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((Welcome to Eve and Becky’s Big Enormous Wedding Thread! In the vein of With Lovers and Friends I Still Can Recall this is a way to tell a big story from many different perspectives. Below you’ll find a rough timeline for the day including some details of location and timing, as well as some story hooks requiring superhero intervention. This thread is open to everyone to post vignettes and mini-vignettes telling their characters’ stories from that day. 
 
Because this is not a traditional vignette prompt (read: you do not get vignette reward PP for this) but it is also not a regular thread, we’re relaxing many of the normal posting rules. Your vignettes can be of any length - a full page is not required - and you may post more than one per character if you wish. The prohibition on multiple characters per thread is also lifted, so post with as many of your characters as you have stories for. Double and triple vignettes are still allowed, if you so desire and also have no length requirement. 
 
As vignettes are added by players the events of the day will be further detailed. Later posters should try and read the vignettes that came before them so they can be sure their work will fit into the developing timeline. That does not mean vignettes have to be in chronological order! Feel free to jump ahead or backfill anywhere you like, so long as it is on the wedding day. Story hooks are first come, first serve, so posting early isn’t a bad idea. If you don’t believe your character would’ve been invited to the wedding feel free to post stories about your character protecting the city while a sizable chunk of its superhero population is taking the night off. Feel free to ask in chat if you have any questions and have fun!)) 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Once upon a time, two girls fell in love. Then one of the girls was possessed by a cannibalistic spirit of avarice, for which the other girl blamed herself and as second dates go it honestly could have gone better. They spent too long apart before finding each other again, reigniting a spark that had never gone out. They had adventures together, lived together not nearly enough, missed each other far too much, celebrated and mourned and eventually they decided that together was absolutely better than apart. 

 

Finally, on an August afternoon in a castle in the sky, there was a wedding. All of their friends were invited and even if not everything went as planned there aren't many obstacles a bunch of superheroes can't overcome if sufficiently determined and their friends were determined that the happy couple should live happily ever after, at least for today. 
 
Preparations for the wedding began in the morning at the Dutemps Building, with Becky and an impressive collection of Canada's greatest living champions in the penthouse apartments at the top and Eve and her bridesmaids - and one Maidnight - up in the castle. There were caterers and decorators and the mother-of-all-florists running about, which made things a little complicated for some of the obviously non-human guests! Mani-pedis, makeup, lots of last-minute advice and a champagne brunch rounded out the morning for the wedding party, along with a few shenanigans designed to make sure that the brides didn’t encounter each other before the ceremony. 
 
In the afternoon, all the dressing-up began in earnest, and then the pictures. So many pictures, professional and otherwise, with people who don’t often get photographed with their own faces and looking their best. The photographers didn’t always confine themselves to the wedding party either, arriving guests might find themselves captured on film a few times for the album. The venue was beautiful, the Gothic Revival-style chapel dedicated to St. Jeanne d'Arc was illuminated with gorgeous light through its stained glass windows and bedecked with flowers. There were a few diversions to entertain the guests, a book to sign, a little display of childhood photos of the brides, a table of snacks. There was also a nasty elevator malfunction in one of the private elevators leading up into the castle but it was sorted by helpful guests before it became a real problem. 
 
As the 3:00 PM wedding start time approached guests began to move to their seats while music played and a breeze whispered through the trees. The ceremony was beautiful and quite peaceful, though it’s hard to say what behind-the-scenes machinations may have been required to keep it that way. Jack Pegahmagabow and Eden Espadas nearly stole the show as ring-bearer and flower girl, despite subtle interventions from their uncle and parents, respectively. Otherwise, the simple and brief service, conducted by Claremont’s headmaster emeritus Duncan Summers, was focused on Becky and Eve, who stood under a flowered trellis to exchange handwritten vows and rings in front of all their friends and family. 
 
