2016-10-31: Hallowe'en in Another Reality

[Bob Schroeck]

Chapter 2: The Setup

Douglass Gardens Apartments
Somerset, NJ, USA
October 18, 2016

The next few days were a mix of frantic brainstorming and somewhat less frantic telephone calls. More volunteers made themselves known, and within a day Bob, Peggy and Ui were joined by Minami Makimura, Keiichi Morisato, Kazuki Sendo and Madoka Ayukawa (who had only arrived in Douglass Gardens the day before with five other displacees from Kimagure Orange Road) to officially form the Party Planning Committee. And the Committee's first order of business was to piece together a master list of everything needed to throw a party for two hundred (!!) people outdoors at the end of October.

"First thing — tables and chairs," Peggy said. "For serving the potluck, for eating at, for sitting and talking or whatever."

"Speaking of the potluck," Minami said, "Where do we stand on that?"

"Good question," Bob replied. "I posted the signup sheet yesterday after dinner. Just to make sure we got enough of everything, I split it out into categories: finger food and snacks, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, drinks and incidentals. And I marked each of them with 'we need at least this much'."

"And?" Madoka asked.

"When I last checked about an hour ago, we were already approaching minimum required levels for every category. I think we're set there."

The other members of the Committee visibly relaxed. "Good," Kazuki said. "One thing we don't need to worry about."

"Just a million others," Madoka added, laughing.

"Anyway," Bob said with a chuckle. "Along with the tables and chairs for two hundred, I'm thinking that we need pavilions and tents to put them all under." He suppressed a grimace. "The end of October in New Jersey is usually dry, but you don't count on it."

"It's also going to get cold before the party's over," Peggy pointed out.

Bob laughed. "Not like it's going to be terribly warm even at the start. It was only five years ago we had a major snowstorm on the 29th, after all."

"Can we do some kind of heaters?" Ui asked. "You mentioned something like that yesterday."

Bob nodded. "There are propane-powered outdoor heaters," he said, "Like the bars in New Hope^[1] have?" he added, looking at Peggy, who frowned then nodded back. He turned back to Ui. "Good idea. We can probably rent them wherever we get the pavilions."

Ui preened for a moment, then turned her attention back to her notes. "Mr. Donaldson said he wanted to see us perform," she noted. "We're going to need a stage of some sort, aren't we?"

"Yeah, and maybe more sound equipment than just your stuff," Peggy noted.

Minami nodded. "You're going to want a PA system separate from anything any of the bands use, for announcements and to play music when you're not performing."

"Oh, yeah, good point," Bob replied. "Maybe a DJ?"

Kazuki shook his head. "No need. There's a lot of musicians among the displacees, and not just the ones living here." He inclined his head toward Madoka and Ui. "We can ask around to see who'd like to play a short set, like fifteen or twenty minutes."

Ui tapped her pencil against the table top. "Mm, yeah, if we get enough people willing to play, no one will get stuck on stage too long." She looked up, grinning. "Unless they want to be, of course!"

"And in between we don't need a DJ," Keiichi noted. "Just a player and some mix tapes or CDs."

"I guess that works," Peggy said. She glanced at Bob, who nodded.

"Oh! Oh!" Ui suddenly exclaimed. "We're going to need a dance floor."

Bob and Peggy shared an uncertain look. "I would imagine we can get something at the same place we'd get a stage," he said. "I'll have to ask around."

"Where are we going to set all this up?" Peggy asked. "Especially a stage and dance floor?"

"Hm." Bob pulled a map of the complex out of the stack of papers that sat at his elbow. "We're a garden apartment complex. It seems obvious that we set up in our green spaces. Softer on the feet than asphalt, after all." He frowned at the map. "Except maybe the stage and dance floor — we're going to need a flatter surface for them." He laid the map in the center of the table, and as the others leaned in to get a better view as he gestured to it with the pencil in his hand. "So, I'm thinking we put most of the party space right behind our second rank of apartments, the area surrounded by buildings three through eight. We'll have to maneuver around some of the trees, but it's the largest pair of open spaces we have outside of the lawns right on Hamilton Street."

Peggy nodded. "And we don't want the party right on the street."

The other members of the committee chuckled. "No, that would be a bad idea," Keiichi said, grinning while rubbing the back of his neck.

"Yeah," Bob said. "The stage and the dance floor... Hm. Maybe we want those on asphalt and not grass."

Madoka leaned in even closer. "There's no one living in buildings 7 and 8 yet, right? Or further back? Why not put the stage right in the street between them?"

Peggy and Bob exchanged a look. "That might work," she said. "It's close enough to be a visible part of the party, but not in the middle where it could overwhelm everything else."

Bob frowned. "The only problem I see is noise. Putting it there would channel the sound right down Annette and out onto Hamilton. If I had my druthers, I'd tuck it away into one of the parking lots, just to give us a bit of a soundproofing. But Peg's got a good point. Put it too far away from the rest of the party and it won't be a part of the party." He sighed. "Let's do it. Hopefully the park across the street will absorb enough of the sound that we won't disturb the rest of the neighborhood too much."

Peggy patted his hand. "Putting it there also leaves the front two parking lots open for portal access as well as parking for anyone who doesn't use a portal — or does and brings something like a motorcycle with them."

Ui giggled. "Like Hane and her friends." She glanced across the table. "You'll like them, Keiichi-san — they're a high school motorcycle club." She giggled again. "Well, most of them are high school, anyway."

Keiichi's eyebrows rose at that, but before he could respond Bob replied, "Yeah, exactly. If they don't show up pushing their bikes through the portal I will be very surprised."

Kazuki asked, "And does anybody expect Lord Phantomhive won't be showing up in a limousine?"

"Of course he'll arrive in luxury." Bob nodded, then looked around at the rest of the Committee. "So... stage in the street sound okay to everyone?"

A small chorus of agreements sounded, and he nodded his head. "Okay, then," he said, "At least that's decided. Now comes the rest."

---

The next morning, a notice went up on displacees.yggdrasil calling for displacee bands to play at the party. Not long after, Ui showed up at the managers' apartment with Yui, Azusa and Akira in tow.

Half an hour later, the party had its first hour's worth of live entertainment booked. And, at Yui's suggestion, an open mike option.

---

An hour after that, Bob was on the phone to the township, trying to find out if a permit were needed for the party, and just what department would issue it.

He gave up at lunchtime after far too long playing phone tag and listening to muzak. Then he remembered that Minami did this sort of thing for a living and decided to ask her to help with the paperwork.

---

By dinnertime, the potluck sign-up sheet had filled up to the point that Bob and Peggy were sure there would probably be leftovers for two hundred when the party ended. Peggy added plastic containers to the party shopping list.

---

Douglass Gardens Apartments
October 18, 2016

Not long after dinner, Bob's cellphone rang. He glanced at it, and when he saw who the caller was he picked it up and accepted the call. "Hi, Uncle Arthur!"

"Hi, Robert, I'm finally returning your call."

"I hope you've got good news for me."

"Well, don't keep me in suspense," Bob said with a grin.

Arthur chuckled. "So, as it works out, Linda and I will be in NJ over the Halloween weekend — we can drop by to hear those bands you emailed us about."

"Okay, great!" Bob replied. "Fair warning, we're hosting a big Halloween party on the 31st, but if you come then, you can hear the girls — and a few other folks — perform."

"We don't have to dress up, do we?" he asked.

"Well," Bob hedged, "it is a costume party, but it's not fair to make you two scramble for costumes and then lug them coast-to-coast — or worse, try to find something local at the last minute. So don't worry about it, okay?"

He laughed. "If you say so. Then it's set — we'll see you and Peggy on Halloween."

"It's a date," Bob agreed.

Almost as soon as he had hung up, Bob started worrying. Uncle Arthur and his family were science fiction and fantasy fans from way back — the reason Bob knew anything about how to work the mixing console in a recording studio was because back in the late 1970s Bob's cousin Shem and he used to improvise Battlestar Galactica audioplays and then spend hours in Uncle Arthur's basement studio layering in all the sound effects necessary to make them sound "real".^[2]

As far as Bob knew, his Uncle Arthur and Aunt Linda weren't into anime, so he didn't think they were likely to recognize most of the displacees. And in fact, he'd been counting on that when he'd originally asked them to visit — he'd been certain that there was pretty much no chance that he'd recognize the girls from K-On! But now with the party... Some of the confirmed attendees — the Doctor and Rose, the Firefly folks, and maybe even Harold Shea — they were likely to recognize. Then there were the ones out of general pop culture like Ferris Bueller and Bill and Ted. On top of that, he doubted that they would ignore the nonhuman attendees, like the ponies or the talking cats.

Oh, and the portals were probably going to be a big giveaway, too. With a sinking sensation, Bob realized that he might have made a mistake. He stared at his cell phone where he'd laid it down on the desktop after talking to his uncle, and knew he needed to make another call while at the same time dreading it and looking for a way to avoid it.

Bob sighed, picked it back up, unlocked it and opened up his contacts list. The number he wanted was right there at the top of the "Favorites" section, and he opened it. His fingertip hovered over the "dial" button as he procrastinated just a few more seconds. He continued to hesitate, but his finger drifted too close to the screen and the phone registered it as an intentional tap.

He'd barely had time to feel a jolt of surprise and fear before the other end picked up. "Yes, Bob?"

Bob swallowed. "Bell, I may have caused us a problem."

---

It only took a sentence or two to explain, after which Belldandy didn't say anything for a long moment, long enough that his anxiety began to mount. Bob had started to imagine he and Peggy were about to get fired for his indiscretion when Bell finally said, "I'm not sure I see the problem here."

Bob's racing thoughts hit a brick wall. "Wait, what?"

"I don't see a problem with your aunt and uncle learning about the displacees," she elaborated.

"You're okay with letting them in on the secret?" he asked, confused.

"Secret?" Belldandy sounded genuinely puzzled. "There is no secret."

"What do you mean, there's no secret?" Bob leapt from his chair and began stalking around the apartment/office. "The whole displacee thing. The residences? Isn't this all a secret?"

"Not at all," she replied. "How could it be? There are hundreds of displacees that we know of, and nowhere near all of them are in the residence system. How could we possibly hope to enforce any kind of silence on their part?"

Bob stopped in front of the sliding doors that opened onto the patio and stared out blankly at Hamilton Street and the park beyond. "I don't know... can't you just do something like a Harry Potter Fidelius using the Ultimate Force?"

"And override the free will of so many mortals?" Her tone had grown gently chiding. "We do not do that kind of thing."

"But..."

"And even if we could, you're familiar with at least the first few dozen chapters of the story that Keiichi and I appear in." It wasn't a question. "We decided to keep my celestial nature secret, but Megumi suffered more than once because of that decision. And we've known since September 27th that not all of the displacees are benign — or even known to us. You have a saying here: Forewarned is forearmed. If you believe that your relatives need to know about the displacees, and can accept knowing about the displacees, then by all means tell them. But do not think that their ignorance is mandated by either Heaven or Hell."

"Uh, well," Bob said after a moment as he tried to adjust to the sudden demolition of his assumptions. "In that case... um. Sorry to waste your time, Bell."

"Oh, no, not at all," she chirped. "It was a valid question, and I hope my answer addressed your concerns sufficiently."

