love, lift us up where we belong! (open rp, all school)

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

The Sorting Hat kept up with the trends! It knew that the world was scheduled to end on May 21, and all the righteous would be uplifted to Heaven.

Since the Sorting Hat knew itself to be the wisest and most righteous being of all, it came to the most logical conclusion.

Upon waking from a nap on the afternoon of the 21st, and realizing it was still at Hogwarts, the Hat understood that it was already in Heaven.

Hogwarts was heaven.

"Halos and harps for everyone!" the Hat decreed.

And so it was. House elves brought everyone gilt halos and strap-on wings and hand-held harps, or autoharps, or the occasional harmonica (the house elves had taken to tasing one another for fun, and their mental acuity was not what it once was). The Great Hall (still home to the wax display of Hatsguard Heroes, mind you) was bedecked in white draperies, tinsel, and leftover battle fog from the Harkonnen Dining Experience machines (the Hat felt this would create a cloudlike effect). Angel food cake and ambrosia were the evening meal. Oh, and cans of Red Bull ((at player suggestion, because it GIVES YOU WINGS)).

Debbie Gibson's BELINDA CARLISLE's "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" was piped through WART, the insipid soundtrack of Hat Heaven. Alternating with the Elvenking cover of same ((thanks to Igor-mun)).

Comments

[engravedonsouls.livejournal.com]

Lenneth had refused the wings, and halo. The silver haired woman already had her own wings, which she had called into existence to gently wrap around her as she held the harp carefully. It was a pretty instrument and she loved the sounds that came from it as she gently plucked the strings. She didn't know how to play an instrument and didn't know where to ask if anyone could show her.

It was with childlike curiosity that she began to pluck at the strings more experimentally, trying to create her own tune. It didn't sound horrible, to her pleasure but it certainly wasn't music. Lenneth wasn't sure a harp could ever sound horrible, she was really quite taken with the instrument. Someone is welcome to prove her wrong.

After awhile of sucking at playing with the harp, Lenneth found herself wandering towards the tables to look over the angel food cake and Red Bull. Well, there's no such thing as energy drink on Midgard (that she's aware of, she didn't spend more time than necessary there) and while she may not need energy she is curious about the taste.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

What adolescent boy doesn't fantasize about having the ability to turn invisible, to watch the women he desires? Ever since shedding his mortal form, Lezard had indulged in this pleasure (http://lparchive.org/Valkyrie-Profile/Update%2039/img-30.jpg) (though he would reveal his presence (http://lparchive.org/Valkyrie-Profile/Update%2039/img-32.jpg) if the moment suited him, and promptly deny any voyeuristic activity).

Throughout Lenneth's Sorting, Lezard had watched and listened, his presence veiled in immateriality. It wasn't because he hoped to hide. Indeed, he expected that Lenneth had tracked him here, following the signature of his energy-pattern just as she'd done once before. His trail would be all the clearer for the Odinic energy he'd stolen and incorporated into himself. Perhaps it even resonated with Lenneth's own divine power, through the resonance with Silmeria's energy he'd achieved during that time when he kept the youngest Valkyrie preserved in crystal. He'd tapped Silmeria's power to build his world tree, used her like a battery, but it was through his own hands that the power flowed, by his own hands that the power was shaped.

(He'd had a time with Silmeria here at Hogwarts, too; it had been educational and tiresome by turns. He hadn't yet decided whether to conceal it from Lenneth, or to taunt her with it.)

No, he was sure Lenneth would find him, and sooner rather than later. He lingered in invisibility only for the sheer sneaky delight of it, the pleasure of observing her unseen. He knew that the moment he addressed her, she'd snap into the forbidding stance of the righteous warrior-goddess. The softness she could show in unguarded moments, the uncertainty of Platina overlaid with the unworldliness of Valkyrie — these aspects he savored would all be hidden away.

He followed her from the Sorting Room; he followed her into the Hat's curious Heaven; he listened with a secret smile as she dabbled with arts unwarlike.

It was as she took her first sip from the silver-and-blue canister of energy drink that Lezard materialized behind her. Waves of diffuse white light rolled off his newly-aggregated form, shed like layers of skin, or like water. Yet he was fully attired in the dark suit he'd worn when she first confronted him at his Tower, for this was how he envisioned himself, and the form taken always matched the pattern one's soul truly held.

