Las Vegas is the poster city for glitz and gilt. It is, in many ways, a consensual hallucination that only exists because their has to be a place certain kinds of madness are vented. People spend billions knowing that they're being fooled, over charged, and taking on a deck so stacked it scraps the clouds. Which makes it perfect for anyone with a love of marketing and taste for ever shifting oceans of people to watch.

Dusk could, quite easily, make her living in this city as a performer. That she has a desk job is a continuous source of mild bemusement at her MMA classes, but getting attention amidst all the neon and nearly unlimited advertising dollars that swamp the desert city is at least as tricky as anything the Cirque du Soleil gets up to each night. The latest promotion has embraced the bane of live magic shows, people are actively encouraged to use their cell phones and there's a custom app to let them interact directly with the performance.

Yes, the magicians hated it but it brought in new blood and money. Even repeat business. Two months in and they're looking at two great quarters.

Until Rufus, tonight's performer, failed to catch a bullet and bled out on stage. This shouldn't have been possible, the entire point of a bullet catch is that there's never actually a little lump of lead in flight. Weirdly the first responders are treating this as some sort of stage mishap, although the police have just finished up their initial interviews of all thirty-six employees at the theatre, Dusk included. It's ten PM before she can call her time her own again.

Bloody hell. What the bloody ever-loving fuckity fuck fuckwit thought this was a good idea?

Dusk's thoughts aren't exactly charitable as she wraps up talking to the police and stretches her calves. What was even the point of this whole exercise if they were just going to write it off as a stage mishap? Did they perhaps think that one of the performers was going to be able to explain how an unloaded gun and a well-timed sound effect had magically transmuted themselves into a bullet in Rufus's chest? Was it perhaps their hypothesis that someone had accidentally forgotten and left bullets in said gun from their other act which involved firing live rounds inside of a packed theatre?

Morons, one and all, and she is glad to see the last of them. It means she can see if she can figure this out herself, since it's pretty clear that the police force won't be much use. As a theatre employee, she has keys to the doors, and nobody seemed upset in the slightest when she volunteered to close up shop once the police had left. Ten o'clock was an early night by their standards, performers in Vegas learned to be nocturnal early on in their careers, but it had been a harrowing evening.

Opening up the theatre she moved towards backstage, studiously avoiding the spaces that were cordoned off with police tape. Fortunately, she had some gloves in her purse - intended more for looking good than for avoiding leaving fingerprints, but hey, reduce reuse recycle, right?

The stage and props departments have been cordoned off. Searching all the audience seating would take a platoon of technicians a week, which is well outside LVPD budget constraints. Management was told there'd be at least five days documenting the scene but given the cameras everywhere it seems unlikely that they'll be too worried about. How long that will last when they realize the gun is just a slide with a sealed barrel is an open question. The scramble for a new act will take at least that long anyway; insurance is actually covering the shortfall for now.

Bullet catching set ups are fairly elaborate, a sheet of resin 'glass' that breaks with a satisfying noise, carefully measured smoke powder, sometimes Rufus even has a blood squib to make it look like he barely caught it. In the bad old days jokers were prone to slipping something into the gun that was supposed to be empty, which is why there is no real gun or audience participation these days.

Backstage is a maze but Dusk knows her way about. She can get within nine or ten yards of where he died on the stage. Less blood than might be expected, it was a through and through that managed to catch his heart and right lung so it oozed more than sprayed.

Literally anyone in the audience, behind the stage, below the stage, in the catwalks about the stage, or the media/lighting control room had a great line of sight by design.

Props being cordoned off was a bump in her plan that she hadn't expected. But Dusk adjusts quickly, looking around the backstage area...hm. Looks like trying to narrow down where the shot was fired from is a waste, at least for her. Maybe if she were a ballistics expert.

Instead, she tries to get a look at the props from outside the cordon. Specifically, looking for where the resin and smoke powder should be, if they hadn't been used.

