xp_logs | Bishop and Adrienne (Backdated to last Tuesday)

Bishop and Adrienne discuss Vanessa's disappearance and Adrienne's offer of aid to the X-Factor agency.

After a perfunctory call to the X-Factor Investigations office to make sure Bishop was actually there, Adrienne found herself back at the building buzzing the intercom once again. Though Warren had offered, she hadn't stayed at Vanessa's apartment as much as she'd anticipated- Garrison was out of the mansion so there was no one to hide from there, and since she'd never been to Vanessa's apartment while Vanessa had been there Adrienne didn't feel the connection to the place that she'd expected to feel. Also, she had no car of her own and her bike was still in Boston, so getting from Westchester to District X wasn't as easy as it used to be. Damn, she missed Driver. Having to sign a car out of the mansion garage and actually drive it herself was a little bit... well, it was different. But everything was different these days, she thought to herself as she stared up at the X-Factor Investigations building, buzzing for entrance.

"It's after hours." Bishop's voice came abruptly over the speaker. "Call nine one one if it is an emergency and contact us in the morning if you don't think the police are treating you right." Despite expecting Adrienne, his mind had been so occupied lately he was missing normal, real world connections in favor of focusing on his case.

"It's me, Idiot. I just called you! Let me in," Adrienne replied, rolling her eyes. Jeez, Bishop really was stretching himself thin, wasn't he?

The door clicked open for Adrienne and Bishop moved back to the window. He had been looking out across the street as he thought, a bottle of Maker's Mark nearby, a glass with ice and a little liquor in it within reach. The window had marks from a grease pencil across it.

Adrienne eyed the alcohol with a raised eyebrow, but didn't comment on it. "There's something particularly cruel about the universe when you endure forced solitude, crippling lonliness and emotional terror for more than a year only to return to your life and find your best friend's gone missing," she muttered by way of greeting to Bishop in a mock philosophical tone. "What the hell happened to her? Because I was inclined to think, after a conversation with Warren, that she just got spooked by the fact he's unabashedly, completely smitten with her and she needed a break. But he says she took off in the middle of a case, while one of her closest friends was in a coma. And that's not Vee."

"I'm working on it." Bishop drew a line across the window, seemingly randomly, though the arcs and angles appeared mathematical. "We don't know much other than something isn't right."

"Are you drunk?" Adrienne accused, watching him draw on the window. She'd hoped the man could hold his liquor better than to be drunk at their meeting! "I need you to not be drunk right now, Lucas. In need you to tell me everything you know, even if that isn't much. Warren said she was on a job. Where was she? Where was she taken from? Was she even taken? Do you have any evidence of what actually happened? How about we start there?" she suggested helpfully.

"I'm not drunk and I have it posted on the cork board." Bishop made a motion. "I'm looking at the angles of cast light from the street lights at different times of day and trying to adjust for the season and time of day differentials so I can get a better idea of how Vanessa might have been abducted by force, if she was."

Becoming frustrated with the lack of coherency and seeming inability of Bishop to answer her simple questions, Adrienne snatched his bottle of Maker's Mark and stole a swig from it.

"Okay," she muttered when the alcohol hit the pit of her stomach, "so she 'might' have been abducted by force. Good starting point. And if you're looking at these streetlights here, she was abducted from here? Because I can use my powers on the buildings in the neighbourhood if you want... see if I can tell who abducted her." When Warren had said she had disappeared on a job, Adrienne had assumed he hadn't meant the office because she assumed that the office would have surveillance cameras or something, but maybe they'd disabled the cameras?

"She was abducted in Boston. I'm looking at the streetlights here because I'm not there. America has a standardized system." Bishop explained. "I have local camera footage giving me places it couldn't have happened, now I'm looking for places it might have so I know who to try to have interviewed when I send someone over."

"Boston...?" Adrienne's face fell and she bit her lip. She'd been hiding in an apartment while Vanessa had been in the same city, being abducted... "Where in Boston, exactly?" Adrienne asked, trying to keep the frustration with the fact that there might have been something she could have done, if she'd only known, out of her voice. "If she was working on a case you would know where she had been staying, right? She would have kept in touch with you. She had a phone, didn't she? She would have called and told you where she was? I want to help you find her, but I need somewhere specific to start... please?"

Bishop stood and walked over to the cork board. "This is everything I know." He began to tap note cards and pictures in a slightly erratic pattern. "I have it all posted so people who are concerned can monitor my progress without interrupting. I appreciate we're all worried but I don't want to stop thinking."

Adrienne touched the cork board with a hand so she would have the images of what was on it in a Reading, which would never leave her mind. Since Bishop clearly wasn't going to discuss it with her, she would go over it later. "So, you're... thinking? Is that what you're doing these days?" Seeing how he was too absorbed in his thinking to even speak to her, Adrienne grew concerned for the state of the business Vanessa had started. "Umm... who's running the agency if you're spending all your time thinking? Jean-Paul's in Europe, Vanessa's... not here, you're acting like you're not here... Are you shutting down the agency until she's back? Warren says he's helping out, but he's a lawyer, he can't have much experience doing investigative work."

"That's what I do when my partner is missing, yes." Bishop stood next to the cork board, now looking down at Adrienne. "I spend all my time trying to find her. I've moved the caseload to everyone else and we're turning down anything too complex to be handled. It's a chance for them to get experience and it gives me the time I need to put together all the smallest clues like how streetlights illuminate at every time of day."

Adrienne was beginning to think that Bishop's mind had been abducted along with Vanessa- she didn't understand how knowing what time of day Vanessa was taken at would help get her back- but she guessed that everyone was dealing with the situation in their own way.

"Well, I no longer have a company to run and it seems like the school aspect of Xavier's mansion gets smaller every year, so I find myself with some free time," she explained. "If you need help with the cases... if my powers can be useful to the agency, I'd like to help... I suppose I feel like it's a way I can be useful to Vanessa during this... situation, by helping her business continue to run."

"We'd be lucky to have you." Bishop offered sincerely, even giving her a small smile. "I'll have Laurie collect up the employment forms so we can get you on the books and paid."

"You don't have to pay me," Adrienne said immediately. "I just want to help. Until we get Vee back."

"I want to." Bishop insisted, keeping his smile. "I appreciate the help."

Adrienne shrugged. If Bishop insisted, she wouldn't turn down the extra money, figuring it would come in handy if she ended up following Vanessa's trail to all and sundry. "Alright. I'll let you get back to your street lights then, and I'll go digest your cork board. Hopefully I can go up to Boston and check out where she was staying. I'll keep you in the loop. We're gonna get her back, Lucas," she promised with a nod.

Bishop shook his head at the use of his first name. "She insists on calling me that sometimes too." He said with another small smile as he moved back to the window. "Thank you for helping."