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xp_logsMarie-Ange visits the Stepford sisters to try to get them settled in - and then get them setup with identities they can live with. It turns into a game of conversational chess that Fourteen isn't aware that Marie-Ange isn't really playing.
With most of X-Force off -at least the last Marie-Ange had heard- on a cruise ship - it was down to the remaining few to handle the details of their new residents.
Right now, the young women were scattered in two guest suites, recuperating, and "find out if they want to stay at the mansion long-term" was the first item on Marie-Ange agenda. Once that was established, they could move on to other topics like identities and toiletries and perhaps why they were locked up in a Weapon facility, and if that was going to bring down bad things on top of the mansion.
The suites were adjoining - but one had it's door ajar, and lights off, and so Marie-Ange knocked on the other, because frankly, if she had been tossed into a strange place under extremely strange circumstances, she'd probably seek out her family members too.
The living suites in the mansion weren't really large enough to house five comfortably. All five of the newly christened Cuckoos had flocked to one room, pushing the two beds together. Not that sleep had been coming easy. They'd probably had less than five hours in the last two days. Esme was feeling particularly dead, and even Phoebe was starting to waver through her normally boundless energy.
So the knock had been unexpected. She'd not had may visitors since she arrived here beyond a non-traditional hospital stay and another recap of the already tiresome "Don't be a threat to anyone here" speech, poorly disguised as an inquiry about her well-being.
For a moment, 14 just wanted to go home. But she didn't have one of those anymore; not really. Just a room in a place she didn't know, surrounded by strangers she didn't couldn't trust.
So instead, she pulled Irma out of bed and opened the door. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was painfully aware of just how thin it was.
"Ms... oh bother. I am actually not sure of your last name now?" Marie-Ange had meant for polite re-introduction and orientation and instead was met with a young woman who looked exhausted, and was briefly taken aback at the fact that not only did whichever of Emma's daughters this was look dead on her feet - there was no easy way to tell which one it was.
Irma cocked her head to the side. "I don't know if we have one anymore." She yawned and rubbed her eyes (while Phoebe kept a discrete eye on their guest from her position on the bed). And they didn't. What she'd found in the head of the man running the facility they'd been kept in (at least, what she'd had time to sort through) had implied that the group that had taken her had wiped her existence from as many records as they could reach. As far as she knew, she could be no more than a ghost.
"Is there something we can help you with?"
Marie-Ange nodded. "More the opposite. I had come intending to offer my assistance with settling in, and, perhaps now in the last name realm, since you will need identities, papers..." She glanced at the practically identical sets of clothes, all of which were assuredly from the 'purchased online in a hurry' category. "Clothing more appropriate for five sisters doing... ah, I think it would be graduate studies and volunteer work." She frowned, and rubbed at her eye. "Haircuts, accessories, bed linens, all the usual trappings of a real life." Really, the identical falls of blonde hair were just creepy. Weapon X had a lot to answer for in the grooming their captives department.
Something about that statement cut through the fog in 14's mind. Phoebe sat up in bed and covered an eye with the heel of her palm. Her blonde hair splayed everywhere in the most wicked case of bedhead. "Wha? Shopping? Like... normal human interactions? Yes. God, please yes."
"...we'll need a few minutes," Irma said finally. "How many showers do we have access to?"
"For all five of you?" Marie-Ange said, and frowned, thinking. "Two here, plus you could borrow mine, plus I suppose you could go down to the gym, there are several individual showers there." She pulled out her phone and tapped at it with her thumb a few times. "Do you have bathroom things? Someone gave you towels and facecloths, shampoo, all that, yes?" She made a bet with herself that whatever generic supplies had been given to the sisters, they were not up to their usual standard. "Take your time. If you find you need anything different from what you already have, we can replace it. I have a very generous expense account."
--
Several hours later, Sophie slid a glass in front of Esme. The six had ducked into some small cafe Marie-Ange said she knew just off the street they'd been shopping on. It had been a long day, and while mentally 14 was still ready to go, at least one fifth of her flesh was weak and tired. Esme was going to pass out on her feet if 14 wasn't careful.
The coffee should help.
"Any one of you could go home, I am certain that your sisters would handle the rest, yes?" Marie-Ange said, from behind a menu she was frowning at. "It has been a very rough time for you, and fatigue will not help you get settled. I could call you a cab?" She finally set the menu down - it would be easier if they would stop changing it, but on the other hand, if they had kept it the same every season, there would not be butternut squash soup on it now.
"I recommend... well, really I recommend anything on this menu. I have rarely had anything less than an excellent meal here." She gestured, vaguely, with the glass of water the waiter her poured for her. "And we have this room for ninety minutes, so we will not be interrupted so long as you are alert enough to keep watch out for the servers approaching."
Celeste and Irma shared a look. (14 realized she was forgetting to do that recently due to the mental stress, and if she wasn't careful someone would start to find it weird.) She was happy to be out of the mansion for the moment. It felt less like there was enemies on all sides of her. Still, Esme's body was screaming at her that if it didn't get to lie down for a while it was just going to crumple into a ball and refuse to go any further.
Problem was, they were far too far away from the mansion to just send Esme back. She could only get 4 miles away from Celeste before 14 was unable to maintain the connection, and the last thing she needed was for half of her to go comatose in the back of a taxi. And, if she was being completely honest, after... her last outing, the last thing she wanted to do was be away from herself.
"We'd rather she stayed with us. At least for a little longer. Is there anywhere close to here she can rest for an hour or two?"
The constant telepathic conversation the sisters were having must have been overwhelming to anyone listening in. Marie-Ange frowned for a minute and then nodded. "The Snow Valley offices are a few blocks from here. I have a cot in my office." She took a business card from her bag and wrote on the back - a message, and a code word to let the rest of X-Force know she wasn't compromised and pushed it towards the sister she was fairly sure was Esme. Reasonably sure. They were just so confusingly similar. "If you want to use that, you are perfectly welcome. Tell whoever is at the front desk to call me if they have questions. If not, we can get the details of your stay in New York and any paperwork done here." Paperwork was accompanied with a hand wave that put far more meaning into the word than just tax forms.
Sophie, who Marie-Ange had actually handed the card to, passed it to Esme. Close enough, really. Irma stood and pulled Esme with her. Well, technically Esme was standing, but it was more like hanging all over Irma. "I'll make sure Esme gets there safely," Irma said. "Celeste will make certain everything goes smoothly." She gave a small, guarded smile.
