Backroom plotting
I don't mind taking her lead. I thought I might before we came to it, imagined how it might work, how I might feel, but in the end . . . She has the information, the contacts, the ideas, and I can play my part. I do worry a little, still, but only a little, and I can hope she didn't pick up on it, to threaten our partnership.
If I ever get on your wrong side again, Emma, let the end be swift, at least.
Putting our heads together to plot the downfall of those in our way: just like old times, isn't it? Why, I'm practically aflush with nostalgic bonhomie. (They'll never know what hit them. I love it. I love this. Us. Working as we should. It's good. It's right. It's about damn time.)
My gracious hostess tonight is a huge supporter of Worthington's safehouses amid all her charities, and doesn't she have a mutant cousin somewhere in her tangled family tree? Trots him out in conversation as proof of her commitment at every chance she gets, the shameless bubblehead. And her husband is an editor with the Times, and he'll be there tonight, too. . . .
Well. This could be a fun party, after all.
3/28/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Back Deck
With a breathtaking view up and down the East River, the patio serves as a natural extension of the grand house that encloses it on three sides. The deck's slate slabs fit together so tightly as to make the seams all but invisible; rougher marble forms the balustrade railing on the outer edge of the smooth-tiled space. Tables can be set up at a moment's notice, and a steel-and-glass roof awaits deployment, hidden behind the stonework of the wall itself but accessible through carefully designed and even more carefully concealed machinery. New York still makes its presence felt, but only as a level of background noise that does not intrude into this exclusive refuge.
Each of the three walls around the patio holds a door into the clubhouse: the north, to the exercise room; the west, to the foyer; and the south, to the ballroom. Stone steps lead down and east into the estate's gardens.
--
The back deck is empty, swept clean by recent breezes and the landscaping staff -- or almost empty, since Shaw is sitting on the top step leading down in the gardens. With his black-sweatered back to the grand old mansion, he has his head tipped up for a pensive, almost Byronic study of the clouds accumulating in heavy, wet, grey layers over the city. His arms lie crossed on his knees to support the lazy arches of spine and shoulders, their span brushed by his hair's loose-caught tail. A water bottle drained nearly dry stands next to his seat, lone companion and fellow sentinel against the coming shower.
Such a picturesquely brooding scene. One almost hates to disrupt it. Almost. Emma emerges from the gardens, ambling the walk of the recently-jogged, loose cotton pants and hooded sweatshirt donned against the coolness of the sullen afternoon. Headphones are pulled to clasp around her neck as she reaches up and pulls the rubber band from her ponytail, practiced hands catching her hair before it has a chance to fall and smoothing it back into a reformed tail tucked under. "Sebastian, darling. Thought you hated weather like this," she comments as she approaches.
Shaw rolls his eyes down from the sky to the White Queen, then just plain rolls them. "If it's going to do more than sprinkle," he tells her practically, "I want to be ready for it. I have that party across town tonight, and I should know how to dress for it if the hostess insists on showing off her balcony view /again/." His disgruntlement doesn't linger, however, as he sits back, braced on hands to the slate tiles behind him, and cocks his head at her. "Were you exercising?" << Jogging? Do we jog now? So plebian. Next it'll be pilates. >>
"Of course I exercise," Emma growls answering both comments aloud. She drops heavily to a seat on a lower step and hooks her elbows on the next one up. "Surgery isn't the answer to /everything/," gets muttered as a low aside, but still clear enough to be heard, and acts as a prelude to her catty tack-on. "I do work to maintain /my/ balcony view."
Obligingly, Shaw leans her way, angling his critical, curious gaze down that view to see what he can see, jogging clothes be damned. Appreciation, amusement scintillate in his mind and provide a half-laughing chaser to his mild reply: "I didn't mean anything by it." << Except of course I did, you know that, clever girl. >> "You want to jog in our gardens, you go right ahead." He pats her on the head.
Now it's Emma's turn to roll her eyes, and she ducks away from that hand before the second pat can land. "Your beneficence is overwhelming," she drawls, settling back into place and running a casually familiar hand under his leg to grip his calf, the circling motion of fingers and thumb both comforting and potentially warning. "Why don't you just watch the weather station like everyone else? They may be wrong seventy-five percent of the time, but at least everyone else will be wrong with you," she asks, tone light and amused.
