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 Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 1:45 pm
They were standing in the Electronics Department of the only WalMart within driving distance of Destiny City. Penny was a big believer in using the subway system, but downtown DC had a bit of a bias against big name corporations breaking up their pretty boutiques and independently-owned businesses. The mission of the day was to get Kam a cellphone so that Penny could actually get a ******** hold of him whenever she felt the need to bond over Knighthood.
Since Kam was helpless, carless, and (before he met Penny) jobless, the petite producer decided to take it upon herself to take him out for the day to buy him all the s**t she insisted he needed. Standing side-by-side, they appeared as a sort of comic duo, him towering over her, and her bitching about something he was doing every other second. "Just pick a phone," she said, pointing at the case of similar devices. "You'll have to sign up for a contract. I use AT&T. iPhone is my god now." She held it up and waved it at him once before tucking it back into her pocket.
One hand gripped an oversized Big Gulp. Penny sipped on the end of a bright red straw noisily, tapping a nail on the clear case over the phones. "So. About this thing we have in common. Any new developments for you?" She raised one eyebrow.
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:55 pm
All Kam really wanted to know was why cellphones were so ******** complicated. Was it too much to ask for a phone that simply dialed and maybe had a texting function? He really wasn't a tech kind of guy and he had no idea what this ******** 'app' s**t was. What in the hell was an iphone, some fancy new type of ipod? Did it still play music?
Kam drew a long sip from his Icee and then ran his tongue along his partially blue-stained lips. Only about half of what Penny was saying actually made any impact on him at all - for the most part she was just background noise while he looked hopelessly through all the phones in the display case.
Did he actually have to read and see what this s**t was for?
With a sigh, he stepped forward and leaned partially over to read off some of the information on the tags. The words on the small white tags were a blur of s**t he didn't entirely understand but, after he walked down the length of the case and doubled back, he stopped at one that said something music.
Music was good.
He reached out for the display model and picked it up with his free hand. He used his thumb to slide it open, looking over the keys with very little interest, and then slid it back shut. He let it go from a distance, unconcerned as it snapped back into place because of the security cord.
"That one will work." Then he turned back to look at Penny, taking another long sip of his Icee, and seemed to actually consider what she was saying for the first time since they'd stopped to look at all of it.
"Not that I know of. I feel like there's a lot of s**t I should know, but I can't figure out what it is." He sighed and shook his head, rearranging the dreads that fell around his shoulders and making an irritated face. "It's kind of like.. when you lose your keys, right? You know you just had the damn things but you can't remember what you did with them." He paused for a moment, and then nodded, confident with his explanation. That was exactly what it felt like, he was pretty sure.
"Who in the hell am I supposed to ask about this s**t?" He turned away from her suddenly and leveled an irritated gaze on the closest Wal-mart employee he could see. Weren't they supposed to be helping him figure this out?
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Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2011 3:24 pm
This was a fun outing, and Kam was acting like she was twisting his arm.
With an emphatic punch on the shoulder, the petite silvernette fixed him with a critical stare. “Hey, you are getting free s**t today courtesy of me. At least pretend to be excited about how I am changing your life.” She slurped loudly off the end of her straw. This was her good deed for the day. The week, even. It just so happened to be something that would benefit her as well.
When Kam voiced his concerns about their shared path in life, Penny could only agree. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of mystical sherpa? I mean, it hardly seems right that we are just dropped into life with these abilities and absolutely no way to ever learn anything about them.” One hand reached out, waving down an attendant. A lanky redheaded girl was busy at the far end of the counter. Penny sighed. “This is going to take forever.”
Leaning forward, she propped up one elbow on the counter and set her Big Gulp down next to it. “Is there some hotline we can call? Maybe ask around? I mean… we could always just wander the streets with our fingers crossed that we bump into something that isn’t a monster.” She allowed herself to think about all those hours spent walking around aimlessly. A deep frown split her lips. “I don’t have time to waste like that,” she said bitterly. “I have a job – one that I actually know how to do.” She shook her head, fidgeting with her straw.
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 1:29 am
"Yes, yes, changing my life, got it." He grimaced slightly from her punch and rolled his eyes dramatically, making sure there was no room for misinterpretation. Then he drew another huge slurp of his ICEE and then frowned as he looked down into the cup. It was almost empty. He really wanted another one, maybe the red this time.
He watched as Penny tried and failed to wave down the swamped employee, groaning inwardly to himself. He could be doing productive things right now, like working out or kicking Bo's a** at Call of Duty. Instead he was stuck in a crowded Wal-mart with incompetent, teenage employees and a bunch of pain in the a** lazy ******** bringing all their groceries to check out at the one electronics register. Sure, he did that all the time but now he actually had a legitimate question about something in the department. Couldn't those assholes just go to the front of the store like everyone else?