Once the two of them were out the door, Phoebe turned back to Marie-Ange. "So, you said something about paperwork?"
The first thing Marie-Ange did was pull out a device that looked like a cell phone, but had a little cartoon of Doug's face making the "nyah nyah" gesture, and did a very good, very illegal job blocking all cellular and wifi signals, and most recording devices in a ten foot radius.
The second thing she did was pull out a tablet computer, and pull up a very custom, also very illegal app. "You need identities, and identical quintuplets are rare at best, so you will be a little trickier than our usual. The good thing is that the best two hackers in the United States work in my office. The bad thing is that we are going to have to build you five identities from scratch and there is going to be no easy way to make you inconspicuous, so it may take time. The doctor who delivered you, the identities of your parents, even the hospital you were born in are going to have to be created from scratch, or records appended to people that have died, or places that have closed."
She rubbed at her forehead. "So first, stay with one of us or at the mansion for the next few weeks. Normally we can make this happen in a few days, but.. you present a unique challenge." Doug was probably dancing with glee to get to do it, and she'd be surprised if Domino wasn't doing the same. "Second, since we have to create an entire life for you, we are going to need it to be as similar to your previous one as possible. Odds are, the facility you were found in has already erased much of your previous life, but I need to know as much as you trust to give me, so that... " She pointed at Celeste. "Let us suppose you were the queen bee socialite of your college sorority. Then we will likely create you an identity that lets you still act like a queen bee."
Celeste tapped on the table. 14 was at least thankful that the older woman wasn't pushing about her past. There were some secrets she wasn't willing to barter for. Still, it wasn't like her to share for free.
"That sounds reasonable. However, we know as much about you as you know about us, so how about a trade? You tell us your story, and we'll tell you ours." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "After all, if we're going to have to hang around, we'd like to know a little of what we're getting into."
She wasn't likely to learn anything from this little trade nobody else knew, but that was fine. She'd take the loss this one time.
"Celeste, yes?" Marie-Ange guessed - though, more a certainty than her guess about Esme. "Half my story is available on those journals you all have been given." Doug had mentioned that they'd only used the first account he'd made, but if they wanted to share, that was fine. "Shall we do the cliche? A question for a question?"
Ah, a classic. She knew how to navigate this one, at least. "No lies," she said in lieu of an answer. "If we don't, or won't, answer a question, we'll tell you but we won't lie. In return we expect the same. Agreeable?"
"Of course. I like traditional, and I will do the same." Traditional was easier sometimes - and Marie-Ange did not have much to hide, besides. The biggest secrets - mutation, spies, the real nature of Snow Valley - the girls would already need to know that, just by being Emma's biological daughters, or they would find out readily. "Would you like to go to far as to flip a coin to see who goes first?" She smirked, though the expression was far more amused than cold. "Or go for lowest or highest card. I always have a deck on me somewhere."
The offer immediately set 14 on edge. Rule one of the game: you take whatever advantage not explicitly banned to get ahead. You don't just leave things like this to chance, and they'd never explicitly banned powers.
The reference to cards might have been a slip, but 14 wasn't so naive as to stumble blindly with that assumption. So... a show of good faith, maybe? Or a heavy-handed attempt to take the upper hand already?
She'd figure it out later.
A block and a half away and well out of the range of Marie-Ange's jammer, Irma pulled out her mansion-issued phone and connected to the logs. Pulling up the older woman's personal journal was trivial, and she quickly began skimming through it.
A few things were immediately obvious. What her posts said weren't nearly as interesting as what they didn't. And possibly most interesting of all, she wasn't exactly secretive with her power.
Precognition. So that was her game. Hard to lose a 'fair' game of chance when you could see the outcome. Especially if she'd literally stacked the deck beforehand.
So cards were out, at least. She'd either have to give up advantage or hope that her powers weren't specific enough she could foresee both 14's intended call and the outcome of the flip based on how she held it. Phoebe fished a quarter out of her pocket, placed it on the table, and slid it across to Marie-Ange, face-up.
"You flip, I call?" she asked innocently.
Marie-Ange nodded and picked up the coin, and rolled it over her knuckles a few times. "I do like the way you think." She said - without malice. The low level of paranoia meant that at least one of the five sisters would not need "How to Stay Safe When Terrible People Want To Get You" 101, and probably the rest of them as well. "I take it you either have done a lot of journal reading since you arrived, or one of you is reading my surface thoughts? A piece of free advice, do not go deeper, I have ... a particularly unique mind." She flipped the coin, caught it, and covered it with her free hand. "Call?"
"You and everyone else it seems," Irma muttered as they approached Marie-Ange's office, rolling her eyes. The distinct lack of unshielded minds recently had meant her primary information stream had dried up to almost nothing and it was starting to make her twitchy.
And what did she even do with that line anyway? There was so much in it, 14 didn't even know where to begin. Well, actually, yes, yes she did.
"Heads."
The coin Marie-Ange revealed was heads-up, so she let it roll off her hand and onto the table. "Clever move avoiding cards, though my mentor was rather a good con man, so I can be tricky with coins too. I am not as practiced with them though." Nothing the girls couldn't find out just by talking to people or observing. "Since you win, it is your call, yes? Ask first, or answer first?"
By this point 14 had realized there was no way the constant hints weren't intentional. Nobody worth talking about was this bad at keeping secrets to themselves. So, she was either not worth talking about, or doing it on purpose. 14 was certain it was the latter. That was fine with her, really. It would take more than a few deceptively-useless tidbits to get her to drop her guard.
She ignored the quarter for now; it'd still be there later.
Right now, she had a decision to make: play or pass? There was an art to the game, and Marie-Ange was playing it well enough. She'd already started, littering the field with so much information, all of it seemingly useful but certainly just the opposite. If she was trying to confuse 14 into missing the critical facts she wanted to know, she'd already started well.
Still, there was more than one winning strategy, and she'd always been a firm believer that a question could give away more than an answer. What someone wanted to know was possibly more important than what answers they were willing to give, and 14 didn't believe for one moment the older woman wouldn't use this little Q&A session to try and get more than just her personal history out of her.
So really, was there ever a choice to begin with?
"Age before beauty."
