2012-09-08 Getting The Band Back Together

It had finally -- finally! -- been a couple of good days in the life of Spider-Girl. Her smiling mug photographed with Superman and the Martian Manhunter after they thwarted a bank robbery was a great pick-me-up, after the Gotham Sewers, and then today? Well. Today was awesome in its own way.
Anya took the bus from New York to Gotham, but it is Spider-Girl who turns up at the address Laura gave her, her mask-clad face peeking down from above one of the windows before she gives a light, careful knock. She knows /somebody/ is home. She just doesn't entirely know who all to expect. Laura and the Girls have a /way/ about them.
Remy has been banished to the balcony. That's the only thing he doesn't like about staying with the girls. Every time he wants to smoke, he has to go outside. He's just finishing up, flicking a spent butt into the coffee can that Esme helpfully provided after seeing him launching them over the railing.He slips inside just in time to hear the knock on the window. "Uh. Laura? You expecting company?" he asks, still not quite acclimated to the various comings and goings around here. "Never mind. I get it."The Cajun crosses to the window and slides it open. "Bonjour, p'tit," he greets Spider-Girl cheerfully. "Good to see you without anybody shooting at us."
Meaning they keep managing to collect weird strays. Which is less Laura's doing, though she has her moments. She's been intently focused since her last run-in with the AIM goons-- brought home some more goodies, one of which is on the coffee table while Laura sits on the floor with her laptop. The girls were elsewhere-- something about a 'reality show', whatever THAT was. She's been... well, about as cordial towards Remy's presence as she is about anything. Well anything other than the Girls and apparently Anya, since she perks up when she recognizes the smell through the curtain of lingering cigarette. She tilts her head, nose wrinkling in thought, then *actually smiles*. "You found something?"
Spider-Girl blinks beneath her mask when Remy opens the window, though it only takes her a moment to place the face. His greeting helps. She can't resist. "Ooh la la. Bonjour to you, too." If she winks, it's hidden. But she /totally winks/. "I come bearing information -- and a job offer for Laura, actually," she admits, peeking around Remy to waggle an envelope towards the girl. "Both from the same place. Mind if I clamber in your window in a highly dignified manner?"
No costume for Remy today. He's wearing a faded Ramones t-shirt and loose, lightweight pants that flow around him. Extreme loungewear. Smiling, he steps aside to make room for Spider-Girl. "And an 'ooh la la' to you, too." Then, not know that she started it, he totally winks back at her."Come in, come in," he says, waving. "We just looking at some of de toys we collected."
The second part results in a tilt of Laura's head to one side. "A job offer?" Not the avenue she expected to have them find her once she decided to consider getting back into old work on her own terms. Which, by the way-- big step there. She's dressed comfortably, but it's not really unusual. Jeans, tanktop, yellow-gold hoodie mostly-zipped.
"I'm afraid we've already exhausted pretty much all of the lousy French I know," Spider-Girl admits to Remy, even as she slips in through the window. Contrary to what she asked, she actually manages to do so quite gracefully. Years of practice. "So, ah. Gracias." She doesn't ask his name, mainly because this is Laura's circle. She doesn't know how much /her/ friends actually like telling people about themselves, so as a rule, she just doesn't ask. Safest for everybody.
"Bethany Cabe's helping Luke Cage get some drug pushers off the streets back in New York," Spider-Girl explains as she comes inside, offering the envelope across to Laura. "And she asked me to pass on an invitation to help to you. There's a paycheck and everything."
Remy's no tech expert. Not unless the gadgets have to do with breaking and entering. As such, he's had little to offer when it came to identifying their new gear. He does perk up at the sound of getting drug pushers off the streets, though, dropping the gizmo he'd been toying with. He looks up, first at their visitor, then at Laura. There's a mischevious smile on his face, making him look ten years younger than he is. "Sounds fun. Maybe ol' Remy give you a ride again," he offers.
That does surprise her a little bit. She wouldn't exactly have figured Remy for a drug crusader, but then again, she pretty much sucks at understanding normal people at ALL, still. "If you like," she decides, which in LauraSpeak is pretty fair approval for the idea. Then she looks back to Spider-Girl. "What do you think? Is it a good job? Worth the offer?"
Spider-Girl can't help but smile. Okay, Remy's already in her good books for encouraging Laura. That was easy. "If you can get paid to do a good thing like that? I see no reason not to at least talk with her about it," she muses thoughtfully. "I /think/ she wants to offer you ongoing contract work. She seems like good people, though I'm not as familiar with her business as I probably should be." She makes a bit of a face at that.
"I like," Remy replies agreeably. He grabs a chair, flips it around, and straddles it. When he's situated with his arms crossed over the backrest, he continutes. "And de girl is right. Anytime you can get paid for a good deed, it's a good idea to at least check it out. I know de lady in question by reputation. She run a respectable private security outfit. And she got money."
Laura makes a thoughtful 'mmmmm' noise as she absorbs all that and her hands get very busy on her laptop's keyboard and trackpad. "Here she is. Mmm. What about this... Cage guy? I'm not seeing a lot come up."
"Make sure you spelled it right," Spider-Girl says, and just like that, she's crossing over to lean over Laura's shoulders and type in a new search. There we go. /Now/ the results start lighting up -- books, charities, even a fan-made themesong. "He's good people. Without him, my elementary school probably wouldn't have been able to afford textbooks."
