Application for Arthur: Inception

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

Arthur came into the sorting room carrying his coat, a leather messenger bag, a rolling suitcase, and a sleek silver briefcase. The scowl he was wearing wasn't a result of suddenly ending up here, although it certainly made it deeper.

He had no idea how he'd gotten here, and that was a very bad thing.

He had just been picking up the suitcase at a train station, since the shiny silver screamed "INSPECT ME" in airports and it had to be transported discreetly. Arthur wondered if he'd been grabbed just after that, because he'd been going down into dreams long enough to be able to remember what happened before he went under. The seamless transition from train station to ...castle? ...lair? ...or whatever this was had him on edge. First things first, though. He pulled a red die out of his pocket and walked over to the conveniently placed table in the center of the room. He set the briefcase down (neatly, lined up with one of the table legs) and put his coat over the handle of the suitcase (folded carefully, no wrinkles).

The rolled die came up one number. He rolled it again and it came up the same. Third time, fourth time, and fifth time the same, and he felt more assured that it wasn't statistical probability affecting the outcome.

If the die was right, then that meant reality had gotten weird without bothering to tell him. Arthur did not appreciate that, because reality followed certain patterns, and he could track and record those patterns. When Arthur had facts and data and observations in front of him he was happy, and all was right in the world, even if the data told him that things were going tits up in a hurry and plans would have to change.

If the die was wrong, well, he didn't want to think about that.

The die had raised more questions than it had answered, but at least he had something to go off of and it was time to figure out what to do next. There was a piece of paper and a quill. Arthur read the paper, and his scowl slowly started to turn into a look of bewilderment. The only part that made sense was the bribe, but maybe he could get out of here before it came to that.

He inspected the door (locked, and a few good tugs, swift kicks, a credit card, and even the jackknife lock-pick kit hidden in his suitcase couldn't get it open), and after that the windows (way too high).

The door kicking had left his three piece suit slightly disheveled, and Arthur straightened himself out before continuing. Arthur's composure was held together with hair gel and tailoring, and they hadn't failed him yet. And what tailoring it was. He wore his painstaking attention to detail on his sleeve, as it were. Everything down to his socks and suspenders was coordinated, pressed, shined, and really expensive. Combined with his painfully straight posture, Arthur gave off the vibe of person with a serious stick up his ass.

Now he was a person with a stick up his ass who wanted to shoot something. It was tempting to pull out his gun and put a few bullets in the door, but that was heading down the path of recklessness. So he went back to the table to fill out the form. If things went smoothly (like hell) he could be on his way, but if not he was ready for a fight.

The quill was ignored in favor of the pen Arthur always carried with his ever-present black notebook.

State your full name.
ARTHUR.

1. What is your favorite cheese? Why is it your favorite?
HAVARTI. IT TASTES GOOD ON SANDWICHES.

Actually it was garlic Havarti, but the fewer details he gave out, the better.

2. Who would you kill first, Barney or Carrottop? ^ CARROT TOP
Yes, Arthur corrected the typo in the application. It was habit.

CARROT TOP.

3. What time is it where you are?
10:17

If Arthur had known that his application was shaping up to be one of the more boring ones in recent history, he wouldn't have cared. The questions had not asked where he thought he was, or why Carrot Top, and it was second nature to not give out any more information than was asked for.

The answers were, in fact, that Carrot Top would die because one night, while trying to reset his sleep schedule after a particularly long job, Arthur had ended up watching Chairman of the Board on the hotel TV. The nightmares that resulted had guaranteed the comedian a gruesome, painful death should he ever show up in Arthur's subconscious. And, no matter what his die told him, he strongly suspected that he physically hadn't moved very far from where he'd last been. As for the Havarti, well, that really needed no further explanation. It was good cheese.

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.
If it turned out that this whole thing was a practical joke by Eames, the man was going to die. Repeatedly. And quite possibly in the real world, too.

I WOULD NOT HARASS ANYONE.

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.
THE EDGE.

Derived from limbus, of course. The answer would have been "Arthur's Bar" if the question hadn't specified a witty name. It wasn't that Arthur had no imagination, he just tended to follow the most logical path to reach his answer, If he got to name the bar he most likely owned it, and a bar owned by him would be Arthur's Bar.

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.
It was like college lit all over again. At least he wasn't being graded on it, so he gave a short answer.

IF THIS IS BASED ON MYTH, THEN HARRY SHOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM MARRYING THEM BOTH. POLYGAMY CAN BE FOUND IN MANY MYTHOLOGIES.

