(no subject)

[princenopants]

Who: Siegfried and anyone else who attends the dancing for echoes dance class.
What: Discovering Past Life Memories Through Dance
When: 7/17
Where: The Transitory School of Dance [also known as "hippy dippy twirly whirly" to the less cooth of the community]



The instructor for the class looks about what you expect, a middle aged woman with frizzy hair in a leotard. There's a sign on the door saying "no shoes on the dance floor" and a line of various sneakers and sandals just inside. It's not too large of a class, though oddly, the amount of people attending has gone up drastically since the first session...




[[OoC: Make your own threads, puppet the instructor, have fun with it!]]

Comments

[princenopants]

There was an air to Siegfried that was new, an odd sort of relaxed confidence. When the music started, he closed his eyes, listening for only a moment before almost effortlessly starting to dance, movements graceful and practiced, despite still having an odd roughness to them, as if he was working from a memory of long ago.

Unbelievable that this would only be his second time dancing...

before class begins :>

[amberhearted]

[ guess who signed up their room mate and drove them here under false pretenses?

THIS GUY.

you can tell because he's grinning like a mischievous schoolboy idiot and failing miserably at containing it.

(this is why he offered to pay for your coffee, ravi.) ]

[healspec]

[he's pretty sure Alex is up to something. it was the coffee that tipped him off.]

[he goes along with it, but he's wary.]

[it's when he sees the sign on the building that he stops and stares at Alex.]

[really.]

[amberhearted]

[ yes, really.

alex moves forward and holds the door open for him with a flourished bow. ]

After you, my Lord.

[ of the sun, hee hee hee. ]

[healspec]

[ staaaaaaaaaaaare ]

[this is his very best 'not amused' face]

[but he goes inside anyway and hovers by the door, looking surly, waiting for alex to explain what the fuck]

[amberhearted]

[ CHALLENGE #2 OVERCOME

inside, he takes the lead again, pausing to read the bulletin board to find out where their target classroom is.

he glances back at ravi, waving his hand forward. ]

This way, your Grace!

[healspec]

Stop that.

[he barely puts up with 'vin', the rest of the dumb nicknames can get out]

[he reluctantly follows] Why are we here?

[amberhearted]

I thought we should try something different.

[ it's been a week since catherine's death. he still wears the plain, metal band that had appeared almost three weeks ago on his left ring finger.

he wants to do something positive. something fun. alas, this time it comes at ravi's expense. ]

[healspec]

[sorry, ravi doesn't consider this sort of thing fun. he considers it woefully embarrassing.]

"We."

[amberhearted]

[ that's why alex's fun is coming at ravi's expense. ]

Mmmmmmhmm. Bonding experience.

[ up the stairs! ]

[healspec]

['bonding experience']

[ok.]

[maybe it won't be ridiculous. (it will definitely be ridiculous.) he will wait to see exactly what it is and then bail on it.]

[amberhearted]

[ he waits for the step or two ravi needs to finish the stairs, then throws his arm around his shoulders and leads him on. in big, bold letters, the flyer on the wall next to the door he's aiming for says, "Discovering Past Life Memories Through Dance", among other things.

really, though, that's the only reason ravi needs to bail.

except alex won't allow it. he will never let him go because theirs is a true bromance and, as such, includes the occasional act of dickery. ]

[healspec]

[he attempts to shrug out of the hold but gives up after a couple of tries. it's when he sees the poster by the door that he stops, and forces Alex to stop with him.]

[Ravi might be short, but he's a tank. he has some stopping power]

You're joking.

[amberhearted]

[ yeeeep, alex stops with him. ]

About what?

[healspec]

This is really why you brought me here?

[sonnnnn]

[amberhearted]

Yeah, you know. Get in touch with your... [ uh ] dance-y side.

[ hip bump?

yeah, he totally just did that. this is a man who is very comfortable with himself. ]

[healspec]

[this is the part where he shoves Alex's arm off his shoulders and puts some distance between them.]

No.

[amberhearted]

Aw, come on, Vin. What's it gonna hurt?

[healspec]

[HIS PRIDE?]

[wow he's suddenly a million times more annoyed that alex dragged him here without telling him the actual reason first. that means alex knew he'd refuse, but was counting on trapping him into agreeing once they were here by virtue of how shitty Ravi is at standing up for himself.]

[well fuck you alex!!! he is gonna assert the hell out of himself right now, so take that!]

[by which I mean he folds his arms and glowers at the wall a couple inches to Alex's left and mutters: ] I don't want to.

