Day: More than a month ago. Lovely.
Time: Just before midnight. No biggie.
Station: A competitor’s. Brat.

“Yeah, well,” the red head distractedly replied, sorting through the tapes, “next time it’s complicated, get to your media expert while the trail is still hot.” More than a month ago? Really? Did Gawain have any clue how fast the news business moved on? They’d be lucky if the reporter who did the segment in the first place even remembered it.

Human shifter, something something... Maxine interrupted her hunt to pounce on her purse, and drag her little white notebook out. A black pen flitted out of its own volition, perching between her fingers in time for her rapid-fire scribbling to begin.

Human shifter (restrictions?) Rare to show own face (just in public?) Hoping to be found (by who?) Maxine scribbled a few other questions after that, but they could go over them later.

For now: she left the pad on the table, and turned back to her search. “If you’re going to info dump like that again, warn me first. I—ah! Haha! Yes.” She still had tapes from over a month ago? She was way further behind than she’d thought.

“All right. Tell me when you see the segment starting.”

The tape went into its big boxy player, on fast-forward. Maxine stayed next to it on the floor. Yes, the remote was broken. Don't. Say. A word.

>>“Yeah, well, next time it’s complicated, get to your media expert while the trail is still hot.”

"Aye aye ma'am" Gawain nodded. To tell the truth, he didn't even remember Maxine was a media person until after he exhausted all the other options. Like, the assassin. Wasn't that just a marvelous idea.
He was getting curious now. Could the redhead really do something useful in this search?...

>>“If you’re going to info dump like that again, warn me first. I—ah! Haha! Yes. All right. Tell me when you see the segment starting.”

Info dump? Oh. She was taking notes. Like any good news reporter should. Yes.

Gawain watched the tape, his eyes narrow; he knew exactly what he was looking for, but it was still not easy to catch.

"There" he pointed at the face in the crowd "There, that's her."

No one special. A dark haired woman, standard enough features, who was working her way through the crowd in the background. ‘No one special’ was Maxine’s first reaction.

She didn’t share that thought with her questing knight.

“All right. So we’ve got a store opening—” She hit rewind, and let the segment play. “Just a department store. Obviously a replay from earlier in the day.” Which meant she actually needed to track down the original, if she was hoping to put a time to this date. Great. The red head scooted backwards until her back hit the couch (and her shoulder brushed against Mirror Mirror’s leg), grabbing her notepad as she went.

“Okay. I’ve got a few questions, but I think the most important one is this: do you think your Mom meant for you to see her?”

Not to be insensitive, but at a glance: all investigative journalism pointed to 'no.'

>>“All right. So we’ve got a store opening— Just a department store. Obviously a replay from earlier in the day.”

Gawain almost smirked as Maxine did her thing with media magic (even with the stone age tech she had). He had seen her in her best bulldog mode before - he knew how effective she could get. If she was willing to help.

>>“Okay. I’ve got a few questions, but I think the most important one is this: do you think your Mom meant for you to see her?”

He looked down at her and slid off the bed to look her in the eye. Not that it was easy.

"I think she does. I mean... I know what it looks like. She's been gone five years and shows up like this, believe me, I know what you are thinking. But I'm not in denial. I just... damn." he run his fingers through his hair, which did not exactly help "I have this feeling she wants to be found... but she can't, or don't want to, make it easy. For me, or anyone else." he glanced at the screen "That's her own face. The real one, I mean. She's a shifter."

Gawain slid down to the floor with her. Why was she getting the urge to hug him? It wasn’t because he was an unattached boy alone in her apartment with her: that’s why it was confusing. It was more of a… he looked like he needed it. She refrained, and let him talk.

It wasn’t the most convincing argument she’d ever heard, but she kept her voice interview-neutral when she replied.

“Explain that to me—‘her real face.’ Is that important? Did she—does she usually try to hide that?”

Or was her real face her normal face, and she just hadn’t seen the cameras? There were a lot of questions Maxine wasn’t writing down, but they were making the list.

She did not look like she understood. Gawain did not blame her.

>>“Explain that to me—‘her real face.’ Is that important? Did she—does she usually try to hide that?”

Fingers. Hair. Mess. The young knight sighed, trying to grasp the right words.

"Mom's a shifter. A human shifter. She can... look like anybody else, but it takes her some time. When... when I was a kid" when she was with me "it took her almost a day to shift. And it was, you know, hard work."

Where am I going with this?