He chuckled, somewhat ruefully. "It did... just not in the way I expected. Thank you, and I'll let you get back to more important matters."

"Oh, Bob," she replied, "questions like yours are important matters. Please don't forget that."

He shook his head. "I won't, now. Thanks again, and good-bye, Bell."

"Good-bye, Bob". And with that the cell connection disconnected.

He stared down at the phone as the call screen reverted back to his contacts list, then back out the sliding doors. "'Forewarned is forearmed'? Guess it's time to be half an octopus."^[3]

---

Franklin High School
October 20, 2016

"That was fun!" Atsuko declared as the gaggle of displacee girls left the music room, where Ms. Yamanaka prepared for her next class.

"I've been telling you — you've got a great singing voice," Ui said. "You sound so much like Megumi Hayashibara."

Atsuko lowered her voice. "Well, Papa-san did tell me he sampled her voice to make mine," she confided in a near-whisper.

"Well, that makes sense, given she's your voice actress here," Jun said, nodding.

Nao chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Now I'm wondering — do you have the voice you do because she's your seiyuu, or is she your seiyuu because you have similar voices?"

"Which came first?" Ui asked philosophically. "The chicken or the egg?"

Jun rolled her eyes. "Who knows?"

"Belldandy-sama might," Sumire pointed out.

"Are you going to ask her? Because I'm not," Jun shot back. "If she's around to ask, that means she's destressing and spending quality time with Keiichi-san, if you know what I mean," she added with a smirk. "I'm not getting in the way of that."

Ignoring the by-play behind her, Azusa leaned closer to Atsuko. "When we get home we're gonna be practicing for the Halloween party," she said. "You want to come sit in, maybe sing a song or two?"

"Sure!" Atsuko chirped enthusiastically.

---

Douglass Gardens Apartments
October 24, 2016

"Okay, now that everyone's here, let's get started," Bob said. "Minami?"

It was a week before Halloween, and the Party Planning Committee had met for what was expected to be the last major planning session before the party proper. Bob wasn't so sure — things had been coming together so well over the past week that he'd started worrying that they'd overlooked something big and important. Preventing that very situation had been the ultimate purpose behind the Committee, and he knew that they had covered every contingency. But his anxiety, usually well controlled, didn't care about reassurances or logic.

Hopefully the meeting would put it to rest.

Minami absently tapped the papers in front of her into an even neater stack than they had been. "Okay, first and foremost, if we need a permit to hold the party, no one in the Municipal Building knows it. I spent several hours on the phone this past week getting bounced from department to department, and no one could give me a straight answer. Then I physically went over and walked the building from one end to the other looking for anyone could tell me." She huffed and shook her head. "No luck. I even went to the police department and asked them — and they sent me back to the front desk of the Municipal Building, who didn't know anything the first time I talked to them."

"I guess that means we don't need one," Bob said, shaking his own head. "If we did, someone would be willing to charge us for it."

"Did you document everyone you talked to?" Peggy asked.

Minami chuckled. "And then some."

"With luck that should be enough to cover us if the cops show up and ask questions," Bob said. "Anything else?"

"Yes," she replied. "I also spoke with Funtom and confirmed that their insurance will cover us for anything that might happen during the party. Or, specifically, between the first portal arrivals on Halloween and the last departures the next morning."

"Oh, good!" Peggy said.

"God, I didn't even think of that." Bob grimaced. "Thanks, Minami."

She smiled brightly. "It's what I do, but you're welcome."

Bob nodded, and shared a quick glance with Peggy. "On the subject of things that cost money, Peg and I have made all the arrangements with Friendly Rental Center..."

Madoka laughed. "Really? That sounds like an outfit from a sitcom."

Keiichi chuckled. "Yeah, and when the cast uses them, everything goes wrong."

"Yeah, that's really what they're called," Bob said with a grin. "They've got stellar reviews on Google, Yelp and Angie's List, and the Better Business Bureau's given them a great rating. So I think we can rely on them. Plus," he added, "if they do screw things up, I fully intend on asking Belldandy to unleash her weapons-grade disappointment on them." The other committee members laughed. "So," he continued, "they're providing everything we need — tents, tables, chairs, lights, linens, patio heaters, the PA system, the stage and dance floor, even a bar, along with the manpower to set everything up and take it back down afterward. They'll show up on Halloween morning and have everything in place by mid-afternoon."

"Good," Kazuki said. "That's like, the biggest part of the preparations locked down."

"Well, that and the food," Ui agreed. "About which, well, most of that's covered by the potluck. But Peggy and I will be making our contribution, all kinds of crudités, hors d'oeuvres and other finger foods. We've also set up an order with Hamilton Street Liquors for beer, liquor and soda." She glanced down at the paper she held. "It's a big order, with a couple kegs, and they don't deliver, so we're going to need both vans to go over there and get it all on Halloween."

"They recommended a professional bartender willing to work the party," Peggy added. "After we talked to him, and talked to a few people he's worked for, we hired him for the party."

"Oh, god," Kazuki laughed. "Imagine the stories he's going to be able to tell the next day."

"Not that anyone's going to believe him," Madoka added with a grin.

"Bob," Peggy asked, "how much beer do you have left from the last time you brewed?"

"Oh!" He nodded. "I've got something like four gallons of Copper Pipe left from my last batch."

"Copper pipe?" Keiichi asked.

Bob grinned. "I make my own beer. 'Copper Pipe' is what I call my signature recipe. I'd just bottled a batch right before Funtom hired us." He glanced back at Peggy. "I've only gone through a couple bottles since it finished conditioning, and I'd be happy to contribute the rest to the party."

"Okay, great," Peggy said. She leaned over to Ui and pointed to something on the sheet of paper in front of her, which Ui dutifully scratched out. She looked up and added, "Oh, and Ui and I hit BJ's and picked up enough plastic cups, plates and utensils to cover our guest list and a bit more."

"And we also picked up foil chafing pans and stands and lots of Sterno," Ui added. "Along with plastic serving forks and spoons, and tongs. Oh, and lighters, too, for the Sterno." She grinned. "We're more than set for the potluck's buffet tables."

"My turn," Madoka said. "I grabbed a few people and we went out and got decorations. Did you know that some stores are already putting 'after season' prices on Halloween stuff? We got some great deals. It's all stashed upstairs in the Community Center for now. We'll put some up before the rental guys show up, and the rest when they're done. We also got everything we need for the haunted house, but we still need an apartment to set it up in."

"Right. Hang around after we're done here and we'll get you a key," Bob said. "And since you brought up the Community Center, here's how using it for the party is shaking out: The kitchen is reserved for supporting the potluck, of course. The home theatre on the second floor is going to be video central, with lots of Halloween-themed movies like Hocus Pocus, Beetlejuice and whatnot. The recording studio is going to be locked and off-limits, but the practice rooms are going to be our 'quiet zone' for folks who can't take the party at full intensity."

Ui nodded. "Makes sense, given their soundproofing."

"We're also putting our first aid station just inside the door of the first room," Peggy added.

"Shall we start a pool on how many times it'll be needed during the party?" Minami asked with a small smile.

"Not where we know about it," Bob said.

"Spoilsport," Madoka muttered, but smiled as she did.

"Anyway," Bob continued, "the rest of the Community Center is going to be given over to playing tabletop games. We're getting extra tables and chairs from the rental place to use for more playing space, and we're seeding it with several dozen games from our collection. I've also contacted most of the other managers to see who can bring stuff we don't have, or duplicates of popular games."

"What games do you have so far?" Keiichi asked.

Bob chuckled. "You really want me to list them all? Sure!" He took a deep breath and began to sing. "There's Knightmare Chess and V&V and Cards Against Humanity... Ow!" He glared at his wife, who had just swatted his upper arm.

"Don't get him started!" Peggy warned Keiichi. "He spent the entire afternoon we were bringing games over to the community center putting their names to the Major-General song from Pirates of Penzance, and then he wouldn't stop singing it." She returned Bob's glare. "I've had more than enough of that, thank you!"

Snickering, Keiichi held up his hands. "Question withdrawn," he said with a broad smile as the other members of the committee chuckled.

"Don't worry," Peggy added in a less irritated tone. "We'll have more than enough to keep anyone who wants to play something satisfied."

"Ui, where do we stand on the entertainment?" Bob asked, rubbing his arm. "You more or less took that over from the first."

"Oh, right!" she perked up. "We have at least nine bands or singers who want to perform. Right off the bat almost everyone here in Douglass Gardens — Hokago Tea Time, Wakaba Girls, OnNaGumi, Gorillaz and even Miss Asahi will be performing. Sawa-chan-sensei said Death Devil's music wouldn't fit the party, though." She aimed a ridiculously exaggerated mock pout at Madoka. "And then somebody else turned me down when I asked."

Madoka wrinkled her nose at her. "I'm not comfortable doing a solo set yet. Back someone up, sure, but go out there all by myself? No, thank you."

Ui giggled. "No, that's one of Hokago Tea Time's songs."

Madoka rolled her eyes.

Still giggling, Ui continued, "Rei Hino and Minako Aino from Blossom Apartments each are going to do a set, and 33-Stars from Dublin, too. And Miss Tomoyo from Aria House is going to sing, with Mugi-chan accompanying her on piano. If they each do fifteen minutes, that's more than two hours of live music. We've also got a couple karaoke blocks in the schedule," she added.

Bob grimaced. "I forgot to request a karaoke machine from the rental company. I'll do that after we're done here and I get Madoka that key." A thoughtful expression crossed his face, followed by an evil grin. "Do you think we can get Sakura Kinomoto into an 'Annie' costume and have her sing 'Tomoyo, Tomoyo, she's only a door away'?"

"Oh, Bob," Peggy groaned. "That's terrible. That's almost worse than the games song."

He waggled his eyebrows at her before growing serious again. "I think that's everything? Is there anything we've forgotten?" Bob asked. "We still have a week to take care of anything that's gotten overlooked."

The committee members looked back and forth between themselves. A chorus of "no"s sounded across the table.

"In that case, I'd say we're done here," he concluded. "Everyone keep going with what you've got, and if you think of anything at all we still need to do, let us all know so someone can jump on it, okay?"

And with that the meeting concluded.

---

The next week sped past. Defying Bob's intermittent bouts of anxiety, no great problems or critical forgotten needs made themselves known at inopportune times. Starting with the stage and dance floor as the party's central anchor, the committee finalized the positions of the various tents and their contents. Madoka and her team completed setting up the haunted house in apartment 44A by Wednesday. On Thursday, Bob and Peggy teleconferenced with Washuu to establish what she needed for her portals.

"First thing," Bob said when the opening "hello"s and "thank you"s were dispensed with, "are we talking about one portal or more? We're a little confused on that."

"Which do you want?" Washuu's image on the screen shrugged carelessly. Her voice still surprised him; it sounded far more childlike than KT Vogt's performance in the English dub. "I'll be using systems I've already got in place^[4] , so a dozen portals aren't really any harder to open up than a single one."

Peggy and Bob shared a look. "Do you need to monitor the portals or something?" Peggy asked.

"Well," Washuu mused, "if it's just the one portal, I'd have to manually switch the far end from residence to residence."

"You can't automate..." Bob began only to be interrupted by Peggy.

