Alex and Adrienne || Interview

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Alex interviews with Adrienne about a job with X-Factor.



Alex took a deep breath as he straightened his tie - rather clumsily knotted, Scott hadn't had a clue how to do it either - staring at hall in front of him for a long minute. Lorna had assured him that Adrienne was cool, but hell this was nerve-wracking. He'd never really had to do much for a job before. And his resume - five years at a surf shop - didn't really sing his praises.

Finally he took a deep breath and stepped around the corner, knocking on the open office door. "Ms. Frost?"

Adrienne looked up from her computer screen and turned the monitor off, letting her gaze linger over the stylish suit. Too bad about the crooked tie or the look might really be striking. She stood up, wiping her hand on her slacks before offering it to Alex. "Mr. Summers. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in. Please, sit. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"And you." He shook her hand with what he hoped was an easy smile. He didn't want too look nervous, even he knew that was a bad sign in an interview. "No, I'm alright thank you. And thank you for taking the time to meet with me."

"No problem. Lorna's a fine employee. It's the least I can do for her. So how long have the two of you been together, if you don't mind my asking?" Adrienne asked, sitting down and shuffling some papers on her desk.

Alex sat down on the either side of the desk, putting on the best look of at ease and confident that he possibly could. "Four years in October," he replied without hesitation. October twenty-third was the anniversary of the day he'd asked her out, but that might've possibly been too much information.

"Nice," Adrienne nodded approvingly. But she couldn't factor the length of anyone's relationship status into whether to hire them or not, so she let the subject drop. "So, what's she told you about what we do here?"

"She told me it was basically a PI business except with less sitting outside taking pictures of people's cheating husbands and more investigation and helping mutants." That was the best way Alex could think of to describe it. "She also said you guys help mutants find safe places to go when they're in danger."

"Well, we do, a little," Adrienne agreed, though there was hesitation in her voice. "To be honest with you, we actually do a lot of sitting outside taking pictures of cheating husbands. Just... mutant ones. We are, first and foremost, a private investigation agency," she clarified. "We give mutants an avenue to receive justice when the police and other agencies would turn them away. Whatever investigative task they need help with, we do.

"But yes, we do help find shelter for clients who need it," she added, since she guessed by the way Alex had phrased his last statement that he was more interested in helping shelter mutants than doing regular investigative work. "Sometimes we even find shelter for the mutants our clients have paid us to find, if the situation calls for it." She'd only come across that situation once, where human parents had hired the agency to find their mutant child and, upon finding him, it was determined that returning him to his parents would not be a safe course of action for him. Hopefully it didn't happen again, but she figured that sort of thing was the tip of the iceberg, and was pessimistically waiting for the day when 'regular' people began hiring her company to hunt down mutants. "As things stand right now, however, we're a small team, and we don't have the personnel to really establish a network to send mutants to safety. We're in contact with a couple members of the mutant underground, and we fund and maintain a safe house which can be used to move mutants in danger into the existing, though somewhat decimated, underground network. But that's not our focus right now, due to staffing restrictions. Perhaps we could do more we had some more staff interested in that avenue of things," she shrugged, a pointed look on her face.

She was right - that was exactly the part Alex was interested in. He'd always liked helping people, and this was the prefect opportunity to do so, wasn't it? "I could help with that." He tried not to sound too eager. "I mean, I don't know how far your network goes, but I know a lot of people between Nevada and California. Good people, always willing to put someone up if they need help - I did a whole traveling thing before I went to college, made a lot of friends, crashed on a lot of couches. And they don't have a problem with mutants if you just needed to like...have someone stay somewhere for a couple days while they're traveling to a permanent destination. Stuff like."

Whoops, maybe a little too eager. He took a deep breath, leaning back in his seat once more. "I mean, I don't know exactly how your operation works, obviously. Just thinking out loud."

"Nothing wrong with thinking out loud," Adrienne assured him with a small smile. "I appreciate the interest in what we're doing, Mister Summers. The network, as it is now, is meant to go across the country, but it's difficult to ascertain whether the west coast networks still exist in any way, shape, or form. The mutant underground is extremely cautious about compromising any of its people or locations, so the communications avenues are very limited. The way it currently works is, we talk to contacts in New York, they talk to contacts in, say, Ohio, Michigan, maybe the Carolinas. Then those people contact Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Arkansas, et cetra. And the chain keeps moving west. So in New York, we would have to get our message through maybe six different regions before it reaches the west coast. It might protect the network, because if someone in Arkansas is abducted and tortured to give up their contacts, they're only compromising, say, Ohio and Colorado. They won't destroy the network nationwide because they don't know who works for the network in California or New York. But the downside of this is that it could be extremely easy for a message to get lost in the shuffle. If you're trying to get a mutant from New York to California, your request could be lost a half dozen times across the country. And that's assuming that there's even someone at each station along the way to relay said message.

"We don't have the budget to set up and monitor our own entire network outside of the underground, but I would think," she added thoughtfully, "that if we could operate alongside the underground, while at the same time staying outside of it so as not to compromise them, with our own networks of contacts, we could be doing them a great service."

Alex nodded thoughtfully, tilting his head as he took in all the information. It wasn't a perfect system, even Adrienne was aware of that. "Well I can't help with budgeting," he said apologetically. "This suit isn't even mine. But I can help keep contacts. I can do whatever you need. I've been told I'm a great people person."

"Then it seems I'd be remiss not to hire you," Adrienne told him, shuffling some more papers around. Besides, another pair of eyes on Quentin was never a bad idea. "Who belongs to the suit?"

"Scott." He wasn't ashamed to admit it. He didn't own a suit, he'd never had a reason to. "So when do I start? Is there a dress code?" He could buy more suits if need be. Scott probably wouldn't appreciate him using the only one he had every single day.

Adrienne smiled at him. "I like my employees to maintain a business-level dress code while in the office, but out in the field you're free of any such codes. And you can start as soon as possible. Probably after we get you a couple new suits. I'd hate for you to have to borrow from your brother forever, and it just so happens that I own a modelling agency and a clothing shop, which means I can kit you out appropriately at no cost to yourself."

Alex grinned, nodding. "That sounds great, Ms. Frost. I'd really appreciate it. I'm free whenever you are to work on wardrobe stuff." He was excited. This sounded like something that could do a lot of good. And that was exactly what he liked.

"How's now?" Adrienne asked with another smile.

"Now sounds perfect if you're not busy," Alex agreed. He would be lying if he said he wasn't excited.