Logs:Threat Assessment

Threat Assessment
Dramatis Personae Charles, Scott
In Absentia Erik, Mystique, Destiny, Amo	2024-10-16 << We need more than just new protocols. We need new perspectives. >>
Location <XAV> Upper Armoury - Xs Basement
Adjoining the teachers' lounge, this is a pleasant but understated enclave for the faculty to relax or catch up on work. Lit softly by a small chandelier, and warmed in the winter by a grated fireplace, it is furnished with one long table and comfortable plush chairs, as well as smaller individual desks, each with a small Tiffany-style lamp. Tall, elegant shelves of with antique books stand along the walls, with displayed antique hunting rifles, finely-crafted swords, or full suits of armor in the interstices between them. The elevator to the lower level is tucked unobtrusively at the far wall, between two framed antique maps. Today there is no crackle from the fire or humming conversation in here, most of the noise coming from the soft rustle of pages as Scott cranks his way through a veritable sheaf of paperwork, collated and separated into several bland manila folders but still somewhat formidable in volume, both in the inbox and the outbox he's brought with him; he's writing with a sharp-nibbed fountain pen that might seem somewhat at odds with the Bic Cristal vibe he otherwise has, dressed plain and practical in a grey heather t-shirt and rust-brown flannel, his hair recently trimmed back to its pre-Mojo length, but it sits easily in his hand nevertheless. Perhaps Scott cannot be blamed if he has changed, lately, anyway -- for all his clawed-back normal he is still thin and tired. Though Scott is not actively guarding his thoughts there is not much that floats to the surface anyway, his mind pleasantly and somewhat gratefully focused on the busywork, revelling as much in the urgency of it -- the need to be done -- as in the texture of paper against his fingers, the familiar rhythm of his own penmanship, quick and boxy, of licking his fingers to leaf through the stack on a double-check, all of it almost comforting in its mundanity. He doesn't choose a new folder once he's tapped the corners of these papers into careful alignment and transferred them to the outbox, but takes a quick break, settling his elbows on the table, to drink looong and satisfied at his slowly-cooling coffee. In the past it's been rare to find Charles doing his administrative work anywhere other than his study or office, but here he is, administering away. Perhaps it's a new habit born of an emergency workload that would have otherwise kept him continuously sequestered between too many classes and too little sleep. If he's overworked or under-slept now it does not show. He's wearing a charcoal three-piece suit and a royal blue tie, riding one of his older powerchairs, and radiating the same steady warmth as ever. His work is for the moment largely digital, for which he has a laptop open on a table arm desk and a tablet propped up on the adjustable bookstand beside it. He has seemed quite absorbed in it, but is attending closely to Scott as well. Still, he projects a faintly self-deprecating sense that he just happened to set his stylus aside now, and definitely isn't hovering at all. "I hope the relocation of the students hasn't been too jarring for you." His eyes tick up minutely, a habitual signal that he is sifting through his far-flung psionic senses. "It isn't at all like the quiet of summer term. The difference is so very stark for me, even during the day. At night, I'd venture to say it's been eerie." Whether or not Charles is hovering, Scott is not really splitting hairs -- he's decided more-or-less consciously that if Charles were hovering, it would be a fair price to pay for refusing to wait just a little longer before taking on some of this emergency workload, and rather less consciously, he's kind of comforted by this too. Though his mind had been a sedate churn over the paperwork, it's coming to attention now, the lift in his posture minute but still readable; without the tedium he is building up a vague but pressing anxiety about everything he needs to do. He's still holding his coffee cup, now in both hands; once he sets it down he folds his hands in front of him, one hand a little more restless than the other where he taps his fingertips on the tabletop. Whether or not this has been a jarring transition, Scott is not saying, though he acknowledges at once, << (It's a lot easier for the kids to get away with stuff over there, I need to...) >> with somewhere to direct his I-need-to stress now he is spinning up a small handful of protocols he should implement ASAP, but this just trails into << (...send some emails.) >> He tilts his head; out loud he is a lot more measured, just says, "We'll get used to it. I do miss the kids playing music." The warmth of Charles's presence doesn't intensify, exactly, but it shifts and offers somewhere else for those anxieties to land. << You will get to it. >> This isn't encouragement or consolation