smartass_captain | A Very Nexus Reception

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A Very Nexus Reception

To all the friends of the happy grooms, PINpoint messages have already been sent weeks ago inviting them to expect quite the street party arranged in the commons of the Nexus. Guests have been invited to bring an appetite--both for food and for a social adventure. Nirnish weddings are public affairs, after all. While the ceremony has had to be somewhat sequestered for the sake of keeping the existence of Other Worlds a secret, neither Felix nor Jim would want to leave out their interdimensional friends entirely. Having a reception party arranged in the Nexus became the natural plan of action.

Overnight large sections of the Commons are transformed via diligent craftsmanship and quite a lot of magic from those who’ve volunteered. Lanterns representing the Divines are hung along every lamp post, bringing at least the idea of warmth even if the flames are too small to heat their surroundings alone. Bardic tunes carry in the air as readily as the scent of food and drink. Past banners of red and black, blue and white the people gather.

For both grooms this is nearly a continuation of the day before. They’ve had the chance to sleep off the nerves of their ceremony. Today is entirely for celebration--uninhibited celebration at that. No more minding what is said and isn’t. No more pretending to be anything other than who they are. Jim’s traded out his Nirnish finery for a suit and tie, garments he’s much more familiar with. Felix is staying with his native clothing; though he may have dressed down a little from his wedding clothes, the conjurer’s dressed in fitted breeches and his best fur-trimmed coat and boots, the soft hide dyed blue to match his tunic. By their side sits the conjurer’s spectral wolf familiar, ears pricked at the gathering.

As the guests find their ways over it will be easy to spot their friends amidst all the decor along with many other avenues with which to enjoy themselves….

Greetings
Food and Drink
Music and Dancing
Bonfire Entertainment
Party Games

((Links to all relevent wedding Prose can be found Here!))

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Maybe it's a bad idea to seat himself among the slightly seedier part of the party, but the alcohol is flowing strong and Thor would rather play quiet games than dance or sing, so the thunderer finds a stein and a seat at a card table, watching the games in progress with an attentive eye. He's not yet dulled enough by drink that he doesn't notice something slightly askew, and for once, he resists the urge to down enough that he forgets all about it.

Yet it's not enough to get him to leave the table either. What could be the harm in a simple game, so long as he does not wager anything he doesn't mind losing? "Deal me in," he asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows against the table's edge.

If a man can't sneak off and peer at the games being played at his own party after hours of schmoozing, what kind of party is it really? Jim's not looking to avoid anyone per say, but he has been curious about some of the tables that have been occupied on and off for the last while.

He's peering around at the table well before he catches sight of Thor. The panic that briefly crosses Jim's face fades quickly. Time has been good for getting used to seeing the God without immediately fretting about impossibilities and coincidences.

"Is that poker?"

Thor glances up from his cards, fanned out in the careful grip of his prosthetic left hand, and though there's still a shadow of sorts in his eye, the smile that comes to his lips is easy and unforced. A far cry from the last time they saw each other, certainly. "Yes, five-card stud. Stark taught me the basics several years ago, though I'm nowhere near as skilled as he was."

He sets the cards face-down on the table, so no one else can take advantage of his distraction and peek at his hand. "Congratulations on your wedding. I, uh, would've brought a gift but you already have a cat, and I didn't know what else would be appropriate." Damn. He'd been doing so well at not sounding awkward.

Jim hasn't been drinking excessively (which takes a lot of talent because people keep handing him drinks) during the party today but he's still not a hundred percent sober when he settles himself into an empty seat to watch the rest of the round play out. He doesn't recognize the strange-armored folk sitting at the table with them but that's more than fine.

"Remind me which version that is? Highest points with five cards, more or less?"

It's an Old style of poker, that much Jim knows.

"Either way I'm in whenever there's a free spot for newcomers."

While the two of them are busy discussing the rules of the game - and Jim is waiting for an open spot - there's a soft clunk as a bottle is set on the table between them. A chuckle and an easy voice: "With compliments to the lucky groom."

