[OPEN] Valentine's Mingle

[passingmod]

Who: Everyone! Open to All
What: Valentine's Day mingle logs
When: any time generally around the holiday
Where: awkward cupid / conversation hearts / repay the gesture

Love is in the air, from chocolated Japan to cherubic America, from Victorian times to the far-off future. There are dreams of romance, candy, timid (and bold!) love confessions, and hearts everywhere.

(ooc: This is a post to keep threads together for Valentine's Day. Separate posts or additional subthreads are also fine, and this one is optional. Since some of the affects have potential to force a character's reactions icly, it may be best to discuss between the players or note your preferences/anything you'd rather avoid.)

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CONVERSATION HEARTS

[passingmod]

It's a giant warehouse. There are bowls, buckets, even entire vats of conversation hearts around with all kinds of messages. Eating one will make its words come true, whether it's a simple 'hug me' or something far more close or passionate.

Or maybe these hearts are totally personalized, such as 'go soak your head'. It's all about the feeling.

[If the players wish, candy hearts can appear on the characters' pillows when they wake up. For fun, there's also a candy heart maker here.]

[waterfell]

She's in a warehouse, one she's never seen before much less walked through. There are absolute piles of little candy hearts, so many she thinks if they were all dumped out, she could swim in them.

She's pretty certain Japan doesn't even have warehouses and factories making those, but here they are and somehow that doesn't seem to be strange. She looks through the nearest vat. The messages at the top are cold words, callous, on candy dyed shockingly black.

Her fingers tighten together. But somehow, something compels her to go on, and she keeps sifting through them. She reaches deep down below, to some place beyond the black. Whatever she finds seems to be an improvement, because she begins to slowly take a few out and hold them in her hand. Most of these are blue.

[decaying]

Some place, hu?

[Kanda wasn't big on candy but he knew someone who was. There were all sorts of words on them but he had made it a point to only find the right ones. He put a bucket of candies down on Ami's feet with a grin on her face.]

Got you some.

[waterfell]

[Kanda's appearance was enough to startle Ami from her reverie, but she recovered quickly as soon as she recognized him. She turned her head to look down at the candy bucket. A holdover of fear from the black ones gripped her briefly, making her reluctant to look and see words like that from him, but she knelt down to pick one out and hold it up.]

What does it say? [She glanced at its expression, with far more avid interest than her careful posture would suggest.]

[decaying]

Don't act dumb. I know you can read. [He felt so sure of himself. Nice and smug. He normally wouldn't do things like this but it had hit him it was something corny to do for the girl you liked. He didn't know the repercussions of course, but who cared. Every heart in that bucket said 'kiss me'. Totally original.]

[waterfell]

[Of course Ami could read. She picked up a small handful of the hearts, a little rainbow of colorful messages, and stood up before looking at them.

Kiss me... kiss me... kiss me... kiss me... (and it went on like that).

Before she could make a joke, or laugh at the sameness, she found herself, uncharacteristically shameless and heedless of whether others were nearby, pulling Kanda to her for a kiss.

And then another.

Another.

One more... little, fleeting kisses at his lips that lengthened with each new one until somehow she'd reached the same number of kisses as the hearts in her hand.]

[decaying]

[Kanda had been expecting a positive response from Ami but he didn't think it would come this quickly. He was surprised at the first few kisses before taking her in his arms and kissing her in return. She was normally not into public displays of affection but he wasn't a sucker to shove her off.]

...I guess you liked the thought.

[braidstobows]

[Homura had made a thorough search of the premises before examining any of the stacks of candy hearts. Part of her was ready to brush it off as the childish nonsense it clearly was, but amid all the pink, she couldn't help thinking it would be a sight Madoka would have enjoyed.

She didn't remember ever being somewhere like this before, and perhaps a year ago, that would have been a worry; a timeline should not have diverged so far as to leave her clueless. Now, it was... not unpleasant, she supposed, the freedom of not knowing what was coming next, the release from Cassandra's burden of warning.

The hearts had very typical messages. But among them, she found a few that seemed oddly specific to her own feelings. She picked these out and kept them. There were so many; it didn't feel wrong to take a handful or two.]

[one_one_se7en]

John sits on the grass as his visor stares at the silvery lake in front of him... strangely melding with a city behind it. From up there, he could see several couples moving together, acting together. Not unlike how he saw many friends of his live.

