Costume Party in Honor of Lex Luthor's Birthday [OPEN]

[defenestration]

As stated on the invitation, Adrian is throwing a costume party to celebrate Lex's twenty-fifth birthday at the Luthor-Veidt Building in Brock Marsh. Everyone is welcome, whether they know Lex or not. There's plenty of food and free alcohol (mostly wine, fancy beer, and champagne), music and a space for dancing, and room to mingle and make new friends. Some simple and classy decorations, purple of course, have been put up on the first and second floors to create a festive atmosphere.

(A note to those who might try to take the opportunity to go snooping: security is insanely tight. The elevators will not go beyond the first and second floors without a special code, and there's an elevator operator who is very obviously there to make sure you don't try anything funny. The stairwells are likewise under guard and the private areas of the first floor are locked and under camera surveillance.)



[ooc: Please wait until a few threads are set up before tagging! Party time! Everyone is welcome!

Note: I've turned off notifs so if you need my attention in a specific spot, please PM or plurk me.]

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[magnetic]

The very same thing nearly happened with the very first Bond film in his own world. Wouldn't that have been a funny coincidence? Ha ha. ...Life is horrible.

Relevance aside, this is a random enough topic that he feels comfortable rolling with it, yet not so random as to be aggravating. Why not discuss James Bond's hair with a lady dressed in an elaborate princess costume? Just, why not. It makes about as much sense as going to a party inside a prison, and what's more, it's a decent distraction from whatever is going on inside his head right now.

And so: "Was he." It's...kind of a prompt to go on? God, Erik, you are just too talkative, stop it.

[rhinemaid]

"Before the world ended." Her serenity is the kind that tends to have intense trauma underlying it, but this is just the sort of thing that happens occasionally during her conversations; as far as she can guess, those people might well all be dead now, though they'd have better chances in Europe, where things aren't quite so fraught as North America.

Her shoes clink quietly when she crosses her ankles, swaying into a more comfortable position, settling them to one side. After a moment, as if it's nothing unusual as a follow up to her last remark, "He was a bit shorter than the other ones. Stockier. I think he would've done all right, but he got bad press."

[magnetic]

Before the world ended. Well, that's intriguing, in a distinctly morbid way. Between that and the growing sense that she reminds him of someone, if only nebulously, he may not even need to down the rest of his Scotch to get through their conversation. He does sip at it, though, and looks into the glass as he swallows, his eyes lifting to meet Ilde again only after he asks, "What happened to the world?"

[rhinemaid]

"My world." It's a fleeting caution- her world is not like others, she's already heard of places that continued on past the point at which the storm came, and...mostly they make her angry. It's a quiet, private anger but it is there and there is a taste of it in those two words. How dare they-

It takes her a moment to choose her words to follow that.

"There was a storm," she settles on. "Most people died. Some got more themselves, others were changed into things they weren't meant to be. Most of the latter killed more of the survivors. I missed a lot of it, Sonja had to catch me up later."

...given how difficult it would be to miss something like that, Erik should probably use his discretion before deciding whether or not he wants to know the explanation.

"I think I like it better the way it is. It's more honest."

Well.

[magnetic]

Well indeed. This is frankly a lot of sharing to be doing with someone you've only just met, and he's not sure her voice suggests she's made enough peace with it that this is a wholly comfortable topic. Still, if she finds some solace in honesty... he can sort of relate. There's no reason to tap the mirror in case it might show a clearer reflection, though, so he leaves it be.

There may very well be a silence here, although not an uncomfortable one—not on Erik's end, at least, since he isn't the one being considered. At the end of it, he leans forward and places his beverage on the low table there, the tumbler still adequately full on account of he's only sipped from it twice. "Here." A gentle push from his long fingers moves it toward her, just so. "It seems like you need this more than I do."

[rhinemaid]

Ilde's sometimes-aggressive honesty about her world (her context - Prometheus and what they've done) has nothing to do with being at peace and everything to do with the bitterness she often does a remarkably good job of concealing, day to day. Burning out of the world all the parts that want her to be ashamed of what she is...

(Fuck humans.)

His offer of the drink, however, clears her expression in a fairly characteristic moodswing; she laughs, suddenly, a pleasant watery gurgle that is no human thing. A flicker of big, blue-black eyes matches it as she looks up from his hands to his face, pale and gleaming as takes the tumbler and says, "A little, I have to be careful."

