Panic! at the Afterparty

## Premise

Things at the Winter Formal got a little out of hand, but surely the afterparty will go more smoothly! It's not like any of our heroes will take advantage of being in Bronson Tower unsupervised... right?

## Cast

* Zen (DM)
* Brittney Megan Bronson (Talatala)
* Kat Afka (Lordlyhour)
* Carolina "Lina" Noticia (kt)
* Nikola N. Change (Authorticity)
* Shaun (Verl)

## Plot Summary

### Part One

An event hall on the seventh floor of Bronson Tower has been set up for the afterparty, with cool bisexual lighting and lasers, a professional DJ, and no adult supervision. Brittney is busy on hostess duty, putting out social fires before they start. Nikola warns Lina and starts up a mental groupchat with everyone but Brittney, then asks what they're doing at the party. Lina is thrown off from seeing Penumbra; she's having a hard time socializing and is visibly less cheery than usual. Nikola and Kat can tell that rumors are spreading about what happened with Thesis, though most of the students don't have a clear idea what happened. Nikola telepathically lets everyone know about what the students know and again asks what the game plan is.

Nikola takes Lina's hand to comfort her, and pulls her into a closet to "make out" and let her decompress, and Lina immediately starts crying. Alison is at the party, hanging out with some other people from the school paper in the corner, and keeps glancing at Lina but doesn't want to interrupt her date with Nikola. Lina puts her mask on to hide her tears, and Nikola starts looking for a way to sneak away. He asks if Kat could cause a commotion as a distraction, which Kat is enthusiastic about. Kat pulls a broomstick from hammerspace and tries to start a game of limbo with middling success. Kat struggles to bend under the limbo pole, but Lina easily walks under with a half-successful moonwalk. Shaun tries to limbo but smacks his huge mask on the limbo pole and gets knocked out, then is taken to a separate recovery room for drunk people.

Lina goes over to talk to Alison, who asks if Lina heard about what happened at the dance. Lina says she heard a little, and Alison tells her about Thesis and hands over her camera for Lina to look through the photos. There are photos of Thesis, though Lina doesn't notice anything incriminating to the group. Lina asks for help in the mental groupchat and Nikola rushes over to help. Nikola asks to look at the pictures, which Alison agrees to, and tries to convince Alison that Thesis is Party Guy in a costume, but Alison is unconvinced. Nikola looks through the photos, and there are no clear incriminating photos, but have some little suspicious details, like odd footprints and Lina's foot as she hides in a bush. Nikola tries to gaslight Alison but quickly gives up, and Lina offers to edit the photos instead, mentally explaining she'll edit out the suspicious stuff. Alison eagerly agrees, saying Lina is a really good photo editor, and Lina convinces her to hand the camera over now so Lina can work on the photos over the weekend.

While Brittney tries to keep everyone at the party getting along, Nikola starts trying to subtly sabotage her with small acts like tipping drinks over. Brittney notices and uses her powers to prevent Nikola's sabotage, then telepathically threatens to kick Nik and everyone else in the party out if she has to. Nikola goes around the room doing random things to get under Brittney's skin, and Brittney pulls out her phone to text Security and tell them to kick Nikola out. While Brittney is distracted, Kat starts introducing people that hate each other in an attempt to sow chaos, but half the people he introduces try to be polite about it. Nikola finds and takes a trio of abandoned masks on a table and dons a new mask, then gives their mask to a different teen. Brittney spots Nikola's mask being given away, but doesn't recognize that the person giving the mask is Nikola. She updates the guards, telling them to pause the search because Nikola is no longer wearing the same mask, and starts scanning the room to try to find Nikola by reading his mind. Kat mentally updates Lina with the plan to cause chaos so they can sneak out, which Lina wearily acknowledges.

Nikola sneaks out of the room without Brittney noticing. Kat bestows the title of Party Guy on a random other partygoer and then sneaks out of the room himself, which Brittney does see. Brittney checks on where Lina is; Lina is still in the room chatting with Alison. Brittney tells the tower guards that some students have left the afterparty and are probably wandering the building, giving instructions to find them. Nikola says they want to look at the general files and the testing areas, and Kat offers to lead the way. Nikola asks if Kat knows how to get to any more secret areas of the building, which he doesn't. Nikola also wonders if the tower has a basement, and Kat says it doesn't appear to. Kat suggests they check out the labs first, and that they travel through the vents, which Nikola agrees to.

