(no subject)

[monsterseekingmonster]

Who: Marzio, Hamsi, Anauel, Mehiel & 69 Slightly Imperfect Balloon Koalas
When: Valentine's Day Dance
Where: Velvet Room
What: Well, it was supposed to be a koalatea party...
Warnings: Of course not these two are angels who have never done anything wrong in their lives.

Under ordinary circumstances, skipping the big dance to go to the Velvet Room and summon Personas might be seen as dedication to the cause. Or, maybe, drive to improve. One might even call it obsessive and dangerous. But, ordinary circumstances don’t generally involve sixty-nine slightly malformed balloon koalas.

Hamsi props one up. She’s named this one Thomas. His butt is slightly deflated, so he likes to slouch. “Can Anauel even drink tea?” She asks, incredulous, as she continues adjusting the sixty-eight other balloon marsupials around a picnic-like setting. (They would’ve done a table, but they added nearly six dozen additional unexpected guests last minute.)

Marzio frowns at a particularly lopsided koala in his hands. He's named her Joanna, and she can't sit up on her own, so she'll have to sit in his lap.

"I'm sure he can??" he says with, like, a double dose of defensiveness. His Persona isn't useless, he's just... ugly. Very, distressingly ugly. The idea that Anauel is an upsettingly honest representation of Marzio himself is something he has and always will pretend to be too dumb to get. "Maybe he just likes coffee instead?"

"Well, jeez, you could've told me and I would've brought some." Hamsi huffs, irritated with this new bit of information. She could've prepared better!! She retwists Beverly's ear so it looks less lumpy. She has to do the same with Gerard. It doesn't improve Gerard much, because one of his eyes is much lower than the other.

Then she plops down between half-deflated Carl and over-inflated Pat and smooths out her skirt. Because, well, they're here instead of at the dance, and she wasn't not going to wear the dress. "Should we serve the tea first or summon Personas first?"

"Dude, no one knows what their Persona actually likes." Marzio tries to adjust the nose on Penelope, but a sudden pop spells the end of his rhinoplasty career. "That's just a lie sold to you by the Persona matchmaking industry." He sets Penelope next to Maynard, who lost his arm in the war, and Inez, who has a great personality.

"We should summon them first because actually I'm, like, ninety percent sure they're just gonna make a mess." Flash of defensiveness over, Marzio has to admit neither of their Personas are particularly well-suited to the task of drinking tea with koalas. "Do Personas even eat or drink shit or do they like feed off our angst?"

"If they feed off angst Mehiel must be starving because I don't have any." Hamsi says, matter-of-fact, as she picks up Magnolia, who is just a koala head, and examines her. She's only mostly telling the truth. Hamsi doesn't look at anything closely enough to have angst. It's like how a comforter over your head protects you from the monster looming over your bed in a scary story.

She sets Magnolia down carefully on top of Charlie. She's pretty sure Charlie's had his eye (singular, he only has the one) on Magnolia since they were twisted into life. Then, Hamsi turns her attention back to Marzio, not quite ready to summon anything, yet. She grins, teasing, "Are you full of angst?"

"No," Marzio says with a scowl. It's not even a little bit true. Long before Carlo Sarno got tossed in the clink, he had always been disappointed in his younger son's inability to just man up and stop whining. Marzio had honestly tried to adopt his dad's outlook of Ignore Your Feelings, Only Women and Babies Cry, but all he'd managed to do was instill a hell of a lot of shame.

But that's not an appropriate conversation topic for a bro-down.

"That was just an example, anyway. Maybe they feed off our happiness or like the pain Shadows feel when we totally shank them." He moves the twins, George and Georgette, so they're next to each other. It's a purely practical decision; they're drooping in opposite directions and need something to prop them up. "Or I dunno, maybe it's ghost poop.”

"Like shrimp." Hamsi says after a long silence, as though this makes perfect sense. She too readily accepts that Marzio doesn't have anything to angst about, especially considering she lives with Marina, and should probably have at least a vague idea that something is up at this point. But, she and Marzio are similar. Not in that they don't have problems, but in that talking about problems fuckin' sucks.

So, instead, she shifts and carefully stands. There's a lot of tulle under her flouncy green skirt, and she swims in it. The look only becomes all the more appropriate when she summons Mehiel, who descends in her sugary Rococo finery on a swing from nowhere. The little gust of wind that accompanies her knocks Alva (another one-eyed koala) on his side and Hamsi bends over to prop him back up. "Mehiel," she scolds. "Be considerate of our guests."

Mehiel titters, the sound echoing, disembodied. Hamsi ignores her and turns her attention on Marzio. "Your turn."

Anauel's summoning isn't nearly as graceful. He slouches in, listing to the left, looking not unlike a poorly twisted koala balloon himself. It's always hard to tell what Anauel's mood is, assuming Personas even have moods; he's always just... drooping, his wings making a mess on the floor.

Marzio, much to his discredit, wrinkles his nose at Anauel. It's not hard to work out the symbolism, and he's never been very kind to something that has literally saved his life multiple times. Before Anauel can turn his blank eyes on him, Marzio looks away and starts fiddling with the lumpy faces of Laverne and Shirley.

"Don't let her be mean to him," he mutters, because he always at least tries to act like he wants to protect the guy.

