(no subject)
From: drgrey@x-school.edu
To: STAFF@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: Gym and Japanese Classes
--------
As Logan has taken some of his vacation time to go on a hunting trip, I'll need to rearrange teaching schedules to cover for things. Hank, I can't remember, but is Japanese on your list of languages you've amassed? Scott, if you can cover Phys Ed in addition to your own classes, I'll cover all your coffee for a month.
Jean
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Saturday, April 12, 2008, 3:31 PM
-------------------------------------------------------
=XS= Kitchen - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
A relic of Victorian times, this kitchen is vast, with more than one oven and several stainless steel work surfaces taking the space once claimed by coal hoppers, cooking hearths and cast-iron stoves. Walls still done in period plaster and tile, and the floor still the original fieldstone, fluorescent lights have been installed overhead to bring the lighting up to modern level. At meal times, kitchen workers scurry to and fro with pans and food and various other sundry items, under the watchful eye of the aging head cook, but once past, order is restored, with copper-bottomed pans hanging above the kitchen island, and a tray of cold snacks left out for foraging students and staff alike. Folding wood doors screen off a pantry capable of holding food for an large household's weekly meals -- or three days' worth of teenager food.
[This room is set watchable. Use alias XSKitchen to watch here.]
[Exits : [H]allway and [B]ack [P]atio]
[Players : Amp ]
[Monitor] Magneto has connected at Sat Apr 12 14:44:23 2008 CDT
Dum de dum. Amp is happy today! She's busy working on a microwave mini-pizza, the burning temperature of the sauce causing havok given her usual style of inhalation, but that is by no means souring her mood. Eating this fast negates the need to sit down, so she's leaning one hip up against the side of the counter.
Jean hasn't been seen in the main areas of the school much today. Of course, given the weekend and given the amount of lab work Jean has piling up at any given time, this isn't an unusual occurance. A careful step precedes her arrival in the kitchens, but there's no hint in sound that there's anything out of the ordinary -- stylish but sensible pumps seem to be the shoe choice of the day, rather than the soft slap of slippers or the more brassy clack of kicky leather half boots. Vision is something else, however: Jean's blazer jacket is worn with only one arm in its sleeve. The other is casted and in a sling, tucked up against her chest. There is a cleaned contusion on her forehead. Sound now chimes in more information as Jean spots Amp, grimaces, and proclaims "I need coffee. How old's the pot, do you know?"
"Hasn't been made since I was here." Amp shrugs. She wandered over to smell in the general vicinity of the pot, but that's not her mutantion-enhanced sense, so she shrugs again. She nods. "Creed did the arm?"
"That obvious?" Jean wonders, lips still quirked as she advances on the pot herself, and then proceeds to begin the art of one-handed coffee making. The initial step, of picking up the pot and dumping its contents down the sink, is at least designed to be conducted in such a fashion anyways. "Although technically it was gravity and a hard edge that did the arm. Creed just arranged for them to interact."
Amp picks up the bag of coffee to extend to Jean at the correct point in the process, to save her reaching for it while she should be holding something else. "Well, it's hardly signed," she says with an ironic twist to her lips. She draws a big 'S' in the air. "Obvious how?"
"He didn't stick around for the casting, regrettably," Jean allows, very gingerly wriggling the fingers of the casted arm, only to stop in mid-wriggle as the arm twinges at her. Immobilized the bones may be, but muscles still need to complain. "Of course, I'm not entirely sure if he's capable of writing anyways... but I was -hoping- not to have a bunch of students connect the dots between the email and my arm -just- yet."
"Oh!" Understanding dawns. "Dr. McCoy told me." She gives Jean the flick of a grin. "Did you kill him too?" Morbid, /morbid/ girl, but more at peace in her own mind than Jean has perhaps seen her since Jack.
