Disclaimer: I do not own the "Strike Witches" franchise. Likewise for one particular Barney Stinson.
A/N 1: The characters featured in this modern-day AU are all five years older than they are in canon.
A/N 2: This story was inspired by "Friday Night (Going Down In Flames)" by The Damned Things. It has absolutely nothing to do with the godawful Rebecca Black song.
Pairings ("Friday Night" main story): Waltrud/Yoshika (main pairing), Waltrud/Adolfine (implied, in the past), Eila/Sanya/Nipa (implied in the background), Shirley/Gertrud (implied in the background), Martina Crespi/Luciana Mazzei (implied in the background), Mio Sakamoto / Keisuke Hijikata (engaged, background pairing)
Waltrud Krupinski groaned as her mobile phone rang. Ignoring the call from her boss for the moment, the 23-year-old woman yawned as she took in the sight of what was meant to be an unfamiliar area.
It was not the first time that the Karlslander had woken up in this particular conquest's humble abode, despite her constant swearing to never hook up with any particular woman more than once. And yet, there was something appealing that Waltrud found about her previous night's bedmate; she couldn't decide whether it was that petite yet perfect figure, complete with a delightful derriere, or the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing vibe that she gave out.
The constant ringing eventually snapped Waltrud out from her thoughts. Deciding to humor her boss-slash-older-former-conquest-cum-good-friend, she reached out for her phone.
"Ja, it's Waltrud."
"Good morning to you, Waltrud," Adolfine Galland replied, "I trust you had a great night out scouring the streets for London's finest?"
"Well…" Waltrud began before realizing that she could not honestly give a simple yes-or-no answer to the oft-asked question for once. "The sex was great, as usual," she responded in what she thought was a neutral tone, "but I don't think you called just to ask me about my private business, given that you are calling from the office."
This earned a hearty laugh over the phone connection. "Why, Waltrud," Adolfine managed to get out, "I believe this is the first time I've ever heard you being tactful outside the office! You are right, though." Her voice taking on a more serious tone, the older woman continued. "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you on a Saturday morning, but as you know, we are on the verge of signing a deal with Clostermann Telecommunications, and their representative wants to finalize the details over lunch today before we sign it."
"Ah, but wasn't Barney Stinson supposed to meet the representative?"
"That was the original plan," Adolfine confirmed, "but when I called him earlier this morning to remind him about the lunch appointment, he said that he was seeing the doctor to treat what he claims to be a rather unpleasant case of warts. I'm sure you don't need to know why that's the case."
"I can see where this is going," Waltrud dryly quipped.
"Indeed," Adolfine sighed. "Although this deal is the result of the collaborative effort from everyone at Galland Incorporated, you're the only other person apart from Mr. Stinson and myself to have intimate knowledge of the tiniest details of the contract, and I can definitely trust you to not seduce their representative, one particular Mademoiselle Perrine Clostermann, because you once told me outright that you would never, and I quote, 'hop into the sack with a Gallian.'"
"You know me all too well. Very well, then, the lunch meeting is still going to be held at the restaurant at the NatWest tower, right?"
"I'm glad to see that unlike some people, at least all that sex hasn't rotted away your brain," the older woman muttered. "So, speaking of which, the sex was great, huh?"
"Adolfine!"
"Are you trying to hide something from me, Waltrud?" Adolfine chuckled. "Anything in particular that could ruin your image as a competent lesbian equivalent of Mr. Stinson?"
"NEIN!" Surprised by the loudness of her own voice, Waltrud glanced at the other side of the bed, hoping that the outburst had not woken up her bedmate. Sighing with relief that she was the only occupant underneath the bed sheets, she refocused her attention on the phone call, not noticing that her bedmate was standing by the doorway, wearing nothing but an apron and with a spatula in hand. "Nein… Ja… I don't really know, Adolfine… I think I might be in love."
CRACK!
"Adolfine?" Waltrud was concerned. "Are you still there?"
"I think my mind just shattered from that little revelation of yours, Waltrud," Adolfine replied, the shock evident in her voice. "It was bound to happen anyway, but I would have expected that to occur in your mid-thirties, and not while you're twenty-three."
"Please don't tell anyone about this, Adolfine," Waltrud begged, "my image will be ruined."
"I won't say a word, Waltrud," the older woman promised, "but even so, the fact that you are begging me to keep quiet suggests that unless something goes horribly wrong with this girl, your image as a womanizer is pretty much shelved for now."
"But…"
"Tell me, Waltrud, how did you manage to fall in love in the first place?"
"Well…"
The first night, four Fridays ago:
Waltrud sighed as she watched the heavy rainfall outside her modest rented Bayswater apartment. Due to her extensive contributions to the drafting of the newly proposed deal between Galland Incorporated and Clostermann Telecommunications, she had been given the afternoon off from work, only to have her plans to drink the night away in the city dashed by a torrential downpour that started the moment she got home. As the hours passed, it became clear to her that taking a bus along Bayswater Road towards the city on a rainy day was a horrible idea, and that her umbrella would not be able to last a trip to either the Bayswater or Queensway "tube" stations.
