Isabela of Rivain (rivainipirate) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-08-31 13:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, isabela, kitty pryde (shadowcat) |
Who: Isabela and Kitty Pryde
What: A little help
When: 8/29
Where: A computer store in Irvine
Rating: PG, it's Isabela
Status: Complete
Isabela’s laptop was dead. It had given up the ghost the other night, and it had been right at the very worst moment. She’d actually been writing something important, and just before she’d sent the e-mail off, the blue screen of death had happened.
After she’d cussed for a few hours, she’d sighed, left the flat, and gone to the computer store. She was standing in front of a display of laptops, but beyond price and hard drive size, she didn’t know what was what. And the one salesperson was a grumpy cow. Sigh.
Kitty had been in desperate need of several SSDs, so she’d headed into the shop and selected several. She was walking past one very attractive but bewildered looking woman. “You okay?”
“Oh. Um. I think so? My laptop died, and I’m trying to find a replacement, but I’m a bit ... out of my league, I think.” Isabela blinked. She didn’t think this girl worked here, did she? She was too attractive.
Kitty flashed her a cocky smile. “What do you do with it? Because the one that guy is trying to sell you is a useless piece of junk.”
“Mostly e-mail and word processing, but the occasional game of Bejeweled has happened.” Isabela couldn’t help but like that smile. “That bad, huh.”
“It’s terrible, even for that. It’ll last you a couple of months before you’ll want to throw it against the wall.” She pulled Isabela over to another. “About fifty bucks more, but with an I7 processor, twice the ram, a faster hard drive, and a dedicated video card. With what you do with it it’ll last you years, and give you the option to try out other kinds of things, like games or video editing.”
Isabela raised an eyebrow. “Oh, dear ... you’ll laugh, but I only understood about thirty percent of that.” Awkward.
Kitty looked at her. She decided with breasts like that this was allowed. Besides, she had to have something she was smart at, not everyone liked tech, right? “It’s faster, smarter, holds more stuff, and powerful enough to last more than a year. I mean it’s already out of date, but I had one laptop that lasted five years because I spent a little bit more. This could be that kind for you, and it’s not much more than that other one. Plus!” And she held up a finger. “The brand is good.”
"See, that made perfect sense." Isabela had to laugh. "Though now I feel as though I ought to apologise for being so stupid. Talk to me about the mechanics of a stunt or the angle to strike with a dagger, and then we can have a conversation."
“Stunts and daggers, huh?” Those were also things Of Interest(™) to Kitty Pryde. She grinned at the woman.
“Yeah, I’m a stunt coordinator for a big studio production company.” Isabela grinned. This was definitely a better subject to discuss. “I used to do them myself, now I just plan them. It’s brilliant.”
“That’s awesome,” Kitty said, excitedly. “I have a bit of a hard on for danger and sharp objects. Comes from having some experience in Japan.” With ninjas. “What kind of movies have you worked on? Do you get to do the stunt planning too?”
Isabela named a couple of films she’d done the stunts for. “I just did the jumps, no planning there. I didn’t start planning until I jumped studios. Just finished working on a pirate film, with Thor Odinson. He’s lovely, by the way. So’s his wife.” Just in case, it felt prudent to add that, even if she’d never met Natasha Romanova.
“Wow. Small world.” Kitty laughed. “I know both of them. Thor’s a great guy. I think I’ve heard about that one. That’s a pretty big project!”
“I’d been having trouble at my old job - stupid director basically said I wouldn’t get any more work unless I slept with him - and Thor invited me to the new place.” Isabela shrugged. “He’s a mate, and we work well together, too. I’m Isabela, by the way.” She stuck a hand out, smiling, doing her best not to check out the girl’s trim figure.
“Kitty.” She shook Bela’s hand. “Nice meeting you. I don’t blame you. I might have punched someone though.” She’d always appreciated Thor’s ability to help people out in genuine ways.