"Ah... no," says Jean, and looks a complicated mixture of regretful, amused, self-recriminating and quietly, quietly angry. Recognize all four and win a cookie! "He jumped me before I had a chance to notice he was there, and I ended up driving him off more out of reflex than calculation." There's a hanging silence then, as Jean nods thanks for the coffee, and accepts it after cleaning out the old filter and replacing it with new. "I've surely done it before, though," she offers, before losing herself to the meticulous work of measuring out ground coffee without the use of a second hand to hold a knife for levelling off the scoop.
"How?" Amp asks, the promise of a grin manifesting in a full one. She settles, ass against the counter and hands on either side. "I can--" she offers, of the measuring.
"Messily," Jean answers, just a touch clipped. She eyes the scoop in some frustration, bristles visibly, and then just as visibly realizes that she's bristling over a measuring scoop of coffee. A laugh escapes. "Please."
Amp obliges, measuring and dumping. "Well, he's good for that." Blood! Whee! An interesting time to be a peeking telepath indeed.
Jean is, perhaps mercifilly, perhaps irritatingly, but very much -definitely- on concussion induced hiatus from much of her casual use of powers. "I'd prefer it if he'd stay dead. That would be better."
"Yeah," Amp agrees, falling into a meditative silence. "How long are we going to be locked in, then?"
"Did you see the email?" Jean wonders, quirking an eyebrow as she leans in to fill the coffee pot with water after a slightly-awkward twist of the tap. "He's a ghost. We can't lock you in because we don't know how long he'll be out. Just don't be stupid when you're out."
That is funny to Amp for no discernable reason. She snerks. "Not being stupid, check."
"Some late breaking episode of stupidity I should know about?" wonders Jean, making her careful way back to the coffee maker with the pot full of water in hand. She very carefully sets it down in order to open the water reservoir, and then very carefully picks it back up again.
"Well, I should probably not have taunted him." Amp grimaces. "Well, definitely shouldn't have."
"Questionable survival instincts there," Jean agrees, one eyebrow arching, but briefly so. Her attention is needed by setting up the coffee maker to brew to her specifications and not those of the last coffee-seeker. "I'm impressed that you made it away unscathed."
Amp touches the back of her head. "Just smashed my head on the ground. Jason stopped him before he did anything else." She goes pensive. "I don't really know why."
"Jason is erratic," is the best answer Jean can give to that, stepping back and eyeing the coffee maker with mild concern, in lieu of turning the look on Amp herself. Gingerly, she folds her uninjured arm to join the casted one. "It's hard to say what way he'll go, but he doesn't -generally- seem to enjoy someone being messily murdered in front of him."
"He said he felt responsible for me," Amp says, quietly. "But yet he doesn't seem to want me around..."
"You can do both at once," Jean replies softly, canting her head sideways at the coffee maker before realizing this lacks something and looking cautiously at Amp herself. "Particularly if you're Jason, the feeling of responsibility may be something you want to dodge."
Amp isn't paying enough attention to Jean to notice the look. She doesn't look upset, just confused. "Want to avoid? Why?"
"In my estimation, Jason doesn't particularly feel comfortable with the idea of caring about a person," is Jean's answer. "Apart from the world, the master of puppets, all that. At the same time, he needs connection. He feels responsible for you. You're making him feel things he's not comfortable feeling," she ticks off on the fingers of her unfolded, uninjured hand. "If he can avoid you, he can pretend things don't exist."
Amp nods. That seems to make sense to her. "I guess mine didn't have the choice to be apart." She snorts. "Well, maybe I'm good for him then."
"Just don't let him be bad for you," Jean advises, and pushes herself away from the kitchen island to go rummage one-handed through the refrigerator. "Although I suppose it's not like he's easy to find anyways."
"I just ran into him by accident." Amp comes to hang on the open door and watch, vaguely. "It's not like I'm trying desperately to get back into his bed or something. I know a hopeless cause when I see it. Besides, Sarah said he had some crazy girl he was playing with at the moment."
"Well, then, there you go," says Jean, not pointing out that it would be a different bed being gotten into. There is a clatter of pickle jars being moved, and she eventually emerges with a jar of mayonnaise in hand. "Is this the one?" she wonders.