"You are really the most delightful girls." Marie-Ange said, and took a long sip of her tea before saying anything else. "Everything is a battle for you now, yes? You really are the ladybugs flown out of their nest." She set the teacup down, and then took a notepad out of her bag. "Let us start with the basics, to construct a series of identities that all of you can be comfortable with. So. How old are you, and where were you born? Both the real answers, if you please, and whatever you have been given to live with until now."
Phoebe hummed noncommitally. She was right, the older woman was just that good. It would have been impressive if it hadn't been so annoying. Still, she had more tricks up her sleeve.
"The official story is that we were born to Marcus and Jessica Drew on April 27th, 1994 in Alberta. It's significantly more boring than the real story, which was that we were apparently born in a lab on April 27th, 2004."
Marie-Ange's eyebrows went up sharply. "Apparently? You are unsure?" She frowned at the math - the sisters did not act eleven, or look eleven, and Emma would have known if they were mentally eleven. "What happened to the people you thought were your parents? Are they alive?" If she had her way, they might not be for long.
Celeste stiffened the most noticeably. Splashes of red and a clawing, aching silence that hung over the entryway like a shroud. The pointless pointless pointless droning of the TV and the thick stench of iron and blood and gunpowder.
The smell of coffee and sound of plates being stacked. Back in the cafe. 14 forced herselves to relax, although the damage was done.
"No. They're not." She said it with such a finality that the topic was clearly over.
"My condolences then." Even if it was a formality. Marie-Ange wasn't sure if the sisters were upset about the loss of their parents, or the lie, or both. "That does make things easier, and I have access to a fertility clinic's records, so we can create a fake set of parents for you to never mention or talk about, because it is just so upsetting." She waved a hand at the tablet. "I believe I owe you two questions now, yes?"
"Indeed," Sophie agreed from where she'd been busy sucking on something the cafe claimed to be a chai tea latte. She cocked her head to the side. "Would you mind explaining the ladybug comment?"
"I will do you the favor of not taking that literally and answering "I do not mind.". Marie-Ange quirked up a smile. "The short answer is symbolic medium-range precognition." Marie-Ange said. "The longer answer is that your distress call came to Emma just after I ruined a rather important legal document with a precognitive flash. Between your call and my precognition, we had a location and knew that we had to move quickly." She was not going to say that it was possible Emma would have taken the distress call as an attack. There was already too much obvious distrust, it had been clear on the plane ride home.
What Marie-Ange called a favor, 14 called 'the whole point of the question'. To 14, the answer was mostly irrelevant (although surprisingly informative, all things said and done). The real question, hidden behind the obvious one, had been 'How specific do I need to be with my questions?'. And now she had an answer, of sorts.
So, that left her with one more. Celeste drummed her fingers on the table. "Why'd you initially come to live at the mansion?" She nearly tripped over the phrase 'the mansion'. "I imagine it wasn't for the same reason we did."
That question got the most honest smile that the girls had seen from Marie-Ange yet. "I was ... asked to leave my school when my powers grew beyond what I could control." She shrugged, seemingly at peace with it. "More than ten years ago. My parents knew someone who knew someone who knew Professor Xavier, and it was safer here than at home."
That... was significantly closer to her own story than 14 had expected. Not quite the same thing, but the same general... overtones. And the older woman didn't seem to be lying, although that was hardly definitive. They'd already determined that both women at the table (all four of them) were excellent liars in their own right.
She hadn't missed the pause, though. It was something to think on later.
"It's your turn," Sophie pointed out, going back to her latte.
"How is your chess game?" Marie-Ange quipped. "Rhetorical question, of course." She drained her tea cup. "How much education were you given, formal and otherwise? What were your courses of study, and what do you excel in? Consider it one long question, or two short ones, however you like for my share."
"It's hard to say exactly where the 'games' ended and the actual 'teaching' began, really." Celeste put some pretty blatant air quotes around 'games'. "Formal is easier. Four years of public high school for Phoebe and Sophie. Irma and Esme went to a nearby private school, and I was home schooled."
"Of course," Phoebe cut in, "once that was over the five of us got into the University of Calgary. Class of December 2015." She quirked a lip, but it wasn't so much a happy quirk as a rueful, ironic one. "Our degrees were supposed to come in the mail. Guess we won't be seeing those any time soon."
"I worked hard on that pre-med degree too!" Celeste suddenly exclaimed. She looked distinctly put-out.
"Yes, we know. I personally had a physical therapy degree. Irma spent way too much time learning psychology, and Sophie here," Phoebe gestured slightly, "studied Political Science." ("God only knows why," Celeste mumbled under her breath.) "Esme did... something music-related, I think?"
"Music Theory," Sophie chimed in.
Phoebe nodded. "Right, that thing."
Celeste cocked an eyebrow. "Good enough?"
"Perfect." Marie-Ange tapped out several long notes on the tablet. "I think perhaps keeping that the same and just claiming several large state universities is the best tactic." She tapped a fingernail on the tablet. "How attached are you to remaining Canadian? I realize that is another question, but I would like to get all the details together before directing Artie and Doug to start the process of creating identities for you."
Celeste just nodded, and 14 kept a mental tally of outstanding questions. This would make 3. Now she just had to make certain that she didn't accidentally let Marie-Ange renege on their deal.
The three 'sisters' shared a long look as 14 considered the question. Then she had Celeste roll her eyes and scoff.
"Irma wants to be Japanese," Phoebe said, as if that explained anything at all. "She's been outvoted."
"Canadian is fine," Sophie volunteered. "And probably safer," she noted, staring off into space, "given the direction the US political scene seems to be trending..."
"Indeed, Irma is out-voted." Marie-Ange couldn't help but smile though it faded as she took carefully obfuscated notes. "Canadian, we will keep your age in the low twenty range, and your new identities will have tragically dead parents. I am afraid we may have to change your university, however. Better to place you each somewhere enormous and anonymous, so expect to each have an alma mater to remember. There will be a quiz. And now I believe I owe you? three? questions? And perhaps more coffee."
There was a loud sucking noise as Sophie attempted to suck the last drops of her drink through her straw. Eventually she gave it up with a sigh. "All gone..." she said sadly.
"More coffee would be good, yes," Celeste confirmed. "And don't worry about the quiz," she said with a small smile. "We're good at that sort of thing."
"So," Phoebe interjected, "I believe it's now our turn." The trick was, what did she want to know? Better yet, what did she need to know?