To Jim it almost sounds murmured into his ear, yet the voice's owner is long gone when he turns. Either way, the bottle is the proper stuff: an expensive whiskey that's smooth when it goes down and smells potent enough it might even have an effect on the Thunder God beside him.

Thor is no expert, of course, but he nods and gives a brief overview of the rules as he understands them. A more casual, homestyle game than anything one would find in a casino, but Stark had never taken Thor to one and he'd never felt the need to learn much about the more popular styles like Texas Hold 'Em, though he does know about them.

At his elbow, Thor's stein is nearly empty, and it doesn't take him long to drain it. The game's still ongoing, though, so he's not going to get up and get a refill until someone wins. Is there table service? He raises an eyebrow at the bottle delivered to the table, though he hadn't seen who brought it. Someone on his blind side, no doubt. "One of the perks of getting married is the gifts," he says with a chuckle. "That looks nice." By Earth standards, at least.

A familiar voice--one that catches his attention even as he's trying to pay attention to the rules and the play going on around him. Jim won't peg where he's heard it before (and it was so close) and its owner has disappeared when the captain turns to look. What's left is a very expensive looking bottle of whiskey. Both of his eyebrows quirk up.

His friends are going to love this. But they're not here right now. Thor, however...

"Here, let me go get a couple of glasses while they deal us in." It's not hard to wave someone down. They'll both smell the liquor when Jim cracks the seal. "You might as well try it too. Earth's got a decent selection on offer so far as drinks go." Because the seal does look familiar enough, even if Jim doesn't recognize the brand by name. It could so easily be of his world.

"Alright, let's play some cards."

Part of Thor knows that he doesn't need to be drinking so much. That he shouldn't be drinking so much. But why not, when it's here? This is a party, isn't it? It's not like he's drinking to forget, he's drinking to celebrate. That's totally different.

...right?

He grins at the young groom, accepting the glass with an appreciative nod and a careful swig. Liquor like this is meant to be experienced, not just slammed down as quickly as possible, though his fingers itch to do just that and then pour himself another. Besides, it'd be rude not to match his host shot for shot, wouldn't it?

It should probably alarm him that his senses dull so quickly as the game progresses. The lights seem brighter, the jokes funnier, his concern for the amount he's betting becoming less and less as he knocks back whiskey and plays his cards. But he can't help but grab onto the good feeling while it lasts, free of the weightier thoughts and relentless apathy that he's struggled with for so long. He's having fun, and that alone is enough to make him check his caution at the door.

Besides, it's Earthen liquor. What's the worst that could happen?

Jim isn't a quick drinker, either. Used to be when he was younger and when his desire to drink was to Get black out drunk so that he could be too numb to focus on the awful shit in his life he was running away from. Now though? His tolerance is so poor these days that it only takes a couple of drinks to get him tipsy anyway. And this stuff? Jim has shot well past tipsy without ever even realizing it. He's laughing just as much as Thor is soon, all reasons as to why he was a bit uncomfortable around the god well and truly forgotten as they abandon the game of cards after several hands to just sit over a small table with their drinks to shoot the shit.

"--right through a debris field between th'two ships. Into a door maybe a meter wide. Threading a needle. Bam!" He slams both palms against the table and laughs. "Crazy ass thing. So damn fun."

One thing is for certain, the young captain tells far better stories than Rhodey does. Thor laughs at the appropriate moment, reaching out to give Kirk’s shoulder a hearty slap and barely remembering to hold back some of his strength. He’s only human, after all, which makes his stunt all the more impressively risky. “Your crew must have thought you mad! Only math and thrusters to get you there.” He shakes his head, smiling broadly. “I used to fly the same way. Sort of. A magic hammer I’d throw and let it pull me off the ground.”

He still could, now that he thinks about it. With no reason to rush ahead, the infinity stones - and Mjolnir - have yet to be returned to their proper timelines, until such a mission can be properly plotted out. And sure, he has Stormbreaker anyway, but it just isn’t the same.

The gesture still jostles Jim in his seat and he nearly spills the drink in his hand though he hasn't stopped laughing. The booze saved, Jim shifts to pull himself (mostly) upright again.

