charles f. xavier }} professor x. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
helpmeguideit) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-05-23 10:25 pm
helpmeguideit) wrote in thecapitol2014-05-23 10:25 pm
Entry tags:
Backdate; Pre-Arena.
Who| Charles & Brainiac 5
What| A mutant and an alien play a game or two.
Where| District 8; Common Room
When| Pre-arena; shortly after Charles' arrival
Warnings/Notes| None.
Charles made his way to the District 8 common room. He had only seen it in passing, so he navigated there slowly, to be sure that he both wouldn't miss it or Brainiac. Not that he believed for a moment that he would miss Brainiac based on his appearance. He had met, already, some very different looking people. At home, the only mutants who really looked different were Raven and recently, Hank. Charles wasn't known for his ability to deal with those who were different. But he wasn't entirely certain that this person was a mutant. He couldn't be sure.
He would make an attempt to figure this out as they played.
Once in the common room, he glanced around, looking for that green to see if Brainiac was already there, or if he was yet to arrive.
What| A mutant and an alien play a game or two.
Where| District 8; Common Room
When| Pre-arena; shortly after Charles' arrival
Warnings/Notes| None.
Charles made his way to the District 8 common room. He had only seen it in passing, so he navigated there slowly, to be sure that he both wouldn't miss it or Brainiac. Not that he believed for a moment that he would miss Brainiac based on his appearance. He had met, already, some very different looking people. At home, the only mutants who really looked different were Raven and recently, Hank. Charles wasn't known for his ability to deal with those who were different. But he wasn't entirely certain that this person was a mutant. He couldn't be sure.
He would make an attempt to figure this out as they played.
Once in the common room, he glanced around, looking for that green to see if Brainiac was already there, or if he was yet to arrive.
no subject
"I'm a supervillain, you know," he said quietly. "It's quite a ridiculous-sounding proclamation, but my teammates and find the word 'criminal' somewhat ineffective in describing the kinds of crimes we commit. When you're in brightly colored spandex and using a death laser to open the confiscated goods safe on a prison ship while flinging mini-black holes at the police, it seems the kind of very specific criminality that requires its own very specific definition."
He took one of Charles' knights.
"Yet despite that, we have always held crimes fueled by intolerance over genetic differences in...distaste. Many of us were considered aberrations on our homeworlds for various reasons, myself included."
He avoided Charles' eyes.
"What I'm trying to say is that I'm not a particularly soft-hearted man but I can appreciate it when I see sentients that understand the nature of hatred and fear and how damaging it is to those who don't deserve to be damaged. You've been guarded about it but you wouldn't call the time you come from a dark age if it was a time of tolerance and if you didn't value such tolerance. Don't ever lose that attitude. If more people had thought that way on my homeworld I might not have resorted to a life of crime as my only option for survival."
no subject
"I find crimes fueled by intolerance are reprehensible," he said. Erik was a victim of crimes like that, so he felt close to them personally, although he had not been a victim himself. He knew of his friend's agony and suffering as a result of hatred.
He couldn't let the same thing befall his own people.
"It's a shame you had to take to that," he said. He moved to take a pawn with one of his.
no subject
"My family line was primarily known for its criminal inclinations. After my ancestor, the first Brainiac, had his intelligence genetically altered, that mutation was passed down to each of his descendants. Most of them became supervillains, though Colugov continued the breeding program in the hopes of achieving Brainiacs that could contribute something to the planetary interest. I was the only one that didn't have the gene express to the same extreme as the others - which made Colugov deem me as relatively useless. They still didn't want to let me go, of course. They figured that there could, after all, be future Brainiacs that could have possibly proven useful."
He briefly pressed his lips together.
"It was a choice between being state property and living a life of my own with people who I had eventually come to consider friends. That is to say: I don't see it as a shame at all. Bettering oneself sometimes has its price," he said, nudging his bishop. "A few wanted bulletins is a small one."