The resin is still scattered across part of the stage. Technicians collected it after each show and used a mold to recreate the appearance of a sheet of glass. It's a slow, boring process that they foist on the newest hires but the same few pounds of the compound can be used for six or seven shows before it has to be tossed. They break it on demand with a series of small hydraulic pins hidden in the frame, press button and cracks explode across it.

She's not entirely sure what compound is used for the sound and smoke, there was a health and safety meeting about moving away from Armstrong's mixture (also used in toy cap guns) but the replacement sounded like someone reading a list of pokemon at high speed. There's a small section in the mechanics and engineering part of props where they mix it as needed. The components are kept in sealed containers twenty yards apart.

From what she can see from the door there's more mess in the area than usual but that could be down to all the uniformed guests earlier.

Dusk stares intently for a long while before shrugging. The investigators are clearly incompetent verging on criminally negligent, but if she's being honest, she doesn't have the skills to handle something of this nature herself. And so, as tempting as digging into the matter is, she finally just shrugs and walks away, closing up for the night and locking the door. It was looking like she was going to need to find new employment soon anyway.

Walking outside, she is struck as always by the raw, fervent intensity of the Vegas night. The neon blazes around the clock, mad and feverish, as people come and go with drunken laughs and sad sighs. This is a city born of the dreams of forgotten youth and the sorrows of forgotten age, a mutual agreement to pretend just for a night that the world really does work the way you always dreamed of. It's openly predatory and everyone has just agreed to act like it's kind. It's alien, artificial, rejecting nature so profoundly as to be nearly a religion in the sheer intensity of its refusal to bow. It's horrible. It's wonderful.

She walks through the flickering neon shadows, almost in a trance, feeling the heartbeat of the city almost more strongly than her own. Thought without words, movement without thought, letting her feet go where they will in a sort of walking meditation. This city is so strange, so perfectly imperfect. Everything from the Heart Attack Grill and its open malice towards its customers through the casinos and their eerie, timeless cages of light and noise and hope to the back streets and their collection of castoffs who have been broken and abandoned by the city. It's a life lived with no thought for the day after tomorrow, all intensity and feverish passion and impulse.

Finally, she draws to a stop on a corner between two streets that don't matter, not far from where Tupac Shakur got shot. It's far enough from the main strip to be less intense, but not so far as to get into the places only locals know about, in that grey area of strip clubs and drive-through wedding chapels in between the two. A scrawny, scruffy youth of perhaps eighteen is sitting on the corner there, drumming out a beat on a collection of pots, pans, and overturned buckets. His face is split in a wild grin, and the beat is fast, and she begins to dance, slowly at first, but then picking up speed until she follows the beat. She dances with an unearthly grace and a raw intensity that no normal dancer could dream to match.

They gather as Dusk dances, slowly starting to accrete like the nacre around a grain of sand. In a city of exhibitionism and excess meaning is where one makes it. The loud garish advertisements, the harsh lights fighting and fading, slowly fade from the front of the stage to her backdrop. She dances and her worshippers drift closer, the flash of their cameras and murmur of their streaming commentary as close to sacrament as the city permits.

Charisma Attribute Check, she will absolutely succeed but I want to see how big the margin is.

14, target was 3 so beat it by 11.

Dusk feels the worship and adoration as it spreads in a slow climb from the soles of her feet to the tips of her fingers and half expects it to erupt from her hair. She knows instinctively that this energy isn't quite pure enough for great works. It is, however, enough in this time and place for a more delicate production.

(Equivalent of two Dominion to alter the size 1 group that has gathered around her. Very easy to start a cult but also possible to just impart bliss or terror. Blessing or curse is up to Nova.)

Dusk is more than mortal, and she could dance the whole night through. But, in the end, the drummer is only flesh and bone, and even driven by the preternatural beauty of her dance, he can only keep it up for so long before he starts to tire, missing beats, slowing. She spares him the indignity of collapse, and cuts her dance short, sweeping into a low bow as she feels the tingling power of all that adoration run through her.

