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Marigold      Castle Ostia, near the border with Etruria
     In a very pleasant dining-room.

     Wyvern-blood still decorates roof-shingles, unwashed by rain. Grass hasn't yet grown on the meadowy battlefield's graves. The city's walls are still pocked by ballista-shot. But in the streets people breathe easy. Small clusters of green-white-clad Etrurian soldiers percolate through the markets alongside the blue Ostian guards, viewed with exoticizing murmurs but little suspicion.

     Those guards let you into the castle proper without asking names- they remember your faces clearly. Some smile in weary-relieved acknowledgement. Comfortably-dressed attendants guide you through gorgeous hallways of blue marble to a sunlit dining hall, where the warm murmur of conversation hushes for you.

     "Ah, there you are!!" Hector slaps the long dining table with his palm, rattling plates of garlic-roasted pheasant and honey-drizzled fruit (and, of course, every species of cream-filled pastry known), and stands up to sweep around and and seat you all personally, over his staff's fretting objections. "I was worried you might be too busy for old Hector. Gallivanting heroes that you are." "Dad, didn't you forget to send out real invitations?" "No! I just like the spontaneity is all!"

     Traditionally a lord would sit at the head of the table, but Hector's seat is at the middle, to be near as many people as possible. Roy and Lilina sit immediately next to him; that Etrurian general who came to the rescue is within his arm's reach, too. 'Cecilia', her name was. A dozen or so spots across from Hector are all reserved for the Elites, though he isn't the type to mind if you choose to go elsewhere.

     All of Roy's army is in attendance, including recent arrival Melady, who sits near the long table's end. There are still dark circles under her eyes, but the celebrations have cheered her a little. "And what about the garlic duck, Melady? Would I like that?" "Your majesty, please... surely you know best for yourself." "Oh, but you know me better than I know myself!" Princess Guinivere and she trade, while Elen nearby shyly smiles. There's an empty seat up by Hector, probably reserved for Guinivere, but she'd rather comfort her retinue.

     Narcian sits at the opposite end. Denuded of his wyvern and magic sword as a captive, they haven't even bothered chaining him up; they've just given him a demeaningly smaller plate with his own tiny quail and carrots. Every so often he sulkily glares at Melady and she stares back with a look so scorching her eyes could be a lighthouse each.
Marigold      Rutger and Dieck trade stories by the mead kegs off to the side- well, really it's mostly Dieck talking- while Shanna loads herself up with way too much exotic wine to be advisable and hangs on every word. Sue, coincidentally sitting nearby, has somehow already stripped her duck to bones; she leans back to take the words out of Rutger's mouth every once in a while, to mutual understanding.

     Marcus, sitting not too far from Roy, scolds his two trainees Lance and Alen about proper alcohol intake, and Hector scolds him about the scolding while returning to his seat: "Honestly! It's a party! If they can't loosen up now, when can they?" "When it concerns Lord Roy, never. If an enemy were to come--" "Now I see where all your problems come from, Marcus."

     And Lucius, of course, sits between his children Lugh and Chad. "You might try the confit, Chad. I think you'd like it." "But it looks greasy..." "Ahaha, alright. Maybe when you're older." "Hey, I'm grown up! I'll try it now!" Lucius tries not to smile too enormously.

     Roy leans forward around Hector to look at Cecilia. Really, it's shocking how close they look in age. "Um. How do you feel about being back in Ostia, General Cecilia?" "Oh, please, no titles! I hope you don't expect me to call you Lord Roy." He sinks in guilty relief. "But of course. I only wish I could be returning under happier circumstances." "This isn't a happy circumstance?" "Oh, you did miss me." "No! I mean... wouldn't it be strange not to?"
Alucard Alucard missed the big brawl. He missed it because he was helping out around the city, continuing its cleanup and inadvertantly grinding reputation with the locals. He is, amazingly, quite handy with a hammer and nails, and his literally unholy strength makes him a great asset for moving broken stones and carrying roofing material. Honestly, his proximity makes him the easiest to invite to the banquet.

It means he has to run home first, though.

When he's led in with everyone else, his manner of dress is ... themed similarly, but it's far more formal. For one, his coat. falling only to his knees this time, is buttoned to nearly the top, with spills of lace coming from the collar. His hands are ungloved, and even more lace pours from the cuffs. Still all black and gold, he has handed his cloak off to a servant. He's even wearing fancy boots that fold down at the top and have low heels.

He is on that 'This is a Noble Banquet and I Must Dress the Part' thing.

Taking his seat where he is bidden, he inclines his head to Hector. "Your invitation is appreciated, Lord Hector. Your people have treated me quite well."

Of course he goes for the wine first.
Aidan Proudpick Aidan's good deeds might not outweigh his sins yet. And that may take forever. But, he feels he can reclaim some of his confidence.

Most of Aidan's terrible t-shirts have been burned, lost to Quicknest, or burned again, leaving him with the simplest of pajamas.

THEN, Hector has the awful idea to issue a sort of challenge, well Dieck is shirtless.

Obvioiusly, Dieck is a good looking guy, broad of chest, strong.

...Wait, am I not a good looking guy? I AM a good looking guy.

Putting life and limb at risk, Aidan forgoes the large blue t-shirt, appearing only in plaid cotton pajama pants. He grins at Hector, slapping him eagerly on the armored shoulder, "Never! For the hero of Ostia?"

As Aidan piles honeyed fruit onto a plate, he looks over at Narcian, "Has he begged and apologized yet? Or still talking about his station and that sort of thing?"
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna Shinmyoumaru does not show up in pyjamas *or* shirtless.

Actually she arrives in a more formal, ornate kimono-adjacent robe; it's not quite a kimono, but it's a little unclear what else you'd call it, with a pair of formal-looking... well they're also not quite slippers but they're certainly not footwear you'd wear outside. This time, she decided to actually show up looking like the Princess of the Inchlings that she is.

Of course she kind of ruins it by bursting into the room behind the guards, having hustled to keep up, holding the trailing skirt of her robe up with one hand so she can take bigger steps. She is also ruining the image by pulling her bowl behind her with her other hand, which is floating and currently contains a small barrel.

She walks right past Narcian without even doing him the dignity of bothering to look in his direction as she heads toward the table proper. Shinmyoumaru is a lot more visible once she's on a chair... standing on the chair, at first, which makes her tower even higher than Hector as long as he doesn't try standing up again. "Of course I'm not too busy!" she says, cheerful, in response to Hector - this is more to her taste than the 'messy and brutal warfare' part. She waves to some of her other friends as she passes, like Lugh and Chad, but keeps going.

"I brought something," Shinmyoumaru says, "because it's traditional for a party where I'm from... it's sake!" It's a small sake barrel, much smaller than you'd expect and smaller than the 'traditional' sizes; it's about as tall as a wine bottle but wider and holds about five bottles' worth.

She is going to have trouble maneuvering it from the floating bowl to the tabletop while standing on the chair so she's tall enough to actually lift up to the tabletop, but she's going to try anyway. "Ugh - one moment, I can get this - "
Odette Raskins For the first time in a while/ever, Odette's here without being prepared for a fight! Mostly. She's not dressed in her usual navy blue uniform for once, instead wearing a light cardigan over a sleeveless sweater and skinny jeans. She's even ditched her usual medical bag for once, although the fanny pack she's wearing around her waist undoubtedly has some manner of medical supplies in there just in case.

Or antacids. Some kind of medication, surely.

Either way, she's actually enjoying herself just coming into Castle Ostia without the threat of violence hanging over her head, and she greets all those guards on the way in with friendly smiles and light bows. Heading further in, she nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of Hector slapping the table, still jumpy as ever from the mere existence of such a loud noise.

"Hello, Lord Hector! Oh no, I was looking forward to this all..." How long ago was the banquet brought up? "... A while now! Wouldn't miss it for the world." She replies with an easygoing giggle, looking rather surprised that Hector's reserved such a high-profiel seat even for her instead of some other bigwig. That surprise only lasts for so long, of course, because...

It's time to mingle! And gawk at food, since everything looks absolutely delicious here already. "There's so much stuff to try... What do you recommend going for first?" She asks Hector, Roy, and Lilina, already studying whatever plates they might have in front of them for their initial picks. If it's a free for all, she has to make sure she samples the real good stuff that might disappear first!

Narcian's existence at the table really throws Odette's concentration off, though, once she does a double take and realizes he's there at all. She instinctively ducks over behind where Marcus, Lance, and Alen are sitting to try and break line of sight regardless of whether he even realizes she's there, then herself realizes that she's right next to the knightly trio. "O-oh! Ah. H-hi, Mister Marcus. Lance, Alen. I heard some people actually pilot-er. Driv-uh... Ride? Ride better when they're a little buzzed, but be careful, okay?"

A beat, and then she squints at their drinks. "What're you drinking, anyway? How's it taste?" Indeed, she's still on a mission, so she needs to make sure she picks the right drinks to start! She hears a magic C-word coming from nearby, however, and her gaze immediately shoots over to where Lucius, Lugh, and Chad are sitting. It's a fancy sounding word for sure, and if Lucius is recommending it, she just needs to see what Chad's aiming for to make her next move to round out her first plate.
Flamel Parsons     It's the Big Meal!

    Flamel Parsons is here, in his usual outfit rather than getting wild with it this time. Can a replicant eat? Apparently, the psychic structure works well enough that he can eat plenty and he can enjoy it too. He's *going at it*. The sweet stuff, the savory stuff, the heavy greasy stuff -- he pushed his own brain quite far last time. He had to spend several hours venting in the groupchat to build up all the aggression energy he needed to load up his mental guns! So now it's time to take that pressure back off. Even some of the wine! A little can be a big help, in the right context.

    He's happily recharging, though. "Make sure you all be however self-indulgent you can be! It sure was well-earned, and if that siege wasn't worth cutting loose, I don't think anything you'll ever do can be!" He calls out, eagerly. He wound up near Melady, so he makes sure to gesture a fork in her direction. "Goes double for you! When you do something right despite the struggle and the inertia, it's important to keep yourself rewarded. Teaches the base of the brain that something was a good idea! And I get the feeling that you might have a little conflict in there." He does wind up beaming, happily, in a friendly way. "Though I'm always happy to help. I could astrally project Guinivere into your head to help clear out any stresses, if you want! At this point, Lugh's got the skills to help out too." So, so helpful. Back to eating.
Angela The Disciplianry Team and Tennant have come to participate in the feast. They all seem to be in relatively good spirits, though Ceri's and Shajo's mood is more muted (slanted positive) than the exuberance Nonon and Tennant are expressing. Tennant has brought one of those tablets along and seems intent on taking pictures selfies with all the food that they put on their plate. Sometimes, they even remember to eat someting.

Nonon does arrive wearing pajamas and, yes, even a pajama top though it's loosely buttoned and it barely contains her. She didn't bring any weapons--nor did any of the L-COrp team except for Ceri, who still has her rapier at her side.

She makes sure to sit right down next to Narcian, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and says, "Hey!! You should be cheering up! It's a pajama party!" She aims to shake Narcian a bit with her arm. "Ga ha ha! You should eat more! How do you expect to fight on an empty stomach?!"

Nonon, who is sitting on Nonon's other side. "That's Narcian, Nonon."

"GA ha ha! Hi Narcian!" Nonon glows.

"He was an enemy general, Nonon." Shajo adds.

"..." Nonon slowly pulls her arm off of Narcian. "Well, you should still eat my dude." She says, poking at one of the buttons on her pajama top that looks a bit precarious. "I don't normally wear these..." She adds, pointlessly.
Desire Stars Ace Ukiyo arrives in a navy suit with a wine-red striped dress shirt, and a peacock paisley vest beneath. Ivory cufflinks and a white-silver pocket square round off the ensemble.

