Genosha - The End of the Beginning
May. 28th, 2012 01:22 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsCharles and the Genoshan Ambassador have another meeting.
Trigger warning: Disturbing content regarding a child.
OOC note: Many thanks to player-on-hiatus [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] for socking the Ambassador. :)
The Gotham Club inhabited an old pile of a building in the end of the Avenue of the Americas. The club had once almost been ‘developed’ in the 80s, but oil money had swooped in to buy the property and keep it in the original shape. It was joked that Henry Kissinger got as much in negotiations over lunch there than he would in two weeks across a long table in Beijing, Moscow or Paris. Inside, it was as much of a relic as the old politic world that they once dominated, smoking cigarettes and cigars in front of city ordinances that proclaimed that they would be happy not to smoke, looking over a menu that treated the ideas of vegetarianism and sustainable foods as unknown realms.
A valet brought Xavier along into the dinner room, motioning him to a corner table where the Genoshan Ambassador was engrossed in the latest copy of The Times.
Charles appeared to have aged overnight, almost shrinking into the wheelchair that was usually as much a part of him as his air of permanent calm. That calm was gone too, leaving in its place an old man, deeply afraid of the hammer about to fall. Not for himself, but for those under his care.
The Genoshan looked up as the waiter unobtrusively made space for Charles's chair at the table, the jovial bonhomie radiating from him like a poisonous miasma. "Professor! Do you follow this?" He gave the newspaper in his hand a brief shake. "It's quite amazing! The disconnect between these people and the real world - I have never seen anything like that. I am afraid it's become a bit of a guilty pleasure. Wine?"
"Water, please," Charles spoke to the waiter, rather than the ambassador. The man's manner had been grating enough on their first meeting - his gloating good humour now was unbearable. "I imagine I will not be here long," he added, to the Genoshan.
Creighten-Hayes shrugged, folding the paper. "I can understand that. Even in happier days, I find that this place is best experienced in small doses." He glanced at the table where the South African delegates to the UN were celebrating. "The company here can be trying at times." He smiled at Charles, the charming expression never reaching the chilly eyes. "So I will not keep you long."
Reaching into the briefcase under the table, the Ambassador produced a computer tablet. "I have something for you."
Frowning, Charles took the tablet with hands that trembled slightly despite his best efforts. The capture of his students, he supposed, or their imprisonment and torture. And that was what he got, images of faces he knew far too well, bruised and beaten, manacled and chained. But then another scene played out on the screen:
Activity taking place around a raised platform, looking to have been hastily turned into a work area, where a framework of technological components encase a man sized area and a padded chair. Technicians and assistants working on the frame, overseen by a man in a containment suit, who watches their process carefully... a pair of guards bringing a struggling child in, who couldn't have been more than six or seven by the size of her. Red hair in tangled curls around a well-known face... a nimbus of energy growing around the girl as she fights against the mutate process, but as the young girl's screams grow, the throbbing bands of energy do as well... A child bathed in pure light, white hot and flaring, the brightness increasing, following the intensity of her screams further and further...
And then it stops. Metal clatters as it fell to the floor, and in the midst of the now ruined framework, an empty seat sat, burned from an unknown source, and holding no traces of the child that had been there.
The tablet tumbled from Charles' nerveless fingers, his face twisting in anguish. "What have you done?" he hissed, only the discipline of a lifetime preventing him from screaming the question in the minds of all there.
In a space of a moment at is as if the soul, everything that made walking meat, bone and gristle into a human being had leached out of Creighten-Hayes, leaving and empty yet hungry... thing, looking back at Xavier. "We clarified the situation. It is time for you stop FUCKING AROUND, Professor."
The pause and decreased volume made the venom and the contempt in the last word all the more shocking, as a sudden quiet descended on the Club.
And then, as if changing a channel on television, the Genoshan smiled was again, seemingly, a man. "Will you be needing an escort to your car? You look a little shaky there..."
Charles barely heard him, mind full of the images he had seen, the shrieks of Rachel Dayspring echoing in his thoughts. The Genoshan signalled and then Charles was being pushed out of the club, a shaken man. A broken man.
