Devil's Advocate... or some similarly witty sounding name

He found her reaction to be quite strange, given that he offered her his blood, even if it wasn't quite human. Still, he was committed to what he said, and as she glanced down in seeming shame, he resisted the urge to tell her not to worry and that he'd be fine. At that point, however, Nick heard her lovely voice tell him just what he really wanted to hear, and his scarlet eyes lit up with some fierce fire behind them. "Beautiful. I was going to knock them off the road with another Repulse wave, but if he has some decent arms there, I won't have to walk back," he said demurely, grinning at his employer before she compounded his orders. Nick found his eyes drawn to her full lips as they moved down and he nodded, already running interdiction plans when he felt her fangs bite down. The fingers on his right hand twitched reflexively as she drank, and he felt his blood leave him at a shocking pace.

By the time he heard a muffled 'Mmn', his other hand was shaking, and he was running out of expendable blood. "That's about as much as I can take, Chelle," he said calmly, slipping his arm away and covering it with his hand as his healing kicked in, and he shook off some minor disorientation, though it'd get worse since he was short a good amount of blood. Nick gave her a quick once over, noting that she looked healthier before he took off at a brisk walk, reaching the car quickly and opening the trunk with a burst of Repulse. What awaited him in the trunk was downright surprising. He grabbed the tube of the AT-4 CS rocket launcher, slinging it under his right arm and disengaging the primary and secondary safeties, looking around the trunk for anything else of immediate use. That want was immediately satisfied by an impressively fresh looking Heckler and Koch MP5 Kurz, a clip inside and the safety on. The guy must really be ready for anything, he thought, looking around the trunk space at various other armaments, including a fragmentation grenade that he put in his front pocket.

"I'll be right back, Queen Chelle," Nicholas said, turning around and going into a simple bow before he looked up and the wings behind him, furled and concentrating thrust, released twin blasts of magnetic force that sent him racing into the air, up to a height of three hundred meters and in a perfect position to see a green Alfa Romeo speeding away down a highway at a heading of 250 degrees. He raised the AT-4 and the closed wings behind him angled backwards, releasing another powerful impulse of energy that sent him streaking towards the roadway. In seconds, he was above the sports car, which was racing towards town. But not for long. He lanced out his free left hand, and a circular blast of Electromagnetic energy slammed into the left side of the Alfa, frying the onboard computers and causing to skid right and then flip, crashing into the rock wall a second later. Without hesitation, he turned as he swept past, pulling the trigger and watching the rocket pop out of the tube in time to slam into the wall above the car.

He hadn't gotten his aim dead on, and he knew it as he braked hard and banked right, wings flaring heavily on his growing left side to correct as he sped back again and dropped the smoking tube at the rapidly approaching wreckage, pulling up the Kurz as he cut all active energy to his wings and formed a quick cloud of Repulse particles beneath him as he passed by, losing altitude. The light tube slammed into the face of the first gangster as he hit the ground, floating on a cushion of EM and spinning around as he slid for a good ten feet. There was only one survivor, and Nick raised the Kurz, switching the safety off and raking the man's legs with bullets before he dropped the weapon and flared his weakening wings, flying slowly back to the villa. When he arrived, only a few minutes later, he was actually glad to feel terra firma as he cruised in for a gentle landing on the earth. "One survivor, for now. I assumed he'd be more good to you alive than dead," he explained, swaying slightly as lack of energy and drained blood began to take their toll.

"That, Chelle, was the idea," Nick replied with stark, almost totally military efficiency. In his Pysch class, they called his current behavior modeling, based off his military father's attitude when on base, especially since he'd experienced it quite a lot as a young boy waiting for his dad to bring the latest version of the F-18 Hornet down, or whatever new plane he was flight testing. This, however, only made him more uneasy on his feet, particularly as she lifted into the air on apparently renewed wings. "I'm coming too," he said, allowing his energy wings to dissipate and lose shape, the majority of the energy required to sustain them going back into his body before he formed a simple pair of trapezoidal pseudowings behind his back and kicked off with a steady but weak stream of EM. I'm not going to be able to keep up with her very well using my old wings, so I'll have to use these and glide. And glide he did, as he lifted into the air and floated towards the wrecked car behind her.

