"Hey Kia..."

Kia glanced up from the pile of, thankfully, dwindling paperwork in front of her. "Hey Maria..." She said, greeting the tall brunette with a slight smile. She had respect for the woman and hoped to someday be as good of a fighter as she was, that is, if she could dislodge herself from this downward spiral of paperwork. How did hunting werewolves make so much damn paperwork? It didn't add up. She swore it was just Bagnold's attempt to keep her busy lest she show him up.

"Here... Bagnold wants you to take care of this..." Maria said gruffly, dropping a note on Kia's desk. She obviously didn't like playing messenger, but at this point in time the office was so boring that they were happy to do anything to keep sane. Nodding her off, Kia unfolded the note and looked it over. "What the hell... Another interview?" She muttered, her eyes sweeping over the scribbled orders. With 'Auror assistance' no less. What was their interest in this? Further more, why did she need help? She couldn't decide whether or not if she should be insulted by the many implications in the order.

"... What fun." She muttered before dropping a paperweight on her in pile. Gathering her wand and dagger, she slipped them into the inner pockets of her blazer and ran a hand through her hair. She hated the idea that she had to maintain a professional appearance in a job that required wrestling with giant, claw and teeth filled creatures of pure rage. She didn't mind the leather armor they had to wear on the full moon, in fact she much preferred it to the business casual they needed to wear on the off days. At least it provided some semblance of protection. But she supposed that was the trade off for working with the government. This wasn't like working from her home where she could wear whatever she wanted.

These thoughts carried her all the way to the second floor, almost past it actually. She barely managed to throw herself through the gate as it was closing and tumbled into the MLE rather ungracefully. Crawling to her feet and dusting herself off, Kia turned a pretty vibrant shade of crimson. The aurors milling about the office were mostly disinterested, but the few that did look up sent waves of embarrassment washing over her. Letting her hair fall over her eyes like a curtain, she tried to hide her humiliation as she approached the girl at the front desk. "Is... Nathanial Whitman here?" She murmured, showing the secretary her note.

 Nathan was actually doing paperwork, for once, mostly because the Direwolf case, regardless of MacDuff, had gone dry. He still attended the office in work clothes: twilled pants with a belt, a button-down collared shirt, black boots, and his crimson red Auror robes, which were currently hanging off the back of his chair, as he lazily regarded his paperwork.

Then he turned to the lifts, where a rather graceful young witch tumbled out onto their level and moved  to the front desk. Of course, Nathan, was among some of the men who let out a chuckle, but then merrily jumped up when he heard whom she was asking for.

"Yup that's me!" he interjected before the clerk could get a word in edgewise, then he leaned into the desk and picked up the girl's note, "Who are you? Ooh, what's this?" It had been a rough month for him and the entire Auror office, but he was still capable of being insufferably chipper.

Insufferably chipper was an understatement in Kia's opinion. She was already grumpy, having to trek all the way up here to have her hand held by an auror on a case she was fairly certain she could solve herself, so she didn't need him to be so... cheerful about it. It made it even worse when he acted like he had no idea what she was there for. Her cheeks turned redder, if that was possible, this time in anger. It took all she had not to scowl at him and snap the note out of his hand.

"Who are you? Ooh, what's this?"

"You... don't know?" Kia said slowly, processing the fact that if he didn't know about the mission, she could have just ignored the note and done it on her own. Was this just some elaborate joke? The WCU and the Aurors were known to play pranks on each other, Kia just never expected that they would use her as the punchline. If it was, she really didn't find it funny. She rarely found things that humiliated her funny.

It took all she had in her to force her scowl into something that resembled a smile. She wasn't going to let them poke fun of her and succeed. "It's an interview. Regarding the Direwolf strain" She said as politely as she could, but failed to keep that creeping edge of iciness out of her tone. She just hoped he didn't notice.

Once Nathan actually read the note about the interview, then of course he knew what it was for, but he dinstinctly remembered this assignment belonging to another WCU member.

The auror lifted his gaze up at the girl again, intently studying her red face before he let his gaze fall down to her feet and up back to meet her icy eyes again.

"Well yes, but you're not Kurby," Nathan he half considered adding a comment about her current attitude being very much like Kurby's, but he assumed that the assumption that someone was a polyjuiced Kurby was not what any woman in the Ministry wanted to hear, especially with a face so flustered.

"I guess he's been lightening the work-load, since..." a flash of twisted regret and frustration crossed his face before his mood lightened and he continued, "The accident." Then a smile crossed his face as rubbed his chin with a curious stare, "I read his file and all that, of course--but what do you know off the top of your head Miss...?" Maybe Nathan lucked out and this girl was one of those stony women who could memorize any manner of paperwork.

"Well yes, but you're not Kurby,"

"Amazing how genetics work" Kia surprised herself by suddenly interjecting. She was not normally one for the smart-ass quips (that was Kale's expertise) and that one came out so smoothly she briefly was tempted to look around for the person who actually said it. It felt kinda nice, for once, to say what was on your mind. Too bad he didn't seem to notice (or was pretending not to).

