Arrival Mingle

[iterumadmin]

Who: Everyone.
What: The Chosen return or arrival in the City.
When: July 1st.
Where: The Districts of the City.
Anything Else? Feel free to make your own arrivals, or throw an arrival starter here! The party is open to all. As a reminder, language barriers are not an issue in the Tower.

The City hadn't changed at all in its time without the chosen. If anything, The City seemed a little dusty. The Chosen would find themselves waking in their assigned homes. Even if they were returning and had other homes. They would wake in their chosen home. For the most part, anyway, a few chosen had special ways of arriving.

The assigned housing varied depending on the district they were assigned according to their sin. However, everyone had a box, a welcome package awaiting them upon waking. Inside the box was an extra invitation inviting them to the tower if they so decided to come visit upon arrival.

The city was once again bustling with life. Cars, demons, and the people of the City moving as if time had never stopped. Business as usual for the returning Chosen.


The Tower

While it was not Aiden's district, he had talked the Duchess into opening up the ballroom, and Skiffell to provide food, that just didn't seem to end. The grand ballroom was filled with many delectable dishes, and a small band of demons playing big band music in the corner.

The doors were propped open with the music drifting out to help lull the chosen who decided to attend. A handwritten poster board outside the open doors displaying 'Welcome Chosen!' with about 10 smiley faces drawn on it. While normally parties at the tower demanded fancy dress, Aiden throwing a party meant that rule would not be abided. He didn't dig out the fancy threads for anyone. This was a different kind of party, put together by the lord of Leisurebrook.

While Aiden didn't plan to reveal himself as a magistrate, he did love to mingle with people and hear their stories. So he was there. He was napping at a round table off in a corner, his messy brown hair spilled over his crossed arms as he napped as if he didn't have a care in the world.

Comments

Sirius Black | ota

[siriuslydementd]

There are a lot of options here, and Sirius doesn't understand all of them, even having had more exposure to Muggles than most pureblood wizards. But it doesn't really matter. He's mostly enjoying having the freedom to go where he wants and do what he wants. After twelve years in a cell in Azkaban, a year on the run, and months in moldering Grimmauld Place, freedom is concept he had almost forgotten.

Plus there's food, and he's not going to turn that down.

He spends most of the evening standing along the edge of the room with a drink in hand, just watching, though he makes a few trips to the food table as well. Where he finds something just out of his reach, and he could go around the table to get it, but what he does instead is pull out his wand and make the particular item that he wants float onto his plate instead.

He's been here long enough to discover that this place isn't like home, and he doesn't have to hide what he can do. He really is free.

[thegreatexperiment]

It was possible that Sam wasn't anywhere near as observant as Avery (fuck that guy), but it didn't take Auspex or any supernatural ability to spot someone pull a fucking magician's wand out and suddenly make food levitate.

Um. Hello?

She'd been lingering along the walls, playing the disaffected youth that she was, but when she saw that, Sam dropped all pretenses and immediately crossed the room, her combat boots thumping.

"Okay, how the fuck did you do that?" she asked. No preamble, because what was the point? The rules of natural order or whatever were shot to hell. Might as well just be honest in her curiosity.

And it was curiosity, in all fairness. Not an accusation, not a fearful pronouncement. She was a scientist and her scientific mind was reeling so fast, it practically made her baby blues light up.

[siriuslydementd]

He's a bit surprised when someone walks up to him and just starts talking, but a quick look in her direction shows no trace of anger or fear, which can happen when a Muggle witnesses magic use. Though perhaps he'd been a bit rash in using it anyway, although at this point he doesn't much care what the Ministry thinks about anything.

"It's a simple levitation charm."

[thegreatexperiment]

Simple. Levitation. Charm. Three words that really didn't belong in a sentence together. Sam was aware of magic, as a thing that existed. Mostly shit that the Crones and the Lance did with their blood. It wouldn't even surprise her if somehow they had spells for levitation. That said...

One, this dude was not a vampire.

Two, as far as she could tell, there had been no blood involved.

