Cathouse: Presenting the Case

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Vanessa gets X-Factor together at the office to propose the case to them to see who, if anyone, will volunteer to help her. Cognizant of the agency's ties back to Xavier, Vanessa and Bishop also agree to take steps to keep the agency looking active to keep suspicion down.

Vanessa had sent messages out to everyone to meet up in the office about a case, though she had intentionally done it when she knew Laurie wasn't likely to be around so she could keep the young woman out of the loop. The metamorph had no problem asking Jean-Paul to get involved with acts of questionable legality and Laura had proven herself to be willing to get into such situations as well, but Laurie was a different story. Vanessa looked at her a little too much like her moral little sister.

Perched on the edge of her desk, Vanessa looked at her assembled crew and nodded to herself. "So here's the situation I've got. It's a case, pro bono and our involvement isn't exactly illegal but it's not particularly on the shiniest side of legal either. As such, involvement is purely voluntary. There's a brothel in District X, apparently. By all accounts I've found it's a decent place for a working girl to do her thing if she's got to be a working girl. Or at least it was before the madame was forcibly removed by a new guy, name currently unknown. In the brothel he only goes by Sir. He had her muscled out and took over. Now the girls have got clients into rougher and more dangerous things in bed than they are used to and no ability to say no lest they incur Sir's wrath. What I want to do is investigate, see who this guy is and what we can dig up on him and hopefully force him out one way or another. It's very likely I'll be asking Snow Valley to see if they have any intel on him once we get a name.

"Now, the morally ambiguous end is that I don't want to shut down the brothel. The girls liked their former madame. They were looked out for, the clients were vetted and a lot of these girls are visible mutants so it makes their job prospects pretty slim. I want to reinstate Madame Libertine. I want to give her back her 'spa,'" Vanessa made little air quotes, "and let them get back to business as it used to be. Because it's a better option than those girls ending up on the street where they won't be looked after." Vanessa's gaze shifted to the tall man at his desk. "And, Bishop, I'd like you to sit this out. We need to keep it divorced from the agency so it doesn't blow back on Xavier's name potentially which means at least once person needs to be investigating legit, paying cases. If the others don't want in on this then that fills that hole, but overall I think having the one person with the PI license working cases is the best option."

"I can take a few spouse watching cases, I'm sure." Bishop consented with a nod. "But I don't want anyone coming into the office talking about how hot any of those women are. You're destroying my chances to hook up with a pink girl. Or one that sparkles. Something I'll never get a chance at again and I'll remember this." He scolded Vanessa, possibly playfully, as he stood and gathered a few files so he could exit the room. His tone rarely gave his humor away.

Vanessa grinned at him, looking full of mischief all at once. "Aye, aye. Should we find ourselves confronted with any particularly lovely sparkling, pink girls we'll be sure to see how they feel about some tall, dark and handsome lovin'. That work for you, love?" She was so amused, but she was also the sort likely to do just that. Before Bishop could respond, however, she turned to the other two. "Are you two in or no? Nothing wrong with you bowing out. You can help Bishop with cases to help keep us looking busy as a business if you do."

She had to accept it, Vanessa had a way to present things as complicated as a power struggle inside of a brothel that she didn't have time to even consider that one way or another, the girls in there were sex workers. Instead, she was more worried about their safety. She wasn't as naive as she tended to appear; between living on the streets without a chance to get any job because of their mutations and having a place where to work when they can make a honest living -well, as honest as a brothel gets- many people would definitely choose the option that allowed them to live.

"I'm in", said, voice a little shaky. She didn't know what she was signing into, actually, but her will to help others was enough to get her interested. "And, we are going to need to get inside that place somehow, right?" Laura stopped there, but the way she had asked and the weight on her stare over 'Nessa spoke by itself. A part of her hoped the woman, and everyone else hadn't noticed though.

"I will help," Jean-Paul said, head tipping to the side slightly. "I could go in as a client," he offered, eyeing Laura's shifty expression with a great deal of suspicion. He didn't like the way she was looking, but he also knew that the likelihood of Vanessa letting anyone but herself go into a brothel for undercover work was pretty much nonexistent. Especially when the only other female employee was nineteen. He knew Laura knew a great deal about sex and he knew she basically treated it the way he once had... but that didn't mean this was the type of situation she could handle on a mental/emotional level.

