Stalkers, shoes, stargazing and the social progression of an Amp.
From: drgrey@x-school.edu
To: STAFF@x-school.edu
Subject: Tim's Stalker
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I took Tim into town to do some clothing shopping, and he picked out the man who'd been following him from the crowd. I then decided to use the fact that I'm now known to be a telepath and therefore frightening to corner him and tease a few answers out of him. (And may I just say that I'm glad I didn't actually have to go poking around his mind. I'm sure it would have left me nothing good.) I also suggested we'd prefer it if he'd leave Tim alone, although I somehow doubt he'll take my advice.
Kitty, look into the name "Austin Stone", if you get a moment? He's a licensed P.I. that Detective Hall has apparently hired with some sob story about being separated from his son through the evil machinations of CPS and our mutant mind control program here at Xavier's. I think he honestly believes the detective, but there's still something that just didn't sit right with me about him.
I've told Tim who his stalker is, and who likely hired him. I'm going to be passing this news on up to Deborah Anders with CPS, since she's been working Tim's case and I've been keeping her informed of these recent developments. I think Detective Hall probably won't be all that happy about that, but... be it on his head.
Jean
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X-Men: Movieverse 3 - Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 9:51 PM
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It's middle of the second day of parent-teacher interviews, and Jean has given up on her office for settings that actually involve fresh air. Thus, as the Prentiss position on the list is reached, the day finds her having laid claim to a set of stone benches and a table to match in the midst of the mansion's Victoria gardens. The laptop that shares table space with a file folder and a tea service is decidedly modern, however.
Major John Prentiss looks a little confused as to the directions he was given to find his appointment, but he follows them without hesitation, striding out in the garden, and then changing direction to Jean when he notices her. He is in uniform, apparently feeling the need to be respectfully formal for this visit, and he comes to stand before the other woman. "Hello, Dr. Grey."
Jean rises from her seat, dislodging a rather grumpy specimen of local tabby cat, who had found the combination of soft foot and sunlight irresistable. Heartless Jean pays the bristling feline no mind, her eyes steady on John Prentiss' face and warm as her smile as she greets him. "Major Prentiss. I'm glad you were able to make it... and glad that Allison managed to get the directions straight. Tea or coffee?"
"Coffee, thank you." John offers a hand to shake, a very firm grip, and then seats himself. "My wife was sorry she couldn't make it, but getting the time off work--" He frowns.
Jean's own hand is likewise firm, if tempered slightly, and the clasp attenuated with a telepath's nigh-subconscious distaste for too much contact. Her manner remains warm, however, even as she sits back down to pour the coffee and hum briefly at the news. "Understandable," she assures. "You're not the only parent to have to travel, and not everyone can send both parents for a single weekend. Cream or sugar?"
"Sugar." John watches her dispense it with a focused attention, hands resting on the table. "I rather hoped--" He sighs. "Amy feels the tenuousness of our relationship much more deeply than I do. I think she hoped to be able to speak to Honor more in person."
"Summer will soon be upon us, at least," Jean offers, lifting the little pot of sugar cubes with a silently interrogative eyebrow. One lump, or two? "And judging from her academics, there will be absolutely no need for summer classes. Even when she's moody she's one of our better students."
"And she's moody fairly often?" John makes a little go on gesture, until two lumps are dumped in. There's a dry note to his voice.
"It comes and goes. Some of it is typical teenager mapped to her own personal experiences," Jean reflects, adding four lumps to her own coffee, and eschewing cream. "Some of it is from trying to get her personal experiences to map to typical teenager. And some of it is PTSD, or something very much like it. But she's coping, in her own way."
"It reminded me a lot of that." John accepts his coffee, but just looks at his hand on the cup for a while. "Especially her nightmares. I certainly know plenty of good air force shrinks. But she doesn't talk to us as it is, I assume she'll bolt if I mention it."
"I find she tends to speak more when there's a silence, if a comfortable one. Bursts of information or a question, like she's seizing the moment." Jean stares at her coffee as well, but also plucks up one of the tiny, delicate silver spoons that mark this as the -good- tea service, and lets the bell-tinkle of metal and china take the conversation for a time. "She's had a bit of a hard time with intrapersonal issues, this year. Teenaged boys, particularly those with money and insecurities, have an unfortunate ability to be complete assholes, if you'll pardon my crudeness." Because military officers have -never- heard swearing.
John sits up a little straighter. "Is she dating?" Then he forces relaxation a little to sip his coffee. "I admit, I hoped maybe she'd confided in you or someone at the school, who might have some insight about what we can do to make her happier, if not open up more."
"No. I think she tends to view the boys her age as the boys they are. Younger than her... which I can see," Jean admits, with a little crook of her mouth. "She does seem to be friends, or at least friendly, with Jeremy, although things were understandably a little odd at first. I would say she's probably closest friends with Autumn Clarke. Otherwise, she's gotten quite self-contained." Her mouth goes more crooked still at this, and the admission of "I wish she wasn't, but I suppose as long as there's -someone- who's allowed in..."
"Ah." John grimaces in turn. "I gather there was some boy she loved in...the other place. I wondered if she was still grieving over that." He sips his coffee. "No more shattered eardrums?"
"Mr. Kinches still is the last holder of that dubious honor... not that I entirely blame her, although that does -not- get passed on," Jean advises, with a dark flash of a smile. "I think that, plus butting heads with our new math teacher, may be why she's so... contained. She's walking the line, and very careful not to go over. It would be nice if she'd let herself enjoy it here, but I suspect she feels like she's just doing her time."
"Our few conversations have...had that tone. Staying under the cops' radar, as it were." John sighs once more. "If only there was some situation she /would/ enjoy--" He hesitates. "You run a fine school, but the associations are very bad for her, it seems. But bringing her home would be even worse."
"I want to encourage her on to higher education... and at the same time, that's what Honor had her eye on." With a slightly frustrated, slightly resigned spread of her hands Jean sums it up with the immortal words "Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It would be a shame to have her waste the intelligence she's so obviously blessed with. And she's fiercely loyal and protective of the people she's decided are hers to look out for. There's a definite ideal of service there, if selectively so."
"I think she might do well in the forces. I know plenty of people who would kill for someone with her intelligence, but of course Honor is--was--registered..." John's face says rather blank, keeping his opinion of that hidden, even somewhat from himself.
"And even if she weren't... there isn't the best associations with the military in that head of hers. Although," Jean muses, with an odd expression, "In that world I'd apparently opted to throw in with -Magneto- and she still is all right with me here. Associations can be overcome. Prejudices from the other side... Intel, perhaps? Irregulars that they are."
A small smile touches John's lips. "For a given value of all right. I think you very much have the reputation of the disciplinarian. I think she might like a--Dr. McCoy I think she said once? It was a passing reference. I was hoping to perhaps talk to him while I was out here." He looks back at his hand. "But she has been behaving, you said? I know you'd call us for anything serious, but--"
"Considering the alternatives, I'll take 'does not attempt to stab me' as a very large value indeed," says Jean, with an erratic flash of humour. "As for Hank, check downstairs in the lab. Just look for the brilliant man who also happens to have a very striking physical mutation. And for a given value of behaving..." she adapts John's quote, "She has been."
"Ah. Well. I suppose she's still fighting against Honor's reputation. I wonder if it might not be a fear of hers, to be expected to be her." John seems much more calmed by being able to hold his coffee than drink it. It is rapidly going cold. "Is there anything the school needs us to do?"
"Just keep on keeping on," is Jean's suggestion. "And... take her out and away for the weekend. Not that you need our encouragement for that, I suppose."
John nods, but he finishes with a frown. "I worry Amy spoils her, when we do that. Lavishing presents on her. Even I find myself doing that. At least she looks /happy/ when you give her things."
"Given the circumstances she came from, I suspect a little atavism isn't unexpected. Professor Munroe, when she first came here as a girl, had some odd adjustments to things. Stole my silver charm bracelet my father'd given me," Jean reminisces, with a curve to her lips. "And explained that one could buy a week's bread, or some meat with it. Completely pampered American thirteen year old that I was, I recall being completely baffled."
"Is it dangerous to indulge it, though?" John asks. "She's never stolen from us, but I sometimes wonder if giving her so much she can finally relax and stop grasping after everything might not be the way to go."
"The problem is that it can't be the only solution. If having possessions is the only way of feeling secure, then you can never have enough," Jean answers, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and sipping slowly from her coffee cup at last. "It treats the symptom, rather than the root pathology, and Charles is the psychologist, not I. You might want to include him on your list of faculty stops."
"That's what I wondered," John admits. "Well. Nothing is ever so easy." He looks off out into the garden, marshalling whatever other questions he had. "I should thank you again, for setting up her identity. As odd as it's been explaining the 'twins' to family and friends."
"Better than 'Honor from a reality diverged three years back in the timestream from our own,' at least," suggests Jean, with a crooked smile indeed. "But you're welcome. Is there anything else I can clear up for you, or help with?"
"Wave your a magic wand and give us Honor back as remember her?" A low chuckle. "Though--she could be such a strong young woman, in a different way than Honor could...I feel I have much more in common with her than she does with her mother. It was the reverse, with Honor. She hasn't said a word about the boy she had there, to Amy." He shrugs. "Time. Heals all wounds."
"I -could- share my memories of her with you," says Jean, looking bittersweet for a moment before she turns her face away to study the roses. "Maybe some day I will. But I'm glad that Amp has the both of you. She... don't let any prickles fool you into thinking she doesn't pretty desperately want family."
"She does?" John snorts at himself. "We know that. But I suppose it helps to hear it from an outsider." He finally pushes away his cold, unfinished coffee, prepartory to standing. "Amp. I must remember to think of her that way, so I don't slip up. She hates that."
"I admit I have an unfair advantage on that score," says Jean the telepath with a crooked smile and a tap to her temple. "They're very different when you can use the mind's eye. But feel free to swing by if you have any late-breaking questions, Major."
John stands, giving her a respectful bow of the head. "Thank you. For all your and the school's work with her, especially. We couldn't have reached her ourselves."
