Overall concluded the ever-so-sarcastically written diary of Hank McCoy for the week of the Professor's glorious return, a most eventful week. Hank had been writing diaries for nearly a decade now, ever since he'd first arrived with the X-Men and realised that their tales could potentially earn a man millions were he to market them to the masses. And yet, of all the tales contained within his diaries, he was sure that this one was doubtless one of the most remarkable he had ever born witness to. Each player had played their parts with precision, each event had built flawlessly towards a pitch. Were it a story, and not the unfolding and ever-intriguing reality in to which Hank found himself flung on a daily basis, he would have happily declared it one of the most enjoyable stories he had ever seen. Yet the Professor's return, as a young man bundled with a full head of hair and a subtly homoerotic relationship with the equally returned and equally youthful Magneto, had actually been far from fortuitous. For whilst Hank was as glad to see the return of his mentor Professor Xavier, he had more than one reason to be mistrustful and worried.

The reasons were many. One of them was the Phoenix connection. Hank loved Jean, as much as he loved anyone he loved Jean. She was as close to him as a sister, his best and most beloved friend. The Phoenix Force had been directly implicated in the return of Xavier, and the thought of his old friend getting swallowed up by that strange, ever-changing and ever-complex force was scary and something he didn't want to think about. No matter how much Hank dissected and studied and observed the Phoenix, no matter how much he watched and rewatched the few examples of its power and how he analysed Jean and the force and whatever else, he could never understand it. It was one of the few infuriating things in his life that he could figure out using the scientific method. The Phoenix was, to put it in the most Shakespearean term possible, the thing outside of heaven and earth which existed in his philosophy.

Yet Hank's mistrust of the new Professor was due to more than just the manner through which he had found himself thrust in to the world. The new Professor was, in reality, the old Professor. By which he of course meant the young Professor. A much younger Professor than Hank had ever known. And with that, Xavier had brought problems. He was hairier, more impulsive, less understanding, had not initially understood the Institute and just lacked the overall decades of life experience which had allowed Hank to foster such a great relationship, and close friendship, with his old mentor. Hank had observed much of Xavier's return from his own comfortable spots, choosing not to get involved despite what he was seeing. And, slowly, he had come to terms with the return of Xavier, and the disappointments it was bringing. Unlike Betsy Braddock, whose return had, like her, been rather painfully precise and flawless, Xavier's brought up problems. Problems which, right now, were exemplified by a chess board.

Hank had always been quite the chess player. He had hidden it at High School, but it had really come out once he started at the Institute. Xavier had been his only serious opponent for many years, though Scott and Jean had occasionally decided to join him for a game. Xavier was a serious threat as a chess player. Their record, as of Xavier's disappearance, had stood at 32-30-5 in Charles' favour. And, even after his mentor's disappearance, Hank had refused to move a single piece on the game they had been midway through playing. He had left the board out in his room, always ready for Charles to resume their game once he returned. Once he returned. There was no doubt in Hank's mind that he would be returning.

And yet, now that the Professor had returned much more youthful than he had last been, Hank had realised he had no choice but to put away the pieces on the board. It was upsetting, it really was. He had long appreciated the Professor's company and friendship, and their games had been the best place for him to experience both those things. Now, though, he presumed Charles would be off, searching the world far and wide in search of injustice and training to battle the forces of evil until he could return to Gotham as it's mysterious Caped Crusader and doing whatever it was he was going to do. Hank began to retrace one pawn's steps across the board lethargically. It had almost made it across the board to become a Queen. It was really very depressing. Then he smelt that unfamiliar, but familiar, smell at his door. How odd that he should show up now. "Hello, Professor," he said, trying not to show his depression in his voice.

Charles Xavier may have been one of the first visionaries to even begin to comprehend what infinite diversity lay in the leap forward genetics seemed to have been taking in his lifetime...but even that hadn't been enough to prepare him for landing himself, quite literally, in his very own future. This cosmic force, this Phoenix had reforged him in the heart of the fires of creation and then summarily dropped him into a world that had seen him grown old.

It was, to use a vast understatement, surreal. And more than a little unsettling.