"In this afterlife, you find the one you thought slain," he said, voice low and quiet, pitched only for her ear.

[engravedonsouls.livejournal.com]

The moment she sensed him materialize behind her, Lenneth almost choked and coughed up the Red Bull. With only a slight tensing of her wings and a moment to compose herself was she able to keep from doing something so undignified. Slowly, she turned around and looked towards Lezard. She tried to keep her expression neutral but her eyes still narrowed at him.

"I was curious as to when you'd show yourself." She still wore her armor, having not thought to change out of it and into something more appropriate after she had been sorted, and for that she was glad now. One hand held onto the can and her other was lose at her side, close to her sword. Lenneth wanted it as close as it could be.

"I've heard of your deeds here." The goddess felt uneasy, knowing that he still held Odin's powers but she made sure that it did not show in her expression. "It shames me to know what the powers you stole are being used for." Namely, childish antics. She'll not name who mentioned anything to her, nobody needs any more trouble than he's already caused or will cause.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

He laughed lightly, and answered as quietly as he'd first spoken. "Why should I not amuse myself? I have so few pleasures. Should I seek to shake the foundations of every world, in everything I do?"

His cloak fluttered and swirled in the Hat's battle-fog.

[engravedonsouls.livejournal.com]

"Entertaining yourself appears to be at other people expense. It's cruel and distasteful. If that's the only way you can amuse yourself, then that alone is a perfectly good explanation of why not to." Lenneth frowns at his laughter. For some reason, it made her feel like he was mocking her. And with that, she drinks a more of the Red Bull and feels more of that giddy/excited feeling build up a bit.

"I can at least take consolation in the fact that you didn't destroy this place as you did the nine realms."

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"I destroy what does not change and grow. I find stagnation displeasing. This place ..." Lezard gestured grandly to encompass the whole of the wing-flappin', autoharp-strummin' Great Hall, figuratively extended to the school beyond. "... is far from stagnant. It is productive chaos! And it entertains me indeed."

He stepped closer. "You were made by a god who ceased to be interesting long before I put a merciful end to his boring, static reign. He made you to be similarly single-minded, similarly humorless. Yet you found it within yourself to be other. You became the Creator, o goddess of mine. That should promise a change. Has it, really, produced anything beyond the re-establishment of Odin's boring old Midgard? Did you do anything of your own, beyond repairing what Odin made and Ragnarok destroyed?" Glancing down at the silver-and-blue can in her hand, then up again to catch her gaze with his own intense eyes, Lezard murmured: "Tell me what truly entertains you."

[engravedonsouls.livejournal.com]

"What right had you to decide that it was all stagnating? What right had you to destroy it?" Lenneth shakes her head, feeling like she was talking to Freya the day of Ragnarok. "Of course you'd find entertainment in that."

As he steps closer, Lenneth takes a step back. This is more for the sake of her own comfort than anything. Fear was not something she felt around him.

"I am not yours." First and foremost. "And I restored the lives lost, rather than change everything they knew into something I think better. It wasn't my choice, everything would develop as the mortals saw fit. I would do what was in my power to help them, not force them onto another path. I won't judge Odin for his deeds, he's dead in both realities. Nothing can come from speaking badly of the dead."

What entertains her? Lenneth is silent for awhile after that. Not because she doesn't want to answer, though part of it is for that reason, but because she never gave it any thought. Music was nice, and swimming...

"Why do you care to know?" Lenneth asks, totally avoiding answering if she can.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

Lezard shook his head, slowly, as if saddened — the look of one who took no pleasure in his own vindication. "Still you speak as a creature of Odin, who made you to serve. It's no different, really. To substitute mortals for the gods, to fix their world for them and give it into their hands, that was to remain a servant. You only changed one master for another. I want to know what entertains you, what gives you diversion or — dare I say it — pleasure, for your own sake and not for the service of others. Have you not the strength to exist outside servitude?"

[engravedonsouls.livejournal.com]

"I serve no one any longer, Lezard!" She's either too ticked off to call him 'necromancer' and 'defiler of souls' or she's actually getting used to him being around. Lenneth would argue the former to the end of time and wonders how persistent he'll be on this topic. With a drawn out, irritated sigh, the woman answers:

"Music. When I had no duties to attend to, I often listened to some of the gods play their instruments or sing. I had always thought Frei had a lovely voice."