fandomtownies | Red's Tattoo Parlour: Open for Henna

Duce heads to work sometime after she and Chloe finish taking Jake shopping. Unlocking the door, she calls for Red, to let him know she's there if he's home.

Setting the Homecoming Henna Drawing Box on the counter, she makes sure the supply of pens and drawing blanks is plentiful.

She sets up her henna supplies, and works on another sketch design while waiting for customers.

Usual cup of Perk coffee in her hand, Shane's dressed in a dark blue wifebeater, baggy black cargo pants and her steel-toed boots. She slips off her purple Shades and hooks them into the front of her wifebeater before pulling open the door and stepping inside.

Her head tilts almost involuntarily to one side as she spots Duce, brows furrowing as she tries to remember. The snakes. Ahh, right. The girl playing with the zombies on zombie weekend.

"Uhh, hi," Shane says quietly with a smile . "Is -- is Red here?"

Duce looks up from behind the counter, trying to place where she's seen this girl before. Imagining her wet and dripping is not only pleasant, but clues Duce as to where they've met before. Smiling, she shakes her head, "We don't think he's awake just yet. If you need him for something, we could ring him..? Hey, sorry we didn't get your name the night of the .. zombie..thing. We're Medusa. Thanks for your help chasing them."

We...? Shane thinks for a moment but her eye catches sight of one of the serpentine tendrils of her 'hair' looking at her particularly closely. Ahh. 'We'.

"Hi, Medusa," she says amiably, placing her cup on the edge of the counter. She reaches up and scratches idly at her bicep, revealing rather nasty bruises and scrapes on her knuckles and a slender silver bracelet engraved with strange symbols around her right wrist. "I'm Shane. McCutcheon. I'm a friend of... of Red's."

"Umm, actually, I kinda do need to speak to Red. I -- I haven't seen him for a few days and I just wanted to check and make sure he was all right. I had some friends over and I tried to call him, but, uhh... I never heard back..."

Duce's attention suddenly rivets on Shane, "Make sure he was all right? Did something happen to him?" At the mention of something happening to Red, Duce's voice goes frosty with a silent promise of vengence, albeit not directed at Shane. "We haven't seen him at all this week, but thought he was busy with the babies."

At Duce's sudden change in demeanor, Shane's back straightens up from its usual, comfortable slouch. "N-not that I know of... I... I saw him a few days ago at the diner and he was totally fine, then," she murmurs, giving Duce a puzzled look. Plus, I think I'd feel it if something bad had happened to him...

Duce settles down, nodding, "He's probably off with the babies, then. It's just been very strange, missing him all week. We know he's been here, his stuff's all moved about." She gestures a pale hand at the tattoo equipment.

She smiled slightly, thinking of something, "The diner, huh? Let me guess.. cherries?"

Shane nods, turning to look at the equipment. "Yeah, same here. I miss him... and the kids," she says.

A broad smile shapes Shane's lips and she chuckles. "Yeah. The bakery does cherry pie once a week," she replies. "He loves it."

Duce shakes her head mournfully, "He," she declares, "is an addict, and no good will come of his unnatural cherry fetish."

Suddenly thinking of the vulgar connotations of that statement, in relationship to her canine boss, causes Duce to almost choke to death when she tries to swallow back a sudden laugh. Laughing and coughing, she leans against the counter for support.

In the midst of laughing at the comment herself, Shane immediately skirts around the counter and pats Duce on the back gently, not even giving a second thought to the live serpents. "Easy," she says, her voice a weird mix of concern and residual amusement.

Duce waves a 'don't worry, I'm fine' hand, still snickering. Wiping the laughter tears from under her glasses. "Well, at least we know what to get him for Christmas.."

Still chuckling, herself, Shane steps back around the counter. "I wonder if they have any of those 'of-the-month' clubs for cherries? Like they have with coffee and stuff," Shane muses aloud as she picks up her take-out Perk cup and sips from it.

Duce ooooohs, "Yeah, we think Harry & David might.. hrm.. or, maybe those are just chocolate covered cherries.." She grins, "Definitely an idea. Must be cherries with stones though. The cubs chase them."

Shane grins. "I think they need a new coffee can. Last time I saw it, it had holes," she says, shaking her head in amusement.

Duce makes a sour face, "Better a coffee can than my boot! One of the little furmonkeys bit a hole in the side of my last pair. We just couldn't be angry at them, though. They're so darn cute." She heaves a dramatic sigh.

"I've seen them eyeing my boots... one of 'em even tried to take a bite, but I caught him before he had a chance, since I didn't want him to hurt his teeth on the toes," Shane says. After a moment she blinks and then grins wryly, "Somehow, though, I think in a battle of boot versus kid? Even my boots would lose."

Duce says mournfully, "Ours were steel-toed Docs, and the little monkey bit the area right behind the steel cap and put a 2" hole in the leather."

Shaking her head, she grins. "Got him back though. Little bugger didn't expect me to have a squirt gun." From her pocket, she pulls a small neon-orange kiddie squirtgun, like the kind you'd get in a goodie bag or capsule machine.

Shane sucks in a hissing breath, face pinched with sympathy. Seeing the squirt gun, she lets out a hearty and rather surprisingly loud laugh, considering how soft-spoken she usually is. "Okay, so... I gotta ask... are -- are Red and the kids cats or... dogs or... what?" She asks, giving Duce a confused look.

Duce grins, "We had to ask him that ourself, the first time we met him. To us, he looks very leonine. He says he's canine, though, most closely related to wolves. Which would make sense, since he can talk to .. ah.. wolves."

She was obviously going to say something else just there, but caught herself just in time. She changes the subject slightly, "We haven't asked about his mate, but we've never seen her. Just the cubs."

