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Ambrose circled overhead for a bit after dropping the META bot to just observe the extent of the girl's capabilities. She'd followed him off of the roof, soaring through the air with wings of her own, but she'd landed at some point for some reason. Well, it did make some sense - she was a bit fleshier than Ambrose was, and by the way her wings dimmed from "sort-of grey that means blood vessels but no real body mass" to "nearly black that means a solid object," he was guessing her powers extended to transforming her wings into some other substance. He couldn't tell exactly what, his eyesight being far too useless for that, but he could hear darts hitting them and falling to the ground. If he were to guess, he'd say some kind of stone, but the sound of the ricochet wasn't quite right for that. He supposed he'd find out the specifics later.

He heard the sound of a muffled curse, and glanced back down again to see the girl using one wing as a shield as she walked forward, as the other flapped wildly behind her. She was heading right into the throng of police officers, all of whom were still firing at her, as she seemed like a more immediate threat than the still-circling Ambrose. That didn't seem particularly intelligent. She didn't look, sound, or smell armed, so how in the world was she going to achieve anything except -

He winced as the sound of something grating against metal hit his ears, and was then greeted with the sudden sharp scent of blood.

Curious, having missed what had just happened, Ambrose circled lower. It seemed as if she'd fired off her feathers or something, because a police officer had just been impaled by something that was the same "color" as her wings. Darts were studded all across the battlefield, and her wings seemed minimally shorter. That was interesting. It was a strange mutation, using your one method of escape as a weapon, but apparently it worked.

He thudded to the ground next to her, the concrete audibly cracking as he landed. The police officers stumbled back, because a massive monster landing on the ground in front of you tended to invoke that reaction. "We are doing well?" the girl asked, hopefully, and he detected an accent and a bit of desperation. Alright then. He might be a monster, but he wasn't a complete jerk. He'd give her her validation.

"Very much so," he said. "Beautiful shot, by the way." He had been impressed by it, and the sadistic part of him was grinning viciously at the scent of panic that was wafting up from the people around him. They'd have to leave soon, though - at this rate, SWAT or some other Big Deal would be called in, and Ambrose wasn't particularly in the mood to deal with that. "Follow me," he ordered, suddenly, and leapt into the air. Yes, he may have forgotten to inform her about exactly why they were leaving, but he hadn't sounded that aggressive, had he?

Once he'd reached a sufficient altitude, high enough in the night sky that the police would need helicopters to even have a chance of hitting him, he turned and started flying towards the warehouse district of the city. He wanted to talk to the girl, just to gather some information, and now that he'd had his fun, it was the time to do so.

Something landed beside him, on the courthouse roof, and Ambrose had to stifle his natural instinct to swing at this intruder in case it was somebody on his side. He swung his head around to look critically at her, his vision not allowing for him to see anything other than a fuzzy silhouette. There seemed to be... wings? Attached to her back? That made sense; she had to have gotten up I this roof somehow.

But then the wings disappeared. Ambrose blinked, to make sure his vision wasn't acting up again, but yup, the wings had gone from the bright white of "alive" to the faded grey of "merely present." Something seemed to detach from her wings, flying down upon the scene below them, and Ambrose just barely registered what they were in time to let loose a warning roar at the police. Thankfully, they jumped out of the way, and none of them were hit by whatever projectiles the newcomer had launched.

Now he turned to the winged figure perched next to him on the rooftop and let out a little huff of annoyance. He sniffed critically at her, not recognizing her scent, but getting that she was young and had just been eating pizza. So if he didn't know her, why was she here?

"You shouldn't do that," Ambrose said, annoyed. "If you attack them directly, then they have a reason to attack us. And hurting a police officer is very different from hurting a regular civilian. They're quite vengeful against those who have hurt their own, you know." Essentially, he didn't want to escalate the situation that quickly just yet. He'd been enjoying himself, perched up here and letting the policemen question whether he was doing this deliberately or he'd just lost control of his mutation. Now there was no question that this was deliberate - considering he'd just warned them and spoke to the person next to him - and they'd move in more aggressively soon.

Ambrose swiveled his head around as her heard something from the ground below - armed officers were pouring out of the vans that had just pulled up, and were lining up on the ground, all of their guns aimed at Ambrose. A couple META bots were arriving as well, and Ambrose briefly caught a bit of a conversation between an officer and a META bot handler.

"One of them tried to attack us," the officer said, Ambrose's enhanced hearing easily picking it up, even through the sound of the fire and the chaos below. "Authorizing lethal force."

Ambrose was even more annoyed now. It looked as if he'd have to leave this party early. "Now look what you've done," he growled, casting the growing swarm of META bots an unpleasant glare.

