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[initiates]

Date & Time: Evening, 10th February 3312
Location: Transport Room
Characters: Open To All
Summary: Everyone is brought into the transport room at roughly the same time, in a great succession and flow of imported individuals. Everyone is being lead around in small bundles, or left to their own devices together inside the Initiative Hold.
Warnings: None.

Widespread and crowded, everyone is being transported into this unusually bright room with an efficiency that is almost horrifying. One after the other, new people are appearing -- being led, shown around and then ultimately abandoned with one final phrase; "Good luck."

The Initiative Hold is wide, like a small town in its depth and industry. You've received your weapon; you've got your keys, your netbook, and one of those robed strangers has shoved a small pouch full of what you can only assume is money into your open palm. You've been given an apartment, but where on earth -- are we on earth? -- is it? Your best opportunity right now is to mingle; at least, that's what everyone else appears to be doing. Those strangers in the robes have left. They're tending to the people who are arriving, one by one and in a quick procession. Energy bustles all around you, as you're strapped up with your sudden gifts and looking around.

Hey, maybe you'll even see some familiar faces.

Comments

[flightlessbird]

[ Oh, that's a little disappointing. But! Artika doesn't look disheartened for long. Language barriers aren't exactly new for her. So instead she tips her head, smiles, and puts a hand to her chest. ]

Artika.

[ That's always pretty straight forward. ]

[noble_sin]

[He copies the gesture—]

Loiec.

[And he grins broadly. He doesn't know how all the pieces go together, not at all yet, but at least there's someone who seems familiar.]

[flightlessbird]

Loiec... [ It's repeated, mulled over a little, and she nods. That'll do. And just for communication's sake, she adds, in her own whistling language: ] Nice to meet you!

[noble_sin]

[He pauses a moment, and then tries to repeat the phrase. It's not quite right—the harmonics are layered all weirdly—but he squints, like he's swallowing something weird, and then he says it again, a little closer, and then a third time, spot-on.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She makes a face at the first attempt, looks a little more interested by the second, and smiles happily at the third. There, now he's got it. Even if he doesn't know what he's saying. Then she cocks both brows expectantly, gesturing to him. Her turn to say something she doesn't understand, at his example. ]

[noble_sin]

[His eyes drift for a moment, thinking, and then he makes a sound-phrase like a macaw trying to imitate a dolphin. It's less musical than before, and those click-pop noises worked into might give for some trouble, but it's fairly short. "May the mother storm shelter you," it says, though in phrasing so condensed and time-worn it would barely be recognized as that.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She pauses, thinking it over-- and doesn't say anything. But there's a circular gesture of one hand, and she leans in with one ear cocked toward him. It doesn't sound too hard to imitate, but she wants to be sure she's got the noises right. ]

[noble_sin]

[He repeats the sound-phrase, enunciating clearly—or at least as clear as it gets for something like that. Then he adds something in the other language he was speaking and grins broadly.

He reaches up a hand to push back that fluffy hair from his right eye, just long enough that Artika can see that the pupil is a catlike slit, though there's still the same aquamarine hue... and as the hair settles down again he makes a little 'shh' gesture, a finger against his lips.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She repeats, nearly as clearly enunciated as he has, save for a few tonal discrepancies -- right up until she catches sight of that eye. Then she trails off, puzzled. It looks a bit like her own eyes, when she's a dragon. But-- if he were a Shepherd, she'd know. Shepherds always know each other.

There's a quick dance of reactions across her face: interested, to puzzled, to quick scrutiny, to disappointed confusion. ...Maybe this guy just has weird eyes. Huh. Shush be damned, she's inviting herself to brush that hair away for herself for a closer look. ]

[noble_sin]

[When she does push that hair back—and he doesn't stop her at all, or even seem uncomfortable with the sudden close contact—the eye is... entirely normal.

