Party in the USSR (sorry, Miley) PV closed

RPing as approved Durmstrang iNPC Vyacheslav Preobrazhensky

Words that Vyacheslav says that are in italics are in Russian.

“С днём рождения тебя, с днём рождения тебя, с днём рождения, милый Максим, с днём рождения тебя!” Slava sang for the umpteenth time today, dancing around his brother and flinging some gold glitter up in the air in front of his face. Max started to express his nerves and Slava frowned, hopping up onto a bar stool near his brother and swinging his legs energetically. “Cheer up, Max, today is a time for celebration! This is meant to be fun.” He elbowed his brother playfully. “Besides, you'll calm down when they arrive. It's the waiting that's the hardest part, I'm sure they'll be here soon.”

He leapt down from the stool and hummed idly, this time a different birthday song that was sung in Russia, sometimes known as Crocodile Gena's birthday song. “А я играю на гармошке у прохожих на виду. К сожаленью, день рожденья только раз в году,” he mumbled as he danced around the pub near Maksim. He suddenly stopped and spun around to face him. “I'll be your doorman! I'll welcome all your guests with a gracious bow~” he proclaimed with a grin, gleefully demonstrating, “and maybe I'll test some feelings on GLITTER. They can't be any fun if they don't like it. It's a security protocol to make sure we're not letting in anyone boring.” He gave a very matter-of-fact nod and tilted his chin up slightly, folding his hands behind his back and moving elegantly across the room.

“Aren't I the picture of a distinguished gentleman?” he asked, making the face that elderly posh people always made in movies, pressing his lips together firmly and elongating his face slightly. He cracked within a few seconds and burst into laughter, his gleaming eyes and cheeky grin betraying him. His shirt had come untucked in one corner yet again, even though he had tried to dress up nicely for Max's birthday. His curls never quite could be tamed, and after his attempts to be more polished had made him look less like himself, he had given up and let his hair run wild. His head snapped to one side as he heard a noise, eyes laser-focused on the door. “I think I heard someone!” he cried, running to the door. He would dramatically open it for every guest with a bow, sprinkling glitter at them when they least expected it. Some got gold glitter, some got red, some got hot pink. The bags hidden in his pockets would not be altogether concealed as bits of glitter lingered around the tops of his trousers.

Roleplaying for the very very first time!!! as iNPC Elliot Bexley | Dialogue Hex: #FFC919

MORE than bad movies starring actors so far down the list of letters they might as well have been varioloids or something in an unsolvable algebraic problem, or putting pink zebra-striped sparkly tape on the back of his dad’s work pants, or giving his best shot at convincing his fellow Pukwudgies that his sunglasses were actually sci-fi style goggles made to control his laser eyes, Elliot Arthur Bexley loved parties. Parties were fun stuffed into four or so hours of stealing food and embarrassing dances from strangers, as the American boy understood. A party was a break from having to pretend to care about anything but thinking of the most entertaining and ridiculous ways to go about doing anything and then actually going ahead and doing it. Of course, there were always exceptions to any rules a preteen with the attention span rivalling a fruit fly’s could manage to keep in their head for long, and business-suited, mustache-twirling adults from the world of endless work made sure of that. So much money in those marble-lined bank accounts, and all they can muster is a bunch of fancy Icelandic desserts with the square footage of an ant’s bathroom. Luckily for Elliot, however, this was an exception to the exception of the exception to an exception (which could be registered as exception inception, he noted, putting the note in the Very Important Notes section of his fruit fly brain). It seemed to be, at least. What else was he supposed to expect when the invitation was made of all that glitters and glows? Not that he was complaining about the design choices. In fact, he’d already fashioned his thirteenth birthday bash invite after it to throw into peoples’ faces when the time came about. He still needed to buy more supplies for that, actually, seeing as a certain someone in the Bexley residence made it their business to chuck out anything and everything that could possibly make a shiny mess of the walls and their collective dignity as a group of relatives. What was he doing again? Oh, right, getting ready to meet a bunch of strangers some few countries away.

