Three days ago Meld had spoken to a man going by the name Joe Stereezy. She wasn't certain if it was his real name and in fact suspected it was not, but that didn't really matter. What mattered is that he promised to pay her well for doing a little bit of shady work on his behalf. What mattered even more is that the shady work she had agreed to do was in the defense of a mutant. Or, perhaps defense wasn't the right word, perhaps revenge was better.

Joe had explained the situation to her in some detail. Apparently Joe's brother had been a mutant. Not only had he been valuable to the family, using his powers of x-ray vision to help his family out in a myriad of useful ways, but he had also been a treasured member of the family. Joe had loved his brother and accepted the fact that he was a mutant completely. If some members of his family hadn't been quite so whole heartedly accepting, then they had, at least, been willing to tolerate it, if only because his talent was so invaluable.

Unfortunately one member of the Stereezy family hadn't been quite so accepting of Joe's brother being a mutant and had had him killed. That was where Meld came in. Joe wanted a little revenge against his cousin and Meld was just the person to do it. She was to put the fear of god into him, do a little torture maybe, scar him up a bit. Essentially make it so that he'd never disobey his brother ever again. Meld didn't mind doing a little torture, of course, and the money was good, but the main reason she agreed to the job was because it was revenge against the death of a mutant. Even in the underground, it was still good to further her cause.

Today was the day that Meld was supposed to meet Joe. The location was a small coffee shop near Central Park by the Bean Inc. Joe was supposed to be the sharply dressed man with a large scar on his right cheek. She couldn't miss him, apparently. Entering the shop, which was rather homey and nice, she looked around and spotted her target almost immediately. The scar was immedately visible and it was hard to miss the shiny boots. "Are you Joe Stereezy?"

There was nothing better, on a day when you had no obligations or responsibilities, than to dress well and read the paper in a coffee shop. Jamison chose a seat all the way across the room from the door, so he could remain anonymous and hidden behind his paper if he chose, or he could watch the other coffee addicts dragging themselves into the fueling station to prepare for another day of drudgery. So what if they had a regular, steady, and reliable income? Look what it did to them. Paradox was just happy that he could enjoy his leisure time.

Glancing over the paper occasionally, (when the bell above the door rang), he noticed that the coffee shop and its patrons all seemed to blend in. Their emotions were all brown, a dull, muddy brown that reminded him of yesterday’s coffee that sat out too long and was kind of chewy-looking as a result. There was so much boredom, weariness, and stress.

And then, out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of color. Yellow!? He nearly whipped up his head up to see, but managed to catch himself. He calmly folded his paper and smoothed it with his hands. Then he was free to discreetly look for the brightly colored cloud.

Ah, yes. Triangles, that makes sense. He had almost been worried that someone was exceedingly happy, but it was only determination. There was occasionally some determination around, over achievers liked to drink coffee to feel extra alive and productive.

And then his face started to tingle. He must have made “eye-contact” or something for her to notice him.

>>"Are you Joe Stereezy?"

Paradox heaved a mental sigh, So much for anonymity and flying under the radar. This kind of thing happened to him sometimes; people expecting to meet a friend in the coffee shop who fit his build would come over to him, seeing a replica of the other person’s face, as perfect as in their own memory.

For the time being, “Yes,” he snapped a bit sharply. He was mildly annoyed that the next portion of his carefree day was going to require concentration. Not only did he have to anticipate what this person wanted, but he also had to keep an eye out for the real ‘Joe’ coming to get a cup of joe and make an appropriate excuse to leave for a moment. This was all made rather more difficult by the fact that he didn’t even know what the real Joe looked like. Yes, he had every right to be a little bit snippy. Hopefully Joe was a snippy kind of person.

Meld wasn't taken aback in the least by Joe's abrupt answering of her question. In fact, it was almost expected in the kinds of people she regularly dealt with. They tended, as a whole, to be one of two types. The first was the suave and shallow type, always with a smile and a kind word, oozing with charisma and able to attract followers to them like bees to honey. The second was the bruske and abrupt type. Both had their uses and both were dangerous and not to be underestimated. In general, Meld preferred to deal with the latter type anyway because that way she didn't have to question their motivations or read between words to get at their true meaning. What they said was what they meant and that worked perfectly well for her.

"A pleasure to finally meet you in person, Mr. Stereezy," Meld stated, extending her mutant hand in offer of a handshake. When dealing with humans she almost always got a reaction, no matter how well they tried to hide it, when she offered a handshake. It was either staring at her blue glowing veins or the even more dubious stares at her blades metal hand. The blue veined hand, however, came across as less overtly intimidating so that was the one she most often chose to use in greeting. Besides, it wouldn't do to accidentally cut up her employer.

