17694/Abruptly, Good News (

Abruptly, Good News (
Date of Scene:	19 April 2024
Location:	Headmistress' Office
Synopsis:	Ruth, improbably, becomes employed. Jean is now informed, along with some prophetic foreshadowing of what this job averts. Does anything stop Ruth from just making this up?
Cast of Characters:	Ruth Aldine, Jean Grey

---

Ruth Aldine has posed:
It was probably a late afternoon surprise when Jean Grey received a telepathic contact from Ruth Aldine, the bewildering BLINDFOLD.

Ruth had apparently been out and about. It's easy to triangulate where she's FROM - she's on the train, nearly to the stop nearest to Salem Center, and thence, the School itself.

<<Ma'am, I need to speak with you once I'm back. It's important, sorry. Don't worry, I'll be there in forty - no, forty-eight minutes.>>

Forty-eight minutes later, still slightly rumpled because she had to get out of the rideshare some distance down the pike because for obvious reasons it's a little tricky to just go and drive a car in front of the school full of innocent, shrapnel-absorbent mutants, Ruth comes into the office. She is slightly out of breath. She is wearing what seems to be her 'good' clothing - a blazer, a houndstooth skirt, a matching blindfold of the same material, and extremely nicely brushed (and now slightly askew) hair.

Ruth bursts into the office -- and then leans against the doorjamb to catch her breath rather than explaining herself.

Jean Grey has posed:
Being a well-known telepath does mean that Jean occasionally deals with mental communications out of the blue, sometimes directed at her by any of the others similarly-gifted, and sometimes consisting of people simply 'thinking loudly' in her direction. Either way, as she sits at her office desk handling administrative minutiae, such a message joins the more collection of more traditional emails, texts, co-working group chats, and so on.

Also, by the magic of mind powers, it's a little easier to multitask that sort of thing whle also doing her normal work.

<<Hmm? Of course, Ruth. Just come by my office when you get here.>> In some cases, she might press for more information on the spot, since they're already beaming it back and forth, but in this case, being that it's Ruth, she trusts that if it were meant to be done differently, well, Ruth would be doing it differently. Managing a school of the uniquely-able means mentally cataloguing any number of such quirks.

It's the same thing when she bursts in -- hurry up and wait. Which Jean does.

"Take your time. Do you need anything? There's hot water for tea already." There's a little sideboard type table off to one side of the office where she keeps a setup for such things, a little electric pot, cups and glasses, a cute porcelain box with the actual tea bags, and similar sundries. Tea, only, because it's that annoying point in the season when the temperature swings between 80 and 40 on a few days notice.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
Ruth is out of breath. It takes her a moment. She doesn't telepath a reply. "No," she says, then, "Yes, I mean, Tea, yes, sorry, great idea." She steps in and puts her STUFF down. STUFF includes a leather folder and a collapsible cane.

As is usual she just walks over to the cabinet and seems to regard it wordlessly. (Jean can feel a little tickle in the back of her mind as Ruth piggybacks out some actual visual angle.) With this countercheck, she moves a cup over, opens up the porcelain box, and chooses a teabag in complete and blessed ignorance.

Bag in the cup. Hot water in the cup. At this point her breathing is more normalized.

"I suppose I should've looked, yes, before I went on ahead and did it but I didn't want to miss the opportunity. I was down the city just now and I got a job." This is when she grins, rather toothily.

"So I guess I have to talk to you about stuff, especially since I won't have it forever," Ruth continues, with just as much good cheer in her voice even as she puts the hot water back down and picks up her teacup. "You don't happen, sorry, happen to know Stilt-Man, do you? I think he was the key part of it."

Jean Grey has posed:
Does her vision of the future predict which bag is the yummiest? These are things that even the great and not-quite all-knowing Jean Grey wonders about.

And still, whatever Ruth is here to tell her seems to be coming in more or less in backwards order, leaving the Headmistress to guess or start to put things together from what bits of context are dispensed. "Before you..? Oh. That's good, what sort of job?"

Xaviers isn't terribly aggressive about kicking its younglings out of the nest, to speak, with a tendency toward offering options that promote semi-subsidized living for those who want to hang around. Rogue worked part time doing odd jobs around the school, handling shopping and supplies. Once she got her teaching license, Noriko inherited the 'Gofer' spot. And yet, all of that said, it's quite encouraging when the brilliant young minds they train actually go out and make something of themselves!

