>>“Oh, then what’s the proper term for it, chopped liver?”

Gawain snorted and decided not to grace that comment with a verbal answer. The extra spinning was vengeance enough. Even though she seemed to be enjoying it more and more.

>>“Anytime, good sir.”

"Ya're not off the hook yet, Bubblegum" he grinned as he led her back to their table "Don't ya go Cinderella on me, you might trip on your heels and fall."

With that said, he walked around the table and offered a hand to the wolf girl, who seemed to have devoured an incredible amount of food. Talk about wolf hunger.

"May I have the next dance, Lady Emerald?"

Emerald’s wolfish grin spread across her face as Gawain approached the table. She had a feeling she would not be able to escape from dancing with the mirror boy. Once his hand was outstretched to her Emerald reached out her own and took his, the wolfish grin still on her face.

“Yes you may .” Emerald told him, her tail wagging back and forth lightly.

While Emerald hadn’t been exactly looking forward to show that she knew how to dance among the other X men at first, now her reluctance seemed to be gone. Dancing was one of the very few things that aided in helping her use up her pent up energy as well as keeping her calm so she wouldn’t be so quick to react to things. The one thing the wolf girl was worried about though was if Gawain could keep up with her.

Under other circumstances that wolfish grin would have looked positively life-threatening. Gawain wondered if it was supposed to scare him off, or invite him to dance, or was it just the way she usually grinned at the world when she attended a wedding.

This should be interesting.

"So, Lady Emerald" he smiled as he lead her to the dance floor - he might have been overdoing the whole knight-and-lady thing, but a name like Emerald just went too well with 'Lady' "Tell me, how do you like to dance?..."

It was half kidding, and half asking her if she knew her left foot from her right (it was always a plus, even though Gawain could lead if he really, really had to), and also, maybe, if there were any extra rules to dancing with a lady who happened to have a tail attached.
A new song was starting, and it was faster in rhythm than the last one. Gawain turned to face Emerald, and grinned.

This should be fun.

The knight in shinning armor thing was bound to get old but at the moment Emerald didn’t mind it too much. Flattery was typically something never done to the wolf girl so it was welcome change of pace as opposed to the people being so nervous around her. His inquiry about her dancing made her smile filled with sharp teeth form into far more mischievous one. Her foot began to tap in place and her tail started moving in time with the music.

”Lets just say I know my way around the dance floor.” Emerald replied, “Question is can you keep up with me Lord Gawain.”

It had been a while since Emerald had last danced in public so despite her initial reluctance to show off the skills she had. For some reason she felt far more at ease with the mirror walker than she thought she did. The Fact she was also having a good time made her remember she would have to thank her mother and her baby sister for telling her to go to this shindig. Things were about to liven up considerably.

Twyla sat back down in her chair at the table and contemplated the idea of ‘going Cinderella’. It would be like payback–he left her in the library after all. Wasn’t it fair if she did the same thing? Part of her liked that scenario but in truth she didn’t really want to leave the reception, not yet at least. Although, it would be weird to leave one of her sandals behind, not to mention stupid. If you only have three pairs of shoes is it smart to ruin a pair? NOPE. Cinderella was crazy for not going after her own glass slipper considering she only had one other pair of shoes. Besides, it wasn’t midnight yet, fairytale motifs only look good in the right context–if she left now she’d just look like a jerk. It’d be a better idea to stay at the table.

Picking up her diet coke she took a drink and watched the pair on the dance floor. The song was a lot faster this time and she couldn’t wait to see what kind of tricks Gawain would pull with Emerald to a song like the new one.

>>”Lets just say I know my way around the dance floor. Question is can you keep up with me Lord Gawain.”

That was a challenge. Right there. And a real knight never backs down from a challenge. E-v-e-r.
The grin™ spread out on Gawain's face as pulled on Emmy's hand and spun her around. It was not really the dancing part yet, he just wanted to try to see how the tail-swishing part works out. It was tricky, but they could make it work.

