[A street on Tier 3]A Midday's Performance[Open]

[Guy Laliberte]

Day 14 of Summer of 510 AV

Guy smiled perpetually at the passers-by who would stop and watch him perform. Of course he did, his mask was on.

“Hello, hello, hello,” He said to the small crowd gathered along the side of the street. “Come to watch me perform? You’re in for quite a show!” At ‘quite’, he winked at the crowd, and flung his arms up into the air. The three small oranges concealed in his sleeves flew into the air, and he crossed his arms and brought them down, catching one in one hand, two in the other.

“Quite. A performance.” He begins to juggle the oranges, slowly at first, and then more quickly, going from a great height to barely higher than his hat.Quite suddenly, he stops, catching two fruits in one hand and... two in the other? Sometime during the juggling, he added another orange, which was invisible in the blur of movement. The crowd clapped, a few dropping Miza into his backpack, laying in front of him, their value hidden to him.

“You give me too much credit,” He said, laughing. “This is not even close to all I can do~” His voice has a sing-song quality, he seems giddy. He begins juggling once more, this time keeping all of the fruit well in the air. He then looks up, and aims the oranges precisely, so that they all fall into his face! They disappear on the mask, seemingly being eaten whole. The crowd clap once more, a few spouses urging their partners to continue walking, and a few more generous souls donating their well-earned Miza.

“Thank you, thank you,” He said, nodding to the ones whose generosity led them to give him his living. “I think for my ne-” He gags, holding at his neck. One simpleton in the crowd remarked, “He’s choking on the oranges!” Guy continues his coughing, banging at his chest. He motions for a small boy to come to him, and instructs him to punch him in the stomach. The boy does so, and runs back to the crowd, fearing retribution, but nothing of the sort happened, except that Guy held his hands out in front of him, and the oranges seemingly popped right out of his mask again. He caught them deftly, and bowed to the once-more-applauding crowd.

[Colette Vicdor]

The housing authority.... The housing authority.... The housing authority.... I think I once knew where he was.... The housing authority.... The housing authority....

Colette, not very long after his ordeal, found himself directed to stop by the housing authority, whoever that was. However, the androgynous wonder soon finds himself wandering around Tier-3 like a lost child looking for his mother, and so it wasn't very long before he found a peculiar scene before him. He heard something of a commotion - people clapping, cheering - and found himself attracted to the source of it. Colette rounds a corner just in time to see an oddly-dressed man before a large crowd. A boy had just punched the poor fellow in the stomach and, as if his mask really was a part of his skull, he seemed to have spat out several oranges and caught them deftly in his hands.

The crowd, as Colette saw it, enjoyed the fellow's performance. Whoever he was, he was an entertainer, and an amusing one at that. Colette kept his chuckling to himself, but he saw fit to enjoy the show while it lasted; he did not think himself to be in any sort of rush. He drew five gold mizas from a pouch and added them to the entertainer's backpack.

Colette almost regretted the decision, thinking the man to be no more than a glorified beggar, but he joined the crowd, clearly interested in the performance.

[Guy Laliberte]

Some of the people, too busy to stand about and watch him perform, had walked off to do whatever it was they set off to do. However, two new people had joined the crowd, and they more or less replaced the three that had left. He decided to end his juggling act, moving on to a different one. He threw the oranges up into the air, and they disappeared behind him. None, however, hit the ground, for they went into a special compartment in the back of his vest just for that purpose. However, to the crowd, it would seem they disappeared.

"Anywho," Guy began, "I think for my next act, I will do a little bout of singing." He scanned the crowd for their reactions. Some of them, having never heard his performance before, moaned, but those who had clapped a bit, waiting for him to begin.

"The way I see it," Sang Guy, in a soprano voice, only slightly muffled by his mask, "is that you are the performers, and I am the crowd!" A few, maybe one or two, people, clapped, they had heard this song before. "Not to mention, oh my oh my, how you are proud!" He stepped closer to the ring of people, walking along the length of it. "I sing and dance and play, and you have all the fun." As he sings this, he points at them, then he looks down, sadly. "But when it's time to pay, you all up and run!" He looks up, laughing as the crowd laughs with him. "No, it's plain to see, with no remorse, you sticklers, all a bunch, who laugh and clap and sing and watch, but won't even buy me lunch!" This song, he knew, was a crowd favorite. They sure love being made fun of, don't they, He thought, grinning through his mask. "This is the song of a poor performing man, who roams the streets of Syliras, just looking for a fan. Looking for someone, anyone, whom he can call a friend, but a performer is he, and nobody is with him in the end..." His voice trails off, adding to the effect of despair. "But hey, that's life, that's how it is, for you are the performers, and I am the crowd. Anyone can see without a doubt that I am proud." He ends his song with a bow, watching the crowd, slightly touched by this sad yet humorous ballad. A few give Miza, perhaps made guilty by his song, and then walk away, but the majority stay and watch, waiting to see what his next performance may be.

[Colette Vicdor]

Truly a man who lives his life pleading for his next meal, Colette thought. If his situation were different, he would be a far more boring beggar than this jester obviously was.

"Anywho," the performer said, "I think for my next act, I will do a little bout of singing."

Before Colette thought of groaning because of the way he paused, he began singing a song that seemed to inspire a slight twinge of guilt to go with its humor. Colette, however, thought he picked up something about the song; that it was a truth, the truth of someone who spent his time entertaining a mass of folk who pass by him and feel generous enough to throw some mizas his way so that he could maintain whatever lifestyle he had. This led Colette to feel nice enough to pick out two more mizas from a pouch and, before he went back into the crowd much unlike the people who "up and ran" after their own donations, whispered something while he was putting them into the man's backpack.