[but hey, at least he said it outright]

[amberhearted]

[ he went into this with an expectation of ravi's participation in the negatives, tbh. mostly he's here to see if this dancing for past life memories is legit.

although it would be nice if it was, and ravi did participate and finally accept that all of this number shit was real. js.

he brings his left hand to his right shoulder. ]

All right, all right. I paid for this, though, so I'm staying. You can wait out here or come inside and hope there're some hot guys for you to check out.

[healspec]

[there is a flicker of guilt at the 'i paid for this', but he reminds himself that he's not obligated to accept things just because money was involved. it's a logic vs emotion thing, though, so he'll be struggling with that for a while.]

I'll wait in the back.

[NOT FOR THE POTENTIAL OF HOT GUYS TO CHECK OUT THO]

[(maybe a little bit for that)]

[mostly because he is curious whether it's legit and he'd rather awkwardly wait inside than awkwardly wait outside. moral support or something like that.]

[amberhearted]

[ moral support? more like entertainment and/or second-hand embarrassment. ]

[italktofish]

Once he learned that this dance class might actually WORK in some sense or another, Arthur made up his mind. He was there. He was going. And he was going to do this all the way. So he showed up in an orange and green dance outfit that did not really need to be quite as tight as it was. It was all the big and tall mens' shop had in this regard, even though some sweatpants and a t-shirt likely would have been more than enough.

Long ago, Arthur had worked as an entertainer aboard a cruise ship. There was a very good reason he hadn't been a dancer. Although his sense of rhythm was good enough, the man was simply two left feet. Arthur was a bit of a walking disaster area in this scenario. Anyone who valued not having their toes stomped on would do well to get out of his way, especially given the enthusiasm with which he was conducting himself.

[doomedtheworld]

This was not the sort of thing Vanessa normally went to. Not by a long shot. She was not a dancer and didn't have much desire to learn to be one, but, that video post on the network talking about it bringing up Echoes had at least caught her curiosity. She figured one of them would eventually have to have answers of some kind.

Still, she ended up standing in the back of the room. Pretty much as far back as she could manage, arms folded and just watching everything play out for the time being.

[amberhearted]

Vanessa, did you think the back was safe? Absolutely not!

Alex left his room mate, who was sulking in a similar fashion on the opposite side of the room, to approach her. He lifted his hand in a casual wave, signaling his intention, and stood beside her, facing the same direction.

"Hey. Why're you out here instead of the dance floor?"

[doomedtheworld]

Well, she was certainly hoping it was anyway.

Vanessa spotted Alex when he started making his approach. Figured, that out of the handful of people who had seen her face on the network one of them would be here. She supposed there were worse ones though. At least it wasn't that idiot from Starbucks.

She stays put as he comes up, just nodding a little bit to return the greeting.

"I don't dance." She answered, glancing out at the dance floor. "I just saw something on the network about this and wanted to check it out for myself."

Besides, it beat how she usually spent the seventeenth of this month.

[amberhearted]

"Uh huh." He folded his arms over his chest, only to lift a hand to the corner of his mouth. "I don't dance much, either, but this is- you know- if you wanna discover anything, I think you're gonna have to dance."

[doomedtheworld]

That got a little frown from her, because of course she'd thought of that. But, well...

"I don't... know how to dance." She amended a second later, a little quieter.

[amberhearted]

"S'what's the instructor's for," he said, dropping his hand to fold his arm over his chest again. He nodded towards the core group of students. "How about it?"

[doomedtheworld]

She looked out at the floor, catching sight of the instructor trying to keep up with the suddenly much larger class she had to deal with. She's silent for awhile before she sighs.

"I guess I might as well." She still didn't sound totally invested in the idea. "I did spend money on this."

[amberhearted]

"Come on, then," he said, unfolding his arms and clapping Vanessa on the back of her shoulder. "Me, too."

Moral support!

[doomedtheworld]

Moral support. Hooray.

That clap on her back gets a bit of an annoyed glance because, hey, tiny here but she brushes it off.

"After you." She nods toward the dance floor. Gah, what was she getting into here?

[amberhearted]

It was a friendly clap! But he noticed her glance and filed it away for future reference. (Namely, not to do that again.)

Having joined their fellow classmates, Alex took a moment to reintegrate himself with the instructor's lesson. He was neither bad nor good, simply mediocre, but what stood out was the grin that threatened to burst, held back only by the valiant efforts of his teeth biting his lower lip. He glanced at Vanessa, wondering how she was faring.

[doomedtheworld]

She knew that. Even so, friendly physical contact is still somewhat unfamiliar territory.

