The Dawn of Liberation - Where's Vanessa?

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With people getting things sorted out at the hotel the Genoshans have put everyone up at Adrienne realizes something is still missing. Or, rather, someone.

There was a rather large mess of people- students, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, people she didn't like very much but would have kissed on the lips for the part they played in everyone else being alive now- gathered in the hotel as the Genoshans worked on getting them all checked into their rooms for the night. It was like being on one of those senior tours arriving in the Dominican or Egypt or something, except instead of being happy and excited, people for the most part just seemed really tired. But Adrienne was having a hard time finding the particular person she was looking for. "Where's Vee?" she asked Bishop as she spotted him, jogging over. "Didn't she come with the rescue team? Damnit, if I've been worrying about her all this time and she's been sitting at home, I'm gonna fucking smother her with a pillow. She'd knife me to death, but I'd feel satisfied in the end."

"We split between two different teams. I haven't seen her in a while." Bishop straightened up, his height giving him a good view of those gathered. "I don't know who was supposed to be watching out for her."

Frowning, Adrienne located North and poked him in the back. "Hey, have you seen Vanessa lately? Bishop says she came with the rescue team, but she doesn't seem to be around anywhere."
Jumping and swinging around at the poke, North leveled a mild glare at Adrienne for startling him before a frown creased his forehead and a strange expression crossed his face. “No,” he admitted, casting his gaze around the crowded area. “She came over with Marie-Ange, but went AWOL during intel gathering. Wasn't she with the prisoners?” He had been too caught up in the aftermath to look.

"No, she wasn't," Adrienne answered with a shake of her head. "Christ, what the fuck happened to her? C'mon, we gotta get some answers," she muttered, pulling Bishop and North along with her as she sought out Tam Anderson, who was doing concierge duty for the moment. She probably could have just run off and started Reading the walls and doors of the prison, but she knew the position of the foreign mutants here in Genosha was still a bit of a tenuous one and she didn't want to spook anyone. "Hey, we're missing someone. We think she's still in the prison. We need to search your cells." She might have been able to rustle up some shred of diplomacy or aplomb, in any other situation, but she'd just had that awful suit removed, her hand was throbbing, she was bruised, battered and bloody. And Vanessa was missing. Again. Fuck diplomacy.

Anderson was in the middle of about a million tasks, but she stopped at the request. "We don't have any of your people unaccounted for in our cells. I can have Warden Wittcombe take another census, but he's sure everyone is accounted for. Who's this person?"

"She's a... shapeshifter," Adrienne answered, going for simplicity for the sake of time. "She can look like anyone. And she uses different aliases for each shape she takes, so it's possible she wasn't counted at all. But," she added, trying to sound like she wasn't trying to be completely uncooperative, "with my mutation and the help of these guys, I can probably find her without bothering your Warden and without needing a census. So I'll just go do that then; thanks for your help. If you wanna wrangle us a driver to take us back to the prison and to keep an eye on us that's fine. Won't be a mo." She dragged Bishop and North towards the hotel exit. "You guys know her last known mimic so I know where to start looking?"

"I know her go to mimics. If I see her I should be able to pick her out but I don't know who she prefers at any given time. She came in as James but that might not have lasted." Bishop said with a sigh. "It's complex, from what she tells me.”

“I’ve got nothing,” the other man shook his head, exiting the hotel with his companions. “We don’t always get complete intel in case shit happens.” Which, as it so happened, it did. “If Bishop says James then that’s probably her last known, unless we can track Marie-Ange down and ask.”

Although North suspected from experience that the other precognitive was probably lying down somewhere nursing the mother of all migraines.

Adrienne was antsy as they made their way back to the prison from the hotel in the military vehicle driven by the tired Magistrate. She had him park at the entrance prisoners were usually brought through and started Reading the doorway, giving it a quick scan. "No James," she muttered, not sounding happy. "She must have changed mimics. I'll look again based on the ones I know, but I may have to describe a bunch of people to you guys and see if anything rings any bells with you." She went back through the timeline, more carefully this time. Something caught her eye but she had to go back to focus on it, not breaking the reading until she was sure. "It's Daniel! I see Daniel! Let's find Daniel!" Jumping forward happily, Adrienne took off through the remains of the building like a whirlwind towards the general population cells.

"A hand over here," Bishop called out after several minutes of combing the area Adrienne put them in. He was struggling with a large piece of rubble that, with a charge, wouldn't have been an obstacle for him at all. "I have movement in this cell. Someone's blocked in"

Immediately abandoning the area that he was sweeping, North moved over to Bishop and crouched by the rubble and sought secure handholds on the concrete. “On three,” he said.

