Alder Heights Movie Night
#1
Paul was itching for a new movie to watch on the weekend. As he'd just so happened to be in the Alder Heights area - the food there, as he'd heard, was very tasty - he ended up at the local DVD store to browse their wares. It turned out that there were plenty of titles to look at.

Purposely passing up the horror section as he couldn't stomach gore, he approached the aisle of comedy movies and began to fish through them. "A Fish Called Wanda, When Harry Met Sally..." he mumbled the names of the movies quietly to himself as he searched the shelf for something he'd yet to have seen. He paused as he picked up a particular DVD, one he'd yet to have watched in his life.

"This is Spinal Tap, huh?"

Shrugging, he turned it around in his hands to read the back of it. It was then that he heard a clatter from across where he stood. Paul pulled his eyes away from the DVD and shot a glance in the direction where the noise had come from.
#2
As the armful of DVDs she'd been carrying clattered to the floor, Alice froze for just long enough that her life flashed before her eyes. Scattered about the floor was a carefully curated selection of nature documentaries, the complete first seasons of various vaguely romantic but utterly forgettable shows and, laying on top of the pile for the whole world to see was the case containing what she actually came in for. 'Puella Magi Madoka Magica' which, judging by the cover, was an anime about magical girls.

Once the noise had settled into awkward silence, Alice dropped down to a low crouch in her aisle in a rather vain attempt to hide. A moment later, her head poked back up, scanning around the nearly empty store and meeting the glance of Paul.

"Don't w-worry," she maintained her gaze, with one hand desperately, blindly, scrabbling to find and hide the anime she'd dropped, "sometimes you just can't settle on one, huh? What have you got there? Is it good?"
#3
The sight he was met with was at first, nothing special. There didn't appear to be any sign of activity on the other aisle aside from the noise he'd just heard.

At least, until the blonde's head popped up in an almost comical, cartoonish manner.

Paul gave her a confused but also slightly sympathetic look. She had the look and sound of somebody who hated humiliation and yet struggled to avoid it which he could relate to. Furthermore, she seemed to be putting the attention on him, or rather his choice of movie, to avoid the spotlight herself.

"Uh...no." Paul answered back, holding up the DVD case to show her. "I mean, I actually haven't ever watched this. It's...Spinal Tap."

At that point he decided to go on over to the aisle she was at to see if she needed assistance. "Uh...you sure you're okay?" Paul asked as he approached her. "If you want I can help you take 'em all to the register."
#4
No, no, don't come over, her brain screamed at Paul in the hope that he was capable of reading her thoughts. She couldn't very well stop the man approaching but, at least, she could hide her shameful choice of what she actually wanted to watch that evening. Quickly scooping up the offending DVD, Alice stuffed it into the pocket of her lab-coat; the top of the DVD guiltily peeked out of the top of the pocket while she grabbed one of the nature documentaries off the floor.

"Just, if you c-could hold this," she held out the copy of Planet Earth up towards Burke as he approached her, "and I can try and, um, tidy these all up. Who needs that many DVDs anyway? Like I'm ever g-going to find the time to watch..."

With her free hand, she picked up one of the DVDs scattered around her.

"Actually, a d-documentary about penguins sounds pretty cool."
#5
As he approached, Paul could have sworn he'd seen the blonde slipping something suspiciously DVD-like into one of her coat's pockets. He didn't want to make assumptions, and he certainly didn't want to accuse her of anything she might not have done, but her movement was so quick that it was indeed a bit questionable.

Paul was there to help regardless, so when the documentary DVD was offered for him to hold, he took it and waited. "Uh, yeah. Not a problem," he answered, but not without giving a quick glance down at what was indeed inside her pocket.

"What's..." he paused, biting down on his lip. "Muh-doka Magica?" Was that how to pronounce it?

He hoped she'd gather what he was talking about, and even more so he hoped she wasn't planning on taking it home as a freebie, especially on his watch. Becoming an accessory to a petty crime wasn't on his list of things to do for today, or ever.
#6
Two little parts inside of her died; the first casualty came from being caught, the second from the man's atrocious pronunciation. She had a plan all sketched out in her mind and, already, it was being torn to pieces. Still, Alice had faced down worse things, like vampires, deadlines and students, and so she closed her eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of her nose.

"It's pronoun- actually," she opened her eyes and hid behind a big, bright smile, "it's sort of a post-modern deconstruction of the entire maho shojo genre and it's v-very sophisticated and, and, if you tell anyone that I am renting this I will, um..."

Her mind raced for something intimidating to say. With no intimidating ideas forthcoming, her voice just trailed off into a quiet, slightly peeved sounding mumble.
#7
Clearly, his pronunciation was off and for whatever reason that had seemed to deeply offend this young lady. She almost looked distressed by it, in fact. Either that or she was having a sudden sinus attack or something similar.

Paul was about to ask her if she was okay but then she made a quick recovery and starting spouting what sounded to him like a load of fabricated jargon. She seemed as if she was attempting to convince herself that it was all she'd described it to be, too. If she was having a hard time with that then it wouldn't surprise him, because the DVD looked a lot like it was nothing more than a little kid's show.

