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It was funny, in a way, the dichotomy of the way Mont Blonc had been revered. There were those that sought a certain kind of solace from it, those who feared it, those who simply respected it and what it stood for. But it was too much to say that anyone loved it, and most if held at gunpoint and asked to describe the mountain and its knight in a single word, it would've undeniably been 'gloomy'.

Anyone who ever said that had clearly never seen Alphonse smile, and especially in the presence of Pix. "Did you? - you think of me so often?" He was clearly endeared, although to be fair, when wasn't he charmed by her?

Especially to see her do what she did best, to move like that, embracing the rhythm of the music and just going. Alphonse could have watched her like that for an eternity, although he would've rather held her as long instead. "I like - " you better beside me, he did not say it, although his eyes screamed it, "it very much." I like this very much too, he thought as he pulled her closer to him, greedily drinking in the moment as he agreed, wholeheartedly, "Me too. So glad."

Mistress Material (Sedna)

Up at the top of a spiral staircase, even at a closed door, it was not lost on Miss that this was more privacy than she had had at the party before. She felt herself ease a bit more, as indeed, the murmurs and the clinking of glasses were below them. It made it easy to focus entirely on the Page, and, it made it easier to be more open, too.

Especially in light of what Chauvet called her. Still. Ah...she hadn't been that in months. It felt like a lifetime ago, and yet it felt like yesterday, too. The name didn't bother her---it was her's, and always would be.

"You're right. I don't need to hang out with PoutyPetticoats McGee. I want to." She adjusted the cloak in her arms, and then took to leaning against the doorframe. She cast a glance back down the staircase to make sure no one was coming up.

"That's not my name anymore." She said, loud enough for the woman to hear her through the door, but no louder. "More than a year ago, I was forcibly corrupted into the Negaverse, and I lost all of my memories. Everything that made me who I had been. Shortly after I met you in the bottle that evening, I returned to Order. I lost half of the memories I had made in that past year---and I picked up the mantle I had lost when I returned. I'll re-introduce myself sometime, after this party."

She was silent for a moment, just thinking. Thinking about talking with Encke, and what returning to Order could mean for her. Helping out those to serve as a cautionary tale. Perhaps just being able to listen and talk as someone who had also suffered a major loss because of this war was a role to fill as well.

"It isn't easy, Chauvet. None of it is. None of us were given the rule book once we were initiated, and we all scrape by. None of it is fair, either. It's war, where one side wants to conquer and eradicate and will do so through any means. I'm sorry about your cousin, but you're not a second string page. Your wonder felt you were the next best to pick up the mantle." The woman trailed off for a moment. "But...one thing you should know is that you're not alone, and no one expects you to do this alone, either."

Chauvet

The door listened in silence. And then, something shuffled and Chauvet spoke again. "That's...a thing they can do?" As caught up in her own mess as she was, she'd always just assumed that powered people came in different flavors, Knights or Negaverse or Stabby Blood Senshi, and what you woke up as was what you were, no takebacks or exchanges. But Mistress Material's story set up the parallels, where senshi were senshi and knights were knights and sometimes they had different flavors but it was more...connected, somehow. She thought about Carminite, how she'd thought he was just a really weird knight that felt bad. Maybe...it wasn't wrong.

The doorknob turned and the gilded wood door swung inwards just a smidge, revealing half of Chauvet's masked face mushed up against the threshold to peek out. "...Did you forget the part where we made out on a pirate ship?" She asked softly, subdued but a little coy all the same. In spite of her mood, she struggled to wipe her nose and pick herself up by her pearlescent bootstraps and smile.

You're not a second string page.

She nodded along with Miss, but as it got more enthusiastic the tears built up in her eyes until they poured over. "Yeah. I don't. You're...right. This is--I was still chosen, right?" She hiccuped, lifting the mask to wipe her eyes. "And...you're right. I've got you, and...a lot of people. You met Cinnabun. And Sunshine, he's...great. Even giraffe boy, when he's not stealing my women."

Suddenly Chauvet felt sheepish. She'd been hiding all of this hurt for so long, when she had the most beautiful network of people there to catch her. She opened the door.

"I--um, when the clock strikes midnight I'm supposed to do one last toast. I guess I should go do that, huh?" She glanced down at her uniform, simple as it was. She reached out for Mistress Material's hand, tentative but warm. "No more secrets, no more stress."

