Venus

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

@Hero @Altered Tundra @Syn @spooner @SpicyMeatball @Ejected @Inkarnate @okonuki @eclecticwitch @HaleyTheRandom

Timeskip shall be up soon! And with that come a few announcements:

-The 10-day post rule will start to be enforced again starting on Homecoming. I once again urge anybody who will have any issues with this to communicate with me via Discord DMs or PMs here.

-Starting with the next scene, we shall have a week-long rest period in between time skips. This way, we have some time to relax and regroup before consistent posting resumes. You are free to post during this period if you wish, but it will not be expected or enforced until this rest period is finished.

-If there is anybody who would like to drop a character for whatever reason, your chance to do so is after Homecoming. I understand that inspiration is a fickle thing, and the last thing I would want is for a person to be obligated to write for a character they no longer feel attached to. However, for this one time only (meaning for the duration of the scene after homecoming), you will also have the option to replace the character you will be dropping with another of your liking. The new character shall be submitted to approval by the GM team, which will reserve the right to accept, deny or request modifications. If accepted, the new sheet shall be placed in the tab of the replaced character sheet.

Once again, thank you guys so much for the interest and the support. You all know where to find me if I’m needed.

And with that being said… Let the Homecoming drama begin! <3

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

The halls of King's Academy were never dull. Sometimes you can see a student throwing a spoiled tantrum because their parents wouldn't get them something they wanted. Once in a while you would spot someone having a public meltdown. And other times the Misfits would be up to their shenanigans with whatever prank they used to one up one another. Lucas usually enjoyed the pranks; laughter is the best medicine in the world of high school, so despite having no affiliation with the group, he did try to keep an ear to the ground to make sure he always caught the show

Today was no exception, although this was probably the first time their unfortunate victim was his sister, Victoire. He was genuinely surprised all things considered, especially after the entire incident with Marisol. But hey, maybe it wasn't so surprising seeing as she got paired with Jun Wang. Despite knowing that he should have sympathized with his sibling, he still found it funny, but he wisely chose to go outside to avoid Victoire catching him laughing. His eyes roamed the courtyard, on the lookout for Santiago. His stomach growled, insisting that the young man eat first before looking for his friend. Probably for the better, he could just text Santi to see where he was.

There was a table that had a few seats open where a cute brunette sat. Grinning, Lucas approached the girl. “Mind if I have a seat?” He asked her. “Just until I find my boy, haven't seen him all day.”

Martha Radley jumped up at the sound of the unknown male voice. She’d been sitting in her usual courtyard table, completely immersed in the latest Anne Rice novel while she waited for Andrés to let her know what would be their lunch plans. For whatever reason, her Colombian love was taking a lot longer than he should be, which had left her exposed and vulnerable to interactions with guys like the baseball captain whose name Mar had completely forgotten. Why he wanted to sit with her of all people was a mystery, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some company.

“S-sure,” she said faintly, putting her book away and gathering her stuff from the table so the boy could have space to place his things if he wanted.

“Thanks, doll,” He grinned somewhat cheekily, placing his book bag onto the table as he plopped down. Her face looked somewhat familiar, but he couldn’t quite match a name to it. “I’m Lucas. What’s your name?” He asked.

“Oh!” Mar said out loud, eyes wide as the realization of who exactly was sitting in front of her clicked and the nerves immediately kicked in. “Lucas… You’re Mr. Anderson, aren’t you?!”

It took Lucas a second to realize what she meant, but he ended up breaking into a grin. ”It’s a small school after all, huh?” He laughed, shaking his head. ”Mind if I get a first name to it?”

“I’m Martha Radley, your appointed homecoming date!” she exclaimed, pointing at herself and struggling to believe that she had been paired with the third biggest player in the school. Just being this close to him made her nervous - terrified, even - that he would even think of attempting to make a move on her. It took a lot of her willpower to stop her voice from breaking or wobbling.

“Gorgeous,” He complimented her name, pausing for a second as he would send out a text to Santiago. Once he finished he would give the girl a majority of his attention. You’d think giving out first names would make things a hell of a lot easier, right? Not sure why they went the whole last name route...pretty sure everyone that wasn’t entirely pissed off was just left confused because of it.”