"Well, I'm here to talk, happy to work through whatever it is. Do I? Ah, no, I don't think so. Does he... fight crime on stilts?" This would be a silly guess, if not for the whole, well... you know, of their lives in general.

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"I think he IS crime on stilts," Ruth says, about Stilt-Man.

It is good perhaps that Ruth does not know of Kite-Man -- but would she truly understand his allure?

As she moves to settle down, she raises the cup of tea. After a tentative sip, she says, "I understood I had to apply for this job because I know that at some point, in eleven or seventeen months (yes, it's not sure which but it's one or the other) from my first day, I'm going to knock something on the floor of the court room on accident."

Ruth sips her tea.

"Oh! It's a paralegal," Ruth explains. "I'm not one hundred percent on all of it but I know I can get it all under control. Better than average, probably."

IN A LAW OFFICE FAR AWAY

Ruth tries six of the various chairs in the area before finding the one with the memory of the butt with the highest degree of paralegal experience. After that, she drags it behind a desk.

HERE, WITHOUT CERTIFICATION

"I think the commute's survivable, since after a couple of weeks it's just going to be once or twice a week," Ruth says, afterwards. "But, well, I -" Her head tilts down then and she gives the tea another sip. There is a knot of embarrassment in her thoughts and posture.

Jean Grey has posed:
"Ah. Well, it's always one of the two," Jean laments. Never any Stilt-Persons just out for the pure love of stilting, anymore!

Ruth gets around to explaining, still not wholly in chronological order, but circling in on the meat of things enough that Jean can start to put the picture together. "Oh! OK. Well, those are usually pretty good jobs, I think? Pay-wise, and not too mind-numbing, although I guess it depends on the kind of law and casework."

"I don't have any legal experience, myself," she quickly ammends, less she sound overly authoritative, "at least, not from the working side. We've had to rely on our own lawyers now and then. That's when it's nice to know rich people." She grins. "But it always seems like they just have whole armies of people, so there's probably always going to be demand-"

She rewinds. "Anyway, I'm sure it's not a big deal if you knock something over. Court is a lot more boring in real life than it is on TV." Which, after saying it, maybe leads her to the thought that this isn't the core problem, the reason for whatever haste. "So... well, what's the problem? It sounds like a good opportunity to me, but I'm not seeing the big picture the way you do."

Ruth Aldine has posed:
It's hard out there for a stilter. Especially in this economy.

"Yeah, the pay sounded pretty good," Ruth says, with another grin. "It's Miss Walters in town, do you know her? She's got very strong muscles and I had a very, green, feeling from her? I don't know if that makes sense. I don't think she's, sorry, a plant or anything."

The tea is given another sip. "Oh, I didn't even think of that. I guess I could try to check things without the outside people getting involved if I learn enough." This seems to give Ruth some obscure pride, above and beyond this already-extant sensation of Success at Life.

"Well," Ruth says, "it's funny that you say that, and it's not like it's a one to one that that's how the job is going to end, but it is true that the pen is what causes it and if I hadn't dropped the pen, I'd have kept the job, which would've been a lot of fun and good times, helping people out, until the impact."

Ruth sips the tea. "... I guess I'd want to ask if I can give anything back," she then just drops on the metaphorical table before taking another sip off the tea. Shouldn't she just let it steep? Maybe she likes it best in this manner.

Jean Grey has posed:
"Oh. Yes. I'm familiar with her practice." While there are many famous lawyers in the big city, not many of them are quite so tall and green! Plus people like her and Murdock are probably among their first calls when there's some government overreach threatening to have them all Area 51'd, or when, conversely, some X-mission gets a little overenthusiastic and they blow something up.

At this point, Ruth's web of future events is getting a bit, well, tangled for Jean to make much sense of. "I know your predictions are very accurate, but there's still always room to, well- let's just say that you shouldn't let knowledge of disappointment discourage you. Maybe there's branches beyond the 'horizon' that you can't see quite yet. And even if not, it sounds like it would be some good experience at least? So I say, do it, enjoy it, see where it all goes-"

"-impact?" That is a bit of a double-take. "Impact pen or impact giant meteor, or what?" It's good to be specific.