Shaw twitches his leg, but doesn't remove it from her grasp: warning accepted, if it comes to that. He drops his hand back to supporting his bulk's slouched lean, and shrugs. "Got away from work, didn't I? It's quiet out here. No phones, emails, meetings . . ." His surface thoughts fizz fleetingly with business concerns, cut off by a subvocalized (and self-conscious) << Sorry. >> "Anyway, sometimes I like to look at the place I'm nominally lording over. Clears my thoughts," though the face he turns out to the gardens, the river, the high grey sky is less than masked and certainly not /clear/.
Her thumb and fingers work in an idle massage as she uses the contact to skim his unvocalized projections. "Nominally? Tsk, Sebastian. You're Lord and Master here," she replies, teasing lightly as she too tips her head back to scan the sky. "What's the matter, darling? You're acting positively Heathcliffian." She stretches her legs out and relaxes into a veritable sprawl.
Somewhere between pissy and pettish, Shaw projects at her the windy sweep of tragic Gothic moors and sets his jaw. "Just business," he allows, with the tangible hope of leaving it /there/, thank you, no more poking at it. Instead, he offers, "I feel like derailing Jacobs's bill. How about you?"
"Sounds worthwhile. I was thinking that things are gathering steam, and it's easier to direct from atop a wave than from underneath. The names coming in from the MRA database have trickled off, and while I'm sure we can protect our own, it's not worth the hassle anymore in it's current form." Emma tips a tendril of power into a return image: that of herself dressed in period costume, standing on those moors with her skirts whipping in the wind. A smile tugs at the corner of her lip as she peeks over her shoulder up at him.
Shaw smiles absently back down at her, but continues in his serious vein, with thoughts clicking and ticking over in practiced political calculation. "Percy's idea is to attach a rider full of pork fat to the bill and stall it in committee or debates. I was thinking that we could try to postpone the vote until after the midterm elections, and work them to get the right people in office to make the right votes. . . . Too much time spent on internal matters," he concludes, glancing away on a self-annoyed frown's cusp. "This sneaked up on us. We need to take care of it and not let it happen again."
Emma's lashes lower and she turns her head back to face outward, stilling her hand and tucking it behind Shaw's knee for warmth as leaf scratches at concrete under the force of a fitful breeze. "That's a good idea," she says thoughtfully. "I'll see if I cannot lean on some of my contacts to support such legislation, if not draft it. But it's not going to be enough to bury it for good. Probably not even for long." She pulls her lower lip in and sucks at it.
"No. I know." Shaw tightens his knee enough to squeeze her hand between hamstring and calf, and with the supportive touch comes a pulse of weary resignation. "If only we could just /rule/ this damn planet, the way we always planned, Emma . . . But we'd probably end up overthrown, heads in the guillotine, and so on. Still." Impatience chafes, scratching at mood and voice like that skittering leaf. "If only. Well. We'll do our backroom dealings, whatever we /can/ do -- but for the future? What can we do about that?"
Emma laughs and leans into his leg. "Backroom dealings /create/ the future, dear. I created this one. I can create another," she purrs arrogantly. "And if we meet the guillotine, so be it. You can't kill a name."
Shaw smooths his fingers down her hair, digs them into her ponytail's lush brush as if to warm them in turn, and mutters irritably, "You can sure as hell kill /me/. I don't want to meet that fate before I have to." Flash of old, worn, yet still vibrant death-worry, health-fear, sloughed off with his sigh. "Let's kill the bill. And let's make sure no one else gets the idea of proposing another one, nor anything like it. It's making my public life hell, I have to tell you: do I live up the bigot role and say I support this shit, or do I keep ducking the issue and lose my anti-mutant credibility? Makes me wonder if the role has served its purpose. Not like anyone's come sniffing around the Circle in a while, right?"
Emma's expression hardens at the inherent message of the touch, and she turns toward him, pressing on an elbow and narrowing her eyes as she stills. "We want to kill the bill? Simple enough, I think. We want to salt the earth, we have to do a lot more. We have to cut off both public and political support and plow it under. Though frankly I don't think it will go under without a fight."
Surprise flattens Shaw's mouth at her reaction. << Did I do something wrong? >> he wonders, only partly to himself. "Is it worth it?" he argues back, taking devil's advocacy with devilish ease. "Worth a fight, right now, when we do have the elections to think about, our personal businesses to shepherd, Magneto and his merry band still on the loose--"
Emma presses out a thin smile and pulls her hand free of his knee to reach up and separate his hand from her hair, bringing it around to place a kiss to its back. "You asked if anyone had been sniffing around the Circle," she says, skipping through the minefield of topics laid out. "The answer is yes. Six months ago I had to... /neuter/ a nosy officer. The fact of the matter is that your smokescreen /is/ still effective. However, it works best when you have something to rail against, and frankly, things have been going too well for you, for all intents and purposes." She stops and her eyes unfocus for a moment before she leans in and murmurs, "Maybe it's about time your 'side' started losing a little credibility..."