    Neon, meanwhile, has shown up in a canary yellow blouse with a turquoise lavallier matched to her skirt. A grey shawl drapes stylishly over her shoulders. Entering together, the two of them look like they just stepped off of the red carpet.

I was worried you might be too busy for old Hector. Gallivanting heroes that you are.

    "Maybe, but...," begins Neon with a soft smile. "After all of our hard work, after so much time spent catching up... well, there's no place I'd rather be than celebrating here, with you."

    "I have to be choosy about which invitations I accept, it's true," says Ace to Hector. "But for you, I'll make the time." He shoots the lord a smile, before his gaze shifts to Narcian, seething with his smaller plate.

    After all of the taunting Ace had done, it might seem at first like he's come over to gloat. But his usual smug smile isn't there, replaced with a more sober expression, as he strides across the hall to speak with the captive general. "I won't ask you to smile about this," he says. "But you're going to have a lot of time to think. So think about this: you're being treated a lot better than we would be by Bern, in your place. Probably better than they'd treat -you,- now that you've been captured. The philosopher Hume says that reason is, and should be, the slave of instinct and passion. I can guess what your passion is telling you just by that look on your face. What about your instinct?"

    Neon, meanwhile, takes a spot near Shanna almost right away, helping herself to a small pour from the keg. "Um... you're really enjoying the wine, huh?" She laughs nervously, but her unease melts, little by little. "...I really am glad you're okay. We were so outnumbered, I wasn't sure..."
Blemishine     This makes for the second time one Maria Nearl has came to visit a party in... an extremely short timespan! Luckily, by virtue of the one running it, this one is considerably more casual than the other, which is only a plus in her book. (She spent the entirety of the last one blabbering about weapons and equipment.)

    That shouldn't happen this time, at least. Shouldn't.

    Accordingly, she's taken the idea of just coming in whatever she feels like to heart, and effectively come in what could qualify for dress /or/ armor; the very same flowing outfit that she wore to the Association celebration, tapering off into a blooming just-past-the-knees skirt at the hip that implies it'd be solely for social gatherings... if it weren't for the armored gauntlets and leggings going up to said knees.

    Still, those are fitted well and thinly plated enough, as well as obviously designed to go with the rest of the ensemble, that they both don't look out of place and don't seem to slow her step one bit. The first thing she does is return Hector's boisterous hello to all of them with a curtsey. "Tha~nk you for the gracious invitation, Lord Hector of Ostia. I'm happy to accept it." ...that she has to resist breaking into a terribly oversized smile while delivering.

    And simply can't after, with a loud giggle that leads into her normal informal tone. "And now that I can tell a certain someone back home I /did/ do a proper greeting without it being a lie, I'll be taking full advantage of your hospitality~!" After the joke, he glances down the length of the table, and even among the Elites who've come. Narcian's presence gives her a few seconds pause. Looking around for someone or something else seems to give her another, for now.

    But far from letting that show on her face or risk lowering the mood, she finds herself one of the reserved seats that places her squarely in front of Marcus and his cavalier charges, and thus also in the general vicinity of Hector, Roy, and friends. Plus, Odette!

    "You know, my Auntie is the type to work you super hard for your own good, and always keep you on your toes and ready for anything," she says while moving a bit of pheasant and some pastries towards herself. "...And then you put her anywhere like this, and she'd have been through four wine glasses already and in the middle of pouring the fifth."

    The thought causes another light laugh she can't hold back, her eyes briefly going Shanna's way before going back to the old knight in particular. "But when you unwind, I imagine it's in moderation and responsibly, huh, Sir Marcus? Have you been able to wind down any? ...Doing alright?"

    The way her focus momentarily drops to his chest probably says what's on her mind, asking that.
Petra Soroka <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka whines, "Liliannnnnn, I tried thinking about how to dress up for the feast and now people are showing up shirtless!"

    As is tradition, upon contact with Elites, the celebratory feast becomes a distressing event for Petra. The mild, but routine, anxiety of choosing an outfit is intensified by the narrative weight placed on it by it being the subject of a conversational prelude, such that now *Hector* will have opinions about it, and *Nonon* might do something stupid, and *Proudpick* said something or other, and *Lilian*-- well, Lilian would have judged her for it anyways, but now it's a focal metric by which Petra will earn harm through failure.

    It's complicated! And dressing for a scene that's outside of her comfort zone is already complicated for Petra, so this escalation exhausts her before she even arrives.

    Not that the result is notably flawed. Or particularly exceptional, either-- Petra isn't brave enough to take the step into indulgent cosplay like she'd theoretically want to, and she'd struggle to have the sense for it besides. Instead, she alchemizes some sort of 'semi-formal cottagecore' midway between a comfortable default and an unfettered delve into self-costuming. Greenish brown culottes flare out swooshily just below her knees, with a short stretch of bare skin between the loose hem and her laced soft leather boots, accented with a short heel to elevate them (literally) from her clunky combat usual to dinner-appropriate. Sitting above her hips, the culottes cinch with a wide cloth ribbon, tied in a large drowsy bow to the side. An off-white ribbed sleeveless top tucks into them, accessorized with a flower (non-lily) necklace and a light yellow cardigan. She's clean, put together, subtly self-cared and lightly makeup-ed-- it's hard to believe, a bit, that this is *normal* now for her.

    Despite her tension over *other* people, Petra is still affected by the healing atmosphere of finally seeing the army, and the castle as a whole, in a good mood. Besides her original motivation of being invested in them all because of Lilian's attachment to them, Petra's rapidly developed her own understanding of *why* the Lycian army relaxes Lilian so much. It's the highest density of ensouled people she's ever come across-- well, in Elite work, at least-- and she can't help having fondly heartfelt reactions to all of them.

    Not always *positive* reactions, though. Hello, Narcian.

    "Aww, did you only get a kids meal, buddy?" Petra, drifting around the room to make it to the open seating across from Hector, obnoxiously trails her fingers along the table while walking past Narcian. "That's probably a good call. Eat like you used to, and you'd just sit around getting fat in that little cell, wouldn't you?" Uncalled for!!

    Hector doesn't draw any kind of unpleasantness from Petra, though, despite their bickering in the radio. "Well, I mean, both my bosses are here! I kind of can't be *too* busy, without that all."

"I brought something, because it's traditional for a party where I'm from... it's sake!"

    Petra stops cold while walking, staring up (or, rather, staring at just about normal eye level, even though Shinmyoumaru is holding it up) at the gifted alcohol. She glances around furtively at the other Elites, murmuring to herself, "Should I have brought something...?"

    Sliding her compact mirror out of her pocket, Petra flips it open like a phone and presses a finger to the reflection to rummage through its contents for an appropriate gift. After a few sweaty seconds of this, she puts it up to her ear, again like a flip phone, to consult with Qetra. . . . "... No, Qetra, I can't just give *everyone* a handgun...." Petra proceeds to abandon the idea of gift giving.
Petra Soroka "It sure was well-earned, and if that siege wasn't worth cutting loose, I don't think anything you'll ever do can be!"

    Bizarrely, Petra ends up sitting nearby Flamel again. It might just be because it's on the opposite side of the table from Nonon, and she keeps shooting judgementally scornful glances at Nonon's most heroically strained pajama button while plating her food. "I mean, even if that's true, it's still worth celebrating, I think." It seems like Petra took Flamel's hyperbole as a statement of fact, and agrees effortlessly that nothing she'll ever do can be worth cutting loose.

"When you do something right despite the struggle and the inertia, it's important to keep yourself rewarded. Teaches the base of the brain that something was a good idea!"

    Beginning the long process of gnawing on a bit of quail and then thoroughly wiping away every trace of grease from her fingers and mouth before picking up the next, rather than waiting until finished to clean herself, Petra nods at Flamel to her side. "Mhm. I learned that from Lilian. It's like click-- it's like conditioning yourself to not associate it all with *just* negativity. To prevent, like, toxic buildup with the association with it all."
Dysnomia     Recovery had been a slow, direly frustrating process. Everything that could have gone wrong with her wound, did. MIA was fairly certain that, if she COULD have gotten sick, it'd have been infected too.

    The days drifted by, slowly, one at a time, and finally Dysnomia could see how the edges of the wound were sewing shut. The nascent scar was ugly, jagged, but it was a relief enough to Mia that it wasn't going to lay open on her side forever. She just...Wished it was happening faster.

    Dysnomia had spent the past three hours in her tent, pacing, changing her midn again and again about the party. She had taken a seat near Marcus...But with a seat between herself and Blemishine, expression pinched, as though she was going to change her mind again.

    "How many combats, over the past few months, have been somewhere we expected them?" She rallies behind the old man in good-natured grumbling. "We're lucky things have left us peace today. That's all."

    She nibbled at one of the pastries. While her mouth remained set at that downward angle, something brighter touched her eyes. "But. Occassional reward incentives are a vital part of keeping morale up, in prolonged conflicts. I like this better than a double ration chit, or a half-day's relief."
Lilian Rook     Lilian had actually been in the process of hurriedly deciding what to wear herself, choosing between several distant grades of haha-what-do-you-mean? war hero ostenteity wit Cecilia's help, when the radio suddenly moved on. This and that and the other thing happened, and Lilian's contarianism catalyzed with sheer pity for Hector into,

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I can't believe it."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I'm having to rescue Lord Hector a second time."

    "Change of plans."
    "Goodness, I knew something more casual would've been the right call all along!"
    "Mhm~ Seldom wrong as you are~"
    "My my, I don't remember that always being the case."
    "That was then and this is now! Forget that imposter Lilian and help me out here!"
    "Oh of course dear~ I suppose you'll be needing something that the wine stains come out easy from then . . ."
    "Right! That's sensible! So . . ."
    ". . ."
    ". . ."
    ". . . Shall I point out which ones those are for you?"
    "Oh god please."
    "Hahaha! No one is so worldly in all the matters of life, Lilian. Please try to remember every now and again that you needn't always seem to know everything there is. You're still young."
    "I'm twenty-five!"
    "Four, and precisely!"
    ". . . Thank you."
    "It's no trouble at all! Honestly, I did miss this dear. Though I do wonder what you'll do when you find a place you like to settle down . . ."
    "Huh?"
    "Yes?"
    "What I'll do?"
    "Oh I don't mean anything by it! I suppose Miss Tamamo is a wonder with the laundry already!"
    ". . ."
    ". . . Lilian . . . Did you only just--"
    "Oh no look I'm going to be late at this rate!!"
    "Oh my. Would you look at that! Needs must I suppose; I'll have to focus on this quite intently."
    ". . . Love you."
    "And you, always and forever."

    And so Lilian somehow ends up in the royal banquet hall of a castle wearing a lace-backed wool dress verging on the boundary of 'cute'.

    Being sleeveless, soft black, and embroidered grey and green, it looks uncannily reminiscent of her Association Naming outfit, but is both much simpler and seemingly a fair bit older, having a completely normal skirt down to the shins. Meandering around the ruling class of Ostia, the princess of Bern, and the generals of multiple different nations, in that, a silver link belt, and basic strappy heels, earrings taken down to the least glittery she has, Lilian alternates between cursing Petra's birth for her tricks of reverse psychology (false) and feeling like it's some sort of sign that such an old dress still fits if she ties it at the last eyelet.
Lilian Rook     'When it concerns Lord Roy, never. If an enemy were to come--'

    "Your concern for Lord Roy is as admirable as always, Sir Marcus. But if an enemy were to come right now, then I'd grind him beneath my heel before you even noticed~" says Lilian, with a theatrically arrogant hair flip, while looking little different than a merchant's daughter with fancy nail polish (if unusually strong). "You should relax too, you know. Or is it that I haven't proven I can be trusted yet?" It is a terribly convenient tactic and they both know it.