It seems only fit to her, in that moment, to pour it out. She takes the youth who provided the beat by the hand, helping him to stand, and lets the energy flow out of her into the crowd, delivering unto them the sweetness that she sees in that moment, the beauty and the strange, almost admirable obsession that is the Vegas night. Let them remember this always; let them remember that once, they saw her dance, and it was beauty beyond words, and for just an hour or two, the world really did work the way Vegas claimed, and they really could win the jackpot. It's a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, and sometimes that is enough.

Using those two dominion for an Improbable change: the people here will remember this experience with unusual clarity and precision, being able to recall exactly how it felt to see and believe in the beauty Dusk embodies. I figure that's enough to get a cult started around her.

Come morning half of these people will probably be broke, the other half will be at least transitorily rich, and neither half's attention will be so focused as they are now. Dusk feels like a process has been set in motion, all there is to do for it now is wait. There's a brief warning flicker of blue lights that seems to start the gentle random drifting apart. Yes, dancing in the streets as a crowd was going to get attention but no one was breaking anything or fighting so the police had better things to deal with than a flash mob. Hell, they're all dressed and mostly seem sober.

The drummer seems the most reluctant to leave, his eyes slightly glazed by awe and idolization. For two hours he kept the pace to say nothing of his front-row view relative to most of her worshippers.

One imagines it takes some of the sting of several weeks drudgery while the theatres does clean up and promotes some new act.

It is starting to edge past one in the morning, figure another thirty minutes to get to her place if she brings the night to an end.

One AM. Normally she'd still be going strong, but today has just been wearisome as all hell, and Dusk kind of wants to relax a bit. She strolls away from the half-dazed crowd and off through the police line abruptly enough that she almost seems to just vanish into thin air to much of the crowd. Continuing to stroll with all the satisfaction of a fed cat, she makes her way along the quiet back streets of Vegas into a residential area.

Most of the tourists would never think of the city as having anything so mundane as apartments in it, but the reality is that most of the long-term residents of Vegas are fairly poor, even discounting the broken homeless people who have found themselves the victims of this city's tendency to eat hope and crush dreams. Once you get off the strip and past the seedy back streets of strip clubs and illegal-but-not-hidden brothels, there are large areas of the city that resemble any other. There are mass housing blocks, shopping centers of cheap retailers and fast food restaurants, and even quiet, almost suburbian neighborhoods that gradually fade out into the barren desert that stretches across the state.

Dusk lives in one of the apartment complexes, and after stopping at a burger place that's just barely above the likes of McDonald's in terms of class and price to pick up dinner to go, she walks back to that apartment, punches in the door code, and takes the stairs up to the fourth floor. She doesn't feel nearly as tired as one would expect after two straight hours of dancing, almost refreshed if anything. Dinner is a subdued affair, and then she sleeps.

The next morning dawns to find her thrashing in her bed, and she wakes early from the nightmare. After composing herself, she eats breakfast and heads out into the city, still early enough that relatively little is stirring in the largely-nocturnal city.

Dusk's sleep is briefly interrupted at 3 AM with an official email. Most of the staff, including her, are on paid time off with more news when decisions are made in a week. Oddly generous, they must have a new potential act lined up and don't want to scramble for back office and production support. Shortly after she wakes up there's a group text, one of the prop guys went by the venue and snapped a picture. The place is covered in yellow police tape and it looks like something cracked several windows.

Oh, and the performance last night has gone slightly viral. All the footage is blurry and the lighting certainly didn't help. Still some industrious soul has stitched together most of it from three or four different phone sources. 289k views so far, not as efficient as seeing it in person but a good ratio of like to dislike. And the comment section is, well, a comment section.

The email and text alike are met with a groan and bleary eyes. Breakfast is a quick bowl of cereal, and then she's out onto the streets, mostly just wandering around. She looks at the crowds, watching the people come and go and mill around. Such a fascinating cross-section of humanity, this city. She wanders through Fremont Street and past the university. It takes hours, but finally she winds up standing in front of the Venetian.

Dusk looks at the canals, and feels something inside her, feeling without thought, thought without understanding, power awakening at a touch. She feels the shape of it, and grins, and goes inside.

