It's a Big Fucking Party, and Everyone will be There

https://youtu.be/K-Ku0xjfBNY

It’s a Big Fucking Party, and Everyone Will be There

Part I

It was a good day for a celebration. It was, of course, always a good day for a celebration on Bourbon Street. Holliday kept the whole place at about seventy degrees, and hidden fans replicated a light breeze. But today was an especially good day for it. He’d just dealt a hardy blow in his game of fucking with Bacchae, after a lot of hard work to set up an entire mystery. Now he deserved a little rest. A little drink, a little party, a little time to kick back and relax.

It was Mardi Gras, after all. Or at least, by his calculations. And so he had set his underlings the task of planning and executing the biggest celebration they possibly could, so that he may simply sit back and partake. It was apparently shaping up to be a wild weekend of debauchery. Despite the general tension, many of Discord’s residents had caught word and were making a point of showing up, against Bacchae’s wishes though it may be. This meant the general level of class might decrease, but it was Mardi Gras, drunken bullshit was the special of the day. He had plenty of staff to deal with the aftermath. And he didn’t even have to pay those ones!

And so, right as the festivities were kicking off about midday, Holliday sat on the veranda of his favorite restaurant on Bourbon Street, a glass of Merlot in one hand and Zellie Lablanc’s thigh in the other.

“I’m surprised you canceled your performances this weekend,” he commented, “though I will say I am enjoying the company.”

Zellie tittered, her face looking surprisingly girlish behind her sunglasses. “It is not a big loss,” she explained. “Drunken fools do not often appreciate the fine arts. Besides, the girls are happy they getting to join in the fun.”

“Practical as always,” he grinned, squeezing her thigh playfully.

“If I just told you I wanted to enjoy the party with you, you would be thoroughly bored.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be as fun without the chase.”

Just then, another group entered the veranda, and the two of them leaned away from each other. Zellie was a favorite of Holliday’s, it was no secret. But for the sake of both their reputations, it was wisest to appear at least somewhat available.

Still, Holliday enjoyed Zellie’s company just as much as her body, and so they discussed this and that—preparations for the upcoming opera, the plans to redecorate some of the luxury rooms at the Tombstone—while they sipped their wine and waited for their meal to arrive.

There were several waiters on staff that day, of course. But when you were Holliday, the chef delivered your food personally. He was an awkwardly-shaped man, a bit like a barrel close to bursting, yet he put himself together well. His orange beard was closely trimmed, and his hair slicked back with perhaps just a little too much wax.

“Monsieur Holliday, it is always a pleasure, sir,” he bowed slightly. Holliday liked it when he was shown the proper amount of respect he was owed. It reminded him of just how much he’d built for himself in his private little kingdom.

The chef described in detail the entirety of the full ten-course dining experience, but a good portion of it was lost on Holliday. He liked to play the worldly man of culture, but he was still much more at home with a bowl of gumbo than whatever fancy French words had just emerged from the man’s mouth. This was his favorite restaurant not because of its quality, or hoity-toity air, but rather because of the bizarre, nearly experimental techniques used to create the things the chef dubbed “food.” The fact that he could rarely understand what the menu actually was made the reveals all the more surprising.

The artificial lights of the strip were dimming just in time for the parade as their first course was brought out: a small pile of mint-flavored foam. What a delight!

“Look at this, Zellie, it’s foam for god’s sake,” he beamed after the chef had left and she chuckled at his bemusement.

The second course was even more fascinating: something the chef described as a “mousse,” but appeared to be made of meat. Holliday wasn’t quite sure, but mousse was typically a type of dessert, wasn’t it? There was also a surprise toasted nut in the middle of the pile. It was slop, only that, but when it was served at Pompier, it was apparently supposed to be treated as art.

He was even more curious about what could possibly be coming next, but by this point he got slightly distracted, as the parade was in full swing directly below them. Legions of women in bedazzled leotards with huge feather fans, men on stilts, a full marching band, and enough fake plastic-beaded necklaces to clog up the entire Mississippi. Around the procession, the onlookers were already getting rowdy, fighting over the necklaces as they were flung into the crowd.

Holliday took another sip of wine and sighed with contentment. If this wasn’t Mardi Gras then he had no damn clue what was. It made him a little nostalgic for home: his N’orleans.

With a small hiss he heard the sound of fireworks going off. A surprising development. He hadn’t expected the staff to go that far. Probably they’d kept it from him on purpose. He grinned as he waited to see what they looked like.

But as they popped, and sizzled, and exploded into the sky, the smile fell off his face. The fireworks were words, and as the letters appeared one by one, all Holliday could do was sigh and shake his head. “The Tea Party wuz here… suckers!”

The final cherry on the cake was the stussy at the end.

