Best Buy

[Emily Littleton] Valentine's Day isn't the busiest for most technology retailers. Few guys get their girlfriends shiny things with LEDs for the holiday instead of flowers. Most of the people wandering into Best Buy on this particular Sunday are therefore single, or soon to be so.

The young woman in the cables & connector aisle is holding a few cables and chatting (tensely) with a blue-shirted sales rep who is trying to help her find something. It is not going well. She could do this faster without his help, and has told him so thrice over now. But she's pretty (enough) and uses phrases like "RS485" and "D-sub-9" effortlessly, so the Blue is hopelessly confused.

she's also wearing a shirt that reads: There are 10 types of people. Those who know binary, and those who don't. This has prompted a question from the Blue, in that flirting sort of casual way that really means he's just trying to cover up staring at her rack.

"That's rather the point," she says, when he remarks that he doesn't get it. Her voice is a little pinched, a little irritated. What about the other eight? he asks, and she sighs audibly. "I rather think I'll go it alone from here..." she remarks, regarding her quest to complete the shopping list from hell. "Honestly, I wouldn't have stopped in if you weren't the only store open on New Years."

Odd that. The Lunar holiday is more important to her than the romanticized one.

"Really, thank you," she's saying, now, in a tone that is not at all pleased. "Mightn't you go sell someone a digicam or mobile now? I think I'm quite well enough on my own." The odd phrasing is wrapped up in an equally odd collection of accents. The most prominent is British, and it makes the annoyance in her voice all the clearer.

[Carmichael] "She's right, Greg - there's someone over at the cell desk right now, and Cass is on a smoke break. Why don't you go see if you can help out?"

In swoops the white-shirt-and-tie, all six foot four and dark curls and charmingly geekish smile of him. His shirt is wrinkled - but still (barely) presentable - only half tucked and his tie is loose (and not the corporate-mandated clip on). Brown eyes are clearly amused as he looks down at this Greg, who is a good three inches shorter than he. That this is the second cute girl he's met in the cables & connector aisle, he doesn't say, maybe doesn't need to; there's a look that some sales people get when someone clearly superior (in numbers, in charisma, in anything) arrives to save the day.

Which is, of course, what Chuck is doing right now. For the blue and (geeks get the) girl both.

"I mean, she's quite capable of finding her own cables, I'm sure. Do you even know what RS485 is?"

There's grumbling, and Greg wanders away, leaving Chuck rolling his eyes after the poor blue. There's a reason he's not sales - he asks that sort of question incredulously when customers ask for something sort of obscure, too.

"Sorry about that. They're cute and mean well, but the blues don't always know when to leave a person to their own devices. You all set now?"

[Emily Littleton] "Hello," she says, and Emily is not at all taken with the geek-chic man on his immediate arrival. She's too ruffled at having to explain RS232=COM=Serial too many times in the same breath, and still meeting the blank somewhat fearful look in the Blue's eyes. Greg. He had a name. She should have liked him immediately with that name, but Emily hadn't.

She's shorter than them both, but not diminutive. She stands around 5'9" but is slight, lithe enough to look willowy in the right clothing. Today she's just wearing jeans, the aforementioned shirt, and her jacket. She hadn't intended to stay long, but Greg had waylaid her.

"And thank you, Greg, for your assistance." There was a dismissal in how she said his name, however politely Emily smiled. Her tone was warmer, now, that there was someone around to intercede on her behalf, but it wasn't exactly inviting. "And no. I need a genderbender for an RS232 extension -- not a null modem, thank you -- but so few things run off serial connections now that I think I'll have to order it online."

A challenge. She just might be testing him. And she was looking for old school esoteric interfaces. RS485 wasn't used by any modern component and serial/COM connections had (thankfully) gone the way of the dodo. Either this one was way behind the times, or she was working on some sort of home-grown madness.

[Carmichael] Chuck likes to give people the benefit of the doubt - he will, for now, assume she's working on something homegrown, and that sparks interest. It's always good to know what those crazy kids are up to these days.

"What're you building?"

The connector, old and dusty, is plucked from behind five others and handed over - Chuck could do that sort of thing in his sleep, really. It shows, if one is looking. What she might need such an esoteric component for is intriguing enough that he isn't yet awkward about the second cute girl in his store, talking to him, in as many days (not counting his partner, who is his partner and thus an entirely different ball of wax). Instead, he's looking over the other stuff she has.

"I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you can get this stuff cheaper online, seriously. If it's not a time crunch, hit up some of the old school places."

