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Artemis made a beeline for the plate full of sliced apples, much to Kieran's amusement. The young fox had noticed the sausage rolls and delighted in satisfying his inner carnivore. A recent visit to the OFUR had left him with a longing for something non-vegetarian. He watched Artemis carefully as the half-demon hovered by the fruit plate, and so he noticed when Artemis's eyes took on a devious gleam. A bowl of sweet and sour sauce sat by a platter of potstickers, not too far from the pitcher of fruit punch. They were remarkably the same color...

"Artie, don't," Kieran admonished him. "Come on. It's Stephanie's birthday."

"Stink eye" is generally a common phenomenon among young children. Considering Artie's parentage, Kieran shouldn't have been surprised that his almost-brother had such a natural death glare.

"Okay!" she called, quite happy to wander off with Imira and play.

Cara, meanwhile, had noticed where Lheya was looking. "Haven't you seen the boys around before? I'm sure they live in the Nursery," she said reassuringly. "They're lovely enough, anyway."

With that, she crouched down to Zevak's level, smiling. "You made it? That must have taken a lot of work, and I'm sure it's lovely. Why don't you put it over on that chair in the corner, so it'll be safe till she's ready to open it?" She indicated the chair in question.

Over near the snack table, William glanced over at Kieran and Artemis, ready to intervene if anything happened.

Clearly appreciating Cara's smile, he kept looking at her rather than at his feet as he added, "I made it."

Lheya, too, had seemed friendly enough as she nodded to Cara, and had got as far as "Things are-" before she saw and heard Artemis's latest demands, and her dark eyes went huge.

Once he'd been successfully detached from Stephanie's head, Artie wriggled free of Kieran's grasp (well, okay, maybe he'd bitten his paw just a teeny little bit, but he didn't draw blood so it wasn't like Kieran was going to complain) and contented himself to hovering like an oversized hummingbird. "Wanna ssssnack!" he insisted, forked tongue darting from his mouth as he hissed.

Kieran smiled apologetically at Stephanie as he took his fluttering almost-brother's hand. "Well, it looks like it's food before pla-aaaaaaay!" Artemis promptly dragged him off to the tables, Lucifer trotting after them with his tail held high.

"Looks like I'd better go and be a good hostess," she said to Gremin and Xericka. "In any case, there's games, toys, snacks, the music - I made sure it's all decent for the kids - so just enjoy yourselves." She tickled Aiden under the chin with a soft smile and headed towards the Nataan family.

"Hi there," she offered once she was close enough, sidestepping the small Bajoran girl charging past her. "Good to see you again. How's things?" She gave them all a warm smile, aware that Lheya and Zevak in particular could get uncomfortable around others. "I like your costumes."

She glanced over towards William, who was still talking happily with his adoptive children. "I don't think you'll be distracting him for a while, but -"

There was a double squeal of excitement at the pitch only reachable by small children. It appeared that Imira and Stephanie had located each other. "Steph's nearby, if you wanted to say hello," Cara finished with a wry laugh.

I am also guilty of using characters no one has seen in a published mission, nor on the Wiki... but they've had increasingly important and eventful lives in various RPs.

I will try and poke in more exposition if necessary, but hey, it's a little kid's birthday party - the fun is the important thing. And cake. :P

...and a group of four more or less tumbled in, given its two larger members were busy trying to shepherd the two smaller ones. All had come attired for the occasion, and it was only at second glance that one would notice a few peculiarities. The thin, dark-haired girl at the back, in the costume of a Lórien elf, had ridges creasing her nose, a feature shared by the much smaller girl she was trying vainly to keep from taking the Really Very Tiny Auditorium by storm.

Her older brother, hampered by the presents he was carrying and the even smaller and serious-faced boy clinging to his sleeve, sighed. "Just let her go in, Lheya. There's more than enough people here to stop her from causing too much chaos."

"I'm not gonna cause chaos!" the little girl protested. "I'm just gonna see Stephanie! And Zevak has to give her his present!" She turned an impatient, expectant stare on the boy, who nodded hastily, and held up the miniature staff clutched in his free hand, from which hung a small silvery gift bag.

