Subject: "You actually eat at the Cafeteria?"
Author:
Posted on: 2014-03-25 20:49:00 UTC
Grace was surprised. "That takes someone way braver than either of us. We tried going once. And then promptly never went again."
"Yeah, well, I don't think they expected me to react like that to the color-shifting soup," Alex said with an awkward shrug.
And to anyone who says to me, "But, Dawn, yesterday was Purim", I say, "Yes, but today is Purim too!" (And I'm not quoting Sam Winchester just for the fun of it, it really is).
For those of you unaware of what Purim actually is, it's a Jewish holiday where we celebrate an ancient deliverance from destruction by doing many things: getting together to read the account of what happened, dressing up in costumes (which range from hamantaschen to characters from the account to animals to, well, anything you want to dress up as is fine), getting drunk to the point where you can't tell the difference between the villain and the hero of the account, giving gifts of food to friends, and giving money, food, and so on to charity...there are many, many traditions, and, well, they can be extremely fun.
Now, when I say that today is Purim too, I really mean that it's Shushan Purim (Shushan, or Susa, being the capital city in which most of the Purim story takes place), which is the day on which residents of walled cities celebrate Purim. It falls one day later than Purim, which was yesterday, so Happy Shushan Purim! (What's really fun to do, especially if you're in Israel, is to spend Purim somewhere and then go into Jerusalem and celebrate Shushan Purim. Two days of Purim! It's awesome.) Why am I letting you know about this holiday, you may ask? Well, I've got an idea.
The idea is this: Someone, somewhere in the PPC, is throwing a Purim party. Everyone is invited: costumes are preferred, hamantaschen and drinks and many other things will be served, someone will attempt to read the Megillah (that is, the account of the Purim story), and there will probably be a good deal of chaos.
Some guidelines/things to note:
-Everyone is welcome. That means new agents, old agents, reluctant agents, enthusiastic agents, agents who wandered in by mistake...everyone. It also means minis, kids, and possibly pets. Free-To-Use Agents are also good.
-This is newbie-inclusive! While I know some newbies (often depending on just how new they are) have agents they're thinking about, many other newbies don't--and, well, this is Purim. It's a party. Everyone should be able to come! So...everyone includes Boarders, with the condition that you're incognito! Pretend to be your costumes, pretend to be newly-recruited agents, whatever you like--as long as you remember that the vast majority of PPC HQ's inhabitants don't know the Board exists (and would forget if they found out). Of course, this isn't just for newbies; if you're not a newbie and you really, really want to, write yourself in! The same rules apply, though.
-On canon-compliance: this one is up to you. Knowing me, I'm probably going to end up referencing this at some point, although without huge amounts of detail--probably just "That was one crazy party, wasn't it?" "Yes, it was! I couldn't even hear the end of the Megillah..." "Didn't someone nearly start a tribble infestation?" "...nearly?" /slow stares/ "Oh dear." ...Anyway, you can call this canon or not (or anything in between) for your agents as you wish. It's entirely up to you.
-Have fun! Oh, and, have an interesting article on interpreting the mitzvah (commandment/good deed) of drinking on Purim...it may come in handy. (Any Hebrew words in there that you can't figure out, bring them to me for explanation).
So, how about it? Shall we throw a party?
~DF
PS: To start, here, have some virtual hamantaschen...there are plenty of types, so I'm sure you can all find some that you like!
PPS: And so it begins:
In 2014 HST, on a day that was probably Shushan Purim, every single inhabitant of PPC HQ found an invitation in their room. Even the Nursery got them; even the Flowers. It was later rumored that even the residents of New Caledonia found the invitations, all displayed in prominent places, all brightly colored and inviting.
The message read as follows:
Sick of work? Want to break free? Just want a drink?
This is your lucky day!
Come to the room in PPC HQ—you know the one—and join the party! Today is Purim, and celebration is imminent!
Food, drinks, and a lot of fun! Bring your friends, minis, and kids! Learn, cut loose, and just enjoy!
(Costumes encouraged)
There was no signature, nor even a hint as to where the messages had come from. And on top of each piece of fireproof paper, enough hamantaschen for every inhabitant of each room sat innocently.
Will you join the fun?
Upon hearing the loud knock at his RC door, Copernicus almost involuntarily looked up to focus on it. The golem briefly weighed the benefits of ignoring the sound and continuing to fine-tune the charge port for his new mini-Colossus with the cons that might result if whoever was on the other side tried to force the door open. Opting for the path that would at least allow him more prep time for interaction, he stood up, taking a brief moment to untangle a wire from his cogs.
"Excuse me, Anersin," he said to the mini perched on the couch. "I have to answer this." Anersin beeped in acknowledgement as Copernicus walked toward the special-sized RC door, and watched as he opened it with a massive clockwork hand.
Upon doing so, however, the golem was confronted with the sight of a short Dersite with his hands in the pockets of an enormous, garishly-colored coat. No two patches were alike in color or texture, the lapels in particular contrasting brightly with its more-or-less red theme, and seemingly as an afterthought, the being's normally-bald head was adorned with a floppy blond wig.
"Hey, Nick!" the Dersite greeted him familiarly as he squeezed around his partner's mechanical bulk into the RC. "Still here, huh? I thought you'd either be down looking for a costume or up in the Observatory hiding again."
The golem only spared a moment to be baffled before remembering who he was dealing with. He sighed, the noise producing a grinding hum deep in his vocal vents. He would need to use simple, direct questions. "Hiding from what, Lonny? And why exactly are you dressed like that?"
"What, like this?" Lonny performed a theatrical half-twirl. "I'm Colin Baker! I got this costume for a steal down at the general store. Well, the coat, mostly. Kelemen said he'd been having a hard time selling it."
Copernicus shifted the position of his feet to get a better look at the coat, and quickly realized that he still found it hideous, even at the new angle. "Well, then, it was very good of you to take it off of his hands, especially if there are other people searching for costumes at this time, as you implied. I know how difficult it is having to unload surplus commodities after their value as a craze item has ended."
Lonny groaned and rolled his eyes. "No, no, no. That was a perfect setup for something like 'I can't imagine why' or 'You know, there might've been a good reason for that'. You'll never learn if you don't take opportunities like this, man!"
Copernicus briefly considered pursuing this, but wrote it off as a lost cause. It would be better to ask more direct questions. "Lonny," he asked, "Why, precisely, are people buying so many costumes?"
"Oh, right!" Lonny fished around in one of the internal pockets of his new outfit and pulled out a message decorated in almost as many colors as the coat. "There's a party today! It's Purim's birthday, or anniversary, or baby shower, or something, and she wants us all to dress up! I didn't really read too far into it, honestly, because the shifting colors started to give me a headache, but hey, anyplace with free food and an opportunity to dress up like the Doctor is a place I can get behind! And you're coming with me."
"And why would that be?"
Lonny grinned, showing that his dedication to the costume hadn't included covering up his sharp Dersite teeth. "Twofold: because it'd be an opportunity to do some more of that 'meeting new people' and 'expanding cultural knowledge' you're always yakking about but never actually getting down to doing, and because without you there, there'd be no first line of defense if I decide to do something you'd regret answering questions about later. And I know you don't want that."
Copernicus thought about this for a moment, musing mostly over how non-specific his partner's second point was and weighing the possibilities for both mentioned opportunities. After a few seconds, he relented. Shuffling to the nearby closet, he carefully opened the door and lifted out several items, stacking them one by one into two piles on the floor until he pulled out a sombrero and a large blue domino mask.
"This will do." he remarked to no one in particular, and managed to loop the mask's string around his head with much less effort than one would have expected with a head as large and smooth as his.
Lonny snickered. "You know, I hadn't even considered this before, but those masks really don't have the same effect when the guy wearing them doesn't have a mouth."
"It was not my decision. They were leftovers from the Christmas party."
"Aaand another opportunity gone. 'Says the guy with the patchwork coat', maybe?" Lonny shrugged. "Whatever." His eyes brightened. "Hey, wait, the Christmas party? Do I get to hear a story from this mysterious escapade on the way to Purim's room?"
"I will never discuss the Christmas party."
Especially this one, I must say. It's good to see Lonny and Copernicus again, and this scene was hilarious. Especially Lonny's Purim misconceptions, his Doctor outfit, all the exchanges between the agents--y'know what, forget it, I just enjoyed the whole thing.
...is he going to spend half the party trying to find Purim now? That could be hilarious.
But yes. Late entries are quite welcome, as I probably should have said much earlier (possibly even in the original post). I'll hopefully be making a few myself; I kind of want to see how Kozar and the Reader are getting on...
~DF
"I don't think you've quite managed to capture the essence of that costume, Cali" Miah said looking up and down Cali's Men in Black suit.
"What? No way! I've got this!" Cali adjusted his grip on Helen's hand. The four-year-old was dressed as Deadpool in a princess tutu. It was Miah's idea.
"It's the blue hair that looks like it might be alive, dude."
"Better than your costume. A psychopath? Really?"
"Hey, they look just like everyone else, but underneath..."
"That has never been anything but a lame excuse for not dressing up and you know--Kyle, Kevin! No! No, slime pistols at the party!" Cali left Helen with Miah and chased after the two boys, who were dressed as generic marines.
Hannah, who was on break from junior agent training, was dressed as Zoe from Firefly. "Does he realize that those are just the decoys?"
Miah shook her head and made shushing noises as Cali came back holding the water pistols. "Seriously, where do they keep getting these things?"
Miah put her most innocent look on her face. It didn't help that Ronan was on her shoulder looking supremely smug.
"Oh. Of course."
"Hey, toots, we're here," Dinozo said before he and Magee disappeared into the crowd. They could be tracked by the loudly off-key singing of Irish pub music.
Miah shook her head. "I don't want to think about the trouble those two can get into when drunk."
"Hey, I see Florestan and Eusabius!" He darted off to join them.
Miah handed new slime guns to the boys and reminded them to take defensible positions before sliming anyone. She left Ronan near the chocolate section of the buffet. Hannah drifted into the crowd leading Helen toward the nearest gathering of children.
Hauk Tauri, Lt Colonel Samantha Cater, and their hatchling mini-Unas trailed in behind.
"Hey Unger," she said when she spotted the half-elf near the meat section of the buffet. She looked around, but didn't spot Kelok.
"Get off of me, already!" Cali shouted. Miah glanced at him. He was under a pile of minis. She shook her head. He couldn't go anywhere near a creature based mini without it glomping him.
Unger pointed to a gathering of agents in a corner. The sound of Magee and Dinozo singing "Seven Drunken Nights" could be heard from that direction. Miah rolled her eyes. A new sound stopped her mid-eyeroll. A baritone voice had joined them on the chorus. She looked at Unger who nodded. he was laughing so hard that he was holding his ribs.
"You know he's going to kill you tomorrow, right?"
Unger nodded, laughing too hard to speak.
Having acquired a red Solo cup full of beer, Gall pushed her way to the food table. Upon spotting Unger, she came over to give him a companionable punch on the arm. She had a tendency to hit hard. "How ya been, man? I haven't seen you around. You're still as scrawny as ever," she noted. "Didn't I tell you to start lifting?"
(( This might be true, or it might just be her making things up to give him a hard time. You decide! {= D ))
Unger rubbed his arm, but beamed at the Viking. "I gained three pounds!" He turned to Miah, "This is Gall my team captain for AHQAIRQL. I'm the water boy."
"Is that a sneezing game?" Miah asked. She pretended to not notice Kyle and Kevin climbing to the ceiling. They seemed o have a power to create climbable pipes, because she hadn't noticed the pipes before. Maybe a check of their glitter levels was in order.
"Nope! Everybody gathers in a room or hallway and turns out the lights and beats each other with bats. The last person standing wins for their team." Unger swung his arms wildly in imitation of swinging a bat at someone.
"Sounds like my kind of fun." Miah held a hand out to Gall. "Nice to meet you."
From the corner they could hear Kelok loudly stumbling along the words of "What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor" as Magee and Dinozo sang it.
Gall side-stepped a wide swing of Unger's arm. "Hey, watch the drink!" She took a few defensive gulps. The booze would definitely be safer in her stomach, yes, Preciousss.
She shook Miah's hand with gusto. "You, too! Any fan of random, senseless violence is somebody I'm proud to call friend." She grinned, then remarked of Kelok, "That guy's got some pipes on 'im. Finally, this is starting to sound like a party!"
"Come on Kelok. There'll be food. Real food," Unger said. He was joined in the puppy dog eyes department by Homles, the mini-Hound of the Baskervilles, and Khazad Dym, the mini-Balrog.
"I like the food in the cafeteria," Kelok growled.
"Hey, no fair using your Wraith growl at me! We haven't done anything in what feels like years! Besides, I want to see you drunk when it isn't a problem with your nigel."
Kelok gave him a Look. "I'll go, but I am not getting drunk."
Sometime later the baying of the mini-Hound preceded the arrival of a Stargate Atlantis Wraith dressed as Sherlock Holmes, and a D & D 3.5 half-elf dressed as Jamie McCrimmon from Dr. Who.
The minis ran off to politely greet and/or cover with glowing drool unsuspecting party goers, and Kelok and Unger settled in near the food. They didn't see anyone they knew, but then, they didn't get away from Sherlock Holmes much.
Unger began surreptitiously filling Kelok's glass with alcohol.
By the time Grace and Alex had made their way to the food table, Grace had already drank a cup and a half of deliciously spiked punch, and given her low tolerance for alcohol, was feeling rather good, a state of being that was compounded by the general air of drunken joy in the room. Admittedly, the mood was being spoiled a little by the Time Lady-driven drama on the other side of the room, but Grace ignored it in favor of getting some food into her. Alex was right by her side; he'd abstained from the alcohol for the time being, not liking how it messed with his high-maintenance senses. He also wanted to make sure Grace didn't make a fool of herself, as empaths and alcohol really didn't mix very well.
Alex was perusing his choices when he felt the top of his left boot start to get suspiciously soggy. He looked down to find a mini-Hound of the Baskervilles sitting just underneath the table, panting happily as it looked up at him with hopeful eyes. "Ah. Um, hi there," he said, moving his foot out of the way. "Hey, Grace?"
"Yep?"
"There's a glowing dog here, right? My senses aren't acting up on me, are they?"
Grace peered down at Homles, tilting her head curiously. "Nope. That's a dog. Look, even its drool glows. Cool."
"I wonder who it belongs to," Alex said, surreptitiously shaking off his boot before grabbing a small meat snack and carefully holding it out to Homles. He and Grace didn't keep any pets, mini or mundanes; they had yet to find one that was hypoallergenic.
"No clue. Think we should ask around?"
Alex shrugged. "Maybe."
Whack fol' the dah, now, dance to your partner.
Wipe the floor, your trotters shake.
Isn't it the truth I told ya?
Lots of fun at Finnegan's wake.
Unger grinned broadly. He hoped someone was recording Kelok as he sang the way only someone very drunk could. Then he noticed that two new agents were interested in Homles.
"Hi! I'm Unger. That's Homles!" He grabbed a couple of small sausages and tossed them to the mini-Hound, who managed to string drool in an impressive arc as he was catching them. Unger didn't seem to care that he now had a glowing line across his kilt.
Grace hid a laugh behind a hand. "Homles?" she repeated. "Interesting name for a glowing dog."
"That drool's got to be annoying to deal with," Alex noted, "but I suppose it could be helpful at times. No need for a nightlight with him around, right?"
"We found him in a badfic. He's a misspelling of Holmes." He giggled, which was should be at odds with him being a barbarian, but he looked like the type that did it a lot anyway. "We definitely don't have any problems with it being too dark in our RC between him and the mini-Balrog." He continued to ignore the drool on his clothes and its glow slowly faded away.
"He's adorable." Grace ruffled Homles' ears, scratching him gently under the collar. "Does he shed at all?"
Unger said. "He used to run through the halls baying, though. He hasn't done that since we before we--I--set the Lounge on fire. I think he's trying to keep me out of trouble."
Homles huffed under the table, and turned his expression into something resembling exasperation. For a dog his face was very expressive.
