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Ambrose ended up having to remind himself that he was here to apologize, because he was about to start laughing at Noel's obviously-so-very-dignified exit from the plane. He had to be polite and not at all his usual self, because then Panu would hate him forever, and he was a lot more averse to that idea than he really should be.

So he sheathed his claws, realizing then that they'd slid out at some point. Of course he didn't know why; for whatever reason would he harbor vaguely homicidal thoughts towards someone who was stealing Panu's attention away?

"Mister Jaager," she said as she neared him, and he gave her a smile. Really, it was closer to a grimace, and showed far more teeth than it really should've, but he'd tried. "Always a pleasure." Well, thankfully for him, he didn't seem like the only one who didn't particularly want to be here. "To what do I owe the honor?" she asked, offering her hand. This. This, Ambrose could deal with - mock platitudes and bizarrely formal hand-offerings were his specialty.

He took her hand with a flourish, pressing her fingers to his lips with a mischievous glint in his eye. "Madame," he said almost mockingly before remembering to tone it down a bit. He gestured at the picturesque Mediterranean landscape around them - even the airstrip was beautiful, and they hadn't even gotten into the car yet - saying, "Welcome to the fair country of Montenegro." Motioning towards the left seat (this was Europe, so the driver sat on the right), he stepped around the car and stopped by the driver's seat, waiting for her to get in before he did.

In the meantime, he decided he'd give her a rather vague itinerary. He didn't want to disclose the reason for her being here just yet, because ha, no, of course he was saving the humiliating apology for the last possible minute, so he kept it intentionally unspecific. "Our destination is the lovely town of Kotor, unsurprisingly located next to the Bay of Kotor," he said, and was about to go into more detail about the town, until he realized he didn't actually know much else. "It's about a half hour's drive away," he continued instead, "so please do remember to buckle up. We will be having brunch upon arrival."

He made a brief mental note to text Madeline about the rest of the day, because he hadn't actually read past the first few entries on the schedule she'd sent him. Hey, he had a secretary for a reason, and without his secretary, he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

It was dark.

Dark, and cold, and as he gradually became more aware of his surroundings, Ambrose started to move. Something clanked, and he whipped his head around towards the source of the noise. And with that movement, he suddenly realized two things.

One, he seemed to be in his natural form. It was a lot more comfortable than his human form, yes, but the last thing he remembered was taking his meds as he stepped off of the plane, having just landed at JFK International Airport. That meant that he would have had to have been out for a long, long time, and what he realized next confirmed that. Because two - the clanking noise came from the thick chains spidering their way across his scales, winding about his legs and even around his neck, the ends of which were bolted tightly to the cement ground. Even when he pulled, with his more-than-just-considerable strength, they did nothing more than creak a bit.

Ambrose wasn't stupid, and he had a fairly good idea of what was going on here. Through the walls, rendered translucent by his stupid excuse for heat vision, he could see a few bright white figures patrolling the hallway. He couldn't really turn his head that much, so that was all he could see, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions about being kidnapped. He had no idea about their motives, though - whether his captors had wanted Ambrose Jaager the CEO, Jabberwocky the generic mutant hellraiser, or Jörmundgandr the Rägnarok anarchist, he hadn't the slightest clue.

Deciding that if he was here, he might as well have a little fun, Ambrose roared. Loudly. If anyone asked, he would swear that it made the ground rumble, but then again, he was never particularly known for his modesty. It did, however, clearly startle the patrolling figures, considering their sudden jerks away from his door. One of them even fell over, and he let out a little huff of amusement.

He watched as they rushed towards each other, clearly muttering among themselves to figure out what to do next. He could hear them, of course - the walls were very much like that of a sewer (in fact, he'd warrant a guess that they were in some sort of underground bunker), so not really built to be soundproof - but even if he couldn't, it was relatively obvious.

