Annie raised an eyebrow as she read the invitation to the charity ball.

"I remember last summer's ball. I didn't get an invite, but everyone who did ended up in a vegetative state or something," she commented to the small purple dragon currently lounging near the fireplace in her penthouse. "I can only imagine what terrible things will happen this time."

The dragon raised his head to look at her and said, "Sounds like an excellent reason to stay home and binge watch the new season of Game of Thrones with me."

"Oh, you know me. I never met a possibly life-threatening party I didn't like. Also, I refuse to indulge your cross-species crush on Emilia Clarke."

"For the last time, woman, I do not have a crush on Daenerys. I merely admire her transformation from timid young girl to dangerous, dragon-wielding queen," the dragon looked offended, if it were possible for a face that ugly and reptilian and very, very purple to look offended.

"Uh, huh. I'm sure that's all you're admiring," Annie said. "Now shoo. Go mind the store. I have an outfit to pick out."

"Fine. Be careful. I'd have to go back to legitimate business if you got killed and that's entirely no fun," the dragon said before disappearing in a puff of smoke.

"He said it just so, 'How DO you do?' with an insufferable sneer on his face as though he thought me too simple to know the answer!" Gatish paused for breath, "I was angry beyond telling, I told him he would pay for his insolence!"

"And how did that make you feel?"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN HOW DID THAT MAKE ME FEEL?! I JUST TOLD YOU I WAS ANGRY! . . . Stay, was that a joke?"

"Excellent! The first step toward being able to take a joke, is being able to identify one. You should be proud of yourself." Doc beamed at her patient.

"I was pretty quick with that one." The orc congratulated himself.

"Continue with your story."

"So I lopped the knave's head off with one clean stroke and dispatched him immediately."

"Merest common courtesy. If you're going to lop a fellow's head off it should be one clean, quick stroke. He was lucky you had the skill to execute it."

"Very true."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was dusk when Doc and ReeRee arrived home. "Zendadda left mail on your desk." said ReeRee, in a weary tone, anticipating the coming argument.

"I'll look through my letters when I've had a glass of wine."

"What have I always told you about procrastinating? Remember the incident with the flying dwarf?"

"All right! If you'll keep quiet." Doc placed the talking knapsack on a seat in front of the fire.

Some of the letters were junk mail, "Buy one crossbow for the price of two and get a second one free!" and the like, but two letters caught her attention. One was from her friend Delia from Dittotopia. Doc hadn't seen her in years. Her curiosity was piqued, so she opened it quickly.

"You'll never guess. I've been invited to a masquerade ball on planet earth."

"Am I going along?" ReeRee had never been to a masquerade ball before.

"I'm not sure if I'm going yet. I don't know if I can justify leaving my patients for that long." Doc mused for a minute before opening the other letter, which had no return address:

It is more than my life's worth to identify myself, but know that I am a friend. Shagar and her henchman are coming for you. The plan is to waylay you on your way to one of your sessions tomorrow. If they do not succeed tomorrow, they will surely make new plans with the same result. Flee with all haste.

Doc blanched. "We need to start packing right away if we are going to make it to the ball in time."

"So they're at it again... great." Neal said to no one as he scanned the overly ornate card in his hand. It was another invitation to a "Charity Ball" like the one the Darkling had been invited to last year, though this time it appeared to be a masquerade party.

I wonder if we'll be transported to another dying world this time or just be turned into whatever mask we happen to be wearing ...

Despite his better judgment, or possibly because of it, the Darkling began preparing for the nights festivities. A mask would have to be picked up, but that could wait until it was time to go.

"Might as well have a meal before going. A possible last meal." Neal mused as he left his small apartment in Ditto Town and headed for the local tavern.

Ainsley-Marie Kellner, well known internet explorer, interstellar asteroid climbing record holder, legendary hunter and all around outdoorsy type trudged herself and her muddy boots right into a high-end exotic fur dealership. The poor clerk at the desk was so taken aback by her wild appearance (not to mention the two rifles strapped to her torso), that he wasn’t entirely sure what to say or do, so she helped him out.

“I’ve got one asyyyriak hide, ten kangaroo furs, about five wambas and a dozen or so dingos.”

The clerk took a deep breath, relieved that she wasn’t here to kill him and recovered enough to perform his job. “I’ll have to inspect the merchandise of course, but we should be able to do some business with you. Have you anything else to declare?”

Ainsley nodded, she had saved the best for last.

“Yeah, I managed to bring down an Albino Yeti while I was up at the north pole. Reckon you’d be interested in that.”

