A SAGE ADRIFT - #19

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A SAGE ADRIFT

#19

Emma was in the middle of finalising the deal with the State education department to have her school recognised as an official school rather than a vocational school like Xavier had done when the man himself rolled himself in.

Or rather, contacted her mentally and cast the illusion of him being in the same room as her through his psychic powers. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that Xavier himself was in the room with her, what with the sounds of his wheels rolling on the floor, along with the door silently closing itself with a satisfying thud. Charles really knew what he was doing when it came to mental manipulation.

“What can I do for you, Charles? As you can see, I am in the middle of something and as time speeds up for us in our mental space, I don’t really have the energy to deal with you right now so leave before I banish you from my mind.” Emma groaned as she looked at Charles coldly. She didn’t want to deal with this old coot, preferably forever, but life was such that she had to do some unpleasant things if she wanted to bring about some change.

Change like building a massive school right in the middle of New Jersey with the capacity to house, feed, and school thousands of children.

Charles sighed, he had the audacity to sigh when he was disturbing her work, “Look, Emma-”

“It’s Ms.Frost to you, Xavier,” Emma interjected in between with a chilly tone. She really didn’t like the old coot and his methods of recruiting people to his case or his inaction towards his best friend who was, by all definitions of the word, a terrorist. An international terrorist even. Of course, part of it was due to his mutant heritage but Magento had performed enough international property-destroying stunts that he should at least be called an economical terrorist.

“Ms.Frost, I am not here to bother you. It’s just that I heard concerning reports about you opening a school of all things. I didn't think the schooling industry had enough profits in it for you to dive into it.” 

Emma resisted the urge to scoff at the incompetent fool. Did he even know the amount of money parents are willing to spend, just for the chance of their kid getting the best education possible? She knew and it was a lot. Nothing compared to her truly lucrative business, especially because she was building just a single school, however large it may be, but it was still more than enough to justify her investments even from a purely economical perspective.

“What I do with my money is none of your business, Xavier. Now, please come to the point,” Emma said while continuing to work on her computer. While the computer might not move since both of them were in her mental space, she continued to log her notes mentally right now so that she could have them typed later on.

Maybe she should invest in some type of mental computer interface that would translate her thoughts directly to text but that would probably corrupt all computers and they might just awaken some AI with a deep-seated hatred for humanity because of all the disgusting thoughts it was exposed to that humans didn’t tell each other but told the computer.

Huh, judging by the extreme tangents she was going on, maybe Naruto’s short attention span was rubbing off on her.

“Ms.Frost, I am just concerned about the students, that’s all,” Xavier had the gall to say that with a straight face.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He of all people had no right to lecture her on student safety when his own students went out in spandex, UNARMOURED SPANDEX, every week and endangered their own lives for a cause that some old man sold them about in their teenage years. It was actually ludicrous that he was allowed to even be near a school, let alone own and run one on his family estate.

“Charles Xavier’s X-men. Isn’t that what you call your little private army of school brats who don’t even know what most of the world has to offer? Come on, Charles, at least let them grow up a bit before turning them into child soldiers. Besides, the casualty rate of your team might not be high but two mutant deaths in 4 years is already high enough for me, Charles. Now, I have  a lot of work to do and while I don't remember asking for your advice, thank you for trying to offer it to me.”

“W-Wait, Emma, you have to understand, that mutants need to be protected and coexist with humans. That can’t happen if you have  a mutant- an only school built where any evil organisation can approach.” Charles said as he sensed that he was about to be booted off her mental space.

She would not have been able to do this a couple of years back, at least not without some difficulty but her powers had really soared in the years since then, especially due to her extreme practice techniques. She paused once she heard Charles speak those extremely ignorant sentences/

Honestly, had the man gone senile because of his old age and powers?

“Charles, when was the last time you had a normal vanilla human at your school? I am not talking about the suits and the doctors, I am talking about students. No? Well, what about the number of times you have had to rebuild your school after it was partially or even completely destroyed after some enemy of yours attacked it, forcing your students to defend their home.”

She waved her hands and changed the scenery from a perfect replica of her office to a simulation showing the combat prowess of Naruto Uzumaki.

“Look, this is who will be here 24/7, protecting both the academy and the students inside. He will also have a dedicated security team who will be responsible for the safety of the campus. I don’t have to tell you that the man who defeated Juggernaut will be more than enough to act as school security.”

It was overkill and she knew it but it was not as if she was going to argue with the man himself. If he was happy being in a school that housed her team, her future team members, herself, and in the future, her family as well, she was more than happy to give him the reins of the security of the campus. 

Already, he had used some sort of written magic that was different from the runes she knew, to close off a couple of weak points in the campus’ security. He had been completely healed up and had spent the past couple of weeks in the academy, trying out every single one of the custom equipment she had made for the no-doubt avalanche of different students that was going to hit her academy once word spread about it.

