ArchivedLogs:Danger Cookies

Danger Cookies
Dramatis Personae Hanna, Kaori
In Absentia	2013-09-06 Kaori runs into Happy Cakes... sort of.
Location Happy Cakes
Happy Cakes Bakery is a cheery little spot of vintage charm amidst the hustle and bustle of the Manhattan neighborhood, a refurbished pair of row homes that hardly resemble their previous selves - the front walls are almost entirely gleaming glass, with the logo of the bakery painted onto the top, and rainbows of cupcakes dancing along the edges. Eclectically styled, it seems homey and welcoming - if the cross stitched sign by the door wasn't obvious enough - "All are Welcome!" it reads, with the "All" underlined in a sparkling bubble gum pink and yellow dotted line, with the logo of the bakery, a cheery smiling pink and white cupcake, beneath the lettering. Once inside, the walls of the combination bakery and coffee shop are covered in crisp clean white ceramic tile, with the occasional randomly placed tile with an color engraving of a tropical flower, or tile made of reclaimed China. Ambient music reminiscent of the Big Band era plays through the shop, loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to make conversation difficult. Tables and chairs in a variety of sizes, colors, and styles fill one side of the room, none of them quite matching each other, but all of them seeming to work together. The other side of the shop is a long series of gleaming glass and chrome bakery displays, filled with colorful sweets and treats of every description. To one end of the counter is a gleaming chrome espresso machine with far more tubes and bobbles than is really necessary, but producing excellent espresso beverages. At the other end is the old style cash register, a chrome and cherry wood relic from a bygone age that dings cheerily with each sale. The wall behind the counter is covered in photos of a tropical island, as well as a pair of shops that look like a smaller version of this one, several including a pair of dark haired women. The morning coffee crowds have subsided for the time being, giving the proprietress of Happy Cakes Bakery an opportunity to clean up and restock the shelves with fresh baked goods. Hanna is currently in the process of transferring a tray of cupcakes from a large rolling rack into the glass fronted display case, carefully lining up the rows of brilliantly pink confections to be presented to the customers. Another several shelves worth of colorful treats wait to be loaded into place by the rotund woman. Today, Hanna is dressed like something out of a vintage calendar, a pale blue day dress with crisp white cuffs and collar hugs her figure, paired with a delicate pair of white ballet flats (gasp, and after Labor Day, too). Her long mass of hair is pulled up into a neatly braided bun atop her head, held in place with a abstract silver hair pin. Jayna is currently working around the coffee stations, mopping up the partially dried spills from the morning rush and making sure the espresso machine is set for the next round of customers. She wears a long green sundress that stands out against her dark skin, the flowing mass of leafy dreadlocks having been re-wrapped in green, gold, and red cotton strips, accenting the slow change of leaf colors that have begun to creep into Jayna’s own leafy mane. Both women quietly go about their business, occasionally offering a slightly nervous glance back towards the doorway, as though expecting either the next rush of customers, or trouble, to come through the charming storefront. Kaori comes rolling into view outside the big glass windows. She’s standing square forward on her skateboard as if it were the moving walkway at an airport, and is fiddling with her phone. Or at least she was, until she passed the big display cases in the window. The bright colors catch the corner of her eye, and she turns her head to stare, mouth open slightly, at all of the beautiful cakes. Her hair is still bright, neon pink, but it is pulled up into a messy twist, shot through with two chopsticks making an ‘X’ in her hair. She’s wearing a bright blue jacket with the Hogwarts emblem on one lapel, and a Gryffindor pin on the other. Under that is a plain white button up shirt. She also has on a plaid skirt which reaches to her knees, followed up with heavy-looking black Doc Marten boots. PANG This is the noise of sideways-staring-Kaori meeting the lamppost on the corner. The normally graceful, Olympic athlete just stands there for a second, stunned, still standing on her board, before she drops to sit down