His fingers hold some strange hearts that appeared in his ammo slots, many with thoughts more accurate than he would have admitted them. It confused him somewhat. But little by little, he wondered if he was coming to understand it.

He looks at his radar. Maybe somebody else is here. He felt out of place in here.

[waterfell]

Ami walks the shoreline; the tiny waves lap at her bare feet and wet them. Where she steps in the saturated ground, her footprint fills with the overflow. Nothing of her shows on John's radar. She holds one of the candy pieces tightly in her hand, gripped hard as it presses into her palm.

She approaches where he sits. For once, she is the taller, and when she is close enough, she looks wordlessly down at him seated on the grass for several moments before speaking. It takes her a moment to work up the words.

Or the courage.

"You saw me with Kanda," she reminds John bluntly, without preamble. There's a pause before she adds, "Did my face look like someone in love?" The tense way she stands, the sense of withheld emotion, suggest the answer's importance to her.

And she has no one else to ask.

[one_one_se7en]

He doesn't react when he hears the name of Kanda. He had that conversation. In spite of their differences, and of their clashing morals, they both cared for Ami. He was not sure if more would need to be spoken.

That being said, his helmet jerks at Ami as soon as she asks him something she really could have found someone wiser for.

He knew of the four loves: He felt storge towards Ami and his Spartans, philia towards Lasky and Johnson (rest his soul)... and agape, sometimes eros towards Cortana. It was possible Ami meant that -- agape.

For a moment, John stays silent, thankful of the expression hidden inside of his helmet, before he processes an answer.

"You'll know if you felt that."

[waterfell]

Unfortunately, John was slightly wrong about the nature of the feelings Ami was questioning. Actually, she had no doubts that she was attracted to Kanda. Maybe the doubt was really agape after all, whether she was capable of that kind of true feeling, unselfishly.

She'd know, he said. But she didn't know. Did that mean no? (Or did it mean whatever was missing from her might have known?)

She settles for saying what she does know, as though prompting John to either confirm or deny it, to tell her if it meant love or something else.

"I want to see him some day," she begins. "A part of me wants to think there's a chance of that."

[one_one_se7en]

His visor slowly moves back to the river. Even without Ami's knowledge of it, for him, it turns too obvious.

She was.

"Kanda said the same."

The memory of Mercury appearing in the chaos of the UNSC Infinity, between humans and fanatical aliens staring in awe for almost a minute, unable to understand what they were seeing -what they would be up against-. All the way, until defying the Didact, and putting a point clear towards him: He was facing the two strongest warriors of their universes, and he would not win.

"And we found eachother. Didn't we?"

She will find him. He knows she will find him.

[waterfell]

She lowers her head as she confesses, "I knew he would say that." He'd said it to her, once. She finds a way to look at John as she explains, "That's why I want to try, too. I want to try to find a way for us to meet."

John is right about their own impossible meetings - more than once. She still isn't sure she believes it can end that happily, but she does want to try. She has regrets born of refusing; she wants to put her regrets to rest, quicker this time.

It still doesn't answer whether she loves the person she's thinking of. Whether this will last or whether it's another inevitable end. Whether it's enough. Whether wanting to be with him and wanting to work to make a way means love, or whether love is something more tender, less grasping.

"I wonder, what if it ends," she finally says.

[forhiscause]

Cortana had known about holidays the humans tended to celebrate but being on military bases or ships in space made it really difficult to see it first hand. She had heard some soldiers talking about how their women back home would normally send them treats or questionable pictures as gifts, but that was it. Love was an emotion she had been told she could never understand. Being a machine had that fault, but she wasn't so sure anymore.

Thankfully, Cortana had mastered the art of walking or else she probably wouldn't have gotten far inside the warehouse. She was looking inside bucket after bucket, still unsure whether she should grab at anything or not. She didn't want to be disappointed so instead she kept her hands at her sides as she moved around the warehouse reading a few hearts here and there. Sometimes, their words would make her stop and think. Why was she finding all the raunchy hearts?

"'Take me'. Seriously? That's not subtle at all?" She gave the bucket a disapproving look before peering into another. "'Come for me'. Well, I wonder what that means." She'll just move away from this general area. This is clearly the marine's section. The things that those men can come up with....

