Welcome to Gaia! ::

The girl onstage looked out at the crowd as she sang her karaoke song. She was filled to the brim with energy despite the lateness of the evening. However, the song she sang left quite a bit to be desired, and not just because she was performing for an audience that was slightly liquored up. It wasn't even because she couldn't sing. Granted, the girl was decent, at least a little, but the song she had chosen was absolutely terrible.

She had chosen the song "Friday" by Rebecca Black. And was singing it like she was Mariah Carey. Or attempting to, anyway.

Thankfully the song ended shortly after the combat master and his troupe entered the room, and the girl started jumping up and down on stage cheerfully, shouting "Thank you, thank you!" She certainly acted like she was a big star.

((The lyrics of the song were not posted for the sakes of the eyes and minds of readers. You're welcome.))

Using a simple levitate spell, she floated the Asphodel and Valerian out of her work space. She quickly grabbed out four sprigs of lavender and threw it into a medium-sized mortar with a cup of sugar and set to work crushing it with the pestle.

What’s next? she thought, her humming becoming a tad bit louder. Moonstone! She nearly hit herself for being so brainless.

She cast a spell to get the pestle to crush the lavender itself and mix it with the sugar while she rummaged about in a cupboard, looking for the tell-tale glow of moonstones. Once she found the rather large jar of them, she carefully removed it, and grabbed an empty shatterproof jar. She placed the moonstone down on the work bench and put the jar over it. Focusing her magic, she manipulated the air pressure inside of the jar then watched the stone crumble to dust with a poof.

This was magic she enjoyed doing.

Cressa finished her song after what must've been a full ten minutes of singing interspersed with jazzy instrumental breaks. Everybody gave her another series of loud hollers as she brought the song to its dramatic conclusion - and then another when she stood up to take a bow. She didn't seem quite ready to abandon the stage yet - however, instead of gearing herself up for another recital, she pointed to somebody in the crowd, reached down and, with the help of a couple of firm hands from behind her target, pulled Lorika up onto the stage with her.

"Oh, no!" she laughed. "I couldn't possibly!"

"Of course you could!" Cressa insisted, steering her towards the karaoke machine. The excited crowd had begun to clap and chant - Lorika! Lorika! She turned and gave a little wave of acknowledgement, which gave Cressa just enough time to start stabbing the buttons of the machine unsupervised.

"There you go!" she said, thrusting the mic into Lorika's hand as the first few seconds of Rihanna's S&M came blaring through the speakers - eliciting raunchy whoops from the listeners. "It's all yours!"

"What?! Noooo! No no no! Not this one!"

"Oh come on, it's right up your street," Cressa grinned. She didn't attempt to interfere, however, as the priestess reached forward and began to select her own song.

"Have they got any MCR on here...?"

"Whaaat?! You're into them? You're just full of surprises, you are."

"Aha!" Rika smiled, triumphantly selecting her preferred song. "This will do nicely!"

"Shot through the heart and you're to blame,
Darlin' you give love a bad name!"

Meanwhile, at the back of the room, Jessie had somehow ended up involved in a game of poker with the two ladies - and a handful of others who'd joined them. It had started off Texas Hold'em... but had somehow ended up veering dangerously towards Strip.

"I haven't got anything else to bet!" Gloria exclaimed as she pulled off the top part of her dress, leaving her in just her bra. Jessie looked scandalised - perhaps oddly so, for someone who'd spent half the evening dancing with Cressa in her state of almost-nudity.

"I don't feel this is quite an appropriate-"

"Oh no, I agree with Gloria," said Adeline, quite innocently. However, her eyes were twinkling with mischief. "Poker just isn't any fun if the stakes are too low!"

With that, she reached back and began unlacing the corset part of her dress. Off it came and onto the table it went, leaving her in just the silk dress underneath. She looked expectantly at the next lady, whose turn it was after her. With a devilish grin, she reached back and started untying the halterneck fastening of her top. The one after her had already begun unlacing her own corset.

"Now hold on a moment!" said Jessie, gesturing for them to stop. "There is honestly no need for all of this. If you all really want to bet, we can keep track of the money and pay each other back later-"

"Girls..." said Adeline, looking round impishly at the other ladies. "Which would you rather bet against our oh-so-chivalric Captain - your gold... or your knickers?"

