December 31, 2025. 2350 hours
>A pair of blue eyes stare up into the sky and gaze to the stars.
>For a moment, though the owner of those eyes stood among a crowd, all was silent, and the crowd seemed to disappear beneath the brightness of the night sky.
>Clusters of stars shown in their bright blue shifted colors down into the clearing among the pines.
>Off in the distance, a fizzing sound could be heard, and then a flash of colors, of reds yellows and blues burst out into the sky where a tube of powdered metals had burst and momentarily fractured the sky into a burst of light before settling for a fraction of a second before a second, and even a third burst shattered forth from the remnants.
>for a moment, Jason forgot the crowd and enjoyed the show, for a moment before deciding that he should call Marina's attention to the fireworks and the night sky.
>as Jason brought his eyesight down, he found Marina just in time for another burst, catching a look at her red eyes being lit up, and seemingly to him, glowing softly as the sky settled back into darkness and the sky cast bluish silver tones onto the snow draped forest of kentucky.
>Marina gazed into the sky, mezmerized by the bright sky, a feature never seen at home in Florida.
>Jason put an arm over Marina and pulled her to his side, gratified when he felt her resting her head on his shoulder.
"Our friends should be here any minute now. Knowing Mike, he's probably closing now."
>Jason scanned from left to right, searching through the crowd and noticed a weird looking couple, who happened to be looking right at them. The couple averted their gaze only for a moment as the woman, hair brown hanging out of her helmet, featuring a goggle whose tubes were swung far out and to the sides, to the point that they were closer to the helmet than their bridge said something to the man, whose helmet held a peculiar looking monocular, whose shape was odd, and looked overtly sleak, and they began approaching.
>"Hi there, I'm Anon and this is my wife Emily."
"Hi, Anon. I'm Jason and this is Marina."
>"Nice to meet you." Emily stated entheusiastically. "It's not too often we get to meet other couples like us."
>"Like us?" Marina inquired
>"Man and Geist."
"Oh. Actually, we were waiting for another couple like us to meet us here, wanna wait with us?"
>as Jason asked that, a pair of grey eyes met him, materializing from the crowd.
>"Hey! Jason, Marina! What did we miss?" Mike said as he slid away from the crowd, a blonde haired woman stumbling in pursuit.
"Well, we just met this couple with the night vision, Anon and Emily, and we had just mentioned you when you showed up."
>"Well, better late than never, would you all like to join Ekatarina and I for drinks at my house? The more the merrier."
>A small wave of affirmative replies followed.
>"Great, we'll go after the countdown, there's someone else here I'm meeting up with, you don't know him, but he's something of a friendly acquaintance or one of those friends in low places you hear about."
"Oh? Who is he?"
>"He's a friend I know through my old PMC outfit."
"What's he do? Are we gonna get a second case of speak of the devil?"
>"He was on a border violation certified team. Anything you want to know beyond that is his business."
"Sounds like a scary bastard."
>"Oh, that's nothing, you should see him first, then hear him. It's scary. like he's baby faced. You wouldn't THINK he was older than 25, then you hear him and you know he's gotta be pushing 40."
>"Pushin' 38." a calm deep voice, somewhat less saturated than one would naturally have in their mid to late 20's chimed in.
>A man of about 6'2" with a gaunt but smooth face interjected.
"Hi, I'm Jason Rogers, and you are?"
>Mike Berdan stepped in between Jason and the stranger.
>"Jason, this is John Stanton. John, these fine folks are Jason, Marina, Anon, Emily and I'm sure you know my wife Ekatarina."
>"You look familiar... were you in the news recently?" Anon asked.
>"Secretly, I'm Eric Rall."
>"The guy who killed a bunch of gang bangers a few years back?"
"Yes."
>"Wow... I actually feel safer."
>"Hehe. Hey, Mike, now that everyone's here, shall we?"
>"Not quite yet. They're about to count down. It's one of the best events around town this time of year."
>"What's so great about it?"
>"The invariably malfunctioning fireworks display and the extreme hazard, they yell something different every year and also the fireworks display is great and... well, just watch, eventually you'll realize why we do controlled burns here all year round and clear the fireworks area."
"I mean... it's snowing... your fireworks display can't be THAT dangerous."
>"Jason, you don't live here. You SHOULD, it's pretty cold in the winter and I know how you like your extreme environments."
"What? The fuck are you on about?"
>"The LAST time we met, we gave you a ride home because you were drugged out and presumably being abused by a drug lord's daughter. Oh, and you learned Russian in five minutes."
"Fuck, that really happened?"