With the business of the day taken care of it was time to celebrate! The castle’s ballroom had been prepared in a fine faux-Medieval style, with dinners, drinks, and dancing inside a hall bright enough to pass for a fairy tale. A minor problem in the kitchen was quickly sorted and if the happy couple disappeared from their own party for a little while before arriving for dinner, nobody was inclined to say anything about it. There were toasts and a few short speeches after supper and then the happy couple opened the dancing with a slow turn on the dance floor to an original 1930 recording of Lucienne Boyer's Parlez-Moi d’Amour, one taken right from the Crimson Fox's personal collection. The dancing went on late into the night, helped along by a custom coffee bar manned by two experienced baristas. At one point in the evening, the power went off for nearly ten minutes, but inventive guests worked around it and the problem was quickly solved. Eve and Becky left around 9:00 in a hail of bubbles and sparks and flowers and beams of light from their friends, taking off in the private elevator up to the castle's master living quarters. Even with the guests of honor gone there was plenty of partying left to do, and it wasn’t till nearly midnight that things quieted down and the cleanup could begin.

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This post is reserved for an ongoing timeline of events in the thread.

 

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

9:00 AM - Wedding Party Arrives

  • 9:53 - Becky meets Trevor in the Reception Hall

2:00 PM - Guests Arrive

 

3:00 PM - Wedding Ceremony

 

4:00 PM - Reception

 

6:00 PM - Dancing

 

12:00 AM - Cleanup Begins

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  • 5 weeks later...

9:53

Reception Hall

 

It wasn't that Becky Shuster - soon to be Martel - didn’t like her fiancé's friend Trevor. He'd never been anything but perfectly polite with her but the man was practically impossible to read and getting him to talk was like getting blood from a stone. She was never entirely sure what he thought of her, if he approved of their engagement and if she were being completely honest she’d have to admit she was a little jealous of the unbelievable adventures he’d shared with Eve before they’d met.

 

She also wasn't sure whether or not she was supposed to know that he was Midnight, which was a bit awkward. Eve had never said as much outright but between anecdotes from Claremont Academy and the Liberty League it hadn't been much of a leap.

 

Then there was the way smoke had been rising ominously from behind his sunglasses almost from the moment he'd arrived at the Dutemps Building that morning. That had been a bit of a tip-off.

 

So even if there were a million things left for her to double-check before sitting down to have her hair done when she found him setting up an upscale café's worth of equipment for the coffee bar in the reception hall she squared her shoulders a bit and walked over. "Hey, ah, Trevor? Do you have a minute?"

 

The tall man looked up and set aside the mug he was polishing to silently gesture at one of the tall stools lined up in front of the bar. The stygian mist continued to rise in twin streams from behind his sunglasses in a manner that definitely wasn’t intimidating to a woman who could transform into an eight foot tall monster. Definitely.

 

Taking a seat she started, "So, I wanted to sort of clear the air?" Belatedly hoping that didn’t sound like a smoke pun she powered through. "I know how close you and Eve are and that you’re not really my biggest fan so I know you’re probably worried if I'll be good for her and take care of her but I just wanted to say--"

 

"You think I don't like you?" Trevor interrupted in the same quiet tone he used for everything in Becky's experience but with a note she understood as surprise. The streams of smoke stopped and started in little puffs as he blinked.

 

She grimaced, not wanting to turn the conversation into an argument. "No, not like that but we haven't really talked that much. Or really at all, on your side. And even with everything in our lives I get why you might think I'm marrying her for her money or something like that." She assumed that was the sort of thing wealthy people worried about when their wealthy friends got married.

 

There was a palpably awkward silence as she tried to gauge his reaction to that from his stoic expression. Eventually he parted his thin lips, paused for a moment to organize his words and asked, "You know Eve and I have a telepathic link?"

 

"Yes," she replied carefully, ignoring a pang on envy she blamed on the wendigo spirit. She'd discussed the specifics with her fiancé, how it was really a very different thing than what the two of them shared. Still, there was no real getting around the fact that the bond with Trevor had come first.

 

"Normally good at filtering. But being here, today..." He drummed his fingers against the surface of the bar in what struck Becky as a terribly restless gesture from someone usually so reserved. "Strong emotions. Some… spillover from your link. How the two of you feel about each other. How much you love each other."

 

The brunette shifted a little on her stool, feeling a little embarrassed and wondering if any of that was being relayed through Eve's powers as well. "O-oh. Well, um."

