10572/Big Gay Ice Cream for Diana!

Big Gay Ice Cream for Diana!
Date of Scene:	26 March 2022
Location:	Big Gay Ice Cream Shop
Synopsis:	Di, Donna and Cassie go to the Big Gay Ice Cream shop to celebrate a Wonderbirthday with books, lockets, selfies and salty pimps!
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark, Diana Prince

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Donna Troy has posed:
    There's to be no huge feasts, festivals and displays of Amazon athletics to celebrate Diana's birthday this year. Although Themyscira isn't really that big on birthdays, for obvious reasons, Diana's birthdays can get pretty spectacular if she's in Themyscira for them. This year however, she's in New York. One thing that New York definitely does better than Themyscira is ice cream, and ice cream is one of Diana's favorite things in the world.

    The conclusion is simple and obvious: Cassie and Donna must take Diana for ice cream. Not just any ice cream, but ice cream from the Big Gay Ice Cream Parlor!

    As the three arrive at the store, they are greeted by a rousing chorus of 'Happy Birthday' from the staff, who have clearly been primed for this, no doubt a doomed attempt by one or more of her sisters to embarrass Diana! Inevitably this attracts some attention from the rest of the customers, but fortunately the place isn't too busy. Once the singing is done, the party are lead to a table by the window and given time to make their selections.

    "Do I remember right that your favorite was 'Salty Pimp', Di?" Donna asks, grinning wide. "One day we're going to have to take mom here, I really look forwards to seeing you explain that name to her."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie plays things real cool on the way over, like this is all no big deal and just a regular trip out for ice cream. Indeed, it's not far from school for her, and so she agrees to swing over and meet up just after a class. That lasts until they get inside and the singing starts, with Cassie promptly joining the chorus in rather spectacularly overdone fashion, belting out the tune like it was a Broadway performance. When they get to the 'how old are you now,' the shop workers have stopped and returned to their business, but Cassie keeps it up, smirking.

Then, just as abruptly, it is done, and she springs back up (she'd adopted some kind of theatric pose with a leg up on a seat) and twirls to glance up at the menu. Not as if she doesn't know it. "Oof, I dunno..." she echoes back at Donna. "That'd be a whole trip, from 'reasons to declare war on Man's World' and then back again. Not sure I'd risk it." And then, on the topic of orders: "You don't wanna get a sundae? Well, you can share mine!" And thus, eschewing any pimping of her mouth, she instead requests a 'Mermaid', which is something of a deconstructed key lime pie in ice cream sundae form.

Since she's come from school, she has her backpack, and slings it off to shove into the far corner as they take up a seat. "So.... how do you feel, Di? Would you even remember these things if we didn't make a big thing of it?"

Diana Prince has posed:
Of course the singing draws some attention, and of course, the three of them are recognizable individually, let alone as a trio. But the happiness of having the singing happening at all has Diana raising her hands up to press them together and put her fingertips pointed up against the tip of her nose, partially obscuring a big smile as she just looks from one face, to another.

When it's all said and done, she lowers her hands back down a bit and puts her fingertips down under her chin now.

"That. Was wonderful, first of all. Second of all... Hello to you all in here. I hope this will not be a bother, and only perhaps a quirky side moment to your days." She says, to everyone who was here before they entered, employee and customer alike.

Then, Diana is looking to Cassie with a grin at her showmanship, then to Donna who gets a hand on the back of her arm and a light squeeze. "Yes. It is my favorite, and yes it will be a challenge to even explain that name to mother on a multitude of levels." She says, chasing her words with a light laugh.

"And that is precisely what I would like today, too. We will worry about explanations when that time comes..."

To where Cassie chose to get seated, Diana takes her coat off, puts it over the chairs back, then adjusts her white shirt and settles down on to the chair. She smirks at the question posed to her by the blonde sister, and sits up straight on her chair. "Well. It was challenging the first... fifty or so years I was away from Themysciran shores, but after awhile... it became second nature." She says, jokingly back. Then she softens her expression some. "No, really... it became a thing shortly after I was treated to celebrating my first birthday away from the island. It was Miss Candy who told me all about it, as I've told you about her. She was ... quite adamant that there should be cake and ice cream for the event. We celebrated at a bar in London in fact. There was singing, and quite the revelry... Of course, everyone thought I was celebrating my 25th back then... Not... well, you know."