Elliot had never used a Portkey before, to be completely honest. Being him, though, he most definitely would not be honest and claim that he’d been all over the Earth and then some by touching random cans and abandoned shoes. Not like anyone would believe him, but it would be nearly as fun as what he’d come to think of the party. Hours spent daydreaming of the most perfect purple-tinted meeting, and he was sure it would live up to what he’d hoped. However, he had heard of others’ mostly truth-based travels through random cans and abandoned shoes, and what he’d heard made it seem more like an HBO special than a Hallmark straight-to-DVD sort of deal. And, see, he was fine with that. He really was! He’d lived in Brooklyn long enough to basically gain immunity from nausea fuel that wasn’t a particular strain of Kool-Aid he’d gladly riot to try and discontinue. But, as one could also see, the word basically was an exaggeration, for no being from land, sea, or sky could possibly evade the horror that was the subway public bathroom.

Portkeys were supposed to be hidden, he got it. Portkeys were supposed to be relatively unnoticeable objects so a bunch of randos wouldn’t look at the giant golden crown propped up on a velvet throne in the middle at the street and go all ‘hey let’s touch that random thing’, he got it. But were they supposed to be in the nightmarish underworld hidden behind a gruesome, battered portal that housed at least five different species of mutated cockroach? He did not get it. Still, nothing, not even impending death, would stop him from getting to this party. Putting a plastic gas mask that did just about nothing, which all but sealed that impending death sticker onto the collar of the clothing hidden under his makeshift hazmat suit, and strapping on some gardener’s gloves he took from the edge of his neighbor’s dumpster, he sprinted down to the subway’s personal corner of the nether it called a bathroom.

It took a solid minute to find that ukulele. Between the inhaling toxins that would turn him into a Trubbish by day’s end, the noises from one of the stalls that would put The Blob to shame in the sound effects department, and trying to keep his plastic bag of gifts away from any surfaces in the wretched room, the travel to the pub place was the easy part.

As soon as he recovered from the adventure through the dingy dungeons of stolen toilet paper and peeling paint older than any of the actual trains on the tracks, he ran over to what was either the pub’s entrance or a headquarters for some big-time heisters about to steal a portrait of the last czar. With absolutely no hesitation, Elliot tore off his pants. The baggy, billowing nylon things would spend some time floating in the air before landing far away enough to not have their owner’s son be arrested for both littering and crimes against fashion, providing a bizarre sight for anyone who drew the short straw on life and was forced to look at it. At least, that’s what he thought it would do, he didn’t care all that much as of now. Taking off his oversized puffer jacket to reveal a much more appropriate — and way more importantly, fun — look for the weather, instead of seeing a runty figure wearing a ridiculously loose gas mask clad in shiny black, whoever was in the location given in the invitations would see a runty figure wearing a ridiculously loose gas mask clad in an inconsistent pattern of pineapples, a white t-shirt stating that God was born in Brooklyn, and cobalt board shorts. He sauntered to the door, and after a few seconds of wondering if any wolves had attacked it in recent years, he opened it.

“Good stranger friends, you better pump the music up and keep your common sense low, ‘cause the Bex is here and—”

His riveting introduction speech was interrupted before its first page of thirty-four could be finished, and in every other possible way the interruption could’ve happened he would’ve been mad. Another exception inception was scheduled, however, seeing as the interruption was made of the hottest, pinkest, hottest and pinkest hot pink he’d ever seen in his hot-pink-deprived life. Slowly taking off his gas mask to show his bespectacled face in its full glory, a moment was spent in shock. For maybe the first time in his life, the Bex, as he’d called himself, was speechless. The short time of silence that all the adults in his life would’ve relished if they weren’t conditioned by years of endless chatter about the deep lore of Flappy Bird to disbelieve it was, well, short, as soon the stunned expression morphed itself into a huge grin.

“Dude, that was the most awesome thing ever, and I never want to open a door again unless there’s a giant blast of glitter on the other side, and I love it, I love you, never stop doing what you do.”

