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The Host looked on at the revelry as the last few grains of sand fell into the bottom of the hourglass, rotating it without needing to examine the display.

He made a few adjustments to his mental list, and seemed to grow still for a moment. Another signal went out, and had the agents been watching, they would have noticed their cards grow a little longer as the name of the person they had just met with appeared at the top.

As the agents shifted, new tables became apparent, as if they had always been there. Interestingly, there was just enough additional room to seat the newcomers.

Regardless of whether the guests were paying attention or not, they would feel something from their placecard as another set of instructions appeared below the names of their current dates, guiding them to their next partners, who are as follows: Harris and Apecian; Chris and Shamrock; Mia and Kei; Lou and Naergondir; Randa and Kaatah; Cat and Lu; Finch and Thorn; Alleb and Steele; Miguel and C; Michael Tanner and Michael Green; Jesse and the Mysterious Host; Ami and Sonia; and Bingle and Apollo.

The newcomers would find their names elegantly written on namecards at their appropriate tables, and the attached directions were enough for those already in attendance to find their respective partners, even if they had never encountered one another before.

As the evening moved onward, the Mysterious Host smiled at Jesse, beckoning him toward the open seat across from him.

((First things first: This is not the end of the first round. This is me attempting to open up the door for our later arrivals, and giving people a bit more to do every day. I was thinking that each conversation should have about ten posts for player, but that is not a hard and fast rule. Secondly, please post your agents interactions for this round as replies to this post, to keep this thread from becoming impossible to navigate. Finally, these pairings are, ultimately, random. I rolled dice, I did not decide who anybody would be seeing. Thank you. That is all.))

Softly lit and filled by low voices which echoed ever-so-slightly, mingling enough to render what was said entirely private and adding a steady undertone of activity and excitement to the proceedings, he was frightened out of his mind. How was he supposed to start talking to any of these -- he looked about -- people, horses, robots. . . squirrel-people? There was so much going on! He found a spot from where he could observe and catalogue the shifting shadows on the wall.

Thorn was not worried. She was sure whoever approached her to strike up a conversation would be perfectly lovely. She was eager to begin. She found a spot where it seemed polite for her to wait.

They stood next to each other in perfect silence.

Cat had no such problems. After thanking her host -- she tried to catch a glimpse of his face as he helped her to her seat, but a trick of the lighting obscured it -- she turned to the person nearest her, a cervitaur in a blouse which could only be described as stunning.

"Hello there," she said, "Please pardon me for having bumped your flank on my way in; I was exhausted after such a long walk to get here. I must have been too focused on my destination; I was so eager for the opportunity to make the acquaintance of a beautiful woman such as yourself." She shook her head wonderingly. "Who in all the multiverse might you be?"

'Ceilings collapse, floors crack, consoles blow up, response Centre Walls get holes in them. The actuator flipped and folded back into place. 'I-d like to get righteously mad at everything you buggers break, but I-d probably blow out my aggression circuits. Whose your partner? Tall? Blonde? Four arms? I might know him.'

'I'll remember to do that.' She sat there in silence for a bit. She glanced, briefly, at Duane.

'Gosh, this is going awfully, isn't it?' she said, not coming off as particularly torn up about this.

If Bingle's body wasn't long dead and largely non-functioning, he probably would have yelped. His nerves, however, did not work. His voice box, too, only worked when he very specifically concentrated, so something all fast and sudden and reflexive like a yelp would have sounded like a the gentle fluttering of dusty paper in a tomb, as opposed to the 'AAAAAGH!' that would have been expected. So Bingle didn't notice at all (except for the very faint sensation of something, somewhere being shifted out of place,) and continued smiling placidly.

'Pardon me, then! But you do seem terribly nervous for someone at ease, you know.' He looked at her. He looked at things around her. Not quite her, but relating to her. Trailing behind her, flowing around her.

'Good heavens,' he murmured. 'You know, I was hoping they would have partnered me with one of those immortal fellows. This is now a tad odd, isn't it?' He tilted his head as he said this.

((Somewhere within the area of three thousand years. Give or take. It gets easy to forget this or that when you reach those ages, you know.))

