Mirror
"My home? Oh you wouldn't..." There's a moment there where De Alcard hesitates. This is a rote answer, the kind she's given to a thousand other people within TC who only asked the question to be polite and wanted a learned answer. You're familiar with that, Hybrasil has set greetings, rituals among different groups and careers, the Huntress Lodge has a thousand such traditions some stricter than others.
It's an interesting thing about De Alcard though. You can really see the exact rate at which her mind is moving. Too slow or too off balance from all this to fully catch herself before slipping into her learned patterns, but fast enough to always catch herself. She's been doing it all night so far, and during your fight. She's careful, thoughtful, just, well, off her game a bit.
The thought is occurring to her too with this catch. So she stops instead. "You wouldn't have heard much about my home, I should think. I suppose you know that in TC being close to the center is everything. TC Prime counts its population in the tens of billions, and I'm quite sure Secundus has cleared a billion as well, they're most probably nearing two." She sips her drink as she mulls on that, perhaps imagining TC Secundus growing ever larger. Likely many opportunities for work there.
She continues though. "Other places, they're for the resources, you see m'lady. Nobody particularly wanted to live on Alcard. The light is very red there and not very attractive. Gravity in Alcard is on the heavier end as well, the planets in system have heavy metal cores, very dense. Mm, I apologize m'lady, I'm sure I'm boring you with all this, but talk of metallurgy is expected of my house. Alcard is so named after the Alcard family, my family. My Great grandfather started the mining colony that produces some of the arms and armor in the galaxy and I'm proud of our work. Though it is apparently still some miles behind the best that Hybrasil has to offer." She takes another sip of her drink, not too much at once, and looks down at you from over the glass with a pointed expression that says she very much understands how she ended up here.
"I'm a third daughter of course, but I was lucky to have the potential for piloting, so I was not consigned to record-keeping or having to go off and start my own branch family in a new mining base somewhere in the system. Alcard has only one inhabited planet you know, but we've got little asteroid bases dotted all over, and I'd guess we're over ten million souls all told by now. Everything and nothing all at once. And you know, not a whit of what I've seen compares to your beauty, m'lady."
She lets the conversation lull for a moment there. You've walked clear across the stage floor through the crowd, chatting and sipping. It can be assumed that she's fine with your brief modeling stint, having raised no objection and being in no position to do so, and you've very nearly reached the bar, where there's some activity and even an overturned stool from what must have been a brief fight a short while ago.
The main show will be starting in a few moments. She's gone through two glasses of the bubbly stuff she's been drinking from the waiters and downs her third quickly before setting it aside. Don't think she's forgotten the offer of a kiss, indeed it seems like she's been sipping so much of her drink to work herself up to the matter. She considers for another moment, but the alcohol has made her bold, and she ultimately bends down on one knee like a squire and takes you close gently, carefully, ensuring that she has not overstepped.
Has she, or will you grant her the kiss she wants?
***
Isabelle
Isabelle, Isabelle, Isabelle, this is simple, you've played this game before. Emidio, he is tired and hard-working and he would like to have something that is easy to write and something that will get lots of attention. He might like to do some good in the world besides, he surely hasn't gone into his line of work for the wealth and the luxury despite attending parties like this.
"Emidio Paz, at your service" he says. "I write for La Nueva Opinion, covering their culture section. As you can see..." he makes a sweeping gesture to the room, carefully avoiding knocking a passing waiter "this is the heart of culture for the galaxy these days."
Really, the trick isn't Paz himself, you understand, he's basically telling you that he's willing to call you important. You could probably get him to write that heart of culture bit straight into the article praising you if you make the right sort of joke at this moment and ask if he's talking about you. The trick, the real trick, is that you know much more than he does about what would please Adriana Teresio, and you need to navigate that without displeasing your family in the process.
The woman is bold, hard-driving, and extravagant. She painted her mecha entirely bright red after all, and dueled people in and out of it in her fiery youth. It's simply not good enough to be thought well of, and she's in the discerning camp that will notice your moment of hesitation in your earlier match. If you want to impress her, do something powerful here tonight, something that shows you've already learned and grown from the previous experience. Maybe become the patron and poster child of your favorite designer, and then simply drop the action right in front of Emidio? That will displease your family and present a real risk to your business though though. Sponsoring something this big, it's terribly wasteful, it won't come cheap, and others in your family might disagree with you as to whether the likelihood of getting Adriana's attention is worth the risk you'd be taking. But of course, doing that right is what would get Adriana's attention in the first place. You could come up with something less extreme than that, but the more risk averse you get, the less likely it's really going to sit well with Adriana, that's the tradeoff.
