What was I thinking? [Felicity]

[symkarian_princess]

After returning from the solo mission that had gone upside down thanks to HYDRA, Nika had gone to a medical professional to check how bad her wounds were stitched. She had all the confidence in Felicity while in the plane, but she wanted a professional opinion about possible scarring. She was sure some of the amazed invectives while examining her wounds would be useful later.

Since then she had kept herself busy until the day rolled around for getting coffee with Felicity. The Symkarian wasn't sure how this would go or if she should be even doing it. She could almost hear her mother's lecture moving along to the cadence of the elder Sable's pacing. Nika was sure there was no one else on the planet as good at frustrating her mother like herself.

Opting not to go to coffee in a tactical corset, Nika rummaged through her closet to find something suitable. It took the third outfit choice for her to realize she was distracted. She tried to focus on one color with some accents. And no animal prints. Why did she have tiger-striped pants?

She smoothed down her tight pencil skirt outside of the coffee shop. Then she adjusted her fitted jacket. It was possibly a tad too dressy for a casual coffee... date, but it made Nika feel better. Particularly as the jacket was tailored to hide the weapons she had hidden about her torso. She took a breath and pushed the door open.

Comments

[pussyfootaround]

Felicity hadn't been sure how to dress it up for the occasion. Her usual attire either consisted of skinny jeans, motorcycle boots, a t-shirt, and her lab coat, or her Black Cat costume.

One was too casual for this, and the other was a little too sexy.

So, she'd opened her closet and thrown some disparate elements together and hoped the look worked.

She'd tried to keep it girly and cute, but not too girly, and not too cute.

Felicity was inside the coffee shop, on her iPad, fiddling with the schematics of a new piece of weaponry she was working on - a utility belt that could use a modified version Pym Particles to carry absolutely anything and everything for every occasion. The belt itself would know when to let an item grow to normal size, or when to shrink it again for storage.

[symkarian_princess]

Nika spotted Felicity once she stepped in and her eyes adjusted to the difference in lighting from outdoors. She pondered going and getting coffee now for a moment before heading toward the blonde with the iPad.

The choice of place had been Felicity's, so Nika reasoned Felicity could tell her what was good and what wasn't. Setting it up under quasi-mission parameters made the Symkarian ignore the nerves gnawing on her stomach.

"Hey there, stranger." Light joke. Nika could do light jokes, right?

[pussyfootaround]

"Fancy meeting you here," Felicity grinned. She snapped the cover on her iPad shut and tucked it under her arm - the thing was too big for her crossbody bag, but everything else she owned was too ridiculously utilitarian to bring on a date. "For a moment, I was wondering if you were going to use HYDRA as an excuse not to show up though," she added before swooping in for a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. "The cappuccino and cafe cortado here are both fantastic. As are their olive oil cake, rose and almond cookie, and their onion marmalade, swiss cheese, and potato focaccia sandwich." Plus, the roasted vegetable and cheddar frittata was one of those post-coital breakfast foods that Felicity just loved.

[symkarian_princess]

"I can only use the HYDRA excuse once a month, and there's a pizza parlor that already handled that." The hug portion caught Nika a little by surprise. She wasn't quite ready for it. The kiss on the cheek was much less of a shock. Being European, her standard non-business greeting went into play. She kissed Felicity on both cheeks.

"I think I'll start with a cafe cortado and see where it goes from there." She was fighting off nerves, which seemed odd to her. She did see Felicity just about every day. And post-coital thoughts were not even a blip on Nika's radar.

[pussyfootaround]

Oh, hey, two kisses. Had Felicity not known better, she would have assumed that Nika was trying to one-up her on the whole affection thing.

But then, Felicity did know better.

A lot better.

"Hey." She placed a gentle hand on Nika's shoulder. "I'm not going to pounce you. Calm down. You're acting like you're at your first job interview or something."

[symkarian_princess]

Nika took a breath and sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm not very good at..." She spread her hands and shrugged helplessly. It seemed easier to do than admitting she had problems relating to people outside of business. She had built up that defense for a reason. "...this."

She rubbed her neck. "I haven't exactly been on a non-diplomatically necessary date in... ever."

[pussyfootaround]

"To be fair, the only one who's actually good at this is Natasha Roma-whatever-the-hell-her-last-name-is, and that's because she's super-trained to be good at stuff like this," Felicity said. "The rest of us? We're all going into it blind," she added. "Besides. If you want diplomacy to go out the window, you can just take me right here, right now, against my will or not."

[symkarian_princess]

"Романова," Nika said absently in the proper Russian. Her mother and the Black Widow had faced each other a time or two.

She blinked and laughed. "I'm not very keen on an audience if that happens."

[pussyfootaround]

"Pumba?" Felicity blinked. "I don't - what?" No, she really didn't know where that had come from.

[symkarian_princess]

Nika raised an eyebrow. She pronounced it a little more clearly. "Romanova. She's female so her surname ends with an a. Mother does business with Russians. It helps to learn the language."

She smirked slightly. "I'm good with tongues."

