Hat Shore party planning had ended up falling mostly into the hands of a couple of contestants, along with set designer Jherek Carnelian. These 'couple' of contestants were actually the Shoggies and Beowulf, who'd squelched and shouted their way toward transforming Hat Shore into a strange Under The Sea experience.
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the lagoon )
Elric was of course still wearing his Adjudicator costume, complete with carrying around the massive Banhammer of Adjudication. But, to the albino's dismay, shortly before the party began his tiara had somehow morphed into a big, sparkly red octopus-thing, equally stuck to his head. And so, Elric was doomed to spend the party moping about as Lord Pyaray of Chaos. Unfamiliar with the art of 'speed dating', Elric was performing this moping in the pink-stained battle fog of the Lonely Hearts Club, pointedly ignoring the occasional bell.
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Hers was supposed to resemble a friendly, cheerful sea turtle. The rest of her wardrobe for the event had also been chosen by the Sorting Hat. While the dress wasn't hideous, it wasn't to Ari's taste at all. Furthermore, she came bearing a molded gelatin, blue (one might assume raspberry flavor) with pineapple rings inside.
Flanked by the bewigged house-elves Flobby and Caddy as her cattle-prod-toting bodyguards, Ari carried her gelatin salad to the Lonely Harkonnen Hearts Dining Club Experience. She knew the Hat would be watching through the map screen, though the screen itself was currently displaying abstract water-like imagery.
She handed the gelatin off to Flobby and seated herself at the Adjudicator's table. "How are things going so far?"
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Ari looked at it dubiously. Then she poked it with the spoon that Flobby had thoughtfully nestled alongside it on the dessert plate.
"It's like aspic, I think," she ventured. "With fruit in."
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"The texture's not terrible," she decided, diplomatically. And speaking of things that were odd and potentially revolting: "Thank you, by the way, for the lovely gifts you sent. I'm curious, what sort of pelt is it, exactly? I couldn't get a usable cell sample off it to test."
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Too late, she recalled that the Hat was surely watching its show through the screen -- likely live. She leaned toward Elric, across the table, pretending to say something intimately close, but what she whispered was:
"The Hat will want to send Hat Shore after the bears. Won't it." It was not a question.
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She laughed a throaty Ari-One laugh, as though Elric had just said something particularly wicked or delightful. She whispered: "Canadian Weasley Bear."
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Elric's lips curled into an appropriately devious little smirk, and he leaned forward to murmur his reply close to Ari's ear. "I know little about the beasts of this world, but it sounds as apt a name as any. I am still not certain it was a bear. It was certainly bear-like, but, I have never before encountered a bear whose path left a smouldering trail through the brush. Nor have I met a bear who brought with it a profusion of tiny black spiders. I am not sure if they merely infested its fur- or if they came from inside of it." A thought occured to him, and he added, "I did make sure that all the spiders were cleaned from its pelt." Elric was strange, but, not so strange that he'd have thought spiders a good addition to a Valentine's Day gift.
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