"We'll go together, then," her brother told her, and, as she promptly took the cue to run off ahead, nudged the shy, small version of Gandalf the Grey (whose colour, in fact, extended to his skin) into heading across the Auditorium to the birthday girl.

"They've got a special area for the little kids and everything. There's nothing to worry about."

"I suppose so," Xericka replied. A careful listener might have noticed a faint trace of her previous reluctance still lingering in that sentence.

Gremlin, it should be noted, was not the most careful of listeners. "Great! I'm going to go mingle us up some punch. Back in a blink!"

Xericka watched Gremlin bustle off towards the snack tables before returning her attention to Cara. "Thank you very much for the invitation," she said. "It was a welcome if unexpected offer."

It was rather muffled as Stephanie helped pry Artemis off her head, but given the way she was giggling it hadn't been too much of a shock. Once she could breathe properly again she gave both Kieran and Artie a gleeful hug. "C'mon, let's play!"

Kieran stepped forward into the offered hug, or at least tried to. Artie immediately pounced from his shoulders, propelled himself forward with his wings, and glomped the birthday girl's face enthusiastically.

"Happy burfday!" he shrilled in her ear. With an air of long-suffering, Kieran set about prying his little almost-brother's arms from around Stephanie's head.

"Sorry, he's been excited since we found out about the party," he apologized, shooting a glare at Lucifer. The cat was sitting on the ground and rumbling like a small engine, his mismatched eyes staring up at the three children with obvious mirth.

He managed to keep a straight face as he added, "Yes, Steph picked them. You have to admire her eye for crossovers. Or fear it, either way is good."

"That does sound like a good idea," she said cheerfully.

Tad looked around, and failed to suppress his smile. "I'm guessing Steph picked the decorations. You don't normally see that kind of mix, except - Ow!" He rubbed his side, and gave Zach an affronted look.

Zach, who'd calmly elbowed him in the ribs, added, "It looks good, though."

"I was wondering when you'd make it." He gave all three of them a warm hug. "How have you been? You look very smart, I have to say." He kissed Mishi on the cheek. "Are you three hungry? You might want to grab some food before we get the locusts down on it."

OOC: For those not Cassie, don't look for these three on the PPC wiki, I haven't got around to putting them there yet. But they've been around quietly for a while now. ;)

"Watching things pretty closely there, aren't you, Dad?" The young man who spoke, his appearance suggesting vague resemblances to both Remus Lupin and James Potter - the latter mostly for the untidiness of his hair - had filed in quietly, his manner self-effacing. Zach Marshall grinned suddenly, seriousness dissolving as he looked at William.

Tad Marshall stood nearby, and Michelle "Mishi" Sellers, who waved impishly at William. The young blonde witch had been as happy as the boys to be suddenly adopted by William in the course of his taking them under his wing, but had kept her own choice of surname on the grounds that she'd only just escaped the alliterative name she'd had in her native fic, and wasn't going to be Mishi Marshall now.

All three wore their old Hogwarts robes (Gryffindor for Tad and Mishi, and Ravenclaw for Zach) as a concession to the occasion.

Cara waved them in. "Come on in, there's plenty to go around." She headed over to Xericka and Gremlin with a broad smile. "Nice to see you - and isn't this young man cute?" She'd melted at Aiden's gurgling. "Hey there, gorgeous. Oh - and I did set up a playpen for any really little ones, if you were worried," she added to Xericka.

As Stephanie made a beeline for Kieran and Artie, William followed hurriedly to ensure there weren't any collisions. "Careful there," the wizard cautioned as Stephanie nearly skidded to a halt in front of the fox.

"Hey Kieran, guess what? It's my birthday!" She held her arms out for a hug; to Stephanie, hugs were the best way to greet her friends, but she'd at least learned by now not to do it without making sure the other person wouldn't object.

William hovered nearby just to keep an eye on things, smiling faintly.

The door to the Really Very Tiny Auditorium swung open again. A young Asian woman wearing a rumpled Slytherin uniform and a snaggle-toothed grin poked her head around the edge of the door.

