Vanessa & Garrison | Monday Evening

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Garrison and Vanessa meet up to discuss a bit of a predicament.

The worst thing about meeting a shapeshifter was that you couldn't just spot them in a crowd. You had to wait for them to come to you, which is what Kane figured Vanessa liked most about it. He had gotten the email through an anonymous internet remailer, which had gone through another one first, making it all but impossible to track. Whatever she had gotten involved in, it was serious enough for her to take steps. So, he leaned on the side of the chip wagon she'd mentioned, and waited.

"Do you carry Red Bull?" an unremarkable woman asked the man behind the counter. She was of average height, slender without being particularly athletic looking, and had long, standard-issue brown hair. But there was something about her voice, a familiarity to it's smooth contralto. Replacing its usual richness was a lyrical quality that at once was foreign and at home in the woman's manner of speaking. When she was informed the guy didn't have any Red Bull, the woman turned toward the bearded man loitering and frowned a little. It was followed by a shrug. "It's for the best, probably. I get so twitchy on that much caffeine."

"There is something just out of whack with that stuff. Never trust anythi- Vanessa?" Kane's brain finally caught up to the voice.

Her only reply was a brief, bare smile and to slide her arm through one of his. She conveniently left his gun hand free. The metamorph began walking without pausing to make sure Kane would be coming along. "Been a while."

"It has been." Kane fell into step beside her, trying to reconcile the new form with the Vanessa he knew. "This is a new... look. Any reason for the secrecy?"

"Divorce is a messy thing. Even the amicable sort," she began, knowing full well he probably thought she was avoiding the question. "People leave angry, even if they don't realize it always. They resent having put so much time and effort into what they may deem a 'failed experiment.' They go their own ways. They stop talking. They cut out of their life someone who was once so vitally important they were determined to devote the rest of their life to being with them." Vanessa glanced up at Kane. "Now, if you do all of that and have children," she trailed off. "Technically, I'm not here right now. That's the deal. I'm not in New York until they've cleared me to be. So if I ever want to be again, I need a favor."

"That's unlike you." Kane kept his gaze floating. Vanessa was normally circumspect, but this was being deliberately obfuscating. Was she afraid of being followed? Did she bring something back with her from wherever she'd disappeared to for so long? "Favours, I mean."

"I prefer to avoid them," she said as a point of agreement. "Favors mean people expect one in return and it's not always particularly clean when they're called in. No one ever just wants a cup of sugar." She also generally had problems asking for help, but they were both well aware of her stubborn self-sufficiency. And the ways in which it had failed her in the past. "Besides, I need a hero." The shifter's hand came up and tapped the badge she knew was hidden in the inside breast pocket of the man's jacket.

"If this turns into 80's karaoke, I'm leaving." He said jokingly. "Oh, hang on. I need to pick something up." Kane turned abruptly, bringing her with him as he walked into the men's wear store. The cashier looked up as they walked through, but Kane waved him back with false familiarity. They walked through the change area, and Kane kept them going through the stockroom and out the back. Anyone trying to monitor them would have a hugely difficult time maintaining their surveillance.

"OK, what did you get yourself into, Vanessa?"

"Family issues," she answered, eyes scanning their surroundings. "Say you divorce the former love of your life and you ditch both him and your kid. You never look back, he presumes correctly that you never wanted to be a mother in the first place and you're done with that life experiment. He moves forward and raises the kid that he did want and loves like crazy. Kid grows up. Kid gets abducted." She was sure he was starting to put it together. "Police can't find the kid so they put it in their cold case files and focus on more potentially solvable crimes. Daddy hires a P.I. who pretty much follows every single lead and vague hope of a lead there is before running up against a brick wall of nothing. And then she goes hunting for mommy because there's precedent enough for parents coming back out of the mists of time to make off with their own abandoned offspring." Vanessa chewed on her lip. "Big government agencies don't particularly like it when you start investigating their people. It's a very 'you're with us or you're against us' mentality."

"Fuck..." Kane muttered, taking a right down the alley. "So, just to put the icing on the cake, P.I looks an awful lot like someone who's involved, because she keeps turning up in the same places their leads are taking them. Am I getting close?"

