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

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

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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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."

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?"

"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.

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.

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.

"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?"

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.

"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.

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."

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..."

"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.

"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.

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.

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."

"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.)

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.

The box is already moving before it attracts her attention, and she watches it with a puzzled tilt for a short time before she does in fact make the connection between Erik and what's happening in front of her. It's safe to say she didn't see that coming, sucking air in through her teeth and sitting back, abruptly, to give him a little push in the shoulder - almost testing, like she thinks she should've felt something. She's begun to get comfortable with being able to tell when people have certain abilities, and she's plainly a bit startled to have missed his-

-but, as she remembers finally, she can't sense anything about Remy, either, other than visually. Their powers aren't magical by nature, and so she's as blind to them as anyone else. (That's so annoying.)

Cautious, because it could be very rude if she's wrong and she's not unaware of that, she hazards a guess: "Not human- mutant?" It's common enough to associate new things with that which we already know, and she's already learning about worlds like Erik's. She doesn't actually hesitate to ask, though, not when questions are the only way to learn and she is, as this implies a little, very invested in knowing things.

She pushes him, then, and again he grins, and the newly formed sphere wobbles faintly in the air but stabilizes promptly. He will never tire of surprising people this way, whether for good or ill. It's one of his ego's favourite little snacks...and he needs a little bolstering right now, frankly, although he would never admit it.

"That's right." He seems pleased by her guess. "Have you met many others?"

"Not many," she admits; 'mutated' means something very different in her world than it does in his, and she opts not to mention that immediately for reasons of 'having any tact whatsoever'. "Remy and Wanda, so far-" she's spoken to Charles and Raven briefly, too, but she knows next to nothing about either of them from those fleeting conversations. "Remy's teaching me sign language."

As she explains, she's reaching curiously out toward the sphere to see what it's like to the touch, after that.

"It looks like magic," she observes, "but it isn't."

Keep on flattering him, why don't you? Gosh. He could really start to enjoy himself if he's not careful.

The little ball hangs there in the air, its surface matte, its form nigh perfect (this took quite a lot of practice, thank you very much), indifferent to Ilde's approaching hand. As her fingers are about to connect with it, though, it darts away just enough to evade her. Just slightly. Erik has nothing to do with this, as he's been sipping from his cup very innocently over here in the meantime. Of course. Mind you, the play is subdued; if Ilde is sensitive to such subtleties she may note the sudden change in his eyes, as though something has withdrawn.

(Wanda's name alone has instantly incited in him a jumble of warmth and anxiety that he finds distinctly uncomfortable. He'll address it, her, as soon as he decides how.)

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

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pretend that last reference to an ashtray actually said 'box' okay

but of course

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