"Once Iron Man is dead, nobody can restrain Shiller anymore."
The younger officer broke into a cold sweat, his tone trembling as he spoke: "Damn it...we've all been played! They want to use Shiller to annihilate us all!"
"It's too late to figure out who's behind all this now!" Ross raised his voice: "Even if the plane flies at its slowest speed, we can't stretch it beyond three hours. Add the time it took him to notice Iron Man and Captain America's disappearance, five hours at most!"
"What about finding someone to impersonate Captain America?" The young officer clenched his fist and asked: "I remember, Captain America has a number of backups. Some of our captains have been in training..."
"No can do." The General immediately replied: "Against a psychic, unless you can clone all of Captain America's memories and ways of thinking, it won't hold up."
"Our backups are far from Steve Rogers in both figure and ability, let alone his memory. They are members of a newer generation who've never experienced war. The holes in the story would be too apparent."
"Have some event manufactured, letting their disappearance seem reasonable? For instance, that Captain America has been reassigned..."
"But we can't handle Iron Man." The General continued: "Even if Tony Stark is dead, we can't gain control of Stark Building."
"We've contacted Miss Potts, but she states that Stark Building is entirely under Jarvis' control. Jarvis has locked all high level permissions, we can't even get our hands on Iron Man's video footage before his death."
"Besides, everyone knows, Tony Stark was the prime mover in the Solar System Development Project. Recently, he's been on Earth overseeing the project's progress, it's unreasonable for him to leave suddenly. Even if he did leave, total detachment is impossible, considering all the labs awaiting to report their findings. It's unlikely he'd cut contact for no reason."
Ross took a deep breath and said, "It seems unlikely we can outsmart them at this point. We're left with only one option: brute force."
"The issue is, what do we use to counter?" The young officer spread his hands on the table, saying: "The weapons and firepower we have can only work against superheroes of a physical type, and even if we order a bombing, who can tell us whether the operator won't be controlled by him? When it ends up bombarding our own people, we'd have no one to blame!"
"To block a rampage led by Shiller, we need someone with equal psychic power." The General squinted, "Remember when he told us about his power, what did he say?"
"He said his abilities match largely one other person..." The General drew out his last word, all of them in the meeting room exchanged looks, all thinking of the same name.
"Professor X!"
"Professor X..." In a secret meeting room, the Vice President spoke: "Now, we can only hope Professor X will step up. Someone has to stop a maddened Schiller Rodriguez. Apart from Professor X, we have no other choice."
"But..." A suited staffer across the table frowned, saying: "We should avoid dealing with mutants as far as possible, not to mention begging them. Otherwise, during future negotiations with them, we will have to make more concessions, this will result in loss of interest."
"Moreover, our policies towards mutants have always been of oppression and exploitation. Once we step back, it would be hard to oppress them again in future."
The Vice President twirled his cigar, saying: "Don't forget, this is the very reason we kept oppressing mutants. We never offered them an olive branch, instead exploiting and pressuring them as much as we could. Therefore, as long as we offer them a bit of sweetness, they would work for us like dogs chasing a bone."
"Previously, we had many successful experiences. For his school to keep running, Professor X has compromised with us quite a few times. He's been influencing Magneto not to stir up too much trouble."
"It's the same this time, you go tell them, we're very sincere, willing to relax the admissions restriction for Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in New Jersey and four other states. There, their teachers can operate in public openly. Isn't such a condition tempting enough?"
The Vice President clicked his tongue. "After all, we're not asking him to kill Schiller Rodriguez, just to block him. This isn't difficult for Professor X, thus there's no need to pay such a heavy price."
"But are we really going to ease admissions in five states? New Jersey State is an important vote bank to the President, where anti-mutant sentiment is high. The moment we announce..."
"Why should we announce anything?" The President retorted: "Just as we did before, delay as long as possible. At worst, when they operate in those states, we won't intervene, after all, people will think that the mutants are overstepping their bounds. As long as there's no clear official authorization, it won't concern us."
The staffer nodded: "Understood, Mr. President, I'll go have a talk with Professor X, I believe he'll agree."
Having said this, he turned to leave the room, but after a while, he returned, puzzlement etched on his face. The Vice President seeing his face, asked: "What's wrong? They didn't agree?"
The staffer shook his head: "I couldn't reach Professor X, Jean Grey picked up instead. It was quite noisy in the background. She only said 'Professor X is busy' before hanging up."
"Professor X is busy??" The Vice President was a little surprised: "Did you use the dedicated secure line? They should have our number, right?"
"Yes, this number is specifically for contacting X-Men, it can directly reach the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters' office. He probably isn't intentionally avoiding the call."
After two minutes, the staffer tried calling again. This time, on his return, his face was not pleasant. He said, "The person who answered this time was Wolverine, that damned idiot. He was quite hot-headed in his choice of words, saying that the mutants were busy, something about following some Majesty and that it was much more interesting than being on Earth...."
"Some Majesty?" The Vice President furrowed his brow: "What majesty on Earth? It couldn't be some small state leader, could it?"
He thought for a moment and then said, "You wait here and call them, I'm going to give them a call myself. Please make sure, Professor X is able to receive the call."
"Make sure to emphasize that it's an official call, I don't believe Professor X would dare avoid the call!"
Standing in the communications room, the Vice President picked up the phone. After ringing twice, a female voice came from the other end:
"Hello? This is Lorna Dane, may I help you?"