"...tell me about Emma Frost."
"I am sorry you did not state your answer in the form of a question."
14 snorted a small laugh despite her annoyance. Somehow, she'd seen that coming. Celeste cocked her brow with a small smile.
"I'd say I didn't figure you to be the pedantic sort, but we agreed to no lies. Alright, fine."
The trick was, how to phrase it? There were so many ways to phrase the question that could lead to a non-answer so easily. So many others would give her information she didn't rightly care about in this moment. But what she really wanted to know, at the core of the inquiry... yes, that would do.
"What kind of woman is Emma Frost?" she tried again.
"Oh, an essay question. Yes, I rather think this counts as all three." Marie-Ange said. And then made Celeste wait, because this was the question she'd been waiting for, and also nearly impossible to answer.
She sipped her tea.
"One word summaries are impossible, but driven would be the closest. Emma is driven, and not one of us are entirely sure all of what is behind that. She has her own motivations, but I think that is true of everyone, no?"
How did you describe a woman you admired so much that you both wanted to be like her and wanted to be nothing like her, because you knew only a fraction of what made her the way she was and that tiny piece was bleak.
"I am also not going to share with you the details of Emma's personal history I know, because it is hers, and not mine and I should probably not have some of it. She has tragedy in her past, several times over, but then, we all do. She protects the people she sees as hers as best as she can, even if the methods are not always what others might choose."
Marie-Ange rubbed at her left eye with a knuckle and frowned. A headache was coming on, and she wasn't sure if it was this conversation, or a distant early warning. "Emma tore a man's humanity away to save New York City, and almost lost herself trying to put him back together and that is not either my story to tell, but the person she did that to is so loyal to her that he nearly lost all the people he loved because of it. Emma commands loyalty, and not unwilling loyalty either, and I am not close enough to her to explain how."
14 was so busy tearing apart everything she learned she forgot to be annoyed that she was being cheated out of two questions. There was a lot of information there; far more than she expected when she initially asked the question. She'd put Esme (who had by now reached the cot in the office and was resting fruitlessly) on passive and let Irma use the extra cognitive power to rip apart every word, every inflection and every carefully chosen piece of information. Already her minds were working overtime to begin drawing conclusions, assumptions, and guesses at a frantic pace. Threads of information were beginning to weave together in her mind into a tapestry 14 wasn't certain she liked. One thing she was certain of though...
She needed to talk to Doug Ramsey.
That, however, was a task for another day. The temporary information deluge had manifested itself in a long, somewhat awkward pause, so Celeste quirked a small, sardonic smile. "I don't think she likes us very much." Which was fine, really. The feeling was pretty mutual.
"Would you prefer reassuring platitudes, or sarcasm?" Marie-Ange asked, though the question itself was redundant in it's sarcastic nature. "Really though, does it matter? She rescued you. Liking you is barely important. Saving your life is."
"There are those who would disagree with that last statement, but the point is moot either way. It's hardly any skin off our backs, after all. Just an observation."
"I assure you, Emma liking you should be much further down on your importance list than her trusting you." Marie-Ange's voice went flat, impersonal - a reminder that this conversation, even if it was in a private room in a cafe, with fancy drinks and sweet pastries and friendly banter was also with the woman who was illegally facilitating five new identities like it was regular business on her part, because it was. "The fact that you mentioned it suggests it is skin on your back. Otherwise, why bring it up?"
14 found it about as mutually likely that 14 and Emma would ever trust each other, but clearly the older woman had made up her mind about 14's thoughts. And even if, even if she was correct (and she wasn't), there wasn't any way 14 would ever admit to it and Marie-Ange had to have known that. So really, there was only one thing the older woman could be expecting, and it was the only thing that Fourteen could say.
"As fascinating as this is," Phoebe cut in, "I'm going to murder Sophie in about two seconds if she doesn't shut up. Can we please get her another coffee?"
Sophie sucked on the empty straw for emphasis.
"Do not telepathically harass your sister." Marie-Ange muttered. "I think the very first thing we are doing once all of this is established is making sure you can purchase your own coffee drinks." But diligently, she handed Sophie cash that had seemed to appear out of nowhere - prestidigitation, one of the many tricks in a spy's toolbox. "Here, go get coffee so you can cease that horrific noise and we can finish this and I can enjoy my dessert without having to pretend to play chess."
"Impressive," Celeste muttered, ignoring Sophie as she grabbed the money and made her way back to the front (and Phoebe's muttered 'Oh thank God'). "Pick that trick up at the mansion?" The Think someone there could teach me as well? went unsaid.
"Not quite." Marie-Ange explained. "My former mentor taught me, and then I spent half a year in New Orleans studying some specifics to my current career. I picked up a few tricks during my sabbatical." She produced a few tarot cards from the same nowhereplace as the money. "Mostly card tricks."
14 made a face that could be loosely interpreted as "I caught that, but I'm impressed none-the-less". She hadn't actually caught the move, but she wasn't going to give the older woman the pleasure of having gotten one past her.
...seriously, she was being watched from two angles. How had she done that??
"A useful skill, I'm sure."
The cards slowly disappeared back into Marie-Ange's sleeve one by one, until all that could be seen of them was the slightest impression of stiff fabric by her elbow. "To be honest, it has done more to entertain me than get me out of a tight spot, but it has it's uses. Mostly in distracting the easily impressed."
Up at the counter and well out of view of the table, Sophie watched the barista walk away before rolling her eyes. Off in Marie-Ange's office, Irma pulled out her phone. She'd foregone the obvious snooping attempts, having pegged the older woman as the type of person who would spot that a clock had been turned an extra fifteen degrees, much less drawers and papers had been shuffled through.
Besides, anything important would be in the big metal safe under her desk anyway, and 14 had neither the time nor the tools to deal with it.
Instead, she went ahead and fired off a text that was a cross between her own shorthand and text speak to remind them to track down info about Doug. Back in the cafe, Celeste's phone chirped at her.
"...Esme is feeling better," she said, making a show of glancing at the phone. "She and Irma are ready to go if we are."
"Excellent." Marie-Ange began putting her things together, and made a quick motion, almost invisible, to a passing waiter for the cheque. "Would you prefer to meet them at the office, and catch the train together, or risk my questionable driving once more?"
