tampered | Log; Ongoing

He's a little rusty when it comes to pool, but he's in good shape when it comes to stories most people would have you committed for, so he feels pretty damn well prepared.
He does find it pretty easily-- the City's surprisingly easy to navigate as long as nothing bizarre is happening that day-- and offers a small half-wave as he catches sight of Toshiko.

With a grin, Tosh waves back, and waits until he gets up to her to hold out her hand.

"Nice to meet you in person, Mr Duchovny."

He winces slightly at that, but also laughs. Because, well, it figures that he'd end up announcing that due to a curse, eventually.

"Call me Mulder. Wouldn't want to blow my cover, after all," he replied, taking the extended hand. "Otherwise we'll be drowning in paparazzi."

And that'll be the last Tosh mentions it, but she really couldn't resist. She shakes his hand and laughs. "Right, naturally. Just Mulder then? My team doesn't really do that last-name-only thing, so I'm never really sure if that's a real convention or just something they make up on the telly."

She pulls open the door to head inside. "By the way, I've a sort of adopted little sister who's been wanting to meet you."

He shrugs, smirking. "I've never really liked to be called Fox, and I guess it's the natural evolution when you're always introducing yourself as Agent Something."

Not that he'd know if it was just a convenient explanation for a television convention-- well, whatever. "Sure thing. I'll be on my best behavior," he answers with a grin, taking a glance around the pool hall.

"All right then. You can just call me Tosh, though, I'm not really a Sato type."

She grins back at him, and leads the way to the pool table she reserved. "Oh, she's not here right now, so you can be on whatever behavior you like. I think I'm supposed to try and talk you into coming by the flat or something sometime. I should warn you that she's eighteen and very enthusiastic. Have you a preference on what you like to drink?"

"I'm getting used to enthusiastic. Sort of." Well, people were often enthusiastic to meet him at home, too-- but usually they were either planning to kill him, or dying to show him their alien implants. "I'm willing to be talked into it, whenever's good for the two of you."

"Beer works for me, whatever you recommend." Mulder doesn't drink often-- possibly because it usually doesn't end well-- and he's got no idea what brands of anything they sell in the City.

"Good idea, 'round here," Tosh agrees. "Also getting used used to crazy helps, and it doesn't hurt to get used to doing or saying things you'd never in a million years think to do or say. You should see the blackmail material that's been collected on me. In fact, Dawn's likely to trot something out on a whim, if you drop in to meet her."

Tosh orders their beers, which probably originate from someplace she's never heard of, and selects a cue from the rack. "Would you like to break?"

[ooc: Hi from Disney World! Sorry for such a long lag, I'm not doing so well with being awake in the evenings. XD]

"Crazy I've got a head start on," he replies with a shrug and half a grin. "Though crazy being the accepted norm is a little weird. I kinda like it, though, to tell the truth." He chooses a cue himself, chalking the end and eying their table.

"Sure." He leans over the table, lines up his shot, and breaks. The balls scatter, the red-and-white falling neatly into the nearest pocket.

"Looks like you're solids."

[ooc: no worries! Hope you're having a good time! :D ALSO. I can't remember the last time I played pool so if I do something idiotic yell at me ~.^]

"I like it too," Tosh agrees, stepping back to give Mulder space. "It's so nice to not be looked at like you're wrong in the head. Although I have to admit it gets a bit intimidating sometimes, living around so many people with these amazing abilities, and being just ordinary."

She applauds the break and grins at Mulder. "Solids it is. Leave me a few to put in, yeah?"

He laughs at that. "When people casually mention they're vampires, or time-travelers, or aliens? Yeah, it's a little unnerving."

He leans over the table, taking a moment to line up his shot. "So I promised stories..." he begins, before pausing to take his shot. The ball bounces off the bumper, just to one side of the pocket. Well, that certainly makes him look cool. Mulder moves aside with a slight shrug. "Any preference on subject?" He's grinning a little, though. Because, well, chances are, whatever she says... he's got something to tell.

"Or magicians, or superheroes," Tosh adds, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, it does get a bit much sometimes."

It's all right, Tosh doesn't judge a person's cool factor by how well they play pool. And she already expects to beat him anyway.

She smiles encouragingly at him and walks around the table to line up her first shot. "Well, have you a story that you never get to tell anyone because you know they'll never believe you no matter how much they promise they will?" she asks, then sinks one ball and quickly follows up with a second.

[ooc: Just to let you know, Tosh is canonically something of a pool sharp. Also I should have mentioned that I only play casually myself, so I will totally not be dissing anyone's knowledge. ;D]

"Most of my stories fall under that category, I guess." He pauses, looking thoughtful, and takes a sip of his beer.

"Nice," he says admiringly, watching her sink two. He's not expecting to win, really. Not that he's bad, but he's not particularly good, either.

"Maybe I should start at the beginning... the reason I do what I do." Seems logical. It's not his favorite story to tell, but he has a desperate need to make others understand. "When I was twelve, my sister was abducted by aliens."

[ooc: heh. I don't think Mulder ever plays.. I imagine he'd be pretty decent but not amazing. He's fine to beat tho ^_^]

That's definitely a story, and Tosh pauses to look up at Mulder, a sympathetic frown on her face. "I'm sorry. Did she...did you get her back?"

Maybe later, if he wants, she'll share her own reason for joining the team.

The next shot goes a little wide, and Tosh backs away with a little smile to hop up on a stool and nurse her beer for a bit.