    Lilian spots Narcian just before sitting down. For a moment, her eyes lock with his, and she stares in an open-mouthed daze. A sort of equilibrium is quickly calculated between them; that he can see her in a casual, low-key, and slightly exposing outfit, while she has the benefit of belonging at this social gathering whilst he is confined to gay baby jail. In a few seconds, the latter outweighs the former, and Lilian licks her lips in a distressing little way and looks elsewhere without elaboration.

    "Should only Galle be here next time." does slip out of her, though, just before she puts it out of mind.

    Before greeting anyone but Hector (Rutger doesn't count; she's just gotta check up on them, you know? Nod and exchange vague affirmatives and updates. You wouldn't get it. It's swordsman business.), Lilian is absolutely critically certain to drink an entire glass of something, then pour another, perform a quick and obvious Clarine Scan, and then park herself somewhere very near both Hector and Guinivere, fondly leaning in to listen to the latter engage with Melady, and simply behold the rare fruits of her merciful labour.

    At some point, she notices Petra, looks at her over her lazily interlocked fingers, and forms a very dangerous idea that Petra will later regret. Maybe to keep out of trouble, Lilian snaps her fingers emphatically in her direction to 'encourage' Petra to bring her exactly the food she is psychically supposed to intuit she wants.

    'But of course. I only wish I could be returning under happier circumstances.'
    'This isn't a happy circumstance?'
    'Oh, you did miss me.'
    'No! I mean... wouldn't it be strange not to?'

    "So this is one I've heard all about~" Lilian says, totally not smirking (she is). "Well, seeing her heroically charge into battle like that, it's not small wonder. Even I could strive to imagine~"
Flamel Parsons     "I mean, even if that's true, it's still worth celebrating, I think."
    Flamel laughs. "Haha, that's so funny!" His friendly chuckles are genuine, yet disarming. "Sure, it'll be worth celebrating even if your goal is that sort of thing. Although, if you ask me, it's usually healthy to have a cut-loose threshold a little lower than this level of massive achievement!"

    "It's like click-- it's like conditioning yourself..."
    "It's like clicker-training yourself!" He agrees, cheerfully and with total diregard towards the secondary meanings that the phrase may have taken on in the early neo-20s. "The little-treat cycle can be turned to some really fun and useful directions, if you're very mindful about that and have some decent accountability partners. And I guarantee you'll never achieve triumph over enough conquering sieges that you'll get into negative habits on the other side of the pendulum swing."
Marigold      Nonon's arm around his shoulders puts poor Narcian into eyes-wide fight-or-flight mode. He makes a noise vaguely like a squeaky toy while his face tries to remember how to look indignant. "G- g- get... you brute... hnnnn..."

     He only takes a breath when she removes it. A deeeep breath. "Oh, of course I mean to keep my strength up. A beautiful body like mine can't be neglected! It's only, this is far below what a man of my station deserves. I suppose I can't be mad at a backwater like Lycia, but..."

     Unfortunately, in a context where she isn't beating the shit out of him, Petra is exactly the kind of girl Narcian victimizes. Briefly aghast, he zeroes in on the slight unease of 'dressing up a bit more than usual'. "Oh," he says with a backhanded twirl of his fork, "look at the commoner they hosed off for the party. Ditched the collar? Maybe if your owner fed you more you wouldn't be built like a child."

     Ace prickles his attention, then. His eyes narrow as he lifts up a forkful of roasted carrot. "... My instinct is that I'll be ransomed out any day now. And that I should play along with your silly games until then. Is that what you wanted to hear?" He finally eats the carrot, looks surprised, and then pretends like he doesn't like it.

     "Has he begged and apologized yet?" "Oh, honestly," Hector murmurs around his mug, "I feel bad for the guy. We haven't been squeezing him. I mean, look at him already! Like a plucked peacock."

     Surprisingly for a big guy, Odette mostly sees fruit and pastries on Hector's plate. Some of it is "pickled melon rind", amber and juicy-crunchy with a sweet-and-sour taste. Father Lucius's confit is juicy garlicky duck halfway between 'rotisserie' and 'lightly fried'. And Alen and Lance's drinks are "oh, mead! It's like honey and cinnamon!" and "redberry cordial. Fruity and delicate."

     A smile creeps over Marcus's face at Lilian's boasting. "Or is it that I haven't proven I can be trusted yet?" "It's that you won't always be here," he says, "and that vigilance is a habit which must be carefully built." But he finally allows a waiter to put a cup of mead in his hands.

     Sipping it before looking up at Blemi: "I'm doing fine, Lady Maria. A quiet evening is my idea of unwinding. All this has been a far grander adventure than I thought I was signing up for, escorting Lord Roy to Araphen, but I've been on worse. Four or five glasses... haha, your aunt must be a decade or two younger than me. I'd wake up in the morning feeling run over by a wagon!"

     He stands up with his plate, patting Dysnomia's shoulder. "I'm going to get some more vegetables. Can I get you anything, Mia? Maybe a drink too?" His patient smile conveys that he's been both the caretaker and the wounded many times.
Marigold      Dieck helps Shinmyoumaru lift the sake barrel onto the counter with one hand: "Hup-- there you go." He winks in the way only someone with younger sisters can while re-crossing his arms. "You pretty much had it. What is this stuff? Smells strong." "Rice-wine," Rutger says. "That can't be real." ". . ."

     "Yeah! The wine's great!" Shanna says to Neon, swaying forward a little and raising her voice even more than normal. "Uh, I wouldn't have the mead if I were you! You know they crush up the little bees to make it." "That's not real. Shanna, you're drunk." "I'm nootttt! It's true!!" ... There are no discernable bee chunks in the mead.

     She sobers up a little after a second's thought. Her eyes drop to the floor. "... Yeah. I shouldn't have been up in the sky at all. It was dumb. My sisters would've yelled at me for doing that. If it weren't for you..." Her lips part for a second before she perks right back up. "But you were there! And I believed in you, and you were so cool!"

     Melady startles a little when Flamel singles her out. Acknowledging her melancholy is unfair! She purses her lips and looks off to the side. "I'm trying. Don't have much of an appetite." "Don't worry, Mr. Parsons. I'm already inside her head," adds Lady Guinivere, putting a hand atop Melady's hair for emphasis. "Lady Guinivere?!" "Ahahaha..."

     After a minute, Melady ambles over to the far end of the table. At first it seems like she's going to sock it to Narcian, but instead she says from behind Nonon: "Hey. What do you eat?"

     Oddly, when Lilian comes to check on them, Rutger makes exactly one request: for "licorice root, if you can find it".

     "I've been hearing of you too, Lilian," Cecilia says, between politely dainty forkfuls of fruit. "I'm afraid I'm only half as wonderful as you've heard. Or a quarter, if it came from Roy." "Hey..."

     "I think you and Ostia put in most of the work. Hopefully there won't be more chances to test my heroism. We're reaching agreements to station our troops throughout Lycia; everywhere we advance, Bern retreats. It seems like Galle's army is under orders not to fight Etrurian soldiers."
Petra Soroka "But. Occassional reward incentives are a vital part of keeping morale up, in prolonged conflicts."

    Petra rolls her eyes at Dysnomia, utterly unsympathetic to her being cleft in twain by an ally. That happens all the time for Petra! Get over it! "Jesus, did you have to phrase that in the least h-- in the, *most*, soulless way possible? It's not a fucking video game. You're not tending to morale points. Calling it a 'reward incentive' in that sullen ass tone is the best way to guarantee that no one feels more motivated after."

"It's like clicker-training yourself!"

    Petra recoils and blinks at Flamel, mouth hanging slightly open as she runs through her own words in her mind. "I-I don't think I-- I don't think anyone said that, particular topic? I mean, like, if you're-- you know, the classic one would be-- the bell, anyways. Pavlov, with the dogs. If you're going to bring something like that up."

    Petra quietly repeats the phrase 'little-treat cycle' to herself, contemplating the plate in front of her as the platonic ideal of a little-treat. "I guess you could start hunting down conquering seiges to keep earning more rewards. There's enough in the multiverse that you could make a full time job out of it. But there's easier ways to get nice meals than that, so it'd have to be more than this to be worth it."

. . . Lilian snaps her fingers emphatically in her direction to 'encourage' Petra to bring her exactly the food she is psychically supposed to intuit she wants.

    Petra springs to her feet at the sound faster than conscious thought. Standing, she looks briefly confused, reminding herself of what environment she's in, and then promptly refocuses on pushing her chair in politely and hurrying off to complete her given task, without explaining a word to the people she was sitting around, some of whom she was in active conversation with. Her opinions on reward incentives seem well-informed.

    Being expected to psychically intuit Lilian's wants is something Petra is accustomed to and takes to so eagerly that it induces secondhand embarrassment in anyone looking at her directly. It barely takes her any adjustment at all to circle around the banquet table assembling a series of neat little plates for Lilian so that there's no need to wait for any of it to come around to her, and she pulls out a pair of gloves from her mirror as if it's second nature. Chattery and visibly delighted to be there while setting out Lilian's plates in order, Petra's emotional defenses are so completely undermined and exposed that any strike Lilian takes will inflict critical damage.

    Obviously, Petra collected dishes in courses: first, a bowl of the soup on offer, paired with a plate of topped breads and some of the fruits for pairing and contrast; and then the quail and accompanying vegetables to come after. It's a meat-centric selection, but exploratative enough of the other options to not just be carnivorous.

    Whenever she's within talking range of Lilian, extended while serving, Petra takes advantage of it. "I don't think I've seen that dress before? It's pretty; I like it a lot. How'd the Trideag stuff go, by the way? I only heard a little bit. I'm not allowed to be part of it, like, officially, since I'm legally just a top secret L-Corp technology in the City, but I'm sure I can help *un*officially if you need me for anything specific. Isn't it still weird how they have a *Lilina* and a Cecilia too? Hey, Cecilia, thanks for showing up-- er, I meant to the battle, like, in time, but I guess I could mean now too?"
Odette Raskins Seeing how Flamel, Nonon, and Blemishine (sort of? Is armor formal?) are dressed makes Odette feel considerably better about choosing to wear something more comfortable (or at least easier to clean). Between just never buying anything fancy and borrowing some things from home, she's feeling pretty okay about having proper eating-with-friends clothes!

Plus, it distracts her from how fancy several other attendees look. She can't afford the laced garments that Alucard wears, she can't pull off the dapper look that Ace went for, and she certainly can't afford a period costume like Shinmyoumaru's. She's certainly not confident enough to try an outfit like Lilian's, and Petra's...

Actually, Petra's outfit looks pretty cool to her. Odette takes out her PDA, then waves meekly at her before resorting to just hammering out a quick message to Petra.

PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "hey petra"
PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "can I take a picture of you."
PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "your outdoor looks really cool"
PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "outfit"
PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "what tile is it?"

True to her word, she doesn't take any pictures yet, instead turning to Blemishine with a mildly concerned noise. "Y.. Um. D-do you take after your aunt at all?" Between that possibility, what Lilian said about getting drunk earlier, and what Lance and Alan might be up to, she's starting to get just a little more worried about having to treat some alcohol poisoning tonight.

Only a little, though, since their description of the flavors of both the mead and the cordial bring her guard down rather quickly. "That doesn't sound half bad... Huh. I thought it was all just boozy-tasting stuff." She murmurs, clearly out of her depth when it comes to the world of alcoholic drinks.  She's far more comfortable picking out foods like Hector's and Lucius', just putting them both together into their own little quadrants on the same plate once she goes around to actually assemble her first course.

