Welcome to Gaia! ::

If he'd had his way, Theron would never have been at this party. It was loud, crowded, and full of people -- all things he hated. But still, he owed the Ars Lilium hosting the party a favor, and it so happened that she'd called it in to have him provide free security. Apparently she was entertaining quite a few important (to her, at least) guests, and she didn't want anything going wrong. And while he didn't really look like much of a threat, the presence of a Blackheart was sure to guarantee that people were a little more careful before they started anything. He had to intervene once or twice, as a pair of women almost got into a shouting fight before he separated them, and a drunk man needed to be escorted out to clear his head a bit, but there was nothing big. No Witch-Eaters, either; good.

The music hadn't been too bad -- small blessings, but having just suffered through a three-hour party, he had taken whatever blessings he could find -- and as the last patron drifted away, he moved on to the second part of the favor: cleanup duty. Not the most useful time he'd spent, but not one he'd been able to argue. When he was done with most of the room, he moved towards the stage.

"Evening," he said, politely, to the man who'd provided the night's music. "Need a hand?"

Contrary to what a few people had said about him, he didn't actually go into a rage upon seeing other people; unprovoked, he was as calm and composed as the next person in line. He just had...more extreme reactions.

Theron regarded the mess of cords with slightly more apprehension than he allotted to the average Majin. Organizational tasks were usually lost on him, but it was enough of a mess that he wasn't about to leave Dane alone to fix it. He nodded and set to work, starting to unplug and separate each cord, making sure to keep them well away from each other. The metal tips of his claws smoothed and blunted, so he wouldn't accidentally cut or clip any of the cords while he was at it.

He glanced up in surprise at the unexpected thanks, blinking at Dane over the knot he was working out. "No problem. It wouldn't be fair to leave you to clean up by yourself." He pulled the knot free, and studied the rest of its path. "Do you play at these sorts of parties often? It must get boring." Being on stage for hours, playing songs while partygoers mingled and made meaningless small talk -- he would rather have been out on patrol.

Theron silently thanked whatever higher power had seen fit to give him nimble hands. Even with the metal of his ever-present gauntlets in the way, he was still more dexterous than the average human, and it helped with the mess. The cords had, no doubt, been neatly-arranged and straightened out at the start of the evening -- and yet somehow they'd managed to work themselves into tangles and knots by the end. No doubt some of the less careful (or more tipsy) partygoers had stumbled over the tangle of cords as well, making it worse.

"Where do you usually play, then?" Music was a foreign thing to him; he usually heard far less pleasant sounds in his line of work, and he'd never paused his combat training to study music. The life of a musician seemed boring to him, honestly -- but then, the life of a Blackheart must seem stifling to others. Perhaps playing music made the Witch feel alive as well.

He shook his head in response to the query, grimacing faintly. "A favor's a favor, but guard duty -- especially at a party like this -- doesn't suit me. I almost wanted a Witch Eater to come in and break up the monotony." He was only partly joking. A good fight would've done a lot to relax him, paradoxically. The rhythm of combat was somehow soothing to him; there was no etiquette to think about, no rules to remember, just the instinctive flow of dodging, parrying, and attacking. It was a lot less complicated than determining how long to shake someone's hand.