"So if, say, someone needs to run back to their place at some point..." she asked.

The redhead nodded. "They'd have to come find me to redirect and reopen the portal." Her image's focus switched to the other side of the screen. "And I could, but that's a lot of unnecessary work just to get people to and from a party."

"Mm," Bob responded noncommittally.

Peggy frowned in thought. "How much trouble is it to just leave a bunch of portals open and running?"

"Pretty much none," Washuu confirmed. "Once I set a portal up, it's stable until I dismiss it."

"Well, why don't we do that, then?" Peg asked. "You open up a portal to each residence where's there's someone coming to the party, leave them open, and go enjoy yourself until the party ends and we have to shut them down for the night."

"And spin them back up the next morning to send everyone home who stayed overnight," Bob added.

"Yeah, I can do that easily," Washuu said appreciatively.

"Cool," Bob said.

"Okay, with that settled, where do you want me to open them on your end?"

Bob and Peggy traded glances again. "If we can trust the Tenchi anime," he said cautiously, "your portals don't need to be anchored to anything, like a wall. Is that correct?"

She nodded. "Yeah, that's right."

"Then the parking lot behind our building?" Bob asked Peggy. "Close to the party proper, and if we place them properly they won't be visible from Hamilton Street. One parking space per portal."

"Yeah," Peg agreed.

"That works." Washuu looked off-screen for a moment while her hands made keyboarding movements below the bottom edge of the window. "Okay, I have the list of residences that need portals. Aaaaaand I've just gotten the lot's latitude and longitude from Google Maps. Handy, that. Sending a nanoprobe through now to confirm — is this the right place?" She swiped one hand across the field of view and dragged a picture-in-picture image onto the screen. In it, a slowly panning camera showed what both of them recognized as the far ends of buildings 2 and 4, the parking lot between them, and the fence and trees that separated the lot from the backyards of the houses on the next street over.

"Perfect!" Bob declared.

"Great!" Washuu swiped her hand across the screen again, banishing the smaller image. "I'll set up the portals for the last few spaces on each side, and we'll be ready to go at the touch of a button."

"Oh, before we forget," Peggy spoke up. "The girls from Aria House want to bring their van over so they can do a road trip back. Their portal needs to be big enough to let it through."

"And preferably located somewhere on their end where they can drive into it," Bob added.

"No problemo." More keyboarding motions below the edge of the screen. "Done." She looked back up at the pair and grinned. "We're all set."

"Fantastic," Bob replied with a grin of his own. "I'm starting to think this thing is actually going to happen."

---

The last few days before the party were, to everyone's relief, mostly calm and uneventful. The planning committee met once more, just to confirm that the planning had done its job and everything was on track. The weekend was actually relaxed, with whatever near-final preparations were scheduled for Saturday and Sunday were handled quickly and easily.

This is not to say there weren't any complications, but extra time for unanticipated problems had been factored into the overall plan by Minami — and it proved both necessary and useful. The belated realization on Saturday morning that they needed some way to block off the complex from Hamilton Street to discourage random passers-by from slipping into the party necessitated a quick trip to Home Depot for a couple sets of traffic barriers. And the unexpected appearance of Mamoru Chiba, Chibiusa and the mooncats on the morning of the 30th might also have thrown a monkey wrench into the party preparations, but instead it was handled with, if not aplomb, then efficiency and a minimum of excitement.

Monday the 31st dawned clear and chilly, and not long after breakfast the combined might of the decoration team and several truckloads of burly men from Friendly Rental Center began transforming the complex. Pavilions (complete with walls to hold in the output of the propane-powered heaters) sprouted around the trees in the green spaces between the second and third ranks of apartments, while the stage was erected in the street between the buildings of the third rank. The dance floor was laid down in front of it, sheltered by its own pavilion — this one open on all sides. As the rental company's men finished in one location, the decoration team swooped in and gave the plain white tents a festive, seasonal makeover. Another group — aided by Mamoru, who admitted to feeling uncomfortable just watching everyone else working — unfolded chairs and tables, and set them up according to the master plan.

In the community center kitchen, Ui (who was "home sick" from school) and Peggy set to work with a third team of volunteers to prepare the complex's contribution to the potluck. As most of the group worked on cutting and laying out a variety of vegetables into attractive patterns and arrangements on a collection of large platters, the remainder prepared dips and sauces. This part of the group was made up of Ayame Yoshida and Chibiusa; the latter took to the task eagerly, stirring and mixing with the tip of her tongue ever so slightly protruding from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on the ingredients and recipes laid out before her and her partner.

"Oh, Chibiusa!" Peggy suddenly called from the other side of the kitchen.

The girl looked up from the bowl in front of her. "Yes, Peggy?"

"Before I forget, save one container of sour cream and one package of onion soup mix." She smiled. "Bob likes his onion dip freshly mixed — he says it's better when the onions are still crunchy and the flavors haven't melted into each other yet."

Chibiusa considered this. "So I should mix them right before we take everything out?"

Peggy nodded. "Yep. Believe me, Bob will appreciate it."

The little girl smiled brilliantly. "Sure!" Then she very carefully selected one tub out of the stack of sour cream before her, and one foil packet of soup mix, and carried them both over to the refrigerator, where she placed them on the highest shelf she could reach. "There!"

Peggy and Ui shared a smile with Ayame. "Thank you!"

Chibiusa grinned impishly and curtseyed. "You're very welcome!"

As Chibiusa went back to work with Ayame, Ui leaned toward Peggy. "That was nice of you, making her feel like an important part of everything," she whispered.

Peggy shrugged. "I'm practicing for when our niece Vivienne gets to be her age," she replied with a slight smile.

"I think you've got it exactly right," Ui said, nudging her gently.

Meanwhile, attendees elsewhere were making their own final preparations...

---

Blossom Apartments
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
October 31, 2016
7:10 am Eastern

Usagi Tsukino was getting tired of her history homework. She'd fallen asleep at her desk (which Rob-oji insisted she get the previous weekend after one too many calls from her teachers about her homework) last night and slept on it, literally.

When was she going to need to know Canadian history? She was going to become Neo-Queen Serenity and rule the world ... and it might be a good idea to know something about the people she was going to lead, so yeah.

Assuming that she was going to become Neo-Queen Serenity on this Earth. She wasn't in her home universe any more, and it didn't look like she was going home any time soon. "Maybe one month" had already stretched into two.

She missed Mamoru. And her family; Kenji, Ikuko, and Shingo. And Mamo-chan. And Luna and Artemis. And Mamo-chan. And Naru, her closest friend who wasn't a Senshi. And Mamo-chan. And her daughter from the future, Chibiusa. And especially Mamo-chan.

Usagi sighed deeply, then got up and changed her clothes so she'd be presentable for breakfast. Being sad was not a good enough excuse for missing breakfast. Besides, she had friends here – some from back home, some from another world altogether, and some from this world – and it wouldn't be polite to make them worry about her.

Then she noticed the parcel on her bed – a parcel that hadn't been there the previous evening, she was sure. Had Kuroko teleported it into her room? She left it alone, intending to mention it during breakfast.

---

Douglass Gardens Apartments
New Brunswick, NJ, USA
October 31, 2016
7:43 am Eastern

"Who do we have to thank for these costumes?" Mamoru asked Reiko while holding up a rather distinctive black outfit from a 1986 movie.

"Nobody in Team Ikkatsu made that one," the cosplayer replied. "We're still finishing off our own costumes. We barely had time to make that bodysuit for Chibiusa. And none of us have any idea how to make something for a cat."

Mamoru looked at the outfits for Luna, Artemis, and Diana, and didn't point out that they were all for the human forms of each Mau. Then he noticed the note pinned to his costume. "This matches your girlfriend's ballgown. Be sure to wear it. Washuu."

Reiko read the note at the same time. "Somebody's setting up a show. Better practice your lines for it."

Mamoru shook his head. "I think it would be best if I said nothing, at least to begin with."

---

Los Angeles, California, USA
October 31, 2016
6:45 am Pacific

Tomoyo quickly washed her face, then put the towel back on the rack. She didn't have time to get breakfast, though – Sakura's costume wasn't finished yet, and they were leaving for Somerset right after school. She needed to work as hard as she ever had just to finish the work that she needed to do.

She absolutely refused to let Sakura Kinomoto appear in front of the other displacees looking anything short of her best. Her own costume... was good enough, even if it could use some work. And she had finished Shaoran and Akari's costumes last night. But what was she going to do about Mira's costume? The full effect would be lost if they weren't all costumed according to the theme they had chosen.

Her television switched itself on. "Hello, Daidouji-chan!" Surprised, she gave it her full attention, to see Urd looking out at her, the Yggdrasil system vaguely visible behind her. "Belldandy says you're working yourself to exhaustion. Don't worry about Mira's costume – just leave the TV switched on to this channel when Sakura-chan summons her."

"Oh, of course! Thank you, megami-sama!"

"You're a good girl. Don't hurt yourself over something that we can help you with. And you're welcome."^[5]

---

Pensacola, Florida, USA
October 31, 2016
3:34 PM Central

Jayne Cobb gave Kensuke Aida a good look. The teenager had almost begged to be allowed to dress as Jayne for the party, which amused and flattered the man. But if the kid was going to be dressed as him, the kid had better look the part.

"Jayne, are you sure it's supposed to ride like this?"

"Yeah, it's supposed to 'ride like this'. Don't be a wuss. Live with it."^[6] He reached over and grabbed the hat Kensuke was wearing, pulling it off his head (almost pulling his glasses off at the same time) and handing it to him. "And you have to wear this right. Not so far back on your head." Then he took a look at himself in the mirror – if the kid was going to go dressed like him, he might as well go dressed like the kid, he figured. "Huh, I almost look wholesome like this."

"Almost," Rei replied in passing. She had found out about the whole "Rei Ayanami expy" thing and was carrying a North High School uniform that she'd received in the mail a few days ago. "Has anyone seen Inara? She promised to help me get ready."

---

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
October 31, 2016
4:46 PM Eastern

"It's ... gorgeous." Usagi held the dress up and looked at herself in the mirror. "And it's my size, too! Who left it here?"

"You can't fight in it, though," Makoto complained. "Look at the size of those shoulders, and how wide the skirt is."

"It's a ballgown," Rei pointed out. "It's supposed to be elegant."

"And impractical."

"I don't care," Usagi declared. "I'm wearing this to tonight's party. If we have to fight at a party, then something's gone terribly wrong. I wonder who I'm supposed to be, though?"

Makoto held up a card. "This says it's a dance gown worn by somebody named Sarah in a movie that I haven't seen.^[7] It also says that we have a certain genius in Vancouver to thank for it."

"Oh. We'll have to do something nice for Washuu-chan in return, then. I wonder when she got my measurements?"

"Three weeks ago, when she did everybody's checkups," Rei pointed out.

"Oh, right! Will you help me with it, please?"

Makoto Kino and Rei Hino did so, sharing a private smile where Usagi couldn't see it. Once they had finished helping Usagi into her dress, they headed off to get into their own costumes.

---

"You look good in a suit. But why the sunglasses?"

Rob smiled. "I am this building's first, last, and only line of defense against the worst scum of the universe."

"Whatever you say, Agent R," Mii replied while wondering how well Rob would fare against a Predator... or, for that matter, against Luna and Artemis.

