It was the weekend of the fourth of July. There ought to have been picnics and fireworks and waving flags. Instead, there were sit in protests and riots. The kids at the Mansion should have been eating barbecue and watching a parade. Instead, they watched the latest news coverage play itself out on the television.

Margo watched, too, with a growing sense of helplessness. It wasn’t until the day after she saw a peaceful protest dissolve into a full-blown riot for no apparent reason that she realized— she could do that, with her powers. She could do the opposite. She could make a difference, however small that difference might be.

The day after that, she made her way down the hallway of the boys’ wing, because two empaths were better than one.

The other empath, if one extended the term to include a certain Frenchman, was now sitting across from her at a cutesy little outdoor cafe that just happened to be across the street from a group of pro-mutant protestors. The situation seemed peaceful so far, but it probably wouldn’t be for much longer if they didn’t do anything about it.

Margo sipped her strawberry lemonade and tried to find an appropriate feeling for the situation.

Margo was a smart lady. Jude appreciated having smart people around. It meant he didn't have to think as hard. So when beautiful, gorgeous, smart Margo showed up at his door with a smart thing to do that was better than any X-mission he'd ever been on? Yeah. Only a dummy would say no.

"Why didn't the powers that be think of this?" Jude wondered out loud while he felt out the intricacies of how Margo was using her power. She hadn't seemed to settle on a feeling just yet. That was fine. She was smart. She'd get there eventually.

"Even if we don't have an army of empaths, they have to know one or two more at least." There'd been a hell of a lot of riots in the last few years that could have been averted.

Granted, he spent one of those riots stealing a limo to impress a girl, but hey. He'd started that riot trying to heal people. It wasn't his fault that they made that task so impossible that he ended up throwing his hands up and walking (well, driving) away.

This time, they were on top of things from the start. SmartMargo had chosen a table where they just had to glance over all casual-like to check on the sit-in. She'd even chosen to order a drink so they could sit and chat and not be suspicious.

Jude also had an internal goal to get at least one spit-take before the day was done. But, you know, he'd bide his time on that one. The protesters were still pretty peaceful right now.

“Proooooobably because the powers that be are drunk.” There wasn’t really a nice way to put it, to be honest, but even if there had been… Margo was so beyond sugar-coating things at this point, because, seriously. Why was she not even surprised?

The X-men weren’t the heroes they claimed to be, and one day she was going to fix that. Today, though, was all about keeping this one situation under control.

The sit-in was attracting more and more nervous looks by the second, but that was only natural considering that one protestor sporting horns and a tail (there was a decent chance he’d bought them at a costume store down the street, or maybe he’d actually had the misfortune of being born as a poster child for the devil). No pro-mutant group in sight, so so far so good on that count. Margo sipped at her drink, and considered the nuances of how she was going to need to use her power.

Acceptance of who she was without hating those who were different? That was as close to true peace as she could get, but it would be a hard sell if it really came down to it. She externalized it anyway, and then calm. That was a less complicated emotion, but it might just do the job.

“What do you think?”

Eeeeh the drunk thing. It was kind of the elephant in the room these days which was to say that while everyone had noticed, no one was talking about it yet. They were all still whispering.

"D'you think someone from the X-men will step up and slap ColdSteel around until he shapes up?" Or maybe the police would show up and cart him away. The story of THAT would echo down the Mansion halls for all eternity, Jude was sure. "Not that anyone should have to..." Slap him around or arrest him.

Jude held tight to Margo's power, but let his own ability trail lazy fingers into the air. No mutants close enough for him to care. Well, none that his power deemed interesting enough, anyway.

The Frenchman looked over the couple of people on the restaurant patio and those who loitered on the sidewalks with their heads turned toward the spectacle. No one was wearing a mask or twirling a mustache. No obvious bad guy traits that he could spy. There were a plethora of fanny packs, cell phone cameras, and sandals worn with socks, though. Jude tried to echo Margo's calm toward those guys and gals. You never could tell when a suburbanite was gonna go off the rails.

> “What do you think?”

"I think we're going to make this the most boring protest in the state of New York." Jude offered up his glass to clink in a silly sort of toast.

"No one will get credit. The news won't cover it. And—" and Jude's power stood at attention quite suddenly. "And— and there's a really strong mutant nearby." But, of course, there were also a bunch of people: on this side of the street loitering and on the other side of the street being all mutanty. He sat up a little straighter in his seat and tried to hone in on it, but it was sort of more like a hunch and less of a neon sign with an arrow.

Besides, just because he knew there was a mutant nearby didn't mean that they were actually going to use that power.

Calm, calm, happy good hippy feelings, calm. Jude cast out an extra dose of the good stuff just in case.