"Surely you have a performance better than that," whistled from his mouth in a tone of obviously pretended disappointment.

[Guy Laliberte]

One man, or, at least, he thought it was a man, came up and put to Miza in his pack, and whispered to Guy, "Surely you have a performance better than that." His pseudo-disappointment did not idly pass through Guy's ears, and he took this as an opportunity to try something he had been wanting to try for a short while.

"Surely, you have a performance better than that!" He mocked, in a sing-song voice. "Surely, I do! Why don't you come and see if I can't do something that is worth your worship?" Guy holds out a gloved hand to the long-haired boy/man, wondering whether to call him sir or ma'am.

[Colette Vicdor]

Colette had hardly turned his back to the performer before he protested - like he thought he would. The performer went as far as to use the word "worship", as if to boast about what he was going to do now that Colette had "challenged" the entertainer. The masked performer held a gloved hand, a cue that Colette wasn't very quick to catch on to. Whatever the performer had in mind, Colette thought, it involved him. He paused for a moment before finally daring to speak.

"Oh? What is this?" Colette, not knowing what the performer had in mind, curiously brought his right hand to meet the performer's.

[Guy Laliberte]

"Oh? What is this?" The young man brought his hand to meet Guy's, which he grasped strongly and pulled away from the crowd. He then let him go, holding both his arms to maneuver him in such a position, then, with an invisible motion, a few oranges fell into Guy's hands.

"For this act, I will go back to juggling, but with a twist." He hands the man two, then four oranges, making him hold two in each hand, then takes out four of his own. Starting to juggle, he says, "On the count of three, and then three counts after for each orange, I want you to throw them up in the air and towards me. I will occasionally throw you back one or two, so be wary!" The oranges fly quite high, falling back smoothly into his hands, then being thrown back up, as he counts, "One.... Two.... Three."

[Colette Vicdor]

Colette wasn't too appreciative on the way the performer treated his hand, but he ran with it because he knew straight away nothing too bad was going to happen. A movement Colette barely noticed later, the masked one was holding a few oranges. "For this act," the performer began, "I will go back to juggling, but with a twist." Colette took the oranges the performer obviously wanted him to hold without complaint, guessing what the performer was up to as he started juggling. He was going to have Colette throw him the oranges and he would keep juggling as he threw. However, the next sentence caught him off-guard.

"I will occasionally throw you back one or two, so be wary!" Colette didn't like the idea of being hit in the face with an orange, but he had - despite having had no chance to practice it recently - confidence in his eye-to-hand co-ordination and reaction time, so he simply nodded and waited for the signal. The countdown, in Colette's perception, seemed much longer than it really was.

"One...." Colette had his target already in mind at this point. He was clearly aiming for around the juggler's hands, that he might actually catch his throw.

"Two...." He replayed the toss in his mind. An overhand toss would be too much and too inaccurate, so.... "Three."

....with an underhand toss, Colette tossed an orange more-or-less on target - it didn't take a marksman to toss an orange at a certain general area - and began tossing the oranges every three seconds thereafter. Knowing to expect an orange to be thrown in his direction, Colette carefully observed the blur of motion that was the juggler's hands and waited patiently.

[Guy Laliberte]

This kid... He was a kid, by Guy's standards, He wants to mess me up, tossing them straight at my hands... Guy decided he was doing so unknowingly, and instantly forgave him for what he thought was an attempt at his performance. Catching each orange in turn, he wasn't seeming to be throwing any back. Let him get comfortable... Suddenly, he flung his hand out, then instantly retracted it, an orange not headed for Colette. It was a feint, designed to see if he was paying attention. After a few more moments, he actually did throw an orange, and it headed directly for the young man's head!

[Colette Vicdor]

Colette tossed orange after orange, unaware that he was close to screwing up the performance, at the hands of the masked entertainer. He caught them in a manner that betrayed a certain amount of difficulty, but it seemed it was nothing the juggler couldn't handle. However, he didn't understand why the performer didn't toss any back--

As if the man read his mind, one of his hands flicked out as if to toss an orange. Colette's arms twitched into action even as Colette recognized the "toss" for what it was, but he snapped them back beside him. A feint meant he needed to pay more attention - the performer sought to fool his reflexes, for which Colette did not understand the need. The chances are good that Colette annoyed him somehow.

It was only when the man threw an orange straight for Colette's head that he realized his error. He shouldn't have been throwing at the hands, but this realization cost him his reaction time. By the time his hand sought the orange in flight, it was too late. The orange bounced off of his forehead, leaving a stinging feeling and a Colette who felt like an idiot. He caught the orange after it bounced off of him, shrugged off the sting of having a fruit thrown at him, and realized he needed to change his target - the chest. He was to throw at the chest. To throw at a juggler's hands, he reasoned, would actually make it harder on the juggler, who has to focus on juggling instead of defending himself from an idiot who's likely to send the oranges - not to mention the performance - tumbling around him.

After the count of three he was instructed to do, Colette used another underhand to toss the orange at the performer's chest, hoping that the change of course would not cost the juggler a screwed-up performance. The crowd that seemed to be watching intently did not anticipate a failure, to the best of his knowledge, and he did not want to cause one.