Not human. The illusion settles back over her features as she tastes the scotch, though, shaking her head. "If I were a Bond girl," she says, still holding the glass up, "I would be the one from that short story, with the cello."

It's not the most smooth segue there ever was, but it is a good faith offer to not veer back into hideousness.

[magnetic]

That, right there, that settles it. Since she first settled into that chair, Ilde has reminded him of Raven—but only during one particular moment, just barely before she changes her shape. The single instant when the illusion becomes not-quite-obvious and yet something seems to shift nevertheless. That metaphysical anticipation.

Now he smiles.

"Do you play?"

Offer accepted, it seems.

[rhinemaid]

"Preternaturally well," she informs him, tasting the scotch again once before regretfully setting the tumbler back down on the table in front of them; she's got responsibilities this evening, even if she's relatively sure she could count on either Cindy or Ivan to haul her drunk ass home as need be. "My cello came with me, I teach music here."

At this point, it belatedly occurs to her that they've had this entire conversation without introducing themselves and she offers him her hand (cooler than a human's would be, like she just stepped out of cold water moments before)- "Ilde Decima."

[magnetic]

Erik does take her hand when she offers, but only holds it in his own—larger, warmer, faintly calloused—while responding with a shallow cant of his head and shoulders, as though to suggest another form of greeting entirely without actually taking it there. It seems more suitable than a handshake. "Erik Lehnsherr. It's a pleasure."

Though he is by all accounts fascinated, he does not clasp her hand any longer than is considered polite. As they part and settle he takes the whisky back with him. "If you don't mind." She's welcome to change her mind, really. "You've lived here for a while, then?"

[rhinemaid]

When she smiles now, it's fleeting like a light behind a shutter, but no less warm or sweet for that; she's just a creature of stillness, left to her own devices. (In a nicer world, she'd spend a lot of her time drowsy in the sunlight on a riverbank, but she's never lived in any such world.)

"A few months- since almost the beginning of this cohort." Almost, but not quite; it was already underway when they arrived and Ilde decided she didn't like that Burnworth woman. "It's been eventful."

[magnetic]

Erik would much prefer a similar life, to be honest, if given the choice—but he feels he has none. Stillness does not come naturally to him, anyway. Not inside.

"So I've heard." Another sip of whisky, and he sucks at his teeth, flashing them briefly. Again, it's a thoughtful sort of pause. It seems he's trying to decide on his next words; presently, a conclusion comes. "So, how is it that you know our most gracious hosts? Or do you?"

[rhinemaid]

"I was their interior designer," she says, turning her mask over in her hands for something to occupy them, sliding the glass wand against her palm and pressing her fingernails against it, testing, absent-minded in her restlessness. "I offered a strongly held opinion on decorating and they hired me on the spot, it was- interesting. But I think babysitting is supposed to be every girl's first job, and it was a little like that." A shrug.

[magnetic]

What's this—an actual chuckle? Unbelievable, maybe, but it's true. Brief, and quiet, but true. "So you're responsible for the purple, then?" Whether or not Ilde's next impulse is to protest, or defend, or whatever else, he follows up his own seemingly facetious nodding and looking-about with a declaration of, "I like it."

He may actually be relaxing a little. Just a little, mind you.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde folds that chuckle away as a minor accomplishment - he didn't look terribly pleased with anything when she sat down - and smiles crookedly back at him for his observation. The purple is easily her favourite thing about having done this job; music is going to be more profitable for her in the long run, but she enjoyed working on this.

"So do I," she says, lightly. "Which made it easier." Presumably if they'd had hideous tastes, it would've been a bit more of an upward climb. (She's still not entirely sure about Adrian's love of statuary, but she doesn't have to live here and she was paid well.) "So, I thought it'd be remiss of me not to come."

Open invitation, people she already knows and is more or less cordial with, etcetera.

[magnetic]

"Mmm, I see. That's mannerly of you. And it must be nice to return to the site of a job you can be proud of, instead of a lot of... tartan or something." What are you talking about, Erik. Yes, take another swallow, surely that will help. He's still gazing around at this point, albeit more slowly now, with a touch more genuine interest and not only for show.

"How does one become so very wealthy in a prison, I wonder?"

