3,601Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or any particular Marvel properties. I'm so glad Deadpool was a good movie. I'd been hearing Deadpool in Ryan Reynolds' voice since X-Men Origins anyway, so I'm happy he put it down so well. Well done, sir. I've already given you my money, and now I tip my internet cap to you.
Chapter 2: First Impressions
It took two weeks for something else worthwhile to happen.
After my first day, I mostly kept to myself, kept my head down and tried to get my bearings of just how the school worked. The only person I knew at that point my age was Ruth, but that girl was seriously hard to find! Who'd have thought a blind girl wearing a cloth wrapped around her eyes wouldn't stick out? Anywhere else, she most certainly would have.
In the meantime, I got to learn a bit more about some of my teachers, specifically Miss Pryde. She wasn't terribly strict, but she knew her shit and she expected everyone to perform accordingly in her class. As long as you shut up, paid attention, and proved that you were at least trying to pick up on what she was teaching you during her lectures, she would like you. She'd at least tolerate you.
I'd started from behind the eight-ball to begin with when I'd thrown a profanity-laden temper-tantrum right outside of her class on day one, but no other outbursts since then coupled with my honestly wanting to learn about the guts of computers and other pieces of tech made her soften up on me fairly quickly.
That was good, because from what I'd picked up about her in passing, she was some kind of badass, working with the X-Men since she was my age with a surprisingly versatile power. Who'd have thought phasing through things was so awesome.
…Actually, her power sounded awesome by itself, without knowing that she could completely ruin a person or a machine's insides just by passing through. That was just icing on the cake.
Another plus, I didn't have to go out of my way to find a way to learn how to use my powers. Apparently it was part of the curriculum, and every student was given an instructor suited to showing them how their abilities worked.
I was getting half of that through the classes I'd chosen, and the other half would come in time once I started figuring out what was physically possible or beyond my limits.
My training was annoying. Not the practice itself, but that it never accomplished one of its goals, which was to drain me of most of my day's power supply. By the time training was supposed to happen, I was close to overloaded, just like I was the first day I got my powers back home. Light was everywhere, all the time. The only way I could have gotten away from it would have been to shut myself up in a closet or something.
It would have been easy for a teacher to slack off with my exercises, but Miss Pryde never did. She tried to keep me on my toes, doing her level best to exhaust me while making sure I actually got something out of the things she made me do. It was not an easy task. It was hard to tell if she expected anything in particular out of me as far as my progress went. She never said anything good or bad. Not until I brought it up to her myself.
I came up to her after the end of one of our hardware engineering classes, trying to take advantage of the short time I had between students from my class leaving and students from the next class filing in, "Miss Pryde, why are you working with me on my powers?" I asked her outright, "I mean, I get that it's not really a control thing with me. More like a resource management thing, but you already teach a class with me in it."
She didn't seem offended or defensive about it, instead smiling at me, "I advise one of the student squads, and one of my kids say you have to be on our team. She said it a few days before you even showed up on my class roster," Wow. Weird, "Now, I'm not going to just take her word for it, but I've been observing you for a while in class and when you're training your powers. I don't think it's such a bad idea."
An X-Men training squad? Me? I wanted to call bullshit on the spot. I wanted to yell and cheer about it. That was incredible news.
"I can't fight," I told her, and I wanted myself to shut up. Why was I trying to convince her not to take me on?
"What do you think the squads are for?" She replied, "They're to train potential X-Men. Trust me, I'll teach you how to fight."
She seemed so confident about it. And it was what I'd come to the Institute to learn in the first place, to at the very least learn how to defend myself. That didn't make me any less nervous about the idea, but my nerves were more excitement and disbelief than real fear.
XxX
A few years before I showed up, the Institute was just a school. It was a place for kids with powers that they couldn't safely control or hide. A safe place.
As it turns out, this school was not fucking safe. At all.
It had been attacked more times than most students knew, and I'd heard about at least three separate instances from them since I'd been there.