"Sweet, we got here before all the nibbles got snatched up!" she said. "They've got mini-hot dogs and everything!"

"I am not very comfortable with this, Gremlin," came a muffled reply from the corridor behind her. "Aiden is far too young for such an event. He may become distressed."

Gremlin rolled her eyes as she pushed the door open all the way. "Honestly, you're a bigger baby than he is sometimes. He'll be fine. This is a good thing, Xerry! You're spending more time with Aiden and you'll be meeting with other parents! It's win-win, sweetheartless!"

After a few moments of hesitation, Xericka stepped into the auditorium. She had not changed out of her typical Organization coat, although she had wrapped a yellow and black Hufflepuff scarf around her neck as a nod to one-half of the themes. Aiden, dressed in a similarly-colored onesie, gurgled in her arms.

"Please try to enjoy yourself," Gremlin said. She put her hand on Xericka's shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze.

Xericka sighed. "I shall endeavor to do my best."

"Good!" Gremlin turned back to the rest of the room and waved in greetings. "Hey, everyone!"

The door to the Really Very Tiny Auditorium opened, and the first guests arrived.

Kieran had not really bothered to put on a costume for LOTR or Potterverse, either on himself or on Artemis, reasoning that his Redwall attire was close enough to the former just as Artie's World One clothes were to the latter. Muggles were part of Potterverse, weren't they? Lucifer the cat slunk along by his footpaws, glaring at anyone who bothered to give him a second glance.

The young fox's nose twitched at the smells from the snack table, and Artie scrambled up to perch on his shoulders. Black wings emerged from his shoulder blades and fluttered excitedly. "Food!" the two-year-old squealed eagerly. "Foodfoodfood!" He punctuated his observation by tugging on Kieran's ears.

"I see the food, Artie," Kieran murmured, before turning to the hosts with a bright smile and a wave of his paw. "Hi, everybeast! Happy birthday, Stephanie!"

((Hi, guys! Just a couple of ground rules to keep things running smoothly:

1. When you join in, just add your response to the end of whatever the most recent post is, to keep just one string of sequential posts. That way it should be easier to keep track of what's going on and we can all respond to each other easier. When the string gets too long, we'll come back to the top and start a new one.

2. Don't worry about your characters being "late" if you can't get here straight away. This is the PPC and people live in their own time warps. :P Turn up whenever, we're in no rush.

3. Keep posts in the past tense. It's easier to read, and it'll make it much easier for me to put together if I think it'll make a good interlude.

4. No controlling other people's characters (unless you have explicit permission). (I did get kgarrett's permission to use Miriam in this post, by the way. :P )

5. And of course, OOC stuff gets marked somehow, but you all know that. ^_^ Here we go, then!))


Three people surveyed the Really Very Tiny Auditorium. It was covered with a rather odd mix of Potterverse- and Lord of the Rings-themed decorations, but then again, "odd" was a matter of perspective here. The birthday girl had picked them, after all, and it made perfect sense to a five-year-old to put the Great Hall of Hogwarts next to the Shire. The party snacks, which had been... er... obtained from outside sources, were set out on a number of trestle tables along one wall. There was a stereo set up for music in a corner out of the reach of grabbing little fingers, and a playpen in another corner for any particularly small children who might arrive.

"Well," Cara said, shaking back the cape of her Dunedain Ranger outfit, "I think it's looking like a success."

"I still think having William do the decorating was cheating," her partner pointed out. Miriam had elected to come dressed as Frodo, though she had decided not to wear any fake feet. The last thing she wanted was to have small children standing on them all day.

William, who had refused to wear a costume on the grounds that being a Potterverse native was enough (and had then been bullied by Cara into at least ironing his normally creased robes), just laughed. "If it means not having to watch you teeter around on ladders putting up the banners, it's worth it."

This was met by a sheepish smile. "Yeah, I guess so. Safer, at least." Miriam fiddled with the One Ring replica she was wearing, and then looked around again. "When is everyone arriving again?"

Cara shrugged. "I just said for people to turn up as and when they could make it. The important thing's having fun - isn't it, Steph?" She paused, and then looked round. "Steph?"

