I'm gonna move to the southwest, and, I don't know...

Honestly, really, Summer probably should have just made some sangria automatically as soon as she realized what was going down last weekend, because it was inevitable, wasn't it, that it would be desperately needed? Although she had to admit, whipping out the quick jello shot maker on Saturday had been kind of a stroke of genius, it didn't quite have the same effect as a proper sangria night, and Summer had to admit, she was kind of looking forward to it way too much.

But she had her sangria (infused with all her favorite fruits that she was still able to get in from Rey's galaxy), she had some pizza on standby on the coffee table, there were little shot glasses of rum and the sangria itself for the squirrels, and Pancakes was hitting her nice mellow stride after a burst of catnip activity so she'd be nice and chill and open to snuggles if necessary.

Now all she needed was a bestie.

[[ for rey, although if you want to get in touch with her before that thread, I am down for it! ]]

Yes, Summer had been having a lot of sangria nights lately, but, apparently, there had been a lot of good reasons for them. And Rey being back after a pretty substantial event in her life definitely called for one, and so she got together all the necessary things and had several large pitcher waiting and ready to go, and they could start to really dish it out and explore all the no doubt complicated feelings she was going through, now that the aftermath had a little bit of time to just settle.

And then Summer would get started on focusing on Annie's bachelorette party. Really!

Also, the giant bowl of gummy sharks on the coffee table right now was probably not only excessive but also a terrible idea considering the amounts of alcohol that were likely to be consumed that evening, but, goddamn it, it was Rey, and Summer could never let a good running joke die.

So, with pizza cupcakes and beer far behind her, she was ready for a much more sophisticated sloppy drunkenness ahead of her.

[[ for the space bestie! although if anyone needs her before then, go for it! ]]

Summer was pretty sure it should be illegal to have to have two sangria nights within less than a week of each other, but that was the dire state of affairs that they were in, and so they had to make the most of it. It did not take her long to know that she was going to be mixing up more of the now sacred drink for another session when she heard about John leaving, and she was determined to all but drag Rey here if she had to.

Thankfully, though, she didn't have to, and she had yet again foiled the cats' attempts to trip her as she brought a pitcher out to the living room in an odd sense of déjà vu, except for the fact that there was already a box of cookies from J,GoB on the table waiting this time.

What? That cookies-in-wine combo had been legit.

She wasn't sure Rey would be as onboard with it as she was, but, hey, it was good to have options.


[[ and for she who is mentioned in the narrative, although if anyone wants to poke at Summer before Rey in the timeline, I'm totes down for it! ]]

Well. So. That was...a whole thing.

Honestly, Summer was kind of disappointed. That didn't take nearly as long or as much effort as she thought it was going to, and while there was a certain cleverness to what ultimately brought down the New and So-Called "IMPROVED" Galactic Federation, it was all kind of an anticlimax, and then....that was it. Sure, once again, the planets under Federation control were being thrown into utter chaos, but that she was a little more willing to leave to her mom and her crew because she was honestly just a little bit over it and kind of just wanted to get back home again. She missed people. She missed Fandom. And, obviously, she was totally on call if anything started up again, which she was sure it was going to, but for now?

Home sweet home, baybeeeee!

She parked her spaceship in the junkyard, feeling glad her spot was still there but a little disappointed not to see any ships she didn't recognize, grabbed her bags, and headed back to MHA under the cover of darkness, Pancakes prancing along next to her. And it felt good to get back, with a little wistful grin at Caritas as she passed it by before slipping into MHA and heading on upstairs, down the hallway, to her apartment, slipping her key out of her pocket and ready to just get back in and revel in being home.

...only to have the key not fit into the lock.

"What the hell?" she murmured, frowning down at it as she tried again, and jiggled the handled. Pulled. To no avail.

"What the fuck?" she gave it another tug, another attempt to unlock it. "Did someone change the locks?"

Someone defintiely changed the locks.

"Great," she murmured. "Just fucking great. I swear to god, Jon, you asshole, if you rented my apartment out...I paid you six months rent in advance! In cold hard cash! So help me..."

She was already on her knees in front of the door, shaking her head as she dropped her bag and started digging around for some hairpins. "If I have to break into my own damn apartment, because someone fucking sublet it out, despite the rent being paid in full for six fucking months, I am going to choke a bitch. I will." Pancakes let out a protesting meow. "I'll fucking do it, just you wait.

"Wait," she then realized, blinking, pausing in her attempts to pick the lock and pulling out her phone. "Have I been gone for more than six months--no. Nope. Definitely not, okay, good, because I was going to be fucking pissed if I was gone for...I mean, I still am pissed," she resolutely returned to her work, "but not about that. At least I didn't just lose half a year, even if I guess I lost my apartment!"

Pancakes let out another meow, this one more impatient and upset, and Summer cooed at her with a small apologetic smile.

"Ohhhh, I know, baby," she said. "I wanna get home, too, but Mama's just got to break into her own damn apartment, apparently just reaaal fast and we'll be golden, okay?"

And as she got back to work, she shook her head. "I swear to god," she said again, "he better not have fucking rented out my apartment to someone else, or else this is about to get real fucking awkward!"