"You're wearing that?"

Mii smiled back at Rob. "I thought you might like it."

"You thought I might like it." Rob carefully avoided showing his true feelings about that statement. After all, they'd both signed a consent form saying he was her guardian, and he was much older than her.

"Do you?"

"You certainly have the build for it. You know you're going to draw the eye of every heterosexual male at the party, right? Although I expect some people are going to complain somebody dressed like that shouldn't be wearing glasses."

"Just call me Gloria."^[8]

"Oh, so you do know at least that much of the history. Just take a coat along; it wouldn't be good if you caught cold."

As Rob walked over to one of the other groups of girls, Mii Konori wondered whether he was noticing her at all, that way. If her wearing a Playboy Bunny outfit didn't get a compliment from him, what would?

---

"I feel ridiculous." Mikoto Misaka tried pushing her skirt down. Again.

"The skirt isn't any shorter than our school uniform skirt, onee-sama."

"Yes, it is - you can see my shorts under it."

"How many times have I told you that you shouldn't be wearing shorts under your skirt? You aren't a child any more."

Just then, Makoto knocked at Mikoto's door and walked into the apartment. "Oh, there you are! You look good in my Senshi uniform, Mikoto."

"Aren't you a little old to be a Tokiwadai student, Makoto?"

As both electrokinetics giggled, Kuroko Shirai wondered (not for the first time) what had possessed them to attend the party dressed as each other... and, for that matter, why people were bothering with costumes at all. They'd just been dumped into this universe a month ago, after all – she thought that what they usually wore back home should be costume enough.

---

Rei Hino stepped out of the shower, carefully pat-drying her hair so that the temporary hair colour wouldn't come out, walked over to her bedroom nook, and looked at the outfit on her bed. It may have been an "internet special", but it was a good off-the-rack costume. A few minutes later, once she was in the short-skirt-and-blouse-and-jacket-and-very-long-boots outfit and her temporarily-dyed hair was in twin tails (and she'd checked in the mirror that the twin-tails were symmetrical), Rei noticed that Kazari Uiharu had done a more thorough job than she expected – the wireless headset she was about to put on had the heft of having actual electronics in it.

And Rei had found the sheet music for "Ten Thousand Stars",^[9] which she had practised over lunch at school for the last week. She was confident she would get it right this evening.

---

Los Angeles, California, USA
October 31, 2016
1:46 PM Pacific

Mira quietly thanked Brent – being in her "The Mirror" card form, she couldn't actually say it – for suggesting that she read that particular Discworld novel,^[10] turned her awareness inward, and started looking through the mirrors that were her namesake. She saw flashes of activity – Rei Hino pat-drying her hair, Rei Ayanami putting on a sweater, Rin Tohsaka carefully closing the clasp of a jeweled bracelet, Makoto Kino walking in on Mikoto Misaka with each wearing the other's uniform, Last Order moping, Akari Mizunashi carefully smoothing a wrinkle out of her leggings, Shinji Ikari putting on a North High school uniform, ... ah, there she was!

"Take a good look!" Of course Urd knew that Mira was looking at her, even without turning her attention away from her work at Yggdrasil. "I told Daidouji-san that I'd help with your costume."

Thank you, thought Mira.

"You're welcome."

---

The Steeple
Philadelphia, PA, USA
October 31, 2016
5:05 PM Eastern

Miyuki smiled as Nanoha and Fate modelled their Halloween costumes. "You two look so cute! But are you sure you should be dressed like that?"

"It's too late to change our costumes now," Nanoha pointed out. "Besides, we both wanted to show respect to the people who we're dressed as, but we didn't want to copy their Barrier Jackets. Not that Kinomoto-san has a standard Barrier Jacket, so I had to dress like this," she added with a grin.

"Also, you called dibs on the track suit," their brother Kyouya added.

"Nanoha uses magic to fight. You and I use swords."

Nanoha nodded quickly, agreeing with her sister. "Yep! So it makes sense that you should dress like The Bride. But doesn't Douglass Gardens have a strict 'no weapons' rule?"

"It's a 'no firearms' rule," Kyouya corrected her as he put on his usual jacket. Turning from Nanoha to Miyuki, he added, "But, unless you can guarantee that none of the two hundred other guests will be able to take your sword away from you, it would be best to take a bokken instead."

"Hai, sensei," she replied formally. Switching back to English, she added, "I'm more worried that somebody will get drunk and try to take it away from me, and I might hurt them when I stop them. Either way, it's poor manners to bring live steel to a party unless you're expecting trouble." Sotto voice, she continued, "Even if it would be funny to use my swords to fight off wedding crashers and then ask if anyone else had an objection to the marriage."

Nanoha looked puzzled for a brief moment, then asked, "Is that something out of one of the stories about us in this universe?"

"It is, yes."^[11]

"It doesn't really matter," their father Shirou said as he and his wife Momoko walked in, the two dressed like Masuo and Sazae Fuguta from Sazae-san. "This world appears to be more peaceful than our own, so we don't need to take live steel. Bokkens are all right."

"What about this bullwhip?" Yuuno asked, holding it in one hand and a brown fedora in the other.

"Best to leave it behind," Shirou suggested, "unless you know how to use it. Besides, Indy didn't always have a whip when he was young." He turned back to Nanoha and Fate. "And our families' Intelligent Devices should stay in standby form."

"Yes, sir!" Bardiche replied as Fate attached him to her own outfit where a brooch would otherwise go.

And that brought everyone's attention to the young blonde who was wearing a Juuban middle school uniform. She took the opportunity to ask, "When will you be getting into your own costume, Kyouya?"

"I'm already wearing it. I'm going as a ninja."

Everyone else in the room who was named Takamachi nodded sagely. Thanks to their family's fighting style, they believed that a ninja who looked like a stereotypical ninja was no ninja at all.

He continued, "Is Alph ready to go to the party?"

"She has to wear two costumes," Fate pointed out. "I helped her put on her black cat suit and crescent moon forehead mark while she was in animal form. Now she's putting on her yellow and purple dress and crescent-mark in her human form."

"So she finally agreed to the two of you going in themed costumes," Momoko commented.

"And here I am!" Alph entered the room in animal form and walked over to Fate. "That dress is very fancy and I don't want to ruin it before I get to Douglass Gardens."

"I was hoping you'd be able to help carry our contribution to the party," Momoko said. "We have a dozen cakes and pies to deliver to New Jersey."

"The four of you ladies can take one cake each," Shirou suggested. "Kyouya and I will take the pies, four each."

"Take three each," their apartment manager, Heather, said from the doorway. "I'll take the other two. They are in boxes, aren't they?"

"Of course they are," Momoko said.

"Then it's settled," Heather announced as she put on her plague doctor mask, completing her own costume.

"By the way," Miyuki asked, "has anybody seen what Lindy, Chrono, and Amy are wearing to the party?"

---

Douglass Gardens Apartments
Somerset, NJ, USA
October 31, 2016
5:10 PM Eastern

"Thanks again for helping out," Bob said to Mamoru as the pair wrestled the last traffic barrier in place across Annette Court between buildings 1 and 2, some twenty yards or so from the intersection with Hamilton Street.

"You're very welcome," Mamoru replied. "I just felt like I needed to do something to repay your hospitality."

Bob snorted. "You didn't have to, believe me. But it's appreciated." He brushed his hands together as though to wipe dust from them, although the newly-assembled barricades were anything but dusty. "Now that we have these in place, we just need our guards."

"Guards?" Mamoru asked with a raised eyebrow.

"That's what I'm calling them," Bob said with a shrug. "A few of our residents have volunteered to man the barricades — I feel like I should make a Les Mis joke here," he added with a grin, to Mamoru's complete bafflement. "Anyway, they'll keep trick-or-treaters from slipping into the party. We've set up half-hour shifts, so no one misses too much of the action, and that only until a half-hour after the township curfew at 8."

"So the trick-or-treaters are out of luck?" Mamoru asked with a smile.

"Not completely," Bob began, but before he could explain further a car turned into Annette Court. It stopped at the barricade and the driver's window slid down.

"Hi, I'm Tom Palaczek, I'm your bartender for the evening?"

"Oh, hey. Bob Schroeck," Bob said, sticking out his hand, which Tom clumsily shook through the car window. "Welcome. And thanks for being available."

"Not a problem," Tom said with a grin. "I'm always happy to pick up a few bucks. Where's the party and where do you want me to park?"

Bob nodded. "Right! Let us move the barricade out of the way, and you can just park in the lot on the left. The party's in the green spaces past the next set of barricades, behind those buildings." He waved at building 3 and 4. "Just walk on through and ask anyone you see for Peggy — she'll get you situated. Oh, wait a minute, here she comes," he added as two figures appeared around the end of building 1: Peggy, carrying a folded card table, followed closely by Chibiusa, who was clutching a plastic bowl almost too big for her to put her arms around, in which were bags of candy.

"Hey, love," Bob called. "Our bartender just arrived." He gestured at the car.

"Oh, cool," she said as handed the card table to him. "Here, take this. You can set up the candy table." She peered at the car. "Hi, Tom, wasn't it?"

"Yep," he replied. "And you're Mrs. Schroeck?"

"Peggy," she corrected gently. She poked Bob. "Let him in," she said imperiously.

"Yes, dear," Bob grinned. "Whatever you say, dear." He smirked at Mamoru. "You heard Her Majesty."

Mamoru chuckled. "Yeah, I know that tone of voice. I have my own Her Majesty, after all."

Laughing, the two quickly pivoted the sawhorse-style barrier and allowed Tom's car in. After pecking Bob on the lips (prompting an "Ewwww" from Chibiusa), Peggy followed his car around the end of building. Bob and Mamoru replaced the barrier, then Bob turned to the girl. "Are you our designated candy carrier, then?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," she replied, nodding vigorously enough that it threatened to spill the bags of candy from the bowl. "I've been helping Peggy all afternoon," she added, looking at Mamoru.

"Did you have fun?" he asked.

"I did!" she replied. "But this candy is heavy, can I put it down?"

"Right," Bob said. "Let's take care of that right now." As Mamoru relieved his future daughter of her burden, Bob picked up the card table from where it was laying on the ground and unfolded its legs. "One way we're going to keep the pedestrians out of the party is to provide them with a distraction." He set the table on its legs, and waved grandiloquently at it: "Gentlemen, behold! The Candy Table!"

Chibiusa giggled, then she turned to Mamoru, pointed at Bob, and in her best impression of a World War II gremlin said, "I like him. He's silly."^[12]

Bob leaned down to her and in a stage whisper said, "You're absolutely right, but no one else knows. It'll just be our secret, okay?"

"Okay," she said, still giggling. Mamoru couldn't help but smile at the exchange.

"Now let's get this set up," Bob continued, standing up again. "Where's that bowl?" He glanced around, pointedly ignoring Mamoru except to give him a wink.

"Right here! Right here!" she shrieked happily, almost tearing it from Mamoru's hands. He let it go, scooping the bags of candy out as he did. Chibiusa spun around and held it out to Bob. "Peggy said I could have a chocolate bar, any kind I wanted, for helping."

"And so you shall," Bob agreed as he took the bowl from her and placed it with exquisite care in the geometric center of the card table. "Candy?"