"If she hadn't had your raising before things went to hell for her, I don't think there would have been anything left to be reached." With a rise from her seat, Jean offers up a solemn nod, and a last handshake to match.
Backdated parent-teacher conference!
> (Xavier)'>
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, May 29, 2008, 12:06 AM
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=XS= Back Patio and Swimming Pool - Xavier's School
The patio is a mixture of grades of cobblestone, flanked with a few flowering bushes and other flora along the outside edges. Its footprint is in the space between the wings of the mansion where the glass walls of the arboretum leave off. A grill and picnic table rests to the side, just under the ledge of the house's roof. The area just outside the kitchen leads to a large pool area. Landscaped with slate around the edges instead of poured concrete, the pool is sloped with both a shallow end and deep end with enough depth for a diving board. A circular in-ground jacuzzi bubbles invitingly just off the shallow end. Chairs and white chaise lounges line along the pool, and a hammock is strung up between two maple trees.
[Exits : [G]arden [P]ath, [C]lassroom and [A]rboretum, and [K]itchen]
Exams are in the air, and the young astronomers of Xavier's School have been sprung a not-quite-surprise bonus quiz, owing to clear nights and the darkness of the countryside. All around the back of the school a small thicket of six telescopes has grown, each manned by a pair of students happily indulging in breaking curfew in the name of science and the finding of as many constellations and their coordinates as possible within a time period. Their appointed keeper has no telescope to aid her stargazing, but Jean sits snugged up in a lawn chair all the same, on the very fringes of the out-spilling glow from the kitchens and with a blanket to stave off the spring dew.
He is aged, but not decrepit. The same vitality that holds its own in the face of overeager teenagers sends Charles Xavier out into the night, garbed less formally than his wont: a black turtleneck sweater; grey wool slacks; expensive Italian shoes. The wheelchair provides heat in any case, a touch of Forge utility that leaves a curious trail of steam behind it. Some questions are best not asked.
<< A pop quiz? >> Humorous approval skates across Jean's mind, a substitute for greeting.
<< I learned from a master of the art. >> floats back Jean's greeting in turn, a bright gloss of red hair shifting in amongst the MacTaggart plaid blanket engulfing the lawn chair, and an over-the-shoulder smile gleaming just as bright in the shadows of the light's edge. << And Saturn is visible to the southeast... if they can all agree on what direction that is. >> Her own eyes cast skyward, but track a different quadrant altogether, seeking celestial bodies less fixed in their orbits and as yet invisible to sight. Asteroids tumble lazily across the surface of her mind, thick in density as they are in film, if not in reality.
There's an old game involving asteroids. The thought tickles, vagrant, through the image -- an idea born in her generation's memories, and conveyed by another's nostalgia. Rare for Charles to be so flippant. A little pixelated spacecraft spits a laser bolt at one of the asteroids (pew! pew!) and then dissolves into a deprecating smear. << A pleasant notion, >> he observes, leaving it to her to interpret his meaning. << Practical application is a better way of teaching than most. A pity it does not apply to English Literature. >>
<< Perhaps if we let Forge fulfil his lifelong dream of building a superlaser. >> Jean suggests, her amusement paired with a silvery mental laugh with overtones of jingling arcade quarters. Her asteroids promptly pixellate in turn, and then wink out one by one, leaving a darkened starfield, but not nearly a void. Out on the back lawn there is a sudden flurry of discussion. A UFO? A comet? No. An angle on one window of the girl's dorms. "I remind you that any moons recorded must be -celestial- in nature." Jean calls aloud from her nest of plaid, subsiding with amusment flickering over her mind like an aurora, here and then gone. << Dramatic readings and plays are, alas, the best you can do there. >> she agrees vis-a-vis the literature, before a change of thought ripples across her mind. << Charles, are the universities going to accept them? >> By the inflection of the thought, it is not the campfires and songs meaning of the word she choses.
Charles says mildly, << I haven't the faintest notion. But there are options outside of the United States, if it comes to that. >> There is a certain flatness in the reply, an underpinning of ruthlessness that is oddly placed, as though borrowed from one thought and applied to another. A wry note curls over it, like a cat's flipped tail. << I am not so bereft of friends that I cannot find them places in Oxford, for instance. And there are other options for those who prefer something closer. Canada, I'm told, has some schools. One or two. >>
The wheelchair completes its path across the patio, descending the ramp to come to a halt beside Jean's seat.
<< Harvard and Johns Hopkins still seem proud of me, >> Jean agrees. << Or at least enjoy the notoriety of my guest lectures. >> The pair of schools are slid into the deck of Xavier's options with a conjurer's subtle touch. << But I admit our second wave of students isn't doing all that well out here. I think Jackson Holland has spent more time out of school than in it. Piotr's struggled. Jubilee and Rogue are all right out on the West Coast, but went through Hell here. >> A bubble of private amusement surrounds this news, coloured with memories of cheerful Jubilee wake-up calls on the heels of slamming cell doors.
Light slants off of deep-set eyes that are hazel in the day; transparent at night. << We make it a little too easy for them, I'm afraid, >> Charles murmurs, looking out across the lawn and the clusters of students, busied with their telescopes and their arguments. Age pulls at him in profile, his jowls and throat sagging over the high lip of his turtleneck. << The ones who leave -- truly leave -- do well enough. It's the ones who stay in the nest-- >>
<< The nest may need to fill up again, temporarily. >> Pricked by the needle of recent memory, the amused bubble vanishes, leaving the darkened starfield across the surface of Jean's mind. << I'm pointing the lawyers at the current sign campaign to see about -some- sort of cease-and-desist, but if mutants are outed and hounded because of CPAM, we may need to pull them out and give them a place to lay low. >> Little mental tallies run, of just how -many- can be stowed in various places in the City, in the mansion itself. A tangent runs towards the barns, and stops. Haylofts are not comfortable. << I don't suppose we could convince them to hurry the asteroid up a bit and give the panicky sorts something real to panic over? >>
Dry practicality answers, a pragmatic cover for a less arid dismay over the prospect of invaders, sheltered or no. << I think the asteroid will come all too soon for all our comfort, even without the encouragement. >> Charles curls his hands around the arms of his chair, the long fingers still graceful for all the bony knuckles and tapestry of veins under parchment skin. << Still, I fail to see why tit for tat should not be a tool in our arsenal, when it comes to the signs -- though not, perhaps, on the windward side of ethics. >>
<< I admit, >> Jean confesses, and worms a little deeper into her so-sadly-free-of-Forge-enhancements lawn chair and blanket. << The thought had crossed my mind. And as we do have a rather tech-savy adult pyrokinetic who comes here for the odd lesson from me... >> Against the star field, a dossier flashes up, Elliott's name and particulars delivered in a tidy package for consideration. ("The problem with assembling your witch hunt electronically is that it leaves traces.") << She'll be finding us some names. >> The hubbub of students grows more pronounced at one end of the telescop cluster. Saturn! Rings! It hushes abruptly as the rules of the exercise are remembered, but more than a few nearby telescopes begin tentatively swinging to match the angles of the lucky pair.
<< And mutation is not the only inconvenient condition at liberty in the population. Nor are mutants the only subjects of database registration. Even if the faces on the flyers are not, strictly speaking, real, they would certainly rouse more vocal and politically powerful opposition. >> The corners of Charles's eyes crinkle; the faint traces of a chuckle corrugate around the mental voice, sighing without breath. Imagine, says knowledge without words. Flyers for the STD-infected. Flyers for homosexuals. Flyers for racial minorities.
<< It's a shame we can't put up flyers warning for gross stupidity. >> Jean's mind and body alike echo a gusty, regretful little sigh. The latter causes heads to bob up and look over all along the telescope ribbon. Teenagers, like kittens, are curious beasties.
Says Charles, tartly, << I fail to see why not. In the past ten years, simple human stupidity has accounted for far more deaths than the sum total of mutantkind combined. >> His gaze turns tranquilly across the field of upturned faces, one thick eyebrow rising in polite, if dampening, enquiry.
<< True, >> says Jean, with laughter twinkling the stars of her mind. << The difficulty would be in picking only a handful of faces. If we wished to indicate that the condition is universal, I could recommend the Times Square Tornadist. I got to see him briefly, you know. >>
<< Did you? >> It is academic curiosity that brings the bulk of Charles's attention back, a fragment of that powerful mind sectioned off for a quiet, private word with one of the students on the lawn. The lad flushes -- the change of color visible even in the darkness -- and turns away hastily to fumble with his fly. Oops. << And? >>
<< He happened to have the cell a little ways down from mine, while Ororo and I were cooling our stylish activist bootheels. >> With the fait of the Bay Horse visit now comfortably accompli, Jean's earlier don't-tell-Charles decision has been revoked. << He was nicely sedated and only there until he could be transported, of course, but the Sentinel suits do seem to be able to non-lethally subdue a person without serious harm. >>
Charles's voice waxes dry again. << A fact which is certain to reconcile Erik to them, I'm sure. >> His own feelings, blocked off from empathy's flutter, are ambiguous beyond the mental voice, itself limited on this one subject to the sparsity available of the spoken one. << I take it that you had very little opportunity of conversing with the young fool, then? >>
<< He was, alas, thoroughly unconscious. I got more out of chatting with the duty officer. Good man, >> is Jean's verdict, assigned to the officer in question. Coffee scents the edges of the memory-picture, hinting at what, besides conversation, has earned the man this encomium. << The Sentinel suits were definitely talk of the room, even if they do seem to have come out of no-where. >>
Dissatisfaction crimps around the thought of that 'no-where,' stretching starfish legs into a quieter realm of unease. << I admit I find that fact disturbing, >> Charles observes, sinking back in his seat to nurse his hands in the warmer cradle of his lap, one thumb idly rubbing friction heat into the back of the other. << It is unlike us to be so ill-informed -- and even more unlike Erik to be taken by surprise. If, that is, he was taken by surprise. I should ask. If not him, Emma. >>
<< I don't mind the suits themselves. Used responsibly, they'll help the NYPD a great deal. It's the out of the blue. >> Jean reflects, and shivers slightly despite her coccoon of plaid. << If -Emma- doesn't know, I'll have to keep an eye out for four horsemen. But on the other hand, she -was- sending out teams of college-aged plane hijackers just a few years ago. If she knew, one would wonder why she didn't stop it. >>
<< One would, >> Charles says, and if he was dry before, he is arid desert now. Inappropriate amusement glints in the antechamber of his mind, roused untimely by the subject and its very gravity. << I believe I should ask her. She is better tempered than Erik, though this is hardly an encomium. >>
<< Around you, that is. >> Jean notes, her own mind dialing down the empathic spill to keep her feelings on Emma to herself. While this scarcely hides history, it at least spares Charles having to overhear it all again.
