pansymalfoy (pansymalfoy) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-02-03 15:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, katniss everdeen, pansy malfoy |
Who: Pansy and Katniss
When: Mid January
Where: Park
What: Hanging out/using magic and skillz to win tickets at the arcade, then buying tablet computers with those tickets.
Rating/Warning: Low/None
Status: Complete
Katniss sat back against the tree in the park playing Freecell on her phone while she waited for Pansy to show up. She’d been troubled by some weird dreams lately, scary dreams that had had her bolting upright in bed at night. She hoped Pansy might prove to be a good distraction.
Pansy pulled up in her little POS car, and gave the horn a quick honk. She leaned out of the window and called out, grinning. “Hurry up, Catnip! I haven’t got all day!”
Katniss looked up from her game and, upon seeing Pansy, cancelled it, leapt to her feet and grabbed her bag before trotting over to Pansy’s car. Opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat beside her friend, “Hey, what’s the rush? Got a plans for us?” she grinned, slipping her phone into her coat pocket.
“Nah, I just wanted to see if I could make you jump.” Pansy said, grinning. She rolled up her window as it was freezing outside, and then pulled out of the parking space and onto the street. “Cheesesteak sandwiches and… I dunno. Arcade? I don’t really care. Magic makes the games go without quarters, though. And I can duplicate any tickets we get, so we can get all kinds of awesome prizes.”
Katniss laughed, smacking her friend lightly on the arm for being tricksy. “Magic? You mean like Abracadabra?” she frowned, pushing her bag down into the footwell.
“Kinda.” Pansy said, breaking into a smirk. “I’ll show you. It comes from my dreams.” She turned the car onto the freeway. “We’ve got to go to an arcade I’ve never been to before, though,” she mentioned, pulling her phone out. She had maps open already, and clicked on one. A voice came over the speakers, giving her directions to the arcade.
“Will they let me in an arcade? I’m not too young, am I?” Katniss asked, having never been in one before. Her family hadn’t been all that well off growing up, so treats like that were few and far between in her memory.
Pansy gave her a funny look before putting her eyes back on the road. “Why wouldn’t they let you in the arcade? It’s for kids. Mostly.” She’d seen a few adult weirdos in there, and a bunch of young adults sneaking drinks from flasks, but for the most part the arcades she knew of were for kids. “You know, Skee-ball and everything. You don’t get out much, do you?”
“Ah, see I thought you meant with gambling machines and stuff, that’s cool,” Katniss tried to smile it off. She’d never been to one of those either but she had read about them and seen them on tv. “We never really had all that much money growing up,” she shrugged. “Didn’t really have many friends at school to go anywhere with before I came here,” she shrugged. “Mom was a bit of a state when dad died, I needed to step up and look out for my little sister when she didn’t,” she told Pansy matter-of-factly.
“Oh, like a casino?” Pansy asked, then shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, those are cool, but definitely not the kind that would let us in. Though, I bet I could magic them to… hmm.” She grinned as she thought about the damage she could do in a casino with her wand. The trick was to win big, but to lose a lot, too. That way you were under the radar. “Well, now you’ve got me to help you out, yeah?” She asked, pulling into a parking space at the mall.
"Yep," Katniss laughed at that. "You're definitely helping me out, so long as we don't end up in prison otherwise my mom will be all about not letting you help me out," she joked. "Have you ever got caught before?" she asked.
“Hey, even if we do end up in prison, so long as I’ve got my wand, we’re golden.” Pansy said, grinning. She shook her head a little at the question. “Nah, not so far. I’m pretty sneaky. We can always disapparate, too, to avoid that sort of thing.”
"Disapperate? What the hell's that?" Katniss asked, almost certain she'd misheard her friend.
“Disappear and reappear somewhere else.” Pansy responded giving a little shrug of her shoulders. “It’s a magic thing. Something that came from my dreams.” She climbed out of the car to lead the way into the mall. There was a huge video game arcade downstairs in the food court. She’d only been here once before, but it was nice. And she could cast a couple of charms on the machines so they’d give triple the normal amount of tickets, then they could exchange those tickets at the snack bar for prizes.
Katniss got out of the car and followed her friend into the mall. “Right, so...where to first?” she asked, looking around the games a little bewildered.
“Here.” Pansy pulled two ten dollar bills out of her pocket and slipped them into the change machine. It started spitting out quarters. “You take these quarters and put them in the machines… then play the games. If you do well in the games, you get tickets. We turn the tickets in for prizes over there at the Snack Bar.”
“You’re gonna show me what you’re gonna do with magic though, right?” Katniss raised her eyebrows playfully at her friend, looking forward to seeing something amazing.
“Well, it won’t look like much.” Pansy said, breaking into a grin. She held out a huge handful of quarters for Katniss. “C’mon. I’ll show you.” She moved over to one of the machines, and put a quarter in. She lifted her wand to fiddle with it, make it spit out about four times as many tickets as normal. “Go on, then. Play.”
Katniss looked at Pansy confused as she stepped up to the machine and started pressing buttons. She wasn't entirely sure what it was she was doing, but seemed to be doing all right she though.
Pansy simply watched over Katniss’ shoulder as she played the game. Then it started to spit out little tickets with numbers printed on them. “See?” She said, excitedly. “Then we take the tickets and go turn them in for awesome prizes.”
Pansy took her own coins to the Skee-Ball machine and started to play. She was really, really good at Skee-Ball.
Katniss played her machine again, laughing as more tickets popped out from it and glancing over at Pansy. “So how long until people notice do you reckon?” she asked quietly, coming over to look over her friend’s shoulder. The place was fairly quiet so she was confident no-one else would use the machine while she stepped away for a second.
