Act 2- Bars, Friends, and Family

--- Joshua ---

He found himself standing on a velvet carpet staring at a familiar set of doors, though for the life of him he couldn’t tell why these doors were so familiar.

Deciding to investigate he walked up to the doors and tried to open them, only to find the doors had been locked.

A sudden weight in his pocket had him pulling out a set of golden keys from a pair of black slacks he couldn’t remember putting on.

Frowning at the oddness of this entire situation he turned his attention back to the door before noticing a large keyhole just below the handle. With a shrug he twisted the key, causing the door to unlock with an audible ‘click’.

Pushing the door open he found himself in a long hallway leading to a curtained off area, and while he could see several old time-y lights along the wall, not a one was illuminating the area.

“Someone forgot to pay the power bill.” He joked, before glancing over his shoulder at an empty abyss of black from which he could see nothing else.

Shaking his head he started his way down the hall, figuring there was nowhere else to go. And while he’d normally be fairly cautious about entering a dark and abandoned building, he found he couldn’t bring himself to be the least bit concerned about this building. Almost as if some part of him was not only intimately familiar with it, but deeply comforted by it.

Pulling aside the curtain he found himself in a wide open space filled with tables and chairs covered by sheets, with a large stage against the back wall where he could just make out a sheet covered piano to the side of a large white tapestry. Along one wall was a door leading further into the building and along the other was a bar of sorts holding a number of bottles of various shapes and sizes behind the counter.

(This whole place looks like one of those old speakeasies from the prohibition.)

While he’d spent a fair portion of his life living around the Saint’s Crossing he couldn’t help but feel this place had a whole other level of style and class to it, even if most of it was covered in dusty sheets and hiding in the dark.

Walking down a series of steps leading into the room he finally noticed a man sitting towards the end of the bar hunched over the counter with several bottles laying around him and a single candle flame being his only light.

(Looks like one of the sadder drunks at the crossing.) He couldn’t help but grimace, as he continued towards the only person in this strange place.

“Three whole generations and of course I’m da one that -hiccup- that fucks it all up! Hiccup!” The man laughed bitterly to himself, clearly not expecting anyone else to be witness to his drunken breakdown. “My father ran it into its -hiccup- hey-day. And his father? First manager to run the -hiccup- cabaret! But me, me, I ran it into the ground! Hiccup!”

(Is he… Is he saying ‘hiccup’ when he hiccups?) Joshua frowned in confusion.

“I mean, the boss up and -hiccup- leaves me… The viewers -hiccup- lose interest… People quit coming… The patrons quit paying… and, and everyone just disappears until it’s poor old -hiccup- Avery Jones all on his lonesome…” The man -Avery- sobbed hitting his head against the counter.

(Damn.) He winced. (Wish there was something I could do for him. Guy seems really down on his luck.)

There was a faint ache in the back of his mind, one similar to but distinctly different from the migraine he’d been sporting the last few days.

The candle light flickered seemingly glowing brighter for a minute, before returning to its previous glow.

“What?” Avery blinked trying to focus on the candle, before looking up towards the ceiling for some reason.

After a moment there was a faint hum in the background, as if a single note was being hit and held down.

“It can’t be…” Avery gasped before looking around the room, his tear filled eyes eventually locking onto Josh’s as a smile slowly spread on the pale man’s face. “It is…”

An annoying beeping went off in his ear, and he was suddenly staring into nothing, at least until the beeping went off again and he realized his eyes were closed.

With a grimace he slammed his hand in the vague direction of his night stand until he found his phone and muted his alarm.

Slowly blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he remembered the speakeasy and the crying drunk within it.

“Weird dream.” He yawned.

Scene Consequences

Josh will start feeding Madness to the Cartoon Cabaret.

---

School went the usual way for him.

Show up, go to class, avoid the bullies, go to more sub-par classes because he lives on the southside of the city, avoid the bullies who happen to be in gangs, and check in with his one maybe-sort-of friend.

