Homunculi Headcanon 15

Here is the third and maybe final headcanon vignette about Pride’s time playing football in his role as Zachary Stubbs. Since it’s February 14th, I’ll talk about Pride’s and Lust’s meet-cute between their guises Zach and Penelope that happened that day. Lust had been watching Pride’s football matches on the lie that she was scoping the competition for her brother Endymion (Envy), the goalkeeper for a rival team, but they had not officially met.

On February 14th 1872, a theatre in Central took a one day break from their run of Thespis, and a night called Miscellaneous Entertainment was held in its place, containing variety acts like dog tricks, ventriloquism and comedy readings. Pride heard about this during his time aboveground with his team mates, and decided to sign up as a magician. He had recently scored three goals in a single match while destroying the Kelpies, so his hat trick was big news around the city…in the world of football. He thought it would be funny to say he was swapping one hat trick for another during his magic act. Sleight of hand is easy when you’re as old as Pride, ~~cheating using his shadows aside.~~

Besides stroking his ego by showing off on stage as well as on the football pitch, this had another purpose. He was able to ask for a volunteer from the audience for some of his tricks, and naturally picked Penelope for one of them, being able to pretend that he did not know she was his rival’s sister.

On a genuine level, visiting this theatre on this day made Pride and Lust aware of Thespis, and their interest in the Xerxian Gods made them want to see it, neatly leading into a follow up meeting/date between Zachary and Penelope as far as the humans would see. This is how they discovered Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas, Thespis being their first, which would become more important to them a few years later.