Week in the Life: Jubilee & Amanda log

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Jubilee helps Amanda with some of the day to day intelligence work.



Jubilee stared in disbelief at the veritable mountain of paperwork laying across the boardroom table in front of her. It seemed that almost every space had been taken up, a system of labels having been taped down near some of the stacks as Amanda and Marie-Ange sorted through them.

At the moment, Marie-Ange was nowhere to be seen but she smiled at Amanda as she moved further into the room. "I'll be ordering take-away for all of us then?"

"Not just yet." Amanda waved at a pile of papers that looked a bit like bank statements. "I need you to go through that lot first." The witch had a distracted air and a pencil tucked behind her ear and several coloured labels stuck to the back of her hand for easy access.

"And I'm looking for?" Jubilee asked, taking a seat at the table and pulling the papers toward her. It all looked pretty much like any normal bank statement to her, albeit one with a lot more money then she had in her own. She really did need to talk to someone about financial advice, she sucked at keeping things in control.

Amanda highlighted something with the yellow highlighter in her left hand, then stuck a label on the sheet and added it to a pile. "Links," she explained, looking up at Jubilee properly now she wasn't in the middle of reading. "What we've got here is a money trail, and we're following it. That list of companies up there..." She gestured at the whiteboard at the end of the table. "...Are covers used by this bloke to disguise his dealings. What you need to do is scan through those statements and look for any transactions with any of those companies."

Jubilee studied the company names and then looked down at the lines and lines of transactions. "I think I'm going to need some coffee for this. What are all the little labels?"

"How many of the companies up there are referenced or how many transactions there are. If it's just one or two, they get a green label. Three to five, they get yellow. More than five, it's a red label since that means something big's going on." Amanda leaned over and pointed at a name on the page in front of Jubilee. "See that? There's at least six different transactions on just this first page to the companies we're looking for. They're all in South America too, which means it's either drugs or guns. Lots of guns." The fact the page was upside down to her didn't seem to bother Amanda. "There's whole little stories in every bank statement. You'll see."

"I can see more geography homework in my future." Jubilee murmured, picking up one of the sheets before she stole a stack of little labels from Amanda's side of the desk. "This all financing for other work then, or just keeping our fingers to the pulse of what's going on?"

"Mostly pulse-taking," Amanda replied, sitting back and grabbing another sheath of papers. "Don't worry about reading every detail, but don't skim-read too fast either, or you'll miss stuff. I find it helps memorizing the names of the things you're looking for instead of looking up at the board all the time." She gave a self-effacing shrug. "Then again, I'm pretty good at memorizing, so it might not be so easy. That's what getting belted every time you made a mistake with a spell'll do for you, I s'pose."

"Yeah, yeah. You're a genius. I swear, you and Forge are totally twins in the modesty stakes." Jubilee said, but the grin she was wearing took any heat from her words. "Give me a surveillance job any day, that's all I'm sayin'."

She turned her eyes to the records, reading each name, her eyes glancing back up at the board several times as she hooked her feet behind the legs of her chair to keep them from tapping. Even so, her fingers reached up to snag a lock of her hair, curling and uncurling it as she read.

Amanda poked out her tongue at the other girl and went back to reading. Like Jubilee, she conveyed restlessness - one knee jiggled and she would periodically chew on a thumbnail. But unlike Jubilee she was scanning through pages twice as fast, the highlighter being employed regularly. Between them, the stakes of labeled sheets grew.

After about forty minutes, Amanda capped her highlighter and put it down, hands going to the small of her back as she stretched. "Right, break time," she announced, glancing at Jubilee. "How're you going over there?"

"Mostly green." Jubilee murmured in a distracted fashion, finishing off the last page she was on before tagging it with a yellow label and placing it on the pile. She blinked slightly at Amanda, rolling her shoulders with sharp pops. "I can't believe you and Marie-Ange do this every day. I'd go stark raving mad within a week."

"It's part of the job," Amanda said, shrugging again. "Yeah, it's boring as hell, but it needs doing." She chuckled a little. "And at least bank statements can't suck you into hell if you read them aloud the wrong way."

"You've never seen my bank statements, have you?" Jubilee replied, standing up and pushing her chair in. "So, to banana bread or not to banana bread, that is the question. I figured I'd head to Pete's little spot. The guy there is pretty up on what I want coffee wise, without me havin' to ask usually."

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, The slings and arrows of outrageous hunger, Or to take arms against a sea of fast food places..." Amanda continued with a laugh as she grabbed her leather jacket from the back of her own chair and slid it on. "Pete's place it is. And while we're there, I can tell you the story of Pete and the dinosaur."

"If it involves the song 'Puff the magic dragon', I swear to God I'll never let Pete live it down." Jubilee noted, eying Amanda's jacket. "I so need to buy one of those soon. New York's a lot colder then Madripoor."

"Oh, you'll get one." Amanda's tone was light, but there was something serious behind her eyes. "I'd say you've earned it."