"She... changed her face a lot. We moved a lot too. It was mostly because of me... gender shifting's kinda hard to hide, and she wanted to make my childhood... as normal as it can get. She taught me how to pass for human. We had all these tricks, and codes, and... routines. She was always... very careful. I don't remember her slipping, not even once. I only saw that... her real face, when we were alone. Sometimes we left, and went to some cabin in the woods for a weekend or somethin'... then she looked like herself." he smiled a bit "And I have been looking all over for her, for all these years. And now, she just showed up."

a day to shift (current? power growth possible? her age? )
frequent moves—gender shifting
tricks and codes—any in video? any expected to be, if communicating?
when did she go missing? year/month/day/time—significance to newscast? political situation at time?
location--other disappearances in area? disappearances now?
other stations covering opening? different camera angles/time frames?
raw footage? (call in favor with Teddy? –last resort)

Maxine tapped her pen against her pad, biting at her lower lip. After a moment, her pen took up the tapping for her, and kept right at it as she let it go to run her finger down the list.

“All right,” the red head said conclusively, with a nod to herself. “Let’s start with the gender-shifting. Care to explain that?”

Maxine met Gawain’s gaze, one eyebrow raised with a purely professional air.

Something the Prince of Orkney had been meaning to mention, pray tell?

>>“All right. Let’s start with the gender-shifting. Care to explain that?”

Gawain's gaze met hers.

"Sh*t." the young knight turned bright red "You didn' know about that did ya."

Of course not. Maxine was probably the last person in the universe who did not know his secret.
Past tense.

Gawain sighed and gave up.

"It means I turn into a girl every other day. Or a guy, dependin' on how you see it. I shift at midnight and I can't control it. It's just the gender... stuff. I don' have multiple personalities or anythin'. It's just me. Gawain or Maya."

From the way he talked, it was obvious he knew the questions before they came. He tried for a smirk.

"I usually don' include this stuff in my pick up lines." he shook his head "Sorry."

When he blushed like that, he matched her hair. Though the ‘Maya’ thing? Not helping his case for the ‘just me’, and the ‘don’t have split personalities.’ This, she would have to see to believe.

Maxine rolled her pen between her knuckles as she stared the Prince and his pick-up lines down. Or as close to rolling as a girl could come, when the pen was sentient enough to think it was a game: a bit more hopping than usual resulted.

She had questions, of course. Like, And when, exactly, do you tell the girls this?

She smiled ever so sweetly, took a breath, and…. let him off the hook. For now. Full-time women knew how to bide their time.

“Well. Now that that’s all cleared up.” Smile, smile. “You mentioned some sort of code—did you see any hint of that, in this?”

Maxine gave him a funny look. Gawain had enough experience with these conversations to know she had a lot more questions about the whole Maya thing... but she did not ask, and it would have looked stupid to start explaining himself.
Gawain cleard his throat and decided to keep his mouth shut instead.

>>“Well. Now that that’s all cleared up. You mentioned some sort of code—did you see any hint of that, in this?”

Moving on.

Gawain was quiet for a few moments.

"No." he admitted finally "No I didn't."

He glanced at the screen again. If you did not freeze the picture you could only see her for seconds, not even a minute. The only code he could see was just her being there.

"It's complicated" he sighed "I have been looking for her for years. We had a policy... we always had a policy in case we got separated. We always had a place where we would meet. But I waited for her there for... days, I kept going back, and she did not show up. And it was the rule... she said, if she does not return in a week, I have to move on, and find a safe place. And wait till she finds me." he glanced at Maxine "I screwed up. I was thirteen, and scared, and I wanted to find her... so I kept looking, and came all the way here. And then I found the Mansion, and I thought, here is a school for mutants, if she is looking for me, this is a safe place she would look. But now she is in New York City, and she hasn't shown up yet... so I'm guessing she cannot come find me, for some reason."

His mother hadn’t given him any sign during the segment, or during the years since her disappearance. Maxine didn’t think she needed to point out that that, in itself, was a kind of sign.

She tried to make her voice reassuring, or consoling or—to be honest? She wasn’t very good with those. She went for confident, instead: she was Maxine Ralls, and she was going to help him, because Maxine Ralls could do anything.

“We need a working theory,” she said. “Something I can start checking. It doesn’t have to be right: it just has to be a direction, so I can start looking for a trail. What would keep your mom from contacting you? Give me anything you can think of.”

She sat ready with pen and paper, ready to write. This was a story: Maxine got stories done.

>>“We need a working theory. Something I can start checking. It doesn’t have to be right: it just has to be a direction, so I can start looking for a trail. What would keep your mom from contacting you? Give me anything you can think of.”

She didn't really believe him about Mom. he did not blame her. He spent countless nights wondering if it really was just the easiest explanation: she left him. Her. Whatever.
He still did not believe it.

"All right" he nodded "Maybe... she either does not know where I am, or she thinks I am dead... or maybe, if she contacted me, I would be in danger."