[Emily Littleton] She's got a nice mix of tech toys. A nicely sized memory card for a terribly modern device, a few generic connectors (destined to be spliced into something new), the cables she'd been quarreling with Greg over, and a copy of the latest RTS game. Because that's for work, really.

Emily's smile broadened a little when he handed her the archaic coupler. "Oh... it's for one of the engineering groups at Northwestern. The bookstore is hopelessly corrupted with all things Apple, and I didn't want to wait on a PO to order it through the normal suppliers."

She shrugged a little, seeming a lot more relaxed now that Greg had wandered away. "I usually buy it online, or in one of the smaller shops. But they're all closed today -- New Years, or Church." The smaller stores were dominated by ethnic groups that kept the Sabbath holy and/or had bigger things to do today.

"And isn't that a bad policy? Telling me to buy it elsewhere?" she quirked an eyebrow at him and smirked lightly. "I wouldn't want to get you in trouble after you saved me from Greg."

[Carmichael] [Per + Aware!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)

[Carmichael] "Oh, it's totally a bad policy. That's why I'm not a blue - well, that and I know about things like gender benders for obscure cables that haven't been standard in ages," he says, all pleasant smirk. And it's now that he notices she's pleasantly attractive, and this is likely why Greg had been even more focused on the sale (or that lovely place where it says 'there are 10 kinds of people') than usual. "But when I'm fixing the messes people make, I don't need to worry about selling them stuff. Have sonic screwdriver, will travel."

Mention of New Year's, and Church, gets a wry chuckle. "Can't say I'm a follower of anything that holds a day holy. Or I'd have been quicker about coming up with an excuse to not be here today, maybe." Though, low man on the totem pole, he may well have had to work anyway.

"So, how come you aren't occupied with New Year's or Church or Capitalists Buy Candy and Flowers day?"

[Emily Littleton] The sonic screwdriver shout out gets a little chuckle from her, and a slow (amused) shake of her head. Briefly closed eyes that blink open to find his, hold them for a moment. Her eyes are a deep blue, shot through with fleck of granite grey. They are also piercingly intelligent. Curious.

"Mmmm, I hate to tell you but Church isn't the reason most people beg off on the 14th," she counters her wryness with some of her own. It's comfortable, this, the banter and teasing. It's easier for her than it might be for most. (Because it's never leading anywhere)

"And I would love to be occupied today, but, alas, my Ayi lives in San Francisco and I've yet to find a nice Chinese family to adopt me here." The Chinese word trips off her tonue without any effort. The little bit of Asian culture is wrapped so tightly around her, intertwined so closely with her sense of family and time and society, that it seems perfectly natural to hear her speak of New Year's and Chinese Aunties. Chuck might not even notice the word, at first.

"What about you? You're working Valetine's Day. Or is your girl more a 8GB thumbdrive and a 25man raid type, over chocolates and a dinner date?" The way she said it could have been a jab. Easily. Or a in... it was difficult to tell, except that she was still standing there, chatting with him, well after he'd found her coupler. And she didn't seem as irritated as she'd been before.

[Nathan Spriggs] A man entered the store, he was wearing a black blazer that was unbuttoned and open, revealing a white undershirt and with matching pan, he seemed to be headed for the TV section. The man, by the name of Nathan, had come here searching for certain things to go with his in-process renovation of the building he'd recently acquired. Now that he'd cleaned up a bit and had stopped drinking constantly, he was back on track towards getting that done and needed to get his hands on some things, he was only going to check prices for now since the renovation was only beginning and it'd be a waste of money to buy anything, but he had to make it look like he wasn't.

The salespeople didn't generally take kindly to that kind of thing and he'd rather not be blown off. So he'd pretend he was gonna buy a new TV, maybe a decent audio system, and check out the laptops section, make them think a nice little commission was in before he got enough info on what he needed and headed back out.

[Carmichael] "My princess is, alas, in another castle. And has long been hauled off by King Koopa. And so, I must endure alone." It's overblown, class clown dramatics, of course - one could hardly expect anything else. "But! When I had her, she was very much a Silent Hill/Fatal Frame over wine, fruit and cheese on the carpet kind of girl. Also, I'm the new guy. So, I'm working by default."

He's the new guy, and he already knows the store (and its stock) better than the blues - interesting. Or not. He's quite obviously a geek, after all; maybe it's standard for him to memorize this sort of thing. He's also open, and friendly, and at least somewhat amusing. She's less irritated, and he's taking that as a sign that he should keep talking; the store's pretty dead, after all, and even with a skeleton crew the lone Geek Squadder is pretty bored.