"Math and thrusters s'all you need. Maybe a little luck." Or a lot of luck, in Jim's case. But mentioning Khan is a good way to ruin any happy story. Besides, this talk of a magic hammer is all new. And exciting! Obviously it's magic if it grants it's owner flight but...

"Wait, wait. Issat flight or momentum? How heavy is it? How d'you not pull your arm outta socket?"

Flight or momentum? Who cares? Thor will insist until the day he dies that it's flying, no matter what mechanism you use to get there. After all, don't birds fly the same way, using their momentum to generate lift? He's far too deep in his cups to articulate any of this, however, so he just makes a dismissive noise and waves his hand.

He laughs heartily at the questions. "As heavy as it needs to be," he answers with a broad grin. "For th' worthy it's a balanced hammer, if you're not, 's heavier than you can lift. Or something. Wasn't my spell. That's how it works."

Well, good enough, anyway.

"Because I'm the strongest Avenger," he answers of the last question, flexing an arm - then realizing whoops he's used the wrong one, because he can't really take credit for metal muscles, and repeats the process with the other arm instead.

That doesn't make any sense. How come it doesn't make any sense. Jim's a smart guy. One of the best, even! That's why they made him captain. He should be able to follow along with a simple explanation. He's shaking his head, half out of confusion and half out of disbelief at what Thor is telling him.

"Show me. I wanna see it. That doesn't make any sense."

Now, Jim won't argue that Thor is the strongest Avenger on account of he has functional eyes and the universe Thor comes from is utter bullshit for a man's sense of self image. He nods along with him even. But half the Reason you have science is to work smarter, not harder. Thor might be strong but there's surely other ways to lift a hammer. Even a god hammer.

It makes perfect sense, Jim! Thor's not surprised at the lack of understanding but he still chuckles at the young man's disbelief, and blinks and perks up at the challenge. Go get the hammer? Yes... yes he can prove it, can't he?

"Fine, I will! Wait here." He pushes himself back from the table and calls to Stormbreaker, which comes flying into his hand from somewhere else in the party - probably wherever the coat check is, though Thor can't remember where he'd put it initially. It's still in its rune-carved walking stick guise, rather than the axe it actually is, but it makes it no less able to open the Bifrost - and accidentally takes his chair with it, narrowly missing taking a chunk out of the table, too.

It'll be a minute or two before the roaring rainbow appears again, depositing the chair and Thor back roughly where they were when they left. Thor makes a wobbly turn as he orients himself, brightening when he recognizes the table where the captain is still sitting, and determinedly plods over to plunk a very heavy-sounding Mjolnir onto the table.

It won't be the first time a human has had a bit of difficulty adjusting to the more advanced ways of Knowing that Asgard has cultivated across it's millennia of existence. To understanding the marriage of science and magic that a people have built on so much more literally than Jim's own union to a Nirnish conjurer here and now. The captain won't make any signs of moving though he does jerk back in his seat (and slosh his whiskey over his sleeve and the table in doing so) when Strombreaker flies dramatically into the scene.

"What is--???" Jim can't even finish slurring out the question before Thor is gone in a seizure warning of light. Along with the chair. Huh.

That sure is a thing that happened.

He's just got his glass carefully refilled so he can sip at it again when Thor comes back in the same dramatic fashion and Jim nearly spills his drink again. He swears in vehement Andorain mixed with old Russian for several seconds as he shakes the bit of drink off his hands before shutting up to watch the hammer THUD! onto the table.

Now, the tables are sturdy. But they're not the carved oak Nirnish masterpieces the food is spread out on. They're finds from the Nexus and thus much more flimsy by comparison. If this hammer was Truly so mighty and heavy, shouldn't it have broken the table? Jim has no doubts Thor himself could break it if he had a mind to. But nor is the hammer placed in the Center of the table. And yet the table doesn't tip.

Surely it can only be So Heavy.

"That's it?" Jim at the very least doesn't sound unimpressed. Just very, very confused.

Thor makes a strangled sounding noise of protest. That's it? As if Mjolnir was not a wonder to behold. "This is it," he answers firmly, almost in challenge. Doubt it if you must, Kirk, but it's still true.