He didn't have to bother cutting power to descend, as he was essentially moving along a stalled ballistic path, moving lower and lower until he landed at a brisk walk behind his future employer, the grenade he'd slipped into his front pocket quickly retrieved along with the Five-Seven, which he took the liberty of pointing at the man's head. A double tap to the head would take less than a second and a half, and at this range, would more than scramble some cerebral eggs. Nick's job here was simply to make sure they weren't interrupted, that his boss wasn't hurt, and finally, to commit this information to memory in case it was needed later. He watched in silence as she interrogated the man, keeping his face impassive and his finger on the medium weight trigger of the handgun, which remained trained on the man's face at all times. At least until she bent down and drained him, at which Nick patiently waited until she finished drinking and stepped back.

He pulled the trigger twice, putting a bullet through the skull slightly above the right eye and once through the heart. "Insurance," he explained, pulling the pin on the grenade as shells clanked against the street and he tossed it at the almost totally destroyed car. "Nemo me impune laccesit", Nick said, quoting the motto from Edgar Allan Poe's 'A Cask of Amontillado'. "Nobody attacks me with impunity." What he'd done was quite simple. Putting two bullets through the man was an execution, or so it would seem until they noticed the lack of blood in the man's body. Though it could also appear as if they interrogated him, shot him, and then drank the blood. It was a chilling message, however. The grenade exploded under the gas tank, finishing off the vehicle in a tenuous fireball a dozen yards away. That much was destroying evidence.

"That's quite a title for someone who happened to be applying for a job, Chelle," Nick said demurely, an innocent smile sneaking onto his face as she looked him over and then started walking. That she was walking surprised him, and even though the pain from his hairline fractures made him wince, he took off at a jog until he caught up with her, hiding a grimace behind a quick smile. "I see. Would such a plan have to do with killing Signore Annavianna?" he asked, feeling rather smart that he committed the name to memory, and that it seemed to be pertinent information. His bright scarlet eyes glanced down to the hand she stretched back, looking warily at it for a second, two trains of thought running through his head at the same time.

He wondered if she perhaps wanted even more blood, but crossed it out of his mind as so unlikely as to be idiotic to entertain the notion of it. The second was that perhaps she did like him, in some way, and this was a way of showing it. That too, he crossed out. Fortunately, seeing no other possibility or real option there, he took her hand gingerly, hoping he wasn't wrong. "I would like very much to assist with coming up with a plan, after all, my father and I used to talk about airplanes, and how my granddad fought in the second World War, and then we'd always get to the tactics of battles. I might be of use, I hope, then."

Nick broke down his energy wings into their component particles as she turned and engulfed him in her wings, the cerulean bits of electromagnetic energy sticking to the surface of his skin and being absorbed as he felt himself pulled through the shadow with her. "Impressive indeed," he noted, before she spoke and he went quiet to listen. "So aim for his head at the best, and at least manage to make him feel bad? I think that's doable," he said, a natural confidence coming over him as he smiled at his future boss before they again shadow stepped and he blinked to get used to the feeling.

"That... sounds good. I don't have any clothes on me, though," he admitted, glancing down at his ruined shoes and muddy, torn up suit pants. Not at all what he'd intended to look like on the way back, but at least he wasn't dead, and Chelle seemed perfectly fine. If only his knees shared the same politeness, he'd have been happy. Nick simply followed her in, slipping a small paperback novel from his pocket and sitting down against the wall in the hallway, not particularly caring much as he turned the pages.

Nick finished flipping the next to last chapter of his novel to it's third page just as the door Chelle had gone into opened without warning next to him, and his vermilion eyes flickered up to her own with an innocent smile hinted at upon his countenance. She looked unhappy, or at least moderately disappointed, yet he accepted it with his smile, because there were far worse things to do when tired, dirty, and injured than stopping down in a hallway with a good book. Still, her voice made it appear that she wasn't asking, but issuing an imperative, and so he slowly, carefully rose to his feet, feeling his knees complain loudly but writing it off as muscle pain. It wasn't likely to still be hairline fractures, since the nanomachines in his body were no doubt knitting bone back together. Muscle, however, they couldn't do much about the buildup of lactic acid as a replacement for proper oxygen, and so that was a much likelier explanation.

"As you command, Miss Chelle," he said, reverting to the more proper tone he had used earlier in addressing her. It was a reflexive mannerism he inadvertently used when in the presence of those he considered to be his superior, unless they were of the same age and class, in which case, he would be much more casual. Regardless, he simply nodded as she spoke, adopting a slightly detached demeanor as he followed her down the hall and to the door across from hers. The order had, naturally, countered his more familiar attitude, and he listened in silence as she turned to face him inside the obviously well done bedroom and explained what was in there.