Celeste, Phoebe, and a newly-returned Sophie (with her double caramel macchiato with whole milk to go) all shared a look, before turning back to MA and speaking as one.
"Train."
With most of X-Force off -at least the last Marie-Ange had heard- on a cruise ship - it was down to the remaining few to handle the details of their new residents.
Right now, the young women were scattered in two guest suites, recuperating, and "find out if they want to stay at the mansion long-term" was the first item on Marie-Ange agenda. Once that was established, they could move on to other topics like identities and toiletries and perhaps why they were locked up in a Weapon facility, and if that was going to bring down bad things on top of the mansion.
The suites were adjoining - but one had it's door ajar, and lights off, and so Marie-Ange knocked on the other, because frankly, if she had been tossed into a strange place under extremely strange circumstances, she'd probably seek out her family members too.
The living suites in the mansion weren't really large enough to house five comfortably. All five of the newly christened Cuckoos had flocked to one room, pushing the two beds together. Not that sleep had been coming easy. They'd probably had less than five hours in the last two days. Esme was feeling particularly dead, and even Phoebe was starting to waver through her normally boundless energy.
So the knock had been unexpected. She'd not had may visitors since she arrived here beyond a non-traditional hospital stay and another recap of the already tiresome "Don't be a threat to anyone here" speech, poorly disguised as an inquiry about her well-being.
For a moment, 14 just wanted to go home. But she didn't have one of those anymore; not really. Just a room in a place she didn't know, surrounded by strangers she didn't couldn't trust.
So instead, she pulled Irma out of bed and opened the door. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was painfully aware of just how thin it was.
"Ms... oh bother. I am actually not sure of your last name now?" Marie-Ange had meant for polite re-introduction and orientation and instead was met with a young woman who looked exhausted, and was briefly taken aback at the fact that not only did whichever of Emma's daughters this was look dead on her feet - there was no easy way to tell which one it was.
Irma cocked her head to the side. "I don't know if we have one anymore." She yawned and rubbed her eyes (while Phoebe kept a discrete eye on their guest from her position on the bed). And they didn't. What she'd found in the head of the man running the facility they'd been kept in (at least, what she'd had time to sort through) had implied that the group that had taken her had wiped her existence from as many records as they could reach. As far as she knew, she could be no more than a ghost.
"Is there something we can help you with?"
Marie-Ange nodded. "More the opposite. I had come intending to offer my assistance with settling in, and, perhaps now in the last name realm, since you will need identities, papers..." She glanced at the practically identical sets of clothes, all of which were assuredly from the 'purchased online in a hurry' category. "Clothing more appropriate for five sisters doing... ah, I think it would be graduate studies and volunteer work." She frowned, and rubbed at her eye. "Haircuts, accessories, bed linens, all the usual trappings of a real life." Really, the identical falls of blonde hair were just creepy. Weapon X had a lot to answer for in the grooming their captives department.
Something about that statement cut through the fog in 14's mind. Phoebe sat up in bed and covered an eye with the heel of her palm. Her blonde hair splayed everywhere in the most wicked case of bedhead. "Wha? Shopping? Like... normal human interactions? Yes. God, please yes."
"...we'll need a few minutes," Irma said finally. "How many showers do we have access to?"
"For all five of you?" Marie-Ange said, and frowned, thinking. "Two here, plus you could borrow mine, plus I suppose you could go down to the gym, there are several individual showers there." She pulled out her phone and tapped at it with her thumb a few times. "Do you have bathroom things? Someone gave you towels and facecloths, shampoo, all that, yes?" She made a bet with herself that whatever generic supplies had been given to the sisters, they were not up to their usual standard. "Take your time. If you find you need anything different from what you already have, we can replace it. I have a very generous expense account."
--
Several hours later, Sophie slid a glass in front of Esme. The six had ducked into some small cafe Marie-Ange said she knew just off the street they'd been shopping on. It had been a long day, and while mentally 14 was still ready to go, at least one fifth of her flesh was weak and tired. Esme was going to pass out on her feet if 14 wasn't careful.
The coffee should help.
"Any one of you could go home, I am certain that your sisters would handle the rest, yes?" Marie-Ange said, from behind a menu she was frowning at. "It has been a very rough time for you, and fatigue will not help you get settled. I could call you a cab?" She finally set the menu down - it would be easier if they would stop changing it, but on the other hand, if they had kept it the same every season, there would not be butternut squash soup on it now.
"I recommend... well, really I recommend anything on this menu. I have rarely had anything less than an excellent meal here." She gestured, vaguely, with the glass of water the waiter her poured for her. "And we have this room for ninety minutes, so we will not be interrupted so long as you are alert enough to keep watch out for the servers approaching."
Celeste and Irma shared a look. (14 realized she was forgetting to do that recently due to the mental stress, and if she wasn't careful someone would start to find it weird.) She was happy to be out of the mansion for the moment. It felt less like there was enemies on all sides of her. Still, Esme's body was screaming at her that if it didn't get to lie down for a while it was just going to crumple into a ball and refuse to go any further.
Problem was, they were far too far away from the mansion to just send Esme back. She could only get 4 miles away from Celeste before 14 was unable to maintain the connection, and the last thing she needed was for half of her to go comatose in the back of a taxi. And, if she was being completely honest, after... her last outing, the last thing she wanted to do was be away from herself.
"We'd rather she stayed with us. At least for a little longer. Is there anywhere close to here she can rest for an hour or two?"
The constant telepathic conversation the sisters were having must have been overwhelming to anyone listening in. Marie-Ange frowned for a minute and then nodded. "The Snow Valley offices are a few blocks from here. I have a cot in my office." She took a business card from her bag and wrote on the back - a message, and a code word to let the rest of X-Force know she wasn't compromised and pushed it towards the sister she was fairly sure was Esme. Reasonably sure. They were just so confusingly similar. "If you want to use that, you are perfectly welcome. Tell whoever is at the front desk to call me if they have questions. If not, we can get the details of your stay in New York and any paperwork done here." Paperwork was accompanied with a hand wave that put far more meaning into the word than just tax forms.
Sophie, who Marie-Ange had actually handed the card to, passed it to Esme. Close enough, really. Irma stood and pulled Esme with her. Well, technically Esme was standing, but it was more like hanging all over Irma. "I'll make sure Esme gets there safely," Irma said. "Celeste will make certain everything goes smoothly." She gave a small, guarded smile.