Donna Troy has posed:
    It doesn't take Donna long studying the menu on the board over the counter to make up her mind. "Rocky Roadhouse!" she declares. /Amukterai/. Almonds. Reminds me of home. And you're right Cassie. Let's never bring her here. I think I pushed her tolerance of the attitudes of Man's World far enough when I gave her the Diana bobble-head, let us not start a war over ice cream."

    "800th, 25th... barely any difference," Donna says with a smirk. "You were a mere thirty-two times older than you claimed. It is fortunate you weren't holding your lasso when you told them. That might have made your first birthday party even more interesting though."

    She leans across to Diana to give her arm a squeeze, smiling wide. "I have to admit when you told me about the idea of birthday parties, I thought it was a very strange notion. But then I didn't even really know when my birthday was. When you asked mom and she came up with a date, I thought that was really funny. Like... she didn't /know/, she was just estimating. And if it's just an estimate, what's the point of attempting to be accurate to the day? It wasn't really until I came to America and met with the Titans that it started to make sense. They were very keen on celebrating birthdays, but quickly I understood it was not really about celebrating the birthday so much as it is an excuse to celebrate the person you know."

    She turns to give Cassie a broad, fond smile. "I think Cassie and I both agree that knowing you is something that is very worth celebrating. You have been a wonderful sister to us both."

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
See? Cassie is wise! She gives a suitably sage-like nod at the restraint the others agree to. "It's just tricky. Everything awesome around here is built on something terrible, y'know?" She gestures out the window, a gesture which may indicate some of the contradictory history of the neighborhood. "But it's something we can work up to. Prolly better to introduce her and the other more conservative Amazons to a nicely curated 'best of' list first, and then... ease into the rest."

Soon the goodies are brought (they are after all on all special retainer for the party so it isn't like they have to wait for other customers ahead of them), and such thoughtful words are replaced with a mouthful of yummy sweets!

"Yepf." Hmm, still some in her mouth. She pauses, swallows. "Its definitely more about the person than the number. Well, mostly. Cuz we got some special numbers." That may or may not be a hint about Cassie's not too far-upcoming celebratory milestone, which... one can only imagine will be a wild bender to go down in history. "But for you... hah, yeah, just an excuse for having a Diana-is-awesome party, which could be, like, totally any time of year and not be out of season. Unless, I don't know. We'll probably have to think up something special when she turns a thousand. Cuz like..." She gestures with her spoon. "That's quite a thing! But short of that, it's hard to get excited for any particular set of digits."

"That must have been fun tho," she now muses, "Doing your first proper one, in the outside world. Etta's always sounded like a total riot. Bet she threw a hell of a party."

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana has her hands togethr on the edge of the table as the two speakk and she sweeps her eyes from one to the other, just smiling so happily at what they say. The age jokes are always fun. She's still one of the youngest Amazons! Even if these two with her are exceptionally youngest!

"I thought the birthday celebration was a little silly at first too, yes. But I quickly came to see what it is about also, celebrating each other, and celebrating the fact that you made it another year. You... gained experience, memories, you are hopefully a better person than you were the year before. It is a milestone, for lack of a better word."

She takes in a breath and reaches for her treat when it arrives. She wields the pink spoon up with a hungry intent to enjoy whats to come, but pauses as she glances to Donna, then to Cassie. "Any reason to be with family is enough for me to celebrate a event... a birthday, or a holiday that does not necessarily reflect our heritage. Be it ... this... or Thanksgiving, or even Christmas. New Years... look at how silly that one is... but it is worth celebrating too for the same reasons. It is ... to find joy, to remember that it's there, if you are wise enough to curate the most important things in life."

She then shuts up and starts to get herself a spoonful of the ice cream, her tongue tip already dancing back and forth on her upper lip like its warming up for the treat too.

Then its up and inside her mouth, and she does the melty face thing... something she does every time she gets ice cream, it never fails!

"Mmmhhh!" She utters with the spoon slowly pulled out from 'tween her lips.

"Salty Pimp, you are my favorite." She's talking to her ice cream, again.

