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Mona	"Right," Mona said. "So we're mixing mezcal, bloodwine, ketchup, chocolate milk, and pickle juice. In mason jars." She did not envy the people volunteering to drink this cocktail. She'd seen a lot of crazy stuff in her years as a bartender -- she'd done a lot of it herself, even -- but this was perhaps the weirdest. "Good luck to all of you."
Sparkle	Sparkle considered the drink. Sparkle considered the people around him. And then Sparkle shrugged his shoulders. "I've drank worse on a dare. Anyone wanna give me five bucks to do this?"
Summer	Summer, meanwhile, was just wondering if this was revenge for all the jello she'd brought to horrific life, and her face said as much. "Five bucks?" she said, arching a brow at Sparkle. "To drink something we were all gonna drink anyway?" That was the thing, right? That was what they were all gonna do? She didn't know she could try to get money out of it, too. "Okay, Mr. Extortionist over here."
Sparkle	"I mean, duh," Sparkle replied, smirking a little. "Everything's more fun on a bet." And why not make a few bucks in the process, right?
Kenzi	"I'll bet you ten that you puke?" Kenzi offered, considering her own glass with trepidation.
Sparkle	"Oh, you're on, Kenz," Sparkle laughed, reaching for the glass and holding it up. "I have guts of steel, you know. This shit is going down." It was going to be chocolate pickle hell, but Sparkle was going to power through.
Kenzi	"Drink drink drink drink drink drink drink!" Kenzi chanted in delight. There had to be *some* fun to be gotten out of this.
Sparkle	Sparkle lifted his mason jar with a flourish. "I'm just sorry it doesn't come with one of those stupid little umbrellas." But he didn't want to risk messing up the effects of the drink by adding anything resembling a garnish, so he knocked it back before he could really let himself think about it." All of it. ... Oh wow, this stuff hit like a sack of bricks, didn't it?
Kenzi	"Spaaaaarkle." Kenzi wasn't sure now if she wanted him to throw up or not. She watched him closely, cocking her head. "How's it feeling? How's it tasting? Are you gonna die?"
Sparkle	Sparkle set the empty mug down on the counter. "Ohmygod," he managed. Because that about summed it up. "Oh my god, holy shit, someone else drink this shit so we can get this over with and I can drink Cokes until I die."
Kenzi	"That is the least motivating thing ever." Kenzi looked at the drink, and sighed heavily. "We're sure it doesn't have, I dunno, peanut butter in it? Or anything peanut-like?"
Sparkle	"Trust me, if it had peanut butter in it, it'd be worse, because then it'd be sticking to the roof of my mouth," Sparkle shared. "I'm sorry, Kenz. This isn't gonna kill you, it's just gonna make you wish it did."
Kenzi	"We who are about to cry," she toasted him with her mason jar, "salute you." Chug chug chug chug oh god oh *whyyyy*.... "Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo." Kenzi tried not to taste her own tongue, but that was nearly impossible. Also: "DIZZY. Buzzy! Point me at that portal, so I can puke it back to nothing!"
Sparkle	"Save your puke for after we save the day," Sparkle laughed, and then swung a hand out to clap her on the back. He missed.
Kenzi	"I don' wanna save the puke! I want to kill the puke!" Kenzi spun around to face Sparkle, then kept spinning. Wheeeeeeee! "Wait, can we burn it, or would that make it smell worse?"
Sparkle	"Doesn't matter," Sparkle decided. "Because all I'm gonna smell is ketchup for the rest of my friggin' life." He pointed at the portal. "KILL IT."
Kenzi	"DEATH TO THE VOID! KLINGON BLOOD DEATH!" Kenzi fell over, but was still pointing toward the portal. "DEATHY DEATH!"
Seivarden	This was undrinkable. No, that wasn't true, Seivarden had drunk really terrible things in her life, usually on leave, in a bar she couldn't remember afterwards. No, actually, this was undrinkable. She had just drunk undrinkable things before, but she wasn't sure she was drunk enough to manage it now. Staring at the mason jar in her hand, she tried not to smell the contents. "Remind me why I'm doing this," she said. "And can I have some whiskey first?"
Sparkle	"Nah," Sparkle said, waving his empty jar around, "just knock it back! It tastes way better than it looks!" This was a lie.
Seivarden	"You're lying." Seivarden saw through it. She offered Sparkle half a smile, though.