Once the two of them were out the door, Phoebe turned back to Marie-Ange. "So, you said something about paperwork?"
The first thing Marie-Ange did was pull out a device that looked like a cell phone, but had a little cartoon of Doug's face making the "nyah nyah" gesture, and did a very good, very illegal job blocking all cellular and wifi signals, and most recording devices in a ten foot radius.
The second thing she did was pull out a tablet computer, and pull up a very custom, also very illegal app. "You need identities, and identical quintuplets are rare at best, so you will be a little trickier than our usual. The good thing is that the best two hackers in the United States work in my office. The bad thing is that we are going to have to build you five identities from scratch and there is going to be no easy way to make you inconspicuous, so it may take time. The doctor who delivered you, the identities of your parents, even the hospital you were born in are going to have to be created from scratch, or records appended to people that have died, or places that have closed."
She rubbed at her forehead. "So first, stay with one of us or at the mansion for the next few weeks. Normally we can make this happen in a few days, but.. you present a unique challenge." Doug was probably dancing with glee to get to do it, and she'd be surprised if Domino wasn't doing the same. "Second, since we have to create an entire life for you, we are going to need it to be as similar to your previous one as possible. Odds are, the facility you were found in has already erased much of your previous life, but I need to know as much as you trust to give me, so that... " She pointed at Celeste. "Let us suppose you were the queen bee socialite of your college sorority. Then we will likely create you an identity that lets you still act like a queen bee."
Celeste tapped on the table. 14 was at least thankful that the older woman wasn't pushing about her past. There were some secrets she wasn't willing to barter for. Still, it wasn't like her to share for free.
"That sounds reasonable. However, we know as much about you as you know about us, so how about a trade? You tell us your story, and we'll tell you ours." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "After all, if we're going to have to hang around, we'd like to know a little of what we're getting into."
She wasn't likely to learn anything from this little trade nobody else knew, but that was fine. She'd take the loss this one time.
"Celeste, yes?" Marie-Ange guessed - though, more a certainty than her guess about Esme. "Half my story is available on those journals you all have been given." Doug had mentioned that they'd only used the first account he'd made, but if they wanted to share, that was fine. "Shall we do the cliche? A question for a question?"
Ah, a classic. She knew how to navigate this one, at least. "No lies," she said in lieu of an answer. "If we don't, or won't, answer a question, we'll tell you but we won't lie. In return we expect the same. Agreeable?"
"Of course. I like traditional, and I will do the same." Traditional was easier sometimes - and Marie-Ange did not have much to hide, besides. The biggest secrets - mutation, spies, the real nature of Snow Valley - the girls would already need to know that, just by being Emma's biological daughters, or they would find out readily. "Would you like to go to far as to flip a coin to see who goes first?" She smirked, though the expression was far more amused than cold. "Or go for lowest or highest card. I always have a deck on me somewhere."
The offer immediately set 14 on edge. Rule one of the game: you take whatever advantage not explicitly banned to get ahead. You don't just leave things like this to chance, and they'd never explicitly banned powers.
The reference to cards might have been a slip, but 14 wasn't so naive as to stumble blindly with that assumption. So... a show of good faith, maybe? Or a heavy-handed attempt to take the upper hand already?
She'd figure it out later.
A block and a half away and well out of the range of Marie-Ange's jammer, Irma pulled out her mansion-issued phone and connected to the logs. Pulling up the older woman's personal journal was trivial, and she quickly began skimming through it.
A few things were immediately obvious. What her posts said weren't nearly as interesting as what they didn't. And possibly most interesting of all, she wasn't exactly secretive with her power.
Precognition. So that was her game. Hard to lose a 'fair' game of chance when you could see the outcome. Especially if she'd literally stacked the deck beforehand.
So cards were out, at least. She'd either have to give up advantage or hope that her powers weren't specific enough she could foresee both 14's intended call and the outcome of the flip based on how she held it. Phoebe fished a quarter out of her pocket, placed it on the table, and slid it across to Marie-Ange, face-up.
"You flip, I call?" she asked innocently.
Marie-Ange nodded and picked up the coin, and rolled it over her knuckles a few times. "I do like the way you think." She said - without malice. The low level of paranoia meant that at least one of the five sisters would not need "How to Stay Safe When Terrible People Want To Get You" 101, and probably the rest of them as well. "I take it you either have done a lot of journal reading since you arrived, or one of you is reading my surface thoughts? A piece of free advice, do not go deeper, I have ... a particularly unique mind." She flipped the coin, caught it, and covered it with her free hand. "Call?"
"You and everyone else it seems," Irma muttered as they approached Marie-Ange's office, rolling her eyes. The distinct lack of unshielded minds recently had meant her primary information stream had dried up to almost nothing and it was starting to make her twitchy.
And what did she even do with that line anyway? There was so much in it, 14 didn't even know where to begin. Well, actually, yes, yes she did.
"Heads."
The coin Marie-Ange revealed was heads-up, so she let it roll off her hand and onto the table. "Clever move avoiding cards, though my mentor was rather a good con man, so I can be tricky with coins too. I am not as practiced with them though." Nothing the girls couldn't find out just by talking to people or observing. "Since you win, it is your call, yes? Ask first, or answer first?"
By this point 14 had realized there was no way the constant hints weren't intentional. Nobody worth talking about was this bad at keeping secrets to themselves. So, she was either not worth talking about, or doing it on purpose. 14 was certain it was the latter. That was fine with her, really. It would take more than a few deceptively-useless tidbits to get her to drop her guard.
She ignored the quarter for now; it'd still be there later.
Right now, she had a decision to make: play or pass? There was an art to the game, and Marie-Ange was playing it well enough. She'd already started, littering the field with so much information, all of it seemingly useful but certainly just the opposite. If she was trying to confuse 14 into missing the critical facts she wanted to know, she'd already started well.
Still, there was more than one winning strategy, and she'd always been a firm believer that a question could give away more than an answer. What someone wanted to know was possibly more important than what answers they were willing to give, and 14 didn't believe for one moment the older woman wouldn't use this little Q&A session to try and get more than just her personal history out of her.
So really, was there ever a choice to begin with?
"Age before beauty."
