Scott and Haroun, Monday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott runs into Haroun on his way out of his office. They have a little chat about his doomsday files, Scott makes a concession, and Haroun issues a challenge.



In the end, Charles had given him back the files. Not before a fairly extensive conversation about how working on them in isolation wasn't just personally destructive but not strategically sound, but at least this mean he didn't have to break out his backup copies and rebuild the database. Muttering under his breath, Scott skimmed through the files, wanting to see if there had been any changes or deletions. He didn't really trust them not to have done anything, in two days.

Nothing seemed out of order. Straightening, Scott closed the database, securing it with his brand-new, unknown-to-Betsy password, and headed out of his office.

Luckily for Scott, Haroun just happened to be passing by Scott's office at that time - carrying a stack of paper under one arm and a mug of something warm under the other. "Hey, Chief." said Haroun peacefully. "When you get a few seconds, I'd like to talk to you. Bout your little gotterdammerung hobby, and a couple of other things."

Scott froze, then forced himself to relax a little, although he didn't quite manage a convincing smile. "I seem to have nothing but time," he said as lightly as he could. "Where are you headed?"

"Copy machine, actually." he replied. "Giving the anklebiters a test next week, want to run off some copies. If you've got some time, we can talk on the way."

"Sure." Scott followed Haroun down the hall, quiet for a moment as he tried to think of what to say. "Alison showed you those files, then." Oh, great. Go for the obvious.

Haroun nodded. "Sure did. Nice piece of work, those." he said with a smile. "Were you expecting me to chew you about them? Not my style. I think your error was keeping them buried as deep as they were for as long as they were. I have no quarrel with their existance."

Scott blinked. "Oh," he said a bit lamely. "Well. Good." He gave Haroun a sideways look. "I could let you take a look at the rest of them," he offered a bit grudgingly. "Ororo is already. And I wasn't out for long enough for anyone to have gone through them all, I know..."

Haroun nodded. "I'll take a look. And once you're up to it I think we need to do some full-team exercises. We've been doing a lot of small-unit tactics stuff - I've been poring through a good number of the DR programs you're written. Impressive work, by the by. But there's not a lot of full-team integraion - why is that?" he asked.

"Time and flexibility," Scott said with a sigh. "How often do we run into a situation where we need the whole team?" Well, there had been Iceland... "Full-team exercises are low-priority. We don't run them very often. Last time was while you were back in Morocco."

Haroun nodded. "I think that's a mistake, but I'm not running this show." he said with an easy grin. He then turned away from Scott for a second to feed his stack of exam papers to the photocopier and to tell it to make roughly 20 copies or so, and if it it wouldn't mind scanning the original and emailing it to him, that'd be perfect, thanks! "Do we at least get a scorecard for how we're doing in these exercises?"

"Feedback," Scott murmured, leaning back against the wall. "There's a thought." It wasn't as if he couldn't print out complete evaluations for everyone.

"Go a long way towards dispelling the black cloud floating over things." he pointed out.

Scott's jaw tightened a little, but he didn't respond immediately. Take your feedback like a man, Summers. Only way this team is going to stop being run by committee. "Fair enough," he finally said, a bit stiffly.

Haroun caught the stiffness, but let it pass uncommented-on. "Good deal. I know I'm curious to hear what the Big Man Himself thinks of my skills in the Danger Room. And speaking of skills - do you play volleyball, Chief?"

The non sequitur took Scott off-guard. "I have played volleyball, yes," he said guardedly. "Why?"

Haroun grinned ferally. "Good. Because I'm challenging you. Two-on-two. You pick a partner, I'll do the same. Get Ororo to make the weather all nice, get Cain to dig us a sand pit out back." he said, then collected his stack of copies from the copier. "You'll look so fetching eating sand with the word SPALDING tattooed across your forehead."

Scott shook his head. "Why not pick on Nathan?" he protested, only half in-jest. "You two are the ones who like to play rough..."

Haroun grinned again. "Because Nathan hasn't irritated me lately." he said sweetly. "And we could use some fun time, just us men. Something that doesn't involve assault and battery, but is still competitive. Unless you don't think you can handle it?" he asked with a poisoned smile.

Scott gave him an irritable look. "Don't do that," he muttered, turning to go. "Volleyball. Fine. Whenever."

"Do what?" Haroun asked with a grin. "I didn't do anything. I was trying to give you an out you could take with good grace, old man. But if you're determined to play, I'll be seeing you on the court. Seriously, though - to get back to our other topic. I'd like to review the scenarios and data you have already. Maybe my experience can shed some light on them."

"Old man? You're precisely how many months younger than I am?" Scott grumbled. "And I told you that you could take a look at the lot. I suppose I ought to recruit a few other sets of eyes," he admitted grudgingly. "Ororo for sure. Maybe Nathan and Pete."

"Both Nathan and Pete would be good choices. Or you could throw them open to the entire team. No secrecy. Let everything out into the light, and keep it there. That's what I'd do." Haroun said. "But I'm not the X-Men's team leader, and I don't answer to Xavier. I answer to you, you answer to Xavier, and Xavier answers to Allah." he said with a grin. He collected his copies from the machine and hoisted them under his arm effortlessly.

"Suggestion noted," Scott said a bit remotely. Then again, the fact that he really, really didn't like the idea of doing that should probably tell him that he should, or at least that something had gone wrong along the way in this whole thing.

"Let me know about the volleyball, I guess," he said as he headed back down the hall.

"Will do." said Haroun, frowning at Scott's retreating back. ~That could have gone better.~ he thought to himself.

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[x-psylocke.livejournal.com]

Nothing seemed out of order. Straightening, Scott closed the database, securing it with his brand-new, unknown-to-Betsy password....

I'm hurt. Really, I am.