Said plate consists of a pile of fruit and rinds on one side, assorted bits of roasted meat and vegetables in one quarter, and the duck confit taking up a full quarter on its own. She returns to that same spot near-ish Hector, Alen, and Lance, setting the plate and two half-filled cups of mead and redberry cordial down to sort of join them.

"There we go..." She murmurs to herself, pauses for a moment to look up at the red and green knights, then giggles softly afterwards. "It's kind of fitting for you two to be drinking these, huh? Something lighter for the aspiring painter, something warmer for the free spirit... H-have you had a chance to think about what you might want to do after all this, Lance?"
Angela Nonon just rolls with Narcian's narcissim. "Of course!" She says. "I know it can't be hard getting that wave in your hair and it's pretty clear to me you take good care of your skin--Now don't you fret about a few off days, what matters is consistency and everybody knows that! GA HA HA!"

''Look at the commoner they hosed off for the party.''

"GA HA HA, She actually outranks me! She's a lot stronger than she looks so you shouldn't underestimate her or she'll totally kill you, GA HA HA!" Nonon is laughing like she's joking around but then she suddenly stops laughing and leans in and lowers her voice. "Seriously, she's killed before, she'll kill again..."

Then she leans back and adds, "Are you...sure they're gonna want you back, my dude? Maybe they're too jealous to want you back, GA HA HA!"

She can be pirate clever sometimes but that's about it.

She spots Petra glowering at her and throws a wave in her direction, squinting with her eyes simultaneously like she's trying to get something for a moment before getting distracted by Melady.

"Eh? Me?" She turns to face Melady. "Oh well I eat a whole bunch of stuff, just avoid process sugar, work out a whole lot--I was always pretty big GA HA HA but eggs, chicken, lots of seafood. Of course I don't forget my veggies GA HA HA. I eat a lot and work out a lot!"

"Why do you ask?" Ceri asks Melady, tilting her head her way.
Alucard Alucard is, well, his usual self. Quiet, slightly pensive, and already on his second cup of wine. Is he eating too? A touch. He's managed to accumulate a well balanced mix of meat and vegetables and fruits.

He's still going pretty hard on the hooch, though it doesn't seem to be touching him much. Vampiric metabolism.

This is, apparently, how he learns about people, engages in social obligations -and- manages to not have to engage too deeply with anything. It's working!
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna Shinmyoumaru doesn't hear Petra wondering about the necessity of gifts.

Honestly, she could certainly have left it at home, but Shinmyoumaru - who does not get invited to many parties - is happy to explain: "It's a tradition to bring your kind of drink, especially if it's not likely to be the same as what's already there, so that everyone can have some. And I don't think I've seen any rice wine here - hup!"

Shinmyoumaru will never admit that she really could have used Dieck's help there... out loud, though she does give a smile of thanks. And with his help, it is now on the table, and Shinmyoumaru prepares to open it ('Normally you use a wooden mallet, but I don't think I should use mine with it') so that it can be taken by the curious. She has some cups, too, though not enough for everyone; some people will have to use other wine glasses or small cups.

"It's real, though! Promise. We've got more rice than grapes. Some grows, but budoushu - um, that's what we call wine from grapes, it just means 'grape liquor' - isn't as popular, and it's not quite the same as your wine anyway. It has honey in it, a lot of the time. No bees though." She glances over at Rutger. "I didn't think anyone here knew about it, though. I hadn't seen any before, or very much rice, really."

Shinmyoumaru, perhaps unsurprisingly, still has an 18th or 19th century Japanese view of wine. It makes her aesthetic, at least. Rutger doesn't, quite, which is perhaps why she's looking over so curiously - she didn't expect anyone here to have much knowledge about her kind of food and drink.

Her eyes finally do track over to Narcian, but Shinmyoumaru lacks the malice - not because she's not capable but simply because she met him so much later, after he was already an enemy, and didn't have to suffer his barbs. Still, she doesn't much like him picking that way to go after Petra, and Shinmyoumaru tucks that away (mentally) for later.

Instead, she mouths to herself, "Clicker training?" because she doesn't understand at all. It gives her something to think about while she cheerfully loads a plate with food, more for variety than a lot of anything favourite; she apparently has no qualms about taking whatever she wants on that front.
Aidan Proudpick "I feel bad for the guy."

"The man threatened children and attacked the people I was protecting," Aidan says, flatly, but brings his voice back up. "I believe in mercy. But. That man has a long way to go before he can earn his mercy, and he ain't even trying yet." He listens to Narcian needle Petra about her body and shakes his head. He looks back at Hector, "If you wanna keep him safe, you should probably give him a guard. He's gonna get himself killed." Still, Aidan grins up at him. "You're a mighty hero, Lord Hector. I've never seen someone so boldly run into battle."

"Although, if you ask me, it's usually healthy to have a cut-loose threshold a little lower than this level of massive achievement!"

A blink from Aidan over at Parsons. He's been struggling with himself with any deed. He shuffles behind his head, "Really? I always figured you needed some big heroic moment to really celebrate. You know, you gotta keep climbing and THEN you can rest a bit before the next hurdle."

A glimpse at Petra as the finger snaps. A brief thought floats across his head. I wonder if that would work on... No, be normal, Aidan, be normal.

His eyes fall on Alucard, a grin on his face. He stops on his way to get some sake from the barrel, bowing to Shinmyoumaru, "Thank you, Princess, for this treat," before setting next to Alucard. He takes a little sip, not too worried about getting drunk enough to start prepositioning anyone here, but still being on the safe side.

"Aidan Proudpick," if it's odd for Aidan to be underdressed next to the extremely overdressed Alcuard, he doesn't care, offering his hand, "You are new to the Multiverse, right?"
Blemishine     Lilian gets a wave, and a snicker when she rolls past. "Taking proper time to unwind goes for you too, you know~!" She sounds awfully chipper about that, before she realizes...

    Ah. Dysnomia. That's who Blemi was peeking around for before, and now-- well, now they're a mere seat away from each other. And once again, those accursed eyes of hers are simply too keen to not pick up on the look on her face, even when not looking straight at her. She's not sure how to react to it instantly. Up until now... well.

    Even when they've ran into each other, it felt awkward enough in person that she wasn't sure what to say. Not the first time she's had to slide around someone without words.

    "Ahaha... well, she's not actually that much older than me, to tell you the truth," Maria says jovially to Marcus, though with a little awkwardness now. Extremely 'ha ha.....' brand of it. "She actually insists I call her my big sister instead of that! /Very/ vehemently insists on it. But--" There's a glance to the door, as if she's worried someone might barge through at any moment.

    "...I might've gotten in the habit of slipping whenever I'm not around her."

    And on that subject, she de-tenses a little at Odette's question, while finishing assembling her plate. That /is/ a lot of pastries. "Oh, no, no! I actually don't really drink that much at all! Come to think of it, she's really the only one like that? My big sister-- er, not her, my /actual/ big sis-- is pretty much just like me there..."

    With the threat of drunken horses out of the way, Maria seems prepared to dive into her meal... but a nagging sensation in her chest pauses her. After a moment of staring down at her steaming hot pheasant calling to her, her lips purse and her mouth wavers for a minute, before she leans forward a bit and exhales heavily. Bracing.

    When she straightens back up, it's Dysnomia she looks to. After she's already replied to Marcus, of course. "...Er. Um... excuse me. Mia?"
Dysnomia     "Alcohol doesn't agree with me. It's a condition." Dysnomia said, at Hector's prodding. None of them needed to know that there was a decent chance the stuff might ignite the moment it slipped into the furnace that passed for her stomach. Probably not a parlor trick the people of Elibe would appreciate...

    It was almost pity, really. The soldiers back home got a kick out of it... But at least no one would try to spike her drink for free fireworks. "But. Some pheasant might be nice, I guess."

    There's certainly a lot of meat on her plate already, intermixed with pastries...But it's the silverware Mia finds herself eying. She picks up a fork, admiring the sheen of it, before tearing into her roast, taking a lingering bite. She savors it for a minute before pulling the fork from her mouth and setting it down on the table.

    In spite of her determination, she can't help but be influenced by the atmosphere--it was her blessing and her curse. Mirth and relief and comraderie radiated around her, coaxing the tension slowly out of her, like someone drawn out of the cool before a hearth, after a long day in the cold--Ah.

    "...Er. Um... excuse me. Mia?"

    Dysnomia's eyes snap toward the smith, first instinct to demand she be referred to by title. "You..." But, she'd abandoned that, hadn't she? Her eyes scanned the table, lingering on the natives. Dysnomia chewed on her lip for a moment. Then; "What?"
Desire Stars ... My instinct is that I'll be ransomed out any day now. And that I should play along with your silly games until then. Is that what you wanted to hear?

    Ace smiles.

    "Interesting answer," he offers, rather than saying one way or another what he would've preferred. His irritating smile doesn't offer much guidance there, either. Ace takes a sip of wine, smoothly poured earlier on a brief stop prior to his approach. "Mercy and dignity are games, to you? It would explain a lot about how you lead your troops."

"If I were you, I'd hope to be wrong. Games eventually end, after all."

You know they crush up the little bees to make it.

    "They do not!" asserts Neon, in the way that only someone who halfway believes it could. She gives it a cautious glance to observe the mead in her own cup anyway, holding it up to the light. No chunks! Sip.

But you were there! And I believed in you, and you were so cool!

    "Well..." She smiles, a little embarrassed. "I didn't know I had it in me. And I shouldn't have... pushed you and Mia as hard as I did. If I can be honest, I'm not really cut out to teach anyone anything, just yet. I still have a lot to learn about fighting, and flying." She pauses.

    "Still... I believe in you, too. It means a lot to me, to have your encouragement. When this is all over, I'd like it if we could keep in touch."
Flamel Parsons     "I'm trying. Don't have much of an appetite."
    "Can't blame you! It's been pretty eventful, huh? Well, just trust it'll all work out! I'm working to help Guinivere with all this regime-change business, and we'll get it figured out." Flamel's tone, as always: Friendly, cheerful, a little too much so. He lets her wander off, though, without pursuing her much.

    "I mean, like, if you're-- you know, the classic one would be-- the bell, anyways. Pavlov, with the dogs. If you're going to bring something like that up."

    Flamel tilts his head with oblivious curiosity, but then spreads his hands plaintively. "Sure, whatever example works best for you! It's just always important to remember that you can train yourself as much as you can train an animal. But you've gotta make sure you answer to someone else, at least a little bit!" Or a lot, as the case may be. Petra's off to go get Lilian her drinks and other suchlike.

    "Really? I always figured you needed some big heroic moment to really celebrate."

    "It's about the accountability. You can cut loose more often -- but you have to trust the people you'll always do it with, it can't just be alone. Never forget to keep yourself indulged and rewarded, but you always have to have someone else in your life that you're doing it with or you can lose yourself in bad habits. It's always easier for people to be ideally kind to each other than it is for them to be ideally kind to themselves."

    "You are new to the Multiverse, right?"
    When Aidan goes to Alucard, Flamel wipes his mouth a little and gets out a little notebook. He turns pages until he finds the right one. Through another bite of food, he runs his index finger over his documents.

    "E-8931: 'Alucard of Wallachia'. Unregistered paranormal entity, son of ####### and an unknown woman. Demonstrates some pretty powerful martial and magical abilities, likely carrier of an Actualization-level transgenerational trauma psychohazard, immune or resistant to psychohazards in the unquiet dead cluster. Very cooperative, plenty of potential for kindness, but limited direct social experience."

