March 22, 2014:
Professor Xavier, Scott Summers, and Doctor McCoy discuss some recent developments while observing recess at the school.
Xavier Institute
Rear grounds.
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions:
Plot:
A Dark Hold
Apocalypse: Only the Strong
Blood versus Family
Bones Of The City
Breaking the Universe
Cyberdata War: First Strike
Dangerous Esterikos Wonderous Mystikos
Dark Gods & Times
De Oppresso Liber
Demon Lord of New York
Diaz de Muertos
Don't Tell Thanos The Babysitter's Dead
Empire of Tears
Escape from Sakaar
From the Ashes
Gateway to the Stars
Genosha: Rebirth
God Of The Dead
Hacker, Sass-Mastah, Engineer, Spy
Himmel und Hölle in Bewegung Setzen
Mood Music: Young Blood
Fade In…
Charles is out back, watching the younger X-men play. With a masterful display of athleticism, he'd bumped his wheelchair down a few stairs, instead of using the ramps built solely for his purposes. His bald pate shines in the afternoon sun, and he wheels around so he can watch most of the back courtyard. He knows there's at least two of the older students hiding in the bushes out back smoking and trying to get away with it, and that another pair of students are making out behind the woodshed. But those are largely trivial concerns for the Professor- children will be children. He plays with the wheels of his chair almost absently, a look on his face if wishing he could run around the way some of the younger ones do.
There is a half-eaten apple in Scott's hand as he comes up to join the Professor. The ruby-quartz glasses shine in the sunlight, in spite of the anti-glare material coating them. It's simply that bright out today. No wonder the children are having such a good time. For a moment or two, he watches them at play with the slightest turn of a smirk to the left. Then, he idly asks, "How many of them are secretly misbehaving?"
Scott Summers. Always the teacher, always the leader, always trying to be older than he is.
While he can spend entire days in his lab and the classroom, even Hank occasionally gets 'cabin fever' and feels the need to get outside and feel the sun. When he caught himself daydreaming out of the window, he knew that he needed to take a break; either that or his work would start suffering. So, with his lab coat still on and shoes still off (he tends not to wear them unless he absolutely has to), he pads outside. Catching a ball as it comes flying his way, he tosses it back before catching sight of two familiar figures watching the kids. A hand raises to shield his eyes from the sun even as he greets the two, "Afternoon, Charles…Scott." Golden eyes glance out at the kids playing outside, "What's the tally today?"
He's been at this school long enough to know the trends.
"Four," Charles says, responding to both Scott and Hank. He turns and smiles at his colleague, nodding a welcome as he makes them a trio. "We should keep an eye on miss Mary and young mister James," he observes, nodding to the garden shed. "Children will be children, but I think both of them could use a refresher course in sex education. And Scott, if you wouldn't mind, do tell Mark and Matthew that their video game privileges are suspended for a month, and they owe me a thousand word paper on the dangers of smoking."
He folds his hands in his lap, quitting his little wheel motions, and smiles again. "So, par for the course," he says with a wry chuckle.
"Hank." Scott is careful to greet the man quietly, given that the rest of the students always refer to him as Doctor McCoy. Sometimes behind giggles, given Hollywood's recent re-infatuation with Star Trek.
Behind the glasses, one eyebrow arches when Mary and James are mentioned, and he shakes his head when Mark and Matthew are brought up. "Again?" he asks. "Better make it two thousand."
Scott turns then to face Hank. "How is your research going?" he asks. "I should tell you, the upgrades you made to my visor worked perfectly. Calvin and I responded to some trouble at a lab upstate, and I was able to give the Cerebro link a good test run. The visor took some radiation damage, but the overlay held." He's referencing a recent upgrade that allows Cerebro to send a three dimensional scan of humanoids onto Scott's tactical visor.
Glancing to Charles, he asks, "By the way, how did things go on your end during that run?"
"Quite smoothly," Charles says to Scott. "I do apologize if it felt as if I were a fly in your ear, but it was immeasurable relief to me to be able to listen in, as it were. Hank, your work deserves praise," he assures the X-man. "Perhaps I can have a little plaque made." His eyes twinkle at the little jest.
"I would like to focus on enhancing the link a bit more, though. At times it was difficult to get a good read through Cerebro- I suspect it may be an interface error on my end, but if you can check the visor, Hank, I would appreciate it."
"I'm betting that they're fairly well-versed in sex education," Hank points in what passes as a smirk on him now. "They're probably just exploring the practical applications of their lessons." He then offers, "If the boys would like to come to the Science classroom and view a smoker's lung cells under the microscope, I'm sure I can oblige."
If the giggles are for having a name similar to a Star Trek character, he'll gladly take it! "Research is going well, thank you, but I keep on getting distracted by new things. Just the other day I met this…Charles, I've been meaning to ask you about this. He claimed to be a 'Digital Person'…not an AI, but a real intelligence in a mechanical body…I…oh, the visor. It worked well, good. What lab was under attack in upstate?"
Looking back to Xavier, he gives a nod, "Sure, I'll take a look at it. Maybe it had something to do with the distance or maybe, depending on the lab, there was some interference. I'll have to see if I can compensate for as many different types that someone could come across." At the mention of the plaque, he gives a shrug, "That's not really necessary…but if you insist…"
"It wasn't a problem," Scott assures the Professor. He's being cocky, of course, for it was a distraction. He knows that Charles knows better, too, but old habits don't break easily.