"I never heard of no Luke Cage before," Remy admits. He shrugs sheepishly. "My knowledge is limited to bad guys and professional good guys. If he do all de things she say, though, he gotta be decent. Look." One hand is waved in the general direction of the computer screen. "I say we help him. I even do it... What is word? Pro boner?"
Laura just shrugs at Remy. Latin is not one of the languages crammed into her by the Program. "Okay," she decides. If both of them are going to agree it's a good idea, it probably is. "Let's talk about the other thing." Once decided, it's done with, so on to the next topic. Laura's very what's-next like that.
"Pro bono," Spider-Girl supplies helpfully, and somehow, /somehow/, she does not laugh. This is serious business, it's no time to be giggling about boners. Especially since Laura would ask why she's laughing and /oh the awkward/. "I volunteered to help, too, so we can all pitch in. It'll be fun." More fun than this AIM crap, for sure.
"You can borrow my phone to call her about it, if you don't have a disposable one or something," Spider-Girl offers to Laura, patting her on the shoulder. "She's used it before so I pretty much just assume she used her magical spy powers to remember the number. She probably did."
"Disposable cell phones we have," Remy says, hauling himself up and heading to the kitchen. He hasn't exactly moved in, but he's brought some of his things and found homes for them. A drawer in the kitchen is dedicated to small tools like lockpicks, listening devices, and yes, cheap cellular phones. He digs one out, thumbs it on, and tosses it to Laura. "Just so you have one. I got lots more, so toss it if you think it gets traced."
Laura catches it, nods. "I had one," she confirms for Spider-Girl's benefit. "But it broke, so." Shrug. "Not useful. Going to need something more permanent eventually. Secure. Maybe she can get something," she notes, nodding at the screen, where she still has Bethany's search results up.
Then she reaches over and picks up the lockbreaker. "This is a lockbreaker. Nice model. Found a manual online. Pretty sure Remy or I can use it if we need to," she notes. "We find anything else about the yellow guys?"
Spider-Girl beams towards Remy. "You are /so helpful/. I don't know how you ran into these four --" She just assumes the Cuckoos are involved. Laura is not a social butterfly. "-- but I'm starting to get pretty psyched about it, I'm not gonna lie."
Then Laura asks the question, and Spider-Girl actually perks. "So glad you asked," she replies brightly, and rather than stealing Remy's chair or stealing one of her own, she hitches up to sit on the closest wall and plucks the phone from her glove so she can call up her notes. "Miss Cabe says they're called Advanced Idea Mechanics. Some tech corporation that is usually up to no good. They've been stealing the stuff they've been kicking our asses with from Vulcan... something. Oh, autocorrect. My age-old foe..."
Being surrounded by real, regular people has been good for Remy. He's started to act like one. He blushes slightly and smiles at Spider-Girl's praise. "Dese girls take good care of me," he says. "I just try to return de favor."Back to business. He nods. "Dat match up with what I know. Ruthless people. Corporate espionage. Sabotage. Stuff like dat. De employees tend to have short life expectancies and de boss doesn't seem to mind. Whoever's in charge is pretty crazy, from what I hear."
Laura falls into a sort of intense information-sponging mode. It's not something either of them have really seen, because this is so much more like a formal briefing on a real job than... anything else they've done. She hasn't ben this focused on absorbing operational information since Operation Christmas. Just goes to show she can't shake off Weapon X that easily. "Any stated goals? Known major assets, headquarters, standards of operation?"
Spider-Girl points at Remy, then taps herself on the nose. Yes. That. "Whoever's in charge is also... how did she put it... very well insulated from the rest of the mooks? Something. No idea who it is, basically," she says with a wave of her hand, then scowls down at her notes again. She must have been in a rush when she typed this crap.
"No stated goals for their more supervillainy of pursuits, s'far as I know," Spider-Girl tells Laura. "But I think any base of operations that we're looking for is gonna be between here and New York somewhere, given the hoopla on the Interstate. You still have that radio?" she asks curiously. "Think you could sniff 'em out so we can get the band back together and go knock on their door?"
"I don't know much more dan dat," Remy says, spreading his hands regretfully. "Dey pretty secretive. As far as major assets, yeah, dey always seem to have a lot of gizmos and gadgets. Dey don't mind throwing lives away to get what dey want, either. Theirs, innocent people, whoever. Dat's really all I know. But if you put de band back together, pencil me in for percussion." Winking, he produces a playing card with a two-fingered flick and pantomimes throwing it.
Laura nods thoughtfully, and then digs in her hoodie, producing the comm. "Yeah. That narrows it down a lot. We can just wander up and down the road and listen for them, kind of."
"Zen is trying to learn some more, too," Spider-Girl notes. Then pauses. Erm. "That's... that's the blue guy we took to the hospital. I am pretty sure he's an alien, or is at least really, really good at pretending to be one." She got to go for a ride in a /spaceship/, you guys. Do you know how cool that is? No. You don't. Not /yet/. "So he's in for helping take these guys down a few pegs, too. We might be able to pull this off," she muses, sounding... pleasantly surprised.
Remy tosses his playing card across the kitchen, where it lands neatly in a pot that's hanging from a hook. Grinning, he turns toward Spider-Girl. "We don't do 'maybe'," he says. "We kick dey butts. Dat's what we do, no?"Perpetually overconfident, the rogue makes his way back to his seat and plops down, straddling it again. "All we gotta do is find 'em."
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