So What Music Does An Immortal Fancy?

Strumming the guitar just once to ensure its tuning was the right amount, he opened with one of his all-time favourite tunes, the pitch of his voice raised just high enough that it'd be indistinguishable from the man who sang it himself. The crowd burst wild as the acoustic notes hit, eventually jumping to their feet when John reached out for the microphone.

"This thing, called love, I just can't handle it
This thing, called love, I must get right to it,
I ain't ready,"


In a rather blatant attempt to further imitate the frontman of Queen, he took one hand away from the guitar, pointing just about upwards in the direction of the audience, compelling them to finish the sentence, and he was glad they did

"Crazy little thing called love."

For John, that inner sigh of relief when the entire audience finished the lyrics for him was one of the most satisfying close-calls he's ever had, assuming the criteria for close-calls only constitutes anything but the supernatural. He would've been boo'ed off the stage if the hype wasn't there, thereby grinding whatever amateur career he's chasing to a halt. Pulling off such a gamble meant he could now take a pint courtesy of the manager turning a blind eye, who patted him rather firmly on the shoulder, cheering for this English boy who debuted with one of the best shows at his pub. Fair enough, he supposed, this little Mississippi backwater town couldn't possibly find someone literally born to the music god anyway.

As he strutted through the backdoor with a bottle in hand, carrying his guitar in a bag behind him, John flipped his head around at the rustle in the parking lot; it was already 3 in the morning, yet another human being found it all fine and dandy to just loiter in an empty parking lot with a single car (his) in it.

"Hey," he spoke up, his voice and inflections made to resemble a condescending Scottish senior, "I haven't a clue how you American lot socialise but you know, standing in the dark in the middle of a parking lot at 3 in the mornin' just makes you look like a nonce waiting for children to pass by or a movie villain trying too hard to be cinematically dramatic, innit." He knew with certainty that he either just successfully pissed said person in the dark off, or he's successfully picked a fight with a Cyclops for the second time in his life; dear gods, he sincerely hopes he just did the former and not the latter, but the outcome could be hilarious eitherway.

Louise-Françoise was in the middle of a hunt. Her she-wolf had tracked down a pack of hellhounds through three different states - she'd killed half of them in Texas, two more in Louisiana, one in Arkansas and was now chasing the remaining four through Mississippi.
It wasn't like her to separate from the rest of the Hunt. Her sisters-in-arms were everything to her, she hated being away from them and Lady Artemis. But solo hunts were a good way of improving technique, so every Hunter had to do a few of them. Louise-Françoise was glad it was hellhounds this time around - they were easy kills when you knew their weak points.  

So here she was, minding her own business, in the parking lot of some random pub. Her she-wolf was drinking from a puddle a few meters away and her eagle was circling the skies. The Hunter herself was focusing on air currents, reading them, teasing out the slightest twitch, the faintest smell of Underworld. As the daughter of Zeus, relying on the surrounding air was a central part of her hunting strategy.

But then, without introducing himself or even offering a greeting, this male specimen swaggered over to her, clearly thinking he had some kind of right to talk to her. Typical guy behaviour. But something was different about him. Her nose twitched. He smelled of Mist. Great. A demigod. Just my luck, she thought in 1600s French. (Something along the lines of, Pardi! Un demi-dieu. Quelle aubaine.)

"Actually, you're the likeliest one of us to be a nonce, male," she said in modern English. "Or are you unaware of your gender's statistics?" She drew a thick silver hunting knife and started cleaning her nails, not breaking eye contact.

John snorted, reverting back to his posh English accent; welp, at least he wouldn’t get killed on the spot yet, as he’s managed to make out the appearance of the young woman now sneering at him, but he felt a lecture looming on the horizon.

”You’re not wrong about the statistics, I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t imagine a nonce trying to call out another nonce if my goal was to stay inconspicuous about it, aye?“ he gazed at the wolf he now assumed was with this woman. Could it be a dog? Nah, he told himself. How does he know? He just does. Pure instinct. Or maybe it’s just something about the Mist that betrays this kind of information to him.  Since wolves aren’t trainable most of the time and people aren’t supposed to be able to sound like Peter Capaldi on command, John had the feeling both of them realised the odd part about each other.

“Pardon my accusation of you being a nonce, I don’t like greetings that make a person seem bland, especially not with random people on the street that you run into at 3 in the morning because it just shows how low someone’s let their guard down. Judging from your pet of choice and casual utility used to sharpen your fingernails, I don’t suppose you’re from Camp?” With each subject mentioned in the sentence, John pointed his index at them, though not in an accusatory manner to further antagonise her. He knows he’s pissed off far too many men and women by just trying to be funny, although in most cases he knew they were snickering deep down even if they just left a red palmprint on his face.“Or, if I’m being inclusive here, you can either be from New Rome, secretly a goddess, or a Hunter of Artemis, as far as I know. Don’t flame me, literally, I’m semi new to this. So which one is it? Or am I just talking to a professional wolf tamer slash knife collecting enthusiast and making a fool out of myself?”