Nikola has a little trouble climbing in the vents, but Kat helps them and they both manage to get to the lowest floor of labs in the building. Kat puts on a spare mask, which is neither his normal mask or his Smog mask. The two emerge into a dimly lit hallway, which Nikola has trouble seeing, but Kat easily spots the security cameras on the floor and the labels on doors. Kat casts Pass Without Trace on himself and Nikola, and Nikola uses telekinesis (Unseen Servant) to open the locked door to the greenhouse from the inside. The two easily sneak into the greenhouse, which is growing various produce. Nikola checks the notes in the room, which reveal the greenhouse is being used to test new cultivars of crops. Nikola looks for anything out of place in the room, but doesn't find anything. Kat also examines the plants, and they seem to be doing well, but to a normal degree. Kat is a little disappointed that they haven't found anything more overtly evil, but Nikola says the evil experiments are probably better hidden.

Before leaving, they take a quick look through the other rooms on the floor, which are normal meeting rooms for holding focus groups. Nikola looks around for secret passageways, but finds nothing. The two use the vents to climb up to the next floor, and Nikola struggles but Kat helps them out. On the next floor, Nikola again has trouble seeing while Kat looks around easily. The rooms on this floor seem predominately focused on advertising and marketing. Kat suggests that Bronson's secrets will be hidden in the rooms with the most boring names, and Nikola goes along with him. Nikola tries looking for anything suspicious in the hallway, but finds nothing, and gets a bit frustrated trying to figure out how to find whatever Bronson is keeping secret and not labeling on the directory. Kat suggests the idea of secret floors in the tower, which Nikola latches onto, suggesting they look in the elevator shaft, and Kat jumps at the chance.

The two climb back down to the seventh floor where the afterparty is through the vents, so the cameras watching the elevator will see them enter at an appropriate floor. They then get onto the elevator and take a look around. There is an access panel in the ceiling of the elevator that requires a maintenance key to open, and there is a security card reader next to the elevator buttons, with only the buttons for floors 1-3 and 7 lit up. There is no camera inside the elevator itself. Kat suggests stealing keys and/or a uniform from a security guard, or having Lina pick the lock. The two decide to go collect Lina and Shaun from the party.

### Part Two

Back at the afterparty, Brittney is having a great time doing social manipulation despite Nik and Kat's suspicious absence. Lina is on the floor, eating some marmalade and trying not to cry about encountering Penumbra again. Meanwhile, Shaun wakes up in the other room; as he heads out into the hall, he runs into Nikola and Kat on their way back to the party. Kat asks if Shaun knows how to pick an elevator lock, and Nikola says they should still get Lina, because he doesn't want to leave her with Brittney too long. Nikola and Kat head back into the party while Shaun waits outside, and Nikola asks Lina if she wants to go do some crime. Lina asks what kind of crime, and when Kat brings up picking locks, Lina starts getting carried away and Nikola has to interrupt her from puling out her lockpicks in front of the whole party. The three try to sneak out of the party room, which Kat manages to do with an armful of snacks, but Brittney spots Nikola carrying Lina out of the room and alerts the security guards that now three people are wandering around.

Out in the hallway, Lina sleepily babbles about the various types of lock the elevator might have. Nikola and Kat explain what they found last time and their plan to explore the elevator shaft to Shaun and Lina. Kat casts Pass Without Trace on everyone. Nikola asks if Lina is okay, and Lina pulls out some caffeinated candy and eats five, waking up substantially. The group sneak into the elevator; Shaun trips and almost falls into camera range but Kat catches him and sneaks him in.

Everyone but Kat examines the lock, which is for a pretty standard key and doesn't seem to have been used often. Lina asks if anyone else knows how to use a lockpick, but they don't. Nikola holds Lina up to the lock so she can pick it, but she fails to pick the lock and instead breaks her lockpicks into the lock by accident. Kat tries to pull the broken lockpick out and fails, but with his slime shapeshifting and some advice from Lina, Shaun manages to not only grab the lockpicks but also to open the lock in the process. As they open the hatch, Lina asks what their excuse is if they're caught and complains about how haphazard this mission is.

Kat climbs up into the elevator shaft, than Nikola lifts Lina up through the hatch, then Nik and Shaun climb up. Lina takes off her butterfly mask.

[50:24]

## Notes

Bronson Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the city, and is in the very center of the city

There is not a statue of Bronson at Bronson Tower, but "Bronson Tower" is written on the side of the building

There is no pool at Bronson Tower, but there is a fountain in the lobby

* figuring this out led to a like 10 minute conversation about whether Brittney would sink in water
* Brittney was not the type of kid to like swimming
* Wellspring High School has a pool, but swimming is not mandatory; the pool is for the swim team and some clubs

Lina plans to show Roadkill the photos of Thesis that Alison took to warn him about it

The glittery blue mask Nikola picks up looks like a lobster

Kat has been part of Bronson brand focus group tests before

## Session Recording

Part One

Part Two

## Art Gallery

Title card, drawn by ZenThe afterparty, drawn by kt