The little girl, wearing a bright red robe with the Gryffindor crest, was sitting on one of the Auditorium seats nearby, her head in a book. It had been Miriam's idea, to keep her distracted enough she wouldn't be getting in the way of the decorating or trying to steal bits of the food.

"Steph-anie," Cara half-sang, amused by the look of concentration on her daughter's face.

When this got no response, William took a more direct approach and headed over to pick the little girl up. "Hey, mischief, your mum's talking to you."

Stephanie squirmed a bit, but quickly dropped her book in favour of cuddles from her uncle as he carried her back to the others. "What's it?"

"I just wondered if you think we're ready, because people are going to start arriving soon." Cara gestured around at the Auditorium. "What do you think?"

There was a prolonged silence as both the question and the room were considered. "Yep!" Stephanie wriggled to get down, and William obliged with a chuckle. "Can I have a sausage roll now?"

Cara rolled her eyes. "Just one until everyone else gets here."

As the little girl dashed off to get her treat, William murmured, "It shouldn't be long, at least." He looked towards the door almost hopefully.

Amused at the stream of talk, Jenni raised an eyebrow at the words "professionals" and "degree," but she suspected the fact that FicPsych was just like the rest of the organization in that the majority of the nurses had no formal training was not something she should advertise. They did the best they could with what they had, and it so happened that their best was pretty good most of the time. She was proud to be one of them.

She exited the department with Suicide, and in a gesture that might have been a sign of shyness in anyone else, tucked her chin and raised a hand to the angle of her jaw in response to the touch to her hair. She didn't fully understand what had prompted him to braid it, so there wasn't anything she could say to acknowledge it that would make sense. Still, he seemed to get the idea.

She did recognize the gruff practical advice for the sign of goodwill that it was—Nume, Mr. Cold Fish himself, was an accomplished practitioner of the art—and she nodded. "Will do. While we're at it, thank Diocletian for letting me borrow you."

And that was that, really. "Thank you," she said back to him. "And hey, you know where to find me. I'll be seeing you." No overly dramatic last-minute gestures, just a smile, a wave, and a parting phrase with at least two distinct but related interpretations. Yes, she reflected as she started for the Nursery, this was definitely the start of something good.


(( Yay, conclusion! I just wanted to get the actual moment of walking away in there.

I'm glad you made the trip in one piece. Michigan IS pretty. If you ever have a yen to go camping, there are some great spots, especially in the north of the "mitten" and the Upper Peninsula. {= D ))

Jenni was indeed the mother of a two-year-old, so she was likely familiar with some version of the expression that briefly flitted across Suicide's face. It was similar to the one any small boy got when a parent would tell him to stop poking a helpless squishy animal with a stick. Fortunately, Suicide was not the type to pout (although there was definitely an aura of 'taking away my toys' about him), and he offered Jenni his arm with the kind of perfect, studied gentlemanliness that suggested he hadn't in fact been threatening people with gleefully non-advanced field surgery only moments before.

"Nice to meet you all," he said, giving them his best "I'm not crazy, really" smile, which was about as close as he got to being normal in polite company. Once they were out of the room, though, he dropped it for something slightly more genuine, albeit definitely of the shit-eating variety.

"You're right," he continued contemplatively as he walked down the hall with Jenni. "I wouldn't want to stay here forever. Being surrounded by psych professionals means they might wind up curing me of my unsociable impulses, and then where would I be? Talk about curing yourself right out of a job. I can't see me going in for late-in-life retraining, getting one of those degree things."

That was a little loquacious for him, but hell, the world could sue him. He was in a good mood: he'd spent the night with a fascinating and quite flexible woman, he'd helped said woman scare her coworkers, and best of all, there was a good chance of a repeat. He liked her: she was a good woman, though there wasn't a way he could properly articulate that to her. The braid was a mute testimony to what had happened there.