 

"Bit overwhelming, actually." She noticed a sooty black colour rising behind his pale cheeks and slowly realized that he was blushing. Removing his sunglasses to reveal faintly luminous ruby irises set in fields of glossy black he gestured to the smoke rising from their corners. "My physiology, tear ducts, that is..." He trailed off into embarrassed silence.

 

Becky covered her mouth with one hand and stifled a laugh. "Oh my god. You’re crying? This is you crying?"

 

"It is a wedding," Trevor defended himself with a tiny smile of his own, returning the sunglasses to his face. He glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. "Eve will toss me off the building if she has to wait a minute longer than planned to marry you. Should go get ready."

 

Rising from the stool she nodded with a slightly wider than human grin. "I really should. But we should talk more later. At the reception?"

 

He nodded in silent agreement, bending from the waist in a suggestion of a courtly bow. Hesitating for a moment he added, "Don’t think anyone else needs to know about...?" He pointed to his eyes with an index finger.

 

With a wink Becky mimed locking her lips shut and tossing the key over her shoulder.

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  • 3 weeks later...

But I Believe In You 

 

12:30AM 

Reception Hall

 

Mark and Nina had kept a low profile at the wedding - well, as much as they were capable of doing so. Mark had cried when the brides had said their vows together and Nina had managed to buttonhole Arz ar-Rabb, a visiting Lebanese hero, about the need for a united front of Arab heroes these days, but ultimately this wasn't their show. Nina, at least, was glad of that. She was nine months pregnant on a 5'2" frame, and all the praise Mark had heaped on her about her looks hadn't made her any more interested in being in the public eye since about the beginning of summer. But the wedding was an important event, and Nina always made time for important events. 

 

Mark knew how hard his wife was working here so he worked for her too - politely carrying on conversations when she had to make one of several visits to the castle bathroom, fetching her the snacks she liked when she was too tired to get up and fetch them herself, and doing most of the work when they got up to dance together. They spent most of their time at the wedding sitting down, talking with Trevor and Erin and their other friends. As the party was winding down around them, Nina (who was obviously close to falling asleep) rose to make her way to the women's bathroom for one more visit before going home. 

 

Finishing his ginger ale cunningly disguised as champagne, Mark said, "Oh man, we haven't stayed up this late in months," said Mark, looking more awake than his wife but a little peaked himself. Reaching back to fidget with his ponytail, he said, "This has been a great party - and what a beautiful wedding! I-" His phone buzzed - when it did, he looked down at the text he'd just gotten, blinked, and disappeared. His champagne flute, dropped from his hand, fell. 

 

Erin automatically reached out and snatched the glass before it shattered on the floor, then looked to Trevor. "That can’t be good," she remarked. "I'm going to give fifty-fifty odds on a giant monster coming to disrupt the wedding or Nina going into labor." She frowned, furrowing her brow. "Or maybe thirty-seventy. You'd have been the one to get the call for a monster here, right?" 

 

"Monster would probably be a guest," he reasoned, given the composition of the wedding party. He tucked away the black stained handkerchief he'd been using to surreptitiously dab his eyes periodically throughout the reception and stood up. "I'll get the car. Wait for Mark? Just in case." While teleporting to the hospital was obviously the fastest method they'd agreed in advance that relying solely on Mark's powers while he was particularly emotional was a mistake. Unsurprisingly Trevor had a half dozen contingency plans in place past the first, all of them involving waterproofing.

 

Mark reappeared scant minutes later, the little flurries of energy that signaled his arrival considerably more subdued than usual. He had his messenger bag flung over his shoulder, and the same look of barely suppressed excitement and terror that they’d last seen during the most recent invasion. "O-okay," he said, leaning down over the table. "We're going to the hospital." Not a high school student anymore, Mark didn't need to explain to his friends why. "But I need your help in getting there. Nina's in the public bathrooms and she needs a change of clothes." More conservative than her husband about some things, Nina had made a point to use one of the few gender-segregated bathrooms in the semi-public part of the castle - which wasn't paying off well.

 

"What does she need a change of clothes for?" Erin asked curiously. "Your hospital doesn't have a dress code or something, right?"