Mamoru stepped forward with the bags, and the bowl was quickly filled to overflowing. After a moment's consideration, Chibiusa fished a Kit-Kat bar out of it as her payment. Bob scritched the top of her head between the "bunny ears" of her hairstyle. "There you go, Cuteness," he said. "Thank you for the help."

"You're welcome," she replied as she examined the wrapper for the best way to open it. "Why'd you call me that?"

"What, 'Cuteness'?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Uh-huh."

Bob glanced at Mamoru and decided the least amount of detail was probably best. "It's what Harry Potter calls you in a story that someone here wrote about you and Usagi."

Her eyes grew wide. "Harry Potter? Really? Is he in a residence, too?"

Bob laughed. "Not that we've heard, yet, but hey, maybe Hogwarts is out there somewhere, just well hidden." He peered curiously at her. "How do you know about Harry Potter?"

Chibiusa finally managed to tear open the wrapper. "Duh. My 21st-century literature class back in Crystal Tokyo." She took a bite of the Kit-Kat. "And I just might have all the movies, too," she admitted.

"Huh. I wonder..." But before they could find out what Bob was wondering, another car turned into Annette Court and pulled up to the barricade. Bob grinned when he spied the driver. "Uncle Arthur! Aunt Linda!" he called out as he trotted across the street and hopped over its narrow, flowered median divider. Curious, Chibiusa followed, with Mamoru close behind.

"...move the barricade and then you can park in the first free spot behind the building on the right," Bob was saying through the car window to an elderly white-haired man with a square, still-handsome face. He seemed to sense them coming up behind him and glanced back over his shoulder before moving slightly to the side. "Uncle Arthur, Aunt Linda, this is Mamoru and Usagi Chiba, a couple guests we've been hosting," he said. "Mamoru, Chibiusa, I'd like you to meet my uncle and aunt, Arthur Schroeck and Linda November. They're coming to the party, too."

"Hello," the older man said, and a cheery, female voice from further in the car called out, "Hi!"

Mamoru bent down to look through the window and spied a slender blonde woman with sharp but attractive features looking back. She seemed close to Arthur's age; not a trophy wife, he thought. "My pleasure," he said.

"It's nice to meet you!" Chibiusa chirped, then took another bite of her Kit-Kat.

"I see someone's gotten a head start on trick-or-treating!" Linda said with a chuckle.

Bob smiled. "Cuteness here has been helping Peggy and me with some of the final preparations for the party. She's earned every bite of that chocolate bar!"

"Uh-huh!" she agreed, nodding, around the candy in question. In the car, Arthur and Linda laughed.

"Mamoru, if you could please help me with the barricade one more time?" Bob asked. "Then you two can get dressed for the party."

Mamoru smiled. "Of course."

---

As Bob was leading Arthur and Linda into the party zone, they ran into Hikaru, who after introductions volunteered to go fetch Peggy. A few minutes later, Peggy joined them, and after an exchange of greetings and hugs, she and Bob began to show off the party preparations. After the fifteen-minute tour had concluded, the four settled in at a table in the main dining tent. The propane heaters were already running, the interior was comfortably warm, and Tom the bartender had provided them all with drinks. In the background someone had started up the party music.

"This is an impressive layout you've got here," Arthur said, swirling his glass slightly.

"The apartment complex, or just the party?" Bob asked with a smile.

"Both, actually," Arthur said with a laugh. "But you look like you're set up to host a couple hundred people here."

Bob nodded. "That's pretty much it, exactly. Counting our tenants, we're expecting about two hundred guests, give or take half a dozen."

Arthur shook his head in amused disbelief.

"So many of your tenants are Asian," Linda noted.

"We have a lot of... well, exchange students is the best way to put it," Peggy answered.

"The ones who aren't going to Rutgers are almost all going to the local high school," Bob added.

"It's not just students, though," Peggy noted. "We have whole families as well — the Kasugas and Natsumes, for instance."

"But they're all Asian?" Arthur asked.

Bob nodded again. "Japanese, yeah. For the moment, at least. After all, we're nowhere near full." He shrugged. "We have no idea who'll get sent to us next."

Linda and Arthur shared a puzzled look. "That's an... odd way to put it."

Bob and Peggy traded glances of their own, and she shrugged minutely. "Ah, yeah, well," Bob said, "We're not a... we don't advertise for tenants, or take in applicants off the street. We're part of network of apartments, set up for a special purpose."

"A special purpose?" Arthur frowned.

"Does this have anything to do with all the strange hair colors some of your tenants have?" Linda asked. "I mean, fire engine red, magenta... bright pink like that adorable little girl? They're not wigs, and if they're dye jobs they're incredibly good; at first glance I would've sworn they were somehow natural."

"Yes," Bob said slowly. "It's all tied in together." A soft beeping sounded from his picket, and he pulled out his battered gold smartphone. Glancing at its screen he nodded, apparently to himself, and dismissed whatever he saw there with a swipe of a fingertip.

"It's time?" Peggy asked him.

"Yeah," he said, then looked back at his aunt and uncle. "Our guests are about to arrive," he told them. "I think it'll be easier to explain what we're doing here if you join us while we welcome them." He stood up, and grinned at them as Peggy stood, too. "Trust me, you don't want to miss this."

Curious, Arthur and Linda followed Bob and Peggy through the growing twilight back to the parking log where they had left their rental car, past it and almost all the way to the far end. There Bob and Peggy stopped and stood in the middle of the lot, where a young woman waited next to a card table, lit by a pair of streetlights to either side of her. She wore an obvious wig of long black ringlets, and a black bodysuit with what looked like grey armor plates on the torso. When she turned at their approach, light glinted off the glasses she wore. On the table next to her sat what looked like a fair-sized lockbox.

"Hey, Minami," Bob said, then gestured to Arthur and Linda as they stepped closer. "This is my Uncle Arthur and Aunt Linda. Uncle Arthur, Aunt Linda, this is Minami Makimura, our indispensable right-hand woman while arranging this whole shindig." She was, they were not surprised to note once they were close enough, yet another young Japanese woman.

"A pleasure to meet you," she said in perfect, unaccented English; she twitched, as though stopping herself from bowing, before holding out her hand to shake theirs.

"Likewise," Arthur said, and Linda echoed him.

"Are we set to hand out apartments?" Peggy asked.

Minami waved at the box. "I took the liberty of bringing out keys for unassigned apartments and a logbook for noting who is where."

"We don't pay you enough," Bob said with a grin.

She returned the grin. "You don't pay me at all."

"Like I said," he shot back.

Puzzled, Arthur ignored their exchange and peered at the end of the parking lot toward which they were all facing. It was closed off by a fence, along with several good-sized trees. "I don't understand, Robert. What are we waiting for?" he asked.

Bob pulled out his cellphone and checked it again. Then he looked at Arthur and Linda and grinned. "You'll see in just under a minute."

---

Douglass Gardens Apartments, Somerset, NJ, USA; The Steeple, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Blossom Apartments, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; and Appartements Mont-Royal Sud, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
October 31, 2016
6:01 PM Eastern

7 Henrietta Street, Dublin, Ireland
October 31, 2016
11:01 PM Western European Time

Ben Rose House, Chicago, IL, USA; Gulfside Rest, Pensacola, Florida, USA; and Live Oak Manor, Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA
October 31, 2016
5:01 PM Central

Aria House, Los Angeles, California, USA; and the Masaki residence, Coquitlam, BC, Canada
October 31, 2016
3:01 PM Pacific

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
November 1st, 2016
9:31 AM Australian Central Daylight

In Coquitlam, Washuu Hakubi, the universe's self-proclaimed greatest scientific mind – who, at the moment, looked like she was ready to sing about the Good Ship Lollipop – pushed a button on her screen, and portals simultaneously appeared at eleven locations around the world — and eleven more appeared in a parking lot in New Jersey.

---

Somerset, NJ, USA
October 31, 2016
6:02 PM Eastern

As Arthur glanced at Linda with raised eyebrows, a faint, high-pitched hum suddenly filled the air. It rose in intensity, accompanied by a subtle crackling noise. Caught by surprise, both looked around themselves, trying to locate the source of the sound beyond simply "ahead". A moment later it culminated in a deep, pulsing chime like a basso profundo bell, as two parallel lines of pitch black disks appeared, six on the left side of the parking lot and five on the right. They were all slightly embedded into the asphalt, and the closest of the six on the left was much larger than the others. Over each one white letters floated in midair — Arthur could clearly read "Venice Beach" hovering above the large disk to the left, "Coquitlam" over the nearest one on the right.

And before the deep ringing tone had finished fading away, people started walking out of the disks.

Linda clutched at his arm. "Arthur?" she whispered. He just shook his head. The first group to appear through one of the disks had already almost reached where they stood with Bob, Peggy and Minami. At their head was a pair of redheads. One was tall and shapely with a shoulder-length mass of ringlets, in white slacks and a peppermint-striped blouse with massively puffy shoulders. The other was petite, almost tiny, with her hair shorter and in looser curls, and wearing a short-sleeved, red and green plaid dress with white collar and cuffs and a black tie, and black maryjane shoes over white ankle socks.^[13] Beyond them was a small crowd that included several men dressed as what Arthur recognized as various incarnations of The Doctor, a tan woman in a full-body "Easter bunny"-style costume, an Asian version of Audrey Hepburn from Roman Holiday, and two more little girls: One with ankle-length cyan ponytails, a strange multicolored uniform, and something that looked like a cross between a cricket bat and a magic wand in her hand. The other was in an elaborate and detailed costume in brown fur that made her look like some kind of animal — although what, Arthur couldn't guess. Two of the men were carrying large, foil-covered trays.

"Garnett! Washuu-chan!" Bob called out, and he and Peggy surprised Arthur by bowing respectfully to the Shirley Temple lookalike. "It's an honor to meet you." he continued.

"Thank you again for providing the portals," Peggy added. "They're fantastic."

"Eh! It was no big deal. I had everything in place already," the ... child? ... said with a dismissive wave of her hand, but still seeming terribly pleased at the praise. She looked around with a massive grin. "So! Where's the food and fun?"

Bob grinned back and gestured behind himself. "Straight ahead, and turn right at the end of the building." He turned to the taller woman and held our his hand. "Great to finally meet you in person," he said as they shook.

"Likewise, and great to be here," "Garnett" replied as she then shook hands with Peggy. She looked around at the parking lot and the buildings to either side. "Huh. I was expecting it to be warmer, but it's about the same temperature back home."

Bob shrugged. "What can you do?" Behind them, Arthur numbly noted a white van with blue stripes appearing through the largest portal. It slowly pulled forward a couple more yards before stopping and shutting off its engine; a collection mostly of teenaged girls poured out of the black disk behind it as the van's occupants disembarked. Bob seemed to notice the growing crowd behind her for the first time. He held up a finger. "Hold that thought."

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Bob then called out, indulging his impulse to be a large ham and using all his long-ago high school drama club experience to project his voice loud and clear. "Children of all ages!"

"Like 20,000 years, right?" Peggy inexplicably whispered to Washuu, who erupted in a bark of high-pitched laughter and gave her a friendly nudge.

