xp_logs | LOG: [Wanda, Haller] Counselors

Haller goes to meet the current guidance counselor, and discovers, among other things, that the soothing influence of tea is useless against Wanda's sense of humor.

Wanda leaned back and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, wishing the pain in her back to go away. It was the sign that she had spent far too many hours in roughly the same position, this being at her desk and working on her projects, and it was probably a wise idea to move. But she didn't really feel like going out and doing much of anything and the crowded, musty room she had aquired as her office suited her better than anything else currently.

Besides, if she left there was the possibility that something could go wrong and it was simply wiser to stay in here.

Jim kept his knock soft, but sharp enough to be heard. Scott had suggested he may want to start by introducing himself to the current counselor, so seeking out Wanda Maximoff had made sense. Still, he hoped he wouldn't be bothering her -- Jim still felt odd about approaching the staff so soon after last week's funeral. Nathan aside, he had no way of knowing who else might be in a solitary mood.

Lifting her head, she hrmed slightly. "It is open," she said, letting the chair fall back to it's normal position. It was probably a staff member seeing as there were no current appointments with any of the students.

The voice didn't sound particularly irked -- just tired. Well, Jim could relate to that. "Ms. Maximoff?" he said, stepping into her office. "I'm David Haller, the new counselor. Or newer counselor, that is. Scott suggested I might want to introduce myself."

Wanda perked up at that. "The new counselor? Really? This is not a prank?" She beamed at him and pushed herself away from the desk to walk over and shake his hand. "Please, call me Wanda. If I knew you a little better, I would have probably kissed you at that."

Jim laughed, a little awkwardly. "I don't often get the chance to shake hands with anyone without having to look straight down," he said, taking her extended hand. Her grip was firm without being challenging. Jim tried to reorient himself towards profesionalism. "I guess I can take that as confirmation that Scott wasn't kidding when he said this is a tough job . . ."

Wanda chuckled and then pointed towards one of the overstuffed chairs in front her desk. "Come in, care for some tea?" A habit learned from Stephen, she thought with amused fondness and some longing. "And it is not _tough_, unless you intend to work for two major universities on top of other responsibilites as you are doing this job." Busying herself with making the tea up, she allowed herself to give him a good look over. He was cute if a little different looking. But, then, this was Xavier's...

"I imagine so," Jim agreed, remembering what Scott had said about Wanda essentially working four other jobs. Her accent was European, but hard to place -- it had the kind of generalized harmonics he associated with frequent travel. "Tea would be fine. Which is fortunate, because now that I'm back in Charles' domain it seems there's no way to escape it."

A snicker escaped. "He will one day take over the world with tea," she mused, settling down on the chair next to his until the tea was ready. "Everyone will be completely confused as to why it happened but no one will argue. So what brings you to this glorious mad house?"

"Some work, some training." Jim coughed. "Which coincidentally puts an ocean between me and England, but that's just a minor detail. Charles thought I could benefit from a working vacation."

"You're here on vacation?" Wanda paused and then laughed in delight, the laughter richer than it had been in days. "The Professor has a good sense of irony. I'm sure you will enjoy it here, if not, well, relaxing." Pushing herself out of the chair again, she groaned as the kettle went off. "Black or with sugar and some milk? You said training, would it be rude of me to ask what it is you do?"

"Just a little cream, please," Jim said. She had a nice laugh -- throatier than he'd expected when he'd first seen the slightly haggard face. "I'm studying with the professor in the area of psychic rehabilitation. I guess I've already technically graduated, but I've come to realize a few more lessons couldn't hurt."

"Mmm, I understand that. My powers are not something one would call simple. I have mine mostly under control but not to the degree that I would wish." She shrugged one shoulder. "And I doubt I will ever achieve that."

"My telepathy is under control . . . it's only a matter of honing them at this point. The telekinesis I never did learn to master." He watched her go through the motions of pouring the tea and adding the required condiments. "What is your power?"