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.
YOU'RE PUTTING TOO MUCH TO PAPER AND NOT DISPOSING OF IT PROPERLY.

Paperwork was incriminating evidence, and clutter to boot. Arthur liked his paperwork neatly filed in folders, stapled and collated and hole-punched and indexed to an inch of their lives. Loose, straggling papers, though, were the bane of his existence. When they finished a job he made sure everything was burned.

D. Hufflepuff – Prove you are not useless.
He so very much wanted to write I can kick ass in zero-g, but that would have required context, and it was a skill only good in specific circumstances, anyway.

Arthur was the person who ran point on their jobs, scouting ahead for locations, targets, and potential problems. He could get dirt on anybody and completely cover his tracks when he was done. His job was to know everything, so that the team could get in and out without trouble. Call him a detail-oriented control freak, but his organized and analytical nature made him the best in the business.

Only the bare-bones version went down on paper, though. Anyone who was interested could ask him face-to-face.

I MAKE THINGS RUN SMOOTHLY.

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.
I'M SURE SOMETHING CAN BE WORKED OUT SO I CAN BE ON MY WAY.

Arthur capped the pen and waited. He had some reading material with him (American Journal of Psychology, GQ, Consumer Reports and specs for a fire-proof safe). He flipped the journal open to an article about the effect of odors on memory and waited, one eye on the page, the other on the door.

((Spoiler warning: All of the information in this app can be found in the previews for the movie. There are no spoilers in the application. If a spoiler comes up in the thread, I'll add a warning to the subject line. This promo clip is pretty much all you need to know.))

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

Comments

[smaug-thegolden.livejournal.com]

The doors were firmly secured and designed to keep the latest applicants trapped within the Sorting Room until the Hat had seen to them, and yet gave way without so much as a groan of protest from the hinges when curious residents passed through. Should the applicant try to exit the room even then, they would still find themselves quite unable to.

The form which presently filled the doorway was an immense, red-golden scaled beast walking quadrupedally. Gold and jewels encrusted the elongated neck and underside, glinting in the light as the dragon bowed his horned head and pulled his wings in tight against his body in order to squeeze through the doorway. Smaug had paid a visit to the Sorting Room (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1960457.html?thread=110446089#t110446089) very recently, and had still been in the area. Good sense and insatiable greed dictated his actions; he hoped to collect more shiny trinkets for his hoard, and harassing new arrivals proved one of the easiest methods of acquisition.

"You offer nothing," the dragon noted in his deep, rumbling voice, his gaze slowly travelling from the application desk to the applicant himself, where his look became appraising. It was not a pleasant expression to be on the receiving end of. "Or do you offer yourself?"

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

A dragon.

He absolutely had not been expecting a dragon to walk through that door. Arthur wasn't in the habit of checking his totem frequently, but without thinking he touched the lump the die made in his pocket just to see that it was still there. He could feel the dragon's eyes on him, and he stole a few seconds to regain his composure by carefully closing the journal and putting it back in his bag.

When he was done he looked the dragon in the eye. "People usually attempt to bribe me for information," he said. "If that's not to your liking, I'm sure I can find something else."

[smaug-thegolden.livejournal.com]

Ancient folklore warned against looking serpents in the eye, often citing that one risked losing one's soul because of it. What was now dismissed as nothing more than faery tales, along with the very existence of dragons, was in fact the plain truth: gazing into Smaug's eyes enabled him to weave his dragon-spell, a powerful hypnotic ability that allowed him to enslave his victim's mind and bend them to his will.

As luck would have it, the same force which prevented death upon school grounds likewise greatly diminished such godmodderific abilities—but did not protect against them entirely. The moment the applicant's eyes met his, wispy tendrils of the dragon's consciousness manifested and drifted through Arthur's mind, directionless and seemingly innocuous, no more invasive than a physical glance would be. To some it would feel like a vague mental pull, or perhaps a sense of recognition despite having never met Smaug before; to others, it might not even be noticeable.

But he had no use for a puppet... at the moment. Information, that held many possibilities. "You barter with what kind of information?" he wanted to know, his unblinking gaze never leaving the applicant.

[charlesofdensen.livejournal.com]

Ofdensen looked at the application. Then at Arthur. Then back to the application.

Honestly, on some parts Arthur reminded him of himself.

Too much.

He went back to looking at Arthur, waiting to make a move.

