[Bixir] Scott Summers {X-Men}

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Frederick Douglass




General Information

Full Name:
Scott Summers
Codename or Alias:
Cyclops
Cyke
Red Eye
One-Eyed Wonder
Fearless Leader
Slim Summers
Boy Scout
Eric the Red
Anonymity
Scott Summers is one of the most prolific of the X-Men, as well as among the most outspoken as a mutant civil rights activist and social media personality.
Gender:
Male
Race:
Homo Superior
Age:
Thirty
Place Of Birth:
Westchester, New York
Occupation/Status:
Social Media Personality, The X-Factor
Civil Rights Activist
Teacher
Superhero
Alignment:
Hero
Factions:
Xavier Institute
The X-Men
Canon Or Original?:
Canon (X-Men)
Powers/Abilities:

Optic Blasts
Scott’s mutation causes his eyes to project continuous beams of overwhelming concussive force whenever they are open. The intensity of these blasts is concurrent with the length of time Scott sustains them, as well as being affected by his amount of focus or the intensity of his current emotional state. A standard blast is capable of sending humans and most armored metahumans flying down the street, whereas more powerful beams can cause devastating damage to otherwise invulnerable targets. Without ruby quartz lenses, Scott’s blasts can’t be stopped from leaving his eyes for as long as they are open. With a custom made visor or glasses, however, Scott may selectively release optic blasts by exposing his eyes or filtering the visor. He has become particularly tactical with his optic blasts, using an advanced understanding of geometry to maximize his effectiveness in close spaces and even ricocheting his blasts off of surfaces at precise angles to attack otherwise safe targets.

Mentor
Scott Summers isn’t new to the superhero game. Trained to use his superpowers ever since he was a child by Charles Xavier, he has near two decades of experience using his powers to help others, as well as teamwork and leadership skills, both in and outside of his time as an X-Man. Scott is a natural leader, and is equipped to tackle most situations with quick thinking and sharp discipline. This skill set is just as applicable outside of being an X-Man, particularly when it comes to being a mentor to mutants of the next generation, at the Xavier Institute and abroad.

Boy Scout
In addition to his experience in combat, field medicine, physics, and many other assorted skills from his time in the X-Men, Scott has learned a great many things from his impromptu training in the Boy Scouts of America. Although he was not a member of an official Troop given his isolated upbringing, Charles Xavier was able to work Scott through third-party programs to receive equivalent ranks, up to and including the esteemed Eagle Scout rank through an arrangement made through the New York Scout Council. Scott acquired a degree of aptitude ranging from amateur to intermediate in a wealth of skills, including but not limited to:


In addition to these many skills, Scott accomplished an Eagle Scout project as a capstone for his leadership skills, as well as a lasting contribution to the legacy of Boy Scouts and the community in which he lived. In Scott’s case, He completed renovations on a secondhand community center slated for demolition when it got condemned because its managers were outed as mutants. In addition to being an Eagle Scout, Scott has recently been approved by the New York Scouting Council as a certified Scoutmaster, establishing a local Boy Scout Troop based in the same district as the Xavier Institute. While many of the Scouts in Troop 811 are also students in Scott’s classes at Xavier’s, others are also ordinary boys (and girls!) from local neighborhoods, all of whom Scott takes great pride in being their leader.

Civil Rights Activist
For nearly as long as Scott Summers has been a superhero, he has been an advocate for oppressed minorities, from homo superior to homo sapiens and everything in between. His views on class and race issues were imprinted on him from an early age during his time at the Xavier Institute, a perspective that matured into a fiery passion for standing up for those forgotten or looked down upon, no matter the reason. More importantly, Scott has come to understand the means in which one can effectively campaign for these groups and the importance of representation in a society that hates and fears such people.

Journalist
Scott graduated from St. John's University with a Bachelors of Arts in Multi-Media Journalism. While he practices journalism and investigative reporting in many other forms, Scott’s expertise lies in the digital frontier, hosting the mutant news and activist web show The X-Factor with Kitty Pryde.

Pilot
Scott has more experience piloting all sorts of vehicles than he ought to legally admit, on account of the fact that most of this operation was done without a license, without a legal adult chaperone, in perilous situations, or, as the case often was, all of the above. Scott has a driving, piloting, and boating license now, though his personal experience operating these vehicles (especially the Blackbird on more than a few occasions) more than speaks for his ability in this than any piece of plastic can.


Weapons/Items:

Ruby Quartz

For reasons yet unknown to Scott and the rest of the X-Men, least of all Charles Xavier, the rare mineral ruby quartz is the only known substance that is capable of containing the energy that his optic blasts are made of. While he is dressed in his civilian clothing, Scott wears ruby quartz sunglasses, whereas he wears a formally designed ruby quartz visor when he is out in the field as Cyclops that allows him to more precisely focus his optic blasts. However, other devices or armor made of ruby quartz would also protect the wearer from being affected by Scott’s optic blasts.

Xavier Institute Resources
As one of the foremost X-Men, and a primary faculty member at Xavier Institute, Scott has full access to the vast resources available to the X-Men. Transportation, funds, a wide array of weapons and gadgets, and more are available to Scott, should he need any of it for any of his duties.

Motorcycle
A prized vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle, albeit with some modifications to keep things… interesting. Much to Scott’s consternation, Logan has gotten the unhealthy idea that it belongs to him (it does not).


