Welcome to Gaia! ::

After his awkward encounter with the Xanis brothers, Alexis thought it wise to go out the next day and look for a costume while he shopped for phys ed clothes, a new pair of sneakers (how had his feet grown so much?!), and maybe (just maybe) some typical teenage clothing. He could never hope to act like one of the normal boys...but maybe he could pull off looking like one of them so he wouldn't be bothered?

Alexis decided to exercise his informal clothes for his outing, breaking in a pair of dark blue jeans and some fancy white shirt with a brand name on it. Holl...something. His parents had gotten him a gift card to the place and he'd managed to get a whopping one outfit with the amount on the card. Not that the gift card was nothing to sneer at, it was a hefty amount, but everything in the store cost twice what it should. Alexis had hoped the one shop would be enough, but he needed three outfits at the least, and phys ed clothes.

Shuffling down the sidewalk in shoes that seemed too big for him (but actually fit just right) he stumbled upon a clothing exchange store that happened to be having a sale. It looked decently busy...perhaps it was worth a look. Alexis made his way into the store, carefully maneuvering his way through the crowd to the shirt section.

There were so many people! And so many types of clothes! Alexis stumbled about, unsure of what he wanted, where to go, or how to get to where he wanted to go! People who were far more adept at this social shopping things shouldered and shoved past him, issuing meek apologies from the boy as each jolt to his body slid his glasses down his nose. despite being six feet tall he felt four feet short.

The flow of the crowd led him to an odd sort of section. There was a motley of black shirts and hoodies with strange symbols, cartoony characters, and phrases that Alexis assumed to be funny to a certain group of people. A small girl shoved past him and Alexis stuttered an apology despite having to catch his glasses before they hit the ground, despite the fact that he had been standing still.

When he put his glasses back on he couldn't help but be mezmerized by her hair. It was so long...and that shade of blue...gorgeous! Alexis was no Picasso or DaVinci, but he did have a sense of aesthetic value. The way the light shone off it...it was inspiring. Perhaps he'd write a song about it. Not for the organ...but maybe the piano...

Just then an announcement asking for the mother of a Horatio Lobos to come to the counter to claim her child brought Alexis back to earth. "Oh god I've been staring," he realized with a bright flush of his face and hurriedly moved to the t-shirt rack beside her and yanked out a random shirt. "Stealth plus five," he said aloud, too confused to keep the thoughts in his head from being vocalized. "How in the world does this make you stealthy?"

Alexis went rigid when someone, no, not just someone, a girl responded to the question he had inadvertently asked aloud. He tried desperately to be polite and listen, to move his neck and make proper eye contact like one should when in a conversation...but the only thing he heard in his mind was the mantra of "OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD" and the thought of moving gave him the mental image of his rigid, brittle neck cracking into a million pieces.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the girl moved to make eye contact and Alexis' Adam's apple bobbed uncertainly as he tried to swallow his way past the immobilizing fear. She'd asked him something. What was it? It was in English but it registered as Greek. And oh her bangs just melted so perfectly with the rest of her hair. She looked so much better without bangs, it framed her face better. BUT WAIT NO. She'd said something. He had to respond! Lock lock lock...something about locks. Why would he call her a lock? It made no sense! A lock was something to secure a container of some sort. Was she implying something? She hated locks, did that mean she hated secrets? Did she hate keys too? OH GOD HE'D BEEN SILENT AND STARING AND JUST SAY SOMETHING.

"N-NO! OF C-COURSE," he cleared his throat to stop yelling in her face, "not...course not..."

"I-I u-uhm," Alexis shifted uneasily, wringing the shirt in his hands as he tried to sound as un-lame as possible. "I...don't play.....a l-lock." He let the statement linger for a few long seconds before stuttering out the truth. "O-or the g-game...at all...wh-whatever that game might be." The boy looked down at his shoes as his face lit up like a stop light. He did, however, have the problem she mentioned, but in an effort to keep the embarrassment level to a minimum, he decided that being truthful about that was not the wisest course of action. "S-sorry," he muttered, unsure of what else to do.

Alexis stored the name away in his memory along with a note to investigate just what MMO stood for, the rules of it, and how it was played (and, should he join, a large note to not be a lock/warlock).

"O-oh no...th-that doesn't sound cool at all." He agreed with her on the sole facts that a) he had no clue about this game and she did (so she was probably right) and b) she was a pretty girl and things always went better when you agreed with them (not that Alexis had the spine to disagree with her, since summoning creatures from hell had sounded pretty tough and cool to him).

"W-WELL I," he cleared his throat with a blush as he realized he was screaming...again. "I've b-been looking for s-something to do...in my spare time? Hillworth isn't a-all that exciting you see? A-and...uh...I...I could p-play? If it's as f-fun as you say..."