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A Space Odyssey - The Willow Effect (On. I guess)


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#1 Guest_VigaHrolf_*

Posted 08 February 2007 - 07:37 PM

Author's Note(s):

1. Yes. The subtitle is anachronistic but fitting. I think. Feel free to disagree. I won't listen, but please, feel free.

2. This is in rough draft form. I wrote it all in one sitting, while riding Amtrak. The idea seemed like a good one... and now, in the light of not being stuck on a train, I am not so sure. If I actually reviewed it, I might kill it, so I figured I'd just post it. You may think I should have killed it. It is entirely possible.

3. The featured annoying character is another we all know and love, and even has a one line mention in Odyssey Chapter One. Exciting, isn't it?

4. Yes. This is two stories in one day. Please try not to die of surprise or anything like that.

Historian's Note: This occurs sometime after Boy Trouble and before the Odyssey. Beyond that? No idea.

 
“Do we really have to do this, Im?” Nalia, well, she wasn’t happy about admitting it, but it was very close to a whine.

“No, we don’t have to. But there are two very good reasons to do it,” Imoen replied, flashing her usual impish grin.

“And those are?” Nalia griped as she, for about the tenth time since they left the ship, adjusted the top of her jumpsuit.

“First, is you want that thruster coil, he has it, and doing this will get it on the cheap,” Imoen smirked back.

“And the second?”

“Come on, that’s the easy one, Nalia. Because it’s fun!”

“I don’t see how dressing like this is fun,” Nalia griped, waving her hands downward at the skintight sky blue coverall she was wearing. “Other words come to mind. Slutty. Degrading maybe.”

Imoen stuck her tongue out in response. “Nals, you just gotta have more fun. And teasing boys is fun. Especially when you can make ‘em drool.”

“Maybe for you. You actually look good,” Nalia replied, waving at Imoen in her slinky pink coverall.

“All you gotta do is own it, Nals. You believe it, you look good. True fact,” Imoen replied with a snap of her fingers.

“Yeah, right.”

“Oh come on. You went to all the balls and stuff when you were a kid, didntcha?”

“Only when I couldn’t help it,” Nalia snorted. “I couldn’t stand most of those little simpering twits.”

“Fair enough on that line,” Imoen replied. “But you still dressed up and everything, right?”

“Well, of course.”

“And I bet you thought you looked pretty snazzy in some of those ball gowns.”

“Well…”

“Come on, I know you did. I mean, some fancy dress, your hair all done up, and you knew you just looked awesome.”

“Well…” Nalia hesitated, then looked down at the deckplates. “Okay. Yeah, there was this one dress. Black Arachine silk with small glowstones woven in. Floorlength and clasped around the neck. Almost no back,” Nalia colored just a little, “but it just flowed around me. I saw it at this boutique and had to try it on. Teresa said I had to buy it, it was just so me. I mean, it looked great but it was a little risqué…”

“But you bought it.”

“Well, yeah… it cost a lot, two months allowance, but… it was so beautiful. And I wore it to this gala and....

“You swept in there like a division of Marines and smashed em all flat. Left em all stunned.”

“Well, maybe a little…”

Imoen laughed. “Right. A little. You probably had all the boys drooling and all the girls plotting bloody revenge. Well, those that weren’t plotting to get into your dress.”

Nalia laughed and blushed a little more. “Okay, yeah, I looked good.”

“Probably not the only time either?”

“No, I mean, yeah, I know how to look pretty or sexy or whatever. I mean, I’m an engine geek, but I’m not clueless Im,” Nalia fired back with one arched eyebrow.

“I’ll admit you do have a few moments of clarity now and then,” Imoen sassed back. “At least once a year.”

Nalia punched Imoen lightly on the arm. “Idiot.”

“Nerd.”

“Goofball.”

“That’s me!” Imoen replied with a wide grin.

Both women couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Shaking her head at Imoen, she laughed, “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“I’ve even got papers that prove it,” Imoen replied with a wide grin.

“No doubt. So, was there any point to this little stroll down memory lane?”

“Yup.” Imoen said, stepping in front of Nalia to face her, forcing both women to stop.

“And that is?”

“You know that feeling you had in that fancy dress?”

“Yes. Quite.”

“Heh.” Imoen shook her head. “Well, just remember and use it. Wear it like a cloak. Believe it. Take that feeling and make it yours and it won’t matter if you’re wearing a suit of Imperium battle armor three sizes too big, you’ll still be smoking.”

Nalia gave her an incredulous look. “Like it’s that easy.”

Imoen poked Nalia in the chest. “Hey, if it can work for me, it can work for someone who actually is good looking.”

Nalia blinked. “You are beautiful, Im.”