Next to him, Zellie gasped audibly. “They are crashing your wonderful party. How rude of them!”

Holliday shook his head again, and finished off his glass of wine, slamming the glass down on the table maybe a little harder than he intended. This was going to be a long night. “Honestly, I’m not sure why I expected any less.”

~ o ~

“Hoh, boy,” Bacchae flopped forward on his plastic horse, wiping a little sweat from his forehead. “That might be me all tapped out for the day.”

“Uh, what do you mean?” Kei raised an eyebrow, her arms crossed over her chest as she sat in the carriage behind him. “Please don’t tell me you wasted your ability to do anything useful on a goddamn light show.”

He flipped around the pole, which connected his horse to the structure of the abandoned carousel, looking irritated. “Look, we had to make a big entrance, right? And you can’t get real fucking fireworks to do that shit. It’s not my fault there were so many people around who had to think they were there.”

Kei put her face in her hands. “No, we didn’t,” she moaned. “We could cause so much more damage if Holliday doesn’t know we’re here, like I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.”

“I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this top secret mission is all about.”

“Really?” Kei scoffed. “Then enlighten me.”

Jack was the only member of the Tea Party who wasn’t on the carousel. Instead he was busy carving something—there was a non-zero possibility that it was dicks—into the metal railings that surrounded it. At Kei’s sarcastic request he glanced up for the first time in several minutes. “It’s about sending a message.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass how much we actually fuck up this stupid shindig,” Bacchae elaborated, now standing and leaning dramatically towards her with only his grip on the pole keeping him upright. “I just want that bastard to know that we’re here, and we’re fucking up his steeze, and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it.”

“Actually!” Kei fumed. “There are a lot of things he can do about it. Unlike you, he’s got a whole platoon of security ready and willing to fuck up our shit so bad that it’s gonna start spewing from our mouths. And you know! What would have really! Helped with that? The ability to make them think you’re not there!”

“Just don’t get caught then, dumbass!” Bacchae laughed. “Besides, that’s Jack’s job.”

“Right. I’m on bloody distraction duty.”

“Remember: wound, maybe a little maiming as a treat. But no killing. I’m declaring: ‘fuck you, buddy,’ not: ‘I’m starting a fucking war,’ you dig?”

Jack was obviously a little put out by this. “What if just one were to go… missing?” he bargained.

“What? No!” Kei was going to wear down her teeth if she kept gritting them like that.

Bacchae instead considered it. “As long as there’s no body.”

“I won’t even leave a speck,” Jack promised.

“I can’t believe you’re letting him do this.”

Plopping down next to her, Bacchae’s arm squiggled its way around her shoulders. “Maybe you should be worrying about your job instead of Jack’s.”

“Which is? You haven’t even told me yet.”

“Well, Jack’s distracting security, I have a series of elaborate schemes to accomplish, so you can… uh…” Bacchae scratched behind his horns. “I don’t know. What do you do?”

“Besides bitch all the bloody time,” Jack chuckled.

Kei opened her mouth to retort, crossing her arms over her chest again. This action, unfortunately caused Bacchae’s gaze to drift downward.

“Oh, that’s it,” he said. “Go seduce someone inconvenient or something. Cause a scandal. Isn’t that what you evil queen types do?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Real fucking funny.”

Standing, Bacchae stretched, before vaulting over the carousel’s railing. It had made for a good staging ground for the operation, abandoned in some forgotten corner of the strip. But now it was showtime. “Alright freaks and geeks, it’s time to get your tap shoes on. Jack, sick ‘em.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” Jack flashed him a sharp grin before skulking off to commit at least one heinous crime.

“Welp,” Bacchae placed a rather large hat on his head. “That gives me like ten minutes to swipe a shot… or three. See you on the other side.” He sauntered off too, leaving Kei alone, still sitting in the stiff, plastic carriage designed for asses much smaller than her own.

“Seduce someone?” she scoffed to herself. “That fucking… motherfucker.”

~ o ~

Of course, in preparation for this occasion, all of Bourbon Street’s security had been given descriptions of the Tea Party members. They were told to keep a special eye out for Jack, and that if they saw him, to get him off the street as quickly as possible. They were not told why.

He was the first one they happened to spot, lucky for them, or maybe unlucky. But of course, Jack did nothing to hide.

The guards were already on high alert, so when he grabbed the nearest pretty young thing and held a knife to her throat, in one of the busiest intersections on the strip, they immediately took notice.

She trembled violently in his arms, and reeked of tequila. A part of Jack howled to just tear into her throat right now, with his teeth preferably, but he held it together. He’d get his prize when the work was done.

Still, he wanted to get out of this spot as soon as he could. “Oi, coppers!” he shouted, gathering the attention of as many as he possibly could.