suddenly. She blinks, and looks around, while New Yorker passersby snicker and go on about their days. There’s a good-sized bump coming up on her forehead, too. The sound of impact near the bakery causes both Hanna and Jayna to look towards the front of the shop at the same time, just as Kaori sinks into a seated position. The pair glance at each other, and Hanna heads out to check on the young woman, wiping her hands on her apron as she reaches the door. Jayna is already preparing a baggy of ice, wrapping it in a damp towel once it is filled, a bemused look on her face as she watches Hanna make her way outside. The bell over the door chimes once as Hanna steps outside, moving towards Kaori with a decidedly concerned look on her rounded features. “Sweetie, are you ok? That looked like a rather nasty bump on the head there,” Hanna says quietly, sinking to a crouch beside the skater girl, “Come on inside, I’ll get you some ice, and you can recover from the shock away from prying eyes and snickering ass-holes.” The baker woman smirks slightly as she stands again, offering a calloused hand towards Kaori to help her up if necessary. Kaori blinks up at the woman and offers a half-hopeful, half-embarrassed smile. {Oh are you-} she starts in Japanese, and then shakes her head. “Uh, sorry, yeah. Thank you. Is that your store?” Kaori takes the offered hand, stands, and retrieves her board, carrying it by the trucks so it dangles at her side, almost to the ground. The fingers of her other hand gently probe the bump on her head, and she winces when she finds it. “Yeah, ice would be nice…” Kaori follows Hanna into the store and slumps into a chair, and slips her board underneath it. She blinks up at Jayna. “Oh hello.” He blinks again, refocusing. “I like your hair…” Hanna looks a little surprised at the Japanese, but then relaxes again when the girl switches back to English, answering with a smile, her eyes brightening slightly to a golden brown color, although that could just be the light outside, “Oh, yes. I’m Hanna, owner and head baker of Happy Cakes.” She holds the door open for Kaori, returning to behind the counter once the girl is situated at one of the many chairs in the shop. “Would you like anything? It looked like you were a bit distracted by the shop window before you met the lightpost - it’s the least I can do,” Hanna offers with a grin, gesturing at the pastry cases and the contents there in. Jayna brings over the bag of ice, holding it out to Kaori with a slight smile, a greenish blush coloring her cheeks at the comment, “Oh, ah, thank you. Yours is pretty impressive, too.” With Jayna this close, it is quite possible to see the subtle bark like whirls in her skin, as well as just how life-like the leaves poking out of her dreads appear to be. Kaori seems to be recovering quickly enough. It’s not like she was going full tilt after all. Her pupils look back to normal, and she takes the ice pack with a grateful smile. Pressing it gingerly against the bump, she says, “Thank you again, both of you. That was so nice.” She nods at Hanna, “Your shop is so /pretty/. And, yeah…” She glances in the direction of the display cases, looking shy and still a little embarrassed. “The cookies, with the huge chocolate chunks sticking out. I was... {hypnotized}.” She taps her finger trying to think of the word in english. “Hypnotized! Your cookies ensorceled me.” The word ‘ensorceled’ is a /little/ garbled in her accent, but that word she knew off the top of her head. Hanna chuckles, and pulls one of the cookies out of the display using a sheet of wax paper, and setting it on a small brilliantly colored China plate. “I’d be lying if I said you were the first to have an unfortunate encounter with that light pole. It’s in sort of an unfortunate spot, right in front of an unusually colorful bakery,” she says with a smile, bringing the cookie over to Kaori, a little hint of a chuckle at the confused Japanese word thrown in there. “It’s a bit of a lull - I’d feel guilty seeing you roll into a light post, and then not doing anything. I’m not from around here - I’d much rather help out people, even if it is just a cookie and some ice,” Hanna says, rolling a shoulder in a shrug, “New York needs a little bit more nice, from what I’ve seen.” The comment about the shop gets a gentle smile as the baker looks around the store, “It is a good little shop. Very much inspired by the cafe my mother had back on the Island. This is as much her shop as it is mine.” Hanna muses quietly, her warm gaze drifting towards the photos behind the