Though given how she was stomping her feet he was fairly certain the long haired teen hadn’t managed to avoid her own bullies like he had.

“Rough day Ann?” He asked quietly as they entered the school library, one of the few places neither of their bullies were willing to bother them.

The girl glared at him through her glasses as she took a seat at a nearby table. “Fuck off Josh.”

“Figured as much.” He sighed, his eyes drifting towards one of the few people to frequent the library more than him and Annette. (Guess Aliyah is hiding out herself.)

(Actually now that I think about it, isn’t her last name Jones?) He frowned, remembering his dream from the night before. (Wonder if that’s where I picked it up? Then again, Jones is one of those common names like Smith. You hear it everywhere.)

Shaking his head clear of that tangent he turned to one of the few people willing to regularly interact with him.

He was fully aware that he and Annette weren’t actually ‘friends’ so much as it was that given how they were the school outcasts they didn’t really have too many options as far as school social interactions went.

Him because his obsession with heroes, villains, comics, cartoons, video games, and well, just about anything ‘nerdy’ had caused him to slowly ostracize himself throughout middle school until by the time he’d hit high school he didn’t really have any friends, and was considered annoying enough to be prime bullying material. Something he knew wasn’t helped by the fact that he lacked a mouth filter half of the time, and would say something to offend or annoy someone that would have him cringing in horror several hours, days, weeks, and even months later when he realized why what he’d said a dozen times over was bad.

Annette on the other hand… (I’m actually not all that sure why she’s bullied so hard.)

Given how little he enjoyed talking about his own bully situation, it was one of the few topics he was smart enough to not intrude upon. Especially since focusing on something so depressing wouldn’t do anything to improve their situations. (Need to stay positive in the face of all of those haters and posers.)

“Fuck.” He grimaced, getting yet another headache. (Please tell me this isn’t going to be a permanent thing.)

“What’s wrong with you?” Annette asked, basic human decency pushing through whatever had soured her mood for the day.

“Nothing, just got a headache.” He sighed, before looking at the papers had put on the table and thinking to pull out his own. “So you decide what we’re doing for that modern history project?”

Annette shrugged, letting the matter go before looking at a page she’d covered in brainstorming ideas.“I’m split between Sanctuary’s influence on society or the Guild’s.”

“Well, we’ve got a few more days to decide since this is supposed to be a month long project or whatever.” He shrugged.

“Yeah, but the sooner we figure this out the sooner we can get it finished.”

Scene Consequences

-Probably grown a bit closer to Annette.

-Can now visit the school library.

---

Having finished with school and helping Annette brainstorm for the project she still hadn’t chosen an idea for, he made his way home not really feeling up to power training after his first day back since getting them.

(Hopefully these headaches won’t be such a problem going forward.) If they were he’d just have to learn to deal with it, since the powers were more than worth a little ongoing pain for.

That said, said headache was not helped in anyway by just how rowdy the bar was being tonight.

“Hey Josh, you doing alright?” Chris asked as he was passing the bar.

“Fine, just got a bit of a headache.” He admitted, before looking around the room. “Maddie going to need a hand tonight?”

“Not if you’re not feeling well.” Chris told him, crossing the arms that hadn’t lost a single ounce of muscle in all the years since his retirement from his ‘other’ job.

“It’s fine, I’m volunteering.” He told his brother, before noticing some of the more common customer’s regulars. “This Howard and co’s?”

“Yeah.” Chris sighed, not willing to fight him on this. “He and his friends are at their usual spot.”

“Got it.” He nodded, picking the four trays up and laying them across his arm with a dexterity he lacked in most things.

Despite a certain awkwardness in his build that his brother did not inherit, he had a tendency to be a little clumsy in most things, but after a couple of years helping around the Saint’s Crossing -something that was only legal because it was his family’s bar, and he didn’t serve anyone alcohol- he’d picked up a certain level of dexterity and agility when it came to weaving between tightly packed spaces while carrying things in his hand.