>"...Yeah." Mike said with a laid back, smug smile.
"Damn, I thought that was all a fever dream... How does THAT happen?"
>Marina chimed in. "You were unconscious and kidnapped. You don't remember that?"
"Not really."
>"You were missing for two months!"
>"Attaboy!" John chimed in, leaning and stage whispering to Jason. "If you can bare the burden of being the villain, you'll be the hero."
"uh... what?" Jason asked with something approaching a laugh.
>"Oh look, they're starting." Ekatarina pointed out.
>the crowd began counting down in unison.
>10
>9
>8
>7
>6
>5
>4
>3
>2
>1
>GET FUCKED!
>Mike and Ekatarina exchanged a sly glance as they looked back on the faces of the guests as they contorted into confusion and bewilderment.
>Suddenly a large number of small objects began ascending atop a clatter of popping noises as the show began.
>In extreme speed they began popping, dispersing more objects of smaller cross sections and full length of the small cartridge like objects.
>moments later thick cascades of light obliterated the night sky as the cartridges exploded and scattered across what little unlit space remained across the sky.
>Mike turned away to his guests when Jason saw a spark on the ground which seemed to fly horizontally and land a mere twenty feet away after a scant five seconds had passed and maybe eighty fireworks had detonated.
>"See what I mea-"
"OH SHIT, LOOK OVER THERE!" Jason screamed as he pointed over to the area where the fireworks had been set up
>Mike looked over before calmly stating "Now's the fun part!"
>In another four seconds when many of the tubes began firing in super rapid succession, the shell burst into five discernible sub fireworks.
>Mike and Ekatarina's eyes both visibly lit up as they took eachother's hands to keep track of where they were, shit eating grins on their faces and began to count down quickly in unison.
>"FIVE!FOUR!THREE!TWO!ONE!" they counted down swiftly in unison.
>The five shells exploded in the span of half a second, sending vast plumes of sparks, smoke and burning metal all over the jury rigged fireworks, which had casings exposed as part of their amateur electronics club setup, staging and resister to charge based timing cicuits.
>Within ten seconds the fireworks show devolved into streams of sparks fire and smoke cascading in every direcion and careening wildly into the sky, low over the crowd, or even in the fortunate cases like those that had gone over the crowd, detonating mid burn from the fire on the outside of their casings igniting the metal within.
>Forty seconds passed
>The would be forest fires were visible in the small glowing smolders the electric club was scrambling off in every direction to extinguish.
>Cheers could be heard from all around as the crowd celebrated another horrendously dangerous firework show going up in smoke in the most amusing way possible.
>Mike and Ekatarina looked into each other's eyes, slack jawed grins a mile wide, shared a kiss and then looked around them to see a crowd, the ones visiting family here and being unaccustomed to this display showing rather obviously who they were by having dove to the ground and covered their heads, save for Anon, Emily and John, who in the case of the former couple, had stood around watching the show with incredulity and started cackling, and the latter individual smiling with a tear running down his cheek.
>Mike turned to John and spoke. "So, John... I've been meaning to ask, where's your date?"
>"Don't have one." he answered, wiping the lone tear away and regaining his composure. "I'm just a little sentimental at the moment."
>"Alright, John. Take as much time as you need. I need to find Kalashnikov's son in law and his weird Samoyed-satan woman."
>"Satan?" John asked, quizzically. "I know she's got a tail and the weird ears, but it isn't like she has-"
>"Glowing red eyes?" Mike cut him off.
>John Chuckled, enjoying some levity which had occurred to him.
>"Hey, Mike, before you go."
>"Yeah?"
>"Satan's pretty nice."
>There was a small silence as Mike looked away as if to check his thoughts on a data screen for a moment before meeting John's eyes again with sharp half breath. "...Yeah... she is." He answered before he went off to check on the two.
>John looked back to the smoke plume, the glows within having been extinguished seconds before as the smoke dispersed.
>A moment passes as John looks up to the sky and then to a woman nearby. "Hey, is it darker than when the show started? The sky was pretty bright."
>The woman turned to him with a smile and replied "The smoke blacks out the sky. You're not from around here, are you?"
>"Only been to this show once before, many years ago."
>"Well, hopefully you're back next year. I can't wait to see how they're gonna top this without literally sacrificing a child."
>"No doubt they'll just point the fireworks straight at the crowd."
>Mike returned. 
"Alright, John, I got everyone wrangled up, lets go get drunk."
>"Alright," John replied before bidding the woman farewell with a "duty calls."
>"Happy new years, fella!"