Shaw turns his hand around to cup her cheek and tip her face to his with insistent firmness. His eyes are sternly dark; the mind behind them, much the same. "Losing credibility. Whatever do you have in mind, devious woman?" << And how much is it going to hurt me? >>
Emma squirms around, getting her knees and hands up under her and pushes up onto all fours, following the direction of his grip easily, smiling with deep-seated calculation at him and his responses. "Credibility. Losing it can certainly hamper efforts to follow up on a defeat. Lose enough of it and your initiatives are permanently crippled. And a movement without a leader is easily marginalized."
"But I don't /like/ losing," Shaw complains.
"You don't like losing, or you don't like /appearing/ to lose?" Emma retorts.
Shaw sulks at her. "Same difference."
Emma crawls up a step and closes the distance between them. "You know better than that."
Shaw eyes her, practically nose to nose by now, and breathes ruminating discontent in slight, seething sips of air. "What would I have to do?" he finally asks, quiet and contained.
"Tell me who the most visible and potentially vulnerable supporter of mutant legislation is?"
Skipping, skittering thoughts, a whirring Rolodex cataloguing Washington's movers and shakers-- Shaw smiles. "Roger Lowe. The President of the United States, and all hail to the mutant-fearing chief."
Emma smiles. "And the man that isn't fully aware of /all/ his campaign activities."
"But you--" Shaw taps his finger to her nose "--are."
She grins, the expression alternately warming the cockles of ones heart or freezing the blood in one's vein, depending on what side of it one stands on. "I am. Now tell me how you don't want to /appear/ to lose."
Shaw does not appear appreciably frozen, but the ashen charcoal nub that masquerades as his heart keeps beating as it always does, faintly perceptible through their physical contact. Thoughtful tap of finger on nose again, then he folds his arms back on his knees and hunches. Sighs. "I can appear to lose. I can flame out dramatically, in fact. My company could probably use the PR," he tells her with a morbid smile. "No such thing as bad publicity, and you know I love the spotlight."
"What? Not going to milk the ranting bigot who foams at the mouth and defies all who counter him? Sebastian...," Emma purrs, laughing and pulling back. "You'll always have your cadre of supporters, both public and private. Bask in /that/ spotlight, because I don't think you're going to get any other today. I'll get my people on gathering up the paper trails we hid initially, and forward the lists on to you. There's a few of Lowe's own supporters I'll need to handle myself."
"I can rant!" Shaw protests and then slides into a laugh, too, as he sits back, doubling the space between them. His emotions stay comfy-close, however, not shielded (never able to be shielded!) and honest: acceptance, anticipation, curiosity, the smallest kernel of nervous suspicion for her motives and what she might do /next/. . . . "If you want to write my scripts for me, in fact, do feel free -- partner. Would you like to be the power behind the throne? Again?"
"I'd look better in front of it," Emma points out with wide open, guileless (yeah, right) eyes. She lifts her hand to his shoulder and uses it for balance as she gains her feet, squeezing it before releasing it with, "I'll forward the information to you and we can discuss methods. But for now, I'm going inside and trading the dampness of the sauna for the dampness out here."
The ghost of steamy bliss flows through Shaw's mind, chased by wistfulness and the call to duty: "Then I'm off to that party. Looks like the rain's staying up there, after all." On his way to his feet, he supposes, guileless right back, "I think America's most prominent bigot might have a few choice words to say about mutantkind tonight. Just to get him back in the gossip rags and maybe onto CNN for an interview, you understand." << Raise my stock, pump it for all its worth, make the plunge more stark, drag down whoever I can with it-- >>
"Might he? I do hope the informants are close at hand tonight then," Emma replies with a smooth, slippery-silk smile. It's likely that they will be. Quite likely.
Shaw stuffs his hands in his trousers' dark deep pockets and gives her the sunniest, the most innocent, the cheeriest of smiles. "Gosh, that'd be swell. In we go, Ms. Frost. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow." His eyes flash, keener even than the smile. "And we will see what can be done about removing that presidential obstacle, you and I, for the good of everyone, dammit."