“If we’re lucky? Never.” Pansy said, grinning. She took one of the long strings of tickets over to a nearby machine and fed them in. The machine gobbled in the tickets, giving little chirps as it counted up the tickets. She accepted a receipt for all of the tickets, and shoved it into her pocket.
“The goal is one thousand tickets. Then we can get that nifty tablet computer up there.” Pansy said, pointing. Though, she was fairly confident they could get two.
“A tablet?” Katniss’ eyebrows raised and almost met her hairline. “Cool!” she remarked then followed Pansy’s example of what to do with the tickets before returning to her machine which spat out more and more tickets as she played. “How many are you up to?” she asked with a grin.
“I’m around a hundred so far,” Pansy said. She turned around and dug into her backpack, then pulled out a couple of candy bars. “Here. Fuel.” She said, offering one to Katniss. “Let’s get back on track.”
So, that continued for a while. Playing the different games, Skee-Ball (because Pansy was a whiz at Skee-Ball), Coin pushers, and a handful of other games where tickets were involved. Pansy didn’t like the ones where you shot a basket or threw a football--apparently, she was too girly for that--but they tried everything. Every few games they’d head back to the ticket counter, and have it count up the number of tickets they had and give them a receipt.
Pansy headed over to the snack counter with all of her receipts in hand, and set them down on the counter. She winked at the teenager who was manning the booth, and gave him her flirtiest smile. “How much for a soda?”
The pimply-faced teen swallowed hard at Pansy’s obvious flirtation, and choked out an answer.
“Okay, I’ll take two, please. Kat and I are here until we have enough tickets for two of those,” she said, pointing up at the tablet computer prize box up on the wall.
Katniss looked between her friend and the teenager she was flirting with who seemed to be rapidly going red. The whole exchange was fascinating. She liked Pansy, she was very different from herself, she never really knew what to expect from her and it was exciting.
The guy brought out a couple of sodas, and Pansy accepted hers with another wink. She paid for them in tokens, which the teenager didn’t seem to mind, then Pansy turned back. “Okay, we need about a thousand more. Which game was your favorite? Let’s go for the gold.”
“Ok,” Katniss looked around the arcade before spotting a shooting game. “Put me on that,” she pointed the machine out to Pansy. “And I’ll get you those thousand tickets,” she told her confidently.
Pansy laughed. “You’re on!” She said, and moved over with Katniss to the shooting game. She popped a couple of tokens into it, then lifted the gun and aimed it at the screen so they could compete. Pansy wasn’t all that competitive, but she was good at video games. Not as good as Katniss, apparently.
Katniss didn’t really consider herself all that competitive, at least not against other people. She mostly enjoyed competing against herself, challenging herself to do better than before and when she had her bow and arrow in her hands the world would pretty much fade away around her. Apparently that feeling also extended to arcade shooting games as she zoned out and nailed practically every shot in the game. The game ended and Katniss lowered her gun and smiled proudly at her score while the game spat out tickets. She looked over at Pansy, “Again? Or do you want to try something else?”
“Holy cow. I think you got a perfect score.” Pansy said, leaning over and looking at Katniss’s side of the machine. It just kept spitting out ticket after ticket after ticket. “Fuck yes, we’re doing this one again!” she laughed, then pumped more tokens in. They’d have all the tickets they needed in no time.
Katniss chuckled at Pansy and her reaction to the tickets. "Ok, lock and load," she grinned, raising her gun as the game started again. Another round finished and more tickets popped out the bottom of the machine. "How are we doing?"
“God, I think we’re gonna have enough for both tablets, and some Chinese Finger Traps.” Pansy said, giving a laugh. “C’mon.” She gathered up all the tickets (armfuls, really!) and moved over to the ticket taker machine to feed them in. It counted up all the tickets, and spat out a receipt with a number on it.
“Oi!” Pansy called out to the teenager behind the counter at the Snack Bar. “Look! We’ve got enough!” She said, coming over to him. “Here. Count ‘em up!” There was a light and a mischief to Pansy that was infectious.
The boy behind the counter took all of the receipts and grabbed a calculator. “Holy… How’d you do this?” He asked.
“Didn’t you hear? I’m magic.” Pansy said, leaning against the counter.
“Are you really?” The boy asked. “Well… You’ll give me a date in exchange for this, right?” He asked, then used a key to unlock a bin behind the counter and pulled out two boxes with tablet computers in them.
“You’d better believe it,” Pansy flirted, giving him a wink.
The girls had to sign for the computers, and Pansy showed her Driver’s License, then they were free to go.
Katniss was trying to keep from laughing throughout the whole exchange, putting her hand over her mouth when she couldn’t hide her smile. Watching Pansy flirt with the guy behind the counter was like watching sport, she was so confident, so full of life. Katniss liked hanging out with Pansy because she brought some of those aspects out in herself.
Once they’d signed for the computers, she and Pansy walked away from the counter, computers in hand and Katniss couldn’t help but letting out the laugh that she’d been keeping contained. “I can’t believe we did that! That was amazing! And you!” she turned to Pansy as they walked. “You and that guy were hilarious. Are you actually going to go on a date with him?”
Pansy laughed along with her. “Hey, that was nothing.” She said, giving her friend a playful slap on her back. “Nah, well… maybe. If I need to get laid. C’mon, let’s go get some ice cream and check out our new computers.” She said, then looped her arm through Katniss’ arm, and led her off toward the ice cream shop nearby.