What have I done?
Trigger warning: Disturbing content regarding a child.
OOC note: Many thanks to player-on-hiatus [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] for socking the Ambassador. :)
The Gotham Club inhabited an old pile of a building in the end of the Avenue of the Americas. The club had once almost been ‘developed’ in the 80s, but oil money had swooped in to buy the property and keep it in the original shape. It was joked that Henry Kissinger got as much in negotiations over lunch there than he would in two weeks across a long table in Beijing, Moscow or Paris. Inside, it was as much of a relic as the old politic world that they once dominated, smoking cigarettes and cigars in front of city ordinances that proclaimed that they would be happy not to smoke, looking over a menu that treated the ideas of vegetarianism and sustainable foods as unknown realms.
A valet brought Xavier along into the dinner room, motioning him to a corner table where the Genoshan Ambassador was engrossed in the latest copy of The Times.
Charles appeared to have aged overnight, almost shrinking into the wheelchair that was usually as much a part of him as his air of permanent calm. That calm was gone too, leaving in its place an old man, deeply afraid of the hammer about to fall. Not for himself, but for those under his care.
The Genoshan looked up as the waiter unobtrusively made space for Charles's chair at the table, the jovial bonhomie radiating from him like a poisonous miasma. "Professor! Do you follow this?" He gave the newspaper in his hand a brief shake. "It's quite amazing! The disconnect between these people and the real world - I have never seen anything like that. I am afraid it's become a bit of a guilty pleasure. Wine?"
"Water, please," Charles spoke to the waiter, rather than the ambassador. The man's manner had been grating enough on their first meeting - his gloating good humour now was unbearable. "I imagine I will not be here long," he added, to the Genoshan.
Creighten-Hayes shrugged, folding the paper. "I can understand that. Even in happier days, I find that this place is best experienced in small doses." He glanced at the table where the South African delegates to the UN were celebrating. "The company here can be trying at times." He smiled at Charles, the charming expression never reaching the chilly eyes. "So I will not keep you long."
Reaching into the briefcase under the table, the Ambassador produced a computer tablet. "I have something for you."
Frowning, Charles took the tablet with hands that trembled slightly despite his best efforts. The capture of his students, he supposed, or their imprisonment and torture. And that was what he got, images of faces he knew far too well, bruised and beaten, manacled and chained. But then another scene played out on the screen:
Activity taking place around a raised platform, looking to have been hastily turned into a work area, where a framework of technological components encase a man sized area and a padded chair. Technicians and assistants working on the frame, overseen by a man in a containment suit, who watches their process carefully... a pair of guards bringing a struggling child in, who couldn't have been more than six or seven by the size of her. Red hair in tangled curls around a well-known face... a nimbus of energy growing around the girl as she fights against the mutate process, but as the young girl's screams grow, the throbbing bands of energy do as well... A child bathed in pure light, white hot and flaring, the brightness increasing, following the intensity of her screams further and further...
And then it stops. Metal clatters as it fell to the floor, and in the midst of the now ruined framework, an empty seat sat, burned from an unknown source, and holding no traces of the child that had been there.
The tablet tumbled from Charles' nerveless fingers, his face twisting in anguish. "What have you done?" he hissed, only the discipline of a lifetime preventing him from screaming the question in the minds of all there.
In a space of a moment at is as if the soul, everything that made walking meat, bone and gristle into a human being had leached out of Creighten-Hayes, leaving and empty yet hungry... thing, looking back at Xavier. "We clarified the situation. It is time for you stop FUCKING AROUND, Professor."
The pause and decreased volume made the venom and the contempt in the last word all the more shocking, as a sudden quiet descended on the Club.
And then, as if changing a channel on television, the Genoshan smiled was again, seemingly, a man. "Will you be needing an escort to your car? You look a little shaky there..."
Charles barely heard him, mind full of the images he had seen, the shrieks of Rachel Dayspring echoing in his thoughts. The Genoshan signalled and then Charles was being pushed out of the club, a shaken man. A broken man.
What have I done?
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