PARTY LOG: OPEN TO EVERYONE

[npc_kun]

Characters: OPEN
Date/Time: FORWARDdated to Friday, March 25th. All day!
Location: The Park
Rating: PG-13 for assumed general raucousness
Summary: Sniper decided to hold a birthday party for Cloud and Krile which means... holding just a huge party in the park whether they like it or not. Fireworks, food and drink within

Comments

Closed to Huo & Stellaris

[longnosedliar]

Though Sniper had been prepared to present a fireworks celebration on his own for months now, he was more than happy to receive help from Stellaris and Huo. Many hands made light work, and besides, the both of them made pleasant - if not rather subdued and overly polite - company. They were the sorts that he felt childish around, too caught up in his own fantasies and joys, but he wasn't about to let that stop him.

No amount of negativity hovering around the campsite could dim fireworks, after all. To some, perhaps fireworks were just a mixture of chemicals that blew up in pretty colours, but even when Sniper knew very well how they worked, he would never stop regarding them with a sense of awe.

He hoped that everyone else would too. He sat on his own in the designated meeting area, cross-legged and humming tunelessly to himself as he sorted the fireworks in front of him. In the midst of a party (or indeed in his daily efforts), there was always a frantic energy that surrounded Sniper, but when he was alone and could busy his hands with a project, he was finally calm.

[getsome_sleep]

"Sniper-jūn. Good evening."

Though the first to admit that he was the more subdued sort, Huo had looked forward to that evening, that event. The party was part of it - a welcome breather, cheerful and welcoming, when his life in Edensphere seemed to have been a leaf in a storm for weeks now - but a greater part was in anticipation of the fireworks display. It had been singularly bad luck that his first real experience with that new art form happened in the midst of horrific violence - violence that he had had to take first-hand part in. That was the issue. Not the use of fireworks as weapons - Huo liked weapons. He simply liked them in other people's hands.

Perhaps not a very virtuous thought, but a realistic one.

He bowed to Sniper in quick greeting - nothing too formal, striking a balance between his idea of good manners and the other man's rather different idea - and surveyed the collection of fireworks with an eager eye. "This will be very nice. What help may I give you at the moment?"

[longnosedliar]

"Hey Huo, evening!" Sniper nodded brightly at Huo, then nodded at the spot next to him for him to sit down. "Nice? I hope it'll be spectacular! We just have to wait for it to get properly dark."

He gestured at the spread of packages in front of him. Their shape gave away what sort of fireworks they were, but he had hastily painted them as well for easier identification.

"You want to help me separate these into different categories? I think I've got what order to shoot them in pretty much figured out, but have you got any ideas?" Sniper scratched the side of his nose thoughtfully. "It'll go from smallest to biggest, of course."

[lingeringlegacy]

Parties in Edensphere had a tendency to go all day, unless held at the bar, in which case Stellaris had heard of last calls occurring just shy of dawn. That custom felt foreign and rather hedonic at first, but after the last few weeks, she really couldn't fault anyone for wanting a break from routinity in a controlled way-one that did not involve nonsensical calamity.

Aside from that, the reason she made a second trip to the party that evening was scientific curiosity. Essentially, pyrotechny wasn't very complex, but between their limited resources and Sniper's origin from a different enough world, she wondered whether he would inject some creative twists into this project.

Coming from the direction of the Aquarium, where she had just checked on the site of her Planetarium project, Stellaris waved at Sniper and Huo. She had changed out of her morning dress into an ensemble of light blue camisole, white cardigan, and cigarette trousers tucked into a pair of boots.

"Good evening, Sniper, Huo. Being last to arrive, I hope I haven't missed too much excitement."

[getsome_sleep]

"I do not think that I should interfere in your creative freedom," Huo answered Sniper with a grin, kneeling down besides the other man to join him in sorting the fireworks. He handled the explosives with deft care and with interest, passing them from hand to hand, humming his approval occasionally. Confidence, confidence. They didn't have to be dangerous, or at least not too dangerous. They did not even have to be weapons. "It is for the student to know his place." His words were a touch teasing, perhaps, but entirely without resentment. It will, after all, be his first fireworks show.

