[Drama] Paranoia Due West

[Heather West]

Heather is sitting in the cafeteria, laptop open in front of her and occasionally poking at what's left of her lunch. Which is mostly steamed vegetables she occasionally brings herself to actually take a bite off. But mostly her attention is focused on the computer screen which is mostly just showing white with a scant few bubbles with only a single letter in them. Specifically A, L, M and m with little bubbles full of notes that look like they're written in some whimsical WingDings font.

Needless to say, she was not convinced by Ashlie's attempt to give Lisette a chance on blind faith alone. She has no solid idea about Lisette's motives, as it is she only knows that she's seen Lisette hanging off of Madison's arm in surveillance footage. Her mother had made her do a lot of that. They'd go on trips, like the one she'd met Ashlie on, and Miranda would not so gently encourage her to look for this and that in the computers around them. Most of the time it was boring stuff but sometimes she'd be looking for her brother and sister, mostly her sister, and usually those were exciting things.

Bad thing, she now knows. Her mother probably hadn't thought Heather would actually spend much time looking at the data she pulled and scrambled but she'd been so bored. Madison almost always was doing something cool so it had been like watching action movies to her. It had been in one of the more boring ones that she'd seen Lisette, but it had stood out because as far as Heather was aware, Madison doesn't really have any friends. Unbeknownst to her, Madison usually kept that part of her life under wraps, but sometimes even obedient corporate slaves assets needed escorting to and from a job.

Still, to Heather being that buddy-buddy with her sister definitely puts Lisette in the 'bad people' category and isn't helped by a vague sense of jealousy. She is the most important person in Ashlie's life, obviously, and here is someone her sister thought was good company showing up out of nowhere. And maybe she would have listened to Ashlie and dropped it there, but it's hard not to look for reassurance when she still worries Madison might one day step out of thin air and take her back 'home'. She had found nothing that convinced her 'Lisette Allaire' wasn't a fake name. And even then, maybe she could have convinced herself, but then Ashlie had come home and the nanites in her body had been singing sappy songs. Nobody is going to take Ashlie away from her again.

Unfortunately, her research so far has not yielded anything actually incriminating, much to her dismay.

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo passed by with his meat-laden tray and paused to glance down at her screen. Was it some kind of puzzle game? He couldn't distinguish any pattern or meaning to the lines of wingdings she was fiddling with. He wasn't a snoop by nature but something about the particular way she was ignoring her food had piqued his curiosity.

"That game looks hard," he commented.

[Heather West]

"It's not a game!" she says with all the indignation of a kid wanting to be taken seriously before she can think better of it. "It's a super-secret investigation, if you have to know." she huffs. She's seen Leo around the school, it's hard not to considering he easily has two feet on Heather and takes up as much space as four of her. She's especially seen him going through the gateway to Mutant Town plenty of times which means he's probably involved in Ashlie's big project. Normally she would assume that makes him trustworthy but now...?

"Very important infosec stuff." she says and who knows where a sheltered 15 year-old picked up that word. Nevermind that she's not quite using it correctly.

[Leo Eskandari]

"How important we talkin'?" There was, of course, a hint of humoring in his voice, but he had seen enough to not entirely dismiss that she might actually be doing important work. Besides, she wasn't that much younger than him. And probably smarter. "Like, superhero important?"

[Heather West]

Superhero-important feels like it should be a threat to more than one person. But then again, the last time Ashlie went away that had become super-hero important. "Maybe but probably not." she admits. "There's someone I don't trust and I got good reasons but no proof."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Someone here at the school?" Immediately, he felt an unpleasantly familiar pang of worry at the idea that there was someone close that could use or betray him the school. He had fought hard to trust people again.

"Is it that dragon guy from Genosha? Something about him seems shifty," he joked conspiratorially.

[Heather West]

"No. I think it's more... personal." she says, then drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I think my sister send a spy and she's all 'Oh no, I'm so scared and harmless, I think I might faint'." she mimics Lisette and puts the back of her hand against her forehead and rolls her head back and finishes by letting her tongue hang out with a "Blech."

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo raised one furry brow and took a moment to sit down. "Why would your sister send a spy here?" he asked, not knowing who her sister was. But he could tell that her sister must be bad news.

[Heather West]

"Me!" she whispers insistently enough she might as well have just said it at a regular volume. "Or to hurt Ashlie. My Mom's probably thinks Ashlie kidnapped me." Either that or she knows Heather ran away on her own accord, but that's too scary a thought to say out loud and thus make it ever so slightly more real.

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo supposed the school sheltered runaways all the time, though he also supposed the parents didn't usually want their mutant child back. "Hey..." he said gently, awkwardly reaching to pat her on the head but thinking better of it before any contact was made. "You know we won't let anyone take you against your will without a fight, yeah?"

[Heather West]

"Duh!" she says. "That's probably why they sent the spy instead of Maddie."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Heh. I guess you've got a point." He lightly chuckled.

He couldn't bear the idea of someone violating the feeling of trust the school cultivated, so it didn't take long to reach a decision. "I don't know how much help I'd be but, if you want to put my senses to work, just ask. I'd like to think you can trust me."

[Heather West]

"Hrm. You're not exactly sneaky. But you go to Mutant Town a lot, yeah? To help with Ash's project?"

[Leo Eskandari]

The big guy nodded, a slight but unmistakable look of feline pride playing across his features. "I mean, yeah. It'd be pretty tacky if I didn't, seeing as how I sorta gave her the inspiration for it in the first place. But... what does Mutant Town have to do with this?"

While he was smart enough to figure it out, he very much didn't want to connect the dots. It was better for his mental health not to start suspecting people of things just because he'd been burned so many times before. This, of course, was easier said than done.

[Heather West]

"She's hired somebody to help with it and she's... suspicious. They went out last night and when Ash came back she was being weird. The nanites in her blood were humming." she says as if that meant anything to anybody who doesn't hear electronic systems sing like she does.

[Leo Eskandari]

"I believe that's called being hap--" He suddenly stopped mid-sentence as he couldn't help but figure out who she was talking about. And he didn't like it.

"Wait, you mean Miss Allaire? What could possibly be suspicious about her?" he asked skeptically.

[Heather West]

"For one, Ash's been happy before but have you ever seen her walk around with a doofy smile? No!" she answers her own question, holding up one finger. "For two, that's not her real name, it's Fakey McFakerson cause she's got social media but it's all the most boring stuff in the world. Like some boring guy with a beige tie made it up for a fake!" she goes on, raising a second finger. "And for three... I can't tell you cause it's top secret information."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Boring people do exist, y'know," he pointed out after finishing a bite of his burger. "And Minamida is a lot more human now, right? Maybe she's just havin' her first crush. Unless that third thing explains why either of those is suspect, you seem to be assumin'' a lot."

"Not callin' you crazy or nothin', I just don't see anythin' weird there."

[Heather West]

"You just don't get the whole picture." she huffs.

[Leo Eskandari]

"Then help me to? As much as I hate lettin' myself get suspicious of people around me, I'd rather find out if someone I'm workin' with is untrustworthy before it can bite me in the ass for a change."

[Heather West]

"Well I doubt she's here for you, so your butt is safe."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Well, yeah, but I kinda made myself partially responsible for the collective butts of everyone here when I took up the X-men banner. Maybe it's self-absorbed of me but, now that I know this much, I'd feel real shitty if somethin' actually happened."

[Heather West]

"Hrm. Alright, but I'm not giving you top secret clearance. Just... keep your eyes and hears and nose open."

[Leo Eskandari]

"Your trust has to be earned," he stated with a nod. "I can understand that. Consider it done."