I'm all alone at the party, wasted away, boring my buddy

The sound of Dakota’s cane striking the ground caught everyone’s ear.

“Now then, esteemed guests of this magnificent party, I have another announcement to make!” Dakota declared with a flourish, bowing extravagantly. The later the evening dragged on, the more theatrical she seemed to have become. As Nick stared at her, an inkling of a thought occurred to him.

I guess Dakota must have always wanted to go to a party like this, even back when we were little kids. Given the way Dakota had lived back when they were neighbors, the notion of a fancy party filled with rich, elegant people of high standing must have spoken to her deeply.

She was certainly making the most of it.

“As you know, there are only two events left before our evening together comes to an end,” Dakota said with an exaggerated sigh, holding her hand over her chest. “It is such a pity. But I am proud to note, that all of you are doing quite well as far as point totals go. You’re definitely showing that you’ve got what it takes to make it in fine company, even those among us with more… modest backgrounds,” she said with an amused smirk, holding her hand over her mouth.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Holly scowled.

Dakota’s eye twitched, and she looked venomously at Holly for a moment. Then she refocused and cleared her throat again.

“Where was I… oh, yes, I do hope you’ve all had plenty of time to enjoy our luxuries, because we will be moving onto the next event soon enough. And it’s one that I’m certain will arouse some stimulating ideas in all of you!”

Nick twitched. He didn’t like the way Dakota’s voice oozed with innuendo. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought…

No, that’s crazy, Gina wouldn’t have come up with something like that!

He looked across the room at Gina, and saw the amused expression on her face.

It didn’t take much more than that to shake his confidence.

“So get on with it already,” Dani said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re waiting here!”

“Careful, Dani!” Dakota warned with a teasing smile. “If you get yourself too worked up like that, your impatience could result in a deduction from your point total! You’re being far too impolite.”

Dani’s cheeks flushed and she bit the inside of her chin in frustration. She glanced quickly over to the judge’s table. It was empty right now, because everyone was out on the dance floor, but it was a good reminder.

She looked around the room at the others and unfortunately had to accept the truth in Dakota’s statement, as much as it might have pissed her off to do. So she shut her mouth and accepted that she’d have to wait.

Being patient is probably for the best anyhow, she reasoned.

“Dani’s not being rude!” Morgana protested meekly. “She’s just being curious! That… that’s okay to do, right?”

Dakota looked blankly at Morgana and then smirked. “…I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “And it’s about time to provide you ladies with an explanation after all, I suppose, yes. So let me tell you about this next challenge!”

She was really dragging it out now. Intentionally, too, Nick suspected.

“As a member of high society,” Dakota mentioned, immediately shifting gears so she could frame the situation, “people of high standing are likely to make a match with those of complementary positions. You can verify that, I’m sure, right, Amelia?”

She looked over at the older woman, who raised her eyebrow.

“…I’m sure you are well aware of my own romantic entanglement with Nicholas’s father,” she replied. “And I would certainly not consider him to be of complementary standing to my own family.”

Dakota smirked. “That isn’t why you married him, though, is it?”

Amelia’s eye twitched. “That question is not worth addressing.”

“Because you don’t want to tell us the answer?” Dakota asked, leaning in intensely.

Amelia crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. “Now you are the one being impolite,” she chastised the host, throwing her own criticism of Dani right back in her face.

Dakota sulked for a moment and then sighed. “Vivian? What do you think? You know I’m right about this, yeah?”

Vivian smirked. “I mean, I love saying Teach is wrong, so sure, I’ll back you up. Doesn’t have to be that way though.”

“W-wait, why are you saying all this anyway?” Mary asked worriedly. She didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “You don’t mean to suggest that this next event… it’s not going to be about romance, is it?”

Nick’s eyes immediately leapt from Mary to Dakota, and he caught the shift in her expression. At the same time, he glanced over at Gina. She was stiff as a board, answering Mary’s question before Dakota even opened her mouth.

“That’s exactly what it is,” she purred in confirmation, and a shiver went through the room.

