Application for Mordichai Black: Julie Kenner's Aphrodite series

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

Being unexpectedly transported to an unfamiliar castle wasn't the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to Mordi, but it was going to put a crimp in his afternoon plans.

He looked like a businessman who'd been dressed by Batman. Mordi's fine Italian suit was offset by a flowing cape and binoculars clipped to his belt. "Hello? What's going on?" He looked around for the person who had teleported him, but didn't see anyone. Maybe they had the power of invisibility, along with teleportation.

Then he saw the paper on the table, and the feeling of confusion drained away to exasperation. "Paperwork," he sneered. Even on a good day, Mordi radiated smarminess and condescension. The sneer wasn't anything special. "You brought me here for paperwork?" The "you" being the Venerate Council, of course, but on closer examination there didn't seem to the multiple forms (all in triplicate) that were the hallmark of the Council's paperwork.

Knowing that if he blew off this form, there'd be even more down the line, he hunkered down and filled out the questions.



State your full name.
Mordichai Black

1. What is your favorite cheese? Why is it your favorite?
Swiss. Why is this even on here? Whose business is it what cheese I like?

2. Who would you kill first, Barney or Carrottop?
Killing mortals is bad. I am not my father's son.

That was either the worst trick question of all time, or Zeus forbid, enough people had considered the proposition to warrant a question on some random form.

3. What time is it where you are?
10:13 He'd had to sneak a peak at the monstrosity of a watch on his wrist. Knowing the time wasn't one of his superpowers.

4. If you were Albus Dumbledore returned from the dead, which member of the Order of the Phoenix would you sexually harass? How would you harass them? If you are Albus Dumbledore, please answer as if you were Sirius Black.

Seriously? He left that one blank. There was no way any sort of answer was going in his record.

5. If you are pushing to be in:

A. Slytherin - please state the clever, witty name of the bar in which you bartend, in the dark.
I suppose that 'Black' isn't clever enough. What about Protectors who can't see in the dark? Whoever authorized this question needs to be reprimanded.

B. Gryffindor – Debate whether Harry should ultimately end up married to Fred or George. Use examples from a variety of world mythologies to bolster your argument.
You want mythology to bolster claims for marriage? That was not exactly our ancestor's strong points.

He decided this must be some sort of test, maybe to see who had read the latest handbook. Except these were things every superhero should have known since childhood. Even Halflings like himself and his cousin had had the rules drilled into their heads from an early age.

C. Ravenclaw – You guys are supposed to be smart. Explain why my desk is inundated with paperwork at all times, even though I’m constantly disposing of it.
Because you're disposing of the white form, but keeping the pink, yellow, and chartreuse ones. Sometimes the Council was predictable.

D. Hufflepuff – Prove you are not useless.
What did that mean? At a loss, Mordi wrote down his powers. I'm a pyrokinetic shapeshifter. I've passed all of the standard requirements for Halflings on the Council. For specifics, please see my personnel file.

6. Offer a bribe to the members of this community so that they will not squib you. Items used in bribery do not necessarily have to belong to the person offering the bribe. Do not threaten us rather than offering a bribe. A threat indicates you either don't really want to be here, or don't have enough sense to answer the question properly. The hat will automatically squib you, regardless of other votes, if you do.

Thinking it was another trick question, he left it blank. When the inevitable enlightenment came, he would offer lots and lots of money as a bribe.

((I have permission from Simon Tam's mun to use the same PB. Meta is encouraged.))

"I have read the [info]hogwarts_hocus faq, and understand it is a crazy, cracktastic sorting community and RPG. ___MB_________
I have read the [info]hogwarts_hocus rules and agree to abide by each and every one of them. ____MB_______.
I agree to be a good sport and not get my knickers in a bunch. ____MB_______.
One day, marmalade will rule the world. _____MB________"

Comments

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"Um. Yes."

Mordi had now been clued in to the fact that the Council had nothing to do with this, and had written sensitive information on a form that had conveniently magically replicated itself for everyone to read. It was by no means as bad as some of the incidents he'd been in (fireballs at SeaWorld, anyone?) but he needed to cover it up. If his dignity had to be sacrificed, so be it.

"I'm insane. That stuff on the form is all made up. Pay no attention to it. Or me."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

For a second it looked like Chance was about to do just that -- pay no attention: turn around and leave. She did turn around.

Then, reluctantly, she turned back.

