wait a minute little back porch lady

[gwynn]

Who: Megan and yooouuuuu
What: Still spiraling into a pit of self-destructiveness, but with less horrible traumatized feels, Megan could use some distractions.
Where: Specifically mentioned are Griss Twist and Howl Barrow, but anywhere is fine.
When: Ruudary 27-29th
Notes: If you need a specific prompt and don't have ideas PUNCH ME OVER PM we can plot things...
Warnings: Drinking, drug use, will add as needed.

Megan's drinking a lot more than she usually does, but from the outside, to people who don't know, it looks like she's just partying harder than normal. Then again, who's to say that's normal -- she hasn't actually been here that long, maybe she was just settling in before now. Who knows. People do notice that she seems a little off-balance, but Megan has always struck most people as being one of those girls -- high drama. When she's up, she's up, and when she's down...

She goes back to work, though, finally, and gets reamed out for not calling out when she was "sick," but she's not fired, it's not that huge a deal -- they found someone to take her slots for her stage shows and her absence on the floor was noted, but her regulars are happy to see her back. It's much easier to plaster her smile on at work, and to be fair, she really does have a good time, usually. She likes her coworkers and she's acquired a number of regulars who are actually really nice to her, even if a few of them are obnoxiously fetishy about her. Well, that can't be avoided. Megan's stage shows -- intricate, flying pole dance, burlesque routines ending in dusting her audience -- are interspersed with periods of her out on the floor, hustling for private dances, just like Camelot back home -- but better, because people here have money. The Vault is not actually a strip club, which works to her advantage because she can make her private shows whatever she wants them to be; there aren't really a lot of rules.

When she's not at work, she's at clubs or bars -- the former more often because she likes to dance, but sometimes she goes to bars to get drunk and flirt with boys in a less noisy atmosphere. She especially likes anywhere that offers karaoke -- she doesn't like to sing but she does like to goad boys into doing so, plying them with beers and vague promises or else facetiously threatening bodily harm, and then laughing as they stumble through the lyrics of unfamiliar songs, embarrassed, but that's the real point of karaoke -- getting drunk and making a fool of yourself. If everyone's laughing at everyone else, she doesn't have to feel like they're laughing at her.

Although she stays close to home -- in Howl Barrow she can be found at local stores, cafes sometimes, always standing out with her wings and hair -- she does venture out to the rest of the city. She does not feel safe here, but she didn't feel safe in New York, either, and it's still true that she doesn't risk being assaulted every time she goes anywhere in Baedal. Just if she gets on the wrong side of the police, which she is, despite her lifestyle, doing her damnedest not to.

She has never felt so alone amongst so many other people.

Comments

[gwynn]

Megan's not had much opportunity for homesickness -- largely because she really is so much better off in Baedal, totalitarian police state or not. Thus far, none of the Militia stuff she's witnessed has happened to her.

Yet.

"No, it was balls. I mean yeah, I guess I miss New York a little, I lived there for like, ten years, but everyone was mean and everything was shitty and awful. At least if you look weird here, no one like, freaks out and runs off to get the torches and pitchforks, y'know? What about you? Better or worse?"

She knocks back half her beer before she goes on. "Fair enough," she concedes after a moment, although she's already thinking that he just needs to get drunker to get in the mood to sing. She eyes his drink to see how much he's got left and makes a note to buy the next round. "I don't know half these songs either, they're all local. Like, what's a Durian Suicide Pact?"

[wontturntofoam]

"You don't look weird." It comes out without him thinking about it, because weird makes it sound like a bad thing that she looks that way, and it's not, "I'm the same, really. Where I came from... may have been a good place for some people, but it wasn't for me. This is much better."

She drinks fast, and Shrieky feels as though he should catch up, so he takes his own drink and tips it back. He's planning on drinking maybe half of it, but somehow when he lowers the glass again, it's empty. He'd had less left than her anyway...

"I don't know what it is!" He confesses, glancing towards her, with a half smile, "Have you tried to sing about it here? Did you bring stones of your own?"

[gwynn]

"D'you want another?" Megan asks, indicating his drink -- before he answers she lurches forward precariously, waving her arm at the bartender to get them both another. He did say he was planning on it! She's helping! "That sucks," she adds as a bit of an afterthought, "about where you come from, I mean. It seems like everywhere kind of sucks, really.