"Supposedly. I keep thinking I should come in here an untrasonically vibrate it for a bit, or something," Amp says, absently. She's still thinking about Jason. "I probably shouldn't be feeling this good, all the threats the Creed guy was throwing around."
"I'm considering taking it down to the lab for analysis," Jean admits, hefting the jar gently before putting it back with a small pat to the top of it. "Run a few tests or scans... but from the sounds of things you help your own far better than I did, and with having provoked him on top of it. An upbeat feeling after something like that isn't unheard of. Just... don't let it fool you into thinking it was a good idea."
"Mm," Amp says. "I need a sparring partner. Not one of the kids."
"Talk to Logan," Jean suggests, muffled somewhat as she leans deeper into the fridge. "He's as much of a challenge, but not inclined to kill and eat you."
Amp's grin gets a little predatory. "Good idea." She steps back from the door, and rolls her shoulders a little. "Anyway. You sure I gotta take a bunch of other kids with me when I go out to try to get laid tonight?' "
"I'd note that while the drive of biology towards mating is strong," says Jean, retreating from the fridge without a batted eye, but -with- what appears to be a leftover meal with her name on it, in Madame Vargas' aged handwriting. "The drive for conserving the species by staying alive and intact long enough to do so shouldn't be discounted. So yes. A group. Sorry if that cramps your style," she offers up, with a crook of her mouth and a bee-line for the microwave.
"Maybe I can get Jamie to come. He's a group! Bring his girlfriend, then I know they won't be tapping their feet waiting for the trip home." Amp chuckles. "Have fun," she says, of Jean's meal, and wanders out.
Jean is left with a reheating pork chop, a broken arm, and an expression caught somewhere between pain and bemusement. "-Safe- sex!" is called after Amp. And then Jean sits down to stare at the coffee maker and resolutely pretend she heard nothing of the last exchange.
Jean is broken. Amp is Amplike.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Monday, April 14, 2008, 5:30 PM
-----------------------------------------------------
=XS= The Garage - Xavier's School
This former carriage house turned garage features several separate rooms, separated by sliding wooden doors with small glass panes forming larger windows. The wooden doors and the beams of the high ceiling are of rich old oak, stained a dark colour by age. Gleaming white tile walls meet with a textured concrete floor, tinted a warm red and with a tile pattern pressed in place for added traction. The main area of the garage features a few benches set up for teaching class amongst the collection of engine lifts, wrnches, slider boards and lots and lots of grease. With the exception of the odd junker brought in here for the automotive class to learn on, the vehicles here consist of sleek black school SUVs and Professor Xavier's dignified old Rolls Royce, with occasional appearances by a motorcyle showing heavy signs of reengineering.
[This room is set watchable. Use alias XSGarage to watch here.]
[Exits : [O]utside]
Jean and a car are returning to the garage after a trip into the City. The car is -not- Jean's beloved Aston Martin. Leaving her forced to take a staid and respectable sedan (Even if it's a Lexus.) with automatic transmission rather than the standard of her own car is just another mark to chalk on Sabretooth's list of scores that need settling. Jean and her broken arm manage to park the car safely, and with a sudden absence of engine purr, the car is turned off. Jean sits for a moment, sighing and leaning back against the headrest with her eyes closed.
Where Jean is making her return, Logan is making preparations for leaving. Having stuck around just long enough to fulfill his obligations for today, his bike is being outfitted for what looks like a prolonged absence. A couple of packs have been strapped to the side stuffed to the brim. Also... there are chains. As Logan stands from tying ropes and securing buttons to take a look at the newly arived Lexus, he holds in his hands... a bear trap?
Jean's eyes open, and there's a reflexive flash of worry as she spots the bike and Logan in such a stair of readiness. Therefore, she takes an extra beat to get out of the car, and not just because of the casted arm, and doesn't speak until she's capable of leaning on the side of the Lexus and wondering, mostly-casually, "Are the reporters getting that pesky?"