[waterfell]

If she were honest, Mercury had to admit that Kunzite's so-obvious interest had been flattering, a balm to those feelings of being left behind and forgotten. She'd liked leading him forward, holding him off, being wanted and most of all, having it on her own terms. Knowing that in this, at least, she could deny and refuse him even as she was bound to the life he gave her in the Darkness.

There'd been a price. Over the years, and as she grown from a girl into an adult, she'd seen the amusement fade from his eyes and something dark take their place. The explicit hearts reminded her of it. She didn't like that. She looked away from them until she found an 'i want all of you' next to an 'undress me' in green. Hmm.

She nearly dropped on the floor in her haste to put them back where she'd found them as soon as she spotted Cortana: the same AI, she remembered, who'd called her a centerfold, and was now standing in front of the aforementioned explicit hearts, who could probably see the ones she'd read. Filthy-minded machine. (Or just curious. Mercury herself knew that curiosity all too well.)

"What a sentimental place." There was sarcasm there.

[forhiscause]

"What are you talking about, these are completely classy come-on's in some part of the galaxy."

Sure, she didn't have any proof of this but it was totally a comedic thing to say. She grinned, moving about more buckets to look in the ones she had been inspecting. She reached for one.

"Too bad undressing me won't work. I don't think I was programmed with any clothes."

[waterfell]

Mercury had several types of lingerie stored very privately on her teletia-S. Cortana was missing out.

That wasn't the point here!

"Try dressing instead," she suggested mischievously. It was much less embarrassing to think about in terms of an AI. Besides, there was something faintly amusing about the idea of turning the entire concept on its head.

[forhiscause]

"An A.I. with clothing? As much as the idea strikes my interest, I doubt I could find something to match all of this blue. And lights."

She looked down at her body, the streams of data lines and raw information. She was such a light-bulb like this. It was different when she was small and literally pocket-sized. As human height, she was just... an inconvenience.

[waterfell]

She had a mental image of Cortana in some normal, everyday dress.

The AI had a point. The blue, plenty of colors would probably complement. The light would become awkward, partly shaded by fabric.

"So you'll stay as you are," she observed. "So why are you looking through these types of messages?"

[one_one_se7en]

For a long time, Spartans barely even knew of Valentine's day. It took five years of being thrown into situations that forced him to adapt -to evolve- when he realized what it was. And for a long time, he didn't even pay attention to it.

Now? He is left confused as soon as he hears Cortana -along those words-. And once he sees her blue figure in here, he hesitates.

She's here. In dreams.

"How...?"

[forhiscause]

"What do you mean how?"

The concept of walking around buckets was definitely odd but she hadn't quite yet realized that he could be there too. Hearing John's voice wasn't rare, they were always together, weren't they? His deep calm voice did wonders to her mood. He was always so held together, all that training had done that she knew, but it was one of the many reasons why he needed it. She didn't bother turning around, she figured his voice was just a ghost.

"I know everything and I would gladly explain but there's just some things not worth mentioning between friends. I'm not having 'the talk' with you."

[one_one_se7en]

He doesn't react to her teases, as he rarely does. But even hearing her is enough to feel happy. The change in his voice is noticeable.

What he meant was something entirely different. He walks towards her. One hand extends to try to hold hers.

"You're here. In dreams."

He didn't know this was possible for A.I.s. And yet she's here.

[forhiscause]

"Crazy, right?"

Things didn't become real until she felt something solid in her hand. She looked down to see the black mesh of Chief's armor and her body froze, whatever she had for a heart beat faster and it was clear on her body as the data streams flow sped up. She glowed a little brighter. She turned around hopefully catching sight of that tall green armored soldier and stared right at that visor.

"Chief." She hadn't dreamt about him yet, at least not awake, but it was bound to happen, wasn't it? Her fingers tightened around his, the thrill of touching him making those data streams pulse. "Who else would I dream of if it wasn't you?"

[one_one_se7en]

"Electric sheep?"

He dreamed of the people he couldn't save too many times. Until Ami brought his Cortana from the brink of rampancy, she had been the most common image haunting him. Wishing she could accompany him once again.

And here she was.

"But thanks."

His voice is low. Even beneath his armor, this dream lets him feel her touch -- what he imagined her touch would be like. He held both hands as he walked closer, wanting to hold her.

Spartan discipline, and five years away from her coming in conflict.