STEVEN'S MANDATORY BIRTHDAY PARTY (OPEN)

[starseedling]

Who: Open to abductees and also hopefully an intervention.
When: Aguril 15th, night of the full moon.
Where: Around the Haven, and in Steven's house.
What: The combination of intense homesickness, his 15th birthday, and also Full Moon faerie mania, has resulted in Steven trying to use illusions to kidnap and trap people in his house that remind him of his family and friends from back home. Theoretically this is for a "birthday party" but it's entirely possible Steven will lose the plot as the night goes on. Threads can either be your character ending up stuck in his house somehow or Steven making an attempt to whisk them away and failing.
Warnings: Probably some fucked up illusion shit. Someone stop him.


With the distraction of the Speed Dating event over, and his initial attempts at experiencing the wild mostly successful, Steven finds himself experiencing a gnawing emptiness towards the middle of the month. He doesn't know how exactly the times line up, but it's close enough to feel true - the 15th is his birthday, or close enough to count. He's fifteen years old, and he's still not home.

He's never had a birthday without his Dad, or without the other Gems. The idea that he's having one here, so far away, without any of them is painful. Part of him wants to try to put together a gathering, to do something to celebrate, but the rest of him feels like doing so will just make the absence of the others more obvious. In the days leading up to it, he resigns himself to maybe doing something small, and to otherwise let it pass by uneventfully.

Unfortunately, on the morning of the Full Moon, those reservations gradually start to peel away in favour of the wild energy of the Sisters. He molts in the afternoon, as has become typical, and upon opening fresh eyes to the evening moons, his fae side starts to take over. He will have a birthday party, and it'll be like his family was never gone! How did he not think of it before?

Steven is going to try to - and possibly succeed in - abducting various people with illusion magic. He could probably end up with anyone, but he'll be specifically focusing on those that fit these archetypes:

1) Anyone with strong dad energy.
2) Mysterious, reserved, self-confident, and will kick your ass.
3) Mother-hen, fastidious, protective, graceful.
4) Scrappy, playful, punk-ass, chaotic, sibling type.
5) People around his age that are big nerds.

We can approach this one of two major ways: either we can thread Steven attempting to kidnap your character, or we can start with them realizing they've already been bamboozled by any kind of appropriate illusions into entering his house, and now can't seem to figure out how to exit. If he's going to try to kidnap them you can have your character be anywhere in the Haven, and if you want to start out in the house, just summarize the initial trickery and have them realize they seem to be in one of the fairly nice houses in the Haven but can't find the door or any exits.

Unless they can see through illusions, in which case Steven's antics probably won't work on them from square one. Feel free to get on his case about it!

He's going to be at this all night, but his roommates and other people may be sabotaging him, so your character may arrive and escape at random times throughout the evening. Other people may or may not be around at the same time. We can play it loose!

Comments

[starseedling]

He could have torn this up back home, but... well. His strength being gone is a little bit of a sore spot, but he makes due. He spent most of his life without powers, so going back to square one is at least familiar.

"No, this is good!" he says, finding a good way to pull the fabric off of the item within. It already felt heavy and solid enough to be wood from the outside, but looking in the specifics draw his attention.

"A stool!" he says, immediately fascinated with the design. He looks at it closely, noting the wood color. Toby has a lot of opinions about wood, and she had mentioned it was yew. "Wow, Toby, you're a really great whittler!"

[horkbajir]

She eyes it and him and is satisfied that she did make it the right size. "Thank you. I have often thought that it must be a trial to be steady without a tail. Perhaps you can rest on it when out singing."

Toby's also got to make a warning, of course.

"Don't lick or chew on it, and don't let your Lion do so either. Yew is poisonous to you if you eat it or inhale the sawdust." She'd had some unpleasant tingles in her lungs while carving until she'd thought to sit upwind. The bark had had a weaker effect, just an odd sensation in her mouth, and no further issues. It was good bark, and the poison meant there were fewer issues with parasites in the wood.

