kaworu’s birthday party | there are strong wings

[terriblepurpose]

Who: Kaworu Nagisa and CR (plus a handful of interlopers)
What: Birthday beach bash
When: September 18th
Where: The Farther Shores

Content warnings: Underage drinking



The party thrown for Kaworu Nagisa in late September is a modest affair by the standard of at least one of its planners, although the second pair of hands involved has had cause to disagree.

A section of the beach near a cluster of natural hot springs up in the black rocks of the Farther Shores has been cleaned of any remaining August debris, set up with a handful of tents, and laid with tables. These amenities cluster around a piled high bonfire, which will be lit as the sun begins to set and kept burning throughout the night’s festivities, just like the sea-scented incense discreetly placed all around the perimeter. A speaker set up has been graciously provided by one mostly mechanical friend, who also has generously and suspiciously curated an angel-themed playlist.

The dining tables are full of various foods meant to be skewered on sticks, catering to a wide variety of tastes and needs, from mushrooms to parboiled root vegetables to bits of game or crab meat and more. A selection of sauces and rubs adds to the customization possibilities, alongside covered baskets of warm rice and flatbreads to complement the skewers. Another table is laden with cakes, pastries, and fruits in another array of flavors, and finally, a modest selection of juice, beer and wine is on offer - anything stronger must be brought by party guests.

Nearby these, in a conspicuously well-lit and well-traveled area, is the gift table, where a large Sleeper cocoon stands guard (with occasional gurgles and wiping about of curious tentacles) under a sign reading THEFT IS A CRIME. Another, smaller sign on the table itself invites Gifts for Kaworu-kun to be piled around it.

Lunar Orbs on tall torch stands mark the path to and from the hot springs and the main body of the party on the beach. The hot springs are well-lit even in the dark, but the air is crisp with the chill of autumn, especially as night falls properly. A few smaller tents allow for people to change and store their clothing before they sink into the hot mineral water bubbling up from deep below the surface.

If you have gotten tired of the festivities, the tents on the main beach are all open for people to rest and relax in, shielded away from the bustle of the party at large. Besides one tent marked Guest of Honor, the rest are all stocked with water, comfortable cushions, and warm blankets, lit by softer glowing Lunar Orbs than the ones outside, which come with a cover to conceal their light if desired.

If instead you venture away from the party on either side, keep your eyes peeled for large, venomous crabs who are not dancing to the playlist, but rather clicking their claws for blood. Better to stick to dipping your toes in the water, where a distinctly alive marine lizard swims purposefully in the shallows, occasionally lifting his head to inspect passersby with a sensitive, yet knowing expression. Shinji-kun is a thoughtful (and handsome) lizard.

The atmosphere is light and warm, the weather pleasant, and all that’s asked of guests is to eat well, enjoy themselves, and celebrate Kaworu Nagisa’s only slightly belated birthday.

Comments

[butnotyet]

He's about to respond — really and truly — to what she's saying, but then she takes the eyepatch off, and now he gets to see what's under it, and —

"Well, non-biological, but you do clearly have one," he murmurs, as if — again — that's the important part. He's leaning a little closer, to study it a little more intently, because he has to use his eyes — and not his sense of thalergy, tricky — not that he's actually realizing it. "Well. Two, rather, which is the point. You do have a second eye. It's quite lovely, for that matter; why do you keep it covered?"

And does he have any reason at all to think she's going to answer that question when he hasn't addressed the rest of what she's said? Well, no, not really, so he holds up a hand to pause her possible response, and adds:

"I've always felt that there have been any number of wonderful terms, but 'loyal opposition', 'unwilling compatriots', and 'malicious flatmates' have had the longest-lasting tenure, when I've had to refer to her at all." John is a different case, after all; he's God, and sometimes even deserves to be called that. Teacher, well — he still deserves at least some respect, unlike Joy.

He drops his hand.

(It lands underwater, but nothing else around their environment changes as a result.)

[hauntedsavior]

"Oh, I like 'malicious flatmates'. Okay, I think I catch the vibe," she says, smiling at him now that he's given an answer—where previously she had not been smiling very much at all, since she doesn't exactly appreciate being stared at like a lab experiment. (If John's ever thought of her that way, like she suspects, he's at least had the grace to not look at her too intently while he does it.)

"It's made of glass," she offers, now that she's feeling more charitable and he's given what has to pass for permission to talk about the rest of it. "Can't see out of it, but a friend of mine made it for me back home around when I first lost my eye." She thinks back to Violet Geteilt (or Violent Gestalt, as she'd apparently taken to calling herself as a joke) and the day she received this gift. Sitting in the bathroom together, helping Anna put the eye in, making sure it all fit right and didn't cause any abrasions or anything. She missed Violent sometimes, weird though she might have been.

"I learned quick that people generally get a little put off by looking at someone with a solid black eye, little silver veins or not." Does it also lend to the aesthetic she's trying to foster, keeping her eye patched up? Absolutely it does. "Just 'cause that's a them problem doesn't mean I gotta be a dick about it. Something Woe—or whatever name you call her—could probably stand to learn."

