[OPEN] Maybe not a literal monster mash

[robintohood]

Who: Jason Todd robintohood and you. Also a mingle!
What: Various antics at Descendant Karaoke Bar and Lounge during October
When: Throughout October
Where: Central City
Content Warnings: N/A for now. Will edit if needed.

[There may be some changes to the timeline now but Descendant Karaoke Bar and Lounge is still open for business. There are always people looking to have a good time drinking and blowing off some steam with a good song. It doesn’t matter if they’re ordinary civilians or some of Central City’s more... colorful characters. Just be nice to the bouncers and check your weapons by the entrance first.

To reflect the fall season, Descendant has included seasonal drinks like pumpkin beer, apple cocktails, and spiced maple bourbon.

Meanwhile, some of this month's most popular songs seem to be reflecting Halloween, such as Highway to Hell and Monsters. Or maybe you want to do a more classy number like Witchcraft? Descendant looks like a speakeasy after all. And in a total coincidence, Time Warp has also shown up on the popularity chart.

If you drop by at Descendant on a Coyote Ugly Night, you’ll find the atmosphere considerably wilder and wetter. You might’ve even already seen some of the social media posts and videos of the employees performing. They certainly look like they’re having a good time.

Perhaps you’re coming in during a more normal time. Come by for a drink. Maybe rent a private karaoke room or karaoke on stage in front of others if you’re feeling brave. There are some bar games around too.

You can always just people watch as well. Those who are especially observant might notice that some of Descendant’s customers are a bit... furtive as they keep their heads low or quickly scurry to one of the private rooms.

There’s always the reading room too for those who want a more quiet ambiance.

And then there's the very select few who are allowed upstairs in the attic apartment.

Whatever the case may be, Jason will be around. As Descendant’s owner, he’s a busy guy with plenty he has to do]

((OOC: Jason will be around but feel free to mingle! My contact information is on this journal's profile and I'm in the game's Discord server. Also feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns as well. I also have a feedback post.))

Comments

[avatarfortruth]

[ Diana smiles back at her, distracted from her preoccupation by the question. ]

I'm fine. But thank you, I appreciate the concern. As for waiting...

[ That smile slips sideways, turning wry. ]

I think I'd be waiting a very long time if I were. But I see you have some friends here.

[ She smiles as she glances over the crowd to where Ororo sits, stunning as always. ]

As a matter of fact, I know one. Ororo and I met in our first days here.

[heartofthedream]

[ Jean doesn't miss the wry comment thrown in edgewise between two polite and friendly pieces. Still, her smile brightens for the mention at the end of Ororo, and she nods. ] We're all from the same world back home, and Ororo is someone I count as dear family.

[ More than. But there are less applicable words for someone whose would you have stood inside of, and someone you would glad both lay down yours for and hand it to their keeping even when you couldn't be trusted to. And not only her, but all else—and everyone therein—she held dear. ]

She's the very best.

[avatarfortruth]

I hope to count her among my own friends, as well.

[ There's a kinship she feels with Ororo that is almost, though not quite, like an echo of what she once had with her sisters. The other female heroes of the League and beyond tended to have a faint dislike of her, tinged with jealousy, that she's never quite managed to shake.

But Ororo is refreshingly free of all that, and they have a few things in common. Her smile warms as she glances up at the red-headed woman. ]

My name is Diana. And you are...?

[heartofthedream]

She's a good one to have.
I wish you well of it.

[ She won't assume on Ororo's part without speaking to her, but Jean can't currently see a reason that Ororo might not have counted her already one. Or at least among those of early and friendly first acquaintance. ]

Jean. Grey. Newly returned here for the second time. It's a pleasure to meet you. If you arrived with Ororo in the same Confluence, you've been here a handful of months, yes? I hope it's treated you well enough thus far.

[avatarfortruth]

Depending on how you reckon time passing when much of it seems to circle back around again, yes.

And thus far, it has treated me gently enough.

[ In the sense that very few things have actively tried to kill her, anyway, and none of them powerful enough to actually cause any real damage. ]

I imagine it's strange, to have left this place only to return again. Has much changed?

[heartofthedream]

[ Jean's mouth twists a little. A small curve that only touches one corner. ]

People keep asking that. It's both a yes and a no,
on both a personal and a planetary scale.

There were people here I cared deeply about who've since returned home and some who've stayed the whole time without the respite of touching home once more. The world I was used to here has shifted in significant ways with time still settling its feet into its newest rewritten chapter, and yet the broad strokes remain the same: the names, the faces of the guilds, the requirements, the rules, the bumper lanes, and the places.

[ A beat. ]

Does it feel significantly different here to you from days ago, before the change?

[avatarfortruth]

I really wasn't here long enough to form an opinion. I was one of those who took the Willow Maiden's invitation and went back to a time before the guilds existed.

[ She shakes her head and lifts her wine for a sip. ]

If I were to draw conclusions based only on my experiences here so far, I would say nothing in this world is set in stone. But perhaps that's true of any world.

[heartofthedream]

True enough.

[ Jean has seen too often how fragile and maliable time can be. How capable it is of being wounded, being broken; how hard one has to fight to protect it staying intact, and how, far too easily, everything in the timeline can be changed as simply as blowing the seeds off a dandelion in the wrong hands (and even some of the right ones). How important it is to keep it safe. Time. The universe. The life held fragile and tenuous upon the bubble of it. At any cost. ]

Who is—was?—the Willow Maiden?

[avatarfortruth]

[ Diana shakes her head again. Between the weeks of September 1sts, the trip back to 1985, the changes here and her own concerns, she's let intelligence gathering fall to the one-time Robins, all of whom are detectives of the highest caliber. ]

That, I don't know for certain. Is she a meta? A goddess? But those lines can often blur, can't they?

[ Even she, herself, has crossed that line more than once. ]

There is one here who might know, and who I need to call upon regardless. Perhaps I'll ask him when I do.

[heartofthedream]

[ Jean gives a deftly small not of acknowledgement at the rhetorical question. There are so many people, humans and mutants and beings and things, which have crossed the divide of those categories at times. It's almost far easier to expect that things might at this point from the get-go rather than to be shocked at the end when assumptions have played you for a fool.

Would Jean even know where to place herself in that box if she had to? Would anyone? Would she leave that to Scot? Logan? Charles?

(A man who loves you thinks that something like me should be afraid of you.
He is married to something that petrifies him on a fundamental level.
Such bravery. He sleeps in the lair of a Red Dragon...

...and I think he's right.

I think you are like me.)

Whose hand would pen the lines to define those divides?
The ones that blur so easily. ]

Here in Central City?

[avatarfortruth]

In Sunset Falls. The god, Eros.

[ Cupid, Bruce insists on calling him, seemingly just to annoy her. But it is a bit strange to think of herself now a champion of the god of love instead of the goddess of wisdom and warfare. ]

He generously granted me a weapon for a recent battle. I must return to him with my thanks.