"Once they figured out that mommy's abandoned little angel was missing. People really should follow up on those rear view mirror offspring of theirs." Vanessa shook her head. "They started looking into me when they realized I was looking into her. They got far enough to realize I was related to her missing kid that she didn't even know about and somehow it snowballed into astounding levels of both crazy and asinine." Vanessa smiled sweetly up at him. "You have to give it to me, I have a remarkable knack for getting into trouble attempting to do the right thing. The wrong thing only ever got me almost killed. That's much easier to handle."

"Part of your charm. Still... who are we talking about? CIA, FBI?"

The smile was back and wider than ever. It was clearly the sweet icing on something he wasn't going to like. "S.H.I.E.L.D."

He didn't groan, but it was a near thing. "Wow... man, you really fucked yourself this time." The emerged back on the street, and he angled them towards the subway. Best thing they could do was to put too many variables to their position, make them impossible to track.

Vanessa kept step with the casual grace of a woman out with a friend or boyfriend. Her face gave nothing away but a quiet, friendly demeanor. "I thought it was charm?" She trotted down the steps toward the subway and eyed the crowd. It certainly wasn't rush hour but there were enough people around that you'd need to search to find someone on the platforms likely. "I should probably change."

"Liar. We both know you'll never change." Still, Kane followed her to a corner on the stairs down, where she was obscured from view for a few moments.

"You say the sweetest things." Vanessa stripped off her jacket and turned it inside out, reversing into a muted blue color. As she did that her skin followed suit.. As her body lengthened up to her full, natural height, Vanessa shoved the jacket between her knees so she could strip off the mousy brown blouse which had a simple long, loose, grey tank top beneath it. She pulled on the jacket and for a moment it matched her skin almost perfectly. Red eyes glanced up over Kane's shoulder and a moment later white was spilling in around the edges and the center was shifting to a dark green. Thumbs hooked into the elastic waist of her skirt and slid it down her legs, leaving her in black leggings while her skin bled back into a more standard hue. When all was said and done, in the time it had taken Vanessa to change her clothes she had shifted back to her base form and into a lightly tanned woman standing about five-foot-eight with long, rich, dark brown hair. The shifter rolled the skirt up and shoved it into a pocket. The shirt she balled up in her hand.

Vanessa finally looked at Kane properly again and smiled. A wink followed and a kiss on his cheek. "You're quite a voyeur." Then she was off toward the trains. The shirt got pitched into a trash can as she walked by.

"Not my fault. It's fascinating, unsettling and kinda hot all at once." It was a bit of a game, but not untrue. They stepped on the northbound 4 train, getting on just seconds before the doors closed. There were enough people on to mask them, but that also meant more ears around them. "So, we need to get this cleared up. Do you have the... materials to help explain things?"

Vanessa gripped an overhead rail toward the back of the car near the doors into the next one. "Sure, I do. They were a bit scattered so I needed time to gather. Most is here in New York. I haven't been able to talk to dad. I didn't want people to get the wrong idea. But I'll need him, too. He's my next real stop."

"Well, I've got... someone in the firm I can talk to." Brand. Who knows what she'd demand in order to clear him through the red tape and get to the real decision makers. "It's likely going to cost though. You okay with that?"

This was why she didn't like favors. They always cost. She'd known that before she'd sent the e-mail. "I have to be. It's either that or quit my position without notice. I'd rather not do that."

Kane nodded. "I'll make some calls, see what we're looking at."

He paused as the train stopped and took on more passengers. "Do you want me to let the folks at home now you're in town?"

She didn't even have to think about it before she was shaking her head. "No, you know how they get if I don't check in. If I do have to quit, it'll be harder on them." Which was also her way of acknowledging the position she was putting Kane in. Not with SHIELD or Brand, but with his friends. If this couldn't get cleared up and she had to disappear more permanently that left him as the only one who would know why.

Kane didn't agree, but he understood and didn't press the issue. "So, does that mean we've at least got time for a drink and a bite before you disappear again?"

Part of her really wanted to get going and keep going. She had things she needed to do and while they weren't necessarily time sensitive she wasn't particularly inclined toward the leisurely route. The other parts of her, however, had really missed Garrison. "Sure. I'd have to be crazy to turn you down, right?"

"Obviously. I mean, look at me." He grinned in response as they continued to speed uptown.