Welcome to Gaia! ::

Niflhel was sitting in a chair at the front of the room, with a table sprawled out beside him. A few others sitting beside him and talking amongst themselves as they shuffled papers around. Niflhel was looking out over the crowd as he studied each paper.

The room had been decorated with jungle like features and a totem head with glowing red eyes off to one side. It had taken a lot of work between him and the knights he'd found to aid him in this. Not to mention there was also help from Polaris, though she wasn't around; having stayed back to patrol and take care of Merlin since Niflhel was going to be gone most, if not all of the two weeks slated.

Not that Niflhel seemed to mind as he finally got up taking a microphone in hand. It looked like almost all of the Knights had arrived to the party. "Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the first, and hopefully not last, Running of the Legends of the Knights Temple. I am Niflhel your host for these games, I'm glad you all could make it. Please feel free to continue to talk amongst yourselves while we finish preparing the team ups for the events to come in the following days. There is a refreshments table as well, that was set up by my guest helpers, knights from The Order of the Crystal Cloud Gate. Feel free to help yourselves to that as well, and I hope you find the assortment of food to your liking."

He smiled, "When we're ready to announce teams we'll let you know." Before he sat down he seemed thoughtful, "Also if anyone has any questions please feel free to ask me. I don't mind answering them while we're setting up teams."

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There had been months between the last time she powered up. Life brought up too many unexpected things, mostly work related, that brought her away from this world. Meru knew, however, that she would never pass up an opportunity like this: meeting a mass amount of people just like her.

Meru looked at the people around her. She was pretty sure she hadn't met all or most of the people there, but she didn't mind. It was interesting to her, seeing all the different people and well... Their clothes. It was easy to tell whom was a Knight of which plant.

She was honestly happy to see those dressed like her. "Other Cosmos nights... Maybe they might be able to tell me more about who I fight for..."

It wasn’t that Valhalla was nervous about getting together with a bunch of knights, but the fact that he was leaving Paris by himself had him rather antsy, especially knowing how the incident at the Carnival had affected his partner’s eating habits.

Okay, so maybe he was kind of nervous about being around a bunch of knights, especially ones he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen some of those he knew well for months, and he hoped it was because they moved away like Daniel, or stopped powering up completely... and not because they’d been hurt or worse.

So instead, he lingered behind the young man who’d convinced him to go to this gathering, his arms crossed over his chest as he tried to mentally prepare himself for yet another gathering of people who tended to have the most varying opinions on everything ever.

He looked up as Niflhel introduced himself and what they could expect, but only out of politeness. Once he’d finished talking, Valhalla went back to keeping his head lowered. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to others or didn’t like talking to them! He really did! But he’d rather it be in a much smaller group... He was better one-on-one than in crowds.

There were plenty of things Sessrumnir could think of doing other than going to this little shindig — he could be out on his sailboat, cruising along the coast, or out at the lake, or even just chilling out at home, bar hopping every night. But despite his own interests and what people thought of him, he did know what his priorities were.

No, these kinds of meetings or games weren’t anything like the bootcamps he’d gone through back in the day, but he could understand their importance to developing a stronger bond. If they weren’t going to work together to end this war, they might as well just hand their starseeds over to the Negaverse.

“The Order of the Crystal Cloud Gate...?” Sessrumnir repeated to himself and snorted. “Never heard of them... Kind of a mouthful,” he commented over his shoulder to the young man not even a few steps behind. He only got a small noise in response, completely devoid of opinion.

“Relax, will you?” he grinned, stepping back to throw an arm around Valhalla’s shoulders, causing him to stumble as he pulled him up with him. “Look, I know you’re worried about me kicking your a** in one of these games again, but I promise I won’t completely humiliate you.”

He was trying. He knew there had been some trust broken once Valhalla had found out who he was and, well... he hadn’t exactly been the nicest to the guy prior to that discovery. How was he supposed to know this soft-hearted wimp was actually his brother?

“Look, there’s someone I know. Hey Palatine!” Sessrumnir called, still dragging a now struggling Valhalla by the neck. “Didn’t think you’d show up. Have you met my brother Valhalla? Valhalla, this is Palatine,” he grinned, wondering if she would assume it was because they were both Jupiter knights, or if there was more to it.



(( If anyone wants to interact with Val or Sess, feel free! ))

To say that she was displeased to see Sessrumnir would be incorrect.

She certainly wasn’t pleased either; rather, she was resigned. She could not avoid him—
though to say that she wanted to would also be incorrect. Palatine didn’t necessarily enjoy his company the way she might enjoy the company of a friend, but it was preferable to being alone, or attempting a stilted conversation with some other knight she’d never met before. Once again the area was mostly devoid of familiar faces.

Sessrumnir was, at least, a familiarity, even if he was also a pain in the a**.

“Your brother?” she said, staring in mild curiosity at the knight Sess was dragging along with him.

It did occur to her that he might be joking, or simply referring to the fact that both he and the knight, Valhalla, were of the same planet. (Weren’t they all technically of the same planet? As far as she knew, every single one of them had been born on Earth, no matter what sorts of symbols they might sport.) “Brother” could simply be his way of denoting a close ally—
a brother-in-arms.

