One step at a time. Moonlit Ball. [CLOSEDish]

As the two continue their kiss the music starts fading away as the last note is played leaving a lingering mark emanating across the ballroom, the waiters start cleaning tables and only a few guests remained. The moon was now high up in the sky as the clock struck 12, signalling the end of the ball. People started leaving through the large silver laden doors, finding their way down the large flight of stares that lead to the street below.

Alonso is the first to pull away from the kiss, resisting the temptation to take it a step further despite the lingering passion burning in his chest and while keeping his arms around Alexandra he starts slowly backing away before taking a deep bow. "Thank you for the beautiful night, Alexandra" He said, taking her hand in his and placing a kiss on it. "It will be something most memorable to me and I'd hate to see you go, though it might be for the best as we barely know each other." Taking a step back he pulls a blue rose from his coat pocket and offers it to Alexandra. "A gift from me to you" Alonso says with a slight hint of sadness in his voice.

Alexandra took the blue rose from Alonso.  It was the most delicate shade of whitish blue.  In many ways, it matched the pale bluish argent moonlight.  She smelled it, letting its fragrance memorialize this beautiful night.

She looked at Alonso, and put her hand on his cheek.  "I had a great time tonight.  It was the best I've had in quite a long while."  She gave him one last brief kiss on the lips.  With her face still close to his, she said, "Maybe we will run into each other at Beacon.  I really hope we will get to know each other better."  With that, she turned and walked back into the ballroom.  

In truth, her doing so could not have come at a better time.  Against her best conscience, her heart told her that she had not had quite enough of that night, and in the grip of passion, who knows what might have happened.  Certainly not she.

Alonso sighed as Alexandra walked away her figure burning into his memory as she left for the ballroom. Taking a seat on the balcony he takes a good look at the moon reminiscing the moment that happened just a while ago. Imagining how they might've looked in the night sky as he grips the edges of the balcony even tighter. Damn. I haven't felt this affected by something like this in a long time. Well, only time could tell. Brushing himself off Alonso waits as the staff start putting stuff away, quietly enjoying his time to think things over.

Alicia checked her shoes and made sure that Hiljainen was safe and not stolen, which it was (they had safes behind the coat check for that very reason) and looked around again before deciding to head over to the 'refreshment table', which she took as fancy talk for 'the booze'. It was laid out with bowls of punch, bottles of wine and liquor, and... a very tall guy who looked to be enjoying the drinks a bit too much.

Raising an eyebrow and smirking, she tapped him lightly on the shoulder (having to reach up) and said, "Now, don't claim the whole drink table to yourself, half should do the trick for someone your size."
While the comment may have sounded chastising in wording, her voice carried a humorous air to it, not to mention a decent buzz, so she probably wouldn't sound all that scolding.

Fionn looked behind him sharply as he felt the tap on his shoulder and the words of the girl, his eyes darting downwards to stare into Alicia's from her smaller height as his sword made his back movements somewhat jerky and clumsy, but this was also the fault of the alcohol.

He smirked and chuckled at the attractive girls words as soon as he realized that she was the same one he had been oggling from a distance, so seizing the opportunity he spun around quickly and gracefully, grabbing the girls hands in the process all the while somehow managing to maintain eye contact with her. "Oh pardon me Madame, it's not often that I get t-" He laughed in a slightly drunk way. "Sorry about that, I find it hard to keep up the classy facade, but the drinks are just hard not to dive into so I said "Why not?" and dug in, I hope that hasn't caused anyone an inconvenience." Fionn said, still holding onto the girls hands as he stared into her eyes with his cocky smirk plastered onto his face.

Alicia chuckled tightly and gently pulled her hands from the guy's grip, backing up a step in an attempt to put a bit more distance between them. She poured a shallow glass of whiskey and downed it, grimacing at the not-too-unpleasant burn in her throat, and turned back to the guy in front of her. "So, who am I talking to?" She asked.

Fionn chuckled lightly again, his face slightly blush from the many alcohols he had tried within the last thirty or so minutes. "Ah sorry, maybe I should keep at least enough of the fake classiness to remember to tell you my name." He said with a light, joking voice as he scratched the back of his neck with one of his long arms.

