Flowers for the Slayer (anyone at beta HQ)

[Donne "Adonis" Kinclaith]

Adonis nodded sympathetically at the admission, managed to suppress his first three responses to the foot in the mouth thing, and followed her in obediently. "Donne Kinclaith, or Adonis, which I think I mentioned," he said as he shook her hand, leaving her with his business card, which even his sister had assured him represented him perfectly. "As you might have guessed from the accent, I'm originally from England, but I've been working in Vegas for the 21st century." That rather raised the question of why he was moving here, didn't it? Well, maybe it was better to match admission of vulnerability for admission of vulnerability, and the more he could admit it, the less it would bother him, probably. "I had a bit of a... falling-out with a client-slash-lover, and it turned out that getting entirely off the drugs concocted by an amateur alchemist and professional psychiatrist can take... a while." Not to mention the emotional poison. He tried to smile, but it felt a bit fragile, forced. "So I'm afraid my own social skills might be a little rusty from disuse. --Hopefully not too rusty, because that's my job. Probably a bigger part of it than even my illusion abilities."

He suddenly remembered she'd asked about those, and that would probably be a good question to answer, considering that was the only not-quite-normal-human thing about him. "It's not magic, just a family talent. My sister's have more range and can be solid, sort of, but I can do sound effects. Or music, speech--and it's surround-sound, I can make it sound like it's coming from anywhere." He considered demonstrating while explaining, as he would normally do (he loved seeing people jump when he did the whisper-right-into-your-ear effect), but probably best not to start in on supernatural abilities in the Slayer's headquarters without permission. "I can demonstrate, if you'd like?"

[Faith Lehane]

When Faith pulled her hand back, it had the guy's business card in it, and as they walked in she led him through the foyer and turned right, putting them back in the kitchen. She listened as she walked, and opened a drawer in which she tucked his business card into. She turned around to face Donne.

After hearing his story, she felt happy she'd stopped the "tough girl" stuff. True, there was an odd chance that this dude was lying to her, but there seemed to be a vulnerability in his voice that rivaled her own from her earlier admission.

"I can demonstrate, if you'd like?" he said, talking about his abilities.

Faith's eyes again went squinty, but with intrigue instead of distrust. "Sure," Faith answered, "show me what you got."

If Donne's powers were anything like he explained they were, perhaps she could use him in the future. There weren't too many times she went for the talk over the kill, but having an arsenal of different "weapons" surely wouldn't hurt matters any. Plus, keeping tabs on this guy may prove useful, especially if this client-slash-lover-slash-all-around-bad-news-person did happen to come back to find him here.

[Donne "Adonis" Kinclaith]

Internally, he cheered. A demonstration! To someone who didn't have to be convinced the "special effects" were entirely mundanely possible--his absolute favourite kind. All he had to do was pick one of his practiced routines that contained nothing threatening and did not involve imitating (putting on the face of his audience member did not seem like a wise capability to demonstrate), pranking (no whoopee cushions), or, let's be on the safe side, interacting with, the person he was performing for. His grin widened mischievously as he thought of an illusion-heavy dance number he'd put together for his sister's birthday a couple years ago (to get her back for using the first verse and chorus of You're So Vain for a picture slideshow she'd put together for his birthday). She'd rolled her eyes pretty hard when the music started, and Faith would probably do the same, but he hoped the overly-literal lyric interpretation and silly effects would win her over like it did Cadence. He turned his back to Faith, conjured up an illusory set of (floating) turntables and record, dropped the needle, and started up the music, throwing away the turntables soon after. (It disappeared as soon as he wasn't touching it. He wasn't Cadence.)

The first verse (I'm too sexy for my love, too sexy for my love, love's going to leave me) was more about demonstrating spotlight-and-shadow effects. As the interverse music started, he whirled around and started throwing out more impressive effects, like flowers of fire blooming in his hands, or a feather boa becoming a snake boa and undulating on his shoulders (an effect partly ruined by the fact that he was still, of course, wearing his suit). As he danced and the next verse proclaimed him too sexy for his shirt, he swept an arm down at a time on each half line, "revealing" a series of illusory shirts which was designed to be decidedly unsexy--a faded Ghostbusters hoodie, an incredibly loud Hawaiian shirt (complete with lei--it's the little touches which count), a faithful rendition of the ugliest Christmas cardigan he has ever seen, and finally a Halloween-costume-style fake "muscle shirt" which--So sexy it hurts--he made the word "SEXY" start to bleed through as if he had the words cut into his chest.