“Alright, here you guys are.” He greeted placing the plates on the counter.

“Ah, good to see you Josh how are ya holdin’ up?” Howard, a construction worker whose crew frequented the Saint’s Crossing, asked.

“Doing fine, you guys need anything else?”

“Nah, we’re good now.”

“Cool, and don’t forget to leave Maddie a tip.” He reminded them as he started back towards the counter.

“Never do.” Howard assured him with a toast of his beer.

He shook his head before grabbing a nearby tray and cleaning up one of the tables whose patrons had left it a mess.

“Oh, thanks for the help Josh.” Maddie greeted him as she passed by him with two beers in each hand. “I’ll be sure to give you a cut of my tips when things calm down.”

“Don’t worry about it Mads, save every penny you can.” He told the waitress, knowing that even with Chris giving her as much as he could afford she wasn’t paid nearly enough for how much she actually worked, and how much she put up with.

As shown by the fact that not even an hour later some drunk was trying to get handsy with the young woman.

Normally he was content to let Maddie handle it -especially since he once watched her break a man’s arm when he’d gotten too handsy- but now that he knew he had powers, seeing it happen in front of him and doing nothing about it burned him ten times worse than ever before.

(Wish I could just smack him across the face.) (No one touches my co-stars like that.)

His headache spiked and he felt creeping in the back of his head, causing him to slip and stumble into one of the nearby tables, where he watched the plates in his hand fly through the air before crashing into a patron as he was trying to stand, knocking him into his table and sending the dishes on it crashing into someone else who began to choke on the food they were eating until they finally managed to spit it out at the person across from him who ended up falling backwards where he landed on a table sending the edge flying up into the jaw of the man sitting there and knocking him out with an audible ‘smack’.

This just so happened to be the same man who’d been trying to get handsy with Maddie.

Looking over the chaos he’d accidentally caused, he felt several eyes slowly turning to him, and feeling some odd compulsion in the back of his head he asked, “Did I do that?”

For a moment there was absolute silence, then Maddie snorted before outright laughing, a reaction that slowly spread through the rest of those unaffected by his madness, save Chris who was making his way towards Josh easily weaving through the mess.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, don’t even feel it.” He chuckled, grimacing at the mess around the room. “Sorry about… this.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Chris told him, frowning at the mess before looking at him and offering his hand. “How’s your head?”

“Hm?” He blinked, taking the hand and letting himself be pulled to his feet. “Fine, why?”

“No headache or anything?” Chris asked with a fair amount of concern. “I know you had one when you got here.”

“Huh, oh. That’s mostly gone now.” He admitted, as for the first time since he’d gotten his powers his headache had receded to a point he didn’t even notice it. “I guess I was just stressed from school or something.”

“Or something…” Chris nodded staring at the mess as the various victims of his madness began to pick themselves up.

“Something up?” He frowned, the tone of his brother’s voice flagging something in the back of his head.

“No.” Chris shook his head. “No, it’s just in my head.”

“Do you, uh, do you want me to help clean this up?” He asked, rubbing the back of his neck.

“No, I’ll take care of this.” Chris told him. “You go ahead and head upstairs before someone tries to pick a fight over this mess.”

“If you’re sure.” He shrugged, not wanting to admit that that was probably a good idea given how many people had been caught in that little whirlwind.

“I am.” Chris nodded, though he sounded like he was thinking about something else.

Scene Consequences

-Can now work at the Saint’s Crossing for pocket change, amount earned is equal to 3D6 with the amount doubling on weekend Turns. (Turns ending in: 0, 1, 5, or 6)

-Gained (3D6 = $12) dollars.

-Trait Revealed: Waiter’s Reflexes- Increase the agility and dexterity of this person by a small amount when moving through crowds.

-Grown a bit closer to Chris and Maddie.

-1 Laughing Madness sent to the cartoon cabaret.