Vanessa, Bishop, Laura, Jean-Paul, and Laurie | Friday Evening

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

X-Factor gets together to discuss their findings for the day so far as their most recent case goes. Hijinks and food ensue whilst said discussion is had.

Vanessa stopped by her apartment on the way up the stairs to the office. She'd spent most of the day talking to friends and family of some of their vanished people and the rest had been spent with her brain bleeding out her ears while watching surveillance video. Somewhere in there she had largely forgotten to eat. By the time she hit the office she had turkey, lettuce and cheese between two slices of bread. It wasn't much but it was food and it had protein. "Anyone home?" The place sounded empty. Laurie didn't even seem to be around so Vanessa collapsed into her desk chair and started to type up her notes from the day.

Jean-Paul pulled himself up the stairs and to the office rather than just using the window because it was still bitterly cold outside and, while that didn't really bother him, he knew Vanessa didn't like him letting all the heat out. "Bonjour," he said, walking over to the futon and collapsing on it. "You are going to tell me to type things, are you not?" He didn't mind so much, but he was starving. "Doughnuts do not make such filling food. Also, too much sugar. I need a carrot."

"As long as you're not thinking about my boyfriend when you eat it," the metamorph answered off hand. "There's some in the fridge, I think. And damn right I'm going to make you type things. Or I'm going to make you write them and you can try to convince Laurie to type them for you when she's around but somehow or another you're responsible for getting shit typed and into the database."

Grunting, Jean-Paul got himself up off the couch and headed for the refrigerator so he could see if there were actually any carrots in there. One he'd gotten himself the bag of baby carrots, he walked over to the laptop that'd been set up for him and logged on so he could start his report. "I am able to type, I just do not feel so motivated." He started typing things up, anyway, munching on carrots in between sentences. "Steak," he said, frowning at his screen. "A steak would be very nice, also."

"I'll be sure to tell Laurie to let your boyfriend know that he has to take you out to dinner so you stop whining the next time she sees him," Vanessa answered with a smile forming on her lips. "But right now you just crunch your heart away and type lest you end up harassed like hell to do it later." She actually leaned around her monitor to stick her tongue out at him.

"Ah, "Jean-Paul pointed a carrot at Vanessa. "I do not have a boyfriend any longer. So it is you who owe me a steak dinner now." He crunched the carrot, tipped his head to the side, and said, "I would not have thought of your boyfriend when I did that, but you brought him up and now I could not help it." The Quebecois bit into another carrot for good measure.

"Hey, stop biting off my man's carroty bits in your head!" It was very hard to not laugh at her own statement, but at least she could hide behind the monitor so she didn't need to keep a straight face. "Why no boyfriend anymore? Should I give you my condolences or is it all okay?" When she'd broken up with Sam she certainly hadn't needed anyone to say they were sorry. Not that they did since he'd shown up at the brownstone that night and was both loud and belligerent. Her coworkers had been so displeased about that one.

"It is okay," Jean-Paul said, not quite as surprised as he might have been by how true that statement was. "We are friends still, Kevin and I. But things... my work and his cases with the courts, they did not leave so much room for one another." That hadn't changed certain aspects of their relationship, even if it wasn't technically a relationship in the boyfriend kind of way. That didn't bother Jean-Paul as much as it could have, either - but perhaps it was just that it was Kevin and there was always something very different about the way things went between them.

Crunching on another carrot, he quirked an eyebrow. "It is still your tiny carrot boy I am thinking of. I cannot help it now."

"I'll be sure to let Lex know that when you've got your lips wrapped around something hard and cylindrical that it's him you think of." She could imagine the look on Lex's face being slightly confused but totally cool with it, and then how that would change when she mentioned the biting bits off part. Ah, the sympathy pain men felt when their manhood was potentially involved. It was cute really.

"Do I even want to know what you two are talking about?" Laurie asked as she manhandled the door to the office open, arms currently full of grocery bags. "I've brought the makings of food, first person to help me with the bags gets to choose what you're eating."

"We're talking about how Jean-Paul thinks of my boyfriend's cock when he has a carrot in his mouth," Vanessa informed her with a beaming smile. For what it was worth, the metamorph also got up to help Laurie with the bags. While she was overjoyed about food it was really the gentleman in her that took the initiative for it.

Bishop stepped up the stairs behind Laurie, pushing the door closed with his foot and scooping some bags out of her arms before Vanessa could close the distance. "Jerked Chicken. Hot." He made his way toward the kitchen.

"Cheater." Vanessa glared at him without any wrath in the look. "Because I'm supposed to compete with your leg length?" Bishop was one of a very few people who could manage to get Vanessa to complain about their height advantage. She slunk off to her desk to resume her typing. "But I'm in favor of hot jerked chicken."

"Chickan," Jean-Paul muttered, crunching another carrot rather contentedly from his place at the little laptop. He looked over at Vanessa where she sat at her desk, then called, "Catch this with your teeth!" Then he chucked a baby carrot at her.