[pussyfootaround]

"I'm good with...cats..." Felicity grinned. "So we all have our secret little talents."

She indicated the cashier, who had freed up. "Maybe if we get our mouths busy with food, the sexual tension will ease up."

[symkarian_princess]

"I'm never tense about sex," Nika commented before she walked toward the cashier with a little sway in her hips. Just to show Felicity she wasn't the only one could tease. Nika just tended not to because the direct line usually worked for her.

She placed an order for a cafe cortado and, after a pause, some rose and almond cookies.

[pussyfootaround]

For her part, Felicity ordered a cappuccino and an olive oil cake.

"Really? Because I can feel something thrumming between us, and it's not an airquake."

...were there airquakes? Felicity didn't know. But she wanted to go with it.

[symkarian_princess]

She laughed. "With all the innuendo you throw around, wouldn't it be inevitable for me to go there? I do take hints, I just use the information at the time of my choosing."

[pussyfootaround]

"Well, sometimes people just ignore, ignore, ignore. I wasn't sure how straight-laced you were. After all, I'm my mother's daughter and you're yours." She brushed her hair off of her shoulders and signaled to the barista. Another round of coffee for the both of them. "As serious as I can be when I'm in the lab, outside of it, I just wanna have fun." Which was a big reason as to why Felicity went thieving. It was her release from all of the concentration in the lab. Well, that, and she got to steal ideas from other companies, improve upon them, and do some good with them.

Recently, she'd uncovered the schematics of something from Hammer Industries labelled Detroit Steel. There were some interesting ideas there that she was planning on incorporating into her Black Cat costume, once she could work out the kinks.

[symkarian_princess]

"Straight-laced makes Mother and I sound like we're Captain America and child. We're just very private about our fun since we run a very public company." Nika knew they were representing their home country no matter where they went. Other countries had loads more famous people to be examples. Symkaria had basically Nika's family to show the world. That was part of the burden. Why she had to be focused on making the American branch work again.

She popped the last of her first cookie into her mouth. Felicity had been right. These were very tasty.

[ngm_villains]

The barista bustled over, a stiff smile on her lips that never quite made it up to her eyes. She stood at the table, tray in hand, and watched the two women speak for a moment.

And then, bored by the direction the conversation was taking, she flipped the tray of coffee onto the two women and produced two very, very sharp knives from underneath her sleeves.

"Do. Not. Move," she said darkly. "Or do. It'll be easier for me to collect your blood that way."

[symkarian_princess]

There was a startled shriek at hot coffee ending up on her. As well as some flailing. She had been intent on Felicity and not her surroundings. She glowered up at the knife-wielding barista.

"Your mistake." She kicked the table at the woman as she moved to get some distance to get one of the non-guns she had hidden on her body out from under her jacket.

[pussyfootaround]

Felicity shrieked as well, mortified that there was coffee all over her iPad. Thank god she'd uploaded her schematics to her cloud database!

She flicked her wrist, unfurling the bracelets she wore on one of her arms into a thin, cable-like whip.

"Meow," she muttered lashing out with the whip.

[ngm_villains]

Kraven the Huntress glowered. This was not how she expected this to go, she thought to herself as she sidestepped the whip...and stepped directly into the table.

"Hrrrk!" she growled underneath her breath and threw one of the knives at Nika. She wanted the Sable-child first. She'd be more of a challenge, anyway.

[symkarian_princess]

Thank goodness for Hong Shan's old collapsible tactical baton. Nika had it out and in hand with a flick of the wrist. Another flick extended the rod to its full length. Just in time to block the knife coming at her.

The Symkarian tried to smack the bladed weapon away but not into people. Nika was best with a pistol in her hand, but she'd at least had enough hand-to-hand training to make Mother happy with her ability to fight.

[ngm_villains]

Anastasia Tatiana Kravinoff roared with anger - actually, honestly roared and took off after Nika.

Clearly, she was really living up to the tiger-patterned leggings she was wearing that day. She ripped off her barista apron and yanked two small guns out of her belt. Her father had always said that it was better to stab the prey than shoot it - it left fewer distinguishing marks that way - but Ana didn't care. She needed blood.

[symkarian_princess]

Nika's eyes widened at the guns. Well, what better way to ruin the date but with mass casualties? Except she wouldn't let that happen. Oh, was she going to hear about this from Lisa...

She turned heel and ran. Mostly to get out of the coffee shop since her pursuer was intent on her. She chucked her baton toward the loony's face when she got by the door.

It would give her a few precious seconds to get out the door. Nika ripped open her jacket and grabbed at whatever weapon came to hand.

[pussyfootaround]

Felicity leapt to her feet, glad that her mother had taught her how to fight in heels, and lashed out with her whip again, snagging Nika's tossed-aside baton.

She'd want that for later.

Then she moved to give chase to the psycho barista...only to be stopped by two very undead tigers that were growling at her, all zombie-like.

Gah!

"Uh. Good kitties?"

[ngm_villains]

Whatever weapon came to hand wouldn't matter. Ana would take Nika's hands first. By shooting them off.