Elliott Thomas. Well, he'd known that already - it'd been plastered all over these internship papers - but in their line of work, telling someone else your real name was either a sign of trust or of stupidity. He was betting it was trust, in this case, and he appreciated that gesture. Ambrose was going to get Panu to do some research, once they'd left this meeting. He didn't expect that it'd be too hard to find records of someone with Elliott's appearance, especially for Panu.

"Of course," Elliott said, immediately pressing the phone up to where Ambrose assumed his ear was. But as for his second, more important question. "It varies depending on job, though. Some can be more. Some less. It depends on how much goes into it. Kind of like a PI." Oh, that was easy. There was nothing more unreliable than a case-by-case salary, and Ambrose could easily match that. Elliott seemed too young to get a regular, paid job, so that limited Ambrose (people would get suspicious of an intern paid more than some employees), but not all too much. The paid internships at JW were notoriously amazing, but he supposed Elliott wouldn't know that, considering Elliott didn't even recognize him immediately.

Ambrose nodded to indicate that he'd heard, but he didn't say anything else. He'd wait until Elliott had his embarrassment of an employer on the phone, and then he'd speak.

"Oh, it is, Sir," Elliott said, and Ambrose ignored the spike of annoyance that he felt at the boy's tone of voice. "I'm going to reach into my pocket in a moment to pull out a cellphone. My hunch says it is probably going to contain valuable information on it from my business partners. My thought is that they wish to do business with you and desired an excellent cover story. They likely assumed you would use something like an internship when I walked off the street, as walking in like this is probably the sort of thing that might seem odd. Aren't deliveries usually handled by middlemen, handed to middlemen? My thought is that you aren't a middleman. Otherwise, why would you be involved in handing out internships, and why would you act so odd about the delivery, in-general?"

Ambrose really had to tamp down the urge to raise an eyebrow now, because seriously, had this kid never watched the news? He was an actual famous person. But then, the thought that Ambrose wasn't a middleman should've crossed Elliott's mind ages ago, as soon as he was given instructions to go to the top floor of the building where the only office was Ambrose's. Ambrose almost started to speak when he realized that Elliott looked as if he were waiting for confirmation, so Ambrose just sighed mentally and outwardly waved his hand, indicating to Elliott that he should continue. And continue he did.

"Deliveries are my game. I'm good at my job. I can be discrete, and I know about the looks of things. They obviously want to make a good impression with you and wanted to look professional by making this interview legit. This cellphone I have in my pocket. May I? I haven't looked at it. I never look at my deliveries unless instructed to. Privacy for my employer is very important to me. It's probably going to turn into a spider or something. Don't be shocked when it does. They like putting people off guard."

Ambrose had never been fond of doing this sort of business to begin with - it put too much scrutiny on JW, which was why he did his best to keep the company itself as squeaky clean as possible. If he had even the slightest sense that even a low-level lackey was dealing in less-than-legal affairs, he'd go out of his way to fire him. So he was very, very displeased that this arrogant Cerberus company was trying to needle its way into his affairs. Who did they think they were? Ambrose didn't want whatever business connections Elliott might provide if they weren't a hundred percent legal. His first priority was Ragnarok, and it seemed as if Cerberus was clumsily trying to needle its way into Ragnarok by assuming Ambrose either needed or wanted their assistance. Nothing against Elliott, of course; the boy had said it himself - he was just a middleman. No, the mistake that Cerberus had made was sending in the squire to fight the dragon while the knight stayed safely at home. No fairytale ever went like that, and it was for good reason.

For a moment, Ambrose just looked at Elliott with an unreadable expression as those thoughts flitted through his head. And then he spoke. "I'd like to speak to your employer," he said, his voice so calm and even that some who knew him would grow uncomfortable just hearing that tone of voice. "What was it? Cerberus, correct? I don't know what your employers expect from me, but Jaager Worldwide is a legitimate company. We don't deal in that sort of thing." Only Ragnarok did. And that was why he'd been so irritated in the first place - he'd thought that the package was weapons or something for Ragnarok that had been delivered to him as a threat or something. This was debatably worse - somebody knew something, but judging by the fact that the name "Ragnarok" hadn't come up once, they didn't know enough. Meanwhile, the scenes he'd been playing out in his head of worst-case scenarios didn't include Elliott in the slightest, so he'd all but forgotten about him. He wasn't particularly important in Ambrose's mind at this point.

"Madeline!" Ambrose shouted out of his office, towards the general direction of where his secretary was sitting. A couple seconds later, his phone beeped, and he absentmindedly flipped it over.

Please keep your voice down. This is a place of work, the text read, sent from a contact labelled "Mom." Ambrose frowned. He hadn't done that. He'd question Madeline later, and maybe Panu. Probably Panu.