"I'm going to get him, Red." Logan oaths, skipping the jokes this time and getting straight to the point. He wraps the trap and chain around the packs with a burn off of energy and secures them with a metal clip. "And when I bring him back, it will be in enough pieces that they won't be able to loose all of 'em this time." It doesn't sound as if he's exaggerating, either.
"Are you sure alone's the best way to do it?" wonders Jean, the levity bleeding away into a quiet, intent stare at the motorcycle, and very carefully not at its rider. "He's hoping for that. I mean... hell, the arm's a slightly more civilized equivalent of peeing on your tree, and god I'm glad he didn't do that literally."
As Jean's eyes avoid Logan, his eyes also avoid hers, his attention focused on getting the ride packed and over packed, the movements of fingers and ropes a good distraction. "I know, Jean, I know." he insist with some self directed frustration edging into his voice. "But if I don't, who's he gonna go after next? And after that? I can't let you pay for my mistakes, not you, and sure as hell not one of the kids."
"And what if it's not about your mistakes?" Jean asks, and a bit of tartness creeps into her tone. She stops leaning on the Lexus to pace around to the other side of the bike, sound arm crossed over the casted one. "The government had him. They let him loose, and from what I could sneak out of the DHS agent's stray thoughts, it was because they got stupid despite everything we and others had told them."
Somehow the thought that DHS just released one of the world's most dangerous sociopaths isn't very comforting to Logan. His hand curls tightly around the rope he was tightening for several seconds before he lets it go and stares blankly into his seat. "He was after me, Jean. As long as me being here puts you all at risk, it's my mistake." His voice rings of /that/ tone again. A familiar one.
The pulse of telekinesis that briefly shakes against the garage walls suggests that tone is all too familiar. Jean's good arm clutches at herself all the more tightly. "Logan... if you're planning any 'it's not safe to be close to me' speech," she warns darkly. "I don't care what Hank says about concussions, I'm going to bounce you on your pointy head all down the driveway!"
"What do you want me to do, Jean? Stay in here and let him get away with it?" Logan protests, if slightly shaken that Jean saw the speech coming before he did. "One way or the other, I've got to put a stop to this."
"Go out there, but not alone, you... you..." Hands flexing, Jean looks marginally less tense and worried as Logan protests rather than persisting. It appears to have been replaced by exasperation. "We want him taken down too, dammit!"
"He'll hurt you, hell Jean, he'll /kill/ you just to get to me." Logan points out with more than a sense of dread in his voice mind and heart. Leaving the bike, he paces closer to Jean with a posture less filled with anger, frustration, and the need of action, and more close to worried, nervous, and sincere. "I don't want to give him the chance."
"I'm a big girl, Logan," says Jean, even as her tone grows quieter and her good hand rubs idly at the wrapped plaster of her cast. At last, she lets herself look at him, her own eyes dark and the worry in them resurfacing. "And I'm an X-Man. I'm not with you because I need to be protected."
And something finds Logan's eyes that finds them a rare home: respect. There are compromises. "I'm going to go after him. I track better on my own." His words come out less harsh than the demands or protests he usually makes. "If I find him, I'll let you know. If you find him, let me know."
"Got it," says Jean, and that flash of worry disappears behind a businesslike nod, somewhat softened by her hand touching his arm to hold him up a moment as it then digs around in her purse to retrieve a keychain. "If he's in the City, I bet he's losing himself in Hell's Kitchen, maybe Harlem. Some place off the radar. Grab the flat over the clinic, if you need a place to hole up and you want it."
"Thanks, Red. I won't be gone long." Logan answers as he does wait at least long enough to collect the keys. His hand reaches out to hers to clasp over key chain and hand alike, giving what warmth the gesture can. "I promise."
Jean's hand finds Logan's jacket once she's handed off the keys, and pulls him in for a kiss that's a firm and heated avowal of that promise. Her lips linger near his as she murmurs a reply of "I'm holding you to that."
Logan is off to hunt Creed. Yes, the bear trap is necessary.