counter. Hanna’s warmth is infectious, it seems, when Kaori reflects that smile back at the older woman. She looks down, breaks off a piece of the cookie and pops it into her mouth. Her eyes roll back briefly while she chews and she makes a very happy sounding noise. She speaks around the cookie she’s chewing, “O.M.G. Ms. Happy Cakes. This is amazing…” She sets the ice down on the table and swallows the bite. “I’m going to be coming here a /lot/. Just fair warning.” She grins, takes another bite, and then seems to remember something. “Oh, which island do you mean?” The laughing response to the comment is loud, boisterous, and as warm as everything else in the colorful bakery, “Please. Call me Hanna. Ms. Happy Cakes sounds almost as odd as my actual last name, but I’m glad you like the cookie. It’s my mother’s recipe. And I have absolutely no objections to repeat visits. Just avoid running into the light post on your way in.” She smiles, leaning against the glass display case, resting her hands on her hips as she does, “Oh, heh. I always forget that ‘the island’ means different things in different regions. I grew up in Hawaii, in a town just outside of the Pearl Harbor base.” She offers a cheery smile, continuing to explain, “My mother had a cafe there, and then I opened a bakery right next door when I got out of pastry school.” “Oh, how fun!” Kaori is nothing if not effusive. She chomps another bite of cookie and seems fully recovered for the most part. “I used to spend school breaks on the big island to surf, and practice English. And it’s been a regular stopover before the X-Games in LA more recently. But now I live here and it seems so far away - oh, I’m sorry!” Kaori swallows and stands up to bow slightly from the waist.. “You must miss it so much…” “Ah, surfing. I am horrible at it. Tried it, as it was pretty much required in the town I’m from, but, heh, there’s a reason I’m a baker, not a surfer,” Hanna responds with a chuckle and a wry grin. “There isn’t really much back on Hawaii for me. I brought what mattered with me when I moved,” she says with a sad smile, glancing around the bakery again, “My mom died a few years ago, and I packed up shop and traveled for a bit - wanted to see where some cheery cupcakes and cookies could do the most good.” There’s a smile, although a tinge of sadness to it, and then a change of subject, “You’re involved in the X-Games? Athlete?” The hyper girl actually lets the sad moment have its time, chewing quietly and offering a surprisingly gentle smile. She nods, and accepts the subject change, speaking softly, "Oh, oh yeah, I've been competing for a while now." She grins down at her board and back up at Hanna. "For /skating/ if you can believe it. But normally I'm not being stared at by hypno-cookies." She grins and reaches up to remove the chopsticks, and shake her hair out. She nods at Jayna and asks, "Hey, I think I'll go green next week, because apparently people with green hair are SUPER nice. If you don't mind, I mean." She twirls a piece of her bright pink hair around her finger to emphasize what she means. “Oh! That is wonderful! I’ll make certain to keep the cookies away from where you compete - just to be safe,” Hanna chuckles, looking curiously skateboard, “I imagine that stray entrancing cookies don’t often make their near the courses and training areas. Otherwise it would just be a mess.” She looks curious for a moment, looking at Kaori with bright golden-brown eyes, “Is that what brings you to New York? Competition? Or resident of this, ah, fine city?” There might be a hint of sarcasm in her voice when she speaks of New York. Just a little. Jayna perks up curiously when she is addressed, chuckling quietly, “Ah, I think you could pull the look off. I’m likely going to be going for some more autumnal colors over the next few weeks. Not that I have too much of a choice in the matter.” When Kaori twirls her hair, Jayna selects one of the loosely wrapped locks on her own head and unwraps the end of it slightly, grinning as she exposes the fine willow frond - the tips of the leaves beginning to show the change of the seasons in their coloration. “Natural color change. Pretty awesome until it summarily falls out in the winter,” she says with a light hearted tone, wrapping the frond back up in its cotton encasement and squishing it back into place. “Oh, well,” Kaori begins, answering Hanna. “I needed some space from my folks back in Tokyo, honestly. Time to break free, you know? Plus, New York is close to California /and/ Europe, so I have lots of options for