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 Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 4:15 am
Locations: Entrance Hall (Ziazan)
Zia let go of Trystan's waist in favor of holding the man's hand, giving it a gentle tug and pointing off in the direction of the other side of the room. "He's with Elst over that way, telling him about the good news. Ellandra was with them when I left." It looked back at the man curiously at the next bit, giving him a "wtf?" look. "Why would you want to hurt him for that? Are you mad because you weren't there for the handfasting?" A brief pause. "Or was it the conception you wanted to help with? I don't think he's insane at all, just stupid."
It looked up at Crux, motioning to him. "Come down here where we can talk. It's fairly awkward to chat at you up there. Besides, I have a present for you."
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 4:15 am
Locations: Entrance Hall ((Misha))
Eep indeed. Aha.. ahahah, funny, that. Yeah, I know people eat rabbits for dinner.
The conversation between Ziazan and Trystan flowed by largely unnoted of, they seemed to be getting along fine, and Crux sure had Misha's attention. He caught himself puffing up slightly, and chided himself silently for trying to 'look bigger' before his little brother. How backwards this all was, so very backwards. Get your darn act together, stupid, this is no time for instincts to clash.
"Heh, I could run fast before... and I think I'd be just as fast as I am if I hadn't been influenced by those bunnies." Let's not talk about how much speed you gained when being frightened out of your wits by ancient primal fears though.
"It's my job, my purpose to be fast and accurate. I'm a Messenger, and I can't afford to get caught." Don't think I have nothing going for me, young one. What I can do is entirely my achievement. "I've been studying some magic to help me with that, too... to stay off the radar."
"It's good to finally meet you, Crux... I've been very curious about you, all of you." There there, he was settling again, though his manner had changed. To Ziazan he could be mellow, but when interacting with Crux, he felt he had to show his less flighty side as well. I may be much like a rabbit, I'm not only that, trust me, young brother-mine. Misha'd found his balance again, his sense of self taking back the reins from his instincts and felt his heartrate slow to a normal level. He was watching Crux keenly, with a calm, golden gaze now.
"Ah yes, do come down. Riding on your master, tsh. Aren't you wearing him out?" he smiled, after Ziazan's words. He meant no harm with the light jibe, really. A present for Crux? Maybe their sibling would grant him his tarot card, too? How fascinating.
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Gracious Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 4:35 am
___( location ) Entry Hall
Trystan was getting eerily whacked out by the light hand grabbing and such, but tried to brush it off as Faolan being stupid again. "Elst? Ah, the plant." Trystan said, intentionally forgetting to mention he'd also blown the mans head off. Ellandra... that must have been the girl. Trystan shifted, and Crux thrummed a bit in amusement. "I was joking, dont worry, Zia." Trystan said with a feral grin, shrugging his shoulders. "And both, if you're really that interested." And then he gagged when the other mentioned wanting to help. Choking on his words, Trystan huffed. "Hardly." He said through an attempt at not bursting into snickers at the strange assumption Zia had come to. "I agree, he is quite stupid. I'm the insane one, thanks."
Crux tilted its head at Zia, wondering what he was talking about. "My apologies." He said loftily, jumping down from Trystans shoulder in one graceful leap. His mechanical legs hit the ground with a soft thunk, and whirring, he lifted himself to his full height, turning towards Zia for a moment. "A present.... I am not sure I know what that is." He said carefully, scanner shimmering for a moment. Then he glanced back, noting that Trystan was about to leave. The man himself just waved a lazy hand with a cat like grin. "I'll leave you three to your own demise. I'm going to go find Faolan - " And try not to beat him up too much. "And give him a big congragulations."
The lie was clear enough, but hell, who cared? As Trystan traipsed off, Crux turned back to the other two, still curious as to this Misha fellow.
"Interesting." He said listlessly to the others mention of running. He wasn't too interested in speed - after all, who cared about that if your endurance didn't hold out long enough for you to get somewhere? Granted, he was sure that Misha was good at both endurance and speed, but didn't care to persist the matter any further. "A messenger. I see - an interesting job. Though a bit mundane." He commented, though his tone held nothing but simple interest, stating what he believed to be correct in terms of information. "Magic? You must be quite smart, if you are able to learn that." Crux had no interest in magic though, his raw potential would be enough. Relying on that could exhaust someone quickly enough - weapons were of much more interest to him then simply trickery.