Politeness, in Meld's experience, went a surprisingly far way when dealing with mafia types. They were men of power and men of power enjoyed respect, especially from a mutant. She would never go as far as grovelling, of course, she enjoyed respect as much as the next person, but her ego did not prevent her from being polite. Treat others how you would like to be treated was, despite its cliche nature, a rather good philosophy. Especially when it came to the men and women who were paying you and doubly especially when those men and women were also potentially dangerous.

Amber waved a waitress over and ordered herself a coffee before taking a seat across from Joe. His voice seemed a little different than it had been on the phone, but the phone often distorted voices somewhat and illness was also a possitibility. It didn't strike her as terribly unusual, i any case. "So, are you all prepared to pay your dear cousin a visit?"

'Joe' observed the obvious mutations with a cool and collected head. Truth be told he wasn't surprised by very many things like that anymore. A lot of mutants just looked like normal people, though some were different in some way. A tail or something could be easily overlooked so it wasn't remarkable that this girl had a visible mutation. Except that she looked more like a Swiss army knife than anything else. She offered him a blue hand to shake.

Paradox raised one eyebrow and searched the mutant's cloud to see if there was a high chance of her skin hurting him. He was immediately flooded with colors. But not seeing anything immediately threatening there, he took the offered hand and returned the shake politely.

Cousin.... interesting... he thought as she took a seat. “Actually,” he replied, letting his voice drawl just a little bit. “Plans have changed a little bit.” He made sure to put extra hesitation in the mix. Mostly, he wanted to know more about what was going on before he committed to anything in particular. He didn't want a huge misunderstanding... though that might be unavoidable for the present moment. He sipped his coffee and let his eyes run around the room.

Meld frowned at the suggestion that plans had changed. She didn't like last minute changes in plan, not at all. It was one thing when she hadn't been apprised of the complete plan ahead of time, something that happened fairly often in her line of work and something she could live with. It was, oftentimes, a need to know basis sort of arrangement. It was quite another when plans were laid out, in some amount of detail, and then abruptly changed at the last moment. No, she didn't like this turn of events at all.

"Why have plans changed?" Meld asked. There was an unmistakable dangerous edge to Meld's voice. Maybe, if Joe came up with a very good reason for having misled her and changing plans at the last moment, she would still go through with doing her part. After all, the money was good and half had been paid in advance, as her her policy. Plus, it was a beneficial career move to improve her reputation by proving to be a woman of her word and reputation was indispensable in her line of work. Once tarnished it was almost impossible to regain. However, she was still willing to completely bail on the entire operation if it came down to it.

"I don't appreciate last minute changes. You have better have a good reason for switching things up." The threat implicit in Meld's tone didn't need to be verbalized. She was dangerous, everything about her was dangerous. Would she kill the man if she found out he was screwing with her? Probably not. But they both knew that she could if she so desired.

Though she's let his gruffness go the first time, the metal-covered mutant got very upset over a simple thing like the plan changing. Very upset, like now I'm going to carve you up and eat you upset. He was starting to understand a little bit more of the reason this meeting might have been called. Had the real Joe actually been there, it would probably have had not-so-nice results for this 'cousin'. As it was, Jamison wanted to avoid involving any other people in this dealing and if it meant he was not involved in a murder, all the better.

Bah,[i/] he thought, Some people are such whiners. “Let's just say that there is no longer a reason to visit my cousin.” He smiled pleasantly, meeting her eyes straight on. People always reacted to pleasantness in interesting ways. Because beneath a warm smile, some could discern a hint of danger. Her's was obvious and flashy, his more subdued. He was curious to see what her reaction would be.

“We've decided to go in a different direction,” he added, loving the duality or plurality of meaning behind his words.

“Let's just say that there is no longer a reason to visit my cousin.”

Meld gave Joe a long and appraising look at that statement, beginning to realize that something just wasn't right here. He had been so determined to pay his cousin a visit in order to teach him a lesson, willing to pay Meld everything that she asked because he knew that she would get the job done right the first time. She knew her worth and it wasn't like that price was cheap, either. So what could possibly have caused him to change his mind at this late juncture in the game?

Different pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. First, Meld had been early and yet "Joe" was still there waiting for her. That in itself wasn't unusual, Meld wasn't the only one who had a tendency to arrive early for missions of that sort. His voice, however, was also different, something that she had dismissed as the difference between hearing a voice over the phone and hearing a voice in person. Now she wasn't so sure, in fact she was more and more certain every second that this wasn't her contact after all. So, the question was, who was he and why was he pretending to be her contact? Her tail twitched in irritation.

"I don't know who you are of what you've done to Joe, but you better start talking now or things are going to get very bad for you very quickly." Her voice was low, too quiet for any of the other patrons in the establishment to hear, but she was confident that "Joe" would hear her loud and clear. Killing was the least awful thing she could do to him. If he knew anything about her reputation at all, he would know she was also gaining quite the skills of a torturer, though she still had a ways to go. The opportunity to practice those burgeoning skills was sounding rather attractive to her right at that moment.