2084/Monster Pizza

Monster Pizza
Date of Scene:	21 August 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Grace Choi, Black Canary, Breath, 222

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Grace Choi has posed:
    It's not too long a ride to Chaney's. Chaney's is, by and large, a bar. Not the nicest bar in town, by far. But equally, far from the worst bar either. Comfortably, Chaney's is somewhere in that tricky middle; the dated decor, old seats, battered table, and worn carpets suggest not the richest clientele come here. Grace parks her bike in the back, and then escorts the group into the bar, telling them, "I bounce here, so just grab a table. I'll get everything set up," she promises.
    Inside, several people are sitting at tables, groups of metas, some human looking, some not so much. Most eyes turn to those coming in, but most see Grace and look away, immediately returning to their conversation. Grace? Grace gets respect here, even from the hardest of metas.

Black Canary has posed:
    Dinah has paused to pick up a first aid kit and disappears at first into the women's room, emerging a few minutes later having cleaned up up the blood on her side, with the white of a bandage showing through the cuts in the side of her outfit, before joining everyone at the table as she slides into one side, leaning back against the corner as she takes a seat, crossing her legs with a sigh as she rests her booted feet on the table. "Sooo...wanna tell us a bit about yourselves?" she says curiously, eyeing Till and Breath. "I mean, whatever you'e comfortable with sharing."

Breath has posed:
Breath looks around awkwardly, then tags along behind everybody hesitantly. Not like she expects anything bad to happen, but she's always worried that any social situation might suddenly go completely off the rails. Now and then, it even does.

Breath blinks. "Uhh. I'm just some girl that has to be really careful at her birthday parties for some reason, pretty much. I moved here not too long ago from conservative nowheresville, and I haven't figured things out yet."

Till (222) has posed:
    Till is a little worried, because he really looks like he doesn't belong there. But he's promised to be good and not drink alcohol, so there's that. Grace gets them in, though, and Till relaxes. He'll sit down at the table as well, turning his leg so the injury he sustained there won't stain the leg of his jeans. That's going to be difficult, though, since it's a pretty big injury. He was just tiny when he got snagged, so it ripped quite a bit. It's shallow, but even shallow cuts bleed...

    He tilts his head at Dinah's question. "Well... I'm just... Till," he hedges, as if he's confused at what to say. Which, well... he kind of is. Since there isn't a lot he can say, not here, without risking getting in trouble. Breath's words get a blink. "Why careful at birthday parties? Isn't that when people are supposed to have fun?"

Breath has posed:
Breath says, "Candles on the cake?" She shrugs a little bit. "You're supposed to blow them out. Anyways, I can't tag around with the wrestling team here, so sorry if I'm a bit jumpy."

Grace Choi has posed:
    Beer is set down at the table, for Till, Grace, and Dinah. Breath is given a 'virgin' strawberry margarita, since she's underaged. "Pizza's on it's way," Grace says as she slides into the booth next to Dinah. She has the courtesy to not strech out, her long legs would most decidedly cramp the person sitting across from her, otherwise.
    "You'll figure it out," she tells Breath, easily. "I did. And, trust me, I started off way worse than you. I figured it out. You can, too. You've got that whole - hero thing going on," she gestures to Breath. "People will love you." She grins, assuredly to Breath.
    Then her eyes swivel to regard Till. "You, though. You're more like me. Tend to deal with things when they're in your face, but you don't give two craps if people recognize you or not. And, probably prefer they don't."
    She chuckles, though, just a little, at Breath's joke, and quizically looks at Till at his confusion.

Black Canary has posed:
    Dinah looks thoughful, though she shoots Breath a grin at the mention of birthday candles. "I can see that." she says cheerfully. She stops and frowns as she sees the wound at Till's leg. "Hmm....mind if I look at that?" she says, tapping the small kit she brough in. "Can at least put some antibiotic and a bandage on it so it doesn't bleed more?"

    She nods absently at Grace's comments to Breath. "Sure...and I'll be happy to give you my number if you need questions answered." She smiles a bit over at the girl. "I try to help when I can, though I'm not always around. There are quite a few metahuman kids though here that might be able to help you out too?"

Breath has posed:
Breath nods, "Sure! I mean, if they don't get weird on me. I mean some of the people at home were pretty awful to me, and that's before I got on E. I'm pretty much just going totally by ear here and trying to stay away from people that might hassle me. I have a few friends I try to keep an eye on, mostly." She looks at the drink in slight puzzlement since she didn't actually ask for anything yet, then sips it cautiously.

