Any Port in a Storm: Legwork

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While Bishop and Adrienne go to check out things with Storm's employees Vanessa and Callisto head out to the assumed scene of the crime.

Despite her sunglasses, Vanessa held up a hand to block the sun as she cast a glance around. "School's not out for hours still but there's got to be people on the street 'round here. The neighborhood's not that good. Nowhere in Manhattan is." Not since Apocalypse had thrown himself a raging bash on the island, anyhow. She nudged Callisto a little toward a narrow alleyway between buildings. This area of the city had been rebuilt pretty thoroughly which meant condemned and unsafe buildings were out of the question for squatting.

With a short tip of her chin that was almost a nod, Callisto turned on her heel toward the alleyway, moving with that light, balls-of-the-feet grace that suggested she was poised for anything, even with her hands still in her pockets. After a few steps she stopped, turned to Vanessa, and gave another short nod, stopping to let her catch up.

"Couple of people. Maybe three."

"Better than nothing." The metamorph peered into the alley but whoever was down there must have been hidden behind the dumpster where it was darker. Pulling her sunglasses up to rest on her head, she nodded for the other woman to lead since Callisto could see in the dark while Vanessa could be left squinting. She could also react quicker if anyone decided to be stupid.

"Non mutants," Callisto muttered as they got closer. "Light - probably a group of kids."

Sure enough, as they rounded the end of the dumpster and Vanessa's eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw what Callisto must have heard - three teenagers who up until a few moments before had probably been sitting on the mound of damp, mouldering cardboard beside the dumpster but were now standing, looking ready for a fight. Then one seemed to recognise Callisto, and dropped his long, gangly arms back down by his sides.

"It's cool. They're cool. 'Sup?" he directed at Callisto, getting a returning chin tip of greeting for his trouble.

An eyebrow quirked upward. Everywhere she went some street kid knew Callisto. It useful, but still a little odd. And perhaps a touch amusing. Vanessa gave them all a bare hint of a smile and a nod. "You guys get outta here much during the day? Some kids doing some sort of summer program at the school a half block down got nabbed yesterday. See anything maybe?"

The kid's eyes slid sideways. "What's it worth?" he asked immediately.

Callisto sighed. "C'mon, Tag, you know I'm good for it. Don't insult me."

"We don't pay for bad information," Vanessa put in calmly. "If you have good information it'll be worth it to you to share. If it's not then just say so and we can move onto someone who might be worth the investment."

The kid just stared at Vanessa as she spoke. "Who the fuck is she?" then flinched back instinctively at the look Callisto gave him. "Sorry," he muttered. Then he cleared his throat, eyes back on the ground. "Might've seen a van," he said.

"Colour?"

"Uh... white?"

"You sure?"

"And some big guys." The kid was looking shiftier now. "Didn't recognise 'em. I swear, that's all we saw," he said.

As he spoke Vanessa was accessing the photo gallery on her phone and finding the picture of the Storm siblings Franklin had given to X-Factor. She held it up to the mouthy kid, apparently unfazed by his attitude since Callisto seemed to be keeping him in line easily enough. "These kids the ones that got taken? And be very, very sure before you tell me yes or no."

The kid stared, made a face. "I dunno," he said. "I... think so. I think it was. But..." His eyes swivelled past Callisto's and Vanessa's and back to the screen. "I think it was," was all he said again.

Callisto pouted thoughtfully. "Where'd you see it? The van?"

"Don't remember."

"Tag..."

"Okay, okay, it was..."

Callisto looked where the kid was pointing, doing her usual thoughtful nod-and-pout.

"Like, roughly," the kid added. "I dunno."

"Kay."

"So..." Tag looked behind himself, and then back at Callisto, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

Callisto breathed out slowly through her nose. "Where you staying these days, Tag?"

The kid frowned. He clearly knew that Callisto wasn't going to like his answer.

"You at Billy's?"

"Maybe."

Very deliberately, Callisto put her hands back in her pockets - and left them there.

"Come by the shelter this week, I'll sort you out with some food, maybe some stamps."

"Aw, shit, man, you gotta-"

"I am done giving you money for your piece of shit crackhead brother, Tag. Get outta my sight," Callisto spat with an air of finality.

Callisto's bite was threat enough for Tag that her bark sent him scurrying off, friends in tow, down the alley and out the other end. Vanessa watched them go, then turned to head out the end of the alley she and Cal had entered from with a quick tug to a belt loop on the other woman's jeans. "Vaguely useful, at least. Vaguely." Once they were back in the light of the street Vanessa's gaze swept from side to side and she headed toward the school in search of neighbors and anyone else on the street. Knocking on doors sucked but she'd do it if she had to. "You know, you can set that kid up with food and bill it to the client. You don't need to use shelter resources. If we pay for information, no matter what form it takes, it gets billed to the client."

