Participants:
| Scene Title | It's Like a Manga |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Kendall and Valerie have their first ever date, and it does not go down in flames! Despite the slow relationship development. |
| Date | November 13, 2010 |
Okay, so it's not a five star restaurant. But it's not McDonalds, either! It's… well, Olive Garden. Sure, it's a chain restaurant and there's a bajillion of them in the US, but they're still pretty high class for such. Kendall is nervous, and even though he's not wearing the full-blown suit, he's still wearing a nice shirt, dress pants, and not-sneakers. Of course, he's also got a heavy coat, but that's on the chair he's sitting in, even as he fidgets in place. Ohgodsheprobablyhatesthisplacewhatshegonnadoahhhhhh. Date anxieties at their strongest.
The crutch isn't as necessary as it had been the first week, but Valerie still brought it along, to lean against the chair in case she needs it, while her coat is drapped against the back. Dressed nicely seems to be what she attempted to go for as well, as she's actually wearing a dress, green in color. Though her shoes are flat, and in fact boots. She also has slacks on underneath, but in this cold, who can blame her? "I love Olive Garden— I've only been a few times, but— I don't think it's changed too much in five years, right?" With only a glance over the menu, she seems to know what she wants.
"Well, yeah, I mean, few new things, but…" Kendall stammers out his response, then gulps. Oh geez, c'mon, he got in two dates for practice, why is it hard when he's himself? Instead of staring at Valerie like a complete goober, he stares at the menu instead. "Ah, well, glad you like it, I mean, I like it too." yeah, and he apparently likes sounding REALLY lame.
Luckily, she doesn't seem to mind too much. "Oh they have specialty drinks— I don't think they had these before!" Strawberry-Mango Limonata sounds wonderful, and nonalcoholic too, so Valerie doesn't have to worry about trying to explain she's really twenty-one, but she's physically seventeen. "Are you okay?" she finally asks, while the waitress is trying to get his drink order.
Kendall looks up after asking for a coke, and blinks. "Ah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm just…. worried I'd screw up and you'd hate me forever." well he's surprisingly blunt about such things. "I guess because, well, I've never had a girlfriend before." he coughs. "Well, uh, anyway." conversation! There needs to be a conversation! That is not about awkwardness! "Do you like Pokemon?" he blurts out, while at least one person in the world suddenly facepalms for no reason whatsoever.
"Um— I like what you've showed me of it, yeah," Valerie says, looking a little startled, but then smiling faintly for another reason all together. "I've never had a boyfriend, so don't worry— I won't dislike you because of anything that happens here. You don't have to be so nervous— this is not that much different from sitting around and playing video games all day." Which they did in abundance when they had the chance.
"Well yeah, I guess, except this is more, I dunno…. official?" Kendall shrugs. "And there's new ones coming out next year, which is why I asked." pause. "So of all the games you played, which ones do you like best? RPGs? FPS? Fighting games? Sports? Guitar Hero?" wow, way to put pressure on her, dude.
"Um…" Yeah, Valerie can sense the awkward levels of pressure. She can't help but look around once, as if trying to figure out if there's anything she needs to do differently, before she looks back at him. "I like the ones that tell a story. Especially if it's a good story. Mostly cause I can enjoy them even if I'm just watching you play— it's like watching a book."
"Ah, so you like the RPGs." Kendall nods in satisfaction. "I do too, but unfortunately there's not many of those that are multiplayer. Actually, I can't think of any offhand. So you like ones like Final Fantasy." he considers. "All right, I think I should introduce you to Golden Sun. The third one just came out recently, after all, and if you like a fantastic storyline and cool graphics, that's the way to go."
"If you want to play together more, I like the puzzle games— Little Big Planet was a lot of fun, and we can even play that with four people." Valerie liked being able to dress up her sack person too, but she doesn't go into that part too much. "I also liked that you could build young own levels… maybe I can make one you can't beat easily one day."