Well, after one of the last few times (we'd been attacked again since this move was made), all students were to be taught at least basic self-defense, and everyone was to be taught how to master their powers.
Some students in particular that volunteered and showed an aptitude for what was needed were offered the chance to be X-Men and go through their training program.
I had done none of this. I was asked to join by one of the X-Men in charge of a student team, with only two weeks of standard self-defense and power-control courses under my belt.
I felt so out of place as I was led into a gigantic metal room. It looked like it was the size of an empty, full-scale arena, with some kind of big, weird platform in the middle. It looked kind of like a round stage.
Waiting there were three other students, all wearing similar uniforms to mine. I tugged at the weird form-fitting outfit. It had a light and dark blue color scheme. Design-wise, everyone else's seemed a bit different in some way.
When we walked up, two of the students stared at me, not helping with my sense of self-consciousness. The third one was Ruth. Huh. Go figure. Seriously, how the hell was she on a combat team if she couldn't even see? As for the other two students, one was a Japanese girl with long black hair. The other was a lanky boy with red hair that would have been better defined as the bedhead-special.
"Hey Miss Pryde," He said, taking note of my presence, "So this is the new guy?"
Miss Pryde grinned at him and leaned over on me with her forearm on my shoulder. Man, she was short. Or maybe I was just tall? "So new. Super-new. Still got that new kid smell and everything," She told her team, "This is Bellamy."
The Japanese girl crossed her arms over her chest and looked me over, pursing her lips in thought. It didn't seem like she knew what to make of this, "I don't know what I was expecting when Ruth kept saying things about some 'Bellamy' person."
"All good things, I hope," I said, waving at Ruth until I realized that she couldn't see me, "She's pretty much the only person I've had any kind of conversation with since I've been here."
"How's that been?"
"Really confusing."
"Yep."
Professor Pride moved between the four of us to make sure she had all of our attention, "Since we're all going to be working together, why don't we introduce ourselves and give each other a little rundown of what we can all do," She turned to me "I'll start for the benefit of our new guy. My name is Kitty Pryde. Shadowcat in the field. My power is intangibility."
To demonstrate, she sank partially into the floor down to her knees before reemerging. I had already seen her come through a wall before, so I wasn't surprised. It was still a neat power.
"I can pass through walls, gunfire… pretty much anything," She continued to explain, "If I don't want it to touch me, it won't."
With that being said, the group fell silent. I figured she was leaving the floor open for someone else to introduce themselves, so I decided to pick up where I left off. It wasn't like I was shy about who I was or what I did.
"Well, as you guys know already, I'm Bellamy. Bellamy Marcher," I said, shrugging before I gave the best explanation of my powers that I could, "I absorb light and then do… stuff with it," I didn't mean to be vague on purpose. Just saying that I could fire energy blasts and use light like instant steroids didn't sound as cool as it actually was in practice.
My offer was enough of an olive branch extension for the others to jump on in, "Hisako Ichiki," The Japanese girl said simply, giving me her name, "I can create psionic armor to fight with."
As a demonstration, a blue armor made of some kind of raw energy formed around Hisako. Her body was safely insulated inside with plenty of space between the core where she was and the outside world. That was pretty damn cool. I always thought she had the most useful power out of all of us.
"Whoa," The stupid part of me that wanted to know what it felt like told me to reach out and touch it, so I did.
"Hey, hands off!"
Unfortunately, the place where I put my hand was where her chest would have been had the armor not been there. Had Miss Pryde not put her hand on my shoulder at that moment, I probably would have felt what it was like to get punched in the face with superpowers a lot sooner than I did. Her armored fist passed right through me. It was a weird feeling.
"Easy, now!" Miss Pryde said, putting herself between me and Hisako before she could try to hit me again.
"I'm so sorry!" I apologized, wincing at all of the good such a thing would have done after I'd basically groped her. I was assuming that she had in fact felt that much, "I just wanted to see what it felt like! Not your boobs, I mean! I was talking about the armor!"
