Groovy Tunes, Tuesday

[tigerundercover]

Raven was still riding a bit of a high from her holosuite session yesterday. It'd been amazing to just let go and kill any hologram she perceived as any kind of threat -- which in a spy simulation was most of them, let's be real. A little voice in the back of her head still thought it was probably not a great sign that she enjoyed doing that so much, but she shoved it off with a reminder that plenty of video games were violent. Just because this one she played with her whole body instead of a controller didn't make it any different, right?

Anyway, she was bopping around the shop today to various jazzy spy-like themes, occasionally taking the time to do unnecessary sneaky somersaults between aisles and shifting herself like a cartoon character to hide behind improbable objects, like cellos or narrow display racks.

Quark quite possibly had gotten himself a customer for life, here.

[open!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

"You went to a club?!"

Hello, Raven. The squirrels had been carrying tales. But hey! You were getting another lunch out of it.

"Did you like it? Did you have fun? Are you going to go again? Did you meet anybody? What made you decide to go?"

Kathy, slow down. Maybe let a girl answer a question?

[tigerundercover]

". . . I did?" Raven asked. She looked up and to the side as she considered that. "I totally wouldn't call that place a club. It was more of an empty bar. Or a really small casino, maybe."

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's what the radio called it," Kathy said, setting the bags of Indian food down on the counter. "You went to...Quark's?"

[tigerundercover]

"Yup! It's over by Hardison's place. He has these little mini-danger shops."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oooh, that sounds cool," Kathy said. "What drew you to that?"

[tigerundercover]

"It looked pretty empty," Raven admitted. "And that side of town is usually pretty quiet and I knew I could hide at Hardison's house if I had to."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded. Still, it was like the completely opposite end of the island from the preserve, so she wasn't going to complain. Especially since Raven had gone inside.

"So you were hanging around Hardison's house and noticed the bar and went inside? And got to play in a Danger Shop kinda thing?" she asked, pulling out veggie samosas and paneer pakora.

[tigerundercover]

Raven nodded, feeling all proud of herself again. "And try something called 'bloodwine'. It was pretty cool."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy hoisted herself up onto the counter, grabbing her yellow curry with tofu and a pair of chopsticks. "So, what did you do in the Danger Shop?"

[tigerundercover]

"Quark calls them 'holosuites'," Raven said. "I played a Bund-style spy game. Lots of sneaking around an imaginary European city."

And killing people.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ooh, that sounds like fun!" Kathy said. "Did you beat the game? Did you give yourself a black cat suit like Brown Recluse from the Revengers movies?"

Bestie bonding time? Bestie bonding time.

[tigerundercover]

"Of course I beat the game," Raven bragged. "I'm the best spy ever. And that's just one of the outfits I went with."

She'd also turned into an actual pterodactyl at one point to dive bomb a suspected mercenary. It'd been awesome.

[spin_kick_snap]

"So when are we going to do this together?" Kathy asked, taking a sip from her strawberry lassi. "Sounds like fun."

[tigerundercover]

"Oh. Um." Would Kathy be into the killing all the imaginary people part? It didn't seem super . . . Kathy. "Whenever, I guess. He's got two of the things, and it didn't look like people used them all that often."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Can you do other ones besides spy games?" Kathy asked, intrigued. "Like any number of different kinds of genre stories? Is it a one-at-a-time kind of thing, where we're each in our own?"

[tigerundercover]

"To hear Quark tell it, he can do anything. He tried to sell me on some kind of war epic first. Then romance." Raven shook her head. "I bet he's got some two-player things we could try. And if it's as much like the Danger Shop as it seems, we could probably just, like, rent it for a big game of paintball in a ruined city or something."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy grinned. "That sounds amazing. And then as soon as we're done, we step out and no muss, no fuss."

Ringo would probably love a chance to go ATing through a ruined city or something. And it might give Kathy a chance to scratch that occasional superhero itch that cropped up every so often.

[tigerundercover]

"Plus, most of the people in it are imaginary," Raven said with a smile. "So there's zero social pressure."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Sometimes imaginary people are my favorite kind," Kathy admitted with a wry smile. "They're less of a pain of the ass."

[tigerundercover]

"And if they bug you too much, you can just kill them!"

There. That could totally be played off as a joke if need be.

[spin_kick_snap]

And there was Kathy, laughing.

"Oh lord, I don't think I'd want to know what kind of person I'd become if there were no consequences," she said, shaking her head. "I'd probably be a tyrant, subjugating whole populations to my iron-fisted whims."

...Big words from Miss Constitutionally Incapable of Being Mean to NPCs In Video Games.

[tigerundercover]

"Oh, now this I need to see. We're definitely hitting Quark's up for some quality fake bad guy stomping."

Quark would be overjoyed. Actual customers! His favorite kind!

[spin_kick_snap]

"Next week?" Kathy offered. "We'll go out and do one of the scenarios, like badass spies or airship pirates or something."

[tigerundercover]

"Sounds good," Raven agreed, then smiled ruefully. "How much of your enthusiasm is just because it's something I'm willing to do in town?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"A bit," Kathy admitted, because she wasn't about to pat Raven's ass and assure her that, no it wasn't like that at all. "And some is because it's something we can do together that isn't Netflix-and-literal-chill. But some of it's also because I'm an adrenaline junkie with nowhere to get a decent hit and this sounds like a lot of fun."

[tigerundercover]

"Well, there'll be plenty of adrenaline," Raven promised. "Seriously, if you didn't know this stuff was fake going in, you'd never guess. How did it never occur to me that someone could make a Danger Shop to just use for fun?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"I mean, the Danger Shop is so big and intense, I don't think it ever occurred to me that people could make smaller ones. It's like looking at a giant, sixteen-wheel semitruck and hypothesizing mini Coopers, you know?"

[tigerundercover]

"Or looking at an old-timey candlestick phone and predicting iphones, maybe," Raven said. "I gather this Quark guy is from the future. He kept talking about the 21st century like it was, like, quaint. And he asked what species I was."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Was he, like, rude?" Kathy asked, now frowning.

[tigerundercover]

"Not at all," Raven said. "He was really straight-forward about it. I asked him for a drink recommendation, and he wanted to know what 'my species' ate so he could suggest something good." She shrugged. "And it's not like I don't look like an alien. I might even look more like one than he does."