Sparkle	"I am," Sparkle confirmed merrily. "But it'll get you pretty fucking smashed and you'll be able to drink without having your soul sucked out by walking hamburger monsters, so at least there's a trade-off."
Seivarden	"I actually prefer it when you're being honest," Seivarden said, wrinkling her nose as she stared down her jar.
Sparkle	"I mean, I could get into detail about all the, like, the flavours and the chewy undertones, but I'm pretty sure you'd run outta here screaming." Sparkle was helpful.
Seivarden	"I said honest, not going into detail." She took a deep breath, then downed the contents of the jar. It left her coughing, wiping her mouth, and making a disgusted face. "Please give me something else to drink. Now."
Sparkle	"Portal first, then more drinking," Sparkle replied cheerfully, gesturing with his jar toward the swirling... thing. "Otherwise you just did that for nothing!" Did it make him a bad person if he enjoyed watching Seivarden squirm like this?
Seivarden	Considering that this was Seivarden, probably not. Seivarden groaned and leaned against Sparkle's arm. "At least my head is spinning."
Summer	Summer let out a slow, careful breath, looking down into her mason jar. It wasn't really that bad. She'd eaten ice cream with flies in it, after all. She'd made jello worse than this before... ...she didn't eat that jello, but some people had. And, hey, at least she knew what jello she would make to commemorate this event in wiggly goodness for posterity. No, it wasn't that bad, you just couldn't think about it. "Alright," she said, resolutely, "bottom's up." Summer tilted her head back, and threw back as much of it as she could at once, like taking medicine, like ripping off a band-aid, as quick and hopefully painless as possible. And see? It wasn't that ba--- ---oh, wait, there was the pickle juice. Followed by the bloodwine, and her body remembering, ah, yes, she'd had bloodwine before... "Ohgod."
Steve	"You can do it," Steve said encouragingly. "It's just like a casserole." It was nothing like a casserole. Nothing.
Summer	"Great," Summer said dryly, "now all I can think of is my mom's tuna noodle casserole." Which was not the thing someone wanted to think about when that was going on in their stomachs. Still, she knew he was just trying to help, and she gave Captain Rogers a faint, strained smile. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, though."
Steve	Steve winced because yeah, not helping to think of that particular combination. "You're welcome," he said. "Just...drink it fast. It's how I got through all of the medications of the 1920s."
Summer	Summer snorted a little. "Good thinking," she said. "But I don't even think a spoonful of sugar will help this medicine go down." She half wondered if it would somehow make it worse. One thing that did kind of make it better, though, was knowing that Captain Rogers would be chugging this swill down, too. It was the little things in life that mattered most in times like these.
Steve	Steve winced again because sugar would definitely make this worse. "You can do it," he said encouragagingly.
Kenzi	Kenzi was watching to make sure someone else got this down first. Because heroics were great, but not turning inside-out with revulsion was even better.
Ghanima	Ghanima examined her mason jar with an almost clinical curiosity. "This is quite possibly the most foul thing that ever was and ever will be," she said cheerfully, even as her mother-within was shaking her head, trying not to laugh. "Do I actually have to taste it, or is 'chugging' acceptable?" She was not above turning off her senses of smell and taste for thirty seconds just to get it down.
Mona	Mona shrugged. "Just need to ingest it. Doesn't much matter how."
Ghanima	"Then cheers to us, and I hope the clinic is standing by to pump some stomachs," Ghanima replied with a sigh. "Bottoms-up." And she promptly picked it up and downed the entire thing in one go, making a face as she did so. "Oh, that's wretched." Even with her taste and smell blunted. The consistencey still made her want to scrub her mouth out with a metal brush.
Mona	Mona's mouth curled up faintly on one side. "Sometimes you have to suffer for the cause." Seriously, she was really glad that, since she had to go through the portal before it closed, she didn't have to drink this damned mess.
Ghanima	"There is suffering, and then there is masochism," Ghanima said dryly. "Would you mind lining up a few bottles of tequila or mezcal, so that I don't have to suffer any longer than I need to?" They seemed like the best palette cleansers after... this.
Mona	Mona shot a look back at Quark, who had had significant trouble allowing people to experiment without charging them an arm and a leg. "I'll see what I can do."