“Classically, I might pass for cute, especially with pigtails or something. But sexy? Beautiful? Not so much.” She smiled. “You? We get you out of the engine room long enough you’d turn heads left and right.”

The incredulous look returned.

“I’m not kidding. You’re way prettier. You just don’t believe it, so it’s harder for people to believe. But you could out vamp me any day of the week.”

“No way.”

“I bet you could. Easy.”

“Alright. If you’re so damn sure, if I get our little friend hanging on me, you’ve got to take my next two galley shifts. And let Jaheira know you’re doing ‘em.”

“Okay… okay. You’re on sister.”

Nalia looked up at the storefront just a few dozen meters ahead. She turned to Imoen and narrowed her blue eyes at her friend for a moment. “No, Im. It’s on.”

Then, with a grin, she made a few further adjustments to her coverall and strode for the storefront. Unbeknownst to her, Imoen, smiling herself, let Nalia get two steps ahead, made a little fist pump and then rushed to catch up.

---@@@---

Business had so far been slow today. Other than a few Garans who had come in looking for a Veltrix plasma conditioner and a wild haired Terran looking for something called a flux capacitor, no one had come in the shop. Now, there was a bunch of work around the shop he could be doing. Things like doing the books or actually getting around to doing a proper inventory of what was actually in his shop. However, none of that really appealed at the moment.

So, instead, he was sitting at the counter of his shop, palmcomp in hand, playing his new favorite game Escape from Cheboygan. It had such a hold on him that he didn’t immediately notice when two customers walked into his shop. The little buzzer had gone off, but he was in the middle of a boss fight and none of his alarms had sounded, so he figured he could just finish the fight.

A polite cough in front of him dragged his eyes away from the screen. When he looked up, the boss fight was quickly forgotten. It was an awesome game, but it couldn’t compete with the two women in front of him. The one on the left he knew. It was hard to forget Immy Varnas, with red hair with pinkish highlights or the cute heart shaped face. She was smiling and her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. The one on the right had auburn hair, almost brown and dark blue eyes. She was smiling at him as well, a smile that banished the last thoughts of battling the mutant forces of Farve and his Cheesehead commandos from his mind.

As he tried to come up with something witty to say, his eyes scanned lower. Both women were wearing tight fiting coveralls. Imoen was in her usual pink, the fabric hugging her like a second skin and showing a lovely expanse of cleavage. Which was nice, but the woman on the right, in the sky blue coverall, well that was a little different. It didn’t show quite as much but the way it hugged…

His observations were interrupted with another polite cough. He snapped his eyes up as quickly as he could and did his best to squelch the blush that threatened to sear up his neck and turn his face the same color as his hair.

“Can we help you?” Imoen asked, grinning.

“Er… isn’t that usually my line?” he managed with a sheepish grin.

“Really?” the auburn haired woman asked with a knowing grin of her own.

“Er... yes. Definitely,” he said, trying to gather his wits and not look down.

There was a few heartbeats of silence before Imoen finally said, “Well?”

“Well what?” he asked confused.

“Aren’t you going to ask if you can help us?”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” He could feel the flush gaining steam, rushing up his chest. He coughed and straightened himself, falling back on his patter to get his brain straightened out. “Welcome to Coltrane Technical Supplies and Equipment, Athkatla’s Station premier location for all your technical needs. I’m Kelsey, owner and proprietor of CTSE, so, how can I help you?”

“Hi Kelsey,” the auburn haired woman said, smiling warmly. “I’m Nalia and this is Imoen. You know Imoen right?” As if on cue, Imoen smiled and waved.

“Yeah. I’ve had the pleasure before,” Kelsey replied, smiling back and getting his wits a little better ordered.

“Course you did, silly. Meeting me is always a pleasure,” Imoen added with a grin.

“Most definitely,” Kelsey replied. “Most definitely. So, er… what brings your to CTSE today?”

“You mean you aren’t reason enough for us to stop in?” Nalia asked with a teasing grin.

“Er…” He wasn’t even sure how to answer such a loaded question. “I’m flattered you’d think so, I really am. Yeah. But I don’t think you both came all the way down here just to hang out with me, right?”

Nalia’s smile faltered just a little and Kelsey kicked himself mentally. But as quickly as it faded, it was replaced by a more genuine, warm smile. “Sorry. That was bit mean of me. Sorry.”

“Er… it’s okay. Really.”

The smile dialed up another notch. “That’s nice of you. And yeah, we did come down here for more than just hanging out with you. I need a thruster coil and Immy, she told me that if anyone on Athkatla would have replacement part, you would.”

He felt himself smiling proudly. “Well, I’ll do my best. And if I don’t have it, I can probably scrounge it up pretty quick. Especially for you.”

