Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, Wednesday Afternoon

[not_every_mage]

Anders knew dinosaurs and dragons were not the same thing.

For one thing, they were from completely different worlds. And for another, dinosaurs were actually extinct, not just biding their time high in the mountains. And Anders had never seen whole real dragon bones ... but there was a whole dinosaur skeleton rising up toward the ceiling here in the science museum, each tooth in its massive jaw bigger than his hand.

He gaped at it as he groped for Kathy's hand. There were plenty of non-dinosaur things to see in the museum, but it was going to take him a while to tear himself away from this one.

[OOC: For she who is there!]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy didn't mind taking their time. She liked dinosaurs and, hell, Anders' expression was worth the price of admission all by itself. "You know, that's not even the biggest one," she said, grinning and she took his hand and squeezed. "The plant eaters got way bigger."

[not_every_mage]

"How'd they manage that?" Anders wondered, squeezing back as he glanced at her. "This already looks about as big as anything can be."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy frowned. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "I think cause their bones were lighter, like birds? But lots of things were bigger back there. There were, like giant sloths and stuff that are bigger than people would have been. Plants, too."

She grinned. "Bet the museum can tell us, though."

And this was why she was a giant nerd.

[not_every_mage]

"Probably," Anders agreed, grinning back. (He loved his nerdy girlfriend.) "I like the idea of giant sloths. They must have been ridiculous, just these things the size of bears lazing around drooling everywhere."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I bet they gave the best hugs," Kathy decided, opinion based solely on an unconscionable amount of time watching baby sloth bathtime videos on Youtube. "I bet you could ride on one, too. That would look super-imposing, a bunch of them with their giant claws coming down with people and spears on 'em. At least until you realized they were going, like, a few feet per minute."

[not_every_mage]

"Well, so you don't really ride on it," Anders decided. "You ride a horse, and then just pose on the sloth before your enemy gets there. All the imposing, none of the hassle."

A pause. "Except that you;d have to haul the sloths on a wagon or something. And they might fall asleep as you're about to charge into battle."

[spin_kick_snap]

"But how could any enemy stand up to me when I have whole wagonfulls of adorable giant sloths there to hug?" Kathy asked, tugging him further into the room with the dinosaurs.

[not_every_mage]

Anders followed along with her, moving slowly because he had to gawk at every single thing. "So your battle plan would be wining via cute," he joked. "In that case, you could just fill the wagon with kittens and skip the giant sloth claws."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ahh, but if the sloths fail to win with cute, then I have the giant sloth claws to fall back on," Kathy said, tapping the side of her nose. "I'm prepared for either eventuality."

[not_every_mage]

"And this is why you get to plan our fights from now on," Anders decided, coming to a stop before a pteranodon skeleton to admire the wingspan. "You think things through."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Maybe I'll hang out in the tactical van while you and Dante fight," Kathy mused. It was easier to joke about, here in Baltimore, than it would be, say, in Limbo City proper. "To warn you about shit coming up that you can't see and come up with brilliant strategies to win the day."

[not_every_mage]

"Could we have earpieces?" Anders asked, glancing toward her. "They always have earpieces for getting directions on in movies, and it looks handy."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Dan and the Leverage crew do," Kathy said. "I bet I could ask for some for Christmas if we were gonna get all fancy about it. It saves me from getting more diamonds I can't ask the about the provenance of or Parker gets sad."

[not_every_mage]

"Do they give you a lot of jewels of unknown provenance?" Anders wondered, half-teasing. "Should I be worried someone will steal them back someday?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Parker does," Kathy said laughing. "Dad usually goes with weapons and Hardison is cash and electronics."

Beat.

"Oh my god, I'm a mafia princess."

[not_every_mage]

“So what does that make me and Dante?” Anders wondered, eyebrows up. “Besides dead if we ever hurt you.”

[spin_kick_snap]

"Mafia consorts," Kathy decided. "My pretty boytoys-slash-enforcers if I ever decided I wanted to make a play for the organized crime rackets in Limbo City. Oh my god, that gives me such a good idea."

She paused, moving off to the side a bit so they didn't impede anybody behind them, then pulled out her phone and started furiously typing.

[not_every_mage]

Anders hung over her shoulder, squinting at the screen. ‘“Wait, what are you typing?” he asked, a laugh still in his voice.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I've been looking for a new idea for my short stories up on the Dite's website," Kathy explained. "I finished up the last one over the summer, but it's all been one-offs since then."

And nothing at all since September, but she was ignoring that.

"But the series are the things that get the readers interested enough to keep paying the membership fees. A series about a sexy mafia princess, a rough and tumble private eye and the earnest med student might just do the trick."

[not_every_mage]

"Wait, you'd base a series on us?" Anders asked, scrunching his nose in thought. "Do you think people would know it's us?"

He wanted to be supportive, but he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Who's gonna know?" Kathy asked, confused. Then her confusion cleared as she realized he'd probably never explored the site. "Oh! All this stuff isn't just, like, available where anyone can find it. There's a whole 'Members Only' section that includes erotic fiction from a whole bunch of contributors on the net. It's behind a paywall and uses internet aliases. I write and upload under a different account than I use as the official site owner."

Not that she got a lot of traffic from the island anyway, but it still made sense to keep the two separate. Besides, it was nice getting a little bit of click revenue separate from the funds generated by the rest of the site.

"And, like, these are gonna be us in, like, broad strokes, I guess, but not us," she added. "The med student won't also be a mage, the PI won't be a Nephilim obsessed with pizza, and the mafia princess will probably be Italian and lacking the vast majority of my neuroses." She gave him a concerned look. "Is - is that okay? If you're not comfortable, I can change it...?"

[not_every_mage]

Anders let out a relieved laugh.

"No, no, that's fine," he reassured her. "I was imagining it all right on the public site with your name attached. If only a few people can see it and they can't even tell that you wrote it, I don't care what you say about us."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ohh, oh noooo," Kathy said, blushing. "Even on the site proper for all the business end of things, I'm listed everywhere as K. H. Li."

[not_every_mage]

"Very proper," Anders said, eyes sparkling. "I love how you can run the shop, but just talking about it makes you blush."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Shhhh!" Kathy said, upgrading from a blush to hiding her face behind her hands. "I'm very mature and cool about everything, shhh!"