The Morning After [House Party cont]

[Hayden]

Gideon was still here. Showed up out of nowhere like usual. Hayden grinned at his brothers curious expression and he just shrugged. There was no reason that Seven needed 100% confirmation that he'd slept with Nox, or that Nox was the reason he'd come to the party to begin with. Not that he'd have given him the time of day with the girl he was all over. And Nox didn't particularly look upset knowing he'd just fucked another guy in another room in his house. He seemed rather chill about it all.

But Hayden knew that he wasn't chill under that mask. Nox was absorbed in the baby because shit was getting real. He'd spent enough time with him to know that he was ready to slip off into a back room and beat himself up with whatever workout regime he decided upon. He'd watched him for months. But the smile looking down at Lily was real.

Hayden grinned at Seven. "Masks are over there, apparently."

Gideon teased the young girl with his pancake, since it was up for offer Hayden snatched it from his brother and took a huge bite from it.

[Roza Vas]

The door was open and they went inside to see if they could find their sweet boy. Roza wondered what mischeivous plan Esper had in mind, she'd soon find out. At least it was warm inside, but getting upstairs might be another matter. Until it wasn't.

An automated voice sounded from the keypad near the entrance to the home upstairs. "Come on up." Roza looked at Esper with a shrug and pulled on the door knob and it came away freely. This was a strange place. It had been strange last night, and now it felt even weirder. And Roza knew weird.

Upstairs opened into the open living space which was full of people. Strangers but no sweet boy. There was a man dancing with a baby in his half arm who spoke to them. "Did you forget something?" He pointed to a pile of clothes and discarded masks from the night before. Roza made a gross face. But the food in the house smelled amazing and her stomach rumbled. The same man said. "There's food if you are hungry, but you might want to act fast I think Hayden might eat it all."

Another dark haired man on the couch spoke without changing his dazed and confused position. Though he didn't sound like he was out of it, just looked totally high. Roza wondered what he was on. "Or I will."

[Esper]

Esper took it all in stride. It felt like the house reacted to them, which was an odd feeling – precisely because it didn’t feel like anything. When they were buzzed upstairs she followed Roza’s lead, internally categorising through all the different people she could sense. The place was full, but the mood was calm enough, and with her hand still looped in Roza’s it was easy enough to ignore. She was only looking for one soul, but she needed to know someone better before she could pluck out an individual like that. For now, she could not tell for sure whether the singing boy was still here or not.

As they emerged into the open plan living space, Esper immediately eyed the baby with a little distaste, mostly because of her recent conversation with Roza. But it was quiet enough in the man’s disfigured arm. “Its mother died when it came into this world,” she said to Roza under her breath. There was a promise between them now, and Esper’s trust in it was absolute. But she wanted Roza to know the risk she had avoided when she chose Esper over a child to placate her family. Especially Voxel’s child. She did not know why that bothered her so much.

They were welcomed, and since it didn’t require any effort on her part to facilitate, Esper mostly ignored it. She did not care about the jackets, and by Roza’s inner grimace at the pile of discards, neither did she. Instead she reacted to Roza’s hunger. There was a ballad playing on the house speakers, and while it was not as intoxicating as Roza’s violin, it did lull all Esper’s impatience into something tolerable. So they would eat first.

She only glanced at the aforementioned competition as she headed for the kitchen. Not that Esper couldn’t be social when she chose to be, but she was only really concerned with finding the singing boy, so everyone else here was of peripheral interest. She had taken the warning literally. But if Hayden tried to steal the food from Roza’s plate, he would, quite simply, find himself excruciatingly nauseous. She almost hoped he’d try.

The conversation continued around them. Everyone had been in masks at the party, and whether anyone would recognise them as the outlandish alien creatures of last night she didn’t know. Nor really cared. By now Esper’s hair was in its natural state; bleached to the colour of bone, and slicked back over her skull where she had smoothed it to accommodate the fiery wig. She’d picked off most of the facial prosthetics, including of course the razor sharp teeth, and any remnants on her body were swamped by the coat she was wrapped in.

[Gideon]

Apparently the only animal here was his brother. “Enfoiré!” He sounded entirely scandalised, though there was mirth in his eyes as he scolded. “Look at you, taking food straight from the mouth of a sweet girl! She is skin and bone, no? Though I suppose you do need the energy this morning.” He grinned, all teeth.