[butnotyet]

"I will grant you that 'Woe' is absolutely the most appropriate name I've ever heard used to refer to her," he allows, thoughtfully. "Her original name, her Sainthood — they're both a mockery, and always have been. I never was sure if John cared, or if that was his point in the first place — or just wanting to rub salt in the wound."

(Ask him about how patient he was, in his first two more-mortal lives.)

"I take it you're more likely to skip the eyepatch when you want to leave people put-off when they see you," he muses, and then gestures slightly toward her face, then his own. "Can you feel it, by the way? Remove it, if needed? Seems like it would always be terribly convenient to have a little pocket you could use for smuggling, if necessary, hidden away behind your patch and a collapsed eyelid."

(It's a morbid topic of discussion, and he does not appear to be remotely uncomfortable with it.)

"And in conclusion, I'll go ahead and take it that there were in fact at least a few blithering idiots who were either unfamiliar with the child in the first place, and therefore didn't know there was a difference, or were oblivious enough, and gullible enough, to believe her atrocious performance?"

[hauntedsavior]

Anna laughs breathlessly when he makes that suggestion and seems to focus on that, despite everything else going on (at least for the moment), when her brain stops being too shocked to form words.

"Oh, you are a little fucked up, aren't you?" she says, not without a sense of admiration. "I can feel it and take it out if I have to, but I've had it for like... three years now, so I'm used to the way it feels. I only really take it out for cleaning. Not really the kind of person to store something in the hole where my eye got stolen from me, but I gotta admit," and she points at him like he's hit her with something brand new, "I never thought of it before now, either. If I ever join a smuggling ring, I'll keep it in mind.

"As for the way Woe pretended to be Gideon, well." She exhales and lets the tips of her fingers sink into the water as she rests her elbow on the edge of the hot springs. "Yeah, I think the only people she fooled were people who didn't know her. But even then, like. A lot of the performance was 'oh, I'm such a nasty little child, and I think bones are lame, and I hate swords', and even if you didn't know G, you'd be able to tell something's up. Not exactly the kind of thing people jump on a network to confess."

[butnotyet]

"Unless," he shoots back dryly, "that's the mood of the week, at any rate — although in that case, she'd hardly be the only one, now would she?"

There's a small pause, before Gus says anything else; it may or may not be a surprise, in the wake of the smuggling commentary, that he continues with: "I take it, being used to it as you are, you wouldn't actually want it restored, at this point, would you," entirely unclear, in tone and pitch, if that's a question or not.

(On the other hand: he is not pulling out pop-punk-2000s lyrics for the occasion, either, regardless of whether or not either of them could readily cite such a source.)

More briskly, as a final point, he adds, "And I beg your pardon — how dare you damn me with such faint praise? I am far more than just a little fucked up, thank you very much." A sardonic toast, with what's left of his alcohol.

[hauntedsavior]

"My sincerest apologies," she says, miming the toast with a beer that she doesn't have. "I guess I still don't know you well enough to know how fucked up you are. But this is a good way to fix that."

She hasn't had a lot of weirder conversations, given all the circumstances, but she's had ones that sit right about the same level as this one. "I had someone try to restore it with magic already," she says, deciding that honesty won't do her any harm right now. "It didn't take. And even if you knew a way to get it back... yeah, I think I kind of got used to things."

There might be room for more honesty. She tilts her head, rolling her neck one direction, then the other, like she's weighing over the options. "Besides, the most important advice my ex gave me was 'you're wrong about how far away that thing is now, every single time, no matter what'. And I'd hate to prove her wrong by getting this fixed now." Could be a joke. Could be serious. She's still figuring it out. "Doubt it's as easy as putting it back in anyway. Nothing about my body is anymore."

[butnotyet]

"What sort of magical fix was it, before?" he asks, shade of intently focused on top of his curious — along with a flick of his fingers, vaguely dismissive, and the added "Personally, it's not something that I would try to put back in, even if you had the original eye — far easier to regrow it from what's still present, whatever it might be, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't still result in potential headaches and whatnot while your brain recalibrates and tries to remember what having depth perception is."

No big deal, in other words.

"Alternatively, of course, you could get a whole host of cybernetic options — flashlight, EMP — well, no, maybe not a good idea, for you —" (what with the whole robot body thing she has going on, and all) "— speaker, microphone for that matter, external hard drive ..."

(Pity he can't quite remember the phrase Wi-Fi repeater.)

[hauntedsavior]

She thinks back, as he goes through that list, to the time the city had asked her and her robot friend to break into a skating rink and recover an EMP. Yes, in retrospect, it had been hilarious.

"Well, slow down there, cowboy," she says, surprising herself with wherever the fuck that had come from. "First off, got you covered on most of those things. I've got a whole A/V hookup built into the side of me and I use my whole-ass body as an amp when I'm doing shows. Second," and here's where she looks up at the concept of jokes and whispers to it very carefully to kind of stand by the threshold in case she does actually need to ask jokes to leave the room.

"Good luck finding anything in there. I don't even think there's an optic nerve left." If she had her cigarettes on her, she'd light one or something; she really has just started building breaks for her vices into her speech patterns. "The evil, extradimensional monster brain that magically plucked it out of my head was at least clean about it."