The simulation she was showing Charles was something that Naruto himself had told her to record and advertise to any potential invader. It was a video of Naruto going head to head against the Brotherhood of Mutants, in addition to the Juggernaut, and what a fight it was. She was of the opinion that the Naruto who fought Juggernaut would be the best version of himself and even after healing himself, he would, at best, be able to keep fighting at that level for longer but as it turned out, healing his body brought up his combat prowess to whole other level.

Now that he was healed, he could easily handle the Juggernaut alongside handling a dozen other capable mutants. She could feel the gears turning in Charles’ head as he looked at Naruto effortlessly defeating, that too nonlethally, a team that would have taken the entirety of X-men bringing their A-game to the table as well a healthy dose of luck. He must really be regretting his choice of not leaving someone behind to help Naruto against the Friends of Humanity, not that it would have helped much since in the face of Juggernaut himself, Charles barely had one or two members who could help, aside from himself of course but Charles himself would have been barely any help as long as Juggernaut was wearing that stupid helmet of his that keep all telepaths at bay.

With the way things are going with her telekinesis practice, one of these days, she was going to try getting his helmet off with just her telekinesis and then use her telepathy to knock him right out. As it was right now, she had kept Cain Marko sedated right under the academy base that was still being built. Actually, his containment chamber was one of the first things that was moved out to the new base because she trusted no one besides herself and Naruto to stop him in case he got out.

The rest of the base was actually still in the process of being filled and would most probably be done before she would send out the first calls for admission to the academy.

“Well, this is certainly reassuring,” Charles said but she could smell the bullshit from a mile away. He was now looking at Naruto as a threat that needed to be contained or curtailed, depriving her of a strong asset.

Emma visibly rolled her eyes and replied, “Now that you have seen that the academy is under strong capable hands, please leave and don’t disturb me until I open the academy to the public. I will be sure to invite you to the ceremony as well. After all, no matter how annoying or obnoxious you might be, you are still a crucial face of the mutant community, something that I intend to change soon but as things stand, your attendance will be appreciated.”

Charles nodded slowly even as his form crumbled right in front of her as she kicked him out of her mind. He didn’t resist this time.

As soon as she exited her mind space and refocused on her work, there was a knock on her door. Before she could ask who it was, the door opened and Naruto let himself in.

“Is he gone?” Naruto asked Emma while looking around her office as if searching for the intruder that he had sensed.

“Yes, Naruto, he is gone. How did you even sense him by the way?” Emma asked Naruto.

Naruto was not one to toot his own horn but ever since he was given Hashirama cells, all of his latent Uzumaki abilities had come out. Turns out, Mind’s Eye of Kagura helped him sense all sorts of different energies in this universe as well. He had been working hard in his office, trying to see if he had missed something with the security of the campus when he had sensed an energy signature descending on the campus, concentrating close to Emma’s office that was disturbingly similar to a Yamanaka Mind Transfer Jutsu’s Yin flavoured energy so he had bolted to Emma’s office as soon as possible.

He settled into one of the seats in front of Emma’s table and said, “One of my abilities allows me to sense different energy signatures from a vast range of distances. I sensed something was fishy because suddenly, a huge energy signature descended on the entirety of the campus but it was more concentrated near your office so I came here. Who was that anyway? I didn’t sense someone going away, it was more like the energy just vanished instantly.”

Emma sighed and replied, “It was Charles Xavier.”

Instantly, the air in the room chilled as a dark look passed over Naruto’s face.

“Oh, him.”

Emma sighed and tried to do some damage control because she was serious about inviting Charles to the school’s inauguration because as much as she hated that manipulative old man, he was one of the two faces of mutantkind and unfortunately, he was the one who was well received amongst the public, at least the ones who hadn’t already been poisoned against mutantkind by their overlords.

“Look, Naruto, what he did was wrong but we can just chalk it up to incompetence. He will be here for the school’s opening and I really don’t want there to be any issues on that day so will it be fine for you?”

Naruto looked at her, surprised, “What? I can control my anger. Don’t worry about it. It's just that for someone who is supposedly good, how could he have not even checked up on the situation? It just doesn’t add up.”

That was something that was going on in Emma’s mind as well. Xavier was not the type to pass up on such an opportunity. Even she realised the benefits of the deal immediately when Mystique offered it to her. Why she did not go to Charles was a mystery to her as well.

Well, their loss. She gained an invaluable ally and defeated her former worst enemy in a single stroke. She would have to do something for Mystique to thank her.

“Well, we’ll ask him the day he shows up. How is the work going?”

“Oh, work is fine. I need a couple more days to safeguard the entire thing but other than that….”

The meeting went on in Emma’s office at the same time organisations in the dark began moving once they had gotten a whiff of a place where mutants would be staying. A place they thought they could easily invade.

Little did they know they were in for a rude surprise.

Word Count - 2304