Sparkle	Okay, Sparkle could ignore the fact that his mouth currently felt like a sewer system had been emptied out into it. Just for a minute, or... however long this took. He could do that. For the island, and all. Just look at the portal, and think, "Close." Or focus really hard on the portal and tipsily hum Semisonic's Closing Time, which was more or less the same thing if he did it with intent, right?
Seivarden	It was really hard to concentrate on closing the portal with the aftertaste of that... drink in her mouth, but since not closing the portal would mean she would have suffered drinking it in vain - not to mention all the other reasons why this thing should be closed - Seivarden concentrated. Really hard, her head spinning from the alcohol.
Summer	Did it still work if you hurled it back up? Probably not, so Summer, focusing on taking breaths in rather than letting up-chuck out, blinked her eyes a few times, and focused her attention on the portal. It was at least a pretty portal, or that could just be the bloodwine and mezcal talking. And then she burped a burp that was all chocolate milk and pickle juice. Nope, she wasn't going to get distracted, she wasn't going to let her head spin, she was going focus until that dumb old portal shut.
Steve	Steve lied a bit as he convinced himself he'd drunk worse during the Great Depression and concentrated on the portal. "Close," he thought. "Close so I can brush my teeth."
Kenzi	Okay, payoff time! Time to make the Sludge of Yeeeurgh drinking worth it! Yes! ...Kenzi could not help imagining a Venus Fly-Trap closing, only with extra fangs. Also, the special effects of purple lightning flashes and screams. (She had maybe seen too many SyFy movies lately.) "CLOSE SESAMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Ghanima	Ah yes, this was why Ghanima had occasionally allowed herself to be affected by alcohol. It was a strange, though not terrible, sensation, and at the moment she rather missed sipping sake with Shunsui. That would be a far more preferable a situation for intoxication, rather than...this. She was rather sure she could still taste that sludge, though there was none in her mouth. "Close," she murmured, taking her Dune Tarot out of her skirts, beginning to flip and shuffle the cards as a concentration aide, letting both the alcohol and all the whispers of prescience flow through her. "It is time to sleep, now. To rest. Close and be gone."
The portal	The portal pulsed once, twice, three times under the force of the combined magics. Mona took a running leap and dove through back into her own world as it started to spiral shut. The portal collapsed in on itself and vanished in a spectacular flash of blue and white light.
Sparkle	Sparkle threw his arms up into the air with a victorious holler. "Fuck yeah! Now somebody get me something fruity and rainbow-layered to get this taste out oh my god."
Seivarden	As the portal closed, Seivarden let out a sigh of relief. "Can I have a bottle of whiskey now?" she asked to whomever felt like answering, then noticed her gloves. "Oh fuck, I'm never going to get these stains off them, am I."
Quark	Quark, never one to give up on a sale -- especially when his current attraction had just been ruthlessly shut down -- pulled out a large bottle of aged scotch. "One bottle of whiskey, and I can replicate you a beautiful new pair of gloves! Just . . . $500!"
Seivarden	"500... are you insane?!" Seivarden gave Quark a look of disbelief. She could get nice, affordable gloves from Sparkle and whiskey from... somewhere. There had to be somewhere else.
Quark	"Just a savvy business man. Not my fault you can't see a fine bottle of whiskey when you see one. This is fifty years old! Finely aged. Guaranteed to wipe out all those nasty, pickley flavors. . . ."
Seivarden	"Why would I want good whiskey after that?" Seivarden asked, looking at Quark as if he was stupid.
Quark	"Why would you want bad?" Quark asked, giving her the same look in return.
Seivarden	"Why would I want to waste money?" Seivarden snapped back.
Quark	"Paying for fine goods isn't a waste of money!" Quark said, looking personally offended. "It's what money's for!" Or for hoarding in preparation for the afterlife, but it wasn't like Seivarden was a Ferengi or anything. She might as well use her money.
Seivarden	"I'm just being selective about how I spend my money," Seivarden replied, making a face at the horrible taste in her mouth.
Quark	"Well you're not getting any free whiskey from me, honey! You can forget about that!"
Summer	"You know," said Summer, tossing her head a little (carefully), and shrugging a shoulder. "It wasn't really even that bad." Then why were you green right now, Sum-sum??
Kenzi	"BYEEEEE MONA!" Kenzi burped, and sat down hard. "Oh god wow we did it. Woohooo." BLICK.
Steve	"Okay, I'm off to brush my teeth for an hour or so," Steve declared.