"Relax, Michael," she said. "No need to panic. 'sides, I'm always looking for new friends, so this isn't much of a bother," said Sonia. "So chin up and pretend that I'm just a very glamorous looking agent, right? So... which department are you in?"

((She's the forgiving type, no worries. He's in good hands :P))

The voice was deep and rich, with a slight accent to its masculine tones. It carried across the room, but did not disturb the conversation, and a tall figure could be seen rising from his chair to raise his glass once more in greeting.

He took a few steps to his left, and was then standing by the door, as if he had always been there. He offered cat a warm arm clad in black and escorted her to a small, comfortable, and, above all, convenient chair, just near the door and outside the ring.

"I'm glad you could make it," he said. "I was worried you all would not be joining us." His grin was just visible in the shadows.

"I believe the couples have just finished talking. I think the new round will be beginning shortly."

"I wonder what the inside of this room could possibly look like," he added in an unnecessarily loud tone of voice. Thorn was horrified at his rudeness, but she was the shy variant of Socially Inept Nerd, while her partner, she thought, was of the strain that didn't know when to shut up. She clenched her jaw and turned away by a couple of degrees. Perhaps her Afro had grown large enough to bop him in the face, allowing a natural change in topic.

Nope, a couple more centimeters to go. She took advantage of her new position to avoid making eye contact with either Kei or the agents waiting (very respectfully, she thought) in the doorway.

"Maybe there's a good reason they're not letting us in," Kei mused, "There could be a fire! Perhaps we should thank them for being thoughtful enough to," he hitched his volume up a notch, "barricade the door."

The agents didn't react, engrossed in their own conversation, which relieved Thorn and frustrated Kei, who proceeded to fling himself against the wall of the corridor -- and slip down his silk cape, landing him on his butt in a less theatrical pose than he had hoped for. Thorn turned at the noise, and they held eye contact for a dumb moment before folding in half with laughter.

"That's what you get for wearing such a ridiculous outfit!" Thorn hooted softly. Kei could only nod, breathless. "You better take off that ridiculous mask, too, before you poke someone's eye out!"

"Nonsense!" he gasped, mock offended. He patted the beak of his red-sequined mask. "Roxie's my good-luck charm!"

"I don't know." She gave him a skeptical look. "It's hard to figure out if you're attracted to someone if you can't tell what they look like."

Collected, he hopped to his feet and dusted himself off. "My suave masculine charms will shine through any disguise."

Thorn smiled, then whispered, "You're right, though. When are we going to get in? I'm more than ready to find my second husband."

"I identify with the sentiment if not the specifics," Kei returned.

Down the hall, Cat was walking at the fastest clip she could manage towards the door, rubbing her arms to keep warm. The curve-hugging little black dress had seemed sexy and fun in the comfort of her RC, but she'd forgotten that the corridors of HQ were clearly temperature-adjusted for Humans. Or perhaps for snowmen, she thought. Oh well, she wasn't about to turn around and be even later for meeting the single ladies of the PPC -- owwww, her hip. What was she doing again?

Oh, a door. . . right, single ladies! Hurrah! Ouch.

((I'm having fun already! Okay, Kei has no preference with regard to gender or species and is a recent high school graduate. Thorn is lesbian but doesn't know it, so send her women to freak her out; she's middle-aged. Cat is a grandmotherly lesbian who has probably wrecked her hip by walking this far even with her cane; get her a table near the door, please?

--Cat and Thorn, Kei, Burd (not present).))

Smiling. Bloody smiling, and not a dead Sue in sight. She felt positively unnerved by her own behavior. "No sub-division, though." She toyed with the sleeve of her jacket, trying to think of something to say. What did people talk about on speed dates, anyway? "So what do you do for fun?" That sounded alright. I think.

((-Alleb))

'Considering some of those here, maybe she's surprised she's ended up with a regular enough human.' He thought, 'or at least human to normal eyes anyway.' He cleared his throat before replying to her question. "I'm from DMS, Freelance Division to be exact. What about you?"

He felt ill at ease, despite Gurnirel's encouragement. He was an Elf of the First Age, one who had seen the light of Laurelin and Telperion in the days before the sun and moon. He had fought in too many bloody wars. His name he had chosen for himself: Man of Lament. It had seemed only too fitting.

And here he was, entering a room full of...'speed daters'.