Out on the dance floor it took a few minutes to get settled in, but by the time Alex looks her way again she's doing surprisingly well. A far cry from professional but still not bad. Although it's probably not from having fun if the look of focused, narrow-eyed concentration is any indication. She does make a misstep here and there and each time, she frowns a little deeper.

Hey, if she was going to do this, she was going to do it well.

[amberhearted]

Rigid. The word comes to mind when he watches her. Vanessa held herself with a certain rigidity -- the same as he had seen in her the other night. It might have been from being in an unfamiliar area, interacting with unfamiliar people, but Alex wondered if that wasn't just her default state.

Breaking away from the rhythm, he raised his arms to chest-level and lifted his hands up and down in an undulating motion, like he was trying to impart calming waves of spiritual energy at her.

Sort of.

The lopsided grin shot any semblance of seriousness in the action.

[doomedtheworld]

Rigid really was probably the best word to describe her. She was always on guard even when she was in her element, and you didn't get much further from that than a dance class. She was following the steps well enough but she was still obviously.

It was a few seconds before she noticed Alex waving at her. She blinked once or twice before catching on and rolled her eyes, about to make some kind of retort.

And then a now-familiar hollowness rolled over her.

Memories again, but not the same as the first one. She wasn't outside in the rain and the cold. She was in a ballroom, a huge and resplendent room like something out of a movie. She was dancing then. Twirling across a wide open dance floor with a young man whose name she didn't remember. He seemed nervous.

There was more too, an even stronger memory of the same night. She was sitting at a table and there was somebody with her. Another young man, maybe a few years older than her, looking quite out of place in a suit that was too big for him and hair that was deliberately uncombed. He had plopped down next to her, dropping a stack of books down and just sat there reading. Reading at a ball....

This memory was important to her. He was important.

Oh, God.

Like the other times, the feeling lasted just a second and the world came flooding back to her, leaving her with a new set of memories in her head. She realized she had stopped dancing, having come to a sudden halt in the middle of one of steps and her head snapped around. Did somebody notice? They must have.

Quietly, she backed away a little before turning and quickly leaving the dance floor.

[OOC: Sorry for the delay. I was waiting on an Echo request.]

[amberhearted]

[ ooc: np! ]

Alex noticed. He lowered his hands when she went still, grin subsiding. For that brief moment, she looked like a statue.

Statue. Pulses.

Had she really gotten a pulse from dancing?

Ah- she was 'back' and already retreating. He followed her, mirth evaporating. As soon as they were in whispering range, he said, "Vanessa, hey. Pulse?"

[doomedtheworld]

Vanessa headed for the door quickly, glaring at the floor the entire way. She had come here because it was supposed to cause Echoes, so she had gotten what she came here. But she had wanted answers, or at least hints, maybe something to give her a clue about these powers she remembered.

Not memories of somebody like that. She didn't want this.

She glanced up when Alex caught up with her. Of course. She should have figured he'd follow her.

"Yeah." She whispered back, stopping at the door and looking at the floor again. "It's no big deal. I just need a minute."

Like hell a minute. She was going straight home.

[amberhearted]

She certainly looked like she could use a minute. Having no reason to disbelieve her, Alex nodded and quietly said, "All right."

[doomedtheworld]

She smiled a little bit, if only to try to deflect any worrying. Hopefully, she did a decent job.

"I'm fine." She nodded back toward the room. "You'd better get back. You don't want to fall behind."

[amberhearted]

His expression shifted to one just shy of 'r u srs', but he rolled with her attempt to deflect attention away from herself.

"I'll be inside, then, if you wanna talk or anything." The corners of his lips quirked up in a sympathetic smile. He understood the confusion an Echo could produce. He understood it all too well now.

Hoping that whatever Vanessa had gotten didn't hit quite so deeply, he went back into the classroom.

[originaloddcouple]

Isaac and Miria put on a good show. They present themselves, and generally are, lovable buffoons.

Problem is, sometimes their fears get the best of them. In particular, judgement of others. The moment they stepped into the room, the couple found themselves crippled with fear of A) messing up or B) looking strange. What if they fell and broke a leg? What if they really did get back a memory and it overwhelmed them? What if a sexist, uber-macho jerk came in, saw Isaac dancing around, and started throwing and burning things?! (This was still the Dian couple, and they had an overactive imagination).

So they sort of leaned against the wall, trying to make themselves as small as possible. They came out of it every now and then to talk to someone or approve of an impressive dance. Otherwise, they stayed where they were.