"What continuum is he from? Guessing from the name, I'd have to say something to do with Sherlock Holmes, right?" he asked.
"We work in the All-Purpose Department Sherlock Holmes Division. I've heard that there is a Sherlock Division for the modern interpretation, and they get tons of these mini-Hounds, but Homles is a proper Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes mini-Hound."
In the corner, a new song had been started by the drunken mini-LEO and SGA Wraith chorus.
And it's all for me grog, me jolly jolly grog
All for me beer and tobacco
Well I've spent all me tin with the lassies drinking gin
Far across the western ocean I must wander
Alex ruffled Homles' ears before glancing over at Kelok. "I've got to say, I've never seen a Wraith drunk before. Why the drinking songs?"
"Well... The little guys were over there singing, and once I got enough alcohol into him, I just sort of shoved him in that direction. He needs to have some fun. It's actually kind of weird. His metabolism should have gotten rid of most of the alcohol by now."
"Huh. Maybe it's not normal alcohol?" Grace suggested. "The punch did taste pretty strong."
but was interrupted by a glob of slime hitting him in the face. He wiped his face and glared at Homles, who was the picture of innocence. Unger noticed that the slime was not glowing about the time he took a second shot of it to the face.
That was enough to have him scooting under the table with Homles to look for the perpetrator from safety.
Alex blinked and then wiped away a few splatters of slime that had managed to land on him and looked at Grace, only to find her fairly covered in the stuff. She looked about as confused as he did, so Alex did the best thing he could think of: he dragged her under the table to join Unger and Homles, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket to help his partner wipe the slime off her face.
Kelok and the mini-LEOs were still singing, then moved his arm higher to an area near the ceiling where two pre-teen boys were sitting on pipes shooting slime filled water guns.
They heard cackling laughter. Unger identified it as Agent Miah, who didn't have a drop of slime on her, and in fact might have been tossing the boys refills.
Cali was stalking toward the scene, also not yet slime-coated.
and then, after swiping a small amount off of Grace's forehead, tasted it. "Huh. I think this is Minecraft slime, or at least, a variant of it," he said. "Maybe from one of the modpacks. It tastes like green apple."
Unger tentatively tasted the slime on his hand. "That's good! Even better than the blue pudding-like substance from the Cafeteria!" He started enthusiastically licking his hand.
Cali had made it to Miah who stopped laughing. She said something they couldn't make out, then pointed over Cali's shoulder. When he turned to look, she dove into the crowd and disappeared. The boys were watching the exchange with obvious mirth.
Grace was surprised. "That takes someone way braver than either of us. We tried going once. And then promptly never went again."
"Yeah, well, I don't think they expected me to react like that to the color-shifting soup," Alex said with an awkward shrug.
Unger looked a bit wistful. "You're so lucky. It always seems like we're out on a mission when they serve that. My favorite is the moving meatloaf. Of course, sometimes when we're lucky, we can find amazing Victorian food in the fics. Kelok is always careful what he lets us eat though. He says that most of the canned food is full of lead and other things that'll make us--or at least me--sick."
Alex said. "It's usually a lot safer, to be honest, especially for me."
"He's a picky eater," Grace teased gently, "but he's got his reasons."
Cali didn't seem to be having any luck with getting the boys down, although they seemed to be running out of slime now that Miah wasn't supplying them with refills.
Suddenly one of the boys started chanting, "Food fight! Food fight!" The other quickly picked up the chant as well. A man walked by, rather covered with slime, carrying two small children, also slime covered, dressed as cookies.
Unger's look brightened. "Food fight? I haven't gotten to be in one of those in years!" He scrambled out from under the table, grabbed the first thing he found, which happened to be cherry tomatoes and started throwing them. His aim was good. He hit both of the boys, Cali, A man dressed in long red robes, and a DMS agent with a long braid. He ducked back down and looked for a table with stickier foods.
Homles stood up, stretched impressively and began slurping up green slime. He did a very impression of a vacuum cleaner--or maybe a mop, since he left a trail of slowly disappearing glowing drool everywhere he licked.
Cali had turned and scowled in Unger's direction, but had quickly went back to trying to get the boys down. The commotion had finally stopped the singing from the corner, in mid-chorus, of Wild Rover. Kelok staggered over to Cali, and nearly knocked the much smaller agent over when he threw an arm around Cali's shoulders. He looked up at the boys, and said, in his best Wraith 'command' voice--the one backed up by psychic willpower--"Down."
Both boys instantly scooted down the pipes. They stood in front of Cali and Kelok, looking guilty.
"Apologize to the host and clean this mess up," Cali said.
Kevin looked up like he was going to argue. Kelok glared at him, and both boys scampered to find a mop and bucket.
Kelok smiled broadly, and clapped his hand on Cali's back. Cali stumbled forward, but managed to not fall. Kelok suddenly wrapped Cali in a bear hug. Cali was distinctly not looking happy.
Unger sighed. "He really likes being close to someone, but he mostly won't, because of his home!fic. I think I should go rescue Cali. He's only human."
Before he could move though, Cali had managed to wriggle out of Kelok's grasp. Homles had worked his way over to Kelok, and now nudged his great glowing head against Kelok's leg. Between the mini-LEO's tugging on his coat and the mini-Hound pushing on his legs, they managed to get him back into the corner. The NCIS minis went back to singing, but Kelok sat quietly snuggling the mini-Hound.
(a phrase to which any cafeteria worker has an instinctual, autonomic response), Séverine and Yoof immediately set out for the nearest exit, Yoof in the lead and Séverine holding the tails of Yoof's cape up to shoulder level, keeping the precious hamantaschen safe from flying food.
The little humanoid train had to keep snaking between groups of agents. Fortunately, most eyes were focused on the kids up in the corner and the adults beneath them, so the pair didn't seem to be drawing too much negative attention as their escape progressed . . .
The DMS agent--at least, she certainly looked like Agent Dawn McKenna, albeit without a costume--shrieked in surprise, and began to frantically brush tomatoes off her clothes. She was joined in the frantic brushing by a young man dressed as Rassilon, who was loudly bemoaning the tomato that had gotten stuck to the top of his staff, just over the imitation white point star.
"I mean, really!" the latter exclaimed. "Bad enough to throw tomatoes, but to cover the Staff of Rassilon with them? Even an imitation Staff of Rassilon? And what about the Robes of Rassilon, that's even worse! At least I didn't actually go and take his robes, then I'd have dry-cleaning to deal with." He turned anxiously to Dawn. "Does this show too much, do you think? Only, I don't think I can startle Time Lords with tomatoes all over my costume."
Dawn looked up at him, picking tomato seeds off her shoulder, and shrugged. "It's not too noticeable," she offered. "I mean, you might want to get a paper towel or something, but, um, other than that, you should be fine. Only--only you might want to dunk the staff in water or something."
"Water, water." Abaddon looked around. "I'm not seeing any."
"More's the pity," Dawn put in, wincing. "At least we didn't get hit with slime, that's something."
"True," Abaddon admitted. He glanced at Jacques, who was currently covered in green slime and carrying two children, also covered in slime, and shuddered. "I can't believe I thought coming to a party would be a good idea. At least I didn't wear a tuxedo, those are definitely unlucky."
Dawn blinked at him several times, and then her eyes widened. "Oh, of course! Right, you quote Ten a lot. I'd forgotten. You, um, you're going by Abaddon just now, right? Hi. I'm, uh, I'm Dawn."
"Yes, I'd noticed." Abaddon shook her hand anyway, grinning. "You're T'Zar's old partner."
This got him an eye roll. "Old, yes, that's me. Have you found any Time Lords to terrorize yet? I should think the Reader would be an excellent target."
Abaddon blinked at her. "You know the Reader?"
"Oh, um--no, not really, not too well. One hears things, though." Dawn shifted uncomfortably. Abaddon eyed her sharply. He had even opened his mouth to begin a Rassilon-inspired interrogation, but then he caught sight of--
"T'Zar!" He waved the arm without the staff excitedly. It wasn't every day he got to see his old partner--in costume, no less. Or was she in costume? It was difficult to tell from here, especially with a woman--was that her current partner?--in front of her. "T'Zar, over here!"
--
Well, you gave me an opening, I'm taking it. (Also, in a bit of unashamed fangirling, I'm rping with/talking to Miah! This is so exciting.)
(...by which I mean that I've read a bunch of your missions and really enjoyed them, but haven't spoken to you properly before, so now I'm excited. Guess I'm still a newbie at heart :))
~DF
Unger sighed. No food fight today. He glanced at the agents he had thrown tomatoes at, now trying to clean a staff.
"I apologize, Alex and Grace. I should go clean up my mess. It was very nice to meet you!"
He bounded over to the tomato seed covered agents. "Hi! I'm unger! I apologize for the tomatoes." He pulled what looked like a small stainless steel fire extinguisher bottle from an improbably small sporran. "Do you need some water for cleaning off your staff? It's really cold, but just water."
Unless this Alex from Floaters is the same Alex from Floaters that we already have(which is entirely possible, since Alex was only described here as "wearing the robes of a Jedi", which would make for a complete costume when matched with existing-Alex's lightsaber, and Ugolino put the character out for grabs last time he was here in preparation for his other agent getting a new anime-native partner), I don't know who either of them are, species and history-wise. Elaborate?
Linked to that, I'm not certain what the "empathic" here means. Is it the standard ability to detect and be affected by emotions, low-grade telepathy, or the ability to shape and manipulate emotions? The "empaths and alcohol don't mix" lines imply that it might be the latter, since her drunken state and lack of mental inhibitions could be influenced by the same in everyone else, and her mind could magnify those and reflect them back on anyone nearby. That's a rare version of empathy, though, and it still wouldn't nail down what species Grace is.
Okay, so, to answer your questions in order, with a small preface: These are entirely new characters I'm playing around with before I debut them officially, so, no, this isn't the same Alex from Floaters that's already kicking around. They're both human, and from The Sentinel fandom, a sci-fi/buddy cop show (yes, you read that right) that aired right around the same time the X-Files did. This is a pretty good explanation of what I'm playing around with with these two; Grace is the Guide and Alex the Sentinel.
As for Grace's empathy, it's the first definition you provided (I tend to call those 'receiving empaths', personally), though I've seen some people write Guides as capable of all three. However, I didn't want to get too OP with her, so with the whole 'empaths and alcohol don't mix' line, it's more that her normally relatively strong and cohesive mental 'shields'/protections are weakened by said intoxicant and make her more susceptible to other peoples' emotions.
Does that help?
That article didn't really make it clear what the mechanics of Guides to Sentinels are, which just makes me wonder how the whole thing works. Does a Sentinel prompt empathic powers in his or her guide, or does a Guide create the heightened senses of his or her Sentinel, or do both exist normally, but are drawn to one another somehow? Can a Guide or a Sentinel operate independently of the other, or is the presence of both necessary to extract the true potential of either? And what would happen if one of these two was reassigned to a new partner? Could one of them imprint on the new partner, if said partner was human enough, and transform that person into a new Guide/Sentinel, or is it a bonding-for-life arrangement? And if it's the latter, what happens if one of them dies, or goes into a coma, or is forced to spend extended periods of time in another country/planet/dimension? What is the primary purpose of the Guide-to-Sentinel coupling, if there is one?
Did you get my e-mail?
Or at least, I did if your last e-mail was a new entry of our last chain on the two newest chapters. I haven't received anything else from you recently, so if that wasn't it, I didn't get it.
The one that I sent telling you, among other things, that I had published Chapters 7 and 8.
I should get to it soon. I'm using the Kindle now, and it's bad with e-mail.
Okay, so, Guides serve as baselines for Sentinels, as well as helping them consciously control their senses. Both Sentinels and Guides exist naturally (though, to be honest, now I'm getting ideas for an artificially-created Sentinel and/or Guide to use in a fic... Hmm....)in their universe, particularly in the extended universe. They can operate independently of one another, though the Guide moreso than the Sentinel, as they don't have the issues with their senses spiking and drawing them into a zone out. Following up with the first question, no, one cannot induce someone to become a Sentinel/Guide if the potential is not there. Usually it's a bonding for life scenario, though if one of them dies, the other usually can find a compatible partner. And that's really what it's all about. I personally usually play it like there's a sliding scale of compatibility between Sentinels and Guides: Any Guide can help and potentially bond with any Sentinel, but there will always be someone who is potentially better suited to that Sentinel. In Alex and Grace's case, they're very well-suited towards one another, and have a deep platonic relationship with one another. Some Sentinel/Guide pairs do have sexual relationships, but like any couple, that's entirely up to them.
How would one tell if a person had potential to become a Sentinel or a Guide? Is any well-prepared Guide capable of detecting Sentinel activity and vice versa, or is there a specific process or test necessary to determine the presence, polarity, and potency of Sentinel/Guide potential? Also, to elaborate on a question left over from last time, is there a specific purpose or reason for the presence of these powers in what seem to otherwise be baseline humans? Were they created deliberately to fight crime, or developed due to a genetic fluke, or kicked off by the presence of supernatural beings, or anything like that?
To answer your last question first, in-canon explanation for Sentinels (the more intensive and planned out role of Guides is definitely an extended universe/fandom thing) is that they developed as protectors of tribes/villages way back when that sort of thing was needed. IIRC, there were actually only a few known Sentinels in canon, but most people tend to extrapolate and have Sentinels and Guides be pretty common. As for a test, it varies with each writer. Most assume that there's either some sort of genetic marker for it, or that a Sentinel and/or Guide can instinctively recognize one of their fellows. Potential is based purely on the individuals, much like it is with any team/duo working together. Some fit and some don't.
"Hm... Florestan, mayhaps this could be rather interesting."
Eusabius held the slip of paper that had been posted to the door.
"Oh dear, it's Purim again," Florestan said. He sighed.
"Purim?" Wave Crest asked. "I... I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that is..."
"It's a Jewish holiday," Florestan replied. "I remember the last time I went to one of those. I got really hammered..." He nursed his head. "I still get nightmares about the headaches."
"Oh, I'm sure it's not that bad," Wave Crest replied.
"Indeed," Eusabius said. He offered a smile. "Perhaps I can even see if Zerenze is willing to come..."
Florestan chuckled. "That's not gonna end well," he said immediately. "Well, unless you're the kind who loves to see what drunk aliens do."
"Hey," said Wave Crest. "It'll be awfully sweet, I think. What's the worst that could--?"
"Don't finish that sentence," Florestan replied. "You know how the Ironic Overpower is."
"Hm... I believe I shall ask him to come along, then," Eusabius said. With this, he walked over to the console. "You two should prepare yourselves as well."
"Okay," said Wave Crest. "I think this'll be fun!"
"Ugh, I hope so..." said Florestan. "I just better not be nursing a hangover when we're done here..."
It's been nearly a week out-of-universe, and they've still not gotten here! No one can interact with your agents if they're nowhere near the party!
Unless, of course, you wanted to write the next entry with the RC 1810 crew having been lost in the halls for a lengthy period of time. Since the invites said "the room, you know the one" without narrowing down which room it could be and wrote the actual number in hard-to-read yellow ink, that may be an even more likely possibility. Maybe they can start off a lost-in-the-hallways sidestory, kicked off after Eusabius realizes that Wave Crest was performing some newbie navigation mistakes and has gotten them sent to the other end of Headquarters.
Sometimes my proclivity for exclamation marks just gets away from me.
In this mission, specifically.
The asari and the quarian where huddled together in fright, with the salarian looking on in wonder. This should contain "were", not "where". Also, in less typographical terms, that phrasing looks as though the salarian is looking in wonder at the cowering fear of the other two children. Perhaps while the salarian looked on in wonder would work better.
She looked no older than “D… daddy?” The end of the sentence seems to be missing. There should be at least one word to describe Seraphina's age, followed by a period.
Dark Lord Aakmal has just finished sweeping the floor of his textile shop when a old, fat orcwoman enters the shop.
"Ah, Bilza, how's the food at Cafeteria?"
"Horrible, my lord." Her burp however suggests otherwise. She seems to be holding a decorated basket of goodies. And its contents are triangular-shaped pastries which Aakmal has never seen in his whole life.
"And what's that you're holding?"
