[semi-locked] It's in your eyes, a colour fade out//Looks like a new transition

[trappedbyhate]

[[OOC: Locked to Phoebe Donovan, forward-dated to Monday]]
Mio and Phoebe have been sent on a mission for Torchwood to check out the ruins of the Neverending Hallway in what was formerly the Conrad's basement. They've been down there for about an hour or so, taking readings with various sensors and seeing what little in the way of personal

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[yourwonderings]

Here, Mio. Have Jo tending bar for the evening.

She's serving drinks and otherwise being a good, if not always sympathetic, shoulder to bitch on. The fact Mio is having a non-alcoholic drink at the bar piques Jo's interest. Particularly since the girl looks like she could really use some tequila.

Living in Chicago is more than enough reason, but it looks like there's a story here.

"Hey, Mio. Rough night?" Jo asks with an understanding sort of smile that comes off more as a grimace.

[trappedbyhate]

Mio would love some tequila. Unfortunately, Mio cannot drink any of the tequila, because the universe is unfair.

"Jo, right? Glad to see you've found a job," Mio says by way of greeting. "Rough day, actually," she says. "Fucking Rift."

[yourwonderings]

"Thanks, took a while but finally settled down somewhere," Jo says with a genuine smile, which turns into a commiserating grimace. She places the dish rag over her shoulder and flattens her palms on the wooden surface of the bar's counter.

"Fucking Rifts," she agrees with a small snort. "If you feel like venting, by all means."

[trappedbyhate]

"So I was on a mission with Phoebe for Torchwood today," Mio begins. "Jack sent us to go take some readings from the Neverending Hallway in the ruins of the Conrad. So not only do we get to climb through a bunch of dirt and rubble to get down there, ohhhh boy," Mio's voice is sarcastic, "but then the Rift decides it'd be a whole lot of fun to start screwing with us." Mio rolls her eyes.

[yourwonderings]

Jo leans against the counter, hand at her hip. "...That's real charming of it. Jesus fucking Christ, you'd think bringing us here would be more than enough for its own amusement."

She eyes Mio with a certain amount of curiosity, though not intrusively. "You sure you don't want me to whip you up a drink? Sounds like you could use one."

[trappedbyhate]

"Real sense of humor the Rift has, let me tell ya," Mio drawls sarcastically.

"I'd love one, but I can't," Mio says. "Alcohol and psychic powers are generally a pretty poor combination. And I'd really rather not cause an incident."

[yourwonderings]

"Tell me about it. My Rift ability is shapeshifting, and it's a pain in the ass. Especially with those damn kittens teleporting all over the Kashtta."

Jo's fairly acquainted with sarcasm herself.

"...Well, fuck. I didn't know you had those kind of powers. Must be overwhelming now and then."

[trappedbyhate]

"I got off pretty easy in the Rift ability department," Mio says. "I can comprehend any language that's spoken to me and read books published in other languages. It sounds useful, but I've got native-level fluency in two languages and have varying degrees of proficiency in about four or five others, so it actually doesn't come in handy very often at all. It was actually more annoying than anything at first because for the first month or two I was here the Rift insisted on playing language roulette with me. I'd try to talk to people in English but I'd end up speaking in some other language instead. And I'd end up switching languages on the order of about every three minutes." Thankfully, due to the nature of her power she'd usually end up speaking in a language the other person knew

[yourwonderings]

Jo looks at Mio with an interested expression on her face. "You're kidding," she says. "That sounds kinda similar to what I could do before the Conrad was destroyed. Anything I read, regardless of the language, I could understand. Not so much speak, but the reading was what mattered. It was a helluva lot useful when I was doin' some research, let me tell you. Once the Conrad was brought down and the Rifts went haywire, something shifted and I couldn't read the stuff anymore." She was a dog instead. And Jo was so, so displeased

[trappedbyhate]

"I know someone else who also had the same power, a Hermione Granger," Mio says. "Seems to me that it's an ability that the Rift likes giving out fairly often." Speaking of which, Mio hasn't heard from Hermione in a while. She hopes she's all right. Hermione seemed like a nice girl.