“Wait… r-romance?” Ella blanched. “No, that… I…”

“Oh, that’s tricky,” Dawn mused. “Let me guess… this is going to be a challenge revolving around romance and confessions, but in a classy way, I’m assuming? Not even Gina would be insane enough to do anything more explicit than that.”

“Indeed, such behavior would be rather gauche,” Rose agreed. But even as she nodded, inside she was swelling with excitement. A romantic event? Certainly it would involve Nick, right?!

And that was precisely what worried Carly and Marley. The twins looked at each other hesitantly, and both turned to the real source of their concern.

Dani’s face had only gotten stormier.

“This again?” She frowned. “Romance? Seriously!? Gina!”

The fact that Dani was only griping with the punk girl showed a remarkable improvement in her usual attitude. She’d come a long way from her days of losing her cool.

…With that being said, Nick would completely understand if she got angry. This contest was unbelievably unbalanced!

“Lesbian,” Serenity said bluntly, crossing her arms. She sneered at Dakota. “Confess? Lesbian? HIM?”

Dakota rolled her eyes. “All of you, reacting so fiercely without even giving me time to explain! Now, if you would just be patient, I can explain how this event is going to go.”

“Hey, Dakota…” Gina interceded. “Maybe this one…”

“Yeah,” Sylvia nodded. Both girls were looking uncomfortably over at Gina. “When we were coming up with this, we weren’t really…”

Dakota tapped her cane loudly on the floor.

“Let. Me. Explain.”

Her voice made it clear to everyone that not another word was to be spoken until she finished her explanation.

With that settled, Dakota took a deep breath, exhaled, and continued.

“…Where was I?” She tapped her cheek. “Oh, yes, now I remember! We were discussing the ways of romance among the upper crust! Now you young ladies I know for a fact have gone through plenty of lovely moments with our master here, Nick. But when it comes to high society, a simple blushing confession or declaration of love is rather… untoward, as it were. Expressions of amorous affection must be made with more subtlety and grace.”

Vivian snorted and rolled her eyes.

Dakota scowled at her. “…As I was saying, subtlety and grace. It is not enough for one to merely express their feelings. No, they must do so in the most elegant of ways. That is why simply calling it a ‘romance’ is not enough- the word is courtship.”

“Courtship?” Kim raised her eyebrow. “Rich people even make dating sound unnecessarily pompous and arrogant.”

“They do, don’t they?” Dakota laughed. “But yes, that is the nature of this challenge… it is a challenge of courting! Each of you young ladies must attempt to court our master here, Nick, as he is the only eligible bachelor among you. You’ll each take a turn to make your romantic intentions clear, and provide a very compelling case for why he should choose you over any of the other fine young ladies that might have caught his eye! But you must do so with class and elegance, the way a lady of high standing would do- if a fine noble miss were to be caught making a fool of herself in pursuit of a man, it would lead to all sorts of spurious rumors that would damage her fine integrity and be a stain on her household, wouldn’t you agree?”

“That sounds unbelievably sexist,” Dawn scowled.

“I-I’m not sure I…” Morgana glanced over at Nick.

“Nicholas is my stepson,” Amelia reminded Dakota with a scowl. “You are not seriously suggesting that I court my own child, are you?”

Dakota looked over at Amelia and sighed. “…I’ve been patient with you, Amelia, I really have, out of respect for how well you took care of me all those years ago. But you know what show you are on. This was always going to happen, and you aren’t nearly naïve enough to have not realized that. So get over yourself, and accept that this is how things go now.”

“I’m not comfortable with this either, though,” Nick protested, shaking his head. “I mean, okay, on some level, I get it when it comes to the challenges. But this event… it’s unfair! Making Amelia do this, and Dani of all people?!”

“And what about Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin?” Kim pointed out. “How is she supposed to be subtle when she’s courting him, if she can’t even talk?”

“Worked last time,” Serenity pointed out. Not that she was endorsing this event.

“Also, there’s Sylvia to consider,” Marley pointed out, joining in on Carly and Dani’s protests. “She has to call him ‘Daddy’. It’s kind of hard to be classy in courting someone while referring to them with such blatant innuendo.”