"I wasn't gonna use the shelter funds," Callisto said simply, with a shrug of her shoulders. Then, "It's cool."

Vanessa frowned but said nothing. She knew better than to try to talk Callisto out of her position. Especially when she was so damn nonchalant about it. The metamorph did shake her head, though. "If you change your mind before the client gets the final bill..." she offered without any pressure and trailed off.

A woman at a stand near the school caught Vanessa's eye as she set out buckets of flowers. "C'mon, maybe she saw something, too."

When they find no one worth talking to at the offices Adrienne and Bishop head over to the school to check out the spot where Cal and Nessa were told the kids got nabbed.

Bishop stepped out of the car and walked around the front with his eyes up toward the tops of the buildings. Most people would look at eye level and then to the ground. It was something he noticed as a detective. He didn't want to miss anything. "This is supposed to be it." He said idly to Adrienne; she already knew that. He stayed in the street right in front of his car. He wasn't looking down at the scene yet so he wasn't going to stomp all over it.

Adrienne followed his gaze. She didn't go out in the field with Bishop very often, and wanted to absorb all she could from him about detective work. "'Buildings are too far back from the street to get a Read of a getaway vehicle," she mused aloud, "but I could Read the street itself. I'd rather not, because streets are annoying and tricky, but I can." Her gaze went down to the scene then, taking in the scattered detritus around the area. "Wrappers, pennies, a pen..." She stooped down and started touching them without moving them, then after a moment stood back up. "None of this stuff belonged to the kid."

"Kids put their used gum under bus stop benches, don't they?" Bishop asked. It could have been a joke but, with his tone, it was hard to tell sometimes. His eyes slowly trailed down the face of the buildings, stopping on light fixtures and windows as he came across them.

Adrienne gave him a Look. "Seriously?" With a sigh, she went over to the bus bench a few feet from where he'd parked, because he did have a good point, and she wasn't about to pass up an opportunity for any sort of lead. "I love this job."

"Not seriously." Bishop said quickly as he looked down to see Adrienne at the bench. "Just reading everything isn't going to get us where we want to be." His eyes moved back to trail over the scene. "We need precision..."

Bishop finally stepped up onto the sidewalk and he walked to the corner of a nearby alley. He squatted down carefully to pick up a pair of nice, smaller, feminine sunglasses. "Like this." He stood and held them so they faced Adrienne at the height they'd sit on the face of someone about five feet tall. "This seasons style?" She had been a model, after all.

Frowning at the sunglasses, Adrienne nodded. "Yeah, but they're cheap knockoffs, like the kind you get at those stores in the mall that are crammed with cheap jewelry and accessories and garish socks and novelty items. The kind of place the kids love and adults are scared to go into because of possible sensory overload and trampling and embarrassment at being seen in them among all the thirteen year-olds. Or Target. They might be Target. Want me to check them out?" She waggled her fingers at him.

"Cheap women's sunglasses from a teen oriented store?" Bishop confirmed with a nod, holding them out to Adrienne. "Now we're talking."

Adrienne reached out and poked the sunglasses rather than actually taking them from Bishop. If the kidnapping involved something gruesome, it was easier to disengage from the reading if she wasn't holding them in her own hand.

Crowds of children flocked through the open school gates joking and laughing with their friends as they streamed to into cars, buses and the subway. A blonde girl leaned on the school gates her bag swinging from one hand as she pushed up the sunglasses and grinned brightly at a passing friend. She let out a tapped her foot impatiently and checked her watch before she looked up at the entrance and waved at someone Adrienne couldn’t see. “Johnny, over here.”

A young boy sauntered into Adrienne’s vision a happy smile plastered on his face and his clothes scuffed up and a skateboard under his arm. He visibly ignored his sister’s questioning look, flashing her an impudent grin as he walked past her and started down the street towards the subway. With a long suffering sigh his sister chased after him, “Let me guess, you spent lunchtime rushing around the city on your board. Which dumpster did you end up in this time?”

The siblings continued down the street. Adrienne could hear the easy banter bouncing back and forward between them. She saw Sue reaching into her bag as a white van pulled up behind them and Johnny went down with a tranquilizer needle in his arm.

