into the real world just as sunrise tinges the Dream Sphere's sky. Of course, it's still the middle of the night back in reality but it's probably in your best interests to just head to bed... you can't get a hangover from alcohol you only dreamt about, right? ... RIGHT???

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Comments

[hanamane]

[Unfortunately, he knew that feeling of hers much too well-- he had the horrendous luck of having his deepest desires projected in front of him a few months ago during Tanabata, and to say the experience had shaken him was an understatement. Luckily, the only person to witness it happened to be Ai, but that was one person too many to see something so entirely personal and uncomfortable. So for it to happen to her here, in a place where anybody could stumble into and witness her guarded secrets...

This isn't to say he was doing this purely out of the kindness of his heart, mind you; if he were to stick around here longer, no doubt whatever magic was at play would start to prey upon his own health fears, and that's the last thing he needed at the moment. Even from the corner of his eye, he could see the room shifting, flickering, with him upon the hospital bed instead, and he picks up the pace, easing Colette out of the room and down the hall. Nope nope NOPE, not dealing with that today, Satan--

Once he deemed them a good distance away, he descends down a little, his feet not quite touching the floor but at least leaving them more at eye-level.]

Y'know, I thought I had a sense of deja vu when I first ran into you.

[He turns to offer her something of a bittersweet smile.]

I guess we have the same hang-out spot, huh?

[Though despite his light tone, it was probably no mystery what the "hang out spot" of theirs actually was.]

[angelolatry]

[Colette lets him lead her away, lets him guide her somewhere else that they could talk, that she could at least get away from that room in particular. She just needs a moment. To recompose herself.]

Ah? Wait, you mean?

[Of course he means the hospital. Colette missed that moment when the image of her on the hospital bed switched to showing him. And of course, being new, she is still getting to know everyone. So naturally she didn't immediately click that she necessarily recognized him somehow. But he apparently had seen her around the hospital. And she supposes after that, well, there's no point denying it, trying to hide it by saying she was there to support her grandmother.]

I guess we might. It was another reason to come move here.

[hanamane]

[Hanako's patient enough with her as she gets her bearings about her again, knowing full well this wasn't exactly something one could casually walk away from. Hell... if it were him, he'd probably be reduced to a quivering mass of tears, so Colette's already proved she had more grit than he could possibly hope for. The Tanabata tree had been one thing-- that was something entirely out of everyone's control-- but this clearly had been set up with someone else's ability powering it, and it didn't sit right with him. Scares were all well and good, but if it started digging at people's personal traumas, that was just edging on cruel.

He merely smiles and gives a nonchalant shrug in response to her question, which... well, was about as much of a confirmation as he was going to give, but the context probably made things obvious.]

Mm... for a city that's not Tokyo or Osaka or anything, we've got pretty good pediatric care system here. It probably must be 'cos a lot of Dreamers are on the younger side...

[Thankfully, Amane's there mostly for check-ups and routine tests these days, but it's still often enough that he can pick up on some reoccurring faces when he spots them!]

... I get it, though. I can't speak for whoever else was in that spooky room of yours, but you don't hafta worry about me spilling the beans about your health, at least. After all, it's not like it matters here, right?

[angelolatry]

[Colette is shaken, but she hasn't necessarily been trying to lie about her situation. Merely just trying to hide it while she figures how to tell people. So used to having everyone already aware back home at her village, that being here and meeting new people like this is a new situation to handle. She's upset, maybe a little angry at it happening, but she doesn't necessarily blame him for it that she should get all emotional to Amane over it when it wasn't his fault. He was just trying to help in getting her out of that room. She tries to focus on their conversation, on him.]

It was one factor for us moving here.

[For her. And also for Phaidra, in knowing that her grandmother would be likely to need more healthcare attention as she is getting older. But more immediately for Colette's sake of course.]

I guess. My not feeling pain is probably more a good thing, with being a Dreamer. That I can push myself more to help. I just -- that wasn't necessarily exactly how I would have wanted to let others find out.

[hanamane]

Yeah... I get that. With stuff like that, it's better to do it on your own terms... if you wanna start telling others about it, anyway. People start getting all sorts of weird ideas in their heads when they find out you have health problems.

[Like being needlessly overprotective, or playing out some tragic, noble narrative about how they're looking out for their poor, feeble friend...

It was above and beyond obnoxious. There was no way to control what others thought about them, but it didn't mean he couldn't get frustrated by it, all the same.]

Mm... I wouldn't go that far, though. Sure, it helps not to feel stuff as much when you get injured here, but pain's there to let you know when something's wrong, y'know? You might get yourself accidentally ejected if you don't pay attention to what's happening to you.

[But then he pauses, realizing that maybe this was probably coming off as patronizing to somebody who's been living with this sort of thing. After all, he'd probably get grouchy if someone started giving him cardio advice...]

Though I guess you don't need me to tell you that much, huh...?

[angelolatry]

Hm. People back home knew. So that was fine, but. Moving here. I don't know how everyone might be about it.

[So it was hard to say. Who Colette should tell or what. Eventually, sure, she might get figured out by hurting herself and not reacting. Or not noticing as one probably should. But she wasn't against telling people, just. Wanting to figure who, and when. Not to have that taken from her.

Still. It seemed he had some sort of understanding, so Amane might not be the worst person to find out.]

I know. I try to be careful. To check myself over every so often that I'm not hurt. It doesn't help that I can be pretty clumsy, tripping over a lot. But I do want to try help as best I can. And I don't want this to stop me.