I am just so fantastic at those first impressions. I don't think Hisako ever quite forgave me for that one.
The lone other male in the group had a good laugh at her expense. He must have had a pretty good rapport with her to get away with it, but he seemingly didn't care. Wiping a tear away from his eye, he introduced himself.
"Eddie Tancredi," He said before pointing to himself as he slowly lifted off of the floor into the air, "The best flyer out of any student in the whole system, just so you know."
My kind of introduction. Whether it was true or it wasn't, he seemed like a good-natured kind of guy.
"Nice to meet you, Bellamy," Eddie landed, walked up, and gave me a pat on the back, "It's good to finally have another guy in the group. Try not to have Hisako kill you before we even have our first team session, would you?"
Hisako rolled her eyes and corrected her teammate, "Seriously though, it's good to have another person in the group, period," She was still mad at me, but at least she recognized that I'd be useful, what with my awesome powers and all, "We were totally undermanned until now."
"How undermanned?" I asked. I had not heard anything about that before I'd agreed to come to the meeting, "…Just for curiosity's sake."
Professor Pride chuckled and answered for me, "Most of the other student squads have six students. We've made do with three until now. You bring us to a grand total of four, that is, if you decided to join. It's still your choice."
"You were fighting other squads 3-on-6 until now?"
"Well, not fighting them directly. You'll almost never do that. More like, competing in mock missions, or just comparing scores from team exercises."
That was still terrible for them! The obvious advantage numbers would give every other squad in almost any kind of mission setting, exercises were likely based somewhat on speed, and speed was probably weighed heavily in whatever scoring system they had. Of course teams with more manpower would finish their tasks sooner.
I had to ask the obvious question, "Why did you have a team with three kids if almost everybody else had six?"
Miss Pryde chuckled in a dark sort of way that I hadn't come to expect from her, "Because the headmistress is a bitch," Hearing that was a surprise. Miss Pryde until then had always been strict, but never really vulgar. It must have shown on my face, because she elaborated, "Emma Frost and I aren't fond of each other. It's a very long story."
I didn't know how much of an understatement this was at the time. I didn't even know other superheroes could hate each other. I would learn. Oh, dear God would I learn.
At the time though, I didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole, and there was one member of the team who hadn't said anything yet, despite wearing a very pleased smile on her blindfolded face, "So I saw what everyone else can do already," I said, walking up to Ruth. I was already kind of familiar with her, "What are your powers?"
I had never asked her before because it seemed rude. I don't know. It didn't sound stupid in my head, I swear! I thought it was part of some kind of mutant etiquette. For all I knew, there were people who would take offense to me asking that question, and with my luck I would have run into them my very first time asking!
Ruth wasn't offended, she reached out and grabbed one of my hands with both of hers. What an odd girl, "You do not need to be so nervous, Bellamy. No. Yes, pardon me, she already knows you will be a wonderful teammate. Thank you."
I laughed, trying to play off what she'd just said. I couldn't have been that easy to read, "I'm not nervous."
"You talk and smile a lot when you are nervous, yes."
Goddamn it. How did she even know I was smiling? She couldn't SEE!
Eddie sighed and leaned over Ruth, planting his hands on her shoulders from behind, "…Ruth's powers are… eh. Psychic powers are freaking weird, man," He looked down at the girl, frowning down at her head, "It's really annoying getting your mind read all the time."
"So she can read minds?" I said, figuring she must have picked up on how I was feeling that way. That helped a few things make sense. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
"She can also see the future, to a certain degree," Miss Pryde told me, "It's very useful, but confusing. Sometimes we can figure it out, and sometimes it sneaks up on us, kind of like with you. She's the one who told us you would be on this team in the first place, before you ever even came here."