With that cleared, Sir Gawain was ready to dance. Picking up the rhythm of the music, he pulled Emerald closer by one hand, and caught the other one. They were already dancing, when he remembered to answer her question.

"Try me."

It would seem that her challenge had been accepted and the ever competitive wolf girl was defiantly ready for some fun. When she started to spin her tail managed to expertly move down closer to her leg so she wouldn’t end up smack everyone around her with it. Emerald had experience with not beating people to death with her tail while she was dancing; it was a sort of par for the course on being a mutant.

Once the music began to pick up a smirk crept across her face, it would seem that the devious grin of Gawain was rather infectious. Pleased he seemed to be keeping up thus far after moments of dancing when the music picked up, the movement of Emerald’s feet did as well.. At this point judging how Emerald’s feet were moving and how her body was moving to the music, it was easy to see that she was actually good at dancing. Could she be a professional? Nope, nor did she want to be one, dancing was a recreational activity for her and despite how good she was at it didn’t want to ruin it by becoming a professional.

“How are you doing Lord Gawain?” Emerald asked, her grin still fixed onto her face.

Well well well, Big Bad Wolf was a dancer. Not half bad either. Gawain's grin matched hers, and so they danced, following the lively rhythm, and It Was Fun. He soon got the hang of the whole tail thing, and apart from that, Emmy was really like any other fun-loving girl he'd ever danced with. Maybe a bit better at dancing.

>>“How are you doing Lord Gawain?”

Instead on answering her, Lord Gawain sneaked an arm around Lady Emerald's waist, pulling her closer, and spun around before letting her go and spinning her again by the hand. He'd been keeping up so far; now it was time to take the lead.
For a moment he wondered if Twyla was watching.

The dance was quite long, but Gawain didn't really count the minutes. He'd been dancing for most of his life, but didn't get the chance too often to dance with a partner like Emmy. She seemed to be enjoying herself. He was too.
The song was almost over when he felt goosebumps on his skin.
Shoot.

Twirling Emmy around one last time he dipped her just like he did Twyla, and then stopped.
"My apologies, Lady Emerald, I'm afraid I have to leave." he muttered, his cheeks turning red to hell with the whole gender shifting damn "Thank you for the dance. Enjoy the rest of your night" with a smile, he led her back to the table, and waved at Twyla.
"Gotta go, Bubblegum, Maya's waitin' for me. Have fun." he winked before walking out of the Danger Room. Trying not to hurry.
Life would be so much easier if his body would finally make up its mind.
Still. The wedding was fun.

Dancing looked a lot easier from the sidelines, Twyla had to say. The pair managed to look like they were having fun and like it was easy, moving their feet this way and that. She wondered how she’d looked out there, probably not nearly so graceful and sure as Emerald–at least not at first. Maybe ballroom dancing lessons wouldn’t be too bad an investment, she could probably find some free ones at a rec center or something.

Twyla was caught up with watching the pair and then it seemed like the dance was over with a dip. I did not look that good when he tried that. The girl in green thought to herself. Wait, is he blushing? Hmm, that’s interesting. I wonder what’s going on there.

“Oh, okay. Bye.” Twyla said standing up, at first confused by the abruptness of Gawain’s retreat. And then it hit her. Grinning she added: “Tell her I say ‘hey’, alright?” A wave was returned and then she sat back down in her chair. Twyla would have loved to understand how Gawain and Maya were the same person so she almost followed the boy out of the Danger Room but she decided that would be an invasion of privacy or something. If she was meant to understand the gender changing she’d understand it--it'd be rude to play Nancy Drew.

Kasumi was light in his hands. As he spun her, as he dipped her, Shin couldn't help but grin. She was beautiful. Not just the way she looked, but the way she carried herself, and the way she looked out for friends. They way she was willing to help others, even if it put her in danger's way. My gal... Brave, beautiful... head on his shoulder. Shin nuzzled her with the side of his head, getting closer. His hands were on her hips. His lips, by her ear.