Martha chose to brush off his compliment of her name, to instead focus on his latest statements. “Oh, I certainly agree,” she replied, nodding at Lucas. “Even though I've been a student here for a while I don't pay attention to the last names. I'm not really close to anybody else here except Oliver, so it’s not like it matters anyway.”

Lucas was in the same boat. Sort of. He knew a lot of people and could match names to faces, but aside from Santiago, he couldn’t say he was too close to anyone. He preferred to watch things from a distance, and the whole Victoire-Marisol incident made him keep his head low in case he did something stupid. ”I feel you,” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. ”C’est la vie. Anyway...so, do you want to ride together, or match or...I usually just hang out at dances, I don’t really go with anyone to be honest.”

His answer made Martha laugh a little. Of course he wouldn't commit himself to going with anyone. That would be limiting himself from the ‘playground’ of available girls, which was definitely not something a guy like Lucas Anderson would want to do. She wanted to make some smartass comment about this, but decided not to in order to not appear like a complete bitch.

“Oh, I completely understand! It's the same on my end. Only reason I even attend these events is so Darling Oli doesn't go by himself,” Mar admitted, rolling her eyes but smiling to let the young man in front of her know she wasn't really bothered by it. “Anyway, you can certainly pick me up if it's not too much trouble. And don't worry about matching outfits or anything like that. I think that's tacky and corny.”

Well, that was easy. Quick and painless, more than what he could say with any other girl he could've gotten paired up with. Then again, maybe he should consider himself lucky, Martha didn't seem as crazy as most of the other girls in the school, so maybe they'd have fun.

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

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Salem found her in the hallway after she walked away from the cafeteria confrontation. Marisol’s back was to him as she stalked off and Salem felt more guilt run through his veins than blood. He had no right to get into their fight like that; no right to plausibly cause their fight like that. If it were him, Salem would be downright furious if someone got between Gwendolyn and him. Then again, the Italian-American would never speak to Gwen like that - maybe he was old-fashioned, but respect towards women was always an important virtue to him. Still, he had no right to judge their relationship and intervene as he had; Marisol was a big girl and she could fight her own battles, if she wanted.

So lost in his thoughts, Salem didn’t realize the gap between them had grown and he had to start jogging to catch up, “Marisol, wait up!”

“It's fine, I'm okay!” she told him out loud, really more so to reassure herself than to reassure Salem. Sol quickly wiped away the few angry tears that had been running down her cheeks before turning to him with a close-lipped half-smile. “Sorry for leaving like that. What's up?”

Salem halted in front of Marisol and swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. It wasn't that he was inexperienced in consoling girls; though Gwen never really exploded with emotion (he still doesn't quite know what exactly happened back there), he had girlfriends before her that had. It's just that he didn't know Marisol well enough to be chasing her down like this and attempting to soothe her. In any scenario, Salem still would have gone after her, but the main drive for him in that moment was the guilt at having some hand (even if he didn't know what) in exacerbating the situation.

“Hey, uh, listen, about back there…” Salem started unsurely, gesturing behind him with his thumb, “I didn't mean to start anything with you and your boyfriend. I should have stayed out of it. Uh, I guess I just have a hero complex or something.” Salem nervously ruffled his hair and let out a small puff of air that was half a sigh and half a chuckle.

“Trust me, Sonny is not my boyfriend,” Mari stated, shaking her head in disapproval. “And I'm sure if you ask him that's what he'll say is my problem. But the truth is that I've been purposely trying to wean myself off spending time with him. Like, don’t get me wrong: the dude has been my ride or die since the day we were born. But we kind of got into some shit this past summer that left me all kinds of fucked up, and it ended with me in the loony bin for 2 weeks and stuck working until I come up with the money to pay off my parents for taking care of the legal shit that went down. I'm sure you'll eventually hear the story from someone else or even see the video that's been floating around,” she rambled on, taking a deep breath. Why did she always end up having therapy sessions with strangers?! Maybe it was because it was easier to talk to somebody who didn't know who she was, or maybe she was just that needy. As the mystery of how many licks did it take to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

“The point is, Sonny was one of the reasons I was going insane. Not on purpose, of course: it's not really his fault. But in order for things to go back to the way they were I'm putting some space between us. That make sense?”

