Alison, Scott and guest Paige

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Alison ambushes Scott while making his way out for a morning run. They talk, getting onto the topics of the trainees just in time for Paige to overhear and create a giant misunderstanding. The paranoia levels escalate, and Alison and Scott continue on their merry way, unaware. Sunday morning, before the Nathan precog hubbub.


Waiting by the door to the mansion for Scott to come out, Alison looked over the school grounds. The grass was freshly mowed and light still lingering here and there as the sun dipped behind cloud cover which didn't seem likely to end any time soon. It suited her mood though on this day, considering the topic of the talk that was to come.

"Hey," Scott said, stepping outside to join her. He was limping a little more heavily, but smiled briefly at her. "Usual circuit of the grounds?" he asked a bit wryly. "I think I could use the exercise."

"The usual circuit," Alison nodded, with a small smile. It was nice to be able to say 'the usual' at that. Nice in ways that spoke of a comforting routine and being at home and other good things, even if sometimes the conversation touched topics that weren't the easiest to talk about. Or the most pleasant. "D'you need to warm up first?"

"I just came from the gym. Trust me, warming up isn't required." He was going to be so glad when his damned knee was back in shape. When he was back in shape. They headed down the steps, and Scott shook his head a little. "Your boyfriend's a nag."

"Oh. Oooh. He's been telling you to work out more, huh?" Keeping an utterly straight face, Alison walked down the steps, careful not to snicker. Or smile too much. Or giggle. Or anything else that might give away how amusing that was, particularly with Scott being so grumpy about it.

"I think his goal is to shame me into it. I'm half-tempted to get back in shape just for the sheer joy of being able to kick his ass at the end of it all." Whoops. Scott gave her a very meek look. "I mean, to, um, practice our hand-to-hand skills in a safe and thoroughly productive manner."

The sidelong look which had focused upon him didn't waver, however, and Alison smiled. A lot. Showing many teeth in the process. "Uh huh. Right." She knew Haroun better than that. "I like his butt unkicked. Just so you know." The smiled stayed as she said this. Very cheerfully so.

Scott smirked at her, abruptly. "You never retracted the 'touch-sparring only' order with him and Nate, did you?"

"No." She was waiting for one or the other to slip up, though hadn't admitted that to anyone yet. "That's bad of me, isn't it?" she added, studying her nails and not feeling an iota of guilt.

"Very bad. Restraining their bad habits like that... what next?" He grimaced a bit as they walked. "All things considered, I think I can excuse them the occasional lapse into macho behavior." Although if Nathan messed around like that once he was back on his feet and in training, he would be having words with the older man. "Easier in a lot of ways than some of the other challenges we have to deal with."

"Ha. They'll forget and slip up at one point. I just bet you," she added wryly, shaking her head. "I'm not sure how to explain to him how I hate seeing the bruises, with how he views the whole thing himself." The murmur was wistful, Alison knew - as much as she didn't like it when it came to the fighting, the way he threw himself into everything was still something she loved of him as a whole. "Ah well. What is, is."

"About the things we can change," Scott said, deliberately shifting the conversation. "We should have asked Ororo along. I think the three of us need to have a serious talk about our trainees."

"She might still drop in," Alison said, nodding nonetheless. "But yeah. It's why I was waiting in ambush. They're had a bit of time to settle in and," it wasn't just the newer trainees they had to talk about, "all that."

"Good news first?" Scott ventured a bit wryly. "I'm not detecting any slacking from any of them. I suppose that's only to be expected, given that they all had to take the initiative to start this process in this first place, but I like to keep an eye out just in case."

"Enthusiasm before the storm hits," Alison murmured, smiling a bit at the pun though it hadn't been intended. "I'm curious to see how it'll smooth out over time. And how they'll be interacting with each other, too."

"I'm maybe perverse, but I'm waiting to see how many of my predicted points of conflict bear out," Scott said dryly. "Oddly, most of them revolve around our two most recent trainees."

"Shiro and Jubilee?" It wasn't that wild a guess, really. "Depends on how seriously they want to be taken, I guess. We'll have to keep an eye out for stuff going on where they think we won't see probably. I'm worried about the former's lack of respect for decisions he's determined are stupid. Or something." Alison paused, then winced. "Gah. I sound bored. I'm not, only... yeah, that one got old real fast."

"I'm a little more confident about Jubilee than I was. She seems to be taking her background reading very seriously, and she's asking a number of the right questions." He thought about their discussion on the porch. "Not rejecting the answers, either. But I think her mind's a little more fundamentally open than his is, or at least, she's learning to make it so."