The girl kept rummaging around in her bag as a pair of hoodie-clad men stepped out of the van. One of them grabbed the fallen boy, lifting him into the back of the van. The remaining assailant advanced on the girl who had finally realized that her brother had stopped talking and turned around. She stood frozen, her eyes wide with terror as the man pulled out a damp piece of cloth. Sue finally shook off her inaction as the stranger closed to grapple with her. She screamed and clawed at the thug's face leaving livid red scratch marks where her nails scored across his face. Unfortunately her fight was short lived as the thug shrugged off her attempts to defend herald and roughly covering her mouth and nose with the cloth, knocking her sunglasses to the ground.

Sue struggled for one, two around more before the drug overwhelmed her. Her assailant hefted the now unconscious girl in his arms and snarled at the gathering crowd. Flames leapt from his fingers, driving them back as he bolted for the van which weaved its way out of sight in the New York traffic.

Adrienne pulled her hand away from the glasses and crossed her arms over her chest. "Two men- hoodies and shades covering their faces, no discernable labels on the clothes- in a white van- maybe an Econoline, but I didn't get a good look at the back of it to check the make," she explained, sounding disappointed in herself. "Didn't get a full licence plate, either. Just the first two digits. Wish I could read the damn road itself, but I'd pass out, probably before we got anything useful, and you'd have to pick me up off the ground and probably smack some sense back into me. And I don't think either one of us wants that." She huffed out an annoyed breath. "They tranq'd both kids. Girl fought, though. I think she might've scratched one of them in the face. Van came from this direction, took off that way." She demonstrated with gestures. "An' I think the one of 'em was a mutant."

Bishop snapped his fingers at the last part. "Perfect. Get their powers?" He smirked a bit. "We have access to someone who can find just about any mutant in the entire world."

"Fire," Adrienne nodded. "Fire from his hand?"

"I have files or we can resort to the Professor." Bishop dropped the sunglasses into his jacket pocket. "If nothing else, tranquilizers are a controlled substance. If we put that with the van we might get something." He stepped up to his sedan's passenger door and opened it for Adrienne. "Ask the Professor if he can pin down a mutant like that for us?"

"Will do." Adrienne climbed into the car and frowned at Bishop. "Why did you pocket those sunglasses? Do you have some sort of women's accessory fetish I don't know about?"

"Same reason you bring a child's favorite teddy bear with you to the hospital. It shows you really do give a shit." Bishop offered, looking down at Adrienne in the seat before shutting the door behind her. He was in the driver's seat in just another moment and they were off.

"Uhh... give a shit about what? Cheap sunglasses?" Adrienne was confused. "I just meant, like... shouldn't you be putting them in an evidence bag or something?"

"About her." Bishop clarified, letting the rest of the conversation die off. They weren't going to be anything to the police. If they had done their job well, they'd have already had them. Then again, if they had done their job well X-Factor wouldn't have been there in the first place.

"Stealing her stuff shows you give a shit about her?" Adrienne was still confused.

"Returning it will. I don't think she usually keeps them in an alley." Bishop glanced at Adrienne and raised an eyebrow.

Adrienne reached over and pulled the glasses out of his jacket pocket and put them on the dashboard of the car. "There. Now one of us can bring them into the office and give them to her father." She couldn't articulate exactly why it bugged her that he'd pocketed them in the first place, and why she'd made him explain himself when she'd had a pretty good idea about what he'd be doing with them all along, but something about putting a missing kid's glasses in your pocket just seemed... weird to her.

Bishop picked up on her mood, of course. "Some reason that bothers you?"

"Nope. At least, not a reason that I can actually articulate," she answered with a shrug and a weak smile. It didn't particularly seem polite to say something along the lines of 'even though I've known you for years I think I'm still creeped out thinking of a much older guy pocketing the personal possessions of a kidnapped teenage girl and wanting to give them back to her to show he cares about her.' It had been her own baggage that had made her think it, not anything he'd done. "So, I saw a crowd around the scene when the kidnapping took place," she said to change the subject, "do you know if the cops got anything useful from any witness statements or anything?"

"I've put in a request for the files, just have to wait until they're done and processed." Bishop let silence hang for a second before pressing just a little more about the sunglasses, "Would it have been weird if Vanessa had done it?"

"Yep," Adrienne lied with a nod and an apologetic expression. "Just a weird personal quirk of mine, I guess. Sorry to have taken it out on you." She picked the sunglasses up and turned them over in her hand. "These are nice. Maybe I should get myself some of these. Once we get the kid back I'll have to ask her where she got them."

Bishop gave her a familiar grunt in response. "it's fine." He was obviously done with the topic now.