1964-05-11 - I Spy Professor X
Summary: Professor X comes upon the Messiah of all.
Related: N/A
Theme Song: None
hope xavier 


*

Cold rain spits from deep, low clouds in thick grey cotton. Everyone smart has a hood or an umbrella. Puddles reflect the many towers of Midtown. She doesn't particularly like Midtown, the crossroads for money and people. Neither is familiar to her. Mr. Big, as a mutant telepath calls himself, goes about skimming thoughts of his customers that go in and out of a pharmacy. It's not an exciting life for a pharmacy clerk, but he has plans. Such plans! The seed of greatness begins somewhere, but while his thoughts are on 'hot girl', 'bet I could take that wallet' and other questionable matters, the redhead on a bench munching on a soggy bagel is skimming the streets around her. The bombardment physically hurts, a headache pulsing behind her temples.

She's looking for someone rather than something, brushing back and forth in gridded sweeps. Hope shouldn't even have to do that much, but the overlapped twinkle of two absolutely identical telepathic presences isn't out of the ordinary that much. One of them being a magnified star of the other, five times greater, is, though. Munch. Chew.

*

There's two things that can draw out the Professor rather quickly. One is a telepath that he could detect on Cerebro, let alone two… and the other, well, he is a sucker for a good bagel and they still haven't gotten a good bagel shop in Westchester just yet. Though he is keeping his psychic shields up as he's doing a bit of triangulating himself, walking down the street in his suit and black umbrella, looking like any other thirties businessman on the sidewalks of Midtown. He does, however, pause, sensing that he's getting close to the psychic disruption, glancing back and forth with his eyes as he looks for a physical sign in addition to the mental ones.

*

The bagels are halfway decent, sold by a shop beside the pharmacy. Both are wedged in the bottom of a tall office tower. The redhead isn't much paying attention to her surroundings, though she looks to be waiting for a bus that never quite comes. Her foot wiggles lazily. The jiggle of her dirty sole doesn't much get attention or warrant focus. The skillful sweep runs past idle thoughts without much touching on them, leaving their thoughts fully private. Mr. Big is mostly focused on eyeing up the ladies inside, and his mental 'heheheh' is rather noisy on the whole.

*

Charles walks around towards Hope, sighing a bit as he takes a seat on the other end of the bench, keeping his umbrella up. Though he does make the polite gesture of shifting his umbrella to help screen Hope as well. He does say, as an opening comment, "Sad that someone can't keep their base impulses under control, really." He wrinkles his nose in a bit of distaste, apparently picking up on Mister Big's intentions as well, though he doesn't look directly at Hope… the meaning is pretty clear.

*

The mutant inside is happily surveying the prospects for the evening, and the noise he generates is something the redhead throws a wall towards. Nothing out there in the morass of human souls is remotely helpful, except to designate someone in the thousands upon thousands of people? Not one of her people. Even at her high level of distracted focus, she is not about to ignore the proverbial tyrannosaur entering the savannah. Green eyes wince as the vibrations crawl up the back of her neck and abruptly, the strobing bloom vanishes. Beyond vanishes, it simply melts away into nothing and the smooth contour of her mind vanishes. Utterly gone, dirt kicked over it, and no proof a body was buried anywhere psychically nearby. Reflexes come hard from where she grew up.

The girl sits up straighter on the bench, and eyes her forlorn bagel. A loose toss of her wrist throws it Frisbee style into the trash… and it hits the rim, wobbles, and lands in a puddle. "I'd say they're pretty uptight." She leans over from the umbrella's shade to grab the bread before it becomes an alligator's dinner. Mr. Big is mildly startled, like he noticed something.

*

A tyrannosaur? That's a bit much for the Professor, who actually decides to embody something a little more suited his personality. In this case, a psychic anklyosaur. Low to the ground, armored, defensive… but that club of a tail that will smash anyone that harms the herd. Which, sensing the presence of Something Rather Bad, Mister Big decides discretion might be the better part of valor. At least for the moment, though the Professor does make a mental note for later.

Charles then says idly to Hope, "That depends, I suppose. Though I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised." At least, not by Hope's presence, which does explain the duplicate signals.

*

Ankylosaurs are also happy, sort of like the highly armoured golden labs of the dinosaur world. Don't mind me, just swinging my club tail, doo doo doo. And if the Shadow King or another enemy happens to get in the way of the tail, they get knocked over.

Hope hunches under a completely shapeless coat that would suit the Michelin Man: puffy, many pockets, far too oversized for her. Maybe it's the new style. Her jeans and flat shoes are thoroughly modern and forgettable anyways. She doesn't make eye contact, the fall of her long bangs responsible. The clerk in the pharmacy might be taking his break right now, scrambling to hide in the washroom. Eavesdropping does that. She rubs her fingertips to banish a wet crumb, and flicks it away. "Could be," she says vaguely, shoulders hunched down slightly. "I'll move if you need space."

*

Charles chuckles very softly, "Oh, that's not necessary. You're fine. In point of fact, I was looking to meet you." He doesn't look at Hope either, but then, he doesn't really need to. "But I'm neglecting my manners. I'm Charles Xavier." He leaves off the Professor, etc. as that's not really necessary right now. While the astral anklyosaur sniffs around the pharmacy, then takes a bit of a nap, tail absently swishing as if content to rest… as long as he's not prodded.

