xp_logs | Operation: Louisiana Lowdown: Surveillance

Under cover of darkness, Jubilee cases the building that the Moseley Initiative has purchased. In the process of setting observation cameras, she has plenty of time to play advice columnist for Doug, who's on the other end of the line.

Jubilee had managed to get atop one of the warehouses close to her target, and now stood perched in the shadows as she watched the smaller warehouse building below.

"Looks pretty quiet," she noted softly, pressing a finger against the throat mike she was wearing.

"Yeah, well, 'looks' and 'is' aren't always the same thing," Doug noted from the other end of the line. "Which would be why you're there." He leaned back in his chair and took a sip from a Mountain Dew.

"Grumpy," Jubilee noted with a grin, pushing herself upward into a run that in turn took her into a leap that had her catching the edge of the roof of the smaller warehouse, which she promptly swarmed up over the side of. "Wake up next to someone you shouldn't?"

"Ha. Ha. Ha." Doug's tone was sardonic in the extreme. "I haven't had anyone over for...a couple weeks." Since my sister got kidnapped, was what he didn't say, not that the math was all that hard to do.

"That's a change," Jubilee noted, picking her way carefully across the roof of the building, laying down camera at strategic points as she moved. "First cameras in place, check for signal."

"Signal strength...good. Turn it a bit to the right," Doug asked Jubilee, looking at the field of view from the camera. "And gee, nothing in my life's changed in the past couple weeks," he said.

"Dude...," Jubilee began, moving the camera slightly to the right and adjusting it accordingly. It wasn't that she was unsympathetic, and Doug had certainly shown her a degree of care both recently and in the past. "Not to be like, a total bitch or anything, but sack up. You're not the first person whose life changed, yo."

"Yeah, well, I'm just saying, if things have changed, maybe don't tease me about my habits changing with them?" It was an effort not to be snappish, but Jubilee had been there when very few of his friends and coworkers hadn't. Besides, he was a bit defensive about the perception of him being an overly promiscuous cad that had been going around.

"That any better?" Jubilee asked, adjusting the camera to its final position and wondering why it always seemed to be her having these sorts of conversations. She wasn't anyone's idea of well balanced or stable, and yet here she was. "I'm like, last possible person to be giving you the 'what's good for you' lecture. I mean, duh, not the expert, despite the number of times I've been around the block. But you gotta stop reacting, makin' changes cause of situations around you. Make a stand for yourself, dude. You're stronger then all this bullshit. If that's like, goin' all monk like and Kung Fu, cool, I'll totally have your back. Just make sure it's what you really want, not just somethin' you're doin' cause you feel it's expected, or you'll get less hurt that way."

"Looks good." Doug blew out his breath. "I'll work on the rest of it." He chuckled. "And for the last person to be giving me lectures or pep talks, you're not bad at it. Thanks." He cleared his throat. "And now, on to placing the 80 bajillion more cameras in your bag, and then the joy of tapping phone lines."