Ah, there he was. White--our deepest apologies, silver--hair, looming as those who loom are wont to do, a expression tangled between stoic, disgusted, unimpressed yet here on the edge of the festivities nevertheless? Unmistakable. Loki knew him instantly.
While it may have been comforting to believe that the God of Mischief was really here for the feel-good stories and the feast that was in essence an attache of a festival-mandated support group, that would be--as it would be always--a lie. Not a good lie either, mind. The sort of lie even the most gullible among us would see through (or the needlessly, how do we say, ‘synonym for sharp, second on the left and yes, starting with an E’ to be more applicable to the subject at hand).
Also, Loki was the God of Mischief. Some conclusions were just needed to be presumed.
It was not unlike a stage hypnotist combing through an audience to find the ones that’d do anything he said by sheer will to please, except that Loki was no stage hypnotist (gods know he’d long since distanced himself from his past self’s outright fixation with the forsaken thing) and he was not looking for the human equivalent of plucky doormats. Bluntly--he was looking for raw entertainment value. Even blunter, he’d thought he found it.
You know what they say about the satisfaction in a tough nut to crack.
“I didn’t expect someone like you would have shown up,” said Loki, at Sephiroth’s side, his face illuminated by a neighboring lantern. “You don’t strike me as the--hm, how would you describe it? Pour away all your troubles into the shoulders of others, sniffling and crying? Ah, yes, that’s perfect. A sniffler. A sniffler that you are not.” Must’ve been victim of an empty schedule.
Then Loki was smiling at him--you know how it goes. Smile, twinkle in his eyes, unending plans for world domination, it was all so rote by now it was almost clinical. But he didn’t know that yet, which was the only detail that mattered to Loki in the moment.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “You’re not going to be doing much of anything here but looming and glowering, aren’t you? What if I said I had something far more interesting for the both of us to do?”
He’d say no with some dry quip, thought Loki not a second after. And, before Sephiroth could make good on the premonition, he hastily added, “Nothing for nothing, of course. Where there’s in it for me there’s in it for you. These festivities are a surefire distraction for certain unscrupulous activities for a silver haired fellow such as you and I.”
He was the God of Mischief. All else failed, it would be one marvelous trainwreck.
