"Yes." Iikka said in an utterly deadpan voice. He had not even turned to face Maxine, and he wore a begrieved grimace while he resisted the urge to grind his teeth. Still, he managed to grab onto the hyperactive girl's last statement, and determined how he and Jason might be able to get away.

"What we came here to do is a complete secret, we cannot tell anybody for any reason. In fact, we shouldn't even be talking to each other, we shouldn't be in a group, and we shouldn't even look at each other. But you can still help us. For our secret plan, Jason and I need to go to Brookstone and get one of those bullshit wine aerators. You need to go with Mario - he's right over there - and get a Rubicks cube. Go ahead and talk to Mario, he can tell you all about what we're doing."

[i]'By which I mean go crawl into a dirty pit and die slowly you putz.'[/i] Iikka thought savagely. He was not in the mood to put up with Maxine at all, especially during HIS free time. He wasn't entirely sure the half-assed scheme would work (very few people were [i]that[/i] stupid, and really, a wine aerator?), but if he could just turn Maxine's attention to Mario then hopefully he and Jason could get out of dodge before the fix was in. The tricky part, of course, would be making sure that there wasn't a second chance meeting between all of them later, but Iikka would run from that Harpy when it came for him.