Narcissa/Viminal

She was mingling with a cat, the Captain when she had a mission. She was supposed to be looking for the statue! How could she forget. Her predecessor would be very displeased if she didnt return the stolen statue. She looked in the direction that Captain pointed, and nodded even though everyone was particularly fancy even she herself.

She sighed as Captain thumped her boob and she was tempted to pop the Mau, "manners Captain, women she be finessed."

She smirked and headed toward the boy pair, "Do me a favor would you? I need to find a statue ... small, about hip height, gold with silver embellishments, musically inclined ... let me know if you see anything like that. Its very important that I take a gander at it."

She arrived at the fancy pants little s**t, "Pardon me, but I seem to have acquired your mau for the moment. He's been quite the interesting company ... pizza incident aside."

She looked around at the artifacts in the vicinity and frowned. The statue wasn't over here. Oh she needed to get that opera back, but that wouldn't happen if she could find the damn statue.

Mori/Ananke

Ananke tilted her head a bit. "Ah... I've met a few knights before but..." She put her fist to her chin in thought. "Well I'm just actually impressed really I've been to my own homeworld for the first time a few weeks ago and what I've been told the state it was in was quite common..."

"So I was thinking the knight of this wonder had a lot to do to fix it up or... Do wonders function differently? Or...." Closing her eyes for only a second before opening them again she fiddled with her hair. "Ah sorry, I'm just being kind of paranoid." She said with a smile.

Diogenes {Quartz}

"Quagmire," he offered, followed immediately by a surprised cough. "Qu -- Quetzalc-- no. Sorry, that's not right." He studied his remaining wineglass (mostly empty) with fascination. "I think this wine," he suggested. "Must be stronger than I thought. That's impressive, given the mild taste."

He offered an abashed smile. "Well, since I'm tripping over my own tongue tonight, just call me Diogenes. I guess a pseudonym goes with the whole masked theme, anyway."

At the Outsider's question, Diogenes looked around the room. To his own observation, it was a remarkably complete gallery, considering how old and remote at least some of its contents seemed to be in their origins. "Missing?" he echoed, his eyes feeling like they went out of focus for a moment, the size of the crowd doubling in shades and specters. "No, it seems more like it's..... too full, somehow, don't you think?"

It seemed that way to him. Maybe it was double vision, of course, but Diogenes was well familiar with the early stages of inebriation, and this felt different.

"What seems missing?"

“Hey, um...everyone? I have an announcement to make.”

Chauvet stood at the top of an open staircase, waving limply, and then with skirts in hand she rounded the spiral to the gallery floor. When she reached the bottom, she blanched at the sight of so many eyes in masks, peering at her or away. It was hard to say which felt worse.

She cleared her throat, reached for a solo cup champagne flute. “Uh. So…” Chauvet started to lose her nerve, but she glanced back up at Still--no, someone else, she had a different name now--and nodded her head. “I’d...well, it’s just about midnight, so I’m supposed to make a toast. So if you have a champagne, then great, and if you don’t, then find one, or just pretend, do whatever you want, I’m not your mom.” She laughed, a nervous peal, and then she stared down at her glass.

“Sorry. I’ll be short. My name is Kelso Cantaloupe--” Chauvet paused, and then she reached up, pulling the mask free from her face, letting the gold half-face fall to the floor. “Okay. Done with that. My name is Chauvet, if you didn’t know. This is kind of...my space house. I hope you’ve all had a good time here tonight, that maybe you got to meet a few new friends or reconnect with some old ones. That’s probably the coolest thing about this whole party--when you’ve got the mask on, there’s no order or chaos, no sailors or knights or negaverse, just...people. I don’t know about you guys, but it’s kind of nice to just...be people for once. We really are at our best when we take a break on the whole ‘we keep trying to kill each other’ thing.”

She laughed, but no one else did, and Chauvet picked at the edge of her gloves. “Anyway. When I was writing all of the invites and sending them out, I was supposed to reflect on the gallery and everything here, because what a good knight of Chauvet does is preserve and remember the past so it lives on, even when we don’t, by keeping tabs of the things we leave behind.” Chauvet pursed her lips, fingers curling around the stem of her glass. If she spoke her truth, she might never be aligned with the wonder enough to be a squire, but if she didn’t, she would never be aligned with herself.

