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[CENTER][img]https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F1180161003%2F1290124242043%2F1%2Foriginal.20260318-175106?crop=focalpoint&fit=crop&w=940&auto=format%2Ccompress&q=75&sharp=10&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&s=20dd6ef84146c35b96a49f9bc5be0b9b[/img]
[color=#D4AF37][h1]H O L L Y W O O D   B O U N D[/h1][/color]
[sup][i]Friday · Evening · Limousine[/i][/sup][/CENTER]
(( ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴꜱ: [@FourtyTwo]/Lightning Girl, [@SonnetNSunbeam]/Asteroid ))
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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]The bottle had already been opened by the time anyone else noticed it existed. Nadia had it by the neck and a glass half-poured before Lightning Girl and Asteroid had finished gushing about the sunroof, settling back into leather that gave just enough to feel expensive. Her wings spread the width of the rear seat, feathers draping over the seatback and trailing across where a fourth passenger would have sat if the car had been built for ordinary people. People might complain about peacocking, but it seemed only fair when you had the feathers for it.

[color=mediumpurple]"Love the ostrich feathers on your gown — they really take it to the next level."[/color]

She turned her head toward Asteroid even as she was taking her first gulp of champagne, sitting forward slightly as she did. A smile touched her lips the moment the glass was gone. [color=#40B4C4]“Just some donations from a few friends.”[/color] If she was talking about the feathers, the diamonds, or the dress as whole she didn’t clarify, but she did raise one long arm above her head in a pose at the secondary mouthed comment. Nadia was certainly well used to attention, and compliments, but it was something she rarely lost her appetite for.

When it came to it, she had long practiced the art of extracting herself from the door way of a limo despite the span of her wings. If anything, it added to the dramatic flair of her arrival, her feathers tucked briefly as close to her back as they could, before flaring outwards as she stood. The golden accents of her wings glimmering almost as brightly as the diamonds of her gown in the light of flashing lenses.[/indent][/COLOR]

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[CENTER][color=#D4AF37][h1]T H E   G A L A   F L O O R[/h1][/color]
[sup][i]Friday · Evening · Gala Ballroom[/i][/sup][/CENTER]
(( ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴꜱ: [@FourtyTwo]/Lightning Girl, [@cosmiccowgirl]/Blackstar ))
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[COLOR=darkgray][indent]The room did what rooms like it were built to do — chandeliers throwing everything in gold, a singer who actually deserved the stage, a hundred people pretending they weren't watching each other's entrances. Nadia let herself be watched. It was, after all, the point of the dress.

Lightning Girl's question came in sideways, half teasing, half genuinely fishing.[color=fff200]"Ikret, what did you do to piss Valerie off? Please tell me this isn't a long running thing."[/color]

Nadia acquired a new drink for herself from a passing tray, downing the contents of the flute and setting it back before the waiter even had time to pass on. [color=#40B4C4]“What can I say? Admiration turns to jealousy quickly in this business.”[/color] She replied with a slight tease and purr of her words. It was an obvious none-answer, but she wasn’t really in the mood to dig into her past right now. She certainly had enough of it.

As she began to make her way to their table, some amount of danger sense flared up for her just to avoid the knock on impact of Blackstar’s approach. Blackstar nearly came apart at the seams trying not to spill a tray of champagne down her front, catching the glass with the kind of reflexes that suggested the near-miss bothered her more than it should have.

[color=gray]"Yikes, sorry, that was close. Uh — do you want this? I'm assuming it's champagne — I don't drink. If not that's fine!"[/color]

Nadia took it from her without comment on the rescue, the crisis already filed under things too minor to acknowledge twice. [color=#40B4C4]"Waste not."[/color] She sipped, unhurried.

[color=gray]"Your dress is stunning, by the way. I've never seen one like that. Those, uh — are those real diamonds?"[/color]

[color=#40B4C4]"They are."[/color] She let her wings shift slightly, catching the light along the cutouts at her hips, an answer in itself. Her eyes roamed over Blackstar for a moment, clocking that the frantic nature was a rather total thing, not just the result of a near-collision. A more gentle smile graced her features, and she leaned in closer. [color=#40B4C4]“It’s on loan from an agent..well, my ex-agent, so it’s sort of an ex-loan.”[/color] She giggled. The act of drawing closer wasn’t just to whisper, with Blackstar in close, the shining beacon that was Nadia and all her wing span was a rather considerable body block for incoming attention. [color=#40B4C4]“You look grand as well, trust me, these things become a lot more enjoyable once you work out just how much better we are than half the room.”[/color] She winked, the more mischievous nature returning to her expression.

Making their way to the table, it wasn’t long before there was a more direct interruption.

"Oh — I heard stories of you. You were in DTLA a while ago, I believe? Ikra?" Calliope had a way of standing that made everyone around her look slightly unfinished by comparison. Nadia recognised something underneath the toga and the wine and the deliberate poetry — the nature of someone who'd been wearing a mortal shape for a long time and had gotten good at it. She kept that recognition exactly where it belonged, which was nowhere visible.

[color=#40B4C4]“Aw, the pretending not to know my name thing was probably cute in 1205,”[/color] Nadia teased back. Her tone was less melodic than Calliope, but it was honeyed all the same. Perhaps in the same way too much honey ended up being a poison all on its own.

"She has wings like those of a man I knew a long, long time ago. Flew too close to the sun and had them burnt. And now here as a Phoenix, regrown from the ashes. A falcon from fire."

[color=#40B4C4]"Different bird. Different sun. I tend to come back from things rather than fall from them."[/color] She let that sit, unbothered, sipping her champagne.

"Anyway, that dress should be back with your agent. You are brave — or hoping someone would notice you and your wingspan."

[color=#40B4C4]"They notice regardless, I don’t need a dress to do that.”[/color] Ikret wasn’t above a little childish sabotage, and even as they spoke, the gentle drift of her wings would touch and brush shoulders around her, an aura of distraction she wielded in any social situation.

Calliope's smile didn't move, but something behind it sharpened, the conversational equivalent of a blade turning to find an angle. "You are seen. Who are you trying to charm? Eyes on someone? Or you want to be a big deal again after what you did? I thought this sort of thing you wouldn't go to."

[color=#40B4C4]“Oh you see, you’re wrong there. How are you supposed to get an invite to the after party if you aren’t at the party?”[/color] Ikret smiled, all teeth with their slightly too sharp edges. [color=#40B4C4]“I’m not here for anyone, everyone is here for me.”[/color] She winked, not quite defining if she was joking or not.

The distraction of Calliope while not long term, had been enough that ‘someone’ had slipped through the protective shield of ‘bird lady’ to get at Blackstar while her attention was elsewhere, and so she turned her attention on Liberty as the intense mid-west hero brought her full yee-haw ADHD routine down on the shy Blackstar.

[color=#40B4C4]“Liberty! If it isn’t the second best rack in the room.”[/color] Ikra beamed with enthusiasm that was all Hollywood glamour and not much sincerity. Ikret leant into Blackstar with a stage whisper. [color=#40B4C4]“Don’t tell them anything, you’ve got them running scared with those numbers.”[/color] Of course, Nadia would be lying if she claimed to have actually checked any of her new team’s numbers before, but she could fake sudden camaraderie with the best of them.[/indent][/COLOR]
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