Nalia blushed just a little and Kelsey felt his smile widening. She laughed and said, “Well, hopefully you’ve got it in stock. I’m looking for an Ypres Corp SuperMax Gold 274 coil.”

“M or T variant?” he asked, flipping on the terminal on his counter and querying his less than complete inventory for the coil.

“M. I’ll take refurbished if you don’t have new. And if you don’t have the axial connectors, that’s okay. The connectors on the old coil are still good.”

“Well, you’ve got to be careful about thorion degradation…”

“Checked the connectors for it before I stripped the assembly. The connectors are fine, still +13. It was a manufacturing fault in the coil itself. A layer problem in one of the superconductor layers, just small enough diagnostics missed right until the damn thing snapped right in half. If it was still good at all, I just would have done the refurb myself,” Nalia replied, leaning on the counter to try and get a look at the terminal screen.

Kelsey couldn’t help but look back with admiring eyes. She really knew her gear. And she was beautiful. And she was leaning over the counter, the fabric of her coverall outlining her breasts so wonderfully he found himself quite unable to focus on the terminal screen.

“So, do you think you can get your hands on one of them for me?” Nalia asked

“What?” Kelsey asked, starting from his studies.

“Do you think you can help me out?” she asked with an eyebrow arched and a very knowing smile.

Kelsey coughed and managed a sheepish grin. Much to his surprise, Nalia’s smile didn’t disappear, but instead it widened which only made his face flush even more red. From the heat he could feel radiating from his face, he had to be just two or three shades lighter than his hair.

As he tried to rally, she didn’t stop looking at him, smiling at him. It was wonderfully disconcerting. Part of him hoped she’d just keep doing it. Another part was screaming that he might actually want to get back to doing his job, so that he didn’t seem like a complete and utter dolt. That part had a decent point, so he dragged his eyes away from those lovely lapis pools and back to his terminal screen.

A few key taps and a quick cross index found that he did in fact have just that part in stock. In fact, he had two; one a refurb, the other new. He turned back and tried out his best smile. “Actually, I can help you out. I’ve got one. It’s a refurb but it’s in great shape.”

“Who did it?”

“Er? What?”

“Who did the refurb?” Nalia asked.

“I did,” he said, a sense of professional pride and the safe territory equipment maintenance buoying his confidence. “I’ve got a pretty comprehensive workshop in the back. I can handle pretty much anything that doesn’t require extensive vacuum work or really large scale work. In fact, a lot of the stuff here I’ve refurbished or rebuilt. It’s profitable and well, it’s fun.”

That earned him perhaps the biggest smile yet. “Some people don’t quite appreciate the joy in fixing things.”

“You mean some of us can think of better things to do then stick our heads in access panels. Yeah, some of us can,” Imoen sassed pleasantly.

Kelsey flicked his eyes over towards Imoen. He’d half forgotten she was there. He was taken aback and couldn’t come up with anything to say.

Nalia didn’t have the similar problem. Shaking her head sadly, she replied, “Your loss Im.”

“One loss I’m quite okay with,” she said with a satisfied smile.

“Well, at least you’re learning to live with your shortcomings, Im,” Nalia said with a grin. “A person needs to get to know themselves, don’t they Kelsey?”

“Er… yeah,” Kelsey finally managed, a little flustered. “Um, so… are you interested? In the coil, that is.”

“Definitely.”

He gulped. “Um. Great. Yeah. I imagine you’re going to want to take a look at it first. Before buying it.”

“Of course. Not that I don’t trust your work, but…”

“No no no, that makes sense. You should check it out. It’s a refurbished part, and while I do good work…”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Yeah. Look, if you want, you can use my workshop to check it out.”

“Thanks, but do you think you could bring it by our ship? I don’t have the axial connectors with me and I’d like to use my scanning equipment, if you don’t mind,” she said, fixing him with a bright smile.

“Um… sure. Yeah, I can do that. I close up in a few hours, I can toss the coil on a cart and have it out to you, but like… 2000 hours?”

“That’s be great! Thanks Kelsey. And it’s the Gorion. Docking station 11C.”

“I’ll be there!”

“Good. See you then.”

“Later Kelsey,” Imoen added as the two women sauntered out of the store.

As soon as they were gone, Kelsey flipped the ‘Closed’ sign on the shop door and pulled out his hover cart. There was a ton to do before 2000 hours. He had to make sure that coil gleamed. Probably should bring over a few other choice bits, the real impressive rebuilds. Definitely. And he was definitely going to have to change. He needed something a little more dapper.

So much to do…

---@@@---

Once the two of them were well out of earshot, Nalia said, “Oh my God, that was fun. I thought he was going to melt into a little pile of goo.”

“You nearly hot nerded the boy to death,” Imoen chuckled, waggling a finger at Nalia.

