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Carnegie parties were not Carnegie parties if they did not start with a loud explosion of some sort. This was tradition; handed down to them by their forefathers, and their aunts and uncles and crazy Grandpa Joe who always told them, in his gravelly and wise voice, not to disclose where they got their supplies.

"Or else we'd all end up in jail in Mexico. And that, my boys, is not a place you want to be without a little bribery cash on hand."

Nevermind what Mexico was, the boys had taken his lessons to heart.

Under the twilight of the rapidly fading sunset, the two huddled over a rather large and conspicuous mass of explosives set far, far away from their peers, but just close enough to the construction tools to send their red-faced boss into a fit of yelling anxiety.

Delicately, Murphy scratched a match, the small and bright flame wavering before set upon a long, long line of what looked to be gunpowder leading to the mass of death. With sparks crackling and snapping, they saluted, grinned, and ran the other way as fast as their lanky legs could propel them as smoke rose in their wake.

A second, two seconds, three seconds -- the sparking flame disappeared beneath wood, silent for all of a long moment.

And then the sky exploded. Not just one boom, but a thousand, rising up and up in a whirl of colored fire and exploding circles, roaring dragons and grinning smiley faces flinging themselves into the air, snapping and crackling and announcing for all the City to see:

The party has begun!

"Well, m'lass," Murphy began, waving his hand grandiosely and leaning against his brother for ego-support. Seamus half-stepped to the side, leaving Murphy to lean precariously against the air. "A magician never reveals his secrets."

"It's an ancient, secret art, it is." Seamus nodded.

"Top secret."

"Too right."

"But if you really want to know--" Murphy's voice was cut off by Valeriu's hand as the shadowy man appeared, just in the nick of time to make sure his ward's mind wasn't filled with the fluff that crowded their own skulls. Dangerous, explosive, and above all, loud fluff.

He had earplugs in for tonight, and was careful to keep his focus on the twins rather than Tepin.

"Now," Vale began, wrapping his other arm around Seamus, friendly-like, a ghost of a smile wrapping over his fangs. "V'hich one of you gave Sydni the sparklers?"

Friendly went out the window. Here was the overprotective brother on the prowl.

"We'll never tell!" vowed Murphy around Vale's hand.

"It was 'im." Seamus pointed immediately at his brother.

"Et tu, Seamus?" Murphy's dying cry followed after him as Valeriu dragged the older man off for a private conversation.

According to Carnegie tradition, it wasn't a party without a little bloodshed, either.

Writ's usual supplier of all things flammable and explosive was swamped with customers today. Nevertheless, Writ got his hands on enough firepower to last him the rest of the day, and enough leftover to have his own personal Fourth of July.

He loved this holiday. No one really knew what it celebrated exactly, but his parents had told him when he was a kid that it had to do with some war that happened centuries ago. Some kind of Revolution, for independence and freedom and all that, they said. There was more to it, but little Writ didn't catch anything after the crackles and sparks of fireworks filled the night sky.

With cotton in his ears, and a spring to his step, he walked down the streets swinging his bag inert pyrotechnics in reckless arm circles, humming long forgotten patriotic tunes, the kind that his parents played around this time of year. Writ wasn't a patriot by any means, but the fact that this whole holiday was based on revolution, well, he could relate.

He heard passing rumors of the roadblocks, so he took the back roads, and switched to his coyote form when he was forced to pass one. The whole ordeal gave him a longer trip back to his apartment, which wasn't terrible as it was inconvenient. On the bright side, it gave him the opportunity to take advantage of everyone's hospitality along the way. There were a parties and barbecues on a block's worth of front porches, and Writ had sparkled and seduced his way into each one, grabbing the free food before getting out to the next party down the road.

That's when he reached Vale and company's little get together. Writ had found some parties in some curious places, but he had never seen one at a construction site. It was a pretty odd locale to be sure, but then, what better place to have a gathering of godlings than an out of the way fenced off piece of private property? He recognized Vale and his "Little Princess", a pair of twins that he didn't recognize (or really care for after he realized they weren't players.) and one newbie in the foreground, looking rather timid.

Writ stopped swinging his bag, and stepped quietly towards the new godling. Sneaking up on newbies had almost become a habit with Writ. Since Izzy's entertaining reaction, he just couldn't help himself.

"Hey kid!" Writ yelled, slapping both hands on the kid's shoulders.

"Because Momma prays to God every single night," he explained, pitilessly ignoring the dying screams of his beloved twin with a casual wave of his hand, "and then prays to Him in the mornin'."

In actuality, he suspected she had made a deal with the Devil. For the first eight years of their lives they had been perfect little angels, until Murphy had gotten into a pretty bad accident. From then on, well--.

But then something caught Tepin's attention as the girl looked around them in such a way that had his own nerves jumping, just a bit.

The Game. The twins were lucky to be privy to such complete information, he'd been told, but the urge to spill the secret had never even struck him. He now knew why parents were left out of the loop, why friends and family were abandoned rather than speak of it.

It was pretty terrifying. At least to Seamus. Gods and such, mortality, the afterlife - it made things all too transparent, had kept him uneasily awake in the early hours of the morning, listening to his brother pretend to sleep as well.

After they'd been told, he'd never asked another question about it.

"Someone else?" he squinted at the party-goers around them, trying to see what she sensed, but nothing really caught his eye as strange. Still, he grinned, clapping her on the shoulder. "We'll be careful, promise."