"Welcome to Douglass Gardens Apartments!" Bob received a swell of responses from everyone already through the portals. "Sorry about the chill, but that's New Jersey in October for you. At least it's not the blizzard we had five years ago. It's a pity we don't have a big enough location someplace warm like Texas, but, well, we have to make do with what we've got, right?"

Peggy touched his arm and murmured, "Keys, remember?"

"Right," he murmured back, then announced, "If you're planning on staying overnight, or you just need to change into your costume yet, please see Minami here to get your apartment and key." He pointed at the woman, who waved her hand over her head as a line spontaneously formed in front of her. Then Bob gestured behind himself again. "The party space is straight ahead and to the right — just turn at the end of the building and look for the tents and lights. Or follow the music! There are heaters set up all over if you're not enjoying our brisk, invigorating Autumn weather. Including in our gazebo, if you want to be outside but not cold."

"The food tent's got a sign on it," Peggy added, her higher voice not projecting quite as powerfully as Bob's. "Take your potluck contributions there."

"There's a bar set up in the dining tent for those of age — that's 21 here in New Jersey," Bob went on, "and we have sodas and other soft drinks for younger folks."

"If you're performing tonight," Peggy called out, "there's a program posted in the tent behind the stage, which we're using as a 'green room'. Please check it for the time you're playing."

"We'll also be having karaoke in between the live acts," Bob said. "Don't miss your chance to embarrass yourselves in front of friends both old and new! Ow!" he added when Peggy elbowed him in the side, and the party-goers closest to them laughed. "And as you can hear there's recorded music playing right now for those who want to dance right away."

"In addition to music and dancing," Peggy said, "we have a haunted house in apartment 44A. We also have gaming in the community center for those who want something indoors and a bit warmer."

"That's unit 19A, first door on the second building to the left behind me," Bob clarified. "We also have cartoons and Halloween-themed movies up in the home theatre on the second floor. And if you need it, we've also set up some quiet spaces in the community center, as well as our first aid station." He glanced at his wife. "Is that everything?"

"Trick or treating," Peg said.

"Right." He raised his voice again. "Oh, and for our younger party-goers, there will be a trick-or-treating expedition in a little while, to give you all a chance to harvest this year's bumper crop of wild candy!" There was a higher-pitched but smaller set of cheers. "Now is that everything?" he asked in a softer tone.

"I think so, yeah," Peggy murmured.

He nodded. "Okay, then! I officially proclaim it Party Time! Come on in, join the fun, and meet our residents!" A cheer rose from some two hundred throats, and the crowd began to flow forwards around them, save for those few who still needed to change.

Arthur hissed with surprise when, with a sound not unlike the arrival of the black disks, a pale figure with long, stringy black hair in a white kimono suddenly appeared floating in the air next to a young man dressed as the Second Doctor. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, not caring if it made it harder for him to carry the foil-covered tray that he held in front of himself. In a pouty voice she said, "Tennnnnn-chi, I wanna dance." She stroked his cheek with one long and black-painted fingernail. "With you."

"Geeze, Ryoko, not until I drop off the food, okay?" he replied in an exasperated tone. On the other side of the small group, "Audrey Hepburn" scowled and audibly growled.

"Oh, Garnett," the ghost-girl then said in a considerably less pouty tone, "I finally dragged Kevin through the portal, but I think he's still standing there." She grinned. "He seemed just a little bit stunned. You did warn him what he was in for, didn't you? Anyway, you may want to go get him."

"Yeah, I should," Garnett replied, clearly surprised. "Thanks, Ryoko." Turning to Bob and Peggy, she said, "I'd best go collect my boyfriend before something happens to him. I'll catch up with you guys in a bit, okay?"

"Sure," Peggy said, and Garnett took off for the "Coquitlam" disk as the rest of her group — except for Washuu, who joined the queue for Minami's services — moved on past them toward the party.

"Robert," Arthur said softly as they watched the line form in front of Minami, "I think we're ready for that explanation now."

As Bob kept an eye on the guests streaming past, he said, "Okay, executive summary: The multiverse is collapsing. While Heaven and Hell scramble to keep all existence from disappearing, refugees from damaged or destroyed universes end up in ours. Peg and I run one of a network of residences set up to house the refugees until things are fixed." He waved at the horde of arrivals. "All these folks are from other universes."

Arthur studied his nephew for a moment. "You're serious," he finally stated, his disbelief audible in every word. Linda glanced between the two of them.

Bob turned to him. "Uncle Arthur. You have just seen eleven teleport gates, for lack of a better description, open and discharge two hundred people."

"And one van," Peggy added, smiling.

"Yes, Peggy, thank you," Bob said with a twitch of his lips. "And one van. If you want, you can pick a portal, walk through it, and find yourself in a completely different part of the world, like Australia."

"Where it's half-past nine in the freaking morning!" said a young man with shaggy blond hair and dressed as James Kirk from the recent Star Trek films as he passed them.

"Kurz!" growled the woman next to him, who was dressed in a black bodysuit and shiny black knee-high boots. A moment later, they were gone.

Bob laughed. "Right, where it's 9:30 in the morning. Beyond that, well, you just saw Ryoko teleport and fly only a few feet away from you. I know extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but I think we've already made a good start on providing that proof."

Peggy grinned. "We could ask Belldandy or Novalis to talk to them."

Bob nodded thoughtfully. "That'd work." He glanced back at his uncle and aunt. "As a side effect of..." He made another vague gesture encompassing everything around himself. "...all of this, Peg and I are on a first name basis with a few deities and archangels. They can definitely prove what we can't."

"Deities," Arthur said, and at almost the same moment Linda asked, "Archangels?"

"Our bosses." Bob smirked.

"Nuh-uh!" Peggy waved a remonstrative finger, but she was still grinning. "Novalis is boss-adjacent, remember?"

"Right," Bob replied.

"Deities and archangels," Arthur repeated. "How is that supposed to work?"

Bob shrugged. "Far as we can tell from the bits of info they've let drop, God is God, regardless of the pantheon. Jehovah, Odin, Zeus... all the same being, just different names. Everyone else — well, it seems like it's just different departments and a matter of nomenclature."

"Belldandy, who's the Norn of the present — a Norse goddess," Peggy explained, "doesn't seem to be all that different a kind of being than Novalis, who's the Archangel of Flowers."

"Archangel of Flowers?" Linda asked. "I'm pretty sure that one isn't in the official list."

Her nephew chuckled. "That's the other thing you learn quickly — nobody mortal has the full picture. Heaven — and Hell, too — are a lot more complex than any religion knows. Or guesses. They're like one of those carvings that cast shadows of three different letters depending on the angle you shine a light on them."

"Only with infinitely many lights and shadows cast," Peggy added.

"Yeah," Bob said, nodding. "Has something to do with how everything on that level operates in twelve dimensions, not just three. The big picture is bigger than we can possibly conceive."

"When you think of it that way," Peg noted softly, "it's surprising just how... human they are. You'd think the gods and demons would be these incomprehensible, alien things, but they aren't."

"Bob!" a voice suddenly shouted over the crowd which had finally begun to thin.

"Hold that thought," Bob said as he craned his neck in search of who had called. "We can talk more about this later if you want. Maybe with Bell sitting in to fact-check us."

Peg patted Linda's arm. "C'mon. I need to get into my costume. Why don't you and Arthur come to the apartment with me and I can tell you more while I change? After that, we'll go join the party, get some drinks, and find a table near the stage. You did come to hear our girls' bands, after all."

Linda nodded slowly. "I think that's a good idea. Artie?"

Arthur turned and looked toward where the mass of partygoers were making their way between the two buildings. "Yes," he murmured, then glanced back at them and nodded. "Let's do that."

Peggy smiled at him, then turned back to her husband to give him a brief kiss. "See you in a few?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, and returned the kiss. "Got some folks to say hi to, first."

"You do that, and tell'em I'll see them in the party," she said, then gathered up Arthur and Linda. Bob watched them go for a moment.

He was still looking after her when a familiar voice said, "Hey, stranger," almost in his ear. He looked up to see several faces he had only ever seen on a computer screen before now.

It was an almost stereotypically motley band who faced him: At its center was a stout man well in excess of six feet, with his full beard and shoulder-length hair both clearly spray-colored gray; he was dressed in grey wizard robes and carried a staff. Next to him was a Tuxedo Mask a couple inches shorter than both his wizard companion and the real Tuxedo Mask with his own hair dyed midnight black. On the wizard's other side was a petite woman with the bearing of a fashion model, with long, dark curling hair and wearing the trademark white gown and fur-collared cape of the Mary Tamm incarnation of Romana from Doctor Who. Bringing up the rear was a slightly taller woman with wild red hair, dressed like a rocker ready for the stage.

"Harley! Brent! Cassiopée! Meg!" Bob called out. "It's good to finally meet you guys in person."

The five building managers shook hands in turn. Harley Waters from the Florida group (AKA Gandalf), asked, "So how is life treating you?"

Bob grinned. "Oh, you know how it goes, a broken faucet here, a lost master tape there."

"Been meaning to ask," Brent Laabs from the L.A. group said as he tucked his prop rose into the breast pocket of his tuxedo, "Three in the afternoon our time is kind of early to start a party." He glanced up at the twilit sky and narrow sliver of a crescent moon that was just beginning to disappear behind the treeline to the west. "Come to that, six o'clock here is still kind of early."

"Ah," Bob said. "Blame the township. Curfew on Halloween in Somerset is 8 PM. So we had to start early if the youngsters wanted to get any trick-or-treating in."

"Gotcha," Brent replied, nodding. "Need a hand with that?"

"Sure!"

Cassiopée Bright, Montreal's representative in the managers' group and the Romana clone, turned to Brent. "Why did you bring a van? Do you have Autobots at your building?"

"Heh, no. The idea is that the Aria Company has a couple of weeks before their gondolas arrive and they start their business, so they wanted to take the long way back. They're going to drive through to Chicago and then drive the length of Route 66."

Bob smiled. "Free travel. I can live with that." Before he could say more, he was distracted by a small band of girls he recognized as being from Rob's place in Ottawa. Three of them were pressed up against Minami's card table, chattering excitedly.

"You have an apartment 221B? Come, Saten-san, the game's afoot!"

"I think that should be my line, Shirai-san."

"But you rarely leave the office, Uriharu-san. You're more like Mycroft."

Bob chuckled at the Academy City girls' byplay. "Minami," he said, "If someone else hasn't already taken it, let them have it."

Minami chuckled softly. "Nope, it just wasn't the next apartment on the list."

Bob turned back to the trio. "There you go, girls — you get to sleep there tonight."

"Thank you!" they chorused, and dashed off with keys in hand to inspect their quarters before joining the party.

Smiling, Bob shook his head. "It's so easy to forget how young they really are," he said to no one in particular. "And then they act like that."

"Don't you have some pre-teens of your own?" Brent asked.

"Yeah, a couple," he replied, "but they act their ages far more often than not."

"Well, maybe they'll all act their ages during the trick-or-treating," Brent suggested lightly.

"We can hope," Bob said absently as he watched the three dash between two of the portals and run up the steps leading to their chosen apartment's back door. "Considering how much crap most of them go through in their stories." After they disappeared inside he shook himself, and glanced around. The line for keys had vanished, and the only people left in the parking lot were the other managers, Minami and himself. He turned to Minami. "Everyone taken care of?"