He tried to hold back a chuckle at the feeble threat, but failed. "Hey, don't you worry. I'm not ratting you out to anyone, 'cause I don't think I'm a hundred percent sure I'd know what I'd be telling 'em in the first place." Maho shojo? He'd never heard of such a phrase in his life. Maybe it was simply been a fancy term for extra cutesy cartoons.

"There's nothing wrong with having a guilty pleasure," Paul went on. "I'm not so different. I'm big on cupcakes. Just uh...try to be responsible, okay? I mean, you are planning on buying the cartoon, am I right?" Emphasis was put on the word 'buying' for reasons he didn't expect he'd need to elaborate on.
#8
Alice was half-anticipating an absolute mess of a sin when it came to a guilty pleasure from the stranger, something that matched the shame she felt about her own, so it was next to impossible to hide the look of disappointment on her face when he uttered 'cupcakes'. Cupcakes! Who isn't big on cupcakes?

"Of course, it's- I'm gonna buy it, but," Alice reached into the pocket, pulling out the tiny sliver of plastic that connected her to a dwindling bank account and some crumpled bills, "it'd be better if you got it. You know, um, less to trace back to me? I'll pay, in, um, cash."

Rather than wait for an answer - an answer that'd probably be negative - she instead tried to press the dollars into one of Paul's hand, one last attempt at making him an accomplice.

"Unless y-you want your secret to get out? About the cupcakes?"

It sounded just as lame as she thought it would coming out of her mouth. Really, cupcakes?
#9
Now this had taken a very odd turn. As it turned out, this mousey little lady was planning on buying the kid's cartoon but she wanted to buy it off of him, as opposed to the more straightforward, sensible way.

Raising a brow, Paul fixed a stare full of loss and confusion on her. "Woah-ho, lemme get this straight. You want me to take this 'Majo Shohou' cartoon to the counter and pay for it just so you can buy it off of me right after? So it doesn't...trace back to you?" He shook his head a little. Dollars were now being shoved into his free hand.

If that didn't seem or look suspicious, he didn't know what did.

"This cartoon, it is for children, right?" Paul cautiously asked all while trying to nudge the cash back into the blonde's clutches. "I'm not gonna look like some creep or weirdo if I said I was taking it home for my two year old daughter to watch?" Hypothetical daughter, he wished he would have said. An imaginary kid was going to be the excuse he gave the cashier if worst came to worst.
#10
"A creep? No, of course not," Alice lied as she recoiled away from the money, strategically returning hands to pockets, "but maybe say, like, ten? Wait, no, thirteen. Probably best to leave it unspecified, then the cashier will f-fill in the blanks themselves."

She offered something approximating a reassuring smile.

"And if the cashier starts asking awkward questions about the symbology of ribbons in the characters hair, you just shout 'no spoilers' and run, okay?"
#11
So at least it was indeed a cartoon geared towards children or pre-teens as this strange woman had suggested. That sort of killed the daughter idea, though. Did he look old enough to realistically have a ten or thirteen year old kid? Possibly. Possibly not. Regardless, it was probably better to take a different route at this point.

The blonde went on about hair ribbons having significance which only further confused him about this entire scenario but he would humor her for now.

"Okay," Paul said, shrugging and giving his head a little shake. "I uh...really don't anticipate that coming up in the conversation, but stranger things have happened."

With that, he accepted his fate and took the cash and DVD to the checkout. The excuse he put out was that his girlfriend was forcing him to watch it, which had the cashier looking in the direction of his accomplice and smiling. Paul went along with it reluctantly, but hoped she wouldn't notice.

Soon enough, that painfully awkward transaction had ended and Paul was shuffling back sheepishly to his alleged 'girlfriend' with the newly bought DVD in hand. "Here, it is all yours," he told her, emphasizing on the word 'all' as he handed it over to suggest he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.
#12
"That wasn't so hard now," Alice was as eager to grab the offending DVD as Paul was to be rid of it, and within moments it was back into the safety of her pocket lab-coat, "was it? I'll forget the cupcakes thing if, um, y-you forget, you know, everything that happened here."

She slowly made her way towards the exit, walking backwards, keeping her eyes firmly locked on Paul. While her goal was to make it look vaguely intimidating, the way she continually bumped into things on her way out rendered it anything but. Once she got to the door, with her hand reaching behind her back to fumble around the handle, she gave one last look at Paul.

"I was never here!"

And with that, she turned about and fled into the night.
#13
Regardless of how slightly miffed he was that he'd become this odd woman's hopefully one-time errand boy, Paul let go of the DVD with pleasure. Thank God that was over with! Even more so because he hadn't been given the third degree by the cashier for bringing that weird DVD to the counter.

He could only give a wordless, sheepish shrug in response to his geeky accomplice's deal, though. There was no way he'd be forgetting this encounter. Not for a long while, anyway. Good thing he didn't mind his cupcake secret getting out, because it truly wasn't one at all.

The blonde backed away in an almost cartoonish fashion and it was hard to take his eyes off of her for that reason. A laugh was barely suppressed as she struggled to get a grip on the door's handle. Not long after that she was gone, leaving Paul and the cashier as the only two people in the building.

"Uh...okay," the curly haired man mumbled to himself. Rolling his eyes, he returned to the cashier to awkwardly purchase the Spinal Tap DVD he'd forgotten he had been holding onto in the first place.

It looked like he'd be watching the movie on his own. Thankfully.
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