"Fionn Macgorm, freelance Mercenary at your service." Fionn said charmingly, extending his right arm to offer the girl a handshake of the casual kind, hoping to know a bit more about the mysterious and attractive young women. "Now." He said pausing for dramatic effect, his charming and cocky grin still plastered upon his young face. "Who do I currently happen to be talking to?"

Alicia shook Fionn's hand with an amused grin, and replied with, "Alicia Ryan, huntress in training." She neglected to leave out some of her other titles (White Fang operative, avid protestor) for obvious reasons, but she was honest enough.

Laughing outwardly at Fionn's expression, she went on to ask, "And what is someone like you doing in a place like this? You look almost as out-of-place as I do." Her wings restated themselves subconsciously, as if they knew she was referring to them.

Fionn sighed and scratched behind his one remaining ear innocently and happily, his eyes briefly fleeing Alicia's and gravitating towards her elegant wings as they fluttered, synchronized to her cute voice. "Oh I don't know, illegal Maradarous things." He said with a laugh, his slightly baritone voice ringing out through his chuckles. "My only question though, is why would you not be here?" He said with a smile, his words being somewhat of a backhanded compliment. "You look almost at home in that posh dress you're wearing." Fionn said still grinning, his slight jab clearly not meant to be any ruder than a tease.

Alicia nodded at Fionn's answer as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "I see, I see." she said in a mocking professional voice, pouring some rum into her glass and sipping it.
At the mention of her dress, she snorted, rolling her eyes so dramatically her head moved with them. "Oh god, don't get me started on the dress. You should have seen the shoes I was wearing earlier, I swear I could kill someone with the heels on those things." Then again, you can kill a person with anything, really.
Smiling more genuinely, the pointed to Fionn with her glass-holding hand, lifting the index finger from the glass while placing the other hand on her hip. "I swear, I'm the furthest thing from posh you can get. Believe me. Hell, before tonight I didn't even think faunas were allowed in this kind of place, though that would have just made me want to come here even more." Her feathers ruffled up and smoothed down again, and she took another burning sip of her drink, struggling to do so around the smile that had manifested on her lips. She could already tell that she would click much better with Fionn than she had with Lí, through no fault of his, of course.

Fionn chuckled yet again, briefly having weird thoughts on whether or not he laughed too much as he did so before pulling his flask out from the deep depths of his coats inner pockets and taking a long sip, savoring the burn of the ancient whiskey he stored within.
He continued to chuckle and nod from time to time as the girl continued on her rant about murderous shoes, the truth being that he was secretly checking her out while she did this, shamelessly catching peeks at her wings; but truly it was not his fault seeing as he had never in all of his years actually seen a bird Faunus of any type, it made him want to see how different they were to normal girls in perverted ways, he slapped himself mentally for those dirty stupid thoughts.

"So if you weren't allowed, why would ya come here eh?" He said before chuckling deviously and leaning into the girl, nudging her with his elbow slightly as a seductive smell of aged alcohol permeated off of his presence. "Don't worry, I hate those posh "No-Faunus" events just as much as you do, hell the only reason I'm still here is the Alcohol!" He said before chuckling heartily again and smiling down at the girl, his eyes obviously drawn to her Faunus details, his expression clearly showing that he enjoyed what he saw.

Alicia could feel Fionn's eyes on her, and she wasn't sure if the burn in her cheeks was from that or the alcohol. Still, though she didn't entirely mind the attention to her body, her wings pressed tighter against her when she caught him staring at them.

Still, she leaned slightly away from Fionn when he got closer, and chuckled before answering, "Are you kidding? Anytime I see a "No Faunus" shop or area, I make a damn point to go there. I can't fix the problem on my own, but I can always piss them off, right?" She grinned wickedly and continued, "And anyway, this place seems to be faunus-friendly, and it's not so bad once you kick off the shoes."