Charles actually chuckles at this, aloud, a low, pleasant sound like the tumble of river stones disturbed by a passing current. Memory flicks across, shared with an odd quirk of satisfaction: the roar of awesome power, and the flattening of the same. Context, like emphatic spill, remains a thing left unexplored. << Not, >> he says with something akin to pleasure, << that you would notice. >>
<< Having adventures, Charles? >> wonders Jean, catching the amusement and the pleasure and her own mind warming in a dusty ray of sunshine in response to it. Thought-heat does little to warm toes chilling steadily away in the midnight air of what is still a spring night, but Jean wriggles them and pulls them in against her blankets before calling a "Ten minutes!" to the young astronomers.
The older telepath blinks solemnly, the twinkle in his eyes hinted at through the wisp of humor unspooled between them. The light itself is too dim to make it clear to vision. << At my age, one does not have 'adventures,' my dear. >> Another chuckle, this one shared in the private recesses of the mind. Charles touches fingers to his control panel, unlocking the brakes with a flick of a nail. << One has -- enriching experiences. >>
<< Ah, >> comes Jean's laughing reply, filial fondness woven tight within it, despite the adult mind that forms the loom. << Duly noted. But still... better you than I, to speak to her. I'll content myself with keeping ties with Bahir al-Razi... did I tell you he's giving his thesis defense soon? >>
<< They grow up so quickly, >> Charles murmurs with irony. Not a sentiment to be shared with the prickly pear of the al-Razi duo, to be sure. His mouth curves towards a smile that is not shared by the quieting surface of his thoughts. << It is a pity, in some ways. >> Two comments, unrelated in reality, though possibly tied together by inference. A glimpse of Hellfire spindle-twists through his mind's threads, then disappears, stitched back into silence. Lightly, aloud, he adds, "I should go inside before your students do. I don't fancy competing with their equipment through the door."
<< I'll be attending, of course. Former lab boss's privilege... and I suspect that of the current Court, only their King could understand what's special. >> The image of Magneto in disguide to attend a thesis defense is considered, abandoned, revived with the addition of alcohol to the image, and then considered further as Jean rises to her feet. "I'll hold them off until you've cleared the south pass," she promises, with a crook of her mouth. "And I believe Madame Vargas has dispatched a minion to have hot chocolate ready for them. One mug is likely for you, by now."
It is a thought that engages Charles's interest: not the hot chocolate, but Erik's possible interest in the thesis. Disguise. Anonymity. The oblivion of onlookers? "Quite likely," he says, resignation sharing shoulder space with affection for the dictatorial cook. The wheelchair hums; the Professor turns back towards the patio and entry. "I will have to see if we have any marshmallows left. For your students, that is. Don't stay out too late, Jean. You'll grow quite tired of skygazing before it's all over."
Stargazing students and catching up.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, May 29, 2008, 8:27 PM
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=NYC= Manhattan Mall - Midtown - Manhattan
Keeping with an 'open concept' idea, the Sunrise Mall sports a large front lobby area - complete with a massive fountain located smack dab in the middle - its spray shooting up towards cathedral ceilings. Behind the fountain are tall, marble pillars that flank either side of dual escalators, their whiteness broken-up by ornamental circuits of bronze and brass. Those adornments match the rest of the decor, from the railings along the second floor patio, down to the new-age style benches lining the corridors that split off from the foyer. Everything looks so very shiny and new, though it's certain that it won't stay that way for long; especially after the swarms of teenagers have settled in.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Tim ]
There is a noticeable change in Tim's attitude the second he sets foot into New York. An extra little spring forms in his step, his usual friendly smile is just a little more honest, and that little nagging fear in the back of his head gets just a little quieter. This is his city. This is home. Here he is Timothy Hall Jr., 15, instead of Tim the invisible boy. While Tim didn't /technically/ run for the car when this trip was mentioned, he didn't exactly hesitate. The strong mental flashes coming from his direction of giant creme filled cookie sandwiches and the soft smell of vanilla probably had something to do with it. He stick close to Jean as he weaves through the crowd, his short stature causing more than the occasional passer-by to bump into him without noticing even without being invisible. "Sorry." he mumbles after one. "Excuse me." after the other.
Jean has perhaps done a little canny planning of the trip to favour maximum time shopping and minimum time spent sitting around eating unhealthy but delicious foods, but there's a merry twinkle in her eyes as she takes the lead in their passage through the mall, cutting the crowds both with height and striking looks, and very occasionally with being recognized for who she is. -That- tends to cause a notable bubble of space around them both. "So," she wonders of Tim. "Any favourite clothing stores?"
"Uhm... not really?" Tim answers kindly, but not helping. With a soft grin on his face, he continues to plod along, socked toes revealing themselves. Each time a Jean bubble forms, Tim shrinks back behind, every lapse in anonymity sparking just a touch of fear that is forgotten completely the instant they move away. "I... usually just get my clothes from thrift stores and stuff... if there's a Goodwill in here..." This small admission though comes at the cost of some embarrassment to the teen.
"Not so much in -this- mall," is Jean's prediction, looking around the gleaming and polished bastion to capitalist consumerism that it is. As the infrequent bubbles occur, her expression alternates between initial subdual and swiftly following setting of her shoulders and chin, and a gleam in her eye as she strides forward all the more boldly. But the gleam softens a little as she looks back at Tim, her smile a more gentle one. "If you want to shop at Goodwill because you like the clothing better, that's one thing. But while CPS isn't covering enough for a head-to-toe wardrobe from Hot Topic," (Which, given Tim's, ah, shape is probably just as well.) "I think Old Navy and the like are well within budget. You deserve some new stuff."
And the cookie stand is spotted. To Tim's credit, he doesn't veer over in that direction at the glimpse of it, even if it does steal his eyes for quite a while. Instead, he forces his eyes away to dance from store to store. "I guess that sounds good, then." he agrees with a growing smile. He picks up the edge of his shirt and fans it in the air. "Just... gotta find a store with some of these..." The mention of the flannel shirt, his constant companion and apparent favorite article of clothing... isn't loving in the least.
The crowd has many faces. What's one more? A safe distance behind a blond man finishes paying for a large buttered pretzel. Just another face in the crowd, blue jeans and a jogging shirt decorated with large mirrored sunglasses and a red baseball cap. His eyes linger on the pair as they walk by, and after taking a giant bite out of the pretzel, he turns to follow, a nice /safe/ distance behind. Much the same way he followed the pair here on the drive over.
"If there aren't any of those to be found new, I know a few good vintage places... although the idea that 90s grunge is now considered 'vintage'." Jean takes a moment to sigh and shake her head at the vagaries of time and the impertinance of it for passing. "Shoes," she reflects. "We'll need to get you some of those too. Here, try in here," she directs, spotting a shoe store that passes some undefined test for Deserves Patronage. Another Jean-bubble forms, the first in ten minutes, although this one is more from curiousity than alarm. A young woman staring over her shoulder as she walks past nearly trips over their casual shadow.
"I... guess we gotta get shoes, huh... Well, if they recommend any... we aren't buying those." Tim decides with a sharp nod as they wheel their way in. The curious and then tripping girl does catch Tim's attention, and he does his best not to laugh as the man almost drops his pretzel in the floor because of it. But then... something in the boy's eyes shifts, and the little hamster in his head slowly steps onto the wheel. Something... something... no, not quiet yet. He shakes his head and returns his attention to the shoes again. "Whatever we get, it can't be /too/ heavy. Its gonna get really really hot for me again soon, and I don't wanna pass out again."
<< Everything all right? >> is the quiet murmur from Jean's mind to Tim's at the shift of his mind's shape from shopping to preparatory-hamster. Aloud, she merely chuckles, and assures that "I'll personally inspect any shoes myself," before waving him into the store space ahead of her. It being one of the myriad unisex shoe stores out there, Jean's own eye is soon apparently caught by a display of leather boots with heels that her height makes truly unnecessary.
This may not be a thrift store, but some habits are hard to break. While a pair of white leather sneakers with enough ridges and aerodynamics to take orbit does catch his eye for a moment... he instead veers towards the front clearance table. << Its... >> Tim tries to think back, but instead just shakes his head and talks the old fashioned guy, in a quiet voice. "That guy back there... I dunno... kinda looked familiar, maybe. Its nothing."
"If you like those first ones, go on and check them out," Jean encourages, doing her part to be a speedbump in the road of habit, although she abandons her study of expensive leather boots to go follow Tim to the clearance table as well, all the better to speak more quietly. "Just point him out to me anyways," she requests. "If it really -is- nothing, I'll know soon enough."
Tim has already yanked out one of the boxes in his size, the black fake leather shoes inside have a cheap price tag, but they are cheap made as well. These would soon be just as useless at the pair Tim's currently wearing. Jean's urging causes Tim to turn around, though, and it takes the kid more than a minute to scan the crowd again. Unfortunately he takes Jean's suggestion literally and points to the man pretending not to watch the pair from the other side of an island selling cell phone cases in plastic bags. "That one, with the hat and glasses like Mr. Summers wears." No, no where near the same quality or brand, not that Tim would know.
Jean is somewhat of an older hand at these games than Tim, in that she doesn't immediately and obviously stare after the pointing hand. Instead she lifts one hand to gently pinch the bridge of her nose, and opts to open her mind instead, listening for who's going to be alarmed by being pointed out. "I see... and do you like the style of those shoes?"
