[Plot] Detective D: Web of Truth

[Diego Zapata]

Diego sat at a table in an internet cafe, drinking a coffee as he loaded up the browser on his tablet. Using an attached keyboard, he began with searching for the social media accounts of the headmaster and his prefects. With the exception of Will, of course.

[Narrator]

Zandra's social media account was very Influencer-wannabe, hanging out around London and taking pictures of herself in cool punkish clubs all around the underground scene. She apparently did not generally pay too much attention to the school's "stay on campus" rules, and how a punk attitude meshed with a Prefect position was unclear.

Quinn's social media account was very Zach King-esque; a bunch of quick videos of seemingly impossible tricks being performed. It might be slightly less impressive to know Quinn was actually performing those tricks, as opposed to clever visual editing or something, but hey, he had a small but loyal fanbase.


Lippencott, being old, was not on the social medias. Ghost, being spooky, was also not on social media.

[Diego Zapata]

He checked for how far back the account activity went, though he didn't expect they'd be sloppy enough not to backdate things if there was anything phony going on.

[Narrator]

Nothing phony there -- Zandra and Quinn seemed, for the most part, to be regular students. Zandra had a couple posts mocking the X-Teams, but then, she had a couple posts mocking everything, too cool for the proverbial school.

As far as Diego could ascertain from their social media, Zandra and Quinn were just regular students. Ones that didn't walk in the same circle as Diego and his friends, but not inherently suspicious.

That's not to say there was nothing of note there, of course. Both Zandra and Quinn, at different points, had posted exasperation at anti-mutant protests, and Zandra had posted a frankly out-of-character memorial image to a mutant from Kent who had been a victim of mob justice.

[Diego Zapata]

He decided to look into the death of the Kent mutant and any connection to Zandra or Lippincott.

[Narrator]

No relation to Lippencott, as far as he could tell, but she was apparently a classmate of Zandra's back in high school -- a friend?


Googling Lippencott + mutant deaths did lead to a story, about a decade prior, of Lippencott's daughter being killed by anti-mutant protesters. The child of one of the country's leading geneticists being killed by a mob and turning out to be a mutant was fodder for quite a few tabloid pieces. The shock had apparently been enough for Lippencott to quit his position at the National Genetics Institute, which is when he first entered government as an advisor to the Labour PM at the time.

[Diego Zapata]

It was no wonder that Lippincott was obsessed with safety. But that only meant his motives were sympathetic. Enough that Diego felt a little bad doubting him. Continuing in spite of this, he searched for any similar stories connecting to Quinn. It could suggest Lippincott had picked his perfects for reasons other than being upstanding students.

[Narrator]

Quinn, too, had tragedy in his past -- a brother who died because he was denied access to medical care. He didn't seem to post about it all that much.

It did look like Lippencott was collecting a menagerie of tragedies -- though Will didn't have a dead relative in his past, he probably counted on behalf of being a big ol' bundle of trauma, plus the recent issues he had with his friends and Muir. At the very least, that might explain why they were sympathetic to his cause, or his science, whatever those might be?

[Diego Zapata]

Diego looked further into Lippincott's history, beginning with what he was researching when he left academia.

[Narrator]

Lippencott's area of study was epigenetics -- the study of how genes switch on and off. He specifically had been doing research into the X-Gene -- what activates it? Why does it lay dormant in some and activate multiple times for others?

A quick search of his final publications -- and some annoying digging through the science-talk to try to understand it -- looked like he had been doing research into how different emotional states and stress, especially chronic stress, effected the eventual expression of the X-Gene.

Lippencott had also written a few papers on the feasibility, or lackthereof, on the so-called "X Vaccine" -- a suppression of the X Gene. It looked like he was mostly arguing against it on ethical grounds, and that it would only worsen the gaps between, as he put it, "those of who have not had our X-genes activated and those who have."

[Diego Zapata]

While relieved that Lippincott was against "curing" mutants, his research might well be continuing through the mandatory power control class. But that wasn't alarming by itself, so Diego moved ahead to the man's political career to see if his ideology had changed over time. Grief could radically change a person's views.

[Ballinger Lippincott]

Lippencott had remained fairly staunchly pro-mutant throughout his career, advising the government on their mutant policy and whatnot. It was probably not solely due to Lippencott that the UK hadn't passed the same level of anti-mutant legislation as the US, but it certainly didn't hurt to have his voice on that side. In fact, there were rumors (mostly from the more bigoted sides of the internet) that Lippencott had been conspiring to get more mutants into positions of power -- "political correctness gone mad" and all that. Whether there was any truth to the rumors was unclear, though it would seem to back his general conclusion that you couldn't really understand the plight of the mutant until you had walked a mile in their shoes.

[Diego Zapata]

It was looking like the headmaster was just overly protective. But, still, his appointment felt like the British government taking over and that seemed like a bad idea. So he searched for articles about his appointment. Surely the government didn't typically appoint the leadership of non-state schools .