"Ah yes, my lord. This basket I found in our pantry. It's an invitation to celebrate... Purim, according to this card."
She walks in through the back door, thought Aakmal. "Call everyone in the shop, Bilza. Let's share the treats. Let's head back to the pantry, my throat is itching for coffee anyways."
***
Aakmal, Gashnag, Bilza, and a few other orcs are seated around the table, the basket on it, and empty of the pastries, which are now being eaten slowly by everyone.
"This biscuit is awesome, Thuglan."
"I think it's a cake, Bilza."
"Thuglan, Look at it! It's so crunchy. Cakes are never crunchy!"
"Well, mine is chewy."
"Is it, Gashnag? Let me some!"
And soon all the orcs are entangled in a quarrel over whether the pastry is a cake or biscuit. Aakmal quickly takes the basket before they ruin it, and let them quarrel for a few minutes before he blows a whistle.
"Now, that I got your attention, it's time to answer the penultimate question: Are we going there?"
Everyone nods and comments in agreement.
"And now, the ultimate question: What we are going to wear?"
Evry orcs mutters in chorus, "Eh?"
Aakmal sighs. "(Costumes encouraged), the cards say."
"I'm dressing as the prettiest princess!" shouts the male orc Gashnag.
"You're too pretty for that." comments Tughlan, to the laughter of everyone.
"Alright, I don't know when the party is going to end, and where the room actually is. Let's meet back here in 15 minutes, with or without costumes, but preferably not naked. We'll close shop for today."
***
Everyone is dressed and ready for a party. Gashnag is rocking the Lady Gaga's Rita Repulsa dress, Bilza is sporting a British Safari costume, Tughlan decides to go minimalist and employs the Indian servant dress, holding an umbrella for his wife, Larslan is wearing the Batman costume, and Daughrad is trying to look like Justin Bieber.
Dark Lord Aakmal, the claimant of Arda, the Lord of Orcs under Bukit Kepayan, the nominal servant of Morgoth... is wearing a green Baju Melayu shirt with green-and-blue checkered sarong with a cheap belt. All the orcs are looking at their lord with disbelief.
"What? I'm a simple Dark Lord, with a simple Dark needs."
"What are we waiting for? Let's go!"
"Wait, let's lock the shop first."
***
"Where's the party, my lord?"
"I have no idea."
"We've been circling the whole PPC HQ for weeks!"
"You mean we just walked for a few minutes, Daughrad."
And suddenly they found a wide-open door with a large hole in the wall right beside it. A small crowd have gathered inside the room, chatting and wondering at the hole in the wall.
"I guess here's the party."
Séverine peeked around the corner of the door--the actual doorway, not the blown-in one. After the large plant stuck in the top of the Kanak chieftain's headdress flopped down over her eyes, she adjusted the hat's flat, round part (mindful of the animal teeth ringing it) back to the top of her head. "Oui, here is this party, Yoof," she said. She edged into the room, with her Mog partner following behind.
"Ha!" Yoof barked, his voice muffled by a full-face Phantom of the Opera mask. "I smell them! Tasty treats from that letter!"
"I wish you had left one for me to taste," she replied, edging around dancing and chatting agents. "But no matter; party food is always decent. Better than anything we have found for la cantine all week, I am sure. Now, where are they--these cookie things you claim taste so good?"
Yoof sniffed the air--it soundly exaggeratedly loud from inside the Erik mask. "Mmmmm . . . everywhere! Find tables!"
Séverine tried to look over the heads around her, but she was too short. "They must be along the edges, Yoof. Come, to the wall!" She took her partner by the hand and started leading him through the crowd. Yoof continued sniffing, the sound drawing a few quizzical glances from the agents they passed.
"All different things in the centers, ha!" Yoof barked. "Cherries and chocolate and cheese and . . . and . . . and . . ."
Séverine waited for him to finish, then hesitantly filled in, "Chicken?"
"Prunes!" Yoof finished. "Ha!"
"Oh. That does sound more reasonable. Oui."
The partners finally reached a table, covered in large platters that were themselves covered in triangular pastries folded over various colors of filling.
"Ha! Ha!" Yoof barked as he grabbed one and tried to jam it into the closed mouth of his mask.
"Not so loud, Yoof! Do not draw attention." Séverine reached for one of the pastries with a dark-colored middle. She placed one in her mouth and began chewing--then moaned even louder than Yoof had barked.
"Oh, la saveur . . . what are these delicious things?"
A nearby agent named the food for Séverine: hamantaschen. [If anyone wants their agent to be the one answering in this scene, just let me know.] "They are so very delicious!" Séverine said, popping another into her mouth and licking the prune from her fingers. As she chewed, she narrowed her eyes and glanced at the other agents near the table. After she swallowed, she whispered to Yoof, "And they will be even more delicious next to the food in the cafeteria. Yoof, give me your cape."
Yoof whimpered quietly, looking over his shoulder. "Ha! But, Sev, there's soooo many agents here!" The "so" came out a long, low whine. Yoof had been particularly intimidated by a human man who had been looking at him intensely from the entrance, one also dressed in all black, but with a smaller, black mask and a bandana. "They'll see! Ha! We'll get caught!"
"Everyone is distracted, Yoof. No one will notice. And besides, you are already wearing a mask! No one could recognize you. Now, give me your cape."
Yoof whined quietly with a big frown hidden under his mask. Still, he dutifully turned around so Séverine could reach his all-black Phantom cape. She took one corner in each hand and fluffed it out like a sheet, then moved both corners to her left hand. She stepped closer to Yoof, giving the cape a shape like a pillowcase. Then she started quickly emptying some of the platters of hamantaschen into the cape.
Yoof watched the nearby agents as she worked, eyes showing wide through the holes in his mask. At Séverine's urging, he moved further down the table to a set of still-full trays, Séverine sticking close behind to keep the food from tumbling out . . .
Hannah still had Helen by the hand. She had been leading the little girl toward the cookie-like desserts when she saw two agents beginning to dump them all into a sheet or cape.
"Excuse me," she said to the less nervous looking one. "Would you mind if I took some for princess Deadpool here before you take them all?"
(Hannah is 13 now. Almost old enough to be an agent. Hard to believe. I think she's still more responsible than Agent Miah, though.)
She had been thinking up excuses to use if any agents had questioned her actions, but she had not expected to be confronted by two small children.
"Ah. Yes! Of course! That is, I was not--well." She quickly scooped a handful of the hamantaschen back out of Yoof's cape and held them out towards the girls, not letting go of the cape's corners. "I was only moving them, you see. To another table that did not have as many!" This technically wasn't a lie--Séverine was just talking about tables that didn't happen to be in this room.
Nonetheless, Yoof was giving her an unhappy gaze from under his mask.
Helen quickly pulled her mask off and began eating cookies. wasn't going to pass up the opportunity of not having a responsible adult in charge of her.
Hannah took a cookie and nibbled it before asking, "Do you need a distraction to get that stuff out of here?"
though for an entirely different reason this time. She slowly narrowed her eyes at Hannah. "You would . . . do that?"
Yoof was whimpering all over again. "Sev, no! Don't let the little guys get in trouble, too! Ha!"
"No one is getting in trouble, Yoof. Relax yourself! Only think of getting a day off, peut-être!" She turned her attention back to the girl. "So you are willing to help us? Oui?"
"Those two kids," she said of the two pre-teen boys sitting on pipes that ran across the ceiling. "have slime filled water guns, and are waiting for my signal to start shooting. They don't want to shoot someone who can't take the joke."
She looked around, betraying her inexperience in this kind of negotiation. "So what is it worth to you?"
"We know where all of the best foods are stored!"
Yoof cocked his head at Séverine, but didn't say anything.
"Any time you like, you and your friends can come by and we will get for you all the most delicious bon bons!"
(Just in case it's not clear by now, Séverine is a BAD PERSON and is now LYING TO CHILDREN. We can write some kind of comeuppance/revenge for the kids against her later, if need be.)
but nodded at the boys. She made subtle pointing motions toward several agents, including one that had just used a disguise generator to change from looking like Ianto Jones to looking like Captain Jack Harkness.
The party was suddenly a lot messier.
((If you want an adult, there's a woman who looks like Agent Dawn who is also dressed like Agent Dawn, although she isn't Agent Dawn. There's also a Matt Smith-lookalike dressed up like Rassilon (so basically, long red robes, a staff, and a gauntlet). If you'd rather kids, um, I've got a two-year-old boy and his sister of the same age, who are dressed up as hamantaschen (although the girl also has a very sparkly tiara). Any of them will probably take being shot with slime guns well enough, although the one in costume as Rassilon will probably start quoting the character into the bargain.))
((Your choice :) ~DF))
((Seems like a perfect time to test out some new agents I've been playing around with, particularly since it's non-canon.))
"No, no, you don't understand, any reason to get drunk is great. This just happens to be a religious one."
"Neither of us are Jewish, though."
A shrug. "And? Since when have you known any PPC agent to turn up free food and booze, my dear guide?"
There was a pause, and then the shorter of the two Floaters shrugged. "Eh, you're right. The food'll be better than the Cafeteria, at any rate, if these cake-things are any indication."
"Literally anything is better than the cafeteria."
"True. So, what should we wear?"
~/~
Not long after that, a stocky redhead in the robes of a Jedi walked in, accompanied by a slightly shorter woman of indeterminate Asian descent who was wearing a set of dark green scrubs and a white lab-coat. She was fiddling with a clip-on badge that refused to hang straight, muttering under her breath. Finally, her companion pulled her to one side and adjusted it for her.
"There," he said, making sure it was hanging straight. "Better?"
"Much. Thanks, Alex."
"You're more than welcome, Grace." He absently smoothed out her lab-coat at the shoulders and then kissed her on the forehead. "Let's go see is we know any... There's a hole. In the wall."
Grace turned. "So there is. Weird."
Caroline frowned as she scanned the invitation. "Costumes encouraged..." She turned to Anne. "Anne, do you -" She stopped speaking as she saw Anne pulling on a glassy mask. "When did you get that?"
Anne blinked in surprise. "This? Oh, it's a side-project I've been working on. See?" She tapped the side of the mask, activating a thin holographic layer over the top of the mask.
Caroline's neck joints whirred as she tilted her head. "In any case. I believe that some of those extra drones we've been working on should work for a costume."
Anne shrugged. "I don't see why not!"
Also, this is another reason why the PPC is so cool- I never would have known Purim even existed if I wasn't a Boarder. American Education System FAIL.
Maybe I'll post something more if I get an idea, but right now I'm just kind of wiped. :/
Also, total bonus points to anyone who gets the reference.
Printworthy read over the strange multicolored note again, finaly able to translate the words written in the lighter shades. "Interesting... Marvin, do you know what the term 'Purim' refers to?"
Marvin shook his head, reading the note over his partner's shoulder. "No, I don't. I mean, I think I've heard it used before, but I can't remember when or why." He scratched his forehead, his eyes clamped shut, in an attempt to look into the past. "It was... Um..." The man started to nod his head slightly, a slight memory peaking over the imposing walls of time. "I think Barry mentioned it once. It was some sort of Jewish holiday his family celebrated. Can't remember anything else, though."
Printworthy smiled, setting the note down lightly. "Ah, a traditional holiday. Well, that would be cause for celebration. I am, regrettably, dreadfully ignorant on human culture, beyond some limited exposure through fan creations and yourself. Is there any information you could give me on the customs of these Jewish peoples that you mentioned?"
Marvin thought back once more, diving back into the recesses of his mind. "Um...They are a religious group. They have a special language they traditionally speak and write in. They follow the Old Testament, as well as some other texts..." Marvin's eyes opened reluctantly, finally accepting defeat. "That's bout it. I never learned much about the Jews. Sorry."
Printworthy batted his partner's apology away, his smile growing ever wider. "No matter, no matter. We are all ignorant on a great many things. However, this does provide a marvelous opportunity to learn more about this culture. Besides, the missions have been wearing down on us. Some festivities would do us both well. Now," he said, turning towards the closet in the corner. "what costumes shall we wear?"
Printworthy is dressed as William Shakespeare (costume adjusted for ponies), and Marvin is dressed as Rincewind the wizard.
Jumper will also be at the party, interacting with the various guests.
"And on that day, the PPC gathered, little knowing what--"
"No."
The young man in red robes frowned at his companion, and then continued. "Little knowing what would--"
"Stop it."
Abaddon scowled. "Look, it's a costume party! Villains are allowed!"
Bookworm, a blond boy with a fearsome (and constant) scowl who looked to be about thirteen years old, glared at him. "Dressing up as Rassilon doesn't give you the right to narrate like he did!"
Abaddon threw up his arms. As he bore a strong resemblance to Matt Smith, this had rather the effect of making him look like the Eleventh Doctor playing dress-up--which was, of course, what he was doing. "Yes, it does! Look, if it bothers you that much, go find someone else to talk to! You can, I don't know, er--" He paused. When he went on, it was in a quieter voice. "Er, what did you dress up as, exactly?"
Bookworm's scowl intensified. "I'm a Hetalia character."
Abaddon raised both eyebrows. "Are you sure? Because you don't look any different--"
"Shut up, My Lord President," Bookworm snapped. "I'm off. Just do me a favor and find some Time Lords to startle, will you?" And with that, he disappeared into the crowd.
Considering this, Abaddon began to grin. "Startling Time Lords. Sounds like fun." He straightened his back, raised the staff in his hand, and assumed a serious expression. "This day, Gallifrey falls--or Gallifrey rises!"
Seconds later, the serious expression broke and ran for cover as he started to chuckle.
"Right," he murmured, still laughing. "Time Lords, Time Lords...I wonder what they're dressed as?"
I'd rather wait until I've formally introduced my Agent to send him to a Jewish holiday bash in the PPC. Plus, his brainwa- orientation isn't complete yet.
I completely understand. Brainw--I mean, orientation is very important.
You are, of course, welcome to attend yourself in his place. Just don't let on who you are!
~DF
...actually, no Boarders at all have shown up...which pretty much means I'll probably be the one to rectify that. Bother.
This should be interesti--oh dear.
Yes, this will be very interesting.
~DF
Two space marines could be seen sitting on the floor, eating with a red-feathered velociraptor, who had a distressing habit of spearing the appetizers with his long toeclaws. Although the sight of their saurian partner attacking his food with enthusiasm (and his feet) didn't bother Vid and Nemedra much, it certainly cleared some space around them. Plus, there were few even amongst the PPC who wanted to get between a hungry velociraptor, no matter how fluffy he was, and the snacks.
(Someday I swear I will properly write Vid, Nemedra, and Trask... I might just graduate first, though.)
“Do you know what is the meaning of this?” the Librarian asked, holding a piece of paper between forefinger and thumb. It was brightly coloured, and a hamantaschen was hanging innocently from a piece of string tied to one of the corners.
Des looked up from the piece of paper he was currently scribbling on. He blinked twice, then got up and moved closer to where the Librarian was standing near the rifle closet in RC log e. He took the paper from his partner and read it. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“That’s an invitation to a Purim party,” the human Agent said and chuckled. He lifted a hand to forestall his partner’s forthcoming elitist protest and continued. “Purim’s a Jewish holiday, you wear costumes and are supposed to get drunk so badly that you can’t tell between Haman the bad guy and Mordechai the good guy.”
While Des paused and rubbed his goatee, the Librarian snorted disdainfully. “Surely you do not mean to go to that party,” he said. “I do remember you telling me that you detest parties.”
“Purim’s an exception,” Des informed him, still grinning. “Wearing costumes is fun. Plus, I’ve the perfect costume.”
“Do I look like I care?” asked the Librarian, demonstratively sitting down near his tablet again. He lifted his cup of tea — a custom he could not avoid adopting after so many days in Des’ company — and sipped from it.
“Well, if you don’t,” said Des in an offended tone, “I’ll just go by myself.”
“By all means, be my guest.”
**
And so it turned out that a while later, a somewhat-annoyed Des wearing a medico della peste mask, a black robe and a wide-brimmed black hat, marched into the room. He looked around, spotted the cake and the children, and went to the opposite side of the room. Settling comfortably in an armchair, he propped his head on his knuckles and looked at the door, waiting to see if anyone he knew — or anyone famous enough for him to have heard of them — to come through it.