Alicia had to admit, Fionn's mention of hating racism had won him some serious points in her book, and she was growing a bit more comfortable around him, whereas normally she was more guarded with humans, like she had been with Lí. It didn't stop her wings from pressing in at the attention, though, although they would never be out of sight. Raising an eyebrow, she asked, "What are you looking at?"

Fionn smirked a bit harder as the girl seemed to warm up to him slightly, he had always managed to get along with Faunus girls better than humans; he chocked this up to the fact that most of them had felt a degree of trauma from their experiences with racism, he himself being quite traumatized from the things he had witnessed gave him a good conversation piece with them, a way to make them feel more comfortable around him.

"Oh I don't know, there are so many captivating views here that my eyes are simply wandering, I guess they happened to wander to one of the better ones." He said, putting both hands behind his head comfortably as he leaned back like a slacker with his eyes resting comfortably in Alicia's gaze, the two staring into each others eyes.

Alicia held the gaze for a second before looking down, bringing a hand up to her mouth as she laughed. "Wow, you are full of shit aren't you?" She looked up, eyes squinted in laughter, to convey that it was, in no way, an insult.

Calming down after a second, her face slightly reddened from both laughter and flattery, she took a larger drink from her glass and asked, "So, why land on me then? I see plenty other girls here in fancier dresses, most of them much prettier than me." She raised an eyebrow. The first few words of that sentence were croaked out as her throat adjusted to the alcohol before smoothing out again to a teasing, slightly flirtatious tone.

"Oh I don't know, desperation would be an easy answer, or maybe I just have a thing for Faunus, but seeing as you're the only I see here that would still fall under "desperation" wouldn't it?" Fionn said before laughing, putting his left hand on the table and leaning onto it comfortably, using his position to look into Alicia's eyes easier as the massive sword on his back weighed him down and forced him to lurch forward towards the girl slightly.

"But maybe it was just a hunch that you weren't another one of those stuck up posh sub-humans over there." He said pointing behind him, resisting and urge to take another sip from his flask. "And if you think I'm just being harsh saying that I'll tell ya a secret, that secret being that growing up poor didn't exactly make me care much for the rich." He said now laughing in his semi-baritone once again, pulling his flask out from the place in his jacket no mortal man was brave enough to venture to and taking a nice sip, holding it in his right hand in front of him and swishing it around, offering a sip to Alicia through action rather than words.

Alicia shrugged, finishing off her glass and eyeing Fionn. "So I'm a product of desperation?" she asked, a risky tone to her voice that said 'tread lightly'. She could tell that that must not have been quite what he meant, but she still wanted to mess with him.
At his next explanation, she grinned. "Oh, I'm about as far from 'posh humans' as you could get." Accepting the offer of the flask, she took a swig and grimaced as the stronger concoction inside made it's way down her throat. "Besides, growing up with the-- with other oppressed faunas made me not so daring for humans like that, either."
She neglected to mention just what humans like that had done to her and her family, and just what measures they'd taken.

"I grew up around Faunus, ghetto and all y'know? Thankfully being thrown down there with the rest of what our society disliked made me a better man, though my dad did act weird when I'd have one of my friends over, she was this cat-girl and we used to hang out a lot, she was probably the reason I didn't end up a racist dickhead to be truthful." Fionn said before taking the flask back and taking a nice long sip, he wanted to steer the conversation away from the bad joke he had made as quick as possible, the truth being the he had been eying the interesting looking girl all night, and was very thankful her personality shined as much as her wings.

He pushed his hand out again, offering the girl another sip of the thick burning alcohol as he considered what to say to the girl next, he was smart enough to pick up on the fact that she was interested and he most definitely didn't want to ruin that, enjoying how much a "sparky" girl Alicia was. "Hell the white-fang have hired me for a couple of minor jobs , it was kind of nice working for them to."

Alicia nodded along with his story, giving the flask back for him to take a drink. "Yeah, exposure really helps. Admittedly I didn;t grow up around humans, hey just sort of barged into my life and... well, they changed a lot of things, I'll say that much."

When the flask was offered back, she put a hand up in polite refusal. "Not to say that I don't like the exposure of Vale. I've met quite a few decent humans, helps with perspective, you know?"

