xp_logs | Log: Jono and Cain, Monday

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Investigating odd noises coming from the pipes, Cain finds Jono playing his music in the boiler room. Tempers flare, although no one explodes. This time.

Cain stomped down the stairs to the basement, following the sound of the noise that was practically echoing through the pipes. Something was vibrating them oddly, and since Julio was accounted for, that meant something unaccounted for. If the boiler was overworked, well, as modernized as the heating system was, things still tended to shake and bust if you pushed them beyond their limits.

The noise got louder as he approached the boiler room, but now it was identifiable as a shrieking, piercing howl of feedback that could be heard even through the thick door with the handwritten "Boiler Beach" sign. Wincing at the din, Cain opened the door, leaning his head in.

"HEY!", he hollered. "What in the fuck are you doing?"

Jono didn't acknowledge Cain's question. Instead, he just leaned one foot on the amplifier and ran his fingers along the strings of his guitar even faster, forcing out power chord after power chord. "Sorry, guv," he projected at Cain, "am I interrupting something important?"

Cain growled and walked over to the wall, reaching down to yank the cord out of the socket, reducing the amplifier's wail to nothing, and only the unamplified sound of Jono's guitar resounding in the sand-filled room.

"Any reason you decided to bring this racket down here instead of the music room, Sparky?" Cain said sarcastically. "All that time as a Christmas light might have addled your excuse for a brain, but this ain't your room anymore."

"I don't much recall being given any choice in the matter," Jono replied, calmly walking over to sit on the amp and picking out a few quick riffs. "Rather liked it down here before it became Beach Blanket Bloody Bingo."

"Wah wah, life sucks, get a helmet," Cain snarled, walking over to inspect the boiler - which had been painted like an oversized pineapple. Aside from being used as a resonator to carry Jono's playing through the entire system of pipes routed through the mansion walls, there didn't appear to have been anything shaken loose. "I swear, Chuck gives you kids an inch and you try and take the entire goddamn yard."

Jono arched an eyebrow and shook his head. "And look at you then, Mister 'I Am The Law', lord of the manor, by whose sufferance we poor delinquents are allowed a place to rest our weary heads. It was old then, and it's bloody repetitive and boring now."

Cain's eyes widened. It was rare that a student ever backtalked him, and definitely unheard of from one of the junior staff members. "In case you missed the memo, you little shit, this happens to be my..."

"Your house, lived here since you were a kid, means the world to you." Jono interrupted. "Yeah, mate, heard it all before. How's it go? Things change. Wah wah, life sucks, get a helmet, right?"

"You little..." Cain's face was turning as red as his hair as he pointed a thick finger at Jono accusingly. "I oughta dropkick your ass all the way back to London, you ungrateful little whiner."

"Ungrateful?" Jono suddenly stopped playing, and set his guitar down. He climbed on top of the amplifier to reach Cain's eye level and glared back at the groundskeeper. "You don't know what in the bloody hell you're on about, sunshine. Without this place, without the Professor and Emma and Moira, I'd be fuckin' dead right now. Six feet under or bloody spread across the sky, who knows? If you think I'm not grateful for all they done for me, you're sadly mistaken. I got a reminder every day," he said bitterly, patting his chest through the bandages. "Xavier gave me a place he said I could call home, someplace I could be who I wanted to be. And you turned it into a fuckin' sandbox, you did. Hypocrite much?"

"And what you were calling home was a fucking hole in the ground, you and Miss Congeniality down here," Cain shot back. "Guess what? She actually moved on and made something of her life. Something more than just being the monster in the basement. What the fuck have you done, other than float around making little light shows? Chuck's giving you a job, fine. But what in the hell are you doing to earn it? Or did you just come back for the free handouts?"

Cain was close to the breaking point - for years these kids had just been happy to live off his brother's generosity, and Chuck never asked a thing in return. For every one of them that stayed on as an X-Man or working for the school, just as many were happy to take and take without any thought of giving back. And he'd be damned if he was going to sit back and have some British pissant pull this attitude on him.

"I'm willing to work for my keep," Jono insisted, not backing down from Cain. "And my reasons for coming back are none of your business, mate. Maybe I ain't putting on the leather and going out to save the world, but I owe the Professor for what he's done for me. And your house or not, it ain't your place to doubt that. That's between me and mine."

Despite himself, Cain felt something almost akin to respect for the kid - not many people stood up to him these days. Even if they were dead wrong, he had to respect the kind of gall it took to stick to one's convictions.

With a grunt, he just turned and walked away from the argument, heading out of the boiler room. "I hear that thing making a racket again and botherin' people," he said, "I'm putting my boot through it and tossing both it and you in the lake."

"Ta for the warning," Jono replied, raising two fingers in a 'V' to Cain's back as he departed. Once the big man left, he plugged the amp back in and reslung his guitar. He paused before he hit the first chord, though, and gently turned the volume knob down. Some things he could compromise on.