“I thought about it, but I threatened to sue instead.” Isabela laughed. “I got more money out of it.”
“That’s one way to go about it, and probably hurt him more than any broken nose possibly could. God. Some people piss me off.”
“I’m just glad my fiance didn’t get wind. Well, he wasn’t my fiance at the time.” Isabela shook his head. “But Atton isn’t ... well. The stunt coordinator would probably have been able to handle him.” Especially before all his training.
“Not much of a fighter?” Kitty grinned.
“He’s better now. Gotten some training, but he wins fights with his mind more than anything.” That was an understatement. Isabela smirked, though. “It’s not as though he’s not nice to look at. Just, smarter than most.” As opposed to stronger.
“See…” Kitty pointed. “Brains are some of the best ways to fight. Outsmart your opponent and you get your ass kicked less. But..it’s fun to punch anyway.”
“I do appreciate that.” Isabela nodded. “I mean, I kickbox, get my aggression out. Atton’s not a wimp by any means, but we have different styles. I like to get in there.” She smirked. “Do you live in this county, Kitty?” If so, she might risk talking about the dreams.
“Yeah. I have a house in Irvine. Got it dirt cheap thanks to Stark’s flight tests rocking all the windows.” Not that she looked old enough to have that kind of money. “I do some martial arts too.”
“Well, if you live here, you’ve at least heard of the dreams?” Isabela asked. “I do martial arts, but in the dreams, I am, not to put too fine a face on it, a pirate queen.” She grinned.
Kitty looked around, then poked her finger into Isabela’s arm. “You could say I’ve heard of the dreams. Pirate Queen? That’s freaking awesome.”
“I got lucky,” Isabela said, nodding and laughing. “Some of my mates have horrid dreams, but mine are mostly good.” After Zevran killed Luis. “I had my own ship, my own all male crew, and until a squall got me, had bloody good fun.”
“How did you keep discipline?” Kitty thought there was a hard enough time keeping men in line in more women friendly professions.
“A combination of feminine wiles and force.” Isabela shrugged. “It’s another time, in my dreams. A mutiny happened, and I put the leader over the side.” She hadn’t regretted it, either. “Those who told me about it got rewarded, either with shore leave, skipping a shift, or a few other perks.” She couldn’t help but smirk, remembering a few nights.
Kitty nodded, and raised her eyebrow at Bela’s smirk. “I guess a pirate queen needs to know when to spare the lash.”
She couldn’t help but toss her head back and laugh at that. “I’d make a joke about sparing the rod, but I never did that much.” Slightly off color, but oh well. “All joking aside, though, I managed. Didn’t hurt that most of my lads joined me for the booty. ... The money. That is.” Isabela laughed delightedly again.
“Something tells me I’d have enjoyed it on your ship,” Kitty quipped. She couldn’t help but flirt. “I like a good workout.”
“Oh?” Isabela smirked. “Well, I put my lads through the paces.” Double entendre, yes, but also just truth. “Normal pirate vessels needed crews of at least fifteen; we had seventeen men and a cabin boy. Might’ve been rather nice to have a couple other lasses on board, though.” Talk about a motivator for the men.
“Depends on which way the lasses swing,” Kitty replied. “Otherwise it might be a tease. But it would be fun. Never actually went sailing. Not traditionally anyway.”
“D’you know, I haven’t either, here?” Isabela chuckled. “I should probably try, just to see if the dreams have given me that.” She looked down at the computer in front of her on the display stand, given that its screen had just gone dark and the screensaver came on. “I can afford probably fifteen hundred dollars, so I should likely go with the one you suggested. But that is one good perk of my dreams ... no one seems to give a toss about homosexuals. Or even bisexuals. In my dreams I shagged both a girl and a bloke for long periods of time - not at once, though.”
“If the dreams give you half of what they gave me,” Kitty replied. “You might be the best damn sailor in Orange County? And god that would be wonderful. ‘I like girls too’ and my mom hasn’t talked to me since. And I thought eating bacon was the great crime.”
