Xaviers!

With a grunt Victor opened the door to the school's science lab, utterly deserted since the protest and the event that followed it. It wasn't exactly like the field trip to Stark's, but he'd take what he could get. He set on the floor the heaping bucket of material donated by the horses at the stables, wiping his hands off on his pant legs before he tossed the little green book onto one of the work tables.

"Would you mind opening to section H? That should have our shopping list. Cutting charge, to be specific." The young man made a beeline for the locked closet where "the good stuff" was kept, with its numerous warning signs and access control lock.

"Sure thing big guy." She flipped through the book and got things set up the way Vic needed.

It was like she'd done this before or something.

While the book may have claimed to be for use in "occupied Europe", it was probably still useful. They were still in Europe, and the lab they were trying to get into WAS occupied.

Victor dropped to his knee to get a look at the lock, looking first at the keypad and then the keyhole itself. "Hmm, it's worth a shot." From his inside coat pocket he whipped out a large black satchel and picked through it to grab a simple-looking metallic cube, placing it on parts of the side of the keypad and trying the door lever.

"You don't have your phone on you, do you? I'm thinking cooking is gonna take awhile, we're gonna need some tunes to keep us sane."

"Yep." Emilie opened up her hip satchel and set up her little Bluetooth speaker, and turned on a little work music.

"Granted, finishing presumes we know where Headmaster Dingleberry has eyes right now."

"Nice." There was a subtle click and the door handle turned. "Double nice." He pushed the door open and looked to the various bottles and boxes, picking up the ones Emilie read off to him from their list.

"I mean, maybe? Maybe he's going to focus on the lab itself. I dunno, I guess we'll find out soon enough, won't we." He seemed remarkably calm, all things considered. Like they were going to bake a cake.

"Have we done this before?"

"Yes.

I mean, more or less.


The horse shit is new. " She conceded.

"Oh, good! 'cause I haven't. This is a bit off the beaten path of how I'd normally handle this but, eh, duty calls."

Victor put the supplies out on the counter and tried to get them in order, then went looking for the containers he needed. "Well, we can't trust that there's enough ammonium nitrate in here to get the job done. I mean... too small, and the door stays shut. Too big, well it just takes care of our problem for us, right?"

"The demolition must never fail." He attempted a British accent was actually pretty passable, for an amateur.

"Sure.

Maybe we make jello girl set off the charge tho. Just to keep the rest of us safe." She joked.

"A bit of a catch-22 there." Victor set to work, getting big chunks of "product" out of the bucket and into smaller containers, and pouring nitric acid into them. That was something that could be left to sit while he worked on a few other ingredients.

"All of this is just reminding me of how unprepared I was. I haven't run my tailor program since back in New York. But I guess I'm not the only one caught with my pants around my ankles. Just literally in my case."

"You know, I could just mend those up right? Like a normal person does? So you don't waste a shitload of resources to fix your pants?" Emilie was making herself busy by basically watching Victor and making sure he was measuring things appropriately.

"I guess I never thought to ask. Writing it into the background of a training program just seemed like killing two birds with one stone, you know? That, and I didn't know ya back then." To his credit, even if he was having a fairly nonchalant conversation he was taking his time, even leveling off his measurements and lifting things to eye level.

"If undoing this was optional... would you still do it?"

"I dunno. Probably.

I like you Vic but being anchored onto another person for the last several hundred years has severely fucked me up. If I could just stay in one spot, even if that meant I'd eventually grow old and die, I'd choose that over the current situation I am in."

Victor stopped what he was doing.

"... I meant the powers thing. But that's a fair enough point. I can't say I'd feel different if our roles were reversed. No offense, I'm just going off of what you've told me."

"Oh." Emilie replied awkwardly, staring back at Vic while she complied a response to his actual question.

"Honestly? I don't think it matters one way or another. This has happened to me before, but I'll die or move or something and they'll be back on the next shift. So for me this is temporary.

Like everything else.


What about you?" She asked. " Would you prefer to be non-powered?"

"I figure I got off lucky compared to a lot of peeps. The aforementioned jelly girl, for example. Or Leo. So for me it's just a bonus. I could go the rest of my life with 'em and never use them once, but I'd miss them the one time I really needed them.

"That said, I won't fault anyone who says no thanks."

"Me either I guess.

I suppose if you grew up mundane and then became superpowered in a fashion you didn't get to choose, you might not be so keen on staying superpowered. It's like someone forced you out of the closet before you were ready to step out on your own. I imagine it comes with a lot of baggage you weren't prepared to handle."

"Yeah. And there's this emphasis on coming out. When you've got a family and community that supports you, like-minded people, a power that doesn't frighten them or disfigure yourself - it's easy. Not everyone has that luxury, it's not safe for everyone. There's a lot of kids who feel like they're not allowed to hide it until they can look after themselves. And that's just not fair to them."

"That's what here is for." She replied, a half smile playing on her face as she looked over the notes again.

"True. And hopefully we won't get splattered all over it.

"... you think whatever new principal we get'll let me submit this as extra credit for my chem class?"

"It depends.

Are we getting a West as a replacement?" She quipped.

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Not really, it's frying pans all the way down."

"It would be a good jumping off point to blow this popsicle stand.

They're definitely going to be onto you at this point, and if this doesn't work out in your favour, that could be a very bad thing indeed."

"In the bushel of apples they've got at this school, I'm not the most rotten one. Hell, compared to some of the students here I'm a fuggin' honeycrisp with a dent in it. If things don't go in my favour, I'll remind them of that."

"Just so long as you're aware of all the consequences of creating a bomb on school grounds." She replied, waving her hands in surrender.

"It's like I told you before Vic, I'm ride or die for whatever you want to do. Within reason."

"This are extenuating circumstances. The lives of over sixty million people are at stake here. Wasn't it just a few months ago that someone brought a friggin' Sentinel back online and used is as a Hulk Buster?

"No one else offered any solutions. And I don't trust in my amateur training to try and pick a lock that sophisticated. If someone's got a better idea there's lots I'd rather do than risk blowing my arms off with horse... apples."

"You probably won't blow your arms off." Emilie offered as.....
Comfort?

"I'd better not. We haven't even gotten to the hand-holding stage yet."

"Boy you don't need arms for fuckin'.

Do we need to go back to the living ambrosia mold part of this conversation?" She teased.

"Dude, I mean you're right, but I still need arms for holding hands though. That ain't just a step on the road to rumpy pumpy, sometimes guys just want to cuddle.

"I mean, I expect guys not to know that. The media tells us we're not supposed to feel emotions but anger and horny. Sometimes guys just want a little intimacy but they don't understand that they just want closeness, not coitus. So they can't get it up at times and they think there's something wrong with them; that's part of the reason why boner pills sell so well."

Emilie smirked at Victor's sentimentality.

"You don't need arms to cuddle either. But I don't think a demonstration is feasible right this second."

"Not this second, no. But I think there's gonna be a bit of wait time before we're ready to take this soup down to the kitchen and condense it. That gives us plenty of time to be... close."

"And you think after a girl rubs her girl junk all over you you're gonna be able to focus enough to handle a bomb?"

"Maybe. Knowing what's waiting for me if I get it right."

"How about if you get it right, you can expect a reward.

Bad boys won't do good if they're rewarded preemptively."

Victor put his chin in his hand and started to watch the chemical reactions with eyes half-lidded. "Not my first choice, but fair I guess."

"I'm nothing if not fair.

Let's finish our work up and save the world."