There was a pop of displaced air, and for a moment a tiny golden dragon hung in the centre of the room. A moment later, it disappeared again.
Some minutes later, the sound of drilling finally reached a peak. With a crash, a chunk of the generic surface wall fell inwards, and a tall, black-haired elf stepped over it.
"I can't believe they made a party this hard to find," he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Without Hera, we'd never have gotten in."
Constance Illian-Sims stroked the head of the fire lizard on her shoulder. "She's a clever one, my little queen," she said. "All right, kids, come on. Don't loiter in the corridor."
"Especially not when we've just wrecked it," Dafydd chuckled as the Illian family trooped in. Tanfin, the eldest at seven years, was carrying Oleander, who was barely even one, and the three girls followed behind, five-year-old Jasmine leading Bella and Daphne by the hand. Once all five were through, Constance took a moment to look around.
"Well, it certainly seems like a party," she said. "What's it for, again?"
"'Purim'," Dafydd supplied with a shrug. "I figured you'd know - it's your world."
Constance snorted. "What, and you know everything about Arda?"
"Well, actually-"
"Daddy," said Tanfin in his serious voice.
"Yes, Tanfin?"
"Why didn't we use the door?"
Dafydd and Constance looked where their son was pointing. Sure enough, across the room was a set of double doors standing invitingly open.
"Well, Tanfin," Constance said, not bothering to hide her smirk, "it's like this: your daddy is an idiot."
"Hang on, there!" Dafydd exclaimed. "You-"
"Cake! Cake!" And the conversation ended abruptly as Bella noticed the hamantaschen.
Here she is anyway! =oD
---
"I can't believe you're dragging me to another of these things. Have you forgotten what happened the last time?"
"Oh c'mon, Agent Smokey Brie, it won't be so bad. It's Purim! A time of fun and laughter and bonding and way too much to drink!"
"And costumes? Why you made me wear this ridiculous rubber getup simply defeats me, like so many of your primitive species's backward customs..." The Notary continued to grumble to herself on the way to the party, but Wobbles ignored it. Not ignoring it might have had a deleterious effect on her balance, a very bad thing indeed considering she was riding an overbuilt wooden pogo stick with heavily diluted Flubber on the mainspring.
It turned out to be not quite dilute enough, as she mistimed a bounce and felt her face impact with a Generic Surface lintel a few times before making her way through the double doors. The Notary just trudged through behind her and immediately went to look for alcoholic beverages to push past her face in quantities normally associated with hydroelectric dams, her spherical red costume's towering black headpiece only just scraping underneath.
Wobbles surreptitiously touched the underside of her red sponge nose, noticed that it wasn't damp, and dismounted with a thud. She then espied a motley gathering of children and bounced over to greet their parents, blowing up a few balloon sculptures along the way.
"Hiya! I don't think we've met, I'm new, but this time I don't think it's because my partner's old house broke the fabric of the space/time continuum, so that's good. Here, have a balloon grager. And you, champ," here she bent down to Tanfin and swiftly tied a string around his wrist, "can have a balloon Gwaihir Wind-Lord! Don't let him near a balloon Frodo, or the Internet gets mad for really dumb reasons."
---
For those playing along at home, yes, Wobbles did manage to con the Notary into dressing up as a douche bag. One for the adults. =]
Where there's property damage there is a DIA agent.
Or two, in this case. From the hallway, Patrol Officer Fire Flash and Special Response Officer Naya'Keegan examined the damage.
"Did they not see the door?" wondered Naya aloud as she photographed the hole with her Omni-tool. "Good grief. Building Maintenance is not going to like this."
"I still don't know why we're standing out here when we could be in there," grumbled the Earth pony. "Naya, I admire your sense of duty off the clock but there's, like, limits to overtime. We were on our way to check out the party right there but noooooo, you want to investigate this. Can't we just leave this to the next patrol team to deal with? I wanna at least eat something from the tables over there. Aren't you hungry too? I mean come on, you have to be hungry after spending all afternoon chasing that little Slorp thing through the Cafeteria freezers. Nice shot with the Carnifex, by the way."
The quarian glanced down at her diminutive friend through her teal-tinted visor. "Er... You're forgetting I can't eat any of this stuff, Flashie. Firstly, it's not dextro-amino based food: I can actually die if I eat any of this stuff. Secondly," she pinched the arm of her full-body environmental suit with a three-fingered hand, "there's bacteria everywhere. My immune system can't handle that just yet."
"What? I thought Terabyte was helping you with that."
"No, no. Don't get me wrong, TB is helping a lot, but I'll maybe be able to live without breathing filtered air in ten years. Now... hmm. Actually, if you can go and find out who made this mess, that'd be great. You can have a bite while you're at it too. Just get me a name and department before I send this email to D-Ops."
"You telling me to get in there? That's fine with me!" said the yellow pony as she hopped over the debris. "This might take, like, five or six hours. Just saying."
"The faster you get me a name, the faster we can get over this," replied Naya. "I gotta start putting up the safety cordon over here."
"The faster I give you a name, the faster D-Ops will show up and shut this party down! I'll take my time," said Fire Flash. "Besides, you said you wanted to get out more, right? Then get your flank in here and enjoy yourself!"
Naya rolled her eyes at Fire Flash-- not that the latter could see it behind the visor-- and sighed. "Fine. Just let me finish up here. This wall doesn't look like it might collapse anyways. I guess it can wait."
"I knew you'd see the light! Have fun with that." Fire Flash grinned in contentment and slowly weaved her way though the crowd. She would still have to find the responsible party for the report, though. Might as well talk to the closest party-goer. Recognizing one of the agents disguised as something that was a essentially an obscene metaphor, the DIA officer approached the drinks table and looked up at the Notary, mustering as much dignity as a metre-tall pony in plate armour can have.
"Hey, you. Yeah, you, giant dou-- squeeze bottle. Internal Affairs. I need to ask you several questions about that wall over there."
- - -
I've always wondered what the Notary would do when confronted by a small cartoon animal. She'll probably insult it somehow, but I'm waiting to see how this pans out.
What with them having a few MLP fics to deal with in their queue.
---
"Oh, joy. You want to talk to my part... ner..." The Notary, originally facing away from Fire Flash, spun on her heel and looked into empty space. The constraints of her costume meant that she couldn't look down easily, so she had to shuffle around quite a bit before coming face to face with a tiny barded horse.
"Are you a mini of some description? I cannot claim to recognise the canon, nor would I care to make a guess as to why the most dangerous creature in that particular continuum is a small pastel donkey in the remains of a tin bathtub, but I congratulate you on your grasp of spoken language, if not your manners. Tell me, who is your owner? I ought to have a word with them about making minis pretend they're agents, it's probably something our managers would take exception to."
Wobbles, who had been watching this conversation from the other side of the room, sighed to herself. This was not something she was going to get involved in.
Not with cake present, anyway.
It took a few seconds For Fire flash to understand to whom she was talking to. This lady had been mentioned by Naya's parter, that new Time Lord that fell into HQ a few weeks ago.
"Holy horsefeathers. The Guardsman wasn't kidding when she said you had a cactus lodged in your colon. This is gonna be good, I just know it," said Fire Flash, smiling at the Notary. "Normally, I'd ignore your insults 'cause I've heard them all before, but the 'mini' and 'owner' ones are new. I'l bite, but I gotta feeling that you're not even listening to me any more.
"Firstly, does it even matter if I'm a mini? I'm asking about the wall over there, dingus, not what species I am. Secondly, be polite and answer questions when I talk to you. I thought Time Lords were supposed to be civilized and stuff. Thirdly, you're absolutely right. I am dangerous. That's why I've been placed in the DIA: so that I can protect people by being a danger to threats."
Fire Flash paused for a second. "Okay, that last line was kinda stupid-sounding, but you get the point. Oh yeah, one other thing..." The smile on the Earth pony's features turned into a maniacal shit-eating grin. "Speaking of fighting threats, I find it really funny that you're questioning my abilities. After all, didn't you betray your entire species by running from the Time War? You ain't nothing but a coward hiding behind insults, doublethinking your way though life so you feel better about yourself."
"But I digress. We were talking about the broken wall, right?"
"You really believe you are an agent, don't you? You, a small, cud-chewing, rather ugly quadruped that looks like it's been dragged through a scrapyard and dressed in whatever stuck, are genuinely under the impression that you are an agent. Moreover, one that thinks it's in some way intimidating."
The Notary prided herself on being a rational and objective woman. Logically, she thought, Internal Affairs agents would be Time Lords themselves, since they were the only species suitable for such high office. Barring a regeneration gone quite amazingly wrong - which seemed unlikely, given what it had said about her people's culture - there was no way the squat, lumpen mammal in front of her was of that noble stock. That it had accused her of being an exile, something anathema to her and therefore something she could not possibly be, was the final nail in the coffin. The horse was not a Time Lord, therefore it was not an employee of PPC Internal Affairs. Therefore, there was only one course of action.
It started slowly, like the more pernicious earthquakes. There were small hissing noises, closely followed by the strange rasping sound of air escaping through a grin. The Notary then erupted with laughter - not the snide and sneering notes that left her mouth whenever Wobbles said something particularly ridiculous, but a full-on belly laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh. It wasn't a noise living things generally made unless they'd been summoned by the Necronomicon. On Gallifrey, it had been known to make dogs sprint in the opposite direction and boil goldfish in their tank. The Notary kept on laughing until tears were rolling down her face. She collapsed onto her back and rolled off into the middle distance.
It could quite reasonably be pointed out that the Notary had been drinking, as evidenced by the abandoned Solo cups littering her little enclave by the drinks table. Most agents elected to fill theirs up with beer; she, on the other hand, had filled hers with the highest-ABV vodka she'd been able to find. There were about six, though in fairness one was still half full.
Wobbles considered going over to defuse the situation, but she was happy that the Notary was having a nice time, so she left her to it.
...this particular kind of laughter was not what she was expecting. The entire party stopped for a moment to watch the Notary, tears streaming down her face and still wailing with laughter, roll away from Fire Flash. The pony felt the eyes of everyone in the room converge on her and felt her mild irritation at the Notary be replaced by a overwhelming wave of self-consciousness. The mare stuttered out something unintelligible and slowly backed away from the Time Lady, ears pressed to the sides of her head.
Fortunately, Naya came to the rescue by diverting the crowd's attention away from her friend. The quarian quickly made her way to the Notary's side, theatrically keyed in a string of commands into her Omni-tool, and held the glowing instrument above the Gallifreyan. "Ah, I see. Elevated levels of alcohol in the bloodstream. That's nothing a bit of chemistry can't fix. Terabyte, please consult Medical's databanks for Time Lord biology and advise me on the correct dose of Purple Stuff."
Naya pulled a vial of the aptly named Purple Stuff from a pouch on the webbing she wore over her bodysuit and popped the lid with her thumb. She then placed a finger on the side of her helmet where her ear would be, as if she was receiving a radio transmission. "All of it? Thank you, TB." The Special Response officer tipped the contents of the vial into the Notary's wide-open mouth. "There you go, miss, all better now. Just watch your drinking habits: it'd be a shame if you had to force a regeneration to fix a liver! Now, I think my friend was trying to ask you what you knew about that wall over there."
During Naya's intervention, Fire Flash had slunk towards the back of the room, trying to avoid eye contact with the other guests.
- - -
Quarians on the Mass Effect Wiki should you need any more information.
"Well, this is the spot it says on the note. I think. The room number is all in yellow ink. What bright sun had the idea to put yellow ink on white paper, anyway? Can't even see it in this lighting." The Dersite dressed as the Sixth Doctor squinted at the note in his hands as he and an eight-foot clockwork golem dressed as the potpourri from his closet neared the Purim room. The latter had not yet managed to convince the former that Purim was not, in fact, a person.
"Well, by the increase in ambient sound, I'd say it's either here or very close to here." Copernicus confirmed, scanning the halls for any brightly colored signs. His experience of parties through popular culture had taught him that any party worth its weight in salt had colorful signs or balloons of some sort hanging by the door, lest the intended guests get lost and end up several blocks away, taking any presents or contributions to the potluck with them. To his disappointment, the "Party This Way!" sign he saw hanging on a nearby wall was only one color, and there were no balloons surrounding it of any sort.
"We're not even inside yet, and already the planners are exposing the height of irresponsibility," he complained.
"Oh, come on, Nick," his partner replied, adjusting his floppy blond wig so that it was no longer in immediate danger of falling off. "You aren't going to be carrying this attitude around all night, are you? Birthdays are a rare and special occasion, and birthdays in which strangers are allowed to come in and eat all of the hors d'oeuvres are even rarer!" He pronounced the French term 'horse deVorrs'. "You don't want Purim not to invite us back!"
"Lonny, I've told you, I am almost certain that this is not a birthday party. The message you found did not denote birth-related celebrations at any point, and I am relatively sure that it corresponds with the World One festival derived from ancient Persian-"
"Ooh, look, second door!" Lonny exclaimed, noticing a large irregular hole in the wall and leaping through it with a hearty "Woop!" He turned back to his partner, a large grin spreading across his face. "Hey Nick, come in this way! There's something going on over there! He gestured over to somewhere left of center, where a Time Lady was currently emitting horrendous peals of off-key laughter.
"I'm not certain I want to be involved in that," Copernicus replied, as the Time Lady fell to the ground and rolled around the floor.
"Oh, Nick. It's not a party unless someone gets humiliated! It's one of those integral parts every celebration needs, like streamers or bean dip!" Lonny held his hands to his head. "Dang it, you've got me saying words like 'integral' now. Are you coming in or not?"
Copernicus briefly sized up the hole, compared it to his most likely and comfortable body positions, cross-referenced it with his size comparison, and performed the ever-necessary 'what happens if I get stuck' check. He shook his head. "I think I'll go around."
"Your loss, man." As his partner clanked away to the next accessible door, Lonny surveyed the party, and as he counted the number of guests and roughly judged their distribution, leaned up against a table to do so. This turned out to be a bad decision.
The Dersite stumbled and flailed as the cheap material shifted under his weight, and as he regained his balance, he grabbed a handful of tiny sausages with his flailing arm in a desperate attempt to make his near-fall look deliberate. Frantically, Lonny scanned the crowd again, noting with relief that no one seemed to have noticed his mishap, since the only person that he could tell had begun to look at him oddly was what appeared to be a velociraptor sitting on a table a few feet over. Nailed it. he thought, allowing his sausage-bearing hand a few congratulatory dunks into the nearby bowl of bean dip.
I don't know why Nick thought it wasn't a birthday party, he continued, placing a bean-dip coated refreshments in his mouth and finding himself pleased by the taste. There's a clown and a ninja here. If it was just a ninja, sure, it's a costume party, ninjas happen. But a ninja and a clown, together? Totally a birthday party. Glancing at a small boy attempting to untie a balloon bird from his wrist, he added Clown's even making balloon animals. I want one! Wonder if she does basilisks?
-------
Copernicus entered through the main door just in time to see a quarian confronting the oddly-dressed Time Lady, presumably about her raucous laughter and unsanitary floor-rolling. Copernicus nodded in appreciation while slowly edging around the fringe of the party, trying his best not to be too noticeable and hoping his hardest that his enormous size and bronze gears wouldn't make those attempts a waste of effort.
He didn't spot anyone he knew, which wasn't too big a surprise, as he didn't know many people. Lonny was right, for once. If he was going to gain new cultural knowledge, he'd have to find someone else to talk to. The social clusters were a little too much, since interacting with one person would necessitate interaction with the whole cluster, and he doubted that he'd be able to prepare for that level of unpredictability. As he glanced at each party guest in turn, a brief glimmer of recognition passed through his mind as he focused on yellow pony. Where did he remember her from? As soon as he acknowledged the question, he remembered. Back in New Caledonia, on the day of the unfortunate cotton-candy machine incident, she'd been one of the DIA Agents who'd dealt with the shapeshifting Stu. Fire Flash, he remembered hearing her called. Now, though, she had her ears curled against her head and was wearing a facial expression that could have been either sadness, disgust, or shame. He'd always had trouble telling those apart.