He shrugs. No easy answer to that. "There was a huge search that turned up nothing. Of course. Because it wasn't meant to find anything. There have been..." He pauses; essentially summarizing his life's work.

"She was taken as part of a project, a secret pact between the government and alien colonists... experimented on. I thought she had come back to us, once--" He takes another sip of his beer. Mulder is surprisingly calm, considering the topic of conversation. "But it wasn't really her. There are clones. I don't know how many. But the real Samantha... I have no idea."

It's why he keeps going, after all, in spite of everything against him. He picks up his cue, returns to the table without seeming shaken. "I thought at first that by devoting my life to the search I would be able to prove myself, even if I couldn't find her. That by proving the existence of extraterrestrials, I'd make it impossible for them to deny what I saw that night."

He shoots, sinks another ball.

Tosh sits quietly as he talks, well used to seeing people manage a detached calm despite the difficulty of the topic at hand. After a while, you either learn to divorce yourself from it, or you fall apart.

"You should talk to Ianto sometime," she says softly. No more than that, because it isn't her story to tell, but she thinks the two would find a lot in common.

She waits until after the shot, then adds, "I'm sorry. That they took her, and they won't admit what happened. I've seen something like it, and it's not...there's no decent resolution. I think sometimes having just a memory and wondering is better than knowing the reality. But it's easy to say that when you're not the one in that position, isn't it?"

Gwen found out the hard way that the truth isn't always what a person needs, but Tosh isn't sure she could stand no knowing either. It's why they do their best to create a believable story, to make sure there's a body, whenever something happens that has to be covered up.

"I'm really sorry."

"It's all right." Maybe he should feel more vulnerable, sharing this knowledge, but he doesn't. People don't usually accept it so easily-- and maybe they shouldn't, at that-- but he's told it before, will certainly tell it again. "That's what my father said when she-- when we thought she'd come back; that you accept not knowing, get used to it. I don't know. I've never stopped looking."

He shifts around the edge of the table, going for a better angle. "So what made you want to chase little green men? Or, uh, space-whales, as the case may be."

"Not sure anyone ever does stop looking," Tosh murmurs. "Can tell you one thing, though -- don't ever underestimate the ability of people to deny what's right under their noses. Even if you had proof you could broadcast over every media outlet in the world, it'd still get carefully explained away. People mostly don't want to know."

And she doesn't blame them for that. There are a couple of things Tosh kind of wishes she didn't know.

With a shrug, she takes a swallow of beer and then glances up at Mulder with a self-effacing grin. "Prison."

"Sometimes people don't want to know, sometimes people don't want it to be known. I keep trying, anyway..." It's a normal life to him, always on the road chasing something.

He shoots, sinks a second ball, and takes a moment to weigh the options for his next shot.

That's kind of a shocker though, and he raises an eyebrow. "Prison?" She doesn't exactly look like the ex-con type, after all.

"Nothing wrong with that. Someone has to, don't they?"

Tosh purses her lips thoughtfully at the table. If Mulder sinks a third, she's going to have to step up her game and stop letting herself be distracted.

Nodding, she says, "UNIT -- Unified Intelligence Taskforce. I stole a set of classified schematics from the archives at Lodmoor and used them to build a sonic resonator. Except that at the time I had no idea what it was, or why they wanted it."

Up until this point, Tosh's tone has been pretty nonchalant, but now she lowers her eyes and frowns. "They -- and don't ask me who 'they' were, terrorists of some form, I suppose -- were holding my mother. Thank god for UNIT's team showing up when they did, or I'd have been dead instead of locked up. And then Jack showed up and recruited me."

There's nothing good for him this time, though; he shoots, and though the angle's not bad, the ball rolls to a stop short of the pocket. Mulder steps back and grabs his beer.

"Sprung you to get you on his team? Hmn.. What's a sonic resonator do?"

With a little sigh of relief, Tosh hops down from the stool and sets aside her beer. He didn't leave her in the best position, but she thinks she can nudge the three into the side pocket.

"Yep. Said I've a gift with technology, and pulled some strings with UNIT. All I had to do was agree to give him five years, and no contact with my family." She chalks her cue and lines up the shot. "It emits sonic waves -- audible sound waves as opposed to ultrasonic waves -- that cause a lot of pain and I assume eventually death. It's alien tech."

[ooc: And because I am braindead today, pretend Tosh called is a "sonic modulator", which is what it is actually called. >.<]

"Obviously the kinda thing you want floating around on the market," he says, nodding. "Tough bargain, but I guess it beats the other option."

He leans on the wall and watches her aim, glad they're not playing for cash. Since he's relatively certain she'll make this, although he wouldn't, in her position. "So you're mostly on the... defensive side of things, I guess? Rather than investigating."

"It was treason, and I'll admit it, but what else was I supposed to do?"

She falls silent for a moment to take the shot, smiling with the ball drops gently into the pocket. Pool is all about velocity and angles, which makes it the perfect game for someone with a love of physics.

"We do some investigating too, a lot of on-scene response, but usually that comes with the need for some kind of defensive action too. The Rift makes Cardiff a very busy place, as far as aliens go."

Mulder is more accustomed to situations where the laws of physics don't apply. "Nice," he says appreciatively as she makes it.

"I tend to go all over the States, myself... And occasionally outside. After a while you get a reputation, and people start asking for you when they encounter weird stuff."

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omg I am so slow >.<

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