nextgenerationmarvel | Times They Are A-Changin'... ((Open to Reactions & Things on the X-Campus))

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Times They Are A-Changin'... ((Open to Reactions & Things on the X-Campus))

With the opening of the school post-Labor Day fast approaching, it was time to open the dorms to the student populations. This was being done so most of the interior of the mansion (above the subbasements) could be remodeled and re-utilized for more academic means.

It was bright and early on that late August morning the headmaster of Xavier's had the students and staff gather for announcements. Things had to change at how parts of Xavier's were ran. Gone were the days of it being a home first and school second.

Rachel went to the front of the gathered crowd and used her telepathy to augment her voice so everyone could hear her.

"Good morning, everyone. Today, we officially open the two dorms to student living." She used one hand to gesture to the two large buildings behind the mansion and opposite each other across the width. "The students will spend the day moving out today from the mansion into the boys' and girls' dorms. Some of the roommate assignments have been updated and adjusted as needed. The assignments have been posted in both your current dorms and your new one. If you don't have a roommate at this moment, do not think you've lucked out. We have students returning and new ones enrolling after Labor Day."

She took a breath. "With this move to the dorms, comes a change in how this school proceeds. Under my predecessor, the school had more leeway and could be like a home before an educational institution. Now, with the watchful eyes hoping we fail, we have to move how we do things into a more proper school setting. With that in mind, more rules have been instituted to get us in line with those terms of existence."

She took a small breath. "The cafeteria kitchen is now off-limits to students. Only those with prior permission and reason to be there will be allowed in. It is up to Ms. Blaire's and my discretion on whom that is. Food in the cafeteria will be supplied on a 24 hour basis, but do not expect hot food once the kitchen has been closed down for the night. The cafeteria will start serving hot food at 6 AM and will close down the hot food portion at 8 PM.

"The horses in the stables are not to be fed junk food under any circumstances. Ms. Moonstar informs me the next person who slips them one of those deep fried fruit pies will be cleaning out the stalls with a bucket, a sponge, and no powers. And I agree with her.

"The Shi'ar mainframe in this school needs to have its resources used responsibly. Mr. Ramsey will disable your access to the internet if he catches anyone trying to host things like Warcraft sessions on it."

Girls Roommate Assignments
Bobbi Angelus and Rose Logan
Kayla Conners and Bianna LeBeau
Josephine Blaire-Bennet & TBD

Boys Roommate Assignments
Dolemeck Night and Brody Lees
Topher Summers and Richard Brooks
Ilya Gavrilov and Pete Eastman (& co.)
David Roberts & TBD

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For as long as Topher could remember, the Xavier Institute had always been home. Despite a brief life away from superheroics in California, Topher had always lived at the Institute - even when his parents were off leading X-Factor or one of the other teams they'd been a part of.

It would be difficult to start thinking of this place as anything else, but he understood exactly where Rachel was coming from.

Besides. Change is good. Wasn't that, like, a thing four years ago?

Granted, the fact that he was moving away from the mansion proper, where he'd lived for so long, into the dorms themselves, well, that was new. And probably good. I'll get to be like one of the other kids. Maybe some of them will stop seeing me as being one of the privileged legacy kids. Not that anyone had ever looked down on him for it - at least not to his face - and not that Topher had ever lorded the fact that he was sort of a legacy over the other students, but it was something he'd been very cogent of.

Of most of the students there, he'd had it the easiest, coming from a family that was almost entirely all mutant.

Besides. New faces, new friends. This is good. And at least the roommate is someone who won't cause Animus to come bursting out of me halfway through the night.

They were teenagers. Emotions were going to run rampant - everything from feelings both positive and negative. Still, Topher couldn't deny that there were some students who tended towards the negative spectrum more frequently than not. And that could have ended badly.

He pulled off his green flannel shirt and tied it haphazardly around his waist as he surveyed his new digs.

They were nice. Dorm-y, but in that rich, prep-school way that made everything seem just a touch more luxurious. It's like steel beneath silk, though. Everything was, after all, built to take a beating, considering the nature of the students there. The rooms could withstand bursts of fire, gusts of wind, bolts of electricity, and so much more.

Though a visit from Fin Fang Foom might not go over so well.