His voice was a little quieter. "But I do appreciate the sentiment. As I said, it's...refreshing. For the sake of your world, I hope your students become teachers of those sentiments in turn."
no subject
He sighed. "Having to commit crimes to be better isn't a choice. When presented with one option..." he said. "Well, you're smart enough to understand how I see it, I think."
The future for him was not predictable, not even the slightest.
sorry for the long wait, lost the notif and omg this got long but Charles made him think things
He remembered the time they'd run into a Carggite thief, someone similar to his teammate, Luorno, who was able to triplicate into three separate bodies but they all had separate personalities instead of three identical ones. It was something that was freakish by Garggite standards. Just like Luorno, she'd run away from her home planet, but unlike Luorno she hadn't had someone as kind as RJ Brande - the Legion's financial backer and surrogate team uncle - to take her in and adopt her as his own.
Instead of taking her to the police, with RJ's help they'd given her a new job and a fresh start, taking measures to help her seek asylum so that her criminal record would be wiped clean. What choice had she had, after all? When her only choices had been a life of crime, starving to death, or being institutionalized and receiving treatment that was tantamount to medical torture back on Cargg?
The difference this time was that he wasn't making the argument, he was on the receiving end of it, and the backstory here wasn't someone else's and it wasn't fiction. It was his own. It was strange to explain his life as if it was fiction, to use it for his cover story, and to hear back from someone that it wasn't a choice.
But it hadn't been, had it?
The truth was Colugov had nudged him around wherever they wanted him to go when he'd been young, like a chess piece on a game board, until they'd grown sick of him and fobbed him off on RJ Brande and his company because he was the only one who'd wanted him. He'd obeyed RJ when he suggested the Time Institute on Talus without question as if it was a tacit command rather than a suggestion, and then he'd been conscripted into the Legion back when it had been forced by the UP planetary governments. If they had turned villainous and not been a force for good - and a team full of individuals that had been infinitely patient with him long enough that he could call them friend - he might have turned out a villain.
If the Legion hadn't worked out and his homeworld hadn't wanted him back, where could he have gone? Back to Talus? By then his reputation of being terrible to work with had traveled far and wide, and while his friend and fellow scientist Rond Vidar might have welcomed him back, he knew the Time Institute Supervisory Staff most likely would have put their foot down after he'd blown up so many labs. It was only on RJ's recommendation that he'd gotten the job at all. His reputation of being a Brainiac had always colored more than just his people's view of him. Before he'd made a name for himself in the Legion as a hero people had always cringed away from him when they'd found out his title. That he was an innocent child at the time had never mattered and never had the species of the people doing the cringing. Carggites, humans, Braalians, Titanians, it was all the same; the name "Brainiac" had been etched into the ancestral memory of more than one species.
Maybe there was a reason anyone he even hinted about his past to as part of the villain rigmarole spoke and acted as if they pitied him. He'd never told his team-mates about his upbringing to see how they'd react to it, and he'd never made any mental attachments of his past to the pasts of people like Luorno and that Carggite thief, but what if it was something just as pitiable? Why did he pity others who dealt with such things and not see himself the same way?
All of this and thousands of other thoughts went on in the space of a second in his head. For just a moment, his attention was elsewhere, lost in his own thoughts, but he didn't stop playing. Somehow, while seemingly not paying attention to the game or even looking at the board, he reached out a hand and moved his knight.
"Checkmate."
Most people had to look at the board to make their final move. And do things like, oh, make sure they were moving the right piece. Especially since the board was a hologram and he wouldn't have been able to tell what piece it was by touch. The only way someone would be able to reach out and do what he'd done was if they'd memorized the board and the location of every piece on it.
oh goodness <3
To feel like that even for these few moments he could be someone who wasn't a mutant.
"Good job, friend," Charles answered. His tone was friendly. He was pleased with the competition. He was always pleased by it. People who kept up with him in these games were rare back home, and to know there was someone who could provide a challenge excited him.
It made him miss Erik. More than anyone, really.
no subject
"Better luck next time," he said to Charles. "Don't hesitate to contact me if you want a rematch. This was...engrossing."
With that, he gave him a slight nod and walked away, still lost in his own thoughts.