Being too sexy for Milan, New York, and Japan entailed the conjuration of an illusory window frame, which he held in front of his head and transitioned the backdrop between an Italian bistro (Italian gondolier costume), Statue of Liberty ("I <3 NY" baseball cap), and the Chureito Pagoda / cherry blossom / Mt Fuji view, each time endeavouring to look as bored as possible, like the world's worst (sexy) tourist. A disco ball and incredibly '70s outfit were conjured and discarded in the next verse, and the chorus about being a model saw him strutting around in a variety of ridiculous outfits: an angel one with wings and attached halo, a devil one with horns and tail, and possibly the world's only attempt to put Herne the Hunter in a cocktail dress (but you know any fashion designer would!). The last effect was again spoiled by his inability to actually make the suit he was really wearing invisible, but he hoped Faith would appreciate the effort.

Cowboy... construction worker... knight in shining armor--he belatedly remembered his "no weapons" plan, and instead of clumsily moving a fake sword around he ended up doing the Robot, an anachronistic combination if there ever was one. Oh well. Maybe it was time to skip ahead--Faith could probably guess his car and hat sexiness levels--and go right to the ending, which featured a catboy look, an illusory cartoon heart beating out of his chest to the beat and then breaking, and finally a resummoning of the turntables and a karate-chop to the record. Applause and cheering broke out from all corners of the room, and he looked up to see if Faith would join in at all.

[Faith Lehane]

The floating turn tables immediately threw Faith for a loop, and as her mind struggled to make sense of them, she was interrupted by the first few words of the song. From the first "I'm" she knew instantly what song it was. She dramatically rolled her eyes and moved her head back at this song choice and let out an involuntary snicker.

"What in the he--?" Faith mumbled as Donne began the show and the music kicked up, causing the final curse word in her sentence to be lost in the music.

Honestly, she was beyond impressed. She'd figured this was going to be a low-rent spectacle, some sort of rip-off of a David Copperfield show he'd peddled at an old, off-strip Vegas casino. But these flowers weren't silk, that's for sure, and the boa to snake transformation wasn't a never-ending scarf pulled from his sleeve. This was truly something else entirely.

She felt like one of those kids that had the magicians at their birthday parties that she heard about growing up, but was never invited to, only this seemed to be those stories on steroids. She felt an odd mixture of glee, amazement, and embarassment, especially for the song choice and the dancing. But this guy was pretty powerful.

Despite his initial denial, she wondered with each passing trick if this was a form of magic. If he really wasn't actively casting glamour spells, perhaps learning a bit of magic could help him vastly improve his talents. "Look out Rosenberg!" she thought to herself.

She laughed aloud at his bored looks, and thought that with this much talent he was probably a hot commodity in Vegas. To leave that all behind, she figured he had to have a damn good reason. The thought honestly made her a bit uneasy.

Regardless, she laughed and clapped a few more times throughout the show, and her eyes remained wide with amazement and wonder. At the end, Faith joined the "ghosts" around the room that cheered for Donne, and she even added in a loud whistle.

"Welllll done!" she said, while clapping. "That was incredible!"

[Wesley Wyndam-Pryce]

Wesley was making his way down the sidewalk loaded down with bags from various stores in the local shopping mall. Hanging from his shoulder appeared to be bags from shoe store and across the other shoulder a familiar Old Navy logo was announcing its presence. Several bags were clutched in his right hand -- the Bed, Bath, & Beyond one giving his thumb the most pain as it began tunneling its plastic way into his skin. But the state of the current bathroom he was so lucky to be sharing was in vast need of improvement, so the pain would be worth it. Under one arm was a paper shopping filled with a few dusty volumes from the neighborhood occult shop and in his hand a mostly full, vibrantly decorated plastic cup of fancy orange juice. He was having some difficulty getting the straw to his lips with the rest of the cumbersome baggage about his person, but he would try again once he was back at the HQ.