Vanessa gave Jean-Paul a flat look. "You don't like girls. You could get naked with one but you'd never get it up and that's just awkward and costly. I could go in as many different clients, but clients only have access to so much. We won't get anywhere that way. You get through the business front, down a hallway and into a room most likely. Remember, I know how these places work." A hand raised and Vanessa rubbed at her eyes. Her shoulders and neck were more tense than usual. She had been thinking about ways around this all night and there just weren't any. "We need someone to work there. We can't do it on the security side because it's too fishy and suspicious. And likely we couldn't get in on the Goon Squad anyway." She sighed. "We need a working girl." Her tone held resignation. Vanessa wanted nothing to do with that life ever again but she had no choice here. Either she went in or they wouldn't get what they needed to help. They wouldn't be able to do anything without risking casualties she wasn't willing to accept.

Jean-Paul frowned a little, but didn't bother to dispute the point about him probably not being able to get it up for a girl. It was entirely the truth. He didn't like the thought of Vanessa doing something like this, which was the obvious train of logic to take given she'd just reminded him that she knew how these places work. "And so? You will go in?" His frown intensified. "To work for this man who roughs up the women there?" It was obvious from his expression that he did not approve of this idea at all.

Laura's mouth opened to protest, although she wasn't entirely what she wanted to protest about just yet, but she closed it right away once Jean-Paul started talking. Really, she wanted to speak up, but it would only end badly if she tried to do so now, because everyone would freak out on her and there would be much, much frowning.

"You can't go in there," she said, maybe louder than she might have wanted. "I-I mean, you have to be in charge, right?"

Sighing, Vanessa nodded. "Aye, that's the problem. I don't know if I can run point and go in. It'd be too risky for me to investigate anything. Which means one of you needs to take point on the actual investigation." Her eyes flicked from Laura to Jean-Paul and back again. They had both had a number of cases they had worked all on their own, but nothing as big as this. Certainly nothing that would involve the level of searching out information the way this would. Laura and Jean-Paul got assigned a lot of cases where they had to follow people, do surveillance and go out to talk to people. They didn't get desk work.

Jean-Paul frowned slightly. He supposed, based purely on age, he should offer to take point on the case, but he felt uniquely unsuited to the job. He wasn't a team leader. Organizing people was bothersome. Coordinating with others was something someone else did. An annoyance, a bore - time consuming and dull. Also, he wasn't very good at it, too short tempered when it came to attempting to work things out, too impatient. Looking over toward Laura, he quirked a brow.

"What?" It was a bit of a silly question to ask, Laura knew, but Jean-Paul was staring at her, and she was getting increasingly touchy about the subject. So she had perhaps mayhaps offered herself to go undercover, although she didn't use the words, because she knew they all would go crazy if she did. So she wasn't hiding the fact they all knew they needed someone in. "We need someone in." she said, mirroring her thoughts. "I'm not saying that whoever ends up doing it will have it easy, but if we really want to help...I'm going to shut up now." And true to her words, Laura closed her mouth and went over a chair nearby.

"He's looking at you like that because he doesn't want to be in charge of anything. And if he isn't that leaves you. You're less of a pussy about it but I'm not sure you're up for it either. Which smacks us between rock and hard place. I can't go in and run the investigation." Vanessa sighed. She hadn't picked up on Laura's earlier implication that she ought to be the one to go into the place and she certainly wouldn't have suggested it herself. "What are the odds that Jake wants to fuck off from work for a while and play girl?"

Jean-Paul shrugged. "I do not know." Then he remembered those men on the street a few months ago and frowned. "He is working, also, and so I think it is not such a good idea to ask him." He had gotten a reply to his last email, at least. Still frowning a little, he said, "Maybe Laura and I, we could work together to run the investigation."

Vanessa looked at them both critically. They were better together than they were apart, at least. "Can you two handle that?"

Making himself drop the expression of distaste he could feel creeping onto his face, Jean-Paul shrugged. "I am willing, if Laura is." He really, really didn't like the idea of being in charge of this. Small cases were fine. Working on his own to track people down was fine. He had a feeling they would quickly become buried until papers with this.

Shifting uncomfortably on her chair, Laura nodded. "I can do it, we can do it." She was going to keep whatever other comment she wanted to make to herself, or at least wait so she and Vanessa could have a talk in private; Laura didn't know what she was trying to get out of it, but she knew she needed to talk to her alone.

Vanessa looked between the two of them and nodded. "Good. Then I'll get a game plan for you two outlined so you can run the investigation while I'm inside and we'll go from there." She didn't want to do this, but she was covering that fact rather well. Vanessa came off as fairly unaffected by the prospect of being a prostitute again. It wasn't the same this time. She was not a child, she was not broken the way she had been. She could handle it because this was so she could keep other people safe. It would be fine.

