Vanessa & Laurie | Tuesday afternoon

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Vanessa finds Laurie in the office and finally has an overdue chat with her about the identity of their newest recruit.

The tell-tale sound of typing greeted Vanessa when she opened the door to the office. It didn't sound disjointed enough to be Jean-Paul or Bishop which only left the girls as possibilities. Finding Laurie at her desk was hardly a surprise. "Hey Peaches," the metamorph greeted with a grin despite having a mountain of paperwork to do for herself. Man did she ever hate paperwork. The thought of putting it off was very, very attractive. She needed to talk to Laurie anyway. That was her official excuse for ditching her keys and notepad on her desk and strolling over to perch on the edge of Laurie's desk. "Meditating to the zen-ifying sound of keystrokes again?"

"Something like that," Laurie replied, finishing the sentence she was typing before gently turning the page of the report Bishop had left her. She had things on voice memo that she had to type out as well, but she would do those later on after all the paper filing and copying was done. "Avoiding paperwork?"

Laurie asked the last with a big grin, her chair turning slightly so she was looking directly at her friend. Vee and Jean-Paul both tended to avoid the more mundane parts of the job as long as they could as far as Laurie could tell.

A guilty look immediately came over Vanessa's face as she rubbed the back of her neck. "Me? Avoid paperwork? No, never. I have actual business to attend to here." She gestured with a finger between herself and the younger woman. "Very important company business, I'll have you know."

"Oh? Should I get out the recipe book then?" Laurie asked, grin widening if that were possible. "Or is this something other then food related?"

"It's something other than food related," Vanessa confessed, the expression she wore plainly amused. Laurie was so good about feeding all her kitchen inept people around the office. Vanessa wondered if any of them could actually, rightfully be trusted in a kitchen. She couldn't, really, and Jean-Paul was questionable at best. Bishop seemed like the sort who might have secret culinary prowess going on. "It's actually work-related. Specifically, it's about a new person who's coming into the agency."

"Oh?" Laurie replied, teasing light fading as genuine curiosity sparked in her eyes. "Is this another field agent, or a specialist?"

"It's a field agent. Basically another part-time person like Laura and Jean-Paul." She thought about, frowned a little, and then revised. "Like Laura. Jean-Paul's basically been pulling full time hours lately. Anyway, the point is she'll be new and she'll be training for a while but she will also be incognito. Her true identity will be known to everyone in the office because I don't believe in lying to my people, but it goes no further. Not to anyone at the mansion, among the X-Men, to anyone at Snow Valley, none of it. Because if I find out her identity was leaked and discover who did it there will be hell to pay." Vanessa fixed Laurie with a flat gaze for a moment before the look softened. "I don't think you'd go and gossip about it or anything, but this is one of those things I'm going to be strict about."

Laurie had always kept Vanessa's real name to herself before the metamorph had come out of the closet about it. She trusted the younger woman. Though it was Laurie's experience with Vanessa and her warring personae that made her think she'd understand why Vanessa would be such a stickler about this information staying under wraps.

"Okay scary boss lady," Laurie replied, eyebrows raised at the vehemence that Vanessa had shown, but not thrown by it. If it were that important that Vee felt the need to be so strict, then there would be a reasonable explanation for it. "So, who is this secret person? And are they vegetarian? Because if they are, then I'm going to have to buy more vegetables, you and Jean-Paul keep going through all the carrots."

"Riley Chase, technically. I've got no idea if she's a vegetarian or not, actually. You'd probably know, though." Vanessa tried to think back to what she'd seen the woman eat during their time working together for Libertine's brothel but lunch just hadn't been important enough to commit to memory. "After all, you know her better than I do I'm pretty sure. Didn't you go traipsing about Europe with her when you decided to let Ea steal away your maidenhead?" The term was intentional and came with a smirk.

"Crystal?" Laurie asked, surprised despite herself, and she wondered if Vanessa had given her the information in this way because of that, she certainly wouldn't put it past her to want to surprise her. "Why would Crystal want to do detective field work? Also, I prefer the term 'deflowered' myself, means I can imagine myself in a 'Casanova' movie or something."

Vanessa snorted indelicately. "Yes, Crystal and I didn't bother to ask. She expressed a desire to help out over the summer and I accepted as her other obligations won't be an issue, I assume including the team as she will purportedly be off globe trotting as the princess she is during that time. She helped us with an off the books case in April, I guess she enjoyed helping people in the manner we do and decided to pursue it further for whatever reason."

"Makes sense," Laurie allowed after some thought, it wasn't like Crystal hadn't decided to do things that weren't entirely princessey or glamourous before, their trip across Europe being a good example. "She's got a good eye for detail too, doesn't miss much in our Dangerroom training."

"Well, we'll see how she does as an investigator. Not everyone who is observant always knows the correct place to look, much in the way that not everyone with strength knows how to properly apply it." She smiled. "A smart opponent will win against a strong one more often than not, after all."

"Something Eamon keeps telling me when I complain about how many times I get slammed by Doug during sparring," Laurie replied with a grin, rolling her shoulders to loosen them up now that she wasn't concentrating on typing. "He says I need to learn sneakiness and treachery, but I told him Doug's already sneaky and fast, and he says that I should learn not to be there when he arrives then. Frankly, I'd like to see him spar with Doug, it's not that easy."

Laurie stopped, and made a wry face as she realised she'd completely gone off the current topic of conversation and launched into an Eamon story.

The thorough derailing into Eamon made Vanessa smile. She was sure Laurie would be moping for a week when he left later in the month but she was hardly going to remind the girl of that now. "Doug is very fast and very sneaky, yes. In a dojo I'm not sure who would come out victorious but out there," she gestured vaguely toward the windows, "my money is on Eamon. Doug's good but he lacks the breadth of field experience Eamon has. Which isn't a criticism of Doug at all, he's led a very different life than Eamon has, though Doug would trump many people I've come across for sure. You should work on not being there, though. It's sound advice." She said this as if it were the easiest thing in the world to accomplish and suppressed her smile as she said it.

Laurie poked her tongue out at her friend, as if that said everything about what she thought of the advice. She was getting somewhat better on her speed, but she still felt awkward as hell when compared to how Doug moved most days. She much prefered the idea of being at a distance with her bow then close up fighting hand to hand, at least with a set of arrows, she knew she'd always be better then half the population out there.

Vanessa blew pseudo little sister a kiss, then winked at her.