(no subject)
Zenith is here today, soldiering on with daily life despite current upsets, but it seems most other people are not. The shared dressing room area off the studio is empty but for her, and she has one of the communal vanities to herself, though there's music out in the main room. Right now, Zenith looks grumpy, worn out, and is eating her way through a pint of ice cream while reading a fashion magazine, still dressed in her work-out leotard and skirt.
It has taken some minor wrangling to get Ororo past security at the studio, but having managed it, she still looks a little out of place. Silvery-white hair pulled back in a half-tail over the fall of the rest, she wears a long dark coat over black leather pants and high-heeled boots. (Perhaps it is a small wonder that she had a little trouble with security.) Now she comes to the door of the communal dressing room, and with a faint frown touching her expression, she knocks thrice.
Zenith looks up blankly at the door for several seconds, unable to fathom by someone would be knocking, and then gets up. "It's not locked, is it?" she asks. Her ice cream and spoon come with her.
Storm looks down at the knob, and then back up at the door. She doesn't actually try it, this being possibly contrary to her sense of the dramatic (or maybe, to her sense of courtesy, at a stranger's place of being). She says, "I don't know."
Zenith sticks the spoon upright, and then opens the door. She stares at Storm on the other side. "Oh--hello." She steps back, a little confused. "Is this about yesterday?"
"Er," Storm says. She has the slightly fragmented dignity of someone for whom the world is not aligning properly according to their prewritten internal narrative of how this is supposed to go, but she lifts her chin slightly and boldly plunged onward. "Not exactly. Hello," she adds. "My name is Ororo Munroe. I need to speak with you." With a slight smile reflecting a certain dry humor, she asks, "Is this a good time?"
"Well, I'm completely burned dry at the moment, and my partner didn't come in to pratice anyway, so I'm not doing anything." Zenith goes back to her ice cream with the air of someone who is hungry enough to eat by instinct when they're not paying attention, rudeness of eating in front of someone else aside. She goes around, trying to find a chair lightly covered in crap enough that it can be cleared for a guest. In the end, she offers Storm hers, and perches on the vanity. "I know it was kind of the show of you guys from the school, but I filled out the form. And was kind of useless anyway."
Storm turns two fingers outward in a sweeping gesture of polite refusal. "Thank you, I'm fine as I am," she says, remaining standing and settling her weight evenly between her high heels. She lets her hands fall again, folded loosely before her. "Any help that you offered yesterday was welcome, I'm sure of it. We are not territorial about being mutant good citizens."
Zenith gets a smear of chocolate on her cheek, and finally looks down at her spoon. "I, uh--" She twists around to look at the mini-fridge, looking worried. "Don't have any more..." She grimaces. "As I said, I wasn't much help."
"Whether you were or not," Ororo says in a low tone, with a slight inclination of her head to suggest that she makes no comment particularly on what she did not personally witness, "I am here to offer you the opportunity to be of more."
Zenith licks her spoon, sticks it in the all but empty pint, and sets both aside. "I can't lift a pencil for a while yet," she says, but hesitantly, not sure about what's being offered.
Storm shakes her head once, and then turns out a hand in an open gesture. "When you are recovered, then," she says, "although time is not an unlimited commodity." She glances over her shoulder at the door, and makes a show of turning and making certain that it is closed. Then she turns back to sweep Zenith with her glance, ice cream smudges and all. "You know the service the school offers publicly to the community. Would you be surprised to learn that it does not end there?"
Zenith swipes away the smear with the side of her thumb, now she's not actively eating. She twitches a wrinkle out of the workout skirt. "I wouldn't really be surprised about anything like that at this point." She leaves just why undefined. She sounds even more hesitant now. "What did you need me to do?" And will it clash with other loyalties?
Tipping her head forward with a frown lingering at the curve of her mouth, Ororo exhales in a contemplative sigh. "Whether you choose to help or not," she says, "I need to know that you will be very careful with the information I'm about to give you. If it should get out prematurely, the panic could be considerable. It is classified at the highest levels." She undoes a few buttons of her coat and pulls out a manila folder, although she holds it closed. It sure enough has been stamped 'top secret' in red, although whether this is because it has earned this status from the government or whether someone at Xavier's had fun with stamps is not immediately clear.