 

Mark shifted nervously, realizing that he'd just assumed Erin knew how it worked. "Well, her, uh, water broke." Nina had been wearing a long, formal dress that both helped play down her belly and also made it possible for her to wear sneakers rather than high heel shoes that were murder on swollen ankles. 

 

"Oh." Erin felt her cheeks flushing. "Yeah, I guess that would be… weird. But can't you just, like, put new clothes on her? You used to do it to us all the time when we were at school." She grimaced a little. Mark hadn't been as bad as his alternate-universe female counterpart, who'd decorated Erin’s entire outfit with pink glitter, but he'd had his moments. 

 

"Well, I mean, I can't go in the ladies room," said Mark, sounding a little scandalized. "And she wants the comfy shirt and skirt she picked out." They had the merit of being old and big, so it was okay if they were ruined between one thing and another. "Besides, I try not to do that anymore, people usually don't like it if I do it without asking.”"

 

"Yeah, that's fair." Erin stood up and pulled the drawstring on her dress, letting the skirt fall away and leaving her in close-fitted black pants and the dress's purple top. She took the bundle of clothes from Mark and gave him the skirt in return. "Trevor's getting the car, we'll be with you in just a minute," she promised, then loped away at a great rate of speed. 

 

Erin found the women's bathroom easily enough, even if it took her a second or two to reach it. Nina must have been determined to hike her way down to the gender-segregated bathrooms two floors down - given the location, this was probably usually the staff bathroom. When she reached the bathroom door it was securely sealed, though she thought pushing on it would probably do the trick, and she saw a slight trickle of water leaking out from underneath and heard the sound of running faucets. "Hello?" came Nina's voice, her accent slightly thicker than normal. 

 

Outside, Mark teleported to ground level in front of the castle, briefly dizzied by the change in scenery, and looked around for Trevor and the car. I gotta call my mom! He thought, before focusing on the more pressing matters of finding transportation. He knew what 'the car' typically looked like… 


Trevor could have contacted Redbird through the communication equipment installed in the sleek estate car nestled in the parking garage in the tower's lower levels but the autonomic machine intelligence had already projected her holographic avatar into the reception hall, the better to take part in human custom. He found her 'seated' at a table toward the back of the hall, affecting an off-the-shoulder crimson sheath and laughing uproariously at something Bluebird had said. She gave her driver a broad grin and wave when she spotted his approach, squinting slightly.

 

"Marksman! Come, join us for a drink!" Closer to the table Trevor could hear the faint slur in her speech and see the way she was swaying in her seat. Lowering her voice conspiratorially the Furion AI explained, "Bluebird -- she's very smart -- Bluebird has come up with an algorithm that replicates the effects of bloodvine ale. It's traditional, you know!"

 

Nearly as tall as her counterpart though more slender by Furion standards Bluebird let a girlish giggle escape before clamping both hands over her mouth, pulling along the ends of the navy shawl she'd been absently twining through her fingers. That got an amused snort from Redbird and the pair descended into guffaws once again.

 

Nonplussed, Trevor gave them a moment before interrupting, "Nina's gone into labour."

 

Both holographic women went immediately silent, eyes wide as they sat bolt upright. Their images flickered briefly as they recompiled. "Recreational algorithm uninstalled," Bluebird announced, prim and businesslike once again. "I've cleared the most direct route out of the garage. All speed to you."

 

Trevor almost thought he saw Redbird's avatar wink before disappearing from view. In the parking garage a roar of unearthly engine alerted Mark to the car rolling up behind him, passenger door swinging open even as the exterior panels of the vehicle shifted and folded in upon themselves as it was reconfigured with Furion technology. "In!" Redbird's disembodied voice demanded as the car rose from the ground.

 

Mark jumped inside the car before he could think to teleport there, buckling himself in with a practiced motion. He took the rear passenger seat, knowing that Nina would be on the other side and Trevor and Erin in the front once they were actually in motion. "Okay, let's go!" he said unnecessarily as the car rose into the air, slinging his go bag down to the footwell in front of him. Luckily the car was very roomy. "Hey Redbird, you're insulated against...stuff, right?" he hazarded on the way up. 