As he neared the house, what he took for an accidental rhythm in his own step was actually being caused by music hammering from within the building. One of those hypnotic dance beats that he thought left the airwaves a decade ago was now coming through quite clearly. His brow knitted into initial concern of what on earth would the neighbors think, then let it ease a bit as it was surely just a bit of blowing off steam for someone inside. He doubted sincerely that it would be Faith’s doing...in fact, she would probably be down in a few to put a quick stop to this. That made him chuckle and nearly drop Things Remembered package.

He mounted the steps, pinched the cup between his teeth, fished for the keys, and finally made his way into Beta Team HQ. Wes shuffled down the hallway and with growing horror tried to fight his mind into submission to understand what he was seeing and hearing here. He dropped a few bags off along the way in a very absent shrugging away of materials. If this were some sort of attack, Faith shouldn’t have been clapping and cheering...so perhaps there was no immediate danger. Slack jawed, he eased up beside her as the show came to a close.

“Faith, this is highly unorthodox. Entertaining in an uncomfortable way...but still, not at all what one expects to find, well...anywhere.”

He lifted one curious brow to the stranger and finally got a good long sip of his fancy orange juice.

[Faith Lehane]

Faith was so sucked in to the spectacle she'd just witnessed, she barely even realized Wesley had entered. The sound of things being dropped almost had pulled her attention away until she remembered her new roommate. So, when he spoke she was expecting it.

“Faith, this is highly unorthodox. Entertaining in an uncomfortable way...but still, not at all what one expects to find, well... anywhere.”

The slayer let out a little laugh. "Chill out, Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud," she teased, "this kid has mad skills."

Now that Wes was here, Faith decided to walk around the counter to the stove and finish up her eggs, partly because she didn't want to be judged by Wes for leaving half-made eggs on the counter and partly because she was so hungry she felt her stomach may be digesting other organs to feed itself. She kinda wondered if she still would have torn herself away if she hadn't still had a full view of both Donne and Wesley.

[Donne "Adonis" Kinclaith]

Reluctantly, Adonis let the illusory surround-sound applause die out, and turned to include the unexpected watcher of the demonstration he'd put on for Faith--who, from the accent, was probably a Watcher as well. Given that Faith's guess that he was a Watcher had included the descriptor "badass" as a matter of course, "Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud" was probably someone to stay on the good side of as well. Donne could only hope that he hadn't, sometime in his teen years, been caught in a cupboard with the man's son or daughter or something. He gave the man another look. Was the age difference enough for that? Maybe younger sibling or cousin. Either way. Charming smile, a little safer to be a little more flirtatious when dealing with a non-Slayer with no known history of homicide, a retrieval of the business card which he held out along with a hand to shake, and--"Donne Kinclaith, Adonis professionally. I just moved to Cleveland, dropped by to offer tribute"--a nod to the bouquet, hopefully he would know the meanings for the flowers, or at least that they had ones worth looking up or asking about, although truth be told neither Yves nor any Watcher he'd met had seemed to attach much importance to the intricacies of the political games most of the women of their families were raised to play from birth--"which led to my demonstration of my entirely non-demonic family talent of creating illusions. I could start it over, if you like," he added, a bit archly.

[Wesley Wyndam-Pryce]

Faith was certainly enjoying herself and not giving much weight to his empty protests. And she was right about the ‘mad skills’. He was perfectly willing to admit the young man must be quite mad to be pulling off such a display in this place, but he wasn’t quite sure he would call them skills...not just yet. Further, why did he look so damned familiar? Upon closer inspection after sitting his beverage aside on a nearby coffee table, something in the cut of the man’s jawline, or maybe it was in the eyes that sparked a giant suspicion of recognition in the former Watcher. “Adonis...why not?” He muttered under his breath as he took another step closer and gave an amount of scrutiny to the offering of tribute. He accepted the card, reviewed it briefly and offered his own name. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce..at your service, of course." But the response was a bit absent and far away as he saw the flowers. Now that certainly was some ancient custom...consider his interest now once more engaged. He glanced back to Faith with a look of curiosity/surprise/worry/anxiety/intrigue that only Wesley seemed capable of conjuring in such moments as these.