Zenith looks at the folder, then at Storm, then at the folder again. She catches her lip in her teeth. "Are sure I'm the one you want?" she asks. "I mean--of course I won't breathe a word. But I have the /reputation/--" Her lips twist with the bitterness in the word.
"With respect, Ms. McMillan," Ororo replies, with a slight smile touched with a hint of irony, "I don't know you or your reputation. My reasons for trusting you are that I must."
Zenith snorts, a 'gee, thanks' kind of noise, but this time she stays silent, waiting for further information.
"As you know, there is an asteroid bearing down on this planet," Storm says, "or more accurately, at this point, a bunch of pieces of asteroid." She holds out the folder for Zenith to take, her expression quite grave. "Our country is asking for our help."
Zenith does take it, running a finger along the edge. "I can only do like four-hundred pounds," she points out, then opens the folder. "Are they small pieces?"
"Some," Ororo says. There are not many pages in the folder, although one of them is a neat dossier of Zenith herself (creepy!). The Pegasus is in there, the projected composition and weight of several of the asteroid fragments, and most importantly, a schedule of team practices and team trainings signed off on by Storm and Cyclops. "But there may be more applications of your powers working in tandem with others' involved -- with Jean's telekinesis, for example, or the detonative power of another teammate, and so on, and so forth. That's why we've come to you. To join us in preparing, working out viable action scenarios, and eventually," she pauses, with another very slight, elusive smile, "in saving the world."
Zenith has to stop and read the dossier, just from pure human nature, and her lip tighten over whatever parts she doesn't like to remember, or wishes they didn't know, such as her arrest and trial, but then she gets to the rest. Her fingers print the pages with wavery little circles. "I'm used to working with other people. I mean, not really powers, as much, but--" She looks up. "You really want me?"
Storm arches an eyebrow, but does not inquire. Rather, she dips her head to Zenith in firm acknowledgment. "Yes," she says. If there are doubts, they do not show in the stoic planes of her expression. "We do."
Zenith lets out a long breath. "Thank you." Her expression, after the flash of genuine gratitude, goes sardonic. "I was tired of fucking fundraising uselessly and working on a fucking show no one's going to go to anyway. How soon is this? Should I cancel the show, to have more time for training--" She chews her lip. "Shit. Of course there's the contractual stuff, from the TV show, and if I can't tell them why--" She winces. "Sorry. Thinking out loud."
"Well, you -- don't need to answer now." Ororo's response comes at a slight delay. It is possible that the sudden upsurge of foul language comes as a mild shock to a woman who runs a tight ship as far as classroom profanity is concerned. "You've the tentative schedule and my phone number in the packet I've given you. Given the tragic disaster at Grand Central, you will need some assistance getting to our site. But we can help you with that."
"Say I had an answer for you..." Zenith hesitates. "Tomorrow morning? When would I start? I mean, for all I'm concerned, I'd say yes right here, but it's the...contractual stuff." The very vague contractual stuff! Only after asking the question, like a doofus, does she think to look at the tentative schedule.
"Just call me when you know," Storm says with a hint of bemusement in the midst of warm assurance. Contractual stuff more important than world saveage?! "Tomorrow is fine."
"I will." Zenith nods. There's a little waver of excitement creeping into her voice finally, as she comes to terms with the idea, and she comes to see Storm to the door of the dressing room, since it sounds like the woman is winding up to leave.
The conversation drawing in fact to its natural conclusion, Ororo cants her head and says, "I'll look forward to hearing from you, then." Her fingers flick quickly over the buttons of her coat, closing it back up again. "Please be careful with that folder," she adds with just a smidge of top-secret-appropriate paranoia.
"Should I burn it?" Zenith jokes, but she holds it closer to her chest anyway.
"Well," Ororo says, with a hint of a laugh buried in the word as she shakes her head, "I'd think you need the information in it..." She moves for the door on a few quick steps.
Zenith laughs more openly, and nods in farewell.
Storm is off, just about as surreptitiously as she arrived. Which is to say, probably not very.
The X-Men extend an invitation.