The poor fella behind the desk nearly fell out of his chair, a yeti hide! In his office? The commission possibilities that this entailed were positively humongous. If only he could talk this girl down on the price. “I’ll give you one hundred thousand credits, cash.” He announced after witnessing the quality of the hide first hand.

The ‘girl’ scoffed at his insulting offer, “they were selling for three hundred a piece just last quarter. I’ll go two fifty, but no lower.”

After considering her counter offer for a moment, the man responded. “There’s been a huge influx of extremely well made replica yeti furs in to the market that’s really driven the cost of an individual fur down. I’ll go up to two, no more.”

“Perfect.”

In the end, Ainsley walked out of that dealer with two hundred thousands credits in her pocket and the dealer was left unawares with a roadkill yeti hide. Hey, even explorers needed cash once in a while.

Delia Death lounged in the Mansion, listening to the clock tick listlessly above the mantel. The masquerade was her idea, since it meant people could dress up, which meant that every time Lucy tried to dress her up, she had argued that she was dressing up as a Ghost Wrangler, boots, utility belt, and all. Her long hair was pulled up in a neat twisted knot, and her mask was pushed up on her forehead, giving her a singularly dangerously silly look.

"Bored now," she groaned, tipping her head back and looking at the clock, which was now, incidentally, upside down. One of the wait staff smiled at her.

"Champagne?" he asked, lowering it to her level.

"Not while I'm upside down," she grunted, sitting up. "But thank you."

Returning to civilization for the first time in months had many interesting quirks. One of those happened to be mailbox chock full of letters and amongst those numerous (mostly junk mail) envelops Ainsley found an invitation to a ball at the mansion. She’d heard of these glamorous events before, the myths said that every year at least one person went missing, never to be seen again. It sounded like her kind of gig.

All she needed was a dress.

That was a troublesome thought. The last time she had even laid eyes on a dress was well over a decade ago. Ainsley-Marie had many positive traits, but fashion sense didn't happen to be among them. The positive in all of this was that today at least there were zero budget limitations.

The day was perfect. Birds sang in the clear blue sky above, and the park-like surroundings were perfectly manicured, not a blade of grass or leaf out of place.

But none of this mattered to the middle-aged man seated on a granite bench. He only had eyes for the carved stone marker, flat on the grass, in front of him. “I miss you so much,” he whispered.

A chime came from his pocket and he fished out his cell phone. The screen showed a toddler, red hair in pigtails, trying to carry a Siamese cat nearly as big as she was. The cat did not look amused, but the man smiled despite his sorrow. Count on his grandkids to always bring a smile to his face.

An instant later the phone rang. Now the screen showed the girl’s mother. “Hi, Abby.”

“Hey Dad. Thought I’d send you the latest picture of Lily and Garfield.”

“It made my day. She’s very cute.”

“Thanks. So how are you?”

“I’m okay, thanks to you thinking of me. Just visiting your mom.” He couldn’t help it; the sadness leaked through. “I miss her so much.”

“I know. We all miss her so much. I wish we lived closer so we could be there for you.”

“I appreciate that, but don’t worry. I’m keeping busy.” He paused, looking again at the card in his hand. “In fact, I just got an invitation for some crazy masked charity ball.”

“Sounds like fun. You should go.”

“This was really more Michelle’s sort of thing.”

“Maybe, but Mom would want you to go. I know it.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

They talked some more, and his granddaughter Lily stopped by to say a few words before the cat distracted her again. By the time he disconnected the call he’d decided to go to the ball.

"But I'm not so sure I'll dress up," he said to himself.

Austyn was setting the oven to 425 degrees when the mailman knocked at her front door. She knew it was the mailman because typically, at four-oh-three precisely, she was sitting on her couch, pizza rolls on a plate in front of her, playing video games and was able to intercept the mailman before he rang the door bell. Today she had gotten a late start and now her normally docile cat-dog-thing was alternately hissing and barking at the door angrily.

“Blast it all,” she said, abandoning her pizza rolls on the counter and, grabbing the broom on the way out, going get the door.

The mailman knocked again, just as she was pushing the animal away from the door with the broom. “I’M HERE I’M HERE,” she yelled, “JUST HANG ON!” She opened the door a crack. The mailman pushed an envelope through it. It was big and had her name on it and looked important. Maybe she would actually open this one. “Thanks,” she said in a rush, and then closed the door quickly before the mailman could engage her in any nausea-inducing smalltalk. People weren’t her thing.

She tossed her invitation on the couch on her way back to the kitchen and returned to making pizza rolls. She wasn’t bothering with possibly important things until she had the really important things in hand. Namely her pizza rolls and controller.