Kendall laughs, relaxing a bit more. Video games, he can talk about video games! "We'll see. Although if you like that sort of thing, I'd introduce you to online gaming, but then I might never see you again. There's this game called Minecraft where you, uh…. build the world around you. And try not to die."
"I promise you'll see me again, but getting on an internet game may be difficult— I don't think I'll be able to get a connection anytime soon," Valerie admits. Between living in a castle and now in an abandoned terminal— they just don't have internet as a priority. But she does seem willing to stay on topics he likes.
"Ah right. For the best, I guess. There's lots of sites out there, and not all of them are good. And with internet also comes manga and anime and that's a whole other can of worms." Kendall is a well-rounded geek. "Not that you need internet for that unless you can't wait for that stuff to come over to the US from Japan."
"You don't understand Japanese though, right?" Valerie asks, perhaps confused how someone could be impatient to wait if they don't understand the language it's released in originally!
"Yeah, well, online, there are scanlations of everything. They come out in Japan, and people work immediately to translate them into english and other languages so everyone can read them." Kendall nods sagely. "Although, learning Japanese means I wouldn't have to wait at all, especially since some of the animes take a while to be subtitled."
"I could teach you some, I had really good tutors in Japanese," Valerie explains, leaning forward and smiling at him as if she found something she can teach him, finally! "It'd pay you back for teaching me how to play video games!"
"Yeah! that'd be great." Kendall perks up. "I mean, I know a lot of words already due to overexposure, but as to all of it… I don't think it'd be a good idea to make a conversation when the main words you know are 'gomenasai', 'ohayo gozaimas' and 'satsujen jinken'." yeah, the last one….. really doesn't fit.
"The first two are important! The last one— uh, probably a good idea not to say that around people," Valerie says, giggling a bit as she fianlly gets to order her food. Yes, she wants extra cheese on everything. "I'll teach you some important stuff, as much as I can, it'll take a while, though! I had the tutors for five years, so it's not something you can learn in a few weeks."
Kendall laughs. "Yeah, I figured as much. It's not something you'd want to bring up ever if you can help it." he makes his order too, for…. paaaaastaaaa! ahem. "Yeah, I figured as much. There's what, three or four different kinds of Japanese you need to learn. Kanji, romanji, uh…. that other one, stuff like that."
"Hiragana, katakana and kanji," Valerie explains, fairly patient as she does, smiling across the table at him, even if he's not really correct. He hasn't had a single real lesson yet! "I can teach you hiragana and katakana in a few days, they're basically phonic symbols, like the abcs. It's the kanji that are extra difficult, cause each one has it's own meaning but they have many ways of pronouncing them, so they're extra difficult."
"Yeah, I gathered that from the anime I've watched. Apparently even Japanese kids have trouble learning those." because everything in anime is realistic for Japan! "The main problem with the others is the number. Aren't there like… hundreds of them?" maybe Kendall's thinking of Chinese.
"Well, yes and no, there's forty six common use ones of each, so… almost a hundred. And then some of them change depending on what you attach to it— like the kyo in Tokyo, it uses the hiragana for ki and then a small yo next to it to make the sound kyo…" Valerie hesitates, as if she's afraid this is already getting too complicated. "Once you learn it it gets a lot easier."
"Yeah, like adding a dot or something next to one changes it entirely, and complicated stuff like that. I already know it's complicated, but one of my bosses lived in Japan for a while, he could help me out too when I'm working that job… whenever he decides to reopen." Kendall considers. Although, getting language lessons in a beauty salon is kinda…
"I've never been to Japan, but all my tutors were from there," Valerie explains quietly, already liking the idea of someone else having lived in Japan. "Do you think I could meet him? Your boss?"
"If you aren't homophobic, I don't think there'd be a problem. His name's Raquelle." pause. "I don't think there'd be any harm in you meeting him at all, actually." Kendall sounds surprised. "But if Brand so much as looks at you I'm gonna punch him in the face."
