thisavrou_log | and so, what else is there to do; (closed)

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and so, what else is there to do; (closed)

Who: Pepper Potts, Marian Hawke
When: Early June
Where: Kauto R1
What: Pepper takes Marian to get mani/pedis and it all goes downhill from there when she picks the wrong salon.
Warnings: Alien pet traffickers? Eventually.

After the whole disaster with the slaver planet, Pepper hadn't pried into the details. Just like she hadn't when Tony came to her beforehand to inform her Hawke was going, and Tony along with the woman to make sure she was okay. Of course, it hadn't been Tony's story to tell in the first place. She hadn't pried, because truthfully, she hadn't wanted to know any harrowing details. She already has enough trouble sleeping sometimes, worrying about everyone in the house.

So today, she'd dragged Hawke downtown for some sorely needed girl bonding, intent on introducing her to a ritual she had probably never even heard of. Whether Hawke likes it or not.

"The point is," she says, emphasizing with a finger pointed skyward while her other hand clutches a take-away cup of coffee, "Every woman should experience getting her nails done at least once in her life. It's a treat, trust me."

It sure is a treat to Pepper, and it's been way, way too long since the last time.

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And Hawke was thankful for the lack of prying. Tony had carried her back to the house unconscious and she spent the next few days sore and exhausted like she was on the verge of coming down with a bad flu. But thankfully she'd recovered quickly after that and hadn't really considered how worrying it would have been to someone on the outside. In her mind, she'd had it a lot worse and that was coming off relatively easy.

When Pepper invites (well more like woke Hawke up from a nap and sort of dragged her downtown) she goes along with it because well... life is easier when Pepper is pleased and she likes pleasing Pepper so it's sort of a win-win.

At the mention of nails, Hawke wrinkles her nose in confusion and looks down at her own sad, bitten-down, and dry nail beds.

"That seems like something that would be done to a cat."

Pepper's heart had jumped to her throat when Tony had brought Hawke back unconscious. Thank god she'd woken up fairly soon, even if she'd been mostly useless for a couple of days. Pepper had fussed, of course, toting the other woman soup and tea and urging her to rest. But she hadn't pried, for once.

She laughs lightly at Hawke's commentary, knowing she isn't so convinced on this idea.

"They'll soak your hands in warm water, file and shape the nails, neaten up the cuticles and massage your hands-- my favorite part," she smiles happily, already looking forward to it. "And then paint them with nail polish. You pick the color yourself."

Hawke felt guilty for worrying Pepper. Not that she'd show it or admit it and honestly had trouble placing exactly why she felt such guilt over it. So instead she simply let Pepper fuss and had done her best to seem peppy when necessary and to sleep when people seemed to hope she would. It seemed to at least soothe some worries.

"Paint your nails?" Hawke looked at her nails trying to imagine a color on them. "Does the color mean something? Seems difficult to pick a different color for your nails to be. Unless you wear black everyday. And that's quite the commitment."

Pepper chuckles again, taking a sip from her coffee. It doesn't entirely mask her fondly amused smile. It's such a strange little thing to get hung up on considering they're in space and all, but it's a bit funny to meet someone who's never even heard of nail polish.

"No, it's just... something to prettify them. No special meanings. I usually have some shade of deep red on mine, or a French manicure. That's when they paint the tip of the nail white and the rest with a more natural, pink shade." She pauses, frowning slightly. "Though that's an Earth thing, I wonder if they do it here under some different name."

It's an idle thought, however, and Pepper shrugs it off soon to suggest, "You could try blue."

Hawke opens her mouth, closes it, and then shrugs as she rubs her nose. Normally Hawke would be rather indignant about someone getting a laugh out of her being ignorant and try to shoot back. But it's Pepper and making her smile feels like a point of pride rather than embarrassment.

"Well, it's at least an excuse to get out of the house. I feel like I've been sleeping for a week."

Edited 2017-06-10 22:04 (UTC)

"You nearly have," Pepper points out a little dryly, stamping down on a tiny surge of lingering worry the statement dredges up even though she knows Hawke is fine now, and that her allergy meds sometimes made her drowsy -- despite the fact that Pepper had made sure she got the allegedly non-drowsy ones. Either somehow Hawke's magic intervened, or 'non-drowsy', space edition, wasn't quite up to the task.

"Give it a chance. Who knows, you might even end up liking it a little bit," she goes on teasingly, chucking her empty coffee cup into a trash can as they pass it and nodding toward the innocuous looking salon at the end of the street. "It's that one. Hopefully they're decent, I found them on the TAB directory."

