Monday, noon. Monet and Amanda.

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A certain history is sought. Following this request for information.



The cafe was the same one most of the Trenchcoats used regularly. Nothing special and it was basically coffee and sandwich sort of things, but it was close to the office, and no-one looked twice at the thick file of papers Amanda laid down on the table as she took a seat. The waitress brought over an English Breakfast tea without prompting, knowing most of the Snow Valley crew by order after a year or more of
serving them. Amanda glanced at her watch and shrugged. Monet was running a bit late, but that was to be expected.

Monet blew into the cafe, irritated at being late. Still unable to drive, she'd had to rely on a taxi and they'd gotten lost. Spotting Amanda and the papers she hurried over into a chair next to her. "How are you?"

"Can't complain. You?" Amanda asked. Since she couldn't smoke in the cafe, she had a pen between her fingers, drumming it against the file folder. "Thanks for coming in - I figured it'd be better to do this away from the school. Too many super-powered ears and the like."

Monet shrugged. "Well, the taxi got lost but other than that? I'm good." She gave the cafe a speculative look. "If you're worried about people eavesdropping, can't they do that here, too? I mean, I could easily listen in from, oh..." There was a little sandwich shop across the road and over slightly. She'd probably be able to get a line of sight from there and it would be just inside her range. "From over there, easily."

"Well, random strangers wouldn't give a shite for your family history, but I figured you might be worried about gossip getting around the school," Amanda replied, putting it bluntly, with a shrug. As the waitress appeared again, she raised an eyebrow at Monet. "Tea allright? I can grab us a pot."

"You say that because you've never ended up in the gossip column after falling out of a taxi when you open the door to have a spew while it's going down the freeway. Tea is good. I hate American coffee. When I rule the world, they'll learn."

Amanda nodded at the waitress, who went to go get the pot and another cup. "Well, given we're a bit camera-shy where I work, we don't tend to advertise our haunts to the paparazzi," she said. "We're good here, as long as you don't go yelling or something. Now, you ready for this? 'S not a pretty story."

Monet nodded. "I kind of figured that, since we found him in a block of housing commission flats. What have you got?" She smiled at the waitress and poured the tea. "Milk?"

It was Monet. Flippant was... well, how she operated, really. Amanda shook her head. "I'm good, thanks," she said, indicating the full cup the waitress had brought her when she'd arrived. "So... took some digging, talked to a couple of people who might be considered a bit on the dodgy side of things, but I think I've got most of it. I'll give you all the supporting documentation I dug up - and don't ask where I got those, or start flashing them around, mind - but I can give you the cliff notes version now, if you want."

"Relax. I'm not an idiot and I'm hardly going to go waving them around. But I'd love to hear the short version of it all."

"Right. So. Story begins 'bout twenty years ago. Marius was your typical golden boy - eldest son of the wealthy media baron, private school, good at sports, not bad on the eyes, blah blah blah. Then he started manifesting. From what you said, some sort of telepathy, right?" At Monet's nod, Amanda went on. "So, you've got this kid, off at private school, hearing voices in his head, back at a time when mutants were science fiction stories. He doesn't know what the fuck's going on, thinks he's going nuts. So he starts trying to make the voices go away. Hits the booze at first, then when that doesn't work so well any more, gets into the harder stuff. After a while, he's taking anything he can get his hands on, and his life, well, it's going down the toilet." Amanda's finger traced a line along the table top, a rising incline that suddenly dropped into a sharp descent. "Fails out of school, can't even do the jobs Dad gets him, winds up bumming around places like Bali 'cause it's easy to get drugs there." Amanda's tone was casual, but there was something almost bitter in her voice. "And that's when he gets into more than he can handle. I couldn't get too much of the specifics - your Dad's got a lot of clout - but it's enough to have him thrown out on his ear and disowned, which you know."

Monet nodded again. "So then what happened?" Marius had been apparently been even more of a fuck-up than she'd guessed.