"It is good to meet you as well, Misha. You seem like an interesting person." Crux acknowledged with a simple nod of his head, red scanner shimmering just a bit. It didn't matter whether or not Misha felt differently around him - that was not his concern. As far as the other went, he was simply a source of information. And if he proved himself anything else, then maybe Crux would change his mind. However, at the moment, he was simply attempting not to think of the instinctual thoughts that filled his mind - the thoughts that insisted that this rabbit was prey. At the light jab, Crux simply thrummed in a slight form of a chuckle. "Wearing him out?" He paused, tilting his head ever so slightly. "You haven't seen anything yet."
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 5:57 am
Location: Home -> Outside the Manor -> Manor gates
When he had received the invitation late last week, Astan had thought it was a joke. What did the attendees of some Duke's party want with his presence? Still, he found he couldn't ignore the thing. It sat on the table near his front door for days, and every time he laid eyes on it, it further filled his head with questions about what he might be missing if he didn't take this Midnight Ball more seriously. At the very least there would probably be free food and booze, but at the most... Astan smirked at his reflection as he ran fingers through his unruly hair, trying to smooth it closer to his scalp. At the most, the whole experience could change his life.
He had opted for a short-sleeved dress shirt, brown pants and an orange tie. Certainly less than fancy, but this DeLonghy character must have known the type of person he was before he had been invited. His outfit choice would have to do, wouldn't it?
As he approached the manor on foot, Astan had to silently admit that he was impressed. Residences in his neighborhood didn't even have a scraggly bit of lawn, let alone grounds. Thumbs in pockets and gaze sweeping over everything in the vicinity, Astan slowly made his way toward the estate's front doors, sandals crunching on the gravel driveway.
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Gracious Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 6:26 am
Locations: Entrance Hall ((Misha))
Yo, welcome to ground-level. Impressive build you've got there.
If they would ever compete to test their strength and speed and stamina, they might find that while Misha would stand no chance against the Combat Essentic, he had quite a good shot at outrunning him. Indeed, speed served little purpose if ther was no endurance to back it up. Misha had both factors aplenty.
"Mundane? I guess so... Sometimes it gets a bit boring to cross through the wasteland yet again, so I try to get from the Vargash border to the Eastern range in under an hour..." meh, I've seen it all by now, yes. Failed to mention it took most people that long even by car. He wasn't trying to impress anyone here, least of all himself.
"At least I never get lost. And if I ever had to deliver you a message, I'd be able to find you. I can find anyone." he glanced from him to Ziazan and back.
"Magic's pretty tricky, but it's not all that tough once you... make that click, you know." Doubt Crux would understand what he meant with 'click'. Learning completely new things was different from expanding upon inate skills entirely. "I'm just no good at other terrains, and it's served me well so far. Little kids seem to find it funny, too." he smiled, recalling Sera's reaction to him vanishing, and him taking her under the veil with him.
"You can both learn most kinds of magic if you ever want to, but you'd have to be a Magicker for it to come naturally." nodnod.
Crux's last comment intrigued him. He was happy the other seemed to have a sense of humour, but he didn't really know what he'd meant with that response.
"Hah, you're pretty interesting yourself. All of us are all so different, it'll be good to learn from each other." he nodded, then left Crux to Ziazan. Yeah, you teach him what a present is, everyone should know that, no? <3
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 9:21 am
Locations: Entrance Hall
Ellandra clung tightly to Faolan's hand, feeling rather overwhelmed by the sheer number of people all gathered together in one place. She stayed silent, as well - not out of choice but because she was completely tongue-tied. The brunette looked around cautiously at all of the meetings and reunions going on, feeling a little bit of her old feelings creeping up - that she was a shadow, nearly invisible, only half there.
The only thing keeping her from drifting away to a corner to wait out the ball and let anyone who wanted to see her have to find her was her grip on Faolan's hand. Her knuckles had nearly gone white from the tightness of her grip, and she hoped that she could make sense of all this chaos soon. She had been looking forward to seing her friends, but she hadn't counted on just so many people being here.
She wasn't a party person, and it showed.
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 9:23 am
Location: Home -> Outside the Manor -> Manor gates
Ishmael wasn't sure of the reason why he had been invited to this, but it wasn't particularly important. He was here, and even dressed up, in a dusty brown suit, and to be honest was a little excited about this. It wasn't every day that he was invited to a party, much less one hosted by a Duke. This would definitely be something to remember.
He noticed a man a little ways ahead of him, heading in the same direction that Ishmael was going, and he almost quickened his pace to catch up with him, but decided against it. For now, he would merely follow him. There would be plenty of time for socializing once they were inside.
