Elena didn't necessarily hate dresses, she owned two of them and rotated them in and out of her wardrobe whenever the urge possessed her to wear one. But she did hate the body conforming style that made it nearly impossible to hide anything more than the tiniest handgun. Firearms weren't everything, she figured, but she sorely missed the two gas grenades she usually kept on her person - her pathetic eensy-weensy purse could barely hold a lipstick shaped stun gun she'd borrowed from Cissnei and a single potion.
At least she did have a garotte around her wrist, disguised as a twisted chain bracelet that went with the Materia bangle that just looked like jewelry. So, she had a heal and a fire too - but she still felt more under-dressed without her preferred weapons than just being out of her comfortable suit.
She might not hate all dresses, but wigs were an absolute bitch and a half. She reached up and had to stop herself from scratching at it, pushing a strand of brown hair out of her face instead and tucking it demurely behind one ear as she gave a surreptitious look around the bar. It wasn't as nice as the place she'd worked a couple of years ago, back when she'd refused to become a Turk if she couldn't be certain of being the absolute and utter best - better than anyone, better than Emma…
Emma was always so excellent at everything, even at being convincingly dead, but that old resentment tasted as nasty as the cheap drink she sipped at for appearance's sake. Elena just might have punched her sister in the chest a few times as she reminded her over and over how much she hated her. And of course, perfect Emma had just pulled her into a hug and said 'I love you too,' because she was always, always, right. But it was just Elena here on this job - a super important mission that Emma definitely couldn't do - Emma, who was so great, unless she had to do anything that involved acting like a 'lady'. Elena didn't much care for it, but she could do it and even though she'd put aside the old rivalry that felt incredibly stupid now, she preened under the knowledge that Tseng had assigned this to her and not anyone else.
Elena was playing bait, which she'd done at various bars and clubs throughout Wall Market for about two weeks - That was just the way any kind of stakeout was, and she'd been disappointed at the end of every shift. A lot of clandestine work involved a lot of waiting, sitting in a car and pointing a parabolic microphone at someone's hideout and writing down everything they said to blackmail them into complying with what Shinra wanted. Staring through a scope for hours and hours was a totally different kind of boring, but that was all forgotten the moment her target was in the crosshairs.
She did have to admit that this was a bit more nerve-wracking than just about any other mission she'd had though, because so far there really wasn't enough information about what the ultimate creeper was looking for in a victim - other than long brown hair and green or blue eyes anyway. So Elena had her itchy wig and green contacts that made it feel like her eyes were going to totally dry out before the night was over. Toxicology reports were pretty inconclusive, because the victims were held way too long to be able to tell if they'd been drugged by the killer when he kidnapped them, but it was the only idea Elena really had for what to look out for…
Having worked in a bar was also a big part of why she was here - she'd caught and fucked up more than one creep a week at least and she knew all the signs of someone skulking around vulnerable girls. She knew how to act pretty and dumb, having watched that sort of thing play out over and over - and she knew a lot of the girls acting like that were just that, acting. A lot stupid dudes fell for it, ending up drugged and robbed in an alley or worked over by a girl's pimp for not paying up or just because they pissed someone off.
So Elena simpered, and Elena flirted, downing drinks that were just fruity enough to be not vomit inducing and swayed off into the ladies room to down an antidote to clear the alcohol from her system. She powdered her cheeks, dusting pink over them to make herself look more drunk than she'd already been and smearing more gloss over her lips that tasted unpleasantly of chemicals - a concentrated form of the potion she'd just knocked back to neutralize the alcohol which was technically a poison and counted so far as chemistry was concerned.
She draped herself over the chair she'd left at the bar, the barely sipped at cup having been conspicuously left alone, and leaned sloppily close to the dude that had bought all but the first drink she'd had that night. Really, really-really, she wanted to break the guy's hand when he put it on her knee - but she let it happen anyway. She swirled her finger through the drink she'd left as bait, keeping her eyes on his face and hiding what she was really doing for enough time that the polish had time to react. Her eyes barely widened as she flicked her gaze down and realized that the smooth polish of her fingernail had shifted hue.