Sonny is a little shit as far as Salem could tell; but by the way Marisol talked about her friendship with him, Salem doubted it would go over well or do much to cheer her up. His first week at King’s Academy was busier than he had anticipated, between the homecoming dictatorship and the lunchroom fiasco. The locker behind him looked comforting and he leant against it, with the lock digging into his spine uncomfortably and his legs crossed in front of him. Salem focused on his shoes, the space between his eyebrows crinkling and his lips twisted slightly down in thought.

The truth was, Marisol is an unknown factor to him. He couldn’t approach her like he did with Gwen, and he couldn’t approach her like he did with his ex-girlfriend Noelle. The first one was steely and took everything in stride, and the second one was soft and needed constant reassurances. Don’t get him wrong, Salem was no casanova or player or fuckboy; but his ma told him to treat girls well and Marisol was sharing such intimate details of her life. The least Salem could do for her, after her openness and honesty, is think how to console her correctly before he acts.

“Yeah, I think I understand,” his nose scrunched up and he didn’t look up from his shoes as he thought carefully on what to say. “Before Gwendolyn, my girlfriend, I was dating this girl...her name was Noelle. Sweet girl, but she didn’t...I don’t know, it just wasn’t give and take with her. And we started losing touch with each other? We no longer had that intimacy we used to have, I guess. I knew, eventually, she would leave me. I only had so much I could give her at that time, and I just sort of … shut down on her, spent less and less time with her, because I knew I was going to be too hurt afterwards if I didn’t. If I lost her as a girlfriend, I still wanted to keep her as a friend.”

He cleared his throat before continuing, finally glancing up into Marisol’s eyes and laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I think I understand. You need space from him, to give yourself time to return to a place where you can keep that friendship.” Salem stopped, observing Marisol to ensure he wasn’t saying anything wrong. “Am I getting this right or reading the situation completely wrong?”

Mari was quiet for a few seconds, staring at Salem with wide eyes. “Shit. You’re good,” she told him in awe, shaking her head. “Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on. Son and I have been best friends for eighteen years now. I can’t imagine life without him, but we’re both so damn stubborn and hot-headed that if I don’t put some space between us now while I still can, I know we’ll end up saying and doing a ton of shit we don’t mean and tearing each other apart.”

He could say that it might be a bit too late, that they seemed to be tearing each other apart quite well a moment ago. The reply seemed particularly unwise, though, and there wasn’t really anything he could say to make her feel better.

Smiling cheekily, a sudden shift from his serious expression before, Salem pawed Marisol’s beanie from her head and tousled her hair playfully. In between messing up her hair, he tickled her sides, eliciting giggles from her as she attempted in vain to defend herself of brush his hands away.

After a few moments, Salem stopped, his cheeks hurting from grinning so hard, and gestured grandly towards the yawning hallway. “Would you do the honors of showing me around the halls, homecoming date?”

“I will if you give me back what’s mine!” she replied, taking the chance to lunge at him to playfully try and wrestle the beanie off his hands.

Salem sing-songed, “You’ll have to catch me first!” And took off down the hallway.

Rolling her eyes with a smile on her face, Marisol hurried off after Salem, the sound of her footsteps and her thrilled laughter echoing across the empty hallway.

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

@Erklings25 last chance to get those votes in is tomorrow!

Crooked Young - An Altered Lies Production

After a few drinks and the latest gossip had been shared, the group of girls had decided it was time to check on their makeups. Laughing along the way, the five young women walked the short distance from the punch table to the ladies’ bathroom. Everything seemed to be alright at first. Some of them took turns to pee, others did indeed checked her makeup, and they even took a round of selfies to immortalize the night. But when the time came to move the party back to the ballroom, things suddenly took a turn.

“Audrey… This is as intervention,” Leslie informed her dearest friend as she positioned herself in front of the door, while the rest of the girls assembled alongside her blocking the path to the exit.

Far from being intimidated at her friends’ ominous demeanor, Audrey merely gave them a curious look. “About…?” she asked slowly, smiling at them and raising a questioning eyebrow.

“We think you’re pregnant!” Katrina blurted out immediately, earning herself groans and exasperated looks from the other girls.

“Seriously, Kat, couldn’t you just give us the second to explain?” Lola complained, rolling her eyes at Katrina.

