xp_logs | Doug and Vanessa

While out browsing at a book store, Vanessa runs into one of the people that can notice it's her no matter who she's wearing. She and Doug chatter and catch up, and Doug has a job offer for X-Factor.

Vanessa had been out eyeballing the church Natalie Gleason was supposedly at according the coordinates she got from Hank and his tracker, but she wasn't sure she really wanted to deal with a little hate mongering child yet so instead she went wandering. So she'd driven. Getting around the city on a motorcycle was infinitely easier than in a car and it kept her from having to deal with the idiots who might be on the subway. Besides, soon it would be too cold to ride her bike, not to mention the icy roads that would follow. Vanessa ended up in Brooklyn, where she hadn't spent much time, staring at the window display at BookCourt. Did she really need more books? Who was she kidding? She always needed more books.

Her hand was on the door's handle and about to pull it open when she thought she'd spotted a familiar reflection in the glass. Turning around, her eyes went searching for confirmation

"Fancy meeting you here," Doug said with a twinkle in his eye. Whether she was wearing a man or a woman, short or tall, Vanessa always carried herself with a certain...something he couldn't necessarily put his finger on, but that the overactive powers-fueled portion of his brain always identified as belonging to her. Besides, the 'alt' she wore out in public most of the time, a tall slender brunette, was familiar enough to him even without the assist from his power. He reached around and held the door open for her to precede him into the shop.

Doug earned himself a smile and a small bowing of her head that would have looked at home if she'd been wearing Eoife but on what had become her usual people-colored suit just looked sarcastic. As she passed him into the store she said, "If it isn't my favorite man with an overactive brain. What would you be doing at a bookstore? Don't you just absorb your knowledge through ones and zeros?"

Doug quirked his lips in amusement at Vanessa's teasing. "Not all information comes in neat tidy packets through the glorious 'series of tubes' we call the Internet. I would think a hard-bitten gumshoe like yourself would know that better than most." He breathed in the air. "Besides, I had a bookshelf full of magical adventures before I even knew what a computer was." The romantic side of him liked to think that he could smell the power of the stories sitting neatly on the shelves, an indefinable...something at the edge of his consciousness. His power very often suggested that there was a...something to things that he could never quite put words to. "So, how's business?" he asked idly as they wandered aimlessly through the stacks, his fingers brushing against the spine of a book here and there as they went.

"Business is good. Lots of missing persons stuff. Suppose it should have been expected with us in District X and the cops not really putting mutants up high on their list of priorities. I did have one girl come to me about a stalker but it turns out she ran away from home and her mum just wanted the heirlooms the chick had stolen from her when she went back. That one was strangely satisfying even though my client technically got fucked. But then she did that to herself, didn't she?" Vanessa's eyes were scouring the section signs as they moved through the store. There were a couple sections she seemed to haunt in bookstores and now she was looking to see which one of them she could spot first.

Allowing her eyes to drift back over to the man walking with her, Vanessa cocked her head to the side and pondered him curiously. It was much the sort of look a cat would give a person. "What all does your brain tell you about people when you look at them? You can ID me from a dozen yards off no matter who I'm wearing or how good I'm imitating them. What else can you tell about a person?" It was a genuine question and one she hadn't considered since he'd spotted her wearing Manuel. Mutations were so strange in the ways they worked, the things they allowed people to do, or prohibited them from doing in some cases. Doug's brain was, well, a bit fascinating to the metamorph.

Doug cocked his head. "I was actually just kind of thinking about that. I...generally don't have the words to properly describe it. It's like a hundred little things that all add up to a pattern." Except that wasn't quite it. He shook his head, casting about for something more accurate and descriptive. Spotting the game section, he put up a finger as if to say 'aha!' "So, it's kind of like one of those huge jigsaw puzzles. But where your average person has to put things together a piece at a time, making the outline and then filling it in, my brain tends to jump straight from 'jumble of pieces' to 'hey, it's a penguin'. Make sense?" That metaphor was kind of imperfect as well, but it came closer to describing what Doug tended to call his 'click moments'.

"And to carry on pretty much two separate conversations at the same time, I might have some business to swing your way," he noted.

"That didn't really answer my question, you realize." She gave him a light poke in the side but figured maybe Doug couldn't explain what she was asking or was completely not understanding the question. Either way, she let it drop and draped an arm across his shoulders. Vanessa leaned lazily into him a bit and smiled. "Business? What sort of business are we talking about here?"

"Sorry, that's about the best I can do. It's one of those weird, hard to describe powers things." Doug cocked an eyebrow at Vanessa's smile. She was always on the flirty side, but this was a bit more aggressive than usual. "As to the business, info-gathering on a real scumbag piece of work."

"A scumbag? Mm...my favorite." An employee looked at the pair as they moved through the bookstore and Vanessa gave him a little wave as they passed him. "You know how to give me all my favorite things, Ramsey, don't you? Are we talking paid business here or a favor for a mate?" She was perfectly fine with either one, honestly. Doug was a very resourceful and useful person to be owed a future favor by. It also spoke volumes of her opinion of him that she considered him someone worthy of doing favors for.

