Snippet #1511217

"Damn, where'd you get that beautiful car?" Charlie laughed. "Vinny likes me best. Wanna help me put some flame cannons on later?" Eliot may not be a technopath, but he was a damn good mechanic, and she trusted him enough to let him work on anything she did, which was probably an honor (dubious though it may be) that belonged to him alone. Ushering everyone back into the vehicle, though, she took a few backroads to the restaurant she was pretty darn sure Vincent would have picked. He was all for high-class stuff, and it wasn't something that the rest of them got a lot of.

Sure enough, the limousine was pulling up even as she found a parking space, and Charlie waved over at the group getting out before the door was opened for the four of them. "Reservation for Erebos?" she asked, and the maitre d' checked the listings and nodded, though the look he shot her grease-stained jeans and plain blue shirt was disdainful at best. She scowled back at him, but as soon as Vincent and Gregory appeared, he seemed to believe that they were actually supposed to be here.

"Of course; this way please." He led the rest of the group to their private room, but Charlie spotted a bathroom on the way and ducked inside. She was seriously considering just staying in her dirty clothes to spite the snotty rich idiots, but... well, Gene had practically forced her to bu this dress and she had no other occasion to wear it, so might as well make her money worth something.

A few minutes later, she was pulling at the stupid thing to try and make it a decent length, only that make the top half indecent, and she was damn sure she was never letting Gene decide on anything that had to do with her wardrobe ever again... ever. It actually wasn't that bad: gunmetal gray and hitting midway down her thigh, but Charlie was the kind of girl who dressed like a grungy teen boy. Hell, people called her Charlie, for the love of all things holy! "Jesus, Gene, what were you thinking? I look like a girl!" She studiously ignored the fact that this was not as unnatural as she believed it to be, and the fact that she was still wearing steel-toed combat boots was something of a comfort.

Hurrying to the private room, she slid into the booth-table... thing with as little fanfare as possible, promptly sending her friend a glare and opening a menu to hide the fact that she presently had cleavage of all things. "So... Italian. What's everyone getting?" It was rare for the lot of them to get out as a group, so she actually found it pretty refreshing. Hopefully, everyone would relax a bit and they could almost forget that they were presently fighting a losing battle against the most powerful corporation in the world. Yeah, that sounded like a very good idea.