"I guess he's been lightening the work-load, since...The accident. I read his file and all that, of course--but what do you know off the top of your head Miss...?"

That look of remorse that crossed his features, turning him from just another jerk in a red robe into a human being, was not lost on Kia. However, it was so brief, and was followed by him blatantly checking her out (Or perhaps, as she was more prone to think, he was critiquing her silently), that Kia wrote it off as a lapse of judgment on her part. She stiffened up again.

"I'll be honest... I don't know much more then what the papers have told me. I have been buried in busy work for the last couple of months since I started..." She said this part a bit bitterly, obviously displeased by the lack of fieldwork she had been part of "... I was hoping that they would have given you more information, considering you are a full fledged auror." Wait, was that more insulting to him or her?

At the witch's comeback, Nathan gave a hearty chuckle. After all the girl's brooding he finally said, "Quite a downer, aren't you?" he leaned back with a bright smile as he rambled off the nutshell of what all he knew,  "Frank Pratt, Direwolf--we know Tawse got his hands on him but he hasn't been too good about providing details just yet--Amnesia, so we're going to try and piece together what we can and check up on him."

He waved a dismissive hand as he continued, "There's other stuff about his condition, of course, but I am not from the WCU, nor am I a healer from the first floor of Mungo's, so I assume that's your job," Nathan waved his wand and the folder he had been reading collected itself and zipped over to float in front of the girl's face.

"Oh and I don't have your name," he quickly added without removing the folder floating between them and, possibly, obscuring the shorter of the twos' views.

"There's other stuff about his condition, of course, but I am not from the WCU, nor am I a healer from the first floor of Mungo's, so I assume that's your job,"

She was tempted to make a snide remark, something along the lines of how his only job was to catch Tawse and he wasn't doing it very well, but she bit it back. No, no... she couldn't let her temper get the best of her. It did in her interview with Bagnold and nearly lost her the job, something that was made even more irritating by the fact that she owed him her gratitude for giving her a chance afterwards. She wasn't about to let someone else hold that over her.

"Oh and I don't have your name,"

"You may call me Miss Ferris, Auror Whitman." She said before snatching the folder out of the air, smiling through tightly clenched lips. Pretty boys were always prats, she reminded herself. It was something she had learned long ago. She just had to keep her temper in check and remain cool, so as to not give him the satisfaction of knowing his insufferable smile was getting to her. Her tight lipped smile immediately fell and she shoved the file under her arm "... Now that the pleasantries are over, can we get on with this?... Please?" She added the last bit quickly, cutting off any chance for him to be condescending and ask for the 'magic word'.

Nathan gave another lighthearted chuckle as he moved to the lifts, snatching up his red robes in the process, "You and Kurby are such charmers..." Nathan jumped into the lift as he waited for the girl and then motioned to the folder, "Well, go on read it," he urged as they began their trip.

The trip was eerily quiet, as Miss Happy Ferris Wheel had spent most of the trip in adoring silence, all however many apparated minutes of it. Nathan couldn't help but keep a cocky and broad smile on his face, glinting with his white teeth as he moved up and knocked the door. It sounded back with the beat of hollow wood before the porch settled into a quiet stillness again.

Of course, Nathaniel Whitman couldn't stand silence forever. So with all the charm infused in him from birth and all the annoyance of a first year Gryffindor, Nathan crossed his arms, turned toward Kia Ferris and asked, "Have you read it yet?"

"You and Kurby are such charmers...Well, go on read it,"

"Oh thank you... I didn't know I had permission!" Kia's voice dripped with sarcasm as she snapped open the folder and begin to read, following him down the hall as she did so. The trip was short and blessedly silent, prompting her to continue reading long after she had already finished the important bits, just to keep him from bugging her. However, this tactic proved to stop working on him after a period of time, no matter how short it was. They had barely reached the house when he broke the silence with an impatient demand.

"Have you read it yet?"

"Patience is a virtue." Was all she said, purposely leaving the question unanswered to annoy him. She had already finished, but she didn't like being rushed. Flipping through the notes, she absorbed as much of the information as she could so that she didn't have to endure any more taunting from Whitman than necessary. Reading Frank's interrogation, Kia sighed and tutted lightly, "Poor guy..." She murmured.

His remorse at his crimes was pretty evident and in the back of her mind, a voice nagged her that, perhaps, the Were that attacked Kale had been in the same situation. But then, that would mean that Kia had joined the WCU in order to find her brothers attacker for no reason aside from misplaced anger and the socially indoctrinated need to protect. How could she have sympathy for the very things she sought to remove from the public? Was she that big of a hypocrite?

Stop it, Kia, You do not need to have an existential crisis right now, especially not in front of him. She slapped and chided herself mentally for being so emotional at the worst times. Shoving the file under her arm, she finally composed her emotions enough to speak without giving them away "All right, I'm ready. You may kick in the door at will."