All right, Copernicus, he thought to himself. This is an opportunity for social interaction. You share mutual experiences, and can start a conversation based on those, focused around the matter of improving her emotional state. But the matter remains: how? Physical contact won't work, because it might be interpreted as intrusion, and neither I nor earth ponies are telepathic, so that leaves... verbal communication. Curses. Maybe I'll start with the basics. 'It's okay to be upset', 'It wasn't your fault', and related. I'll save the specifics once I find out more details. Wait, will those even work? I'm not sure why she is upset, so it's possible that-
His musings were interrupted when a blue unicorn that Copernicus had noticed closer to the party's central cluster moved to Fire Flash and effortlessly began emotional interaction with her. Copernicus released a small sigh of relief, careful to ensure that it wouldn't come out of his vocal vents too loudly. Oh, good. I can just watch. As subtly as possible, he began to move between the two ponies and the crowd beyond. It would be important to watch the ponies for any noteworthy development, but they'd need some space. Solitude in these matters would be very important.
((Man, everyone is talking about that hole in the wall. It certainly is this RP's breakout character, if you'll pardon the pun. I look forward to its eventual development of sapience and assignment to a little-known Department.))
Emiran watched Fire Flash converse with a dark blue unicorn of similar height and cartoonishness. Ah, excellent. She's found herself some good company, thought the Time Lord. This chap seems like a decent fellow and it looks like she's cheered up somewhat. I guess I don't need to intervene.
The DIA officer then noticed the giant clockwork golem trying its best to discretely observe the two ponies' conversation. Despite its rather unnerving steady gaze, it didn't look threatening: in fact, it seemed like it was studying the social interaction...
...or so Emiran would have noticed if he wasn't standing there admiring the golem's mechanical structure. The silhouette, the bronze-coloured casing, the glowing eyes, the clockwork movements, all of them were beautiful. I've worked on automatons before, but this is exceptional. I'd love to have a chat with it... Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Maybe it will tell me a about itself...
Emiran drew his laser screwdriver from his coat's inner pocket, approached the golem, and waved at it to attract its attention. "Excuse me! Yes, hello. Do you mind if I scan you with this? It's just a laser screwdriver, nothing harmful. You see, a long time ago, I used to build robots and... well... your design is amazing. Oh, and d'you mind if I ask you a few questions about yourself while I'm at it?"
- - -
Yes, I know that the laser screwdriver has a rather negative reputation in New Who, but I like to think of it as a tool often used by Time Lord engineers: it can weld things together, scan structures, emit light of various wavelengths from radio to gamma, microwave dinners, blast flies out of the air, be used as a laser pointer, and more.
That would be ridiculous. No one would spend time and effort making a device only to have it be a "more evil" version of an existing technology unless they're Decepticons, or COBRA Command, or a Power Rangers enemy, or... a lot of people, actually. But not the Time Lords. Altering a device so that it can have temporal properties, however? Of course they would! Any excuse to put "Time" in the name of their new technology! Actually, due to my interpretation of the typo that created him, Copernicus is temporally sensitive, in that he can detect distortions or alterations in time's natural flow.(You can imagine his discomfort when he goes into a continuum without fixed or logical time rules, like Timecop.) Time Lord technology should have a field day with that.
----
One can learn a lot in a short few minutes if one is looking to do so, and Copernicus had absorbed a number of interesting facts from Printworthy and Fire Flash's conversation. Interesting. he thought. I wonder if her immediate and unprompted relation of personal history was based on the presence of someone of her own kind that she recognized as such, due to the fact that she was being supported and comforted during a period of emotional instability, or perhaps a combination of the two. If I had been the one to attempt to comfort her, would he have responded similarly? I doubt it. I would hardly be as effortless in the execution as Printworthy was, and might have produced adverse emotional effects if my assistance was seen to be forced.
He was shaken out of his contemplative state by a Time Lord waving a thin white device in front of him, complimenting him and asking if Copernicus was willing to be scanned by the small device. Copernicus looked back and forth, somewhat flustered by the sudden attention.
"I... I suppose so. Thank you, I wouldn't mind the questions, and do I, um, need to stand in a particular position in order for your device to work? He held out his arms from his sides at a forty-five degree angle, demonstrating a position he'd seen used for checkups at Medical during scheduled maintenance, and all the while glancing from side to side to make sure that no one was running the risk of walking into his elbows. He instantly became aware of how large he was in comparison to everyone else, and how difficult it would be for people to move around him if he was to be standing still for an extended period of time. "Should we... should we do this outside? I wouldn't want to bother anyone."
It still makes sense with the other pronoun, but the train of thought isn't as coherent. The worst kind of typo is the one that's almost acceptable at first glance. Well, second-worst. The worst will always be the one that renders a word completely indecipherable.
Emiran pointed the laser screwdriver at Copernicus and did quick up-and-down motions with his arm while waking around the golem. "The laser works a lot faster than the sonic. Some say sonic beats laser, but I'm a sucker for this thing. Granted, you can't accidentally irradiate yourself with alpha-meson particles with a sonic-- that actually happened to me once during the War-- but it's a fine tool if you can set it up correctly. Aaaaaaand here we go, scan complete. You can put your arms down, sir-- or ma'am. I don't know: which do you want to be called? Don't want to be rude or anyth-- ooooooohh... now that's pretty cool." The Time Lord held his tool next to his ear, listening to the scan report over the psychic interface.
"You're time-sensitive? I was curious before, but now you have my attention. Is that a feature or a unfortunate side effect of some sort? Speaking of features, what's your power source? I'm getting these weird readings off your core and I'm getting sidetracked again, aren't I? In the future, feel free to tell me to shut up. I have a nasty habit of going off on tangents like his one!
"Ahem. From the top! Hello, I'm Emiranlanoamar, but everyone just calls me 'Guardsman'. I was just coming 'round to check up on my friend over there but since she's doing all right, I figured I should let her be. Then I noticed you over here and we're now having this rather one-sided conversation. So! Forget all what I said beforehand and let's have a proper conversation like civilized people. What's your name?"
- - -
He sure seems to like the sound of his own voice. I bet he drives Naya crazy.
Sorry for the massively long wait. There's been a lot going on this week.
-------
Copernicus shook his head. "I don't mind the tangent or the one-sidedness, believe me. I occasionally lapse into monologues myself, and even if I disliked the habit of sidetracking in conversation originally, my partner's speech patterns would have gotten me used to it months ago."
While considering the other points that the other Agent had brought up, he arched his eye ridges, the closest a being with as few facial features as he did could get to a furrowed brow. "Regarding my origins, well, I..." He brought his arms back in front of his chest, tapping his fingertips together nervously. "I really prefer not to talk about it. I wasn't created with temporal sensitivity in mind, because in actuality I wasn't supposed to be created at all. I am what is officially termed, at least given my understanding of the terminology, that is, as a mishap, so, um, I really don't have the best understanding of my power source, because since there's little frame of reference, figuring out its details would require dismantling me, a procedure that I am understandably cautious about undertaking."
Copernicus immediately felt guilty for providing so little information. The other agent had seemed so enthusiastic, and Copernicus didn't want to finish the conversation feeling that he'd let someone down. "However," he continued, lifting one arm away from his chest and facing his palm upward in a way he'd seen used in situations like this, "I have several facts telling me what it is not. I operate by clockwork, and the scans I've undergone during maintenance show that I don't have separate operation categories in different areas of my body, so it won't be something that would require the exchange and circulation of fluid, though I suppose electrical power or kinetic magic might not be out of the question as an originator of motion. The latter is unlikely, as I don't exude magical radiation, but my... unusual beginnings might mean that something is involved that those who examine me simply cannot detect. In fact, I am not at all radioactive, so I doubt my motor is atomic in nature, either. I do know that I must enter a low-motion state for at least three hours a day, which may constitute some sort of recharge cycle or my equivalent of the traditional golem's time of mandatory rest. I prefer to spread the period out for the full period of a humanoid sleep cycle, though, since doing so allows me to remain conscious. I usually use the extra time to read."
Copernicus paused. "And now I appear to have proven my earlier statement regarding my occasional monologues. I apologize for that." He considered whether he should answer the section about the strange energy readings the screwdriver had been picking up, but then realized to his chagrin that he had almost forgotten the most socially important parts of the other agent's conversation.
He put his arms back to his sides. "Amending this, then. Conversation. Hello, Emiranlanoamar, or Guardsman, my name is Copernicus, I am a golem, and I am male. What exactly do civilized people most frequently talk about?"
-------
Copernicus tends to talk a lot when he's nervous, or when he's confronted with potential awkward silence, or when he's become interested in something. This particular instance had shades of all three, though I suppose the awkward silence was chiefly metafictional in this case, so he wouldn't have been able to detect that part.
Emiran twiddled with his laser screwdriver in his right hand, looking in the middle distance behind Copernicus. "I mean, I spent most of my life at the Time Lord Academy, so you can sorta imagine what my day to day life must've been like. It was always about tomorrow's assignments, trading gossip, trying to peek into your own future to see your test scores, and swallowing nutrition pills. Really boring, if you ask me. I intended to go into robotics when I left the Academy, but the Time War started literally the day after graduation. Long story short: I got drafted, I got killed, then I got resurrected during a time travel event, then I got killed again-- you get the picture. I have no idea what is 'civilized conversation'. I just wanted to put it out there, yeah? It sounded like a good thing to say."
Emiran tucked his screwdriver back into his Inverness coat's inner pocket and smiled broadly as he looked at the golem. "That doesn't mean we can't improvise something! We could talk about missions or Flowers or favourite continua or stuff. It seems to work for the other agents, so I don't see why it wouldn't be appropriate now. So... uh... 'verses. Now, I'm not an Action Department agent, so my continuum knowledge is actually a bit spotty, but I enjoy both my home universe-- Doctor Who, that is-- and my partners' continuum, Mass Effect. How about you?"
"In fact," Copernicus said, "one of the reasons I came here was to see how people conducted such conversations in public settings. Perhaps we can help one another." He paused, thinking back through his list of known continua and wondering whether to respond with another list or to expand on the prompt given to him. He decided to be proactive and go with the latter. "I'm unfamiliar with most video game continua, unfortunately, so I only know of Mass Effect by word of mouth. I can't exactly operate a controller with any amount of skill, you see." He slowly rotated his large metal hands in emphasis. "I might be able to play the games as such, but I wouldn't want to risk breaking off part of the controller. I am not certain how fragile they are. I've been attempting to begin video game canon research with a Game Boy Advance, since I have been told Nintendo makes its systems to be practically indestructible."
"I have a great deal of experience in Doctor Who, though, in part because I recognize it as a powerful science fiction centerpiece that I should, as a multi-fandom agent, have plenty of experience with, and in part because, as I am a time-derived entity, people are going to make constant references to it in front of me and I want to be able to understand them. So far, my favorite Doctor has been the Seventh."
Copernicus's eyes glowed briefly brighter as he suddenly remembered something significant. "Wait a moment. Were you involved in the Continuity Council event a few months ago? I heard that approximately all of the Time Lords in Headquarters contributed in some way, and if you were there, could you please explain to me what precisely happened? The details I have been overhearing are contradictory at best, and all that I know for certain is that at the end of it, we employed several more Daleks than previously, and that occurrences connected to it created temporal anomalies so severe that I checked myself into Medical. I had thought that whatever system allows my temporal sensing to operate had been overclocked, if you'll excuse the pun. I didn't think 'overloaded' would be the proper term."
When I looked at it the next day, some of the dialogue in that post turned out to contain a really wonky speech pattern for Copernicus that I had not intended. I wanted his speech to sound a little stilted, because he's not the best at conversation, but I overshot, and I'm going to need to work on that.
I'll respond later tonight. Hopefully I will do better.
((Just wanted to see if you're still interested in pursuing this. Real Life takes precedence of course, but I just want to know.))
"I've never really been into the entire 'private club' thing: it's often more trouble than it's worth. Case in point: the Council did... a thing? I dont know. Then the HQ Daleks tried to one-up them and the entire thing escalated to ridiculous proportions. Mind, I was in a fic during that event-- some ESAS team called in extra reinforcements to deal with a Diablo-verse Suvian-- and I still felt the HQ timeline go nuts. Not that it's nice and organized right now, but worse that usual, I mean. Anyways, they're messing stuff up and I don't want to be a part of that."
Emiran sighed and absentmindedly scratched his short curly hair. "Yeah. Daleks, eh? I keep telling Naya: they're up to no good but she won't listen. She finds them endearing. Endearing! Would you believe that? I don't care if they've been humanized or if they just wanna exterminate Suvians, they're all rotten down to the core. You simply can't convince a a Kaled not to kill. You keep your distance from them, man. Nothing good can come from cooperating with Daleks.
"But... yeah. That got pretty preach-y fast, didn't it? Uh... New question, new question... Oh! Have you ever visited New Caledonia yet? That's the PPC town in World One. I really want to go there one day: I heard there's some really good food over there. Y'know, when you've spent the last three hundred years swallowing nutrition pills, having actual food in your mouth is..." The Time Lord gesticulated vaguely with his hands. "Hard to describe, really. It's like, juice and flavour and substance and being full but wanting that next bite and... am I describing food to a robot? Sorry, that was rude. So, uh, New Cal. Been there?"
...the Sue Lord mission. I can't really remember the original versions, if I ever saw them, and I unfortunately wasn't too involved in the New Caledonia RP.
Speaking of RPs, though:
"Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?" The young man--in his mid-twenties, with a Welsh accent and brown hair, and wearing a beautifully cut suit--had just sidled up to the Dersite. Now he stood to Lonny's right, proffering his hand to shake. "Maybe not in that coat, but...it's definitely an interesting one. Jones, Ianto Jones." He paused, grinning ruefully. "Well, that's my costume, anyway. I know, I know, using a disguise generator is cheating, but I can never get the accent right. Nice to see you again, uh...sorry about this, remind me of your name? It's been a while."
--
Yeesh, he's going on a lot. Sorry about that. It was very fun deciding he was going as Ianto, though; it amuses me quite a bit.
~DF
Lonny paused as he sized up the new arrival beside him. The man(or presumably he was a man; if he was using a disguise generator, he could easily look like anything underneath) had seemed to recognize him, but with the disguise changing the other agent's voice and body structure, Lonny had no idea whether or not they'd actually met before. He tried recollecting the name Ianto Jones, and found to his annoyance that it matched up with a Torchwood character rather than a fellow agent. Well, that was no reason not to respond. Maybe he'd be able to sort this out later. Mentally thanking whichever gods were in close proximity that it had been his left hand that he'd now stained with bean dip, he clasped the other agent's right hand in his own and shook.
"Hi there! Name's Lonny. I'm usually great with names and faces, but since I don't have either to go on, I'm afraid I haven't the foggiest idea who you are. Small price for an accurate costume, though. Good job with that." Discreetly wiping his left hand on the back of his coat, Lonny continued. "Say, are there going to be any party games or something at some point, or did we come in too late for those? I don't want to brag, but I am a boss at the piñata."
However, I highly doubt the real Ianto would be a fan of this one. I like it well enough, though; not that I've seen much of it, but Colin Baker's remark about the best part of his costume being the fact that he didn't have to look at it makes me laugh.
--
The man laughed. "I don't doubt it. Unfortunately, I can't really say I'm all that sure; I've asked around, but no one seems to know who organized this in the first place, much less what's going to be happening. On the other hand, this is the PPC: somehow I get the feeling that even if piñatas aren't traditional for this holiday, one will surface at some point anyway. I don't suppose you've managed to find the food yet? I hear the cookies are great." He paused, lips pursing momentarily. "Or do you actually like cookies? I don't remember seeing you or your partner eating, but, well, it was just that one mission. Sorry again about tempting the IO, by the way; I know I've apologized before, but, well, that was a really stupid move, and I want you to know I'd never do that nowadays."
--
Some more clues. Also, I keep wanting to have him leaning on a table, but Lonny's already proved that to be a bad move...
