"It starts at 9 - let's leave at 8:40?" Nuzzle.

Haru sets a timer and resumes kissing Cara.

This is very practical and sensible of him! Clearly she should reward this behavior. Perhaps with kisses on his favorite spot~

"Mmmmmmmm you should probably not do that in front of all your friends later but it's very nice..."

"Of course not! It's not medically necessary, after all."  Also not medically necessary - what she's doing with her tongue right now. 

"Aaaaaah," replies Haru intelligently.

It's so good how they're both scintillating conversationalists! 

Heeeee. She loves doing this to him.

And eventually they need to get ready to go which means shirts and shoes and jackets since it'll be dark out and summoning a self-driving car so he doesn't have to park at the karaoke place.

Cara will bring a jacket, but keeps it off for now - "it can get pretty hot in there, and also this will make me easier to guide."  She chose her skirt and top with this in mind as well. 

She's a bit sad about not having any of her makeup on hand, but Haru probably doesn't want blue all over his lips and she wants to be able to nuzzle him without depositing unwanted glitter, as well. 

Makeouts in the car? For medical purposes?

An important advantage of the self-driving kind! Kisskisskiss.

And soon they arrive, Cara putting earplugs in to ward off against headaches. She happily attaches herself to Haru's side, and they enter the venue together.

She scans the crowd, her eyes lighting up as she spots Stella. She waves excitedly. 

A woman in a bra and a pencil skirt, both heavily pearl-beaded, extracts herself from a conversation with a bartender, trots over in platform shoes that must be almost 6 inches tall, and gives Cara a delighted hug.

"The gills worked out so well, it was my first time doing the thing where you dissolve the edges with acetone but turns out it's really satisfying, I'm so happy with them," she preens and points to her cheek, then seamlessly redirects her attention to Haru. "Hi, you must be the PDA co-conspirator?"

"Did she not give my name?"

Cara turns bright red. She sure didn't!

"Ack." She takes a deep breath. "Stella, this is Haru! He discovered I was awakening Friday and has been taking really good care of me ever since then. I'm absurdly lucky he found me." 

"Haru, this is Stella! She's a dear friend and an incredible inspiration, she's the best person I know at trying new things and finding enjoyment wherever she possibly can." 

(Stella briefly hugs another regular as they pass by.)

"Don't listen to her, actually I'm a deep sea creature out for your soul," and she raises her eyebrows to accentuate the black sclera lenses she's wearing.

Blushing Cara gets squeezed again. "Thank you for taking care of the Cara, she's important. Have you been to stage karaoke before, do you need a tutorial or are you good?"

"Nice to meet you, Stella, but hands off my soul please. I've been to the kind where you get a room with a bunch of friends, but not recently, give me the rundown?"

A rundown is given! Here's the stand of the KJ, which is like a DJ but for karaoke, and they have little pieces of paper that you write down your name and song on! (They also have a name, a poorly fitting but impressively flashy evening gown on, and some sort of cryptic running joke with Stella.)

If they submit now, they'll probably get to sing immediately, but it can be nice to wait for an hour or so to get more of an audience.

She looks up at Haru. She'd be fine with diving in, but it might be nice for him to get to see a few other people sing first...

"Do you want to wait a bit? I could go either way, since there's plenty of people here already I'd like to say hi to." 

"I could also go either way. Are most of your friends here, or are the people likely to trickle in over the next hour some of the ones you want to show off for?"

She looks around and then thinks. "A good number of them are probably going to show up in the next 30 minutes, I'd guess. Let's mingle?"

"Lead the way."

She gives him a little kiss. "With pleasure!"

She spends the next while finding groups of 1-3 people, introducing Haru to them and vice versa, and chatting with them a bit about what's been up with them. When they ask her what she's been up to she'll mention going flying with Haru and also the dungeon monster zoo investigation, which often leads to pictures of Cricket and gives Haru a chance to talk about his Very Cool Cat, if he wants to.

Oh, Haru's always happy to talk about his very cool cat. "Maybe I should've asked him if he wanted to come."

"Oh, I hadn't even considered that - does he like this kind of thing? I assumed the thing where he dislikes most people meant that this wouldn't be his kind of scene." She really needs to try and befriend him tomorrow, she wants to get to know him well enough to be able to recommend him things.

"He might like the activity even if he didn't like any of the attendees? But actually now that I think of it he's still kind of shaky on reading and might not be able to do song lyrics in real time."