Hammer and Anvil [IC]

[alderwitch]

Taylor shrugged and gave the matter some thought, "We all get scared, but you just learn to act through the fear. Kinda like any emergency worker. Fireman know better that anyone how dangerous fire can be but they still head into the building anyways."

She finished the dregs of her ice cream cone and tossed it into a small can. "Being a hero just means you held back your fear a little longer than everyone else. Honestly, for those of you that have the choice to walk away, I think you lot are braver than I'll ever be. You could chose to have a normal life but instead you're out having slugfests with nutcases in bee suits."

[Electra]

"But I don't want to have slugfests!" Stesha protested. "He keeps chasing me! I would be happy if I never had to fight a villain. And this one is really screwed up in the head. If he gets out of jail again, I think I'm going to have to move, or he'll keep chasing me down. And I really like my place, so that kind of sucks." She frowned at the remains of her ice cream. "But maybe if I learn enough self-defense, I can fight him without help... Guess we need a better class," she offered.

[alderwitch]

"He's a wackjob," Taylor agreed wholeheartedly as she tipped her chair back on its two back legs and thought, "We need a better teacher. One that's good enough to teach us what we need to know but isn't going to ask a lot of questions about why. A fellow super hero would be the best but I don't know that many. I can only think of two hand to hand types that I know."

One of those was right out for Stesha. Taylor didn't think that a training session with both Stesha and Jack would make anyone happy. "While the chance to pound Jack might prove cathartic, I'm not sure there would be a whole lot of training involved. Unfortunately, I don't know the other person at all well."

[Electra]

Stesha made a face. "Yeah... I really can't foresee any situation where I would ever willingly get within arms reach of Jack again. But maybe it doesn't need to be a superhero. I mean, there must be people who can be hired for self-defense lessons. It's not like we'd be going in costume or talking about fighting villains, we'd just learn how to subdue an attacker and hold him still long enough for a giant plant to eat him." She grinned. "Maybe leave that last part out. But there's got to be something between badass-death-machine training and what we saw in there today."

[alderwitch]

Taylor laughed and folded her arms accross her chest, "Well, any good teacher would startle us. I have bad habits when startled. I go intangible. It can be difficult to explain. We could hire someone very discreet, I suppose."

She pursed her lips, thinking, "There are actually two more people that I can think of that do hand to hand. One's Arrowhawk who I don't know very well. Then, there's Ace. While wrestling with Ace might be a great deal of fun, I've spent a good deal of time trying to get him to tone down the flirting."

[Electra]

Stesha laughed. "It's funny when he flirts," she pointed out. "It still makes me tongue tied sometimes, but it's not like he really means it, or like he's going to be offended if you turn him down. It's just the way he acts. He could probably teach lessons in that if he wanted to, and I figure maybe I'll pick up a few pointers if I just watch him for awhile. But wrestling..." She thought about that for a minute. "I don't know. I think flirting while you're throwing someone around or being thrown around would be a little weird. But I've never even met Arrowhawk. Isn't he a long-range fighter?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor coughed a little at the commentary about 'being thrown about' and gave Stesha a studiously blank face. She could think of a few scenarios would be rather fun, actually, but there was no reason to go there. Instead, Taylor blushed and touched on Stesha's earlier subject instead.

"Yes, well, he kind of means it. In that, if he's flirting, its a bit like an open offer but he's not offended. I think he just concludes that its a loss for whoever he's flirting with. Ace is odd." Taylor rolled her eyes even as her voice warmed with obvious fondness. "Arrowhawk's mostly a long range fighter but I think he knows hand to hand stuff as well. I don't know him, really, at all, though."

[Electra]

"I think Ace is definitely our best bet. If he can't do it himself, he'll know who to talk to," Stesha decided with confidence, polishing off the last of her ice cream and wiping her fingers. "He knows everything about everybody. But you both have to promise not to laugh when I make a total fool of myself trying to throw people around. I mean, I have three big brothers, but wrestling with them isn't exactly fighting for my life. I'll probably just end up laid out flat. But it's better than carrying pepper spray and just hoping."

[alderwitch]

"I promise. I have no room to laugh, anyways. When I was at the drive in, I got chased around the car by a were-fox. Stupid secret identities. Thank goodness I was wearing flat shoes." Taylor grimaced. She still hadn't gotten the mud stains out of that pair of jeans. Stupid, stupid thug. "I even got rescued by my date. It wasn't my worst moment since I started super-heroing, and before you ask, I'm never telling anyone my most embarrasing stories. It's hard enough getting people to take me seriously as is."

Taylor grinned and let her chair drop with a thump, "I'm sure he'll be more than happy to teach us at least a bit and direct us in the right direction."

[Electra]

"Oh, come on, please?" Stesha pressed with a grin. "My career so far has been nothing but embarrassing stories, it would be good for my morale to hear some of yours. I spend my heroic days being chased around by a loser in a robotic bee suit and being rescued by my boyfriend. I promise I'll still respect you afterwards, honest!" She leaned forward confidentially, hoping to invite a story.

[alderwitch]

"I would think that it would just be depressing to hear that its the same song, different verse," Taylor said dryly but after one mostly joking sigh, gave in.

"Lets see, we went to the drive in for a double feature, which was likely the first mistake. During intermission, while my date headed off for the restrooms, I was alone in the car. Of course, this thug showed up to jimmy the trunk and of course after seeing me, he comes after me."

She did try to keep Jack's name out of the story. No reason to ruin Stesha's mood, "So after a brief wrestling match for the door, I couldn't exactly blast him in the middle of the drive in. So, I scrambled out the driver's side - barked my knees doing so, too - and let him chase me into the woods. To add insult to injury, my date punched him in the back of the head and he fell down. Game over."