Talking to various employees, all she has to do is keep her confidence and not let them see her blink to work her way up the chain - dealer to pit boss, pit boss to supervisor, supervisor to floor supervisor. There's no shortage of people who want to pass the buck up the chain.

Talking to the floor supervisor, though, actually takes some attention. She smiles at him, nothing artificial in it - she's genuinely enjoying herself. "Hi! My name is Dusk Neva - I'm not actually here from the power company, but you probably guessed that. Before you kick me out, though, hear me out. I've got an offer to make, and if it's as good as I think it is, you might get a lot of love from the suits for being the one who brought it to them. See, I was looking at those canals, and I thought, those have got to take a lot of water, and we're in a desert. It can't be cheap. If they could make that problem go away, and at the same time have a whole new angle to advertise...you see what I mean? High value offer, right there." Her smile widens until she looks like the cat that ate the canary.

Alice is something called a Logistics Oversight Manager, a mousy brunette in her late thirties, and like most long term residents of Vegas has an easy air of weary cynicism the Big Apple wishes it could match.

"You have a FEIN?" she asks, not dismissing Dusk outright but the tone is clear, she's going to be a stickler because a pretty young woman wanting a job supplying water in this town is well outside her context.

"Nope! Dusk's voice is unapologetic. "Look, I get that you're doing your job. But I'm here to tell you: What I am offering here is pretty far out of the normal scope of that job. I'm not here to represent a company. I'm here because I can personally do something for you that nobody else can. You can turn me away if you want, but eventually someone is going to agree to take me to the suits at one of the casinos in town, and that person will be the one getting praised for finding me when they do."

She pauses as though struck by a thought. "Wait, maybe I'm going about this wrong. I guess it must be pretty hard to believe, huh? Not every day someone with literal fucking magic shows up at your door. Would a demonstration make this seem more plausible?"

"Look, we do this and there has to be a contract. I assume you can deliver because the world has gone mad but the legal liability of not doing the paperwork will have the Risk Management Office literally screeching," Alice retorted, "Okay, let's make a deal. You do your demonstration for us somewhere less public and liability prone than here. We front you an advance with the agreement that some of it goes to a good lawyer for you. They'll want to test the product before going full bore here."

She sat down, fingers steepled.

"Frankly I'd love to not have to bother with the pumps, filters, and cleaning. Those are bigger headaches than transport. But all it would take to bankrupt you can get me fired is some idiot doing something dumb near the water."

"Great!" Dusk's voice is cheerful now. "I'm not sure how hard it will be to find a lawyer who specializes in, uh, this, but sure, why not. Pumps, filters, and cleaning won't be a problem; this is clean water, you can have it tested if you want. It'll act like a natural spring. If you want to source it somewhere that people don't have access to, that's fine by me. So let's go do that demo, you talk to the people who can finalize that advance, and you can have the water tested while I dig up a lawyer."

Alice blinked then nodded.

"Fine, but I've got to cancel half my calendar so if you are bullshitting I'm going to dump an ink pack on you. How permanent is this demonstration going to be? Don't want to accidentally flood anyone," she said as she stood, "I've got signing authority for twenty without review. Digging up a good lawyer is hard but a good enough lawyer should only take a few hours."

"It'll last until I want it to go away, I should think. Twenty should be plenty for a decent enough lawyer!" Dusk is all but bouncing in her chair.

She continues the vibrating excitement all the way to the demo location, where she cracks her knuckles and stares intently at the ground. A low, slightly eerie droning noise emerges from her mouth, and -

It doesn't feel like the previous night. That was power singing through her, a rush of energy that burned like whiskey on the way through. This is more just a relaxation, drawing in the ambient energy and letting it flow out. It barely even feels like work, and suddenly, water is streaming up from the ground in front of her. It burbles gently as it begins to fill the small pit, as though its existence is not wholly in violation of all natural logic of the desert surrounding it.

"That should be enough for you to test," Dusk says brightly. "I can do more - enough to supply your canals in their entirety, I think."