To: STAFF@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: Gym and Japanese Classes
--------
As Logan has taken some of his vacation time to go on a hunting trip, I'll need to rearrange teaching schedules to cover for things. Hank, I can't remember, but is Japanese on your list of languages you've amassed? Scott, if you can cover Phys Ed in addition to your own classes, I'll cover all your coffee for a month.
Jean
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Saturday, April 12, 2008, 3:31 PM
-------------------------------------------------------
=XS= Kitchen - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
A relic of Victorian times, this kitchen is vast, with more than one oven and several stainless steel work surfaces taking the space once claimed by coal hoppers, cooking hearths and cast-iron stoves. Walls still done in period plaster and tile, and the floor still the original fieldstone, fluorescent lights have been installed overhead to bring the lighting up to modern level. At meal times, kitchen workers scurry to and fro with pans and food and various other sundry items, under the watchful eye of the aging head cook, but once past, order is restored, with copper-bottomed pans hanging above the kitchen island, and a tray of cold snacks left out for foraging students and staff alike. Folding wood doors screen off a pantry capable of holding food for an large household's weekly meals -- or three days' worth of teenager food.
[This room is set watchable. Use alias XSKitchen to watch here.]
[Exits : [H]allway and [B]ack [P]atio]
[Players : Amp ]
[Monitor] Magneto has connected at Sat Apr 12 14:44:23 2008 CDT
Dum de dum. Amp is happy today! She's busy working on a microwave mini-pizza, the burning temperature of the sauce causing havok given her usual style of inhalation, but that is by no means souring her mood. Eating this fast negates the need to sit down, so she's leaning one hip up against the side of the counter.
Jean hasn't been seen in the main areas of the school much today. Of course, given the weekend and given the amount of lab work Jean has piling up at any given time, this isn't an unusual occurance. A careful step precedes her arrival in the kitchens, but there's no hint in sound that there's anything out of the ordinary -- stylish but sensible pumps seem to be the shoe choice of the day, rather than the soft slap of slippers or the more brassy clack of kicky leather half boots. Vision is something else, however: Jean's blazer jacket is worn with only one arm in its sleeve. The other is casted and in a sling, tucked up against her chest. There is a cleaned contusion on her forehead. Sound now chimes in more information as Jean spots Amp, grimaces, and proclaims "I need coffee. How old's the pot, do you know?"
"Hasn't been made since I was here." Amp shrugs. She wandered over to smell in the general vicinity of the pot, but that's not her mutantion-enhanced sense, so she shrugs again. She nods. "Creed did the arm?"
"That obvious?" Jean wonders, lips still quirked as she advances on the pot herself, and then proceeds to begin the art of one-handed coffee making. The initial step, of picking up the pot and dumping its contents down the sink, is at least designed to be conducted in such a fashion anyways. "Although technically it was gravity and a hard edge that did the arm. Creed just arranged for them to interact."
Amp picks up the bag of coffee to extend to Jean at the correct point in the process, to save her reaching for it while she should be holding something else. "Well, it's hardly signed," she says with an ironic twist to her lips. She draws a big 'S' in the air. "Obvious how?"
"He didn't stick around for the casting, regrettably," Jean allows, very gingerly wriggling the fingers of the casted arm, only to stop in mid-wriggle as the arm twinges at her. Immobilized the bones may be, but muscles still need to complain. "Of course, I'm not entirely sure if he's capable of writing anyways... but I was -hoping- not to have a bunch of students connect the dots between the email and my arm -just- yet."
"Oh!" Understanding dawns. "Dr. McCoy told me." She gives Jean the flick of a grin. "Did you kill him too?" Morbid, /morbid/ girl, but more at peace in her own mind than Jean has perhaps seen her since Jack.
