After the Dancesaster

[magicdancer]

Who: Shantae, Alorah, Brown, Inigo, and possibly Schezo
What: A few conversations need to be had following the incident at the first Dance Club meeting.
Where: All over
When: Following Dance Club

What happened on that fateful Wednesday could best be described as... a spectacle. One gigantic train wreck that just kept piling on until it reached critical mass. And it all started with a boy hiding in a barrel.

Shantae suspected, but could not confirm equivocally, that Inigo was interested in learning to dance, but was just embarrassed at the prospect. So she understood why he hid himself in that barrel, even if she thought it was kinda crazy.

Then there was Brown, who set the disaster in motion with his magic. Or rather, his other self's magic, as he explained it to her earlier.

There was Schezo, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and tried to kill Brown afterwards.

And Alorah, who witnessed the whole thing, including Shantae flipping out and turning into an elephant to straighten everyone out.

All of these things hung in the air, and needed resolution.

Comments

[docilehearted]

The nice thing about being roommates with Shantae: it made the inevitable post-Dance Club talk extremely easy to have.

When Shantae returned to their shared dorm, it would be to a small bowl of cut-up fruit and Alorah comfortably situated at her work desk, hand-stitching what would eventually be a stuffed animal's arm.

"Oh, welcome home! Um... I made a snack. You can help yourself, if you're hungry."

[magicdancer]

Shantae certainly didn't mind coming home to this. She could get used to living like this, she thought, as she came in to the smell of fresh fruit. "Thanks, Alorah! I'm starving... I skipped lunch before practice today."

Shantae took a seat on her bed, taking a nice slice of apple and munching on it.

[docilehearted]

Alorah smiled down at her stitching -- it was always nice when her little gestures paid off. She was willing to guess Shantae'd probably had her hands full with the fallout from that puzzling standoff in the hallway after Dance Club, after all.

"I hope skipping lunch isn't something you do very often," Alorah said, already starting to recall how much she missed making Gold's lunches every day, but it was no use getting carried away with that sort of thing. "You really do love dancing, don't you, Shantae?"

[magicdancer]

"No it's not, don't worry about that," she reassured her. "It's been a busy day after all!"

She leaned back in her chair, settling in. "Yeah, dancing is really important to me," Shantae explained. "It makes me feel like I'm kinda... connecting with my roots."

[docilehearted]

"Oh? How so?"

Alorah looked up from her sewing, urging Shantae to continue. She really didn't know much at all about her new roommate, after all, aside from the fact that she ran the Dance Club and may or may not have been some sort of humanized elephant.

REDO for later that day

[manforflowers]

Inigo might have collected himself after that pitiful display, but that didn't mean he was any more willing to face up to it just yet. He ran off on his own again, rather wishing that the earth would just open up from underneath him and swallow him whole. Pathetic. No energy left to just smile it off, all the mercenary wanted to do was to find somewhere private he could sulk and mope.

He hadn't been around long enough to have any good hiding spots scoped out, and he didn't want to return to his dorm just in case Pidge was there. So instead, he just kept running. He found himself running up and up until... there was nowhere to go anymore - on the rooftop.

Fresh air. With a sigh, he dragged himself over to the ledge and sat down.

[magicdancer]

After the club had dispersed, Shantae knew she had to talk to Inigo about what happened. He had reacted so badly that day they met when she tried to encourage him to dance, that she could only imagine how badly he was reacting now. She searched all over the school for him, and when she didn't find him, she decided she needed a bird's eye view.

Or rather, a harpy's eye view.

After transforming, she flapped up into the air, eyes scanning the grounds for any sign of the nervous prince. As soon as she spotted him on a rooftop, she dove down and flew right for him.

[manforflowers]

Mopey he might've been, but a lifetime of fighting a hopeless, brutal war on all sides had kept his instincts honed sharp to attack. Inigo's head snapped up to meet the source of that sound. A sharp flap of wings in the air could've easily been an assault from an undead Pegasus knight, but this time it came from some sort of malformed Laguz?

Whatever it was, it was diving for him. The mercenary's eyes steeled, suddenly calm but determined.

"If it's not one thing, it's another..." he muttered to himself. In a flash, his sword was drawn and he prepared for the incoming blow.

[magicdancer]

But that blow never came. The harpy took a sharp curve over his head and landed on the rooftop behind him. As he turned, a bright flash of light signaled the transformation of the harpy back into the purple haired genie. She turned to face him.

"I've been looking everywhere for you, you know," she told him.

[manforflowers]

Inigo spun around, only to be blinded by the intense burst of light - huh? It wasn't until he opened his eyes again and saw Shantae standing there that he lowered his sword. First elephants, now half-bird monsters? She really was a woman of many talents...

Somewhat sheepishly, Inigo relaxed out of his fighting stance. "Didn't anyone ever tell you? It's rather dangerous to be diving at armed men," he said, trying to keep things light. Still, there was a worried air to him - he'd come this close to trying to kill her, without even realizing. If he hadn't been trained to anticipate enemy attacks, well... he didn't want to think about what might've happened.

