I am cold against your skin, you are perfectly reflected [forward-dated to Thurs]

[allmydiredreams]

[OOC: Pretend this totally happens Thursday; I just won't be around during the day tomorrow so I figured I'd throw it up here now. :)]

The Crown Fountain is one of the few things about the weird amalgamation that is Grant and Millenium Park that hasn't been destroyed, by some miracle. It's still there, the extra-large faces still spitting out

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[diatomic_life]

"...is that it?" Kat asks, running towards Kaden. Never mind that she doesn't know this man, but there is a rogue pigeon running around Chicago that could single-handedly wipe out most of the supernatural life there. "Oh, no, that's just a sparrow."

She waves dismissively to him. "Feel free to go along your day. No atrocious inadvertent apocalypses, apparently. Astronomically aprobable."

Someday, she will find that pigeon. Someday. Don't mind the crazy lady in a labcoat, Kaden. Not that you aren't used to crazy people in labcoats.

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden jumps, slightly, when someone runs up; it quickly melds into the motion of him looking up and giving the be-lab-coated woman in front of him a bit of a bemused grin. "Not just a sparrow," he quips, "but the boldest and yet slowest of sparrows." The slow might not be entirely true; it certainly made a valiant effort to get away, but he's faster than sparrows when he puts his mind to it. Could have been even faster with his wings out -- he shifts his shoulders thinking about it -- but hell no. Not here, not now.

And of course, with that kind of warning, he can't help but be at least a little curious. Not that the lab coat had piqued his curiosity to begin with; not often one sees people in lab coats wandering around outside the library. "Should I be watching what city fowl I catch?" he asks.

[diatomic_life]

Oh! Oh! OH!

This person wants to talk to her. Kat does an about-face, striding back towards Kaden. "There's just a pigeon on the loose that somehow managed to get its beak on a toxin that could possibly destroy half of the city, if it managed to get out," she says, as if this really isn't a big deal. She leans forward, to the point that she would be invading Kaden's personal space if he had any, squinting at the sparrow. "But how do you know that it's the boldest yet slowest of sparrows? Can you talk to them? No, don't answer that. I don't really care if you can talk to sparrows because that would be the most boring thing ever. I can't imagine they have much to say that's interesting. You however, might. I bet you have lots of interesting things to talk about."

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden meets her invasion of his nonexistant personal space with an eyeblink and a stare. Huh. Either this is someone else who doesn't give a fuck about social convention the way he does, or someone completely untrained in it altogether.

"No, I can't talk to them," he says, looking back down at the sparrow, running one finger down its back. "At least, not directly. But this one, this one came right up to me, and didn't fly away fast enough when I grabbed for it. So in away, it did tell me that. And right now, it's telling me it's scared, by its breathing and the beating of its heart." He holds the sparrow up as if it will catch the light, somehow; the sparrow gives Kat a rather frightened look and cheerps at her. Kaden smirks past the sparrow at her, and adds, "As does its struggling."

Then the sparrow is moved back down, though Kaden just keeps looking at Kat. Tilts his head. At this point, Kat's getting treated to the public version of the Fuchizaki Stare©; the only thing missing is the laboratory and the palpable

[diatomic_life]

Kat doesn't even notice Kaden's mild stare when she invades his space. There are more important things to going on. While she's not the most socially aware person in the world (hah), she was taught manners at one point in her life. They just never stuck. Which is half the reason she almost got kicked out of high school. After biting her assistant principal, they said one more strike and she was gone. Oops. She learned to be a very good girl after that. It didn't stick very long.

She blinks slowly at the sparrow at it cheerps at her.

When she does become the subject of the Fuchizaki Stare© she actually notices

[doyoulikecake]

The stare doesn't change whatsoever, though the headtilt untilts, when Kat goes on the ramble about the pigeon. It's mildly alarming -- though not entirely surprising, this being Chicago and all -- that there's something like that out there. He makes a mental note to never attempt to catch pigeons, not knowing how this is transmittable. His own mortality is something he'd like to not have to face for another good hundred years or so. Maybe longer than that.

"Can't say that I do," he says. He, unlike Kat, is pretty good at shutting up about his work; he has to do it often enough. Hey, at least he doesn't think she's crazy. Or, well, too crazy. "So is there a particular reason your boredom jumps instantly to 'painful death', or is your lab filled with things like that?" he asks. Yeah, he caught on to her prying -- it's not like she was being subtle about it -- but he's going to ignore that for now.

[diatomic_life]

"My lab? No, this didn't come from my lab," Kat says. "Well it did. Kind of. It's hard to explain. Part of it's mine. The other part is from a dead person who is pretty awesome. Well, she started the angelic DNA targetting stuff and I just built on it in her memory. So really, this is more of memoir." Kat nods furiously as she talks, flailing slightly, which only scares the poor bird more.

"And my boredom doesn't always just to painful death. I created a way to get affordable clean energy from algae once, although some shady company bought up all the rights to that before I could offer it to more legit sources. Was probably big coal. I have no idea. I just make stuff and people buy it. It's not like I have any control over any of that. But you've got to admit that curing cancer gets boring, yanno?"

[doyoulikecake]

The stare quickly goes from blank into bemusement, though inwardly Kaden's still very much in scientist mode. And while he's not sure that this woman would really notice if he kept staring like that, well, other people would. And there's enough other people going up and down these steps for him to keep up that facade. He's not that far gone.

"How sweet of you," he says flatly, turning his attention back to the bird for a few seconds and shifting it around in his hands so he has a better grip on it. "Though despite the memorial intentions, I think I'll be avoiding pigeons from now on."

The stare melts into a smile, albeit a weird one, like he's keeping a secret. "Wouldn't know personally," he says, "but I'd imagine it'd be very boring indeed. Anatomy was really more my forte." He spreads one of the bird's wings out, as if to demonstrate, feeling each of the bones under his fingers. Wondering which to snap, if any. Wondering what else this woman does.