"Much as that appeals," she said flatly, "I can't do that." She owed him better than that. Owed the previous Simon, maybe, but at some level they were the same, even she had to admit it. Was the Dancy Flammarion of her dream/memories a different person than the Dancy Flammarion she'd seen in a Florida madhouse? It'd be more comfortable to think so, more comfortable by far, but Chance's gut knew the answer, however her brain might try to equivocate. Same with popcorn. People who'd been popcorn. Simon might have forgotten the help he'd given her -- not just one day, but months of sustained care -- but his cleared mind didn't clear her slate of debt.

"Why are you wearing a cape and binoculars? Did you decide you were, I don't know, a birdwatching superhero?" She tried to sound ... not so acerbic. She might have failed in that attempt. "Have you hit your head, or ...?" Chance was running low on explanations and excuses, today.

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

He'd completely forgotten that he was wearing his favorite propulsion cloak. Since flying unassisted was not one of his powers, the propulsion/invisibility cloak made spying unseen from high locations that much easier. Since he wasn't about to soar through the New York skyline anytime soon, he looked like a loon with it on.

Mordi took the cloak off and started folding it up. "That's what it looks like, doesn't it? As a matter of fact, I was birdwatching, and I was cold." Gods, that sounded stupid. "I'm fine, really. You can go."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"You were birdwatching, and you were cold." Chance repeated the words with clear skepticism. "Yeah." She crossed her arms. He was acting ... weird was an understatement. Uncharacteristic, she thought. That was the word.

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"You've got it."

Obviously she didn't believe him, but maybe if he stuck to his rediculous story she'd stop asking questions. Go away, he thought, but suggestion wasn't one of his powers, either.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Of course she didn't believe him. When she'd seen him in here at first, he'd been wearing a lost look that made her think of the way she felt after one of her damn-near-trademarked trilobite-induced fugue states. That seemed to have quickly changed to a self-conscious defensiveness. She couldn't blame him for that, really, either.

"You don't want to talk to me, that's fine. I ought to go get Brennan or something, then. Don't insult my intelligence by pretending everything's normal, okay?"

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"Look," Mordi said running his hand through his hair and looking a bit weary, "I don't think you're stupid, but I can't tell you what's going on. Go get whoever you want. I'll tell them the same thing. It'll be a lot easier if we pretend that I'm telling the truth."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, okay." Chance didn't have to deal with the attitude. (The un-Simon-like attitude, actually; when had he ever been this pissy? Well ... all right, Simon could be pissy. And obstinate. And a pain in the ass. So, maybe not so un-Simon-like. She just wasn't used to being on the receiving end of it.) Doctor Tam was someone else's problem these days.

Let him deal with it.

She left Simon where he was, and went to go find Billy Brennan. Odds were pretty stellar that he'd be with the dinosaur skeleton he'd gotten for Christmas.

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

She finally left, and Mordi breathed a sigh of relief. Until she came back with a beefy guy who looked concerned. Great. Save the Council one headache and get committed. He should have just said to hell with it and let the Mortal Liaison Office deal with the fallout.

"So Chance tells me you've gone insane," the man said. He picked up an application, read it quickly, and turned to Chance. "I'm not sure if Simon is creative enough to come up with a name like Mordichai."

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance hadn't even looked at the application -- hadn't even noticed it was there, before. She scowled. It wasn't unheard-of for a person who already lived at Hogwarts to fill out a Sorting application, she was sure, though she couldn't think of any specific examples. But Mordichai?

"That's awfully biblical for spacemen," she admitted. "It's like something off a tombstone in --" Ugh. She put a hand to her temple. "Never mind." Old North Burial Ground? Best to let Billy take the lead, she decided. "You know him better than I do."

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"Hello?" Mordi interjected. "Can I say something here? Mordichai isn't that unheard of." In the Protector world, at least.

"You're getting me mixed up with that doctor." He'd been holding out hope that the man was a mimic of some sort (he was definitely an ass, but that wasn't a superpower), but this seemed to confirm that he went around looking like that all the time.

"I'm Mordi. Your friend already came and left."

[bone-not-rock.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, that explained a lot.

Billy's first introduction to doppelgangers had been a lecture along the lines of thou shalt not talk to Damien Thorn. This time the resemblance was much more striking, down to the fancy clothes.

Billy would regret having missed the cape when he found out about it.

"So, Mordi," he said. "How's that pyrokinesis working out for you?"

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance's eyes flickered from face to face. She thought, vaguely, that she ought to be embarrassed. Instead, she was relieved, and also a little annoyed, irrationally enough.

"It's bizarre," she said. "You don't just look alike, you talk alike." That was not the case with Grant and Thorn and Sidney Reilly, all of whom Chance knew, all of whom had a distinctive style setting him apart from the others quite definitely. "And hold yourselves the same way." Something to do with the way they wore their clothes, or their clothes draped on them. Something physical, she supposed, and therefore stupid to talk about.