And then he blinks, with a little bit of a smug smile, and that eye has a slit pupil again, and then with another blink it's back to normal. He tilts his head a little, watching her reaction intently.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She blinks right back, entirely focused on that eye, and starting to look a little bewildered. She's never seen anything like that before. The last person she'd known to hide an eye under hair had only had an empty socket. Nothing nearly so interesting as this.

When she finally leans back again, there's a whole new study of the kid underway. She even loops in a circle around him, the better to try all angles, and keeps up a low, running commentary of her high, whistling language as she goes. ]

[noble_sin]

[He seems quite amused by all the sudden interest—and quite normal. Except for that trick with the eye, he could be an entirely normal teen boy, but for being a little warm to the touch, and but for being so comfortable with a complete stranger being so close to him.

He grins again, and waits until she's looking at just the right angle, then his smile changes... all the teeth becoming sharp-edged and fine-honed, before changing back, like an optical illusion flipping back and forth.]

[flightlessbird]

[ Okay, well, that cinches it. If he has eyes like her, and teeth like her, even if they're weirdly displaced in a human shape, then he must be like her. Somehow.

So she smiles excitedly, leaning back to gesture to herself, enthusiasm clear in the kept-up stream of whistles. But of course she can't only change parts of her, so with a glance around, she snatches for his wrist to drag him somewhere a little more roomy. There's all sorts of humans around to accidentally run into here, after all. ]

[noble_sin]

[He quite enthusiastically lets himself be pulled along, and tries to guide Artika in the direction of somewhere away from prying eyes, even if that means finding an empty room to sneak into.]

[flightlessbird]

[ All she's looking for is a little space, prying eyes can pry all they like-- but she's not opposed to this little side room they seem to be making for. As soon as they get there she drops both hands to that brightly colored loincloth, wiggling out of it even as she changes.

It won't be a long wait, though. In no more than two seconds she's fully dragon, a snaky 10 feet long, with her narrow, horned head just barely at the height of a man's shoulder. She's slender, and almost fully black, save for the streaks and circles of blue along her limbs, throat, and ribs. She turns around with wide, expectant orange eyes, peering intently at him and already chattering happily in a growling, deeper language than her last one. ]

[noble_sin]

[He undresses, neatly and unashamedly, though not so urgently as she. Under the strange clothes, he's well-muscled for his age and slender frame. Full-grown, he'd be built like an endurance athlete, all muscle but no bulk. The clothes he folds in compact motions and sets atop his leather bag, along with his sword.

And then he turns and—it's like a muscle twitch, the way he just kind of stretches from being human to something else entirely. Not as long or tall as Artika is, but perhaps more solidly built, in the casual rippling of muscles underneath interlocking yellow-gold plate-armor scales. And then there's the crack-stretch of the wings...

...big ones, bat-style with a half-armored membrane stretched between long 'fingers', that somehow exist independently of his other four limbs. The thirty-foot wingspan is enough they can't even be fully extended in the smallish room, stretching around like the eaves of a tent. The idea that they can carry him—well, those strangely arranged shoulder-and-chest muscles must be extraordinarily strong.]

[flightlessbird]

[ Oh-- oh, that is strange. She's seen white dragons, she's heard of red dragons, and rumor has it that somewhere out there is a giant and elusive blue dragon. But golden? How odd. But then of course it's not the color that has her attention most of all.

She's darting forward almost immediately, long, low-slung body coiling about itself in excitement. Wings. She's nudging at them almost immediately with her muzzle, even rearing up to settle on her haunches, and free both delicately clawed forepaws for the investigation. And that animated conversation keeps up all the while, like she fully expects him to understand. Shepherds all understand one another, regardless of language, and she just saw him take a Shepherd's two forms, so surely he can understand. ]

[noble_sin]

[He sits, catlike, while he's examined, stiff like a guardian sphinx, though the nudges at his wings make his head and neck tremble a little. His head twists, and he lets out more of that foreign dragon-tongue, throatier and more baritone now, but just as incomprehensible. And then he speaks in the human language he was using, something short and gentle.