"She can hold out almost over an hour before talking now in meditation," Alison teased lightly. It wasn't as though she was making her last longer anyway, for normal sessions. "I'll be working with her on emotional control when she's ready for the single Danger Room training sessions, I suppose. Her power's closest to mine on that score, at least." And Jubilee had expressed interest.

"I'll be interested to see how she does perform in the Danger Room," Scott confessed. "Her reactions are going to be unpredictable at first, I think. She's got a lot of bad habits to unlearn. As does Shiro, mind you." He shook his head a little. "Entirely different bad habits, though. I'm still a little uncertain of how to approach the sense of superiority. Confidence is a good thing, but I distrust the arrogance."

"It's the 'I'll follow orders but I know I'm still right no matter what you say and you're all fools' that I'm worried about. Bending and pretending to be a good little trainee isn't actually being willing to work with people and open one's mind.
And that will get someone killed fast at one point. Probably another trainee or a team member. That's what worries me."

'…the sense of superiority. Confidence is a good thing, but I distrust the arrogance. It's the 'I'll follow orders but I know I'm still right no matter what you say and you're all fools' that I'm worried about. Bending and pretending….' Paige slowed her steady pace as the words wove right through the trees and to her. It was early morning, her time, and she was making her way back to the mansion, through one of the more winding paths that led right through the trees and forced her to jump a fallen log or two. She was thankful for the spring weather; dry leaves and branches would have cracked underfoot, but for now she was silent, and Alison and Summers, there was no mistaking her voice, had yet to notice her.

"I just..." Scott shook his head again. "Don't get it, I suppose. As in, having serious difficulty wrapping my mind around it. Maybe it's because I was totally the opposite when I was first going through training? But it just boggles me that someone with so little real experience can have that much confidence in their own judgment." He grimaced. "And you're absolutely right. Lip service to the concepts of teamwork and trust isn't acceptable. And maybe we ought to give it more time, yes, but we've all been watching our little 'prodigy' for a while now."

"Prodigy in whose viewpoint?" Alison asked with a touch of irony. "I'm wondering if there's a realization that being a trainee in no way guarantees becoming part of the team actually heavily influenced a lot of decisions about things, there. It's why I was never really worried. Time will tell - and there's a lot of time left before that decision comes along."

Paige halted at that as if she'd be slapped, grabbing onto a tree to keep her balance. The pair of them paused a moment, just a hair, with heads tilting in her direction, before brushing it off towards wildlife and continuing their walk down to the main path. They were getting farther away, and while she knew she should merely continue her run in the opposite direction, she wasn't so sure if she let go of her tree if she wouldn't fall down. She'd been right; they didn't trust her any more. They didn't even really want her on the team. It was all a matter of time for them, just waiting for her to screw up. The way they threw around that word, 'prodigy', as if it were a joke…

"A lot of time, and a lot of proving one's self left to do," Scott agreed, then snorted softly. "Of course, God forbid that we should point that out to the trainee in question. Might cause offense. In fact, it probably would cause offense. That's another thing that's going to have to be shaken, and shaken hard. The pride. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

"Haven't you noticed? We have the bad taste to critize anyone or oh my god imply someone has less sense than God gave a gnat, then there's an uproar." Alison rolled her eyes, though the comment lacked the biting edge it had sometimes previously sported. "When it comes to a trainee though? Though. They can take it or they can damn well leave. We work with things and give as many chances as we can while a student is on probational trainee status, but anyone wanting team..." She shook her head. "It's not about being heroes. That one has to get through, and hard."

"Superhuman," Scott murmured, shaking his head as he remembered the conversation with Paige. "Did you know we're superhuman?" he asked wryly. "If it hadn't been precisely the wrong time for a honest reaction I probably would have shaken Paige to within an inch of her life when she said that to me. What sloppy, dangerous thinking..." From the last person he'd ever expected to come out with something like that, extreme stress aside.

"She's always thought that," Alison murmured, a smile both sad and wistful on her face. "Always. Sets herself up against impossible standards and won't listen to anything that doesn't match with that. She stopped talking to me about anything but the... inconsequential for a while now." Sighing, Alison looked at the ground as they walked. "Can't do it for her. She's the only one who can work through that one. So I try to be there, we go jogging, I get her books and... I hope."