Take his ancestral home, or the Xavier Institute as it was now known apparently. Structurally, it was essentially unchanged, the same building into which Charles had been brought into this world. His body and his mind remembered their way around its layout...except he was learning that they really, really didn't. Changes in a familiar layout were disjointed enough to throw him, such as learning that various recreational rooms had been changed into a string of dormitories and his first tour around the lower levels had nearly paralysed him with awe. Adjusting to the advances in technology that had naturally occurred in the decades he'd skipped was trial enough, but according to the X-Men that he had supposedly found (would go on to found? tenses were complicated now) a lot of the tech down here was alien in nature and even more advanced than anything earth currently had to offer.

To say that Charles had a lot to catch up on was, again, hardly doing the facts of the situation justice. To some degree he had countered this by using what he'd telepathically absorbed from Jean Grey, the most talented telepath he'd ever come across in his lifetime...but therein lay another of his problems, one that left him almost constantly uneasy. See, it was the fact that the denizens of the Institute all had memories of him - or at least the man that he was once destined to become - while he himself recognised none of them that left the man feeling so unbalanced. And, worse, he could hardly escape sensing the fact that, compared to their beloved Professor, he was not the version of himself that they wanted to have returned to them.

Feeling like a disappointment was not something that Charles Xavier had ever really had to deal with before.

The telepath had been mainly responding to the wary, confused or (worse in many ways) naively elated responses that his presence evoked in people with resigned equanimity. He could hardly blame these children for finding it more difficult to place their faith in a younger, unfamiliar version of the stately, wise Professor who lived in their memories, but it was sometimes as galling as it was frustrating. This Professor, this older version of himself...Charles could appreciate that he had gone on to do great things, but could these X-Men not understand that he didn't want to become that man if doing so required the man he currently was to lose so much?

It wasn't in Charles' nature to be bitter, else he might have been resentful of Erik for not having to deal with quite this magnitude of being faced with his own future, or how he wasn't living up to the 2011 version of himself. Then again, he reasoned with himself every time he felt himself giving in to crotchetiness, it wasn't as if Erik would care anyway. It was Charles out of the two of them who was more concerned with how he was viewed, probably because his strong empathy meant that he could hardly escape knowing how people viewed him. In the time since he'd materialised, naked, in his office in this new millenium, he'd had more cause to boost the power of his mental shields than ever before. And maybe that was the best way to view all of this, as a fresh start, as something he could learn from.

A new beginning.

...or at least it would have been if it didn't come with the baggage of the Charles Xavier that this time had already known. That was enough to make even the normally calm Charles a tad grumpy, that his future self was still somehow managing to weigh him down now. Dealing with his own problems was often hefty enough; dealing with the burdens of two Charles Xaviers just seemed unfair somehow.

This was of course just the negative side of this entire mystery, the parts Charles concentrated on when he was most frustrated with his own inability to reconcile his view of himself with that of the man everyone here seemed to want him to be. Feeling inferior, of course, was nothing that appealed to a man who was used to being at the head of his field. Now science had left him behind, politics had left him behind, life had left him behind...and he felt like a relic. Or, more irritatingly, like a child trying to fill an adult's shoes. And while his future self may not have had the power of his legs, those shoes still felt awfully large.

To distract himself from this, Charles had attempted to lose himself in the wonders that a world several decades on from his own time had to offer. The side of him that chased after new knowledge like a particularly persistent puppy was, of course, thrilled by it all and being shown Cerebro...well, that had been like having a hazy, impossible dream handed to him on a silver platter. Then there were the computing advances and the promotion of human rights and, oh, the genetic research. Were it not for feeling completely inferior compared to this 'Professor', Charles would have been in nirvana. He would have been completely content to immerse himself in conversation with the resident scientist, one Henry McCoy, whose mutation fascinated Charles almost as much as his intellect did...if it wasn't for the fact that he couldn't fail to sense that Henry was one of those who'd been closest to the old Professor. And Charles was learning that it was those original students to whom his presence and youth was often the most distressing.

So when he took a wrong turn on the third floor and found himself in someone's room rather than the reading room it had once been, faced with a sturdy and vaguely leonine figure completely by accident, Charles couldn't help but wince slightly. Inflicting himself on a man who he could sense would willingly trade him for his alternate self was not what he had wished to do...but there was no escaping it now.

"Doctor McCoy," he said in return, since politeness was something he apparently still shared with this older version of himself. But then, simply because he was a tad fraught where said older Xavier was concerned... "You know, I did suggest to Jean and Scott that they - and everyone else - should call me Charles rather than 'Professor.'" A vaguely awkward pause. "Just to differentiate between me and, well, the me that you are all more familiar with."