"Thank you, Miss Chelle, I'll be down after a quick shower then," Nick replied, returning her bow with a fluid example of his own and he waited until she left, hearing the door click closed. His jacket was effectively a write off, he noted, undoing the buttons with one hand as he entered the adjoining bathroom and dropping it in the empty hamper. And as he undressed, he found that only his underwear really survived the day, which was undoubtedly a shame, considering that it was all quite dear to him. Still, he didn't dwell on this as he stepped into the shower and put on the cold water at full blast, washing away the day's annoyances with a wholly theraputic experience before he came out and wrapped a towel loosely around himself.

Nick's hair still dripped cool water as he browsed, finding much of it not quite appropriate for dinner, but he settled on a simple pair of gray slacks and a sedate white shirt, tossing a matching gray sweater on after it and finding some slippers that fit before he exited the room. He was refreshed, calm, and as he stepped downstairs, innately hungry. It made sense, he supposed, given that his body needed constant amounts of energy or it'd start wasting away again, but he didn't particularly think there would be blood just floating around the place.

As his slippers tapped against the stairs on the way down, Nick faintly heard bits and pieces of a conversation, though it sounded more like his host was ordering food at a five star restaurant than anything else. Who the hell are Bethany and Gabriel? he asked, though his didn't exactly need to think all too hard about what they would be used for. His smile as she addressed him grew slightly, though he couldn't totally repress the feelings of anticipation and revulsion at it that constantly reared their heads whenever he was about to act like what he was. "That sounds good. I haven't had a decent meal since last night," he answered, stepping off the last two stairs and following sedately behind her.

The room that they entered from the hallway was certainly impressive, and he again wondered just how far the resources of Thrones could go. It was both a pragmatic employment based question and one as a self analysis of if he'd actually grow to like it. He wanted security, and if the money was indeed good, then he would be content with the first part. The second, however, seemed tenuous, though he had to admit that there could be another reason he would accept the job if it was offered. Nick remained standing as she sat down and curled into the chair, deciding to walk and talk instead. "It'd depend heavily on where exactly he is. Considering he has the reach to attack you here, on your property, I'd assume he's no mere mobster. That means he has to have some big connections, and that implies international crime. If we can find where he lives, a blueprint of the place, and aerial reconnaissance, then we could either find a way to break in and kill him, or force him out with brute force. Personally, I'd love to drop a cruise missile onto his head, but that's unlikely to be an option without clearance in the area." He spoke deliberately slow, vermilion eyes flickering back to her at the end of every sentence to see if she had any disagreements or comments on his words.

Nick tried to keep his face impassive, but that wasn't that easy when she explained that Annavianna was in fact ex family, and her great uncle. He wasn't totally comfortable with the idea of taking out someone she once called "Uncle" and it showed a little before he suppressed it to reply. "Well, family or not, I think he lost the right to be considered that when he sent people to try and kill you. If I do get a chance to kill him, I'll put a bullet through his heart." he answered, right before she laughed and a slight smile came to his lips at the sound. "Besides, I'd like to get paid, and I can't get any form of payment from a corpse, and I'd rather not be poor and all that, so I have a personal stake in the situation," Nick added, deciding to edit out the mental addition of the fact he liked the woman. She had a certain air about her that seemed to draw him in-- he couldn't place exactly if it was how she spoke, the personality behind the words, or, much to his chagrin, her looks.

He chuckled softly as she said it'd be too easy to drop a missile on the man's house. Not to mention I'd have a minor problem sourcing the plane, fuel, and a decent sized cruise missile. And then there's the fact that most governments didn't really like military aircraft destroying private property and disappearing without a trace, he thought bemusedly as she walked over to the record player and some classical music came on as she invaded his bubble. Not that he minded, though for a second he again wondered what her purpose there was. Fortunately, he figured it out as she spoke and the song picked up pace. "Then I think I'll have to break a few things," he added darkly and stepped forwards. His right hand went to her waist as the left raised to the side. Silently, he thanked his parents, well, mostly his mother for making him learn the anachronistic ballroom dancing for a prom he was never going to see. Not to mention that they didn't even do that kind of dance at his school, and so he was plain miserable with it when it happened.

"Excellent," he replied, a coy smile slipping onto his face as they danced, seeming to do so quite effortlessly, though he was really having to try to avoid screwing up. Still, when she looked into his eyes, he didn't look away as he normally would, entranced and drawn in by the ones that stared right back. He laughed softly, shaking his head at the moment. He was pulled back to earth by the sound of her voice again, and his face turned a little more serious as she spoke. Nick blinked, having heard the offer of the title earlier but not really paying much attention. "Others, huh? Does that allow me to present a plan, then?" he asked, looking towards the record player as the song ended. "Wait.. King? That's quite a promotion."