"We shall be alternating the colors, I presume, for the best combinations - blue and purple, for example, compliment each other very well." That last comment was with a cheerful nod as he spied Stellaris approaching, rising to his feet to greet her. He made an interesting sight, giving his usual clasped-handed bow with a firework's shell between these hands.

"No excitement as of yet, although I assure you that we are working on it."

[longnosedliar]

When Huo addressed himself as a student, Sniper laughed and flushed before reaching a hand to scratch at the back of his head. Flattery got to him every time, but unlike with Krile, he felt unable to boast with Huo around.

Sniper nodded. "Any excitement here or at the party yet," he said. "People are mostly just eating and chatting for now."

He gestured for Stellaris to come sit by himself and Huo and to look at the fireworks that he had spread out in front of him for now. "Yeah, colour combinations are important! Though I haven't figured that bit out yet. Cool colours go together, and so do warm colours, so we can separate them into two separate categories."

He took two tube shaped fireworks and stood them upright. "For the finale, I made two flares that can work as pillars to frame the fireworks. I called them red serpents at first, but I couldn't get the tips to look like snakes properly. Instead they're just kind of swirly, but they'll still work."

[lingeringlegacy]

As Stellaris approached, her smile widened at Huo's quip. She returned his greeting with a wave before crouching by the others, eyes gleaming with interest at the various fireworks.

"How can we help, then? Are you perchance planning to do simultaneous launching in a formation?"

[getsome_sleep]

"How far up do they shoot, if I may ask?" Already standing, Huo moved to glance at the tubes. That particular gleam was in his eyes again - the almost childlike excitement at flashy, dangerous things. Maybe it was Sniper having a bad influence on him.

"That is an interesting thought." He nodded at Stellaris. "If there are three of us to attend the launching, and we keep exact times, we can create a great variety of effects."

[longnosedliar]

Sniper noted the excitement in Huo's eyes, and it bolstered his good spirits. There was nothing he liked more than seeing enthusiasm in his friends, and it often led to a contagious chain of merrymaking.

"Yep, that's what I was thinking! We can go in patterns."

He grabbed a stick and began to doodle a sketch of trajectory of the fireworks in the dirt as a demonstration. He looked a bit sheepish when Huo posed his question, then admitted, "I'm not really sure how far up they go. I just kind of... did it. The big ones go further and the small ones are lower, that much I can tell you."

For all his talent with machinery and inventions, Sniper was terrible at keeping exact measurements--besides, he had no idea how you'd measure the height of fireworks with only one person.

[lingeringlegacy]

"To keep the timing exact, we need to synchronize our watches," a moment of pause before Stellaris asked, "ah, do you have watches?"

She took a couple of firework shells in her hands and assessed their size and weight. Her eyebrows furrowed in concentration before commenting, "Hmm... since they are handmade and hence not standardized, we don't really have a basis for an exact calculation." To be honest, that made her uncomfortable, but she did not want to put down Sniper's work. She turned to Sniper, her face serious, "Sniper, have you at least try one or two? If you have some estimate how high they go, I can try and do rough calculation."

[getsome_sleep]

Now it was Huo's turn to look a little sheepish at Stellaris' question. He knew what watches were, but never felt the need to carry one - he had one in the house, and outdoors could always tell the time by light and shadow, but none of that was particularly helpful now. Something else to consider adding to his slowly growing toolkit.

He crouched next to Sniper's rough sketch and looked it over, picking up a stick of his own. "We needn't keep too precise a standard. Counting at the same pace will do, as long as no one becomes too enthusiastic and lets fly prematurely." A small teasing smile went Sniper's way.

"Much of it depends on what patterns we wish to see. Simple geometries will not require anything more exact."

[longnosedliar]

"It depends on how big they are. The biggest one goes as high as about..." He squinted at their surroundings, and pointed at a large tree in the distance. "About two of those. The smaller ones only go as high as that tree is tall.

Sniper stuck his tongue out at Huo at the mention of his penchant for becoming a bit too overenthusiastic (to put it lightly), and then said, "Yeah, yeah, I can stay on time for something like this. I think just counting will be okay, too. This will only be the first fireworks showing, after all. If this goes well, I want to do more."

He tapped at the watch that was clipped onto his bag. "I've got one right here, but if we just count I don't think we'll need it."