Characterization Corporation

Yvette almost took a step back. "Well my customers might complain if you did..." she said, thrown by the forwardness. "It's not any of those..." she flailed mentally trying to search for something to at least distract the girl.

"Who are you? Why are you here if not for coffee or pastries?" The girl didn't even look like she was here to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi, for that matter. She was afraid to even mention about the soul part. Too bad there was no one in the coffee shop to see her glances for help...

"Call me Taryn, if you like. I wasn't formally given a name, so I took my own," the girl said, and swept her arms open. "Perhaps I am merely a shadow. Your shadow."

She pushed off from the counter and half turned, standing almost like a ballerina with her arms up in the air.

"A shadow of dark desires," she said, running her hands seductively down her body - too seductive for a girl her age. As she embraced herself, her eyes lowered onto the woman once more. "A shadow of wicked intentions..."

Taryn leaned forward onto the counter once more, so much like a predator ready to pounce. With a cruel, knowing smile, she whispered, "A shadow of your secret need to be loved by all and treated as a queen. After all, isn't that what someone with your... ability deserves?"

Yvette was ready to run out of the room and call the cops, when the girl started to go all seductive on her. She shivered uncomfortably, unsure of what to make of all this and just feeling pretty much awkward, when Taryn mentioned her abilities.

Surprise crossed her face briefly. "I just make coffee...nothing too amazing there," she suggested, playing dumb. Surely, surely, this girl couldn't know about her magical ability.

"Oh, such a liar!" Taryn said, grinning even as she feigned shock. She supposed it was possible that whatever it was she detected was still undiscovered by the woman, but she doubted that. People with that sort of special trait tended to figure it out before adulthood - plus there was the subtle shift in the woman's manner. "What is it you think you're hiding from? Certainly not the things that go bump in the night. We can smell things like that."

Yvette tilted her head to the side, still playing dumb. "Things that go bump in the night? What things would those be?" Actually, she had a good idea. She saw all types of people in her job. And not all of them were coffee-drinkers. "And who is 'we'?" She lowered her voice and leaned towards the counter, tentatively, ready to jump back if she needed to. "What are you?"

"I already told you, I'm your shadow," Taryn said softly, though she noted that the woman no longer appeared to be tripping over herself. She raised her hand to brush lightly against the bottom of the woman's chin and just to her neck, provided she didn't jump back too soon. "And I can be whatever you like - or whatever you hate and fear. I can be the whisper in the dark. I can be the eyes that watch when you think you're alone. I can be the shiver that creeps down your back."

The teen tilted her head and somehow managed to look entirely innocent.

"Tell me, Miss Yvette - what do you really want me to be?"

Several ideas of what Yvette wanted Taryn to be, got stuck somewhere between her brain and her tongue. 'Gone' just wasn't a polite way of phrasing it, and anyway she didn't think Taryn was the type to comply with it. She pulled back, withdrawing out of Taryn's reach and nervously reaching up to rub her neck where the girl's cold fingers seemed to remain.

"What do I really want you to be?" she echoed softly, hesitantly. "How about someone who wants to order a drink, a customer. I'll even give it to you on the house." Despite the fact she wasn't even making coffee, her hands tingled. What was going on now? Her magic senses were acting up. What had the girl done? Or was it something else entirely?

Taryn stood up straight once again, and it somehow seemed as if the entire cafe brightened back from some previously unnoticed darkening. Her entire manner changed - no longer predatory, but more like that of a typical teen. Even the girl herself seemed somehow more... solid and real.

"Alright. Whatever your personal favorite is, I'll be happy to take," Taryn said with a cheery smile. Lifting her arms to rest her hands behind her head, she added, "And thank you, dear Yvette, for not pushing that dumb 'no shirt, no shoes, no service' thing that so many places seem to love so much."

Taryn's comment actually elicited a soft laugh from Yvette. "I was...trying to refrain from saying anything," Yvette admitted as she went to prepare Taryn something. Her personal favorite was a mocha latte, a subtle combination of hot chocolate and coffee. It had a lot of sugar, but not as much caffeine. Frankly she wasn't sure she wanted to give Taryn caffeine after whatever had transpired between them.

She finally finished the mocha and handed it over with a smile.

((OOC: This is flippin' ridiculous. Everyone has gotten good luck from her! EVERYONE.))

The teen's eyes followed Yvette the entire time. When she reached to take the cup, she smirked and looked back up at the woman with a knowing expression. She knew something had happened right at that moment - she just wasn't sure what.

Taryn considered throwing the hot drink at the woman, or perhaps merely dumping it, but she didn't want to get kicked out just yet. Instead, she pushed it back into Yvette's hands, saying sweetly, "It is your favorite. You deserve it, don't you?"

Poor Yvette was in a quandary. The luck fortune that she had unwittingly put on the cup had been for Taryn, but if she drank it--would it apply or not? Well, it was good luck and moderate at that. At best she would get that good luck. At worse, it wouldn't do anything or...or it could shift to bad luck.

"Well, yes...but..." She didn't know what to do! And the look on her face showed it. "I can't drink it. The...fortune...is for you." The word seemed to stick in her mouth, though she managed to say it anyway.

"Fortune?" Taryn smirked. "But here I thought you just served coffee."

