Welcome to Gaia! ::

[[Okay so I tried this last year but there weren't that many chibis! This ORP is mainly for the kids but if you have older characters that have siblings that attend knight side feel free to hang around.]]

Istas grinned, it'd been a while since she'd been out to the roller rink. Today was a good day for just such an occasion. Her parents had booked it for the whole day! Actually, Istas invited everyone from Knightside, because well it'd just be more fun the more people that showed up!

She already had on quads and was getting use to the feel of them on her feet. "I don't know... maybe inlines would've been better?" She looked up at her mother. Head tilted just a little, she had her balance pretty good just standing there, but she had a feeling if she moved... shifting the child ended up falling down landing on her bottom. She started laughing, "This is going to be interesting isn't it?" Good thing she was still on the carpet.

"Oh be careful dear!" Chi helped her daughter up and steadied her. "I'm sure you'll get use to the skates."

Istas nodded, "I will! It'll just take a little bit, maybe we can buy me some inlines for summer? I saw some with Hello Kitty on them at this one skate shop, they had Yellow ones too!" She gave her mother a big smile as if to say please? Afterwords taking off trying to get her balance while moving, her blue skirt rustled a bit as she moved. "Oh yeah we have cake and ice cream too right?" She knew her mother was walking beside her, still worried that Istas might fall again.

"Yes, yes we do. I hope it's enough, I have no idea how many are going to show up." Classic Chi, always worried about something to do with her daughter.

Istas smiled, "I hope a ton!" She never told her mother that she might have posted a few of the posters around town too, just because there might've been kids that didn't go to knightside. They could handle it, really she knew her parents could. She continued to smile, "I hope All the kids in town come if they could!" Istas paused, and shrugged taking a detour onto the floor, where her mother couldn't follow her. After all, that was going to sink in, in a second.

"Istas!" Her mother looked a little shocked when Istas mentioned the whole town of kids. That would mean, Chi was already rubbing her temples. It would be okay they could cover it.

[[*edit* sorry guys I had to cover a few that I forgot weren't attending Knightside]]

Victor had his skates on, roller blades he'd brought from home, but had not gone out to actually skate yet. He was sitting at a table near the rink, with a glum look on his face.

He was worried.

If he went out there and did not judge himself right he would fall down and embarrass himself, possibly getting hurt in the process. The last thing he wanted was to hit his tailbone on the floor and have the rest of the kids there laughing at him for it. Then his body and his pride would hurt, and he couldn't bear that.

But he liked to skate, and knew he was good enough at it not to fall down, at least. So why was he stuck there, grumping and staring at all the kids having fun and hating them for it? He needed to just get up and go out there, see if anyone wanted to skate with him. They wouldn't, he knew that, because he would do something to put them off. Like shove them or tease them for their wobbles, or some other failure way of starting a conversation.

He wasn't great with people.

Mercy Haynes had arrived at the party under duress. She would have much rather been home, maybe gotten on the phone with Hafwen and invited her over for tea. But - No, her mother had seen the flyer and her father had insisted she go and spend times with her peers.

It wasn't that they didn't like that she had an older friend - they just felt it would be healthy for her to have friends her age too. So now here she was, strapped into skates while her parents mingled with the other parents in that awkward way parents do as they jostle for position in the social hierarchy of who is the best parent.

She scooted along the floor as she skated, trying to keep as much space around her as possible. Just because she was here did NOT mean she had to enjoy herself.

Nope - not one bit.

"And you're sure you'll be fine?" Charlie Caffrey was usually the counseling voice of calm and reason. It was his job, after all! But right now he sounded like he didn't know if he was more hurt or worried when his daughter requested he park a block away from the roller rink to drop her off.

"Uggggh, yes, dad," Dana groaned, flopping around the backseat of the embarrassing beige minivan. It was bad enough she had to settle for Evie's hand-me-down pink foil laden roller blades and not something cooler, but she didn't want to be seen being dropped off in her dad's dorky car.

She hopped out of the van and slung the currently tied skates over her shoulder and started walking, only to turn around and glare when she noticed he was following her.

She ran into the roller rink with a sudden, hurried pace to get inside and wave off her poor, nerve wracked father. With him gone to no longer cramp her style, she heaved a huge sigh and slicked her hair back, a nervous force of habit triggered by walking into a den of kids she didn't know with nothing but a party invitation from school.

After skating around the rink for a quick bout, the mother-daughter pair had decided to take a quick break. The younger of the pair wore a sleeveless white top that had a knot tied at the bottom, showing off her stomach and a pair of lavendar capris. She tugged slightly at the matching headband with oversized bow, moving it so it would be slightly askew upon her head.

Perhaps she was showing off a bit, but she skated backwards out of the rink itself, momentarily separating herself from her mother. There was a dark haired girl (Dana) about her age nearby who had just meandered in. It honestly could have been anybody that had entered from that entrance, it didn't matter much at the moment.

