tampered | Log: Complete

Despite the fact that Owen wasn't around to tease her about wearing a dress, Tosh had decided on an attractive pantsuit -- black and lavender -- which didn't look too odd with a small caliber handgun clipped to her belt. After the attack on Gwen, she wasn't taking any chances, and the tussle with Captain John the previous night had her feeling just a little bit jumpy. She had put her hair up, though, and since the computer satchel was the same dark brown leather as her coat, it didn't look too dissimilar to a large handbag.

With a wave and a smile after catching sight of Prince Charming, she picked up the pace and hurried over to him. "Tell me I'm not late?"

"You're not late," he replied with a smile, offering his arm to Toshiko.

He would've been armed too, in fact Prince Charming sort of was. He carried a small revolver at the small of his back and nothing more. Royalty such as he was far more accustomed to carrying a side arm of the bladed variety. He had a rapier in the City, but bringing one to dinner (that wasn't a formal ball banquet) was out of the question. At least he fell into the mundy way of life easily.

"Let's walk," Charming nodded in the direction of pebble paths surrounded by lotus ponds. At the end of the winding walk was Dewi Shri, a restaurant specializing in South East Asia's finest cuisine and a fully stocked internationally palatable bar.

Tosh was rapidly becoming convinced that being unarmed in this city was just a bad idea in general, and these days she never outside of arm's reach of a gun. Which really just made it seem all that much more like home.

Giving him a bright smile, she took Charming's arm and fell into step beside him, looking with interest at their surroundings.

"Oh, it's gorgeous! Now I wish I hadn't waited so long to come here."

Charming had been in the City on and off for close to a year now. He knew a lack of arms was detrimental without magic. A fable was magic in itself to an extent, but bullets could certainly stop one for an indeterminate amount of time. Charming would know.

His arm comfortably cradled hers against his own as they walked along the foot path.

"And the season's still fresh," he nodded, meaning the lotuses were in bloom but the weather wasn't warm enough for the water bugs to come out. "What could've kept you?"

Charming asked in a... charming manner, his lips pursed.

Tosh was coming to the conclusion that what kept her was just plain stupidity. Although she didn't quite phrase it that way out loud.

"A habit of looking for the places where the less pleasant things like to lurk first, I suppose. And a habit of holing myself up inside at my computer or my worktable, instead of getting out and enjoying the city and the outdoors."

He was charming, and his manner had Tosh smiling easily as they walked.

"Is that a calling based on your profession," Charming asked innocently.

He had an idea of what Tosh did for a living but not all the details. Similarly he'd never tell those of the City, the mundies of the City, that he was the Mayor of Fabletown. He wouldn't tell them that he was leading the campaign against the Adversary. It wasn't modesty that kept him from bragging on about it, mind, it was the fact that Fabletown and all its secrets needed to stay a secret. Even Blue knew that, but the boy fable regularly spouted about how Charming was a womanizer of some repute, tch.

They came upon a statue of an Indonesian Goddess at the entrance, and here the maitre'd looked for his name. That's right, Charming had a table reserved. He led the pair to a table along one of the outdoor decks, inside just enough for shelter but with a view of Xanadu from the second level. As was customary for all princes, Charming pulled Tosh's chair out for her.

"It is, yes. I guess I hadn't realized how ingrained it had become, though. Funny how you wind up in a strange place, and the first thing thought that comes to mind is to go monster hunting."

Tosh wasn't necessarily unwilling to talk about her work, as Jack seemed to have loosened the restrictions that kept Torchwood's secrets under wraps, but she'd learned her lesson about just blurting things out before she had a handle on why the person listening really wanted to know.

Another smile appeared when Charming pulled out her chair, and Tosh sat down, removing the holster from her belt and tucking it into her bag. Trying to think how long it had been since she was taken out for a meal like this, she laughed quietly when she realized she couldn't remember, and gave her head a little shake.

"You must be active on the field," he remarked, "of course in a place like this you wouldn't be short on monsters to hunt."

Charming nodded again. To him, a monster was a gob, and all gobs had no other destiny except meeting the sharp edge of his sword... or the business end of his battle canons. He noted how Toshiko removed her holster and tucked it away. She almost reminded him of Cinderella, except Cindy would never in a million years come to a dinner with Charming. Not after their divorce!