"What's this about, dearies?" Ambrose positively purred, delighting in watching their heads whip around. He could smell their fear, as faint as it was. He was getting the impression that they hadn't been looking for his monster form at all, which made this all the more irritating. "Tell me, why don't you -"

His words were interrupted by a roar of pain as electricity arced its way up the chains. Okay, that'd been unexpected. It felt like eternity but was probably more like fifteen seconds before it stopped, and he slumped onto the floor, actually vibrating the ground a bit because of sheer body mass. He swore loudly at the retreating white figures with a steady stream of Dutch and English insults, and was positive that he could smell smoke wafting up from his poor scales. Pulling again at the chains, he was disappointed to see that they were steadfast as ever.

"I hate my life," he muttered under his breath, resigning himself to laying properly on the floor. Looked like he wasn't going anywhere - and he didn't even know why he was here. To be fair, though, for whatever reason, he probably deserved it. He wasn't exactly a paradigm of morality or anything remotely like that.

Long story short, it's Hell Week before a production my school's doing and I'm on tech, and major assignments. Posts will likely not happen until the end of next week.

Are you busy? I am getting a ride now from strong mutant. Maybe you want to meet.


Ambrose frowned down at his phone. "Madeleine?" he called out through the slightly ajar door to his office. "Where's Panu?"

"I'm not his mother," came the slightly sarcastic response.

Ambrose scrolled through the numerous wifi networks shown on his phone, looking for the one that would indicate Panu's presence. "I just got a text asking if I had time for a meeting with a mutant he's getting a ride with. Did he not go home last night?"

"He'd left when I did," Madeleine called back, now sounding a bit worried. "Did you go home last night?"

"No, I stayed downstairs overnight, working on the blueprints for the Haxill commission - it was urgent and our entire biochemistry team is out sick." Ambrose was very much not okay with the situation, because something about it was very abnormal. Panu's wifi network was nowhere to be seen, which he probably should've expected, but it added an extra air of urgency to the situation. Maybe the strange mutant had gotten Ambrose's entire team sick just so he could kidnap Panu. But that was probably paranoia, considering the toxic mold from an improperly disposed of chemical could've done that too. "Did he text you?"

"I left my phone here overnight and I haven't checked. Let me see." Silence except for the rustling of some papers. A long pause. "Yeah, I'm going to go with Panu is definitely in trouble."

Ambrose was out of his seat and out his office door in record time, leaning over Madeleine's shoulder and reading the texts off her phone.

Being held captive a little. Do not need help, he said he does not want to kill me. Please tell Mr Jaager I will probably miss dinner but am getting food here.

And just now:

I am not drowned last night. Please put time in Mr. Jaager's schedule for Very Important Meeting. Thank you.

"What in the world is going on," Ambrose said blankly.

"Text him back," Madeleine said suddenly, and very authoritatively, and Ambrose couldn't really say no. "Tell him you're at work and to meet you here. I'll call Cail up." Ambrose nodded, taking out his phone and typing out the message.

I'm at work right now. Meet me in my office?

Madeleine put down the receiver on her desk phone, telling him, "Cail's on his way up. He'll stay by the elevator for that extra layer of defense."

"Thank you, Ms. Brass," Ambrose said briskly, straightening up. "Let me know when they've arrived, and clear my schedule for the next hour and a half or so." She nodded, turning back to her computer to make the necessary edits.

Ambrose walked back into his office and sat down at his desk, and caught a glimpse of Cail standing guard by the elevator doors just as his office door swung shut. He sincerely hoped Panu was alright. And much to his irritation, it wasn't just because Panu was a valuable asset. But that could be dealt with at a later time.

So she had understood him when he'd spoken Dutch. Not only that, but she'd called him out on a lie. Interesting. He'd have to determine the extent of her powers later. When she spoke next, it was in Dutch again, but what was unnerving was the fact that it was Ambrose's Dutch. She spoke exactly as he did, even slurring her vowels in the way that had irritated Ambrose's father to no end, and overenunciated the "d" in "Nederlands" - the Dutch word for "Dutch" - in the same way that Ambrose did. That was slightly uncomfortable, to say the least.