Till (222) has posed:
    Oddly, Till doesn't seem to know what Breath means when candles are mentioned. Not until she specifies that one is supposed to blow them out. "Oh! THAT'S what the candles are for!" He'd always had to hide from his tiny human's birthday parties, since all of Tiny Human's friends could see him too. So he never really knew what went on during them. "I always thought it was strange that a parent would light part of a cake on fire for a little tiny person..."

    Oh hey, he DOES get a beer! That works. "Thank you," Till offers to the bringer of the beer. As for dealing with things in his face? "Well... fix with you can, don't worry about the rest, right?" As for being recognized? "Everybody has to hide every once in a while," he notes. Dinah's attention on the wound gets a bit of a wince. "Oops. Yeah, I forgot to get it tended to." He shifts a bit. "Do I need to go somewhere else? Not the bathroom, right? Since you'd go to a different one?"

    Breath then gets a blink. "'E'?" No, he doesn't understand that, either. Though he doesn't seem judgemental about it, so there's that. Then again, would he if he knew what it was?

Grace Choi has posed:
    Grace doesn't seem surprised that Breath states she was on 'E', or worried about the fact she was - or is on it. She advises to Breath, "Stick with your friends." She lopes an arm around Dinah's neck, then, in friendly manner and kisses the side of her cheek, before picking up her own beer with the same arm, and drinking a few good swallows of it. She wipes off her mouth with the back of her hand and she adds, "There's a lot of good people around who can help you if you do want to be the hero type," she tells Breath.
    "Ectasy. Drug," she tells Till. "Best to stay away from it, really. Gets you high, makes you feel good while you're on it. Like being drunk, but, different. Better, and worse, in various ways."

Black Canary has posed:
    Dinah snags one of the beers, taking a deep swig as she leans back again, sliding her boots off the table, though she does draw her left leg up next to her body, resting the sole on the front of the chair, then erks as she's grabbed by Grace, grinning at the smooch. "Gah!" she protests, giving Grace an amused push, before she straightens up, looking a bit more serious. "Hmmm...do you need help with that?" she says to Breath thoughfully. "There are places to go that can...E's not as bad as some, but...it's not good either."

Breath has posed:
Breath opens her mouth and then looks awkwardly at Till, then Grace, for a few seconds, trying to decide how to react to that. "Wrong E. ...I, um, take estrogen. E. Not the other one, sorry! I used to be on the boys wrestling team at my old school, and I hung out with the guys on the team, and sometimes the cheerleaders, because they decided I was the cool girl. Everybody else pretty much was jerks though. So I get nervous in new places."

Breath has posed:
Breath ums, "Anyway, my dad was way too hung up on me being a guy, so as soon as I hit eighteen I ran for it and ended up here."

Till (222) has posed:
    Till tilts his head at Grace's explanation of 'E'. "Ooh, not good," he confirms. To note, he's being pretty careful with the beer too. "Lot of that stuff on the streets, those drugs. People could improve life and not need to escape it so much. Or pick better ways to escape? That's expensive and harmful." Though still there's nothing judgemental in his voice.

    He gives a quiet 'hehe' at Grace kissing Dinah, though he stays quiet when Dinah offers assistance to Breath. It's a bad thing, Dinah can help, and Till isn't going to interfere with that. Though Breath's explanation gets another tilt of his head. "Why can't people change themselves? People don't get to pick what they're born as, so why can't they just change themselves later?"

Black Canary has posed:
    Dinah's jaw drops a bit before she can catch herself, before she facepalms. "Oh god, sorry..." she says, sounding sheepishly. "I shouldn't have assumed that's what you meant...." She sighs, then nods. "Okay..." she says, filing that fact away without an apparent problem with it, though she has more sympathy in her eyes now. "How long have you been on your own?" she says gently, before peering at Till. "Well, not sure how it is for you, buddy, but most of us are kinda stuck with being the way we started off. Physically at least." She shrugs a bit. "Unless you happen to have a talent for shapeshifting, or run into one of those really rare metahumans who can alter other people too."

Grace Choi has posed:
    "Sometimes people don't have a better way to escape," Grace tells Till, with a reasonable tone, as she finishes her own beer. She scratches at some of the dried blood on her shoulder, causing flecks of it to break off, wrinkling her nose as she does. "Damn thing. Ruined my shirt," she complains. But, thanks to Nico's healing spell, there's no sign that any wound was there.
    Breath's comment has her considering the girl thoughtfully, "Ah," she says, "Might want to clarify that in the future, yeah?" Still, her reaction to Breath's admission is one of almost disinterest. She tells the girl, "You'll find your way, if you got the brass for it. Seems you do. You didn't lose your shit at the hundred or so monster bastards. Gotta have some brass, yeah?"