"Mjolnir the crusher, the grindstone, a thousand years old and still- wait, no, two thousand?" It was in the mural with Hela, which means it must be older than himself, right? How old is the hammer? He trails off, frowning as he struggles to come up with an actual age, and waves vaguely toward the ancient hammer when he can't.

He goes to sit down, and realizes almost too late he hasn't put his chair back, wheeling back around to grab it and drag it back up to the table before dropping his weight into it. "Give it a try," he says, once he's no longer in imminent danger of toppling over.

In Jim's defense he is very drunk and definitely should not still be drinking anymore of the whiskey (of which the bottle is still almost entirely full somehow). Lots of things confuse him right now. Including dear Mjolnir. The hammer does indeed look exceptionally crafted.

"It looks exc...ex..uh..really good f'r bein' that old." Hard to imagine it's seen that much battle really just by looking at it. The table keeps steady as Jim leans against it to push himself up onto unsteady feet. Get a closer look at this thing. Really lean in and see if he can tell what makes it so special. But just from looking at it? He really can't.

"Right. Lemme just say..." He looks up toward Thor as he reaches for the hammer, "I don't think it's gonna be so eas- holy fuckingshit that's not moving at all!" Not even a wobble, a budge, a wiggle.

What. The actual fuck??????

"How is it not breaking th'table???"

Edited (form and from will be the death of me) 2019-12-21 00:16 (UTC)

Thor beams proudly at him, though he had little to do with the hammer's actual construction. "Solid uru, forged by th' dwarves in the heart of a dying star. Can't find a bett'r weapon anywhere."

He leans back in his seat as the young captain examines the hammer, possibly a little closer than is warranted. But he's not that worried. Really. In the years since Odin enchanted the hammer, only two others have ever been worthy to lift it. And despite what his human friends think - or had thought, for those no longer in the realm of the living - being a good person is only one small part of worthiness, as Mjolnir sees it.

Okay, he's a little uncertain. Two in ten years is a lot, really.

But he's not playing for high stakes this time, and he can't help the grin when he sees Kirk pull on the handle and move it precisely nowhere. Oh, he is regretting not having a phone now, because this would be an excellent photo. The look on his face!

Thor laughs out loud and slaps the table. "'s only as heavy as it needs to be."

"What's uru? No--forget I asked. Stupid question. S'a metal of some kind."

Magic metal. Why the hell is it always magic that's the answer? If he was a mage like Felix is, maybe magic could also be the solution to fixing it. He's pretty sure he's heard talk of Stratos making things lighter than they ought to be with some spell or another before. He could go ask his brother-in-law for help, but that would mean admitting defeat.

Defeated by a piece of space-magic-metal made by Space Dwarves????? in the heart of a dying star. Did Thor make that part up or did Jim hear it wrong. Everything about that sentence seems wildly implausible And Yet here they are.

Thor watching with a smirk while Jim fails to even budge this hammer. Strongest Avenger, Jim Kirk ain't.

"...Okay. So th'table had different rules than I do." Jim's quiet a suspiciously long time while he squints. "What if I lifted the table?" Could he do that? He could probably at least move it a bit. It's not attached to the floor or anything.

Thor takes a few swigs of whiskey as he watches the captain try and fail to so much as budge the hammer from its rest, a warm nostalgic glow somewhere deep in his chest, the pain of it muffled by drink and a little time. It seems like only last year the Avengers were all gathered together, competing to see who could lift Mjolnir from the tower’s coffee table, good-natured teasing all around. If he lives five thousand years, he hopes that memory never fades, perhaps the last moment of peace he’d known before the spiral downward to Ragnarok and what came after.

That was a good day, Ultron notwithstanding.

He tunes back in when Kirk starts muttering to himself though, shaking himself free of the memory and leaning forward again a little, raising his eyebrows. “Why not try, and find out?” he says innocently. It won’t work, of course. Not when it’s a person trying to lift it. Automatons like the hypothetical elevator? Perhaps. Stark and Steve had never had time to test that theory before he’d left, casting their doubts on Vision’s worthiness, if he counted as machine or man. For Thor, he has no doubts on the matter. Vision was no mere machine, and if ever an android could have a soul, Vision did.