"What do you think? No family, powers out of control, drug problem... There's not too many choices to be made, specially in a country that's got nothing in the way of services." Amanda shrugged. "Things are a bit patchy, but from what D... we managed to pull from the computer records of your Centrelink, he was in and out of work, unskilled stuff mostly. And when he screwed that up, he wound up doing crime – small shite, mostly. Petty theft, shoplifting, bit of small time drug dealing. He wasn't exactly a criminal mastermind, but then again, it's not like he'd had the upbringing for that."

"He looked a hell of a lot like Mum, when we met him. That probably didn't help much," Monet offered. "But I thought we had plenty of mutant services stuff back home?" She thought about that for a moment. "Or at least, we've got that stuff in the private system. They probably don't in the public hospitals."

Amanda chewed on the end of her pen, caught herself, and started fiddling with the cap instead. Bloody non-smoking policies everywhere, especially in winter. "Talk to Marius the Younger about that," she said. "He nearly died when he manifested, 'cause they couldn't work out what was wrong with him. And this is still a good ten years ago, and in a place that's not exactly known for keeping up with the latest in things. How long ago did they stop taking Aboriginal kids away from their families? The 1970s?" She reached for her tea, and took a sip. "For your big brother, there wasn't a lot on offer, being an unidentified mutant and part-Aboriginal, so he made do as best he could with the self-medicating. Of course, doing drugs tends to mess you up in all sorts of ways, plus the amount of booze he was drinking - I got a look at his medical records. His kidneys've packed it in, his liver isn't too far behind, he's got brittle bones from malnutrition... They started him on dialysis about three years ago, and I guess that's when he started getting really desperate."

"I guess I just got lucky when I manifested and managed to avoid all the problems Marius and Dickhead had." Monet fiddled with her tea cup. "Actually, did he have those thingamybob, problems with being maladaptive Marius had, too? It all explains why he was in the housing commission flat, too."

"Pretty much. From what the docs were able to work out, those brain worm things had been eating away at him for years. 'S how he learned to project them - he had to clear them out of his own head occasionally, make some space." Amanda watched Monet intently. "Yeah, he was a fuckup, and he went about things entirely the worst way. But... he's reminding me of my mum, a little. She was out of her head with the Altzheimer's, and all she wanted was a bit more time. Marius... he got done over by life with his mutation. Poor bastard never really had a chance." She sipped her tea. "Makes sense why your dad latched onto the Professor for you and then Marius, tho' – he didn't want to fuck things up again."

"So? That's it, is it? Just 'cos they were eating him, he's excused? He knew they were dangerous, so he shouldn't have ever taken them out of his head in the first place." Monet shook her head. "He fucking knew what they could do."

"No, he's not excused." Amanda sipped her tea again. "Just that things
aren't as black and white as they seem." She shrugged a little "Having been the one with the out of control mutation and making some fucking stupid decisions, maybe I've got a different perspective on it."

"Different is one way of putting it. You sound really bloody sympathetic to him." Monet glared at Amanda, furious that she could see his side in it all.

Amanda, for her part, was unruffled. She met Monet's angry eyes levelly, setting her cup down. "A bit, maybe," she said. "Like I said, it doesn't excuse him. He still had choices, and made the wrong ones. He could have told you who he was, maybe he could've gotten help, like at Muir. But maybe it isn't me you should be having this part of the conversation with. Maybe you should trying asking the younger Marius about choices."

"Yeah, because he's totally an evil fucking bastard like the other Marius." Monet wondered, yet again, what her father had been thinking, calling them both that. "What on earth would asking him about anything do?"

"Because there was a time when he ignored the choices he had and did something that could have hurt people. And funny, now he's an X-Man." Amanda finished her tea. "I'm not gunna argue this any more, Monet. I got the information you wanted, and it's up to you what you want to do with it." She pulled out her wallet, and left some money on the table, before pulling out a business card. "This is Moira's direct number. If you want to see if there's anything can be done for him now, give her a call. Muir's the experts at this sort of thing." She held the card out to Monet across the table.

"Fine." Monet gathered up her bag and the papers, dropping the card into her jacket pocket. "I'll see you around, I guess?"

"Sure." Amanda stood up, offering her hand. "You take care, yeah?"

Monet shook hands with Amanda. "You too, okay?"