"So the opposite of Nathan? Interesting." Scooping up the mugs of tea, Wanda busied herself with giving one to David, noticing some rather obvious burn marks on his hand. She tucked that away for later, when she knew him better, and settled herself down in her chair with her own cup of tea. "I have the ability to use chaos energy. Effectively when my powers are on, I can see strings that I can affect. I am not a precog so I am never one hundred percent certain what the outcome will be."

She grinned. "It leads to a rather amusing power at times."

Jim raised an eyebrow as he took the cup in his hands. "So your power is basically a form of Russian roulette? That must be interesting." He took a sip, taking in the equally interesting decor of her office. It wasn't particularly disorganized, but there was a definite skull-and-mask motif going on. "Scott mentioned Nathan, too. I have a feeling I should be worried."

"Just wait until you meet him, I'm sure it will all click." Wanda gave him a quick wink. "As for my powers...well, I made a duck fly into a helicopter's rotary blades to make it crash."

Being Charles' student had some advantages; in this case, Jim's training in carefully schooled reactions was the only thing that saved him from choking on his tea. "That's . . . a unique way of solving the problem," he managed, giving serious consideration to the thought he might not want to drink during a conversation with anyone other than Charles.

She smirked, just a bit. "My power is unique. How long did Charles manage to grab you for?"

Jim shrugged. "Indefinitely. I'm here to get my liscence to practice therapy as well as the training in psionics, so it may take a little time. I'd already done what I could with the patients I was seeing before I left, so I don't have any pressing commitments."

"Brilliant, it means I can cheerfully foster work off on you while I get my Cambridge reports done," she cackled, tucking a leg under her despite the heels. A thought occured to her and she tilted her head, a mass of hair flowing with the motion. "Did they tell you about me?"

Jim laughed. That's usually my first question . . . "No, just that you were the currently overworked guidance counselor. Is there something more to tell?"

It was a good thing she wasn't shy. "My father is Magneto." Wanda took a sip of her tea and then studied his reaction.

"Magneto?" That was a bit surprising, if only because Jim had never pictured the notorious terrorist as a family man. He took another sip of tea, considering. "Since you're here I'm going to assume you don't agree with his philosophy," he said after a moment, giving her a half-smile, "in which case I can't say I feel all that concerned. And I can't say he did anything particularly monsterous when I met him, anyway."

"...Well." She laughed again. "You certainly do not look like a terrorist, so I'm assuming...you were here when he taught at the school, yes?" Wanda grinned. "It is good to know that neither of us are terrorists. Besides, we're much too pretty to belong to that group."

"Maybe one of us," Jim grinned, and immediately felt embarassed for it. He hurriedly lifted the tea to make the blush a little less obvious. "Uh, but no. He left -- a year, I think? -- before I came to the school. I actually met him last spring, after I'd participated in a local search-and-rescue operation for a missing Alzheimer's patient in Britain. I think that's what got his attention, anyway." He swirled the tea in his cup thoughtfully. "I wasn't sure it was him the first time we met, and he never actually announced himself, but he called himself Erik. He looked like the pictures I'd seen of him and Charles."

She froze for a second, hands clenched tightly around the mug. "That, however, is not as pleasant as I was thinking," Wanda mused, forcing herself to unclench. "My apologizes, there is clearly some family problems. I'm glad to see you managed to avoid his charms."

Nothing her obvious discomfort, Jim gave her an apologetic smile. "It wasn't -- bad. Or at least, not as bad as I expected. He was civil. Affable, even. That's one of the reasons why I wasn't sure at first." He ran a hand through his hair, forehead creasing at the memory. "But it was clear where he was going, after a while. Asking if I'd been harassed for my part in the search -- which I had, a little, but I wasn't that upset about it. Then he offered me a chance to change the world, at which point the Crazy bells started going off." He shook his head, a faint smile returning. "He said he'd give me a few days to consider it. He did, I declined, and that was that. No big deal. Nothing even exploded."