OOC: One use of Azure Oasis Spring should provide enough water for them to do their testing, I think. It's effort-free, so I can basically use it as much as I want - she's not at all bluffing about her ability to supply them.

Alice drives a cherry-red Tesla, letting Dusk take the passenger seat after about two minutes of gathering up scattered paper into manila envelopes. Their trip is leisurely enough, ending up on a residential neighborhood on the very edge of the city. The house they arrive at is, well, a cute little ranch style. As they move around the side into the backyard Dusk sees an empty in ground pool.

"We emptied it a few weeks ago for repairs. It should be good to go," she tells Dusk.

Dusk nods, looking pleased and having ridden with the window rolled all the way down. She knew it wasn't actually as much relief from the heat as the AC, but she liked the breeze too much not to. Once there, though, she was all business. She concentrates and lets the water flow until there's clearly enough to test.

"You want me to leave it going, or nah?" Her voice is completely unconcerned with the answer. It's no hair off her back either way.

"For now. Might not be the most professional environment but at least it's cheaper than renting a spot," Alice tells her, kneeling down to run her hand through the water and taking a whiff, "Fresh water, good. I'll have some health and safety guys out here this evening. Direct deposit for your down payment?"

Dusk rattles off the information and heads back into town, whistling as she goes looking for a lawyer. It can't be that hard to find a lawyer who specializes in weird shit that makes no sense; this is Vegas after all.

Vegas is weird, but in predictable ways. This makes it a bit troublesome, as does the fact that business law and personal law only overlap a little. There's a plethora of divorce attorneys, tax attorneys, gambling attorneys, bankruptcy attorneys, and injury attorneys.

Ultimately she's reliant on the internet, a few text messages, and the assumption that if it goes wrong the next guy will just sue the first guy.

Braxton is a small practice, wanted a five thousand retainer, and was willing to guide her through the basic paperwork as a curtesy. He's on the phone with Alice thirty minutes after Dusks walked through his office door.

"I believe that's it for now," he tells Dusk as four PM rolls around, "I'll make sure to keep them on their toes but I don't think she'll try to screw you. You need anything?"

"Nope, thanks! And I don't think so either; what would be the point of screwing me if I can just cancel the offer any time I want, really?" Dusk shrugs. "Let me know if you need anything else - you got my number, yeah? Good, great." With a few more pleasantries and valedictions, she's out the door with a smug smile and a spring in her step that draws eyes for more than one reason.

Now, she just has to wait and see if the casino calls her back.

Her bank account shows an incoming wire for the agreed upon down payment. Braxton's retainer hasn't had time to come out yet. By her usual standards she's quite flush. Spring or strut the dancer is gathering yet more eyes. Even some jaded locals mixed among the tourists were subtly watching.

Lawyers and corporations move a bit like boulders, every slow until the tipping point, then very fast indeed.

Do we need to empty the canals first? came a text at five thirty.

Her reply came at five forty-five. I can take care of that as well. When and where?

Dusk was grinning now as she ate dinner. This little plan was working out quite well indeed thus far.

We'll have to pay the normal crew regardless. Just give us a heads up an hour before whenever is convenient.

0900 tomorrow I'll be there. It won't take more than a few minutes. Dusk is grinning more than ever as she sends the next message.

She doesn't sleep that night, too caught up on learning a dance off of YouTube. You'd never guess it from how peppy she is as she gets ready to head over to the Venetian. No amount of ocffee could do that. You didn't get that kind of authentic refreshed look from speed.

There's yellow tape, caution cones, and over dressed casino employees scattered around the canals when Dusk arrives. Detouring the rubes seems to take a bit of effort, crowds always love to gum up maintenance projects.

Alice is there, along with another woman and man who are each business casual attire that had to cost a few grand per piece.

Dusk didn't exactly look cheap by comparison - she had dressed well, and as a performer in Vegas, she had to have the kind of clothing where dressing well isn't nothing. But she does look out of place, wearing a black dress and high heels in a maintenance site at nine in the morning. She moves so gracefully it's easy to miss the latter, and think her height is innate (she was tall, but not this tall) and not the result of ten centimeter heels.

