"Hi!” Kirsi said cheerfully as the door swung open. "I’m selling cookies for the Girl Scouts of America. Would you like to buy some?” Behind her stood Maddox, smiling awkwardly and seemingly trying to blend into the wallpaper. Because no, this was not for a mission. There was no target hiding in this building that she was trying to get close to. There was no super secret file tucked away in some corner, waiting to be retrieved.

Kirsi just really wanted to be a Girl Scout, and apparently you need parental supervision for that sort of thing.

It was the quintessential young, female American’s dream. Become a Girl Scout, get a pet puppy and some American Girl dolls, and so on and so forth. The pet she already had - Maddox had brought a German Shepherd over from Italy, aptly named Lupo, and she’d taken an instant liking to him. American Girl dolls - that wasn’t happening. But being a Girl Scout she could do, because the uniform also did lend an extra air of credibility to her, and it gave her an opportunity to practice her English.

But she also just really wanted to be a Girl Scout.

As the man whose door she’d knocked on happily signed up to buy some Thin Mints, Maddox tapped her on the shoulder.

"How many more?” he asked her, voice somewhat strained. The idea of domesticity was about as foreign to him as penguins were to an armadillo, so he was very much uncomfortable with the situation. But he was coping. Kirsi was somewhat proud of him for that.

"One more floor,” she told him quietly back. She smiled as the man handed her the sheet, thanking him, before he shut the door and they moved on.

She knocked on the next door in the hallway and waited for it to swing open.

"Ugggh...." Icy blue eyes opened with a groan. Last night was....sucky. If the sore, aching body wasn't enough, there was the subsequent hangover. And if that wasn't enough, and it definitely was, there was the added joy of the very vivid, graphic nightmares of flashbacks and his imagination stemming from such just made Ty's night all the worse.

Stupid Lori for scaring him into moving to Stupid Kansas. Stupid Kansas for being...Stupid Kansas...

His head was throbbing so badly it sounded like it was pounding audibly, shaking the entire apartment with its presence...

Wait...that was the door. Which he decided he should go answer if he wanted the hellish pounding to stop. So...he forced himself to his feet, pulling on a pair of pants and a Deep Purple tee shirt. Then, he dragged his bare feet across the floor, through the living room, grabbing his wallet and cell phone along the way, just in case. And then he opened the door.

Oh look...A Girl Scout. That meant Girl Scout Cookies, his favorite. He was going to give this girl a bunch of money--ohhhhh expletive....It was that girl...That girl. From the park. The one that killed those people.

Being of Irish heritage, Ty was already lacking in color. Add in the hangover, and Frosty the Snowman sported a better tan than him. And now...seeing her...he was so pale he was practically transparent. He froze in his tracks, not knowing what to do at this point. Maybe if he bought all her cookies she wouldn't kill him. But what if he did buy all her cookies, and she killed him anyway? Then he'd be broke, dead, and worst of all....he wouldn't have any cookies.

"Mornin," he finally said, gathering himself together as best he could.

As the door opened, Kirsi recited the same mantra she'd said at every door - "Hi! I'm selling cookies for the Girl Scouts of America. Would you like to buy some?" She didn't noticed until she'd finished that the man looked rather miserable - though he did perk up a bit at the mention of Girl Scout cookies - until he looked up and saw her face and turned very, incredibly pale, and froze. She could've sworn that, had it been snowing outside, the man would've camouflaged flawlessly. He'd gone that pale.

Kirsi frowned slightly at him. He looked rather sick. She had the nagging feeling that she'd seen the man before, but couldn't really know for sure, so she just brushed it off. New York was full of people, and she'd probably just passed him on the street at some point in time. His bright hair was pretty distinctive.

There was a long pause, during which Kirsi exchanged a rather confused glance with Maddox. Hungover, the man mouthed at her. Probably trying not to puke.

She made a sort of 'oh' face, and turned back to face the potential customer.

"Mornin'," he finally said after a very, very long pause. She waited for him to say something else, but he didn't seem very inclined to speak more. So she decided to speak instead.