"I wouldn't put it past nonces," Louise-Françoise replied with a sharp stare. If it weren't so annoying, it would almost be comical watching this xy blather around trying to defend his poor choice of words. "And I would have preferred any bland greeting to the one you just gave me." She sighed with a shrug, "In your defence, you're a man. Your kind isn't known for being appropriate."

She listened to him going on and on and on and on.... Gods of Olympus, did he even breathe? It was a miracle she hadn't zapped him with electricity already. "You're already making a fool of yourself, demigod. For your information, I'm the daughter of Zeus and I serve the goddess Artemis. Have been serving her for almost three centuries now. Now if you don't mind, I'm kind of in the middle of something here."

"That's cool. I've always wanted to meet someone who's a couple of centuries old. Doesn't that mean you're into classical and disco at the same time?" said John; so far, he hasn't really been paying attention to her insults. If anything, he found them funnier than offensive, especially if half of the statements were technically correct from a certain perspective. He'd heard about the Hunters: they were notoriously misandric, but hey, everyone else he knows is the same: overtly liberal and progressive. If anything, this daughter of Zeus who's 20 times older than him is a breath of fresh air compared to everoyne he's met.

"You're hunting, I bet. What are you hunting if not a monster? Wild boars are hardly worth chasing at this hour if I was a hunter myself." he commented; if he had to guess, she'd tell him to bugger off next, which is fair: he can fight but it's not what he does for fun, nor would he want to have anything to do with life-threatening creatures."Well, I hope you haven't lost it yet, or at least not hung out here too long that it's now coming for us because of the scent. Imagine if that actually happened, it better be susceptible to getting smacked with a guitar."

OOC: do you want to start the monster attack in the next reply?

Gods. Men really didn't know how to take a hint, did they? Although Louise-Françoise had made it clear that she was busy, that she had things to do, he was still talking to her. Why were men acting so entitled to other people's time?

"It mainly means I'm into not chumming it up with males," she replied dryly. What did he think? That she was going to talk to him about menuets, gavottes, sarabandes and all the other intricate music styles of her epoch? The evolution of her music tastes over the span of three centuries? This bloke probably couldn't differenciate between a chassé and an assemblé.

Suddenly, she perked up. Something was coming towards them. She could feel the movement rippling through the air, carrying across the distance. "Shut up," she told the still blathering male. Her ears were starting to pick up on it too - raspy breathing, slithering noises. This wasn't a hellhound.

Her eagle dove down and landed on a lamp post with a low screech, folding her wings. Through a ruffle of her feathers, she confirmed what Louise-Françoise was already thinking. A drakon.

"Get out of here," she told the guy, her bow materializing in her hand. "Now."

John shrugged his shoulders and her comment off; judging by her reaction, she probably thinks she knows better than he does just because she doesn't wrinkle and die from old age, and to her credit, she very much does. If John had to sit in music class he'd speedrun failing it, he couldn't care in the slightest about anything that he doesn't consider a banger, or as the millenials say, rock'n'roll.

As the eagle perched on the lamp post, he merely found himself confused at what the Hunter had to say. John couldn't exactly hear or see anything, but this was no effort to get rid of him and he knew there was no bluff to call. This had to be something dangerous. Extremely so. Worst part was, he isn't the best sword wielder.

"Well, I'll leave it in your capable hands." With that, John hurried back to his car, popping the trunk open to stuff his guitar back in. As he did so, the rumbling got louder and closer, and he knew he overestimated how much time he had to leave. He rummaged through to find his backup set of weapons at the bottom, barely having his hands on a bow quiver when he heard a loud screech erupting, deafening the sound of the person yelling at him from behind. The dragon-like creature crashed through the treelines and just as he jumped backwards out of its way, the drakon tore through his car, flipping it a dozen feet in the air.

"OH COME ON!" John got up, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the drakon. He pulled the string back, watching as the arrow he let fly bounce off the scales covering the monster. Welp. That wasn't good. He decided to turn to the Hunter, hoping she could do something as he was practically powerless compared to most other demigods.

With a deafening noise of crumpling metal, the drakon burst into view, sending cars flying through the air. It was an ugly beast - twenty meters of glistening black scales, two sets of glowing green eyes and a maw full of sharpened fangs that could easily swallow a small vehicle. In the blink of an eye, Louise-Françoise managed to land a few arrows in the small space between the scales of its neck - but the celestial bronze didn't seem to bother it too much. Not enough, at least, to send it crawling back where it came from.
She had to switch up her strategy.
Evading a bite that would have snapped her in half, she jumped onto the wall of the pub and started climbing swiftly, her fingers sticking to the stone through a thin net of electricity. She reached the roof within a second, her eagle landing on her shoulder with an inquisitive squawk. "Stay safe," she told her, "but be ready to jump in if things get ugly." The bird of prey gently bit her ear and took off.
Louise-Françoise turned back to the drakon, which was going after the male demigod. Now don't get her wrong, she didn't mind that much if it killed him. But he probably had a mother, a sister, maybe a girlfriend. She couldn't cause these women pain.
The daughter of Zeus notched an arrow and blew on it, sending tendrils of electricity down towards the sharp bronze tip. Let's see how it likes that, she thought, letting it fly to the soft spot at the side of its jaw.