10/27/2007
"We cannot hold him forever. Sooner or later, vacation or not, his people are going to start to wonder about him." It sounds like a refrain repeated more than once already. Emma lifts her hand and scratches the back of her head with a long fingernail, careful not to dislodge the elaborate up-do or its glittering assortment of jewelry.
Magneto declines to argue the obvious (that, if they really wanted to, they probably /could/ hold him forever) and simply lifts a brow from his post behind and aside. Dressed in a gritty assortment of sooty, charcoal greys, even with his hair back out of his eyes and the close trim of his beard neatly shorn, he looks decidedly out of place in the fluffy office of the White Queen. He looks at her ass, and is otherwise generally unhelpful.
It /is/ well displayed in the form fitting field filled with the light catching glitter of thousands of crystals hand-sewn into place. She does not yet have her shoes on though, so when she spins and walks back, too lost in calculations of what they /can/ get away, and nearly bumps into him, she has to look up. "/Erik/," she breathes in agitation. "He's not of any /benefit/."
Magneto reaches automatically to steady them both against the threat of collision, which would probably be a more comforting gesture if it was not accompanied by a sliver of something sleekly predatory in the ice of his eyes. Physical and visual contact are both brief, however, and he moves to step past her to occupy the space she just abandoned somewhat less fantastically. Less sparklingly, at least. "He has the potential to be."
"Yes, he's just filled to the brim with potential. Overflowing, even," Emma retorts, spinning around after he steps past. She holds her place and watches him. "But he is /not/ cooperating."
"His /potential/ is negated by his youth and his ego. His potential benefit is not, should we wish to allow Zenith an opportunity for retribution." From Emma's prior post, Erik prowls on to prod lazily at a bit of paper on the edge of her desk.
Emma folds her arms in front of her, ignoring the pricks and pokes to the delicate skin of her arms from the crystals. "We let her have him. Fine. But the problem of what to /do/ with him does not end there."
"Well," says Erik to the paper, which he has taken up and is now in the process of folding it over into...something, "we could kill him and do something embarrassing with the body."
"And when the investigation leads to our door? I don't believe that he is stupid enough not to have some type of failsafe in place should he not return from his little 'vacation.'" Emma crosses the few steps to take a look at the paper--it is a R&D report from a specialized medical machinery firm.
Tada! A few crisp folds later, it is a triangle. ...Sort of. Erik knits his brows at it and turns it over to start unfolding to see where he went wrong, ignorant or uncaring of Emma's scrutiny. "Kill the investigators."
"And then the entire police department? Oh, brilliant, Erik. /You/ may have an affinity for hiding out on undiscovered islands and abandoned warehouses, but the rest of us rather enjoy our creature comforts." She drops her arms and sighs, turning to lean back against the edge of the desk. Crystals dig into aluminum and flesh. "Unfortunately, what Zenith does to him is of little consequence. We are still left with few options. Release him or kill him."
Magneto refolds his masterpiece into the classic triangular football shape with more success this time. Having accomplished this and seen that it is good, he flicks it at Emma, straight-faced all the while. "You already have my vote."
It hits Emma in the face. She jerks back and blinks, wrinkling her nose. The football drops into her lap and catches between a pair of beads. "Erik!" She pushes off the desk, dislodging the paper, and fairly growls, her hands clenching at her sides. "Fine. You kill him. Take him someplace public and be done with it. Call the police and government forces while you are at it. Make it a perfect /circus/ act."
A low chuckle is Erik's answer for her frustration, and he moves away from the desk to circle lazily back around behind her, abandoning his paper football to its fate. His brows are lifted at her in passing; the look on his face crystal clear. Don't think he /won't/. "Do you have a trident, perchance?"
"A /trident/? What?" She turns and plants her hands on her desk, leaning forward and toward him. Perhaps he has gone crazy.
"It's simply that harpoons are so /last year/." The thin line of his mouth tilted into a slant, Erik halts again when both hands are on the back of her desk chair. The look he levels at her across the desk is certainly /lucid/, if rather arrogant.
Emma hangs her head between her arms and exhales. Well. That makes rather more morbid sense. "Considering, for a moment," she says, her words muffled until she lifts her face to look at him, brow lifted in paradoxically respectful insolence. "That he is /potentially/ worth more trouble dead than alive, we should consider what leverage we have available."
Magneto takes the opportunity presented him to look down the top of her dress before he paces on again. Restless. "If you are afraid of the police, relieve him of his memories of what has happened and fling him into the reservoir. You are making this very complicated."
Emma is quite aware of the presentation, and it bores her. She turns her head to follow his pacing, then pushes back upright. "Fine. We'll place him under surveillance to ensure the memory wipe holds afterward. If it doesn't..." She pauses and nods at him, continuing with "We will find you a trident."
"Hrmph," says Erik, who is apparently disinclined to trust in the truthiness of her feelings on the matter. "Where are you going?"
Emma looks down, then back up, and frowns at him. "Right now, or tonight?"
"In that dress," Erik elaborates, opting for the option of 'neither.' "It's terrible."
"Have you added fashion critic to your repertoire?" she retorts, skimming a look across his own selection of blacks and grays. "It happens to be a Tadaci."
Magneto's expression remains a skeptical blank. Ta-who?
Emma rolls her eyes and moves away from the desk, rounding it's corner to head for the bedroom. "A charity dinner, darling," drifts back over her shoulder as she disappears inside the darkened room.
Ah. Rather than snark further, or follow, Erik lingers a little awkwardly in the open area of her office before retrieving his football, and then turning to meander for the door.
10.27.07 - Erik, the tactical genius. He'd probably kill the lawyers too.