~DF
Well, I'd known it was one of two people, and this post narrowed it down to one. It's just that Lonny wouldn't know. Even if he was well-acquainted with the person in question, he most likely wouldn't recognize them if they showed up next to him unannounced and without offering their name, while simultaneously looking and sounding completely different. We're not exactly dealing with Sherlock Holmes here.
-------
"Found these," Lonny said, offering the disguised agent a bowl of tiny sausages. "There might be a few other bowls around, too. In my experience, you never see these things alone. No baked goods yet, but I only just got here. Through that." He gestured at the hole in the wall, registering with surprise that its outside was now crisscrossed with urple cordon tape roughly an eighth of a second before the sight of the unnatural color made him visibly flinch.
"Ow! Ow! The one time I don't bring my filtered shades." Rubbing at his eyes with the hand not currently holding the sausages, Lonny carefully positioned his back to the hole, muttering something vaguely discernible as "Blasted aberrants, no idea how everyone else can look at 'em all day without needing new retinas."
Blinking, he glanced up at the other Agent, the mental shock of the urple having brought new information to his brain. "Wait, I remember you now! From that mission where the Sue kept rebooting everything and making all those new bodies! Since you've got the-" he gestured vaguely to indicate the disguise "-Torchwood, I'm guessing you're one of the two who came in later to help with that part." He paused. "Wait, no, neither of them was tempting the Ironic Overpower, so that leaves... ohhhh. That's why you didn't come here dressed up." He grinned again. "Because you'd still look like John Barrowman underneath! Hi, Jacques!"
Lonny stopped, lowering his voice to a whisper and looking around. "Wait, should I be keeping that a secret, too? Are there people mistaking you for Jack Harkness and trying to deport you? Because if so, we can probably talk to the birthday girl about that. Anyone important enough to have a party this big organized in secret is important enough to show the DIA your papers. I can help in case of problems, if you want. You don't get recognized by Noir himself without being able to cook up a good cover story."
((Dang it, SeaTurtle! Why would you bring urple to a party? There are children and the photosensitive present! At least the horrible color will make fewer people look at the hole, which may have been the DIA's plan all along. Since Taldaris is the only one of your five who hasn't shown up yet, I suspect he's also the one behind this nefarious plot.))
True, true. Disguise generators are good for that. (Who's Noir, by the way?)
--
Laughing, the man pulled a rather unlikely, squished jelly donut out of a pocket, and reached through it to push several buttons. Several seconds and a prrrrrp! later, the D.O.R.K.S. was a colorful child's rattle, and the Ianto Jones disguise was gone, leaving Agent Jacques Bonnefoy wearing almost the exact same suit, but with a blue-themed shirt and tie.
"Red's not really my color," he explained, tucking the rattle away again. "And no one's trying to deport me, don't worry about it." He clasped Lonny's shoulder briefly, grinning. "Not that I don't appreciate your offer of help, of course, but, well, it's been nearly a year since you recruited me, and I'm doing fine. I just wear a different uniform, make sure the ESAS patch is visible, and most people don't even make the mistake. If they do, I generally just start singing or speaking French at them." He winked, and then his brow furrowed. "Uh, Lonny--this isn't a birthday party. You know that, right?"
After all, Edgar's not gotten any appearances aside from his non-canon role with your two Permission Request agents and the co-write with two other teams. This might have been you taking the opportunity to expand on him solo. We've seen Brenda and Charlie, Dawn wouldn't have gone in a costume that would have made her unrecognizable, and Agen_t wouldn't have wanted to pick a disguise that leans toward an individual gender until zie'd gotten closer to deciding zir own gender identity. Oddly, I always think of Agen_t as female when referring to her mentally, and I'd initially typed this message using female pronouns. Maybe I'm just not equipped for custom pronouns like xie, per, and zie, and default to female when there's nothing else available. Or maybe "zie" just sounds like "she", and my mind's decided it would fill less headspace if she-based terms were used instead of having to memorize numerous unfamiliar conjugations.
Noir is short for Jack Noir, the Archagent of Derse. Lonny used to work for him in his home fansession, before the BRD came in to bust it down and recruit Lonny for helping out.
----
Lonny rotated his hand dismissively. "Well, there's a clown, a ninja, balloon animals, gift baskets, cake, a mysterious figure who may or may not have organized the event against somebody's wishes, and both strangers and near-strangers invited and encouraged to hang out and eat snacks. Plus, I heard somebody mention it was an annual event when I walked in here, so that rules out a baby shower. It all adds up to birthday party for me. Maybe we can ask Purim when she shows up. It might be her PPC anniversary or something." He leaned back, trying to look as far back into the room as possible. "She may already be here, actually. I don't see anyone the groups are clustering around, but she might just want her space. I can respect that. From what the cleanup crew told me, everyone wanted so hard to crowd the last guy who held a birthday-slash-anniversary party he had half of space-time crumpling up to get in his business. I'm paraphrasing, of course."
Lonny had punctuated the 'slash' by making a chopping motion in the air, and nearly dropped his bowl of tiny sausages doing so. He looked at the bowl as though he had forgotten it was there, set it back on the table, and turned back to face Agent Bonnefoy. "Wow, almost a year, huh? Dang, it has been a while. What are you doing now? I heard you mention ESAS, so there's probably some shenanigans you can pass on from there. I love shenanigan stories."
((You didn't think I'd let the Lonny-not-knowing-Purim-is-a-holiday joke drop that easily, did you? Besides, he legitimately would not know. Neither he nor his partner are World One-native or the sorts of people who would strike up conversations with other people about their holidays. It's actually a little surprising that Copernicus knows about it, but he probably found out about it in the Canon Libraray after trying to research an obscure pop-culture reference or something of the sort.))
Oh, yeah? Interesting. Oddly enough, Edgar's actually got some bits and pieces being written for/with him, although of course none of that's really been seen yet...and I actually managed to completely forget that I'd written in Brenda and Charlie. /sheepish look/ And you're quite right about Agen____t; for the most part, I think ze just goes for androgynous, unless there's really a need to do otherwise, and then I think ze just alternates? I have no idea. It hasn't really come up.
And, well, as for the Purim joke...I look forward to seeing where it goes. It's pretty funny.
And, of course, thanks for the heads-up. And, um, thanks for this sentence as well: "If they stand there impassively chatting while green-apple slime rains down on them, it would just be no fun."
Because, of course, now I have to make sure I use that...even just a little.
--
"Ooh, shenanigans?" Jacques grinned, paused briefly to swipe at his shoulder, and then went on. "Well, I'm sure I can think of a few..." He grimaced, wiped at his hair, and kept talking, now shaking his hand off to the side. "Mind you, I am fairly sure Purim is a holiday, but...you never know!"
"Anyway, shenanigans. Well, I've now done missions with Elves, missions with--hold on, sorry--" He wiped off both sleeves, shook his hands mostly clean, and kept talking. "Where was I--oh, right. Well, you know what ESAS missions are like--or do you?--well, there was this one time where this Sue just wouldn't die. I don't mean she was a Sue Lord--she just wouldn't die. I had to drop her into the Fiendfire in the Room of Requirement in the end, though it took quite a bit of seducing to actually get her there. And then of course there was the time when I ended up going after a Sue who made herself both a necromancer and the daughter of the Middle-earth version of gods. That was just about the most--oh, great. Excuse me."
He flashed Lonny a smile before he turned and walked several steps to the side, to where two children (both two years old, both dressed as hamantaschen) were sitting. One of them, a girl, had slipped in the green slime that had been raining down on Jacques, while the other, a boy, was staring at his basket of slime-covered hamantaschen. As the ESAS agent approached, the two-year-old boy took a cookie from the basket and handed it to the girl. Jacques began to reach for it, but stopped when instead of eating the cookie the girl threw it in the general direction of two other children (these ones older) who had produced the green slime in the first place. As Jacques watched, the boy also began to throw the slime-covered hamantaschen.
Jacques chuckled. "Having fun?" he asked. He eyed the green slime on the floor for a moment before shrugging and kneeling in it. The suit was ruined anyway, although the tie was still--
A great glob of green slime hit Jacques square in the chest, completely covering the visible part of the blue tie. The former character replacement sighed, and lifted a hand to wipe it off.
Well, maybe part of the suit jacket was still salvageable--
At that point, the two-year-old girl in the hamantaschen costume scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around his neck, bringing even more slime with her. Jacques sighed and wrapped an arm around her in return, ducking his head to the side to avoid having an eye poked out by her sparkly tiara. "Well, that's me answered," he said. "It's good to see you too, Seren. Where's Ruby? And your mother?"
Seren shrugged, and began a long (and mostly incoherent) description of how she'd been hit by slime. The boy, meanwhile, lost interest in throwing hamantaschen at the kids with the slime guns, and turned to Jacques as well. For a long moment, he simply stood and stared, the last hamantaschen clutched in his hand. Then...
"No, Owain," Jacques said firmly, raising his free hand. Seren wriggled away, slipped in the slime, and sat down hard. Owain's head turned, as did Jacques'; when Seren did nothing more than pout, they looked back at each other, blue eyes meeting blue. "Now is not the time to throw things at me."
Owain pouted. "But I wanna."
"I know, and it looks fun, but I really don't feel like having things thrown at me right now."
Owain stamped his foot. "I wanna throw it!"
"Then throw it at a table or a wall, if you can find one. I'm not your target today."
Owain scowled. Seren got to her feet, and scowled too, as Owain looked at her, considering.
"If you throw it at me, I'll tell Mama," she threatened, and Owain's scowl became a pout again. Jacques did his best to hide a smile.
"Either throw the cookie or put it down, Owain," he advised. "And remember, Seren and I are out of bounds."
Owain pouted even more fiercely. About to put the hamantaschen back in the basket, he caught sight of something behind Jacques, and stopped. Raising his chubby hand, he threw the triangular cookie with all his might. Well, most of it, anyway. Jacques, too late to stop him, turned just in time to see the cookie sail past his own face and hit Lonny's leg.
Great.
"Owain Taliesin Sato, that is not a good thing to do," he scolded, scooping a two-year-old up in each arm as he stood. Owain kicked him lightly once before he hid his face in Jacques' slime-covered shoulder; Seren grabbed his shirt collar in a death grip, and began to look around from her new vantage point. "Lonny, hey, I'm really sorry about this, he's--well, he's really got a thing for finding loopholes just now. Sorry." The side of his mouth quirked up in a smile. "Let me make it up to you."
--
I...I don't know whether to apologize for the length or not. You tell me, I suppose. I thought I'd bring in someone from my original list of people to be shot with slime guns, and somehow went from the agent dressed as Rassilon to the two-year-olds dressed as hamantaschen. And then...it snowballed. Rather a lot.
Both kids (and their older sister Ruby, who got a mention) were created in a badfic, and adopted by one of the agents who were sent to take it on in 2011 (the mission report is currently in progress). While Jacques was not the one who adopted them, he's recently been serving as an honorary uncle of sorts (for a good reason that I won't go into just now). As you can see, they're rather fond of him.
And yes, all three children have the surname Sato. And no, none of them are actually related to the Torchwood character with that surname, although it was chosen with her in mind.
Fun, isn't it? I wonder how the Bellisario kids will take having hamataschen thrown at them (if they even reach them, who knows, these are two-year-olds we're talking about). And, um, I hope you don't mind that Lonny got hit; if it's any consolation, I doubt it hurt much...or at all...
And now to end this before my note gets to be as long as the scene. At least none of the kids is named 'Purim'; that would make for an interesting conversation...
~DF
Wait, there was something sticky on the hamatasch! Lonny's still not mad, but it's a little embarrassing that I forgot that. Oh, and there's no need to apologize for a lengthy scene. Even if it was a bad thing, which it isn't, it's not nearly as great an offense as the lengthy wait I put you through.
-------
Upon the light impact of the hamatasch, Lonny's leg twitched reflexively, not enough to move his foot off of the ground, but enough that the small baked good caught in a fold of his pants and slid evenly downward into the opening of his shoe. Frowning, Lonny scratched at the side of his foot, missing the entire short-lived food fight(or more accurately, two or three people throwing food at each other as a furry humanoid and a woman in a strange hat bolted in disproportionate terror) with all but his peripheral vision as he fished out the offending cookie. While he hadn't been so dedicated to the costume to track down candy-red shoes, his yellow-and-black pants now had a thin streak of green slime running down the side, which he tried to wipe off with a lone napkin that had been sitting under the sausage bowl as Jacques scolded the small child he was apparently supervising. When the slime wouldn't completely come out with scratching and wiping alone, Lonny looked up to see the ESAS agent walking toward him and apologizing.
"Hey, it's fine." he replied, placing the slightly slime-stained napkin back on the table. "Normally when there are people shouting 'Food fight!' nearby, you'd expect to see worse than this by the time it's over. Plus, I hadn't been planning to wear these pants again for a while. Shame about your suit, though."
He paused, glancing up at the pipes that had been the slime-shooters' short-lived base. "I missed most of the action, but did the people who shot those slime guns get mind-controlled into stepping down? I might've misinterpreted something, but that's pretty awesome, if it's true."
He blinked, remembering something he'd been told about human psychology, and appended "Not that you should ever do something like that without permission and proper training, kids. Mind control is not something you take lightly." He glanced back and forth between the two children, attempting to cement his message through eye contact, but neither of the children would look at him. Either Lonny was more intimidating than he thought he was, or the kids were deliberately avoiding any sight of his coat. Lonny frowned for a few moments before glancing back up at Jacques.
"I wouldn't say no to that making up you mentioned, if you're still willing to do that. Or do I have to be offended by something to qualify for it? I'm pretty sure I can find something to make me angry if that's the case." The last few lines were said with an ironic smile as Lonny placed his hands back in his coat pockets.
((I know what you're undoubtedly thinking, DawnFire; where's the Purim joke? Well, my answer is that even if I was able to wedge it into the dialogue, no joke is as effective if I force it in at every opportunity. Also, this is a good opportunity for it to go dormant for a while, which I choose to take.))
Kevin felt something splat against his shoulder. He turned to see a little boy dressed as a cookie throwing matching cookies at him. "Hey, Kyle! Now it's a food fight!"
Kyle started chanting loudly, "Food fight! Food fight!"
---
At which point I imagine someone in the room might turn around to look for the food, which doctorlit's characters are stealing right now.
Before you write your next entry, just in case you didn't read all of the posts beforehand, the two Bellisario kids are now shooting at Jacques with slime pistols. He doesn't appear to have been one of the agents on your list, but your next entry should probably mention that event, unless you want my next entry to include Lonny pointing out to Jacques that there's green goo on his suit and making him aware of the issue. If they stand there impassively chatting while green-apple slime rains down on them, it would just be no fun.
((Taldaris is out meditating in the Courtyard. He's not going to show up anytime soon :P))
Let me guess: Copernicus is from the Dungeon Siege III universe, isn't he?
And have you introduced these characters before? DF mentions seeing them "again," but the only prior mentions that searching the Board brings up are an AU version of your agents-to-be.
I plan to go into it a little more with a history interlude once I iron everything out and make this official. In all honesty, I had never heard of Dungeon Siege III until you mentioned it just now, and even after active Google searching, I can't find anything on their clockwork golems. I did get a few entries on clockwork golems from Pathfinder and a few MMORPGs, though.
Yeah, they've undergone a bit of development since I first thought of them. Copernicus doesn't make gear puns any more, for example. He's actually kind of sensitive about his clockwork nature now, so it would be out of character for him to draw attention to it. Lonny's still pretty much the same, surface-wise, but I've given him a few more major character traits so that he can operate better when he's not acting as a foil, and rearranged his history a couple of times. So the originals would be pretty AU at this point if I'd written anything for them officially, especially since their modern counterparts may be operating out of a different Department.
DawnFire(humorously, autocorrect kept changing her name to AdveNture when I was writing this post, complete with the randomly capitalized N) might be remembering modern Lonny and Copernicus from their appearances in SeaTurtle's New Caledonia RP, which they sadly didn't get to do much in before the Board dropped it, or their main character roles in the mission I was cowriting with her and Lily Winterwood, before said mission was left in three-fourths-complete limbo for six months. I rewired a few details of backstory during the break, which I've been meaning to talk to Lily about, since the changes involve their departmental assignment and would invalidate part of her dialogue.