Her eyes look up to Cassie then. "So what are we doing for your big big big one this year?" She asks with a little grin and a glance to Donna before she returns to her ice cream.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "We will definitely have to give some thought to Cassie's birthday," Donna agrees. Her eyes seek out Cassie's and she's smothering a bit of a smirk. "It might be best if we have more than one celebration..." she says. "I mean turning twenty-one, that's a big thing in America, Di. Obviously we should do the whole family get together thing, but I don't know. There might be ways Cassie would like to celebrate which... I don't know."

    Donna stops attempting hide the smirk. "Well, you know how it is Di. I mean if Cassie wants a trip to Cancun or Ibiza to dance away her drink-and-drugs fueled nights, it might be a little much for you at your age.

    Again with the age jokes! Thankfully Donna's Rocky Roadhouse arrives to stop her continuing, and she breaks into the chocolatey, marshmallowy, almondy goodness with obvious relish. "So good. When we open up Themyscira more, we should ask these guys if they are interested in opening up a branch there. I'm sure it would be very popular."

    "So /do/ you have any plans for your twenty-first, Cassie? Does Ibiza or Cancun sound appealing? Or maybe we could talk to Nadia's Rannian friends and see if there's a party city on Rann. That could be a blast."

    What do you get for someone for their twenty-first when they've already got the fancy sports car? Vacation on another planet doesn't seem like a terrible option!

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"All I'm hearing is that you just really like a party," is how Cassie summarizes Di's more serious and heartfelt 'every holiday is a worthy celebration!' "No shame in that, though!" Then she pauses to... just watch. Stare even.

Because the degree of ceremonial reverence, awe, of even ecstatic experience that Diana displays in consuming her own first spoonfuls of salty pimp? It's something else! And before too long, Cassie breaks out laughing. "It always amazes me, to watch you eat this stuff. A bajillion years old," wow, she suddenly pushed it up from nine hundred going on a thousand, "and you act like a little kid having it for the first time. Or..." A meaningful pause. "Well, I won't say what it looks like, sometimes. BUT I THINK YOU KNOW."

As talk from there falls toward her own upcoming birthday, she looks between both of the other women, back to Diana, "Well..." And then toward Donna. "Nope, no thought! Neither of you have to do any thinking, any crazy planning," she declares. "Cuz-" And then Donna seems to have it, and she does a quick snap-point. "Exactly! I got it covered."

"Cuz, see... I'm not leaving this to chance, and no disrespect to Amazon custom, or anything, but I'm not sure either of you quite has the proper perspective on this, on the associated rituals, and just what they mean to someone in my exceptionally not a bajillion years old condition. So this time around, I'm sharing Man's World- nah, screw it, CASSIE'S World with the Amazons."

Another wide grin. But then, just as quickly, she's shaking off the image Donna conjures of more intense debauchery. "Nah, nothing quite like that. Cuz, even if I can do that kinda stuff now, it's not really... got anything to do with what my life has really been like, you know? So I'm keeping the wild partying to a more contained trajectory. And details are still kinda light but basically... Bar crawl, prolly right around here through the village. Mostly. Can't promise I won't decide half way through that I'm drunk-flying to the next stop."

"'Course, everyone's invited and I know a couple of more... adventerous sisters who are very interested in the idea!" Cassie definitely has her particular clique of liberally minded Amazons who have been more curious about adopting off-island culture. The ones she's always bringing clothes!

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana is laughing at the thought of a Big Gay Ice Cream Shop opening up on Themyscira. "I support this whole heartedly as the very first local establishment to make the jump to our home..." She says with no small amount of audible elation at the very notion. She's shaking her head softly as the conversation routes back to Cassie's 21st which just has her quiet for a spell as she enjoys that ice cream, shaking her head again at Cassie's insinuation of what it makes her truly feel. She glances up though at that and just smiles, sweetly. "No comment..." she says very softly in her smoky voice.

Her eyes drop back down then as she grins at Donna's supplied suggestions, then raises her brows up at Cassie's rebuke.

"Really? You'd turn down a big... trip to a place away from here, to instead, just hit up..." Diana stops then. "Oh, I get it..." She then corrects herself in a warmer tone.