<< Shi-- did fat ass spot me? >> Is the slightly panicked pulse that does indeed come from mind of their shy new friend. Though his voice is far from the only one flooding the area, nor the only one reacting to Tim's finger including a couple of << Huh, me? >>s and a rather frightned female worrying << Don't be a narc, kid, its just a CD, I'm not getting arrested for fucking Norah Jones. >> Tim himself? Mostly thinking of the cookie, though the hamster is trying to insist he's seen the guy somewhere before... "... I dunno. I mean, its just a pair of shoes, right? But... they don't look comfortable."
<< Put that back right -now-, young lady. >> is the response Jean does give to the enterprising shoplifter, not bothering to look up from the shoes for all that her voice rings clearly between the young woman's ears for a moment before vanishing. Outwardly, and in part, Jean's attention is on the shoes, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and holding out a hand for them with directions of "Let me show you some tricks for telling good quality shoes." Inwardly, silently. she sticks a small marker-flag to the surface of the watcher's mind, for easy tracking. Such responses bear watching.
More than a little startled by the new voice in her head, the thief listens clearly to her much more forceful conscience and sets the CD back down with a nervous motion and turns to walk away. Point, Jean. Tim's eyes turn curious and he hands the shoes over more than eager to learn a new lesson. "Alright, Dr. Grey. Didn't know there was a difference."
Their friend shakes off the make and just resettles in his watchful perch. << What'm I worried about. Kid's dense as a damp cinder bloc.k >>
"Oh, a huge difference," Jean assures, and if there's a hint of satisfaction in her expression as the CD thief mends their ways it's a brief flash, soon buried in a lesson about stitching quality, the role of adhesives, the thickness of material, the reinforcement of lace eyelets, and the structural support of the soles. The cheap black shoes end up as negative examples in many a category. "In conclusion," says Jean, with a twinkle in her eyes, "You generally get what you pay for. Why don't you check out that aisle down there?" she suggests. "I'll just be up here communing with those boots I saw." << And keeping an eye on things. >>
Concern lights the face of their tail as Tim shifts out of view. He sets down the plastic cellphone belt clip that he had shifted to pretending he was interested in, and steps a little closer to the store, eyes glancing sideways from behind sunglasses to try and catch sight of the lad while at the same time pretending to be interested in a pair of men's boots in the front display from outside.
"Find a pair that you like, and that you think will be comfortable," Jean bids with a smile. "After all, it's your feet they'll be on." Watching the watcher, she meanders along the displays as Tim heads out of immediate line of sight, and positions herself so that the new line is obscured as well. Humming tunelessly under her breath, she pores over a collection of Spider-Man shoes sized for tiny boy feet, and considers Nate's shoe situation as she considers Tim's stalker.
"Damnit." is her oh so kind greeting from the man in the not so yellow hat. The words are mumbled from the other side of the glass and they are soon joined with more. "...she can't stick by the kid all damn night... c'mon fatty, go get a cupcake or somethin'" His hands go to his pocket, rolling an object of some kind through his fingers as he considers the boots almost in earnest at this point. But as long as Tim is out of sight, he's continuing this little stalemate.
Jean considers the Spider-Man shoes, considers a pair with Batman instead, and is then ostensibly distracted by a pair that have no superheros at all on them, featuring Bob the Builder instead, but make up for this with light-up action when walked with. She smiles once to herself, perhaps a little more of a huntress's grin than is appropriate for shoe shopping (At least without deep discount sales on, anyways.) and lets her mind murmur over to Tim's. << Your instincts were right, Tim. You just keep on looking at shoes, I'll be right back. >> Moving casually for the cash with shoes in hand, she seems in no outward hurry to pounce.
Having caught a glimpse of the tumbling Tim, the mysterious strange cracks a grin and lets out a good laugh quite confident in the glass between them to muffle it. However, spotting shoes being payed for, he decides its time to give the pair some space again and turns to walk down the hall. As he does, though, something is slipped from the pocket and slowly worked up the inside of his sleeve. Something small and plastic, with a nice sharp metal end.
Blessings on the fine and holy MasterCard express pass. A tap of her credit card, and the shoes are bagged, leaving Jean free to slip into the main hall of the mall again. There are no bubbles of recognition this time, and not only because of how little time passes: the minds surrounding Jean simply take little notice of her passage, encouraged by the touch of one of her Somebody Else's Problem fields. Long legs stretch themselves, and the keen attention usually used for squeezing her car into improbable gaps in traffic is now put to the test of slotting herself in beside the unknown man. She favours him with a bright smile. "Hi."
To say that this is unexpected would be one heck of an understatement. While the sunglasses manage to hide most of the physical cues that the 'stalker' was just scared senseless, the mental pulse of adrenaline is much harder to hide. Still, he keeps his cool enough give her a smile of his own and return the "Hi." Though his is much less bright, more cautious. His feet change directions and he attempts a casual walk away. The object in his hand is fed even higher up his sleeve.
"Oh, don't walk away," Jean encourages, tone still quiet and bright, but with an edge beneath it. She, of a height with many a man, simply matches strides and directions with him. "You see, we've got so much to talk about, and I'm pretty sure you'd rather not have the police involved."
"I don't know what the fuck your talking about lady, and its pretty obvious I didn't shove a pair of sneakers up my shirt, so if you're with mall security, get lost." Playing dumb til the end, he at least has plays the part enough to turn to face her with his claims of ignorance and innocence.
What faces him back is a coldly restrained fire in green eyes, and the elegant planes of a face entirely composed and entirely lacking in amusement. "You know who I am," Jean says, simply and quietly. "Which means that you know what I am, as well. Do you want to continue making yourself look like a fool as well as a predator?"
"Yeah, I know /what/ you are." The man regards Jean with a certain slant of the word reserved for dirt, scum, and telemarketers. "So I take it this is the part where you tell me to 'Stay away from your school.' but you aren't the first one to try and scare me off a story, you won't be the last, and I'm guessn' it'll end the same as the others. Me getting what... I... want." The lie is well delivered, practiced, and backed up by the edge of listening in on the speculations of exactly who or what he is. His smirk taunts jean from beneath the mirrored lenses, and he does his best to completely hide the fact that the look she just gave him nearly made him wet himself.
"Actually," says Jean with a smile that doesn't dislodge the look from her eyes. "I highly doubt you're a reporter, since you're so very focused on a single student of mine. I'd prefer not to go looking to find out just -what- you are, since I suspect my mind will benefit nothing from contact with yours. Seat?" she indicates, nodding towards a metal bench between a pair of thoroughly-trimmed mall trees in pots. Somehow, it's not quite an offer.
"Every story has to have a spin on it." Again the delivery is near spotless, and he pushes the last bastions of outward fear from his poster and movements, even if not his mind. "'Mutant school brainwashes cops son, turns him against father.'" he quotes, penning the letters hastily in the air as he paces over towards the bench. "I think it has a nice ring to it, don't you? I take it this is my chance for an interview?"
"This is your chance to stop lying... although you're being nicely revealing in the lies you choose," Jean notes, tipping her chin and taking a seat only after he's sat first. "Incidentally, I don't have to read your thoughts to tell when you're being truthful, just to explain things. It's like body language. So, Detective Hall. He hired you?" she wonders, folding her hands on her knees and leaning forward with a posture conversational and interested, and her eyes giving the lie to the outward ease.
"So what if the story won't make print." The man answers, shifting from one leg to the other. "Doesn't make it any less true. Hell, maybe I will send it in. Who do you think they'll get to play me in the movie?" His hand reaches up to pull the ball cap off his head, revealing a short blond cut. "Lets just say I'm often hired by concerned parents who need help getting their sons and daughters back where they belong." This story, at least, is true as far as the investigator knows it.
As the cap comes off, and as the truth-as-he-knows-it is given, Jean eases a little bit, the alarming intensity of her eyes lessening, leaving them simply alert. "That's not a bad job," she reflects. "Rewarding, I imagine. Although... did you get any details on the situation from anyone other than Detective Hall? I could offer you some perspectives."
"Oh, I'm real sure it'll be very convincing." the investigator answers with enough sarcasm to drown the Sahara. "You think fat ass is the first kid I've had to get out of a foster home? Kid falls down a few times, clumsy as hell, or takes a few beatings at school and the next thing you know CPS is filing charges and they end up at places like yours. Add in the fact that the kid's a freak and a mind reader into the mix and thats just gonna make everything better, right?"
That, apparently, was not the right thing to say. "I'd like to see your investigator's license for the state of New York, please," Jean murmurs, one hand turning palm up on her knees.
That much is easy. With an audible sigh he smacks the back of his cap against his thigh and then places it firmly back on his head. Both his hands go into pockets on his jacket, something is deposited inside one of them at the same time as his wallet is removed from the other. Flipping it open he pulls out the insert with the license inside. "Austin Stone Licensed Investigator."
"Thank you, Mr. Stone," Jean murmurs, studying the license with attention to detail, and the pulling out of her reading glasses from her purse, the better to study it further. "Now, as a properly licensed investigator within the state, I'm sure you're aware of the limits of your mandate for investigation. That said, Tim injured himself on the listening device you placed in his shoes, a thing I have documented and passed on to his case worker."
"How the hell did- he.." Mr. Stone mumbles out, expression puzzled even behind the glasses. Everything is in order. He appears, at least, to be what he says he is. His hand reaches out for the license, impatience wearing on his face. "Is that all, Miss Grey?" the impatience is equal in his voice as well. "I'm guessing you would like me to leave you alone?"
"Placing delicate electronics in something that a somewhat heavy young man is going to be resting his full weight on is generally a bad idea, Mr. Stone," Jean offers, with a schoolteacher's fastidiousness. "And I would like you to leave Tim alone. If Detective Hall is planning to make a case with CPS to get his boy back, then the onus is on him to prove that he's a fit guardian. I wish him well with that."
"I'll give him your regards." Mr. Stone answers, with a tip of his hat and a teasing smile. Returning the wallet to his pocket and turning to leave, he toss his hand up to wave goodbye over his shoulder.
"I'm sure he'll be thrilled," Jean murmur-mutters, but she returns the wave as she rises, and returns back to Tim and his shoes, her bag with Nate's new sneakers in one hand.