"Very happy," he exhaled. Both for Ghost, and for himself. "It isn't every day I get to wish one of my best friends a happy marriage... and it isn't every day we get to dance."

While other dancers around them spun and dipped, Shin hung with Kasumi, taking the occasional step back and forth on the dancer floor, in time with the music. There wasn't any need for fancy dance steps here. He was happy just keeping close.

He took a moment, just enjoying it... the music ended, and they were done. Shin tilted Kasumi's head up to face him. He pressed a light kiss to her lips.

"I love you." Shin spoke. And he did. The wedding had brought all that into clearer focus. He had to tell her. Had to share. His gal... he wouldn't mind spending more time with his gal.

A dangerous idea was brewing. How could they spend more time?

~~"Ditto."

Koga stood stunned for a moment, that wasn’t quite a warm reception, but she did just have juice spilled on her dress, and she was new here, and she was just trying to get some sweets.

>>"Kokoro, this is Kasumi. My girlfriend. Kasumi, my cousin Kokoro. The punch-covered lady in red. Sorry, it's kind of funny, though..."

Now the little jap had that song 'Lady in Red' by Chris de Burgh. Yeah, that was it. Screw holding back. She had to fume.

~~"IT'S NOT FUNNY! ALL I WANTED WAS FREAKIN CAKE, I'VE BEEN KNIFE JACKED AND MY DRESS IS RUINED. GAAAAH! AHHHHHHH!!!"

Koga was about to open his mouth to try to sooth her, He was sure that the was a way to get fruit punch out of a dress. Surely there was someone around here who could control fabric, or liquid…or had a laundry power. Right? But he was stunned to silence as he listened to the yelling. Drama much?

.~~ "Nice to meet you Kasumi. And...Koga-kun!"

And then she was suddenly very close, when she was leaping at first his arms spread wide to catch her, was she tripping? No, she wasn’t tripping , she was capturing him? he swallowed slightly. Now this greeting was a bit warmer.

~~"...Hello." she was pretty. Really pretty. And she had her head tilted down and was manageing to look p at him somehow. Was it warm in here? Yes it was warm.

“Hi.” His eyes went to Shin. If shin was like every other male in this mansion then he was in trouble, when anyone found about the day he met Kat, he was the bad guy every time. But no.

. "Well, it seems like she's found a dance partner, at the very least. Speaking of which..."

He swallowed again and let his arms settle platonically around her, being a perfect gentleman.

“Sssso Kokoro, how long have you been in New York, Shin mentioned that you were coming here but not when.” He suspected at first that Shin was going to hide her from him after he heard about the ongoing katcapades. But here he was leaving Him in her grasp. She was, friendly too. And then a bit more shyly. “did you want to dance?” Shin had after all already suggested it, and it would be a bit less awkward than just hugging her in the middle of this reception.

‘Two left feet,’ Slate had determined, was an expression. Its meaning proved surprisingly painful. Through the foot-shaped bruises he was developing on the top of his own feet, however, he determined that her actual skeletal structure seemed (felt) entirely ordinary. ‘Two left feet’ meant, in plainer terms, that she had weaponized her pedal appendages.

Given that he did not know how to dance, though, Slate was reasonably confident that he—to borrow another expression—‘gave as good as he got.’ (He had always enjoyed the alliteration in that one.)

“I do not think we are doing this right,” the teenager confided into Verdy’s ear. They seemed to be wincing more than the other couples...

With regards to Circe’s deathly comments, his reply way simple: So long as the body is never found, nor the Kabal implicated in the crime, he stated, then I did not hear anything.

He had a no kill policy, yes. A ‘policy.’ There was, of course, some fine print attached.

Verdigris felt infinitely better as the young man happily stomped back over her toes. It was one thing to be crushing the feet of your employer-for-the-last-five-minutes, it was something entirely different if he was crushing right on back. She smiled at him in between twitches of pain and apologetic grimaces. This was crazy fun, there was something just liberating about knowing that even with next to no knowledge of dancing they weren’t the oddest looking people there.

