Unexpected Holiday

At the waitress's request, a slender man, sitting alone at a table by the back wall, swallowed down the piece of key lime pie he had been scarfing down, grinned a bit, raised a long arm and called out in a silky voice, "Excuse me! This table is open if madame will be needing it."

The waitress sighed, though not enough to be noticeable. Wonderful. I'd forgotten he was here... "All right, if you'd like to join the man back there, we'll be with you to take your order shortly!" She then shuffled off to the kitchen. Kazaad'jinn wasn't exactly a bad guy, but from her observations he did have a tendency to...rub people the wrong way. She just hoped he wouldn't drive off another customer...

As the woman approached, Kazaad'jinn looked her over and analyzed, both with his own eyes and his eyepiece. It scanned the woman and searched over personnel records back at the Guards' database. It took a few seconds longer than normal, but it turned up a match: Witilda. Hm. That name sounds familiar...

Ah!

Of course. That mafia member who'd been slated to take up a high slot in the gang's ranks, but instead ended up falling completely off all radars. Had she taken up the offer, she very well may have been in a similar position in her organization as he was in his own. Very curious that she'd have turned it down... Her records also noted a few other details, such as a younger sister and two dead parents. Perhaps that may have something to do with her motivations? Well, whatever the case, he decided best to keep his speculations to himself for now. For whatever reason, most people didn't seem to take kindly to a stranger who already happens to know everything about them.

This all went rapidly through his mind in the span of about five seconds, after which Witilda reached the table and took a seat across from him. Interesting girl. It was hard to put his finger on how exactly she looked to him. She appeared fair and yet with a gruff twinge to her that made it entirely possible to see her performing mafia-like activity. It was a bit disorienting, really.

As she thanked him, he waved it off with a pleasant smile.

"Was it good? I haven't been here since I left work."

"Hm?" He raised his eyebrows. He noticed her staring down--looking a bit surprised, perhaps?--at his nearly-finished pie. Did he really wolf down that much? "Ah, heh. I stop in here fairly often just for their desserts. They're quite delectable, yes." He glanced down and picked up the extra fork that had been in his napkin. He picked it up and held it out across the table to his guest. "Try some, if you'd like. It would be rude of me to just gobble down the rest of this right in front of another," he said with a light chuckle. "Left work, you said? Your phrasing makes it sound like a more or less permanent adjustment of employment. Where did you happen to serve?" He propped his arm up on the table by the elbow and rested his chin on the back of his hand, interested in her response.

As Witilda turned down the offer, Kazaad'jinn shrugged and placed the fork back down. "All right, suit yourself. You really are missing out, though." He interlocked his fingers now beneath his chin, resting on both hands.

He listened to her story of freelancing jobs curiously. As expected, a convenient lie. If not of outright falsification--though he supposed it was entirely possible that she could have done some actual freelancing ever since apparently severing her mafia alliance--then one of omission. She then mentioned her sibling again. Death threats from classmates? Rather serious stuff. Odd that her sister would pop into here rather than continue her pursuit if that were the case... He raised an eyebrow, somewhat puzzled by the "helicopter parent" remark, though remained silent.

After she made her order out to the waitress, he then spoke up. "Beer float, eh? What happened to 'a snack'?", he asked with partly playful snark, yet also part actual concern, considering her current situation with her sister. Was now really the best time to begin drinking, he wondered?

He absentmindedly continued finishing off his pie as she spoke more about her sister's activities. Evidently she had a fair enough idea as to what the sibling's plans were. He figured it better to refrain from any judgment, considering his own...family situation.

He noticed her slight quirk of biting her lip as she spoke. Generally, he recognized this as a--while somewhat odd--common subconscious expression of some sort of attraction to a conversational partner. Though, considering the topic of conversation, that didn't quite seem to match up with the case. As such, he dismissed it.

"Hmm. Well, I can't say I'm too familiar with your own kind of situation, but I suppose I can empathize to a degree. It does get stressful, worrying about the well-being of an underling...", he said, dangling his fork with a small piece of pie attached to and fro. He tried to bring it up to his mouth, but--not quite paying attention--instead missed the mark by a bit, smearing his cheek with a bit of whipped cream. "Augh," he grunted, frustrated by his own slip in coordination, "embarrassing...". He took his napkin and dabbed off the errant topping from his face.

The snort from Witilda upped his embarrassment even further. Damn it, Kaz, professional. Pay attention! He put the napkin back down and let out a short laugh. "Apologies, miss. Generally I'm more...coordinated than that. Have to be, in my line of work..." He resisted his nervous habit to take out his revolver and twirl it around. Pulling out a loaded firearm had this odd tendency to cause most people to get very...jumpy, we'll say.

"Do they work you pretty hard? I kinda had a decent amount of flexibility with my line of work, but being a royal guard can't be easy on the mind."