Elena had never actually used the stuff that was advertised for detecting whether or not drugs had been added to a drink or not - the website had promised it was safe and effective. Of course the actual instructions had been to, you know, not fucking drink the drugged drink. But, whatever, the stuff the polish was made of couldn't be more poisonous than whatever someone had slipped her. And she and Reno had spent an afternoon trying it on a dozen different likely substances, so she did know it actually worked. The pale pink had darkened, just noticeable enough, and she brought the drink up and downed it all in one go - the cheap Costan rum would definitely hide just about anything, and she sucked on her lower lip in a way that she hoped looked sexy and messily drunk rather than as weird as it felt. The bitter taste of the potion coated her tongue and she had to trust that it would do the job.
It wasn't at all surprising when the guy who'd been aggressively flirting with her offered to walk her home when she said she wasn't feeling well. He was pretty damned surprised though when she tripped him into the alley he'd started dragging her down and got his arms twisted behind his back. The hidden snaps that kept the bottom of her dress snugly around her hips popped as she straddled him from behind, ignoring the stupid-ass innuendos her would-be attacker - and hopefully her target - kept trying to throw at her as he tried to squirm out of her hold - he shut up after she dislocated his elbow at least.
"Hey, yeah, I got something," she said into her PHS, rattling off the street name and confirming she was alright when Tseng asked - he was secretly a softy, not that any of them would ever let that information come to light - and settled in to wait for a pickup. The sound of the chopper was loud, about as loud as the confused and excited shouts from the street, as Tseng and Rude landed on the roof of Corneo's gaudy as hell eyesore of a headquarters. There were a few rumors that the chubby asshole was the serial killer, but Elena had laughed her fucking head off at the thought of it. Corneo had a handful of gil rattling around where his brain should be. Maybe someone could use him for cover or something, but she doubted it.
It wasn't like serial killers were super geniuses though, not like in crime dramas and suspense flicks. They were a whole lot more likely to be that annoying guy in your building who blasted metal remixes of the Stamp theme song all night and got falling down drunk every other day. This guy had some kind of smarts, enough that he knew some kind of doctor shit, but she kind of figured he was either a medical school drop-out or someone who'd lost his license when he couldn't hide how fucked up he was. Not that they'd found any leads about that yet, but they really only had records of shit on the plate and upper Junon. There were doctors down here, who probably had degrees they hadn't printed out themselves, but there wasn't exactly a registry for all of them.
Elena sighed when the guy underneath her tried flirting again, stammering and slurring his words - he really was a bit more drunk than she'd been pretending to be. He sure did shut the fuck up again when she cocked her tiny pistol and put the muzzle behind his ear.
"Hey boss," she said, chipper as hell when Tseng appeared at the mouth of the alley, and happy enough to get to her feet and let Rude grab her prisoner who was at least smart enough now to keep his trap shut as he gaped at the three of them.
Hours later, Elena felt a strange tiny bit of something that might be vaguely related to shame. Not at all because of what they'd done to the guy during interrogation, or that she'd healed his hands wrong on purpose so he'd not be able to grab another girl, or for what Reno had done to the asshole's balls. No, she felt a little bit ashamed for thinking of him as 'just a rapist', because there wasn't 'just' anything when it came to something like that. She'd done her part, they'd done a good job getting him off the streets. But good guys were a myth, really, so justice was as much about retribution as it was locking someone up. But still, that guy wasn't the guy. He was just a run of the mill rapist who'd been doing this to girls for years without ever getting caught, and if Elena hadn't been down in Wall Market investigating something a lot more serious he might have kept doing it for years and never got caught.
She felt kind of bad that she was disappointed he wasn't a serial killer. She should be happy one smear of slime from the alleys was taken care of. But she flopped into bed and threw the wig across the room and screamed into her pillow to make herself feel better anyway. She'd take a real shower and get the stink of drugged drinks out of her pores and put the whole thing back on tomorrow and hope an actual murderer tried to get her the next time.
But the next time wasn't going to come, at least not for over five more days, because she woke up to Tseng's particular pattern of vibrations she'd programmed into her PHS and found out the one person he'd spent almost his entire career as a Turk watching over had been grabbed from the streets of Sector Seven slums and not anywhere even close to Wall Market.