Shine told the others what happened to her on the way home, and, of course, Scott scolded her for going off alone.
"I helped 10 people escape," she said, quietly. Not even angrily.
Scott frowned. "Well, that is the only reason I'm not being harsh."
"This is you not being harsh?" Wally said. "Can't you just back off?"
Scott took the hint mostly because he knew better than to push it with Wally if he got mad.
"Is Storm okay yet?" Rogue asked.
"Still not wakin' up," Logan said tightly. "She must have way overdone it."
"She alive, at least," Gambit said.
"I feel like you say that every time you leave Genosha," Shine said.
"Every time we leave, it true," Gambit said.
"I hope ve at least got the information ve needed out of all this," Kurt said. "You vould think I vould be used to this danger by now. How do you all do this all the time?"
"I guess we try not to think about it," Rogue said.
"I did get one lead," Mystique spoke, finally. "Something called A-List Supplies."
"That sounds like a sports supply store," Wally said.
"For the last time, it's deceptively innocent sounding," Mystique said.
"It always is," Shine said knowingly. "Like big brother is watching. Or using words like Equality or Social Justice."
"What's wrong with equality?" Rogue said.
"In measuring ingredients? Nothing," Shine said. "But if we are all equal, we are all replaceable. No two real things are exactly alike. My mother once told me a story about a lecture she was at, where a man said 1 does not = 1, because no two things are the same, so they cannot be equal. Even two rocks are not the same. Heck, in cooking, if you followed the directions, you still cannot measure by the grain exactly equal. Different batches of cookies come out different, no matter what. Even if we could measure it the same, we might overcook it. Equality does not exist qualitatively."
"Makin' my head hurt," Rogue said.
"I believe the concept of equality is quantitative not qualitative," Emma Frost said.
"Yeah, like having one of one thing and one of the other is an equal amount," Kitty said. "It's not saying they're the same, duh."
"Okay, Kitty, then how do we use it to apply to people?" Shine said.
"I'm pretty sure equal rights just means we have the same amount of rights, not that we're treated like the same thing," Kitty said.
"That is how our founding fathers intended it," Shine said. "But people keep pushing the definition more to the other side, saying we're all equal in every other way. That no one can be preferable to anyone else for any reason. You have your truth--I have mine. We're all winners. You know, that kind of crap." She gestured. "That's quite blatantly a lie, isn't it? We can't treat people like that without stripping them of all value. The Bible actually teaches too that we each have certain amounts of gifts, some less, some more, just so that we are not all replaceable. God gives us each an amount of ability for our lives. If we all had the same, either we'd suffocate because we'd have too much of a thing, or we'd starve for not having enough of it. Each of us have a need to meet and an amount of need we have to get back. If it were the same, we'd be like some cube, unable to do anything except function in that exact way. But we're more like a puzzle."