Now if only she really believed she'd make it out of this without damage from it.

* * * * *

After the group disperses Vanessa heads down to her apartment to figure out a way to deal with the idea of signing up to be a prostitute again. Only she isn't the only one there and Laura unfortunately takes the logical stance where the case is concerned.

After things were settled about the way the investigation would run Vanessa headed down to her apartment. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to prepare for signing up for prostitution again, but she was pretty sure there was some sort of mental process she should be going through right about now. If nothing else, she had to figure out a mimic. She was too well known in the neighborhood to risk wearing herself into the brothel. The first step was going to be to go through her closet and see what body types she had the wardrobe for. Then she would hit the city and see what she could find that would fit her parameters.

Vanessa hadn't realized Laura had followed her down until she was most of the way to her bedroom and heard a light knock on her door. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of Laura in the half-opened door. "Hey, Laura. What's up?"

She hadn't meant to follow her in a semi stalker-y way, but Laura wasn't entirely sure of what she was trying to accomplish by following Vanessa. Or rather, she knew what she wanted, but wasn't entirely thrilled about it. At any rate, when the woman spotted her, Laura crossed the door slowly, closing it behind her as she leaned against it. "You don't have to do this." She was frowning as she looked at the blue woman. "Jean-Paul and I aren't completely useless doing your job, but it's your job to call the shots and oversee everything. And you don't have to do this."

"I appreciate that, padawan, but I've been those girls before. Only I never had a madame who took care of me or looked out for me. I got clients without any say in it and I know how johns can be to prostitutes. If they pay for you they feel entitled to do all those things they shouldn't or can't do to a normal sex partner." She frowned. "I can't just leave them there. I could call the cops but then those girls have no way to make money at all. So I need to get him out and the only way to do that is to go in."

"I know that, but you don't have to do that. Let...let me go in there." A beat, and she looked to the side, slightly ashamed of how that had sounded. "Look, I don't like the idea any more than you do, but if you see it under a completely rational standpoint, you are of more use outside, and I am of more use inside. I don't think I'll have a good time in there, but if it's for the sake of other people..." She looked back at Vanessa, feeling uncertain, but certainly game. "I just want to be useful, that's all."

White eyebrows darting upward, Vanessa returned with a strong, "Fuck. No. I appreciate you wanting to be helpful in this, but you've got no idea what it's going to be like in there. You're a gorgeous young woman, but the emphasis there is on young. I'm sure you're no virgin. You've maybe even gotten around a bit as a lot of girls your age tend to do these days, but it's entirely different from being less than property. It's not just being used. It's being used and letting them. It's a level of passive and submissive I'd never want to see on you. Because you don't get a say. You get instructions. And you carry them out and you don't get to fight back. Do you understand that? You, my tough as hell sidekick, do not get to fight back."

"Stop underestimating me."

Only a second later, Laura realized she had sort of snapped at Vanessa, but she was already doing it, so why stop. "I'm not a little girl that can't take care of herself. Of course you have a lot more experience at this than me, and hey, I'm sorry for it, because it can't be a good thing, but I am not useless." She crossed her arms over her chest, her back leaving the door. "I know what you are trying to do; you are attempting to keep me away from the danger and the trauma of being, as you said, something less than property, but I wouldn't ask you if I didn't trust I can do it. And I have way more experience in the field than I'm proud to accept already." She wasn't entirely sure if she was trying to protect her own pride in some weird way, or actually trying to keep Vanessa out of that kind of life. "I'm not going to tell you what to do, but at least I would like you to trust me about this. I don't think you should go back to that sort of life, even if it's undercover." Her crossed arms' grip tightened. "It's not that I don't think you can't overcome it again, but you shouldn't take such a risk anyway. I personally don't think it's worth it."

She'd give the kid credit for standing up for her position. Vanessa thought her position was epically stupid, but she gave her credit for being willing to stand there and yell at Vanessa to defend it. "I don't underestimate you. And yeah, I'm trying to protect you. I don't want to go back to that. Why would I want anyone to wind up in it when I don't want to step foot near it again? Maybe you sleep around. That's not nearly the same thing as what you're offering to sign up for. You're tough, you've had a lot of sex maybe, but this isn't about what it does to your body alone. It's about what it does to your head. To your heart. And what if you wind up pregnant? You get an abortion at twenty because I put you on a job that got you knocked up by some sleaze bag? What kind of person do I need to be to just throw you into that?" Exactly the sort of person Vanessa never wanted to be.