Taryn leaned in once again, still lightly pushing on the cup. "At least you admitted to your lie. That lie. But if you already lied, how can I ever trust anything from you? I suppose, maybe if you were to admit to all of your lies, even the ones you tell yourself..."

She traced a finger over the lid of the cup as she spoke, her face tilted down as her eyes followed her finger. When she lifted her eyes to Yvette's once again, her finger gently stroked up the woman's hand.

"So... why are you so scared of your own drink?"

Yvette watched Taryn tracing the lid of the cup, trying not to listen to the lies she spilled, but unable to help herself. Taryn had a silver tongue, able to spin lies and create truths from lies that Yvette had never even admitted to, and yet felt compelled to give an answer. She hesitated, flinching as the--woman?--touched her hand.

She pulled her hand away, rubbing at it as if to remove the feel of Taryn's stroke against it. "I-I don't fear it, exactly. It's just that it's not meant for me--to drink." She looked away, then briefly met Taryn's eyes. "It's hard to explain. My mother just told me never to drink my own fortune, that if I do, it'll ruin everything. Possibly," she hesitated, "possibly I'd lose the...er, gift."

"The queen lose her crown!" Taryn exclaimed and clasped her hands to her cheeks in mock horror. "Such a terrible fate! Without your gift, how could you be special anymore?"

She tilted her head and cocked an eyebrow, the same smirk as ever playing across her lips once again. "How many lives have you changed, little butterfly queen? How many lives have you indirectly damaged? How many lives have you, personally, ruined?"

Of course, Taryn was working on assumptions just as much as she always was. Being right so often just made things more fun.

Yvette backed up a step. "I didn't lose anything! It's not that I want to be special or am special or..." she flailed, coming up at a loss for words.

And then Taryn threw the words in her face that Yvette had long feared. "I don't damage lives! I just give out luck. Fortunes. Some good, some bad. It's not like I mean to give out bad fortunes to people! What they do with it is their prerogative!"

"Why do you accuse me of such things? What are you trying to do to me, get me to say?" she shot back, finally finding her voice. "Are you threatened by me?"

The teenager laughed. She had to step back from the counter and hold herself to keep steady. Part of it was the incredibly defensive reaction she got from the woman, and part of it was the woman's final question. She was still snickering even as she asked, "Threatened by you?"

She giggled some more and shook her head.

"Threatened by a woman who nearly crumpled the moment I gave her attention? Threatened by a woman who has been cowering this whole time? Who is so repressed that the best she can do to try to get me to ease up is to offer me free coffee? Why would anyone be threatened by that?"

Taryn moved forward and hopped smoothly over the counter, inching ever closer to the woman as she spoke in a low voice, "I am a child of shadows beyond the reach of the moon and stars. I have seen wicked beasts that disguise themselves as humans and others that don't even bother to hide. I have touched the very beating heart of a demon of white fire, and I could have crushed the life from it had I wished. So why would I... be threatened by pathetic... little... Yvette?"

Well, it was all mostly the truth.

Yvette eeped as the girl came over the counter at her, and backed up into the wall, just a foot away from the door that led into the backroom. Her hands closed into fists, that tingling sensation growing stronger than before and this time there was no coffee in her hands.

Something, a build up of power, was happening to her, and that frightened her almost as much as the poisonous words Taryn was spewing. "I-I don't know! You're the one coming after me. I'm just a barista minding my own business." She looked to be on the verge of tears. The power surging through her was disorienting enough, and the wall it appeared was more or less holding her up. Her plea was pathetic, and she winced internally just to hear it: "Just...what do you want from me?"

Well now, something was happening. But, that was alright. She'd had her fun, and doubted she could get much different from the woman at this point. Taryn stopped her approach, grinned, and shrugged.

"The world may never know," she said softly, and simply left the woman - and her coffee - there. As Taryn headed out, she looked back with a smirk and said, "Maybe I'll visit you one of these nights. You'll find I'm much more fun in the dark."

Yvette was still shaky long after the teen had left, but her hands still tingled. She reached for the cup still on the counter, deciding to throw it away. A burst of power shot from her hand to the cup, or maybe from the cup to her hand, and she watched in horror as smoke rose from the cup. The drink on the inside had evaporated completely except for a smudge on the bottom of the cup.

It looked vaguely like a skull and crossbones. Or maybe a mouth grinning with too-sharp teeth. Yvette shuddered and threw the cup into the trash can before going to wash her hands. Maybe she should close up shop early...

"Excuse me, ma'am!"

This was the closest coffee shop that Richard Ruiz could find. The effects of the extra caffeinated brew sustained from his last battle were setting him on edge, and he had quickly pressed through the doorway, scrambling for the main counter.

He saw the barista. "Ma'am!" Here he was, a businessman garbed in blue, fresh off a mentally exhausting battle of attrition, jittery and unkempt, unable to stand still in one spot. About to fall on the floor, he fell onto the counter instead, catching the surface with his arms and leaning forward.

His arms and hands were jittering. "I need...the strongest, blackest coffee you've got." Ruiz shoved his hands in his pockets, struggling to pull out his wallet. "This is a- an emergency, ma'am!" he continued, his struggle with a simple task becoming more comically inept and overexaggerated. "COFFEE!!!"