xp_logs | Artie and Megan, Thursday night

~~Captain Emo~~ Artie and Megan enjoy an evening out.

Backdated to Thursday night

Pixie let the shuffling stream of people carry her out of the old movie-theater-turned-live-music-venue, into the night air and hiss of street noise. She popped bright pink earplugs out of each ear and let her mind drift for a minute through her experience of the amazing punk and indie rock show, including her first-ever riot grrrl performance.

"I could feel the sound vibrating my wings. I'd forgotten about that. It's been a while since I'd been to a show," she said, turning to Artie with the biggest smile on her face.

Artie nodded, letting the text flow in front of her eyes as he said "It was great. I didn't think girl music could be so... It was a lot better than I'd expected." He hadn't bothered with earplugs but he untied the jacket he'd wrapped around his waist and shrugged it on. "Drink?" he signed.

"Yeah, it was awesome." Pixie held up her perfectly mark-free wrist triumphantly - the pair were certainly continuing the trend of talking their way out of situations. Other underage kids had received the black "do not serve" marks. Her all-black eyes faintly reflected the color of Artie's fading text as she nodded. "Sure, let's go."

Inside the burger place was an 8-bit wonderland. There were arcade machines squeezed into the corners, some made before Pixie and Artie were born. Pixie gazed in awe at the mosaic tile art in candy colors, as they walked in and slid into a booth seat. With her bubblegum pink hair, she sort of looked like a video game character herself. None of the other (decidedly hipster) customers spared them too many looks. They were just two cool people on a... date? Pixie smiled nervously at Artie and squashed the thought. They were just hanging out. She didn't want to make it weird by thinking about it too much. She forced her mind to switch subjects.

"Hey, now if any of those bands get famous, we can say we saw them before they were big," she said jokingly. She didn't really care about trends one way or the other.

Hah, Artie thought and guestured at a booth, indicating that they should sit down. He glanced over at the counter - half of it was a bar - and raised an eyebrow at Pixie before signing, slowly and carefully, "want a drink?" She signed at about the same level as most of the mansion's residents - as in, she could about manage simple requests - and headed over to the bar, where he pointed at one of the microbrew taps and then showed some ID in response to the request and headed back to the booth with two pints in hand.

"Thanks," said Pixie, accepting the tall glass. It looked magical. Or local - how did one tell? - or something. She didn't know much about local microbrews and beer didn't do a lot compared to her own dust.

She took a sip. "Not bad. Better than PBR." PBR was pretty much the sum of her beer experience to this point.

Artie gagged and replied in an image, with someone holding up a PBR truck at gunpoint, removing all the beer and pouring it down the drain. "You can do better" he said.

Pixie laughed at the detailed image. "You're funny, Artie. I like you." She tried to take another sip but started giggling again and couldn't.

He gave her a small grin and pointed to the menu. "Kimch fries work for you?"

Pixie looked down at the menu. "Sure. Kimch - is that like, fermented cabbage?"

He nodded, taking in the dubious look on her face and smiled reassuringly. "It's good! Try it, okay?" Doug had a lot to answer for regarding Artie's food choices these days.

"Okay, sounds interesting." When the waiter finally noticed their booth, Pixie ordered the snack. However, the waiter also noticed her beer.

"Can I see some ID, m'am?"

"Yeah, it's - " Pixie started rummaging in her purse, meanwhile shooting a stricken look at Artie. Places in the US were super strict about the alcohol consumption laws for minors - and the legal age was higher here than in the UK for some reason.

The waiter was glaring, and Pixie couldn't decide if it because she looked like a mutant, or because she looked like a kid trying to get away with something. Well, she'd drank half the glass by now and decided she wasn't too stressed about it.

"Oh, that's my business card," she said, showing her eVolution card. After a few minutes' delay, she finally procured it. "Here's my license."

It barely took a thought for Artie to change the date on it and show that she was 21.

The waiter looked down and nodded, handing it back. "Thank you," he said as he left with their orders.

"You think I was going to leave you hanging out to dry?" Artie asked, keeping the text too small to be read by anyone other than Pixie.

"You're fast," she replied softly, impressed. Wow, they could really go where they want, do what they want. It was an intoxicating feeling.

"I've had my powers all my life," Artie replied. "I've had a long time to practice with them. Here, look at this." He was subtle about the illusion, taking a moment to think it through and visualise all the details - himself, as he sat at the booth, the shift in point of view required to show everything from her perspective, the light and shadows, and handed Pixie a pair of sunglasses. "Put these on. I want to keep this subtle."

Pixie tucked a stray section of hair behind her ears and put on the sunglasses. A surprised sound escaped her lips. Artie was sitting on a cabana chair - and there was nothing beyond him but miles of sand. She looked to her left and saw the waves of a tropical ocean. The restaurant and everything in it had vanished - except for themselves and their drinks.

"This is just brilliant," she said. "I can cause illusions, of a different sort, but I can't control what people see."

"It's limited." The text appeared in a speech bubble above Artie's head in the illusion. "I have to create the details myself - I'm not a TP where I just tell u you're looking at a beach and you create the details, and if ur eyes are weird or ur focus point changes too much it stops looking real. BUT ppl are really good at filling in the blanks. They don't look @ stuff."

"Yeah, our brains like to play connect-the-dots." She gazed at the waving fronds of a palm tree. It looked real enough. "With the speech bubble, it's almost like a video game - except it looks better than any game I've played," she observed. "A game inside a video-game themed burger shop - wow, that's meta."

"Trippy, huh?" Artie said and let the illusion vanish as the waiter brought over their fries and took a large forkful of them.

"I'll say," Pixie said, pulling off the sunglasses. Handing them back to Artie, she turned her attention to the fries. They were covered in kimchi. That made sense, of course, now that she was looking at it.

She pulled one of the pile and took a bite. "You know, these flavors do go oddly well together," she decided.

Artie nodded, thumbs up appearing above his head before looking down at his empty glass. He gestured at the bar - refill?

Pixie's gaze followed his motioning to the bar, where the beer tap handles were made of different video game controllers.

"Actually, I'm good. I can't stop eating these fries, though." She was such a freaking lightweight, the beer was making her sleepy. Plus, she'd had work earlier that day and was beginning to crash.

Artie nodded. "I have to be at work at half past 7 tomorrow morning, so.." He gestured toward the door. "Shall we?"

Pixie nodded sleepily, then straightened in her seat and flagged down the busy waiter.

"Halfsies?" she said, pulling some cash out of her purse when the waiter left their bill.

Artie nodded and tossed a couple of bills down on top of hers and stood, ushering Pixie out.