"You are really the most delightful girls." Marie-Ange said, and took a long sip of her tea before saying anything else. "Everything is a battle for you now, yes? You really are the ladybugs flown out of their nest." She set the teacup down, and then took a notepad out of her bag. "Let us start with the basics, to construct a series of identities that all of you can be comfortable with. So. How old are you, and where were you born? Both the real answers, if you please, and whatever you have been given to live with until now."
Phoebe hummed noncommitally. She was right, the older woman was just that good. It would have been impressive if it hadn't been so annoying. Still, she had more tricks up her sleeve.
"The official story is that we were born to Marcus and Jessica Drew on April 27th, 1994 in Alberta. It's significantly more boring than the real story, which was that we were apparently born in a lab on April 27th, 2004."
Marie-Ange's eyebrows went up sharply. "Apparently? You are unsure?" She frowned at the math - the sisters did not act eleven, or look eleven, and Emma would have known if they were mentally eleven. "What happened to the people you thought were your parents? Are they alive?" If she had her way, they might not be for long.
Celeste stiffened the most noticeably. Splashes of red and a clawing, aching silence that hung over the entryway like a shroud. The pointless pointless pointless droning of the TV and the thick stench of iron and blood and gunpowder.
The smell of coffee and sound of plates being stacked. Back in the cafe. 14 forced herselves to relax, although the damage was done.
"No. They're not." She said it with such a finality that the topic was clearly over.
"My condolences then." Even if it was a formality. Marie-Ange wasn't sure if the sisters were upset about the loss of their parents, or the lie, or both. "That does make things easier, and I have access to a fertility clinic's records, so we can create a fake set of parents for you to never mention or talk about, because it is just so upsetting." She waved a hand at the tablet. "I believe I owe you two questions now, yes?"
"Indeed," Sophie agreed from where she'd been busy sucking on something the cafe claimed to be a chai tea latte. She cocked her head to the side. "Would you mind explaining the ladybug comment?"
"I will do you the favor of not taking that literally and answering "I do not mind.". Marie-Ange quirked up a smile. "The short answer is symbolic medium-range precognition." Marie-Ange said. "The longer answer is that your distress call came to Emma just after I ruined a rather important legal document with a precognitive flash. Between your call and my precognition, we had a location and knew that we had to move quickly." She was not going to say that it was possible Emma would have taken the distress call as an attack. There was already too much obvious distrust, it had been clear on the plane ride home.
What Marie-Ange called a favor, 14 called 'the whole point of the question'. To 14, the answer was mostly irrelevant (although surprisingly informative, all things said and done). The real question, hidden behind the obvious one, had been 'How specific do I need to be with my questions?'. And now she had an answer, of sorts.
So, that left her with one more. Celeste drummed her fingers on the table. "Why'd you initially come to live at the mansion?" She nearly tripped over the phrase 'the mansion'. "I imagine it wasn't for the same reason we did."
That question got the most honest smile that the girls had seen from Marie-Ange yet. "I was ... asked to leave my school when my powers grew beyond what I could control." She shrugged, seemingly at peace with it. "More than ten years ago. My parents knew someone who knew someone who knew Professor Xavier, and it was safer here than at home."
That... was significantly closer to her own story than 14 had expected. Not quite the same thing, but the same general... overtones. And the older woman didn't seem to be lying, although that was hardly definitive. They'd already determined that both women at the table (all four of them) were excellent liars in their own right.
She hadn't missed the pause, though. It was something to think on later.
"It's your turn," Sophie pointed out, going back to her latte.
"How is your chess game?" Marie-Ange quipped. "Rhetorical question, of course." She drained her tea cup. "How much education were you given, formal and otherwise? What were your courses of study, and what do you excel in? Consider it one long question, or two short ones, however you like for my share."
"It's hard to say exactly where the 'games' ended and the actual 'teaching' began, really." Celeste put some pretty blatant air quotes around 'games'. "Formal is easier. Four years of public high school for Phoebe and Sophie. Irma and Esme went to a nearby private school, and I was home schooled."
"Of course," Phoebe cut in, "once that was over the five of us got into the University of Calgary. Class of December 2015." She quirked a lip, but it wasn't so much a happy quirk as a rueful, ironic one. "Our degrees were supposed to come in the mail. Guess we won't be seeing those any time soon."
"I worked hard on that pre-med degree too!" Celeste suddenly exclaimed. She looked distinctly put-out.
"Yes, we know. I personally had a physical therapy degree. Irma spent way too much time learning psychology, and Sophie here," Phoebe gestured slightly, "studied Political Science." ("God only knows why," Celeste mumbled under her breath.) "Esme did... something music-related, I think?"
"Music Theory," Sophie chimed in.
Phoebe nodded. "Right, that thing."
Celeste cocked an eyebrow. "Good enough?"
"Perfect." Marie-Ange tapped out several long notes on the tablet. "I think perhaps keeping that the same and just claiming several large state universities is the best tactic." She tapped a fingernail on the tablet. "How attached are you to remaining Canadian? I realize that is another question, but I would like to get all the details together before directing Artie and Doug to start the process of creating identities for you."
Celeste just nodded, and 14 kept a mental tally of outstanding questions. This would make 3. Now she just had to make certain that she didn't accidentally let Marie-Ange renege on their deal.
The three 'sisters' shared a long look as 14 considered the question. Then she had Celeste roll her eyes and scoff.
"Irma wants to be Japanese," Phoebe said, as if that explained anything at all. "She's been outvoted."
"Canadian is fine," Sophie volunteered. "And probably safer," she noted, staring off into space, "given the direction the US political scene seems to be trending..."
"Indeed, Irma is out-voted." Marie-Ange couldn't help but smile though it faded as she took carefully obfuscated notes. "Canadian, we will keep your age in the low twenty range, and your new identities will have tragically dead parents. I am afraid we may have to change your university, however. Better to place you each somewhere enormous and anonymous, so expect to each have an alma mater to remember. There will be a quiz. And now I believe I owe you? three? questions? And perhaps more coffee."
There was a loud sucking noise as Sophie attempted to suck the last drops of her drink through her straw. Eventually she gave it up with a sigh. "All gone..." she said sadly.
"More coffee would be good, yes," Celeste confirmed. "And don't worry about the quiz," she said with a small smile. "We're good at that sort of thing."
"So," Phoebe interjected, "I believe it's now our turn." The trick was, what did she want to know? Better yet, what did she need to know?
"...tell me about Emma Frost."
"I am sorry you did not state your answer in the form of a question."