He surveyed the boxes on his side of the room - clothes, books, training uniforms, action figures, two guitar cases - and got to unpacking. Moving things over had been easy - super-strength had it's advantages, after all - but the unpacking part. Well, that part was always...Tch. So boring.

Okay. Important stuff like clothes first. Fun things like posters and guitars and Mom's tiara later.

It took him a shorter time than anticipated - maybe an hour and a half, tops - and he grinned as he set down the glass mannequin head with Lorna's first tiara down on his desk, next to his laptop. The thing was old - scratched and battle-worn, dented in places - but it had history. When he was little, Topher used to throw it on, along with his mom's cape or his dad's well-worn leather jacket from their X-Factor days, and he'd run around the house, pretending that he was a superhero on a mission to save the world from evil.

His hand gently brushed over the tiara. Sometimes, dreams do come true.

It was a strange thought to think that they would have to move from that rooms that they had become accustomed to, but Richard supposed that change was inevitable for the likes of them. Of course, the idea of there being more changes to come with the move was disconcerting, but he understood that they needed more structure with more students coming it. He had just held hope that the cafeteria wouldn't be one of the places affected.

These were the things that he thought of as he floated all of his belongings through the air, which was the easiest way to move things and not bump into people and cause serious accidents. Making his way to his new room, Richard found his new roommate to already be there, and he thought it was his great fortune to have a roommate that he knew.

"How is it going rooming," he asked as he made his stuff transform from vapor to its natural state on his bed. It was time for the long process of figuring out how to arrange all of his belonging in a new room, and he figured keeping up a conversation might be a good way of speeding that process along.

"Hey!" Topher said. He turned around and watched as Richard's belongs went from being vapor to solid. It was, Topher had to admit, one heck of a nifty power. "Welcome, roomie! I, uh, hope you don't mind? I kind of already chose my side of the room." Thankfully, the room was a spacious one, evenly split down the middle, mirror images in terms of basic layout. Topher undid the green plaid shirt he'd tied around his waist and slipped it on over the thin white v-neck t-shirt he was wearing and looked at Richard's things. "Arranging things. Kind of a pain, isn't it?" He sometimes wished he'd had his mother's powers - magnetism made moving and arranging some things easier, at least. "Need help?"

"No worries. One side of the room is as good as another," he stated as he began to figure out how to maximize space so that nothing had to get thrown out and that there was always room for more things to be added. Once he had established how things should go on the shelves in his head, Richard began moving things with his powers so that they lined up perfectly, and it only took a few minutes to get everything settled in.

When he was done, he turned to face Topher with a smile on his face, and Richard felt quite proud of himself. "I was actually going to ask you the same thing."

Topher leaned against his desk and watched Richard quietly. He was more organized than Topher was, in a way. Topher tended to collect and collect and collect so there tended not to be space for more things to be added.

He grinned and indicated the posters on the wall behind him - Dazzler, Nightcat, Lila Cheney, Darla Deering, and a poster for some band called Marvel Boy and the Starjammers. "I'm all done," he said. The bed was also made, the shelves filled with books and knick-knacks. At the foot of Topher's bed were two guitars - an acoustic and an electric.

"I hate making it a process, you know?"

"I know what you mean," said Richard. Sometimes, it was just easier to go with the flow, and sometimes it was just easier to plan everything out like it was surgery or something.

Scanning over at his new roommate's side, Richard stared at all of the posters and random knickknacks, and he wondered how one collected so many things. The only items like that he had was a rolled up poster of the human anatomy and an old stethoscope that his mother had given him when he was younger.

"So you play the guitar, huh? Which one do you prefer out of those two?"

Going with the flow had gotten Topher in trouble a couple of times, so he'd been trying to plan things out better. First rule of leadership, after all. Always have a plan.

His eyes drifted over Richard's things. He actually looked like he might have a plan.

More of a plan than leading the X-Men and being one of the first mutant-led bands to really hit it big, in any case.

"I do!" He moved to pick up the acoustic guitar and brought it back. "I like the electric? But here, when I'm not with my band, I kind of dig this a bit more? It's got that, you know, personal feel that the electric just doesn't. Kind of like the difference between an intimate dinner party with close friends versus a rager in the city filled with people you don't know but are partying with anyway." He pointed a thumb behind him to the poster of Marvel Boy and the Starjammers. "That's us. My band. We usually play in Salem Center a couple of times a month. Coffee shops. Under twenty-one clubs. That sort of thing." He shrugged. "Music makes people happy. I dig it."