“Sylvia and Gina came up with this idea,” Dakota rebutted her.

With a pretty good rebuttal at that.

“Yeah, maybe I didn’t think this one out…” Sylvia stroked her chin thoughtfully. “Whoopsie! Must’ve been my old host instincts kicking in. Focused so much on making it a good and exciting event for the audience that I didn’t even think of how I’d be personally disadvantaged by it! …But then, not showing special consideration towards one specific contestant is kinda like, the best way to be a host, so I suppose that evens it out!”

Dakota rolled her eyes. “The fact remains, this was the event Gina proposed. She was the one who came up with it, she’s the one who decided the criteria. So don’t shoot the messenger, okay?” She said with a huff, crossing her arms over her chest.

Nola stared at Dakota in shock, unable to believe that she of all people was saying that. “Are you kidding me?!” She hissed under her breath.

“I mean… Dakota’s not wrong here,” Dawn pointed out, glancing warily at a flustered Gina. “Gina’s the one who came up with this competition, not her.”

“Thank you!” Dakota said, glad someone else was taking her side.

“But you’re being kind of a jerk about it,” Rose pointed out, frowning. “That’s a little unnecessary, don’t you think?”

Dakota’s smug look quickly shifted back into a scowl.

“Well, I already changed the last event,” Dakota said firmly. “I promised Gina that I wouldn’t make any more alterations to her idea, so-”

“Actually, didn’t you say that you’d do the next events the way I wanted to?” Gina asked, frowning. “I think you said something like that, right, Dawn?” She looked hopefully at the genius girl, counting on her memory to come in clutch again.

“That’s right,” Dawn confirmed with a nod, having Gina’s back. “Specifically, you said ‘We’ll do them exactly as you wish’ Dakota.”

Dakota frowned. “So maybe I did,” she replied. “What exactly is your point?”

“Well, then what if I ‘wish’ to do it a different way?” Gina asked. “That would be fine, right?”

Dakota’s face froze. She **** a businesslike smile onto her lips and said icily, “…The criteria for the event was already filed.”

“Right, but you changed it before, for the last one.”

“Yes, and then I said-”

“That you’ll do it the way I wish. And the way I wish… isn’t like this.” She glanced over at Dani with an apologetic look, then turned back to Dakota. “I wasn’t even thinking about Dani, okay? And yeah, that’s my bad. But it’s not cool to make her have to court Nick! I don’t want to do that!”

“You can’t change the criteria of the event,” Dakota said firmly. Then she sighed. “…But I suppose a slight alteration would be acceptable. What exactly did you have in mind?”

Gina frowned. “Well… it’s okay if she courts someone else, right? Just have her court Carly or somebody, I don’t care.”

Dakota raised her eyebrow. “Special treatment, then?”

“It doesn’t have to be!” Sylvia jumped in. “How about this? We just let everybody court whoever they want! That would be fine, right? If the girls want to court Daddy, then they can! But if someone like Dani or Amelia wants to court somebody else, then that should be fine too! That way everybody’s happy, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea, Sylvia!” Gina nodded in agreement. “Let’s do that! What she said!”

Sylvia smiled proudly.

Dakota almost looked impressed. If you squinted really hard.

“…If that’s what you want, Gina, then we can do things your way,” Dakota decided, waving her cane. “The content of the event will still be a classy courtship. But you may court whoever you wish out of the judging table.”

“Wait, so I can’t court Carly?” Dani frowned. “But…”

“Carly isn’t a judge,” Dakota said bluntly. “It wouldn’t work if you girls could court one another, that would just be ripe for playing interference. What if someone courted another guest, and that resulted in them getting so flustered that they wouldn’t be able to properly court someone themselves?”

“That conveniently wasn’t a problem for you in the first event,” Dawn pointed out suspiciously. “Remember Rose’s introduction?”

“Yeah, she threw me off my game,” Marley nodded in agreement. “So Dani should be allowed to throw Carly off hers, right?”

“Hey!” Carly exclaimed.