They were getting too far for her to hear now. Alison's last words, something about talking, barely reached her ears, and the next sentence was merely made up of nonsensical sounds, murmurs. Paige felt cold, hot, angry, sad, horrified; it was as if every emotion in her was turned on full and battling for dominance. Maybe this was what a myocardial infarction felt like. Her chest certainly hurt enough. It didn't occur to her that it was panic attack, there wasn't enough room in her head to think it, as she forced herself to stumble towards the mansion and her room. Her bed, with it's soft duvet, where she could read books and try to come up with a reasonable explanation for why they couldn't tell this to her face, but instead gossip behind her back. A twig snapped in her hands and she looked at it, surprised; when had she grabbed hold of that? What had she done wrong? Why wasn't she good enough any more? She was close, she could reach the mansion soon, maybe if she sprinted...

"There's a fundamental difference," Scott said with a sigh of his own. "Between choosing to hold yourself to impossible standards and believing that you're being held to them by virtue of your genes. You can resolve the former... with time, and difficulty. But there's no escape from the latter."

"There is." Alison shrugged a bit. "It just requires a re-adjustement that's a bit bigger than the previous. And a
willingness to admit to the merest possibility of being wrong. And human and faillible. And that it's ok. It's when you fall into thinking you're better by virtue of your genes, without factoring in a desire to do good for others by that, regardless of their own genetic status..." She trailed off, staring ahead calmly.

"You're more optimistic than I am. When did that happen?" It wasn't quite as much of a joke as it should have been. "I wonder sometimes just how badly some of the telepaths around here are tempted to bend their ethics a little," he mused as they walked onwards. "It must be hard to resist, sometimes, when you can see the thought-structures that lead to the damaging behavior."

Alison smiled a bit at that. "It's not that simple. Each pattern of thought is interlaced with another. And another after that. For every factor you influence, even slightly or just to suppress or push it in the background, you tug everything else out of place as well, either quickly or gradually. Hit the wrong pattern of thoughts and you can turn a someone into a serial killer because of the ripple effect into other patterns and deeper-" Alison blinked a bit, then looked sheepish, because that was better than outright wincing at the fact that she was repeating, in part, a conversation she'd had with Charles not so long ago. "Ah. Yeah. Came up in a talk with Charles."

"I was about to say, yes, you've been talking to Charles," Scott said with a smile for the sheepish look. "I've heard similar things, at times. But not every telepath has his experience, or... well, wisdom about things like that. I suspect it's at least partially an age thing." He paused thoughtfully, then shook his head. "Then again, of the other adult telepaths in the house at the moment, one doesn't have enough control to do anything, the other has a hard time bringing himself to do more than use his for communication, and the third..." Don't I wish I know what was going on in the mind of the third. Scott looked down at Alison, the smile lingering. "How did we get off on telepathic ethics? We're rambling again, aren't we."

"The third hasn't quite figured out what telepathic ethics are yet," Alison said quietly, in a matter of fact tone. "And yes, we're rambling again." Her lips quirked slightly and she shot him an amused look. "We'll be rambling when we're both walking around bent over our canes and the young 'uns run the show, I'll bet you. I blame you for it. You're all contagious and stuff. I was just a plain ordinary retired rock star when I got here."

"And I was jaded beyond my years and not at all into the whole trust thing when I got here," Scott said in amusement. "So who do I get to blame?"

"Horrible thing. Truly terrible. Traumatic even." Alison wrinkled her nose, trying not to laugh outright. "Bet you we can find someone for you to sue for that dastardly deed if you want!"

"Eh. Surprisingly, I'm not all that litigious." Scott took a deep breath of the fresh air. "So," he said more briskly, "now that we've dissected the problems, how about focusing on the good? Cain's doing well. So are Doug and Angie... I'm very pleased with all three of them."

"Cain's got the background to take to this and the experience to help move things along." She chuckled a bit though, still amused by the quicksand experiment. "China Shop scenario will be such fun to run there. And Doug and Angie are progressing well, yes. We may want to sit down with Doug to see how far he wants to go in hand to hand. His power can be a scary advantage for him there..."

"Give him all the training he'll take, as far as I'm concerned," Scott said. "Whether or not he intends to stay on the sidelines, we both know that plans have a way of changing very quickly if the crisis is big enough."

"And there's more to him and his power than he realizes," Alison added. Pausing in mid step, she slowly facepalmed slowly. "Please tell me I didn't sound like Mace Windu or something? I didn't do the accent thing, right?" The accent lessons with Rahne were doing wonders for her Scottish accent, but also meant she tended to do any accent if she didn't watch herself.

"More like Alec Guiness, actually," Scott said blithely. And ducked.