He turned around while he was waiting and began to look over the displays of video games directly behind them, walking a little ways down the isle until he was standing squarely in front of the bright green 'Xbox' label.
"We could probably track down one of those 'terrorists'." He'd actually seen enough news now to know that the city was full of young women dressing up in sailor outfits and doing all kinds of insane things. He wasn't sure they were terrorists, but that might have to do with the fact that any girl in a skimpy little outfit like that couldn't be a bad thing in his mind. "They probably have some.. what did you call it? "Mystical Shepard"?" He shrugged at the wording - she was lucky he knew what mystical meant.
He stopped to glare at some punk that was obviously trying to get Kam to move out of the way, sending the teenager scurrying off to another section. Then, once he was sure the kid wasn't paying attention, he turned back around and walked back to Penny. All the new releases were crap.
"Look, all I'm saying is that they're magical, we're magical, and we're both in the same place. That can't be a coincidence." He actually looked very proud and not just a little smug about his reasoning. It wasn't very often that he could put two and two together like that.
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 3:11 pm
If Kam wanted to go get more gas stations goodies, Penny would be all about it. She had already finished two Slim-Jims and half a pack of turkey jerky. She smelled of spiced meat and cigarette smoke and was happy to bathe in the aroma. Why not go for round two?
First, they had Adult Things to do – and it was becoming clear to her that she was far more adept at the responsibilities of every day life than her Knighted companion. She watched his eyes fall to the video games. “Oh, don’t even think about it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know I’m buying you a cellphone and everything, but I am not actually your ******** mother.” There was no malice in her words, just the constant flow of crass word vomit that she seemed incapable of going two seconds without.
Penny tugged at her straw until it squeaked and then plopped it into her mouth. She spoke out of one corner, saying, “Yeah, we get footage of them all the time. A few spots seem to always turn up with skirted girls. We could try to camp one out, maybe. Chat it up with whoever stumbles into view?” Her words clipped off at the end when Kam turned to intimidate another guy. She raised one eyebrow. “Calm down, Kujo,” she said. “Pretty sure you just made that kid drop a deuce in his pants. Now it’s totally going to smell.” Sip sip sip.
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Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2011 3:19 pm
"Relaaax," he drawled as he got closer to her once more. He leaned over the counter in front of them and propped his elbow on it while he took a rather aggrivating, stuttering slurp of his ICEE. All that was left at the bottom now was the chunk of flavorless ice that was almost impossible to suck up through a straw. He set his cup down on the counter, making a show of taking up the space so he was nearly impossible to ignore. "None of those games are even worth it, anyway. It's a bunch of dancing s**t and pet games." He sighed and turned to lean on his side so he could face her while still half-sprawled across the blue top. "Who plays that kind of crap?"
He glanced after the kid who had disappeared down an isle to avoid him, almost as if he regretted it. Then he just shrugged and brought up his free hand to scratch at his scalp, digging beneath one long dread. "It builds character. He'll live."
The squeaking straw did not go unnoticed. His eyes went from lazily observing all the gadgets laying around in the electronics department to snapping up and staring at her big gulp. Being that it was Penny, and that she was offering to buy him all kinds of stuff he apparently didn't know he needed, he just drew in a deep breath that flared his nostrils and look away.
"A stake out it is, then. We'll just have to make sure we buy a lot of food or something, I don't want to deal with those fairy princesses on an empty stomach." He didn't know what to expect of them, honestly. If they attacked, he wanted to be at his best to take them out, even if the thought of punching one of them seemed almost like beating up a child in his mind.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:01 am
Penny turned one mint green eye on the rows of video games. She played a lot of Sims as a kid. Playing God was something of a passion of hers. After hours spent building their homes and designing their outfits, she would play them for all of thirty minutes before beginning to invent ways for them to die. One week of that, and she was over it until the next boring weekend.
When she hit grad school, Penny didn't have time for games anymore. She preferred to waste away her hours reading trade magazines and staying up on the trends in the news. She mashed together her own videos based on things that happened in her college town. Other than the odd drunken game of Rock Band, it had been ages since she had even thought about video games.
Apparently these ones were crappy anyway.
Turning back toward the counter, the petite producer tried to catch the worker's eye again, but he was having none of it. Great. At least the conversation at hand was interesting enough. "Do you eat Asian food? There's this buffet around there. It has the best barbecue wings. Seriously. I have no idea what else they serve -- but these wings." She gripped his arm. "Kam, these wings." Her eyes rolled back up into her head and she smiled widely, then frowned. "********, now I'm hungry again." She was always hungry.
Hopping up on the check-out counter, Penny swung her legs, kicking them against the side. Hopefully that would get them some attention. She turned back to Kam. "So food and a stake out. I can hack it. We could do it after Thursday's show -- you new employee, you." Penny reached out and tried to pinch his cheek.
She tried really hard.