She only had time to look over to see what he wanted her to catch with his teeth and then promptly duck. The carrot bounced off the wall behind her. Vanessa considered for a moment throwing the rock she used as a paperweight at him but that would be terribly childish. Instead she found the carrot and threw that back. "Oi! Vespa special, catch it in your own bloody teeth."

"Should my poor innocent ears even be hearing this conversation?" Laurie asked with a genuine smirk.

Of course, she didn't mean a word of it, but one of the things about the X-Factor office was it's ability to take a joke and run with it, something she loved about Vanessa's team. She motioned for Bishop to lay the bags on the bench and went about setting up the things she'd need to make his jerked chicken.

After setting out the bags, Bishop moved to his desk. It wasn't often his way to participate much in the banter but he didn't tend to stop it either. "So, where are we at in all this?" He opened a few files and laid them out.

"I talked to Kayla Gold's grilfriend Lara and her parents. Also Rashid White's parents, siblings and girlfriend Yolanda and Hailey Martin's parents. None of them have any cross over in age, race or obviously gender. They're twenty-five, thirty-two and sixteen respectively. Kayla's white while Rashid and Hailey are black. None of their jobs overlap. Kayla's a hydrokinetic, Rashid is photokinetic and Hailey generated an electromagnetic force field. No overlap." She looked at Jean-Paul as if visually poking him to update Bishop on the people he looked into.

"I spoke with Maria-Sophia Hernandez's husband and her employees as well as her children. 54, Hispanic, geokinetic. Also, Waseem Gadepalli's wife and coworkers. 37, Indian, generated lightning as thunderstorms," Jean-Paul said, frowning a little at the pad of paper he'd taken from his pocket. "None of their interests overlapped, either. Hernandez's family had never been to Gadepalli's restaurant, for example."

"What does this mean?" Bishop held up a pad with "-tic" scribbled on it. "They all have that in common. It's an energy indicator, right?" He asked honestly, not being one for etymology.

"Aye, they're all a something or other kinetic. Geokinetic, gravitikinetic, hydrokinetic. A couple have stuff like superhuman agility or longevity," Vanessa explained. "It's all physical. Either they've got enhanced stuff we all have or they can manipulate things like water and the earth, light or gravity. I'm not sure if that puts them all in the same category exactly, but it's literally the only thing that had in common. That and they live in the neighborhood."

The door opened and closed quickly, and a very weather-displeased Laura entered, hugging herself over her jacket. "Cold," was the best she could manage as she kept rubbing her arms. "Oh, hey there...Bugs," she said by the time she looked at Jean-Paul, a smirk on her face for a moment. "Are we eating something?" Because she could certainly use the food. And Laurie was there too! That could only meant they had food and it was going to be cooked.

She did catch Bishop and Vanessa's little chat though. "So they all handle or emit some sort of energy. That's a pattern, right?"

"And convenience." Bishop replied with a nod. "If that's the only thing they have in common, that must be it."

"Well, there is a maybe sort of pattern alongside that. Our lovely and frozen girl with the nose realized we had the same guy cropping up at all the scenes. I left a print out of a screen capture on your desk." It was labeled 'person of interest' but it was also possible he hadn't even seen that bit of his desk yet. "We all went out to see if any of the family or friends knew who he was. I came up empty. Lara recognized him vaguely but couldn't pin point where from or when. That's all I got." She looked from Jean-Paul to Laura. "Either of you get anything better from the picture?"

"Non," Jean-Paul said. "The spouses, they also recognized the man, but could tell me nothing of him. Only that they knew he frequented places we have pictures of him in. It was the same with the coworkers and the children." He shrugged, tipping his head to the side as he looked toward Laura. Maybe if he threw a carrot at her, too, she'd stop calling him 'bugs.' It was something to consider, at least.

Laura made a little face at Jean-Paul, tempting him to take a shot at her, and then shook her head slowly. "The friends of Rosa Ruvalcava had some vague idea of seeing him around, but he never came closer to them, or anyone in the school that they know." It was a bit frustrating, really, but Laura was glad the man wasn't lurking the school grounds too much. "Ping Dao's wife doesn't know him, nor Hailey, and she looked like the kind of person that remembers every face that sets foot on her bookstore. And they have cameras." Which left them with not much, actually. "It's like he really just was in the place by chance, which is totally stupid, I say."

"Pretty much in agreement there." Vanessa still didn't buy the coincidence of it. "Even if somehow coincidence does exist, he must have seen something. He was at every single scene." She sighed and looked over toward Laurie. "So if I offer to help you will chicken be done faster?"

Jean-Paul held two carrots in one hand, considering them both for a long moment before eating one and tossing the other at Laura. He felt like she deserved it - and not the warning he'd given Vanessa. Then he finished getting his notes into the laptop, saved the document, and closed it. He grinned at Laura. "Carrots, they are good for you."

"Now we only need to find the man, and ask him personally." She really wanted to know what he had to say about it. The carrot flew at Laura, and the girl caught it without really paying much attention to it, but did look at Jean-Paul after she inspected the carrot. "Oh, I know. I just prefer meat." Biting off the smaller edge, she returned the grin to Jean- Paul as she went and plopped down next to him. "Eh, what's up, doc?"