[rhinemaid]

Having never been entirely clear on exactly what it is that they do - it was remarkably quick, their acquisition of this building and all of this that they're seeing now - Ilde has more or less assumed there's something shady going on, an opinion that Remy's dubiousness only encourages. She shrugs, loosely, pressing the end of the mask's wand to the center of her palm and twisting it in idleness. "That kind of business is probably over my head."

One might safely assume she just means that they're operating on too unfamiliarly complex a level for her to follow or have interest in. Or one might not! She's hard to read, sometimes.

[magnetic]

"Or under your hand. As it were."

Erik's gaze returns to Ilde now, but his head doesn't quite turn to face her properly. The result may very well be classified as a cheeky sort of look, perhaps with a dash of...conspiracy. Gasp.

[rhinemaid]

It takes her a moment or two to realize what he means - she tilts her head at him, quizzical, like a cat that's deciding whether or not what she's been presented with is for biting or not - and halfway through the dawning realization a laugh begins to bubble up, quiet and playing at scandalized. Sir.

(That was a terrible joke, Erik.)

She turns her hands over, palm down, and glances up at him from underneath her lashes. "That would explain it, wouldn't it."

[magnetic]

Terrible though it was, the joke got a laugh, and now that laugh gets a grin in turn. Maybe it's not such an awful thing that he allowed himself to be dragged out to this affair, after all. ...No, he still doesn't like it. But he doesn't like being anywhere in this city, so here's as good a place as any, especially if this Ilde keeps smiling at him.

"It seems just as likely as anything else. Unless either of them happened to appear in one of those abysmal little rooms with a blank cheque, instead of some other useless item..."

[rhinemaid]

"I could have used one of those," she says, reflectively, arching her ankle and examining her glass slipper. It is glass, just with built-in enchantments against the assorted dangers of walking around wearing a pair of heels made of the aforementioned, and for that reason they did not come cheap. "Feet are better when they're optional, I think."

...yes. Well, river-maiden.

[magnetic]

"Are they?" This isn't one of those oh, do go on sorts of non-questions—he actually does mean to ask if her feet...come off, or whatever, and is genuinely interested in whatever she cares to share. It may not show, exactly, since he's more or less lounging in that chair of his with increasingly heavy-lidded eyes—well, no, perhaps it does show, at that. Just not in an especially jubilant way.

[rhinemaid]

Her toes curl beneath the clear glass and she grins at him, sudden and fey. "I'm a-" there's a pause as she's clearly deciding which word to use, since she has a few to choose from, "-water nymph, like the rhinemaidens." Her species is, as it happens, more or less what Wagner based the aforementioned on. "Feet are clumsy in the water, I do better with a tail."

Ilde isn't a shapeshifter as it relates to the identity of some; she's a faerie who happens to be able to shapeshift, treating it casually as an ability that she's entitled to.

[magnetic]

A similar exposition unfurls among Erik's thoughts: Wagner's story, the river itself, illustrations from picture books.

"Ah, eine Rheintochter.." Hair spreading weightless in the water, the matte pallor of submerged skin. His lips form a slow and placid smile as he lifts the glass once more to meet them. "I'd like to see that some time."

[rhinemaid]

"Come down to the river one day," she says, with a lightness that's made strange for a moment by the edge in her smile, "and you can. I don't hide from humans." In the river, her tone implies, it should very much be the other way around.

(Her fondness for humanity as a whole is- well, she doesn't have any.)

[magnetic]

So that's how it is. Erik can't blame her for making such an assumption, really, since it's not as though he's done any show-and/or-tell tonight. It's not that he's trying to keep his genetics a secret; oftentimes, it can pay to be low-key, even in a place where one cannot walk down the street without witnessing some form of extraordinary talent.

That said, the very smallest of the decorative—stylish, but practically pointless—metal nesting boxes arranged on that low table is now standing on its end. Now folding itself in half. Crumpling inward, impossibly. As it works itself into a sphere by a sort of peristalsis, slowly but surely, there remains a modest gap between the once-ashtray and the table's polished surface. Erik sits through this abnormality wearing the same calm expression, the only difference now being that his middle and index fingers have lifted away from the curve of his whisky glass.

"Neither do I," he says, finally, and shows her a sliver of his teeth in turn.