Appearance

Image:

Physical Appearance:
As his old childhood nickname implies, Scott has a slim figure, tall and slender at around six feet and three inches, weighing approximately one-hundred seventy two pounds. While Scott remains a physically healthy person, he is by no means a professional athlete, and has a lighter frame that can get knocked around as such. He has lighter features, sporting roughly kept short brown hair and facial shadow ranging from minor to nonexistent depending on his motivation for shaving that week.
Clothing and Armor:


Scott is one of the least fashionable people on Earth. He dresses roughly the same way that he did over ten years ago, opting for a combination of plain - though practical - shirts and pants, in casual appearances as well as most professional functions. Though he doesn’t frown upon costumes or “superhero fashion”, so to speak, Scott avoids wearing his similarly plain costume unless he has to do so as Cyclops. A full-body black bodysuit, with gold inlays that is present in all X-Men uniforms. Most importantly, however, is the ruby quartz built into the cowl. Giving Scott maximum efficiency and range with his optic blasts, it was designed by Forge, as one of the few favors he has owed the team over the years. Without this visor, it is considerably more difficult for Scott to use his mutation to its full potential, though it is possible.


Personality




"Why you pursue something is as important as what you pursue."
Dan Gilroy




Socially Stunted
Scott was orphaned at a young age, and separated from his only brother for most of his formative years. The isolating circumstances of his childhood caused Scott to become distant from others, and it wasn’t for many years that he would begin to grasp what he had been unable to establish at a younger age. While Scott is not nearly the reclusive, dutiful schoolboy that he used to be, it is clear that he is still not adept at picking up on social cues or making connections that would seem obvious to others. He may never be.

Allergic to Fun
Though not to the hyperbolic extent many people at the Xavier Institute believe, Scott can be a bit of a bummer. He holds rules and security to a high bar, and will be very vocal should that threshold ever be challenged, be it by students or his peers. He does his best not to be too much of a killjoy, but the many experiences of the X-Men paying the consequences for doing just that are too numerous and severe for Scott to turn a blind eye to fun and games for too long. Scott does know how to have fun… but it’s not always evident.

Thought Police
Scott’s measured experience with telepaths and those capable of mental manipulations have conditioned him to be exceptionally pragmatic with how he frames his thoughts. While he obviously cannot alter his brain patterns to make him more difficult to read, Scott is more wary whenever he is in the company of those capable of reading his mind. His relationship with Jean Grey has helped him come to terms with how his mind works, though he cannot help but monitor his thoughts to try to be less obtrusive, as well as to keep secrets he wishes to remain secret far from the surface.

Sexual Orientation:
Heterosexual
General Personality:
Scott Summers is not what you would necessarily call a compelling person. Nor would he describe himself as charismatic, however much that may be the contrary at times. He has always seen himself, in spite of his flaws, in spite of his mutation, as a relatively ordinary person, with his own wants, passions, and faults, just like anyone else. That self-perception has changed a great deal over the years of being an X-Men and everything that came afterward, though Scott remains insistent on identifying as a person, and just that. He appreciates himself for who he is as Scott Summers before Cyclops, or even before the host of The X-Factor, or the numerous other labels that he and others attribute to him. Whether this insistence on the mundane makes Scott more or less “normal”, as one may put it, is a matter of considerable debate, especially considering the continuing role that he has at the Xavier Institute, with the X-Men, and many other avenues of mutant activism.

Scott has undergone a great many terrible things in his life, most of which were in his most formative years. They would be trying for anyone, if not completely devastating to how they would develop in their youth, if they made it through their youth at all. Scott is no doubt a strong, resilient soul for having endured his hardships, but he is not by any means as put together as he may appear. The burden of what he went through nearly twenty years ago continues to weigh on Scott’s psyche, however much Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, and others close to him may be able to ease that pain. He is forever changed as a mutant, forever changed as an orphan, forever changed by all of the factors that forced him into his circumstances that he had virtually no say in. Scott does his best in life in spite of these many factors of stress and anxiety, though they are all inevitably there, never truly going away. It is unlikely that they ever will.





Scott would never admit it, but the X-Men are more a part of Scott’s life than anything else. The childhood he had prior to the incident are fleeting moments now, too colored by what had come afterward and the family he gained to replace the one that he had quickly lost. His sense of community, personal values, and leaderly demeanor are owed entirely to this group that was the bedrock for his adolescence and young adulthood. This is not at all to say that Scott does not have a personality of his own, or that he is “boring” compared to the more colorful members of the X-Men and the Xavier Institute faculty. If anything, Scott is an incredibly insightful and endearing person once you get to know him. He has a fierce devotion to social justice and does his best to right wrongs wherever he sees them. He has a heart of gold and loves playing board games and hosting activities for everyone to get involved in. Logan often jokes that he’s the “frat host you wish you had” to some accuracy. Scott wants the best for everyone, provided that it does not jeopardize the circumstances of others. This is just as applicable out in the field as it is behind a teacher’s desk. He won’t leave anyone behind, and he’ll be damned if someone tries to tell him that something can’t be done. You’ll only make him succeed that much harder in spite of the odds.