"You have been going past these bars day in and day out on your way to, and from, school here for quite some time. So now you wish to hit them all at once, so to speak, and taste what you believe you have been missing. Well... legally missing." She adds that last part with a smirk, assuming Cassie has had some fun with or without a proper ID to please the vastly different number of authorities in these bars that may or may not have been carding everyone on any given night.

"Well. I'll happily come along to one, maybe two of these 'crawling bars', or what eeeever. But I would imagine a night like that would be best spent with your peers who are not ... as old as 'Yoda'." She jokes, pronouncing the Jedi Master's name with an emphasized 'YO'.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Oh it's true there are party Amazons. There are definitely party Amazons. It's not just off-island culture, either. Donna and Cassie have probably been a bad influence, but there is a home grown party scene too, and Donna has developed a certain reputation in some quarters of the city of Themyscira where the oil lamps burn late into the night and the wine flows freely. However as the saying goes, what happens in Taverna Nikopolis stays in Taverna Nikopolis.

    "Might be an idea to plan out the bar crawl so there's a natural opportunity for the lightweights to take their leave before the heavy drinking starts," Donna suggests. "Not everyone can drink like an Amazon, and Diana needs her early nights at her age." Of course Donna's including Cassie very much in the heavy drinking party. It's going to be her twenty-first, so it's obligatory. But then there's also the fact that Cassie is on Donna's special mental list of Titans who are allowed to drink at the Tower, a list that has nothing to do with age (she's /still/ horrified of the memory of Diana taking champagne away from her when she was sixteen) and everything to do with Donna's /perfectly reasonable/ views of who's mature or not and somewhat vague notions of adherence to the strict word of the local laws. Cassie is Cassie. Cassie is a sister and an Amazon. Cassie is trusted. Why would something as silly as being under twenty-one come into the reasoning of who's allowed to drink beer at the tower?

    Donna breaks away from her ice cream for a moment to look up at Diana with a grin. "We're talking about Cassie's birthday when it's your birthday though, sister. We have a couple of months to think about Cassie's, but today is the day we're meant to be celebrating your birthday."

    She pulls a small package wrapped in paper so glittery Vorpal would probably steal if if he saw it from her coat pocket and slides it across the table to Diana. "Do not ask me where I got this from," she says. "It's best you don't know."

    Inside the package is a small leather-bound book in a plastic museum preservation bag. It's ancient and a little the worse for time, but the pages are bright and the ink is clear. It's obviously something that has been looked after. The pages are filled with hand-written text, the large majority of it in one handwriting, but with some notes here and there in another. In the front of the book is a portrait drawn in pen of a woman Diana does not recognize, but there's a family resemblance she can see when it becomes clear what this book is -- a diary that once belonged to Diana's mysterious lost aunt Melanippe, that has obviously been kept privately all these long years since Melanippe left and was removed from the official histories of Themyscira by someone who cared deeply for her. Probably the person who wrote those additional notes and drew that portrait.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Yeah, 'xactly," Cassie echoes Di's appraisal. "'Cause, y'know... I can fly? So 'far off exotic locale' isn't really anything special. Or I can go relax on a breathtaking tropical beach that always has perfect weather and never has shitty tourists. Just the other day we just f'd off to France cuz why not... Oh! That reminds me."

Suddenly, Cassie has abandonned her interest in the colorful Mermaid sundae and turned her attention to her previously stashed backpack, supposedly full of her day's school supplies. She hunches over it, digging through the contents. "Where is it, no, that's- aha!" Triumphantly, she sits up again, displaying, in hand, a little wrapped box. She turns, and holds this out toward Diana.

"Not quite a car or anything, but take a look!" She looks very proud of herself.

While holding it out, she turns back to Donna. "Yeah, don't worry, the way these things work... that's pretty much part of the design? Never wanna pressure anyone into more than they can handle. So you just like post up the list of where you're going, update your location as you go, and people can find the party as it moves, hop-on, hop-off as they want," she explains. Ah, the life of a generation raised on their phones. "Or stick it out for the long-haul!"