Within a moment, she had called out rather loudly "HULLOFERICEROUS!!!" and waved an arm wildly at the stranger at the entrance.

Carolynn chuckled a bit, gesturing to her daughter that she was going to go investigate the food-scene.

The silvery haired girl briefly thrust out a thumbs up at the woman before the two separated for a bit. Mystery wanted to check out the sticker vending machine scene, since they tended to have the most random glittery things for relatively cheap in those machines.

And just like that, Mystery had been sucked into a conversation!

In a smooth manner, she used her stopper to stop her quad skates just by this new girl. She flashed a charming smile (which she had seen many times thanks to many photographs of the very smile) at the girl. It felt kind of nice to wear her roller skates, if only because it gave her a bit more height than usual. Heels were nice on occasion, but they tended to hurt her feet, where as the skates were more level.

"Let me? Mom was the one who did this!" With a watchful eye, the silvery haired girl glanced to the mentioned woman, waving in a wide enthusiastic gesture to get her attention.

A white haired woman with curled hair and dark make-up, and a rather flirty low-plunging V-neck shirt smiled and waved back almost immediately. She seemed young to have a daughter of Mystery's age and too trendy to have the title of "Mom."

"Your hair looks trendibular*! Did your parents let you do that? Did you get it done at the salon, or is it one of those 'do-it-yourself' style jobs? Have you ever done any other colors?"

There was a pause before she thrust out a hand. "Oh, yeah, I go by Mystery, by the way!" Introductions, they needed to go somewhere, right?

It was funny, how quickly life could resume its normal pace after the most abnormal of activities.

When Wallace had been kidnapped into space, he'd spent the better part of a month up on some rainbow road that he still wasn't totally convinced wasn't just a figment of his imagination. It would have made far more sense if he'd been a victim of some weird experimental drug, because there were no rainbow roads in space. And yet, he couldn't dismiss it as a hallucination, because he was not the only one who'd experienced it. Flannery, his best friend slash worst enemy, had been there too. Heck, Flannery, as "Red," had managed to put together an entire pirate crew. As was often the case when things went horribly and crazily wrong, he'd wanted to blame her for all of that. But he couldn't. Not when it was the terrorists who did it.

And then, all of a sudden, he was back. It definitely wasn't as if he'd never been gone: his family was worried sick and he'd had to change schools. But it didn't take long for life to settle back into a routine. It wasn't the same one he'd been used to, but it was a routine, and he liked routines. They were comfortable and they were safe.

His life during the City Council election had been topsy-turvy as well, though in a very different way. Wallace had never expected to get as far as he did in those, though it made his eventual defeat even more painful. Not that he doubted that this paved the way for his eventual entrance into the political world. If anything, it proved that he had what it took, and the world wasn't ready for him. Which didn't mean it didn't hurt. Still, it was only a matter of time before he'd stopped being Wallace the Candidate- as much as he ever stopped that- and went back to being Wallace the Student, Wallace the Brother, Wallace the Slightly Neurotic Friend.

That day he had his brother hat on, holding on tightly to his younger sister's hand. "Slow down!" he ordered, pulling back before she could run into the street. "What's your rush?"

"I want to get there already!" Becky complained, tugging as soon as the light turned green. "I love skating, Wally! C'mon, we're gonna miss everything!"

"You've never even been skating before." Only after looking both ways did Wallace begin to cross the street. Once they were safely on the other side, he let Becky pull him into the rink.

Becky shrugged, clearly not disturbed by this flaw in her logic."Well, I'm gonna love it, so there. Oh, that must be it!" She wriggled out of Wallace's grasp and ran to where the other kids were gathered, slightly out of breath by the time she arrived. "Hi! We didn't miss anything amazing, did we?"

I doubt it," Wallace replied as he caught up. His attention was more on the guardians in the group as he fumbled for his wallet. "There's a place to rent skates here, right?" Neither he nor Becky owned their own, and while he had no plans of going out on the rink, he would hate having to disappoint his sister.

"My name's Becky! And this is my brother, Wally. He's probably gonna be a party pooper, don't mind him." Becky waved a dismissive hand at Wallace, who looked up in surprise. "I don't remember seeing you before, Istas, but it's awful nice of you to do this. How old are you? What class are you in? I'm almost ten!"

Once Becky paused for breath, Wallace stepped in. "You won't be ten for two months," he told her. "And my name is Wallace. Thank you for the information, Istas." He smiled at her, not bothered by the strange look. She probably recognized him from the elections, that was all.

Becky rolled her eyes. "Yes, Wally, I know what your name is." She was being rude, perhaps, but she also didn't let go of his hand after he'd grabbed it again, continuing to squeeze it as she went on gabbing at Istas. "Help? With what? Once Wally gets the skates, I think I'll be all set, right?"

Taking that as his cue, Wallace managed to remove his hand from Becky's death grip and slipped off to the counter. Thankfully the line was short; it probably wouldn't take too long for him to get the necessary equipment.