Scott’s foremost values are steeped roughly equally in his experience as a mutant who can’t pass, and in his experience as an underprivileged middle-class youth hailing from one of New York’s less impressionable suburbias. He recognizes that his experiences are far from the norm, for ordinary people undergoing oppression of all kinds, and certainly for mutants simply trying to exist in the United States and abroad. This has not stopped Scott from doing everything in his power to effect positive change for the social, ethnic, and economic minority in New York and elsewhere in the United States, using his social and cultural capital almost exclusively to the benefit of the groups that he claims to support through his moral soapbox, on and off the web. Scott means everything he says, though he especially means the extent to which he will fight for your right to not only exist, but to exist in comfort… and woe to anyone who would stand in the way of that goal.

Anything Else




Character's History

Siblings:
Alexander Summers, Younger Brother (Estranged)
The Third Summers Brother
Mother:
Katherine Summers, deceased
Father:
Christopher Summers, presumed dead
Other Family:
Professor Charles Xavier, foster father and mentor
Jean Grey, childhood friend, beloved wife, and co-leader of the X-Men
Kurt Wagner, Warren Kenneth Worthington III, Henry McCoy - Foster siblings to varying extent as original X-Men, and lifelong friends

History:


Fall


“All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”
Sean O’Casey




Scott’s childhood was mostly a blur, marked by their tragic orphaning at an early age. They were sent to a foster home in Westchester, where conditions worsened for Scott and Alex in just about every way, least of all the hazing. Scott knew that he needed to be strong for both of them, understanding - though with great distress - that whatever dreams he had about getting justice for his family and people like them would have to wait in line while he made sure that he and Alex made it through this in one piece. For them, even that courtesy was difficult to assure. The bullies at school and at the foster home alike were relentless, well aware just how much the Summers boys had gone through. They eventually pushed hard enough. Had Scott turned around to face the onlooking crowd, the beams shooting out from his eyes may well have leveled the boarding house. Then and there, the lives of Scott Summers and Alexander Summers drew to a fateful close.


They might have, had the boys not been found by one Charles Xavier. He had become keenly aware of the Summerses’ predicament, fostering a feeling that something more may be at play than the mundane tribulations of young boys plagued by a system that had abandoned them. Together, Charles Xavier and Jean Grey persuaded the belligerent matron of the home to allow them to take the boys off their hands. Alex was apprehensive of their new circumstances, having no reason to believe that this seemingly concerned guardian would be any different. Though Scott felt similarly, something about the professor, and the girl who had talked him into going along with it, gave him pause in his paranoia. Scott couldn’t place it then, but he would later recognize it as the feeling of having a family to truly call his own.





The Xavier Institute had only recently been founded, though its facilities and community was no less welcoming to Scott, Alex, and others who were forming the first class of students that Charles Xavier hoped to raise on his estate. Scott admitted that Xavier felt more familiar to him than his father had in the limited time that he had known him. After all, his father Christopher had hardly been able to manage the energy to look after - or even raise - his two boys. Charles would be there for Scott to this day, doing what he could to reassure him of his faults and steer him on what he thought was the best path for him. For Scott, Charles Xavier may as well have always been his father.

And then there were the rest of the kids. Scott grew to know them all over the next few years - Kurt Wagner, a flighty escaped serf from eastern Germany; Warren Worthington III, a stuffy son of upper-crust New York elite; Hank McCoy, an overgrown scientist with a love for gymnastics; and Jean Grey, the sweet, doting telepath who had convinced him to come to the school in the first place - very closely, as friends and as a found family. They all came from disparaging backgrounds, compounded by from these strange abilities that manifested in moments of great trauma. Together, however, they would come to terms with these powers, and, perhaps in time, use them to help others like them out of crisis. So went the dream of Charles Xavier.







As it happened, that dream had merit. The message of fighting for equality coursed through every fiber of Scott’s being long before he became a mutant. It was similar for his peers. They were all misfits in their own way, though the idea of the X-Men was something that they could all take part in. Hank was rather distant from Scott for quite some time, though. He seemed the least adjusted out of all of them (Alex excluded), and didn’t take well to people trying to get to know him. Alex was… difficult, in a way that only Scott could understand. He never fully adjusted to the school, and it was evident early on that whatever he needed, Xavier’s wasn’t it. Scott did his best to include him, but it seldom went well: the norm for the Summerses for as long as Scott could remember.

While the group found their footing, Scott longed to continue his time in the Boy Scouts of America, something that had barely held together when he and Alex had been living with their father. Although Scott’s circumstances were certainly extenuating (if not impossible), the professor worked through third parties so that he and Scott could work through the Boy Scout ranks on their own. Most of the others had no interest in the Scouting experience, though some, like Kurt and Jean, were more than happy to play along, if for nothing else than to spend time with Scott and be outdoors, a rare opportunity given how often they were holed up in the mansion “for their own good”. Indeed, this was one of the few moments in their life as adolescents to simply be adolescents, which Scott remembers fondly to this day.

Scott was drawn to leadership the most out of all of them, eventually calling the shots during their training in the Danger Room. The Danger Room. Even after everything he had seen of everyone’s powers so far, he could scarcely believe that this school of all places had a cutting-edge training facility. It turned out to be all that, and so much more. To add to their absurd circumstances, the professor had an amazing stealth jet, which they called the Blackbird, that they would use to get anywhere they needed to in record time to help mutants in need and stop disasters. Even Scott was skeptical at just what the professor was expecting out of them, but the child in him was enthralled by the idea of becoming a bona fide superhero. Scott and his friends learned over the years just what it meant to be X-Men, and how much more it entailed than simply being a group of well to-do, aspiring mutants. After all, whenever they decided to go out and about in Westchester proper, they were far from welcome. That wasn’t surprising. What concerned and confused Scott Summers were the mutants who had internalized their trauma into radical hatred.