“For real, though! You always have to mess up all the fun!” Phoebe whined, siding with Lola.

“I’m sorry, okay?! I couldn’t help it! You guys know I’m bad at keeping secrets!” she whine, crossing her arms in front of her chest. But before she could go off about any previous experiences she could use as examples of her bad secret-keeping skills, she was quickly interrupted by the girl suddenly placed on the spotlight.

“Me? Pregnant?” Audrey repeated in disbelief, letting out an amused cackle. “You’re all fucking crazy,” she told them confidently, flipping her hair back with a smile on her face. “What the hell was in that punch? Crack? Because you all sound really freaking insane right now.”

Leslie let out a deep sigh. “Just think about it for a second, Audrey. Like, take this moment to really think about it. All the symptoms you’ve been having, the timing… You can’t seriously think that a stomach bug’s got you all bloated and that it made you miss your period twice now”

“Okay, fine: so maybe it’s all a little weird. But that doesn’t mean I’m fucking pregnant!” the young woman responded with a tinkling laugh, talking to the girls as if she was explaining a basic thing to a five year-old.

“Are you seriously that delusional, Audrey Elizabeth?!” Leslie cried out in an exasperated voice, looking at her best friend as if she wanted to punch her. “I just can’t- Just pee on the damn stick, won’t you?!” she said brusquely, forcefully pushing the pink box of pregnancy tests into Audrey’s chest.

“Alright! Fine!” Audrey cried out, taking the box from Leslie’s hands and shooting her best friend a nasty look before walking over to the nearest bathroom stall. Before she closed the door she turned back to look at each of the girls. “But when it comes out negative, you’re all going to be very fucking sorry for making me waste my time like this!” she declared before closing and locking the door behind her.

“If that test comes up negative you can slap us all in the face, but I’m pretty sure that won’t be the case,” she heard Leslie say from outside the stall.

Rolling her eyes, the Latina did as she was told. She opened the light pink box and pulled out one of two tests, removed it from the wrapper and followed the instructions. Once finished, Audrey exited the stall and placed the test on top of the nearest sink.

“And now, we wait the ten goddamn minutes for it to tell me the obvious: I’m not fucking pregnant.”

The next ten minutes were, without a doubt, the longest ones she’d ever had to wait for. Any attempts at conversation between the girls were quelled by Audrey, and the tension in the air as they approached closer to the deadline became heavier. When the timer in Leslie’s phone went off, the Latina visibly jumped. She was expecting her brown eyes to fall onto a single pink line across the white box, effectively proving to The A Team that their baby idea was nothing more than a drug-induced conspiracy theory.

What she was not expecting was for that second pink line to appear across the first one, forming an unmistakable plus sign that shone brightly in all of its positive glory.

There was silence in the bathroom, only interrupted by the thumping music of the ballroom outside. The five girls were huddled up around the sink where the test rested, staring at it with various expressions of shock and disbelief. Audrey’s mind was racing a mile a minute, thoughts and emotions flowing through her body with such speed she was unable to pinpoint exactly one. As much as she had refused to admit it earlier, every piece of the puzzle was falling into place now, and the story she’d pieced together made perfect sense. Her friends had been right all along.

Unable to stand thile silence in the room any longer, the Latina suddenly blurted out a feeble “I have to go,” before pushing Phoebe and Lola out of the way and rushing through the door. Wasting no time, her dazed self navigated through the sea of grinding bodies. After what seemed like forever, Audrey was finally able to locate Alexandros: standing in the corner with his friends, drink in hand and looking like he was having a great time.

The young woman sighed, a rising panic working her way to the surface. This was going to suck.

Taking in a deep breath, Audrey walked the few steps to where her boyfriend was. “Alex, we have to go. Now,” she told him as soon as she’d been within earshot, a sense of urgency painted all over her voice and face. This whole thing was already making her feel nauseous and dizzy, and she unconsciously found herself holding onto the young man’s shoulder for support.

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

Hello loves! Just wanted to make some quick announcements!

1) Our next time skip to the long-awaited Homecoming Dance will be happening next SUNDAY, OCTOBER 28, so make sure to wrap up your scenes by then!

2) Homecoming King and Queen will be decided by who gets the most votes! I will need every active player to PM or DM me their votes for every character they play based on their characters' mindset by MONDAY, OCTOBER 22.