"I trust you, Laura. I trust you to have my back. I trust you to protect our clients. I trust you to keep your mouth shut about our cases to anyone who doesn't work with us. I trust you to keep yourself and the rest of us alive when you are in the field. I even trust you to not kill the assholes who deserve it. This isn't about your capabilities, your abilities or trust. This is about not wanting to take from you what you'll lose. This experience, if you have it? It will change everything. It will infect everything. And I won't ever be able to give that back to you. And it will be my fault you lost it."

She listened in silence, her anger receding. She spoke not only with reason, but with experience, which made Laura realize just how much it had hurt her, and how much she wanted to keep Vanessa away from that life. She supposed it was the idea of belonging and, how she had said, to protect them that had driven her all the way to Vanessa's door to keep discussing it. And right there when Vanessa was giving her all the good reasons for her to look away, Laura knew that she wanted it; not to go into a brothel to be hit and hurt for the enjoyment of others, no. She wanted to protect her, and the girls in there, and the woman that was in charge.

"Whatever they do, I will heal it. They can cut, burn and bruise me all they want, but they can't reach my head, my heart, my soul. They can't, and if they do, I have you and the rest of the team, my friends, my family to smack me on the head and set me straight again." She didn't remember sounding as serious as she was at the moment before, at least not in front of Vanessa. "I can heal."

She could heal, Laura was right about that. If she copied the girl, though, so could Vanessa. But that wouldn't have solved all the problems. It wouldn't keep everyone where they were strongest and most useful. It wouldn't keep Vanessa out of the brothel, which seemed to be Laura's main objective here. Vanessa was more useful running the investigation than Laura and Jean-Paul combined would be. Laura wasn't already damaged by the sort of life she'd be temporarily walking into. She'd had sex, she'd presumably had relationships...it wouldn't color her whole life like it had for Vanessa. Vanessa rubbed her eyes. She hated this entire situation right here. "They can reach. You don't think they can but they can, and they do. By time you realize it the damage is done. You've got us but...I don't know how you undo the sort of damage that life can do to a person. I coped by learning how to kill people and then killing loads of them. It's not the tactic I would recommend to you if you did this."

Vanessa knew she'd just hit the danger zone. She said if Laura did this. If. If implied possibility. A world of trouble laid within that word and she had just put it out there between them.

It was ridiculous, it was all ridiculous. There it was a completely sane girl arguing over taking a job at a brothel where she would most likely go through hell and back, and the moment she noticed Vanessa was actually considering it, Laura couldn't help but feel relief. And terror, lots of terror. "I would rather not kill a lot of people just to cope with it, true." Even though, it looked like a viable choice...in perspective. There were lots of bad people that deserved death, right? But that wasn't really going to solve anything. "You don't have to do anything, just be there. And don't give up if I happen to give up. I was serious about the head smacking." She allowed herself a little smile. "I'm serious, 'Nessa; if I don't do this I don't think I'll ever be able to face myself and know that I have done all I can. Maybe it won't be as traumatizing, but I'm sure it will last a lot longer"

In that moment Vanessa both loved and hated Laura. And she hated herself because she was going to give in. Laura was right. The smartest play here was for Laura to go in and Vanessa to work the case from the outside. That was the smartest thing. But Vanessa wanted to be emotional about it. This was a job, though, and you didn't get emotional about the job or you didn't do it right. Vanessa could beat herself up about it later. After the girls were safer. After the really bad guys had been removed from the picture. For now she nodded and felt a lead weight settle in her stomach.

"You're a good person, you know. And it's an honor to know you and work with you." That was as close to consent as Vanessa was going to get, but she figured Laura would figure out the words for what they were. Vanessa would let her go in and she would live with the self-loathing when she saw how bad it ended up being for the girl.

Laura looked down. She didn't smile, even though she had won; it was a sad victory, after all. Whatever happened after that was all because she had made that choice, and fought for it. She only hoped it was enough when it counted. "I'm learning from the best people, you know? All I know is that it counts. It's not much, but because of that it's very important." Sighing, she willed herself to face Vanessa, confidence back on her face. "Thanks. It's an honor, too."

Vanessa gave Laura a very bare hint of a smile. "There will be rules, here. So very many rules. And you will abide by them or I will blow your cover and kill anyone I think deserves it before I find you. Are we clear?"

Laura nodded, not really smiling but still looking less conflicted about the whole thing. "Lots of rules, I like that." It would be easier for her just to close her eyes on follow them without thinking. "Crystal clear."