Breath has posed:
Breath freezes up on Till's comment and furrows her brow a bit, trying to figure out how to react to that. "I... am? Just couldn't do it at home. Way too awkward. And.. aw, jeez, is this like the one time I actually passed for once?" She rolls her eyes dramatically. "Awesome! I've just been living here for a couple months." She looks over at Till. "What about you?"

Till (222) has posed:
    Apparently Till is socially awkward. Or there's a lot of stuff he doesn't know about human society. He seems not to understand when Dinah's so contrite, blinking in confusion. Though he doesn't speak up about it. He seems to be looking between Dinah and Breath; he wants to see how that works, this whole 'apology' thing. How is Dinah going to make up for it, if she's offended Breath? What sort of compensation?

    Though he does nod to Dinah's words to him. And frowns a little. "I noticed that. People change a lot over the years, but sometimes they don't want to change that way. But there are things they can't help but change towards..." All of a sudden, he seems a little down for some reason. He's remembering his Tiny Human, how his Tiny Human changed to be not-so-Tiny, and then forgot about him...

    Grace words of escape get a frown too. "That's horrible, to not have any other way to escape than in one's own mind," he says, honestly sad. "Especially if they have to do such things to their bodies in the meantime." He means drugs though, not hormone therapy.

    But now, Breath's mention of changing herself gets an enthusiastic nod. "That! Yes, exactly," he confirms. "People should be able to change themselves any way they can, if they want to, and people ought not get so mad about it. If it's inside and doesn't match what's outside, it's not genuine. It's not real."

Black Canary has posed:
    Dinah nods thoughfully. "YOu've got grit, to take that on by yourself. Are you going to school out here? Got a job, a place to stay?" she says, going down the list. Though she doesn't advertise her past all the time...she's been in a position where she was on her own. Younger than Breath, and she knows Grace has been through it too. Her first reacton is to make sure that she's not going through what they did....even on top of the other stress of her life, which she can imagine doesn't help at all. "Some people can't see the world in anything but black or white, left or right, us or them." she says simply. "It's how some people are, it makes them feel safe if they can put everything in neat categories and try to ignore that the world isn't actually like that." She shakes her head. "Though you'll find they're inthe minority in a big city like this..." she says with a smile. "People have to learn to to get along in a place like this, so people are a bit more, mmm...willing to have a little empathy for others."

Grace Choi has posed:
    "Some people are stronger than others. They can pull themselves out of it," Grace tells Till, matter-of-factly. "Some people can't. They can't pull themselves out, and they don't have anyone else to help them do it. So they escape through drugs. Sex. Liquor. Whatever." She shrugs her shoulders again, "No, it's not pretty. But, it's life. Life isn't always pretty." She's speaking from experience, experience that Dinah knows all too well if what Grace told her is true.
    "People can change. Their minds. Their hearts. Their bodies. Just have to have the brass to do it. She does. I did. Most don't."
    Grace then offers Till a half-smile, "You're new here, aren't you?"

Till (222) has posed:
    Dinah's explanation gets a firm, emphatic nod. "Oh, that's very true," he agrees. That's how he stays out of most people's view when he's in his smaller form, after all -- 'magic' is in the 'fantasy' category, and 'fantasy' is in the 'not real' category. So he often goes ignored in that form. "I guess that's what makes people treat others that aren't like them so bad. hey don't get it, they don't understand, so it's 'weird' and 'wrong'.

    Till also nods to Grace's words. "I've seen that before, yes," he confirms. "It's really sad when you know they're capable of so much more, but they're just... at rock bottom and can't see the way up." As for being new? He nods. "I am. I travel around a lot, so I don't stay in one place too long. I tend to just blend into the background most of the time." Not a lie, either; most people won't think to open a tulip to look for him. And those that would, most wouldn't see him anyway.

Grace Choi has posed:
    "Well, I gotta pick up my shift. You lot, stay as long as you want. Drink as much as you want. My guests, yeah? I'll call a cab for you two," she points at Breath, and Till, "When you're ready to go, if you need one." She pats Dinah's shoulder, "Nice fighting with you, Legs. Just like the old days." Which were basically just a few weeks ago. The upwards slash on Grace's lips tells the story of her amusement at her joke.
    "And, don't start any fights. Wouldn't want to have to throw any of you out."