Three. He had a wand. A wand. Neither the Crones nor the Lance would be caught dead with that shit. They'd be laughed right out of their covenants, as far as she knew. So her questions were multiplying. Fast.

"Okay," she said slowly, the gears turning behind her eyes. "What's being charmed, the food or the gravity around it?"

[siriuslydementd]

"The...food." He's never really thought about how or why the magic works before, just knows how to do it. Theory and history had been more up Remus' alley than his and James'; they'd found the practice of magic more interesting than the theory. Which isn't to say that he didn't get good grades when he applied himself to the work. Just that essays weren't his thing.

[thegreatexperiment]

The food itself. Possibly changing its density, somehow? Did that remain true when it was eaten though? Wouldn't that essentially be transforming matter into another type of matter? Was a flying burrito actually a burrito? Or just some strange combination of low-density gases?

"Huh."

It was all she could get out for a second or two without spiraling. Not her most sophisticated response, admittedly. But come on. Extenuating circumstances.

She had more than a few.

"Cool," she managed. "And the stick? Some kind of conduit?"

[siriuslydementd]

"It's a wand. There are wrist movements associated with the charms, which is what the wand is for." Though some people (himself included) can do magic without a wand, it's generally a requirement; he supposes it could be a conduit, just not explained in those terms.

He's also confused by this conversation, mainly her interest in the topic.

[thegreatexperiment]

Wand. Okay, he was actually going with wand. She supposed the term and concept itself had to come from somewhere. Even if it felt kind of cheesy.

Who the hell was she to judge? She was a fucking vampire. True, she refused to use the word 'Kindred.' But even 'vampire' itself had connotations. Nothing to do about that.

And on the subject of vocab words...

"Are you a Mage?" she asked. Avery kept a file on Mages. He was absolutely convinced that they had to exist. So far, Sam had conceded the point that magic seemed strangely common in the multiverse. But she had yet to put a name to all of it.

[siriuslydementd]

"I'm a wizard." Though now that he thinks about it, he's not sure what the distinction is between the various words used to describe magic users. Someone just seems to have chosen that word at some point in the past, and the rest of the wizarding community went with it. Had that topic been covered somewhere in History of Magic? For what will probably be the only time in his life, he wishes he had paid more attention in that class.

[royal_venant]

It was the free food, already cooked, that drew Regulus to this particular event. He was so tired of whatever concoctions he could creatively conceive to throw together, or, horror of horrors, those frozen meals he just had to heat up.

The problem with growing up in a house full of House elves is that he'd never learned even the basics of how to cook.

It was irritating.

Running into his brother was also irritating. Not because Regulus was embarrassed about their last interaction, no, he'd already put that memory and associated emotions in a box and shoved it away in his mind. He planned to act like it had never happened.

It was just irritating because his brother was simply irritating. And he wasn't in the mood to analyze the complexity of their relationship.

And Regulus had almost pulled off ignoring his brother completely when his brother snatched up the last of an hor dourves on a plate (note: there were plenty of other plates of food to choose from) and Regulus shot him an indigent look and said, "I wanted that."

[siriuslydementd]

If James or Remus had said it, Sirius would have first assumed they were just teasing him, and then have offered it to them anyway. He's less inclined to indulge anything that Regulus says, nor does he really care what Regulus wants.

"We don't always get what we want."

[royal_venant]

Regulus hated the way a part of him stung whenever he and his brother interacted, the part that wished things could be different. Like they had been when they were younger, but that was deep in the past.

"Arse," he shot back. And he should have just moved on, but of course he didn't.

"This City was better when you weren't here."

[siriuslydementd]

Don't look at him like that. It's not his fault that Regulus became the golden child and is now facing a rude awakening from the rest of the world.

"Everyone has one, and some people talk out of theirs." He's been called worse, and it's more a matter of pride to him that his brother thinks of him as such. There's a certain type of person he wants to be, and that person is whatever type of person annoys his brother.

"Were you here when I wasn't?"

[royal_venant]

Regulus rolled his eyes. His brother just merely existing annoyed him.