“I-I’m still not sure that works for me,” Dani said, shaking her head. “I can’t court Carly?”

Dakota sighed. She was trying to give Dani as much latitude as she could here, but it was starting to run thin.

“…The way the contest is set up is that each of you girls comes up to the judge’s table and tries to court the judge. Then that judge, and the other judges, will all determine how effective they thought that courtship was. A big part of that is having the direct perspective of the judge you are courting in the explanation. So if Carly isn’t a judge, then it won’t help in that regard. Now, does that make sense to you?”

What Dakota was saying made sense, yes. But that didn’t mean Dani had to like it.

“Hey, it’s fine, Dani, I get what you’re trying to do here,” Carly said, placing her hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “You’re trying to be considerate of me, right?”

Dani winced, and nodded. “…Yeah.”

It wasn’t just about not having to court a guy, although that had been a big part of Dani’s initial objection. While she was totally fine courting girls (even if she wasn’t very good at it) she felt **** because she didn’t know how Carly would take it.

“You sure you’re okay with it?” Dani asked. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable…”

“Hey, come on, it’s part of the party event!” Carly said with a laugh. “So you’re probably going to court Serenity, big deal. I know you two are close. And just like you won’t get jealous when you see me courting Nick, I’ll be fine with you courting Serenity. And we’ll both just go about the whole thing like nothing’s wrong! Sound good?”

Dani nodded. She liked the sound of that. And she was relieved that Carly wasn’t going to be upset by her making the moves on another girl.

“I’m glad you’re so understanding,” Marley said, amused.

Carly stuck her tongue out at her sister. That might have resulted in some point deductions from the judge, but she wasn’t concerned about that.

Right now, there were more important things for the girls to do, like think about how they were going to court Nick.

…Because let’s face it, in spite of having the freedom to choose, most of the women here were going to pick Nick by default.

Not everybody was happy about it though.

“I… I have to court him?” Ella mumbled, pacing back and forth nervously. “B-but I don’t know how to do that… I’ve never… I mean, we had the one date, but…”

An awkward date between two people trying to have fun was a lot different than trying to do an active seduction on a boy she was developing a crush on.

Ella couldn’t handle that! She had no experience whatsoever!

Just thinking about it, she could already feel…

Feel…

“Ella? Are you okay?” Morgana interrupted the fretful girl’s worried pacing, and Ella jumped. She turned to look at the goth girl, startled.

“I, um, yes, what? What is it?” Ella mumbled out.

“I’m just worried… are you okay? You were kind of…” Morgana blushed and looked down. “…I’ve done that before too, you know. The whole pacing thing?”

Ella sighed. “…You have?” She asked glumly. “It’s just one of those things…”

“Are you worried about the event?” Morgana asked. “But you’ve been doing so well on the other ones so far…”

Ella had more points than her. But she didn’t feel better about it.

She shook her head. “Those events were different. This one… it’s romance stuff, and I’m awful at that! Just thinking about it makes me want to run away as far as I can!”

Morgana knew how Ella felt.

“…At the last party? I got turned into a mouse,” she revealed.

Ella’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened behind her bangs.

“A m-m-mouse!?”

Morgana bit her lip and nodded. “Not like a full mouse, but a mouse girl. Thanks to the party’s rules. So that… was a thing. I had a lot frantic running around to do…”

Ella could see how wary Morgana was. “That must have been hard…”

“It was, but… I tried my best, even if I lost. So maybe… maybe you can, too?” She asked the other girl hopefully.

“Are you gonna try you best this time, then?” Ella looked enviously at Morgana. The goth girl seemed so… cool.

She was shy and worried, but still looked so bold…

“I’m not so scared anymore,” Morgana said, nodding. “So I’m gonna try hard!”

If only I could be like her… then I wouldn’t feel like running away from this.

If only Ella could magically transform into someone tough and strong and confident who could handle this challenge for her, and win it!

But she couldn’t do that…

…

…Could she?

Ella swallowed, unable to believe what she was about to ask.

“Morgana… can you do me a big favor?”