She snapped the latch on the keybox and placed the logbook on top of it. "Yes," she said with a little smile. "I'll just put these back in the office and join the party myself."

"You do that, and thanks again," he said.

She looked up and gave him a wink. "We're not done yet. This is just the middle." She handed him the keybox and log, folded up the card table with quick, efficient motions, then took them back. "You'll need me tomorrow, too. For now, though... time to skitter off and have fun." To Bob's surprise she leaned in and pecked him on the cheek, then turned toward the office.

"Hold on a moment, Minami," Bob said, and she paused. "That," he then said to the other managers, "is my cue to get into my own costume. I'll see you all again in a few, okay?"

---

In the green space on either side of Annette Court, between the second and third ranks of buildings making up the apartment complex, the party had commenced. While the hosts retreated to get into their own costumes, recorded music continued to play, and displacees from nearly a dozen residences had begun to mingle and (in some cases) squee at meeting each other for the first time.

Others were somewhat... differently focused.

"A gazebo? Where??" Tomo Takino pulled a wooden sword from the bag she had brought with her and started waving it around. "Have at you, foul fiend!"

"Idiot." Yomi Mizuhara grabbed Tomo's bag with one hand and rapped Tomo on the head from behind with the other.

"But somebody has to defend everybody from the dreaded gazebo! Especially if it's a fire-breather the way Mr. Schroeck said!"

"Do you even know what a gazebo is?"^[14]

"Do you remember me telling anyone that the gazebo was a fire-breather?" Bob, dressed in a tuxedo that managed to hide the more portly parts of his figure and a black wig that hid the balder parts of his blond pate, asked his wife as the two of them finally joined the party, followed by his still somewhat shellshocked aunt and uncle.

"Who was that?" Peggy, dressed in a flowing white gown in a floral design with a matching scarf, asked.

"That was Tomo," Brent said, then held out his hand. "Peggy, great to finally meet you in person."

"You, too, Brent," she said.

"Who are you two dressed as?" he asked.

Bob smiled. "James and Tracy Bond." Gesturing at Brent's white domino mask, he added, "Having spent the afternoon with the original, I don't need to ask who you're dressed as."

"Yeah, it's a bit obvious, isn't it?" Brent said with a smile, then raised an eyebrow. "Tracy?"

"Bond's wife, played by Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service," Peggy said.

"She gets killed at the end of the movie," Bob said in a stage whisper, "but don't tell Peggy that." She rolled her eyes as Bob waved the older couple with them forward. "And this is my Uncle Arthur and Aunt Linda."

"Nice to meet you," Brent said, shaking their hands. "Welcome to the nuthouse. Shall we head to the gazebo?"

"Likewise, and certainly," Arthur said. "You're another of the residence managers Bob told us about?" he asked as they began walking slowly down the concrete walk that ran down the middle of the "lawn" between the buildings.

Brent nodded. "I run the place in Venice Beach. California," he appended. "I ride herd on a bunch of crazy schoolgirls from Japan circa 2002, and a band of undines — gondola pilots — from 24th-century Mars. Oh, and I'm the point of contact for a magical girl and her family, who don't actually live in my residence."

"Gondolas on Mars?" Linda looked intrigued.

Brent nodded. "Yeah, in their timeline Mars got thoroughly terraformed, with big oceans. Then someone built a replica of Venice, Italy there."

Linda nodded. "I see."

Brent smiled. "They're looking to restart their business in Venice Beach, once the gondolas we've got on order show up."

She glanced at Arthur, who chuckled and nodded. "We live in Las Vegas," she said, turning back to Brent, "but we visit L.A. regularly. When they're finally in business we'll have to come by and take a ride."

"I'm sure they'll appreciate having at least two guaranteed customers," Brent replied with a grin as they came to a halt next to the gazebo. Having had to navigate around one of the party tents, they couldn't see it until they were practically on it — at which point they realized that it was already full of teenage girls, some of whom Bob and Brent recognized despite their costumes.

"Ahoy, sailors!" Bob called. "May we come aboard?"

Laughter rang through the small crowd occupying the structure, made up mostly of the Sailor Senshi and some of the undines. "It's your gazebo," said Usagi Tsukino from where she knelt on one of the benches that ran around the gazebo's interior, watching the other partygoers with great interest but heedless of the wrinkles it was putting into her voluminous ballgown of gem-encrusted iridescent pale cream satin and lace.^[15]

"Which I have bravely defeated!" shouted Tomo from somewhere in the middle of the group. "Ow!"

"Idiot," Yomi's considerably quieter voice drifted out of the crowd as the others laughed again.

"Your tuxedos are great, Mr. Schroeck, Mr. Laabs, but not as good as my boyfriend's," Usagi said, ignoring the byplay behind her. "I do love your dress, Mrs. Schroeck."

"Thank you," Peggy said. "Usagi, right?"

She nodded vigorously, sending her hair — done up in a massive waterfall of curls instead of its usual twintails — into a cascade of motion. "That's me." Another undine approached the gazebo. "Oh, I love that 'Alice' costume!" Usagi gushed. She continued people-watching, calling out to more partygoers whose costumes she appreciated. "You look lovely, Ayanami-san, so much like Nagato-san. And – MAMO-CHAN!!!"

As Usagi raced over to Mamoru, Bob chuckled and Minako turned to Ami. "Okay, who had 'As soon as she saw him' in the pool?"

Ami pulled out the Mercury Computer and double-checked its display. "All four of us, Ruiko-san, Tomoyo-chan, Tomo-san, Sakaki-san, –"

"Really?"

"I suppose she's a romantic at heart. Chiyo-chan, Sasami-chan, Mihoshi-san, Kaji-san, Kaname-san, Chihiro-san, and of course Washuu-chan. Oh, and Rob-oji."

"So we get favors from everybody else?" Minako Aino grinned. "I know what I want from Tenchi-san ..."

More than a football field's length away, past several tents and the stage, Aeka and Ryoko both felt their "romantic rival sense" tingle. Identical scowls appeared on their faces, and simultaneously they swiveled their heads to glare in the direction of the unknown, unseen person who dared lay a claim on their Tenchi.

Back at the gazebo, Minako was seized by a sudden feeling of impending doom. "... but I think I'll think of something else instead," she finished hurriedly.

The sense of doom vanished as Aeka and Ryoko shared a satisfied nod and returned to their usual bickering.

"Tenchi-san didn't play," Ami noted blandly.

"Oh. I guess that's a good thing," Minako replied with the distinct feeling that she'd just dodged a bullet.

Yomi grumbled, "The one time he doesn't make a dramatic entrance, and it had to be today."

Ignoring her, Minako plucked up Artemis into her arms and gave him a big hug. "There you are, you tomcat you! I missed you. What have you been up to all this time?"

"All this time? It's only been a day for me."

Linda leaned in to Bob. "Did that cat just... talk?"

Bob nodded. "Yeah, it's a whole thing."

"So that's your excuse, huh?" Minako relented, "Oh well, that Setsuna-san, never around to explain when you want her, right?"

"Actually..." Artemis started.

"She's right behind me, isn't she?"

As Setsuna tried to explain to Minako what she knew of the displacement process, Ami walked over to Luna and squatted down to be closer to her eye level. "It's good to see you again, Luna. If Usagi didn't have eyes only for Mamoru, I'm sure that she'd tell you that she missed you."

"Oh, she has her priorities straight," Luna replied slightly wistfully. "I'm sure she'll talk with me soon."

"Luna," Ami said, "It's been nearly two months since I last saw you. I missed you, too."

In the middle of the hubbub, the human and the Mau quietly hugged each other.

"Another talking cat?" Linda asked Bob.

"Yeah," he said. "There are three of them here tonight." He frowned for a moment. "That we know of."

Another reunion wasn't nearly as quiet. "Puu!" (At the other end of the party, a small white creature not unlike a large animate marshmallow with rabbit-like ears, dressed as Pikachu, looked about in confusion for a moment.)

"Small Lady!" Setsuna squatted down to be at Chibiusa's level... and ended up tackled by her hug.

"See, Peg," Bob said, patting his wife's hand where it rested in the bend of his elbow. "You have nothing to worry about. No one thought you looked strange, and Usagi even complimented your costume."

"If you say so," she said doubtfully, then took a quick look at the rest of the group from Ottawa, searching for the one person she'd recognize but seeing only teenage and preteen girls. "Say, where's Rob?"

"He stayed behind to hand out the treats. He'll be along when they run out," Mii Konori replied. "I'm happy to meet you in person, Peggy."

"Hello, Mii. it's good to meet you in person as well." They shook hands.

"You know, why don't we leave them to their reunions, go get some drinks and something to eat," Peggy said to her husband and his relatives, "and find a table near the stage?"

"The live music will be starting in a little bit," Bob added, "and that's why you're here, right?"

"I think I'd like to sit down, yes," Linda said.

"Okay, then." Bob turned to Brent. "We'll see you around, okay?"

Brent waved them off. "Sure. Have fun!"

"Us? Have fun? Good god, man, are you mad?" Bob replied with a grin, before the four walked off in the direction of the food tent. "And everyone, don't forget there's even more party on the other side of the stage!" he called back over his shoulder. "Don't everyone all just hang out over here!"

As they walked off and the Senshi and their allies were getting re-acquainted, Kazari Uiharu quickly made her way to the Montreal group. "It's good to see you again, Rin-san," she said loudly to Rin Tohsaka with a smile that rivalled Akari Mizunashi's best. That broke the ice; the displacees who had been holding back for whatever reason started mingling.

Except for two of the youngest visitors from L.A., who were standing still, rapt in wonder. "Hooeeeeeeeee..."

"I know what you mean," Shaoran Li said to Sakura Kinomoto while they both looked at... no, stared at Usagi.

"Is that Sailor Jupiter? Oh my God!" Kaorin came to a sudden stop behind Sakura and Shaoran, which caused Osaka to bump right into her.

Osaka emoted, "Oopsie."

In fact, all of the Inner Senshi were in the gazebo. The rest of the California group walked forward to meet everyone else, but Kaorin remained a wallflower to the extent that you could almost see her roots growing.

Tomoyo went up to Kaori and started in a secret conversation; the only audible part was the point where Kaori declared, "No, it's too much!"

Brent was star-struck by the lunar guardian, too. He'd quickly gotten over the idea of meeting fictional characters, but meeting one who was a bona fide messiah was a different idea entirely. But he'd somehow made it through meeting Belldandy in one piece.

Usagi had already noticed that she was the centre of attention and had (reluctantly) let go of Mamoru, so he went up and offered his greetings anyway. "Nice to meet you. I'm Brent Laabs, manager of the apartments in Venice Beach."

"Hi, I'm Usagi Tsukino, age 15, tenth grade. Nice to meet you too," the odangoed one returned. It was the exact same speech she gave at the beginning of the first season of Sailor Moon, plus a couple years. She omitted the "I'm a clumsy crybaby" part, which was probably an improvement.

"So uh, nice moon you got up there. Very useful at night," Brent said, moonily.

Minako raised an eyebrow, but Usagi laughed graciously anyway. "It's still hard to get used to everyone knowing my secret identity."

"Yeah. Try to live like a normal person for as long as possible. It's what Serenity would have wanted."