I was remembering the automatons that are in Stonebridge, a town in Dungeon Siege III.
It's the right yellowish-bronze color, and it's got large hands like he does, but other than that, they're not very similar. Copernicus is broader and stockier, with visible gears near some of his joints and in parts of his torso, and a plated body topped with a circular flat area on the chest instead of the broken-up torso of the automaton. He's also got a squat, smooth head, with two lamplike eyes arranged in the usual fashion to the loss of any other typical facial features visible, rather than the automaton's three ambiguous green lights that could be either eyes, one eye and two miscellaneous parts, or two eyes and a mouth-indicator.
I know, you were just misremembering something, but I haven't gotten the opportunity to describe Copernicus in a while, and I wanted to use some more detail than just his basics. I may need someone to draw him at some point.
Also, is that automaton's head shaped so that it looks like there's a marching band hat on it, or is the gray area just a space between structures? Because if it is hat-shaped, that's pretty adorable. Robot marching band is best marching band.
He sounds like he looks rather similar to Blitzcrank from League of Legends.
Aside from Blitzcrank's stumpy out-of-proportion legs, pipes, and really long arms, they could be part of the same species. Well, technically they are, because they're both golem subtypes, but saying all golems come from the same stock is like saying all robots do. How long has Blitzcrank been around? Maybe I can mention the similarity in my interlude on Copernicus's history.
MOBA backstory is MOBA backstory. However, we do get one pointer - his creation is within living memory on Valoran. His creation (and who got the credit for it) was the subject of a massive court case in Zaun, during which friend Blitzcrank requested personal autonomy. It implies that his creation was rather recent.
That said, it could just be that someone cribbed the design from Prof. Pididly's doctoral students and built Copernicus from those, making him more normal-looking and less stumpy in the process. =]
Copernicus's backstory involves him having been in the PPC for several years before Lonny was assigned as his partner, and the history interlude would take place shortly after his discovery and recruitment. I wouldn't want someone mentioning Blitzcrank if the character wasn't created until 2012 or something.
Copernicus is a clockwork golem, though, and Blitzcrank is a steam golem. I'm no doctoral student, but I think that, despite similarities in their design, the mechanics powering them would be quite different. Regardless, it probably wouldn't be safe getting either within contact distance of Agent Wobbles. =)
In which case, c'est impossible, desolee. LoL hasn't been around all that long, and even though Blitzcrank's one of the first champions, it wouldn't be feasible. Sorry. =[
it is indeed a hat. That particular automaton was a constable overseeing a prisoner.
Marvin and Printworthy had only just entered the party when the laughter began. It rolled over the agent's ears, a carol of madness in a sea of revelry. The party goers parted slightly, revealing a madwoman doubled over in hysterical madness.
Printworthy observed the scene in absolute awe and terror, amazed that such a cry could be made by any mortal tongue. As he watched, he noticed another pony slowly back away, clearly attempting to remain unobserved. The unicorn tuned towards his partner, poking him lightly with his horn. "Marvin, would you mind staying here for a moment?"
His partner nodded slowly, unable to tear his eyes from the strange scene before him. "Uh, sure, you go do that. What the hell..."
The unicorn rolled his eyes, but turned and cantered slowly towards the other pony. "Excuse me," he ventured, speaking carefully, so not to alarm the poor mare. "I am terribly sorry, and I do hate to intrude in such a manner, but I had to make sure you were all right."
--
Well, I could not just let another pony go by without my attention! Let's see how this plays out...
Fire Flash's head whipped around to face Printworthy, her green eyes slightly puffy and reddened.
"I'm not crying!" she said. "It's just-- I was-- ugh." She took a shaky breath, then exhaled sharply through her nostrils. "No, it's okay, I'm fine. S'okay. No need to stare and hover 'round me like that like some big fat mother hen. Wait, that was rubbish. Sorry. Like I said, it's just..." she looked at the spot where the Notary was lying on the ground, thankfully silent now. "I'm fine with insults. Hell, I can fling some really good ones back in peoples' faces. I didn't expect her to laugh, though..."
She sniffled and grinned. "Hah! Look at me now. Taken down by a giggling Time Lord. Happens to the best of us, amirite?" The mare held her smile as she sighed. "Why am I telling you all of this and why haven't I introduced myself yet? Fire Flash, resident mud pony of Internal Affairs. You look familiar... I think I read your file once. There's so few of us ponies in HQ we can count 'em on a pegasus' wingtips. Your name is... Chronicle? No, no, it's Printworthy, right?"
- - -
This is giving me some pretty good material on Fire Flash. I like where this is going.
Printworthy nodded lightly. "You would be correct. I would be Printworthy, agent of the All Purpose Department for My Little Pony." He smiled kindly towards the earth pony. "Department of Internal Affairs? Well, that would explain why you would have read my file. I admit, the battle against the forces of uncanon can be quite taxing. However, that must seem as a mere series of trivial conflicts when compaired to keeping this house of insanity under control."
The unicorn gently levetated a handkerchief from his pocket, offering it towards the puffy-eyed pony. "Here, take this. I insist."
...and accepted the offered tissue, dabbing her eyes with it and then handed it back to the unicorn.
"Well, aren't you a model gentlestallion?" she chuckled. "Thankee much, mister. Whew! Luna's stars, I think the last time I was shaken up like that, I had just been recruited. Good times, yeah?" Fire Flash let herself breathe for a few seconds before resuming the conversation. "So... you were saying something about this old madhouse here? Yeah, it gets pretty nasty at times. Like, just last week one of our patrol teams stumbled upon this huge soma trafficking ring-- you know, that drug from Brave New World? Just goes to show you what happens when you leave a portal generator in the hands of a bunch of idiots. Or maybe you heard about this guy Mansfield and his new division? 'Active Recruitment' they call it. More like 'Kidnapping and Brainwashing of Bit Characters' if you ask me. I'd suggest you keep an eye on Mansfield. He's up to no good, I can feel it in my bones...
"But... yeah. I'm done yapping about my life. Why don't you tell me about yours? Any good stories you'd like to share?"
...as he heard the tales from the DIA agent. "My word. People actually did that? I cannot imagine what ever could have gotten into their heads, to think consuming soma was a good idea." He shook his head, sadly. "Here I am, avoiding the consumption of bleeprin unless it is truly necessary, and other agents are smuggling in refined artificial joy. Unbelievable."
"That Mansfield character does sound suspect. I suppose bit characters are blank slates for a Glitter Do -Oh, pardon me, Mary Sue- to project praise onto themselves, but shaping them into agents? It does sound sinister. I hope nothing all too bad comes from it though, either because of it's innocence of wrong-doing, or because you stop it before it can cause too much harm.
"However, I am sidetracking. You wished to hear one of my stories?" Printworthy put a hoof lightly to his chin, pondering which story would be best suited to tell her. Much as her mood was improving, she was still shaken by the laughter of the Time Lord. What tale would boost her confidence best, or at least provide some entertainment?
Eventually, a few choice tales came to his mind. "I suppose I could tell about the day I became uncanon, by past rendered moot in one fell swoop. Of course, there is also the time I convinced the Marquis into admitting my partner and I into our chosen department, mere moments after falling into headquarters. I'm unsure which one to elaborate om. Which tale would you like to hear?"
---
Man, I want Printworthy to get all mad and defensive of Earth ponies and ponykind in general, but I know he's much more subtle then that. Heck, I've got a good rant and everything. However, his goal right now is to raise her spirits, and he's choosing to do so by subtly reassuring her that she's a good agent and a worthwhile agent. Man, why can't he be more blunt and forward with trying to comfort her? Gah!
"Let's hear the first story, the one where you became uncanon. That's always fun," said Fire Flash. "There's nothing quite like that feeling that you get when the world as you know it is shown to be a lie."
- - -
Printworthy being super-defensive of Earth ponies? Would you care to elaborate?
Also of the indisputable fact that Tali'Zorah nar Rayya is the most adorable sentient being who has ever lived. One day she will acclimatise to Earth's atmosphere sufficiently for Tonks to marry her I will brook no arguments to the contrary THEIR LOVE IS PURE GODDAMMIT-
---
"Ah. I presume you are actually an agent, albeit one with a serious medical condition, and that removing the only way I had of making this gathering of benighted primitives even remotely tolerable was my punishment. You want to speak to Wobbles. You know, the brightly coloured, easily visible idiot human holding a pogo stick? I will not presume to tell you how to do your job, but might that not have been something of a clue as to the identity of the vandal? And while you're here, I'd recommend filling out requisition form 212m/5(lxviii) and getting a better collar for your beast. It seems to have slipped its leash."
At this point, the Notary would have swanned imperiously off in search of more booze. However, she was still on the floor.
"Ahem. I appear to be, er... slightly stuck. If it's not too much trouble, could you possibly pick me up by the ceremonial headdress of this confounded costume? Why my partner forced me to wear this costume I do not know, it's not as if I've ever even been to the temples of Montezuma..."
Naya rose to her feet and stepped out of the Notary's reach.
"You owe my friend an apology. You do realize that Fire Flash puts up with some pretty serious bullcrap on a daily basis because she's a-- how did you put it? A 'cud-chewing, ugly quadruped' as opposed to the majority of the DIA personnel. Apologize, and then I might help you and your tasteless douche bag costume off the ground. Come on now, quick as you like. I can wait all day: I'm off the clock. And don't half-ass the thing either; I can smell dishonesty though my olfactory filters."
- - -
Oooh, lovely to see another Mass Effect fan here. What's your favourite race? I'm partial to the quarians, actually. They all speak with some pretty awesome accents.
I've just realised that Wobbles and quarians really, really don't mix. One of Wobbles's little quirks is that she has a rare genetic disorder called acute arcane technometaplasia, more commonly called Dresden's Syndrome, which causes technology that she touches to go a little bit nuts. By which I mean catch fire, catch ice, form cracks that appear to leak cake batter, spout green and purple smoke from no obvious gaps, turn into small origami leopards, and explode.
Quarians need technology to live.
Uh-oh.
"I have been accosted by the Flowers' secret police, accused of something I had not done, and been threatened when informing you of this. To paraphrase a famous human film, Rassilon forgive me, I owe you and your pet precisely dick. If you'll excuse me, I shall propel myself to somewhere more conducive to standing up, whereupon I shall endeavour to drink myself into a stupor and forget that barbarians like you have any kind of power. Can you smell any dishonesty from that statement, or are your olfactory filters bunged up with your own hot air?" With that, the Time Lady bounced off into the middle distance like a priapic space hopper.
Wobbles decided enough was enough. Making a few excuses to Dafydd's children, she mounted her pogo stick and made for the scene just as the Notary. "Um, hi, Officer Space-person. Sorry about her, she's..." The clown scrabbled around in her brain for something nice to say, and answer came there none. "Yeah. Um. Oh, I know!" She grabbed a few balloons out of her dungarees pocket and began to inflate them with a small hand-pump. "Have a balloon Rannoch. Uh, it might take a minute, though, 'cause I've gotta do this from memory and mountain ranges are hard. Is this about the pogo stick? I mean, I know I hit it kinda hard and kinda three times, but I'm not used to diluting Flubber yet. Think I might've got the dosage a bit wrong. And here you go!" Wobbles tied the inflatable Rannoch around one of Naya's wrists and beamed. "I've really gotta speak to catering about party food for people of different chirality. You're at a party and you can't have cake, that's just wrong."
---
While my favourite of the characters is Tali, who is precious and lovely and my moe space Jesus, my favourite race are actually the geth. I'm a sucker for aioid lifeforms, I guess. =]
...to introduce the last of my DIA agents. Meet Terabyte the geth and Emiran(lanoamar) the Time Lord.
- - -
As the Notary flopped away from her latest tongue-lashing victim, Naya noticed a clown approaching from the left. A series of warnings in Khelish flooded her visor's heads-up-display, all of them circling the woman as she closed the distance between her and the quarian.
>TB: Subject: Agent Wobbles
>TB: WARN: DRESDEN'S SYNDROME
>> \Define{Dresden's Syndrome}
>> Subjects suffering from this rare genetic disorder cause all manner of technology failure by their mere presence or touch. Results are often spectacular, explosive, or spectacularly explosive. \
>TB: Locking down suit seals in preparation for close proximity with Agent Wobbles. Activating emergency air supply. Power cut from all non-essential systems to avoid system overload.
>TB: Uploading myself into HQ wireless. Scrubbing session from hardsuit memory drives to avoid file corruption.
>TB: Regroup at Response Centre as fast as possible. I will activate my platform.
>TB: Will warn the Guardsman.
Naya's HUD then went black as Terabyte the geth quickly extracted all of its core files from the quarian's suit computer and fled the incoming tech-destroying aura via Wi-Fi. The quarian gulped and put on a smile as Wobbles chatted and started to piece together a geographically correct model with balloons.
* * *
Emiranlanoamar stared at the mechanical body of a geth trooper on the workbench in front of him, then at his clipboard full of repair notes. He plucked his pencil from its perch behind his ear and scribbled a line of calculations beside a complicated-looking diagram. Satisfied with his arithmetic, he hung the clipboard on a nail in the wall in front of him and grabbed a laser screwdriver from his toolbox.
"All righty then," he said to the inanimate shell as he slipped his welding goggles over his eyes, "this should improve your energy efficiency by sevenish percent. Sure, It doesn't beat having some new power cells installed on this thing-- we really need to replace those-- but an extra twenty-odd seconds during an operation is nothing to sneeze at, eh? Now, let's open up this chest compartment and... there we go. Now, we're gonna fuse this circuit with that circuit... Good... Now come the wires... Reconfiguring the capacitor alignment..."
The console [Bip!]ed during the middle of the last procedure. Without raising his eyes from his work, the Time Lord waved his laser screwdriver at the console to acknowledge the message. Terabyte's robotic voice sounded over the speaker system.
"Guardsman. Naya's suit integrity has been compromised. She will require an immediate change of uniform. Please prepare the cleanroom and my platform. I shall assist her with suit removal if necessary."
"Hey, wait! No-no-no-no-no! The robot isn't ready! I'm still working!" said Emiran, stumbling over the cables and the half-disassembled electronics that littered the RC's floor towards a heavy set of doors. "The battery unit is still exposed!"
"Remove the power cells and put me on umbilical power."
"Oh for crying out loud, I'm working on them!" said Emiran as he heaved open the cleanroom door and used his laser screwdriver to program the washroom-sized space for a decontamination cycle. "You're not giving me time to fix anything, you know that? It's always emergency this, emergency that, emergency all day and every day!"
"My apologies, but there is work to be done. Beginning upload now."
Emiran let out a frustrated growl as he quickly made his way back to the workbench and plugged a thick wire into a socket on the geth's neck section. The Time Lord then ran back to the cleanroom and plugged the other end of the cable in a plug inside the room. Terabyte's body started to buzz and twitch as servomotors and cooling fans turned on. Meanwhile, Emiran had rushed back to the workbench and disconnected the main battery from the geth platform, yanking out the power cells from their casings with his gloved hands.
A portal opened in the middle of the room, letting Naya through, RA in hand. She walked stiffly, as if her all of her suit's articulations had solidified.
"Don't get me wrong," said the quarian as she hobbled over to the cleanroom, "Wobbles is a really nice lady. I mean, she got me a balloon replica of Rannoch, mountains and everything. I just think that we shouldn't be in the same room again."
Terabyte, who was now able to walk under its own power now, helped guide Naya to the decontamination chamber. "Extent of suit damage?" it asked.
"I think that my Medi-Gel turned into custard and my servos are definitely frozen over," answered Naya. "Nothing serious. My Omni-tool is completely shot though: Wobbles touched it when she tied the globe to my wrist. Oh yeah, Emiran?"
"Aye, miss?"
Naya managed to toss her Remote Activator towards her partner. "Can you go and check on Fire Flash for me? She was in a pretty bad state when I left her."
The Time Lord shrugged off his apron and his gloves and removed his goggles. "Why? What happened to her?"