[Log ends.]
If I ever get on your wrong side again, Emma, let the end be swift, at least.
Putting our heads together to plot the downfall of those in our way: just like old times, isn't it? Why, I'm practically aflush with nostalgic bonhomie. (They'll never know what hit them. I love it. I love this. Us. Working as we should. It's good. It's right. It's about damn time.)
My gracious hostess tonight is a huge supporter of Worthington's safehouses amid all her charities, and doesn't she have a mutant cousin somewhere in her tangled family tree? Trots him out in conversation as proof of her commitment at every chance she gets, the shameless bubblehead. And her husband is an editor with the Times, and he'll be there tonight, too. . . .
Well. This could be a fun party, after all.
3/28/2006
Logfile from Shaw of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hellfire Clubhouse - Back Deck
With a breathtaking view up and down the East River, the patio serves as a natural extension of the grand house that encloses it on three sides. The deck's slate slabs fit together so tightly as to make the seams all but invisible; rougher marble forms the balustrade railing on the outer edge of the smooth-tiled space. Tables can be set up at a moment's notice, and a steel-and-glass roof awaits deployment, hidden behind the stonework of the wall itself but accessible through carefully designed and even more carefully concealed machinery. New York still makes its presence felt, but only as a level of background noise that does not intrude into this exclusive refuge.
Each of the three walls around the patio holds a door into the clubhouse: the north, to the exercise room; the west, to the foyer; and the south, to the ballroom. Stone steps lead down and east into the estate's gardens.
--
The back deck is empty, swept clean by recent breezes and the landscaping staff -- or almost empty, since Shaw is sitting on the top step leading down in the gardens. With his black-sweatered back to the grand old mansion, he has his head tipped up for a pensive, almost Byronic study of the clouds accumulating in heavy, wet, grey layers over the city. His arms lie crossed on his knees to support the lazy arches of spine and shoulders, their span brushed by his hair's loose-caught tail. A water bottle drained nearly dry stands next to his seat, lone companion and fellow sentinel against the coming shower.
Such a picturesquely brooding scene. One almost hates to disrupt it. Almost. Emma emerges from the gardens, ambling the walk of the recently-jogged, loose cotton pants and hooded sweatshirt donned against the coolness of the sullen afternoon. Headphones are pulled to clasp around her neck as she reaches up and pulls the rubber band from her ponytail, practiced hands catching her hair before it has a chance to fall and smoothing it back into a reformed tail tucked under. "Sebastian, darling. Thought you hated weather like this," she comments as she approaches.
Shaw rolls his eyes down from the sky to the White Queen, then just plain rolls them. "If it's going to do more than sprinkle," he tells her practically, "I want to be ready for it. I have that party across town tonight, and I should know how to dress for it if the hostess insists on showing off her balcony view /again/." His disgruntlement doesn't linger, however, as he sits back, braced on hands to the slate tiles behind him, and cocks his head at her. "Were you exercising?" << Jogging? Do we jog now? So plebian. Next it'll be pilates. >>
"Of course I exercise," Emma growls answering both comments aloud. She drops heavily to a seat on a lower step and hooks her elbows on the next one up. "Surgery isn't the answer to /everything/," gets muttered as a low aside, but still clear enough to be heard, and acts as a prelude to her catty tack-on. "I do work to maintain /my/ balcony view."
Obligingly, Shaw leans her way, angling his critical, curious gaze down that view to see what he can see, jogging clothes be damned. Appreciation, amusement scintillate in his mind and provide a half-laughing chaser to his mild reply: "I didn't mean anything by it." << Except of course I did, you know that, clever girl. >> "You want to jog in our gardens, you go right ahead." He pats her on the head.
Now it's Emma's turn to roll her eyes, and she ducks away from that hand before the second pat can land. "Your beneficence is overwhelming," she drawls, settling back into place and running a casually familiar hand under his leg to grip his calf, the circling motion of fingers and thumb both comforting and potentially warning. "Why don't you just watch the weather station like everyone else? They may be wrong seventy-five percent of the time, but at least everyone else will be wrong with you," she asks, tone light and amused.