The plot thickens! Tim also learns how to look for quality shoes.
To: STAFF@x-school.edu
Subject: Tim's Stalker
---------------
I took Tim into town to do some clothing shopping, and he picked out the man who'd been following him from the crowd. I then decided to use the fact that I'm now known to be a telepath and therefore frightening to corner him and tease a few answers out of him. (And may I just say that I'm glad I didn't actually have to go poking around his mind. I'm sure it would have left me nothing good.) I also suggested we'd prefer it if he'd leave Tim alone, although I somehow doubt he'll take my advice.
Kitty, look into the name "Austin Stone", if you get a moment? He's a licensed P.I. that Detective Hall has apparently hired with some sob story about being separated from his son through the evil machinations of CPS and our mutant mind control program here at Xavier's. I think he honestly believes the detective, but there's still something that just didn't sit right with me about him.
I've told Tim who his stalker is, and who likely hired him. I'm going to be passing this news on up to Deborah Anders with CPS, since she's been working Tim's case and I've been keeping her informed of these recent developments. I think Detective Hall probably won't be all that happy about that, but... be it on his head.
Jean
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X-Men: Movieverse 3 - Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 9:51 PM
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It's middle of the second day of parent-teacher interviews, and Jean has given up on her office for settings that actually involve fresh air. Thus, as the Prentiss position on the list is reached, the day finds her having laid claim to a set of stone benches and a table to match in the midst of the mansion's Victoria gardens. The laptop that shares table space with a file folder and a tea service is decidedly modern, however.
Major John Prentiss looks a little confused as to the directions he was given to find his appointment, but he follows them without hesitation, striding out in the garden, and then changing direction to Jean when he notices her. He is in uniform, apparently feeling the need to be respectfully formal for this visit, and he comes to stand before the other woman. "Hello, Dr. Grey."
Jean rises from her seat, dislodging a rather grumpy specimen of local tabby cat, who had found the combination of soft foot and sunlight irresistable. Heartless Jean pays the bristling feline no mind, her eyes steady on John Prentiss' face and warm as her smile as she greets him. "Major Prentiss. I'm glad you were able to make it... and glad that Allison managed to get the directions straight. Tea or coffee?"
"Coffee, thank you." John offers a hand to shake, a very firm grip, and then seats himself. "My wife was sorry she couldn't make it, but getting the time off work--" He frowns.
Jean's own hand is likewise firm, if tempered slightly, and the clasp attenuated with a telepath's nigh-subconscious distaste for too much contact. Her manner remains warm, however, even as she sits back down to pour the coffee and hum briefly at the news. "Understandable," she assures. "You're not the only parent to have to travel, and not everyone can send both parents for a single weekend. Cream or sugar?"
"Sugar." John watches her dispense it with a focused attention, hands resting on the table. "I rather hoped--" He sighs. "Amy feels the tenuousness of our relationship much more deeply than I do. I think she hoped to be able to speak to Honor more in person."
"Summer will soon be upon us, at least," Jean offers, lifting the little pot of sugar cubes with a silently interrogative eyebrow. One lump, or two? "And judging from her academics, there will be absolutely no need for summer classes. Even when she's moody she's one of our better students."
"And she's moody fairly often?" John makes a little go on gesture, until two lumps are dumped in. There's a dry note to his voice.
"It comes and goes. Some of it is typical teenager mapped to her own personal experiences," Jean reflects, adding four lumps to her own coffee, and eschewing cream. "Some of it is from trying to get her personal experiences to map to typical teenager. And some of it is PTSD, or something very much like it. But she's coping, in her own way."
"It reminded me a lot of that." John accepts his coffee, but just looks at his hand on the cup for a while. "Especially her nightmares. I certainly know plenty of good air force shrinks. But she doesn't talk to us as it is, I assume she'll bolt if I mention it."
"I find she tends to speak more when there's a silence, if a comfortable one. Bursts of information or a question, like she's seizing the moment." Jean stares at her coffee as well, but also plucks up one of the tiny, delicate silver spoons that mark this as the -good- tea service, and lets the bell-tinkle of metal and china take the conversation for a time. "She's had a bit of a hard time with intrapersonal issues, this year. Teenaged boys, particularly those with money and insecurities, have an unfortunate ability to be complete assholes, if you'll pardon my crudeness." Because military officers have -never- heard swearing.
John sits up a little straighter. "Is she dating?" Then he forces relaxation a little to sip his coffee. "I admit, I hoped maybe she'd confided in you or someone at the school, who might have some insight about what we can do to make her happier, if not open up more."
"No. I think she tends to view the boys her age as the boys they are. Younger than her... which I can see," Jean admits, with a little crook of her mouth. "She does seem to be friends, or at least friendly, with Jeremy, although things were understandably a little odd at first. I would say she's probably closest friends with Autumn Clarke. Otherwise, she's gotten quite self-contained." Her mouth goes more crooked still at this, and the admission of "I wish she wasn't, but I suppose as long as there's -someone- who's allowed in..."
"Ah." John grimaces in turn. "I gather there was some boy she loved in...the other place. I wondered if she was still grieving over that." He sips his coffee. "No more shattered eardrums?"
"Mr. Kinches still is the last holder of that dubious honor... not that I entirely blame her, although that does -not- get passed on," Jean advises, with a dark flash of a smile. "I think that, plus butting heads with our new math teacher, may be why she's so... contained. She's walking the line, and very careful not to go over. It would be nice if she'd let herself enjoy it here, but I suspect she feels like she's just doing her time."
"Our few conversations have...had that tone. Staying under the cops' radar, as it were." John sighs once more. "If only there was some situation she /would/ enjoy--" He hesitates. "You run a fine school, but the associations are very bad for her, it seems. But bringing her home would be even worse."
"I want to encourage her on to higher education... and at the same time, that's what Honor had her eye on." With a slightly frustrated, slightly resigned spread of her hands Jean sums it up with the immortal words "Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It would be a shame to have her waste the intelligence she's so obviously blessed with. And she's fiercely loyal and protective of the people she's decided are hers to look out for. There's a definite ideal of service there, if selectively so."
"I think she might do well in the forces. I know plenty of people who would kill for someone with her intelligence, but of course Honor is--was--registered..." John's face says rather blank, keeping his opinion of that hidden, even somewhat from himself.
"And even if she weren't... there isn't the best associations with the military in that head of hers. Although," Jean muses, with an odd expression, "In that world I'd apparently opted to throw in with -Magneto- and she still is all right with me here. Associations can be overcome. Prejudices from the other side... Intel, perhaps? Irregulars that they are."
A small smile touches John's lips. "For a given value of all right. I think you very much have the reputation of the disciplinarian. I think she might like a--Dr. McCoy I think she said once? It was a passing reference. I was hoping to perhaps talk to him while I was out here." He looks back at his hand. "But she has been behaving, you said? I know you'd call us for anything serious, but--"
"Considering the alternatives, I'll take 'does not attempt to stab me' as a very large value indeed," says Jean, with an erratic flash of humour. "As for Hank, check downstairs in the lab. Just look for the brilliant man who also happens to have a very striking physical mutation. And for a given value of behaving..." she adapts John's quote, "She has been."
"Ah. Well. I suppose she's still fighting against Honor's reputation. I wonder if it might not be a fear of hers, to be expected to be her." John seems much more calmed by being able to hold his coffee than drink it. It is rapidly going cold. "Is there anything the school needs us to do?"
"Just keep on keeping on," is Jean's suggestion. "And... take her out and away for the weekend. Not that you need our encouragement for that, I suppose."
John nods, but he finishes with a frown. "I worry Amy spoils her, when we do that. Lavishing presents on her. Even I find myself doing that. At least she looks /happy/ when you give her things."
"Given the circumstances she came from, I suspect a little atavism isn't unexpected. Professor Munroe, when she first came here as a girl, had some odd adjustments to things. Stole my silver charm bracelet my father'd given me," Jean reminisces, with a curve to her lips. "And explained that one could buy a week's bread, or some meat with it. Completely pampered American thirteen year old that I was, I recall being completely baffled."
"Is it dangerous to indulge it, though?" John asks. "She's never stolen from us, but I sometimes wonder if giving her so much she can finally relax and stop grasping after everything might not be the way to go."
"The problem is that it can't be the only solution. If having possessions is the only way of feeling secure, then you can never have enough," Jean answers, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and sipping slowly from her coffee cup at last. "It treats the symptom, rather than the root pathology, and Charles is the psychologist, not I. You might want to include him on your list of faculty stops."
"That's what I wondered," John admits. "Well. Nothing is ever so easy." He looks off out into the garden, marshalling whatever other questions he had. "I should thank you again, for setting up her identity. As odd as it's been explaining the 'twins' to family and friends."
"Better than 'Honor from a reality diverged three years back in the timestream from our own,' at least," suggests Jean, with a crooked smile indeed. "But you're welcome. Is there anything else I can clear up for you, or help with?"
"Wave your a magic wand and give us Honor back as remember her?" A low chuckle. "Though--she could be such a strong young woman, in a different way than Honor could...I feel I have much more in common with her than she does with her mother. It was the reverse, with Honor. She hasn't said a word about the boy she had there, to Amy." He shrugs. "Time. Heals all wounds."
"I -could- share my memories of her with you," says Jean, looking bittersweet for a moment before she turns her face away to study the roses. "Maybe some day I will. But I'm glad that Amp has the both of you. She... don't let any prickles fool you into thinking she doesn't pretty desperately want family."
"She does?" John snorts at himself. "We know that. But I suppose it helps to hear it from an outsider." He finally pushes away his cold, unfinished coffee, prepartory to standing. "Amp. I must remember to think of her that way, so I don't slip up. She hates that."
"I admit I have an unfair advantage on that score," says Jean the telepath with a crooked smile and a tap to her temple. "They're very different when you can use the mind's eye. But feel free to swing by if you have any late-breaking questions, Major."
John stands, giving her a respectful bow of the head. "Thank you. For all your and the school's work with her, especially. We couldn't have reached her ourselves."
"If she hadn't had your raising before things went to hell for her, I don't think there would have been anything left to be reached." With a rise from her seat, Jean offers up a solemn nod, and a last handshake to match.