"It sure feels like it. It's less fun than I would have imagined." Hawke yawns and stretches through the last few words. Even at full energy, Hawke considers a day without a nap to be a day sorely lacking in pleasure. Slave planet after affects and allergy medication just make it far easier to take more naps per day. And even then there's a limit. If you take too many naps, the joy is stolen. It's a very important balance that Hawke takes very very seriously.

"And I don't know. I've never been good at luxury." You'd never know this bitch was rich from looking at her. Hawke follows Pepper and looks around the little salon with somewhat comical suspicion. From the towers of nail polish to the pedicure beds, everything is strange to her. But if Pepper seems at ease, she'll follow without complaint.

It's kind of funny to Pepper how Hawke has such an aversion to cats when she basically is one giant cat herself, more or less. Pepper knows better than to actually say so out loud, but it is something of a source of private amusement to her.

The salon is neat and elegant enough decor-wise, but Pepper's immediately struck by the fact that it's also completely empty. Her and Hawke are the only patrons and nobody is manning the counter, which seems odd to Pepper. But maybe they've just managed to stop by during a slow hour? unch break? Some unnamed sense of suspicion still niggles at her, a small frown furrowing at her brows.

"This must be the least busy salon I've ever seen," she mutters to Hawke as she leads the way to the counter nearby, ringing the small bell sitting on top of it a couple of times. "Hello?" she calls out, eyeing the slightly ajar door a few paces behind the counter that probably leads to the staff break room. She can hear muffled sounds coming from there, something almost melodious -- a radio? Playing some strange alien music? -- but no approaching footsteps or anything indicating that someone heard her. "This is a little weird."

Yes, good idea to keep that on the down low, Pep. Hawke would have a mental shut down trying to comprehend the idea.

Hawke follows Pepper, expecting to maybe just drop down and catch another nap. But she catches onto the air of suspicion that emanates from the other woman. She herself is starting to feel funny. That familiar vaguely itchy feeling when she's around a cat or some other animal that she's allergic to.

She reaches up to idly scratch at her neck.

"I'm new to this but... is it just me or does this feel suspicious. Like a cover? Though usually I'd suggest a brothel. Pick something seedy so that they can't imagine anything seedier underneath."

"A cover?" Pepper scrunches up her face in bafflement as she glances over to Hawke. "What makes you say that? It's weird that it's so quiet, yes, but let's not jump to conclusions just yet."

But even as she says it, she doesn't completely convince even herself. Some gut intuition is telling her this feels really off, but she can't quite put her finger on the specifics. Squaring her shoulders, Pepper rounds the counter and steps over to the door she assumes leads to the break room, nudging it open with one hand. Any polite apology for intruding dies on her lips as the door swings open fully to reveal not a room, but a dim staircase leading down to the basement level. The odd noises Pepper had figured was a radio are considerably louder now, floating up from the lower level; different chirps and trills, not unlike birds.

"...Or maybe we should," Pepper murmurs with a frown. Jump to conclusions, that is.

"Dark basements with lights that seem not to cast much light and a creaky door definitely screams "I'm very suspicious and probably hiding something dark and nefarious." Hawke sniffs and moves forward, twisting sideways so she can stand in the doorway with Pepper and give the dark hallway a good look.

Definitely suspicious.

"Sometimes there's nothing wrong with landing a nice leap into a conclusion." Hawke states cheerily before she starts to descend down the staircase. She's pretty sure they're doing this. And if they're doing this, she's going to make sure that Pepper doesn't get hurt.

"Should we really do this?" Pepper hisses quietly after Hawke as she takes to the stairs, but she takes a couple of steps down anyways after the other woman. "Maybe we should just leave..."

She's a little hesitant to go exploring someone else's obviously off-limits basement. God knows what they'll find -- or who. Trying to keep as quiet as possible, Pepper asks in a stage-whisper, "What if someone's there?"

"Punch them in the face. Maybe a little fire if they decide to be really persistent," Hawke responds like she's talking about the weather. They reach the end of the staircase and Hawke presses herself against the door trying to hear voices. The only sound that she can hear is the strange sound like birds chirping.

Then she pushes it open, making sure she'd block Pepper from any onslaught that might happen unexpectedly.

Pepper rolls her eyes behind Hawke's back at the woman's retort, feeling that familiar prick of exasperation she usually gets when dealing with Tony's antics. "Great," she mutters as she carefully takes the last step in her heels, while Hawke's trying to listen in through the door. Pepper opens her mouth to interject, possibly to suggest they book it again, but words get exchanged for a sharp intake of breath -- as if bracing for impact -- when Hawke suddenly pushes the door wide open.

