[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[songbird_slayer]

...You know, my people choose their wives and husbands by engaging in combat. Tests the reach and flexibility. Can we do that instead? ...No?

[She sighed, rolled her shoulders to give a bit of a show, then slipped her hat upon her lap. Snatching up the question list, she gave it a once-over. A few of them made her snicker. Sexual fantasy... oh my. But who on earth would be brave enough to ask it? She's sitting in a coven of quite a few nervous nellies.

Madhuri helped herself to a shrimp, flicking the tip of a finger against her tongue as the tender tidbit disappeared to an eager-for-real-sustenance stomach, and further pondered her options.]

Well! I'm going to ask random questions for fun, then, dear: How do you feel about women with prehensile tails?

[Black, spiny, very dragon-esque... but her tail peeked up from behind her and wiggled the tip in a come-hither motion to her current date for the evening. Her smile was playful... no, that was edging on predatory.]

[mech_and_mutt]

Wouldja believe me if I said I'm relieved I'm not the only one?

[Maybe not fully prehensile, but his ravenous gorging on the appetizers- FINALLY, something other than that slimy seaweed!- was accented with a flick of his own furry tail.]

What's up with that dating-through-combat thing, anyway? You just fistfight your way to the bedroom or somethin'?

[songbird_slayer]

Hahah, essentially! Some would call it foreplay. You can learn a lot about someone when you see how they fight, according to many of my kin.

I mean, if you truly think about it, favorite colors? Favorite food? Hopes and dreams? Not exactly the priority. Not when there's a tribe to help grow.

What of your kind? Does a lady throw you a bone, as it were...?

[mech_and_mutt]

Well, cuttin' straight to the chase is one way of doin' it, I guess... [Really, Red almost thought she was joking. You'd think someone so elegant wouldn't do things... well, like that.

Still, he laughed off her followup question.] Nahhh, guess we're the romantic types. We get to know each other, maybe take a coupla dates together... Y'know, real dates. Not stuff like this.

[...Nope, the thought of brawling-to-bedding was still giving him better questions than anything on the card.]

...But doesn't all that other stuff help you two get along afterwards...?

[songbird_slayer]

I've seen much affection between the pairs when I visited my homeland after so long, so you may have the right of it. The wooing does ice the cake, as it were.

But I'm not... er... that is to say, I didn't grow up among my kin. I was raised among humans and elezen, so I'm something of an odd duck among my own kind. I personally enjoy the romance and the show of it. I relish in it!

But I also wish the palai would just... it's- it's tiring, is all.

[mech_and_mutt]

Hah! Figures. You don't dance and sing like that if you don't have a little bit of love for the romantic stuff.

[Don't be tired. Here, have the breadstick basket nudged over.]

No, I know what'cha mean. Every time the Palai want me to get romantic I have urge to punch 'em, too.

[Nnnope. He can't keep a straight face as he says it.]

[songbird_slayer]

[The smile was back, softened, as she helped herself to a breadstick and picked off the first piece.]

So what you're saying is that we show them a little love sometime, xaela-style? I'm sure I've got my frying pan lying around somewhere... cast iron. Well-seasoned.

[mech_and_mutt]

[There's a laugh... but it soon folds inwards and into a groan.]

Ugh, speakin' of well-seasoned, about time we had somethin' on the table other than kelp, right? ...even if the meat is just weird bug things.

[songbird_slayer]

Shrimp, dear. Lovely when subjected to white wine, a little butter and a touch of garlic. I'll take plain shrimp over the sea vegetables any day.

Wait... don't tell me- you haven't had lobster, have you?

[splinten]

The combat idea sounds better.

[Honestly? Combat is entertaining and he sees the logic for it in courtship. But then there's the question and the tail and he goes sort of blank-faced with 'oh god no']

It'd be fucked up to judge a person based on physical appearance unless there's a direct and consistent relationship between the physical trait and some personal quality.

[fast monotone]

[songbird_slayer]

[She was brought to pause, and her laugh was quiet and low. Now her tail moved in the manner of a contented cat.]

Aye? How so, dear?

[splinten]

[This is unnerving and Dirk is traditionally not great at keeping cool in circumstances of this particular kind.]

It's the very definition of prejudicial, by which I mean it would be judging pre-emptively like fuck.

[songbird_slayer]

[Eloquent. Not quite what she was asking, but she wasn't about to linger on prejudice when she'd helped end a war that was drenched in over a thousand years of it.]

Which would make you one of the rare gems, if you were born where I'm from. But this leaves me curious as to what sort of world you're from. ...And I have to know where you got your eye wear.

[splinten]

[AT LEAST SHE APPRECIATES GOOD SHADES]

It was part of a legacy left behind to me in my world. My Bro left me some weapons, a lifetime supply of orange soda, and these wicked shades. [Best present ever tbh.] The world I'm from is honestly pretty fucking stupid and mostly dead, so there ain't much to talk about there. [Hers may be more interesting. It probably involves fewer Juggalo Presidents.]

[songbird_slayer]

Ah. Well, fair enough. I take it coming here has been something of a relief for you?

[Well, the world may be stupid and dead, but the gentleman was intriguing. Who else would pop up to a date, even involuntarily, while wearing something like those? It was glamorous. Reminded her of some of the aristocrats in Ul'dah with the bravado of a Lominsan pirate.]