Their host had already swept in to look after the vagrant, and two more girls had piled in from the cold outside. Gideon watched it all, sipping on his coffee. He had done nothing but sweep a hand through his dark hair, but he was the sort to make dishevelled look artfully sinful. Blue eyes pierced over the rim of his mug, but the charm was virtually wasted; the house was full of guys, relatives, and questionably aged girls.

“Computer boy!” After a moment he called out to the man Liam was cosied up with. Granted he seemed completely high, but he had responded to the dig about Hayden’s greedy appetite, so he must have been paying some kind of attention. That was Red Mask, Gideon recalled. “What happened last night? Zizi will kill me if her brother was hurt. Or possibly thank me. But I’ve never seen him take his liquor badly. And did anybody else see the man in the cage?”

[Roza Vas]

There was a lot going on. Roza assumed that the guy who invited them to eat was the home owner and clearly American, everything about him shouted American. He floated around the room with the baby in his nestled tightly against his body with the half arm. He didn't even look like he was holding the baby tight with all that movement. She almost went over and snatched the baby from him to tell him he was doing it wrong but her stomach rumbled again and Esper tugged her towards the food. it all smelled amazing, a clearly American breakfast. Eggs, bacon and pancakes only thing it was missing was baseball. Not that you could eat that.

Roza piled her plate with eggs and pancakes and a single strip of bacon. She'd never had it before. It smelled amazing, or at least she was pretty sure that was what she was smelling underneat the coffee which she also poured a cup for herself and found milk and sugar to add to it, though it was hiding behind everything else on the island in the middle of the living space.

Roza picked up the strip of bacon and tenatively took a bite before she realized it was amazing and grabbed another few slices before she slithred off towards the dancing man with her plate and bacon and hopefully Esper in tow. "We are looking for a boy. He sings. Blond hair."

The man stopped dancing and looked at her like he was angry but his eyes softened and he gave her a crooked grin. "Ashton's upstairs." He resumed his dancing and swaying with the baby in his arm and looked up at the ceiling. "Sky, tell Ashton to come downstairs please."

Roza giggled, but then a voice reverberated through the room. The same voice that had let them in. "Right away."

"Thanks, Sky." He looked to Roza and nodded. "He'll be right down."

Roza couldn't really do much other than stare, almost forgot about her food, but then she remembered the bacony goodness and found an unoccupied space on the floor and set to eating while they waited. They had found what they were looking for and it was easy.

[Sage]

Nox had taken to the house almost immediately. There was never any doubt. Sage would have to send in some workers to install projection cameras into the open living space. It wouldn't be as good as the one hooked up in the office, but this way Nox could do whatever he needed without hooking Sky up to the special server -- the one no one should get into. Air gaps were important he thought to himself and smirked as Liam sat next to him watching him. Sage put on a show for Liam but the work he was doing in his head was far differen that what was happening on the screen.

The new stranger who Sage quickly identified as Gideon Marquis, Liam's cousin asked about Jaxen and then commented on the cage that had held Ashton prisoner. Sage barely knew anything about those reasons, but he got the distinct feeling that Ashton had played a part in some nefarious part of Jaxen's life. Much like he had Nox's. And yet Nox forgave the strange creature that sang and kidnapped him right under his vigiliant watch. Sage didn't like.

"Jaxen's fine. He had a tangle with the Emissary. He made it home safe." Sage had followed him home and insured that nothing amiss happened. It wasn't his party but Sage felt a little responsible for what happened. Even if he didn't fully understand what shit just went down.

While he spoke Sage was carefully poking at the wallet the young would-be hacker had brought with him and stupidly autoconnected to Sage's network. Everyone was a sucker for free wifi and well Sage took advantage of every signal on it. Every one. It was easy enough to just poke his mental head in, drop some software and sneak out. It was risky hacking another hacker, but Liam, Catch or Thyme or whoever he wanted to go by at the moment, was so involved in meeting his so-called hero that he wouldn't pay any mind.