“I’ve read about such practices in the Watcher’s diaries, a tradition that died out centuries ago.” Wesley reached out and touched one of the flowers in a fascinated gesture. “...long before public acceptance of the supernatural and of the Slayer was forgotten and buried.”

Now he was fairly certain he had to know this young man. “Kinclaith...why does that name seem so familiar?”

[Donne "Adonis" Kinclaith]

Wyndam-Pryce? "As in Pamel--A pleasure," he cut himself off. If he was the nephew or God forbid the son or really any relation to the head of the admissions committee, it would be the best for all concerned to let that relation remain uncovered.

He had to assume that the long-dead tradition the Watcher was referring to was tribute, not bouquets. "You'd be surprised what traditions are living a second life in the City of Second Chances," he offered, as an explanation that diplomatically avoided mentioning the traditional lack of Watcher-Slayer non-hostile contact with the supernatural community. He felt a bit like he was tap-dancing through a minefield: "I'd do the same if you were a Fyarl demon or a dragon" was OK with the Slayer, but "I've done the same with a Fyarl demon and a dragon" was unwise around the Slayer under the influence of a no-doubt traditionalist Watcher like this one.

Add another mine to the minefield: "We were in the same social circles, even if you were the better part of a generation ahead," was not a polite response, and to be fair, his current profession(s) and associated skills were probably about as far away from the dusty old books of the Watcher's Council as you could get, especially with the contract with the subsidiary of Wolfram and Hart. "Ah, perhaps you've met my brother, Yves? My generation's up-and-coming prodigy scholar--slash nerd," he added in an aside to Faith, "--who made a point of lowkey pretending to be an orphan and only child despite four generations of Watcher portraits before my mother in the east hallway alone." He was over it though. "Last I heard, he'd been doing some kind of project interviewing previous alumni of note in a 'Where are they now?' sort of thing--but, of course, that was a decade ago, so perhaps you simply remember meeting my mother, Lyra. She always had a way of making an impression on people." Like a particularly charming anvil dropped from five stories above. God, even talking about his family had him slipping into posher vowels and his mother's socialite's drawl. Awful. He was doomed to be 17 and wearing concealer borrowed from Lyra to hide his spots ("in case your illusion slips in a moment of distraction, darling!") forever.

[Faith Lehane]

Being that her cooking session had been interrupted by Mr. Illusions and then Wes, Faith made the last ditch decision to forgo her delicious breakfast despite her growling stomach. Couldn't very well be cooking up bacon in the middle of their conversation. Plus, Wes hadn't really seen her be "domesticated," and a small part of her wasn't willing to let that go just yet. She was supposed to be "big bad Faith," not Martha-freakin'-Stewart. She quickly poured the half-finished eggs down the disposal and cleaned up the rest of her mess.

While stashing the package of bacon and carton of remaining eggs back inside the fridge, she eyed a pizza box. She paused, trying to figure out the last time she had pizza before shrugging, opening the box, and pulling out a slice. When she turned back to them she was mid-bite of the cold pizza, and while it wasn't the yummy breakfast she'd imagined, it was food. Her stomach piped down.

Turning her attention back to the developing conversation, Faith could sense Wesley's hesitation when it came to this guy which lead to question her own behavior yet again. She'd went from ready to attack the kid to being an amazed child herself during his performance. Since she was no longer living alone in the house, she was beginning to think that maybe should have approached the situation a little differently. Whatever the case, if she was wrong she'd sure hear about it from Wesley when the guy left. She forced herself not to roll her eyes at the thought.

Faith made mental notes of this guy's story, although she didn't pay too much attention to remembering names and such. She figured Wesley was taking inventory of all of the guy's statements anyway. Definitely one of the perks of having the watcher living with her in the Team Beta house. With "the brains" now on her side, she could squarely focus on being "the muscle."

She smiled at Donne's "nerd" comment before finishing up her slice of pizza and heading back to raid the fridge for more.

She had to admit, the guy had a certain "air" about him. Truth be told, she saw a bit of herself in him... what with the casual confidence, sketchy past, and the family drama. And the fact that he wasn't half bad to look at either probably had something to do with it.