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

It was going to be a long wait. Arthur wasn't one to waste words, and if Ofdensen wasn't bothering him, he was going to go back to reading the article.

With one eye on the band manager, of course.

Vote: Sparklypoo

[charlesofdensen.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ofdensen could wait with the best of them, but he still had plotting to do, first off, finding this Apos he's heard of.

So he voted Sparklypoo, to see if he got a reaction out of him.

[vislor-turlough.livejournal.com]

"How pedantic!" Turlough said. "Are you really so boring that you have to correct applications written by a mad man? Mad hat, I mean?"

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

"Yes." He flipped the page of the journal, following the article onto the next page. Boring was one of the more flattering things he'd been called.

[vislor-turlough.livejournal.com]

Turlough's mouth was open for a few seconds before he spoke.

"I'm not sure what I should feel: annoyance that you only gave a one-word answer, or surprised that you didn't seem to notice that I said a sentient hat wrote the application."

[woocha.livejournal.com]

Paws went up to Arthur's knee.

Whatcha reading?

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

At this rate he was going to develop a twitch like Cobb, checking his totem every 30 seconds.

"I'm reading about how scents impact the emotional content of memories," he told the dog. It could be useful to influence the mark by what smells they took in as they walked through their dreams.

[woocha.livejournal.com]

I can use scents to find people. Well, he CAN. I prefer reading stories, though.

[needsanewliver.livejournal.com]

Where there's Ofdensen, there's sure to be Nathan. Well, occasionally. It wasn't as though Nathan was stalking him or anything. Usually. He just happened to be passing by the Sorting Room, and noticed Ofdensen staring at some jackoff who...

Looked... and acted... a hell of a lot like the manager, minus maybe a decade of age.

Intrigued, Nathan came over to get a better look for himself. Dethklok's lead singer was hulking, easily twice Arthur's size, and looked to be able to crush someone's skull with his bare hands, which he had in fact done before. But there was nothing especially hostile about his stare, nor was it the rapetastic eye-molestation that Arthur was likely to receive from the slut brigade of Hogwarts a term which his mun uses affectionately, to be sure.

"Huh," he finally grunted. "So do you fence?"

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

Arthur stared up at the man towering over him, not intimidated in the slightest. There's a stiffness in his spine that suggests that getting closer might be hazardous to one's health.

"I've tried." And he has. Nobody's going to call it one of his defining talents, but there has been more than one occasion where knowing how to handle a sword has saved his skin in a dream. It's the mun's theory that Lucid dreaming was different from normal dreaming. Arthur simply couldn't fake fencing in a dream, especially not against armed subconscious projections that wanted to kill him. He'd picked up a foil once or twice, but thought that guns were much more economical.

[he-was-born.livejournal.com]

((Sorry about the TL;DRing! Especially since it mostly adds up to a bunch of words to say "Jherek is dressed ridiculously!"))


Jherek Carnelian had been wandering about the school, making the occasional aesthetic 'improvements' to his surroundings. On the whole, these various transfigurations were actually improvements, and served to reduce the general cold stuffiness of the castle's stone walls. But, the house-elves were often inclined to disagree with this choices in this regard, and so a few were following behind him, transfiguring things back to 'normal' after he'd passed. Fixing a wing of the 6th story which Jherek had turned mostly translucent had been particularly time-consuming, but the house-elves never actually complained to him about his transfiguration-practice. Not only were his transfigurations exceptionally well-done, it might have hurt his feelings, and, given his 'generosity' with the house-elves, the majority of them had no desire to do this. Many a female house-elf, and a few of the males, had been far more content since the arrival of the sexually-relaxed denizen of the End of Time.

Jherek had grown slightly tired of his usually-favoured white on this particular occasion, and, had left his room in an elaborate robe (apparently) made from the scales of a 77th century reptilian inhabitant of a world somewhere near the Pleiades, which shimmered in resplendent shades of blue. To match this, he'd tinted his hair a deep and lustrous cobalt, and his lips and eyes a bright robin's egg color- for a finishing touch, he'd coloured his skin nearly white, but with the slightest hint of icy blue. Jherek was fond of single-color ensembles. By the time his random wanderings had brought him to the Sorting Room, he'd added to his ensemble, now accessorized by a swarm of tiny, jewel-like dragonflies he'd copied from some he'd seen by the lake. The talking portrait of a quite-stylish witch he'd passed (and flirted with a for a moment) had inspired him to add a sparkling blue wizard's hat, adorned with a tiny blue songbird which sat upon the jauntily-angled brim.