14 snorted a small laugh despite her annoyance. Somehow, she'd seen that coming. Celeste cocked her brow with a small smile.
"I'd say I didn't figure you to be the pedantic sort, but we agreed to no lies. Alright, fine."
The trick was, how to phrase it? There were so many ways to phrase the question that could lead to a non-answer so easily. So many others would give her information she didn't rightly care about in this moment. But what she really wanted to know, at the core of the inquiry... yes, that would do.
"What kind of woman is Emma Frost?" she tried again.
"Oh, an essay question. Yes, I rather think this counts as all three." Marie-Ange said. And then made Celeste wait, because this was the question she'd been waiting for, and also nearly impossible to answer.
She sipped her tea.
"One word summaries are impossible, but driven would be the closest. Emma is driven, and not one of us are entirely sure all of what is behind that. She has her own motivations, but I think that is true of everyone, no?"
How did you describe a woman you admired so much that you both wanted to be like her and wanted to be nothing like her, because you knew only a fraction of what made her the way she was and that tiny piece was bleak.
"I am also not going to share with you the details of Emma's personal history I know, because it is hers, and not mine and I should probably not have some of it. She has tragedy in her past, several times over, but then, we all do. She protects the people she sees as hers as best as she can, even if the methods are not always what others might choose."
Marie-Ange rubbed at her left eye with a knuckle and frowned. A headache was coming on, and she wasn't sure if it was this conversation, or a distant early warning. "Emma tore a man's humanity away to save New York City, and almost lost herself trying to put him back together and that is not either my story to tell, but the person she did that to is so loyal to her that he nearly lost all the people he loved because of it. Emma commands loyalty, and not unwilling loyalty either, and I am not close enough to her to explain how."
14 was so busy tearing apart everything she learned she forgot to be annoyed that she was being cheated out of two questions. There was a lot of information there; far more than she expected when she initially asked the question. She'd put Esme (who had by now reached the cot in the office and was resting fruitlessly) on passive and let Irma use the extra cognitive power to rip apart every word, every inflection and every carefully chosen piece of information. Already her minds were working overtime to begin drawing conclusions, assumptions, and guesses at a frantic pace. Threads of information were beginning to weave together in her mind into a tapestry 14 wasn't certain she liked. One thing she was certain of though...
She needed to talk to Doug Ramsey.
That, however, was a task for another day. The temporary information deluge had manifested itself in a long, somewhat awkward pause, so Celeste quirked a small, sardonic smile. "I don't think she likes us very much." Which was fine, really. The feeling was pretty mutual.
"Would you prefer reassuring platitudes, or sarcasm?" Marie-Ange asked, though the question itself was redundant in it's sarcastic nature. "Really though, does it matter? She rescued you. Liking you is barely important. Saving your life is."
"There are those who would disagree with that last statement, but the point is moot either way. It's hardly any skin off our backs, after all. Just an observation."
"I assure you, Emma liking you should be much further down on your importance list than her trusting you." Marie-Ange's voice went flat, impersonal - a reminder that this conversation, even if it was in a private room in a cafe, with fancy drinks and sweet pastries and friendly banter was also with the woman who was illegally facilitating five new identities like it was regular business on her part, because it was. "The fact that you mentioned it suggests it is skin on your back. Otherwise, why bring it up?"
14 found it about as mutually likely that 14 and Emma would ever trust each other, but clearly the older woman had made up her mind about 14's thoughts. And even if, even if she was correct (and she wasn't), there wasn't any way 14 would ever admit to it and Marie-Ange had to have known that. So really, there was only one thing the older woman could be expecting, and it was the only thing that Fourteen could say.
"As fascinating as this is," Phoebe cut in, "I'm going to murder Sophie in about two seconds if she doesn't shut up. Can we please get her another coffee?"
Sophie sucked on the empty straw for emphasis.
"Do not telepathically harass your sister." Marie-Ange muttered. "I think the very first thing we are doing once all of this is established is making sure you can purchase your own coffee drinks." But diligently, she handed Sophie cash that had seemed to appear out of nowhere - prestidigitation, one of the many tricks in a spy's toolbox. "Here, go get coffee so you can cease that horrific noise and we can finish this and I can enjoy my dessert without having to pretend to play chess."
"Impressive," Celeste muttered, ignoring Sophie as she grabbed the money and made her way back to the front (and Phoebe's muttered 'Oh thank God'). "Pick that trick up at the mansion?" The Think someone there could teach me as well? went unsaid.
"Not quite." Marie-Ange explained. "My former mentor taught me, and then I spent half a year in New Orleans studying some specifics to my current career. I picked up a few tricks during my sabbatical." She produced a few tarot cards from the same nowhereplace as the money. "Mostly card tricks."
14 made a face that could be loosely interpreted as "I caught that, but I'm impressed none-the-less". She hadn't actually caught the move, but she wasn't going to give the older woman the pleasure of having gotten one past her.
...seriously, she was being watched from two angles. How had she done that??
"A useful skill, I'm sure."
The cards slowly disappeared back into Marie-Ange's sleeve one by one, until all that could be seen of them was the slightest impression of stiff fabric by her elbow. "To be honest, it has done more to entertain me than get me out of a tight spot, but it has it's uses. Mostly in distracting the easily impressed."
Up at the counter and well out of view of the table, Sophie watched the barista walk away before rolling her eyes. Off in Marie-Ange's office, Irma pulled out her phone. She'd foregone the obvious snooping attempts, having pegged the older woman as the type of person who would spot that a clock had been turned an extra fifteen degrees, much less drawers and papers had been shuffled through.
Besides, anything important would be in the big metal safe under her desk anyway, and 14 had neither the time nor the tools to deal with it.
Instead, she went ahead and fired off a text that was a cross between her own shorthand and text speak to remind them to track down info about Doug. Back in the cafe, Celeste's phone chirped at her.
"...Esme is feeling better," she said, making a show of glancing at the phone. "She and Irma are ready to go if we are."
"Excellent." Marie-Ange began putting her things together, and made a quick motion, almost invisible, to a passing waiter for the cheque. "Would you prefer to meet them at the office, and catch the train together, or risk my questionable driving once more?"
Celeste, Phoebe, and a newly-returned Sophie (with her double caramel macchiato with whole milk to go) all shared a look, before turning back to MA and speaking as one.
"Train."
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