[Narrator]

There was nothing. Not a word, not a peep -- either no one had thought it was a big deal, or people had gone out of their way to make it look like it was not a big deal.


Xaviers University had always had a weird relationship with the government, due to it's status collecting essentially refugees from around the world, the X-Teams, and so on, so it isn't that surprising that the government would appoint the leadership of the university.

[Diego Zapata]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to inquire with X-Corp for its position on the matter. But first, he searched for anything about Lippincott's position on the X-Men program.

[Narrator]

Lippencott had never, apparently, taken a public position on the X-Men. Other than his genetic research and his daughter, Lippencott didn't seem to have much of note about other mutant-related activities.

[Diego Zapata]

He continued in the vein anyway, looking up the politicians and organizations he supported for their positions on mutant issues including the X-Men.

[Narrator]

It was a mixed bag! Some people liked the X-Men, some people didn't. The UK is a land of contrasts.

[Diego Zapata]

Well that's a dead end.

He looked up a number for X-Corp's UK office and called it on his phone.

[Narrator]

It didn't take Diego too long to get in touch with someone at X-Corp and, after explaining what he was calling about, he was put in touch of one of their UK representatives.

"How can I help you today, Mr. Zapata?"

[Diego Zapata]

"Yes, there's some concern going around about the British government appointing the new headmaster at Xavier's University. You know how many mutants here have reason to be wary of governments. So I thought I'd actually look into it and maybe sooth some of that instinctual suspicion."

[Narrator]

"The new headmaster? Alright, what would you like to know?"

[Diego Zapata]

"How it came to be that the British government decided who got the job."

[Narrator]

"That was due to Ms. Minamida's disappearance. When a school given a charter by the government has administrative issues, the government has the right to replace the administration to ensure the quality of the education of the students within."

((This is an actual law, but your humble narrator has lost the citation!))

[Diego Zapata]

"For what timeframe does the government control this?"

[Narrator]

"Oh, the placement was permanent. It's not a temporary assignment."

[Diego Zapata]

"So that means X-Corp can never replace him?"

[Narrator]

"Not without cause, and so far, the new headmaster has been doing a wonderful job, from what we know."

[Diego Zapata]

"That's all I wanted to know, thank you."

[Narrator]

"Have a nice day."

[Diego Zapata]

After hanging up, he searched for traumatic events connected to Morgan Mathers.

[Narrator]

There's no news reports or social media that comes up regarding Ghost. The most Diego can find on Ghost is that they bounced around the foster system quite a bit.

[Diego Zapata]

Perhaps he was letting the worries of the others get to him, but he lack of information on Ghost didn't sit well. But maybe Natalie could find something where he couldn't. So he sent her a message on a secure messaging app she helped him set up.

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DetDee99> Found little suspicious so far. Just that he and his prefects have all experienced traumatic loss. Though I don't know about Will and there is a conspicuous lack of anything about Ghost. Could you poke around his records for me? Also, perhaps his foster care history. Could be something hinky there. Or I'm just paranoid.

[Natalie Denisov]

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Unknown> Foster care system is less problematic to break into. And less likely to tip hand than student records. I'll start there.

A code window popped up on his laptop and started running various commands as she wormed her way into the foster care computer system, hunting for records on Morgan Mathers.

[Narrator]

A lot of sealed records, which is standard for that kind of stuff, but not hard for Natalie to circumvent. There are a bunch of complaints registered from various foster families, all boiling down to Morgan being a 'difficult child'. Disobedience, occasional fighting with other foster siblings, running away. One incident went all the way to the courts but was dismissed as juvenile misdemeanor, something involving theft but details are light. It's a relatively 'standard' record of a juvenile delinquent, really. The system does list Morgan as male, which clashes with their university records, that have them listed as non-binary.

[Natalie Denisov]

She skipped over the gender 'discrepancy', her mental process flagging it as 'normal' given that the teen years encompassed a decent bit of self-discovery. She bundled up the overall records, displaying them for Diego on his laptop.

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Unknown> I can dig deeper on the juvenile record, but I don't know that it's relevant considering several of the people at the school have juvenile records of one kind or another.
Unknown> Still want me to try cracking the student records? That's going to be harder.

[Diego Zapata]

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DetDee99> No on either.
DetDee99> L used to work as a geneticist. He researched the effects of emotional states and chronic stress on X-Gene expression. His training classes sure sound like experimentation without consent to me now. Too soon to snoop the network, but it may come to that.

[Natalie Denisov]

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Unknown> Certainly sounds like he's continuing his research in some form or fashion.

[Diego Zapata]

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DetDee99> The rest of what I found is pro-mutant positions on things going back before his daughter was killed by anti-mutant protestors, and some pretty pretty typical teen social media activity. Not Ghost and obvs not Will.
DetDee99> Any ideas where to look next?

[Natalie Denisov]

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Unknown> Unfortunately no, not without cracking into some harder to crack systems for information that may or may not be there.