"At least I don't have to close. I'll get in some good FPS or RPG time when I get home."

Cables & connectors are usually not far from the door, close to cell phones, which are roughly on the way to Audio and Video. It's at C&C where Emily and Chuck stand, chatting as she holds a bunch of esoteric cables and connectors. And an RTS game.

[Emily Littleton] She laughed a little. Emily couldn't help it, and the sound tumbled from her lips and brightened her eyes. It shaped her mouth pleasantly.

"Mustn't you save her then?" she inquired, when he alluded to a particular gaming franchise and a long-lost love. "She sounds delightful. I would quest to save such a princess," she adds, letting the pleasant expression linger.

At least until a familiar shadow darkens the path between AV and C&C. Emily is, for a moment, distracted, and the pleasantness fades a little in her expression when she spies Nathan. She takes a taut little breath, and then looks away, back to the Geek Squadder, trying to reclaim the ease and flow of their earlier conversation.

"Sounds a bit like my evening, provided all these pan out well," she makes a show of hefting the little bundle of cables lightly with one hand. But she looks over, again, to see where Nathan might be heading. And her teeth catch the corner of her lower lip thoughtfully.

[Carmichael] "Oh, I did. But she decided that King Koopa was a solid bet and asked if I was really going to work at Best Buy forever and why was I letting a perfectly good degree go to waste and what was I going to do with my life and when was I going to grow up. It was less than pleasant! So, while video games and wine were lovely, I decided there were other quests that might get me other treasures."

He doesn't say 'better', because that's subjective and makes him sound pissy. Which he isn't. Most of the time. It was a long time ago, after all; Chuck's not old, but he obviously has a few years on the girl in front of him. Who sees someone come in, and tenses, which draws Chuck's eyes up to see if there's a problem . . . but all he sees is, "You know Nathan?" Who isn't [obviously] drunk, thank goodness. It would suck to have to call security.

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan continued to look through the different TVs, waiting for a clerk or something to approach him, but the store seemed to be fairly empty, still because of his investigation into the details of the HD TVs, Chuck and Emily. Being technologically challenged, he was trying to discover the big difference in two TVs of the same size that made one exponentially more expensive than the other. It was a hard task but he had to learn some time, not that the description tags helped him at all. The damn terminology was a bother.

He was almost glaring at the TVs, as though hoping they'd tell him what the hell everything meant, but they were switched off today apparently so he couldn't even compare picture quality. A sigh later, he turned to search for someone to help him, a thought that nagged at him and frustrated him endlessly. However, the sight of Chuck and Emily stopped him dead in his tracks, his gaze fixing upon them, though he didn't move to approach them or signal to them.

[Emily Littleton] "Harsh," Emily says, in response to Chuck's woman woes. It's not commiseratory, but it is almost compassionate. The American slang sounds a little odd on her tongue, though, in comparison to the Chinese.

"Oh, is that his name?" she asks, when Carmichael looks over at the newcomer. This time, as she raises an eyebrow, Emily's tone is not wry. It is not teasing. And why yes, she does seem to know Nathan (in some small way), even if she does not know his name.

[Carmichael] "I should probably . . . Greg, just because it doesn't have . . ." Blush. That could have been a bad slip. "I don't know where the other blues are. Cass should be back from smoking, which means Greg should be wandering around, but . . ."

Chuck rolls his eyes, long suffering, mildly amused. "Well, Nathan isn't as cute as you are. And yes, that's his name. Or, as I refer to him in my head, Drunky McDrunkface." It's not particularly charitable, but it escapes being truly mean by the lack of anything remotely resembling malice in tone - it's an apt description of the last time he'd seen the other man, is all. "Oh! There's Cyn. She'll help him."

And there is Cyn indeed - a short, round thing in blue, who comes up to talk about TVs, and help figure out which one might best fulfill Nathan's wishes.

[Emily Littleton] (( Oh, you know Nathan ... ? Per + Aware ))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Carmichael

[Carmichael] (Why yes, that is a glimmer of dynamism, and my, isn't Chuck a progressive (for progress' sake) sort of fellow? There's not quite enough staticism to balance it, but for all that progress, he's also quite secure.)
to Emily Littleton

[Emily Littleton] Just because it doesn't have... She cants her head to one side, fixing him with a(n oh, really?) look and a less amused expression. It's also somewhat seeking, and there is a flicker of recognition across her features as she pegs him as something, categorizes him, and shifts her posture accordingly.

Her chin draws up, just a little. Emily's shoulders square, just slightly. He has more of her attention, and less of it is as easy and flirty as it had been moments before. That's not to say she wasn't warm, and every bit as nice to look at. Only that she seemed measurably more Aware of the situation than before.