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 12:26 pm
Location:: Inside Manor-->Ballroom entryway (Dorian) Inside Manor--> Entrance Hall (Claudia)
Dorian was far too busy noticing everything around and holding Claudia to do much of anything else, and so Claudia started squirming. She wanted to talk to people, and learn more human mannerisms. There were lots of women here, maybe she could learn to be more like a little lady from their mannerisms? But at the moment, she was highly interested in the boy with the rabbit ears, the boy with wings, and a strange man that had some kind of reddish......thing, with him. It actually looked a lot like Claudia's proto-skeleton system. Only without skin, and organs, and anything else to cover it up. It was kinda creepy, she decided. But she'd go over anyways out of curiosity, but not before slipping her hand into Dorian's jacket pocket and taking out the rock. He put her down distractedly, not noticing her pilfering, and she kept the rock close to her, holding it tight to her and drifted back over to the group of Essentics and the human.
Looking up at them, she cocked her head. She tugged on the closest one to her, which happened to be Ziazan though she didn't know his name yet, tugging gently on one of his feathers. "How did you become alive? How will this little one become alive? Can I do it too?" she asked, seeming to all the world a little girl with a fantastic imagination thinking that she could do the same things an Essentic could. But then, Dorian didn't advertise that she wasn't normal. He treated her like she was, for the most part, unless she was fritzing and malfunctioning. Then he just got worried about her personality files corrupting. She wasn't lost on the fact that these people knew one another, and she looked back at Dorian to see if he was faring well. She sighed and visibly slumped a little, shaking her head as she saw her 'father' already getting himself into some booze. God damn that man and his insatiable taste for alcohol and trouble. Best served together, he'd probably say. It was then that Claudia noticed the boy with wings had some cards, and her eyes went a bit cloudy and blank as she searched her memory bank for what they were. It came out without her even meaning to, really.
"Tarot cards. A common tool used by psychics and conmen to predict the future; fake; illusion; plaything." she recited as her memory bank found the information Dorian had uploaded from a very reliable encyclopedia-type source that he'd tinkered with to suit his and her personalities. It was Dorian's influence that made her think they were fake little things that had no meaning, really. Snapping out of it, her eyes were once again a bright shining blue as she looked up at the boy, still waiting for an answer to her question, as if she'd never fallen into her memory bank at all. In her memory storage though, it was logged as a malfunction. Something Dorian would check later.
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 12:37 pm
Location: Entrance Hall (Ziazan)
Zia hugged Crux once he was standing, then held up a silk wrapped rectangle. "Since my wings molt cards now, I collected them . . . one of each. Now you have your own deck to practice with after reading the book I loaned you." It grinned at Crux, then waved at Tryst when the man sauntered off.
His attention was drawn to the rather painful tug at his feathers and he turned to look at the little girl holding them. "Get off 'em!" He rudely shoved her hand away, losing a few feathers and a card as she was forced to let go. "You can't just go grabbing on people." Oh, thanks, pot, for telling the kettle that.
Location: The OTHER side of the Entrance Hall (Faolan)
Faolan looked down at the hand Ellandra was holding and wiggled his fingers a bit, trying to subtly get her to ease up on her grip. "Wife, don't break my hand, please. I need that for work." He got his hand free and put his arm around her waist to let her huddle against him. "We can go find a quiet place to sit if you'd like."
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 12:45 pm
Location: Entrance Hall
Ellandra shook her head a little, easing her grip on Faolan's hand and huddling close to him. "N-no.... I'll be alright... but. . . whoever picked out these shoes for me will be getting one of them tossed at their head when we get home," she said, pursing her lips and trying to shift her weight so that her toes were a little less pinched. "Just don't go running off and leaving me, okay? I might get swallowed up by the crowd," she said, her voice shakier than she would have liked.
So many people. . . and she hadn't gotten to say hello to anyone who she felt relatively comfortable with, yet. . . goodness. . .
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 12:57 pm
Location: Somewhere around the Entrance Hall
"I won't leave you, girl. I'll be right here with you," Faolan purred against her ear, giving her an affectionate kiss. "Throwin' shoes, woman? Assa, you're finally a true member of Farstep."
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 1:06 pm
Location: Entrance Hall (Ziazan)
At the little girl? Really, girl? having approached them, and snagging on Zia's waist-wings, Misha jolted a little. Oh, oh, that's no good.
"Hush, hush..." he left his position in the Crux-Misha-Zia triad, circled around and leaned down slightly, took the young lady's hand carefully in his own an softly pressed it against her own chest, so she wouldn't accidently go and hurt Ziazan any further. And to avoid the reverse, too.