"She encountered the Notary. Anyways, just make sure she's OK! I'll be in Medical if you need me."
"Sure thing, partner. See you later," said Emiran, heading for his room. He threw his protective gear on his bed and grabbed his black Inverness coat from the hanger behind the door. The DIA officer quickly donned his coat and opened a portal to the last coordinates shown on the device.
Emiran stepped through the portal and found himself just outside the party room. Through the gaping hole in the wall beside him ("What in Rassilon's name happened here?"), the Time Lord thought he could spot Fire Flash's distinctive red-and-orange mane somewhere towards the back of the room. He ducked under the urple cordon tape that criss-crossed the hole and slowly started to make his way towards the pony, hoping not to bump into the Notary.
Though if that's the case, he is officially the only Time Lord in HQ, and one of very few of his species in total, to use his own name before his title. Most Time Lords either don't have a title or don't use any version of their name, even a truncated form, if they do have one. It makes sense that Emiran decided to shorten his name when he chose to use it, though. I can't figure out how that last part would even be pronounced. Lan-OH-uh-MAR? Lan-WHUA-mar? La-NWA-mar? Nope, can't get a fix on it.
((I pronounce the second part of Emiran's name as "la-NOH-ah-mar".
His title refers to his rank before he fell into HQ: Guardsman Emiranlanoamar, Arcadian 442nd Regiment, combat engineer corps. When he first introduced himself to the denizens of HQ, he only managed to identify himself as "Guardsman" before regenerating. His title stuck: why be plain old "Emiran" when you could be "Guardsman"? Only two people call him by his given name: Naya and Taldaris.
Fun fact about this Time Lord: as a survivor of the Last Great Time War, he has amassed a massive body count over his military career.
A little over half of them were his body, to be precise. Despite being killed and resurrected more than a hundred times over by the paradoxal timestreams at the heart of the War, he only regenerated twice: one happened after a Dalek fell on him, the other occurred when he was dragged through the Time Vortex with no protective equipment. The other deaths were near-instantaneous.))
Aioid is a term from the hard sci-fi web thing Orion's Arm; it means computer-based life instead of biological life (referred to by the term "bioid").
Or at least, that's the continuum that gave me the definition that best tied in with the geth.
After a few moments of dreaming, Des noticed trouble. Rather, he noticed a pair of people he vaguely remembered from somewhere. He tapped his nose a few times, trying to remember where he saw a clown and a haughty woman that sounded like an older version of Petra Fina; realising he met them in a birthday party in the Cafeteria about two months ago and that the Librarian pointed the now-douchebag-wearing woman as an obstructive bureaucrat, he wasn't surprised when she proceeded to address an MLPverse pony like he was some sort of animal.
The masked agent got up and looked around, searching the room for the clown. Spotting her at a different corner of the room, he briskly walked up to her. “Excuse me,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled by the mask, “you're, um, what's-her-name, the Notary, I think? Anyway, you're her partner, right?”
Because, chronologically speaking, that would've been over a year ago. The ten-years-of-PPC party took place in February 2013, and this would be about thirteen months after that. Wobbles and the Notary's presence at the Nume-bash was eventually pinned down to a malfunctioning time machine.
Unless, of course, you meant some other non-RP birthday party, perhaps for some of the Nursery kids, which is distinctly possible. I just thought you ought to know in case it was the former rather than the latter.
It took place at February 2013? Oops... damn this Board not having an edit function...
You aren't the only one to have made that mistake, though. There were at least three others, if I recall correctly. Like I said, you can just retcon this to Des showing up at a children's birthday party at some point, since you said "birthday party" rather than "anniversary party". Wobbles would show up to plenty of birthday parties, and I'm sure the Nursery staff would let semi-responsible Agents in to let them have free cake in exchange for chasing off any undesirables. Can't have Luxury or the Daleks traumatizing the impressionable children, you know! Not on their special day!
Where there was likely to be a wild party, there you would find Gall Bonecrusher. Where you would find Gall Bonecrusher, you would find Derik, bound by some doom of responsibility that kindly looked the other way if he took the opportunity to tie one on.
Not having a wealth of costuming skill between them, they were simply reprising their Viking and Pirate getup from Halloween: Gall was kitted out in full armor from her home 'verse, though she'd left her mace and shield in the RC, and she'd streaked her face with blue warpaint inspired by a recent viewing of Braveheart. Derik was swathed in all black as the Dread Pirate Roberts. The mask was indeed very comfortable, and made him somewhat easier to look at than usual by virtue of hiding some of his scars and obscuring his blind right eye.
The two entered through the doors, though given the option they probably would have used the hole in the wall for sheer novelty.
Just inside, Gall planted her hands on her hips and surveyed the room skeptically. "Well, this is it. We must be early; this place is dead."
"I'm not so sure," said Derik. He pointed across the room at the large hole in the wall.
Gall blinked. "Aw, I hope we're not late! Jeez, that would just figure. First chance at real fun since the last Indoor Quiddich match, and we missed someone knocking a wall down!" She kicked the floor. "Screw it. Where's the alcohol?"
"Hm." Derik scanned the room, then froze with a sharp intake of breath as two things caught his eye simultaneously. One was the Phantom of the Opera—a proper one with a full mask, even—and the other was a small golden dragonet fanning her wings on a dark-haired woman's shoulder. After a moment, Derik remembered to breathe again. "Gall? I... changed my mind. I don't think I should be here."
"What?" She gave him the kind of side-eye that would be warranted by suddenly speaking in tongues.
"I think I should go." He turned on his heel and started for the door, but a sharp tug at his waist stopped him.
Gall had seized him by the sash. "Don't be stupid. You know you'll just sit and mope back in the response center. Come on, I found the drinks table. You're be fine once you've got a few in you."
"Let go!" In a surge of anger, he batted her hand away. They glared at each other for a minute, then Derik sighed, and his head and shoulders drooped. "Fine. Let's get very, very drunk."
"Excellent. Right this way!" She cheerfully stomped into the crowd, careless of who she had to muscle out of her way in the noble and time-honored pursuit of booze.
Derik trudged after her wearily. He made up his mind to ignore the Phantom—it was just someone in a costume, after all—but his glance kept straying to the gold fire-lizard. It hurt to look at her, making him very much aware of the piece of himself that was missing, but... perhaps her Impressor was someone he could talk to. He had so little contact with anyone or anything of Pern, and despite never really having had a life there, he missed it. So he stopped, and turned, and approached the dark-haired woman.
"Er... excuse me?" he said softly.
(( Sorry for angsting up the party. I'll try to find some way to make up for it. ^_^;
~Neshomeh ))
Constance ran quickly through the mental checklist she applied to any conversation with strangers. Tall, muscular, and scarred he may have been, but this was the PPC - there were tall, muscular, scarred hobbit-lasses around. His posture didn't appear threatening - more like nervous. The children were being entertained by a clown (well, the girls were - Tanfin looked distinctly dubious, and Oleander was more interested in Tanfin's eagle-shaped balloon), and Dafydd had found someone he recognised to go and... glower at or something. No danger, no responsibilities - conversation is go.
"Hi there," she said, smiling at the pirate-costumed man. "I don't think we've met. I'm Constance, and this is Hera."
The fire-lizard queen let out a purring noise, and propped herself up with one paw on the top of Constance's head. Constance snorted.
"She's such a show-off," she told the stranger. "On the other hand, quite often she just glares at people, so it seems she likes you. Don't worry - she's not dangerous." She grinned. "And can I say, Dread Pirate Westley? Very nice."
Derik started to explain that he wasn't afraid of Hera, but the compliment on his costume threw him a curveball. "Er, what? Oh—right." He glanced down and plucked awkwardly at the loose shirt. "Thanks."
He was stammering like an idiot. That had to stop. He took a deep breath and straightened up, attempting to smile. His expression was always at least half a grimace, so with the current roiling of his emotions, it didn't go well. All the same, he extended a black-gloved hand and said as pleasantly as he could manage, "I'm Derik. I couldn't help but notice your Hera. She's very beautiful, and it's not every day you meet someone lucky enough to hatch a gold egg. May I ask how you came by her?"
With that desperation-tinged performance, he estimated that he had about two minutes before Constance realized there was something dreadfully wrong with him and made her excuses to leave. Shards.
Constance snorted as she shook Derik's hand. "Luck had nothing to do with it. When your husband is so obsessed that he portals you both to Pern's Southern Continent when there's, quote, 'no one around for two hundred years each way', and you spend the next three months staking out nests... well, it's like I said. Weight of numbers beats luck every time." She tossed her head, jolting Hera.
The fire-lizard hissed irritably, flapping her wings for balance, and Constance chuckled. "I admit it, though - despite all the work, I was glad to meet my little queen. She's not just a pretty face, you know." Hera crooned softly in Constance's ear, and the woman reached up to stroke her under the chin. "Yes, dear, but don't let it go to your head." She nodded at Derik. "She's empathic, or telepathic, or one of those. Dafydd tells me the emotional feedback can have a stabilising effect, but he may have been talking rubbish again. It's hard to tell."
Constance paused a moment, eyeing the Silent Pirate Derik. "Any time you want to get a word in edgeways, just ask."
"Well, in fact..." Derik forged ahead with the opportunity he'd been given. It felt too forward, barging straight to the point, but he wasn't sure another chance would come before either she left or he went to pieces watching her interact with her little gold. "The matter of it is, I'm from Pern, and I was wondering if you were. Or your husband. As far as I've known, it's just been me and Jenni from FicPsych, but her only sort of. It's complex." He waved it off. "My point is, I'd be very pleased to know any others."
He wasn't too sure, though, having listened to her talk. She didn't share his accent, and there was something else, a vague sense of disconnection. Still, he waited hopefully for her answer. The husband with egg fever sounded promising.
"Oh! Ah, no." Constance shrugged, forcing Hera to scrabble for grip. "Just fans. Well, I say fans... I've only read a couple of the books. Dafydd was the one who really got into it." She pointed at her husband, where he was kneeling to deal with Belladonna's sudden flood of tears at the clown's departure. "I'm not sure why - you'd think an elf would be scared of dragons."
Hera made an irritable noise and batted Constance's ear, and the woman chuckled. "I know, I know - no-one could be scared of you and Ilwion, and if I say otherwise you'll bite my fingers off." Still smiling, she turned back to Derik. "There must be more than two of you, though. I know Alec Troven from Improbabilities spent some time on Pern - though, as I recall, 'complex' describes him just as well as Nurse Robinson. And..." She frowned, turned away, and waved across the room. "Dafydd! Get over here, elf-boy, I need your memory."
Feeling Hera turn on her shoulder to keep Derik in view, Constance glanced back at him and winked. "You should like Dafydd, if he can keep his arrogance leaking everywhere. Fantasy canon, obsessed with harps... oh, hello, lover, we were just talking about you."
"You were talking about me, at any rate," Dafydd said, passing Oleander to Constance. "Problem?"
"No problem," Constance said, bouncing the baby absently. Hera, dislodged by the rocking, leapt into the air and hovered over the group's heads. "This is Derik. He wants to know if there's anyone else from Pern in HQ."
"Well, there's Alec," Dafydd suggested. "Went on a mission there with him once, actually. And... didn't you work with someone, once?"
"He already knows Nurse Robinson," Constance said. "Honestly, I thought elves were supposed to be mind-readers."
"That is a vicious lie," Dafydd said blandly. "Let's see... I know Lou was Pernese at one point, but she doesn't exist." He glanced at Derik and shrugged. "It's complex."
Derik took the bad news surprisingly well, in his own opinion. "Oh," he said. The mask and bandana suddenly felt a bit hotter and more confining. He cast a longing look at the drinks table, but it would be rude to walk out now. Anyway, it wasn't as though he were any worse off than he had been to begin with.
"Bother this," he growled to himself as Constance called Dafydd over. He pulled off the headwear and shook out his shaggy, slightly damp black hair. If he was going to continue conversing, he wanted to do so as himself, not some strange masked figure.
He nodded in greeting to Dafydd and attempted another smile for the baby's sake, this one slightly more convincing than the first. He hoped his face wouldn't scare the kid, who had probably never seen Threadscars.
"It's all right," he replied when his turn came. "To be honest, I suppose 'complex' describes my situation, as well. You mentioned harps." He glanced at Constance, then back to Dafydd. "I remember playing the harp—I was a Harper—but I'm told those experiences were artificially constructed for me, thanks to some sort of reality-warping field I stumbled into after I got here." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter much—and that's quite enough about me. Thank you for your concern." He nodded to Constance.
And finally twigged onto the fact that she had kids. A whole clutch of them, if he wasn't much mistaken. All of them had a touch of their father's otherworldly good looks. "So, uh... are those yours, then?"
Constance held Oleander tighter as the baby (still just about, at any rate) stared at Derik's revealed face. Slowly, he lifted one pudgy hand to point at Derik, and Constance could practically hear his mind working, cogs whirring (or squeaking) until they finally sent a word to his mouth:
"Da!"
And Oleander burst into fits of laughter.
Constance chuckled and ruffled his wispy hair. "He only knows one word," she told Derik, "but he does love to use it. Yes, they're all mine."
"And they're all," Dafydd said firmly, ignoring Constance's pout. "Honestly, five children was enough for Uncle Finarfin, it's enough for me. I don't need to be like- well, you know."
Tanfin, now holding Daphne's hand to keep her from running off, was frowning up at Derik. "What happened to your face?" he asked, sensing the lull in the conversation. "Is it like what Daddy did to his hand?"
"You have a lovely family," he complimented both parents.
His mood took a sudden upswing for no real reason that he was aware of—these things just happened—so he grinned at Tanfin's question. "Only if the answer can be summed up as foolhardy overconfidence." But of course he wasn't seriously suggesting that could be true. The poor guy probably had his hand chopped off by a Warrior!Sue or something. "When it's your first real Threadfall, and you both think you're invincible..." And then he crashed back into depression and sullen silence. He looked away from the boy lest he think it was something to do with him.
Dafydd noted Derik registering his missing hand, and held the stump up with a snort of laughter. "This is definitely 'foolhardy overconfidence'," he told the ex-dragonrider. "What else would you call trying to use a 'Sue's magic ring that had already tried to kill you once?"
He thought for a moment, his gaze flicking between Derik, Tanfin, and Hera, and then held up his remaining hand, palm out. Burned into the skin was a circular scar.
"But he was probably talking about this," the elf revealed, "and this one is less 'foolhardy overconfidence' and more 'suicidal stupidity'." He closed his hand again, fingers subconsciously running over the scar. "You said you were a Harper? Well, what with one thing," he held up his stump, "and another," and lifted the scarred hand, "you're probably better on the harp than me at this point."
"You're just fishing for complements now," Constance chided, elbowing her husband in the ribs, and looked back at Derik. "He does this sometimes. 'Oh woe is me, I have even less manual dexterity than my brother, all my fame has come to naught' - you know the sort of thing."
"Why exactly is there a hole in the wall?"
Charlie shrugged, flipping her blonde hair--specially straightened for her costume--over her shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe someone brought a laser?" At her feet, the mini-Balrogs Glorfinel and Ectheleon exchanged glances, and began to bounce excitedly. Caradharas had already disappeared into the crowd.
"No," Brenda said, "I meant, why is there a hole in the wall so early on in the party?"
Charlie shrugged again. "No idea. Do you think anyone dressed up as the Doctor? Or," she sighed, "Pippin?"
Brenda snorted, and pulled her long red cloak closer about her. "Rose's love interest and your lust object? We couldn't be so unlucky." She dodged the shove Charlie aimed at her shoulder, and glanced around the room. "Weren't there supposed to be things to eat?"
Charlie scanned the room as well--or at least, what she could see of it. "They might be over there?" she ventured. "Where the crowd gets thicker?"
Brenda stared around, frowning. "By that logic, almost anywhere might have food." She thought this over, and then shrugged. "C'mon, let's go."
Charlie eyed the crowd, and sighed, but followed her partner in, the mini-Balrogs at her heels.
--
(They're dressed as Rose Tyler and Ruby from Once Upon A Time, by the way.)
~DF
Dafydd and Co. certainly know how to crash a party.