"Thanks," Mio says with a smile. And Mio would totally agree that the guy deserved to have his dick shot off. She trawls bars sometimes herself to look for guys who need to learn a lesson about respect of women. Granted, she's never shot anyone's dick off, but she has other ways of making things stick.

"Battoujutsu and kenjutsu are my combat arts of choice, but yes, I do something similar sometimes. There is something very satisfying about slicing clean through a straw mat rolled up thicker than my arm with a single cut." Why yes, Mio's a bit of a sword nut. She likes them quite a bit more than guns, though she's put in quite a bit of training with her Torchwood issue gun. With swords, the fighting is up close and personal, much more so than guns.

[yourwonderings]

"It was a helluva lot better than what I got stuck with, let me tell you. And the kittens that teleported into the lobby one day haven't helped with the whole getting-the-shifting-thing under control."

It's part of what set Jo off. She's seen as a tiny, defenseless, cute Barbie blonde and is immediately assaulted with innuendo and a pat in the ass. When you deal with those kinds of people every day of your life, you can't just tell them they can't , you have to show them. It may have been a bit extreme, true, but Jo'd been having a really, really bad day.

Jo quirks up an eyebrow in appreciation. "...That sounds kinda cool. If you ever have time, you should probably give me a lesson or two."

She has violent tendencies. It'd come in handy.

[trappedbyhate]

"Shapeshifter?" Mio asks. "Ouch. I've never been one myself, but every once in a while I'd manage to set off an animal form curse back home and I'd have to spend two weeks as a cat. You never realize how useful opposable thumbs are until you don't have them anymore."

Luckily for Mio, despite the fact that she worked at a porn studio, she managed to make it rather clear that any kind of physical attempts at flirting with her was a shortcut to a very unpleasant next few weeks, or even just a firing. She didn't mind a little bit of casual verbal banter sometimes, as long as they'd knock it off if she wasn't in the mood.

"Sure," Mio says. "I always enjoy passing on what I know. It helps me pay of my debt to my teachers." And Mio has an inkling that Jo'll be a quick study. "I imagine you're working here most evenings--when are your days off? Unless you'd like to get up at the crack of dawn for early morning practice." Mio has a feeling Jo'd rather not do that. Mio's aware that bartenders tend to be a nocturnal bunch, whether it's by

[yourwonderings]

"Shapeshifter," Jo confirms with a grimace. "And damn straight you don't realize it. Not to mention, the actual shifting is a pain in the ass at first. All those bones crunching and twisting into place. I was turned into one around the time the Conrad was destroyed. One minute I was fighting monsters falling through like it was some damn party, the next I was a German Shepherd. Only in Chicago, I tell you."

And Jo's seen her brand of weird. She grew up around hunters, whether it was hustling them or trying to emulate them. She became a walking encyclopedia for everything supernatural. It's hard to faze this gal, and she can still find herself surprised with what Chicago chooses to throw their way.

"Awesome!" She gives Mio a genuine smile. "Thanks, Mio. And weekends are my busiest days, the week is flexible. I mostly patrol for the Tower those nights till real late, but I could open up my schedule for one of them to focus on that instead."

Bartending and hunting definitely makes Jo one nocturnal girl.

[trappedbyhate]

It almost sounds like something that could have happened in the Nexus as well, but Mio doesn't really feel comfortable enough with Jo yet to tell her about the Nexus. So she just smiles and shakes her head. "Only in Chicago," she agrees.

"How about Thursday?" Mio asks. She knows that Friday nights tend to be busy as well, with some people starting to hit up the bars as soon as they get off work. "And we'll want to start off for only an hour or two at a time, so you should have time for a quick patrol after."

[yourwonderings]

"Sounds like a plan to me," Jo says easily. She cleans her hands in the cloth tied around her denim jeans and looks up at Mio with a small smile. It can be easily construed as a smirk, but it's a lot more genuine than that.

Jo's just not as open about things. "I get restless if I don't have two things going on at once as it is."

[trappedbyhate]

Mio is well versed in the language of the smirk. She's even been known to smirk a time or two herself. (Only once or twice, you understand.) So she doesn't have much trouble reading into the meaning behind Jo's expression.

"You and me both," Mio agrees. "I was here for two and a half months before I got recruited into Torchwood, and I was just about ready to pull my hair out by then."