"I did a round earlier! I'm a bit shit at it, but I've got massive stones, so yeah. My date," she waves a hand at the stage, where he's flirting with some other girl -- not that she cares or anything, "went all hipster on me and it wasn't fun anymore."

It was also not fun because she's still not ready to be messing around with boys again, nor is she ready to dip her toes into the quagmire of jealousy he's trying to stir up, but she'll never admit it. As far as she's concerned, nothing happened.

[wontturntofoam]

He's going to say yes anyway, but she's too quick for him with the drink ordering, so Shrieky busies himself with staring over at Megan's erstwhile date. He pulls a bit of a face at the sight of the man, who has neither pink hair nor dragonfly wings, and therefore there was absolutely no reason why someone who possessed both of these qualities should deign to spend any time with him.

Also why was he talking to that other girl? She didn't have pink hair, "Does he not know that you're over here? Did you sneak away?" He glances back to Megan, his expression mildly puzzled. There is literally no reason why you should come to this bar and want to look at anyone other than her.

"I think you're correct about everywhere being terrible, thought. I mean, I know some people here are sad to have been taken, but they probably just hadn't noticed that where they lived was terrible yet. Humans sometimes don't, I think."

[gwynn]

"Nah, I ditched him. He was bein' a big pill." Clearly Shrieky should feel honoured that she decided his attention was more worthy of her time than that other dude. He's nice enough so far anyway, so she's going to take this as a decision making victory.

She slams her next shot before starting on her beer, which she takes a lot slower because she is just sober enough to remember that mixing hard liquor too fast is a recipe for puke soup. Her feet are dangling inches from the floor -- she's rather short, even in her ridiculous heels -- and her wings are opening and closing in a gentle wafting motion, resulting in her taking up a lot more space than she ought. "And yeah, I guess so! They don't really have to until something shitty happens to them, though -- like, they get turned into something not-human and then whoops, pee ess, everyone is totally a jerk all the time to them, wah wah suddenly everyone cares about like, prejudice and stuff. It's, like, ironic, or something." Or something.

[wontturntofoam]

Shrieky drinks his own drink at a more manageable pace, taking a long, slow sip of it while she talks. The mention of humans turning into something non-human makes him frown, it hadn't occurred to him that that could be a thing which actually happened to people. He'd heard a story once, about a man who was cruel to his wife, and was eventually punished by being turned into a horse.

It was a perfectly good story, but if it was true, then he couldn't see the recently behooved man being in any position to begin complaining about discrimination, so that probably wasn't what she was talking about.

"Was that the kind of thing that happened a lot? Back where you're from?"

[gwynn]

"Yeah," she says. "A few years back, everyone was just, like, normal. Then this big solar flare happened, and a bunch of people got sick and died. The ones that didn't die got all these weird powers. No one really knows if it was like, the flare that did it, or if we were all born this way and the radiation just, like, triggered it. I think we had to have been born this way 'cause it doesn't make much sense otherwise, y'know?" With a shrug, she stubs out what's left of her cigarette. "And then, you know, the human people flipped the fuck out because oh no, people who are different from us, and it was a huge deal, and it sucked. Most of us have been like this since the flare but now and then you get people who find it out months or years after and they make it this huge deal like oh no poor me I can do something totally awesome like read minds and have super strength and am immortal and shit but I look totally normal and no one can even tell a bloo bloo bloo."

... So Megan has feelings about mutant politics, evidently.

[wontturntofoam]

If he'd heard about this from a less biased source, then Shrieky might feel more sympathetic towards the recently awakened non-humans, but he enjoys being uncharitable, and the prospect of agreeing with the pink haired girl appeals to him considerably. As it is, his first instinct is to allow himself to agree wholeheartedly with everything she's saying, "That's ludicrous! Why would they object to having been made better than ordinary humans?"

No sooner than he's said it, the answer looms up in his mind, and he quickly takes a slurp of his drink to avoid looking uncomfortable about his stupidity. After the initial moment has faded, he lowers his glass and clears his throat, "And of course, it only becomes a problem to treat those who changed badly once they are the ones changing." He's quiet for a moment, then he offers, "It's strange to think about, but... it must be frightening to be better, where you come from."