"~Pity he didn't explode~" Wanda muttered to herself in German, shaking her head. "I am glad that he did not try to do anything. He has been known to be less...forgiving of the word 'no' and to simply take what he wants. Perhaps he was afraid of what you could do..." There was an interested gleam in her eye but she pushed that to the side. "I am, however, very biased when it comes to him."

Jim chuckled, giving another shake of his head. "I doubt he considered me much of a threat. Anyway, I got the impression he was looking for a telepath, and it's not a particularly rare mutation. It's more likely he decided I wasn't worth the effort." He sat back, spreading his hands. "My range isn't much to talk about, even by normal standards. A mile or two, maybe. If he was looking for someone to counter Charles, he was sorely disappointed."

"Hopefully, you will not have that many more odd encounters while...you're..." Wanda gave him a soulful look. "Shall I start offering you drinks now?"

Jim laughed, this time in genuine amusement. "Scott did that yesterday, citing demon-attacks and adolescent angst. Apparently one of these eats men, and it's not the one you'd think. I think the word I'm looking for at this point is 'dread'."

"The demons or the teenagers eat men? I know there's a man-hating horse in the stables..." Snickering slightly, she finished off her tea and leaned back. "You learn to accept the dread."

"Fortunately, that happens to be something I've had a lot of experience with," Jim smiled. He raised an eyebrow. "And -- you did say man-hating horse, right? Which is fine, but if you said man-eating then I'd like know. I spent enough time here and at Muir to know better than to make silly assumptions based on, well, reason."

"The horse is from another dimension."

"Oh, then that's okay. As long as reason is in there somewhere I should do all right. Even if it's reason from another dimension."

"Didn't they tell you that you were supposed to leave your reason at the door?" Wanda asked, laughing again.

Jim grinned, knowing full well it came out slightly more goofy than he was comfortable with. "Maybe I missed the sign. Was it beneath the one that said 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'?" I must never drink around this woman. I've only had tea so far, and if today is anything to go by, alcohol is a very, very bad idea.

He had a cute smile, Wanda mused. "Right under that sign, actually, in slightly smaller font, so no wonder you didn't see it."

Jim forcibly directed his eyes back to his tea. "I'm starting to wonder if Charles has some kind of a disclosure law related to the school. Almost everyone I've met so far, including Charles, has expressed concern for my mental health. That's not actually unusual, but it doesn't bode well as the standard greeting."

"Oh no, dear, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the current staff. Moira and Nathan's baby attempts to float by herself, Charles is attempting to take the world over via herbal drinks, Kylun was involved in a hurricane related event in the basement, and my powers have a fantastic ability to lending themselves to pantsing people." The smile grew larger and a bit more evil. "At least you can never say we're a quiet bunch."

"I've had enough quiet for a while." Jim had come to like people who weren't quiet. Experience had shown him that, insofar as a telepath was concerned, the outwardly quiet ones were usually the loudest.

Studying him, she leaned back in her chair. Maybe she should let him know something else, as well. "You might just want to be aware that when my powers are on," Wanda said softly, "I disappear from the telepathic, and empathic, radar. Psis in general, we believe. Either disappear or white noise. I just thought you might appreciate the heads up."

Jim smiled at her concern. "Thanks for the warning. It shouldn't be much of a problem -- I don't feel much unless I'm trying, but that's not a fun time to run up against an anomaly."

"I figured as much. Besides, the last thing I need is someone assuming that I am not real or simply a figment of their imagination."

The smile broadened at her choice of words. "Believe me, the effort is appreciated. You have no idea."

There was a joke somewhere in there that she wasn't getting but Wanda just grinned. "I always go out of my way to help the newcomers. Especially if they're cute. Do you want me to show you where a good office might be for you?"

"Thanks, that would be great," he said, somehow managing to sound only slightly strangled. Mentally he was trying to wall off the part of his brain that had heard "cute." And cursing the fact that his telepathy could hypothetically be used to make a total stranger dance on a table while singing 'The Yellow Rose of Texas' but, inexplicably, was absolutely useless when it came to controlling a blush.