Alicia's brow raised at his mention of the White Fang, eyes widening as a result. "You're kidding," she murmured in disbelief, "That doesn't sound right, the Fang hiring a human? I've been with them for most of my life and I've never heard of- &@%#." She scolded herself for the slip-up, and blamed the alcohol for altering her filter.

Alexandra walked slowly inside the ballroom. She watched the waiters clear the tables, reflecting upon the events of the night. The night had been so perfect, with the dancing and the romance. It was so sad to see the ballroom being cleared. It was like a dream slowly being pulled away. It was terrible. While the night would last in her memories, memories were simply not enough for her, being merely shadows of the true sensations she felt in Alonso's arms.

In the midst of her thoughts, the quick flash of a small red object caught her eye. One of the waiters had taken the first rose that Alonso had given her and was preparing to toss it away, as if it were common rubbish. With haste, she made her way to the table and stopped the waiter from discarding it. Taking back the rose, she held it close with the blue rose. They were a pair, beautiful when separate, but even more so when brought together despite, or perhaps because of, their contrast.

Alexandra, with the roses in her hand, continued to drift away, walking every so slowly towards the exit of the ballroom.

Fionn chuckled a bit, a devious grin on his face as he took the flask back and slipped it into his coat, the girl was quite obviously a bit too intoxicated to be talking about illegal activities and terrorism.
He leaned in close to the girl, pushing some of her hair out of the way as he slid his mouth up to her ear, alcohol sweetly tinting his breathe. "Don't worry Alicia, your secret is safe with me." He whispered before pulling back from her and leaning onto the table again, Oberursel quite clearly putting too much strain on his back as his devious smile remained.
He had liked this girls style before, but after hearing that she was a member of the White Fang his opinion of her had risen significantly, he loved a girl who fought her own battles, much better than all of these rich girls who couldn't kill a cockroach on a crackhouse floor.
"And if you're wondering how I got hired then let me ask you a question, how do you sneak into a secret meeting without being rubbed up and down for Faunus features?" He paused dramatically again, his smile still devious and handsome. "Not having them, and besides, I don't charge Allies as much for my less than legal "services"."

Alicia blushed when Fionn got close, feathers ruffling and smoothing themselves subconsciously. She went very still until he backed away once again.
He went on to explain why hiring a human would be useful, an understandable asset. "Well, I can't say that's not a good idea." she remarked, leaning with one arm on the table. Frowning, she saw the sword on his back and the stoop in his posture, and put two and two together. "Hey, why don't you check that thing? They have huge safes over there for weapons, I put Hiljainen there."

Fionn seemed to look somewhat stressed at the concept of putting away his sword as Alicia inquired, he hated having to have this conversation; nonetheless he sucked it up and put his usual happy face back on, swallowing up the stress. "Eh I would but me and Oberursel here have been through a lot together." He put his hand on the grip of the blade, massaging the uncomfortable looking rectangular handle covered in the peeling grip tape.

"So yeah, just the usual Sentimental value bullshit, I had to keep it on my back near constantly when I was..." He briefly paused, not sure of how much he should tell Alicia, before finally deciding that it would come out eventually anyway. "an orphan, had to avoid 'im getting stolen and all that, used 'im like a pillow some nights as well, that's the beauty of single-edged swords, a lot more practical as long as you're smart enough to know which side is which" He said before chuckling, his choice of words a bit strange seeing as he had referred to his sword as "him", showing just how highly he though of the unconventional blade.
"Anyway, what's your weapon? With a name like Hiljainen I can't imagine it not being face-melting-ly awesome." He said pointing at the check-in, hoping he would be able to see it if she pointed it out.

Alicia wasn't pitiful as Fionn explained his own sob story. Everyone had one, especially in the White Fang, and they lost their lustre after a while. Shrugging, she accepted the fact that he wasn't going to get rid of his sword and carried on with the conversation.

At his comment about her weapon's name, she scoffed. "Not exactly. Hiljainen means 'silent', so it's not 'exactly made for face melting." She set her drink down, clearly eager to chat Fionn's remaining ear off about it. "So, it's like a double-ended glaive with larger-than-normal blades. The blades can come off and be wielded with handles on the backs of them, so you can use 'em like handheld axeheads. But that's not the cool part."