But Palatine was perpetually suspicious, especially of Sessrumnir. She looked between the two of them, closely scrutinizing. They did look similar, but that could very well be the abundance of green and the symbols that marked them as a knight and squire of Jupiter. Palatine thought she might have seen Valhalla somewhere before. One of the training sessions, perhaps. Yes, she remembered his helmet. Or half helmet, or whatever it was supposed to be. She’d caught a glimpse of him recently, she knew that much. Other than that, however, there was nothing notably familiar about him.

“Your brother?” she tried again. She held out her hand to Valhalla in the process. No point in not being polite. Maybe she’d catch a few mannerisms she might be able to place. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

If there was one thing Sutai didn't like, it was wallflowers.

Bounding up to Lassell, the bright and musical Squire of Polaris made a Very Big Deal out of their first meeting. "Hi! I'm Sutai, my princess is Polaris! What's your name? Are you here for the event too? Are you excited? I'm excited! I used to watch all these game shows on teevee when I was little. I don't know if I'm very good at this sort of thing but I'll certainly try! Did you know Niflhel is my princesses' boyfriend? I think he's doing a pretty good job but he could cheer up just a teeeeeeeensy bit more. Don't you think?"

Sutai was skilled in the one-sided conversation. Taking up a glass of punch from the side table, she took a sip and more words spilled out of her mouth.

"I heard we're going to be in groups or something. Well I mean, that makes sense since a lot of those game shows have teamwork built into it. Do you think you'll be on my team? I think that would be a lot of fun! We could make maps and plans and do our very best! Do you think other people will be watching? OOH what if they broadcast this? Do you think there's money involved? If there's money involved, I think I'll donate anything I win to animal shelters - they could really use the money, don't you think?"

The Squire fluttered her long lashes at Lassell and giggled. The Blathering Ballerina strikes again!

Valhalla grimaced as he was forced down under the weight of his brother’s arm, thankful that he was now just as tall as him, and no longer completely helpless in a headlock. “Seriously?” he hissed at Sessrumnir as he was dragged over to meet some knight woman he knew.

It didn’t take much for him to shove Sessrumnir’s arm away from his neck, and shot him a small glare for his goofing around. Valhalla ran a hand through his bangs as if to try and fix them from being too ruffled before taking Palatine’s hand in return, showing her a small smile.

“Unfortunately,” he mumbled weakly, but his expression made it clear that he was just teasing. No matter how much his views of his brother might change, he was still his brother.

However, he didn’t intend on being pulled into a conversation with someone Sessrumnir was probably trying to hit on. Thankfully, he was able to spot someone he recognized and took the opportunity to escape. “It’s nice to meet you... but if you’ll please excuse me...” he pardoned himself, taking a step back so he could turn and try to catch Dallol’s attention.

“Hey,” he called when he was within earshot. “It’s good to see you.” His smile had widened from when he’d just met Palatine, no longer feeling the pressure of his brother’s presence. “How are you?”

Delphi had to admit that the decorations here looked very nice, well done, the care showed. But more important, at least to her, was the knight running this. This was one of the few people she knew and one of the first she'd ever met, she'd been shocked by the missive from him since it had been so long, so she had accepted the invitation without much complaint. Getting out of work had been easy enough, she had vacation time anyway so she finally took it, and she was out of college for the summer.

She had worried, and wondered, what this meeting would be like. She had wondered who else would be here that she knew, as few as that was, and was indeed seeing many unfamiliar faces as she glanced about.

Shifting her weight the warmly dressed knight went to remove her coat, if only to insure she didn't over heat, and hung the thick garment over her left arm while she found a nice place to stand and observe others from - near but not too close to the food table.
(Anyone can interact with her, she needs to meet more people.)

The focus of Dallol's attention had reverted to her drink at some point after a quick scan of the other knights in the room failed to reveal more familiar faces. A timely reminder that she should be out there socializing, getting to know more of those who stood on the same side as her in this war. That was one of the main reasons that motivated her to set aside some time so that she could participate in this. That plus she very much needed a distraction from the recent carnival events and what she should do eventually about a certain redhead Captain.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Valhalla call out to her, a slight stutter accompanying an almost nervous look on her face as she tilted her head to the side and smiled at him. "H-Hey... how have you been?" She really hoped that he wouldn't read too much into how easily she was taken aback with his presence, quickly following up her greeting with a question as she pondered over how best she should address the seemingly innocuous question as to how she had been since the last time their paths had crossed.

"Am glad to see you too. I take it that you're here for the games, or would you happen to be one of the organizers with Niflhel?" The entire truth or part of it? That was the question she went over and over in her mind before she settled on an interim answer sort of for the time being. "Things have been kind of... peachy with the recent problem at the carnival among other... things." She gave him a wry smile, shrugging lightly as she lifted a hand to lightly scratch the back of her head. She wouldn't be opposed to elaborating further if he wanted her to really. It just wasn't in her to trouble others with her issues from the word go.