As a high-level sorceress, Ororo needed a certain degree of psychic focus to channel lightning or hurricanes. She could read shifts in someone's mental state.
She studied Jean carefully.
"You look happy today, Jean." She and the others—Professor Charles included—had privately formed their own estimates of Jean's trajectory. An ostrich mentality, really: none of them wanted to face the truth.
But today, Jean seemed different to Storm. More optimistic, more open.
The Phoenix issue was too delicate to bring up when Jean was in a good mood. Ororo observed for a moment, found her opening and asked with mild surprise: "No makeup today? You look great, though—fresh-faced and full of energy."
She was cheerleading for her old friend. Of course, if Jean had put on makeup, the script would've been different—but the compliments would've flowed either way.
"Really? I didn't think about it much... Cosmetics contain a lot of toxins, actually. I figured I'd try being a different version of myself." Jean followed her instincts and spoke without overthinking.
What people wore was a personal choice. Emma Frost claimed she hadn't taken off her high heels since she was eight. The staff didn't police student fashion, let alone fellow teachers. Storm simply thought today's change in Jean was refreshing.
They parted ways. Storm had a class to teach. Jean was more than a teacher—she was also the school's vice principal, responsible for a mountain of daily minutiae.
She walked into her office, glanced at herself in the mirror. No makeup, bare face. Not bad, actually.
She hummed a tune softly and sat down at her desk to handle paperwork.
The good mood lasted about five minutes.
Irritation. A nameless, gnawing irritation settled over her thoughts.
It wasn't the Phoenix's blade-at-the-neck dread. This irritation came from the files in her hands.
Waste. Every line item, every entry—Xavier's School was hemorrhaging money.
Jean couldn't pinpoint where this feeling had come from. She only knew she was annoyed. Deeply annoyed.
She kept reading. Things she'd never questioned before now filled her with guilt. Professor Charles treated her like a father. How had she repaid him?
Under her watch as vice principal, enormous sums were being thrown away on nothing. That was the Professor's money.
Three free coffees per student per day?
With her medical doctorate, Jean didn't think that was appropriate. Excessive caffeine made people jittery and anxious. The mutant students who came to the school were already scared enough dealing with their own abilities—instead of helping them decompress, they were being caffeinated into panic spirals.
She struck through the line with a decisive stroke. One cup per day from now on. She added a note in the margin: Encourage students not to drink any at all.
She pulled out her calculator. The keys clattered. She looked at the savings and felt a genuine surge of joy.
Air conditioning running twenty-four hours a day—completely unnecessary. Most mutants had slightly superior physical resilience compared to baseline humans, including better heat and cold tolerance. What a normal person considered sweltering was merely uncomfortable for a mutant. She scribbled a new policy: fixed operating hours, cooling capped at twenty-six degrees Celsius.
She pruned the athletics program next. Soccer? Americans didn't care about soccer. That extracurricular was gone, and with it, the lawn maintenance budget. Several students who weren't suited for contact sports got individually flagged and put on a rotation schedule. Colossus was restricted from basketball on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Iceman was restricted from ice skating on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. And so on.
As the school's history teacher, she also had opinions about the current class schedule. Too inefficient. Too many sessions.
Take her history class: sometimes she had to teach three sections in a single day. Completely unnecessary. Set up the large lecture hall, herd every student in at once. It was history—there was no advanced or beginner level. Whether she was lecturing on the Civil War or the American Revolution made zero difference to any of them.
Restructuring teacher schedules would foster competition among students, she told herself. Breaking down the barriers between classes. A net positive, overall.
She spent the entire morning compiling her list. Satisfied with the results, she circulated her proposed reforms to her colleagues.
Professor Charles thought she seemed a bit different today, but everything Jean said was perfectly reasonable. He was not someone who casually deployed his telepathy, so he signed off on her reform plan.
Cyclops had dressed up: black fitted dress shirt, black slacks, paired with his signature ruby-quartz visor. Tall, trim, sharp.
As Jean's boyfriend, he made a show of reading Jean's proposal carefully before voicing his support. Even if Jean wanted to go on a crime spree, he'd probably hesitate for a moment and then tag along. A few cuts to student perks and creature comforts? He wasn't about to stand in her way.
Storm was indifferent. A former street thief from Cairo, she didn't have a doctorate in anything. She taught combat techniques, and a compressed schedule meant more free time to spend with T'Challa. She voted yes.
That evening, at dinnertime, Cyclops personally grabbed a hammer and nails. Under the curious gazes of the assembled students, he mounted a bulletin board on the cafeteria wall—the board the students would come to know as Grey Order No. 1.
"How's it look?" He climbed down the ladder and presented his handiwork to his girlfriend.
Jean smiled approvingly.
Cyclops could tell her mood was good. He suggested they go for a ride together.
As a wealthy orphan with property and vehicles to spare, Professor Charles had amassed an enormous garage in his younger days. After he lost the use of his legs, the luxury cars gathered dust, and the garage had basically become Cyclops's territory.
An amateur modification enthusiast, Scott owned several custom builds. Tonight's showcase was his latest project: a motorcycle. He'd already planned the evening—ride out, enjoy the night air, and then... well, the unspoken part.
But Jean frowned slightly when she saw the bike.
"What? Something wrong?" Cyclops asked.
"...Scott, I'm worried about your safety." Jean cupped his face, her voice warm with affection. "Tell me honestly—can you see the red light on traffic signals?"
Cyclops wanted to say he could distinguish subtle differences through his ruby-quartz lenses, but he didn't bother explaining.
Jean seemed to already know the answer. She gently took his arm. "Sell the motorcycle. We'll buy two bicycles instead. Safer, and good exercise."
What could Cyclops—who'd never said no to Jean—possibly say? Between his hobby and Jean, he chose Jean.
He dictated the motorcycle's specs while Jean listed it for sale online. The proceeds, she decided, would go toward improving teaching conditions and waiving enrollment fees for a few more underprivileged students.
Cyclops expressed his full support.
Before she left, Jean also wheeled out his other motorcycle. Better to eliminate the hazard entirely—with Scott's eyesight, he was done with motorized vehicles for good. The older bike wouldn't fetch much online, but it could be turned into a wheelchair for the Professor.
The interaction between psychic forces wasn't symmetrical.
As the source of the "commercial plunder" theory, Daisy experienced minimal blowback—just that slight bump in psychic power.
Jean, as the recipient, absorbed some of Daisy's personality traits. At the same time, Dark Phoenix had been testing that same theory on the original self, warping part of Jean's personality in the process. Under that double influence, Jean's reaction was dramatically larger than anything Daisy felt.