A necessary phone call Who: Frederick standalone What: A necessary phone call When: Wednesday afternoon Where: Haven Warnings: None
Every day that passed convinced Frederick further that carving out a niche for himself in this Haven for mutants was going to take more work and patience than he was probably willing to invest in it. He felt completely out of place. Wasn't this supposed a self-proclaimed haven for kindred spirits, for other mutants like himself? Not only was it not, but they had humans walking around, probably making themselves feel good for being so accepting and bullcrap like that. Oh, we're so open-minded, we don't mind living among the freaks. One of the main reasons many mutants came here in the first place was to have a safe place in which they could let their freak flag fly without any kind of fear of judgment from baseline humans.
Frederick did not feel welcome here. Of course, it didn't help that what he saw as showing initiative had cost him a humiliating dressing down and a black eye. The guy who was supposed to be his commanding officer had given him a black eye on his very first mission out in the field. Who did that? So his damn girlfriend had gotten stabbed. That wasn't Frederick's fault. Hell, he'd been left outside to babysit the car and been nowhere near her when it happened. Sure, she was a hottie with that tight little ass and hair the same green of Scion's eyes, but that still didn't warrant the violence. Scion hadn't even made a pass at her yet, for God's sake.
And then there was the fact that he'd completely failed to reconnect with his old buddy Jamie, for whom he was carrying a torch that'd make a twelve year old girl proud. It was ridiculous, and just piled on the humiliation. And to top it all off, he had alienated his teammate, fighting over a shared room when he had his own little suite here that he had paid for so he could have it to himself. Ridiculous. He couldn't believe he had reacted the way he had, much less that he had put himself into this position. And then there was the whole Xavier and his naive kumbayah rhetoric. No. Frederick Slade was not going to sit around and let those envious baseline cavemen crap all over him while he begged for crumbs at the table. Never. Not ever.
That was it. He made a decision and found himself walking towards the dresser even before he was entirely conscious of making it. He took out the slim fireproof safety box out of his bottom drawer and unlocked it. Once opened, he grabbed the throwaway cel phone inside and turned it on. There was only one number in the memory, so he simply pressed the call button and put it to his ear.
"Hello, Mr. Lehnsherr?" he asked when a voice answered at the other end. For a moment there he was afraid nobody would. "This is Scion, sir. You were right. I'm all in. I will wire the funds you require first thing in the morning. Yeah. Thanks for the tip about not doing it over this network. I'll be seeing you soon. Thank you, sir." There was a short pause while he listened, then he added, "Understood."
Frederick shut the phone closed, ending the call. He took off the battery and double checked that the disposable phone did not have a sim card to remove. He then shapeshifted his hand into a dense metallic claw and destroyed the phone. It was funny, he thought. He was not used to the submissive tone that came out of his mouth when talked to Magneto, but the man just inspired so much respect, and not a little awe. He looked thoughtfully at the shattered phone in his hand before tossing it in the garbage.
"Sorry, Mr. X. Nothing personal, but I'm not a fucking sheep," he muttered to no one in particular. He would soon be leaving the Haven without saying goodbye.