She was just glad that, with all her experience breaking into Rick's lab (and, hey, she even broke into Rosa's place that one time, too, and that was Rosa!), a lock like this should be easy-peasy.

And if not? Well, fuck, then, she could just portal in, dammit.

[[ OH HEY GUESS WHO DECIDED SHE WANTED TO COME BACK BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS BEEN TOO BUSY TO WRITE HER SOME CRAZY SPACE ADVENTURES and is insisting that, okay, other characters got to have their time to shine a little, we're OVER it. I was going to do this over the weekend, but, well, this happened and I couldn't refuse? Like, how could I not do this??? Anyway, oh, hey, yeah, the post is totally open ]]

So, the whole space part of Summer's plan for Annie's party didn't exactly pan out the way she was hoping. Part of her conversation with Lucifer on Wednesday had turned out to be somewhat prophetic, as one for her choices for location had conveniently decided to start a galactic civil war with their moon colonies, and the other place, apparently, didn't even exist anymore. The best guess was that it somehow involved Cromulans, which meant that planet was pretty much space dust now, which meant that Summer could pretty much kiss her deposit on that venue good-bye.

Which was fine! If she couldn't still pull together a more terrestrial party at the last minute, then she truly should just hang up her party crown now and retire in shame. So emails and texts went out, the gnomes at Portalocity would hopefully cooperate in sharing the news with anyone who showed up expecting to head elsewhere, that the party was relocated. And Summer was going to just use her own place for the cause, but, really, through the ensuing chain of events in preparation that morning, she remembered that Diego's apartment was pretty much literally right across the hall and easily twice as large.

So Diego's apartment it was!

Honestly, as boyfriend, it was literally the least he could do.

But because it was a little last minute and Summer didn't have the benefit of foisting at least half the cleaning duties on an NPC bartender like she could at Caritas, the decorations were a bit more...restrained. Oh, sure, there was still going to be glitter everywhere and every corner that Summer had access to was decked out in stars, but the mood was much different, trying to go for something a little more elegent in mood, with starlights draped out on the balcony, draped over doors, and projected over the walls and ceiling.

Look, if they couldn't make it out to space due to galactic conflict and super harsh critics with planet-exploding capabilities, they could at least try to bring the space to them.

[[ Please, please, please feel free to mod getting notifs on the big bash, apartment modded with gracious persmission, please wait for the OCD is up, party on, dudes ]]

Summer couldn't really remember if the bottles of Coke being distrubuted by the polar bears would actually stick around for longer than today, but she'd collected a few extra for tomorrow, just in case, and was going to try some new ideas for incorperating the cola into jello shots in the meantime. And when she wasn't working on that, she was crafting together a good mass text to send to everyone about the party on Friday.

Sure, she said she was going to invite the whole faculty thanks to having them already on hand for when she sent out school trip party invites, but she wasn't going to just stop there. She'd been put in charge of invitations, and so she was going to be in charge of invitations. Which meant sending out a mass text to everyone outside the student body whose number she could scrounge up.

Happy Holidays!
Before we all get SICK of Christmas cheer and can only say BAH HUMBUG to it all, party it up with a Holiday Party Extravaganza!
Friday, December 4th
@ MCA #1
(that's Rey's apartment!)

There will be punch! Presents! Party games!
Ugly Sweaters Encouraged!
And an EXCLUSIVE seasonal jello shot DEBUT!

Seriously, you don't want to miss it!
Contact Summer (that's me!) or Annie for more deets!

And, obviously, there were posters being printed up to be spread around town, too, just in case anyone just straight up disregarded the mass text as spam, and she would not blame them.

When her phone buzzed soon after that with a message, she was thrilled to see someone already responding, but it turned out that was not the case at all, and the message was actually coming from somewhere else entirely.

( Cut for text conversation )

"I didn't!" Summer said to her phone, outloud, because that's how frustrated she was, and then she remembered to text it, too, but, after that, things on her grampa's side went quiet, as she was pretty sure he went to deal with whatever this monolith bullshit was that she knew she had nothing to do with but was now actually really curious about, and she considered...

...no. Nope. She had a party to help plan for and some jello experiments that would hopefully go better than other recent jello experiements performed by other people, and she reminded herself that it was healthier to just step away and not engage...

[[ yeah, like a mysterious monolith is going to show up randomly in the same place where this hyper-ridiculous sci-fi ship wound up for Thanksgiving and I'm not going to do anything with it?? Anyway, it's open! ]]

Summer had had a busy week, topped up with some absolutely ridiculous squirrel drama this morning that made her almost wonder if she was going to need the wine even more than Rey at this point, but she'd still managed to completely refurnish and redecorate her apartment so it looked like a normal person lived there and not someone who'd just came crawling back after literally blowing up all their assets in space and she'd also made that sangria, because, you know what? She was just awesome like that.

And then, after a quick hop across the street probably, eventually to the bar to stop in for a drink like she said she would, it was back to the apartment, to ply Pancakes with treats for being an excellent squirrel-chasing cat and to dick around the internet and Instragram some of her new budget-chic, emergency-trip-to-the-Isle-of-Ikea interior design until someone showed up to help her drink all this wine.

Because there was a lot of it.


[[ expecting one, but also definitely open for other pestering! ]]