It was getting on for what passed for morning in the PPC, and FicPsych was beginning to stir. Reluctantly, Suicide crossed the threshold. After a moment's hesitation, though, he turned and flicked the end of Jenni's braid lightly. "I'll be around," he said, risking that notorious moment of sincerity again. "Say hi to Henry and Ilraen for me, okay? And tell Ilraen that if he's gonna make a habit of psychotic breakdowns on missions, he and Nume need to work out some kind of buddy system. When he went to pieces on 'Ring Child,' it was a complete mess. No form at all." If Jenni squinted, she could possibly guess at how this was Suicide's form of trying to be friendly towards the other agents.

"Thanks," he added finally. A good night was at an end, but he had the sense that something even better might be getting started.

((If you want to cap this off, you can, but otherwise we can end it there. Michigan is beautiful, BTW!))

The moment of relaxation was followed by one of nervous anticipation. Even Parwill looked up from his—her—Parwill's breakfast to watch Jenni for an indication of how seriously they should take this development. It wasn't a question of whether they were being messed with or not, since Suicide's expression left no doubt, but rather how far it would go.

Jenni herself seemed to be in some doubt on that score, looking up at him with a fixed expression, but as it turned out that was only because she was trying not to laugh. She gave up after a moment.

"You know, if you want me to strap you down again, all you have to do is say so," she said with elaborate sweetness, eliciting a few groans and a facepalm from the nurses. (Mirrad notably did not react, but seemed to have designated himself the responsible adult in the room and merely kept an eye on things as he went about his own routine.) "But either way, I'm off." She turned to the room and gave them a wave. "Thank you all, you've been a wonderful audience. Elms, hide the banner before Suzine confiscates it, and better luck next time. Alex, let's talk when I get back, okay? Be somewhere findable."

The young intern nodded, cooperative in spite of looking pinched with apprehension. Yeah, he definitely needed some reassurance about all this. Later.

"As for you," she said to Suicide, "we did this dance already, but at least walk me out. I'm pretty sure you don't really want to stay here that badly. Trying to anesthetize random canons would be a good way to earn a one-way booking, though." She shook her head with a wry smile. "Mental images for the day. Thanks for that."

Elms was nineteen, eh? Suicide mentally resorted her into the "kid" category, but like Nume, she was a kid who had shown some excellent backbone. Still--ai Na'an, he was being condescended to by someone less than half his age. He really was getting old. When he was nineteen, he hadn't even expected to live to twenty, let alone to forty-something (how old was he, anyway?), and now he was the crazy old man people couldn't believe someone would sleep with. How times change, eh?

On the other hand, there were serious benefits to being the crazy old man . . .

"Tempting," he said, planting a quick kiss on the top of Jenni's head. "But we might give the callow youth PTSD if we tried to enlighten them." There was a moment of relaxation as the nurses breathed again. "But it looks like there's still plenty to do around here. And I know it's not the Medical department, but you do have plenty of drugs and supplies here, don't you? I did tell you I wanted to practice my field medicine. I thought I saw Legolas looking rather beat-up in the hallway, too." He gave Jenni his best charming grin, which wasn't very charming at all but got the message across. "I need to learn to use anesthesia some time, right?"

It got a laugh from both Jenni and Elms. The others variously smiled quietly, giggled, or pretended not to have heard. Elms nodded in approval—it seemed Suicide had earned himself some points.

"Wise man," Jenni remarked, giving him an affectionate scratch between the shoulder blades. "Elms, you're nineteen, aren't you?" she asked with a grin, remembering stories from the previous night. "The multiverse looks awfully different at nineteen. You just don't know what you're missing—but alas, I don't have time to enlighten you right now. Not that you lot don't deserve every filthy little detail, but I've got more important things to do."

Alex breathed an audible sigh of short-lived relief before Jenni added to Suicide, far too earnestly, "Of course, you could stay if you're feeling civic-minded. I'm sure the Flowers would understand. Educating the youth is very important." She couldn't resist, really. She could practically hear the wheels turning in the nurses' heads, calculating how likely was imminent trauma, how much Bleeprin it would take to erase it, and how quickly they would have to move to escape out the door.

"Fox... you remember where we went on vacation yes? " She asked slowly.
"Do you think.. that it migth be that?"
she asked. She has no clue how it is that though.