[splinten]

[He's still a little nervous, to tell the truth. He has very little social experience and this is not at all in his repertoire. Talking about his feelings in this way isn't super familiar either. But he can manage it, he thinks. (He hopes.) He's still trying to understand the person he is talking to.

So far, he has mentally only registered 'huge troll' as probably certain. The rest is up in the air.]

It's definitely been a change of pace. Compared to the base, this place has the relative merit of fishing opportunities.

[songbird_slayer]

Absolutely!

I'm sorely tempted to find something akin to sweetfish and grill it the old-fashioned way! Touch of butter, touch of spices, maybe rub a little olive oil on the skin to get it crispy...

[probablynoteren]

[He's already flustered because he recognizes her, immediately, even in the light of day -- the voice and the horns, for one -- it's hard to mistake her for anyone else. And alas, the question makes it worse, not the content but mostly the way she asks it. The actual dragon tail isn't helping!! Honestly he would have preferred combat, minus the dating part. Actually, dating through combat doesn't sound terrible either but that's not the point.

Nevertheless, Lenka can't help blinking and leaning over as best he can while strapped to the chair, because that is a tail making a come-here motion and while he's not in the habit of obeying alien appendages he is curious.]

That's-- It's not a random question, is it? [once he realizes he's leaning too much he'll hurriedly snap back into place like a spring] I've never seen that before. Is that your power?

[Safe ground, magical powers. Safe ground.]

[songbird_slayer]

[But is it safe, Lenka? Is it? ...Yeah, maybe it was. She raised her hands to her chin and entwined her fingers.]

'Fraid not. It's mine, just as my horns and scales are mine. My power comes from my voice, my body, and how I may use them as weapons to entrance, perplex, and ultimately trounce my foes. Quite fun, really, and makes it easy when I can't exactly lift a sword my height or more.

...Of course, that doesn't mean I hadn't tried, but the path of the warrior, the dark knight, the paladin wasn't mine. What of you?

[probablynoteren]

[He's an evasive specialist...! Granted, that doesn't wholly apply when it's words and interpersonal relationships, but he can get somewhere if he puts his mind to it!]

So you're... not human, but then, what should I call you?

[He has no idea what she is, obviously, nor a good way of asking about it -- so his curiosity ends up being both incoherent and rather blunt, somehow. Her actual question merits a bit more consideration, or at least a bit more uncertainty as Lenka tries to decipher what her word weaving actually means.]

... I guess you're good at illusions? I'm not really a knight or anything... [though perhaps in other lifetimes he could have been] But I use swords, and guns at home.

[He's still working out how he's going to fight here -- but swords are probably the best bet he has.]

[songbird_slayer]

I am a xaela. The other races are still trying to work out whether or not we're related to dragons! Alas, spoilers: We're not.

Illusions...? Hmm, maybe, in a way. Though, I like to think it's no illusion that I've done well to clean myself up and present myself to some manner of attraction. I simply enhance it magically to the point of making it hard to ignore.

[She smiled.] I've known a few swordsmen and machinists in my time. Which is your preference? The up close and personal or the gunslinging from afar?

[probablynoteren]

A xaela... [his quick reassessing look at her is colored by the not-quite-dissipated embarrassment of their situation and Madhuri's bold emphasis on her own charms both, but all Lenka concludes is that] I haven't seen someone fight that way before. Does it... work on the Uvi?

[They're not quite Aragami; they're too intelligent and focused for that, but they still don't seem like enemies you could simply charm away. But then, when magic is involved, apparently many strange things are possible.]

And I think... swords are better. It's easier to move.

[Many of their gun specialists are snipers, and his own skillset is agility-based more than anything else. Of course, both sword and gun are indispensable to a God Eater; but when left to his own devices, he tends to start swinging things.]

[songbird_slayer]

Immensely. I won't forget leading a full street of them into a little dance number while a new friend carved them to ribbons. His name was... ah, Julius. Very serious face.

[She steepled her fingers and canted her head curiously.]

There's something timeless in a blade. I considered perhaps taking on something that's lighter and quicker like a rapier. The way the red mages seem to dance circles around a beast... it's a marvel!

[probablynoteren]

[He doesn't quite laugh -- too blindsided by the bizarre visual and Julius' involvement makes it even worse somehow -- but Lenka does manage to choke spectacularly on nothing and then start coughing for a suspiciously long time. His face is red by the time he's done, half-lack-of-air and half-definitely-no-longer-embarrassment.

How is he going to look Julius in the face after this..... Actually, how is he going to look half the coven in the face after this experience: the great mystery.

Lenka shakes himself back to composure a little bit, but his eyes are bright when he manages to get back on top of the conversation here.]

Right. Julius. That makes sense. [it doesn't make sense] I think I would have liked to see that... If you need, uh, another blade sometime.

[It's a spur-of-the-moment offer. He doesn't mind fighting with those from the coven, and her fighting style sounds interesting, to say the least.]

[songbird_slayer]

[She smiled. So many stories, so many offers of strength. She quietly reached for a bread stick and began to pull it apart for a little of the... well, what she hoped was olive oil, but she was about to find out, wasn't she? She missed olive oil. Ooh, she missed the little ones soaked in red wine vinegar, the meaty little loves...]

That would be a delight, ser-

[She blinked, the bread hovering before her lips before she lowered it.]

...I don't think I know your name. I'm terribly sorry, sweetheart! I'm Madhuri.