"Sorry," she said to Mordi. "Honest mistake. Simon's ..." She shrugged. "Not my friend. His friend," she tilted her head to indicate Billy. "Around here, strange things sometimes happen, that's all. I don't think you're even the first pyrokinetic we've seen." Thinking of Gillian, there. She missed the girl.

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

Mordi facepalmed.

"I'm not even the first," he muttered. He'd just made himself look like a complete fool for nothing. "So if this isn't Council business, and I'm not the first Protector to come through here, what in Hades is going on?"

[bone-not-rock.livejournal.com]

"Birdwatching in the cold, apparently." That was too good to pass up. Even the real Simon was going to hear about that.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

Chance's mouth twitched. The remark made her think Billy might understand why Simon-in-a-cape would have to be Simon-gone-off-the-deep-end.

"That's what the man said."

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"Apparently, since this isn't the great secret that I thought it was, no, I was not birdwatching. I was getting ready to do some surveillance before I got teleported here."

He shook out the folded cape. "It's a propulsion and invisibility cloak. I'm guessing that if you've already had people throwing fireballs around, this isn't too exciting." Mordi folded it back up instead of putting it on, because really, it did look stupid with his suit.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Depends on how the cloak works. Invisibility cloaks aren't common around here, but they're not unheard-of. Propulsion --" She shrugged. "People fly on broomsticks. I'm not kidding. Anyway ..." Chance looked to Billy, and addressed him: "Sorry about dragging you in here. I should've realized it wasn't what it looked like."

Hufflepuff

[bone-not-rock.livejournal.com]

"Are you kidding?" Billy said to Chance. "I wouldn't have missed this for the world."

He turned to Mordi. "You and Simon should work something out, or at least mix up your fashion sense a little. A word of advice: avoid vests, if you can. I'm also guessing that sticking you in Ravenclaw would be a bad idea. I don't think Simon goes to Hufflepuff very often."

Re: Hufflepuff

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

"Maybe you wouldn't have missed it for the world, but I could have done without it." Chance shook her head. "Do me a favor and keep this under your hat?" Figurative hat, of course. Billy in a hat would just look odd. "Simon doesn't need to know I flipped out."

Which she really hadn't. She'd been concerned, but she hadn't flipped out. Had acted fairly reasonably, if hastily. So what she was really saying might be Simon doesn't need to know I worried about him. But since she was saying it to someone who was her friend and who also happened to be dating Simon, she didn't need to dig too deeply into her own motives or reasoning. She could take herself at face value.

She gave Billy a rueful half-smile, tacit permission to go do something cape-related or dinosaur-related, now that they knew the evil trilobites had not infected Simon.

As for Mordi ... the mun forgot Chance was going to explain about HH doppelgangers "Now that I know who you aren't," she said, ruefully, "I should probably figure out who you are, before I make any votes. Billy may have the right idea, but on the other hand, Hufflepuff may not be your bag."

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"I'm Mordi." He held out a hand for her to shake. "I don't suppose that I'll be able to convince you that I'm not this much of an idiot when I know what's going on."

Billy waved to them both and went off to find the real Simon, to offer consolation or maybe lighthearted teasing.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

A bit stiffly, Chance obliged with a handshake. "I'm Chance Silvey. And I'm the idiot in this scenario, actually. I'm sorry I put you through that. Ending up here by surprise is shock enough for most people; I can't think how I'd have dealt with it if people insisted I was someone else when I first got here. If it's any consolation at all, you're not the only person here who's got a double running around. A friend of mine has got two of them." Which made them triplets rather than doubles, she supposed absently. Never mind. "But for them, the similarity ends with the surface appearance. It didn't even occur to me that you might be a double."

She had other reasons for assuming automatically that another Simon was another Simon, but that was too weird and Hogwarts-y (not to mention too awkward) to discuss with Mordi, who was a stranger and who wasn't likely to be interested anyway. The intricacies of popcorn etiquette were not on the Sorting agenda.

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"The face was bad enough, but then he had the gall to insist that I was stealing his." Never mind that Mordi had made the same claim.

[chance-silvey.livejournal.com]

The funny thing was, Chance could imagine this. Had she been drinking anything, she'd have lost a sip there.

"To be fair," she pointed out, once the weird look of I would so be sporfling something had cleared, "you did write that you're a shapeshifter. And if you were looking for a face to steal, you could do a lot worse."

[shifter-mordi.livejournal.com]

"Shapeshifters do have regular faces," he explained, rolling his eyes. "If I was using somebody else's face while undercover, it would hardly do me any good to point out that I was a shapeshifter, would it?"