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Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:53 pm
He didn't move when she jumped up to sit on the counter beside him, instead he just rolled back to his stomach and propped both of his arms on the counter so he could drape his whole body over it. They were eventually going to have to pay attention to them, or they would just take over. He wasn't opposed to crawling over the other side and taking a nap in their work area if it meant getting them to acknowledge his presence.
"Penny, I'm Indian," he tilted his head to look at her, a skeptical look on his face. He knew few people ever remembered that Indians were also Asian, but that still seemed like a silly question to his ears. "Of course I eat Asian food." He just shook his head at her and glanced away, trying to flag down the lanky redhead again. She glanced at him at least, and looked apologetic, so maybe there were making some headway.
"You're always hungry, you have the metabolism of a ******** teenage boy." He cast a sidelong glance at her, almost as if he was double-checking that she was actually an older female and not a little boy in disguise. That's when he saw the hand reaching out to pinch his cheek and he instantly jerked away. He leaned his head backwards, bending from the waist, and reached up with one hand to swat at hers. It was a good thing he was so much bigger than her, which meant proportionally longer all around.
Of course, it was just then that the lanky redheaded Walmart employee walked up with a fake smile and eyes that said 'I hate my life'.
"Mayb I help you?"
Kam paused where he was bent half over backwards, grabbed Penny's hand, and simultaneously straightened up and set Penny's hand on the counter casually.
"Yeah, I want to buy that phone over there." And by that he meant that he wanted the girl to get it for him so Penny would pay for it. Then she began to pull out paperwork and talk about contracts and plans and Kam's eyes glazed over almost instantly.
So, with a frown, he looked at Penny with a silent plea.
Help?
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 9:14 am
The end of her straw snapped between teeth. "Okay, you're Indian," she said, missing the point. "And you are down with the Asian buffet. Excellent. These are vital life questions." For someone six years older, Penny didn't seem like it. On the DCNN set, she was commanding and fierce. Outside of it, she liked to sit on counters, eat junk food, and goof off. Seriousness was meant for work.
That was why she decided to flick him in the arm when he called her a teenage boy. "I can teach you how to be a real man, Kam," she said, laying a hand on his shoulder and fixing him with a serious look. "I think we should start our man-to-man conversation on the importance of the cli--" The attendent walked up, Kam put her hand down, and Penny jumped off the counter to stand beside them.
She allowed Kam to waffle for all of two seconds before slamming her Big Gulp down on the counter and taking over. "Hi," she said, glancing to the girl's name tag. "Tiffany. This is what I need you to do for me, okay?" They went through the motions of signing a contract, with much annoyance and swearing on Penny's part, and within forty minutes, Kam and Penny were strolling out the door -- Kam with a cellphone in hand.
Crossing to her car, Penny popped open the door and slipped inside. It was a tiny green Volvo from the mid-90s. It positively reeked of cigarette smoke, as if the car was actually one giant ashtray. Before the keys were in the ignition, Penny already had a fresh cigarette dangling from her lips, lighter poised at the ready. "So you know," she said, "this is a one time thing. Don't break that thing by trying to pound it into submission. And once you get your first DCNN paycheck, this gravy train is over."
The keys turned in the ignition.
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Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2011 8:03 pm
Kam was pretty content to let Penny bully the Wal-mart employee around. She was lanky and her hair looked kind of greasy - definitely not his type. He spent the majority of the exchange alternating between watching women walk by in the outside isle or rescanning the wall of games in the hope he would suddenly find something worth his time.
He only woke up from his daydreaming long enough to scribble his name in a few places, pick a phone color (why yes, that bright red one would do), and then trail after Penny as she walked through the milling crowds with a purpose that made most people part ways for her tiny figure. Then again, the really tall, dark man following in her wake probably helped.
He flopped down into the seat beside her and stretched out. The seat had been pushed almost all the way into the back and it was leaning so far that any normal sized person could have made a bed of it. He still looked a little scrunched through the shoulders though. He toyed with his phone for all of a minute before he reached out and rolled down his window. Kam was a social smoker sometimes, and he would never complain about Penny's habit, but he was pretty sure he could suffocate in her car. She seemed to burn up what little oxygen was ever there just by flicking her lighter.
"I've got it, I've got it, quit bitching." He flipped his phone open, scrolled to the contacts, and plugged in the only number he'd bothered to memorize so far. Then he held it up for her to look at, despite the fact that she was driving. Who cared about vehicle safety anyway?
The screen read "Penny" with her number beneath it and a little box in the corner with the number "2" - her speed dial number, right after his voicemail. Then he flipped it closed and dropped it in his lap, already forgotten.
"To the batcave, Robin!" he called out, pointing in the distance across the parking lot as Penny backed out of the parking space and shot him a glare between puffs on her cigarette. "But don't forget to stop by the Shell station on the way back, I want another ******** ICEE."
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