An Invitation and A Little Shopping (VHBB) By Lana G. Soward, Unaffiliated Day/time: Tuesday, August 6th, 12:04am Location: Diane's room at the hospital The nurse looked at the brain wave readout on the monitor. The activity was starting up again. Usually comatose patients didn't display such strange brain activity, but then nothing about this case was normal. The nurse noted it in her log and went back to her book. Meanwhile Diane started to dream.... **** The invitations were hand delivered by a snooty driver in a white Bentley limousine. It stopped at seven places: The Knightie Loft, Natpack HQ, Merc HQ, the new CERK radio station, the Die Hard headquarters, the Vaqueras church and for form's sake, the Raven Club. Each invitation was black. Very black. Blacker than any black anyone had ever seen. It made the silver leaves and gold lettering stand out in stunning relief. Each one read the same: The non-faction, non-fraction Unaffiliates would like to invite you to a surprise birthday party for Diane Echelbarger To be held at the RAVEN on August 6th, 1996. Dress is formal. Inter-factional fighting is NOT allowed. Although scrimmages *may* be tolerated. Open bar Full buffet. Party starts at 7pm. ----- Each faction sprang into shopping action. The Raven(ette)s were organized the fastest, primarily because they were always organized for a shopping expedition. They exited the Raven, en mass, leaving it to the care of the caterers that had arrived and started to prepare the place. Cynthia had first extracted promises that the caterers would not repaint the place or leave any lasting marks. The head caterer took one glance at the steely look in Cynthia's eyes and agreed. They descended on Siren fifteen minutes before the Cousins and thirty minutes before the Knighties and Vaqueras. The owner of the small boutique (which suddenly got a lot smaller with four factions in it) would have closed his doors, if he'd known the chaos that was going to descend on his small shop. The one hundred plus women wiggled their way around the shop, (you put 100 people in Siren and that's all you can do.) trying on clothes with abandon. A Ravenette and a Knightie almost got into a tussle over the last black velvet choker until a cousin snuck in a bought it out from under them. Finally, the shop having given all it could give, disgorged it's patrons as they moved to the next goth shop, the Raven(ette)s leading the way. But before the owner could lock his door, a woman with *bright* red hair stuck her foot in the door. "We need to buy something," she demanded urgently. "For tonight." The owner stuck his head out and looked behind the woman. Behind her were at least twelve squinting women, standing like a conga line, one behind the other, their hands on the shoulders of the one in front. He shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've been cleaned out." "Damn!" said one of the squinting women, who looked strangely like one of his regular patrons. She waved a bottle. "We'll just have to keep going. Let's go." The conga line moved off down the street, with the bottle being passed up and down the line. "I need a vacation," said the Siren proprietor, his voice echoing in the empty store. He'd order his stock and then take a nice vacation in the Caribbean. And that's what he did.