Lunchtime, doubly so. (open)

[Warren Worthington III]

((OOC: random socialization; open to anyone Warren hasn’t hung with recently… which, really, is just about anyone.))

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since he started filming the Institute, but the collection of video images on his laptop is pretty definitive about the fact.

It’s a simple enough project, really; reduce the video results of his daily flights over the grounds to about fifteen minutes of timestop, showing how the grounds change over time. When he’d started out, he’d just intended to capture a year’s worth of seasonal changes – trees turning colors, snow appearing and disappearing, that sort of thing.

But more things changed during that year than he’d expected, and when the year passed he hadn’t had the heart to finish the project. He’d kept up the filming out of habit, though; it had become part of his daily flying exercise regimen. And it finally feels like the right time.

Of course, six hundred ten-minute clips adds up to a hundred hours of video footage, and there’s no way he’s actually going to look at all of it. So his first move had been to auto-sample every 200th frame to get a half-hour video, which he’s now watching on the big screen. The result is something like what he had in mind – the seasons rolling in and out, the building suddenly collapsing into ruins and rebuilding itself again, the occasional pock-marks caused by Guthrie’s landing practices – but ultimately disappointing, a dizzying aerial roller-coaster view of the grounds rather than the stately progression he’d intended.

"Hrm," he murmurs to himself, too engrossed in the project to notice anyone else in the rec room, "OK, that didn’t work. Maybe if I cut it differently so each loop takes, let’s say, ten days? That’d cut total size to ten hours… bump up the sampling rate to every 20th frame to get half an hour… could work…"

[Warren Worthington III]

His second attempt is a noticable improvement. The camera eye loops around the grounds at a rapid but not breakneck pace, more like a trolley than a roller coaster… though it still jags around distractingly. I wonder if there’s some way to automatically “steady” the image, he thinks with a frown, then puts the question aside.

The seasonal changes are neither faster nor slower than in his first draft, but they feel faster… especially when the foliage turns, deep greens replaced by more vibrant colors in the course of a single loop around the campus; the lake freezing and thawing again before the camera has quite managed to clear it.

Between one loop and another, the Institute goes from stately mansion to smoking rubble; the next loop shows it visibly rebuilding itself. Nice, he thinks. Maybe I can stretch that section, show all the repairs on one pass.

A blur on the basketball court for a moment – that would be Matthew, Warren guesses – and one of Sam’s landing craters appears out of nowhere. It’s like the Institute populated by ghosts, he thinks idly, then regrets the image.

[Laurie Collins]

[]
Gail still doesn’t venture out of her rooms much. She’d been assigned to some empty staff quarters when she’d arrived a few months ago and despite her offers to vacate them after Laurie had returned from…wherever it was she’d disappeared to for three weeks (she’s refusing to call it the future)… she’s settled into the space. She suspects that everyone thinks it will be easier to watch out for Sean with her under the same roof as the X-men but she hasn’t enquired too deeply, doesn’t really want to know about the car that seems to always appear behind hers on the morning commute, and now, with everything that Laurie’s going through, she’s just as glad to be close by. Still, it’s strange after living alone or with her daughter for over a decade to be thrust into an occasionally explosive communal living environment like Xavier’s, strange to be living with a group of mutants when all she’d thought about for years was how to get as far from them as possible.

Today, however, wandering the Institute is unavoidable. Laurie had seen fit to keep the car keys in her pocket after their last driving lesson and, upon questioning this afternoon, had muttered something about “putting them down somewhere” and then gotten defensive and rushed off to search for them herself. Gail sighs softly and reaches a hand up to run through her hair and, on a whim, decides to check the rec room. Laurie has a much better chance of finding the keys than she does but it’s a Sunday afternoon and she has nothing much better to do than look—besides, almost everyone’s at lunch around this time and she’s unlikely to encounter too many curious mutant teens. She still tries to avoid the students as a rule, some by this time bone-deep layer of protectiveness keeping her away, because she doesn’t think they’ll be able to handle the way she looks at people who aren’t Laurie less like people and more like potential threats that have to be assessed and/or confronted. They’ve probably been looked at like that enough by mothers.

She shakes her head and swings into the rec room, moving right in to shuffling around on the coffee table before she catches a flicker of something- an image changing- out of the corner of her eye and realizes she isn’t alone. She whirls round to see Worthington doing something on a computer (some sort of slide show?) and relaxes slightly. She’d had some qualms back when she’d first looked at her teenage daughter’s roster of teachers and seen the name of an infamously promiscuous tabloid favorite but since coming to the Institute the now apparently married Mr. Worthington has actually impressed himself on her as one of the more stable faculty members. Not that he’s had much competition, she thinks a little tartly before nodding towards him civilly enough and explaining her purpose- “Sorry to interrupt, Laurie’s misplaced the car keys somewhere around the mansion. You haven’t seen a spare set have you?” she asks, leaning forward to check between the couch cushions and raising her eyebrows as she catches some of the video loop, the bit of the Institute crumbling and then seeming to rebuild itself. “Interesting project,” she comments, “anyway I’ll be out of your way in a moment.”

[Warren Worthington III]

>“Sorry to interrupt, Laurie’s misplaced the car keys somewhere around the mansion. You haven’t seen a spare set have you?”

Warren is a little startled by her voice – not by her presence, which he’d picked up some minutes earlier, but by the fact that she’s speaking to him. Not that she’s been avoiding him, exactly, but… well, things had gotten tense for a time. He looks up from the editing screen and shakes his head. "No… sorry. Haven’t. Can I offer you a ride somewhere, though?"

> “Interesting project, anyway I’ll be out of your way in a moment.”

"Mm. Actually, if you can spare a few minutes… I’d like your reactions. I’m not exactly sure why I started this thing, to be honest, but now that I’m working on it I’d like to get the perspective of someone who wasn’t here for most of it. "

[Laurie Collins]

"No… sorry. Haven’t. Can I offer you a ride somewhere, though?"
“Oh, no, thank you. I don’t have to be at the office until Monday.” Gail says, carefully schooling her voice to politeness. It’s ridiculous to be nervous about mutants after all these years with Laurie and this is her teacher, one of the people who pretty much saved us from Sean, and who has been putting up with Laurie’s latest foray into the wonder years. Though it isn’t nervousness, precisely, but something more complex having a little to do with not knowing how she’ll react to mutants who have an effect on her, a little to do with how Laurie would react if she couldn’t deal with other mutants, and then a little again to do with nerves. It wouldn’t even be a problem if she weren’t living in the middle of a house full of them but…there she is.

"Mm. Actually, if you can spare a few minutes… I’d like your reactions. I’m not exactly sure why I started this thing, to be honest, but now that I’m working on it I’d like to get the perspective of someone who wasn’t here for most of it. "

She hesitates for a moment then smiles, genuinely if not unrestrainedly, and pulls up one of the extra chairs. “Least I can do,” she says lightly, taking a seat and pulling a pair of glasses out of her pocket to better see the images on the screen. “I’m sure Laurie will come find me if she finds the keys, I don’t think she’s quite at the illegal driving stage yet,” she adds wryly.