    He looks up, regarding Alucard again, and his elegant eating and outfit. Then he scribbles a quick note revising that. "'Limited direct social experience -- but great social protocol!' Makes me trust him but distrust the dad, I gotta say." This is really, really, *really* socially inappropriate, but he just acts like it's normal, enough that it might be tough to get a foothold in accusing him of overstepping on this documentation thing.
Dysnomia     "I didn't know I had it in me. And I shouldn't have... pushed you and Mia as hard as I did. If I can be honest, I'm not really cut out to teach anyone anything, just yet. I still have a lot to learn about fighting, and flying."

    Dysnomia blinks at Neon, briefly, food forgotten momentarily at the shock of being acknowledged. She growled briefly, making a waving motion with her hand. "I shouldn't have been up there at all," she grumbled, but it seemed more at herself than either of the other fliers. "What else should I have expected, doing those kinds of turns with a wound?" She chided herself, for not anticipating the pitfalls of a kind of injury her body hadn't had in over a decade.
Petra Soroka "Maybe if your owner fed you more you wouldn't be built like a child."

    Petra, while making her rounds in order to serve food to Lilian at a single finger snap and not a word of verbal request, is enriched enough to scoff at Narcian rather than being immediately aggrieved. "For your *information*--" There's a million damning (to Petra) things that could follow her haughty corrective snap at Narcian. Absolutely none of them, even lilyless as she is right now, could be a convincing refute of the word 'owner'.

    "I can feed *myself*. And besides, I'm literally exactly average height. And below average weight, so don't even *start*. *And* I actually work out a lot." Her attempts to retort to Narcian have devolved into... listing stats, as if they discredit his insults. "*You're* the one wasting away in a cell, idiot; my build is *fine*."

"GA HA HA, She actually outranks me!"

    Petra is now fully distracted by this argument, and she points a finger at Nonon emphatically while nodding from behind her. "That's right, that's right. And I own a *castle* too, actually. *I've* almost single-handedly caused the destruction of an entire nation and claimed its seat of power for myself, so, I'm kind of *less* of a commoner than some dolled-up pervert who got his ass hauled into jail by a 'backwater nation'. How about *that*?"

PDA message from Odette Raskins (EMT): "what tile is it?"

    Petra, feeling her phone buzz in her pocket, frowns and presses her hand to it, fidgeting with the trailing bow-ribbon that hangs down over the opening. She's about to ignore it and get back to attending to Lilian, when she happens to catch one of Odette's furtive glances and then her returned attention to her PDA, and connects the dots enough to pull it out and scan the messages with a little sigh.

Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | picture?
Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | like for inspo?
Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | weird but sure ig
Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | i'm not posing for shit
Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | if you want the pants i got them at casgil

    Petra doesn't mention the brand because she doesn't remember it, and doesn't care to check. She spends a solid thirty seconds in a fight with her phone over the word 'CasGil', because autocorrect is oddly insistent about capitalizing it properly and she has to undo it out of spite.

Phoning Odette Raskins, Petra Soroka texts | boots are from a local offworld shop though so you're out of luck, just look around for actual people instead of chinese sweatshop factories or whatever tho

    Eventually Petra realizes the silliness of texting someone who's in the same room as her and less than a dozen feet away, during a social event where they're completely encouraged to talk. The fact that Odette is the one who initiated that weird interaction is lost in the fact that Petra feels embarrassed for having perpetuated it, so she abruptly slides her phone away and ends the conversation, going back to drifting around the long table. Without any indication she would, or any lead up at all, Petra ends up right behind Odette's chair, bluntly asking contextless, "Tile? What? Like, sewing patterns?"
Lilian Rook     During the inderminate middle chatter of the party, Lilian lets her eyes wander a while and fall smiling on Nonon and Shajo. She's learned a shocking number of the Agents' names by now, but those two were in some part because she was once terrified she'd gotten them killed before their wedding. She does an admirable job of not staring at Shajo's fianceé's hard-working top button, though more for dreadful half-formed premonition that she'll learn about some Nest's Prima Noctis laws if she doesn't.

    'redberry cordial. Fruity and delicate.'

    Lilian doesn't even look at Petra; se just points in Lance's direction and expects her to intuit it.

    '... My instinct is that I'll be ransomed out any day now. And that I should play along with your silly games until then. Is that what you wanted to hear?'

    "Oh I'd certainly hope so." Lilian says, smoothly, picking up knife and fork as Petra hurries up to finish. "After all, I'm the one who suggested that we ransom you. Petra's idea was . . . ah, I believe it was 'tying you up in the dungeon and hitting you with hammers'? Crude, but not entirely without merit." Fidgeting idly in the few moments of wait left, what Lilian thinks are totally normal behaviours during this topic are: Drinking a lot of wine, and, occupying one hand with seeing how quickly she can rotate her knife around all of her fingers in sequence. "The others wanted to kill you, of course. Oh but she does hose off well, right~?" It is completely inconveivable why she would want to actually talk to Narcian of all people, and yet here she is.

    'vigilance is a habit which must be carefully built.'

    "Mmmhhh . . . True." Lilian actually concedes to Marcus. "When it comes to assassins in banquet halls, though, they'll have more need of it once Lord Roy is a famous war hero than now. At the moment, they need to etch into their bones that it's possible for them to win and feast the next day, and exactly how difficult that is."

    'That can't be real.'

    "I know, right?" Lilian does not try to pretend that she isn't looking at Dieck's chest, though the temptation is less severe for having seen him strut about topless enough times already. "In the first place, wine is made from grapes. Everyone understands that! I had my whole--" She makes a dismissive hand-waving gesture about the wording, and yet still says, "--arc, about that, before realizing that it isn't, of course, 'wine', but something we give the distinction to for being similar. I hadn't even tried it before, but my--" Lilian looks both ways like she's crossing the road. "--partner, made certain I came to enjoy it."

    'You know they crush up the little bees to make it.'

    "That's not real." Lilian says. Then perhaps to ward herself against the mental image of cute fuzzy bumble bees being cruelly mashed up to make drink, she repeats "They don't do that." She sighs. "And if you noticed, then don't take flight in a situation like that without at least three wing-women." She is currently aware of one man in the party who can fly, and is sure he wouldn't take offense.

    'I've been hearing of you too, Lilian'

    Lilian hastily burns through the second half of her glass.
Lilian Rook     'I'm afraid I'm only half as wonderful as you've heard. Or a quarter, if it came from Roy.'

    "Just the sort of thing someone wonderful would say." Lilian says, fumbling a little for the words between multiple different possibly-applicable contexts in play, and settling on the well-worn and familiar. "Contrarily, I've no idea at all what they've been saying about me! Honestly, it might be too much to hope that it's even halfway flattering, haha."

    'Isn't it still weird how they have a *Lilina* and a Cecilia too?'

    "Don't make it weird." says Lilian, weirdly, to Petra, who is actually not being weird for once. She pinches the back of her leg under the table for emphasis. "And it went swimmingly. There are some buzzards from T-Corp, but the turnout was tremendous, they all loved my absurd speech, and the young punks actually seem as if they'll turn out quite well, as long as they pay attention. This dress is just . . ." Lilian holds her breath and considers the answer. "Something I used to wear for very small special occasions. It's been a while since I wore something familiar and homey. That's all." It menaces with Lore.

    'I think you and Ostia put in most of the work. Hopefully there won't be more chances to test my heroism. We're reaching agreements to station our troops throughout Lycia; everywhere we advance, Bern retreats. It seems like Galle's army is under orders not to fight Etrurian soldiers.'

    "Only for our being here first." says Lilian, now given the luxury of quail to deftly slice apart and soup to quickly sample in the interim, able to make it table-talk instead of 'meeting your boss' perfect nephew's slightly inappropriate crush'. "Unless you mean myself, specifically, in which case I'll happily take all the credit~" Lilian says, once she sets her spoon down, and casually stabs a piece of fruit with her fingernail, so she can get her inquisitive lean down just right. "I'm afraid that you might hope all you like, General, but I've no doubt those orders will be changed once they make it back to Bern. Their deployment was suspicious enough as-is."

    "I have the feeling that King Zephiel is only trying to control who sees his hand for now. He doesn't seem like the sort to give up once Etruria gets involved. Only select a better-tailored strategy."

    'The man threatened children and attacked the people I was protecting'

    "So did you, fuckface. Put a shirt on!" Okay yeah there goes the grave military general talk and all the associated atmosphere. Lilian is two glasses in, starting to feel it, and alerted by the smell of the dregs trying to outrank one another like blood to a shark. "I have thrice the abs you do, wretch! So forget whatever you're thinking!"

    'Taking proper time to unwind goes for you too, you know~!"'

    "Hm?" Lilian blinks doe-eyed at Blemishine. "Do I not seem as if I'm having fun?"
Odette Raskins Blemishine's plate reminds Odette that she hasn't taken any pastries nor carbs. Is that going to be okay? Wait, there's always the second plate. Problem solved! "That's good! I mean... F-for the rest of your family, I guess? I think. Um. I-I mean, if she's healthy otherwise, then there's probably nothing to worry about?" A beat, a pause to try that confit first, let out a delighted little squeal at the indulgent graesiness, and then she taps her chin. "Well, unless she does crazy stuff after drinking a lot like... Er. Almost everyone else back home."

She chuckles lightly after that. "I know mining's dangerous work, but... You'd think it'd be more dangerous to do that with a hangover, you know? O-or even drinking while handling all that equipment around all that gas..."

Feeling a familiar buzz from her belt, Odette taps her PDA once, then remembers that she sent some messages to Petra and takes a look. She's about to start fumbling around with it, too, even without realizing how weird it might be to keep chatting that way, but there's plenty of good information to get out of that. When she doesn't see Petra anywhere to her sides, though, Odette's about to start tapping a response in when-

"Tile? What? Like, sewing patterns?"

Like with Hector slapping the table, Odette nearly jumps out of her seat, but catches herself before she can accidentally upend her plate of food. Breathing out a sigh of relief, Odette turns around to look up at Petra with that possibly-familiar deer-headlights look on her face. "P.. Petra? Tile? O-oh! No, no. Um..." She glances at her PDA again, then grumbles. "Sorry. Um. Style. I-it's a really neat style, so I was wondering if there was a name for it. Casgil, right?" Odette replies, looking down at Petra's culottes before remembering that she had asked to take a picture and bringing her PDA back up to do exactly that.

"Oh. Um. Thanks, by the way! I'll have to do some digging for matching boots, but having the open legs looks so much more comfortable..." She continues, fidgeting a bit in her jeans in comparison. They fit well enough, but the washed out color makes them look like they might be older than she is. Odette pauses to look over at where Petra had been speaking to Narcian, then looks back up and over at her. "I-is everything going okay with you and... Um. The dandy knight? H-he's not doing anything weird, right?"
Blemishine     Dysnomia's snapping her way doesn't actually get Maria to flinch or anything. Not physically, though there might've been a bit of it in her eyes, followed by an understanding twinge. "That must be a little too familiar, huh. Just Dysnomia, then?"

    The knight slash smith doesn't let that slow her momentum for long though, and soon she's turning in her seat to face the wounded dragon more properly. "I'm really sorry... but that's something you've probably heard enough, and it doesn't help anything." A hand comes up to rest on her own chest, after setting her silverware down for a second.

    "It hasn't been healing much at all, has it? Durandal's wound." It'd have been hard to miss, with the bleeding from before. "Is there anything I can do to help speed it up? Even just making it less painful. You know your body better than anyone, so if there's any way I can help even a little, I want to."

    "...And if not, well. If there's anything else I can lend a hand with so you can focus on recovering, just say the word. I'd get it if you didn't want anything to do with me at all. But I don't want that to be a shadow over the rest of the time we're working together."