"Panties any day!" Gloria said, emphasising her point with a firm stab of her finger on the table. The rest of the girls quickly echoed her enthusiastic agreement.

"He can have mine right now!" said one of them, eliciting wicked cackles from the others.

"I'm sorry, Jessie," Adeline said sweetly - or with ever the pretence of sweetness, "I do believe you find yourself hopelessly outnumbered."

Jessie's gaze darted around the room, lips tightened in a frown, as if he were calculating a way to get out of this that wasn't simply getting up and leaving in a huff. The seconds ticked by, and Adeline deemed the moment right to press him a little further. "Well...? Are you going to stake something against us, or are you just going to let us all take everything off by ourselves...?"

A few more moments of quiet desperation dripped by. Finally, Jessie's expression relaxed.

"I can accept when I am defeated," he said, pleasantly enough. "And though this greatly offends my standards of decency, I admit it would be cruel not to let you have your way with me..."

A couple of the girls squeaked at this, but they all joined in, shrieking in near-hysteria, when he reached down and unclasped the Order brooch from his hip, allowing the red cape to fall off him completely. He gathered the material up in a heap and then tossed it on top of the betting pile of garments.

"Well, sir, if you want to preserve our decency, all you have to do is allow yourself to lose," said Adeline, with a pointed wink over her shoulder to the other girls. Of course, if Jessie lost, that meant he'd be the one left in his undergarments.

"Oh, I won't be losing," he said, with an equally pointed look that drew more squeals of excitement from the girls.

A few songs later, Jessie was tutting and shaking his head as he put down another winning hand. "Goodness me, ladies, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were all losing on purpose."

"I'm not!" said one of them, with a mock-pout, "I'm trying to get you naked, not myself!"

"I am!" said Gloria, who'd just lost again in the flop. She stood up, completely bare except for her underwear, even missing the crow-feather fascinator off her head, and took a couple of small, seductive steps towards him. "I'll let you choose. Top... or tails?~"

"Neither," he replied firmly, pointing back at her seat, "Sit down this instant. You're exempted from any further forfeit."

"Are you suuuuure?" she purred, hooking her thumbs beneath the paper-thin waistband of her underwear, pulling the material slightly away from her hips.

"I am absolutely certain," he insisted, expression darkening. He was fast switching into lecture-nag mode. "This has gone too far already. I won't allow you to throw away your dignity on this silly, ill-advised game."

His tone of voice gave her pause. It was difficult to argue with Jessie when he turned so commanding. However, she wasn't about to give up. "Hmmmph. I don't really think it's up to you to decide whether or not I throw away my dignity," she began to argue - but there was no fire there. She was just pouting. Suddenly, Adeline interjected with the offer of a solution. She herself had also ended up in her underwear - also on the tactical play of 'playing to lose.' After all, it wouldn't have been fair for all the other ladies to divest, while she remained cannily aloof, so she lost on purpose, with a sense of good humour and fair play.

"I have an idea!" she said with a smile. "Jessie, you've hardly taken off anything since the start," she said. It was true - aside from the wrap of red material, he'd only removed the overshirt that was immediately underneath it, leaving his arms bare, but nothing else. Adeline's eyes had that mischievous look about them again, whilst she still feigned innocence. "Why don't you accept Gloria's forfeit for her?"

At that moment, however, Cressa appeared behind him, wrapping a hand around his eye. "Guess who?~"

"Oh, it can only be the Queen of Kytirii," he answered drily. This could quite possibly be interpreted as the equivalent to the human Queen of Sheba. "Hello, Cressa. Have you come to gang up on me as well?"

"Hello!~ As a matter of fact," she said, feigning shock that he would suggest such a thing, "I've come to offer you some aid! If mine ears were not deceiving me, these dreadful harpies here were trying to rob you blind of your sense of moral decency. Well, we can't have that now, can we?"

"I was just suggesting that our bold hero take the forfeit and divest a little himself, to spare the continued embarrassment of this delicate young flower," said Adeline. Gloria, to her right, had just knocked back a shot of whisky - or rum - or something in a short glass anyway.

"Well now, I know you aren't talking about me!"

"I have a better idea," Cressa proclaimed, "And it's one that isn't going to leave anybody uncomfortable. Jessie. You take the forfeit."