When Di gets to her smaller box (indeed, the big pink bow on top is larger than the box itself), she may unravel it to eventually discover what seems to be some piece of jewelry, or maybe a watch? It has a chain, and is vaguely round, or maybe oblong. Not anything glitteringly precious either. Pewter, it turns out. And, like the book, old looking. Well, no, not remotely like the book, on the scale of an order of magnitude at least. Maybe a hundred years. And opening it reveals an anachronistic oddity, though, some kind of very modern screen. Currently it's dark.

"So mine's actually got two parts..." she starts to explain.

Diana Prince has posed:
It goes without saying that seeing Donna produce a gift, and soon there after, CAssie starting to dig for one... well, it is a surprise, and a pleasant one. "I thought just coming here was the gifts..." The Princess says as she sets her spoon down, as there are few things that can take her away from her ice cream, but gifts from her sisters are one of those things.

The book comes first, she smiles at the wrapping, and runs her fingers over it before she carefully opens it up, being one of those types who preserve packaging and enjoy the sensation of unwrapping a present without damaging the cover, so to speak.

Once she pulls the wrapping off, she sees the journal within and it makes her tilt her head to the side, a familiar knitting of her brows as she looks quite curiously at the book. "Oh my." She says quietly. "This is..." Once she runs her fingers over the interior, sees that reproduced imagery of Melanippe, it really makes Diana look enthralled. She starts to look quickly through the pages before she pauses and looks up to Donna. "How did you come across this?" She asks her. "I... will have some reading to do tonight, to be sure..." She further notes before Cassie's gift is looked to.

The bow gets a big smile, before she starts to untie it and give the gift the same careful unwrapping.

She gathers out the oblong chained ornament. "A watch?" She asks before finding the screen. This makes her smile warmly. "Something modern, pretending not to be?" She asks when Cassie says hers has two parts.

"you both are surprising me quite a lot today..."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "It was that thing about the damnatio memoriae that got me thinking, Di," Donna replies. "You know I'm a bit of a history buff. Well... people who have been removed from history never get removed all that well. I knew there would be traces of her. After that talk we had in your tree house -- well I knew how much it bothered you that you had an aunt you knew nothing about. So I did some asking around."

    She gives a quick shrug of her shoulders, and returns her attention to her ice cream as she speaks. "I asked around. A lot of people didn't want to talk about her. A few did. After a while I got the names of a few people who had been close to her but had remained on Themyscira. One of those had been her lover, a while before Menalippe left Themyscira. She did not want to forget Menalippe, even though mother wanted everyone to forget her. She had kept a few mementos of her old friend and lover. She was reluctant to part with this but she has a few other things. When I told her I wanted this for you... well, in the end she felt that Menalippe would have wanted her niece to know her. And that's all I can really tell you without breaking certain promises."

    Donna gives Diana a smile that's an odd mixture of sadness and happiness before turning her attention to Cassie's gift. "Ooh. That's... what /is/ that?" she asks curiously. She blinks a couple of times and turns to Cassie, agog for the explanation.

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
Cassie grins impishly as Diana ponders the dual nature of her gift. It's fitting, perhaps, as even then she speaks of phones and other such conveniences, amidst a pair so immersed in history. "OK, just tap the screen and it'll turn on..." It will, and it does!

Diana will immediately recognize the image, one of those from her office showing her alongside a certain group of soldiers. It's a nice trick, a small digital picture frame, stuck in an old locket.

"You can swipe, like on a phone, to cycle through them, or there's an auto-slideshow... tap to start-pause, well, you'll figure it out, it's all easy," she continues, rambling through the technological whiz-bang parts, toward what is evidently the larger 'wow' factor. Because as Diana goes through them, she will find not only the many familiar images from her office (which means that Cassie definitely snuck in and stole them to do the scans, at some point!), but after a while, encounter some images NOT from her existing collection.

"So I figured it out pretty quick, where we were, and after practice one day, when I told you I was goin' off with that local kid... I went to poke around. The locket's just from some local curio shop, probably not anything itself but it's supposedly from the period , at least. But better, I found the town record office... Anyway, most of it's archival, and a lot just, you know, some pictures of the town, the local area... but, well, you can look for yourself!" Leaving Diana to peruse them a moment, she quickly interrupts, "Oh! I've got them on the Embassy server now too, so you can look at 'em, y'know, on a not super-tiny screen when you want, hah."