Before Ambrose could respond to Noel, Panu spoke, asking him very subtly to please not kill her. Ambrose sighed. This situation had gotten absurdly out of hand so very quickly, and there wasn't much he could do to bring it back under control.

"<Let's stick to English,>" he said, almost exasperated. "<Though I would suppose you need your English back in order for that to happen.>" He was guessing she'd have to copy his English in order to do so, which would not help Panu too much. English had been Ambrose's second language, learned after Dutch, and he took far too many liberties with the language, and definitely more than he really should.

"<If you want, we could find someone with better English than me for you to get your English back with.>" There. That seemed like the best course of action. Having to take care of a child was more stressful than anticipated, especially when one had to make sure that the child's English tutor could speak English again and that she wasn't law enforcement in some shape or form.

Oh, dear lord. Why was respect so hard to come by nowadays? He suspected that it was a primarily European thing, being polite, which was why he and Panu both were more than a little bit irritated at the informality of most people. Ambrose was used to it, having been born and raised in America, but it still threw him off sometimes because he'd spent most of his developmental years isolated among polite people, and the real world was nowhere near as respectful.

As for what Hades had said. Most of it sounded rather overdramatic and magnanimous, but the "led armies" part was what mattered. This was really just a business interview, after all, and Hades had experience. Another crucial part of being chosen for a job, however, was being the kind of person that would fit in well. Ambrose needed somebody who wouldn't be a loose cannon, because he couldn't afford for everybody to have their own personal goals when the time came to work together as a machine. But it looked as if Hades was still trying to keep the power on his side. Well, Ambrose would humor him, then. He was tired of arguing with people who didn't understand what they were talking about, and he certainly hoped that this didn't end the same way it had last time he'd argued with someone ignorant.

"Purpose," he said, in response to Hades's question. "After all, isn't that the most important thing? We want a world where people aren't fettered by the shackles of society today, and are free from the bigotry and hatred that we can't get away from now. At least, that's what I'm told. I'm just the recruiter; Loki is the one with the vision." Oh, that had been a stroke of brilliance on his part, inventing the non-existent Loki. People weren't so inclined to want to feel powerful if they didn't think they were dealing with the leader. He'd taken advantage of people's egos to come up with the idea, and he'd been absurdly proud about it afterwards.

Wow. Ambrose was really getting pissed now, even if he didn't show it. "You also reveal your ignorance in biology"? Really? She'd clearly never taken high school bio, or earned a degree in biochemical sciences - you know, like Ambrose had. She might as well murder everyone on the planet, then, considering they were all mutants. That's why he didn't particularly like the word "mutant" - technically, everyone on the planet was a mutant. Somebody with green eyes would be considered a mutant by someone with blue eyes, considering one was natural and the other was a mutation of the original gene. He was dealing with someone with even less knowledge about what she was talking about than he'd thought.

That could be good, though. It was always easier to manipulate the ignorant than the well-informed, and she certainly wasn't the latter.

"Well then, I suppose you should disregard me, then," Ambrose said suddenly, shrugging. There was an almost absurd change in his body language and tone of voice, having gone from positively primal to about as ambivalent as he could possibly get, as he leaned back and crossed his arms. He wasn't stupid, contrary to what the woman believed - in fact, he was very much the opposite. He was, at the very least, smart enough to know when someone wasn't quite smart enough to carry on a sensible business conversation with. This supposed diplomatic discussion seemed to be spiralling downward very quickly as the two participants opinions' of each other changed drastically, and Ambrose was quite ready for Aura to resort to violence. She seemed like the kind of person who would do that once she realized she had lost the intellectual upper hand, although he doubted that she'd ever had it in her life to begin with. "Clearly, working together is out of the question. Which is really too bad; I'd really hoped that we could've worked something out, but circumstances were against us, I'm afraid." He stood up, smiling pleasantly, and proceeded to walk towards the door. "I'll walk you down, Miss Whilver. It's the least I can do."

Oh, dear. He hoped she wouldn't be too startled by the use of her real last name. He really hadn't meant to use it, but too late now.