Backdated parent-teacher conference!
> (Xavier)'>
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, May 29, 2008, 12:06 AM
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=XS= Back Patio and Swimming Pool - Xavier's School
The patio is a mixture of grades of cobblestone, flanked with a few flowering bushes and other flora along the outside edges. Its footprint is in the space between the wings of the mansion where the glass walls of the arboretum leave off. A grill and picnic table rests to the side, just under the ledge of the house's roof. The area just outside the kitchen leads to a large pool area. Landscaped with slate around the edges instead of poured concrete, the pool is sloped with both a shallow end and deep end with enough depth for a diving board. A circular in-ground jacuzzi bubbles invitingly just off the shallow end. Chairs and white chaise lounges line along the pool, and a hammock is strung up between two maple trees.
[Exits : [G]arden [P]ath, [C]lassroom and [A]rboretum, and [K]itchen]
Exams are in the air, and the young astronomers of Xavier's School have been sprung a not-quite-surprise bonus quiz, owing to clear nights and the darkness of the countryside. All around the back of the school a small thicket of six telescopes has grown, each manned by a pair of students happily indulging in breaking curfew in the name of science and the finding of as many constellations and their coordinates as possible within a time period. Their appointed keeper has no telescope to aid her stargazing, but Jean sits snugged up in a lawn chair all the same, on the very fringes of the out-spilling glow from the kitchens and with a blanket to stave off the spring dew.
He is aged, but not decrepit. The same vitality that holds its own in the face of overeager teenagers sends Charles Xavier out into the night, garbed less formally than his wont: a black turtleneck sweater; grey wool slacks; expensive Italian shoes. The wheelchair provides heat in any case, a touch of Forge utility that leaves a curious trail of steam behind it. Some questions are best not asked.
<< A pop quiz? >> Humorous approval skates across Jean's mind, a substitute for greeting.
<< I learned from a master of the art. >> floats back Jean's greeting in turn, a bright gloss of red hair shifting in amongst the MacTaggart plaid blanket engulfing the lawn chair, and an over-the-shoulder smile gleaming just as bright in the shadows of the light's edge. << And Saturn is visible to the southeast... if they can all agree on what direction that is. >> Her own eyes cast skyward, but track a different quadrant altogether, seeking celestial bodies less fixed in their orbits and as yet invisible to sight. Asteroids tumble lazily across the surface of her mind, thick in density as they are in film, if not in reality.
There's an old game involving asteroids. The thought tickles, vagrant, through the image -- an idea born in her generation's memories, and conveyed by another's nostalgia. Rare for Charles to be so flippant. A little pixelated spacecraft spits a laser bolt at one of the asteroids (pew! pew!) and then dissolves into a deprecating smear. << A pleasant notion, >> he observes, leaving it to her to interpret his meaning. << Practical application is a better way of teaching than most. A pity it does not apply to English Literature. >>
<< Perhaps if we let Forge fulfil his lifelong dream of building a superlaser. >> Jean suggests, her amusement paired with a silvery mental laugh with overtones of jingling arcade quarters. Her asteroids promptly pixellate in turn, and then wink out one by one, leaving a darkened starfield, but not nearly a void. Out on the back lawn there is a sudden flurry of discussion. A UFO? A comet? No. An angle on one window of the girl's dorms. "I remind you that any moons recorded must be -celestial- in nature." Jean calls aloud from her nest of plaid, subsiding with amusment flickering over her mind like an aurora, here and then gone. << Dramatic readings and plays are, alas, the best you can do there. >> she agrees vis-a-vis the literature, before a change of thought ripples across her mind. << Charles, are the universities going to accept them? >> By the inflection of the thought, it is not the campfires and songs meaning of the word she choses.
Charles says mildly, << I haven't the faintest notion. But there are options outside of the United States, if it comes to that. >> There is a certain flatness in the reply, an underpinning of ruthlessness that is oddly placed, as though borrowed from one thought and applied to another. A wry note curls over it, like a cat's flipped tail. << I am not so bereft of friends that I cannot find them places in Oxford, for instance. And there are other options for those who prefer something closer. Canada, I'm told, has some schools. One or two. >>
The wheelchair completes its path across the patio, descending the ramp to come to a halt beside Jean's seat.
<< Harvard and Johns Hopkins still seem proud of me, >> Jean agrees. << Or at least enjoy the notoriety of my guest lectures. >> The pair of schools are slid into the deck of Xavier's options with a conjurer's subtle touch. << But I admit our second wave of students isn't doing all that well out here. I think Jackson Holland has spent more time out of school than in it. Piotr's struggled. Jubilee and Rogue are all right out on the West Coast, but went through Hell here. >> A bubble of private amusement surrounds this news, coloured with memories of cheerful Jubilee wake-up calls on the heels of slamming cell doors.
Light slants off of deep-set eyes that are hazel in the day; transparent at night. << We make it a little too easy for them, I'm afraid, >> Charles murmurs, looking out across the lawn and the clusters of students, busied with their telescopes and their arguments. Age pulls at him in profile, his jowls and throat sagging over the high lip of his turtleneck. << The ones who leave -- truly leave -- do well enough. It's the ones who stay in the nest-- >>
<< The nest may need to fill up again, temporarily. >> Pricked by the needle of recent memory, the amused bubble vanishes, leaving the darkened starfield across the surface of Jean's mind. << I'm pointing the lawyers at the current sign campaign to see about -some- sort of cease-and-desist, but if mutants are outed and hounded because of CPAM, we may need to pull them out and give them a place to lay low. >> Little mental tallies run, of just how -many- can be stowed in various places in the City, in the mansion itself. A tangent runs towards the barns, and stops. Haylofts are not comfortable. << I don't suppose we could convince them to hurry the asteroid up a bit and give the panicky sorts something real to panic over? >>
Dry practicality answers, a pragmatic cover for a less arid dismay over the prospect of invaders, sheltered or no. << I think the asteroid will come all too soon for all our comfort, even without the encouragement. >> Charles curls his hands around the arms of his chair, the long fingers still graceful for all the bony knuckles and tapestry of veins under parchment skin. << Still, I fail to see why tit for tat should not be a tool in our arsenal, when it comes to the signs -- though not, perhaps, on the windward side of ethics. >>
<< I admit, >> Jean confesses, and worms a little deeper into her so-sadly-free-of-Forge-enhancements lawn chair and blanket. << The thought had crossed my mind. And as we do have a rather tech-savy adult pyrokinetic who comes here for the odd lesson from me... >> Against the star field, a dossier flashes up, Elliott's name and particulars delivered in a tidy package for consideration. ("The problem with assembling your witch hunt electronically is that it leaves traces.") << She'll be finding us some names. >> The hubbub of students grows more pronounced at one end of the telescop cluster. Saturn! Rings! It hushes abruptly as the rules of the exercise are remembered, but more than a few nearby telescopes begin tentatively swinging to match the angles of the lucky pair.
<< And mutation is not the only inconvenient condition at liberty in the population. Nor are mutants the only subjects of database registration. Even if the faces on the flyers are not, strictly speaking, real, they would certainly rouse more vocal and politically powerful opposition. >> The corners of Charles's eyes crinkle; the faint traces of a chuckle corrugate around the mental voice, sighing without breath. Imagine, says knowledge without words. Flyers for the STD-infected. Flyers for homosexuals. Flyers for racial minorities.
<< It's a shame we can't put up flyers warning for gross stupidity. >> Jean's mind and body alike echo a gusty, regretful little sigh. The latter causes heads to bob up and look over all along the telescope ribbon. Teenagers, like kittens, are curious beasties.
Says Charles, tartly, << I fail to see why not. In the past ten years, simple human stupidity has accounted for far more deaths than the sum total of mutantkind combined. >> His gaze turns tranquilly across the field of upturned faces, one thick eyebrow rising in polite, if dampening, enquiry.
<< True, >> says Jean, with laughter twinkling the stars of her mind. << The difficulty would be in picking only a handful of faces. If we wished to indicate that the condition is universal, I could recommend the Times Square Tornadist. I got to see him briefly, you know. >>
<< Did you? >> It is academic curiosity that brings the bulk of Charles's attention back, a fragment of that powerful mind sectioned off for a quiet, private word with one of the students on the lawn. The lad flushes -- the change of color visible even in the darkness -- and turns away hastily to fumble with his fly. Oops. << And? >>
<< He happened to have the cell a little ways down from mine, while Ororo and I were cooling our stylish activist bootheels. >> With the fait of the Bay Horse visit now comfortably accompli, Jean's earlier don't-tell-Charles decision has been revoked. << He was nicely sedated and only there until he could be transported, of course, but the Sentinel suits do seem to be able to non-lethally subdue a person without serious harm. >>
Charles's voice waxes dry again. << A fact which is certain to reconcile Erik to them, I'm sure. >> His own feelings, blocked off from empathy's flutter, are ambiguous beyond the mental voice, itself limited on this one subject to the sparsity available of the spoken one. << I take it that you had very little opportunity of conversing with the young fool, then? >>
<< He was, alas, thoroughly unconscious. I got more out of chatting with the duty officer. Good man, >> is Jean's verdict, assigned to the officer in question. Coffee scents the edges of the memory-picture, hinting at what, besides conversation, has earned the man this encomium. << The Sentinel suits were definitely talk of the room, even if they do seem to have come out of no-where. >>
Dissatisfaction crimps around the thought of that 'no-where,' stretching starfish legs into a quieter realm of unease. << I admit I find that fact disturbing, >> Charles observes, sinking back in his seat to nurse his hands in the warmer cradle of his lap, one thumb idly rubbing friction heat into the back of the other. << It is unlike us to be so ill-informed -- and even more unlike Erik to be taken by surprise. If, that is, he was taken by surprise. I should ask. If not him, Emma. >>
<< I don't mind the suits themselves. Used responsibly, they'll help the NYPD a great deal. It's the out of the blue. >> Jean reflects, and shivers slightly despite her coccoon of plaid. << If -Emma- doesn't know, I'll have to keep an eye out for four horsemen. But on the other hand, she -was- sending out teams of college-aged plane hijackers just a few years ago. If she knew, one would wonder why she didn't stop it. >>
<< One would, >> Charles says, and if he was dry before, he is arid desert now. Inappropriate amusement glints in the antechamber of his mind, roused untimely by the subject and its very gravity. << I believe I should ask her. She is better tempered than Erik, though this is hardly an encomium. >>
<< Around you, that is. >> Jean notes, her own mind dialing down the empathic spill to keep her feelings on Emma to herself. While this scarcely hides history, it at least spares Charles having to overhear it all again.