"I'm— not? Though I've never really met any that I know of," Valerie admits, tilting her head to the side. It's hard to be homophobic when someone's been so sheltered. In fact she's facinated by the idea. What are they like? "Why would you punch a guy named Brand though?"
"Because he tries to get in the pants of anything female." Kendall replies with a frown. "Any girl that shows up, he wants to sleep with." Rawr! protective Kendall! "Raquelle's really nice though, if… a little weird."
It's oddly innocent the way she immediately replies, "I don't think very many guys would fit in my pants…" It seems Valerie doesn't always understand slang as well as one might like her too. But then a moment later she seems to get it, cause she turns red on her cheeks. "Oh, you mean… well… I— am not interested in strange guys…" And he sounds strange!
Kendall chokes, tries to turn it into a cough, and ends up having it become a real cough. "Yeah, he's very weird. He's the kind of guy who'd beat up people like me in high school and disrespect girls. Definitely the kind of guy you'd never want to associate with." now that he's done vilifying the poor guy… "I hope I don't count as strange?"
"No, you're pretty harmless," Valerie says with a shy smile, as she takes a moment to hide behind her very tall strawberry mango lemonade drink. "And I don't like disrespectful bullies…" Though until now she may not have had any idea what she liked… Luckily it wasn't old men, like the ones she got to spend most of her youth with. "Did you pick the movie we're going to see?" She asks, as she breaks off some of the buttery breadstick to eat.
"Well there's quite a few out right now, although given you've missed the past few years, I don't think Harry Potter or Narnia would be good since they're sequels and you probably haven't seen the first ones. I didn't really pick out a movie but there's a time frame they normally play at, I've noticed. There's this animated one called Megamind that looks funny. It's in 3D." waitaminute, Kendall is harmless? That's so…. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"Megamind sounds like a fun movie," Valerie says, not really seeing how pretty harmless is a bad thing. They'd just been talking about bullies and how she doesn't like bullies! So in her mind a harmless guy is a good thing to be. "But maybe we should watch the ones those movies are sequels of sometime so I can catch up, and so we can have a second date." Not even to dessert and she just said they'll have a second date.
WAHOO! Score~! Ahem. "Well, for Harry Potter it'd take a while considering this is the seventh movie. We'd have to watch six just to catch up. It's based on a book series, after all. You do know about Harry Potter, right?" the books did come out before the Bomb blew up! "Actually, you might've seen the first three…"
"I didn't get taken out to movies very often… And I don't think I read the books either," Valerie admits with a hint of a slouch. Her tutors were a little dated in their reading. "I do think I read the Narnia books, though, if that helps."
Kendall wrinkles his nose. "Well if you did read the books, you'll be really disappointed with their rendition of Prince Caspian. They made all the Pevensies spoiled brats. And they deviated from the book so much in that one."
"I don't remember the books that much, except there were talking animals. I tried really hard to make my animal projections talk thanks to that…" Valerie admits, with a bit of a sad sound. "But every time I force myself to talk when I'm projecting I end up turning into me. I don't know why I can't project an animal talking."
Kendall hmms and pulls out a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket, and sketches something out. Then Valerie might feel a small paw tapping her leg. It's a one-foot tall mouse standing on its hind legs, hiding under the table. "We can talk to you whenever you want." it whispers to her. "But restaurants don't like mice!"
"That's… so cute," Valerie says, leaning down to rest her chin on both of her palms, and her smile wide and bright. "Thank you," she adds up at Kendall, before glancing away for a second. "Though you should probably stop, before someone sees…" They could both get in trouble. Luckily you don't need to be registered to eat…
Yet.
"Right." Kendall immediately erases the picture, and the mouse disappears. "That's why I was careful and did it under the table. No one looks under a table unless they drop something, and this is our table." but yeah, Kendall should be more careful.
