xp_logs | Vanessa and Marie-Ange, coffee meeting

Marie-Ange and Vanessa have a meeting to swap information between X-Force and X-Factor. In the process, they also discuss shooting Cammie, the mental re-winding incident, croissants and North.

The thing about burying oneself in work was that, well, Vanessa didn't see much of anyone these days. Granted, she wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to be social even when she lacked enough work to be buried in. Work meant she could focus on something wholly apart from herself. Being social did not afford her that luxury. It was likely why Vanessa had been putting off seeing Doug about those hard drives that had been pulled out of the facility in Prague where Lucas and his hodge podge team had found her. And yet here she was at Snow Valley's office...still avoiding seeing Doug about that.

Somehow, Marie-Ange simply did not feel like a social meeting to Vanessa. Yes, coffee was in part so X-Factor could be filled in on the events that rewound everyone's mental clock at Snow Valley - or nearly everyone - but given she was on friendly, social terms with many of her former colleagues these meetings between the agencies simply never felt like they were all business. Particularly when she kept thinking about Amanda as some dour, goth teenager all black hair and attitude. Or at least that was the mental image Vanessa had lodged in her brain since her first discovery of the event.

Vanessa blew on her coffee in a vain attempt to preserve her taste buds rather than scorching them off in her impatient desire for caffeine, something she barely functioned without a constant stream of these days. The coffee here was almost always awful, which was why Vanessa had brought coffee for the two of them with her. "So, freak occurrence or potential deja vu material?"

Marie-Ange made a little show of raising her face upwards and crossing herself. Agnostic with inclinations to talk to gods no normal people worshiped anymore or not, it worked. "I would go to Mass every day and twice on Sunday if it meant I never had to have that happen again. We think it was an accident. We have a contact, Thomas Glorian, he is a psi, and we think he was dosed on Kick and had a very bad powers interaction, but it is hard to be certain without asking him..." or Emma. She wasn't asking either. She didn't want to remember any of it. "We sent him away, I do not think he is going to be working for us anymore, because it is just too risky."

"How far away?" An eyebrow raised with the question. "And how likely is he to stay gone?" And how the hell did you wind up with such a bad trip that an entire building of spies reverts back to the age of sixteen mentally? She shuddered at the thought. Vanessa was working in a brothel at that age. Trips down memory lane were very much not welcome with the metamorph.

"I am not certain. He has strange powers, and we can only guess that it was the drugs." Marie-Ange explained, or failed to at least. "And since he is not at all happy with any of us, because he very nearly was killed, we suspect he will not be back anytime soon." Glorian was still recovering, so no one had details on where they were sending him just yet, but he'd certainly indicated that he'd be happier never seeing any of their faces again. "It was terrible. None of us remembered anything except Remy, and he had to be a babysitter."

"LeBeau the babysitter. I'm sure he was passionately in love with that slot. I can't imagine him being patient enough to deal with the lot of you as teenaged miscreants." Or at least she knew some of Snow Valley's crew had been miscreants. Others may have been perfectly well behaved teenagers by some miracle or another. "What brand of psi is Glorian, by the way? He may be gone but one person with a bad trip on Kick reverting an entire office to sixteen year olds is bad enough. If someone with similar enough powers has a repeat performance...well, I'd rather not consider all the possibilities at the moment. Are we talking about something with mind control here?"

"He swore a lot, but he was rather patient." Marie-Ange clearly remembered Remy answering her somewhat naive questions. "He is... I am not entirely sure what you might call it. A telepath, but he usually affects dreams. A dreampath? That sounds ridiculous and like it should be drawn on a girl's notebook with unicorns and rainbows." Ugh, like something she might've drawn when she was thirteen. "The security risk is one of the reasons we are taking him out of the field. He can have an office job."

"But anyone with a hallucinogenic or mental manipulation aspect to their powers could have a similar effect." Vanessa's lips pulled into a frown as something occurred to her. "Or with an empath. I'd very likely rather an empath not have any mishaps with Kick. Do you know how it happened? Did he take the drug intentionally, was it slipped to him? Is Kick distribution taking some upward momentum? You said 'dosed' and you thought so he's not being too forthcoming with the details, I take it?"

"He declined to answer." Marie-Ange said, carefully. It was a neutral enough answer that didn't go into the details of why they weren't really pushing for answers, which that got into the issue of just how Emma had restored them to the proper ages and that was just... too awful to explain to someone who had not been there. "As for the Kick, that is part of what I wanted to pass along to you. We had Glorian looking into one of the local gangs that was pushing Kick." She made a "give me a moment" gesture and took her attention to her laptop for a moment. "I've forwarded you some information, in case they did not get the message Remy delivered that they should cease distributing. Sometimes those sorts of people are very stupid."

Vanessa's phone vibrated with the incoming email but she didn't bother checking it for the moment. There would be time at the office later. "Sounds like a party," the metamorph deadpanned. "Thanks for the head's up. Has everyone come out of their regression more or less unscathed?" Not everyone around Snow Valley had been fortunate enough to have happy, shiny adolescent experiences. And that was only the people whose histories she knew.