Behind him, Tomoyo approached; Kaorin's hand was in her grasp, the child pulling the shy adult along with her.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Tsukino-dono. I humbly introduce myself, Tomoyo Daidouji. If it pleases you, may I introduce my honored friend Kaori Aida." Tomoyo proved it was possible to speak keigo^[16] in English.

Kaorin blurted, "H-h-h-hello M-miss Tsukino."

"A pleasure to meet you both. But my friends can call me Usagi."

"Friends?" Kaorin looked like steam was about to come out her ears.

"Please, feel free to call me Tomoyo." She and Usagi made polite conversation over the next two minutes, discussing popular topics like the weather and travel.

Kaorin finally piped up, "Um, um... Are Haruka and Michiru here? I want to meet them." Tomoyo's face lit up a little, while Usagi's grew a little sadder.

"I'm sorry, we don't know where they are right now. We're trying to find them, if they made it to this world."

"Oh, well. If you see them, tell them that they mean a lot to me. Michiru is so beautiful and graceful, and Haruka – Haruka is just the coolest!"

Off to the side, Yomi noted, "Sounds like you have competition, Sakaki-san."

Sakaki opened her mouth, but didn't know what to say.

Kaorin filled the gap in the conversation, babbling, "Uh no, I mean, it's just a figure of speech!"

"I'll be sure to tell them when we finally meet in this world, Kaori," Usagi said.

Tomo took this opportunity to push her way to the center of attention with her usual aplomb. Yomi mumbled, "Oh, here we go again."

"Yo, I'm Tomo Takino. Nice to meetcha, Usagi-chan!"

"It's nice to meet you, too, Tomo-chan. And thank you for defending us from the gazebo."

"So I hear that you're going to be a queen in the future, right?"

"Maybe, but I'm not really worried about that now. I'm just trying to get through Canadian History right now!" Usagi laughed.

With a grand gesture, Tomo went down on one knee. "Neo Queen Serenity, I hereby pledge fealty to you as my sovereign from this day forward, and swear to work towards love and justice. Also, can you make me a daimyou?^[17] A duchess would be fine, too."

This earned Tomo a quick karate chop to the head from Yomi which set Garnett Iwasaki off on a prolonged laugh.

"Nice form," Jayne commented. "But too weak in the delivery."

"I believe that's the ancient Japanese practice of tsukkomi," Shepherd Book replied.

"Who are you calling ancient?" Hikari Horaki and Ruiko Saten asked indignantly. They looked at each other... then giggled.

"Actually, aren't we technically the daimyou in the future?" Ami asked, rhetorically, with Luna riding on her shoulder.

"I don't think she's another Sailor Senshi, but I've been wrong before," her passenger replied.

Tomo withdrew an elaborate pink pen with wings from her pocket and raised it above her her head.^[18] Posing dramatically, she yelled, "Eris Power MAKE UP!"

Everyone stood silent for ten seconds, and nothing proceeded to happen.

"Meh, guess not."

At which point the entire group in and around the gazebo broke out laughing.

"Did that just happen?" asked Ruiko.

Brent confessed, "I'm actually disappointed that didn't work."

Ryoko materialized right behind him. "I bet you're disappointed. A transformation can be so ... revealing."

"Unless you turn on the sparkles," Mizuki Takase pointed out.

As Tomo realized what Ryoko meant, and oh-so-slightly blushed, Usagi decided her answer. "I'm sorry, I don't think we can do that. We don't even have a country, we're just high school girls."

"Awwww," Tomo whined.

Comments continued to circulate throughout the group. "Eris is the tenth planet in the system," Washuu explained. "Most humans don't even know how many planets they have in their home system."

"Not that I'm bitter about being demoted to the same status as Ceres," Setsuna muttered.

"There, there," Hotaru whispered as she patted her foster mother's hand gently.

"Oh, I see!" said Chiyo Mihama. "It's a planet named after the goddess of chaos and discord, then."

Tomo pressed her case with Rei Hino, "Can I just be like Earl of the Sacra Mensa, then? I'll be like totally helpful to you."

"May I ask why?" Rei pressed back.

"Mainly, I want these Martians to call me Tomo-dono!"

"Not happening."

"Aw c'mon, Rei-chan!" Venus teased. "Sounds like fun to me."

"Noble titles are forbidden!" concluded Aika Grantchester.

"Oh, do I have to change my name?" Cassiopée asked before smiling.^[19]

---

Fifteen minutes later found Bob, Peggy, Arthur and Linda ensconced at a round table big enough for eight, located to the side of the dance floor and close to the stage. Each had a drink and a heavy paper plate filled with an assortment from the potluck. Arthur and Linda seemed to be losing their shell-shocked expressions to a sort of stunned wonder. For Arthur in particular, an encounter with Mal Reynolds and Inara Serra (dressed as Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke, respectively) had been a turning point; Bob was sure he was seeing his uncle's long-sleeping inner fanboy re-awaken.

"...after Hokago Tea Time, we've got OnNaGumi," he said, running a finger down a copy of the set list. "They're a punk power trio, and technically better musicians than Hokago Tea Time. Then after them is Wakaba Girls, probably the weakest band of the three from K-On!. They've just finalized their lineup and they're still working on their sound, but they've got a good songwriter/producer. Nao really wants to meet you," Bob added, looking at his uncle.

Arthur took a sip of his drink, "Like I said, Robert, I'm happy to work with all three bands. Getting to hear them all first just gives me more to work with."

"We're happy to work with them," Linda corrected with a smile.

"There you are!" a woman's voice cut across the (fairly low key) crowd noise. Bob and Peggy looked up to see a tall, heavyset woman dressed in black slacks, black frock coat, a purple satin shirt and a grey striped bow tie. The entire ensemble was capped off with a black silk top hat with a purple band that made her seem even taller than her already significant height. Accompanying her was a shorter man, dressed simply in a black T-shirt, jeans, denim jacket and a ball cap; his dark mustache was surrounded by graying stubble.

Bob and Peggy leapt from their seats as Arthur and Linda watched. "Hey! You made it," Bob said.

At the same time Peggy said, "Helen, Attila! Come here, sit down."

"Hey," Attila said as he took a final drag off a cigarette, carefully ground it out on the nearby curb, then stashed it in an Altoids tin he drew from his pocket.

"This is my uncle Arthur and my aunt Linda," Bob said. "Our friends Helen and her husband Attila."

Helen smiled. "I remember meeting you both at Bob and Peggy-chan's wedding."

"Of course, yes," Linda said. "It's good to meet you again." She studied Helen's ensemble. "I don't recognize your costume."

"Ah. You probably wouldn't. I'm dressed as Japanese rocker Atsushi Sakurai."

Bob turned to Attila. "No costume for you?"

"Hell no," he spat. "I ain't done that shit since I was a kid."

"No problem. Not like it was mandatory." Bob gestured to the table. "C'mon, sit down."

"Sure." Attila slouched into one of the open chair, and glanced around. "So, big crowd tonight."

"Not surprised or shocked by anyone here?" Bob asked

"Nah. I figured you two were telling the truth — you couldn't bullshit Helen to save your life, and Peggy wouldn't try," Attila replied.

The rest of the table laughed. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"'Scuse me." Bob looked up to see Brent, resplendent in his tuxedo and mask.

"Oh, hey, Brent. Helen, Attila, this is Brent Laabs, the manager from the Venice Beach residence. Brent, our friends Helen and Attila."

Brent leaned in and shook hands with both. "Bob mentions you guys every once in a while on his forums. Nice to meet you." He turned back to Bob. "So... trick or treating? Got a bunch of eager kids waiting."

Bob nodded. "Right," he said. Grabbing the briefcase which was his costume's one prop he hopped to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, we have to escort the young'uns on a candy hunt. A party host's work is never done." He shook his head, then bent down and kissed Peggy. "I'll be back in an hour or so, I guess. Hold down the fort."

"Have fun!" Linda said.

As they walked off, Brent asked Bob, "So, what's the plan?"

---

1. RMS: New Hope, Pennsylvania, a small artsy town right on the Delaware River. No few of the establishments along its main street are bars and restaurants with big outdoor dining/seating areas, which they use well into fall (and sometimes beyond) by virtue of such heaters.
   
2. RMS: No, I'm not making this up. Somewhere in our music collection I still have an early-1980s-vintage cassette tape with a couple hours of this stuff. Assuming its contents have survived the last few decades, I should probably look into how to transfer it to digital. You never know when I might want to embarrass my cousin with it. <grin> Yeah, the product of a misspent youth, that's me.
   
3. RMS: "Forewarned is four-armed".
   
4. As seen in Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA 8 "Hello Baby".
   
5. RK: Urd would never make an offer like this to somebody who isn't one of the Tzadikim Nistarim.
   
6. BL: Had Mr. Humphries been at Gulfside Rest, he would have advised Kensuke not to worry — it rides up with wear.
   
7. RK: Sarah being the protagonist of the movie Labyrinth. There's a photo of the scene here.
   
8. RK: Gloria Steinem, who worked as a Playboy Bunny in 1963 for long enough to write an exposé of the working conditions at the Playboy Club in New York.
   
9. RK: One of Hatsune Miko's songs, from one of the "live" concerts that the Vocaloid programmers and illustrators give on occasion. Watch a 2016 performance of it here.
   
10. RK: Witches Abroad - mirror magic, including using mirrors to scry, is an important part of that novel.
    
11. RK: Miyuki's been in Refuge for less than two months and she's already read at least up to chapter 5 of The White Devil of the Moon. It must have been recommended to her by somebody on the in-universe "displaceees.yggdrasil" forum.
    
12. RK: Considering one of our writers uses the screen name "Looney Toons", how could we pass up the chance to include a Looney Tunes reference?
    
13. RMS: Don't believe the colorizers. The dress was not blue. Washuu did her research. As did we.
    
14. BL: Moments like this I really feel sorry for Yomi because it's hard to tsukkomi when the world is, in fact, crazy. It's also why Tomo's star rises and Yomi's falls early in the story.
    
15. RMS: You can learn more about this gown than you probably ever wanted to know here. And I suppose it goes without saying that Washuu forewent the shortcuts and compromises made by the Labyrinth costume designers — like plastic jewels and using a layer of cellophane to get the iridescent look.
    
16. RMS: Exquisitely formal (and archaic) court Japanese.
    
17. BL: Daimyou were the top tier feudal lords, under only the shogun or emperor. Each one controlled a clan and a roughly a prefecture's worth of land. Actually, Brent thinks the Silver Millennium government was a little more similar to the Holy Roman Empire, with each of them having a literal sphere of influence. Patrons of planets, such as Princess Venus, would be akin to prince-electors, where other senshi of minor planets like Vesta are the other princes, grand dukes, and counts.
    RK: Usagi isn't thinking that far ahead yet. Wait until Yuuno-kun, Fujitaka-san, and the other archaeologists find her throne in the ruins of the Silver Millennium on the Moon.
    
18. BL: Buying a prop in advance for a joke I might be able to use in a month or two is a thing I've done in real life. Unlike Tomo, I spend my own money.
    
19. RK: Yes, "Cassiopeia" is a royal name, not a title. Cassiopée isn't a scholar in ancient languages or Greek mythology. (She has Caster and Rider for that.)