Her fingers reached up to toy with a thin silver chain around her neck. Fished out an old-looking (deprecated [legacy]) locket, that she wrapped her fingers around quickly. In that moment, the sense of something stable, comforting, accepting, was almost palpable. (It beat out a steady hearbeat of Home, home, home.)

"How do you two know each other?" she asked, but the question had purpose this time (figuring you out) as was just a little guarded. She smiled, again, and then looked back over at Nathan. Nathan and the approaching Cyn.

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan observed Chuck and Emily for a few moments longer before realizing someone else was coming up to help him. Turning his back on them, he turned back to the row of giant televisions, where a short, plump woman was coming up to ask him if he needed anything. A moment's thoughts later, he and the woman were examining the aisle up and down, she started to explain to him what the specifics meant and why the increased price in what was seemingly two almost identical TVs. Though the impulse to go bother Chuck and Emily was still there, but he kept in under control.

He remembered his meeting with Emily and didn't quite know how to handle a second meeting just yet, and something in the back of his mind told him Chuck wouldn't be exactly pleased to see him either. Though he couldn't be quite sure why.

[Page from Jess] OOC: sneak attack pounce from afar 'cos you aren't on AIM, woe!

[Carmichael] Chuck is human, and male. He's noticed where those words on Emily's shirt lie, though he hasn't fixated and fawned over her because of it. He's talked to her because it's a slow day, and because she's there. "We've just bumped into each other a couple of times, is all. He knows someone else I know, too - or, well. I guess I don't really know either of them," he says with a shrug. "I've just met them. When I said I'm the new guy, I didn't mean just to this store."

He may have an uncharitable nickname for Nathan, but that doesn't mean he'd be displeased to see the other man again - it just means he'd met him at a less than idea time. Impressions change, given opportunity to do so; it's quite likely this one will, too. But for now, Chuck is with a customer, and Nathan is not in his section - to be honest, Chuck only knows about TV stats because he's a magnet for that kind of knowledge (and also because it's handy to know which ones can be modded, and how). His area of expertise is with computers, and the programing and securing thereof.

"What about you? How do you know him?"

((Hmm, it's a secret club! Therefore, I simply must know . . . [Per + Alert]))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] He isn't sure how he missed it before, now that he looks at her and catches the brilliance around her, twinkling like so many LEDs in the dark night at the server bank. She is alive with the crackle of untapped energy, and it is pure (unflavored) for the most part. Only a thin aura of staticsm clung to her (besides the second heartbeat [about her, not of her] of home), and that bordered on a preternatural sense of calm, of Reverence.
to Carmichael

[Emily Littleton] "I'm new, too, of a sorts," she says, and it's reinforced by whatever he's picking up off her resonance today. "Not to the city, though." And that's where she leaves it. Emily's smile is coming back in small degress. It doesn't take too long for her to regain that easy sense of balance, as if nothing had bothered her at all.

"We had dinner the other night," she says, trying to make it sound like an intentional thing. "He filled me in a local situation." She shrugged a bit, giving away nothing that would explain her paler visage, or fumbled expression when she first saw the other mage.

Emily took a little breath, and set aside whatever had upset her. "So I guess we have an acquaintance in common now," she said, trending back towards their easier banter. "It's amazing how quickly you can get to know someone in this City."

A coy smile, that almost entirely hid the earlier unease. Confidence, in the way she met and held his eyes for a moment. And then there was a little pause... because she had no real reason to linger, beyond wanting to keep chatting with a fellow geek. So she shifted, a bit, and waited to see if things were going to get awkward.

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan had finished seeing the TVs for now, he understood what he had to so he'd sleep on the decision between the 1080p or the 720p. For now, it was time for his real goal for today, while looking at the TVs, he'd decided he might buy something for real today and settled for a laptop. So he headed for that section, hoping to find something he actually understood there.

[Carmichael] Laptops are closer to C&C, and there's a rather attentive blue there to help Nathan with anything he could possibly need. This also butts up on the Geek Squad desk, which is closer to where Chuck and Emily are chatting (and the various blues are glaring - partly because he's standing around chatting, and partly because he's standing around chatting with a pretty girl); Chuck watches as this happens. "It really is," he says, eyes on Nathan before they flit back to Emily. "Think I should let the blue sell him a laptop? I mean, he's buying one here. They're alright, but he can't need much."