summer or winter. So I live here now.” Kaori’s eyes go wide when Jayna reveals her hair. “Oh /wow/ that is so pretty… Well, I’ll probably go bright green, but still. I like it.” Kaori’s eyes go even wider as she thinks of something. “Oh wow, best idea ever! Do you have a business card? I should have my manager call you about sponsorship. I have a clause, where I can represent stuff I like, and you don’t have to buy the space on my jersey. And I don’t have any other bakeries, so it works!” She seems especially amused by the idea that she doesn’t have any competing bakeries in her sponsorship stable. “Understandable. Although, to be fair, I haven’t heard someone refer to New York as “close” to California /or/ Europe, but compared to Tokyo, I imagine it is a decently close location,” Hanna offers with a grin and a shrug. The request for the business card gets a surprised look, a bemused smile crinkling her features, “Oh, well, yes, I can give you a business card, but, ah, I cannot guarantee I am the variety of business your managers will want to be sponsoring you. We are a little bit on the polarizing side, I suppose it could be said.” There’s a slightly defeated sigh, “Happy Cakes is, ah, inclusive? I actively offer employment to visible mutants, and refuse to turn away customers because of a happenstance of genetics.” She looks to Jayna with a weary smile, and then back to Kaori, “If you want this sort of place sponsoring you, I’d be more than willing to consider it,” she holds out a business card, a cheerily smiling cupcake in bright pink and yellow with sprinkles. “I suppose, if you wear patches or stickers or anything, it would be our cupcake logo or something. Considered getting those made, actually,” she says with a giggle and a gesture at the repeated logo tastefully put in a few places. Jayna looks surprised at the comment about sponsorship, but refrains from saying anything about it, letting Hanna handle the business talk. She chuckles quietly at the hair commentary, “They were brighter green earlier in spring, but the colors change slightly over the course of the year. Start out neon, fade to golds, reds, and ambers, and then just,” she makes a gesture over her head, with a quiet wooshing sound, “Gone. Sometimes I miss getting to pick my hair color. I always liked having blue hair when I was in school.” “Oh shit,” Kaori says quietly, in possibly the cutest possible cuss a person could make. “My agent will be pissed. He says we have to lay low since I did the fundraiser for the church in Harlem.” Kaori pouts in her seat, but the angry bite of cookie does a lot to defray her pout. Soon, she’s looking optimistic. “Well, look, maybe when things start to get better for-” She stops herself, smiling shyly. “For /everyone/, maybe we can put you on our roster then? God, that sounds terrible, huh? I’m so sorry…” Hanna offers a resigned smile at Kaori’s response, chuckling quietly, “No worries. It is why I mentioned it up front - we’re a relatively new bakery, but we’ve earned a little bit of an infamous reputation.” She chuckles and offers a shrug, looking less tense once Kaori explains the reasoning, “Oh, really? Huh. Well, perhaps once the business in Harlem cools down, you’ll need to make another wave as it were. Keep me us in mind, for that time.” Hanna snickers slightly, and offers a cheery grin, “But, of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still come around here for cookies and other such things. Really - we like it when people come back regularly.” Kaori smiles and pops the last bit of cookie into her mouth before getting to her feet. She smiles and nods, “Sure thing, Hanna. This place is really nice. I’ll be in again soon. Here…” Kaori digs in a jacket pocket for a business card which proclaims her to be DJ Spinster. “You might want to look me up too, and make sure you want to sponsor me, if it comes up.” She grins. “Sometimes… I’m a troublemaker.” She gives the most innocent of shrugs and picks up her skateboard by the trucks. “But I’ll see you soon! For more of those, for sure!” Kaori heads for the door. “Thanks again!” Accepting the business card with a grin, Hanna chuckles, “Nothing wrong with being a troublemaker. Sometimes I’d even say I encourage it.” Jayna snorts at this, and offers a sidelong glance at her partner, shaking her head slowly. “Thanks for stopping in! Watch out for those light posts!” Hanna says with a chuckle as Kaori exits, picking up the abandoned ice pack and returning to the task of cleaning up the bakery in preparation for the next round of customers.