[cowardlyjustice]

The thing about Brown was the fact he was quite the mobile person, even when he wasn't making an escape from some poor, unfortunate soul he accidentally messed up. While he would normally just let bygones be bygones should the other person give him the chance, it would take more than the usual time for people to cool down, especially considering what happened can only be described as a disaster; only second to that time he accidentally struck lightning to more than half of his friends to prove truth behind a rumor. Long story.

So, of course, he had decided to be mature about the whole thing and take refugee in his radio station when he wasn't attending for class- which was quite often really.

The couch in his office was comfy enough as a makeshift bed, it was certainly relaxing to lie down and continue off reading Shakespeare's The Tempest. He was absolutely off-guard, because he was quite certain that his escape had been successful.

[magicdancer]

Knock Knock

Evidently not successful enough.

[cowardlyjustice]

Graceful as he was, Brown shot right up.

And abruptly fell right off from the couch with a loud thump.

There were more fumbling noises before he unlocked the door.

"Oh- er, Shantae! What brings you here to my humble retreat?" There is nothing humble about holding yourself up in your office, Brown.

[magicdancer]

"Did you fall over in there?" she asked right away, after hearing that loud thump. "Er, sorry, I'm just here because I figure we should probably talk about what the heck happened back at the club," she admitted. "Can I come in?"

[cowardlyjustice]

"Nah, not at all, step right into the office!" Brown motioned her inside.

"Er, sorry about the mess, I had been crashing here for a few days." And it shows, with the school issued laptop placed on the coffee table right next to a stack of books he borrowed off from the library. Though otherwise, it could have been worse, but there was evidently a pile of leftovers overflowing the trashcan on the corner.

[areiard]

Schezo could be found outside for once, secluding himself from all the noise and ruckus that happened just a little while before. He was somewhere close to the woods and the surrounding was fairly darker than the rest of the campus.

Darkness and solitude, that's what Schezo needed at the time to calm his irritated nerves. So there he was, getting back in tune with the element he specialized.

[magicdancer]

Oh. Well. She hadn't expected to see Schezo again so soon, let alone here of all places. She wasn't looking for him, but now that she found him, she felt it would be a good time to say what needed to be said.

"Uh, hey there," she called out to him, having not gotten his name after the previous incident.

[areiard]

That voice. He remembered it all too well; perhaps it was predictable, seeing how he made the worst impression he could ever do.

"It's you." He replied, tense. Can you tell he preferred to stay away from you? He didn't want to be called a pervert by more people than he knew already. "What do you want?"

[magicdancer]

"I, uh... I wanted to apologize to you," she told him honestly, grabbing the tip of her ponytail and playing with it. "It was a weird situation, you fell on me, I was angry. I shouldn't have called you a pervert."

She amazed herself with how rational she could be sometimes.

[areiard]

Schezo gave a surprised look for a moment. While he was used to being called a pervert (as much as he didn't want to be called one), he wasn't used to being apologized after the fact. The surprise goes away with a frown with a narrowed look of suspicion.

"What is your business? No one ever bothers to apologize for name-calling as such."

for Brown

[manforflowers]

It took a day or two, but Inigo (as usual) managed to bounce back from the terminal case of embarrassment he'd suffered. Past is past, so he just had to pick himself up and keep going.

It was totally by coincidence one day that walking down the hall, he spotted the brown-haired guy with goggles again. This time, intent on making a better impression, the mercenary trotted towards him and called, "Hey! You're the guy from the other day, aren't you?"

[cowardlyjustice]

As one would expect from him, Brown flinched. While he wasn't necessarily still hanging his head of it, he wasn't entirely over it either.

"Oh hey it's- you again," the words 'the guy in the barrel' were on the tip of his tongue, but that would probably stir more trouble. Curse you Henry and your curses, and your curses cursing him even further by making a habit despite the curse being more of a metaphor than an actual curse.

[manforflowers]

He'd ignore that flinch, but Inigo was getting the feeling that this guy could be kinda jumpy. And jump-the-gun-y.

But that just meant that the mercenary would have to be the bigger man here. He put his hands on his hips and, with an easy-going smile, told him, "Look, I just figured I'd say... no hard feelings, yeah? Even if you completely ruined my hiding spot and all."

[cowardlyjustice]

He blinked before laughing it off, "yeah, no worried man, still 's a weird place t'hide!"

"Oh, who am I kiddin', there were worse places to hide than that," he added as he patted Inigo's shoulder. Still, it brings up the question why he was doing in there. While he had initially thought it was probably some ulterior motive, it wouldn't have resulted the poor guy to run off in panic like that, especially knowing that he seemed to have this 'cool guy' persona to him.

I'M SORRY THIS IS SO LATE kill me

[manforflowers]

Sounding just a touch defensive, Inigo huffed and told him, "Well I'm open to suggestions, you know! There's not a lot of things to hide behind in a room with a floor to ceiling mirror."

Actually, thinking back, he'd been talking to Shantae before the whole incident, hadn't he? Not for attending dance class's sake, either. Was he a friend of hers, or...?

"What's the deal with you and Shantae, anyway? I saw you two chatting it up." She totally didn't seem like the kind of girl who would fall for such a dork.