Unlike that night in the tower, no one is getting Mjolnir to so much as budge. At the very least, Jim Kirk sure isn't. Were he sober he might actually be upset by this. By someone looking like his father carrying a magical artifact all but screaming at Jim that he isn't worthy of whatever Thor is. But this far into his cups Jim isn't thinking about any of that and likely won't recall much come morning. It's a small blessing for both of them.

"Here, pick up th'drinks so nothing spills." Thor won't need to do that if Jim can't budge the table either but the human is trying to be polite and practical despite the drink in him.

"Right. Okay. Here goes noth--!" Oof! A whole lot of huffing, puffing, and probable sore back muscles in the morning later and the table hasn't so much as twitched. Both Hammer and now table may as well be one cohesive concrete statue so far as Jim is concerned. "Wh...what the fuck?"

He saw Thor carrying it simple as anything. It can only be So Heavy, right? R-right?

"Okay, so what if...what if I found a two-by-four and wedged it under the table leg to make a lever. Still no good? How many things do I have to set up before something autonomously moves that goddamn hammer?"

Oh, if you insist, captain. Thor obligingly picks up both glasses and the bottle, setting Kirk's cup on the floor and having to take a few tries to get upright again before he can drink more of his own. Not that he feels the beverages are in any danger, but really, there's no harm in humoring him. And it gets more whiskey in him! Win-win.

If the young captain was more sober, that look of wide-eyed scientific contemplation might remind Thor even more strongly of Jane, wrestling with any number of conundrums that she'd encountered when dealing with magic. She'd been quick to accept it as a science she did not understand, but that never did stop her from trying to understand. He sees the same in Kirk now, the gears grinding away as he struggles to outsmart the Allfather's enchantment.

Thor shrugs, a cheeky grin on his face as he takes another long drink from his glass. "You'd be trying a while. My girlfriend - ex-girlfriend, long story - she never got it to move either. She was a star scholar - er, astro... physicist?" It takes him a couple attempts to pronounce the latter coherently. "Lots of math. Didn't help at all."

The title is sadly lost on this man of the future as one that might be especially impressive. For a people who have gotten around the pesky speed limit of the speed of light their niche branches of science are quite different from the 'modern' Earth Thor has any sort of familiarity with.

"Y-yeah." The important take away from this is that this woman never did figure out how to move the hammer either with just math alone at her disposal. Simple machines won't work then. Levers, pulleys and the like. Would simple spells?

"What if I had m'brother-in-law cast a spell on it to make it lighter...?" Jim Kirk doesn't Only have mathematics on his side to rely on. Just because he doesn't understand how such tools Work isn't going to stop him form at least hypothetically reaching for them.

Oh, what? Thor actually frowns in contemplation at that, thoughts grinding against one another and he tries to sort that out. The Odinforce is - was - powerful magic, and no mere parlor trick could overcome it. But unalterable? He's seen more than enough to put cracks in the foundation of the Allfather before him. It'd be stupid to assume that no magic could undo what Odin cast. Right?

Has anyone actually tried magic on Mjolnir since the enchantment?

"You could try," he says slowly, rubbing at his chin and almost tangling his fingers in his beard braids. "That... might work. If th' spell's strong enough. Or... can... undo things?" Though something about that doesn't sound right either. He's a little too drunk to contemplate the logistics of time loops and the fact that the ancient hammer was unchanged the day he'd taken it.

Oh ho, Jim sees that uncertain frown Thor. His smile is triumphant, the face of a man who just may have found a loophole to abuse. Victory isn't assured yet, not by a long shot, but Jim's got a chance now and that's all he has ever really counted on in life. He's pushing himself upright from the table after only a moment.

The hammer actually comes in pretty handy right now as absolutely nothing is budging underneath his unsteady weight.

"Wait...wait here. I'm--I'mma be right back. I'll get him. You'll like him." There's no guarantee of that either, but Stratos Caelus is a good man and as pleased as the grooms are damn near to see this marriage done and settled. If he proves too hard to find Jim will go bother his subordinate Celann to help him hunt the Tribune down.

There's a wager to be settled!

A Very Nexus Reception

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