The English language was really rather ineffective when discussing one's future, potential self.

Hank couldn't imagine it. Being the Professor, right now. Thrust, suddenly, in to the sort of world you'd always simultaneously hoped and feared you might get. A world decades ahead of the one you left mere hours ago. He wondered how younger Xavier saw his older self's achievements, and his failures. How would he be in such a situation? Would he be proud of his rises, ashamed of his falls? Would he see the good, or focus on the bad? There was no doubting that the X-Men, and the Institute, those things which Hank had been a part of since their conception, and had raised and seen grow, were something Hank was proud of. But would the Professor be proud of them? They were his brainchildren, but they were the children of an older man than he. They were the brainchildren of a man already separated from his best friend. And yet, whilst he was sure that the fate of the mutant world would be the first thing on Charles' mind, he had already realised the other developments that Charles would have had to deal with. That was why, in typical Hank style, he had decided to prepare a small file of around 20 pages.

This 20 page was as concise as Hank had been able to be in detailing the progression of society. Whilst he was sure Xavier could get much of his knowledge through telepathy, the file summed up key details of history, politics, societal upheaval and more. Much of it was, rather sneakily, copied and pasted with minor edits from Wikipedia and various other websites with information on what Hank needed, but he doubted the Professor even knew about those. Which was why it was a good thing that there was no fewer than 4 pages upon the internet, with everything from Youtube to Facebook to 4Chan given a brief summary. Even more space than was devoted to the internet, though, was devoted to science. Hank had shamelessly included a few mentions of himself in there, the research and papers he had published on the X-Gene were second in volume and quality only to the research and papers Xavier himself had written on the X-Gene, and most of those hadn't been written from his perspective yet.

As it was, though, the depression over the Professor not being the one he remembered had won out and he'd wound up stuffing the folder in a drawer whilst he moped around, clearing out chessboards. Somehow, though, seeing the Professor in the flesh, this close, whilst alone brought a sudden flood of memories back. His head was thick with hair, he walked and did not roll, he was leaner and younger than Hank had ever seen him...but he was still there. In that crackle of blue in his eyes, in that slight raising of his eyebrow as he made his insistence that Hank call him Charles- something Hank was agreeable with- he could see the man who had once come to visit him, and offer him an invite to a very remarkable school. And all at once memories came to Hank's mind, unbidden. And he sunk for a second back to a sixteen year old boy, sat in his parent's lounge, afraid of what he had become and confronted by a man whose papers on mutation had helped him to realise his nature long before anyone else, and whose calmness and confidence had offered him the strength to stand and be counted as a mutant when he wanted to bow to the pressure the world was dropping upon him.

It seemed impossible that Professor Charles Xavier, genetics expert, world-class genius, scientific celebrity, could here, in Hank's parents' house. It seemed impossible that Professor Charles Xavier was speaking to him. What seemed most impossible, though, was that Professor Charles Xavier was, much like Hank, a mutant. A true mutant, with remarkable telepathic abilities. Telepathic abilities. Like a sci-fi TV show. Hank was impressed, awed and dying to find out how on Earth such a power was possible. A physical mechanism? Some sort of organ or internal cerebral modification? His scientific knowledge was limited, but the mystery was tantalising. The Professor talked, and Hank sat, enraptured, feeling more alive than he had done in weeks, maybe more alive than he had ever before.

"With my Institute, I intend upon educating unique men and women such as yourself in the use of their powers, and in turn how to use their powers for the betterment of the world. We have two students already, and I would very much like you, Hank, to be our third. You'd meet people of your own age in a similar situation to you, get training in your abilities and be the first generation of mutants growing with the tools to further the dream of peaceful human/mutant interaction." Hank sat, mind blown by this development. He did not know what to say, so he spoke without thinking. "I'm thankful for the offer, sir, but I'm not sure if I--" He was cut off. "And of course, Mr McCoy, you'd have unrestricted access to laboratory facilities and my own library..."

And just like that, Hank had been hooked. More than a decade and two further mutations later, and Hank was still hooked. Hooked on the ideas of science and discovery bettering the world, hooked on all of Xavier's grand ideas and dreams. And when the Professor entered in to Hank's room, he felt the sudden force of that addiction rush through him. It may not be the man he had known when he knew him, but they shared the same mind, the same body, the same hopes and aspirations. "Of course, Charles. And I have something for you." He took out the file and handed it to him. "It's a little thing I created to help you cope with this strange 2011 you've found flung yourself in." Hank chose to ignore his mentor's awkwardness. He could grow to like this man just as much, he was sure. He just needed another scientist who was on his level, and whilst Forge and Jean had their strengths, no one had ever matched Xavier for his ability to discuss science with Hank.