Diana Prince has posed:
With the oblong locket in her left hand, and her right holding the journal open, Diana just takes in the gifts as they're both explained. She looks between the two of her sisters and just smiles after a few moments of thought. "You tw are the best." She says then quietly as her fingers brush over the journal, then move over to swipe through some of the photos on the locket. "I did not realize you knew where we were that day." She tells Cassie, having not really gone in to history lessons about it. "I didn't want to 'bore' you with old stories again." Diana says with a light laugh as she reaches up then to dab at the corner of her eyes.

"Thank you both though, really. Donna, I'll be reading this all night, maybe twice. Then we will transcribe it, scan it even, so it is recorded. But, Eventually, maybe we should return it to whomever you discovered had that connection... as it surely means a lot to them. Memories can be like that, after all." She notes as she glances back to the other gift which is displaying just such things to her.

"You are both such treasures, in your own... agism-forgiving ways." Diana fires back with a light laugh.

A couple people approach the table soon there-after to ask if they can get selfies with the famous Wonder Women, to which Diana is happily offering to oblige.

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's inevitable that there would be a selfie request eventually. There's a certain pleasure for members of the Titans that the inhabitants of the local area at the St.Martin's boardwalk are now so used to the presence of Superheroes on their turf that the general feeling is it's cooler to /not/ ask for selfies and treat the Titans just like anyone else. Further afield, selfies happen. And when you're with Diana, selfies happen twice as often!

    Enjoying the freedom from selfie requests doesn't mean you can't enjoy the selfies too. While there are some moody and brooding superhero types who stick to the shadows, the three Amazons certainly don't fit into that category, and it's fun to put a smile on people's faces, right? So when the request comes along, Donna hops to her feet to stand behind Cassie and Diana and wrap an arm around each shoulder while grinning wide to the camera. She's in a good mood, and doesn't even give Diana bunny ears this time, which is a thing she has done often enough in the past there's a whole website where someone has collected photos of Diana being given bunny ears by Donna.

    When the photo is taken and the selfie-hunters returned to their table, Donna keeps her arms wrapped around the pair's shoulders to give them both an huge hug. "Funny," she says, grinning even wider. "I was just thinking the same thing, that you two are such treasures! Best sisters I could ask for. Happy birthday, Diana! And Cassie, while your twenty first is a little bit closer, you're right -- we should definitely be thinking hard about something special for Di's one thousandth. There's barely enough time to prepare a party of the epicness that is called for!"

Cassie Sandsmark has posed:
"Hah. C'monnnnn, 'course I knew. You're such a sentimental softie! Second I realized what country we were in, even, I had a kinda feeling..." Regardless, Cassie very much looks pleased with the result, accepting that 'best' title with all due satisfaction and honor! Moreover, she quickly rejects those 'old stories' as boring. "No way! You've lived through a lot of wild stuff! It's just hard to... I dunno, understand it or feel it like you do. But I feel like I got a tiny bit of it, wandering around there."

And then it's selfie-time!

Of course, Cassie takes to these like a fish to water, striking a variety of poses beside Di, in front of Donna, and framing whatever members of the public come to pose with the birthday gal. She makes the requisite fun faces, tongue-out, ducklipped, and otherwise!

When this is done, she leans into the group-hug with that her characteristic thousand-watt smile. "The best!" she echoes, before throwing in wholeheartedly to this true millennial party-planning. "Oh yeah, for sure. Just working out the guest list, sending out the galaxy-wide invites... Its gonna be a big job!"

Diana Prince has posed:
Diana takes a much more reserved level of photos than her siblings do, but even she is smiling ear to ear in them, giving the camera the best she can muster up. It's the nature of the business, in some ways, and she loves every minute of it. The hugs are shared, and when the talk of her one thousandth birthday comes up again, Diana will just laugh a little and shake her head as she goes to return to what is left of her ice cream, her eyes going over those gifts again.

"By the time that one does come around, the two of you will be telling 'boring' 'old' stories to the wild young Amazons that will come to pass by that age. maybe even some 'children' of your own." She says up to them both with another big grin as she picks up a melty spoonful of ice cream'd Salty Pimp and puts it in her---

Happiest Birthdays!