"Give back... do you mean to the school?" Jean smiles a bit at this, and with Jean, well, the lack of seeing might not even be a total obstacle to noticing it, with the way the warmth can sometimes radiate from her. Metaphorically... and also maybe errant mind-beams-ly. "This is going to sound corny, but you, any of our students doing well, it means a lot to us here. Makes what we're doing seem more worthwhile."

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"It could be," Ruth says, soberly, "but I feel like until that changes I need to be there, because I don't see how, but if I don't knock that pen over, Hisako's team fail to stop the impact."

That sounds encouraging.

A beat or two passes. "Neither," she says. "I think it's a ship, or like... what do you call them. Like a big space station. Anyway, one falls down onto Earth and it's pretty bad. If I'm there, in court, I mean, that doesn't happen."

Then, "Yeah," Ruth says with a nod. "Even if it's just for a while, I guess I have to do something." Her arms fold loosely over herself, teacup held over the opposing shoulder. She smiles again, then, and it's less of a 'got away with it' grin.

"It's funny," Ruth continues after, tilting her head upwards somewhat. "It's kind of like this is a place outside of the world, just a little bit. Like the space-port, but I don't know what it's near. Do you know what I mean? I wonder if there's other places like that, just for other things. I don't know. Robots or something."

Ruth unfolds an arm to sip her tea. "I guess I just felt like I've taken a lot so I ought to give back if I'm gonna have, you know, money."

Jean Grey has posed:
As much as Ruth's meandering musings can be difficult to unravel, Jean knows better than to dismiss them, so at least a little bit of worry creeps in to errode that otherwise radiantly sunny disposition.

And there are details. So Jean thinks about it a bit. "There's a lot going on around the Atlantic Starport right now. We keep the SR-X there. But it's... well, not really outside the world, in the way of things in orbit. Up there..." She pauses again. "...lots of satellites. SHIELD has a space station. Then further out, there's a few things on the moon. But for robots, I don't know."

Eventually, she lets it pass. "You're going to stop it, anyway, so why worry, hmm?" That's the spirit.

As for MONEY? "The alumni association helps a lot with our endowment, so there are ways to give if you feel like it. Though if this is the first time you have that kind of spare change of your own, I'd say maybe treat yourself a little first." Considering that fundraising is a pretty significant portion of Jean's _actual_ job description, she's currently doing a really bad job! "Everything helps, but with people like Warren and Roberto, let alone Charles himself... we're not bad off."

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"It would be about eight years after in either case," Ruth says. "I couldn't tell the date exactly, but I smelled a lot of pine in the air even though we were in New York."

Her head tilts downwards. "Ah, well -- sorry -- I -- I mean I understand and I'm not stubborn, yes, enough to push on it, I just -- I mean --"

There's a sort of glurk. She swallows, her face pursing tight, and after about four seconds, she relaxes; and she finishes off the tea.

"... I'm going to at least give you a couple of hundred each check for the room and all the food and everything," Ruth says, holding the cup in both hands, emptied though it is. "And I might have to adjust the courses I was doing." (Ruth was doing an average of 4 credit hours a semester. Just loaf around, why don't you, Ruth Aldine!)

She takes a deep breath.

"... but I guess I do deserve something nice, too, don't I? I'll have to figure out what to blow money on."

Jean Grey has posed:
"Oh, well, good. I'll put it on my calendar." This is not a joke or a brush off; Jean is still sitting at her workstation, and thus has access to the magic that is her scheduling app. Obviously, it's not a hard date, but she taps in a brief reminder for the beginning of 2032.

Future doom noted, she turns her attention back. "Great. It's probably a little late for this term, but let me know and I can get you registered for the next one."

As for the marvels of financial freedom and the positive power of 'treat yo self,' the Headmistress does have one anecdote to offer. "We didn't have college courses, back when I graduated here. So I went to ESU in the city. I started doing this modeling gig," because she is THAT kind of predictable trope, "found a roomie, got an apartment, the whole thing. It wasn't strictly necessary, really, but doing a bit more for myself really helped me come out of my shell a bit."

With this said, she gets up and comes around from behind the desk, to more politely see Ruth out. "Just let me know when you have the courses figured out, alright?"

Ruth Aldine has posed:
"Miss Walters did offer to help me get some place out there," Ruth muses, "but I guess I'll get the job sorted before I think about that."

"You were, sorry, a model?" Ruth concludes, as she reaches the door. "Thanks," she concludes, and when she walks off, it's smiling.