He was careful to make sure the silence of the kitchen wasn't broken as he set his white cup down on the table top, smoke wafting from the warm content of it as he sighed and leaned on his good hand whose good elbow was on the mahogany. In one word, Shiro sulked. Despite Jean's good efforts, his tummy still hurt if he wasn't too careful with the way he moved and worse, his left arm was in a sling because of a bloody bad thumb.

So much for thinking he could catch a bone like a baseball...

The nth sigh escaped from Shiro's lips as he was reminded of his latest match and he scratched his head then moved his fingers towards his notebook's trackpad; e-mails and YouTube were the in-thing today. The news, one he had been so fond to read whenever he started his day, was not. Fresh from the mission (if you could even call it one), he considered it a bad memory and wanted nothing more than to forget about it and just move on. Because of that, the idea of skipping work did not really settle nicely with him since it meant skipping a mundane life which did not have a Shiro who was also known as Kamuro who went into battle and lost to a bloody boy.

A bloody boy.

But Jean was keen to make sure he didn't go to work.

That had done nothing but make Shiro feel the general suck of losing gnawing on his skin. How was that possible? Last he knew, he was in check with his danger room sessions (and ate well and slept well...or close-to-well) but to lose to his half-cousin? Who was most possibly a decade younger than him? He despised the idea that he was getting on his years, thirty-three isn't a very old age.

...but who lost to a boy like that?

And what did he do wrong? He'd used his powers the way he knew how to use them best, hadn't he? How did that not work at all?

His head fell on the table with a low thud, right arm still stretched towards his notebook. If anything, skipping work for the day had only made him decide that in a few week's time and as soon as he's all better, he is going to treat the danger room like it was his lover.

[ Open to: Anyone within the X-Mansion ]

It was by nobody's standards an ideal day to hold a protest. The weather was overcast-- rain was definitely on the horizon, and while the streets had been closed by the local council in order to let the protest march peacefully and safely up the street, by standing in the middle of the road in a thunderstorm the marchers truly were trying their luck. None of the weather forecasts had predicted lightning, but every single one of those forecasters knew that the weather could turn on you as quickly as a wild animal, that trying to predict it was a fickle art, and while you could monitor trends, you could never be one hundred percent sure of what was to come.

It was the only legitimate form of fortune telling out there, but it would not take a climatologist or a psychic to predict that trouble was looming on the horizon today.

The protest was walking down Waterbury St towards Cromwell High School. The roads were cleared ahead of the march, and leading the pack was one of the higher members of the Friends of Humanity, a society dedicated to the continued preservation of human superiority. Their aim was not, as their signs preaching Safe Schools declared, to keep society safe, but to keep society pure of the unpredictable, the unknown, the new.

Half a block in front of the protest, a man rose slowly up through the bitumen. He was dressed very nicely in a suit and tie, with his black leather shoes polished enough for them to shine. Erik had always had a flair for the dramatic. Perhaps it was because his home life was so terribly unassuming, and the nature of his powers was made more for stealth and secrecy than for theatrics, but whenever he had the attention of a crowd he certainly came into himself. The protest slowed down to a stop, moving no closer towards the terrorist.

"Surely you would have learnt by now." He said loudly, projecting his voice in a very theatrical manner. He would've been at home reading the bard. "Cromwell High School have made the right decision. I suggest you disperse now, while you're still well enough to take your children to school tomorrow morning, or you can stay and suffer the consequences."

For several seconds, the march stayed immobile, as his message was murmured and carried down through the crowd so everyone could hear what he had said. But they were not the kind who idly accepted and yielded to threats, even when it would've been the sensible course of action. Instead, they slowly began to march towards Erik once more.