He swiped at the screen, unlocking the phone, and started typing a response. My calendar says I have a delivery in half an hour.

You do.

There are people to pick up deliveries. Why is it on my calendar?

It's a delivery for you.

Ambrose sighed heavily, and then relegated himself to getting up. He winced as his limbs creaked and something sloshed beneath his skin - he wasn't getting old, but he'd gotten back into human form not an hour before he came to work, and his body wasn't particularly fond of going from human to monster back to human in one night. But he'd had to, because there had been a situation of sorts that he'd needed to deal with, and it had unfortunately been a 4 AM situation. He'd left for work at around 6:30 AM, because he lived outside fo the city, and so that had been tiring and painful.

He limped over to his office door, making heavy use of the carved cane he unfortunately had to rely on once in a while. "Thank you, father," he muttered under his breath as he made his way out.

Madeline was, as per usual, typing away on her computer. To be very honest, Ambrose didn't even know what she did most of the time - Ambrose ran JW in a way that would allow greater individuality, so he'd have to do less (he just demanded weekly updates on the big projects, to be honest). "What delivery?" Ambrose asked, as he dragged his way over to her desk.

"The sort of delivery that shouldn't be given to the people who usually pick up our deliveries," she said under her breath, but Ambrose's enhanced hearing picked it up easily. He dropped his voice too, in response.

"Those sort of deliveries aren't supposed to be delivered to me directly, especially not at work," Ambrose growled quietly, growing slightly peeved at whatever idiot had arranged this. Madeline just shrugged in response, before a notification popped up on her screen. She glanced at it.

"The messenger is here," she said, and Ambrose sighed.

"Make sure anyone who asks or checks sees that he's applying for an internship," Ambrose ordered, and Madeline nodded, immediately returning to her computer. "I'll be in my office."

Around twenty minutes later, Ambrose heard the familiar ding of the elevator opening, and hushed talking outside. (The office was meant to be soundproof, but the door was cracked ever so slightly). Moments later, the delivery boy entered the office. Although, to be frank, Ambrose hesitated to call him a boy.

While it didn't show in the slightest on his face, Ambrose was momentarily put off by the messenger's appearance. He looked like something that had walked straight out of some conspiracy nut's head and into the real world, except in a suit. Ambrose was mostly accustomed to seeing physical mutants, especially as he was one himself, but seeing something so... unusually normal? was off-putting. He was pretty sure that he'd be less shocked if a distorted embodiment of body horror had walked in, versus this very alien-like alien.

Although it was hard, Ambrose resisted the urge to make any "take me to your leader" jokes, but that would've been gold.

"You're the messenger, I presume?" Ambrose said, looking decidedly and very determinedly unperturbed. "Who sent you?" Now that he'd gotten over his surprise, he was more focused on what idiot decided to send him a package here. Especially since his being Jörmungandr wasn't public knowledge, or even underworld knowledge. A lot of people just assumed he was a mutant affiliated with Ragnarok, probably through bribery because of his power, and not their leader-pretending-to-be-second-in-command at all. So this - this was what he called a "security breach," especially since the delivery was made in plain view.

"Yeah," Noel said, and Ambrose stared at her out of the corner of his eye as she seemingly wrestled with her hair. "Are we meeting someone?"

Well, she definitely wanted to be here about as much as he did. Which was to say, not at all. He was okay with that. Panu would not be okay with that, though. So dammit, it was down to him to try and be genuine, and nice, and all those human frivolities. At least he could pretend rather well. He liked to think of himself as a monster in a person suit - literally - and he obviously thought that he wore that person suit quite well.

But as he opened his mouth, probably to say something witty and clever and painfully insincere, the ground rumbled, and he shut it, slowly. He turned around, clearly looking for whatever the source of the chaos was, and the ground rumbled again. This time, though, the buildings visibly shook, and a plume of smoke spiraling up from not three blocks away accompanied the loud burst of sound that was unmistakably a bomb. For a moment, Ambrose was confused, and then he realized that the terror alert in all of Europe was high for a reason. This was probably some sort of Ragnarok wannabe organization, and Ambrose sighed. He didn't really feel like having to suffer through a transformation, but he couldn't just let this pass, especially since the bombers were definitely competition.

"Excuse me," Ambrose said absentmindedly, as he drifted towards the source of the noise. There was shouting coming from down the street now, and a very clear sound of machine-gun fire, so maybe these terrorists were more painfully normal than he'd thought. But before he walked too far, he stopped and turned around to face Noel. "Care to accompany me?" he said brightly. He doubted she'd say yes - her powers, as far as he could tell, were practically useless in any sort of combat situation - and he was the sort of person to entirely discount anybody's non-mutation-enhanced physical capabilities. But he'd ask anyway, because he was polite.