comin' on to the overload

[doyoulikecake]

[OOC: Okay, so the first section is a bit tailored and QUITE timey-wimey, as I'm not actually sure what day the Mio & Roxis meetings went down. But feel free to have it be backdated, forward-dated, not-actually-on-the-same-day-as-each-other-at-all, etc. To Kaden, it'll have happened on the same day, but I doubt that anyone's going to be like 'so

Comments

[trappedbyhate]

And, promptly at five 'til one, Mio walks into the coffeeshop Kaden's at carrying a box of extremely pretentious handmade artisan chocolates. We're not talking See's or even Godiva here. This is some level of pretentious even beyond that.

"Hello, Minoru," Mio says. "Happy new year. These are for you." She holds out the box to Kaden, not sure where to put it down considering the sheer amount of stuff on the table.

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden stands up as soon as she's at the table, though he'd seen her enter the coffeeshop and made no move. It's less out of politeness than it is out of sheer necessity, but even if his table hadn't been totally covered in stuff he probably would have stood. He still doesn't know what this relationship will yield, if anything. Mio certainly seems to be an interesting character, something to crack as much as anyone is, and he recognizes her outer mannerisms. They were brought up in similar circles, he suspects, those of the very rich and image-conscious

[trappedbyhate]

"Oh, I couldn't very well come empty-handed," Mio says blithely. No really, she couldn't have. It's almost against her nature to show up to a meeting like without at least bringing something

[doyoulikecake]

They're mostly boring old psych textbooks, Mio -- though that's probably hardly boring for either party present, here. Some of them aren't so much textbooks as scientific journals, specifically from the Angel of Knowledge Board of the Sciences and other related supernatural-only publications. Most of the stuff he's been looking through have to do with trauma-based psychosis in supernaturals, but it's hard to tell a lot of that by the names of the journals or anything

[trappedbyhate]

Mio does notice the supernatural-publications. She doesn't know anyone with ins at the AoK BoS that would be willing to show her any of their literature, but she'd be willing to place heavy bets on who the publisher of several, if not most, of the journals on the table is

[doyoulikecake]

Well, the AoK BoS has published a lot of those journals, but some of them come out of Stanford, as well. They are in the minority, but it's a large minority

[trappedbyhate]

"Thank you," Mio says, taking her drink as Kaden returns to the table.

"Well," she says, "if you're a nerd and a workaholic, I must be one as well. I'm dreadfully curious about your research. Of course you can't breach patient confidentiality to give me specifics, but surely you can give me a topical overview of the theory." Mio gives Kaden what most people might assume is a winning smile, but in this concept is a bit more akin to a shark-grin. "You're cog psych, not clinical, right?"

Notice how she's managed to redirect the conversation away from the topic of Torchwood.

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden takes a sip of his own drink, taking in the change in subject. Well, he can't say he wasn't expecting to be dodged out of the way, but so blatantly? Not even a little drip of information? She can't expect him to give her anything if she's going to be so close-lipped.

So he sets the coffee down, matching her shark-grin with his own. They both know this game too well to be fooled by the other. "Nothing wrong with either," he says, "and nice dodge, there." That'd be his way of saying it wasn't a nice dodge at all. He's tapping out a staccato rhythm on his mug, now; it's still hard to keep still. "I dabble in everything, but my main interest is the cognitive differences between angels and demons, to be perfectly honest. Though my work is mostly analyzing survey results and I pretty much teach gen eds." At least, that's what he and Biosys would have everyone think. The latter, at least, is true.

[trappedbyhate]

Well, you can't expect Mio to give up information unless you're willing to give up some of your own. Kaden was the one who suggested they get to know each other better, so he should make the initial offerings of information, in Mio's mind.

Mio gives him another grins with too many teeth as he mentions her dodge. "Just testing the waters," she says. "I don't give out information for free, after all. As for what I do for Torchwood, it's mostly boring administrative stuff. Equipment requisitions, making sure the kitchens in the Kashtta don't run out of food, that sort of thing. Not particularly exciting, but Torchwood's responsible for housing and feeding most of the Wanderer community now, so someone's got to do it. Martha Jones's people do what they can, especially now that things are settled down, but they don't have the bureaucratic infrastructure that Torchwood does." Not that Torchwood has much of a bureaucratic infrastructure either, really, but she's not telling Kaden that.

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden's relatively bad at offering tidbits of information, half the time. Unless he'd infodumping about one of his passions, but that requires either a certain amount of respect or trust from him, and she's earned neither. Or a certain level of stupidity, in which he'll be sure the other person won't get it at all, and he can tell Mio's sharp enough. More than sharp enough

[trappedbyhate]

"Well, it's their loss," Mio says. "They get so distracted by looking at the numbers in their bank account that they never realize that there are currencies that are far more valuable." A lesson Mio's father had never seemed to learn

extra spectacularly late tag of doom and wonder

[doyoulikecake]

"Or the lack thereof," Kaden agrees with a small nod, but he's far more interested in the rest of this conversation. It's at least some information, even if it's not exactly the insider info that he's prying for. He didn't really expect to get any of that on the first 'date', so to speak, anyway. Just something interesting

[trappedbyhate]

"Oh, don't get me wrong, most of what I do is nothing more than glorified secretarial work," Mio demurs. "It's like that old soldiers' saying about war being hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Of course, this isn't a war, but the same principle still applies