The wings fold back and settle against him, the scales of the wings clink-clinking as they meet. There it's thinner... but across his chest and neck and body they're solid enough to deflect a sword blow, despite the way they easily shift and move with him. It's an incredibly efficient bit of design, the way it all goes together, as if the work of some sculptor matching bits and pieces of the best creatures in the world instead of the result of natural evolution.

He circles around her, head twisting as he looks her up and down. He doesn't coil like her, but with the way he so casually twists on himself even with the burden of the wings, it might be a matter of inclination rather than ability.

Then he pauses, and raises his head, and from his mouth lets out a little puff of flame, like that of an overlarge candle, that lasts for just a moment before snuffing out.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She pauses, at that stil-incomprehensible language, and drops back to all fours again. That's kind of disappointing. Oh, but she'll manage. After all, she's totally got a buddy. A... well-armored buddy. She can't help but be a little jealous of all that armor plating he's got. Her own scales are small and thin, more a snake's than anything else.

Her eyes widen at the display of fire, pleased all over again. She's never known a dragon that can do that. She coils and twists over herself in a rush to show off in the same way, and from her own mouth comes a light, wafting, almost transparent breath of green gas. She remembers a little too late that an enclosed space is... probably not the best place for that, and butts her head into his side to nudge him away from it. It's not lethal in this amount, but it's definitely better avoided. ]

[noble_sin]

[The golden dragon nods slightly, and twists his head out of the way, half-slinking sideways.

He waits quite patiently, glancing back and forth until he thinks he's gotten Artika's assent that the danger's gone, and then he shrugs forward—as his whole body changes again, slithering across the floor as an armored serpent some twenty feet long, the same golden color but wingless, like some mad paranoiac's dream of an anaconda.]

[flightlessbird]

[ Oh... well, that's something she can't do. Those large orange eyes are wide all over again, and she hops to her feet from where she'd been crouched to come over and tentatively steal a taste of the air near him. He smells about the same. She drops back to her crouch next to him, lower this time, like she'd slighter along on the floor herself, and glances back at their tails.

He's larger. Ah, well, you can't win every time. She rises again, looking just slightly less pleased. Only a little, because this is still all rather interesting. She aims an insistant nudge somewhere along that long body (it'd be his shoulder if she could find it), looking to see what else he can do. ]

[noble_sin]

[He slithers and twists up on himself and... for a moment it might almost seem like he's vanished, except that there's a mouse there - a perfectly ordinary brown-furred field mouse. It lets out a cheerful chirp.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She blinks, glances around, and-- oh hey. Mouse. What the crap. She drops to a crouch quickly, head down for a closer look. She's nearly expecting gold scales on this too, somehow. No such luck, though. After one last quick taste of the air right in front of the furry brown face, she looks content, and sits up again. That expectant head-cock to the side is a pretty clear anything else? ]

[noble_sin]

[The mouse twists and unfolds like a piece of origami, back into the golden-scaled dragon. He gestures at himself with a paw and makes another half-musical noise that might, barely, be Romanized as "Magr'ateth". It's got another of those sharp clicks right in the middle. Then he turns human again and with a hand he taps his chest, still uncaring of his own nudity.]

Loiec. Ah?

[He makes the 'shh' gesture again, and then gives it a moment, trying to see if she'll understand what he's getting at.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She tips her head thoughtfully. Not because it's difficult to figure out, of course. No, Pyran had taught her the 'shh' gesture (not that it had ever worked on her)-- she just can't figure out why he'd want the two shapes separated by different names. He's still the same, isn't he?

Her tail flicks a few times as she mulls that over, and finally she gives a mental shrug. Hey, if he wants it, he can have it. She sits up a little straighter, making the same gesture at herself with a forepaw. Her dragon vocal chords aren't quite as versatile as her Avian ones, but she still manages something that sounds very close to "Artika". And then, changing back, and equally unmindful of the lack of clothes, she does the same thing, and repeats the same name with a wry little grin. ]