The talking heads were at it again. Usually Logan didn't turn the TV on but he'd needed something to distract him from the pile of papers on his desk, a pile that had gone from a neat stack to something decidedly less organized as he worked his way through it.

I need to hire someone to do this shit, he thought as he came upon the bills. Money wasn't an issue, not with Warren Worthington III's money smoothing the way, but someone still needed to sort through them and make sure all the numbers were right.

And what good was a healing factor if it didn't take care of stress headaches? He could feel one blooming right between his eyes.

A familiar cultured voice caught the edge of his attention and made him look up. The news station had gone to a split screen with the reporter on the left and Eric Lensherr on the right. He wore his signature red and purple, regal colors that spoke to the position he was in as the ruler of Genosha, a position he'd remorselessly shed blood to attain.

"Of course homo sapiens are not welcome in Genosha," Lensherr was saying, his thing lips curling back in a snarl, hatred evident in his words. "This is a haven, a stronghold, for the true race. Here we can live without fear that you baselines will break down our doors and take us in the night, just as the Nazi regime did so many years ago." It was something Lensherr understood firsthand, had the marks on his body to bear testament.

The reporter seemed a bit startled. "But don't you worry about being attacked? All someone has to do is push a button and missiles could be airborne."

"My dear, you forget what I am capable of, what all mutants are capable of. Nothing enters or exits without my knowledge and express approval." His eyes smoldered with contempt. "To come against us would be folly of the highest order. All we want is to live in peace without outside interference."

"And if the rest of the world were to take up the cry that mutants should be registered and catalogued, if the bill being discussed in the Senate were to be put into law, what then?"

"We are above human laws."

The reporter stammered, clearly shaken by such fervor as she stumbled for words. "Do you not worry that your attitude will spark further violence against your kind?"

The mutant known as Magneto smiled, and it was ugly. "There will always be violence, always be hatred. Soon enough it won't matter."

Disgusted, Logan grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. It was bad enough Lensherr was running free without the damn media giving him an outlet to spew his doctrine to the masses. It gave Magneto an inflated sense of self-importance which, given the size of his ego, was already enormous. And having one of the bad guys as the most visible specimen of mutantkind wasn't doing anyone any favors.

Logan groaned and leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands. How the hell had he let himself get roped into this? Ororo and Scott had both survived the blast that took out the original Institute, why not them? The former at least was aiding him in running the place; the latter had taken off for parts unknown, switching usual roles with Logan. Even a year later everything was still chaotic, the new Institute having only opened two months ago.

He needed beer. Several beers. Anything to drown out the frustration.

Doug being Doug, he'd been in the library for the better part of the day. Hey, what was an unemployed twenty-something to do when he didn't have classes? Well, an unemployed twenty-something like Doug, that is. Normal guys would probably be out having something resembling a social life.

Ah, well.

Doug's token nod towards being social was that he didn't have his earbuds in and his iPod going. For Doug, this was the equivalent of an open door. It was known pretty much Institute-wide that a Doug without earbuds in meant a Doug you wouldn't be interrupting at something important.

Not that he was paying attention to anything outside of the books he was paging through as he translated a document from Latin into English. He could read it, of course, but sometimes it was much more fun to do it the so-called normal way.