“Maybe not to death,” Nalia demurred, grinning widely.

“Certainly to the point of imminent brain implosion.”

“Okay. Maybe that far,” Nalia said with a grin. “And you know what that means.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, you get to be the hot nerd queen and I get to be the scullery maid,” Imoen replied with an overly dramatic eye roll.

Nalia looked over at her, eyebrow arched. “What is a scullery?”

Imoen paused. “I honestly have no clue. But I’m pretty sure it sucks.” Then, she laughed.

“It certainly sounds like it,” Nalia said with a laugh. “And you know, you really don’t have to take my galley shifts.”

“Hey, it was a fair bet. You won, I lost. I should have figured… never go in against a hot nerd when dealing with nerds. That’s just stupid.”

“I’m not a nerd.”

“No. You’re a hot nerd. There is a difference.”

Without a better response, Nalia resorted to a classic Imoen rejoinder: the raspberry. The results were typical. Both women dissolved into laughter as they made there way back to the ship.

Epilogue:

*Several hours later – the galley of the Gorion*

“What are you doing here?” Valygar asked as he stepped in and observed Imoen scrubbing the dinner pots.

“I believe it is called washing the dishes. It involves the use of soap, something you might not be familiar with.”

Valygar snorted. “I do have some passing familiarity. However, that doesn’t answer what you’re doing here. Washing the dishes.”

Imoen put the pot down and smiled. “Oh. That. Well, they say no good deed goes unpunished.”

Valygar arched an eyebrow. “Of course.” Shaking his head slightly, he turned and left.

As the doors slid shut on his form, Imoen turned her attention to the pots and grinned. Definitely worth it.

Definitely.

#2 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 08 February 2007 - 10:08 PM

“I don’t see how dressing like this is fun,” Nalia griped, waving her hands downward at the skintight sky blue coverall she was wearing. “Other words come to mind. Slutty. Degrading maybe.”


CN: "No, 'slutty' is when you do anything that Britney Spears has ever done. That's slutty."

Imoen stuck her tongue out in response. “Nals, you just gotta have more fun. And teasing boys is fun. Especially when you can make ‘em drool.”


CN: "Teasing girls can be just as fun... more so in many cases."

JG: "Why's that?"

CN: "Well, you expect guys to act like... you know... idiots... over a pretty girl."

JG: "Gee, thanks, Coll."

CN: "Well, maybe not you, specifically, though there was that one time... Valentine's Day, two years ago, when Clara surprised you with that sleeveless, backless, red dress?"

JG: "Um... ok... that dress -was- pretty hot."

CN: "Right. Well, point is, it's not as commonplace when girls drool over other girls. So when you get one of those rare moments, they tend to stand out a lot more."

“You swept in there like a division of Marines and smashed em all flat. Left em all stunned.”


CN: (Grins) "I've known girls who could do that. I was even lucky enough to date one in high school."

“Classically, I might pass for cute, especially with pigtails or something. But sexy? Beautiful? Not so much.”


CN: "I know that feeling. We're pretty much in the same boat. I mean, just speaking from personal experience, I'm the "cute" one, it's my sister who's the "beautiful" one."

wild haired Terran looking for something called a flux capacitor


GREAT SCOTT! ;)

Which was nice, but the woman on the right, in the sky blue coverall, well that was a little different. It didn’t show quite as much but the way it hugged…


CN: (Blushes) "See... that's the trick. Look... I'll admit. I'm... I'm a little lacking up top. And when that happens, you just can't make one of those low-cut boob-windows work. But if you keep them tucked behind some form-fitting, skin-hugging material, that accentuates the curves and makes it seem like you got a lot more to work with."

Kelsey couldn’t help but look back with admiring eyes. She really knew her gear. And she was beautiful. And she was leaning over the counter, the fabric of her coverall outlining her breasts so wonderfully he found himself quite unable to focus on the terminal screen.


CN: "Note to self: Get some coveralls. Heh."

“So, do you think you can get your hands on one of them for me?” Nalia asked


CN: "Um... you mean... a hand... on one of your breasts?" (Gulps)

JG: "No, Colleen. That's not what she meant."

CN: (Frowns) "Oh. Sorry."

That earned him perhaps the biggest smile yet. “Some people don’t quite appreciate the joy in fixing things.”


JG: "Uh oh. Hot nerd effect... this guy's in trouble."

CN: "Never underestimate the hot nerd effect. If not for that, I'd have been alone all throughout high school... instead of having a really hot girlfriend." (Grins)

Nalia looked over at her, eyebrow arched. “What is a scullery?”


Shouldn't she know? Didn't she -have- scullery maids? :)

“I believe it is called washing the dishes. It involves the use of soap, something you might not be familiar with.”


Immy likes her guys... dirty, does she? ;)




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