The professor had warned Scott, Jean and the others of Magneto. He wanted equality only for mutants, content with reversing the roles of oppression from man to mutant. The “Brotherhood” that he had cultivated around his personality was not much better. Mastermind was an illusionist, similar to what Jean and the professor could do, though limited to deceptions, and cruel ones at that. He was a lecherous, disgusting man, and though he wasn’t much older than Scott, just thinking that someone around his age could act this way was enough to make his blood boil. There was Mystique, the vexing shapeshifter who continues to get under Scott’s skin to this day; the Juggernaut, the professor’s apparent older brother and nigh unstoppable force; the Blob, a similarly immovable, massive person who took all of the X-Men working together just to knock over; Typhoid Mary, a borderline insane woman who seemed to revel in the idea of abusing humans as they did her; and Moonbeam, a seemingly normal girl who had taken up the cause of something she had no right fighting for. For a group that had such an appalling agenda for both mutantkind and humankind, the Brotherhood was a rapidly growing movement that was outpacing the virtues of the X-Men by far.

Needless to say, Magneto posed the greatest threat to the professor’s dream, and Scott would do everything in power to prove that cooler, more peaceable heads would prevail in the face of such vitriol. The rest of the X-Men shared their impromptu leader’s sentiment, and together they battled the Brotherhood of Mutants, quite publicly, a series of confrontations that quickly put the X-Men in the - though often not sympathetic - spotlight. After all, they were mutants, young mutants, still very much in their puberty, fighting other mutants, the grounds of which did not seem to matter to the media. Scott and his peers were very much child soldiers, though none of them realized at the time the implications of the war that they were waging on Charles Xavier’s behalf. Hearing the likes of Godfrey and Tapper condemning both sides as if they were of equal merit reminded Scott of the power of public persuasion, for what little good it did them now. The professor was never adept at making public appearances, but perhaps...


Winter



“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus


Later adolescence was hard on the X-Men. Scott, Jean, and all the others were forced to grow up in the thick of puberty, much more quickly than any teenager should be expected to. Fighting the Brotherhood was perhaps the least stressful thing for these burgeoning adolescents to go through, compared to living out their lives as mutants, activists by the very nature of their existence. The X-Men had little option but to band together as a family, no matter if they actually liked each other. Hank opened up to Scott and the others during this time, when he revealed his numerous failed attempts to cure himself of what he could not accept about himself. As a result, he had transformed into a blue, furry form, now truer to his namesake than he had ever been before. Scott embraced him that much more for his courage to come forward, as did the rest of the X-Men. They were nothing if not supportive, so important were those simple gestures of kindness and empathy for their kind. Alex, on the other hand, only grew more inward with his place in their group… team was becoming a better name for it. He had never wanted to be a mutant, he had never wanted to become an orphan, swept up in all of this against his will. Any attempts Scott made to reach out to him were only met with bitter resentment. Because of the X-Men, any efforts he might have been able to make to reinvent himself after leaving the orphanage were in tatters. Alex Summers was, as far as the world learning of the X-Men were concerned, “Scott’s brother”, and not “Alexander Summers”. Unable to take it anymore, the two brothers finally clashed, threatening to tear down the Xavier mansion if not for the professor’s timely intervention. The decision was finally made to let Alex go his own way. It was better than the alternative. The X-Men were not doing well, to say the least.





Jean? Scott could never tell with Jean. To be honest, he had never been able to tell much with Jean. He was an open book, the clumsy, bookish boy from Westchester who could barely see straight, to say nothing of getting a group of kids like him to tolerate each other long enough to save the day from the latest attack by the Brotherhood or whatever mutant threat was on people’s minds. Something about Jean (re: pretty much everything about Jean) was able to keep Scott calm, focused, and armed with the confidence to do what needed to be done. He wasn’t so sure she felt the same way, and this tenuous silence continued throughout most of their adolescence, Scott too absorbed in his thoughts and responsibilities as the de facto leader of the X-Men, Jean too reserved in her telepathy (what little of it she had access to at the time) and apprehensive about pushing boundaries to pry into what may or may not be. For all their social faults, both of and not of their own volition, Scott and Jean managed to become exceptional leaders - and superheroes, one might add - by the time they were nearing the age of eighteen.





It was a little too fitting that the twilight days of the X-Men’s teenage years were bookended by two of their most trying encounters. The first of these was Wolverine, who as far as most of the X-Men were concerned was just a wild animal. He was certainly as such when they first met him on a request by the professor to investigate one of his old friends, out in the Canadian wilderness. A burly, terrifyingly hairy man with claws coming out of his wrists, who didn’t seem to have any qualms about trying to rip through a bunch of (superpowered) teenagers. The thing that he was out here fighting was far more terrifying, a creature that they later learned was Sabretooth. The tale between those two was for another time, though it was enough to know that as scary as Wolverine was, Sabretooth was that much worse, an irredeemable, nigh unstoppable beast. Wolverine called himself Logan, and he liked his privacy, even after reluctantly deciding to stay at the mansion at the professor’s request. As far as Scott was concerned, someone like that was welcome to keep their distance.