A high five and a quick pair of finger guns ended the otherwise never-ending sentence as Elliot twirled over to the older boy at the bar’s counter. He brought the plastic bag up to the birthday guy’s view, which contained three throw pillows of different colors and levels of how obvious it was he bought one of them from a thrift store and the other from the cardboard box labeled ‘Donate’ in thick black marker.

“Got these for you, Maks-man. Make sure to throw out the bag, dunno what wacko thought the subway bathroom was a good place to put my Portkey, but the bottom of it touched the floor for, like, a whole second, so if you don’t want Gwyneth Paltrow’s death on your hands, better dump it at a nuclear site.”

He went back to the middle of the room, clapping once to get the attention of whoever else was in the room that his sunglasses didn’t let him see. “Now let’s get this party started!” The confident proclamation was cut off when the ever so confident proclamator realized there was nobody in his immediate view to actually party with. “Wait…”

Banner from Winnie Harper!

Roleplaying as iNPC Henrietta Montagne

While Henrietta did come from a rustic farm where guidance was chimerical tales told to scare the young blonde into planting the broccoli on the south side of the garden (or else terrible things would happen), the various family members that dwelled with her ensured that she receive basic life advice, too. All the basics. You know, wash your reds and your whites separate. When the ocean recedes, run fast and far. If a tall, dark, and handsome boy [@Ami Procoppio] invites you to his birthday party, go with no questions asked.

Ret had found Elliot Bexley [@Leonard Oaksworth] and his sunglasses within the grand walls of Hogwarts over their prior visit, intending to discuss dueling with him while it was fresh on her mind. A real blessing in disguise, he’d been. The substance of their conversation was cut short, even before Ret got to inquire why he insisted on presenting himself as a fool by shielding from the sun in shaded corridors—part of the “basics” is the common decency not to wear sunglasses indoors. Two foreign boys of another school had approached the pair, fractured their introduction, and invited both to a birthday party due to happen over the summer. Refusing would’ve been plain rude; the ray of sunshine glimmered and elatedly accepted, frolicking away from Elliot after her train of thought not only diverted, but crashed.

As the sun’s light washed over the horizon that fated dawn, so did Henrietta’s beaming grin. Still in her night clothes, the girl had rushed outside into the flower bed, collapsing to her knees and running her fingers along the buds to decide which composed the perfect bouquet. After a few moments of mindless humming, newly blooming marigolds were dug from the ground with her hands, a thin tan ribbon then securing the sun kissed flowers into a bunch to be later gifted to Maksim alongside a custom striped quilt of similar colors. These two gifts (the latter wrapped in sunflower paper), as brightly colored and radiant as the blonde girl herself, were in tow as she left home that afternoon to first find her portkey, and then the birthday boy himself.

Vertigo struck the moment her feet hit the ground again, unsure whether she was twirling, or the world was doing a dance of its own in celebration of the big one-five. A grand pair of doors was before her, darkly tinted and quite heavy to push open with a loud note of complaint which harmonized with Ret’s own strained grunt. There were only a few seconds of unhindered vision to absorb the sight of the pub, a cozy room of varying décor and imposing fixtures centered around a shelf of what seemed to be a liquor cabinet times a thousand. It was then that the sparkling rain came, a cloud of golden glitter consuming Ret’s silhouette, a quite befitting fog that only brought more shine to the marigolds outstretched in her right hand.

“My, my, my!” She exclaimed, spinning in a circle to resurrect her vertigo and let the glitter come to settle in her tightly curled hair. “That’s just lovely, this is quite the shindig.” Ret would reach up to touch the cheek of the glitter-boy [@Ruby Cazares] appreciatively before continuing into the room to greet Maksim and Elliot, who’d already arrived seemingly moments before her. The hot pink sparkle he emitted was a dead-on sign of that. “Happy birthday dear! I brought you these flowers,” She’d attempt to give them to the older boy, rather aggressively in fact, “and this gift, um, where may I sit it?”

