Giada hid behind a trash can just up the road from the Magical Menagerie. There were few people still in the street at midnight, but those few were so evenly dispersed that there hadn't yet been a point where the coast was entirely clear. Never had she realized that sneaking in to the building where she lived on one floor and worked in another would be so tricky.
Her luck came when two pedestrians passed each other in opposite directions in front of the store, granting her an opportunity when the only people in the area would have their back to her. Holding her breath, she dashed out from behind the trash can with her red wagon full of bags, hoping so dearly that she'd oiled the wheels enough to make a silent dash.
The seconds she spent from her hiding spot to the front door to the foyer were the most harrowing of her entire life. Every wrong thing she'd ever done repeated itself in her head as she struggled to get inside the shop before another person walked by, and she collapsed on the floor once the door was locked. It wasn't being seen merely entering her own place of work after hours that she feared - it was the bags of cooking supplies and tablecloths Punchau had insisted she buy.
When he knocked at the door a few minutes later, she nearly jumped. Thankfully the staff always moved the pets to a special room for sleeping except for the fish, so there were no animals for her to trigger like alarms. She unlocked the door to let him in, and found herself absolutely confounded from the very first second.
"Uh...why are you wearing a tuxedo?" she asked as she closed the door behind him.
Not seeming to understand why it was weird, Punchau simply adjusted his bow tie in a mirror after setting a bad of carpentry tools on the floor. "Huh? Well, uh, it's after six," he replied absentmindedly. Once he was finished, he took a quick look at her little red wagon. "So you got everything, right?"
Giada felt movement in her stomach as she pushed the wagon full of supplies over to him. "Everything you asked for. Am I correct in assuming that I don't want to know what exactly is going on tonight?"
A small growl freaked in the back of his throat, and he only looked at her from the corner of his eye. "You getting your life back, that what's going on," he replied a bit indignantly. "Get with the program, Giada."
She just tried not to think about it and closed the curtains over the shop windows. "I'm with it as long as we don't draw attention to the shop." She paced in circles for a few moments until a knock came at the door, causing her to jump. "Please let this be the people you said can help make this all go away."
Punchau beat her to the door and peeked from behind the curtains to see who it was. He cleared his throat and nodded. "This' them. Don't worry, they're real quiet. We let them in?"
Despite her racing heartbeat, Giada nodded her assent. "Yes...let's get this over with." She handed him the key and stood aside, immediately noticing the heavy footsteps of the 'helpers.'
To her shock, more huge and fancifully dressed people entered one by one. An ogre who looked big enough to have his own gravitational pull walked in, ducking to avoid bumping his head on the ceiling. The ogre was also wearing a tuxedo.
"Mr. Stonemaul, so glad you could join us!" Punchau said in a formal accent Giada hadn't heard a Darkspear use before.
Following the boulder dressed like a penguin was a female ogre wearing a dress so sparkling red that it hurt Giada's eyes. Surprisingly, the dress was so well tailored that the ogre woman's bulk was actually accentuated without any awkward bulges. Her high heels looked like they were ready to strike oil under her weight, though.
"Mrs. Stonemaul, thanks for coming! You look positively radiant tonight."
"Oh you."
A sourfaced undead man with a metal jaw entered next. His countenance wasn't simply due to being undead: he legitimately looked unimpressed. He was at least a little more creative and had worn a grey suit and tie.
"Finneas, glad you could make it."
"We'll see about that."
The last 'helper' nearly bumped into Giada from behind, causing both of them to gasp. Instinctively, the goblin moved toward Punchau, startled that one of the odd visitors had snuck up on her so easily.
She spun around to find a blue-skinned Draenei woman wearing a yellow evening gown. The colors looked great, but something was off about the complexion of the visitor's face. It was a paper mask, apparently, and as Giada started out stare into the stranger's eyes, she was taken aback by the sense of recognition.
"Serrah! What on Azeroth are you doing here?"
Red eyes blinked in surprise as if the disguise were actually a good one. Giada's longtime coworker paused for a few seconds, clearing her throat and mustering a clearly fake accent.
"You don't know who I am," the jungle troll said in an overdone Draenei accent.
Giada blinked for a few seconds because she was too stunned by the poor attempt to speak in the beginning. When her coworker tried to follow the others into the back room, Giada tried to block her.
"What the...Serrah, we've worked in the same place for like four years, are you being serious?"
Serrah's eyes widened behind the paper mask, and one of the paper mache horns almost fell off. She remained undaunted, though, and maneuvered around the goblin to escape the conversation.
"Sorry, I don't know who you are," Serrah said in the fake draeneic accent.
Before Giada could intervene, Punchau ushered the masked woman into the back room and started to close the door. "Hey, watch guard, yeah?" he asked her just before she stuck a wedge in the door to keep it open.
"Wait, Punchau, what exactly do you plan on doing back there?"
He'd drawn his fingers over his mouth a few times in a hand signal to be quiet, and the guests had already disappeared down the hall as if they knew where to go. Punchau kicked the wedge out of the door with his special made troll dress shoes and shook his head at her vigorously.
"We save your behind, now watch the door! Maybe this takes only an hour."
He shut the door without giving her a chance to ask more questions, leaving poor Giada to bite her fingernails in the front room for the next hour. She passed the time by peeking through the curtains, hiding under the checkout counter at the sound of any voice from the street outside, and thinking of every wrong thing she'd ever done in life to deserve such luck.