It's a clean, intermediately-lit space, with most of the light coming from rainbow fairy lights festooning the walls and ceiling. There's a counter selling little plates of snack food and brightly colored cocktails from a menu posted on the wall under a spotlight. There's a little stage against one wall, where a band is setting up a drum kit, a sitar, and some kind of electronic keyboard thing. The band members are wearing jackets and skirts covered completely in plastic gems, with more plastic gems glued to their faces. Many of the clubgoers sitting around the little tables are only slightly less sparkly; there are a lot of elaborate but cheap-looking jewelry pieces and body glitter and unnatural hair colors. It's also . . . weirdly hard to tell the men from the women? Some of them have skirts (none shorter than mid-calf) and some of them have breasts (or loose outer layers that could be hiding breasts) and some of them have hair down to their waists (usually in braids, but one or two have it loose) and some of them have girly faces, but all these features seem distributed at random. There are little groups chatting, and couples holding hands, and individuals knitting or reading on their smartphones or working on a portrait of the bartender in charcoal on a sketchpad. (The bartender is not complying with the apparent dress code; he(?)'s in head-to-toe denim with at least six belt pouches.)

Weird place! Is he in a gay bar? Gay bars are a great place to pick up women because they assume you're gay and therefore their bitch shields aren't up. 

He approaches the nearest person who obviously has breasts and is hot enough for him to get it up. "Hey, you look like you're having the most fun here out of anyone," he says sarcastically, with his patented smirk on his face. 

The person in question has curly hair, glasses, and amateurishly-done swirls of glitter on her forehead. She's wearing a fitted t-shirt with a picture of unicorns in a forest on it. 

She looks up from her attempt to fold her paper napkin into a crane (it's going surprisingly well, which is to say, still pretty badly) and says, "I am having so much fun! I love about 90% of all songs Diamond Dreams have put out and I've never seen them live before!" Her friend pulls out a smartphone in a glittery green case and starts typing something.

Excellent! The cockblock is disarming herself. 

Shadow is about two feet away from the target. His body is at a slight glancing angle, to convey that she will have to prove herself before he will pay attention to her. He's looking her in the eyes. "Let me guess, you've been a fan since before they were big?"

These subtleties of posture may be lost on her, since she's looking at the air to his left.

"I got into them after their first album, yeah. Are you, like, new to the glitterpunk scene, or do you like the music but not the visual aesthetic, or other?"

She's asking him a question! She's super into him. 

He quickly calculates. Being new to the scene isn't very alpha-- it puts her in the position of power over him-- but saying that he likes the clothes will put him in a position to run his clothes routines. "It's the latest style, actually. Everyone in the glitterpunk scene will be into it in a few months."

"Plain black in glitterpunk? Three to one against more than 30% of people at the next Diamond Dream concert at this venue after 90 days from now wearing plain black with no jewelry or glitter, unwinds if you bribe anyone."

Green phone friend pipes up, still looking at her phone. "Using the threshold of 'does looking at the title make me want to listen to the song', I love 72% of Diamond Dream's discography. I'm slightly less hype than you so that tracks with your 90%."

"Rockin'. Plainshirt, bet or nah?"

Blink blink blink. That is a *really* weird way to give him shit!

He says, "wow, you are really feisty. Are you always like this?"

Blink blink right back. "I'm surprised that you're surprised, given how common casual bets are. I would say I am usually like this when I am awake and socializing. What's your favourite Diamond Dream song?"

This girl has a very flat affect when she's giving him shit. He can't tell if he's getting blown out. Well, faint heart never won fair lady. 

"I don't like it that much. I'm really into Britney Spears," he says, smirking. 

"Ooh, I haven't heard of Britney Spears. What's their sound like and what's a good first song?"

Wh. What. Seriously?

"I recommend Toxic," he says, "and it's great music for white girls to listen to while drunk." 

Confused headtilt! She makes a note of the music recommendation on her phone, then starts to ask "Why is it specifically--" but gets cut off by the band.

"Sound check, sound check, this is the sound check. Hold up three fingers if you parse it." If Shadow knows stuff about audio equipment he will notice that the microphone and amps are shockingly good relative to the apparent mediocre budget of the rest of the concert. Unicorn shirt, green phone, and everyone else fall silent and hold up three fingers.

Shadow was briefly a DJ because he heard it was a good way to pick up girls! He hopes their sound guy gets pussy tonight. 

He holds up three fingers so as not to be weird.

It's music time!! The band counts off and launches into a song. It's pretty decent for an indie band; the sitar player definitely isn't the best at the sitar but he's also the lead vocalist and he's great at that. It's a song about how awesome it is to walk through a city at night and see the lights reflected on the river, to be alone and powerful and free and surrounded by beautiful things. Everybody sings along on the last two choruses. After the song there's a break so people can talk some more.

What kind of dancing are people doing?

Lots of swaying to the music, some enthusiastic bouncing up and down/spinning around/arm gestures limited by everyone being careful not to get within a foot or so of anyone else. Unicorn shirt is swaying in her seat and making little conductor motions with her hands.

Then Shadow sways to the music as well!

When the music is done, he sits down next to his target. "I can only stay for a minute."

She's still rocking back and forth and grinning. "Hearing them live didn't help you get more into them?" she says cheerfully. "Alas."

"I have to meet a friend but she's not here yet." And now his target will get jealous, and know that he's popular among women. 

"Wow, punctuality fail. Unless you mean you just texted her. Anyway, what-all do you do when you're not trying new bands?"

"I live off the land."

"Woah, you're an autarkoid? Sorry I implied your outfit sucked, obviously if it's handmade it's super impressive. Are you with the traditional artists or the backup plan crew? Or Children of Gaia I suppose but I'd guess one of the others."

Shadow... does not know what any of those words mean. She's not supposed to believe him when he says that! She's supposed to give him shit about it!  

He quickly scraps the rest of the routine and falls back on his standard answer to girls' questions. "Guess!"

"Backup plan. They go in for decorations the least."