milliways_bar | (no subject)

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There's a Man in Black striding in through the Door. It's been quite a while, and he wasn't actually expecting to end up here tonight. As the Door quietly shuts behind him, he slips that shiny black phone of his back into an inner pocket of his Suit, and takes a seat at the Bar. As usual, he makes a point of ignoring that pain-in-the-ass shrink a few seats down.

There's a napkin waiting for him as he settles in. He eyes the writing on it and nods. "Too right, Darlin', been much too long. I'll have the usual, if you please."

A double of Eli Lockhart's finest bourbon appears with a *bamph*. K lifts it up, admiring the look of that wonderful stuff under the lights of Milliways and offers what looks suspiciously like a smile.

"Back in the saddle. About time."

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"Hello, Kate!" K grins. "Well, aren't you a vision."

She laughs wryly.

"That's right; I put on my very best horse perfume, jus' 'cuz I heard you were comin'."

To be fair, she has had time to clean up since working in the stables this evening.

"How've you been?"

"Oh, you know. The usual invasions and galactic wars. Always one damn thing or another." He shrugs. "But, hell, keeps things interesting and all."

"Could do without the planet-wide theft of Earth's peach jello, though."

"The usual?"

She carefully arches an eyebrow.

Milliways has tempered her reactions to statements like those.

"Stealin' peaches, now. That's no laughin' matter."

"We don't particularly find it too funny either. But the Dentazi seem bound and determined about it. They won't even hear about strawberry or cherry. It's got to be peach and nothing else."

Given her good spirits of late, the very idea gets her laughing. Just softly, a little snicker that comes through her smile and shakes her shoulders.

Mayhaps it is a laughing matter after all.

"What d'they plan on usin' it for?"

"Well, they've got this southern ocean on their planet. Way we hear it, the whole thing's gone bone dry. So they figure peach jello ought to be just the thing to fill it up again."

Kate's expression is the visual representation of a "..."

"Well. They'll make a killin' with tourism. Who wouldn't want t'swim in a peach-flavored ocean?"

"You've got a point there, Kate, and no mistake," K allows. "But getting that peachy ocean means they'd have to pull a fast one on the MiB, so they're going to be seriously disappointed."

A smile slowly spreads across Kate's face.

"It's a mite different than rustlin' up cattle thieves, an' rescuin' damsels from the tracks of the San Antonio rail, I reckon?"

Her soft voice is only just sweetly teasing.

"I'd be scared of you, if I had stock in peach jelly."

K gives her a Texas grin: "Well, ma'am, that would be why we don't ask the peach farmers first before we kill the deal."

She shakes her head.

Only in Milliways could she have this conversation with an intergalactic Pinkerton, and still somehow like the guy.

"For the good of all mankind, I reckon?"

Naturally.

"Y'know, you an' I had a deal."

"Oh, uh, did we, ma'am?"

K's failure to remember might not be entirely sincere.

Men in Black. They're sneaky that way.

Edited 2011-10-28 02:41 (UTC)

Sneaky indeed. But K should know that a Texas woman isn't easily dissuaded, once she has her mind on a matter.

"Mm-hm. That's what I'd call it, anyhow."

Offering a demonstration of his world's weaponry down at the firing range, and then not following through? Now, that'd be just plain cruel.

"I've been lookin' forward t'handlin' your gun."

Bless her heart, she means that in the most innocent way possible.

K gives her a Look, but there's a smirk coming right behind it.

"I'm guessing the Landlord wouldn't look too kindly on a demonstration sitting right here."

He drains the rest of his glass and sets it down firmly back on Bar.

"Ms. Kate, would you care to join me out back, by that firing range I'll bet they still have out there?"

Her gunmetal eyes flash with mischief.

"Why, what singular idea! I would be utterly charmed."

She straightens up immediately, and gives him a winning smile.

K slides gracefully off his seat at the bar, and gestures toward the Back Door, following her on the way out.

"Guess the only question is, do you need to warm up with something familiar or are you ready to jump in with both feet?"

K has a feeling which way that's going to go.

She chuckles.

"Well, not t'say I don't have a healthy sense of caution, but I've never been one t'tiptoe around."

Both feet it is.

She steps out into the cool October air, and lets him come up even with her so they're walking side by side.

"If y'think it's more than I can handle, I do have my Colt," she says, placing a hand on the butt of her sixshooter. "But I'm fairly hardy."

"Tell a lady from Texas something might be more than she could handle? My momma raised me smarter than that."

K draws out his pulse blaster. And what a shiny, shiny thing it is.

He points it at the target, eyes still on Kate. "Now the thing to keep in mind about a standard pulse blaster is that it's going to give you one hell of a result, but without any of the recoil you'd expect. So everything you've learned about firing a gun, you'll have to unlearn to master this."

"Fortunately, that ought to be a damn sight easier than learning how to be a crack shot with that Colt of yours."

K fires the blaster several times, each shot a brilliant burst of light that rockets at the target and slams into it with an impressive BANG and a spray of sparks. And sure enough, he doesn't seem to have much trouble keeping it aimed true to the target.

He spins it in his hand and offers it to her handle up. "Give it a try."

"Your momma sounds like a real firecracker," Kate grins. "Makes you a real smart man for listenin' to her."

Kate's eyes go candy-store wide when K pulls out the foreign weapon, giving it a good long appraisal up until the fireworks show. She holds onto her hat despite K's admonition, visibly surprised at how easy the spectacle handles. She doesn't say anything, she just gives him a wide-eyed stare and breathes out hard.

Taking it in hand:

"I reckon I don't really wanna know what this'll do to a body?"

"Make a bit of a mess."

"Then again, when you've got a cockroach bearing down on you the size of a house with one hell of a mad on, the mess that'll make isn't quite enough."

"But for most things, it does nicely."

One corner of her mouth tilts into a crooked smirk, and she laughs.

"Sorry. Jus' thinkin' about the first time I saw you, all covered in goop like a newborn calf."

It's an easy image to hold onto.

She takes her time aiming, keeping her arm straight and her head low. When she fires at the target she does so with pretty good aim. She's about an inch off the bull's-eye, though it's hard to really tell after all those sparks erupt.

"Hot damn!"

That's her way of expressing approval.

"Yeah, happens a lot, that does."

K nods approvingly at the shot.

"See what I mean? All that show but not even a little kick. Comes in handy when you need to blast the hell out of a small target. Like, say, the brain stem of a Balgrazian Razorworm."

"I'll hafta take your word on that."

She gives the weapon an appreciative once-over.

"There's not an awful lot of Balgrazian Razorworms in Texas, but jackrabbits can be a helluva pest."

She may or may not be teasing him.

"What d'you use on bigger targets?"

"Bigger targets. Like, say, the rest of the Razorworm? K points at the stable for comparison, which suggests having a herd of Razorworms would be a seriously interesting problem.

"We have plenty to choose from, but the classic next step up would be a Series 4 Deatomizer."