"You need not find love here," Gurnirel had pointed out the day before. "We are both aware that tragedy follows the pairing of one of the Eldar with a mortal, and there are few of us in Headquarters."

"Then what reason could I possibly have to attend?" Naergondir had asked her.

His sworn sister had smiled. "You might find friendship there, Meldaner. On that, the Valar have so far smiled."

He could not argue with that, even with the Doom of Mandos ringing in his ears (To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well...), and so he had consented to attend.

He had dressed well, as one did for first impressions. His robes were long and blue, in overlapping layers and varying shades. His hair had even more small braids than usual, and bore a shimmering array of tiny gems at the clasps. He bore no weapons save a short dagger at his waist under the outermost robe, and that only in case of unexpected trouble. He had learned not to underestimate any place's capacity for unexpected trouble.

Unfortunately, he had no idea where he was meant to go, and so he stood just inside the doorway and looked around for direction.

"Err, yes I am Kaatah'Lekh vas Headquarters." She mumbled nervously, taking a good look at the human who'd approached her. She'd seen some humans wearing fancy suits like the one he was wearing in some vids before, and realized that, to him her armour must have looked really weird, especially at an event like this. Hoping she hadn't created an awkward silence, Kaatah looked at the card on the other side of the table and asked, "So, you're Chris then?"

"C. Forwards. Now." The first speaker was a decidedly feminine individual in frame, but somewhat less so in manner. Even before she'd opened her mouth, her eyepatch advertised to any who glanced at her face that this woman hadn't had a cushy life, and the set of her features advertised that she was not wanting to convert to such a life. In contrast to her eyepatch, and her somewhat battered-looking horns (if one cared to look at them), she was dressed in a fine red gown, exposing a pair of armored arms but hiding almost everything else.

"Relax, Lu, she's not one for attention." The creature at the back of the group spoke in a fair voice, but... well, she was very much not human. Her torso and face were, yes - though they were quite a bit higher than the average human female's was - and they were rather pretty for human features, at that. Below her torso, though... well. Cervitaurs weren't exactly common in HQ, but this girl had managed to get her hands on the mods to make it happen. Clearly, she held her human and deer halves to quite different standards; she had worn a stunning blue blouse to cover her human half, and though she technically wore a skirt below it, it primarily served to complete the outfit as opposed to covering anything.

"Steele, thank you for defending me. Lu, I will move as soon as I decide where I would like to go. Besides, standing in doorways makes for a nice picture, if you ask me!" The final girl - or the first, if you were going by who was where in the cluster, as this was the one actually in the doorway - was most certainly the most 'ordinary' of the three. Light skin, brown hair, and completely human. She hadn't worn anything particularly fine, either - a darkly-colored top and a somewhat more lightly-colored skirt, which was nicer than any of her usual attire, but looked extraordinarily ordinary amongst the finery of the room.

"That's uh... wow," he said, articulate to the last. He put an elbow on the table and leaned forward, frowning. "Lemme get this straight--so you've got a Princess, and she's immortal, right? You said she was alive for thousands of years. And she's got a sister. And the older one rules over the day, and younger one rules over the night, and the younger sister don't know that sleepin' under the stars is the best dang thing a cowboy out on the trails has, so she gets all mad that people're sleepin', and goes crazy?" He thought about this for a moment. "Sounds like my uncle, Randy."

((-Alleb))

"Nonsense! I am perfectly at ease." She took his hand in a firm grip, then shook. She hoped her grip wasn't too firm. She also hoped her blush had faded (it hadn't), and that her gown looked alright (it looked perfectly ridiculous), and that she wasn't actually expected to exchange gifts or go on walks with this man (as one did when courting), because he looked to be at least thrice her age.

She hoped Sir Jesse was having better luck so far.

((How old is Bingle, anyway?

-Alleb))

"Yes and yes," he said, then realized that that made absolutely no sense. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Um, I meant to say, I'm seventeen, and yes, this is my first time in the pool. The dating pool. Dating." He stopped pinching the bridge of his nose and instead let his hand cover his whole face, hiding his blush. "Oh, geez," he muttered. On the list of awkward conversations he'd had, he put this just beneath the one back in seventh grade when the principal had mistaken him for his twin sister. That had been a nightmare. "Look, can we just pretend that I didn't say anything there, and that this isn't actually speed dating, and we were forced to share a table at Rudi's or something? 'Cause you're right, the age gap is redonkulus." He paused, looking up at Sonia in shock. I just said redonkulus, he thought, mortified. He squeezed his eyes shut and let his head thunk to the table. And he goes down in flames...