This kid might be dumb enough to walk into a hacker invited party with an unsecure wallet, and Sage was hoping he was dumb enough to walk into Paragon's air gapped system so he could piggy back into it and get in without a problem. He wanted to know what was behind those locked doors and what the fuck they were doing with Raffe. Nox may not care -- he did, but he never asked. He could and he knew he could, but he didn't. It was between Raffe and whatever gods he worshipped or whatever, Raffe would tell him if he wanted him to know. Sometimes Nox was such a pain in the ass. But Sage, that air gap, that was a challenge he intended to beat. And the curious little boy sitting next to him was the key.

Besides, he'd already hacked Paragon's nanobots they stupidly put in his body. He wondered what other fun cool tech they might have that would help him reach his goals. His plans and maybe he'd help the world in the process, but that was more a Nox and Cruz thing than a him thing. He just wanted to know it all.

[Esper]

Esper drifted right after Roza with no complaint or protest. Her plan had simply been to wander the house until she found the sweet singing boy. She could feel there were still others here, and the man with the baby had let them in – that was all the permission she felt she needed to search around the interior to her own heart’s content. Instead Roza just asked the question.

She said nothing during the interaction, only watching with curiosity, the flicker of her eyes suggesting there were intense thoughts inside. One-arm didn’t like the singing boy, or… no, not quite that, but there was a sting that suggested something still raw inside. The deeper she delved the more turbulent he felt. Esper made a disagreeable face and looped her arm through Roza’s to stave it off, but she made no comment.

Afterwards she sat close enough to sigh and lean her head on Roza’s shoulder as she ate. Patience was not always Esper’s favourite thing. She leaned to pluck a strip of bacon from the plate, but only tested her tongue on it before she smirked and placed it back. Roza felt better than it tasted.

Her eyes half lidded, and she left herself to bask in Roza’s enjoyment of the bacon while she waited.

[Seven]

It seemed the morning after the party was transforming into yet another party. All they were missing was music and mimosas. Plus, he was in a wonderfully good mood. It made for a fabulous time.

Pointing out the pile of discarded masks led to his spying the fringe of his horse head, which he would attempt to remember to grab on his way out. It was a fantastic piece, worthy to be on display in its own right.

Breakfast made the rounds, and in the middle of it all was Nox acting as conductor to this symphony. Nox and the infant.. It was such a bizarre scene, Seven almost couldn’t believe it if he wasn’t here as witness.

The question about Jay was unexpected. He meant to bring it up himself, but the casual way in which the event in question was described was somewhat unsettling. The two men nearly beat one another to death and parted in hatred. Had time cooled such intense passion that much?

“Actually, I was going to ask you the same thing, but no, I haven’t seen him since. I don’t even have his number, come to think of it.” He glanced at Hayden, wondering if he discerned the nature of their mutual relationship with Jay. Though for Seven’s part, it was far less intense.

“Are you okay?” It was none of his business, of course, and he would respect the privacy of what conspired to lead to such a violence, but nobody walked away from something like that without a scar - physical or emotional.

[Daiyu]

Mara accepted the plate that was pushed in front of her, only to lean into the depths of its aroma and take a huge whiff. It smelled marvelous, and the greasy sliver of meat was eyed most fondly. When she took a nibble, she was surprised by the crunch and the explosion of flavor in her mouth. However, rather than ravenously devour the whole thing, she put it down to sample at another item. It was yellow and fluffy looking, drenched with a syrupy concoction. She assumed it was some sort of baked good, so she tore off a piece with her bare hands for a bite.

[Gideon]

There were various private conversations going on as people ate, but Gideon didn’t seem to mind that his was conducted between his perch by the kitchen counter and across the room to the nerd on the couch. He shrugged a little at the reassurance, since it wasn’t exactly what he’d asked. Jaxen was Jaxen. He was always fine. Little shit perpetually managed to bounce back, and Gideon had heard some stories.

No one commented on the man in the cage, which meant Gideon was drunker than he thought last night, or it just wasn’t notable in this crowd. At least two of the girls looked like they’d never had a decent meal in their lives, and apparently didn’t know what to do with all the unusual food stuffs like “bacon” and “pancakes.” One sitting with her friend looked slightly high still. Meanwhile Liam was staring at this man with literal love hearts in his eyes.

Gideon gestured with his coffee mug, encouraging a bit more explanation. Or any really. “And, uh, what the fuck’s the “Emissary”?”