They were afraid of him, though they maybe didn’t know quite why they should be yet. He could tell by how cautiously they approached. Seven of them, he counted. It was good, for a start.

Of course, some of them had been around the block once or twice, and it was only a matter of time until one of them recognized him. “Fuck, that’s Laughing Jack,” one of them muttered. Luckily, most of the crowd around them were too damn drunk and enraptured by party vibes to actually realize there was a hostage situation going down right in front of their eyes. This meant he had to wait a long time for the guards to wind their way closer to him without alerting the herd. Finally, they got close enough that one of them raised a baton.

And so he shoved the drunk woman towards them and ran the opposite direction. One of them would stay behind to make sure she was alright, but six followed close behind him. They all had guns, of course. Jack, however, was banking on the crowd to prevent them from actually shooting at him.

Down the main strip he went, tearing through the crowd, trying to make a general commotion all while running past as many guards as he could. He was target numero uno, and by this point, even the ones who had no idea who he was wanted him dead. He wondered idly if Holliday had offered a contract reduction for the one that brought him his head, with all the fervor they were chasing him with. It honestly wouldn’t be that surprising. He could probably take advantage of that.

A little more than halfway down the street—he could now see the Tombstone, and the grandstand they’d set up in front of it, glittering in the distance—Jack’s breath started hitching. And if he was feeling the exertion of bobbing and weaving through the crowd, he couldn’t imagine how the guards must be feeling. If he wasn’t careful they might start peeling off. Which meant it was time.

Even a joint with a layout as simple of Bourbon Street had abandoned corners, dark spots, the abandoned carousel was proof of that. At the very least, you needed a place for the dangerously drunk to spew their guts out that wasn’t in the middle of the crowd. And Jack was good at finding them.

This spot would do nicely. Just off the thoroughfare: large, overhanging balconies, and a quiet little square of unused pavement. As he dashed through, he grabbed some rope that was probably being used to tie up a banner or something before being forgotten in the chaos. It would do very nicely.

By this point, there were at least twenty guards chasing him. Bacchae’s instructions had been to distract, but disabling accomplished the same thing, and it was less work for him. If only he’d been allowed to kill. He understood the reasoning, but a part of him insisted that the reasoning was stupid. Still, what Bacchae said went, and it was easier to listen if the order was coming from someone else.

The first couple rounded the corner of the back street, but by the time more joined them their pace had slowed. “Where the hell did he vanish to?” one mumbled.

“Uh, uh. Don’t like this,” said a second. “I think we should get out of here.”

“Why?” a third sneered. “I’m getting my contract torn up, I don’t care who the fuck this guy is.”

“Haven’t you heard the rumors?”

“Rumors? I wandered into this freakshow two months ago. I don’t know jack squat about this Laughing Jack, and frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

“He’s a goddamn serial killer,” the first guard was sweating now. “Real gruesome stuff.”

“The daemons can just shake that shit off, but for us…”

“I heard he eats the eyeballs of his victims.” A falsehood. He mostly just joked about that one for shock value.

“I heard he killed a hundred people before Bacchae put him on a leash.” A hundred? In Discord? How efficient did people think he was?

“I heard he keeps a pet alligator in the labyrinth below Discord and feeds it with the blood of his victims.” That one… well, okay that one was only half wrong.

“Oh yeah? Well I heard that he flays anyone who flaps their gums with all these nasty rumors about him.”

That got a few nervous chuckles before they turned and realized just who had said that. The guards closest to him freaked, but Jack was already gone. Desperately, they glanced around, alerting their fellows. Yet they were looking in the entirely wrong place. There was a loud crack from the wooden balcony above their heads, and then a scream as a body dropped right next to them.

It bobbed a little, caught by the rope that held it by the foot. A second of examination revealed that the unfortunate bastard was merely unconscious, not dead. But who knew if he would stick to that.

“You know,” came a low growl that they couldn’t for the life of them determine the origin of, “I’m really not a fan of chin-waggers, They like to do stupid things like prattling to the papers.”

Another muffled cry was followed by a slam as another guard disappeared through a darkened doorway.

“Luckily for me, I’ve already been told that I can do whatever I want to you wannabe coppers.”

They caught a brief glimpse of musty coat as he dangled off the upper railing and bashed two of their heads together with enough force to cause at least a moderate concussion.

“So I’m pretty sure you should be trying a little harder to catch me.”

One more guard slipped on a rope that had been left in a loop, and now Jack had already pulled him onto the balcony and was holding a knife to his throat. He whimpered.

“Or else I’m certainly going to catch you.”

He sliced. For a second, the other guards stood frozen in horror as Jack’s newest victim gagged, staggered, and finally collapsed onto the wooden floor. His blood started dripping through the gaps in the slats, right onto their heads.

The rest of them bolted. Jack grinned.

The game was on.