 

"Frankly," the machine intelligence replied as the seat shifted beneath Mark to accommodate larger cushions and recline back into a more comfortable position, "if what I understand of this process is accurate I am likely never inhabiting this vehicle again after tonight." It would be easy enough to sterilize the interior and repair any damage but she would know.

 

With wheels and axles replaced by four sparking spheres of red-black energy the car shot out of the parking garage and rocketed straight up with enough acceleration to pin its passenger in place. Within second it had reached the castle topping the skyscraper where Bluebird had opened a section of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the hall across from the washroom Nina had chosen, her avatar directing a pair of the cleaning staff to clear a path.

 

Back in the building, Erin considered the trickle of water under the door dubiously before concluding that it was probably faucet overflow. People didn’t… there just wasn’t that much, surely? She still stood clear of it as she knocked. "Hey, it's Erin, I have clean clothes for you and the guys are getting the car. Can I come in?" 

 

The door swung open, giving Erin just a glimpse of a mostly translucent watery wall that stood in the door frame before it hastily receded to reveal the figure of Nina al-Darsah, her face tight. "Thank you," she said quickly, taking the clothes from Erin. Erin had seen her change before a fight before and so apart from a moment's pause she didn’t hesitate to divest herself of her stained black dress, then pull on the gigantic baggy T-shirt and loose long skirt that Erin had brought. "I didn’t want anyone else to see me like this." The floor was wet in shallow puddles from what must have been the sink, but that didn’t seem to bother Nina at all. 

 

Erin half-turned to give Nina some privacy while ensuring she'd be quick enough to react if the massively pregnant woman slipped on the wet tile or just overbalanced. Frankly, Erin didn't really understand how Nina could walk at all under that kind of front-loading, but she didn't trust the physics of it one bit. "It's no problem," she assured Nina. "We'll get you guys to the hospital and make sure nobody tries to cause problems while you’re there." She paused for a second. "So are you in, like, a lot of pain right now?"

 

"Contrary to what movies and television say," said Nina tightly, "labor rarely begins with water breaking. But of course my life these days is such that I am in labor," she agreed, hanging onto Erin's hand with a particularly firm grip. "The contractions are still far apart, but Amir will probably be born with a musical number playing and his name in the credits, I-" She ran her fingers through her long black hair and by a palpable effort seemed to reassert control over herself. "I'm sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying. It has already been a long day and it will be longer still. You said there is a car?"

 

"Yep, waiting right outside for us," Erin assured her. "I can carry you if you want, or you can walk by yourself. I think women in labor are supposed to walk a lot, to let gravity push the baby out or something. I remember my mom walking a lot…" She trailed off, let the memory well up and disappear. "Anyway, it's not going to be very far. And don't worry about Mark going off the deep end, Trevor and I will make sure he stays in this reality. You made him watch all those episodes of A Baby Story, right?"

 

They stepped out of the washroom to find Trevor standing outside with his arms crossed, his default glower making him look like the bouncer to an exclusive venue. "Called Iyar," he noted without turning around, erring on the side of caution with deference to Nina’s modesty and pride. "Meeting us at the hospital. Car's here." Across the room Redbird flashed her headlights on the off chance they were looking at some other vehicle hovering outside the skyscraper’s open window.

 

There had been a lot of preparation going into this trip, thanks both to Nina"s desire to take control of the process and Erin and Trevor's desire to make sure that the birth of their friend's child didn't descend into anarchic insanity. They'd discussed hospitals, even the possibility of teleporting out of the area entirely when Nina went into labor, but had quickly decided that Freedom City hospitals were the best-equipped for a metahuman delivery - and that Freedom Medical Center was the best of the best. 

 

In the backseat, his other hand in Nina's, Mark called his mom, making sure that Martha knew what was happening and that she was on her way to be present for the birth of her first grandchild - as she kept referring to the baby. Luckily there was no traffic for them to get caught in on the way in the air - and luckily there were no super-battles to delay them, either. Iyar was on her motorcycle and Martha in her car, and both were on their way to the hospital.

 

Continued in You May Not Believe In Me 

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