Not long after, the Professor was becoming visibly concerned about a particular mutant case, by the name of Katherine Anne Pryde. He was hesitant to say why, though Scott began to realize that the rivalry between the professor and a woman named Emma Frost was to blame. The name was familiar to Scott in part, as was her Massachusetts Academy. It didn’t sound that different from what the professor was trying to do with the X-Men, though from how the professor reacted to the topic, it was easy enough to tell that those differences were certainly not for the best. This case was also one of the few where Scott was decidedly excluded from leadership of the X-Men, the professor instead taking that role. Those times, few as they had been, gave Scott pause as to whether the professor really trusted him, even after all the years that he had spent under his roof. This insecurity and bitterness was exactly the right powder keg to help set off what was unfolding behind the scenes. Scott unknowingly drew the rest of the X-Men into another case of mutants that they hoped to recruit before Emma Frost, before that same woman ambushed them, subduing them all almost immediately and whisking them away to God knows where.





The details of what followed elude Scott’s memory. What he did remember was that they had gotten targeted by that group Frost was a part of: the Hellfire Society. There had definitely been a battle of some kind, and they had won, at great expense to Frost. If it hadn’t been for Wolverine, as well as that new mutant, Kitty Pryde, they probably would have remained the prisoners of the Society. Scott and the rest of the X-Men had no problem never seeing that woman again, though many of them, Scott included, were outraged when the professor urged them not to pursue justice for what she had done to them. Something about the pretense of “making things worse for themselves”, whatever that meant. Perhaps there was something to be said about skepticism in the professor’s words, though Scott kept that to himself. Looking back on what came next, he wished he had done something more.


”We should just go buck wild… Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty.”
Steve Bannon




There seemed to be many different places for mutants and other kinds of metahumans these days… anywhere, that is, except in the eyes of God. Scott had never been much of a believer. He was certainly faithful, of a sort. He had come to believe that in order to have distinguished optimism like he did, you had to at least be a bit of a believer, even if it wasn’t necessarily in God, then in some kind of higher power beyond our understanding. That way of thinking had helped him see the good in others, even if he didn’t agree with them. He did not share that sentiment with the likes of William Stryker and his congregation. His megachurch had only recently come onto the scene, most explicitly through his “World of Adam” program on GBS, and Scott didn’t need to tune in for long to know the kind of people that he was appealing to. The kind of people that were not so different from Magneto’s Brotherhood, in a way. These were people driven by hatred, other-ness, poison for those not like them that Scott had never truly felt in his heart; but he had faced it well enough to know what it was capable of. No matter how many times he and the X-Men faced down these kinds of people, the sheer fervor with which these people carried hatred in their hearts never failed to shake Scott to his core. In many ways, it was worse now that Scott was a young adult now, capable of understanding this hatred and what it could drive people to do. He hadn’t felt so scared to go out into the public to oppose these people and their horrible ideologies, but he had to. If the X-Men couldn’t stand up to hatred against mutantkind, then no one could.

Trying to speak out against William Stryker and his rising movement was some of the hardest public appearances Scott ever made. Even more than going up against the Brotherhood or the Hellfire Society, trying to validate his existence in a public that was turning its opinion even more against them was extremely disabling for Scott, though he knew that he had to be strong in spite of that terror that they most certainly wanted to see in their faces. Even harder were William Stryker’s own champions. These were men and women who had powers of their own, and only wanted to use these powers to dominate, subdue, and destroy the races that they perceived as inferior, least of all mutants. These people were a part of an organization that referred to itself as Empire 88, named after the white supremacist dog whistle for “Heil Hitler”. The fact that this group was able to operate at all put even the professor ill at ease. Xavier urged them to avoid confrontations with 88 at all costs, knowing full well what these people were willing to do to mutants like them.





Magneto and his Brotherhood were not so careful with their battles, nor had they ever been. Erik condemned Xavier and his charges, seeing them for cowards before the true face of the enemy when it at last presented itself. Scott realized that in that moment, Magneto was right. The X-Men should have done more, especially to help the Brotherhood against a common enemy. With that said, doing so would certainly have sent them all to their graves. Magneto issued an ultimatum to Empire 88: Come to Battery Park, and let the war between homo superior and homo sapiens be decided. What transpired there, Scott dares not describe in detail, let alone the media outlets that decided to cover that event. It was over quickly, and brutally. The image that forever immortalized the legacy of Magneto was his elderly body, beaten to a near unrecognizable pulp, lying before Juggernaut, who had been crucified on a burning iron cross that protruded from inside his armor, surrounded by the remaining dead. Not a single member of 88 met a similar fate, though at least a few of them, like Albrecht Krieger, the so-called “Captain Nazi”, who had beaten Magneto to death himself, faced justice… most of them did not.


