You All Meet In An Inn (Astaire)

[Fiona Kingsleigh]

Even when she was off the clock, Fiona's mind couldn't stop thinking about work.

As her first out of state project, Stark Industries had sent her along with a few others to aid a senior engineer on a power grid project in New Orleans. The job employed some of Stark Industries' more advanced technologies to deliver electricity to every corner of the city in the most efficient way possible. While Fiona wasn't high enough in clearance to have access to all of Stark Industries' secrets, some of the proprietary schematics, especially those related to fuel cells, were made available to some of the employed engineers. With this knowledge, the blonde had been drawing up simple designs on a device that would absorb energy from around it, and storing it all in a compact and stable form for later use. While a prototype was still many months away, Fiona saw the potential for a device no larger than a baseball capable of dropping the temperature of a room by half, using no external energy source, and has enough power garnered to charge an iPod.

The engineering team was staying at the Renaissance Pere Marquette hotel for the duration of the project. Being engineers, Fiona and her coworkers spent a lot of time at the Bar Uncommon, chugging beers and shooters well after midnight, every night. Tonight, her friends were still a little hung over from the night before, and Fiona was left by herself and a pitcher of ale. She was unique, and something that wore down the body such as alcohol didn't damage her nearly as much. It was a good thing anyway, Fiona thought. She got a chance to work on her side project. With a small table to herself, Fiona tapped away at her laptop, gathering more information for her energy absorber's design.

Soon enough, the attractive and deceivingly young looking Fiona was catching the eyes of the men at the bar. One man in his thirties wearing a suit strolled up to Fiona and took a seat at her table. Fiona ignored him.

"Hey now, where did you get the fake ID to get into the bar?" said the man in an attempt to be funny. Normal women may find it flattering. Fiona did not find it amusing.

"Same place I got my Mace." she responded coldly, not bothering to look up from her screen. "I don't need you to buy me a drink. I still have a pitcher of beer."

Without missing a beat, the man got up and started walking like he was no longer interested, but stuck his hand out just enough to knock the pitcher to the ground, the golden liquid inside splashing all over as the glass shattered.

"Oh, clumsy me! I'm so sorry about that! Let me make it up to you, miss, by buying you another drink."

The nerves of this guy! As much as Fiona was slightly impressed, she was far more annoyed that the gentleman wasted a pitcher of perfectly good beer.

"Idiot, if you don't leave right now I swear I will throw you out the door myself." Fiona mumbled to herself in Japanese, wondering what else she had to do to get this guy to leave her alone.

(I actually had the Japanese part translated out in google translate in Japanese text, but proboards couldn't display all the characters )

[Astaire Kingston]

Some nights, Astaire was able to convince himself to go straight home from work. Not this night. The dreams he'd had that morning - dreams of her - had followed him out of bed and into the office, through clinic duty, up through now, as he was closing up for the day. He needed a drink. Just one drink. He would be responsible; he was driving tonight.

There was a particular bar he frequented, where intellects and such tended to gather. It made the company more bearable. He usually preferred to drink alone, but, aside from the dangers of doing so, he had stopped stocking his apartment with alcohol. Bar Uncommon it was.

He walked in just in time to be within easy earshot of a conversation taking place at a small table, between a young woman and a man. She was unwilling to entertain him, which was nothing new in bars. Astaire kept walking, looking for a separate table of his own. But then something crashed, and Astaire turned around instinctively. The same man had just knocked over the woman's pitcher in some sort of display of power or something.

Astaire was wholly unimpressed. As if the threat of danger to the woman was not enough to inspire action, the woman's next words were. Whispered, they were words he had not heard in some time. She was speaking in Japanese.

Within the next second, he was standing next to the man, and had taken him by the arm. The man flinched away at having been touched, but Astaire's grip was strong and quite unshakeable. "Say, why don't you pay for another pitcher and then be on your way. Looks like this young lady's in the middle of something important."

When the man began to sputter a response, Astaire ignored him. He could have simply been pleading to be let go, and Astaire would not have cared. He was not in the mood for complaining. "That's a nasty injury you've got there," he told the man. "I hear dislocated shoulders are particularly painful."

