Event: Party at Rush!

[eldorado_npc]

Rush tended to be much busier on the weekends.

There was something about the atmosphere that attracted people to it. They had many regulars who came in with their friends for drinks, businesses that threw their parties in the dining rooms, and curious newcomers who stepped in to get a look at the place and left several hours later. The bar always

Comments

Sitting at the Bar

[whoiamundrneath]

Since it was mostly quiet and peaceful around El Dorado, Bruce couldn't help finding how busy Rush had turned out to be a little unsettling. Sasha's suggesting they go there had been the first he'd heard of the place, and walking in, he almost felt like he was back in Gotham. Maybe that'd been the point.

Either way, with a few polite smiles and smooth words, Bruce got himself a seat at the bar to wait for his Vice President. He looked down the bar to check if she was already there, and sighed when he couldn't see her.

Bruce ordered himself a ginger ale, ignoring the raised eyebrow that got from the bartender, and watched everyone else there move around him. It was going to be a long night.

[msattentionspan]

The thing with moving around a bar was that there were other people in it. Other people with body temperatures and the urge to dance and get sweaty. That also meant those same people increased the temperature in the room, which meant if you wanted to stay cool, well you either had to just leave or drink some more.

Faith was always a fan of the drink more line of thought. As she cut through the crowd, she leaned against the bar, sliding in where she could find some space and ordered a beer. Truthfully, she wanted another shot of Jack, but she figured she could at the very least take the time to have a beer and maybe let her body acclimate a bit more to the warmer temperature of the room.

After the first swallow, she turned to look at who was sitting beside her, or at least near her. "Wow, you could not look any more bored."

[whoiamundrneath]

"I'm waiting for someone." Or he'd missed her entirely. Or she was somewhere around here. One of the three. "A friend." Bruce flashed another polite smile to the woman next to him, sipping his ginger ale and setting it back down again. Iced tea after this, then the usual routine to make it look like he'd been drinking.

Gotham had followed him to El Dorado. That was it. "She has a talent for making an entrance, so I'm assuming she's lying in wait." He looked her way, figuring he could maintain conversation for the moment. "What about you, waiting on anyone?" He assumed she wasn't going to be this social if she was, but he also didn't know her.

[msattentionspan]

Nodding, she tried to figure him out, sizing up the drink at his hand, the way he didn't want to be there. He was something, but she couldn't sort out what. Even in prison she'd learned a few things about sizing up someone, but he was better than she was, at least at hiding it.

"Waiting? Nope. I'm new, so I figured I'd go where the people were. Turns out? Lot'a people." Extending her hand, she wiped the condensation from the bottle off her palm, and onto her jeans, before returning her hand out, "I'm Faith. You might recognize my name from random text messages that made no sense."

[whoiamundrneath]

"The one that asked me what I was wearing, right." At the time, he'd just deleted it and moved on. Although he did remember wondering who would think that kind of thing was funny. Now he knew. "Interesting method of socializing."

Betraying a lacking sense of humor wasn't a good idea at the moment, so Bruce smirked, shaking her hand. "Bruce Wayne. I'm not quite as new, but I suppose we're all still looking for ways to adjust." Otherwise, there wouldn't be nearly as many people in this place.

[msattentionspan]

Shrugging, Faith took another swallow of her beer, "I wasn't socializing. Well, not really. There were four standard cliche messages I sent out. I just wanted to see who would react. You can usually cross off the 'types' pretty easy when they reply the way you expect them to."

See, Faith wasn't in it for the prank. Well, partly, but mostly she was trying to get a reaction out of people. She couldn't target the messages as well as she wanted to, but it was a good start and some people actually replied.

"With the one you got, it depends on the sex. Guys either reply asking the same of me, tell me 'Nothing' or delete it. Maybe it's not a foolproof method, but I at least can narrow down a few."

Smirking, she glanced back at him over the end of her bottle as she took another sip, "Besides, someone here already told me about you."

[whoiamundrneath]

"I deleted it." Bruce admitted with a nod, and a small smirk at his own predictability. It was one thing when Sasha made calls as to how he'd react to something, but it was something else entirely when complete strangers had started doing it.