[Electra]

Stesha giggled, covering her mouth with her hand to hide it. "I can't believe someone would jump you with all those people around! It's too bad the guy got punched out, I'm sure you had something really exciting planned for him once you were out of sight. But he learned his lesson anyway. I guess that's exactly the sort of situation self-defense classes are good for." She paused a moment. "How did you know he was a werefox? Did he have ears and a tail and stuff?"

[alderwitch]

"He started with the 'Raaah! Gonna eat you, girly!' and began getting all fuzy when we hit the woods. It lost the scare factor when Jack knocked him down, however." Taylor said with a laugh. "Sometimes it seems like I get all the monsters"

[Electra]

"Maybe they just like you," Stesha suggested with a grin. "Maybe you don't look like enough of a badass to scare them away when you're not in costume. You should go out with Ace and get yourself some spike-heeled boots, a leather jacket, and maybe a whip. Or a mohawk. Pierce your ears five times, and wear sunglasses even at night. That's the way to look badass, I've seen it in movies." She chortled. "But you would also probably want to learn CPR first, for when your mother sees you for the first time."

[alderwitch]

Taylor snickered and tossed a napkin at Stesha, "Of course I don't look like a bad ass in my civvies. I'm almost five foot one in my socks. Even if I was some sort of chinese american ninja, I don't look it. Dimples do not strike fear in the hearts of criminals."

Taylor shook her head firmly, "And I am definately not shopping with Ace for leather and whips. The underwear shopping trip was bad enough"

[Electra]

"You let him buy you underwear? And you don't like that he flirts with you?" Stesha teased. "Are you sure you aren't giving the poor man a few mixed signals?" She rummaged in her knapsack for a compact, checking to make sure she didn't have any ice cream still on her face. "You look really intimidating when you're dressed up, and it doesn't really make you any taller. Or not that much taller, anyway. It's all about attitude. Though I still think that a couple of piercings wouldn't hurt." She gave Taylor a broad grin.

[alderwitch]

"It's not how it sounds. He just showed up and said I was a crime against fashion and the next thing I know, we're in Paris and he's dragged me to some shop that sold things even I couldn't pronounce," Taylor protested with a blush, "And I didn't let him pay for it either."

Thank goodness.

She cleared her throat and changed the subject, her tone amused, "The cloak does give me some bulk and I regenerate. Everything. If I pierced my skin, I'd have to do it again everytime I wanted to change earings."

[Electra]

"Huh, that is a problem," Stesha allowed, resting her chin on her fist and thinking about that. "I never really thought about it before. I got my ears pierced ages ago, so maybe that's why they don't heal when I'm out in the sun. In that case, I suppose the only solution is to actually become a badass, so that when people underestimate you, you can give them a valuable lesson in not judging a book by its cover. And when you finally ditch that job, maybe you can give Drew a nice going-away present."

[alderwitch]

Taylor made a face in refrence to her job. Heaven knew she needed a new one. "I should see if I can start working towards freelancing as a translator or interpretor. I know half a dozen languages. Sadly most companies want three to five years of experience and at least a college degree.."

[Electra]

"You could always try freelancing on Craigslist, or even volunteer someplace," Stesha suggested. "I know places that deal with immigrants are always looking for multilingual people. You could really do a lot of good one of those places, though you wouldn't make much, if anything. It's a lot of good experience, though." She shrugged. "Or just send in your resume in eight different languages. Maybe that will impress them!" She nudged her chair back from the table. "Everybody's got to start getting experience somewhere. Where did you learn that many languages, anyway?"

[alderwitch]

"The majority of the languages I know don't come through the immagration offices too often, though. I was going to go into academia. Translate the next dead sea scrolls." Her tone dissmissed the old dream even as she admitted to it.

"I grew up in a bilingual household. My family mingles Cantonese and English interchangibally. I picked up Mandarin in high school when we were planning a trip to China to see the extended family. Found out I have knack and went into linguistics in college where I studied Arabic. Greek, Latin and Aramaic came from the people who trained me to be Phantom."

[Electra]

"You really must have a knack for it," Stesha agreed. "It probably wouldn't take you very long at all to learn Spanish or any of the other languages immigrant centers need. And you could get a job cribbing homework for lazy high school students with too much money," she suggested mischeivously. "But even if you don't want to do that, surely someone will be willing to take you on to do translations."

She thought about that for a minute, then brightened. "Hey, I have an idea! I know the guy who runs this bookstore full of rare books and antiquities down in Lantern Hill. Maybe you could go and talk to him, and he would know some private collectors who could use someone to do translations of old documents. That might even be more interesting than doing public archive stuff. Who knows what sorts of things old collectors have laying around?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor gave an equitable shrug and a nod of agreement. "Sure, why not. Especially if I can contact them in relative anonimity. Using magic, there really isn't anything I can't translate. Of course, people ask questions when I can do everything from Farsi to ancient Sumarian. I've even toyed with the idea of using Ace's political connections to get in as an interpreter."

[Electra]

"Sure, here." Stesha dug into her knapsack, pulling out her wallet and rifling through her cards before pulling one out. "Here it is. His name is Damien Silver, he runs Silver's Rare Books and Antiquities. He's... not quite normal, but I don't know exactly if he's like us. He's nice, though. You can tell him I said you should get in touch with him." She grinned. "I don't know if that'll help, but we did seem to bond a little over his rhododendrons."

[alderwitch]

"Thanks," Taylor took it and it vanished between her fingertips like some sort of stage magician trick. Of course, with Taylor it was always real magic. "Well, all in all, I'd say we've had a quite successful evening. Punched my boss in the face, went over your love life a bit and my need for a new job. I think this is as close to a normal evening as I've had since become Phantom. And look"

She waved her hands with a pleased expression, "No imps!"