    There's a glance to the two other fliers over yonder, and then back to Dysnomia. Her serious expression might've eased up an inch. "Besides. You're one of the only ones who can fight in the air here. I have to do what I can to make sure the trio sticks together, don't I?"

    So did you, fuckface. Put a shirt on! I have thrice the abs you do, wretch! So forget whatever you're thinking!
    Do I not seem as if I'm having fun?

    Hm.

    "Ahaha... no, you actually seem like you're enjoying yourself quite a lot! Just be sure to drink some water once in a while!"

    Odette mentioning hangovers made that jump right back to mind. Under her breath, "D-Drinking while handling gas mining equipment...?"
Dysnomia     "That must be a little too familiar, huh. Just Dysnomia, then?"

    "Dysnomia is better," she allows, stiffly, assessing Maria. Then, turns away. "No, it really hasn't." Everyone was busy laughing and chattering to one another, but they were, all of them, well within earshot. "It has more inertia than most injuries," she said. "It's all about how difficult it is to reassert will. It's hard to explain, but the more an injury 'means,' the harder it is to refute." Not heal, not restore. 'Refute.'

    She took a bite of a jelly-filled pastry, leaving unspoken in the air between them how much a cut from a legendary, dragon-felling weapon could mean, turned against a dragon with intent to kill. It was practically poison to her.

    "Do you think what you can do 'means' more than that?" Dysnomia asked, flatly, openly dubious. "Because, you wouldn't be the first to have tried." And then failed.
Alucard Alucard gets joined by a shirtless ... squirrel(?)-person. Golden eyes regard Aidan, his face a marble mask. He takes another sip of wine, remaining silent as he tries VERY HARD to at least get a little drunk.

"Yes. Fairly recently," he replies, his tone a smooth baritone. Formal and stiff, but with the tiniest twinge of awkward in there somewhere. He doesn't people much. He looks at the outstretched hand for a moment, considering before he swaps the cup of wine to his other hand and reaches over. He doesn't shake Aidan's hand, but instead claps his wrist in the old way. Plus, since this is at least a semi-formal occasion, he has to, ugh, refer a title.

"Alucard, Son of Dracula. Prince of the Vampires. ... Technically."

Curse his Father for drilling courtly manners and the importance of titles into his head as a boy. At least he has the castle to prove it. Tomb that it is.

As for Flamel ''reading his notes out loud'', the dhampir just raises an eyebrow. Odd, but, well, nothing he said was inaccurate, so he doesn't correct him!
Lilian Rook     '*I've* almost single-handedly caused the destruction of an entire nation and claimed its seat of power for myself, so, I'm kind of *less* of a commoner than some dolled-up pervert who got his ass hauled into jail by'

    "Aren't you a dolled-up pervert who got her ass hauled to jail, though?" Lilian says, drink three in, like she promised Hector. "I distinctly remember hauling your ass into jail myself, actually. And like, this is the prettiest I've ever seen you dress up, and you're totally a freak, so couldn't you find something less hypocritical if you're going to fume and look stupid?" Taking a moment to tuck into her quail, quiet bone snap and all, Lilian starts sawing off pieces of bread as she goes.

    "And you own a castle that someone else conquered. And the destruction of the nation was basically just him and Proudpick and the Gale Emperor and basically just a twelve car pile-up of men with egos. And you literally put me in the seat of power; as in you actually dragged out the throne and begged me to sit in it. Haha, what are you even talking about actually, now that I think of it? Aren't you sort of completely making it up?" Lilian bookends it with happily chomping into her food and forgetting her conversational pathing.

    'Ahaha... no, you actually seem like you're enjoying yourself quite a lot! Just be sure to drink some water once in a while!'

    "You're about to have a hard time catching up if you don't start now." Lilian says to Blemishine, waving her fork vaguely. "God, I know how to drink water. You sound like Cecilia, but like, all nervous and less warm."

    'I shouldn't have been up there at all'

    "You should have been doing what I told you do!" Well, now Mia is in the crossfire too. "If you're going to ignore the once place you're obviously useful and get into a slapfight with Melady's lover again then I'll stick you with Durandal myself!" Lilian almost sounds like she doesn't mean it, forty-five minutes into feasting.

    'licorice root, if you can find it'

    On the second run through, Lilian gets an actual request(!) from her cool swordsman friend whom she is friends with (probably? it kinda feels like they're friends at least?) and stops to take it very seriously. Not having a bag of greens on her right now, Lilian wracks her brains a little for the herblore she remembers from her teenaged years and--

    Lilian pauses with a puzzled look on her face, glances down, stares at a blank spot of table for slightly too long, and then suddenly shakes her head.

    "If you needed painkillers then you should have said so earlier! Goodness, and I thought you were being even more quiet than usual. You're not hiding anything from Lucius, right? I'm certain he'd say just as much as me that you're not being any trouble!" Now she has to go fetch her Paladins mini-medkit.
Aidan Proudpick "You can cut loose more often -- but you have to trust the people you'll always do it with, it can't just be alone."

Aidan blows out a breath. "I gotta get back to team building with my friends." And make new ones.

"I have thrice the abs you do, wretch! So forget whatever you're thinking!"

"Nothing involving you! And I don't NEED abs." He watches her steadily dig into Petra and turns away, coughing. He quickly regrets drawing more attention, knowing he may get shot at by verbal artillery.

A warrior's grip. Aidan nods, grabbing Alucard's wrist firmly. Hands that know a weapon and labor, at least. "Heeey, a prince! Good to finally meet one, I've met a LOT of princesses." Aidan is also bright and cheery, picking at the meager non-meat offerings at the table around him.

His ears tilt backwards to pick up Flamel's report. He brings a palm up to one ear to scrub at it, shaking his head back and forth as he hears a... non-sound. "Mister Parsons! I mean... you could just give me the report on the radio at least?"

A sheepish smile at Alucard at the sudden airing of laundry, then an eager smile, "I saw you in battle, you are pretty powerful! You should get around to the rest of the army, I'd bet they'd love to meet you!"
Odette Raskins "D-Drinking while handling gas mining equipment...?"

Odette breathes out a sigh of relief at Blemishine's reaction. "Right? I thought I was the only one thinking it was weird! But mom said it's just the way they do things, and the foreman said it helped morale, so..."

She lets out another anxious noise, pauses, then peers at Blemishine's gauntlets and leggings for a moment before looking right back up at her face. "That reminds me... H-how did you get started being a knight like this, anyway?"

"Aren't you a dolled-up pervert who got her ass hauled to jail, though?"

That gets Odette's attention rather easily, too. She looks over at Lilian in a confused daze, then at Petra with a questioning tilt of her head, then back to Lilian as she keeps hammering it in. It's not enough to stop Odette from eating, but she's definitely not going to interrupt any of that going on even though she's enraptured by everything she's hearing.

She's also watching Petra's reaction curiously, too.

"If you needed painkillers then you should have said so earlier!"

Odette doesn't catch who Lilian said that to as she's still in the middle of chowing down on way too much fruit at once, but she does take a small bottle of painkillers out of her fanny pack and sets it besides her plate of fruit and meat and her half-cups of mead and redberry as though she's planning to signal Lilian to take the pills.

She completely forgets to give any kind of signal whatsoever. The bottle looks like a pretty standard tiny pill bottle that would be out of place at this kind of feast, though, and might especially stand out with the little blue cross and pink heart stickers on it instead of the usual prescription label.
Dysnomia     "If you're going to ignore the once place you're obviously useful and get into a slapfight with Melady's lover again then I'll stick you with Durandal myself!"

    Dysnomia tenses. That makes the second time that one of the elites has talked about how her lingering, strangely stubborn wound came from a dragon maiming sword in front of almost the whole of the Lycian army. How long before they connect the dots?

    Her hands clasp, her back straightens, and she can't help but scowl. "You may have noticed, Dame Commander, but I did fall from the sky." Stars, but it had been a msitake to come after all. "My apologies, if I was a little late crawling on top of the gatehouse, but you'll note that a certain spearman was between me and the walls."

     Dysnomia grimaced as Lilian immediately began fretting over Rutger. Such care for the wounded. Heartwarming. She slipped a small ruby out of pocket and into her mouth. A little snack, to take the edge off.
Marigold      "Mmmm. Just pheasant, then," Marcus says to Mia, but his eyes linger on her for a moment as he walks off. When he returns with the poultry, there's an extra silver butter knife on the plate. "Hector won't miss it," he winks. "Miss what?" "Oh, the pheasant."

     "Hmh," he says to Blemi, settling back in. "I hadn't taken you for the youngest sister. You're dependable enough it feels like you must've always been depended on. That feeling of 'reliability'... where do you get that from?"

     Hector scoffs warmly at Aidan while knocking back his second cup of mead. "I am a great big hero, but charging in isn't why. That was just me being stupid, and if it weren't for everybody else, I could've been dead and stupid. Now don't follow in my footsteps, alright?"

     "Oh, I'll still be needed in peacetime. But if I'm wounded or something, I'll definitely become a painter," says Lance while neatly cutting up his fruit into squares. He flashes a smile up at Odette. "It's Alen who hasn't sorted out his future." "Hey! It's sorted!" "Really? You want to be a knight forever, like Sir Marcus?" "Well, maybe. If I don't find anything I like better. I'm not really sure, but..." "Then it isn't sorted." "Humph."

     "Mercy and dignity are games, to you?"
     Narcian smirks insufferably and touches his hand to his own chest. "For others. But I'm fine art, and even that brute Hector knows art when he sees it. Art is timeless. And it must be put on display.

     Nonon's audacious claims about Petra's competency make Narcian's eyes dart between the two of them nervously. He can't quite tell if the bigger woman is joking, but Lilian's debunking calms him back down.

     "How about *that*?"
     Emboldened, Narcian examine his fingernails haughtily. Not realizing the evil he speaks: "You're not very good at being a blonde, are you? You should take lessons from... who was that Etrurian noblewoman? 'Claren'?"

     "And of course they'll want me back," he says dismissively. "That Ilian filth Galle is no replacement for--"

     Melady buries a butter knife an inch deep in the wood of his chair, just above his shoulder. "Eeeek--! Fine, fine!"

     Nonon's dietary description makes Melady shrug. "Why do you ask?" "I'm a little jealous," she freely admits to Ceri, without taking her eyes off Narcian. "I hoped that there was a special trick to it. I guess the Otherworld just makes women differently." "You're already a freak." "Weakling."

     "They dooooo. They squish the little bees up with a big roller like dough so they spit out all the honey, and they--" "No. Shut up." "Fiiiine." Shanna steadies herself against a barrel, and then a sincere smile crosses her face again. Her eyes are a little more lucid when she looks at Neon.

     "... Yeah. I'm not really good enough to teach anyone either. My big sisters are way better. You know, one of them has a castle in Ilia? That's Juno. When everything's over, let's go there. You'll love it. And by then we'll both be big famous heroes, okay?" "Just focus on not dying first." "Dieeeeckkkkk..."
Marigold      "Oh, it was flattering gossip. Roy asked if I could teach him to swordfight like you do!" Roy is very interested in his food right now. Cecilia just smiles dreamily. She's just like if 'the college-aged babysitter you thought was really cool' froze and waited for you to grow up too. "But that's really not my area of expertise. I've already taught him everything I can about the sword."

     "To tell you the truth, Lilian, I'm certain that Etruria taking action shocked Bern." "I'm surprised your king allowed it." "Well... that's just it, Roy. King Mordred's ministers wouldn't let me talk to him. I acted on my own." "Cecilia?!" "Oh, relax! If I lost they'd have had my head, but I won, so they can't be mad."

     "Ahahaha! I knew I picked the right tutor for Lilina. You're a woman after my own heart, Cecilia." Cecilia taps her lips in fake thought. "Should I be insulted? You were just calling yourself stupid, Hector." "Hey!"