A million bizarre questions ran through Hank's mind. He wanted to ask the Professor so much, at this age. He wanted to know whether this was what he had been imagining when he thought about human/mutant relations all those years (or hours) ago, what the Professor made of the modern world, what the Professor made of the school. Yet he also wanted to know just how much of the old Charles was in there. Finally, his mind settled upon one particular thing. Cerebero. It had been Charles' pet project when he'd arrived at the school, but over the years Hank and his mentor had modified and changed it to make it superior to its original design, Hank being the first engineer other than Charles and Magneto to see the device and helping design the software it now ran, as well as the system itself. It could interface comfortably with multiple telepaths, from Xavier to Jean, thanks to Hank's tinkering. "Have you seen Cerebero yet?" He resisted the urge to call him "sir". "I believe you'll be pleasantly surprised."

At least the man acquiesced more readily to a request that had been almost a tad more plaintive than Charles would have liked than a few of the other older mutants around the Institute. The white-haired woman, Ororo, had been almost unbelievably accepting of his arrival and...temporal status, but there had been a British woman with an apparently complicated past of both bodies and powers whose hostility, suspicion and, yes, fear radiated off her like a beacon. And that was just from her body language and expression because, for whatever reason, Charles simply could not get a read on her - to his powers, she just didn't exist.

So Ororo called him Charles, Elizabeth Braddock refused to call him anything and Hank McCoy...well, the telepath was just grateful to anyone who didn't automatically put him in the Professor's shoes at this point in time.

An eyebrow arched in polite surprise at the mention of something for him and Charles watched with open curiosity as Hank removed a dossier from a drawer and then handed it to him. With the ease of someone who was all too used to reading standing up, Charles flicked through the first few pages, his eyes moving in the rapid way that was indicative of his ability to read almost foolishly fast. What he was seeing here was the footnotes of the years Charles had 'missed', apparently, condensed down into an easy to digest form that didn't involve him getting too up close and personal with the intricate specifics of a person's memory, nor with the impossible to avoid biases that came from using memories rather than actual peer-reviewed data.

The thoughtfulness of the document was almost...touching.

"Thank you for this, Doctor McCoy," Charles said with genuine gratitude as he moved onto the section on the internet (just what was a 'lolcat' and were they indicative of the standards of literacy in this time?) "This will prove most useful, I think, for both myself and Erik." Though reaching one section made his other eyebrow shoot swiftly up to join its brother. "...well," he said dryly, refusing to allow himself to be nonplussed (again) by the havoc that time travel played with people's sense of themselves, "I see that I was not entirely distracted from my research by this Institute and the X-Men in the future then." There were a sizable number of papers published by a Charles Xavier here and was it vain to wish to read a paper written by yourself, even if you hadn't technically written it yet?

Only the mention of Charles' new love interest was enough to drag his attention away from the fascinating dossier and his gaze was one of rapture that was familiar to any scientist who'd ever come across the purest, most beautiful form of their specialty. "Cerebro may in fact make up for all the Christmases and birthdays that I've missed," he said, unable to keep himself from smiling broadly, "or all the ones that I have left, actually. It is a...marvelous piece of design." He shook his head, a little bemused, a little wondering. "Though it is odd to see it fully-conceived and built when up here--" He tapped his temple. "--I have only the barest, vaguest ideas regarding its creation. I'd been intending to look into whether I could somehow boost my outbound telepathy via radio waves, but Cerebro..."

It took something as scientifically sexy as a big room that allowed him to touch all the minds on the planet to leave Charles Xavier lost for words...

Hank's face lit up with pride at the fact that the Professor found his gift useful. Few seemed to have consider that the Professor would need some assistance in fitting in in the modern world, and whilst he understand the pains of his friends and fellow staff, he had rather taken the strangeness in his stride. Perhaps it came with his own secondary mutation. With the shock of such a transformation, utterly unheard of by the mutant community and the scientists who studied it until Hank took his sample of "mutant growth hormone" and tested it upon himself and then put his new-found ape-like hands to good use writing a paper on the subject which had knocked much of the genetic world for six once it appeared (a mutation occurring not just once, at puberty, but later at a seemingly random occurrence? Charles and Hank had to rewrite the book overnight, almost literally.) Perhaps after such a massive shock, combined with the resurrection of Betsy and all of the day-to-day scientific miracles which Hank observed as the X-Men's resident scientist, the idea that a man could not merely be returned from the dead, but be literally ripped from his own time, was not such a surprise at all.