Nothing bad happens, though, except the chirping and screeching gets more frenetic for a moment as the poor beasts inside the room are startled. But more humanoid sounds are nowhere to be heard. Confused and curious in equal measure, Pepper steps beside Hawke to peer into the room properly. Her lips part in astonishment as she does, eyes widening at the scene in front of them. "What...?"

There's nothing in the spacious basement but crates upon crates and cages upon cages of pet animals Pepper is familiar with -- cats, dogs, parrots, guinea pigs, rabbits -- as well as alien creatures she's never seen before. But they all appear to be on the small and cute side of the spectrum. In the back, there's miscellaneous lab equipment and steel examination tables. But again, no people. The place looks otherwise deserted, but Pepper knows better than to think that's true. Another door lies in the back of the space behind all the equipment. A back exit, maybe?

"Oh my god," Pepper breathes in dismay, stepping into the room. "Something tells me this isn't a pet shop in the making."

Hawke wrinkles her nose at the sight of cats and parrots but immediately goes over and starts looking at a cage with some cute little puppies in it. They bark and try to lick at her fingers, crawling all over each other to try and get some attention. She grins and has to really struggle to just take all of them out of the cage and let them crawl all over her.

Oh wait, they're in a weird creepy basement. Not the best time to play with adorable puppies. Hawke looks over at Pepper and follows her gaze to some of the lab equipment and the back at her. The idea of animal experimentations are not thing Hawke would ever really consider. It's just not a thing in her world. And even here she's had the benefit of modern medicine but it never occurred to her how it was made.

"...They're not going to eat them are they? This guy doesn't look very appetizing."

"I hope not," Pepper says grimly, slowly wandering past the cages. "Where I'm from, some make-up companies and the medical industry test their products on animals like these to make sure they're safe for humans. Not all of them, but some. It's pretty terrible."

She can understand the necessity when it comes to important medications, but not with something superfluous like beauty products. Some of the cages have small charts attached to them, and Pepper grabs one to peruse it further. "A date... and some kind of markings I don't know the meaning of. Reserved? Levitation?" She frowns, dropping the tag and moving onto the next, reading the scribbled lines. "Sold, aquatic respiration." Another tag. "Reserved, fire breathing?"

Dropping the tag, Pepper shakes her head incredulously, glancing down the row of tagged cages. Luckily, most of the animals seem free of tags -- perhaps this operation is only just getting started.

"They're-- scientifically augmenting these animals and selling them to people? What's wrong with completely unremarkable, normal pets? This is awful!" Indignation wells within her, soon replacing her horror. "We can't leave these poor things here to be exploited like this."

Hawke's normally inscrutably cheerful face darkens ever so slightly. Nothing phases her, even this isn't even close to the most horrible thing she's ever seen. But everyone knows that Hawke has a special place in her heart for all animals. Even though she complains all day long about cats and how horrible they are, she's the first to greet and let Tenzin cuddle with her.

The idea of experimentation is still a little beyond her understanding but she gets enough that these animals are being subjected to something sinister. She reaches out and puts her fingers through the bars of a cage. A little puppy sniffs at them and licks her knuckles.

"So we bust them out? I could at least fit a few of these guys in my room. ...Varric might have to move to the couch though."

"Well, we can't leave them here, that's for sure," Pepper says with a frown, thinking furiously. But they can't exactly take them all in, either. "We could probably ask people to give homes for these guys on the network. And there has to be some authority to report this to."

She wanders closer to the equipment in the back as she speaks, coming across a cage with a tiny piglet with black spots. He's so endearing with his dark eyes, tiny pink snout and little feet that Pepper can't help awwing softly over him. She's just about to open the cage to pet him, when the back door suddenly opens and three aliens enter, obviously the ones running this dubious enterprise.

"...Oh." Pepper freezes, staring at the aliens who now realize they have two unauthorized visitors; and they do not appear to be particularly happy about this turn of events.

"I'm quite certain I could fit at least ten dogs into my part of the house. Fifteen if they're the smaller sort."

And then there's the door opening. Definitely trouble. Hawke crosses the room quickly to stand next to Pepper, her shoulder slightly blocking the other woman from any potential harm.

"Hello. We were just looking to get our nails done. But then we found puppies. Who can say no to puppies?"

Pepper doesn't doubt Hawke's dedication in that matter at all, but they'd talk about it later.

Specifically, after dealing with the angry aliens now shouting and gesturing at them.

"I don't think they're very happy we decided to go sightseeing on our own," she mutters to Hawke.

"Yes, but puppies!"

Hawke glances at the aliens shouting and gesturing like they're ridiculous for being so upset about this.

"Don't have puppies if you don't want people to find them! Humans are naturally bonded to dogs!"

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