Of course, his smile said, quite plainly, that if it was a foe, it would be a foe finding themselves face to face with the exploding end of several pounds of fireworks, courtesy a la Carnegie.

With that, he slipped off, mingling and winding his way towards the spot where he'd last heard Murphy's piteous sobs.

At first, Writ thought that he had his hands on a girl. But judging from the mess of masculine German poured out of his mouth, the kid he grabbed was a boy, just one with a really odd fashion sense that bordered on Quinn's. Back when he wore clothes, of course.

"You know the key to sneaking around is staying quiet." Writ laughed, and looked down to be face-to-upside-down-face with the new godling,

"Name's Writ, what's yours?"

The smile on his face suddenly faded off his face for a moment and melted into a neutral, inspecting look on his face. He had caught a glance of the shimmering scales on the kid's face.

Wait a second.

Odd accent.

Snake scales.

Writ raised an eyebrow. The logistics of that were impossible! Even with godly intervention, he was pretty sure that a couple such as Vale and Quinn wouldn't want a kid. Besides, there wasn't any family resemblance. Writ dismissed the thought as a leftover cloud of peyote floating around his brain. Still, the combination of two familiar godlings in a newbie amused him. Writ's smile came back before he lifted his head and called out,

"Hey, Vale!" It was just loud enough to be heard over the whistling bottle rockets being launched overhead, he let go of his Faylen's shoulders and waved both of his arms in the air before making his way over to where the party was happening.

He lowered his arms and stared at the tanned man blankly for a bit, brain still to sluggish (and now frozen up with shock) to do much more than gawk.

"Meine name ist Faylen. Was is dein name?" he finally answered reflexively, his voice sounding tinny and faraway to him (but probably choked and squeaky to the other). He'd replied in German, still a bit too in shock to grasp English. He did this when he was startled, revert to his Mother Tongue. He managed to shake of the shock and swallow, answering again a bit loud. "Faylen. I'm Faylen." he refined, dropping the habitual 'and yours?' part for the English rendition.

But by the time he'd gotten his voice loud enough to be heard over the din, the man was already walking away. And he was alone again, feeling even more awkward than he had at the onset.

He watched the other man's retreating figure curiously, taking notice of the weird gut feeling he got from him. That squirmy feeling...it was like what he felt with Quinn. It was stronger now, though. He wondered idly if the man was a Player like Quinn but...he didn't look too weird from what Fay could see. Maybe that funny feeling in his tummy was hunger. He looked again to the table.

Stealing was wrong.

'Starving isn't much better, child.'

He glanced to the group again. They were so distracted, that he doubted they'd notice him taking a few bites... He edged closer to the snack table. Just a little, he told himself, feeling that same daring feeling from when he had snapped at Mr. Anubis swell in his chest. His hand snaked out, small outstretched and ready to seize some food. He felt giddy with such naughtiness but also...scared.

He looked around nervously, for a moment fearing that she may be around, watching his defiance. He knew- knew!- there was no way his mother could be around but he just had to check. Seeing that no one was much paying attention to him, he grabbed a few food items and plunked down by the table, bolting down his spoils. It wasn't the greatest food- he could probably cook better if he was able to- but when you've been starving for two days, it was like sweet ambrosia. Pretty soon, he'd appropriated an entire bowl of chips and was munching at them ravenously, hunger overriding his ability to be subtle about his food theft.

Valeriu should have known that the minute Writ opened his mouth with that look on his face, it would have been better to just turn and walk away.

Definitely should have known.

"V'hat?" He looked between Writ, and Faylen, first in bemusement and then in horror. "V-V'hat do you mean? I haven't!"

Well, he had. With, with--

Scales. Shining, iridescent scales, smack dab upon the boy's face.

For a moment, he could have sworn the world stopped spinning.

"V'hat?!" Valeriu having a panic attack was nothing new for his coworkers, and they kept on partying. The same way they simply stepped around the half-buried twin. Nothing new at all.

No, no, that didn't make sense at all! Males couldn't do that, kids couldn't grow like that --

Unless the gods were involved, his mind miserably reminded him.

A long-suffering sigh echoed through his undeniably empty thoughts, breaking through the shock.

No, boy. Neither myself nor that snake are the gods of pregnancy, Tezcatlipoca drawled with a sneer to his voice. He is messing with you.

He frowned at Writ, oh, how he frowned. It was probably obvious by the look on his face that it had taken a reminder from his god to enlighten him.

"Sometimes, I hate you," he muttered crossly, folding his arms with a dark stare. "But you have seen them too, da? The blockades are not too much trouble. No one to guard the roof tops. But their movements do not make sense."

Any godling with half a brain and even the most basic of powers could sneak by them. What was the point? Why bother milling in the streets, other than to shift the Game to more secretive areas?

"If v'e are the X-men, I call dibs on Nightcrawler," he added as an afterthought. Old, old stories, to be sure - but his parents had collected all sorts of books and stories. He'd read some of the series growing up, just enough to take a liking to the blue, fuzzy member of the force.

And maybe, when he was a kid, he might have attempted teleportation. Maybe. Not that he had yelled "BAMF" and hopped off the top of the stairs to the floor an entire story below, after all. No broken arms there. He wasn't that gullible.

...Moving on.

"V'hat do you think they're aiming at, anyv'ay?"