Xaviers!

"Good question. Never got the details," he sighed. "Didn't think I'd get trolled by him, but whatever. Time to get shitty," he forced a smile and flagged down the bartender.

He did not seem to notice the cute enemy next to him and Em while grumbling.

"Well, what did he tell you about your date? Maybe we know her. Or him."

The bartender brought the girl her drink, a Black Velvet served in a cheap plastic skull-shaped goblet, it's sinister dark appearance offset by the straw she used to drink it through the tiny mouth hole in her mask.

"Probably that he used to stalk her." Emilie threw out there dismissively, again revealing how highly she thought of him.

Emilie was eye-balling her friends drink.

"Shit's fuckin' metal, me likey."

"Uh..." Trev thought aloud, trying to recall exactly what he had said. He pointed at Jez' drink and made a "me too" motion to the bartender.

"Well. Not much. Didn't really want it to be anything super formal. No matching costumes..." he said looking back to Jez.

He blinked, a grin spreading across his face as he noticed the costume she was wearing "Speaking of matching costumes...I feel as though I should be jumping on your head. I'm Trev--who's hiding under the mask?"

"Well, I thought it sounded spooky enough without any gummy eyeballs or anything in it. A little bit of dry ice and boom, perfect." She took another sip of her drink before setting it down, dangling one of her oversized and colourful boots idly while speaking to the punk turned matriarch.

"Well, I guess that's better than throwing a turnip at me." She said as she turned toward Trev. "And it kind of defeats the purpose of the mask to just tell you, doesn't it? But I guess I can give you a hint at least." Always a show off, Jez had a duplicate of herself slip off of her stool and hop onto the neighbouring one, the original picking up her drink again. She had some catching up to do after all.

Jez was lucky her friend wasn't too drunk to just blurt out her name and ruin her compadre's game. Instead, she started eating the bar nuts and let Jez flirt with Trev. Jez was shy, so Emilie wasn't about to do anything that threw her off her game lest she not get her confidence back.

"Oh! I've seen you around. I know....Oh. Shit. I'm so bad with names....J something...Jess?" Trev said wracking his brain.

"Close enough!" Said the Shygal who wasn't sipping her drink.

"So, you don't know anything about your date? What do you think she'll be like?"

"Well. Not too sure. I know that she didn't want to coordinate costumes or anything," he shrugged taking a sip of his drink.

"I bet she'll be a busty redhead telepath. They always are."

The original Jez put down her drink. "You know, we could be your date."

Trev hesitated as he reached across the bar for his drink. What if she *was* his date? He looked back at her, a nervous smile on his face partially obscured by his fake mustache which was now half falling off.

"Well...are you?" he chuckled.

The two Shygals looked at each other.

"Well Basil had mentioned a handsome American wanted to come to the party with me...."
"Us."
"We weren't us at the time."

Holy threesome, Batman--shut up no there are telepaths around this is a first date don't make it weird...

"Well," he chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck as he took his beer off the bar, "I...guess that makes you...both? my date...s."

Jez sipped her drink using the straw protruding through the little hole in her mask, her double not as occupied.

"I guess so! But don't worry, if two is too much, we can go back to one."

"No...no, no, you don't have to do that," Trev replied, clearly a bit flustered by the simple fact that this was apparently his date. "Can I buy you a dri...you have one. Well. Uh. Can I buy you a drink?" he asked to the Jez not currently holding a drink.

"That'd be lovely, thank you! I'll let you pick out something for me then."

Having a mask on was giving Jez a better sense of self-confidence than she normally would have shown.

"Sure!" Trev said.

"...I...well straws look like they're good for the costume. So we'll go with that..."

His fake mustache gave up and completely fell off at this point, landing in his beer.

"...son of a..." he grumbled, picking it out of the beer with his fingers and just shoving it into the front pocket of his overalls. He flagged down the bartender and ordered one of the overly sweet novelty cocktails for Jez.

"So...do I call you both Jess?"

"Well, it's better than Thing 1 and Thing 2."

The other Jez laughed at her own joke while the previous took her drink with a soft thank you in Trev's direction. "Don't worry, you can't ignore one of us by talking to the other. Think of us as a conference call if it makes you feel better. But I was just showing off, she doesn't have to stick around."

Trev laughed, "Jess 1 and Jess 2 then."

You can do this. This isn't that bad. Just relax. Have fun.

"You can both stay, or it can just be Jess...Prime? Just happy to finally meet my mysterious blind date."

"Me too! Honestly I've been such a cave troll lately I've hardly met anyone."

"So Trev, what do you do when you're not rescuing princesses and upstaging your little brother?"

Trev looked puzzled, "....I don't have a little bro...oh," he laughed, her question finally dawning on him.

"School and team practice keep me pretty busy. I play Dungeons & Dragons every week with Em and a few other folks. Read. Video games. Watch nerdy TV...you sensing a theme here yet?" he smirked.

"There's a D&D game going on? What edition?" The two Jez's took turns asking the question, one turning toward Emilie. "How come you never told us there was a D&D game going on? I could've printed off one of my character sheets."

While one Jez grilled Emilie, the other stayed focused on her conversation with Trev. "Well, it sounds like we have a lot of the same hobbies, I guess the games part is kind of obvious too both of us. Though I haven't tried out for the teams yet. Is it hard?"

"Well, A: seems kinda weird to just go around assuming all nerds are carbon copies of each other and that you'd be into it considering I've only seen you play video games, and B: kinda rude for me to just start adding people to Trev's roster neh? " She replied, sounding amused at Jez's frustration while she played with the ice in her glass from her current drink.

"Yea, I get that a lot. I'm used to being stereotyped." She grinned.

Emilie laughed. "I can imagine, though they don't do that with me.

Black is my armor to all that bullshit. People take a look at me and assume I will beat them senseless if they lip off. That's the way I likes it.

Which isn't entirely a bad thing to assume if they are particularly lippy, but I'm not exactly as short-fused as one would think."

"Surprise." Emilie smirked. "When they were giving out redhead powers i got the shaft with a area of effect buff spell."

"Oh no." Jez said sympathetically. "Because you are a girl they made you the healer? Ugh."

"Yea, life's a bitch like that. "

"The teams are tough. Worth it though. I'm getting into much better shape. And as far as games...we could totally fit an extra player into the game," he grinned.

"Hmm, then maybe I will have to give it a shot. I haven't done much power training since... well, before here anyway. It would be interesting to be part of a team with members other than myself.

"And keep me in mind if an opening shows up. I've always got a few character ideas brewing, though I don't play the ones I have already nearly enough." Jez smiled and sipped her drink.

"The group is in Waterdeep, a huge city, right now. You could literally join at any time if you like," Trev smiled. Talking about nerdy shit was keeping his nerves at bay for now.

"Well we'd have to see what the rest of the party things, I don't wanna ruin everyone's fun by showing up and not mixing well. But what kind of characters are in the party so far? If it's like 3 wizards and a rogue then I probably shouldn't make a sorceress."

"We've almost got one of every role, so really, anything would work. They're about to go visit Skullport underneath the city so if you want to just try things out for a session or two, narratively there's a perfect opportunity to join in."

"Oooh, that sounds like a lovely vacation spot! I've been tooling around with trying to make a neutral necromancer that wasn't broken, an undercity would be a pretty great spot for her to get... parts."

"Not really a necropolis or anything, but plenty of unusual types down there and definitely walking distance from the largest dungeon in the Realms, Undermountain. There'd be no shortage of adventurer pieces there to use, for sure."