"It is our table," Valerie says with a smile, still impressed at the talking mouse, though she still can't do it herself. Not in this lifetime. Maybe in a few years… "Thank you, though. For everything." The date, the mouse— everything.
The dinner is paid for(by Kendall, of course. Chivalry is still alive!), and the movie is watched, although the price of said movies caused Kendall to wince, especially with the additional 3D fee. Coming out of the theater, Kendall looks thoughtful. "I need to get me one of those watches. I could make it WORK, too!" he seems very enthusiastic about it.
"You really think you could do that?" Valerie asks, looking impressed at the idea. She's walking a little unsteadily thanks to the combination of 3D and crutch she has to walk with. "That was really neat, though, with the 3D and how everything seemed to just pop out at you! I'd never seen that before." Not only was she sheltered, she skipped the last few years of 3D movies.
"Yeah, though I wish they'd make it so you didn't have to wear glasses. Mine kept on slipping down. I know they came out with a new Gameboy DS that's in 3D without needing glasses. I really want one but they're like $300. And not out yet, I don't think." Kendall nods. "So what did you think about this movie? It seemed to have some interesting plot twists. And 'Metrocity', hahaha."
"I liked it. It was sweet and interesting, and felt bad for the villain turned hero," Valerie admits, with a small smile on her face. "And the girl too, cause she was tricked on that date— but he showed himself to be a real hero in the end, so it was very good— I liked it a lot." And now for the thing she hadn't thought of til now. "Are you supposed to know about the place I'm staying…? Cause it may be too late for you to go back to the island now." It's a long boat ride, after all…
"Well I am officially a member, so it's all right for me to know where everywhere is." Kendall looks immensely proud as this revelation, and even puffs his chest out a little. He's a member of Ferry now! "Yeah, and it's harder to see where you're going when there's no light, and if people see light where there shouldn't be it'd be a problem. But… your sister's there, right?"
"I think so— there's a lot of people there. But I figured I shouldn't kick you off to the island unless you want to go— I can't really go back, I could… go with you most the way back, though," Valerie says, smiling sheepishly, and shyly. It's likely she's not intending it to mean more than her wanting to spend extra time with him. But one never knows with teenagers.
Kendall is suddenly glad that Kaylee's the mindreader, and not Valerie. "Ah… I think it'd be less of a risk if I didn't go back tonight. It's enough that I go back and forth as much as I do, I really need to find somewhere to stay that's not there."
"If you're part of them now, you probably have more right to stay where I am than I do— so… I'll take you there," Valerie says, leaning against him on one side, and walking with the crutch on the other. Time for them to spend the night together again. Only this time, they won't actually be as alone as they'd been in Gun Hill. Perhaps to Kendall's dismay.
"All right." Kendall sounds pretty cheerful about this, although where did she say she lived again? A terminal? Hmm. As she leans against him, he wraps his arm around her waist…. for support, naturally. "So how's your back doing, is it getting better?"
"Well— it's still difficult to walk sometimes, wobbly, and part of my legs are numb," Valerie admits with a small shrug. "But I'm okay. I'm used to this kind of thing, actually. Not the getting shot part! But the being sick part."
"Well at least you didn't become paraplegic from it, I heard that if you damage your spine you could lose the entire use of your legs. You were really lucky. You can still move them and stuff, you just got a little nerve endings damaged, or something like that." Kendall's not a doctor, he doesn't quite know how it works, just that nerve endings are important! "My offer still stands that if you ever need help getting around, just call for me! I'll carry you piggyback if need be!"
"Thank you," Valerie says in a soft voice, before she leans over and presses a quick kiss against his cheek. Just his cheek. But it's a kiss on the first date, at least.
Woot! It's a kiss! Even if it's on the cheek, it's definitely a kiss on the first date! And so the two of them go off into the… well, the sun set about five hours ago, so… into the dark and cold. Kendall's at least relaxed on this date, fortunately.