As she sighed upon sending out several text messages to her friends stating that she would not be able to make it, Waltrud vaguely recalled that a new pub, The Wolf And The Greyhound, had opened in the basement portion of her apartment building just a few months ago. Deciding that a beer is a beer, and knowing that her apartment was severely lacking in liquor, she decided to give the new drinking hole a try.
A few minutes later, which included a ten-second cautious dash through the rain, Waltrud found herself standing in the doorway of the homely-looking pub. A cursory look confirmed the pub's status as a new establishment, but a smile grew on the Karlslander's face as she noticed the few attractive women scattered throughout the place.
"Hello there, Miss, welcome to The Wolf And The Greyhound. How may I serve you?"
Waltrud jumped at the sound of the voice. Turning around towards the direction of the speaker, she noticed a young man of Fusoan descent smiling at her from behind the bar counter. "I'll have a Beck's, if you have any on tap," she squeaked out, her tough-girl image momentarily disrupted.
The Fusoan chuckled. "Of course, we do serve Beck's here," he responded without a hint of his Fusoan roots in his voice, "but we do serve a fairly wide variety of obscure Karlslander and Fusoan liquors in this fine establishment, as fitting of the owners' desire to combine the very best of Fuso's and Karlsland's food and culture."
Taking a look at the beer list on the counter, Waltrud gulped. "That's a lot of beers to choose from."
"Feel free to try as many beers as you like," the man chuckled. "Since you're the fiftieth new face to walk into the pub, beer is on the house for you."
"Ummm… Thank you very much, Mr…?"
"You may call me Keisuke."
"Waltrud," the Karlslander said as she reached out to shake the bartender's hand. "Thank you very much for the offer, Keisuke, but I cannot possibly impose myself on the pub like this, especially with how expensive these beers are."
"Ah, you don't have to worry about that," Keisuke responded. "The two owners are both very rich, and because they are treating this venture as an experiment, they are not too concerned about whether the place is financially successful or not, just as long as someone enjoys the food and beer. Besides, Mr. Sakamoto, one of the owners and my future father-in-law, was the one who implemented the conditions for the free beer."
A smile formed on Waltrud's face. "Very well, Keisuke, if it is not too much of a bother, could I have an Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier?"
Moments later, Waltrud was sitting at a booth, enjoying the smoky taste of the beer she had ordered. As she marveled at the wonders of her native homeland's beer-brewing capabilities (despite not regretting moving to Britannia to escape her racist family, our young heroine would always consider Karlslander beer to be the best), her eyes began to closely scope out the other customers in the pub. The ladies who seemed as though they were from Romagna looked pretty exotic, and the college-aged blondes from Suomus were looking very nubile.
"Do you like what you see?"
Waltrud, who was busy eyeing a busty redhead Liberion bending over an antique jukebox machine, jumped in surprise upon hearing a voice from the booth behind her. She turned around, hoping to give the speaker a piece of her mind, only to stare in surprise at a slightly younger innocent-looking Fusoan.
"Nice breasts, huh? I can go all night while playing those like a set of bongo drums," the Fusoan whispered in a conspiring tone, the glee present in her accent-less voice, "but it's a huge shame that she already has a girlfriend."
"And how would you know that?"
"Have you ever been thrown across a bar by a ticked-off woman from Karlsland? I'm Yoshika, by the way," the Fusoan said as she moved over to Waltrud's booth with a glass of Asahi in hand.
"Charmed. I'm Waltrud. I'm sure that must have hurt a lot."
Yoshika chuckled. "I'm just glad that I tend to heal pretty fast. As for the others," she continued as she gestured at the other female occupants of the pub, "the Suomus girls are in a three-way relationship with a slightly younger girl from Orussia, and the Romagnans already have boyfriends." The Fusoan paused as though she was trying to recall a piece of information from her memory. "Oh, wait, the platinum blonde and the tall shorthaired woman don't have boyfriends – they're sleeping with each other," she added upon seeing a smirk on Waltrud's face.
"Did you ask each and every one of them out outright? On an unrelated note, your accent isn't what I expected it to be."
"I'm a second-generation Fusoan-Britannian," Yoshika shrugged, "Mr. Sakamoto is a family friend. Anyway…" Holding up her two hands, she flexed her fingers as though she was about to grab two ball-shaped items. "I love the feel of lovely breasts in my hands, as long as they're silky smooth and have a certain degree of firmness, no matter how big or small they are. You know," the Fusoan purred, "if you weren't wearing a suit now, I would've been able to evaluate your, ah, assets just from sight."
"Hah! The ladies love the suit," Waltrud snorted, the smoked beer clearly making its way into her system, "the only reason why I'm not proving that at my usual drinking hole at Piccadilly Circus is because of the unholy torrential downpour." Frowning into her half-drained glass, the Karlslander gestured around the pub. "And as much as this place has a nice feel to it, the fact that the women here are all attached means that I would have been better off spending the evening eating a microwaveable dinner in front of the TV."