Upon which statement he promptly popped the man's right humerus out of its glenoid fossa.

Ignoring the man's screams of pain, Astaire tossed the man toward the door. "You should see a doctor about that," he called as the man left. Then he turned to the woman. "Sumimasen deshita," he explained, using a Japanese phrase to apologize for what he had done. "I'll have that pitcher replaced, if you wish."


(It's actually better that way, as the Japanese characters don't give an accurate description of the syllables she's speaking. )

[Fiona Kingsleigh]

The fun Fiona would've had with the idiot! If she had any time at all to forfeit, she would've challenged the bothersome male to a drinking contest and leave him passed out after twenty tequila shots. Better yet, she would arm wrestle him for the right to buy her drinks, and promptly snap his arm. The blonde didn't have to choose tonight, as her knight in shining armour rode in for the rescue.

With her diminished physique, it wasn't the first time guys tried to "save" Fiona from those looking to cause trouble. She always appeared to be the damsel in distress. Like the gentleman that stepped in to intercept the beer-waster, they all utter threats to the trouble makers, ranging from speeches very well crafted, to a string of expletives, Fiona had always heard the talk. Rarely did it really escalate to anything beyond a few shoves. This was the first time she had seen someone actually followed through on the threat, even when it was wholly unnecessary.

Such presence, such demonstration of dominance! Fiona let out a slight gasp as her white knight dislocated the man's shoulder and threw him to the exit. It wasn't really due to shock, but more so from excitement. Fiona valued strength, and was impressed by those that were not afraid of using it. She watched the injured man slither away, shamed and humiliated, a smile creeping up the sides of her cheeks. Then, her saviour's gaze met hers. Oh, he had nothing to apologize for. If he didn't ruin that man's arm, Fiona maybe have done far worse.

"Iie, tasuke wo itadaki, arigatou gozai masu." Fiona replied, thanking him for the assistance instead. "... nee, nihongo wo hanasu! Wow, your Japanese is really fluent. It took me a second to realize we weren't speaking English. Have a seat. I'll get the next round, as a thank you for getting rid of the moron, and you can tell me all about when you learned to speak Japanese."


Fiona ordered another pitcher from the server still mopping the previously spilled beer, while snapping her laptop lid shut, wondering whether she should lie about why she learned Japanese: to read Japanese instruction manuals.

[Astaire Kingston]

If Astaire was going to step in and do some damage, well, he figured he might as well go all the way. He did not make half-assed threats. This was an unusual case; he did not usually get involved in other people's troubles, but this time, it had seemed necessary, since the man was so much bigger and quite pushy toward the woman. Besides, Astaire appreciated the chance to vent some anger on the guy.

The young woman thanked him and complimented his Japanese, in Japanese, and invited him to sit down. He did, and she went ahead and ordered a fresh pitcher. He would have insisted on covering the round instead, but that would really have made the prior altercation really ironic.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he commented as she closed her laptop. He had figured she was doing some work, though a bar of any kind was a strange place to do so. Maybe she was just surfing the Web and goofing around. Maybe waiting for her significant other to show up. Then again, she probably would not have invited him to sit if the latter were the case. That just would have caused problems.

Now, the reason he knew Japanese did tie into the many secrets he was carrying around. He usually tried not to explain his past. But this was an innocent question, just a couple of strangers chatting it up while a round was served. There were no foreseeable consequences here, not for telling a little bit of truth for once.

"I'm a medical researcher," Astaire explained, giving the young woman a smile. "I spent a couple of years in Japan, doing some studies there. There's no better way to learn a language than to immerse yourself in it." As an afterthought, he extended his hand to the woman, a late greeting. "I'm Astaire," he added. "I don't usually go popping people's arms out of sockets, but today was a long day at work," he half-joked.

"And you?" he asked as the pitcher was delivered. "Your Japanese sounds pretty great yourself. Have you traveled there? Your lack of accent makes you sound like you have."