"Wine? My treat," said the prince, ordering a glass of red for himself.

"Well, back home there's a reason for it, and technically it's aliens. Here...I mean, we don't really want to go all vigilante, but if there's a threat, then stepping up between it and the city is what we do."

Tosh nodded, requesting a glass of white wine for herself, and took a moment for a quick look around the dining room before turning her gaze back on Charming. "So back in your home, what is that you do?"

"Aliens," he repeated out of curiosity. Those sort of beings weren't out of the realm of believability for fables. Charming even remembered how they conned a tabloid reporter with a story about vampires. Those were the days. "You're like an officer?" He concluded in a question.

As for what he did back home... Charming laced his fingers together, bridging them just under his chin.

"You could say I'm an investor," he said, smiling coolly, "I do what I can to generate progress for my interests. And I'm a prince so by birth I'm a land owner, I've dabbled in real estate."

"Yep, aliens. And we're more...um...a civilian project with international oversight. And I'm mostly tech support, not really a field agent, unless there's something that requires the whole team."

There'd been a lot more of those recently, though, and Tosh wondered absently if that was a bad sign.

She sipped at her wine, wondering what Charming was hiding behind the persona of investor. Because a phrasing like 'you could say' almost always meant there was something more, that you weren't supposed to know about. "Right, of course, Prince Charming. It's...still a little strange for me, to get my mind around the idea of people like you and Blue being actual living people, not just the stories. Interesting! But still a little foreign."

"Peace officers," he suggested in a joking manner, because peace officers didn't carry firearms.

He lifted his glass for a sip. Yes he had things to hide and even better reasons for hiding them. This City had angels enacting executions on the citizenry. He didn't think it was too farfetched to believe that the Adversary might be here, listening to every word. But Charming wasn't paranoid either, though he did wonder if the Cloud Kingdoms were accessible through the City.

"It's not so foreign in the European continent," he joked again. He'd spent several years in Europe, wooing women of fable and mundy origin alike. It was easier there, to declare himself a son of some principality east of Monaco, whereas in New York City his crown was mostly interpreted as a medieval joke. Admittedly, he didn't have it as bad as Blue.

"I'm a prince with a valet who's a troll. That could be interpreted in enough manners to keep our identity protected in the world."

"I personally think I prefer 'secret alien-fighting superheroes'," Tosh joked, with a little grin. "But pretty much, that's the end goal. Keep the world safe in one piece."

She wasn't entirely convinced that Charming and his ilk existed where she was from, but that got into a branch of science and philosophy she wasn't quite ready to examine yet. And here in the City, there was an overwhelming urge to just stop worrying about whether things did or didn't exist outside of it.

"If you say so. I'll admit my time's been mostly spent in Japan, England, and Wales. Not so much on the continent. And I'm guessing you mean...an actual like, lives under the bridge and eats goats troll? Or more of a giant club-carrying troll?"

"But you don't have uniforms," he quipped, regarding Torchwood's status as a secret team of alien fighting superheroes.

"Ahh, the giant club carrying type," Charming answered in complete utter seriousness. "We've the other working as a security guard," he added. It was all true... but then he couldn't help himself. The prince laughed. "Pardon, it's entertaining to see how others treat the stories. More are likely to believe in the existence of aliens before they'll believe in three billy goats and pigs."

The latter were living on the farm, till one of the pigs tried to pull a bloody coup.

[ooc: All canon by the way!]

Edited 2008-04-24 21:11 (UTC)

"We're undercover," Tosh retorted lightly. "And we a shiny black SUV with our name on it, that should count, I'd think."

She cocked her head curiously, imagining a place where fairy tales and fables were made flesh. It was an absolutely intriguing idea, completely foreign to the science-and-machine world she inhabited. "But only relatively recently, with the advent of serious thoughts of space exploration. And...we've encountered a thing or two that doesn't quite fit the typical alien mold. Things that have been living on Earth for long enough to become part of our legends. Like the fairies."

"Even Batman has an alter ego," Charming countered, completely in jest.