((Aw, poor Michael. He has no idea what he's doing.

-Alleb))

The corner of his mouth quirked up a bit in a smile, but that dropped as he recalled what had happened last month. "On the other hand, my partner is responsible for the hole in the wall of Response Center 11235813. I am sorry for that." He noticed Finch's eye looking around, seemingly nervously, and wondered if he really ought to have said that.

...as his nervousness increased with every syllabe that Lou uttered. She was absolutely past flamethrower-crazy at this point and had reached the fabled ranks of the metastable-insane. As awe-inspiring as was this sight, Harris wasn't feeling particularly impressed with this. He was almost certain that Lou would explode if he pointed out that maybe, just maybe, Duane wasn't as talkative as she thought he was.

"Intelligence, yeah," he said, nodding. "Nothing extraordinary, y'know. I'm just the one who has to deal with the fics first. Thank me later, huh?"

'And, yeah, he's my partner. I don't know what his backstory is except that he met me one day and then started being a giant butt.' She shot a glare towards Duane, as she said this. 'And I don't think he'll ever tell me because he's a giant butt.'

'What about you? Duane says you're in Intelligence.'

He forced a smile as his hand was vigorously shaken around by Lou. "Always good. Yes, not bad. So, er... From which department do you come from? Floaters? DMS? And, uh..." He looked at Duane.

"Is this your partner? What's his backstory?"

The boy was on edge-- the tension in his handshake betrayed his nervousness. She didn't blame him, though: Michael looked as if he had never so much dipped his toes in the dating pool before.

"I'm in Intelligence," she said. "Assigned to watch over the incoming badfic... and this guy over there." She waved her hand at Harris, who looked as if he was literally trapped between a rock and a madwoman. A part of her wanted to stand up and rescue him from his torment, but she couldn't just leave Michael as-is.

"Okay, honest question and expecting an honest answer," she said to him. "How old are you, and is this your first time putting yourself out there? Because, uh... you look pretty young to be chatting up a 21-year-old. No offence."

Oh, bugger me, thought Finch. Not in a literal sense, the date just started and now I don-t entirely trust this person he added, to straighten the record with himself. 'Should-ve figured you were a bloody agent. Who isn-t a bloody agent, here?' He shook his ocular sadly. 'Operations. We-re the frowning bastards who get pulled over to fix up all the hallways you lot mangle. With your bloody flamethrowers.' And his ocular jumped and gazed and looked, searching for any stashed away flamethrowers in the general area.

The effect was more of words bursting from her mouth like shrapnel, as opposed to her sitting back, considering the question, and delivering an intelligent, well-researched discourse. 'Gosh, I dunno. You just don't seem very Harrisey,' she said, shaking his hand. 'I think it might be your nose. Duane, what do you think?'

She looked at Duane for a moment, before rolling her eyes. 'He says that it's because I'm an idiot who couldn't tie her shoes within the span of a week.' She took a sidelong glance at Duane, before looking back at Harris. 'I can, for the record, and I'm very happy about it.'

Some part of his being was whispering to him that he was going to have to try a little harder to if he wanted to catch Miguel's attention. Perhaps it was something about him having cut off in the middle of his sentence. Unfortunately for that little part, it was ever so quiet, and so couldn't actually commune with Apecian to tell him to clean up his speech, too. He paused to think about the question. "About six months, I think," he finally said. "I'm not sure about that, though. I can't ever remember to keep track of time, most days. But, yeah, about that long. So, where do you work? I mean, what kind of continua. And department, if you feel like it."

'Hello, Miss Nalleb-' He shook his head. 'Alleb, pardon me.' He extended a bony hand. 'I am Bernhard Bingard Bingle, but most people call me "Bingle," or "You." How are you?' He leant in a smidge. 'You look terribly nervous, you know.' Bingle, himself, didn't look particularly nervous at all. He didn't look anything beyond placid.