"That depends on whether it's actual help, or you stealing bites while it cooks," Laurie replied, pushing the chopped up chicken into the marinade she'd made. "Laura, do you want some of this as well, or did you eat already?"

"Why can't I help and steal?" Vanessa was capable of just helping, but Jesus she was starving. "And, Laura, you know you're supposed to catch the carrot with your teeth. You cheated."

Laura nodded at Laurie, perhaps a bit more excited than she should be. "Of course! And I promise I won't steal. Just stare from a distance and try not to sniff too much."

Vanessa's statement made her sigh "Oh really now?" Well, those were rules she wasn't aware of. "Now, we can't have this, can we?" Giving a small bump to Jean-Paul as she stood, Laura went all the way to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall. "Try not to poke an eye out, Bugs; I'm not sure if those grow back."

"I think they would," Jean-Paul offered, taking a carrot from the bag in his hand and aiming carefully before he tossed it at Laura. "Everything else would grow back, would it not?" He wasn't actually all that familiar with Laura's mutation and how it worked.

Laura caught the carrot cleanly with her teeth, even if it meant she needed to incline her head a bit to get it right. Then she just bit and held it by a side. "You know, I'm guessing they would. But losing parts of my body just to see if they grow again...yeah, let's try not to experiement until we really need to. Like, ever." She bit the carrot again, and stared at it; if she was going to get choped, then it would most likely happen over a mission, and she would worry then. Or not, because she would most likely heal. Whatever. Back at her spot it was. "Okay, these are really good."

As this went on in the background, Laurie handed Vanessa a knife and pointed her toward a small stack of sweet potatoes, carrots and regular potatoes she'd gathered near a chopping board. "You can peel and wash those," she said, before pulling a skillet out of a cupboard and setting it up on the stove. "Also, I'll make extra, just so you can get the joy of stealing some."

"Oui, they are very good," Jean-Paul agreed, offering Laura another carrot before taking a deep breath and saying, "Laurie, she is a very good cook. We will like her chicken, I think." Then he paused and tipped his head to the side, "Laurie, did you bring enough for me to have seconds?" She knew about his metabolism, after all, and how he was kind of like a bottomless pit. He suspected Laura could hold her own so far as eating was concerned, as well. And Bishop was huge. He hadn't actually looked to see how much food she'd brought in.

"Of course, I'm a professional," Laurie said with a grin, she'd brought enough fresh food for everyone in the room, and always made sure the cupboards were stocked with the dry food she needed to do the rest. She was so glad that she wasn't the one actually paying the grocery bills. "You might need to fight Vee for it though."

"He can't take me in a fair fight," Vanessa announced with confidence. Truth be told, there was no such thing as a fair fight if Jean-Paul was involved. He moved too fast for there to be an even playing field. Unless.... "And if he cares to refute that fact we can cuddle for a while and we can have it out while I wear him, aye?" She grinned, the tip of the knife still pointing in Jean-Paul's direction from having been gesturing with it a bit. The blade quickly got turned back onto the vegetables at hand, however.

To only herself she muttered, "I should make a food tax, take it out of everyone's check to stock the kitchen."

Jean-Paul considered Vanessa's challenge while he chomped his way through another carrot, weighing her learning curve against his experience. He could probably take advantage of her at the beginning, but he knew she picked up the practical applications of mutations quickly after absorbing the mimic. "After dinner, maybe," he said finally, nodding his ascent. They'd be evenly matched, given their respective training - though he was pretty sure that, even in a fair fight, Vanessa might fight dirty. Jean-Paul knew he probably would.

"You're on, doll." She liked challenges. Sure, he had decades of experience with his mutation over her, but she would figure it out. And if she lost then she lost and she still got the experience of it for the next time. "I get a thirty minute minimum period to acclimate to the mutation, though. And Bishop judges the fight because he's the only one who can be impartial enough for it."

Laura quietly stole a carrot from Jean-Paul. "I would beat any of you, anytime." Then, a beat after. "On Monopoly, mind you. Anything else might involve claws though. I do want to see you two chasing each other around though." She might not be able to actually see half of it, if she thought about it, but that also was part of the fun. "Although it's freezing out there." Because there was no way two speedsters would go all out in the apartment. No. Way.

Jean-Paul offered Laura the bag of carrots so she could stop trying to be stealthy and gave Vanessa a jaunty sort of salute. "I agree to your terms." He paused for a moment, head tilting to the side a little, and then asked, "Is there anything else that we should speak of for the case?"

"A friend of mine at the PD said there's at least one more body involved in this. He's sent me the information he has but I'm still piecing through it, I'll have a copy for everyone in the morning so we can find out if they have more in common than the rest of the victims." Bishop jotted down a note to do that, even though he wasn't likely to forget that point.

"Great, another body. Have they notified the family, at least?" She wondered what it said about her that she doubted they had. Maybe it said more about the police. Or it was possible that she'd just been influenced by the neighborhood opinion of them. "Anyway, food tonight, police findings update in the morning."