"Ah... no," says Jean, and looks a complicated mixture of regretful, amused, self-recriminating and quietly, quietly angry. Recognize all four and win a cookie! "He jumped me before I had a chance to notice he was there, and I ended up driving him off more out of reflex than calculation." There's a hanging silence then, as Jean nods thanks for the coffee, and accepts it after cleaning out the old filter and replacing it with new. "I've surely done it before, though," she offers, before losing herself to the meticulous work of measuring out ground coffee without the use of a second hand to hold a knife for levelling off the scoop.
"How?" Amp asks, the promise of a grin manifesting in a full one. She settles, ass against the counter and hands on either side. "I can--" she offers, of the measuring.
"Messily," Jean answers, just a touch clipped. She eyes the scoop in some frustration, bristles visibly, and then just as visibly realizes that she's bristling over a measuring scoop of coffee. A laugh escapes. "Please."
Amp obliges, measuring and dumping. "Well, he's good for that." Blood! Whee! An interesting time to be a peeking telepath indeed.
Jean is, perhaps mercifilly, perhaps irritatingly, but very much -definitely- on concussion induced hiatus from much of her casual use of powers. "I'd prefer it if he'd stay dead. That would be better."
"Yeah," Amp agrees, falling into a meditative silence. "How long are we going to be locked in, then?"
"Did you see the email?" Jean wonders, quirking an eyebrow as she leans in to fill the coffee pot with water after a slightly-awkward twist of the tap. "He's a ghost. We can't lock you in because we don't know how long he'll be out. Just don't be stupid when you're out."
That is funny to Amp for no discernable reason. She snerks. "Not being stupid, check."
"Some late breaking episode of stupidity I should know about?" wonders Jean, making her careful way back to the coffee maker with the pot full of water in hand. She very carefully sets it down in order to open the water reservoir, and then very carefully picks it back up again.
"Well, I should probably not have taunted him." Amp grimaces. "Well, definitely shouldn't have."
"Questionable survival instincts there," Jean agrees, one eyebrow arching, but briefly so. Her attention is needed by setting up the coffee maker to brew to her specifications and not those of the last coffee-seeker. "I'm impressed that you made it away unscathed."
Amp touches the back of her head. "Just smashed my head on the ground. Jason stopped him before he did anything else." She goes pensive. "I don't really know why."
"Jason is erratic," is the best answer Jean can give to that, stepping back and eyeing the coffee maker with mild concern, in lieu of turning the look on Amp herself. Gingerly, she folds her uninjured arm to join the casted one. "It's hard to say what way he'll go, but he doesn't -generally- seem to enjoy someone being messily murdered in front of him."
"He said he felt responsible for me," Amp says, quietly. "But yet he doesn't seem to want me around..."
"You can do both at once," Jean replies softly, canting her head sideways at the coffee maker before realizing this lacks something and looking cautiously at Amp herself. "Particularly if you're Jason, the feeling of responsibility may be something you want to dodge."
Amp isn't paying enough attention to Jean to notice the look. She doesn't look upset, just confused. "Want to avoid? Why?"
"In my estimation, Jason doesn't particularly feel comfortable with the idea of caring about a person," is Jean's answer. "Apart from the world, the master of puppets, all that. At the same time, he needs connection. He feels responsible for you. You're making him feel things he's not comfortable feeling," she ticks off on the fingers of her unfolded, uninjured hand. "If he can avoid you, he can pretend things don't exist."
Amp nods. That seems to make sense to her. "I guess mine didn't have the choice to be apart." She snorts. "Well, maybe I'm good for him then."
"Just don't let him be bad for you," Jean advises, and pushes herself away from the kitchen island to go rummage one-handed through the refrigerator. "Although I suppose it's not like he's easy to find anyways."
"I just ran into him by accident." Amp comes to hang on the open door and watch, vaguely. "It's not like I'm trying desperately to get back into his bed or something. I know a hopeless cause when I see it. Besides, Sarah said he had some crazy girl he was playing with at the moment."
"Well, then, there you go," says Jean, not pointing out that it would be a different bed being gotten into. There is a clatter of pickle jars being moved, and she eventually emerges with a jar of mayonnaise in hand. "Is this the one?" she wonders.