"Would you like to order some cookies?" she asked energetically, and a little bit more loudly, because she knew very little about hangovers and automatically assumed that being louder might help. As she reached into her pocket to pull out the list they'd been given, a quarter fell out. "Oh, oops!" she said, and bent over to pick it up. She palmed it with the sort of dexterity not usually found in nine year old girls, making the coin seemingly disappear. Hey, years of using pretty much nothing but coins meant that she'd taught herself a few tricks at some point, if only out of sheer boredom when waiting somewhere on a mission.

"Yes, yes I would," he replied, still shaking off the fear and panic and the hangover that were all attacking him at once. The hangover was winning, but the fear and panic....well he was trying. In the heat of everything that happened that day, any given event was merely the tip of the iceberg. But afterwards, every little detail stuck out. Especially how easily this kid had killed four people. Four. In broad daylight. In the park.

But here...she seemed so sweet. Just like...a normal girl. Maybe he was wrong and his mind had just pinned this kid because she looked similar to...

The raised voice and the falling coin interrupted all of Ty's thoughts. Like he was hearing them not only loudly, but in slow motion. But then...

The way she picked up the coin. The skill required to palm a coin like that was something most kids didn't have. Given his own profession, Ty'd learned tricks like that, but it'd taken him awhile. Yep. It was her. Maybe she wasn't there to kill him. And hell, if she was...at least it'd help this damn headache.

"Put me down for two boxes of Thin Mints, two Caramel Delights, and one Peanut Butter Patty," he said groggily, his Southern accent still bleeding through his hangover. It was fortunate he liked his accent because there seemed to be no way he could shake it. "Name, Ty Fisher."

Well, now she knew his name. Not that it mattered anymore. Besides, maybe today was her personal "Sell Cookies instead of Murder" day. Who knew?

Much to Kirsi's confusion, the man seemed slightly terrified and very much stunned by her appearance. Had she met him before? She'd thought that perhaps she'd bumped into him on the street in passing - it's a small world, after all - but she was starting to doubt that now. It seemed almost as if this man knew Renegade, not Kirsi. She just had to remember from where, because she didn't usually leave loose ends untied. As terrible as it seemed, she was almost hoping this man was a murderer, because then her conscience would stay clean if she killed him.

He started to list off his order, jolting Kirsi out of her thoughts, and she immediately started to furiously mark what he wanted down. She was about to ask for a name when he told it to her first - "Name, Ty Fisher." It didn't sound familiar. But he still seemed freaked by her presence, and his order seemed to be more to placate her than anything.

"I'm sorry, sir, but do I know you?" she asked curiously and a hundred percent innocently. Behind her, she could hear the almost imperceptible rustle as Maddox stiffened, clearly understanding the implications. Maddox made a good partner, really - she was going to be sad when he inevitably took his leave, because he wasn't the kind of person to stay in one place too long.

"I'm sorry, sir, but do I know you?"

Now that was a loaded question. If he answered it wrong, then well, this would definitely end with him not enjoying those cookies he just ordered, that was for sure. And, if things did go south...he was outnumbered, and his hangover prevented him from effectively using his powers without throwing up, so...there was that. Besides, what was the honest answer to that, anyway? 'Yeah, I saw the aftermath of you killing people in the park.'

Yeah, that would be great. He didn't actually see the act, but...what he did see that day was plenty. And...today was a bad enough day without adding 'dying' to the pile of crap for the day.

"I don't think so, no," he answered weakly. So, maybe this was why he didn't often go drink for no reason. The aftermath...it just wasn't worth it.

He still seemed really, really terrified with the situation. She was suspecting now that he'd been a spectator of sorts to something that she'd done, and was now trying to figure out how to react in a way that would lead to his survival. If she did something, though, that would definitely cast suspicion onto her, if the guy was just a total coward and always looked like that. But if he was specifically scared of her, then she could deduce why and how, and follow through accordingly.