"Yes," he said. "Loads of people here were here before. It was nice." And it was only a half lie. His last stint in the City was a bit lonely and confusing if a reprieve from dealing with his family and Lord Voldemort.

[siriuslydementd]

"Well I'm sorry to rain on your parade," except that he's not, really, Regulus whining is the highlight of his night, "but like I said, we don't always get what we want."

At which he sticks a canape in his mouth and chews.

[royal_venant]

"Or you could actually act like my brother," Regulus shot back. He didn't know why he'd reveal himself like that to someone who clearly didn't care about him. But maybe it was because he was dealing with a lot mentally, himself. Dying and all that, then living again. It was a lot to weigh on someone's mind.

[siriuslydementd]

"Excuse me?" Regulus isn't the only one who misses what the brothers used to have. They'd had each other, and then Sirius had gone away to school and made friends, and when he came back, he found that his entire family had turned on him, including his brother. He wasn't toeing the line anymore, and none of them found that acceptable.

He hadn't let it show the first time that Regulus called him a 'blood traitor,' but it had hurt. He had hoped that perhaps he could talk some sense into Regulus, but at that point he'd known it was no longer possible.

[darkforcerising]

The collusion was on purpose. Anakin had watched the man along the wall use a wand to magically call food from the table to him, and Anakin was amused.

And that's when the thought crossed his mind. No matter how many universes he lived through, or lives lived, Anakin was still a bit of a pratt and he loved all things crashing and exploding.

The next time the man called an item - he guessed it was a cream puff - from the table, Anakin reached through the Force and called forth his own cream puff so that it crashed midair with the man's floating choice. And both puffs not so much exploded but spattered apart, and then fell to the floor in a dozen small pieces.

Anakin laughed, thoroughly entertained, but to make up for it, he called forth another one of the same puffs and sent it over to the man.

"Thanks for humoring me," he called out.

[siriuslydementd]

He's confused when the item he's attempting to put on his plate moves in an entirely different direction; he knows that he has better control of his magic than that. He mastered that charm a long time ago. A quick look around reveals the cause of the confusion: someone is messing with him, apparently for no reason other than it amuses him.

It's not magic like his though, he can tell that much.

"How exactly are you doing that?"

[darkforcerising]

"The Force," Anakin said. "It's..." and he paused, figuring diving into the entire explanation of it right now might be overkill and corrected mid-sentence. "A whole thing. You can just think of it as a kind of magic where I'm from." If another Jedi could hear him now, calling the Force 'magic' was a bit of an insult to the members of the Order.

"We-" Well just him, as far as he could tell right now he was the only Force user here at the moment, "I don't need anything to help me focus using it. It's mostly an intent and conviction thing."

And he threw propriety into the wind and asked, wholly innocently, even though he heard the innuendo as he ask it, "How does your wand work?"

[siriuslydementd]

"It directs the magic where I want it to go." There's a whole other explanation about wrist movements and such too, which he'd only half paid attention to in school, but he's not going to get into technical details right now.

What is it with everyone's fascination with wands at this party?

[darkforcerising]

Anakin gave an appreciative nod. And then he thrust out his mechanical hand to shake.

"I'm Anakin," He figured it was worth introducing himself to a person who didn't instantly take offence at the food explosion.

[siriuslydementd]

Sirius hardly notices that the hand he's shaking isn't flesh and blood, but even if he did, it wouldn't be the strangest thing he's ever encountered. Considering he went to a school for wizards and can turn himself into a dog, it doesn't even scratch the top ten.

"Sirius."

[darkforcerising]

That was good. It was maybe underhanded to present a secret test to someone like that, but Anakin found it was the best way to weed out the people prejudiced against disabilities.

And Sirius passed.

"Is this your first time here?"

[siriuslydementd]

"Yes." He's not going to complain too much about being pulled away from gloomy London and Grimmauld Place and brought here instead, although he does wish that if someone from his world had to come along, it had been someone other than his brother. "I gather that some have been here before though."