Isabela laughed. “You’re Jewish, too? I don’t actually like the taste of bacon, but I’ve tried it. And my mum still thinks bisexuality’s a phase ... I’m marrying a bloke and she’s like ‘well, glad you got past that.’ When Atton was in a female body during that one week or so of lunacy, it was hard to keep my hands off him.”
“Bacon is good, but it’s not this magically amazing thing people like to think it is,” Kitty nodded her head. “I was married. My dad accepted it really well, mom not so much. I’m actually surprised my mom didn’t send me some kind of twisted ‘told you so’ when Xi’an died.” Kitty made a face, and ignored the pang. It only grew a little worse as she continued, “God, I know. My current girlfriend was in a male body and if he had been legal I don’t know if I would have behaved.”
Sometimes she thought she moved on too fast. Or that she hadn’t really moved on at all.
Isabela sighed. “That sounds horrid. I know it isn’t worth much, but I’m sorry for your loss.” She was honestly of the belief that saying things like that often made it worse, but she still felt obligated.
“Thanks..” She rubbed the back of her neck, then turned back to the computers. “You should get oops insurance.”
“Do they have insurance for ‘I’m a twat and drink coffee near my machinery?’” Isabela raised an eyebrow.
“That’s the oops insurance.” Kitty laughed. “Most basic warranties say you’re SOL if you spill anything or drop it. It’s a laptop. That’s gonna happen. Worth a little bit extra to save yourself seven hundred in repairs.”
“Ah. I didn’t know that; I’ve only ever had the big desktop computers before.” Isabela shook her head. “I swear I’m an adult professional, I just have been lucky with my computers, I think.”
“Well, you’re still really lucky, ‘cause you met an expert.” Kitty tapped her chest.
Isabela grinned. “If you ever need a favour, you can count on me. Though Atton, sadly, might object if that favour were sexual.”
“So would Rikku,” Kitty assured her. If they’d both been single, she would be flirting a lot more heavily. “But I don’t really need anything. If I think I need help with oceans or stabbing things though…”
“I don’t really know how good I am at stabbing things here,” Isabela said. “I should find out ... but I don’t know, where does one go to practice that?”
“My house?” She grinned. “Or a friend of mine’s, he has a room set aside for a dojo. I actually train some people in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Do you really.” Isabela was interested, in spite of herself. “I mean, I can’t think of a reason I’d need to know how good I might be at it. But ... it’d be a lot of fun. Sounds like it, at least.” Hell, if any more Las Vegases happened, maybe she’d be even better prepared. She’d managed in Vegas, but that could have been luck.
“It’s fun, and it helps keep me in shape so it’s not like I don’t get something out of it. Plus, you know, watching sexy friends sweat a lot.” Kitty grinned.
“There’s no law against looking.” Isabela smirked. Kitty was an attractive woman, and seeing her no doubt pert little bottom in skin tight shorts would be a nice perk. “Maybe I’ll take you up on it.”
“Looking should be the law sometimes.” Kitty let out a little sigh. Sometimes she wished she were the type to sleep around before hooking up long term.
“As opposed to what?” Isabela got the feeling something was off in her love life.
She shook her head. “I mean sometimes I just really like to look.”
“Well, if I come to see you, you can look all you like.” Isabela smirked. She didn’t entirely think that was it, but she wasn’t about to push a complete stranger. She did have a little tact, unlike dream her. “And I’ll take a flier on this computer.”
“If you want computer training, I can help with that too,” she replied, her smile widening. She shrugged off a potential dark cloud. “It’ll be fun.”
“That I may also take you up on.” Isabela smiled. “Maybe after my honeymoon.”
“Assuming you’re still standing.”
“Fair.” Isabela smirked. “All joking aside, I think I’ve got the stamina.” For training and her honeymoon.