When Toshiko mentioned faeries his own blue eyes widened just slightly. Those little enchanted cretins served a purpose somewhere, but for the most part Charming only recalled the Blue Fairy. The fae on the other hand, elves, well... they were arrogant even for Charming's standards. Briefly he considered if Tosh's world was his own, and that somewhere in Cardiff another portal to the Homelands had opened. If he knew anything about rifts in time and space he'd consider it even more plausible.

"Ah, and to eat," he asked, breaking the subject a moment to order.

Tosh laughed, conceding the point, and a bit distracted by Charming's odd reaction to her remark about the fairies. She wondered if he'd encountered them himself at some point, or knew something about their origins, and filed that away as something to ask about later.

A nod for the change of topic as the food order was taken care of, and again Tosh's attention was distracted for a moment by her surroundings.

"How long have you been here in the City?"

"Months, almost a year. You see, at first I'd been here in spring of last year. I was around for only a few weeks before somehow I managed to return home. Then I came again around the same time as Blue."

He raised his chin, thinking fondly of those times. Well, 'fondly' wasn't quite the way a few others would put it! But Charming had clearly left an impression on Faye Valentine and Elle Driver at the very least. Whether those impressions were good or bad was something one would have to ask the ladies themselves.

"Almost a year! You must know your way around the city pretty well by now. I...hear that people have been able to leave, and then wind up back here again."

Luckily, perhaps, for Charming, Tosh hadn't made the acquaintance of either Faye or Elle, and therefore the only person who'd felt the need to warn her about seeing him had been Blue.

If she'd thought about it, she might have thought it was funny how people kept feeling the need to warn her about her dates.

"I'd like to think I do. I was Warden after January," he remarked in er... a mild tone of arrogance. But he didn't dare buff his nails on his lapels or anything of the like.

"It's true. Some come and go, other people believe they're tied to the City and keep coming back," Charming shrugged once, casually. "We should've kept records of that," said the prince, almost an offhand remark related to his Wardenship. He wasn't Warden anymore though, so it wasn't his problem.

The food arrived at about this time.

"It looks good," he smiled.

He didn't have to, saying that he'd been Warden was enough to make Tosh look impressed. She had a respect for government and military that came from both her upbringing and her work.

"Really? What was it like? Challenging, I'd suppose, in a place like this."

She smiled brightly when the food was placed on the table, nodding quickly in agreement. "Smells delicious. Thank you again, for asking me here. It's fantastic."

"Like you wouldn't believe," Charming laughed again. "You see Commander Vimes and I were tied during election, so we both managed the position. Unfortunately the City gave him the boot back to his homeworld--"

When he understood how possibly suspicious that sounded, Charming paused in his meal eating.

"And I do mean that in all serious. His portrait appeared in the Hall of the Missing. That's how we knew he was gone for good. I held the position alone after that," nodded the prince.

It was probably not a good thing that Tosh hadn't even thought about there being a suspicious angle to the story until Charming brought it up. He did her a favor, though, by reminding her that she needed to be more wary.

"The Hall of the Missing? Does everyone who leaves the City for good have their picture appear there?"

She leaned forward, looking quite intent. It could be a way for her to be sure Owen was still around.

He nodded while eating, then set his setting down to sip his wine.

"Yes, the Hall of the Missing. Well that's the theory. Many people who've left and returned to their homeworlds have appeared there, but some others haven't. It's not one hundred percent accurate," Charming shook his head. Toshiko had to like numbers, he presumed. "However, a friend of ours is there after we specifically attempted to send him back. He followed Vincent's trail," he said seriously.

Both Mowgli and Bigby Wolf were there. Bigby's return to Fabletown was a ray of hope for them all. They wouldn't be able to stand up to the Adversary without him, but they likely couldn't do that without Charming, Blue, and Ambrose either.

The Hall of the Missing just got moved up to the top of Tosh's list of places to visit, asap.

She did indeed prefer numbers over vague descriptions, and nodded appreciatively for Charming's attention to that detail in his explanation. "So if a person had been sent home, their picture's relatively likely to be there, but if they're just lost somewhere in the City, it wouldn't be."

Owen would be happier back at home, she thought, even if she'd be happier to have him stay with the rest of them. But it would be a relief to know one way or the other.

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