Cecily was not invited to this party. Well— she wasn't quite sure, actually. Technically the invitation had been handed to Remington, who, upon biting down on the ungodly amount of glitter and finding it did not taste even slightly of food, promptly dropped the shimmering assault on the eyes on the ground at Cecily's feet. Cecily wasn't even quite sure who the party was for, except for the logical conclusions that, based on the invitation, he was named Maksim and was probably one of the two boys who had handed her the sparkling, yet oddly enticing, atrocity.

And yet— maybe it was the audacious glittery block letters or simply the almost vaguely insulting fact that the boys had invited her (maybe) as an afterthought to her own lizard— at some point in the seconds between between the idea sewing itself in her mind and the seed of a thought blossoming into a full-fledged plan complete with intent to assure her mother that yes, she knew who these people were and yes, she knew where she was going, and yes, she was taking her pet lizard for reasons of unimportance, it was settled: this was simply too alluring of a mystery to wither away in her mind unnoticed. Plus, there was the fact that she was pretty sure she had sort of accidentally already accepted the invitation in the whirlwind of glitter and strange Russian boys, and who was she to back out of a commitment?

Although rather unsure of the general safety of bringing a lizard through a portkey, at a loss for other options, Cecily had tucked Remington into the cuff of her sleeve, taking a moment to pray to whatever higher power was listening that the poor guy wouldn't be flung out in the hurricane that was portkey travel. Fortunately, perhaps a higher power had taken action; unfortunately, said power's solution included Remington's claws rather painfully digging into the skin of her forearm from the moment the portkey lifted her from the ground. As her feet returned to the earth rather ungracefully, she carefully extracted him off of her arm and out from her sleeve, setting him on the ground for a moment as they both regained their bearings.

Cecily still was rather unsure of where she even was, or where the party took place, but she assumed that the massive oaken doors the portkey had dropped her in front of were likely her destination. Paying little attention to Remington as she returned him to his noble perch upon her shoulder, eyes instead fixed on the entrance to what appeared to be a pub of some sort, Cecily straightened her clothes and reached for the handles.

She stopped dead in her tracks, just inside the doors, as she was encased in a flurry of sparkles. It took a moment for the shimmering shower to register as bright red glitter— something this family clearly had something of an infatuation with. "Oh—" was all she could manage to get out at first, quite unsure of what to say in the scenario that a stranger douses her in bright red glitter, followed shortly by "Uh, thank you." Okay, that was fine, it would do. Cecily was further distracted upon immediate entry into the pub— so much for the tame entrances she was so accustomed to and much more comfortable with— by a dull sensation of something landing on her foot. A large-ish pebble rested on the floor near her shoe, directly below Remington, who seemed to be entertaining himself just fine biting at stray specks of glitter that drifted past. She wasn't quite sure when or where the stone was from, or why or how he, a small lizard, had managed to carry the moderately sized rock this far, but she supposed it was now a gift to the lovely pub owners (conveniently disregarding the fact that it had probably come from their property anyway).

"...It's- it's in my mouth..." she muttered, stepping out of the doorway and surveying the faces that had arrived before her before the realisation struck her once again that she continued to have no knowledge of where she was or who any of these people were. Hell, although she recognised the two boys who had handed her— or, rather, Remington— the invitation, she didn't even know which one was Maksim. "Uh, happy birthday!" she offered with as much mild enthusiasm as she could manage, addressing vaguely one or both of them, assuming the one it applied to would get the message. This was off to a great start.

speaking in russian, unless specified

Pros and Cons to being my friend:

Situation: Johann had been invited to a birthday party. Problem: He barely knew the people who invited him and the method of invitation had made him wash his hands at least four times after handling. Solution: Let's go over there and destroy the place (with birthday cheer).

The invitation had been charmingly tacky in a little-kid-who-got-into-the-art-supplies type of way, the shimmery letters giving up on the badly folded paper. They could have used glitter glue or, if magic was more up their alley, a glueing charm. Could have printed the invites out at a library. Though the idea of Maksim and Slava trying to work a printer in the middle of a sleepily old-fashioned public library…

Perhaps it was best they didn’t try?