Shaw twitches his leg, but doesn't remove it from her grasp: warning accepted, if it comes to that. He drops his hand back to supporting his bulk's slouched lean, and shrugs. "Got away from work, didn't I? It's quiet out here. No phones, emails, meetings . . ." His surface thoughts fizz fleetingly with business concerns, cut off by a subvocalized (and self-conscious) << Sorry. >> "Anyway, sometimes I like to look at the place I'm nominally lording over. Clears my thoughts," though the face he turns out to the gardens, the river, the high grey sky is less than masked and certainly not /clear/.
Her thumb and fingers work in an idle massage as she uses the contact to skim his unvocalized projections. "Nominally? Tsk, Sebastian. You're Lord and Master here," she replies, teasing lightly as she too tips her head back to scan the sky. "What's the matter, darling? You're acting positively Heathcliffian." She stretches her legs out and relaxes into a veritable sprawl.
Somewhere between pissy and pettish, Shaw projects at her the windy sweep of tragic Gothic moors and sets his jaw. "Just business," he allows, with the tangible hope of leaving it /there/, thank you, no more poking at it. Instead, he offers, "I feel like derailing Jacobs's bill. How about you?"
"Sounds worthwhile. I was thinking that things are gathering steam, and it's easier to direct from atop a wave than from underneath. The names coming in from the MRA database have trickled off, and while I'm sure we can protect our own, it's not worth the hassle anymore in it's current form." Emma tips a tendril of power into a return image: that of herself dressed in period costume, standing on those moors with her skirts whipping in the wind. A smile tugs at the corner of her lip as she peeks over her shoulder up at him.
Shaw smiles absently back down at her, but continues in his serious vein, with thoughts clicking and ticking over in practiced political calculation. "Percy's idea is to attach a rider full of pork fat to the bill and stall it in committee or debates. I was thinking that we could try to postpone the vote until after the midterm elections, and work them to get the right people in office to make the right votes. . . . Too much time spent on internal matters," he concludes, glancing away on a self-annoyed frown's cusp. "This sneaked up on us. We need to take care of it and not let it happen again."
Emma's lashes lower and she turns her head back to face outward, stilling her hand and tucking it behind Shaw's knee for warmth as leaf scratches at concrete under the force of a fitful breeze. "That's a good idea," she says thoughtfully. "I'll see if I cannot lean on some of my contacts to support such legislation, if not draft it. But it's not going to be enough to bury it for good. Probably not even for long." She pulls her lower lip in and sucks at it.
"No. I know." Shaw tightens his knee enough to squeeze her hand between hamstring and calf, and with the supportive touch comes a pulse of weary resignation. "If only we could just /rule/ this damn planet, the way we always planned, Emma . . . But we'd probably end up overthrown, heads in the guillotine, and so on. Still." Impatience chafes, scratching at mood and voice like that skittering leaf. "If only. Well. We'll do our backroom dealings, whatever we /can/ do -- but for the future? What can we do about that?"
Emma laughs and leans into his leg. "Backroom dealings /create/ the future, dear. I created this one. I can create another," she purrs arrogantly. "And if we meet the guillotine, so be it. You can't kill a name."
Shaw smooths his fingers down her hair, digs them into her ponytail's lush brush as if to warm them in turn, and mutters irritably, "You can sure as hell kill /me/. I don't want to meet that fate before I have to." Flash of old, worn, yet still vibrant death-worry, health-fear, sloughed off with his sigh. "Let's kill the bill. And let's make sure no one else gets the idea of proposing another one, nor anything like it. It's making my public life hell, I have to tell you: do I live up the bigot role and say I support this shit, or do I keep ducking the issue and lose my anti-mutant credibility? Makes me wonder if the role has served its purpose. Not like anyone's come sniffing around the Circle in a while, right?"
Emma's expression hardens at the inherent message of the touch, and she turns toward him, pressing on an elbow and narrowing her eyes as she stills. "We want to kill the bill? Simple enough, I think. We want to salt the earth, we have to do a lot more. We have to cut off both public and political support and plow it under. Though frankly I don't think it will go under without a fight."
Surprise flattens Shaw's mouth at her reaction. << Did I do something wrong? >> he wonders, only partly to himself. "Is it worth it?" he argues back, taking devil's advocacy with devilish ease. "Worth a fight, right now, when we do have the elections to think about, our personal businesses to shepherd, Magneto and his merry band still on the loose--"
Emma presses out a thin smile and pulls her hand free of his knee to reach up and separate his hand from her hair, bringing it around to place a kiss to its back. "You asked if anyone had been sniffing around the Circle," she says, skipping through the minefield of topics laid out. "The answer is yes. Six months ago I had to... /neuter/ a nosy officer. The fact of the matter is that your smokescreen /is/ still effective. However, it works best when you have something to rail against, and frankly, things have been going too well for you, for all intents and purposes." She stops and her eyes unfocus for a moment before she leans in and murmurs, "Maybe it's about time your 'side' started losing a little credibility..."