When he strode into the Sorting Room to see who might be there, Jherek was feeling like the epitome of fashion. When he saw Arthur, however, with his perfectly coordinated, pressed and tailored outfit, all perfectly arranged and perfectly presented, Jherek decided that he had to concede to the newcomer's sense of taste. Why, surely his outfit was directly from the late 20th or early 21st century, and if not, it appeared to be a precise replica. Given that they were in the 21st century, that the man was an actual native seemed likely to Jherek. It was of course required that he make the acquaintance of any newcomer with such a fine sense of style, and so Jherek swept towards him in a billowing of blue and a whirring of dragonfly wings, doffing his hat as he performed an elaborate and entirely affected bow. He skipped over the application entirely- as Jherek couldn't read, there was little point to looking at it. "Welcome, sir!" Jherek greeted Arthur with exuberance and a smile. "Welcome to Castle Hogwarts! I must compliment you upon your costume. Are you a native of this era?"

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

Jherek's outfit is an affront to everything Arthur holds sartorially dear. Arthur defines himself by his conservative appearance. His clothes are not an affectation, but an extension of his personality. Like bright colors on foul-tasting butterflies, Arthur's outfits signal at a distance, "Beware, Type A ahead!"

Sometimes he forgets that other people don't attach the same meaning to their clothes that he does. When he looks at Jherek, though, he sees a person he wants absolutely nothing to do with.

"I--" Costume? What? "Yes, I am a native," he says slowly, trying to parse Jherek's question as he answers it.

[serrulata.livejournal.com]

He wasn't paying attention to the new applicant. After the fight with Ulquiorra, Kurama wasn't interested in engaging more conversation than necessary.

Unfortunately, his current goals required at least minimal interaction. "Have you seen a cat (http://lolosad.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/leopard_cat.jpg) come through here?" He held his hands apart, indicating Belophoebe's size. "About ye big, leopard cat." He hadn't seen her in days. He was starting to worry.

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

At least Kurama would be on his way quickly; Arthur wasn't one for small talk. "No, I haven't," he said.

[g-wormtongue.livejournal.com]

Grima did occasionally get out and he was curious to see the new arrival in the Sorting Room. Really, why were there no guards? Though the new arrival hardly looked like a troublemaker. The man seemed strange, with a clipped manner, combined with a style of dress Grima was beginning to recognize as "modern."

"Hello." Perhaps the man was lost and would be grateful for some advice. "I suppose you may be wondering where you are. This is Castle Hogwarts, in the Land of the Scots, the United Kingdoms of Earth 2010 (though whose reckoning of years it is, I do not know.) You have been transported here by a powerful wizard." Grima coughed. The pompous speech had left his throat dry, but he hoped the man would think he was an authority within the castle.

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, Grima was a little bit late to the party. The bit about Scotland was helpful, but after everything else he'd learned it was more a happy surprise than shocking.

"Thank you," Arthur said, the tone more dismissive than he would have cared if he actually did care.

[noseymaddie.livejournal.com]

So, this mun is terrible and meant to throw someone in here before but she has been horribly distracted...oh, bunny...and has had trouble making herself concentr....butterfly.....ate.... She picked Maddie so she could make fun of herself...

Okay, now seriously, on to the tag!

"You know, you can talk to the pen and it will write what you say," Maddie said as she picked up the application. "It's very strange, but it works here."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

The poor quill must have been feeling so ignored this whole time. Arthur looked at it and then Maddie, and quirked an eyebrow.

"Why would I have talked to the pen?" It's a helpful thing to know, and he'll keep it in mind in the future, but he's not exactly in the habit of talking to himself.

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

As it so frequently did, the Sorting Hat wafted into the room with a song. "Clean shirt, new shoes, And I don't know where I am goin' to. Silk suit, black tie, I don't need a reason why. . ." It stopped directly before Arthur, with its brim tilted in what it considered to be a 'flirty' way. "So you're lookin' sharp- but are you lookin' for love?"

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

A talking, flirting hat. He'd been warned about this, but actually seeing it in person was something else. Arthur prided himself on his composure, but he couldn't help an eyebrow rising towards his hairline.

I don't think you can afford me, he was tempted to say, but he wasn't outright stupid.

"No, I'm not," he said instead, and he settled into his usual expression, which was somewhere between impassive and perpetually annoyed.

Slytherin!

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

Your bribe has been accepted!

Welcome to Slytherin!