"Well, maybe this pub isn't exactly the right place for me either," Yoshika mused as she drained a third of the beer in her own glass. "The reason why the college-aged regulars hang out here in the first place is because of its obscure location. It's like a mini community where they don't have to worry about being hit on by complete strangers."
"Sounds reasonable. So, tell me, Yoshika, I take that you're also an university student?"
"I'm studying to get into the hospitality industry," Yoshika replied. "During the upcoming break, I intend to ask Mr. Sakamoto if I could get a part-time job here."
Waltrud's tough-girl image temporarily faltered as a genuinely warm smile grew on her face. "I'm sure you'll be able to land a job here, Yoshika. You come across as the type of person who would do her best to ensure everyone has a good time."
The duo sat in relative silence, as they each nursed a second round of drinks that Keisuke offered on the house. The number of beers grew as the evening melted into the night, with the two regaling each other with amusing personal experiences over a fine dinner that Waltrud insisted on paying for. By the time they had finished eating, the rain had stopped, and the Karlslander decided it was time to return to her apartment.
They had just climbed the stairs up to street level, and were standing in front of the apartment building when Yoshika tilted her head upwards to plant a soft kiss on Waltrud's lips. The older woman briefly savored the taste of her companion's lips before pulling back.
"Yoshika?"
"You didn't have to drink all that beer just to get me into bed," Yoshika whispered loud enough for Waltrud to hear, "because I was already drawn to you even before you noticed me. It's like you are a power supply, and just being around you feels so electrifying."
"What about your parents?"
"They've gone back to Fuso for a family matter, and they won't be back for a few months. They won't know a thing."
Silence reigned for all of a good five seconds.
"So," Waltrud broke the silence with a renewed lady-killer smile, "I've got breasts."
"And I love the feel of breasts in my hands," Yoshika finished the Karlslander's thoughts.
The lady-killer smile evolved into a lady-killer grin. "Oh, you're going to be feeling a whole lot more than that!"
The two ended up not getting enough sleep for the night.
"Scheiße, you just had to cut off at the good part," Adolfine groaned. "So, are you going to tell me the rest of your story?"
"Not now, I'm afraid. It's a bit of a long story," Waltrud stated as frankly as she could, "but I will say that even though both Yoshika and I intended for that encounter to be a one-night stand, it seemed that we were meant to be drawn together ever since that night."
"I see," Adolfine responded. "Well, I'd better leave you alone for now – after all, I wouldn't want you to be late for that lunch meeting."
"Of course, especially not after having told me to attend it on such short notice!"
"I expect some good news on Monday morning. Please don't let me down."
As her friend hung up, Waltrud contemplated making a quick dash back to her apartment a few blocks away when she became aware of a presence by the bedroom doorway.
"Yoshika? How long have you been standing there?"
The apron-clad Fusoan slowly stepped into the room. "Since you told your boss that you might be falling in love. Normally, I would be a little angry at you for telling someone else about all that we've been through," Yoshika continued as she edged towards the bed, "but I'm glad that you made that first encounter sound nearly as sweet as it was in real life."
"You're not…"
Yoshika chuckled. "Of course not! If anything, you deserve a little something as a reward," she said as her body movements reinforced the fact that she was wearing nothing underneath the lone apron, "but you'll have to wait until after that lunch meeting that you've been dragged into. For now, though…"
The kiss was short but intense, and left Waltrud with a lingering image of a promised night of wild, passionate sex that forced the Karlslander to use every single trick in the book to prevent the lewd thoughts from disrupting the lunch meeting.
In testament to Waltrud's competence at her job, Adolfine did receive the good news the following Monday morning.
More A/N:
Wow, where am I going to start? I have to say that this was inspired by uber-tastic, although future chapters will end up incorporating influences by Overmaster and Shadow Crystal Mage.
Anyway, the main pairing for this mini-series is Waltrud/Yoshika. If you don't know who the former is, she's the womaniser in the 502JFW. I'll confess that I had second thoughts about making Waltrud the main character for the "real" storyline for this fic, given that her real-life distaff counterpart was involved in the Rudel Scandel (as such, do not expect Hanna Rudel to make an appearance at all). What's done is done, though, and it was fun writing out her character based on what we know about her from the available canon material.
The main "Friday Night" story will be told in four parts, this being the first. Part 2 will be told in chapter 5, part 3 will be told in chapter 10, and the final part (which leads to the beginning of chapter 1) will be told in chapter 15. In between and after the main story, I am open to any requests for AU!Friday Night ficlets. As with uber-tastic, do not just give a random "character 1 x character 2 fluff" - a scenario would be nice to work with. Also, keep in mind that all ficlets will be modern day AUs, all characters are five years older than they are in canon, and both Mio and Minna will be in straight relationships (for the record, I do ship the two together).