My Bad Reputation

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza was a little apprehensive because getting summoned to the Headmistress' office was not likely to be a good thing. Still she knocked briskly on the door, trying to pretend she was ready for whatever was coming.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Please come in." Ashlie's voice comes from inside.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza comes in, shutting the door behind her. "You wanted to speak to me?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Yes. I apologize for having to bother you with this, but it was brought to my attention that you recently met with a member of the Brotherhood." Oddly enough, she actually does sound a little bit apologetic.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza seemed a little surprised. And that probably made her a little defensive. "Brought to your attention by who?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"A concerned friend, supposedly. I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on that."

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza seemed perplexed, "I did meet an old friend and she *was* a member of the Brotherhood, but from what she said, she's not anymore. I wasn't aware hanging out with an old friend was an offense."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's true that the last record of her being an active member was 2 years ago, but it was brought to my attention and I have to look into it. I know you're not associated with them anymore, but I'm curious who might be interested in discrediting you."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"You've seen my record. I'm not exactly a shining angel. But I can't imagine who would be interested in discrediting me. I was small fish even when I was in the Brotherhood."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"You never stepped on anybody's toes? Made any personal enemies?"

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Who hasn't? I can think of a few kids from my old school that might want to see me dead or at least severely beaten. I can't think of anyone I explicitly made enemies of when I was with the Brotherhood, though I'm sure 'sticking it to the Man' as they say might have burned a few bridges."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Then you don't know who could have send this. Very well." she says as she tries to trace the origin of the email herself.

[Narrator]

Whoever had sent the e-mail was good, bouncing the e-mail through a series of servers around the world, routing the e-mail from one anonymous e-mail address to another. Ashlie was better though and she eventually ran the source point to an internet cafe in Berlin.

[Ashlie Minamida]

She tries to see if she can pull any security footage from near the cafe around the time the email was sent, though she doesn't have high hopes. Not every city was a wet dream of surveillance like London and the further away the harder it became to force her way into systems like that. Maybe the computers in the internet cafe have webcams, she ponders, seeing if she can get access to any logs. It's kind of a legal grey-area and she finds she has to push her suspicions up quite a bit in order to convince herself to keep digging.

[Narrator]

Grabbing the web camera logs shows her the grainy back of a post-it note over the computer's camera at the time the e-mail was sent. The computer was signed out to a "Svetlana Yeltsin" at the time according to the cafe's records.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Do you know a Svetlana Yeltsin?" she asks Tereza while she runs a search on t he name herself.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza shook her head, looking puzzled, "The name isn't familiar."

A quick search turned up the usual public records of quite a few citizens of Russia with that name. Narrowing it down to which one(s) were in Berlin would require accessing passport and visa records, assuming that information is reliable.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Unfortunately even if she was capable of breaking into that kind of system, the situation by no means requires that drastic an action at this point.

"It's possible that it's a fake name. The email was sent to me from an internet cafe in Berlin and rerouted several times to obfuscate it's origin. What did you talk about with your friend?" she suddenly shifts gear.

[Tereza Rozanov]

The gear shift made Tereza hesitate a little as she talked. "Where I'd disappeared to, what she'd been up to. Old times, you know, just the sort of stuff friends talk about when they see each other again. I crashed at her place for the night and we rambled around Lambeth for a bit the next morning before I caught a bus back here."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"And what has she been up to? If you don't mind me asking."

[Tereza Rozanov]

That seemed to irritate Tereza a little bit and she frowned, "Living in Lambeth, doing mechanic work mostly and some tattoo work when it suits her. She's damn good at both."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Please don't take my concerns the wrong way. The Brotherhood poses a potential threat and I can't let a connection like that go uninvestigated."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Well, she said she's not in the Brotherhood anymore and I believe her. But since we're laying our cards on the table here, you should probably know I still agree with some of the Brotherhood. I think we are the next step and in a lot of ways superior. I just think their methodology is generally counterproductive, causing mutants more harm than good. And I think Brand agrees with me."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"No one doubts that mutants have superior capabilities in many ways, Miss Rozanov. But that does not inherently make us more fit to shape the future. You want to be superior, then prove that you're better than most. It's something that you earn, not something that is in your genes."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Actually, quite a few people doubt it, some of them were waving signs outside the gate. But you're right, I'm in the process of proving I'm a better person than the old me, but I've got nothing to prove to them," she said, waving in the vague direction of the gate. "I could come down out of the sky with a halo flanked by all the gods and they still wouldn't care. It'd be just another 'mutie trick'."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"You have everything to prove to them. The fact that they don't care or won't change their mind has nothing to do with it."

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza tried to remind herself that she was in the Headmistress' office and needed to be respectful. Which is probably why the cast of her face didn't *quite* match the words coming out of her mouth, "That... doesn't make any sense. Why bother proving something to someone when it isn't going to change their mind? It seems like wasted effort all around."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Because you're not trying to prove anything to them."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"But you just said... how can I have everything to prove to them when I'm not trying to prove anything to them." Her confusion was mirrored on her face.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie's head twitches ever so slightly. "Because what you are trying to prove should have nothing to do with what they think. They are only here to witness your failings, the goal is not to convince them, it's to prove something to yourself in spite of them."

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza mulled that over for a moment, "I *think* we can agree there."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"If you want to be better than them then prove it to yourself. Fail if you must, but don't do it for anybody else. Do it for yoursel--" She suddenly stops mid-sentence and completely freezes for a second before all tension seems to go out of her body. Her shoulders slump down slightly and she blankly stares straight ahead.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Headmistress?" Tereza said, moving closer and waving her hand in front of Ashlie's face. "Are you okay?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

The headmistress doesn't react. She's not blinking either, though Tereza does notice she's still breathing very slowly.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza reached out and gently shook Ashlie's shoulder, looking more closely at her. "Miss Minamida? Hello?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

No response. There is a strange inertia to her when Tereza tries to shake her. Like she's kind of resisting the movement but not really in a natural way. More like a mechanical stabilizer that is keeping her from sliding off the chair. On closer inspection she'd notice the cuts on Ashlie's right hand that appear to have been somewhat mended but don't really look like natural wounds. There's no blood, for starters.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"What the hell?" Tereza mutters, reaching down to take Ashlie's hand for a closer inspection.

[Ashlie Minamida]

It looks like the 'wounds' have been glued together with some kind of semi-flexible epoxy. The hand feels kind of cool, but Ashlie could just be having naturally cold hands. She's still not blinking but that could just be an effect of the cybernetic eyes. But still, that's a reflex, isn't it? And now that she's been holding Ashlie's hand for a couple seconds she notices that there seems to be a distinct lack of a pulse.

[Tereza Rozanov]

The lack of a pulse weirds her out sufficiently that she grabs for the phone on Ashlie's desk and calls the infirmary.

[Hank McCoy]

"Doctor McCoy speaking. What can I do for you, Ashlie?"