[starseedling]

"Ohh, cool, it's poison!" he says, that obviously just being an all around bonus. "I don't think Lion likes to eat wood but I'll tell him not to, anyway."

He seems pretty pleased, all around. He looks the stool over studiously for a few more moments, before something seems to almost violently strike him. He bounces into the air, floating on wing.

"Wait here one minute!" he says. "I have to get something for you."

[horkbajir]

There's more of that moons-energy. A bit of her wants to go back to the quiet of the woods; she treads on it. This, especially, is a time to be present and try to limit any damage. Toby nods. "Very well. I will be here."

She'll stay in the room, but keeps her ears and eyes open. Aren't there more people in these confined spaces than usual?

[starseedling]

He grabs the stool and takes it with him and he zips upstairs and into his room. It takes him a little while to find it, but eventually he will locate his query among the miscellaneous objects he has received as performance tips. He comes back down to her with a pendant in his hands.

It's a circular design, made with unremarkable bronzy metal. In the center, there is the shape of a tree. He's liked it since the moment it was given to him, but he thinks he can make it better.

"I want to give you something, too," he says. She gave him a gift, so she should get one in return, right? He presses the pendant between his palms, focusing his power. For just a moment, many of the illusions around them flicker.

When he opens his palms, the appearance of the pendant has changed. It's the same general shape, but the metal has turned into a bright rose gold, and the outer ring shimmers with all the same colors of his wings, in a way that both looks like diamond and opal.

He holds it out for her, on its matching chain.

"Here!" he says, satisfied.

[horkbajir]

Toby talks to a person or two in that time and has to come to a conclusion. There's no rush, no dire emergencies, but she's going to have to do something about this. It's not acceptable to have all these people trapped in a house all night until the moons-madness subsides or someone manages to damage a wall enough to escape.

"You don't need to," she says as he returns with a purpose, and what's a standard polite phrase generally is a more earnest statement from Toby. They were both recently given enchanted jewelry by grateful Wilders, who had to pause and improvise something for her. She can see the point of having personal possessions, especially with them being so useful for magic, but she can also easily imagine them becoming overwhelming. Having a wide array of items with sentimental value is a human thing, an Andalite thing. At home she has a cache of books and magazines that are shared with Tobias, and with some youngsters who enjoy looking at the covers and pictures. That's it.

Places are much more important in her mind; if this house were burgled, she would find a hole in the wall and the violation of security more upsetting than pilfered belongings.

It seems important to Steven, though, so she leaves it at the one protest. "It's very colorful," she says, leaning in to peer closer. "I am reminded of light on oil. And you, of course. Will the illusion remain?"

[starseedling]

"Yeah I do!" he says, cheerfully. Something about it just feels right - like there's no open-ended expectations left unaccounted for. Not that Toby would ever demand something in return, he feels he knows. The balance he's seeking is more on a cosmic, magical scale that his blessing seems to appease.

He hesitates for only a moment, analyzing his own work.

"I think it will!" he says, proud with that knowledge. "It's different this time. I wanted to make it special for you, so the illusion became real!" He thinks for a moment longer. "It will make crafting stuff easier. It's magic!"

[horkbajir]

It does seem very important to him. She doesn't know if it's a Monster compulsion or some aspect of being human that she doesn't understand, or a combination of both. Toby pushes down her unease, hoping it hasn't shown in the bond; in any alliance, she wants to promote harmony whenever possible, and she likes this child besides. If collecting items does come up, it can come up at a better time of month.

"Is this your first blessing, then? Congratulations." She's looked up some material on Fae, enough to have a rough familiarity with what they're capable of anyway. "I'm honored."

She is, misgivings aside. It's good to have milestones witnessed. It's probably the point of marking days of birth, if she thinks about it. "Can you show me how to-" activate it? "It would go around my neck, do you think? I hope there is a clasp."