As far as theories went, that was a poor one.

"Maybe... she is not allowed to contact me. Super-secret-government stuff?..." he suggested with a half smile "Reporters like that, right?"

Maxine grinned. “Reporters love that.”

doesn’t know where Gawain is/thinks dead
contact = danger?
‘super-secret government stuff’

‘Abandoned’ didn’t make the list. Honestly, that story sucked. They’d work on the other angles for as long as they could.

“I,” the red head said, “am going to need either an email or a phone number, so we can keep in contact.” She flashed a grin. “I’m guessing the ‘mirror mirror on my wall’ trick isn’t the best way to get in touch with you, if I find anything.”

She flipped to a new page in her notepad, and started scribbling like a gal used to getting a lot down, and quickly. It didn’t stop her from talking. Multitasking: a common mutation, amongst journalists.

“Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try and rustle up the original tapes for the segment; see if higher resolution gives us any extra details. I’ll check with the other stations too, and see if any other cameras were working that store opening, or anything in the area.” She’d look into the subway videos in the area and the traffic cams, too, if she could—but she didn’t want to get his hopes up on those. She had decent contacts amongst the interns and new reporters with most of the local stations, but city transit? That could get interesting.

“You,” she said, tearing out the piece of paper and poking it towards his chest, “are going to get me the answers to these.” This was clearly not an option. “I’ll give you a call when I’ve got my end worked out; you get those to me as soon as you can, but make sure to double and triple check the details. It’s been years. Kids don’t always remember their facts right.” She gave him a reporter look, to make sure he grasped the importance of that. She didn’t want whatever condensed idyllic memory he’d turned this into; she wanted the truth, or as near to it as she could get.

The paper read:
Mother’s full name? Birth date? Physical description/Distinguishing marks? Social security number? (She doubted Gawain knew that last one, but boy would it be nice.)

Where were you when your mother disappeared? What date/time did it happen?

Was she upset/angry/nervous at any point leading up to her disappearance? Any fights with you/other people that you didn’t understand? Anything unusual?

Where did you wait for her?/How long?

Where did you go after you stopped waiting? What did you do to catch her attention?

Are there other faces/aliases she frequently wears?

What is her mutation? Specific strengths/details/surprises.

Not like Gawain here ever kept back little surprises, when it came to mutations.

“One more thing,” the red head said, catching his gaze. “If you’re serious about this? Then I need you to trust me. This might not be pretty, Gawain. People aren’t always who you think they are. But I’ll help you, if I can.”

>> “Reporters love that.”

I win.

>>“I, am going to need either an email or a phone number, so we can keep in contact. I’m guessing the ‘mirror mirror on my wall’ trick isn’t the best way to get in touch with you, if I find anything.”

"Nah, that only works on special occasions" he chuckled, and watched her scribble. Boy was she fast.

>>“Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try and rustle up the original tapes for the segment; see if higher resolution gives us any extra details. I’ll check with the other stations too, and see if any other cameras were working that store opening, or anything in the area.”

He had been looking for Mom for years, doing everything he coul possibly think of doing (including hiring some shady assassin guy). And, for the first time in five years, Maxine made him feel like he was actually making progress. That something was happening.

>>“You, are going to get me the answers to these. I’ll give you a call when I’ve got my end worked out; you get those to me as soon as you can, but make sure to double and triple check the details. It’s been years. Kids don’t always remember their facts right.”

"Aye aye ma'am" he smirked, taking the paper and rading the questions. They actually made sense. He'd need time to answer them all, but he will get it done, if that was what it took to find Mom.

"All right" he nodded again, taking the notepad and the pen to scribble down his cellhpone number and email "Here, you got my number" he added with a smirk.

>>“One more thing. If you’re serious about this? Then I need you to trust me. This might not be pretty, Gawain. People aren’t always who you think they are. But I’ll help you, if I can.”

He was quiet for a few seconds; quiet, but determined. Then, he nodded.

"All right. You're the boss."

Things were going to get done.

A small smile tugged on the young knight's lips, and he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

"I owe you big time, Maxine."

He seemed to understand what she meant. Good. She accepted his number with a nod of her own. They were partners in this, now.

He was kissing her. Good—

Maxine squeaked, a bit like a surprised mouse. She clapped a hand over her mouth, her face turning just as red as her hair. Green eyes blinked over her fingers.

He kissed her.

The red head shot up, dragging Gawain with her to their respective feet. A certain backside got a shove towards her bathroom, and the mirror therein.

“Get you gone, Sir Knight. I’ve got research to do. Very serious research.”

And boys, as it turned out, where distracting.

He kissed her.

He kissed her. Ha!