***
Dolly
Angela clucks her tongue and with that outstretched arm, she wraps it around you and pulls you close to her. Oh, little Dolly, this big, hard-working woman with her strong muscles is really very much, isn't she? She's looking so intently down into your eyes, that arm holding you tightly, so very strong.
She holds that gaze with you for a long moment, keeping you pressed against that soft, long, satin dress so close that you can feel the weight of her thick leg against your chin. She holds you long enough that you blush and lower your head, and that seems to satisfy her. "This isn't an act, little priestess, aya, you are not joking with me."
And then, then she picks you up, straight off the ground! She hefts you so that she can put you on eye level with her. Oh, gosh, she's so strong, outside of Jade you don't have any way to resist that strength, do you? You could fall back on Hybrasilian instincts and scamper away, find somewhere very dark and quiet to hide, but Jade wouldn't like that and you wouldn't really like that either. It's very nice to be picked up and held, isn't it?
She holds you at eye level and speaks to your face, very close, her breath hot. "You, goddess, you think you can toy with me, ya? You and your little priestess, you're good, I'll give you that, but you think yourself untouchable and it makes you arrogant." She snorts derisively, the breath tickling your nose. "Well you've made yourself an enemy today, and I'll be starting by keeping your priestess for the night."
And with that, she settles in a chair that peers over the balcony to watch the start of the fashion show, still holding you very firmly, Dolly.
The others up here, they've seen all this, and they're all wondering if she got it right. What are you going to do?
***
Solarel
Your tigress partner hauls you into the booth roughly, though not unkindly, she ensures that your pretty cream dress is properly tucked under you and not at any risk of tearing, then slides in directly next to you. She's barely said a word this whole time, just that opening joke, but now that she has you in a private, quiet space, calm and in hand, she's got some things to say.
"Yes, I know you and you know me. But you're not the only one of your species I've met. I learned since the last time we met, Solarel. You walked over us because you had new gods, I understand it now. Gods we'd never met, gods that spoke to you directly, even gods you hunted." The thought of that, it makes her heart race, her muscles tense. Crescent wants that hunt for herself. Might even be on that hunt right now, with you the prey. Your pink brushed scales glimmer in the dim light of the booth and for a moment you truly imagine what it might have felt like to be hunted by a cat through the twilight, stalking every closer.
"You're going to be mine tonight. I'm going to show you a good time, Solarel, I'm going to show you just how I let bygones be bygones" and she bares her fangs and presses against you harder than she was. The feel of a Hybrasilian must be so interesting for a Zaldarian like you, taking in energy as you do. She's small and soft, but this one is strong and sturdy too, muscles developed and coiled, ready to pounce. She's underselling how well she knows your people too, this pressure, it's good, she's reading your body incredibly, putting in energy in all the right places.
She leans into you and whispers so very close. "And when I'm done, if you're very good, I'll tell you about a place where you can learn all about my gods and yours."
***
The first fashion line by Prime Couture
As you all converse and settle, the main show will be starting.
Prime Couture is the most famous fashion house on TC Prime. They were started by the Teresio family some years ago, and have developed into a large fashion house that snaps up promising designers and employs a veritably army of artisans putting their garments together. It's known to be somewhat vicious: if you join Prime Couture at all, you're already top talent, but if you want to break out to be famous in your own right, you're competing for a tiny handful of slots with several hundred equally bright designers.
Tonight is a premier under the house brand showing off a new line of ball gowns styled "for an expanding galaxy."
They open with their music, a lazy sort of opening guitar that rises into a tango accompanied by drums, synth, and a rolling baseline as the models begin coming out.
The dresses here are all about the fabric. The house seems to have obtained neural mesh imprints of vistas from across the galaxy, including from several Zaldarians and Hybrasilians and they've made a kind of printed fabric that shows off the landscapes upon the models. The long gowns are woven wide and with long trains in several different cuts so that as the models walk and then turn, it's like a distant sunset is walking past you, or a lush lake, or sweeping spires patrolled by vast and wild nanobot spirits. There's something really special to these, like seeing through someone else's eyes and each dress is its own unique perspective with accents and emphasis as the viewer saw it. That means the sparkle and shimmer of the water beyond the leaves for the one, and the strong powerful silhouettes of the mechanical gods in stronger starker contrast than the other, their spiritual overlays making the empty terrain between them look dim by comparison.
The final model, walking alone, wears a dress with flying high shoulders and a vast cape down her back wrapped over the interior dress visible from the front. The landscape is not on the surface, but rather is a view from a pilot exploring the ringed nebula. Or perhaps some kind of composite view. It's impossibly wider than a single pilot could be at a single place, like gazing upon the vast rings of star matter from the vantage of a god. The rings of the nebula crisscross in different colors, circling the shoulders, running along the cape and down and back through the sparkling front of the dress in a wild rainbow depicting this cradle of stars.