"Galluzzo labs," he answers Hank. "Nothing special about the place, aside from the fact that their safety measures are historically terrible. Apparently things got bad enough that something in their main lab exploded." He draws a deep breath, taking a moment to remember the incident. What happened there is… troubling.
"It wasn't a normal explosion. The fire was… if you can believe this — blue. And my optic blasts seemed to disperse it." He looks over to Charles. "There was someone else there's too. A woman, metahuman in nature, but I didn't recognize her. She dove into a large… what do you call it… a vat of material where the explosion and radiation was coming from, and rescued a man who had fallen inside."
Charles pensively toys with the wheels of his chair, listening to Scott speak. They'd been over this in detail- in point of fact, Xavier had plucked the memory of it from Scott's mind to the smallest of details, and could replay it in his head at will. "It was disturbing on a number of levels," he agrees, his voice absent. "But." He claps his hands together. "A mystery that will remain unsolved for the time being," he declares, briefly adjusting his posture in the seat, his legs twitching fitfully. "Hank, are you joining us for dinner tonight?" he asks the mutant. "I am hoping to have a proper dinner- the staff and students all at once, rather than a meal time. It seems a good habit to maintain as a family, here."
Hank McCoy shakes his head at the mention of the lab, not recognizing the name. However, he does offer, "Sure, I can believe that there was a blue flame. A lot of elements and chemicals can produce blue flame when burned…most types of alcohol such as methanol, ethanol, rubbing alcohol…then you have arsenic, copper, lead…and, of course, natural gas." He could go on, but he's getting better at knowing when to stop. Sometimes. "A vat? Did she and the man she rescued make it out alive? That can't be good…" but Charles' question pulls his attention back. "Dinner? Oh…you mentioned that earlier, didn't you?" It's not like he's hiding from the students as that would be almost impossible to help with the teaching then. "Sure, I can join in for dinner. Although, in that big dining room…it sort of feels like Hogwarts. I suppose that makes me Hagrid."
"And that paints me as Dumbledore, then? Well, I've had worse comparisons," Charles laughs, the sound merry and rich, if seldom heard. A little bow-wave of genuine amusement flitters out from him, and everyone within a hundred yards suddenly feels a little more perked up, smiling at one another. Even the two kids smoking, who suddenly realize they aren't as cool as they thought and hastily stub out their cigarettes and shuffle out into the courtyard.
"Yeah, you're probably stuck as Dumbledore." Hank glances over at Scott as if trying to figure out which Hogwarts Professor he'd be. "Indeed, it could be worse." There's actually a pleased expression on his face at getting Charles to actually laugh. He knows how rare the sound is. Noting the two kids returning to courtyard, Hank points two clawed fingers at his eyes and then at the two of them. He's watching them…he'll make sure they get a good education as to just what smoking can do.
Hank gets one of those looks. Anyone who knows Scott Summers, is a member of the X-Men, and knows what kind of a prick he can be is familiar with it. Quite simply, it's says, 'Read the report, Hank.' Because Scott Summers always files an AAR.
Still, he can't help but grin a little when that burst of feelgood comes from Charles. Thus, he reaches out and claps Hank on the shoulder. "Yeah, they made it out alive. But I got the idea they didn't want to be bothered with it." And it's hard for him not to track them down and make sure. Then he gives them both a confused look. "Hogwarts?" he asks. He's not familiar with Harry Potter, and the talk of it actually has him considering whether he'd come to dinner or not. A glance is given toward the two young smokers, but Hank seems to have that under control. He'll bring the hammer of discipline down on them after dinner, and after they've come to believe that they got away with it. That's the right time for such a thing, after all. Finally, he sighs and nods. "Yeah, a good family dinner sounds nice."
Charles starts wheeling his chair around. Going down stairs is tricky, but backing up them is way more work than he's prepared for. "Then I will see you both at dinner. Don't be too hard on them, gentlemen," Charles calls over his shoulder. "We were all young once, and foolish," he reminds them gently. He wheels himself to the door and pulls it open, then rolls into the main building, letting the door slowly close behind him.
Hank McCoy tenses at the touch — he's all right to make quips and the like, but he's still not used to friendly intimacies. He'll do his best to ignore his appearance, but it's such gestures that show how he still isn't quite accepting of it. Turning to look at Scott, he peers over his spectaces at him, "You haven't read the books or seen any of the movies? How is it that -I- know of this pop culture thing and you don't?" Nevermind that he's sort of a geek that way.
As Charles turns to go back inside, Hank takes a step forward but stops himself. "See you at dinner!" is offered before he looks back at the students. "Sometimes I wonder if I was ever young. Foolish…all the time."
It may be that Scott noticed Hank's tensing, but constantly wearing his glasses gives him a pretty great poker face. To Charles, he nods his head in silent agreement, before giving Hank a confused look that soon breaks, "Oh. Harry Potter. Not my kind of thing." He turns to look back at the students as well. "I was," he remarks, with no shortage of self loathing, It only lasts a short while, before he's turning to follow the Proffessor. "I'd better go find my best tie."