Spring


”Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Theodor Seuss Geisel




Nothing was the same after Battery Park. Scott’s heart wasn’t in it anymore. Not in the X-Men, not in the Xavier Institute (which was now beginning to become a public school, in spite of its gross negligence for Magneto and his followers). To think that the professor really was that fearful of Empire 88 that he wasn’t willing to stick his neck out for his lifelong friend in his darkest hour... He still hadn’t come out as a mutant. What kind of confidence was that supposed to inspire in his students, who he had groomed to fight this war on his behalf? Scott’s teammates’ feelings on this weren’t much more reassuring. Many of them had already begun to go their separate ways: Kurt had developed wanderlust, and had decided to see the world for himself, now grown enough to see it through new eyes. Warren had decided to join the Hellfire Society of all things, losing himself in his aristocratic origins and the demands his father had been making of him. Hank declared that his interests in science were best served with the likes of S.T.A.R. Labs, growing more and more apart from his mutant nature that Scott thought that he had come to accept so long ago. Bobby ran off on his own to… “discover himself”. Whatever that meant, Scott just hoped he was happy. Out of all the X-Men, Bobby deserved it the most. Kitty… Kitty had taken things the hardest, and ran off to college. That was probably for the best. Logan left to little fanfare, no doubt to do his own thing, as he so often did. Scott would miss Logan, if only for everything he represented that Scott wasn’t. He still wasn’t any closer to reclaiming what he had told himself he had joined the X-Men for in the first place… and what had his brother been up to the meantime? What legacy had he made for himself instead of what Scott had been trying to reach for?

Jean was the only one who had decided to stay with the X-Men in any capacity, though even then, her efforts took the form of public advocacy, not as tied to their former mutant superheroics. It stunned Scott that she could go into that sort of thing right after she had agreed with Xavier not to help Magneto in his doomed resistance. Scott and Jean… did not leave on the best of terms. He thought things might have ended differently between them, or, more naively, that they could have gotten together, after everything they had been through. There were certainly things he said that he regretted, though if he had the chance, he would have said them again. There were some things that he simply couldn’t bring himself to budge on. The “graduation” ceremony, what there was of one, was like breathing, hearing, and walking on eggshells, with only half of the original team there to be seen off by the professor, who was even gloomier than his usual self. Scott didn’t know what to do with his life, but to pursue that journalism dream he had kept telling himself about. Maybe Kitty’s own academic dreams had rubbed off on him.

As one final favor to Scott, Xavier arranged for his tuition and board at St. Johns University, a new home that was not so far away from the home he was leaving, for whatever that was worth. Scott never returned to the mansion with this in mind, using his new environment as an excuse to avoid going back to old haunts. Scott wasn’t sure where he belonged now. Thankfully, college was exactly the place to reinvent yourself, mutant or otherwise. The idea of attempting to pass for a human gave Scott pause. If not for the fact that his mutant identity had defined him for as long as he was capable of giving himself labels, then for what it would mean to turn his back on that now. To do that was to follow in the footsteps of the man who had raised him. Scott was reminded of his goals before he had gotten swallowed up by the X-Men and everything that came after, and knew then and there what he would do with his life. He would pursue a career of social justice. He would become a journalist.

The next few years of Scott’s life were dedicated almost entirely to this. Not unlike his time at Xavier’s, his attention developed tunnel vision, having ruby quartz eyes only for what he saw directly in front of him. Thankfully for Scott, his roommate wouldn’t have any of this, and eventually succeeded in pushing him to branch out of his self-imposed bubble to meet other people and to - God forbid - get a little social. This ranged from extracurricular activities like baseball and escape rooms to more involved social events like being a part of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or even student politics. The latter of these activities Scott quite easily lost himself in, even if he didn’t see himself as a nerd nearly as much as Kitty or Jean did. He took to alternate roles rather easily, considering that he had essentially done so all his life, never revealing his true name as Cyclops when he had run around as a teenage superhero. Eric the Red was a fearsome barbarian, separated from his clan of legendary warriors. Forced to wander by his lonesome, he was forced to embrace new companions in his quest for purpose in a world he was increasingly at odds with. Perhaps the imaginary wasn’t so different from what had happened at the mansion.





For all the adventure Scott experienced at the table and in the debate halls, though, he couldn’t shake what he had missed with the X-Men: the exotic yet all too real menaces of mutantkind and worlds adjacent to it that the X-Men had stopped. The childhood fantasy daunted Scott at every turn, his fantastical D&D escapades only serving to exacerbate the longing that he had come to St. Johns to get away from. One of the other players in his group was something of a kindred spirit. Lee Forrester offered a new start for Scott in many different ways, not the least of which was the fact that she was, quite frankly, nothing at all like Jean. Lee was feisty, unpredictable, and much too willing to call out Scott on behaviors that he had felt comfortable with for much of his life. He was caught off guard, to say the least. More importantly, though, Lee represented exactly what Scott had hoped to find, without the worry of falling into being an X-Man again. She was a sailor, an intrepid woman who blazed her own trail around the world. How she was able to support this was something Scott never ended up learning, though that didn’t matter. What mattered was an opportunity to pursue what Scott was missing in his life, without the pretense of returning to his life as a superhero, of implicitly telling Professor Xavier that he had been right all along. It was time to prove to Charles, to the world, to himself, that Scott was his own man.