Once the pizza rolls were properly baked and cooled, Austyn returned to her broken in corner of the couch. If they squinted and tried very hard, guests, if there ever were any, could almost make out the leftover lettering from when Austyn’s mother, in an attempt to simultaneously be funny and motivate her daughter to try yoga, had written “AUSTYN GOES HERE” in permanent marker on the couch cushion.

Austyn had thought it was hilarious and had claimed that spot as hers forever. Not that there was any contest from the cat-dog who preferred dark corners and the bathtub when it wasn’t being a menace.

Now, armed with pizza rolls, she was prepared to open her envelope.

“You are cordially invited to the…”

Never mind. She wasn’t prepared. She put the invitation back into the envelope without reading the rest and tossed it onto the couch beside her.

The cat-dog hissed. And barked. Or something like that.

Austyn picked up the envelope again and stuck her tongue out at the cat-dog. “You’re a bully.”

You are cordially invited to the second Ditto Town Charity Ball!
While this year’s ball will be a masquerade, feel free to come as you are. Extra masks will be available for those who do not have their own (and want one).

Lovely. She couldn’t not do something for charity. She looked at her pizza rolls and sighed. “I guess I’m trading you in for gourmet…thingies.” She picked at a stain on her three-day-old t-shirt. There was only one thing she could wear to a ball and she was sure that, in the year and a half since she had graduated and it had taken up residence in the farthest corner of her closet, it would be dusty.

Oh well. The invitation had said come as you are. Maybe she would just change her shirt instead.

It was almost midnight when ReeRee finished the packing and Doc placed Delia's invitation unfolded on the desk, where their busy-body landlady Zendadda would be sure to find it. She then sat down to strap the mechanical wings to her shoes.

ReeRee looked at her apprehensively, "Don't you think you should get a bit of sleep before we head out? You're wobbly on those things at the best of times."

"We need to get out of Edoras in case they find out I've been warned and decide to come after me here. Once we're out of town, we can go full speed. Before mid-morning we'll arrive at Fangorn, where we can rest a few hours and refresh ourselves before heading North to Caras Galadhon."

"You don't think Shagar's crew will follow us into Fangorn?"

"They probably would, but not with any speed. Relations between the Ents and Orcs are always icy, and the Orcs now find themselves the less powerful of the two. An Orc contingent headed into Fangorn will have to proceed cautiously and diplomatically. Since neither caution nor diplomacy are hallmark Orc traits, this is bound to slow them down."

"Can we leave through the window?" ReeRee asked. "Nothing makes me feel alive like jumping out of a third story window!"

Doc nodded. She placed ReeRee on her back, and picked up the rest of the luggage before wrapping herself in a thick cloak. The breeze that whips around a person when they are shoe-flying can be bitterly cold. She opened the window, flew out, and was hovering as she closed it again when an arrow sang past her ear and planted itself in the window pane.

Without a moment's hesitation she fled the spot, skirting around the rooftops and towers of Edoras as fast as she could while maintaining balance.

"Didn't you remember to make us invisible!?" ReeRee hissed frantically.

"I did. Someone must have been watching our place very carefully, and noticed that the window was opening and shutting itself." After a short while they could no longer hear arrows, but they continued their hasty escape.

Annie arrived at the Mansion in a limo. She glanced around for any other guests, hoping she wasn't the first to arrive. She sighed, exasperated at the fact that her glamorous entrance had been wasted. She entered the Mansion and looked around for signs of human habitation.

"Hi ho," Delia called, lifting her glass in a salutatory manner. "Seems you're the first one here. No worries, though--more people should be arriving soon. Champagne?"

"I never say no to free champagne," Annie said. "Are you the host?"

After finishing at the tavern, Neal headed to the nearest "party and masquerade" shop to find a mask. His search was in vain, though, as all the options available were decidedly against the Darklings style sense... which was already questionable to most. In the end, Neal decided to simply use a black scarf wrapped around the lower part of his face.

.....

Arriving at the mansion, the Darkling entered and gave a quick look at himself in the rather large mirror in the foyer. "Good grief, I look like a bandit." Neal muttered before heading into the main part of the building.

"I'm afraid she is." Neal said to answer the question posed by the other guest. "Hello again, Delia." he added with a nod while removing the scarf from his face.

"Hello, Sailor," Delia grinned at Neal, and threw a in wink for good measure, before turning to the woman. "Yes, I am the official host--although I must warn you I did absolutely none of the planning. I just look pretty."