"Supposedly. I keep thinking I should come in here an untrasonically vibrate it for a bit, or something," Amp says, absently. She's still thinking about Jason. "I probably shouldn't be feeling this good, all the threats the Creed guy was throwing around."
"I'm considering taking it down to the lab for analysis," Jean admits, hefting the jar gently before putting it back with a small pat to the top of it. "Run a few tests or scans... but from the sounds of things you help your own far better than I did, and with having provoked him on top of it. An upbeat feeling after something like that isn't unheard of. Just... don't let it fool you into thinking it was a good idea."
"Mm," Amp says. "I need a sparring partner. Not one of the kids."
"Talk to Logan," Jean suggests, muffled somewhat as she leans deeper into the fridge. "He's as much of a challenge, but not inclined to kill and eat you."
Amp's grin gets a little predatory. "Good idea." She steps back from the door, and rolls her shoulders a little. "Anyway. You sure I gotta take a bunch of other kids with me when I go out to try to get laid tonight?' "
"I'd note that while the drive of biology towards mating is strong," says Jean, retreating from the fridge without a batted eye, but -with- what appears to be a leftover meal with her name on it, in Madame Vargas' aged handwriting. "The drive for conserving the species by staying alive and intact long enough to do so shouldn't be discounted. So yes. A group. Sorry if that cramps your style," she offers up, with a crook of her mouth and a bee-line for the microwave.
"Maybe I can get Jamie to come. He's a group! Bring his girlfriend, then I know they won't be tapping their feet waiting for the trip home." Amp chuckles. "Have fun," she says, of Jean's meal, and wanders out.
Jean is left with a reheating pork chop, a broken arm, and an expression caught somewhere between pain and bemusement. "-Safe- sex!" is called after Amp. And then Jean sits down to stare at the coffee maker and resolutely pretend she heard nothing of the last exchange.
Jean is broken. Amp is Amplike.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Monday, April 14, 2008, 5:30 PM
-----------------------------------------------------
=XS= The Garage - Xavier's School
This former carriage house turned garage features several separate rooms, separated by sliding wooden doors with small glass panes forming larger windows. The wooden doors and the beams of the high ceiling are of rich old oak, stained a dark colour by age. Gleaming white tile walls meet with a textured concrete floor, tinted a warm red and with a tile pattern pressed in place for added traction. The main area of the garage features a few benches set up for teaching class amongst the collection of engine lifts, wrnches, slider boards and lots and lots of grease. With the exception of the odd junker brought in here for the automotive class to learn on, the vehicles here consist of sleek black school SUVs and Professor Xavier's dignified old Rolls Royce, with occasional appearances by a motorcyle showing heavy signs of reengineering.
[This room is set watchable. Use alias XSGarage to watch here.]
[Exits : [O]utside]
Jean and a car are returning to the garage after a trip into the City. The car is -not- Jean's beloved Aston Martin. Leaving her forced to take a staid and respectable sedan (Even if it's a Lexus.) with automatic transmission rather than the standard of her own car is just another mark to chalk on Sabretooth's list of scores that need settling. Jean and her broken arm manage to park the car safely, and with a sudden absence of engine purr, the car is turned off. Jean sits for a moment, sighing and leaning back against the headrest with her eyes closed.
Where Jean is making her return, Logan is making preparations for leaving. Having stuck around just long enough to fulfill his obligations for today, his bike is being outfitted for what looks like a prolonged absence. A couple of packs have been strapped to the side stuffed to the brim. Also... there are chains. As Logan stands from tying ropes and securing buttons to take a look at the newly arived Lexus, he holds in his hands... a bear trap?
Jean's eyes open, and there's a reflexive flash of worry as she spots the bike and Logan in such a stair of readiness. Therefore, she takes an extra beat to get out of the car, and not just because of the casted arm, and doesn't speak until she's capable of leaning on the side of the Lexus and wondering, mostly-casually, "Are the reporters getting that pesky?"