As always, thanks in advance for your cooperation! <3

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

<sub>Fuck my life, can't save that, girl
Don't tell me you could save that shit
All she want is payback for the way I always play that shit
You ain't gettin' nothin' that I'm sayin'
Don't tell me you is
Nothin' like them other mothafuckas'
I can make you rich
I can make you this, baby, I can make you that
I can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back
Growing sick of this and I don't wanna make you sad
Do I make you scared?
Baby, won't you take me back?

Down another lonely road, I go
Just another lonely road, oh</sub>

The past six weeks had been the most depressing ones Santiago Fernandez had experienced, only coming in second to the ones right after his grandmother’s death. Ever since that fateful night of his back to school party, things had snowballed into a shit-storm that had left him with only misery to keep him company. His hookup with Ximena and the company of his friends from out of town had been nothing but a mere band-aid, keeping his bleeding heart whole until he eventually had to rip it right off.

Whenever his mind wanted to revisit the unfortunate series of events that led to this pathetic state of being, Diablo had to muster up all of his might to avoid doing so. The kiss with mousy little Bea had most certainly not been worth all the crap that happened afterwards, and just thinking about it made him want to bash his head against the nearest wall. But even in such turbulent times, he’d learned a very valuable lesson: he really needed to stop thinking with his head instead of his dick.

When the assembly was announced, Santiago didn’t think much of it. He figured it was just the school coming up with some stupid, useless new rule to further instill in the students a desire to die. And technically he wasn’t wrong… But the situation was far worse than anything he could have imagined. The whole idea of randomly assigning the Homecoming pairings wasn’t what had Diablo worried. In fact, what really had him internally panicking was that 99.9% of real possibility of seeing April being paired off with someone else. And when it was announced that she would be attending the event with none other than Kavi Salvador, it took all of his minuscule restraint to not jump out of his seat and wreck havoc at the auditorium. Her smug little smile at him really didn’t help the case, and neither did hearing that his date would be the ‘charming’ president of his hate club: Mara Lubitsch. It was the cherry on top of this shit sundae.

The minute they were dismissed, Santiago angrily grabbed his belongings and stalked off in the direction of his car. It wasn’t long before he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, and just reading the sender’s name had his eyebrows knit together in a nasty frown. But when he read the contents of the message, Diablo literally thought he could feel the steam coming out of his ears.

Good luck getting Mara to put out, Santi. I'll be sure to give April my love for ya. ;)

“Touch her and I swear to God I’ll put you in a coma,” he typed up immediately, thumbs flying across his phone screen even if hands were shaking with rage. But as soon as he took a second to really think about it, Santiago cursed out loud, shook his head and deleted the text message. Responding to it meant that Salvador was getting to him, and he would be damned if he gave that living, breathing piece of shit any of his time. As much as he wanted to pull a Marisol Castillo and destroy the dude, he needed to be the bigger person. So instead of giving Salvador what he wanted, he texted his charming Homecoming date:

“See you next Saturday, Blondie. I promise I’ll make it a night you’ll never forget.”

Once that text was sent, Diablo pocketed his phone and left the school building. He wasn’t going to give April or Kavi any chances to further push his shortening temper, so he opted to skip lunch altogether. His furious body was begging for a round at the gym, to imagine Kavi’s fucking face on his favorite punching bag and beating the crap out of it until his arms tired out. And if that’s what his body wanted, that’s exactly what Santiago would give it.

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

Just for reference: the assembly happened right before lunch, so when the seniors were dismissed it means they got an early and longer lunch period.

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

@Okonuki accepted! Move him over! ❤

Palm Beach Royals: Senior Year

Time skip has been posted! In this scene, we're exploring our characters' reactions to the faculty's little social experiment and the pairings, focusing on their reactions to their partner. I don't plan to stay in this scene very long (maybe 3 to 4 weeks tops), so get those posts in while you can! The real kicker will be on Homecoming!

PS: As I said before, interactions and communication between the paired are CRUCIAL in the current scene and the next one. Make sure to get on with your partner to discuss ideas and plans for homecoming. If you have any questions or issues with your partner, please message me either here or on discord to see how I can be of help!

Can't wait to read those posts!