The mention of Erik made Hank let out a little hissing noise under his breath (a primal feline response to a situation they didn't like). It wasn't that he didn't think that Erik deserved to be able to integrate in to society like anyone else. With a little luck, they may even have been able to show Erik the error of his ways. Hank simply did not know where to stand on the issue of Magneto. Despite possessing that spark of arrogance, though some might say well-informed self-awareness, which let him believe that his knowledge in many areas was higher than that of the average man, he was simply smart enough to know that his training as a psychologist was not even close enough to be able to understand the things that drove Magneto.

"Ah, yes. A select few highlights of what will become a long and storied career, Charles." He smiled genially. "And please, call me Hank." He might not have been the Professor he had once known, but that did not mean that they could not be friends. Hank clung to that idea. Intellectual equals were rare around here, and Charles had certainly once been one of them.

Hank doubted that Charles knew that he had helped in the construction of the machine, so what he said about it came across as the truest kind of compliment. He smiled broadly. "It is. Forge is...a different kind of genius." That was true literally, as well as figuratively. He was a different kind of genius in the sense that he was simply on a higher intellectual level than Hank and Charles and potentially even men like Tony Stark, but also that his intelligence and skill with machines was amplified. Much like there was "intuitive" and "Xavier" and there was "kind of hairy" and "Hank", so too was there "a good mechanic" and "Forge". He had revolutionised the way Hank thought about machines by sharing a single design with him, and he hadn't even understood how it had gone together. "Radio waves, and some fibre-optic cable and wi-fi transmission." Detailed on page 6 of the book in the Professor's hands. And telepathic amplifiers. God, that was a tough one to crack." Hank had spent 3 days without sleep working on just adjusting the original Cerebro. Whatever he may have thought of Erik, there was no denying that the man possessed a certain level of innovative, brilliant genius.

Charles was not often one to be swept away by his own pride...but he could not deny that it was pleasant to have a glimpse into his own future and discover that his work had not gone unrecognised. Was it vain to enjoy knowing that his work had been acclaimed, that it had made a difference?

For all the overwhelming and jarring sensations that went with being catapulted into one's own future, occasionally - just occasionally - it was a beautiful thing. For Charles held in his hand proof that his work had contributed to the field of mutant genetics, and by a rather considerable degree as well. For all that he was a mutant and a telepath and the father of a new generation of students...well, at heart he was a scientist. And the document Hank had made up for him had done rather well to warm him inside as he scanned the list of works that he had (would?) publish.

"Well," he said, aiming for lightness and scoring rather higher on a sort of gratefulness that was slightly more heartfelt than was usually acceptable in a conversation between two men, even if one was blue, "it seems as if I have some reading to do before I can catch up with myself, as it were." Even his telepath's brain was currently finding it difficult to accurately convey the complexity of Phoenix-facilitated time travel or age reversal within the confines of the rather more linear English language. Tenses, it seemed, were not currently able to cope with Charles Xavier as he was, being rather more wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey than the language could handle.

Charles shot Hank a brief, bright smile, a surprisingly youthful and eager expression that probably highlighted just how startlingly young he was to people more used to him looking rather more venerable. "Hank it is then," he said cheerfully enough, satisfying himself with one more scan of the document before he closed it and tucked it under one arm. There would be time enough to peruse it at a more leisurely place - preferably with access to the wondrous and accessible scope of the internet as it was now, since one of the students had given him a rather thorough lesson in how to deal with the dizzying quantity of data that he could now get his hands on so quickly.

His blue eyes rested on Hank's equally sapphire face and it was difficult to the telepath to hide quite how much he had missed this, the conversations and discourse with a fellow academic. Granted, Hank came from a field of science about four decades into the future from the advances Charles was most familiar with, but still - a scientific, logical mind was a rather timeless thing, he hoped. Scott and Jean had offered friendship based on trust and faith; Hank and Charles, however, seemed to actually have a lot in common.

Which was...reassuring.