He raised his eyebrow at her as she simply continued to smile. "And that's supposed to leave everybody comfortable...?"

"Oh, but your forfeit isn't going to be stripping yourself off," she explained, "You're going to be getting up there," she indicated the stage, "And privileging us all with your lovely voice."

Jessie was searching again for a way to get out of this. "But I-"

"No buts! Come on. Hardly any men have gotten up to sing. Maybe you'll encourage them! ....Or shame them into never uttering a single note again. Either way, it's win-win!"

All of a sudden, the apples of Jessie's cheeks turned a darker shade of grey. It was more difficult to tell on such unusual skin, but... was he blushing? He didn't seem to enjoy the praise of his voice at all. He ducked his head and looked away. "I'm not... I can't..."

Before he knew what was happening, he'd been pushed and prodded and pulled by a number of cajoling female hands across the room and up the steps. Thus, it was with great reluctance that Jessie found himself onstage. "I-I don't know much human music..."

"Nonsense!" Cressa boomed, punching the buttons of the machine again, "We had some grand old singalongs on the road when we stole that guy's iPhone, remember?"

"When you stole it, you mean!"

"Okay, how about this one?" she said. The first few bars of Something Happened on the Way to Heaven blared out of the speakers. "This was the first one we ever sang off it. You can do it!"

But Jessie just dithered, unsure of whether to just agree and get it over with or... well, he couldn't exactly run away now, he'd look like a fool in front of everyone. Why on earth did he let people drag him into these things? The crowd was waiting expectantly.

"This is no time for stage fright!" Cressa said, with a touch of exasperation. "Alright, alright - let's dazzle our audience together, shall we?" she smiled, giving him a little, reassuring touch on the arm. "Come over here."

She crossed the stage and sat down at the keyboard, shifting over for him to sit down next to her. She lifted her hands up to the keyboard and played a highly recognisable chord sequence, drawing a few hollers of anticipation from the listeners. She repeated them again, this time elaborating them into a longer, more complicated introduction. "I'll help you. I'll do the male part, so I'm the one starting it off. Ready? ...Don't go breaking my heart!" she encouraged in a low voice, before raising her voice in song.

"I couldn't if I tried," Jessie obediently replied, in a strong, clear tenor that drew gasps of admiration from the crowd.

"Oh honey, if I get restless..."

"Baby, you ARE the kind," he sang with a smirk. The crowd, which had been so unsure of but interested in what was to come, immediately relaxed and laughed at the joke.

"You cheeky so-and-so! Don't go breaking my heart..."

"Wow!" Lorika cried as she clapped along, to nobody in particular, "I didn't know he could sing like that!" Then, by the time the song had reached its first chorus, everybody had joined in, clapping and singing along to the old favourite.

"Oooh, oooh,
Nobody knows it,
When I was down
I was your clown,
Oooh, oooh,
Nobody knows it,
Right from the start
I gave you my heart
Ohh, I gave you my heart!"

Evelyn turned her attention away from a book she had found on the floor (Honestly, who treated books so badly?) to the act on stage. Jessie and Cressa were singing a marvelous song. She recognized it immediately—in addition to being an instaclassic, it had appeared on one of her favorite movies, Ella Enchanted.

Her eyes were drawn to the stage to watch the performance, and she inwardly sighed in relief. The Combat master wasn’t in near as close to state of undress as she thought he was. It must have been the lack of his cape that got her. Ah well. She had noted previously that Cressa was daringly clothed, but somehow…it just suited her.

Evelyn spun around and danced to the dark elves rendition, although her ears caught a distant difference…as if someone was playing a piano along side of it…and was that an organ as well? Oh, her mother would simply KILL her if she knew her daughter couldn’t pick it out. No bother. What mother didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her…right?

Evelyn smiled at a familiar twinkling sound. She heard Cressa singing the familiar lines…and hadn’t even realized she was already next to Cressa, and singing along, a glimmer in her eye.

“But I prefer a man who lives…
And gives expensive jewels.”

Evelyn snapped and caused sparkles to appear around the room in a great, twinkling show. She danced in a fashion that—well, it wouldn’t have made her ballerina mother proud, but her old theater director never would have been happier.

“Tiffany’s…Cartier…”