Life on the ocean was a stark contrast from everything that Scott had known before. It highlighted the vast privilege that living in the sheltered mansion of a reclusive rich old man had given him, to say nothing of the limited perspective he had because of it. Scott did not think himself blind to injustice, and to an extent he was not… but even then, he had far, far to go. They visited many different cultures, from as near as the Caribbean to the far reaches of the South Pacific, none of them anything at all like what he had expected. Scott slowly began to realize what Lee had tried to get him to understand about himself when they had first met, warts and all. There was plenty of action among this reflective odyssey too. The world had more than its fill of bizarre, nigh unbelievable things that left even Scott confounded as to just how “normal” the world really was, from the grisly likes of Empire 88 to the wild and weird things hiding in the far corners of the world. By the time that the summer had come to an end, Scott had firmly decided that being an adventurer like Lee definitely wasn’t for him, as much as he loved her company, and she his. Scott’s place was in American society, where he could do his best work for the most amount of people. He had a feeling that this was far from the last they would see of one another, but both of them understood that it was time for them to go their separate ways. After all, Scott had a thesis to finish.

Scott didn’t consider himself enlightened or anything like that upon returning to St. John’s, though he certainly realized how limited his scope had been. His project had initially been to capture the “mutant experience” at St. John’s, and by extension, the outlying Brooklyn culture, and seeing the value in which their culture was just as much a part of it as that of any other minority. Now, however, his eye turned to more fervent activism, echoing a part of his character that, while uncomfortable for what it had been attached to, he knew now that he would never be rid of. It was with this in mind that he did not dismiss the outcry of this “Mutant Liberation Front” and its indignant youthful leader outright. Their message was one that he was familiar with, and this time Scott Summers would not let the right side of history pass him by. He devoted his thesis to exploring action that went beyond affirmative and bordered on the radical, for mutants, and for those who had the vertical struggle of being an oppressed minority in addition to becoming the former. It was hardly one that gained much - if any - traction outside of the board that was forced to accept his project on its merits, regardless of what they thought of it. For once, people decided to listen to the message that he and those that he had interviewed had to say… if only just. With that said, the experience with Diaspora and those like her was a poignant rejoinder that all the reasons that he had left the X-Men for, paled in comparison to all of the good that he had done, and could still do, with those people.


Summer

Scott was many things. Being adept with words was never one of them, in spite of his new journalism degree. He struggled, day in and day out, to come up with the right words to give to Jean and the others when he came back, so that they might forgive him for what had happened. Fortunately for him, that same roommate left him in front of the Xavier Mansion on the false pretense of a trip to Central Park. With no other option but to face his troubles without a script, Scott walked to the front door, and found Jean greeting him from the other side before he could even knock. It was awkward - terribly, terribly awkward - but Scott was able to get out as much as he could get himself to say, and Jean combed his mind for the rest. It was a consensus, of a sort. To Scott’s (lack of) surprise, they were the only ones of the original X-Men that were at the X-Mansion. As much as Scott wanted to make this reunion more encompassing, he was content with it simply being him and Jean for a little while. It gave them time to catch up, to come to terms with everything that had happened, between graduation and the incident with Arcade, and everything else that had come after that. This process went on for a few more months, at which point other X-Men heard about Scott and Jean being back at the Xavier Institute, and began to follow suit. At long last, Scott was able to do what he had been wanting to for many years now. He proposed to Jean.




”There were times I was lost, and you found me.”

“There were days which were heavy, and you lightened my heart.”

“Through it all, since the day when we met, there was you for me, and me for you. That hasn’t changed. That will never change.”

“Times have been good, and times have been bad, and still, our love has endured and triumphed. I take Scott Summers to be my lawfully wedded husband.”

“I take Jean Grey to be my lawfully wedded wife.”

“Through pain and passion, through sorrow and hope, through death and through life. No matter what tomorrow may bring, we will face it together.”


Scott was the happiest that he had ever been. He could only hope that Jean felt even half as well as he did. The rest of the X-Men all came to the wedding; even Logan, to everyone’s surprise. That man always seemed busy, but the fact that he had made the time to come back for this special occasion meant more to Scott than that grizzled loner probably realized. Kitty was back from her own college adventures, coming out even better (not to mention smarter) than even Scott did. Warren had pulled whatever strings he needed to to make it to the wedding. He and Scott still didn’t see eye to eye on things at all, but Scott had to admire his friend’s willingness to put aside his new life for his friends’ wedding. The three of them had had a bit of an awkward triangle when they were growing up, but it seemed that they had finally put that behind them. Bobby and Hank both showed up of course, and while the former didn’t seem all that interested in coming back to the school for good, it meant the world to Scott that Bobby had decided to come at all. Hank had apparently had his fill of human scientists and the like, and was ready to help mutants for mutants’ sake. All the same, Scott (nor Jean, for that matter) couldn’t express their gratitude to see them all again, for however long or however brief.

Not long after the wedding, a similarly tumultuous though not necessarily as welcome development came in the form of one… Emma Frost. The tragedy of the Massachusetts Academy was well known by now, though even with that in mind the reception was, rather aptly, cold. Kitty had no desire to see the woman who had nearly ruined her life, never mind seeing her take residence at the mansion. The professor did what he could to alleviate tensions, but even he couldn’t avoid the exchange of harsh words at numerous junctures. At Jean’s urging, though, and reflecting upon his experiences in college, Scott decided to side with Emma, if only to see what came of it. Everyone had the potential for redemption within them, and it appeared that Emma was willing to embrace a better version of herself. More complicated were the five girls that Emma had brought with her from the incident, all of whom looked like herself. While the explanation that they were clones of Emma was the most straightforward and understandable one (but still quite definitely insane), it didn’t make it any easier to accept Emma and her “children” into the Xavier Institute, or to the X-Men. Emma’s arrival made Scott realize that the Xavier Institute was in fact a school as it had started to become when he left, one that mutants could come to not only for safe haven, but to learn about themselves and how to live in a world that hates and fears them. The more Scott thought about it, the more familiar it started to sound… and that wasn’t so bad. But even with this homecoming for the X-Men, Scott couldn’t bring himself to commit to being a superhero like he had with the X-Men in their teenage years, or that that was what the X-Men should go back to doing as a whole. The world was different now, and it called for a different X-Men… a new X-Men.





