[ Emma Frost // Open to anyone that feels like it ]
"Growing" and "changing" were not things that Emma Frost cared to do at all. She liked things to be the way she wanted them and that was that. Apparently, other people seemed to think that she needed to expand her horizons and learn to tolerate things that she felt were intolerable. Children, for instance. She loathed them, but dear sweet Charles wanted her to learn to love the children he had left in her more than capable hands. It was like being put through a torture chamber of incessant chatter and whining. She persevered only because she knew that the ends justified the means. If she dug her fingers deep enough into the inner-workings of this academy, she could shape the future of not just these children, but also the nation or the world. If she molded these minds in the right direction, she could have the ear of the future leaders of the world and make things better for herself and her colleagues. Of course, by the time some of these little brats became world leaders, she and those she worked with would be old and gray. Obsolete pieces of the political machine. Maybe, maybe not. No one really knew the future anyway.
The children at the facility were one thing, but the adults that called themselves "faculty" were more than enough trouble. Blue ones, green ones, tall ones, small ones. They were almost as varied as the student body and much more dangerous. These were people who had honed their skills either by force or just by participation in the training that the school provided. They definitely weren't as easy to fool as the students. With their eyes upon her, Emma had to be a million times more covert with her intentions and that, of course, made them trust her even less. She was an outsider here. Of all those that returned after the death of Xavier, none but Ororo Munroe knew who she was or where she came from and that was sketchy at best. Were it not for a hand-written letter from the Charles himself, God rest his soul, the other staff would have turned her away and forgotten that she had even arrived.
There was something he saw in her during their brief times together on the Astral Plane that caused him to decide he trusted her to take control of these innocent hearts and minds. Emma couldn't lie. She respected Charles more than just about any other man she had met, but that was possibly only because he was just as powerful and capable a psychic as she. She had been drawn to his bright light on the Astral Plane like a moth to a flame and it had proved fruitful. He was a charming man that she enjoyed visiting with when she needed a kind word to calm her restless mind after a hard day's work. He did not judge her for being a beautiful or highly opinionated woman. Instead, he counseled her and became a trusted confidant even though they had never physically met or even attempted to do so. She, in turn, listened to his woes and worries about his own endeavors and offered advice when she felt she had it. Of all her affairs, this was one she cherished most while also being the one with the least amount of physical contact. It was an irony that did not escape her and it was probably this attachment that made her accept his posthumous invitation.
Now, she paced the halls of the school and tried to duplicate them in her mind. She wanted to make these halls as familiar to herself as they were to the other faculty members. She wanted to know the nooks and crannies like the back of her hand. She wanted all of Charles' secrets to become her secrets and carry on his legacy as he had so eloquently communicated to her. All these wants managed to conflict with her goals in a way that it made her nights somewhat sleepless and her days so very tiring. Her heart had finally begun to cloud her ambition and she was angry at Charles for hooking his claws into her like this. He had changed her in a way that she had yet to understand and, God damn him, he knew it. He knew it long before he had ever gotten himself killed and that was why he had all these things in order before he died. If she ever met a man as cunning as him again, Emma decided she would cut him down before he could sink his claws into her like Charles did. It would be the only way to keep these things from happening ever again.