The Reception

[smelltheashes]

In the depths of the bunker beneath the Greenbrier Resort Hotel is a massive, columned room, intended to be used to hold sessions of Congress in the event of a nuclear war.

Today, it's being put to a very different and much less somber purpose.

The wedding is over; the party has begun.

Comments

Re: Receiving Line

[aeons_crackshot]

"I'll do that," Annabelle says with a nod.

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

Next in line is...

"Doctor Isaac Kleiner, late of Black Mesa," says the balding Caucasian man in the lab coat and coke-bottle glasses. "Pleased to meet you, Mister... er... would you prefer 'Jim' or 'the Waco Kid'?"

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Either one's good," Jim says. "Most folks here seem to go with the first one a bit more than they do back home."

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"Well, it's a delight in any case," says Kleiner. "I was quite fond of Mel Brooks's oeuvre when I was a younger man..."

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Always good to meet a fan," Jim says. "Well, maybe not always, but that's what restraining orders are for."

Re: Receiving Line

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Kleiner would probably keep right on talking if it weren't for the fact that there are people pressing the group along, and so he bids his farewell to Jim hastily.

"Hi there," says Ellen, who's wearing what looks for all the world like a dark green version of Danny Kaye's outfit here. Without the service markings, mind, and with a Brotherhood of Steel emblem embroidered on it. "Glad you could make it... that's what you're supposed to say, right?"

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"I think so. I've never been invited to one of these. Or maybe I have and was too drunk to remember it.

"Anyway, glad you could make it, too."

Re: Receiving Line

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Alyx asked me to serve as one of her bridesmaids," Ellen admits. "I'm not really- we do weddings differently back home, and it's not a position I'm familiar with. Hopefully I did it right."

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Well, it looked like it went pretty well to me."

Re: Receiving Line

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods. "Annabelle and I were expecting we'd have to fight somebody off, to be honest," she says. "The fact that nobody came gunning for us was... pretty much the best we could ask for."

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Well, weddings in your world sound an awful lot like weddings in mine," he says. "In some places I've been to, anytime the chapel bells aren't followed by gunshots is considered a pretty good Sunday."

Re: Receiving Line

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It had more to do with knowing Alyx and Gordon have a lot of enemies than the way things are in my world," Ellen says, "but since I'd heard the best man was supposed to step in if someone tried to take the bride away, I figured bridesmaids were there to do the fighting for her, too, you know?"

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Sounds downright reasonable to me," Jim says.

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"Greetings to the Waco Kid," rumbles the final groomsman. (Grooms-thing?)

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"And greetings to the, um..." Jim tries and fails to find the appropriate word. "...well, I don't think we've been introduced."

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"This one has no individual appellation," it replies. "Our kind are known to humans as 'Vortigaunts.'"

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"No name, huh? Well, that's common enough among humans in some universes," he says. "The Western film genre's full of mysterious nameless folk, for one.

"Anyway, nice to meet you, Mr. Vortigaunt."

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"We are unfamiliar with this 'Western film genre,'" it remarks, canting its head to one side just a little.

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"The details aren't really important," Jim says. "Long story short, it's a kind of human storytelling that also happens to be the place I'm from. Don't ask me how that's possible."

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"In the Vortessence," it says serenely, "all things are possible."

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"I suppose," Jim says. "What is the Vortessence, if you don't mind me asking?"

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"Your kind is ill-equipped to comprehend it."

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Do you mean quantum-physics-to-a-child ill-equipped or ending-to-2001-A-Space-Odyssey ill-equipped?" Jim asks. "'Cause if it's the latter, you can run it by me and I can see what I can get from it."

Re: Receiving Line

[smelltheashes]

"It is both. And neither."

...unhelpful much?

Re: Receiving Line

[waco_jim]

"Oh. You mean a sort of understanding-the-mass-appeal-of-the-Transformers-movies-from-the-perspective-of-a-sane-man kind of ill-equipped. Gotcha."

Beat. "So, um...how'd you get to know Gordon and Alyx?"