or even reassurance, but a kind of knowledge. "I can still hear them, you know." This is meant to reassure, burdened though it may be with caveats of the harm that's come to their students when they did live in the mansion. << (not just the students) >> This flash of the instant the X-Men (and Amo) vanished from his telepathic radar might not have been intentional to begin with, but catlike he diverts it into a wordless acknowledgement that there was nothing he could have done to prevent it. But the fact remains that they were take from his house. "We'll have to get used to a lot of things. The world is more dangerous now than it was when you started superheroing." << I know you can, >> comes swift in response, though who can say if Scott is duly reassured -- he's holding onto those anxieties almost defensively, like the agitated white noise of whitewater. Though his inclination is to wordlessly agree that Charles couldn't have prevented his abduction, he's adding, a moment later, "I keep thinking that if we'd been faster figuring out the Madripoor situation, you know..." This is wistful for something he did wrong that he can correct moving forward, but somewhat self-aware of its own fruitlessness where dimension-spanning reality TV producers are concerned. He huffs out a breath, somehow too exasperated to qualify as a sigh. "The Earth is more dangerous, I think," he says. "We're the new kids in the universe." Though a moment later, his brow scrunches down over his glasses -- "Unless you're thinking about -- something else?" << I need to watch the news, >> is joining the rapids. "I don't know whether it would have made any difference," Charles admits, mentally underlining Scott's insight. He makes no attempt to pry the anxieties away, though he does not withdraw the offer, either. "There's nothing more alarming than usual in the news, but the usual is alarming enough." << I am thinking about a lot. >> The glimpse of it that he shows Scott is a sort of conceptual flow chart written in memories and newsflashes and foreboding -- of the cosmic dangers about which they know so little, but also of Genosha and Prometheus, of Purifier and Sentinels, and so many more banal threats they know only too well. << We need more than just new protocols. We need new perspectives. >> Scott accepts this grim look at reality very readily -- "Okay," he says, punctuated mentally with a << ! >> even if his tone out loud is its usual flat affect. "Are you thinking about anybody in specific?" Charles raises his eyes to an exquisitely crafted longsword mounted on the wall, and his mind flashes to a helmet and a cape and the sense-concept of the escape that he had inadvertently enabled. He almost entirely suppresses his grief, and his voice is steady when he says, "Magneto." This time Scott is nowhere near as ready with his answer -- he taps his index finger one, two, three times against the tabletop. Despite the continued disturbance at the surface of his mind there is a sense that it is cooler deeper down, calculating and contemplative. He heaves out a breath -- "Of all the places to crash-land," he says regretfully, which starts to come with an accompanying stab of guilt before he forcibly reminds/defends himself that their ship had turned back into a pretty rock on impact, << (could have had far less survivors if I'd crashed it into the Arabian Sea instead.) >> He's not terribly reassured by this, of course, but it lets him set aside the topic to say, with the utmost professionalism, "I would prefer the new protocols." Charles shakes his head. "It was no fault of your landing." << (it was fate) >> Though after a brief consideration he allows, "Your arrival diverted the Magistrates' attention, but I crippled them. All this during an unexpectedly severe geomagnetic storm, which strengthens his powers." His lips compress. << I'm not about to invite him for tea and ask for advice. >> Beneath this is a guilty acknowledgement that he was far too permissive with Erik after the last escape he had inadvertently enabled. << In fact, I was counting him among the more dramatic threats. >> "But he was right about one thing: we are at war." << Fate >> loops in slightly unpleasant rondelay amid the mental agitation, echoed in Charles's inflection, as Scott listens somewhat numbly to all of this, but it's a quieter refrain of << (faith) (faith) (faith ) >> that settles to the bottom, that Scott is considering with his brows still drawn together over his glasses. Though he wants to see fate as a holy and meaningful force, he's also not sure it isn't on some other level just a plaything of Mystique and her wife's, and when for the first time some of the guilt and anxiety eases off it leaves an uncomfortable, unhappy fear in the space where it was, intolerable powerlessness and ignorance as the obverse of faith. Scott folds his hands again, fingers interlocking in front of him. "Then I will go to war," he says finally. Then -- silently -- he takes another folder from his inbox, and picks up his pen.