Mehiel stills behind Hamsi, the both of them focusing their attention, however briefly, on Anauel as he takes shape. And then immediately proceeds to start losing that shape. Marzio's Persona has always appealed to Hamsi in a strange way; partially because he reminds her of honey, which is tasty, yes, but if she's being honest, she's always wanted to just thrust her hands in there and try to mold him into something cool. He seems like a tactilely satisfying Persona. Which is...weird. It's a weird thing to think. About your bro's Persona.

Hamsi scoffs at Marzio's warning. "She wouldn't." A pause, considering, as Anauel drips pieces of himself onto Bethany and Rigoberto, the conjoined twin koalas. "She thinks he's pretty. She likes...the gold." As if in agreement, Mehiel swings, flipping her shoe off and in Anauel's direction. Hamsi isn't actually sure what that means, but, "See? She's playing."

Anauel tries to straighten up, but his right leg starts to buckle and a sharp strip of wax drips off and spears Amos, the heretofore best looking of the koala rejects. Does it still count as a balloon animal if it's just arms and legs now?

"I don't know if Anauel likes to play." Marzio, squinting up at his Persona, tries to ignore the way it slumps again after his comment. He just wants Anauel to be the best that he can be. But. Maybe he can make up for it by offering the two of them a cup of tea and a koala friend.

It takes a moment for Hamsi to respond, distracted by the neat annihilation of Amos as they'd known him. Poor Amos. His husband, Terry, doesn't look like he's taking it well - he's fallen forward. She blinks - back to Marzio, watching him prep a cup of tea and doing absolutely nothing to help.

"You like playing, don't you?" She challenges. Behind her, Mehiel swings low, eager to accept a cup of tea that she cannot drink, because her head is tucked under her arm and it doesn't look like her mouth works. "Anauel probably kinda likes what you do. Roombas and sperrys and stuff like that."

Marzio doesn't actually know how to make tea. Which is fine, because Anauel definitely can't drink tea, and this is just a couple weird teenagers playing tea party. Whatever, it's super cool, they're super cool, there's no one here to judge them but manifestations of their own subconscious.

Still, he holds a mug out to Anauel, who obediently takes it and then just... holds it. He's trained in battle, not etiquette, Sarno.

"Like yeah maybe, but what if they're, like, the opposite?" he asks, moving Bud, Buzz and Butch out of Anauel's splash zone. "Like your tarot can be backwards, so why not these guys?" Even Marzio knows he's just lying to himself.

Hamsi turns and looks at Mehiel, rocking placidly in the air, the sugary details on her fondant and buttercream dress glinting a little in the weird light of the Velvet Room. She doesn't give Mehiel's symbolism much thought, generally. Cake girl. Sugar. Sweet. Simple enough. Positive things, right? Or. Maybe not. When you poke around a bit.

She furrows her brow, steps carefully over Kerrigan, Lucius and Holt to stand beside Marzio. Shooting him a sidelong glance, then knocking against him. "Maybe?" She offers, staring at Anauel, dripping away, holding a mug. Like an art installation Arthur would've taken her to. "Do you think your Persona's backwards, then? Maybe Mehiel is, too."

Marzio has never purported himself to be one of Finchwood's great thinkers. It's much easier to be cute and dumb and rich than to be more than two layers deep, and Marzio can pull off at least two of those things. But he's spent a lot of time thinking about his Persona -- about whether he can change, or if he would be happier if he forgot about him and went back to just playing dumb.

Or, like, whatever. Something else that sounds fun instead of that shit.

"I mean I'm obviously cuter??" he scoffs, and avoids the judgmental gaze of Leandro and Scarlett. He knocks back into Hamsi. "And he's like eight percent more useful than me, you shoulda seen this dope little like tornado he did last time."

She hums and shrugs noncommittally in response to Marzio claiming he's the cuter between himself and his molten gold angel Persona, hiding a shitty grin behind an upward tilt of her chin and scrunching her whole expression up, like she's really giving it some thought. "I think you're both fine." Hamsi decides in a way that somehow manages to sound both like it could be a neg and a compliment.

But tornados sound like fun. And, hey, there's so much here they could make a mess with. Harold, Jr and Jessica look so smug over there, able to sit upright without any help. "Hey." She shakes his shoulder, suddenly excited. "Want to go wind bowling for koalas?"

Marzio wants to take issue with Hamsi categorizing him as fine, because Marzio is totally way more than fine?? Has she even SEEN his eyelashes??? But, look, a tornado is way more fun than tea and arguing with your bro over your cuteness rating. And Marzio and Anauel may not be, like, super accurate, but a little collateral damage done to Santino and Miguel and Donna's teatime is worth it. Sorry but, like, you guys aren't real so you'll get over it.

"Can I get points for the one my boy already fucked up, or are we starting from scratch?" he asks after a moment of consideration. He didn't need to decide if he wanted to do it or not, he just needed to figure out how to be obnoxious about it.

Hamsi bends over and picks up Audrey, who, somehow, has her head on upside down. She squints at Audrey, who is very relatable, trying to decide how to respond to Marzio's request. After a moment of careful consideration, she turns to him, grinning fondly, and says, "Sure. You're probably gonna need the bonus points, anyway."