"Wow!" So his new roommate was in a band with their own poster? Richard had to say that he was impressed and sort of envious because it seemed like Topher's future was kind of set up already, and he wondered if maybe the idea of going into the medical field was too much of a long shot for him. After all, his grades weren't the best in the world even with his extra work, so there was no guarantee that he would get in to a medical school even if he passed the required classes. He just didn't want all that time to be a waste.

Deciding to turn to a different subject, he stared at the poster of his roommate's band. "So how long have you all been playing together," he asked. They must have been together quite a while if they were getting regular gigs somewhere, and then he began wondering if he should perhaps learn an instrument of some kind just to have as a fall back plan.

"The poster's just something we did on one of those websites that customizes everything for you," he said. "We don't have any record deals or anything yet. It's very garage-bandy." But wasn't that how all bands started out?

"We started a couple of years ago, playing in our drummer's garage. Things kind of took off from there." He shrugged. "There was a moment, after the outing, where he took a brief hiatus. I mean, the band knew about me, but some of the townfolk were a bit weary, you know?" Topher, as much as possible, wasn't a fan of keeping secrets. He'd always been open about being a mutant and being gay. If people didn't like either facet of him, he didn't need them in his life.

"It kind of just started out as something for me to do, keep in touch with my school friends from before I was a mutant." Just because he'd practically grown up on campus didn't mean he'd always gone to school there, after all. "You should come by sometime, hear us play. I've been bugging Kayla to come see us sometime, too."

Okay, so his roommate wasn't a household name. It was still an impressive thing to hear that someone was in a band, and being a local band was probably better than an extremely famous one anyway. Too many stories and news articles had told him that there were too many problems associated with getting famous, but he supposed that just because there were a few rotten eggs out there didn't mean that Topher's band would turn out that way.

"Well, that sounds really great that everyone seems to be okay with everything,and I will definitely have to come down and check you guys out. When is the next show," he asked as he pulled down one of the few non-medical books that he had on his shelf. It was the entire series of 'The Chronicles of Narnia' books, and it was one of his favorite ones to read when he had doubts about what he was capable of doing.

"So are you planning on going the whole pop star route or are you thinking of doing something that no one would expect you to do?"

"A week from Thursday," Topher nodded. "We're playing at Harry's Hideway in Salem Center." Which is where they played an astonishing amount of their gigs. The place had been a small bar once, but had grown in size until now, where they could hold small events like the gigs that Topher's band played.

"The rocking out thing is fun. If I can make a career out of it, that'd be great. But if I can't," Topher shrugged. "What I really want is to lead the X-Men one day." Everyone in his family - his mom, his dad, his Uncle Scott, his Aunt Jean, his cousin Rachel - they'd all led the X-Men at one point or another. They were all important people in its history.

He wanted to be part of that tapestry.

Topher glanced up at Richard's books. "I can see you're on the medical path though," he said. "You should talk to Dr. McCoy and Dr. Reyes. They'd be a huge help for you, if that's the field you really want to go in," he added. He looked down at Richard's books and grinned. "I forgot that you liked to read. I've never read the series, but I played Edmund in my junior high school's version of the first book."

"I'll be there," stated Richard. What he didn't say was that he would be there if nothing came up to distract his mind from forgetting about having to be there, which usually had something to do with homework. His mind zeroed in on such things so that he got them done instead of procrastinating, and that was something that he couldn't afford to let happen to him given where he wanted to be.

Hearing what Topher wanted to do, Richard had to say that he was shocked to find that the young man wanted to lead the X-Men, but mainly he was shocked at himself. Given Topher's last name, he should have expected some aspirations of wanting to take charge of the superhero team. "Well, it is good to hear that you have a fall back plan if music doesn't work," said Richard with a smile.

"I will definitely have a word with them about teaching me a few things," responded Richard. "But I can only see myself being an emergency response person or something. I lack the brains for anything more than the basics of the medical field." It was a sad thought, but it was a realistic one that he had to admit was possible even if he didn't want it to be.