Vanessa didn't subscribe to outpourings of emotional what have you and she hadn't ever really hung out with any of the Snow Valley crew much aside from Amanda, which was shot in the foot with how Vanessa left. If most people were asked who she considered friends she wasn't sure they'd get much farther than the continually absent Adrienne, Jean-Paul and Laurie. Doug, however, made that list insofar as the metamorph was concerned.

Doug cocked his head. "Not that I'm not flattered to be considered a 'mate', but I'd rather not play on that unnecessarily, if that makes sense?" Friendship was an important commodity to Doug, not to be frittered away. "So how about I foot the bill -and- owe you a favor?" he asked with a smile. "Besides, it's the least I can do to help a friend with her budding business concern by steering work her way."

The pair turned down an empty aisle, gaining at least a temporary measure of privacy from the other customers and employees in the store. "Guy's name is Telford Porter. No idea whether it's an alias or not. Mutant. Teleporter, which is why I half-think it's an alias. I mean, who names their kid Telford, on top of the combination of name and power being too pat. Sometimes goes by 'Vanisher'." He sketched out his conversation with Tabitha, and Porter's possible connection to the sex trade, the details making it obvious that Doug wasn't entirely asking about this man for himself, but that he was in turn doing a favor for a friend himself.

Vanessa made mental notes as he spoke and even pulled out a small notepad from a pocket and started to jot down actual notes as well. Sex trade. It was one of those things that almost always made her want to nail someone to a wall. There was a possibility she wasn't as well adjusted from her life as a whore as she claimed she was. "It's five grand for the first week's retainer which basically gets me and mine working around the clock seven days a week. From there the daily rate is four-fifty which caps out at five days a week even though we work seven days. At the end of the week I'll check in with you and let you know what we know and where we stand. From there you can decide if you want to pay to keep us digging or not."

She read over the notes she'd made and made a face. "Telford the teleporter. If you're going to name yourself you pick something less lame, shouldn't you? This is exactly why they charge you so much to legally change your name." She grinned at Doug. "Which is why I just use fake IDs," Vanessa said in a hushed tone full of faux pride over her smart decision.

"Agreed. I didn't exactly bring my checkbook with me, but you'll have the retainer within the day or so." Doug grinned crookedly. "I suspect tracking a teleporter isn't going to be the easiest, depending on how casually he uses his power. But thanks for taking the job," he said quietly.

He nodded at the other part of her statement. "Fake IDs are definitely useful," he agreed somewhat conspiratorially. At this point he had several regularly used identities - Nick Wood, cub reporter. Joseph Crockett, Jr., minor league hockey player. Aron Hugaldrson, Norwegian socialite. Not to mention more throwaway personas for missions and traveling.

"No sweat, we needed something really complicated to add onto our plates," he told him with a smile. Looking for Nick was bad enough. "At least I'll have real, serious use for Jean-Paul's skills, aye?" Vanessa gave Doug a one-armed hug.

Only half-joking, she mused aloud, "I wonder where I could get a tracking device and how I could manage to implant that in someone? You know what I need? A reality warper. Or someone who can freeze time like that chick who used to be around the mansion. That'd be dead useful right now." Adrienne would have also been dead useful, Vanessa thought. Her best friend had been completely incommunicado since she'd left. It was hard not to miss her and she visibly sobered when the thought of the woman struck her.

"That's me, always looking out for your workload," Doug joked back. "I dunno about reality warpers, though. I mean, I always figure something along the lines of, would you want your worst enemy to have it? If not, best left alone." He waved a hand. "Sure, life isn't always neat and tidy like that, but I shudder to think of what Magneto or Apocalypse could do with one."

"Yeah, but I'm not talking about giving them one, too. It's not a gift with purchase. It's about me having one and them not having one so I can be sneaky and get a leg up on them. Because, theoretically, I'm the good guy. Or at least we have the girl scout in the office who I'm sure will try to keep the rest of us shady sorts on the lighter side of the grey spectrum anyhow." Laurie had done a remarkable job not getting on anyone about morality or ethics, but Vanessa and Bishop hadn't done anything for a case that warranted a lecture yet. If she was honest, it was probably only her or Jean-Paul who would do something lecture worthy.

"Like I said, life is rarely neat and tidy like that. But you're right, it would be dead useful." Doug's power tended to lead to a natural sort of mimicry of accent, language, and expressions, especially around friends. Half the time he wasn't even aware of it. "So, business done, how's life been treating you, gumshoe?"

The fact that Doug had just said "dead useful" made Vanessa grin widely. "It's been alright. Work's kept me busy and that does an ace job of distracting me from just about everything else, which is lovely really." She stopped and chewed on her lower lip as she thought about how distraction didn't actually solve anything. Like that enormous well of flirtation she seemed to have in lieu of not seeing her boyfriend almost at all. It was almost like being sexually frustrated, only sex wasn't at the heart of the frustration. "Though distraction will probably bite me in the ass eventually."

"Doesn't it always bite all of us that way, seems like?" Doug shook his head wryly.

"Aye. Shame really," she said with a small smile, "there's so many better things you can get up to with your distraction and a mouth."