     "Anyway, how's Eliwood doing, Roy? Is he still unwell?" "My father? He's better than he was a few years ago, but he's still in no state for travel." "Mmm. And your mother?" "Cecilia... Lady Ninian died not long after you left. I thought you knew?" "Oh, Roy..."

     "You're not hiding anything from Lucius, right?"
     Those words, specifically, drive a stake through Rutger's heart. They look aghast, totally paralyzed. It takes Dieck's concerned "You okay, man?" to defibrillate them back into consciousness.

     Their hand grabs Lilian's wrist as she turns to fetch the medkit, with the desperate reaching urgency of grabbing at a life-raft. Their eyes are the eyes of the drowning. "No. It has to be licorice root."
Flamel Parsons     "Mister Parsons! I mean... you could just give me the report on the radio at least?"
    Flamel rambles through more mouthfuls of food. "Oh, no way. No, mlmph, no chance, too vulnerable to being intercepted by secret societies, aliens, that kind of thing. If you want it to be more private, I could, hmpmmh, I could dead-drop it to you in a subway locker after silent-ringing you on a payphone. Glp." He finally swallows and gets a big drink of wine. "But that's an awful lot of trouble. This way's a decent sweet-spot of privacy and convenience, I think!" It's simply not inappropriate, in his view, to discuss dossiers.
Blemishine     You're about to have a hard time catching up if you don't start now.

    "Ahaha... I better get started soon, then!" Blemishine bravely takes up her pheasant-cutting knife again. She just has to get the complicated stuff out of the way so she can spend the rest of the time enjoying the feast.

    You sound like Cecilia, but like, all nervous and less warm.

    "Oh-- really...?" This actually seems to surprise her in a way that's not apparent as immediately good or bad before her free hand comes to her hand in experimental thought. "...Hmm. I'll need to work on the 'warm' part then."

    "Am I more wound up than I thought right now?" Yes. "Maybe I /should/ get at least one drink in me...?" Thankfully, this probably won't happen.

    That reminds me... H-how did you get started being a knight like this, anyway?
    You're dependable enough it feels like you must've always been depended on. That feeling of 'reliability'... where do you get that from?

    "I guess..." After some shared bonding over thinking drinking on a job like that is obscenely dangerous, Blemi ponders the unexpected question from Odette, and figures she can address that and Marcus' curiosity at the same time. "To make a pretty long story short, though making things has always been my biggest passion..." She taps one gauntlet as if for emphasis.

    "I first went down the road of a knight because... well, I felt like I had to at the time. Our family was in a lot of trouble, and it was the only way I could help, you see. Buuuut... I was trying way too hard to be my big sister. One of the most famous in the whole country, before she had to leave. I always looked up to her as everything a knight should be. Stronger than strong, and so radiant. There was so much pressure trying to take her place, but the thing that got to me..."

    "...was someone saying my dreams were borrowed."

    "Honestly, I wasn't reliable at all," she says almost conversationally while picking up a pastry. "I got told I could and should stop a ton of times. I only tried doing anything when it was almost too late, and tried to fill shoes that weren't mine because I was pushed into a corner. I forced it as far as I could-- just to totally screw up! After all that, my sister had to bail me out and take on all the responsibility I couldn't handle anyway. I wasn't ready for... any of it."

    "But I learned a lot by trying. And learned about how much I /didn't/ know. So here I am now, approaching things as myself and doing it my own way. If I seem dependable... eheh, that's only because I got off the ground being the opposite. So it means a lot that you really think so, Sir Marcus." She flashes him a smile, and then Odette.

    "But that's my origin story! I actually rambled a whole lot, didn't I? Sorry about that. In the end, I guess it's sort of just a family thing! Just call me a craftswoman trying to moonlight as a knight. Or maybe just the most unconventional one out there...?"
Odette Raskins Odette snaps her fingers lightly as she realizes her mistake in confusing Lance and Alen. "Darn it. S-sorry, I'm.. Names." She chuckles awkwardly at that, distracting herself with a sausage slice before looking over at Alen. "A forever knight, huh...? Well, there's always going to be a need for someone strong and tough around, even if you're not fighting. There'd be plenty of rebuilding, I bet, a-and just being able to carry all sorts of heavy loads..."

She pauses, glances at her plate, then peers at Alen again. "What about cooking? Ooor... Growing food? Then you'd never have to worry about running out of tasty stuff to use or eat, and you'd never run out of work!" Another pause, and then she sips some of the mead. "Y-you could also become a bodybuilder, if you're into.. Um. Bulking up."

Blemishine, meanwhile, reveals the source of her motivation and her knightliness. Odette listens closely and attentively, nodding at first, then slowly tearing up a bit as she starts to speak of her older sister and the path she's been taking.  "That's so sad... B-but I'm real glad you found that out about yoursef, because..."

Odette pauses again, then nods firmly. "I don't know a lot of knights outside of here, but you're definitely better than the ones I do know that aren't from here." She assures, then chuckles lightly and munches on more fruit. "A-and don't worry about rambling. That's.. I mean, stories like that can't not be rambled, right?"
Lilian Rook     'You should take lessons from... who was that Etrurian noblewoman? 'Claren'?'

    "Oh god no."

    Lilian is just tipsy enough to whisper way too loud. That scorched sound of shellshock is the most afraid she's ever been in Narcian's vicinity.

    'I guess the Otherworld just makes women differently.'

    "I'm normal." Lilian mutters, skipping several steps. "And Nonon couldn't ride a pegasus if she tried." She says it sadly, also skipping several steps.

    'They dooooo. They squish the little bees up with a big roller like dough so they spit out all the honey, and they--'

    "No no no no nonononono they don't!" Lilian only breathes when Dieck takes over. Aghast, she tries not to look at any cup of mead on the table, then dazedly tries to screw her facts and logic head back on. "The honey isn't inside the bees! They make it! Inside the hive! You have to take the solid honey block out! That's why it's called honeycomb!" Lilian is . . . fairly sure that's true. "You don't milk the bees for honey or whatever!"

    'My apologies, if I was a little late crawling on top of the gatehouse, but you'll note that a certain spearman was between me and the walls.'

    "Then you call in your god damn negative and request exfil-- how do you not get this?!" Lilian shouts barely over the general level of table clamour. It's easy to imagine her huffing and growling and pacing around with that delivery, but she mostly just seems like she's forgotten that Dysnomia doesn't . . . actually answer to her. She's hellbent on getting through her cordial now too.

    'And I don't NEED abs.'

    "What the fuck are you talking about?!" Lilian yells on the verge of a squeak. "You swing shields around!" She leaps up to her feet and slaps her palms on the table, then then revs up into howling "YOU. NEED. CORE STRENGTH!" in eerily near-identical cadence to 'YOU. HAVE. UNO!' She busies herself staring around the table for assenting opinions on the get-a-load-of-this-guy cam, then spots Odette's pill bottle, and gives her a blisteringly sour look for no comprehensible reason, distracting her all over again.

    'Oh, it was flattering gossip. Roy asked if I could teach him to swordfight like you do!'

    Enjoying herself more successfully than half the people in the room, Lilian harrumphs back down into her seat and resumes her mid-twenties wine aunt practice before her hair is even done with its catchup bounce. "Oh, well that's normal." she says. "If you want to the secret to fighting like me Roy . . ." Lilian holds up one finger, forgets what she was saying, remembers it again, and smiles too early. "It's 'have ten more years of practice'~" Perfect. Smooth. Lilian falls to biting through a pear slice when Cecilia continues; and then barely doesn't choke on it.

    She'd comment on the obvious, first, but a little bit out of it, Lilian desperately searches around for Flamel's attention, locks eyes, looks back to Cecilia, and repeats "King Mordred . . ." at him in tipsy nonsense deadly seriousness.

    "Goodness. No wonder they were so surprised. If Etruria's stance was to do nothing at all, then that siege should have been a bloodbath." Lilian murmurs. "And yet they still had orders to pull back if . . . No, they must have assumed that the King had a change of heart, mustn't they? I certainly can't allow you to lose your head after that miracle."
Desire Stars Art is timeless. And it must be put on display.

    "That's true," Ace smilingly replies. "And the context it's viewed in can change the meaning of the piece entirely--even being on display at all. Something as ordinary as a pigpen becomes art, when it's put on display."

    "In particular, you remind me of a piece by Duchamps--the Fountain. I could talk about art all day, but I should try some of those pastries before they're all gone."

    He politely excuses himself to do just that.

I shouldn't have been up there at all.
You should have been doing what I told you do!

    "I'm-- sorry, Dysnomia, Lilian. I'll do better next time."

When everything's over, let's go there. You'll love it. And by then we'll both be big famous heroes, okay?

    "Okay!" Neon smiles brightly, her head bobbing in approval. "I'm sure I would. Maybe I could even put on a performance?" She takes a sip of her mead. "Dieck is right, though. I'll keep watching your back, and you keep watching mine. Being a big hero... well, that's not so important to me as making sure everyone gets out of this okay."
Lilian Rook     'No. It has to be licorice root.'

    "Um . . . ?"

    By now Lilian has disinhibitedly whiplashed between so many different conversational tones that she's nearly lost. Whether someone wants to find her lack-of-remembering to insert fake emotional continuity endearing or frightening is all up to them; Lilian is busy comprehending the strange feeling of desperate enormity that comes over her from Rutger's words.

    Setting aside the sass and yelling and joking on instinct, she freezes mid-reach with Rutger's hands on her wrist, and stares at them, struggling over her next move in the lagrange point between being too disinhibited to put it out of mind yet no actually drunk enough to impair her ability to think about it.

    She seems to stick on something for several seconds. Like gears nearly turnining, meeting too much resistance, and shuddering back into place. A computer trying to repeatedly boot the same program that keeps crashing. 'What if--?', 'But why would--?', 'Well what other--?', 'Then why me--?', 'What reason--?', 'Then why now--?', 'But why couldn't they--?', and so on and so on.

    Lilian hesitantly breaks her baffled deadlock wit something muttered under her breath involving a specific number, and then says ". . . Haha. I didn't even think to ask if it's difficult to get out here. I was so focused on getting to Ostia, I wasn't looking at the flora in the area at all."

    She tries her softest smile while gently easing her hand back out of Rutger's grip. "Sorry. It was arrogant of me to think that you don't know your own treatment. You've lived on this continent all your life, after all. And I'm not even a doctor anyways."

    Picking up her glass, Lilian looks at Lucius, chews her lower lip, thinks a little more, then shakes her head again, downing another irreponsible amount of alcohol, as if wishing she were too sloshed for this. "Actually, it was really stupid of me. You looked like shit when we met; I should have guessed you weren't able to mix your usual treatment out here. You're all the way from Sacae after all." Pulling her seat in closer, Lilian presses herself into the chairback and makes a stretch-approximate sound. "Well. First I'm your employer, right now. So if you can write down a list, I'll make certain to have it imported right away. Starting today."

    Sinking a little lower into her seat Lilian mumbles over the rim of her glass at a volume she probably thinks no one can hear, "God. Still sick, no meds, can't get stuff from home . . . Really, how 'naturally pretty' can you be? Maddening."
Lilian Rook     'I don't know a lot of knights outside of here, but you're definitely better than the ones I do know that aren't from here.'

    "Huh?" That's a totally different kind of 'huh?'. Lilian sits up straight. Staring at Odette in a way that could only be described as 'temporarily polite tolerance', Lilian smiles and says "Do you want to fucking go? I'll destroy you."
Blemishine     As far as Dysnomia goes though... well, if Maria didn't wince at the snappy response she got at first, she certainly does after Lilian goes off on her. It's hard to tell if it's more from that or from the scowling reaction to it - or maybe because 'sticking her with Durandal' is still a sore spot.

