Bakura's Birthday Shindig [OPEN]

[hackeralastair]

WHO: Bakura, open to his roommates, everyone living on Hell Towers 10th (and 9th), their guests, all of Bakura's friends and their guests, and anyone who can con the party location out of Alastair
WHERE: Hell Towers' 10th Floor Mancave
WHEN: Friday, Sept. 2 from 7pm on
WARNINGS: none unless Kaiba is his usual self. ;)
SUMMARY: Bakura's turning 20! Time for all the fluffballs and assholes who know and like him to party. And collect delicious random CR from each other.
FORMAT: absolutely whatever you want. Please tag yourself in!

The last-minute party is ready to go. Momiji had been entrusted with the decorations, the cake is coming with Maggie, and food and drink are in the process of being set out. The Mancave is still in pristine form, with arcade games and console games hooked up to the giant TV, and poor Pierre still surviving well enough in his tank. Alastair has his longest techno playlist pumping through the stereo. All they need now is the birthday boy himself!

Oh, and Vector, Alastair has a request for you. Something about space bridges, Tokyo, and January.

Comments

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

Maggie very carefully had carried the cake all the way to Hell Towers, in its homemade cardboard cake box (paper mastery has some awesome practical uses).

Having been let into the apartment moments before, she is carefully setting the cake on the table. Encircled in strawberries, carefully written in chocolate gel icing, are the words "Happy birthday Bakura" in Japanese.

[shiromadoushi]

There's a look of wonder on Bakura's face when he spots it, wonder and something much harder to define that makes his eyes almost water with the near overwhelming feeling.

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

The look on Bakura's face is thanks enough, but of course she frets that no one will like it.

"Happy birthday," she says. "I hope it's okay," she adds, nodding toward the cake.

[shiromadoushi]

"It's perfect," Bakura smiled almost shyly, looking down at the cake again. "Thank you-- it's--"

He rubs at his left eye a moment. Getting so emotional over a cake... how much a girl was he?

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

Maggie clapped her hand on his head in that odd but affectionate gesture she used sometimes. "Thank you. I'm glad you like it."

She removed her hand. "How are you?"

[shiromadoushi]

"A little overwhelmed! I had no idea you guys were planning something like this!" Bakura smiled. Really, he'd been keeping quiet about it, he really hadn't expected anyone to even remember!

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Alastair got everyone rallied," Maggie explained. "He seems like a good friend."

[shiromadoushi]

"He really is," Bakura agreed with a warm smile. Even if he had thought Momiji was a good idea for the decorations. Silly Alastair.

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Is he from your world?" She didn't really know Bakura's other friends that well. This was probably a good time to learn more about them.

[shiromadoushi]

"Sort of. Like a half step from it," Bakura explained with a soft smile. "Sometimes happened in his version of Domino that never happened in mine." Anything that would have resulted in the two of them ever meeting...

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Hmm. I wonder if there's multiple versions of my world," she mused. Like one where her memories hadn't been altered. Or where they'd been hired to be someone else's bodyguard other than Nenene's. She could scarcely imagine such a thing. Or that someone else was Nenene's bodyguard. What if was someone horrible like Wendy Earhart? She shook her head, refusing to let her mind go down such a ridiculous track. And then blushed for good measure.

"But you both play that game?" She knew it was more than a game where he was from. She had always tried to understand it better--it seemed helpful to understand those who came from it.

[shiromadoushi]

Bakura nodded, laughing slightly. "I think sometime Duel Monsters is the only constant between all the variations of Domino," he smiled. "Even everyone from the future still plays it." It had even gotten more insanely popular by then...

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Have you met someone from your future? That must be odd."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair really hadn't said hi while he was making sure everything was set up, but once he had time, he stopped to have a look at the cake.

"Nice," he said with some surprise and genuine interest. "I think he'll really like it."

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Thank you very much," Maggie said shyly.

"And thank you for organizing everything. Did you get a lot of help?"

[hackeralastair]

"Yeah, I really did. Although, Bakura's got a lot of friends - I'm not surprised." Alastair shrugged awkwardly; talking with girls wasn't one of his strong points, particularly if they were nice and quiet and almost as tall as him. "He's a sweet kid, he deserves the best."

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

Maggie nodded. "He does. I know he'd been feeling down for awhile. I hope this will cheer him up."

"Who else is coming?"

[hackeralastair]

"Mostly people from the floor," Alastair replied with a little shrug. "But that's because Bakura's pretty much collected a bunch of his friends so they'd all live here. Though, I think there's a few others coming, too."

He glanced behind him to make sure his adopted brother wouldn't overhear, and then leaned in conspiratorially. "I don't even know half the people he knows. The Kaiba brothers are the only people not living at Hell Towers that I'm just as familiar with." That, of course, included present company, but he wasn't worried about offending her. He didn't know Maggie; but then, he didn't have a problem being social with strangers. Alastair was not shy.

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Kaiba?" Maggie had met the elder Kaiba twice. Only the second time he had been out of his mind, but neither had been pleasant. She decided not to comment on it, except to note, "I'm glad he found his brother, then."

She changed the subject. "How did you meet Bakura?"

[hackeralastair]

Alastair smirked a bit. He didn't feel like discussing Kaiba at all, so he just nodded. It was good that Kaiba had his brother, that much he could agree on.

"You know, I don't even remember anymore," he answered. "Probably just talking over the comms. I found out he was a friend of Yugi's, that meant he was from my world, so we already had that in common. Everything else just sort of grew out of there."

Belatedly, he remembered that he was supposed to be some kind of host or something. "Oh...I was gonna get a drink, you want something?"

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

Maggie nodded. "If it's not too much trouble. Thank you very much."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair went to the fridge to fetch a hard cider for himself, but then hesitated. "Uh...we've got iced tea...some beer...a lot of beer...water?"

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

"Beer is fine." Maggie didn't drink much but if that's what they had the most of, then why not?

"What do you do in the City? I mean, for a living."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair picked out a bottle and handed it over. He liked anything non-American, thanks to his travels in Europe prior to getting blinked into the City, so most of what he had personally gone out to get was fairly exotic.

"R and D at StarkTech," he answered easily. "Mostly programming and computer stuff. You?"

[origamiguardian.livejournal.com]

Maggie unceremoniously twisted off the top.

"Starktech? That must be interesting," she replied. Starktech seemed a bit legendary somehow. "I'm a detective. Well, I'm unemployed. But I'm trying to get a detective agency going."