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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... 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. ]

[noble_sin]

[He nods, smiling, and he reaches to take her hand. He squints in focus, and then his skin starts rippling and changing, first the proper skin tone, then emulating the markings and height and shape, and... It takes a minute or two for him to finish, even in uninterrupted silence—her to finish, by the time she's mostly done, for she's become a mostly-complete emulation of Artika's human form. Not perfect—plenty of the minor details and proportions are off, and something about the stress of it seems to have made golden scales sprout up about her neck and shoulders, pebbly-bright against the darker skin—but enough to pass at a casual glance from not too close.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She watches this curiously, interested at first, and makes a few questioning queries. But then as she sees what he's doing, interest starts to look a little uncomfortable. Everything else had been almost unbearably neat, but this? This is just sort of weird. One of herself is sometimes difficult enough to put up with, she doesn't think she likes the idea of two. Her running narration tapers off when the change finishes. She leans forward to inspect those odd lingering golden scales, frowns, and then immediately ducks around behind him--herself-- to see her back. She's there to check for the scars she bears on her own back, from just inside the shoulder blade to halfway down her back, light pink against her dark skin. ]

[noble_sin]

[The scars are there—Magr'ateth's senses are too sharp to have missed them entirely—but the details are all off, and almost flecked with gold in places. The simulacrum tilts her head, standing patiently for that inspection.]

[flightlessbird]

[ Well, considering that she's never gotten too close a look at said scars herself, it looks like a pretty close imitation to her. And she doesn't like it much.

One hand rises to trace a line down one of them, then drops. She steps back around to the frown, frowning, and shakes her head. ]

I don't like this one. Everything else was very interesting, but this one is-- different. [ She knows he won't understand, of course, and it's probably because of that that she adds: ] One of me is plenty enough bad luck, you know.

[noble_sin]

[The pseudo-Artika takes a breath in and lets it out, and she nods a little. And then she shivers and changes and melts away into Loiec again. He's looking a little tired, in subtle ways; not quite as bright-eyed or knife-edged graceful in his little movements as when he started the show. But he snaps his fingers together a few times half-compulsively, and says something that sounds delicate and sad. Then he gestures Artika back a little, not pushing her away, but clearing some space.

Then he holds up a hand, and breathes a little puff of thick flame into it, rolling it between his fingers and then shaping it against his palms into a sphere and then and egg-shape. Holding it up—the flames still flicker-burning somehow with no fuel to feed on—he watches her reaction to the little show, squinting, and he breathes against the 'egg', waves of heat coming off like a much larger fire.

It 'hatches', twisting and writhing as it breaks into a sinuous serpent-shape of flame, and then that sprouts legs and wings... crudely shaped, but the resemblance in shape to the golden-scaled dragon is obvious. The little dragon-of-flame steps forward, walking up his arm, and as it does it changes again, shifting to a thing on two legs and two arms—a little man-shape that finally flickers out like a blown-out candle after a few long moments.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She looks happier when she's the only Artika in the room, and is happy to make a little space. Whatever he's turning into now must be very large. Only-- it's not him changing, this time. She leans in despite herself, interested, and does a happily little trill to see the thing hatch. She watches the shapes move back and forth with a grin, and claps when it fades out. Pyran taught her that. She hopes Loiec knows what it means.

She looks up at him again when the fire has died out, eagerly. It's been quite a show so far, but she's still hungry to see more. ]

[noble_sin]

[He tilts his head, and he gestures at her, curious, and says something his own his own dragon-tongue, light and trilling. He's never known a dragon not to have other tricks... even the white-scaled, the crude vicious ones, are known for the way they command the base elements of the world. Surely she must have some other ability of her own?]

[flightlessbird]

[ She can tell what he's asking, and blinks a little. She doesn't have any tricks like he'd shown. Why woud she? No one she's ever met could do anything like that. She thinks a moment (if they were outside she could at least show off her tree-scaling abilities), then shrugs and shakes her head, adding a not-too-heartfelt apology in her own language. ]

[noble_sin]

[He says something thoughtful in the human language he knows, and tilts his head the other way. She's too bright and clever to be one of the unclaimed ones, even if he doesn't understand the patterns of her hide. And then he changes again into his dragon-shape, circling around her.

He moves like some hybrid of a snake and a tiger—the languid similarity to a wild big cat is too clear to deny, if she's ever seen one. It's smooth, but it's... strange, in the fine details, as if the instincts of movement were arranged from multiple beasts and then ever so carefully stitched and grown together.

He sits like a guardian sphinx, the tip of his long tail flicking slightly, almost like a cat.]

[flightlessbird]

[ Oh, are they doing dragons again? She rather likes the dragon part. Her change is just as fast, and she immediately sprawls herself comfortably out over him, black on gold. It's a messy and haphazard lounge, but there's still the grace of a snake in all those lazy coils.

She twists and wiggles once to be comfortable, chirps contentedly, and nudges her forehead against his shoulder. She, at least, looks ready to laze away the rest of the day like this. New location, dozens of people to meet? Eh, it can all wait. ]

[noble_sin]

[He gives her a few moments in that sprawl—and then twists, wrapping his wings with him to help try to topple her over so can sit upon her. He's a heavy, strong thing for all that his body's a bit smaller than her... some three hundred pounds in those muscles and scales, and that's before counting the extra leverage he easily gets from one of his wing-limbs propping against the wall.

If he does manage to succeed, he's likely to seem vaguely smug about it.]

[flightlessbird]

[ She lets out a surprised squawk when he moves (no one ever moves, they always just put up with her!), and her few seconds of frozen surprise are enough to get her tackled. And ugh, he's heavy. She takes a second to be glad that she's in a hardier form than the hollow-boned Avian one, then immediately begins the counterstrike.

Which, as it turns out, is just a load of thrashing and squalling. If she has to annoy her way out of this, she will. ]

[noble_sin]

[He lets out a noise like a human laugh fed through a harmonica. He likes laughter—perhaps the one thing humans have that's better than what dragons have invented, in his mind.

Finally he lets her up... by way of grabbing onto her, rolling onto his back with the wings splayed out like limbs for balance, and then only letting go then.]