Vanessa & Tabitha | Wednesday afternoon (backdated)

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Vanessa asks Tabitha to poke at Haven in a leather brigade sort of way.

As much as Vanessa liked libraries, somehow it seemed strange to her to be going there to find someone to take this Haven chick to task. Librarians conjured images of fetish dominatrixes, coquettes and stern elderly ladies. The metamorph was fully aware that Tabitha Smith didn't really fall into any of those categories, but she didn't conjure images of ass kicking either. Vanessa trusted Xavier, though, and if the professor said the chick could do the job that likely needed doing then she'd take that on faith. Or at least as much faith as she could muster.

Vanessa found the librarian at the desk cataloging something or other it looked like. She couldn't help but think that Tabitha Smith seemed much younger than Vanessa felt though she knew the pair of them were about the same age. That was probably a good thing for Tabitha. Vanessa knew why she felt as old as she did some days; lacking that sort of life experience was nothing to be upset over. "Hey, Tabitha? You got a second?"

Tabs looked up from her work, surprised to see Vanessa. "Hi, sure. It's summer, there's nothing but time." She put her stack of books aside and gestured for the other woman to take a seat. "How can I help you?"

Vanessa turned the chair around so she could straddle it and fold her arms across the top of its back. "I've got a high 'weird shite' factor with a bit of 'doesn't add up.' Professor said you could look into it and handle it. Basically I got six missing persons reports in District X. All mutants. All but one found and all of those without mutations. Sound familiar? It all tracks back to this Haven chick in District X and...something's off about it. Wanda says it's more leather squad territory than trenchcoat."

"So, did these kids ask Haven to get rid of their mutations?" Tabitha asked curiously. "The ones that were recovered, I mean. Where did they say they'd been?" Tabitha pulled a steno pad from her desk to take some notes. "Our kids didn't go anywhere." And that worried her.

Vanessa shook her head. "You're using the word 'kids' too much. All of my missings are legal adults except for the one we couldn't find. All went to Haven for other things and were extended an offer to have their inconvenient mutation removed. All of them took her up on it and all of them woke up the next morning a completely normal human. So they all left District X to start new lives as quote, normal people. None of them have had recurrences of their mutations since."

Taking a moment to draw the comparison between the missing persons she'd gone looking for and the mansion kids, Vanessa found one very obvious difference. "Our kids didn't go anywhere but where would they go? And why would they need to? Three of the four can pass for baseline anyway. I don't think Black has anywhere else to go and is unwilling to leave the one permanent place she's had since she manifested, no matter how much of a bitch she is about being here. Ford has friends, a boyfriend, a job, school. Corbo's got a job and a rent-free place to stay. Petrovic's a student with friends and a sort of adopted family with her only blood thousands of miles away. The people I found had lost all semblance of normalcy when they manifested and were in District X because it was the safest place they knew of where you could be what they so obviously were in the post-Apocalypse New York."

"Nice of them to let their friends know where they went," Tabs muttered. She looked up at Vanessa. 'What about the one you haven't found? What's his story?"

"Sixteen year old orphan thanks to our little friend Apocalypse and his attempts at claiming New York City as a mutant mecca or whatever the fuck he was on about. His foster family thinks he probably just ran away but say he was doing fine, or so they thought, until he disappeared. He's got a friend who suspects that isn't what happened. Name's Derek Barnes. As far as I can tell no one's seen him." Everyone else had left some sort of trail. Some of them were thin, thready trails but they could be followed. Derek just simply...ceased to exist. Maybe it was because he was a teenager. Unlike adults teens didn't have things in their names. No paper trail. Vanessa didn't like it, but what was there to like about any of it really? People had gotten to be real, normal people somehow but the chick who did it was so fucking off that she couldn't be trusted with that sort of power anyway. The whole thing stank of trouble waiting to happen in a big, messy, exploding kind of way.

"You checked the kids' shelters? The grifters? Lotta times they get their claws in a kid and make them disappear but good." Porter had taken her around the world to pick pockets in fresh places. "Or is there something pointing you to this Haven with Derek too?"

"I don't know if Haven's involved with Derek's disappearance. I'm still searching for him. But Haven's an issue. A really powerful issue that thinks she's serving the greater good by giving people their lives back. I don't actually think she's completely crazy yet, but..." Vanessa shrugged a little. Really, where was that line that defined people as crazy or sane? It was a slippery, thin little line. "She could get there fast. And we still don't know if there could be unforeseen complications she hasn't disclosed and the 'cured,'" she used little finger quotes for the word, "haven't discovered yet."

Tabitha's mind started racing. "So you want us to follow up with Haven?" Who would be free? Who would be suave enough to get her to open up?
"Yeah, she's potentially dangerous and what can go wrong will go wrong. She insists on having only done wonderful things for people but there's gotta be a catch. Maybe the leather squad can find something out?" She sorta hoped Tabitha tortured the truth out of the woman, but that wasn't really their shtick, was it?

Her smile was bright, with only the smallest hint of her predatory thoughts. "I'm sure we can get something out of her," she reassured the other woman.

Vanessa's returning smile gleamed. "Brilliant. I'll get you copies of all the information we have on her. If you want back up or help just let us know and Bishop and I will make sure to have your backs if need be." Suddenly the metamorph was feeling much more reassured about the other woman being the one for the job.