“But, uh...if we’re being honest,” she stammered, glancing away, “It’s kind of a garbage way to remember each other, isn’t it? In the weeks and months that I’ve been up here, no piece of jewelry, no painting, no...fancy vase thing ever woke up to tell me about the person who made it or what they were like, how they felt. There’s probably some story there, but it’s not in any language I know how to speak, so it’s just...stuff. That’s it. Stuff without context, existing...incredibly far from wherever it might have called home and anyone who might have known what it meant.”

She shuffled on the balls of her feet. “When I think of the way I want to remember the people I love the most, I think about the experiences we share, the heart pounding highs and lows, birthdays and weddings and times when you end up in the hospital because parkoured too hardcore. It happens.” She shrugged. “I think of people like the one in this room, exchanging ideas and building connections. It’s beautiful, more than any piece of art, because it’s here and ephemeral the same way that we are. No...critics to come by afterwards to comment secondhand. No little placards to tell us how we’re supposed to feel. Just...this fleeting moment, while it’s here.”

“I think Genevieve Degrasse was...very good at what she did, which was collect stuff for the sake of checking off boxes.” Chauvet’s nose wrinkled. “But that doesn’t work for me, and it’s my party so...to heck with it. I’m not interested in a big room of stuff. I don’t think we can be defined by the things we own, nor can an object summate or honor the people who have left us behind.”

“So at this time I’d like to invite you to peruse the gallery one last time, see if there’s something that calls to you. Take it--it’s yours. If I know anything about spooky space magic, it probably always was.” She quirked half a smile. “But I’d also like to invite you to take a moment with the people around you and maybe say hi to someone you’ve never met. Or say hi like it’s the first time you’ve met them, share something new. Shake a hand, give someone the highest of fives, hug the ones who matter because I promise you, this moment is the only one that’s guaranteed.” Chauvet bit her lip and nodded. “And uh...sometimes you can’t do that, because they’re gone, so the best you can do is share a story or live the best that you can. It never stops being hard, but...it does get easier, and as long as we remember the people we care about...they never really leave us, do they? There’s always a piece that stays behind.”

From the doorway to the foyer came a small cough. A translucent girl with coral hair stood at the threshold, wearing a white flapper dress decorated with purple fringe and a cloche hat that covered her curls. In her hands, she held a gilded soccer ball--she bounced it twice on the floor, then let it sail over the party-goers and guests. Chauvet had only the time to glance up before she reacted, reaching with her free hand to catch it--but when it touched her fingertips the ball split into two, swirling around her dress with a blinding light…

...and then, standing before the assembled guests, stood the Squire Chauvet.

A chime tolled from beyond the foyer, and Chauvet blinked, staring at the gallery and then herself. “I--uhhhhhhhhhhh. Ha. Haha. Well, that saves the second half of the announcement. Anyway--that’s midnight, folks, and we all know enough about Cinderella to know what happens next. The round window in the Astrarium has opened, and walking through it will take you back to wherever you were. If you’ve got things to say to the people around you, then there’s no time like now to say it. If there’s something you’d like to take home, then take it, call it my thanks for coming out tonight. And hey, if there are any ladies out there who want a kiss from the birthday squire…” Chauvet shook her head and chose not to finish the thought, but at least she was smiling.

“Sorry, that was...a lot longer than expected. Um. On three, let’s toast--to all the stories we make with each other, and the ones we can look forward to sharing with each other in the future. I hope I get to see you all there.” Laughing, Chauvet raised her glass.

One...two...three.

((Art lovingly rendered by Lucyal!))

Aurora Night - Methone

"Do you think after our dance, we can explore the halls? I so rarely get to leave Methone after all." She shyly smiled at him, mischevious like a pixie twinkling in her eyes.

She wished to see the gallery of Chauvet, often revered for the famous collections it had garnered from all over. She spun, laughing bright like her namesake and sphere.

There was so much she enjoyed about this ball, to dance with the painter who always seemed caught up in his mountain. To see more wonders of the universe.

"I think of you whenever I visit Saturn, to deliver those who are ready to pass. It takes a lot, to not come rushing to your home and crash it." She giggled, "I do believe I would give you a start though, and I would hate to make your heart race-" She paused, "Out of fear." But she did hope his heart raced in other ways.

As much as hers did, whenever she thought of him. Whenever she danced on her methone dias, to express the emotions she ranged for him. She eagerly went to his arms though, her small form pressed against his larger one, her hand reaching to bush up black...no wait..White bangs?