    Maybe all of the above?

    As their resident dragon fumes over Lilian and Rutger from afar though, she chooses to break the silence that had come between the two of them by addressing what she was asked. It actually does take her a long moment to find the right words. "Do I think what I can do 'means' more...?" She repeats, as if letting the words sink in and wrap her head around them. Trying to, at least.

    "...What it 'means'..."

    Pasty in hand, she goes quiet long enough that it seems like she might not have a reply to that before facing Dysnomia again, a twinkle in her golden eyes. "...Then I think so. It's a sort of will, and feelings, and about the intent behind something like that trying to hurt you, if I'm understanding it properly? I'm probably not, but I'm trying to grasp the outlines."

    "It was Roland's will and Durandal's power to slay dragons that made that wound. But I was still the one chosen, and the one wielding it. I'm sure that has to also 'mean' something, whether or not it's quite as much. And, eheh, I don't want to sound like I'm getting ahead of myself-- but I at least feel like I mean it as much as I can."

    Contrasting that dubiousness, she sounds as earnest about it as can be. "...Would you mind if I looked at it and tried healing it, after the feast? I'd at least hope I can't make it any worse." The small smile she has on turns a little bittersweet. "...Any worse than I already have, anyway."

    I don't know a lot of knights outside of here, but you're definitely better than the ones I do know that aren't from here.

    "A-Ahaha, geez... are you really tearing up there, Miss Odette...?" Maria sounds simultaneously embarrassed and maybe grateful for that in equal measure, heaving out a sigh before her voice levels. "...In that case, I'm really, really happy I could be a good example of one for you. I--"

    Do you want to fucking go? I'll destroy you.

    Still smiling, she seamlessly transitions into, "--still have a real long way to go, you know. That's the reason my codename and all! But one day, I'll make it up there with the Dame Commander and my sister~!"
Petra Soroka "Petra's idea was . . . ah, I believe it was 'tying you up in the dungeon and hitting you with hammers'? Crude, but not entirely without merit."

    Petra, while pouring Lilian a glass of redberry cordial after spending a short time hunting down the bottle around the table, hums and nods in emphatic agreement. Just a bit too suddenly and quickly for it to really be a lighthearted threatening joke like she intends for it to come off as, Petra contributes her totally normal interjection; a thought whose full context in their relationship only becomes *more* insane rather than less.

    "Well, I picked up that life draining evil sword of his, too. It's probably more interesting than hammers, if I get a chance." War crimes are a form of enrichment, for girls. Lilian's offhand comment about Petra's ability to wash up and present herself instantly recovers all of the HP she'd lost to Narcian's bullying, lighting up with a temporary overheal barrier. "I do?!"

"Contrarily, I've no idea at all what they've been saying about me! Honestly, it might be too much to hope that it's even halfway flattering, haha."

    Petra doesn't actually want to relocate from loitering around behind Lilian, even though her own plate still awaits her on the other side of the table, so she drags her feet on returning by remaining attentive in case she's needed again. "Literally, like, what could they possibly say about you that *isn't* flattering? I mean," Petra's voice lulls for a moment, eyes becoming distant as she thinks about all the ways that people, including herself, come up with ways to say unflattering things about Lilian. "--I mean, you're the biggest hero of the army, and everything. You're kind of perfect."

"Don't make it weird."

    "Oh, sorry." It is taken as a given that Petra is making it weird. The rest of the update is drunken in glowingly, and only secondarily because the contents are actually good news. Thoughtfully, on the topic of the dress, "I guess it makes me happy that this place can allow for 'familiar and homey', for you."

"I-it's a really neat style, so I was wondering if there was a name for it."

    Petra chews on the inside of her lip and awkwardly looks out of the corner of her eyes while being photographed by Odette. She's not uncomfortable with the camera being on her in concept, but without it being a picture she's initiating or posing for, she doesn't really have a paradigm for how to hold herself during the few seconds where Odette is fumbling with taking it. It severely undercuts her passive menace towards the other girl.

    "... Style? I guess it's got to be, but I don't really... I mostly just wear the clothes I want to. It just looked good, so I got it." The open legs *are* much more comfortable, though, Petra agrees. Pants that are nearly skirts are something she's shown an affinity for before, just as long as there are actually discrete legs within the flowy fabric.
Petra Soroka "Aren't you a dolled-up pervert who got her ass hauled to jail, though?"

    "I--...'m....." With glacial slowness, gears creaking and groaning while a mechanism forces itself into speech despite the multitude of reasons not to, Petra freezes behind Nonon and agonizingly objects in the way she's compelled to. "... *not*, a pervert, th-though. I mean, I went to *jail*, but... the whole, castle thing, happened *after*, so...."

    Slightly off-topic and out of order, Petra sidesteps past Narcian to place herself into more direct visibility, plucking at the soft fabric of her culottes as a proud little demonstration. "And you've seen me dress up a bunch of times! You like these pants, though? I'm pretty happy with them too; I think I can get a lot of use out of them."

"And you own a castle that someone else conquered."

    "W-well... I didn't have an *army*... but I *defended* it pretty well, right?" Petra sweats, nervous.

"And the destruction of the nation was basically just him and Proudpick and the Gale Emperor and basically just a twelve car pile-up of men with egos."

    "I-- I *physically* destroyed it, though. I feel like I-- I mean, the robots count for something, right? L-like, I literally stole the capital city and left the rest of the country c-covered in deadly traps and killer robots, I wasn't, just, sitting around...."

"And you literally put me in the seat of power; as in you actually dragged out the throne and begged me to sit in it."

    Petra, now fully pink-faced, fails to generate a retort for this. "... Th-that was for a different reason."

"Haha, what are you even talking about actually, now that I think of it? Aren't you sort of completely making it up?"

    "But I *did*! I *did* do it!" Petra Soroka, supervillain extraordinaire, apprentice to the feared Doctor Eggman, is reduced to whining petulantly and insistently gesturing. "The only time I was sitting around doing nothing was because no one *else* cared enough to do anything! But *I* was a good supervillain! It's my *lair* now and everything! I, like, totally terrorized an entire populace and stuff!"

"If you needed painkillers then you should have said so earlier!"

    Without missing a single beat, or asking Odette in any way, Petra sweeps by and plucks the painkillers she sets out away, moving to unobtrusively drop them by Lilian in case she wants them for Rutger. She doesn't quite understand the subtext between the two sword wielding women, but if it's something that Lilian would have to get up from her seat to address, then it's something Petra should at least try to assist with. Obviously, if Lilian *doesn't* need the painkillers, Petra makes no move to return them to Odette.

"Nothing involving you! And I don't NEED abs."

    Petra glares at Aidan, like this in particular is some grave offense that he's spoken. "It's *muscles*, you idiot. You know, the things that let you move around and fight? What the fuck do you *mean*, you don't *need* them? Go rot on the sofa and get off the battlefield, lazy freak.'

"You're not very good at being a blonde, are you?"

    Petra gasps, aggrieved, at Narcian, and holds up a strand of hair to show off the roots of it. "It's my *natural* color, idiot. And she seems... dangerous?"
Odette Raskins "Do you want to fucking go? I'll destroy you."

"H... Huh? Go where? D-destroy.. What?!" Odette's eyes go wide, and she's already trembling a bit in fear as she looks up at Lilian and seems to shrink a good few inches or so without actually moving. "D... Did something happen? What did-did I say something wrong?" She looks over at Blemishine for some kind of help there, and...

"But one day, I'll make it up there with the Dame Commander and my sister~! "

That's the clue, and Odette cowers just a bit more upon realizing it. "S... Sorry, Dame Commander! I-I just thought... I mean, you're a Commander! A-and knights are usually younger and not in command roles, so-"

She realizes her next mistake almost immediately, and her gaze slowly drifts off to the side as she tries very hard not to hold eye contact or even look anywhere near Lilian at saying that. Maybe if she keeps staring at the wall, she might cease to exist before Lilian destroys her.
Petra Soroka "D... Did something happen? What did-did I say something wrong?"

    Odette's terrified confusion is one Petra knows well. Completely losing track of where you went wrong and putting your foot in your mouth so badly that no one is willing to tell you what it was, and suddenly having everyone turn against you without even having the context to try and fail to argue in your defense; it's a familiar song and dance to Petra. She is an ally, of the girls who are a little bit stupid.

    But this--

"Sorry, Dame Commander! I-I just thought... I mean, you're a Commander! A-and knights are usually younger and not in command roles, so-"

    "What the fuck is *wrong* with you?!" Petra has her black glass EGO spear drawn halfway out of her compact mirror before pausing in her automatic motion, wondering if actively brandishing weaponry during a nice dinner might get her in trouble. "What the *fuck* kind of delusional fairyland are you from that makes you think Lilian is *older* and I'm *thirty*?! What do you think the *'Dame'* means if not that she's a *knight*! Use your fucking *eyes*, and your *common sense*, or at least keep your mouth fucking *shut* if you're too stupid to form a coherent fucking sentence! Get on your knees and fucking beg for forgiveness!"
Dysnomia     "Then you call in your god damn negative and request exfil-- how do you not get this?!"

    Her hands clenched; couldn't help but remember another dinner they'd been too in Elibe together, what felt like forever ago.

    "We aren't allies. And I don't have a terribly high opinion of your employers."

    Dysnomia stares at Lilian for a while, after her outburst. Probably the wine. "Dame Commander Lilian Rook." Dysnomia leaned forward, hands clasped. "I often follow your lead. I usually trust your judgment. But you are still not my superior officer. And even if you were--you don't get to disavow me one moment and claim authority over me the next." Her eyes were intense, but her words weren't hostile...

    ...And before they had chance to GET hostile, there was Marcus, interrupting with the delivery of a pheasant. She took the plate, eyes falling down on the fork, then up. She couldn't help it, then; she smiled, a skittish little flicker of an expression. "I'm sure he's got plenty, you're right." She winked back at him and, taking the spare knife under the table, clutched it into a ball in her hand, bringing it up to her mouth to drink down with her next, considerable bite of pheasant.

    She swallowed it down, feeling the silver melting down her throat, breathing a pleased sigh. "Stars, this is some good stuff, Hector."

    "I'm probably not, but I'm trying to grasp the outlines."

    "You're not far off. The outlines are the point." Dysnomia is dead serious now, gaze focused on Maria...But she grimaces. What Maria hears next, is something that echoes through her mind. "Can't we avoid the 'd' word around all these people who don't know what I am? It's not a safe place to be called that."

    "...But..." She huffed. It made a childish sort of sense, what Maria was saying. Very storybook. The kind of thing that felt right, but certainly wasn't.

    Which meant...It might just be worth a shot.

    "I suppose I won't stop you from wasting your time."
Odette Raskins Petra's shouting, as expected, has Odette cowering further, complete with yet more tearing up of the terrified kind rather than the sympathetic kind Blemishine got just moments ago.She's all but pulled away from her food now, whimpering anxiously at everything Petra's saying in such rapid succession.

"Sh-sh-she has so many accomplishments, so I thought... I-I mean, is she not older?" Wait, wrong question. "Sorry! Um. I-I just thought Dame was another word for a lady, not an actual.. Um. K-knighting thing! Y-you know, like those... Old gangsters?" She swallows anxiously, trying to psyche herself up for a few moments before going "Nyeah, those dames, shee?" in the shittiest attempt at an old-timey ganster voice anyone has likely ever heard.

And then Odette's right back to whimpering, shrinking further into her seat, and staring at the underside of the table like she's planning on moving in with whoever else lives under there.