Computers are in his field, but he's a fixer, a doer. He'd made Ashley's phone unhackable by mundane means in fifteen minutes or less - that's what people come to him for. They don't ask him what to buy, they ask him to build it for them. Or to fix the shitstorm that is Windows.

[Emily Littleton] Emily's nose wrinkles a bit at the thought of buying a pre-fab anything, but with laptops it can't really be helped. Much. Of course, whatever one buys can be upgraded and re-kitted to be more appropriate. (She mentally pets her laptop, safely snuggled into its charging cradle back at the lab.)

"... He didn't really strike me as a gamer. He probably needs a solid business distro, Dell plus Windows 7, Office..." A quick appraisal of the situation, that. "Do the blues know anything about computers?" she asks, after a short pause. Given Greg's level of helpfulness, it might be perilous to leave Nathan (drunk or otherwise) to the mercy of the salesforce.

"Unless he does some wicked video work... but then he'd be going Mac anyway." Sad, but true. The arts were better supported on the other platform. Arts and people who couldn't be helped by the Geek Squad, instead needing their own table of "genuises" to help them with things like plugging in peripherals or networking.

So yes, Chuck should probably help him. Though Emily wasn't hurrying him away in any sense.

[Nathan Spriggs] As lost as ever, Nathan continued looking from laptop to laptop, trying to make heads or tails of the specifications and special feature descriptions. It was giving him a right nasty headache and getting nowhere, and while he remembered Chuck knew a hell of a lot about computers, he was hesitant to ask for help. After the encounter with Ashley the very night he'd met Emily, he knew better than to rely on other people no matter what, unless there was something big in for them, anyway. And he didn't know if Chuck would care enough or not about the commission to help him out.

He needed a laptop for work, mostly, he didn't enjoy games all that much and surfing the web seemed a bit too unsafe in case the Technocracy was somehow watching. Something he didn't put past them, either. But as far as he knew about computers, he had only one rather difficult to meet requirement without getting it himself and installing it, that the OS be Windows XP. Amazingly enough, he knew just enough about computers to realize how big a piece of crap Vista had been and how mediocre (though better than Vista, which wasn't hard to do) Windows 7 had been.

[Carmichael] There's a sigh, and a shrug. "You can hang out at the desk if you want, or you can come with. I'm easy," he adds, back to teasing, and with the added flair of waggled brows. "We should do drinks or something, after I get off, since neither of us has plans."

But that's about the extent of that for now - he's got another customer to see to, and so it's over to that section, where he (again) shoos off a well meaning blue who doesn't know quite enough about what she's talking about. Or rather, she probably does for Nathan's needs? But it's someone Chuck knows, at least in passing, so he may as well help the guy.

".....did I really hear you say you're looking for an XP rig? You're not gonna find that here. Almost everything's Seven, though we might have a Vista kit somewhere."

[Emily Littleton] "Brilliant," she replies, in that lovely British-tinged accent that lilts upward for a moment, pleased with his suggestion. "I'll leave this at the desk, then come with," she adds, as she has little better to do and it might be a good time to practice being a nicer person.

Emily dumped the collection of esoterica on the Geek Squad desk with relative certainty as to its safety. That left her free to tuck her thumbs into the back pockets of her jeans as she joined Nathan and Chuck in laptop land. "Hey there," she said, with a pleasant smile for Nathan, and then she started tapping at the laptop not far away (incidentally with the nicest specs), just happening to see if it might be on an unsecured net connection... or easily swapped over to one.

Because, you know, geeks get bored too. And, well, maybe she wanted to check the medal count for the Olympics. It might cause Chuck some distress, though. But he could handle it.

"Seven isn't all that bad, you know. Its scalability is far better than XP. You may be able to find an OEM disk somewhere, if you can't buy it off the shelf. But I don't know if it'll have drivers for all the newest hardware."

[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan glanced over to Emily for a moment and smiled, he recognized the girl and remembered her, even if he didn't have any recollection of ever hearing her name. He was obviously looking better compared to when they had met, he still looked tired and weatherworn, but being sober had done marvels for his complexion nonetheless. "Hey, good to see you're doing well. Next time we have Chinese, I'll pay."

Next his eyes darted to Chuck, a weird mixture of feelings hitting him, he felt like apologizing for some reason but didn't know why, so he just pushed it to the back of his mind. Whatever it was, if he didn't remember, it probably wasn't serious. Maybe it was related to that Greek deli thing? "Not exactly looking for XP from the box, I know enough to know they don't make those anymore. Sadly, I don't trust Vista, or 7 for that matter, so I prefer XP to the alternatives. The Greek place you told us about was great, by the way, if you still remember that."