He pushed back a stray lock of hair that was resting on his shoulder and looked back at the young woman. "I'll admit, it started out somewhat rough, but...in my current position it's not so bad. I do get into quite some big scraps every now and then, though," he paused as something of a hungry gleam appeared in his eyes, "I do suppose that's part of the fun, no?"

The devilish look he'd had disappeared as quickly as it had shown up as he continued, "Generally I get quite a bit of downtime, though. Most of my time not spent in the field, I'm stuck in my own office which is...well, it's roomy, but there's only so much one can do to keep occupied in such a dull situation."

My, she suddenly got rather...on-edge. Interesting.

Kaz looked quizzically down at her baton, then moved his eyes back up to meet hers. He settled back in his chair a bit, closing his eyes and brushing back the hair from his face. He opened his eyes to meet Witilda's as she sipped from her glass. The way she sounded, talking out of the side of her mouth was almost cute, in a somewhat amusing way, especially considering how deadly serious she was attempting to be.

"My apologies, again, madam. I didn't intend to come off as threatening, really. Honestly though, it's Christmas, I'm simply relaxing in a cozy, local diner, do you really think I'm looking for some kind of fight, Witilda? And yes, I know your name." He folded his hands on his chest as he leaned back. "I know you were involved in some less-than-legal activities in the past and I know you've cut yourself off from that lifestyle. Even if I were interested in making some kind of bust out of your past," he shrugged, "it's out of my jurisdiction. Now..." He leaned forward again, smirking a bit now, "if you'd accepted that promotion you were offered a while back, then that might be a different story..."

At this, he stopped leaning in any particular direction and sat back normally, resting his arms on the table. "But instead, you never ended up getting into any trouble that would be quite...big-league enough for my department." He gently, with no sudden movements, picked up the blackjack and inspected it all around. He twirled it around a bit, causing some of the other patrons to stare briefly. After a few seconds more, he placed it back down in front of her and restored eye contact. "As long as you stay on the up-and-up while I'm around, you've got nothing to worry about from me."

He flashed the same pleasant smile he gave at the beginning of their encounter. "Look, I'm sorry, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot here. Let me try again. My name is Kazaad'jinn. You can call me Kazaa." He extended a hand to Witilda across the table. Generally he didn't add in that last 'Kazaa' bit with first-time encounters. However, this woman was...intriguing. Why, exactly, did she step down when she was so close to higher status, he still wondered?

Witilda seemed to ease up a bit, though she did not quite accept the handshake offer. Fair enough, really. The girl did seem to be having a difficult enough time of her own. He decided not to push the issue.

He retracted his hand and brought his other hand up to his eye-mounted scanner. She wanted to know what kind of info they had on her. While the personnel databases weren't publicly available, generally citizens did have the right to review their own government-held information for accuracy, revision and such, so this was a non-issue. "I suppose you deserve well enough to know after that scare I seemed to give you," he said with a smirk.

As he brought up all of their stored information on his scanner, he was bombarded with a relatively huge amount of information. Typically when he did a scan it was set to provide only the most relevant info so he could digest and utilize it quickly to his advantage. Now, though, there was no filter. So every statistic about them was brought up. It was just a bit overwhelming, to be honest.

He rested his head on the backs of his hands again, focusing on the information being fed to him. "Well, let's see...regarding you, we know a lot. Birthday, height, weight...measurements? Hm." He looked over at Witilda again with a mild grin, "Though, I suppose that isn't quite what you're looking for. I'm guessing are just the kinds of things we have on everyone."

He waved a hand in the air, dismissing that train of thought and turned his attention back to the scan. "Hrm...As far as more specialized information goes...We don't know exactly when you began your mafia involvement, but we did track your activities when we got wind of your soon-to-have-been upgrade in status... We know of your powers: Healing, temporary enlargement of objects--interesting one, that--and an odd sound-wave blasting technique."

"While we tracked your activity, we know of at least a few cases you were involved with that likely would have gotten you arrested, were our police force more...competent. But by our records, you never committed anything big enough for us to spend our own forces on. Whether you want to take that as an insult or not is up to you," he added, with a coy smile. "When you fell off of the Mafia's radar, though, you also fell off of ours. So we don't know all that much, in that area."

His expression turned serious again. "We also know about your parents' demises--terribly sorry about your loss, for the record--though because it happened outside of the jurisdiction of City 9, we don't know any details about it, I'm sorry to say. But, as such, we know that you are the de facto guardian of your sister...Delitha? As such, you do have permission to request her information as well, so I'll access that for you..."

He was silent a few seconds, looking over everything for any kind of interesting info. "As far as I can tell... We only seem to have the most basic of info on her," he said, closing his scan and putting his full attention on Witilda. "She's been a good girl, I suppose. Managed to stay about as off-the-radar as any other common citizen would. We don't even know about her powers, as a matter of fact. Hopefully, we can keep it that way," he finished, with an optimistic inflection.

"There. You know at least everything I know, if not more. Satisfied?"