As surprising as this might sound- [And he's somewhere between wry and not-quite-self depreciating, but also not-quite-I don't really care how ridiculous this might sound.] I do, actually, agree with what I said in my last address to the network, even if I'm not currently operating under the delusion that I'm the 32nd President of the United States.

I say it might be surprising, but that's honestly probably just for the newcomers, because this isn't anything I haven't said before. I've been quieter about it in recent months, and I know there are people who won't agree with me, and might even be angry with me for suggesting that we have a responsibility to each other, because I know discussions of community building and learning from example often isn't a popular topic, here.

But in the wake of truly terrible events - like the ones we've witnessed recently - we have to remember that this is a place that requires all of us to meditate on our responsibility to each other and the community at large. And revenge and defeatism often isn't as productive or fulfilling as it might seem.

I know how difficult this might be for some people to hear, because God knows I've been in that place myself often enough over the last two years, but I can promise, going down that path isn't worth it. The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be.

[Private to Chris]

[So, this is maybe a little awkward. It's not like Charles and Chris have exactly been on the best terms (or really spoken much since Charles told him not to brutally fourth wall people way back when), but he's not really good at just sitting around when he might be able to help someone.]

I'm assuming you've already been approached with quite a few viable options in terms of navigating the Barge, but I've got a motorized wheelchair Tony designed for me if you're interested. [And as if the fact that it's designed by Tony Stark isn't enough...]

It's also capable of flight.

[There's a sort of graininess in the sound quality of the recording, like you're listening to - for those familiar with the technology, anyway - a radio. How Charles is accomplishing this is totally your call.]

My friends, [And that's where it really becomes apparent that something is up, because instead of the posh British accent you've all become accustomed to, Charles is speaking in a perfect American accent - specifically, one common to the upper class of upstate New York - and doesn't seem to notice there's a difference at all. He speaks slowly and deliberately, but with undeniable charisma and interest, like he's trying to make sure everyone can understand every word he says because they won't have a chance to hear this again.] This is not a fireside chat on violence. It is a talk on our continued security as a community; because the nub of the whole purpose of keeping this as safe a place as we can make it is to keep you now, and other people later, and those who come after us much later, out of a last-ditch battle for the preservation of whatever order we have here, and all of the things that matter to you and to me and to ours.

This week, in the face of the crisis we all faced, my mind goes back to seven months ago in the night of all out crisis. It was a time when both wardens and inmates were punished through the actions of one person, and I well remember that while I attempted to give aide to those unjustly imprisoned in Level Zero, I had before my eyes the image of all those so deeply affected. Once it had been resolved, I tried to convey what the best course of action was moving forward, and what it meant in our daily lives. Tonight, I want to do the same thing.

We have a responsibility, to this community and to each other, to protect and support those that need it, and to dole out punishment when we see fit. But we also have a responsibility to understand that revenge is not the best or only solution in the face of such terrible acts of violence, and that we must set an example, so that others might come to accept that truth as we do. We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope - hope for peace, yes, and hope for the defense of our well being and for the building of a better community in the future. Let not the defeatists tell us that it is too late. It will never be earlier. Tomorrow will be later than today.

[Open Spam, throughout the flood]

[Thorough the floor, Charles can be found in all of his usual haunts - the library, the dining hall, the common rooms, he might even stop by the infirmary to see if he can lend an extra hand. But there's definitely something different today, and it's pretty much immediately noticeable.

Namely, for the first time in over a year, he's pushing himself around in a wheelchair. On top of that, he seems to have switched out his usual sweaters and collared shirts for a pretty fancy looking suit and tie, and has found a pair of glasses somewhere. He's also got a plush Scottish terrier on his lap, and will keep up with the American accent if you engage him in conversation like this is all perfectly normal.

He also might start trying to sell the New Deal to you. Sorry about that.]

[It might surprise some people to see that Charles has some mud on his shirt, which is clearly the result of having some of it thrown at him, versus from falling on his face. His daemon, Hypatia, isn't in frame, but she's obviously not far and is currently in much the same state.

He looks... well, irritated probably isn't the right word for it. Exasperated might be better.]