Charles actually chuckles at this, aloud, a low, pleasant sound like the tumble of river stones disturbed by a passing current. Memory flicks across, shared with an odd quirk of satisfaction: the roar of awesome power, and the flattening of the same. Context, like emphatic spill, remains a thing left unexplored. << Not, >> he says with something akin to pleasure, << that you would notice. >>
<< Having adventures, Charles? >> wonders Jean, catching the amusement and the pleasure and her own mind warming in a dusty ray of sunshine in response to it. Thought-heat does little to warm toes chilling steadily away in the midnight air of what is still a spring night, but Jean wriggles them and pulls them in against her blankets before calling a "Ten minutes!" to the young astronomers.
The older telepath blinks solemnly, the twinkle in his eyes hinted at through the wisp of humor unspooled between them. The light itself is too dim to make it clear to vision. << At my age, one does not have 'adventures,' my dear. >> Another chuckle, this one shared in the private recesses of the mind. Charles touches fingers to his control panel, unlocking the brakes with a flick of a nail. << One has -- enriching experiences. >>
<< Ah, >> comes Jean's laughing reply, filial fondness woven tight within it, despite the adult mind that forms the loom. << Duly noted. But still... better you than I, to speak to her. I'll content myself with keeping ties with Bahir al-Razi... did I tell you he's giving his thesis defense soon? >>
<< They grow up so quickly, >> Charles murmurs with irony. Not a sentiment to be shared with the prickly pear of the al-Razi duo, to be sure. His mouth curves towards a smile that is not shared by the quieting surface of his thoughts. << It is a pity, in some ways. >> Two comments, unrelated in reality, though possibly tied together by inference. A glimpse of Hellfire spindle-twists through his mind's threads, then disappears, stitched back into silence. Lightly, aloud, he adds, "I should go inside before your students do. I don't fancy competing with their equipment through the door."
<< I'll be attending, of course. Former lab boss's privilege... and I suspect that of the current Court, only their King could understand what's special. >> The image of Magneto in disguide to attend a thesis defense is considered, abandoned, revived with the addition of alcohol to the image, and then considered further as Jean rises to her feet. "I'll hold them off until you've cleared the south pass," she promises, with a crook of her mouth. "And I believe Madame Vargas has dispatched a minion to have hot chocolate ready for them. One mug is likely for you, by now."
It is a thought that engages Charles's interest: not the hot chocolate, but Erik's possible interest in the thesis. Disguise. Anonymity. The oblivion of onlookers? "Quite likely," he says, resignation sharing shoulder space with affection for the dictatorial cook. The wheelchair hums; the Professor turns back towards the patio and entry. "I will have to see if we have any marshmallows left. For your students, that is. Don't stay out too late, Jean. You'll grow quite tired of skygazing before it's all over."
Stargazing students and catching up.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, May 29, 2008, 8:27 PM
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=NYC= Manhattan Mall - Midtown - Manhattan
Keeping with an 'open concept' idea, the Sunrise Mall sports a large front lobby area - complete with a massive fountain located smack dab in the middle - its spray shooting up towards cathedral ceilings. Behind the fountain are tall, marble pillars that flank either side of dual escalators, their whiteness broken-up by ornamental circuits of bronze and brass. Those adornments match the rest of the decor, from the railings along the second floor patio, down to the new-age style benches lining the corridors that split off from the foyer. Everything looks so very shiny and new, though it's certain that it won't stay that way for long; especially after the swarms of teenagers have settled in.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Tim ]
There is a noticeable change in Tim's attitude the second he sets foot into New York. An extra little spring forms in his step, his usual friendly smile is just a little more honest, and that little nagging fear in the back of his head gets just a little quieter. This is his city. This is home. Here he is Timothy Hall Jr., 15, instead of Tim the invisible boy. While Tim didn't /technically/ run for the car when this trip was mentioned, he didn't exactly hesitate. The strong mental flashes coming from his direction of giant creme filled cookie sandwiches and the soft smell of vanilla probably had something to do with it. He stick close to Jean as he weaves through the crowd, his short stature causing more than the occasional passer-by to bump into him without noticing even without being invisible. "Sorry." he mumbles after one. "Excuse me." after the other.
Jean has perhaps done a little canny planning of the trip to favour maximum time shopping and minimum time spent sitting around eating unhealthy but delicious foods, but there's a merry twinkle in her eyes as she takes the lead in their passage through the mall, cutting the crowds both with height and striking looks, and very occasionally with being recognized for who she is. -That- tends to cause a notable bubble of space around them both. "So," she wonders of Tim. "Any favourite clothing stores?"
"Uhm... not really?" Tim answers kindly, but not helping. With a soft grin on his face, he continues to plod along, socked toes revealing themselves. Each time a Jean bubble forms, Tim shrinks back behind, every lapse in anonymity sparking just a touch of fear that is forgotten completely the instant they move away. "I... usually just get my clothes from thrift stores and stuff... if there's a Goodwill in here..." This small admission though comes at the cost of some embarrassment to the teen.
"Not so much in -this- mall," is Jean's prediction, looking around the gleaming and polished bastion to capitalist consumerism that it is. As the infrequent bubbles occur, her expression alternates between initial subdual and swiftly following setting of her shoulders and chin, and a gleam in her eye as she strides forward all the more boldly. But the gleam softens a little as she looks back at Tim, her smile a more gentle one. "If you want to shop at Goodwill because you like the clothing better, that's one thing. But while CPS isn't covering enough for a head-to-toe wardrobe from Hot Topic," (Which, given Tim's, ah, shape is probably just as well.) "I think Old Navy and the like are well within budget. You deserve some new stuff."
And the cookie stand is spotted. To Tim's credit, he doesn't veer over in that direction at the glimpse of it, even if it does steal his eyes for quite a while. Instead, he forces his eyes away to dance from store to store. "I guess that sounds good, then." he agrees with a growing smile. He picks up the edge of his shirt and fans it in the air. "Just... gotta find a store with some of these..." The mention of the flannel shirt, his constant companion and apparent favorite article of clothing... isn't loving in the least.
The crowd has many faces. What's one more? A safe distance behind a blond man finishes paying for a large buttered pretzel. Just another face in the crowd, blue jeans and a jogging shirt decorated with large mirrored sunglasses and a red baseball cap. His eyes linger on the pair as they walk by, and after taking a giant bite out of the pretzel, he turns to follow, a nice /safe/ distance behind. Much the same way he followed the pair here on the drive over.
"If there aren't any of those to be found new, I know a few good vintage places... although the idea that 90s grunge is now considered 'vintage'." Jean takes a moment to sigh and shake her head at the vagaries of time and the impertinance of it for passing. "Shoes," she reflects. "We'll need to get you some of those too. Here, try in here," she directs, spotting a shoe store that passes some undefined test for Deserves Patronage. Another Jean-bubble forms, the first in ten minutes, although this one is more from curiousity than alarm. A young woman staring over her shoulder as she walks past nearly trips over their casual shadow.
"I... guess we gotta get shoes, huh... Well, if they recommend any... we aren't buying those." Tim decides with a sharp nod as they wheel their way in. The curious and then tripping girl does catch Tim's attention, and he does his best not to laugh as the man almost drops his pretzel in the floor because of it. But then... something in the boy's eyes shifts, and the little hamster in his head slowly steps onto the wheel. Something... something... no, not quiet yet. He shakes his head and returns his attention to the shoes again. "Whatever we get, it can't be /too/ heavy. Its gonna get really really hot for me again soon, and I don't wanna pass out again."
<< Everything all right? >> is the quiet murmur from Jean's mind to Tim's at the shift of his mind's shape from shopping to preparatory-hamster. Aloud, she merely chuckles, and assures that "I'll personally inspect any shoes myself," before waving him into the store space ahead of her. It being one of the myriad unisex shoe stores out there, Jean's own eye is soon apparently caught by a display of leather boots with heels that her height makes truly unnecessary.
This may not be a thrift store, but some habits are hard to break. While a pair of white leather sneakers with enough ridges and aerodynamics to take orbit does catch his eye for a moment... he instead veers towards the front clearance table. << Its... >> Tim tries to think back, but instead just shakes his head and talks the old fashioned guy, in a quiet voice. "That guy back there... I dunno... kinda looked familiar, maybe. Its nothing."
"If you like those first ones, go on and check them out," Jean encourages, doing her part to be a speedbump in the road of habit, although she abandons her study of expensive leather boots to go follow Tim to the clearance table as well, all the better to speak more quietly. "Just point him out to me anyways," she requests. "If it really -is- nothing, I'll know soon enough."
Tim has already yanked out one of the boxes in his size, the black fake leather shoes inside have a cheap price tag, but they are cheap made as well. These would soon be just as useless at the pair Tim's currently wearing. Jean's urging causes Tim to turn around, though, and it takes the kid more than a minute to scan the crowd again. Unfortunately he takes Jean's suggestion literally and points to the man pretending not to watch the pair from the other side of an island selling cell phone cases in plastic bags. "That one, with the hat and glasses like Mr. Summers wears." No, no where near the same quality or brand, not that Tim would know.
Jean is somewhat of an older hand at these games than Tim, in that she doesn't immediately and obviously stare after the pointing hand. Instead she lifts one hand to gently pinch the bridge of her nose, and opts to open her mind instead, listening for who's going to be alarmed by being pointed out. "I see... and do you like the style of those shoes?"