An eyebrow shot up briefly when she said she already knew him, even though he shouldn't've been all that surprised. His name was starting to travel. Even if he hadn't already spoken with people like Dr. Magnus, with it scrawled across a building in huge silver letters, it was bound to.

"Whatever you heard, I guarantee you, only the good parts were true." Especially if it'd been Sasha who'd done the talking. Who knew what she'd said. "Who did you speak with, if you don't mind me asking?"

[msattentionspan]

Faith smirked, "See, you didn't want to waste your time with a stranger or you were busy."

Taking a moment to finish off her beer, she slid the bottle across the top of the bar, returning her attention to Bruce, "Met a girl here tonight. Sasha, she gave me a few names, told me about her hiring opportunities - but I declined the offer."

[whoiamundrneath]

Sasha. He definitely wasn't surprised. Thinking about what she had possibly said, though, was almost enough to make Bruce grimace. He stuck to a calm expression, sipping his drink and nodding.

"Well, if you reconsider, I'm sure we could find you something." Bruce offered. He flashed another charming, polite smile to go with it. "And like I said, whatever Sasha told you, only the good parts are the truth." He was still convinced she was responsible for sixty percent of the rumor mill back in Gotham.

[msattentionspan]

Those charming polite smiles weren't too bad to look at, but Faith had a feeling they were more on the polite side and a lot less on the charming when it came to her. Apparently, random text messages in a kidnapping situation wasn't as good of a way to get people to talk to you. Of course, she did realize that once she got a few of them back in reply. Still, at the time it wasn't as if she was going to just 'drunk-dial' anyone either. She had reached out and if no one wanted to reach back, she'd just deal with that later.

"I'm not much of the nine-to-five kind of person. I do appreciate the offer and I told Sasha I'd keep it in mind. Just -- not too close in mind."

[whoiamundrneath]

"Is there a reason you're not the nine-to-five type?" Maybe she just wasn't the type to work. Or maybe it was just the idea of working here that bothered her. That, Bruce would understand. When he'd first thought of starting this, he hadn't been particularly pleased with the idea himself.

But he hadn't been able to let it go, either. Which was what had gotten him to where he was right now. And if it was the first part, well. The Prince of Gotham would understand that. "Generally, I'm really not myself, but it seems to've happened to me anyway."

[msattentionspan]

"Never had a job," Faith replied. "Didn't exactly finish high-school, then life got a bit too interesting for me to just buckle down and be responsible."

That of course wasn't discounting the fact that she was being responsible, just for saving the world and all that sort of stuff. She couldn't exactly just explain that prison didn't really give her work detail and that being a Slayer was a twenty-four-seven gig.

[whoiamundrneath]

"Interesting." Bruce repeated after finishing the last of his ginger ale, and smirked to that. It wasn't hard to tell that a girl like this had seen a lot. The more he looked at her, the more he recognized a quality he should have noticed from the beginning; this was a girl with far too many secrets, and she'd give up absolutely nothing until she was good and ready.

Maybe even a while after that.

No matter how utterly familiar a quality that was, he still had to play it like he didn't know. So he asked, letting himself appear amused by what she'd said. "That sounds a bit shady. Define interesting."

[msattentionspan]

"Shady?" Faith raised an eyebrow in amusement, "You're making me sound like some sort of criminal ripping off the elderly of their swear jar coins."

Smirking, she shrugged, "I didn't finish high-school and opted instead to just cross the country, see if trouble followed me or not."

[whoiamundrneath]

That, he thought, was true. Bruce didn't have much of a baseline to follow with this girl, but it did at least seem right. Even if there was clearly more to the story.

"And you found a new place to set up shop as a criminal ripping off the elderly of their swear jar coins." His lips twitched in a smirk, and he nodded, motioning to the bartender for another drink. "That is an interesting story."

[msattentionspan]

"Of course, it was an easy choice," she teased.

Shrugging, she glanced around the bar again, just getting a feel for how crowded it was getting.

"I went from Boston to Sunnydale and then to Los Angeles from there. It was mostly a coast-swap, but it worked out."