~ “I do not think we are doing this right,”

She grinned awkwardly at the young man, his cut and formed way of speaking reminded her a little of movies set in ‘olden days’, where everyone pronounced the syllables correctly and were constantly polite and following all the social guidelines. She idly wondered what social guidelines he was trying to fit into, before recalling that others had been thinking too loud and shushing the wanderings of her mind.

“Me either. Do you want to take a break?”

She glanced towards the tables, there were unoccupied ones scattered around, some close to the buffet table, others under the trees virtually solitary. She felt a little bad when she noticed the girl with a tail and a teenage boy twirling and swirling like professionals, but decided to say nothing. They were in their own little world. A world which the boy decided to exit abruptly. Verdigris tossed her head a little and looked at the young man before her.

“You’ll have to tell me what I should wear and everything, also where this… Mondragon place is, I’d offer you a number to contact me on with details and everything but, I don’t have one.”

A break. That might be good, yes. Slate paused a moment to erase the bruises from his feet. He blinked over at his dancing companion, and future employee.

“If you would permit me,” he asked, “I can heal,” he blushed slightly: these were wounds induced by his own trampling, after all; “your feet.”

The tables seemed a fair destination, indeed.

>> “You’ll have to tell me what I should wear and everything, also where this… Mondragon place is, I’d offer you a number to contact me on with details and everything but, I don’t have one.”

Like many people, there was an unconscious area Slate looked, when he was trying to recall something. In his case, ‘Mondragon Labs dress code’ seemed to be stored somewhere high up, and to the left. For a Kabal employee, there was no set dress code... but Kabal matters were best left until they were not in a swirling crowd of Mansion students and X-Men, with a scattering of Order members. For a Mondragon Labs secretary, he was quite sure what the girl was currently wearing was... not quite appropriate. Particularly the blood stains; those would have to go.

“I believe business attire is the most appropriate. A skirt suit would be fine.” He stated after a moment, trying to recall what Noin Mortman and the other secretaries were generally wearing, outside of judo practice. He blinked again at the girl in front of him, then tactfully added, “You will receive a stipend for buying work clothes. We will have to get you a work phone, as well. Do you have a preference between a blackberry and an iPhone? Those seem to be the most popular options. I have a... slight business trip coming up. When I return, is there anywhere I can contact you? Are you staying here at the Mansion?”

She didn’t answer his question for a moment, until she had made her own. Statement really, not question, but it served the same purpose. She watched as he stared into his own mind, with that slightly glazed look one wears when recalling something. She smiled awkwardly when he looked back to her. A skirt, well this would be interesting. She hadn’t worn a skirt since high-school.

Blackberry or i-Phone. She crinkled her brow for a moment, she had heard a teenager on the streets proudly proclaiming to his friend that his i-Phone was far superior, but with the way he waved it around to loud ‘whuuum’ sounds she feared it might have been a little defective. That and it had no buttons, she liked buttons. Especially ‘pressing other peoples buttons’, but years on the streets had squashed her trickster streak to a minimum.

She quirked her lips, anywhere she could be contacted. She hadn’t seen her green skinned friend again in the park, although while she was here she might as well grab the forms for herself. Fill them in and move in ASAP, preferably before Mr Slate came back from wherever he was going.

“I think I would be more confident using a Blackberry, and by the time you come back I hope to be staying here, yes, I just have to fill in some forms. If not, well, there’s a Japanese food place, called mountain pass. In the back alley behind there is where I spend a lot of my time.”

Awkward. She glanced down at her feet, oh yeah, he had offered to make the tingling redness she could feel spreading across her feet go away.

“So, healing huh? Cool.”

She didn’t really know anything about how other mutations worked. In fact, she wasn’t even really sure how her own mutation worked. She was pretty sure that when she was a child her parents had dragged her off to church where people had had hands laid on them ‘for divine healing’. The thought that the pastor could have been a mutant hadn’t even crossed her mind until now. She eyed the young man, he was far too young to be a pastor, but maybe one day.