Even though Duce caught herself, Shane couldn't help but notice the slip, eyebrow quirking up just the tiniest fraction at it. She leans against the counter. "I haven't, either... I mean -- it's none of my business, y'know?" She says, head tipping to one side as she fiddles idly with the corner of a nearby flyer.

Duce nods understandingly, "The curiousity is killing us, though. We just don't want to ask if it's not a happy ending, though, y'know?" She wrinkles her nose slightly, "Plus, we're afraid he'll reveal something like he's secretly hermaphroditic and spawned them himself. That would really screw with our butchy mental image of him."

Remembering something she heard recently in passing, she asks, "Hey, aren't you enrolling in school this quarter? We thought we heard something of that nature..Will you be enrolled in time for Homecoming?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna be," Shane says as she nods, smiling. "Still need to get all my shit for school, though. Notebooks and ... pens and crap." Drawing her bottom lip into her mouth, she worries on it pensively for a moment. "I dunno. Maybe? I... I'm not sure if enrollment's gonna be before Homecoming or after."

Duce ohs. "Hrm. We'd think they'd let you start as soon as possible so you didn't have much catching up to do.. Well, the school's crazy anyway. We have a drawing going on," she points at the box, "for a full henna workup. Red's trying to pimp out to the kids at school." She offers, "You could still fill out one of the blanks, if you want. We don't think many people have so far."

"Oh," Shane says, both brows arching slightly as she turns to look at the box. "Sure, yeah. Why not, right?" She grins as she straightens up and takes one of the entry forms, filling out her name and address and such. She folds it up and slips it into the box. "Thanks," she says, smiling at Duce.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A glass bottle comes flying in the open door. It shatters into razor-sharp pieces that fly about the room.

Duce jumps at the noise and goes bolting outside at almost inhuman speed. Failing to see who the vandal was, she began swearing a blue streak in at least two known and one unknown language. Storming back into the store, she asks Shane, "Did any of that hit you?" in a worried tone of voice.

Still slightly shaken from the shattering glass, Shane looks down at herself, smoothing her hands over her torso as she studies her arms. She looks down and sees several large shards of glass laying at her feet. Huh. Bracelets saved the day again.

"No," she says after a moment, shaking her head. "No, I... I'm okay. Did any hit you? You're all right?"

Truncating her subverbal snarling, Duce nods curtly, "We're very hard to hurt, and it missed us anyway. Bets on whether it was a punk kid or some holyroller who's anti-bodmod?"

Shaking her head with disgust, she places a call to Red's voicemail to let him know what's up. Resuming her seat behind the counter, she slumps slightly as the adrenaline burns out of her system, "Well, at least that bottle didn't have burning alcohol or oil in it this time." Her voice is wry with macabre humour.

"Yeah..." Shane says absently, turning to glance at the door. After a moment she frowns and looks over at Duce. "Wait, what? That bottle. This has happened before?"

Hanging up after the call, Duce's lips tighten before she answers, "Not.. here. We've had it happen before. Smallminded bigots who don't realize what century they should be living in, or idiot punk kids who think being a vandal is cool and entertaining."

Deliberately shaking off her declining mood, half her mouth quirks in a grin, "Wish Red were here and were a lion derivative. We'd pay to see the bottle-thrower react to a lion roar following them down the street."

Stuffing her hands into her back pockets, Shane looks perturbed. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a cleansing sigh, trying to shake off her own discomfort. It reminded her too much of one of her friends in West Hollywood who had gotten bashed. "Uhh, yeah, kinda familiar with that feeling," she says with a rueful chuckle.

Duce grimaces slightly, "Well, at least around here it's not ethnicity or sexual orientation or anything that gets discrimintated against."

Frowning, Shane looks down at her boots. "Rogue told me there was stuff... going on at the school," she says.

Duce nods, "It's gotten better lately, since the admins started stepping on necks. It started with one teacher getting paranoid and spread to the student body. There's detente right now." She shrugs a shoulder, "We've seen this shit before. It either dies out quick, or it dies out hard. So far, the administration's been doing their all to make sure it dies quick."

"For what it's worth... I don't think you guys are dangerous," Shane says. "I mean -- you are... I know you are, but..." she trails off with a shrug. "You don't seem like the kinds of people who would hurt anyone."

Duce sighs, but her face relaxes in ..relief? "Thank you for that. When the situation calls for it, or if a situation gets to the point where we're no longer in conscious control, yeah, we're deadly. There's really no coming back from being turned into a stone statue.. yet. We're working on that, though. It's just annoying to have it break down into a pissing contest between nats and non-nats."

She shrugs again, "We're here to finish highschool and graduate and make the parents happy. If we wanted to go hurt or kill people, there are better venues for it."

Shane shrugs a little and gives her a humorless smile. "I learned a long time ago how to tell the difference between the people who would hurt me and the people who wouldn't... you and Rogue just don't go in the first category," she murmurs. At least not physically, anyway, she thinks to herself with a slight frown, thinking of Rogue and the talk they'd had the previous morning.

Duce's smile is just as humourless, "As long as you don't hurt anyone we care about, that'll always be true. Otherwise, all bets are off." Her smile eases, "Although, you don't give us the impression that you're likely to attempt to barbeque the cublings or use Red's pelt for a rug or anything like that, so we think you're safe."

"The same goes for me," Shane says soberly. "But since it seems like we care about the same people, I don't think it's something we'll have to worry about."

Duce grins, "Yeah, probably not." She eyeballs the stairs, "Wonder where the big hairy lunk is, anyway."

Red's Tattoo Parlour: Open for Henna

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