"Easy there Zia... she didn't mean anything bad... right?" he looked from the young Alter to the girl and back, trying to lull the situation before it even became one. "We all make mistakes, she's just.... curious, I guess?" Again he looked at the girl-thing. Something was off about her, setting her apart from a child like Sera quite a lot.
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 1:48 pm
Location: Entrance Hall
Ellandra blushed, a bit embarrassed. "Well, they deserve it; I don't think I'll have any toes left after tonight. . . unless I find some place to leave these silly things." Still clinging to Faolan's hand - albeit still gentler than she had before, breaking his hands would wait 'til baby came, probably - she glanced about, looking around desperately for someone she recognized, someone she'd feel safe talking to. There were so many people, though, that picking out the faces of the few people she knew was a challenge.
Surely she'd run in to some of them eventually?
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 1:49 pm
Location: Main Gate ====> Entrance Hall (Dorian)
The castle smelled of hope. It smelled of money. Most of all, it smelled of alcohol.
The sight of the DeLonghy estate, towering over its surroundings like a king over his peasants, filled Kaosu with a myriad of emotions he had not experienced in a long time. Anxious, he checked his stolen invitation one last time, memorizing the key parts. "Robert Lynd". "Banning". "Essential Biotics INC". He could manage. Steeling his nerves and taking a deep breath, he proceeded in through the manor gates. No one stopped him. No one noticed him. No one called him for the fake he was. Relieved, he regained his confidence. This plan of his... it could work.
As he stepped towards the already bustling tableau, he stepped into an entirely new character. He was Robert Lynd, respectable hotel owner and potential Essentic customer. With his unruly red hair slicked back, his old but fitted suit, and his confident stride, he completely looked his part. All he needed to do now was enjoy the ball. Tucking his gloved hands into his pockets, he absently traipsed past the Manor Gates and into the Entrance Hall.
It was like a candy store. The moment Kaosu set eyes upon the inhabitants of the corridor, his second thoughts vanished immediately. He would enjoy this. Essentics. People of all walks of life. Servants, friends, and activity. He really had been away from civilization too long, hadn't he? The memories of the showy dances and pretentious parties from his childhood revived in full. He wiped them clean of dust, put them on, and settled comfortably into a corner to think.
Should he attempt to remain inconspicuous? Should he loiter among his fellow guests? No, those options were too pedestrian. What he wanted was attention, and he had learned from his teenage years that the easiest way to claim this was to cause a commotion. Smiling, he glanced around the hall, searching for a punch bowl he could fall into or a drunk he could entice into a fight.
Reminding himself that he had only just entered the hall, he decided to wait to raise chaos until he had explored his surroundings more thoroughly. It simply would not to to get kicked out so early in the evening. Not just yet. Popping his neck, he started down the corridor in order to explore the extensive tunnel. He moved carefully. Because of his blind left eye, he lacked depth perception and had trouble navigating crowds.
A stranger offered him a drink. Kaosu hesitated then accepted it, vaguely recalling that in the rules of etiquette, blatant refusal would be rude. Assuming the substance in his grasp was classic champagne, he politely took a sip. Involuntarily, he immediately spit the drink out. "Rum," he hissed to himself, dumping the rest of the vile liquid on the manicured floor. He suffered from quite acute allergy to molasses, and he could not afford for his throat to swell up at the moment (though that might be a good plan for later on).
His heart froze in his chest as he realized that he had splattered the ill-flavored beverage all over a rather pristine pair of white leather heeled boots. For a precious second Kaosu panicked, sizing up their owner, a rather... effeminate doctor. Hastily he regained his calm. He should say something. He should apologize. Something he was very, very bad at. "Sorry." Perfect. "I just figured those shoes of yours lacked a little taste." Oh well. He tried.
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 2:05 pm
[[Location]] Entrance --> Ballroom
Shade smiled up at Verdant and blinked as the older male began fixing his suit. He was glad that at least one of them knew what they were doing - formal wear wasn't the teen's area of expertice. He nodded a bit, trusting Verdant to know whether or not to outfit looked good on him. "Thanks..."
The impling's eyes widened as they entered the ballroom, barely registering the hand on his shoulder. It was huge! The one room could probably fit about ten apartments like his in it! How could anyone use such a huge house anyway?! "D...double wow..." he muttered, swallowing a bit. At this rate, he'd probably get lost in this place! God, he was so out of his element. 'You can do this...it's just a really big house. Nothing to worry about, right?'
"S-So...um...what now...?" He didn't know where to start in this place. The whole thing was rather overwhelming, really. Seriously, birthday parties were NOT good training for something like this.
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