"I don't think so, no," he said, in that way that very clearly stated "you don't know me but I know you." Kirsi sighed. She'd just wanted to sell cookies, dammit.

She turned to look at Maddox, and cheerfully said, "Watch the door, will you?" He nodded, and Kirsi pushed past Ty to get inside, as Maddox rather authoritatively shut the door behind her.

Once inside, she turned to face Ty, still as innocent as ever. "Are you sure we've never met before?" she asked again. Maybe he'd take the hint and answer honestly this time.

A string of expletives flew--very loudly--through his mind as she had the big guy watch the door, then closed it behind her. Usually, he wouldn't have been too easy for a nine year old girl to shove out of the way, but given the circumstances, he was practically tossed aside like a rag doll.

Since he was in this situation, he figured he'd treat it like an interrogation. Even if it'd been awhile since he found himself in an interrogation room, he still had his tricks.

"Well, we haven't technically met before, no. We might have passed each other in the park or something, though. Look, I'm having a really rough morning." He didn't know why, but he had a tendency to speak to kids as if they were really tiny adults. Maybe that wouldn't come back to bite him one day.

Park.

Park?

That was absolutely useless information. There were a lot of parks in New York, and so, by extension, a lot of deals that Kirsi was either a part of or monitored in parks. He could've been at any one of them. And he looked rather generic, to be honest - not really the kind of face who she'd pick out in a crowd as a threat, and then keep in mind as a threat. Either way, she was confident that he wouldn't pose any sort of physical threat to her.

"Care to elaborate?" she asked, in response to his words. She totally disregarded his attempts to get her off his case.

But then she considered something she hadn't before, and narrowed her eyes, looking at him. "Are you a mutant?" she said deliberately, subtly shifting the coin in her pocket to her hand. His response, or lack thereof, would give her all the confirmation she needed. She had the sneaking suspicion that this may be one of Ganelli's thugs - a crime boss that had screwed her contracting agency over quite a few times, considering that he was starting to look slightly familiar. She was relatively sure he'd been at the scene of that one time Ganelli had sent thugs to intercept a deal she'd been employed for. She couldn't recall how, though, since her memory told her she'd left all of his thugs at the scene dead.

Ty sat on the nearest chair, somehow succeeding in keeping from evicting the contents of his stomach onto the floor. But that was one less thing he had to worry about. Now, was staying alive while battling this freaking hangover.

"A mutant? Yes," he replied with a nod. "To elaborate, I work a lot of parks in the city, so I can't be sure which one. I'm a pickpocket in my free time, so though I may not target women or children, we may have seen each other in passing. We haven't spoken, I know that much."

Sure, he'd just admitted to being a criminal, but hey, this little girl wasn't exactly in a position to be throwing stones. Even if she could probably definitely kill him with said stone if she saw fit. But...well that was a problem he was trying to evade at this very moment in time.

Did this man just confess to being a pickpocket? And... a chivalrous one? Kirsi wasn't sure if it was chivalry or sexism, but as a female and a child, she didn't mind if petty thieves like him weren't bothering her. And alright, so they hadn't spoken. Maybe he had witnessed her little display in the park. But she was in a lot of parks, a lot of the time, because the parks were the nicest parts of the city (during the day, that is).

"Why are you scared of me?" she asked, bluntly, after a moment. She was just going to get straight to the point on this one. No point in dancing around the topic.

And just like that, the little game of cat and mouse was over, and Ty found himself cornered with a very blunt and to the point question. Welp, if he was going to die, today seemed like a decent day, right? After all, he already felt like hell, and he was pretty sure death would cure a hangover. How odd would it be if it didn't? Actually...that'd be just Ty's luck.

"First of all, I'm mostly hung-over. Second of all, let's just say that I told you my...well, it's more of a hobby than a profession nowadays. I don't need to pick pockets, but old habits die hard. Anyway...let's just say I told you mine because I already know yours. Not that I plan on telling anyone," he finally replied. "Honor among thieves and all that, right?"