His eyes went briefly vague as he riffled through the roster of mutants that Scott had described to him. "Forge..." he repeated thoughtfully, fingers rasping briefly along the line of his jaw - he'd missed a spot shaving this morning, apparently, given the slight fluff his fingertips encountered just north of where his carotid beat. "You'll have to forgive me, I have not yet met everyone employed here." His smile managed to be both apologetic, sheepish and delighted all at the same time. "There are just so many of you now." Several decades, apparently, had made quite the difference in the sheer size of the mutant population. It was that or Cerebro had made it rather easier to find and then recruit young mutants the Institute that his future self had established.

Charles nodded enthusiastically as Hank began to outline the basline premise for the way in which Cerebro worked, never so happy as he was when discussing brainwaves, after all. "I had started working on modifying electroencephalographical processes to try and achieve the same results," he explained, "but my best theories seemed to require intracranial, or at least subdural EEGs." He winced a little and touched his skull. "Forgive a man's vanity, but I was not looking forward to the loss of hair required for such methods." He arched a questioning eyebrow at the doctor. "So I have this Forge to thank for a rather less invasive method of picking up telepathic frequencies without going directly to the source brain waves? Or am I right in thanking that you had a hand in the creation of such a wondrous machine as well?" He wanted to be able to thank someone other than his amorphous future self because, well, there were limits to scientific pride...

And besides - that had been someone else. Someone Charles was most decidedly not just yet, if ever now.

Amongst the many roles that Professor X had once played at the Mansion- teacher, scientist, leader, speaker, thinker- one of the ones which Hank had always been most impressed with his capacity to serve as had been his ability to be a voice of wisdom when it was required. His advise, his ability to blend kindness and harshness in equal measure, his mixture of personal experience and desire to let his student's gain their own personal experiences, his balance of logic and emotion, had all be things which had truly stuck in Hank's mind. Hank hoped that, after so many years trying to follow the Professor's example as a scientist, he might have been able to follow his example as a giver of expertise in life. And who better to practice this upon than the Professor himself, albeit in a guise slightly different to the one that Hank was used to associating him with? "My advice, Charles," he said seriously, "would be to not spend too much time trying to catch up with yourself." The document he held in his hands was a guide on the world as it was. He had even tried to make it truly objective, as was his scientific wont. It was a guide to society in the present day, not the Professor as he had been before his disappearance. "Just be the you you are, and not the you you once became." My word, that sounded hokey.

Hank smiled cheerily at the Professor- no, not the Professor. Charles- as he called Hank by his first name. "Are you a chess player by chance, Charles?" He eyed the board which he had been in the midst of clearing away. Just because the game they had once been playing together was now over didn't mean they could not begin once again. Set out the pieces once more, play new moves but with the same minds driving them. What an oddly apt metaphor for the situation in which Charles had found himself. "I mean, you were prior to...to your return," How else was he to refer to it? He could not tiptoe around the issue. "But are you now? Or were you, then?" Hank did feel a slight scruple. Perhaps if he'd lost a few years, then Hank might stand at something of an advantage. Then again, you never really did have an advantage when you were playing a telepath in a game of strategy.

There were so many of them. It was true. The Mansion had swollen with potential brilliance and existent brilliance. It was a place for both education and the enacting of that education in ways which were changing the world at a pace virtually unimaginable. "I know," Whispered Hank, his face a broad, broad grin of joy at the idea of how exciting Charles must have found it, knowing that the people which he had been integral in founding was now as much a force for good in the world as any group of similar size and means. "Isn't it fantastic?"

"I know, intracranial EEGs were really where I fell down with the idea initially. I attempted to reach some compromise using only semi-intrusive methods." Hank had devised something like a combination surgical syringe and ethernet cable connected to a soft plastic pad. However, the technique had never worked properly even in preliminary tests and the pads were both uncomfortable and outright painful. In addition, the amount of power required had been enough to make every light in the building dim every time Cerebro had been turned on. Hank, much like Charles, had certain limits to his scientific arrogance. "Well," He shrugged, modestly. "I dare-say I aided Forge in some ways with the neurological and neurochemical complications he was facing during the initial enhancement of the project, and- as you can probably deduce- I'm rather good at, well, monkey work." That was as arrogant as Hank got in speech. He might have acted with arrogance, but that was as close as he was able to get to boasting unless he was doing it to intimidate. He smiled at the Professor. "But Forge is really the master of the project."