Turning to look at the check, where Hiljainen resided in a safe, she continued, "The shaft retracts into the grip to make it short for carrying, and the blades fold in, but it can extend to be about four feet long. And if you flick the grip just right and press a release, the limbs of a powerful bow pop out and string themselves. I carry arrows in a thigh quiver--I made them myself, the fletchings are my feathers actually, funny enough--and they all have different specialties. Some are normal, some explode, that sort of thing. And-" She stopped herself, realizing she was join on.

"Sorry, sometimes I ramble," she apologized, "I made Hiljainen myself, she's my pride and joy."
One could tell how fond she was of the weapon, she had even personified it the way Fionn had his.

Fionn smiled in a happy approving way as he heard the girl speak, her over joyous and smart speech about her weapon and what it was capable of rang smoothly through his ears like sexually attractive butter, he slapped himself mentally once again for his weird thoughts, wondering briefly if there really was such a thing as a "Butter fetish".

When she finished her detailed explanation of the weapon and what it was capable of Fionn took a sip of alcohol, thinking desperately about how he should reply to her words without sounding strange or drunk.
"Ah it's okay, we all ramble on about the things we love sometimes, and I think it's really cool that you take so much pride in your weapon, not enough people can see beyond the simple steel and realize that their weapon has just as much personality as any person." He said confidently, now putting the drink down and eying Alicia again, a band had begun to play now, their happy and upbeat orchestra music reverberating throughout the hall as he decided he had had enough of simple talking.

Fionn slowly and subtly inched closer to the girl, he looked around him as he saw a few other people begin to dance, seeing his opportunity he stared into her eyes again with his wide and confident grin, his intentions obvious as he knelt down and performed an obviously fake and purposefully bad mockery of a posh bow. "Oh Lord Alicia, may I kindly ask you for but one graceful and totally classy dance?"

Alicia nodded along with Fionn, tapping one foot as music began into a discernible melody, instead of the background noise it had been up to that point. "Exactly. When you're making something that is going to be possibly your only battle partner, the only thing standing between you and an Ursa's teeth, then you tend to pour yourself into it. You should see the detailing, I got a bit lost in the process, you know?" Chuckling and not expecting an answer, she leaned one hip against the table and stared out at the couples on the dance floor.

She glances back to find Fionn look her up and down and get on his knees, earning a wry eyebrow raise from the avian.

"Oh Lord Alicia, may I kindly ask you for but one graceful and totally classy dance?"

Alicia almost laughed at Fionn's slip-up, and offered her hand to him. "Why the hell not. Lead the way, Lady Fionn."

Fionn chuckled a bit as he stood up from the obvious joke crouch, looking up at Alicia and slowly sliding his right arm forward to place it gently in hers, locking fingers in one hand with the girl as he pulled her away from the table for drunks and towards the dance floor with an excited step, his feet near bouncing on the floor as the music influenced his movements, making just his walk resemble the dance which he wished to pull the bird Faunus into.

As they arrived Fionn stood there with his hand gripped to hers for but a moment, staring into her eyes with a cocky grin. "Now, I wonder what those oh so classy and posh feathers will look like in a twirl?" He asked as he put his left hand on to Alicia's hip, pulling the girl into a quick paced dance as the orchestra played on, their instruments filling the hall with the sweet sounds of melodious music while many happy pairs danced on in a similar fashion to how the Mercenary and the Revolutionary moved, deciding it was time to put his thought to the test he pulled the girl into a quick twirl as the music hit a high note, it would look very pretty to onlookers despite being a rather simple move.

Upon entering the ballroom once more Alonso notices the silhouette of Alexandra picking up the rose than proceeding to leaving the venue, her figure burning itself into his memory as if a pike into his heart. As she was on her way he also noticed the figures of a few more couples on the dance floor. Though nothing as perfect as his own dance with some minor flaws here and then, he couldn't help but smile as he watched a girl twirl, chuckling as he headed back into the preparation room to fix his things.