Regardless, Johann supposed the Preobrazhensky brothers were aiming to lay on the homemade nostalgia instead of going for aesthetics. And no matter his thoughts about how chaotic their creation could have been, our ne’ere-do-well wannabe-wizard would never pass up a chance for a party!

As any good birthday party required, he needed gifts and a way to get there. Luckily for him, the method of transportation had already been decided for him, he just needed to find it.

Over the matter of presents, he had debated over possible candidates for a surprisingly long time (trying to compensate for how little he actually knew the birthday boy) before going 'Screw it' and picking up something off his shelves that looked cool enough. And if Johann had originally stolen the antique out from the back shelves of a thrift shop, trying not-so-hard not to get caught by the outdated mall cameras and grinning all the while, the Preobrazhensky brothers didn't need to know anything. Finding his portkey was a lot easier said than done, but he had a bit of a clue considering the vague details in his invite.

So comes to the now: Johann wishing he had an invisibility cloak and looking like an absolute moron climbing up a wooden utility pole in the middle of some shopping street. In his defense, he was trying to get at a motorcycle helmet hooked onto the wires he just knew was something helpful. Oh, he had so many questions. How the hell did that helmet even get up there? Was Maksim trying to joke with that neon yellow 'Safety First' sticker? At least it was quiet enough that all he got was a few confused and concerned stares.

Finally able to do more than brush his fingers on the polycarbonate plastic, Johann made a grab for the helmet in some attempt to pull it along the wire closer to him. He was scarcely able to realise his mistake in overbalancing when the portkey did as portkeys were supposed to do, disorientation of both natural and magical gravity compounding into an unholy cocktail of horrible ideas.

If anyone inside the pub cared about a loud thump right outside their doors, followed by a particularly passionate "SCHEIẞE!*"- well, Johannes could deal with it after recovering his sense of self between vertigo that kept him laid out solidly on the concrete sidewalks. He was usually pretty good at dealing with the disorientation of a portkey, but this time could rightfully be an exception considering he had just been yoinked across continents mid-fall without even the crutch of a gravity-defying flying broom.

By the time the random patch of Russian sky and street he had the pleasure of seeing as a funhouse mirror stilled, the stretch of time had most likely crossed the paper-thin line between 'interesting dramatic entrance' and 'concerning dramatic entrance', an occurrence that happened admittedly too often for his own sake.

Ego and back lightly-but-thoroughly bruised and sense of balance back to normal, Johannes pushed himself onto his feet (as he should have landed, if only he had more sense in teleporting) and, after checking on his gift for possible damage, burst into the pub through imposingly heavy-looking doors.

He was greeted with the lingering sight of awkward hellos and a face full of golden glitter. Truly a hound at heart, his first instinct was to shake off the foreign matter raining down on him like a dog, a cloud of fine glitter getting disturbed even further from what would otherwise be a quiet ride towards the floor. "Yoo, what an entrance! Here, Slava, buddy-" He fumbled with the flowers he had in one hand, plucking one yellow rose from the bouquet and handing it over to his sparkly assailant with a quickness that required grabbing before speaking. The last time he had a proper interaction with Slava, past being given that invitation, it was the farthest thing from a good first impression and Johann would rather move past that experience.

That out of the way, he made a beeline towards their resident Tall-Boi birthday boy, silently mourning the state of his poor hair. "Maksim, MaxAttackz, Mamacita. Happy birthday dude! Why was my portkey hanging from the top of a telephone pole in the middle of a shopping district? Anyway, uhh- Here. Gifts. Where do I put this? Take this." It looked like Maksim already had a bunch of marigolds in hand, but that didn't stop Johann from also shoving over the rest of his own flowers in the middle of his introductory ramble. Ah, he damn loved such special occasions.

Pros: You'll be the prettier friend.
Cons: Where do I even begin?

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*Scheiße = Shit.