"Dusk, a pleasure," she says, waiting to see if she is offered a handshake or not. "Everything ready? Just tell me where you want the springs and I'll make it happen."

"Ms. Neva," Alice greeted her with polite professionalism, "We are standing over the current originating point. Everything is redirected from the pumps in the chamber below us."

Matching Corporate Barbie and Ken watch with expressions so blank it'd make an argument that Lizard People existed. Granted, it was Vegas and lately who knew?

"All right, let's go down and get this done." Dusk looks around for the maintenance entry. She's all but vibrating with excitement.

One of the stones lifts up with a little manipulation from Alice.

The waters are still and stagnant, the pumps and filters have been off for a few hours and the local biome took full advantage of water when it was available. Tourists also have a bad habit of leaving things behind in the waters.

Underneath the stone is a slightly eliptical chamber, roughly nine feet in diameter horizontally but seven in height. Dusk has to crouch slightly to avoid hitting her head on the curved interior. There's a big gap in the middle where hoses and bolts are exposed, presumably where the old equipment had been removed.

Dusk looks at the water, and nods. She brushes her hands together with the air of someone about to lift something heavy, and then hums a low note, rising slowly as she looks down at the stagnant water. It grows louder, as well, until it's a piercing drone, and then suddenly she stops, and the water is gone, evaporated into the dry desert air like it was never there at all.

Alright, step one down. She steps down into the space left behind, and looks at the hoses and other detritus of the pumps and filters. She slides closer, and moves one hand in a graceful arc, and suddenly water is bubbling up from below in a steady stream. A few repetitions have more water flowing, and soon there's enough to supply the canals in an ongoing fashion.

Using Azure Oasis Spring to first dry the water out, and then provide enough of a spring to supply it. It's zero effort, so I can pretty much just do it until there's enough I think.

It takes Dusk nearly an hour, mostly because so many pipes and canals that aren't visible from above require filling. Still, it slowly burbles and rattles. As a bonus the damp smell slowly fades, replaced with a cleaner, faintly metallic scent.

Alice looks smug when Dusk emerges, corporate Barbie and Ken seem to have bitten a lemon.

((Really it should probably tie up some influence to stay perfectly controlled but the effect is so small, egh, one and done for the most part unless repair is required because someone messes with it.))

Dusk tosses a casual salute Alice's way, and an equally casual, "You know where to send the payment," to the corporate types. She isn't too concerned that they'll renege. They have to know better than that.

She waltzes off without waiting for a reply. Literally waltzes, moving through the steps and spins of a quick waltz as though she had a partner and an orchestra. It draws some stares, but she doesn't mind; you don't make a living as a performer of any stripe without liking the attention.

Continuing down the streets in a dance, she moves towards her apartment, considering what to do next. This deal should resolve her financial issues for the moment; but she can't help but feel it to be a bit...hollow. I was made for more than this, she thinks, and then frowns. Where had that thought come from?

Faintly troubled, she reaches her apartment, thinks, and turns away without going into the building, somehow discomfited at the thought of being indoors. Why? She doesn't know, reflexively flinches away from considering the thought. Instead she turns and continues, not dancing now, but just walking, head down, staring at the pavement under her feet. She doesn't walk into anyone, and doesn't stop to consider how strange that is.

There has to be something to take her mind off it. It's Vegas; distraction is what this city does. But everything she can think of to do to celebrate her new financial comfort just leaves her feeling more hollow than before. Not hollow; hollowed. As in, hollowed out. Gutted. Everything felt sour and she could see she could see the -

Someone pulled her back from the sidewalk's edge right before she stepped into traffic. She thanked them, and they asked if she was okay, and she laughed and walked away. Her feet, she realizes, are taking her to a bad part of town. She considers that, and finds she is alright with it.

Dusk finds herself steadily moving across the city, seeming to half-hear a familiar melody. She ends up in, well, not quite suburbia but close. The usual distractions of Vegas falling away towards more practical shops, stores, and housing. There's an old man talking in an alley, so very boring, but something in the alley is much more interesting.

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