Marie-Ange waved a hand in the air side-to-side. "Unscathed is a difficult thing to say. We had a range of trauma." And then there was Emma. "Compounded by psionic migraines for everyone. It was not, perhaps anyone's idea of a good week. I think Sofia will be doing overtime in therapy for everyone."

"So not an entirely atypical post...adventure, so to speak." What exactly else did you call it? It wasn't an op, it was a really weird circumstance foisted upon them. "Anything else I and my people should be aware of?"

"No, nothing that I can think of. Just the increase in Kick distribution, and the gang leader Remy put through a window." Marie-Ange seemed both frustrated and amused at the same time, if that was even possible. "Nothing local, at least. We still do not have any good information on the people who took you, nothing that we have not passed on to you already. Other than that, it is the usual business at hand."

Vanessa tensed at the mention of people who took her. It wasn't specific to Marie-Ange herself bringing it up. It had much more to do with the fact that Vanessa had, thus far, avoided the hell out of the topic. She had not sought out what information X-Force had come up with, she had not yet gone to see Doug to get more specifics and see what, exactly he had pulled off those hard drives. She did not want to think about it at all and she sure as hell didn't want it brought up unsolicited, even by someone she got along with. Vanessa gave the redhead a curt nod and stood. "Alright then. I should get out of here so I can follow up on a few things for work. If you lot need anything looked into locally with the Kick or otherwise you know where we are."

"District X, with the good coffee and the assistant who does not sprout a magical staff several days a month?" Marie-Ange said. "If you promise not to tell Amanda that sometimes I steal her assistant for photocopying I will ... send David to your apartment with the best French food I can get in take-out?"

"If you promise to send David to my apartment with just about anything I promise to have extensive amnesia." Vanessa smirked, the expression all mischief and sex, then winked. "Who's her assistant? Isn't Amanda the assistant?" she asked, her expression and tone instantly a perfect mix of confusion and ignorance.

"Amanda is Wanda's assistant, and Nico is Amanda's assistant, so it is assistants all the way down. Like turtles." Marie-Ange explained. "No one will give me an assistant, so I have to steal Amanda's, because it is that or Cammie, and Cammie and I get along like oil and water."

Vanessa shook her head, laughing a little. "I knew that, I was just previewing my faux amnesia. Though at least you're doing so well with Cammie." This time Vanessa gave the redhead a dazzling smile. "She and I get on like gunpowder and matches. It's a constant struggle to not throw her out a window from the higher levels of a skyscraper every time she speaks. I really should get some sort of medal for every year she continues to breathe."

"I shot her once." Marie-Ange said, smirking. "To kill a lot of evil nazi bees, it was entirely justified." And yet, she couldn't help but both feel vaguely bad that she hadn't trusted Cammie enough to ask her to just open a wound and also feel like the green-haired girl sort of deserved it for beating the pulp out of Jake.

"What is with you people and Nazi bees?" Vanessa shook her head. "I really do have to get back to the office, but one of these days I will bring you really good coffee and bribe you into telling me about shooting Cammie. In detail. So that I can vicariously live through the satisfaction of that moment."

"Also our downstairs neighbor's daughter who was brainwashed into being a Russian spy threw a car at her." Marie-Ange said, entirely deadpan to see Vanessa's reaction. "I think the next time we are on the information-sharing rotation it is my turn to bring coffee, but you could order pastries in. I am not as bribable as Jubilee, but I do like croissants. I am French, I must maintain some stereotypical traits."

"I know some excellent croissants, actually." Vanessa smiled and tipped her head to Marie-Ange. "If one is going to throw a car at Cammie one ought not to miss. It's a terrible waste of a vehicle being destroyed otherwise."

Marie-Ange shook her head, frowning in a mostly inauthentic way. "But if she had died, she would not have been there for me to shoot her to kill the bees." She said, tone just this side of teasing. "And then where would I and Amanda have been? We would have been covered in bees." Her impression of Amanda's impression of Eddie Izzard was dead on. Not that one could tell because it was an impression of an impression, which just ruined any chance of authenticity.

The impression, and the reference in general, went right over Vanessa's head. "Well we can't have that. You two are far too pretty for all those welts all over your bodies. And I wouldn't want to deny anyone the joy of shooting Ms Black." Even if it left Vanessa thoroughly envious that she, herself, hadn't been the one to shoot the smart-mouthed kid. Then again, Vanessa wouldn't have aimed for the kid to survive the shooting. Even some in this office might frown on that.

"Sadly, Remy seems to think she is useful, and so I should possibly not have her shot more often. Just the once." Marie-Ange said. "But yes, next time I will give you all of the gory details, minus perhaps the actual gore. Cammie's gore is poisonous, after all. I did not have personal experience with it."

"LeBeau sometimes has questionable judgement," Vanessa put in without a hint of sarcasm. "Anyway, next time gorey details and croissants. This time I need to run before it's too late for me to follow up on some of the things I need to."

"I will bring the coffee. Good coffee, not the kind in the pot here."

"It's a date." Vanessa shot the redhead a wink and blew her a kiss before disappearing out the door.