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

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[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.

"At least you're up front about it," Kaden says with a shrug and another sip of his drink. "Most people don't understand smalltalk as an exchange of information -- or rather, don't think of information as currency. Aside from other AoKs I've met, that is." Well, certain other AoKs, though all of the ones he's run into in general are much more aware of what's going on when they're actually paying attention to the conversation to begin with.

He raises his eyebrows at the description of her job. "You make yourself sound like nothing more than a glorified secretary," he says. "Somehow I doubt someone as sharp as you seem to be is just used for acquisitions." He pauses for a moment, tilting his head -- and jiggering his leg a bit, but that's not a calculated action by any means, that's just his jittery getting the better of him. "I suppose 'data analyst' doesn't exactly sound like I'm being used to my full potential either, though, so I suppose that makes sense."

[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.

"Oh, well, there's always the occasional monster call to spice things up," Mio says nonchalantly. "Can't leave monster corpses to rot on the street, and of course none of the regular authorities have any clue what to do with them, so we get called in to haul them off. Loads of fun, let me tell you." And by loads of fun, she means just the opposite. Well, at least it provides Owen with interesting new aliens to study.

"Really, with the way things are in this city, it's hard to predict what I'll end up doing on any given day. The universe seems to take a perverse pleasure in dropping disasters on us at the most inopportune moments." Jokes about the frequency of (un)natural disasters in Chicago are a common form of smalltalk among supernaturals. And especially among native-born supernaturals, it helps distinguish those who are 'just visiting' from those who embrace Chicago as their home. Which one was Kaden?

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.

Still, he feigns slight surprise -- not too much, otherwise he'll look as naive as a new Wanderer, but a little. "Okay, I retract the glorified secretary statement," he says with another quick grin. "Though I guess for the aware secretary, a little rift flare here and there is probably a common occurrence."

Kaden mostly considers himself a visitor, though not necessarily in the sense that Mio might mean. He's well aware of the fickle nature of the Rift, well aware of the weirdness of the supernatural community. He just doesn't want to stay in Chicago much longer than he has to -- unless the job calls for it, which it very well might. Either way, he doesn't particularly consider himself a part of the community in anything but genetics.

"Not that I'm calling you a secretary, at this point," he adds, though with such nonchalance that he might as well have been. If she wants to take it that way, she can; he doesn't care. "Sometimes I wish my own job would allow me to deal more directly with it the way you described, rather than just analyze -- or rather, give me the chance to analyze it in the field, as it were. I can't exactly turn off the AoK brain, or anything."

[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."

She's trying to keep Kaden off guard, keep him guessing as to what she "really" does for Torchwood. Of course, it also helps that Torchwood doesn't have defined positions and duties so much as overlapping areas of expertise, making the duties she carries out for them subject to change at any given moment. Basically, her job description--all of their job descriptions, really--boil down to "whatever needs doing to carry out Torchwood's mission," but it'd be no fun to tell him that. It's much more fun to play the demure administrative cog in the machine, but with just enough hints of hidden badassery to throw people off balance.

So she just smiles when he claims not to be calling her a secretary. She'd be perfectly pleased if he thought her a secretary, to be honest. Mio knows there's really no such thing as "just" a secretary, even if many people scarcely pay attention to them. Secretaries are frequently some of the most well-informed people in any company, and a secretary to one of the executives can wield considerable influence behind the scenes, if they're good enough. Kaden might or might not realize that, not having come from an academic background rather than a business background, but that would only be to Mio's benefit, so she's not going to clue him in that bit of wisdom. No sense in willingly giving up your advantage for free, after all.

"Oh, I rather doubt you'd like the kind of field work I have to do," Mio says. "There's the grit, the dust, the smell...oh, and the blood, grime, unidentified slime, and the occasional threat of buildings collapsing on top of you. Definitely not as glamorous as people make it out to be." But, Mio does it anyway, because the adrenaline rush of a disaster situation outweighs the unpleasantness of the physical environment. And of course, there's the other type of "field work" that Mio likes much better: working as a representative to other supernatural organizations when it's politically unwise for Jack to negotiate directly...but that's something that while, not exactly classified, is something that Mio doesn't trust Kaden enough yet to share with him.