"No kidding. I would have seen you playing Peter or Aslan." Looking down at the book, he had to smile at the thought of someone wanting to lead the X-Men playing the young brother in a book series he had never read. "It is one of my favorite books because it reminds me that we truly are capable of becoming things that we never dreamed of."

"It's funny how we consistently underestimate ourselves, isn't it?" Topher grinned. "Keeps us humble, sure, but sometimes it also keeps us from achieving great things. I don't think you lack the brains to go as far as you want in the medical field, man. I think it's more...our self-doubt, our baggage, sometimes it makes it seem as though we can't go as far as we want to." He nodded, then. "But. EMT's, all those guys? As important, as necessary, as surgeons and doctors and specialists. Everyone's got their roles to play, and each role is important." It was a thin line. On the one hand, Topher did want to encourage his roommate to not hold back and grab life by the balls, but on the other hand, he didn't want to come off as too pushy or Pollyanna-ish.

"Heh. Apparently I do the cutsey-with-a-streak-of-evil thing really well." His grandfather was Magneto. It's possible that it was in his blood.

But he didn't want to think about that.

"My favourite book is 'Hero' by Perry Moore," Topher said. "It's about this gay teen whose dad is a disgraced superhero, struggling with all that fun coming of age stuff that gay teens with superpowers struggle with." He chuckled. "I identified pretty heavily with it, big surprise."

Maybe Topher was right that it was just his issues that were holding him back, or it could actually be that he wasn't meant to be a doctor. "You're right. We each have our roles to play, and who knows being an EMT or something might work better with my powers. If anything, I could just turn out to be the X-Men's field medic and transporter," he said with a smile.

Even though his roommate had said it, Richard still couldn't see him as the devious Edmund, but he wasn't one to argue about someone else's personal opinion on something especially when it was about them. "So Musician, Actor and Future Leader? Nice to know that my new roommate is a triple threat." Of course, it also meant that there was going to be a little bit of envy on Richard's part given how much Topher had accomplished.

"Wow, I haven't heard of that one." This might have been from the fact that he only read new books when they were assigned to him, so most of the time he was holding a novel that he had already read once before. In fact, there were many stories that he could recite the entire plotline by heart if someone were to ask him about it. "So what do you think of this change that they are implementing?"

"Not much of a threat at all," Topher smiled. "I'm just okay at what I do." He really wasn't the greatest actor - he'd felt as though he'd had to ham it up too much to play Edmund - but he did okay with the music. The leadership thing...that would be tested one day.

"I think the change might be good for the school," he said after a brief hesitation. "I mean. This place has been home for as long as I can remember, so there's going to be a lot that I need to get used to. The kitchen being off-limits, for one. All of the new rules. It's going to be a mental fight to try and slide into the new way of life at the Institute." He licked his lips, then, and took a deep breath.

"Honestly, I can't help but feel as though some of this is my fault. I was running a rogue training exercise the day some officials came to take a look at the school, and things went down south quickly. It's not all my fault, I know, but there's a little bit of chaos that I contributed to help get us where we are now. But this might be for our betterment. There are so many of us now that we kind of need to run more official-like, you know?" Which brought about the question as to whether or not they were going to split the various students into smaller training squads. He'd have to bug Rachel about that.

"How about you?"

"Got to admit. The new kitchen rule is going to be a very tough one to follow, but someday I might get it," stated Richard with a smile. Of course, his powers might make it easier to sneak around the rules if it weren't for the fact that telepaths, cameras and people with heightened senses existed. Curse those rather obvious flaws in one's abilities, but it was probably a good thing that he wouldn't be the exception to the rule.

He guessed that helping more kids with powers had to come with some order like Topher said, but he was surprised to hear about the training session that his roommate had orchestrated. "So you are telling me that you were running a practice session and got busted for it? Where was I when this happened?" Honestly, it sounded like a lot of fun that he should have been in on, so he was very disappointed to be left out of it.

"Do you think that they will be offering more or less training exercises because of that incident," asked Richard as began to ponder it this new system was going to slow down everyone's chances of becoming X-Men at this point.

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Times They Are A-Changin'... ((Open to Reactions & Things on the X-Campus))

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