"I'm going to get him, Red." Logan oaths, skipping the jokes this time and getting straight to the point. He wraps the trap and chain around the packs with a burn off of energy and secures them with a metal clip. "And when I bring him back, it will be in enough pieces that they won't be able to loose all of 'em this time." It doesn't sound as if he's exaggerating, either.
"Are you sure alone's the best way to do it?" wonders Jean, the levity bleeding away into a quiet, intent stare at the motorcycle, and very carefully not at its rider. "He's hoping for that. I mean... hell, the arm's a slightly more civilized equivalent of peeing on your tree, and god I'm glad he didn't do that literally."
As Jean's eyes avoid Logan, his eyes also avoid hers, his attention focused on getting the ride packed and over packed, the movements of fingers and ropes a good distraction. "I know, Jean, I know." he insist with some self directed frustration edging into his voice. "But if I don't, who's he gonna go after next? And after that? I can't let you pay for my mistakes, not you, and sure as hell not one of the kids."
"And what if it's not about your mistakes?" Jean asks, and a bit of tartness creeps into her tone. She stops leaning on the Lexus to pace around to the other side of the bike, sound arm crossed over the casted one. "The government had him. They let him loose, and from what I could sneak out of the DHS agent's stray thoughts, it was because they got stupid despite everything we and others had told them."
Somehow the thought that DHS just released one of the world's most dangerous sociopaths isn't very comforting to Logan. His hand curls tightly around the rope he was tightening for several seconds before he lets it go and stares blankly into his seat. "He was after me, Jean. As long as me being here puts you all at risk, it's my mistake." His voice rings of /that/ tone again. A familiar one.
The pulse of telekinesis that briefly shakes against the garage walls suggests that tone is all too familiar. Jean's good arm clutches at herself all the more tightly. "Logan... if you're planning any 'it's not safe to be close to me' speech," she warns darkly. "I don't care what Hank says about concussions, I'm going to bounce you on your pointy head all down the driveway!"
"What do you want me to do, Jean? Stay in here and let him get away with it?" Logan protests, if slightly shaken that Jean saw the speech coming before he did. "One way or the other, I've got to put a stop to this."
"Go out there, but not alone, you... you..." Hands flexing, Jean looks marginally less tense and worried as Logan protests rather than persisting. It appears to have been replaced by exasperation. "We want him taken down too, dammit!"
"He'll hurt you, hell Jean, he'll /kill/ you just to get to me." Logan points out with more than a sense of dread in his voice mind and heart. Leaving the bike, he paces closer to Jean with a posture less filled with anger, frustration, and the need of action, and more close to worried, nervous, and sincere. "I don't want to give him the chance."
"I'm a big girl, Logan," says Jean, even as her tone grows quieter and her good hand rubs idly at the wrapped plaster of her cast. At last, she lets herself look at him, her own eyes dark and the worry in them resurfacing. "And I'm an X-Man. I'm not with you because I need to be protected."
And something finds Logan's eyes that finds them a rare home: respect. There are compromises. "I'm going to go after him. I track better on my own." His words come out less harsh than the demands or protests he usually makes. "If I find him, I'll let you know. If you find him, let me know."
"Got it," says Jean, and that flash of worry disappears behind a businesslike nod, somewhat softened by her hand touching his arm to hold him up a moment as it then digs around in her purse to retrieve a keychain. "If he's in the City, I bet he's losing himself in Hell's Kitchen, maybe Harlem. Some place off the radar. Grab the flat over the clinic, if you need a place to hole up and you want it."
"Thanks, Red. I won't be gone long." Logan answers as he does wait at least long enough to collect the keys. His hand reaches out to hers to clasp over key chain and hand alike, giving what warmth the gesture can. "I promise."
Jean's hand finds Logan's jacket once she's handed off the keys, and pulls him in for a kiss that's a firm and heated avowal of that promise. Her lips linger near his as she murmurs a reply of "I'm holding you to that."
Logan is off to hunt Creed. Yes, the bear trap is necessary.