“One… two… three.”

The two men heaved the stone up and to the side, dropping it to the floor with a loud crash to reveal a very welcome sight.

It took Adrienne a moment to realize that this Spanish-speaking Daniel-shaped person wasn't some stranger she'd mistaken for her friend, the smile was the point where she was able to take the leap that this was the right person. She might have picked up more of the Spanish if she hadn't been such a mess, but as it was she only caught the part about home. "Yeah, home time. And hey, seems to me like jailbreaks are just as effective if someone's got the key!"

Standing was a slow, easy movement as if Daniel had all the time in the world. He tipped his head to his cellmates and offered them the deck of cards. "Gentleman, I believe my ride has arrived." He smiled and moved to wait for the cell to open.

The Magistrate escort called into someone about the three having identified the amnesiac without papers as their missing companion. Some chatter took place with some grunts of confirmation before he unlocked the cell and allowed Daniel to step out.

Once past the Magistrate and the pile of rocks that had fallen in front of the door the night before, Daniel wrapped an arm around Adrienne's waist, swept the woman up off her feet and kissed her cheek. He did not bother putting her down, but rather grinned. "You all look like shit." His eyes swept around and came to focus on David. "Particularly you."

“Should’ve left you in there,” the German man snarked in response, although there was no heat in his words. North shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, away from Daniel’s sharp eyes, and arched a sardonic brow at ‘him’ before shaking his head and averting his gaze. But even if North had succeeded in ignoring the relief that had momentarily flooded him when Daniel’s face had come into view, he was hard-pressed to deny that his mood had lifted. Just by a fraction.

Bishop stepped around in front of Daniel for a moment, looking in his eyes with deep concern. "You sure you're alright? Everyone knows I never look like shit."

Smirking a little, Daniel set Adrienne back down on her feet and looked at Lucas fully. A hand went to the other man's chin, turning his head left and then right as he was inspected. "I am certain, amigo. You look terrible. We cannot let you see your girlfriend like this. She will do the female over reaction thing with the worry, yes?" The smirk turned into a more genuine smile. "How is it you are always around to find me when I am lost?"

"I told you I didn't want a partner up front." Bishop said, keeping his seriousness. "It's a lot of work and you're getting lost all the time. I wanted to go home and shower. I still have static crawling across my skin."

"I was not going to let you be my boss in my own company," Vanessa replied with Daniel's easy, smooth rhythm of speaking. "You could have said no." Daniel still wore a faint smile on his lips, though. Lucas being grumpy wasn't going to cloud the fact that Vanessa no longer had to share a prison cell. "So, can we go home now so Lucas can finally have his beloved shower?"

“He can shower at the hotel,” North replied from where he had halted further down the corridor. “Our flights leave tomorrow so we get to enjoy the hospitality of our hosts for one more night.” Their escort visibly bristled, but he merely jerked his head in the direction of the exit with the faintest of smiles. “Let’s go. You can reassure yourselves of each other’s continued existence in a more comfortable setting. So long as none of you get kidnapped or killed along the way.”

"Hey, thanks for saying that and tempting fate, there, Ninja," Adrienne muttered, slapping North on the back a little harder than necessary.

"Why does he assume it will be one of us who will get killed or kidnapped?" Vanessa mused aloud, arm still slung around Adrienne. "Only two out of four of us have ever been kidnapped and I'm fairly certain zero out of four have been killed." She resisted the urge to childishly poke North in the back. "So these showers he speaks of, they exist? Without having to be shared with a half dozen other men at once?" There was, perhaps, a touch of hopefulness in Daniel's voice. "Group showers are highly overrated."

"I dunno," Adrienne replied, not sounding convinced, "I mean, minus Pizzaface over there-" she cocked her head towards their escort "-sorry, kid, you'll grow out of it one day- this is a pretty hot group to shower together."

Daniel shook his head and pointed at Lucas," Committed and faithful," then David, "likely not interested." Then he patted Adrienne on the head. "You can shower alone, mi amore, and have pleasant fantasies. And do not pick on the kid. He cannot help hormones but he can refuse to let us out until someone makes him."

Vanessa caught a bit of a smirk on the kid's face and figured she had sufficiently endeared Daniel to him to make up for Adrienne being...Adrienne. Now, she just had to keep her friend from being too much of a nuisance before they got out of here and to this mythical land of showers. In the process, perhaps Vanessa could avoid questions about how she got caught or how she didn't get linked to Xavier's. If she was lucky they would assume since Daniel isn't a mutant there was nothing to put her on the radar. Who would really guess that she hadn't known who she really was for days?