Most of Scott’s peers didn’t share his opinion, though a few could see where he was coming from. Not about to let his schooling go to waste, Scott looked into the digital sphere, recognizing it for the part firebrand, part melting pot of most of the fight for rights in this era. Social media won hearts and minds more than TV, and certainly more than radio. If mutants were to find a voice representative of themselves in that infinite cacophony, the X-Men needed to fill that void. With that said, Scott was a complete bit of a mess when it came to computers, let alone the age of Instagram and Facebook. Helpful as Jean was with her own social activism, Scott’s real ally in this endeavor was Kitty, who knew more than a few things about putting yourself on the web. With her help, Scott was able to launch “The X-Factor”, a platform for mutants to come on to speak their peace about themselves, about the latest episode of that show everyone loved (or hated), about society itself; just about everything was on the table, for people who had never had a recognizable voice until now. For Scott, pursuing new platforms like this one was how they were going to best tackle the problems of today, from mounting paranoia over the rise of evolved humans populations to the looming cloud of Empire 88 and its public faces that hadn’t faded from the public eye. The rest of the X-Men took steps to advancing mutant rights in their own way, all of them committed to the same goal. The X-Men had returned, and they were here to stay.

When that thing had come to New York City, Scott realized it was as good a time as ever to stop kidding himself and put that costume on. True to the nature of the times, though, he arrived on the scene in something new, sleek, and more importantly, didn’t paint a big blue-and=gold target on his chest. It seemed that being a bona fide superhero was in Scott’s DNA just as much as being a mutant. It was the same for Jean, Kitty, and all the others who came with him to help rescue people from the aliens ravaging New York City. It didn’t matter if they were mutants; the X-Men saved people, period. Scott had to admit, he wondered what it would be like to fight aliens like this, getting into the things that Superman, Wonder Woman and those types did. He even met them for a brief respite once these things had been driven from Earth. Inspiring and extraordinary as they were, that life wasn’t for Scott. The professor, Jean, Lee… especially Jean… had helped him see that.


Fall, Current Day

In the following years, Scott joined the faculty proper of the Xavier Institute, recognizing that he needed to be at the head of the academic part of their dream if he wanted to consider himself the leader of the X-Men. He took up teaching social studies, perhaps to no one’s surprise. While the professor had developed a curriculum (of sorts…) in Scott’s absence, it was... wanting, to put it lightly. He leveraged his own experience as the foundation for what mutants ought to learn about relating to the history of their species and their culture, though he also took steps to interview students and mutants in Westchester and beyond to get a bigger picture of what they should be preparing their students for. The world was becoming an increasingly dangerous place for mutants, even more than before. The least Scott could do was arm their students with the knowledge to prepare themselves for it.

The X-Men - though Jean and Scott faced it more than anyone - became more and more sought after by the metahuman and metahuman-adjacent groups at large. The Justice League, The Protectorate, Oscorp, Excalibur, the Hellfire Society of all things. They wanted them to be a part of their team, help grow and expand their agenda to mutants, or simply to have their expertise. The Protectorate was perhaps the most egregious of these. Folding mutants into the status quo of “legal” superheroes would be one of the greatest PR stunts that they would pull off ever since Alexandria replaced Captain Atom as their poster child. Being on good terms with Alex was certainly tempting to Scott as well, though he knew better than to think that that would stick. More pointedly, Scott knew what the state was capable of. Worse, he knew what it was incapable of. He could never in good conscience pledge himself to that path. He would not think any less of X-Men (or any mutant) who decided to change sides, though he was glad to see that everyone was in solidarity with him on this. It was that simple. The likes of the Justice League weren’t for Scott either. No matter how many times he tried to explain to them, they seemed to have great difficulty understanding that the X-Men being a part of the Justice League would not make life better for them. If anything, it would make things worse on both sides: the Justice League, for not only willingly, but proudly harboring mutants, and the X-Men for attempting to color themselves as the self-proclaimed guardians of the Earth. The mutant cause was enough for Scott to have in his life, though he wasn’t above becoming friends with these other heroes. The X-Men needed every ally that they could find.





The first generation of new mutants at the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters are finally ready. With Jean, Kitty, and the rest of the X-Men, Scott can only hope that they are able to do for these kids that Charles Xavier hadn’t been able to do for them. On one hand, no child should be forced to become a “superhero”, wearing garish costumes that they didn’t make or want to wear themselves, to fight people whose only desire is to see their very existence erased from this world, from history. On the other hand… there is no other hand. It was amputated the day these children were born as mutants. There was only one way: forward.


Role Play Sample:

(These events took place two years prior to the beginning of the roleplay and is considered to be canon.)