I understand that everyone's very fond of their war games, but I think we'd all appreciate it if you kept any mud slinging activities safely away from noncombatants.

[And then a wry smile spreads across his face.]

That goes double for any adults playing along.

[YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.]

[Spam]

[Charles and Hypatia have always been a little bit unusual amongst the academic crowd from Jordan College. They're friendly and active and eager to get out and do research and get involved with people of all walks of life, instead of being content to just stick to the stuffy, closed off world of some of the other scholars. So while they can both certainly be found on the college grounds and in the library, it's just as likely to catch him out on the streets of Oxford doing research.

His particular area of interest has always been understanding and raising awareness and tolerance towards other cultures and ethnic groups, so he's just as likely to be at a society party exchanging stories with explorers and business men as wandering the markets, browsing the wares and talking to street children.

But his most common haunt - as long as they're in town, anyway - is visiting with his best friend Erik and his family, either just by wandering Oxford with him or dropping by the family longboat for dinner, as he's done ever since he was a teenager. He's by no means been adopted as Gyptian, or anything close to that, but he's been working to improve relations and general attitudes towards them amongst the non Gyptian population, and so anyone with a particular interest in that would likely at least know his name.

And then, of course, he checks in on his cousins Nathan and Alex occasionally. Never mind that Nathan is actually older than him and probably doesn't need looking after.

Most of the time, anyway.]

[Filtered to Wardens + Former Wardens + Erik]

[Charles sounds more tense and tired than anything else when he clicks on the audio feed, because he hasn't really slept much since the beginning of the week, and it's starting to wear on him.]

Does anyone actually have any solid theories about who might be behind this? Something, anything concrete, because honestly, I'm not comfortable doing a more thorough telepathic scan of the people on board until I've got something specific to go off of, especially considering whoever it is might not respond all that kindly to someone poking about in their minds, and I'm not sure provoking them is really going to do much good. [That's definitely a sort of sarcastic attempt at a joke. B(]

[Spam for Zero]

[Charles understands why Zero exists as a concept, but he's never really liked it. He likes it even less now that every time he goes down there, he remembers different rows of cells, of being filthy and hurting and terrified, and sometimes the memories seem almost too real, especially because as much as he'd like to think things would work out fine with this, he didn't know for certain and he sort of wants to be sick.

But he knows it's worse for the people actually in the cells, and so he busies himself with trying to help whoever he can. He's been down here since the new Admiral's announcement, providing blankets and food, making sure people stay hydrated and as cool as possible, trying to talk them through the hallucinations or just offering a hand to hold if they need it. It's difficult without his telepathy sometimes, the cells blocking his ability just as effectively as they always had, because he could just tell people to calm down, to go to sleep until they were let out again, but now he couldn't do anything but be there for them, and that didn't feel like enough.

He's wearing the flight suit this time, not wanting to run the risk of another incident like what happened with Senji, and he's putting up a very convincing brave face, but all he can think of is how is this going to solve anything? Yes, there were flaws in the system, but he wants to know what the point of this all was, because torturing people wouldn't solve anything, and there's no question in his mind that that's what this is.]

[ooc: Charles has been and will be down in Zero trying to help people pretty much throughout the event, so feel free to tag in at whatever point in the timeline works okay for you! Tags/multiples/fuzzy time/etc all welcome. c:]

[Charles is sitting at a desk in his room, dressed in one of his usual dark blue sweater/lighter blue colored shirts combos, and over all looks very put together, even though he's sort of been chewing over making this post and how he wants to say all of this for a while before actually turning on the video feed.]

My counterpart during the breach worked for the secret facility in Bargewell, trying to rehabilitate mutants and aliens who could learn to cope with and control their abilities and pass for human among a normal population. [Which isn't a secret to some, but will be news to others.] He honestly wanted to help them, and thought the facility was a safer place to adjust, away from people who might think to cause them harm for being different.

Because- [And it's silly, to have to hesitate before saying this, because he's certainly not hiding what he is or what he's capable of.] He was a mutant, too. And he lived his whole life terrified of who he was and what he was capable of, and what might happen if anyone ever found out about what he could do. He spent his whole life being afraid because he thought there was something wrong with him for not being "normal".