Shaw turns his hand around to cup her cheek and tip her face to his with insistent firmness. His eyes are sternly dark; the mind behind them, much the same. "Losing credibility. Whatever do you have in mind, devious woman?" << And how much is it going to hurt me? >>
Emma squirms around, getting her knees and hands up under her and pushes up onto all fours, following the direction of his grip easily, smiling with deep-seated calculation at him and his responses. "Credibility. Losing it can certainly hamper efforts to follow up on a defeat. Lose enough of it and your initiatives are permanently crippled. And a movement without a leader is easily marginalized."
"But I don't /like/ losing," Shaw complains.
"You don't like losing, or you don't like /appearing/ to lose?" Emma retorts.
Shaw sulks at her. "Same difference."
Emma crawls up a step and closes the distance between them. "You know better than that."
Shaw eyes her, practically nose to nose by now, and breathes ruminating discontent in slight, seething sips of air. "What would I have to do?" he finally asks, quiet and contained.
"Tell me who the most visible and potentially vulnerable supporter of mutant legislation is?"
Skipping, skittering thoughts, a whirring Rolodex cataloguing Washington's movers and shakers-- Shaw smiles. "Roger Lowe. The President of the United States, and all hail to the mutant-fearing chief."
Emma smiles. "And the man that isn't fully aware of /all/ his campaign activities."
"But you--" Shaw taps his finger to her nose "--are."
She grins, the expression alternately warming the cockles of ones heart or freezing the blood in one's vein, depending on what side of it one stands on. "I am. Now tell me how you don't want to /appear/ to lose."
Shaw does not appear appreciably frozen, but the ashen charcoal nub that masquerades as his heart keeps beating as it always does, faintly perceptible through their physical contact. Thoughtful tap of finger on nose again, then he folds his arms back on his knees and hunches. Sighs. "I can appear to lose. I can flame out dramatically, in fact. My company could probably use the PR," he tells her with a morbid smile. "No such thing as bad publicity, and you know I love the spotlight."
"What? Not going to milk the ranting bigot who foams at the mouth and defies all who counter him? Sebastian...," Emma purrs, laughing and pulling back. "You'll always have your cadre of supporters, both public and private. Bask in /that/ spotlight, because I don't think you're going to get any other today. I'll get my people on gathering up the paper trails we hid initially, and forward the lists on to you. There's a few of Lowe's own supporters I'll need to handle myself."
"I can rant!" Shaw protests and then slides into a laugh, too, as he sits back, doubling the space between them. His emotions stay comfy-close, however, not shielded (never able to be shielded!) and honest: acceptance, anticipation, curiosity, the smallest kernel of nervous suspicion for her motives and what she might do /next/. . . . "If you want to write my scripts for me, in fact, do feel free -- partner. Would you like to be the power behind the throne? Again?"
"I'd look better in front of it," Emma points out with wide open, guileless (yeah, right) eyes. She lifts her hand to his shoulder and uses it for balance as she gains her feet, squeezing it before releasing it with, "I'll forward the information to you and we can discuss methods. But for now, I'm going inside and trading the dampness of the sauna for the dampness out here."
The ghost of steamy bliss flows through Shaw's mind, chased by wistfulness and the call to duty: "Then I'm off to that party. Looks like the rain's staying up there, after all." On his way to his feet, he supposes, guileless right back, "I think America's most prominent bigot might have a few choice words to say about mutantkind tonight. Just to get him back in the gossip rags and maybe onto CNN for an interview, you understand." << Raise my stock, pump it for all its worth, make the plunge more stark, drag down whoever I can with it-- >>
"Might he? I do hope the informants are close at hand tonight then," Emma replies with a smooth, slippery-silk smile. It's likely that they will be. Quite likely.
Shaw stuffs his hands in his trousers' dark deep pockets and gives her the sunniest, the most innocent, the cheeriest of smiles. "Gosh, that'd be swell. In we go, Ms. Frost. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow." His eyes flash, keener even than the smile. "And we will see what can be done about removing that presidential obstacle, you and I, for the good of everyone, dammit."
[Log ends.]