<< Shi-- did fat ass spot me? >> Is the slightly panicked pulse that does indeed come from mind of their shy new friend. Though his voice is far from the only one flooding the area, nor the only one reacting to Tim's finger including a couple of << Huh, me? >>s and a rather frightned female worrying << Don't be a narc, kid, its just a CD, I'm not getting arrested for fucking Norah Jones. >> Tim himself? Mostly thinking of the cookie, though the hamster is trying to insist he's seen the guy somewhere before... "... I dunno. I mean, its just a pair of shoes, right? But... they don't look comfortable."
<< Put that back right -now-, young lady. >> is the response Jean does give to the enterprising shoplifter, not bothering to look up from the shoes for all that her voice rings clearly between the young woman's ears for a moment before vanishing. Outwardly, and in part, Jean's attention is on the shoes, pursing her lips thoughtfully, and holding out a hand for them with directions of "Let me show you some tricks for telling good quality shoes." Inwardly, silently. she sticks a small marker-flag to the surface of the watcher's mind, for easy tracking. Such responses bear watching.
More than a little startled by the new voice in her head, the thief listens clearly to her much more forceful conscience and sets the CD back down with a nervous motion and turns to walk away. Point, Jean. Tim's eyes turn curious and he hands the shoes over more than eager to learn a new lesson. "Alright, Dr. Grey. Didn't know there was a difference."
Their friend shakes off the make and just resettles in his watchful perch. << What'm I worried about. Kid's dense as a damp cinder bloc.k >>
"Oh, a huge difference," Jean assures, and if there's a hint of satisfaction in her expression as the CD thief mends their ways it's a brief flash, soon buried in a lesson about stitching quality, the role of adhesives, the thickness of material, the reinforcement of lace eyelets, and the structural support of the soles. The cheap black shoes end up as negative examples in many a category. "In conclusion," says Jean, with a twinkle in her eyes, "You generally get what you pay for. Why don't you check out that aisle down there?" she suggests. "I'll just be up here communing with those boots I saw." << And keeping an eye on things. >>
Concern lights the face of their tail as Tim shifts out of view. He sets down the plastic cellphone belt clip that he had shifted to pretending he was interested in, and steps a little closer to the store, eyes glancing sideways from behind sunglasses to try and catch sight of the lad while at the same time pretending to be interested in a pair of men's boots in the front display from outside.
"Find a pair that you like, and that you think will be comfortable," Jean bids with a smile. "After all, it's your feet they'll be on." Watching the watcher, she meanders along the displays as Tim heads out of immediate line of sight, and positions herself so that the new line is obscured as well. Humming tunelessly under her breath, she pores over a collection of Spider-Man shoes sized for tiny boy feet, and considers Nate's shoe situation as she considers Tim's stalker.
"Damnit." is her oh so kind greeting from the man in the not so yellow hat. The words are mumbled from the other side of the glass and they are soon joined with more. "...she can't stick by the kid all damn night... c'mon fatty, go get a cupcake or somethin'" His hands go to his pocket, rolling an object of some kind through his fingers as he considers the boots almost in earnest at this point. But as long as Tim is out of sight, he's continuing this little stalemate.
Jean considers the Spider-Man shoes, considers a pair with Batman instead, and is then ostensibly distracted by a pair that have no superheros at all on them, featuring Bob the Builder instead, but make up for this with light-up action when walked with. She smiles once to herself, perhaps a little more of a huntress's grin than is appropriate for shoe shopping (At least without deep discount sales on, anyways.) and lets her mind murmur over to Tim's. << Your instincts were right, Tim. You just keep on looking at shoes, I'll be right back. >> Moving casually for the cash with shoes in hand, she seems in no outward hurry to pounce.
Having caught a glimpse of the tumbling Tim, the mysterious strange cracks a grin and lets out a good laugh quite confident in the glass between them to muffle it. However, spotting shoes being payed for, he decides its time to give the pair some space again and turns to walk down the hall. As he does, though, something is slipped from the pocket and slowly worked up the inside of his sleeve. Something small and plastic, with a nice sharp metal end.
Blessings on the fine and holy MasterCard express pass. A tap of her credit card, and the shoes are bagged, leaving Jean free to slip into the main hall of the mall again. There are no bubbles of recognition this time, and not only because of how little time passes: the minds surrounding Jean simply take little notice of her passage, encouraged by the touch of one of her Somebody Else's Problem fields. Long legs stretch themselves, and the keen attention usually used for squeezing her car into improbable gaps in traffic is now put to the test of slotting herself in beside the unknown man. She favours him with a bright smile. "Hi."
To say that this is unexpected would be one heck of an understatement. While the sunglasses manage to hide most of the physical cues that the 'stalker' was just scared senseless, the mental pulse of adrenaline is much harder to hide. Still, he keeps his cool enough give her a smile of his own and return the "Hi." Though his is much less bright, more cautious. His feet change directions and he attempts a casual walk away. The object in his hand is fed even higher up his sleeve.
"Oh, don't walk away," Jean encourages, tone still quiet and bright, but with an edge beneath it. She, of a height with many a man, simply matches strides and directions with him. "You see, we've got so much to talk about, and I'm pretty sure you'd rather not have the police involved."
"I don't know what the fuck your talking about lady, and its pretty obvious I didn't shove a pair of sneakers up my shirt, so if you're with mall security, get lost." Playing dumb til the end, he at least has plays the part enough to turn to face her with his claims of ignorance and innocence.
What faces him back is a coldly restrained fire in green eyes, and the elegant planes of a face entirely composed and entirely lacking in amusement. "You know who I am," Jean says, simply and quietly. "Which means that you know what I am, as well. Do you want to continue making yourself look like a fool as well as a predator?"
"Yeah, I know /what/ you are." The man regards Jean with a certain slant of the word reserved for dirt, scum, and telemarketers. "So I take it this is the part where you tell me to 'Stay away from your school.' but you aren't the first one to try and scare me off a story, you won't be the last, and I'm guessn' it'll end the same as the others. Me getting what... I... want." The lie is well delivered, practiced, and backed up by the edge of listening in on the speculations of exactly who or what he is. His smirk taunts jean from beneath the mirrored lenses, and he does his best to completely hide the fact that the look she just gave him nearly made him wet himself.
"Actually," says Jean with a smile that doesn't dislodge the look from her eyes. "I highly doubt you're a reporter, since you're so very focused on a single student of mine. I'd prefer not to go looking to find out just -what- you are, since I suspect my mind will benefit nothing from contact with yours. Seat?" she indicates, nodding towards a metal bench between a pair of thoroughly-trimmed mall trees in pots. Somehow, it's not quite an offer.
"Every story has to have a spin on it." Again the delivery is near spotless, and he pushes the last bastions of outward fear from his poster and movements, even if not his mind. "'Mutant school brainwashes cops son, turns him against father.'" he quotes, penning the letters hastily in the air as he paces over towards the bench. "I think it has a nice ring to it, don't you? I take it this is my chance for an interview?"
"This is your chance to stop lying... although you're being nicely revealing in the lies you choose," Jean notes, tipping her chin and taking a seat only after he's sat first. "Incidentally, I don't have to read your thoughts to tell when you're being truthful, just to explain things. It's like body language. So, Detective Hall. He hired you?" she wonders, folding her hands on her knees and leaning forward with a posture conversational and interested, and her eyes giving the lie to the outward ease.
"So what if the story won't make print." The man answers, shifting from one leg to the other. "Doesn't make it any less true. Hell, maybe I will send it in. Who do you think they'll get to play me in the movie?" His hand reaches up to pull the ball cap off his head, revealing a short blond cut. "Lets just say I'm often hired by concerned parents who need help getting their sons and daughters back where they belong." This story, at least, is true as far as the investigator knows it.
As the cap comes off, and as the truth-as-he-knows-it is given, Jean eases a little bit, the alarming intensity of her eyes lessening, leaving them simply alert. "That's not a bad job," she reflects. "Rewarding, I imagine. Although... did you get any details on the situation from anyone other than Detective Hall? I could offer you some perspectives."
"Oh, I'm real sure it'll be very convincing." the investigator answers with enough sarcasm to drown the Sahara. "You think fat ass is the first kid I've had to get out of a foster home? Kid falls down a few times, clumsy as hell, or takes a few beatings at school and the next thing you know CPS is filing charges and they end up at places like yours. Add in the fact that the kid's a freak and a mind reader into the mix and thats just gonna make everything better, right?"
That, apparently, was not the right thing to say. "I'd like to see your investigator's license for the state of New York, please," Jean murmurs, one hand turning palm up on her knees.
That much is easy. With an audible sigh he smacks the back of his cap against his thigh and then places it firmly back on his head. Both his hands go into pockets on his jacket, something is deposited inside one of them at the same time as his wallet is removed from the other. Flipping it open he pulls out the insert with the license inside. "Austin Stone Licensed Investigator."
"Thank you, Mr. Stone," Jean murmurs, studying the license with attention to detail, and the pulling out of her reading glasses from her purse, the better to study it further. "Now, as a properly licensed investigator within the state, I'm sure you're aware of the limits of your mandate for investigation. That said, Tim injured himself on the listening device you placed in his shoes, a thing I have documented and passed on to his case worker."
"How the hell did- he.." Mr. Stone mumbles out, expression puzzled even behind the glasses. Everything is in order. He appears, at least, to be what he says he is. His hand reaches out for the license, impatience wearing on his face. "Is that all, Miss Grey?" the impatience is equal in his voice as well. "I'm guessing you would like me to leave you alone?"
"Placing delicate electronics in something that a somewhat heavy young man is going to be resting his full weight on is generally a bad idea, Mr. Stone," Jean offers, with a schoolteacher's fastidiousness. "And I would like you to leave Tim alone. If Detective Hall is planning to make a case with CPS to get his boy back, then the onus is on him to prove that he's a fit guardian. I wish him well with that."
"I'll give him your regards." Mr. Stone answers, with a tip of his hat and a teasing smile. Returning the wallet to his pocket and turning to leave, he toss his hand up to wave goodbye over his shoulder.
"I'm sure he'll be thrilled," Jean murmur-mutters, but she returns the wave as she rises, and returns back to Tim and his shoes, her bag with Nate's new sneakers in one hand.
The plot thickens! Tim also learns how to look for quality shoes.