[He pauses, considering what to say next, because he can't help but think of Raven, and how he basically made her feel the same way because she was different, because she couldn't be herself without exposing what she really was, and it just wasn't safe to be parading around yelling "mutant and proud!" from the rooftops.

But he could have been more supportive. He could have told her she was always beautiful, no matter what color her skin was, and he's still not entirely sure he's ever going to have a chance to make up for that. Or ever see her again.]

I know I've had it easier than a lot of people with supernatural abilities. I've always had to hide what I'm capable of, but it's not like I have something physical to hide that marks me as different from everyone else, and so I've never felt like there was anything wrong with me, or been told that there might be or was.

But I have known people who have heard that said, and, worse, actually believe that's true after being told it for so long. And it isn't. There is nothing wrong with us for being different. We shouldn't have to be afraid, or ashamed, and we shouldn't have to hide. [Erik's words taste almost bitter in his mouth, and he has to take a breath before he continues.]

Obviously, we do, and me saying this here isn't going to change that, for those of us who come from worlds where that's the norm for people like us. But we aren't there now, and there's no reason to hide or be afraid, because there are people here who understand what you're going through now and what you've already been through before coming here. You're not alone.

We're no better or worse than people without abilities just because we can do things they can't. We're all just people. We're flawed, and we make poor decisions, but that has nothing to do with being able to read minds, or change our appearance, or use magic. It's time for us to accept what we are, and that's people, not monsters or supermen.

( Notes for Alex, Jean and Doyle )

[Hi, Barge, someone else really doesn't want to talk about the flood, so Charles is taking this opportunity to talk more about science. Everyone loves science, especially when it's a distraction from things like promising your best friend you'd come rescue him from Auschwitz and sincerely meaning it because you're a telepath and can pretty much do what you want. :\

Science is generally easier to talk about than feelings. :c]

I'd imagine most of you are familiar with the concept of mass extinctions, wherein the population of all living things on Earth is decreased by over fifty percent. It is, after all, what helped propel mammals into being the dominant life forms on Earth after the dinosaurs went extinct. But despite the widespread devastation each time, some species do survive, and can remain largely unchanged since they originally evolved. The horseshoe crab, for example, is virtually identical to its relatives that have been preserved as fossils from several million years ago.

Others are considerably less well known and familiar to us, and some potentially have yet to even be rediscovered. Although it's quite rare to rediscover a species after it's been thought dead for thousands if not millions of years - for example, it's highly unlikely that a Brachiosaurus has escaped the attention of modern science while roaming the woods of North America - it has happened before.

One such species was considered extinct by the scientific community until December 23, 1938. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer - a museum curator in South Africa - told local fishermen that if they ever found anything unusual in their hauls to call her in immediately. On this particular day, she was called down to the docks to investigate a captain's haul and discovered a five foot long fish with navy blue scales and white spots that looked like nothing she'd ever seen before. After hurrying the specimen back to the museum and preserving it as best she could after the local morgue refused to help preserve the body, she began to go through her books trying to locate the fish, but couldn't find any information about it. When a friend from Rhodes University was finally able to come look at the specimen, he immediately recognized it as a coelacanth, an ancient fish thought to have gone extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. A population of fish had apparently been living on the east coast of Africa for potentially millions of years, largely unnoticed by human populations because they spend most of the day very deep under water. Occasionally a fish would be caught by a fisherman, but as the flesh is incredibly oily and often makes people sick, they were often tossed away as trash without a second thought. A second population was more recently discovered in Indonesia.

There are plenty of other examples of so called "living fossils", and Lazarus taxa, both plants and animal, but a discovery like this is generally unheard of, especially considering the coelacanth is generally considered to be a step in understanding how land based animals developed locomotion, as fossil evidence suggests that tetrapods evolved from fish whose fins eventually developed into legs and allowed them to walk out of the water and onto dry land. I've often wondered if another similar discovery might be made with further exploration. Living things are, after all, incredibly resilient, and we still haven't mapped the entirety of our planet's surface.

[Private to Steve]

Do you have a minute? There's something I need to discuss with you.

[Private to Jean]

Merlin tells me you two have been experimenting with the limits of your abilities.