*

Hope slowly lifts her head, the smoothness of movements only because every muscle winds and twists to strung agony. Wires go taut. Adrenaline creeps into the veins. With the cocoon wrapped around her thoughts, her lock down extends. "That's a mistake," she says, a bit even. Paranoia is a fine drug. Inhaled or injected really acts the same way. She's ready to bolt, just looking for the opening. Psychic ankylosaur isn't going to catch anything in her direction. Her mind isn't there. "There's no way we could have met." You're dead doesn't make so good a coda.

*

The Professor hmms a bit, "Introducing myself is a mistake? I wouldn't have thought so." He glances over at Hope with a wry expression, "What were you… hoping to find?" He doesn't react to the tightening of Hope's shields, except for the possible arching of a brow.

The dinosaur, meanwhile, seems content to just terrify Mr. Big with its presence, not really going in Hope's general vicinity at all.

*

"Mistaken you were looking for me." The weapon at her command is a psionic nuclear bomb, and one that has familiar activation sequences if she bothers. And this is precisely why cosmic forces should not align their auspices to grant girls under thirty power to make life or death choices. Hope isn't even twenty, by looks. Though it's hard to tell under that coat. "We haven't met. You can't be looking for someone you don't know." She gives him a blank, measured look that is the epitome of a teenager: blase. Nothing to see here. Except her mask is a really good one for someone her age. Even if Mr. Fancy, Mussed Hair is nothing like what Nay-Nay told her about. Nor about this person ambling around. Or…

That she is taller than Charles Xavier, the titan of the past. By a few inches, no less. It becomes clear when she stands, and her eyes widen a little before that revelation cracks away. "Nice try, though. You can go tell him I didn't fall for it."

*

Charles looks… well, mildly confused, really. "Tell who, what, specifically?" He seems a little concerned as he does sense that psychic power backing up Hope, and he says, quite calmly, "Whatever quarrel you have with me, I would ask that you not hurt anyone else. But I'm not going to stop you if you wish to go." And even then, he sounds sincere in the hope that if he is attacked, the collateral damage is kept to a minimum.

*

"Simmering, angry giant with white hair," says the redhead, as though this could possibly be indicative of a single person in New York. Charles' statement angles her brows down, a frown forming. "Why would I hurt anyone else?" It's the deft facility with which she shields herself that indicates how easily his power comes to her. The kicker? Not all the effort is directly conscious. A hermit crab knows to squish itself in a shell. If it throws off a can and finds a conch, it rearranges itself to squeeze in nice and deep almost instinctively. He is the conch, Mr. Big the clerk a bit of tin sheeting. "Look, he may have told you a few things. I'm sorry. Whatever instructions he gave you are fake. This is his idea of a drill." She waves her hand. "If he's here I'd return the favour and tell him myself, but he's not." And so, does one Nathaniel Many Names Summers probably feel his ears proverbially burning for one of the few sins he didn't commit.

*

Charles sighs a bit, "Because I suspect you don't have my experience with what you're using right now." The nice thing about being a top psychiatrist and student of motivations… you don't exactly need telepathy sometimes to determine what people are thinking. "Though no white haired people sent me here, nor am I some sort of test, I assure you of that." His own shields are up, but only in a tentative fashion… enough that if she wanted to look, she could.

*

She doesn't look. Not even a tickle of curiosity. Hope might be saying volumes about that, but she closes her hands briefly into fists. No attempt is made to correct his assumption, even as she scans the streets. Ways in, ways out, no signs of Dad having a laugh at her expense. "Raven?" A word dropped into the void. She shrugs, an easing of the brittle tension building on and on. Every sense keys to danger. And it's an old friend, danger. She wears it easier than the casual air of a teenager. The bearing gives it away. That, and the eyes. Too old for someone so young. Way, way too old. What they have seen scars at some level. "You're dead. So reconcile that."

*

Charles arches a brow at that, "Dead? Well, I suppose I'll die /eventually/…" He looks at Hope curiously, "But you're not threatening me, though as far as Raven goes." He makes a bit of a grimace, "That is… decidedly complicated. Though you're not from around here at all, are you?"

*

"That's complicated, as far as place goes."

In absolutely anyone else, it's probably going to come across as mockery or contemptuous, a flippant statement. Something. From Hope, who hasn't even got the capacity for half those things? Her statement is a bald faced truth. "Charles Xavier is dead. And you don't…" A wave of her hand follows. "Not matching up."

*

Charles looks a bit puzzled at that, "Well, I admit I was on a sabbatical, but I hardly think that hanging out in a hobbit-hole with J.R.R. Tolkien means I was dead…" He stays seated, mostly so he doesn't set off Hope to run or attack him, but does seem to want to keep her talking.

*

What else is there to say? She gives another of those half shrugs. When it comes to easygoing, she's never going to be a synonym for that. "Sorry. Dunno what to tell you." Her terseness is something of an art form, and the deeper she goes down that hole, the more comfortable.

*

Charles nods, "Well, I'm guessing that you're the Ghost of What May Be, not What Will Be, whoever you are." He looks more curious than anything else, "Though, for the moment at least, I'm alive. And I frankly wouldn't mind staying that way."

*

Hope blinks slowly as the words register. Dapper, short. Umbrella, suit. Details are parsed. If there is a literary reference, accept she misses it completely. Curiosity meets that vibrating ball of potential. "It doesn't make sense."

Then, quite abruptly, she beelines for the safety of the bagel shop because she desperately needs something to mull over. Or more likely the energy burn for sustaining his power set reminds her acutely a bagel would be great about now.

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