Something about hearing that you were supposed to be somewhere was encouraging. That even if it was just blind, random chance in reality, someone was waiting on you to show up to do something, it made you feel good.
I laughed, none too humbly, "It's destiny. I was destined to be here and take this team to all new heights!" I crowed aloud, "…Does this team even have a name or a number? Are we Team 5 or something?"
"The Paladins."
It had a ring to it, kind of. It sort of seemed like it was a little 'try hard'. After I heard all of the squad names, it felt like the people who came up with them were usually trying too hard.
"Huh. Not bad," I said, before clapping my hands and rubbing them together in anticipation, "Now I don't know about you guys, but I came here to learn how to not die. I'm all suited and booted. The quicker we can make me not suck in a fight, the better."
As if I needed the motivation, Eddie was right there hyping me up further, shoving me around, "Yeah! I hear you! Don't be the anchor dragging us down, man!"
Eddie could have been an awesome hype-man. If I hadn't been jazzed before, I definitely was after a few good shoves. It wasn't even fake. I was bouncing in place, raring to go, "I'm ready. It's what I came here to do in the first place. Hit me with your best shot," Wrong choice of words, as Hisako armored up her right arm and drew it back for a punch, "No! I meant with the training, not literally!"
XxX
It helped to think of training as P.E. class, only turned up to eleven. Such an idea wasn't really that far from the truth, really, given the fact that most kids used their powers during gym too. It was just that, in most of our gym classes there weren't dangerous holograms trying to kill us all.
You had to compartmentalize when it came to the training, or at least I did, because it was insane.
I flinched hard at the sound of an energy blast coming from a 20 foot purple and blue robot from where I was taking cover alongside Ruth. She wasn't exactly a combatant, and I wasn't trained particularly well yet, so we were meant to watch and wait for an opportunity for the most part.
In other words, I was basically her bodyguard and the last resort, at least for this session. I was working as hard as I could to get up to speed in the two weeks I had been on the squad, but to say that I could carry the lion's share of work at any given moment would have been an expectation that I probably couldn't have met.
We did alright for the little bit we'd been given earlier. There had been some human foot soldiers sent out way. Ruth had been able to pinpoint their location by reading their minds, and I had ambushed the bejesus out of them. Almost no collateral damage. Barely a single shot fired when they retaliated.
Small Captain Morgan pose for victory.
That being said, thirty minutes after that part of the mission, it was annoying just sitting back and hiding during the deciding moments of the simulation, mainly because in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't going to help any of us.
"Why are we even hiding?" I asked aloud as I took cover from a 'safe' distance with Ruth, "This thing can sense where we are. After it's done with them, it's coming straight for us. Then we're really screwed."
I got my answer from the cosmos themselves apparently, but it was just from the Danger Room's observation area, "I'll stop the program when it looks too far-gone. I don't expect you to win."
There might not have been anything worse she could have said to me at that point in the simulation, "What the fuck do you mean, you don't expect us to win!?"
"I want you to get used to dealing with odds that aren't in your favor," She explained, not seeing the problem with what she'd told me. "That's the way they'll usually be if you need to be called in to begin with, so I want you to be prepared."
I hated losing. The only thing I hated more than losing was the thought of failing at something before I'd even gotten to try.
I put my hand up to the communicator in my ear to reach out to the others, "Wing!" I said to my airborne teammate. I could see him in the air, a flying Sentinel in hot pursuit. Those things could move for gigantic robots, "Come get me!"
"Kinda busy right now, Sol!"
Sol was short for Solaris. As in, pertaining to the sun. Get it? Because I absorb light… and the sun is the most bountiful source of light on Earth. Haha! Whoever came up with that must have been a genius, Eddie.
I hated that name, but I had no luck coming up with my own, so that was what I was given.
"Fine, where's Armor?"
"Not up here! Look down!"
I was able to spot her, not too far away from where the Sentinel was chasing Wing in the air. She was on the ground, trying to follow along underneath on-foot. There wasn't much she could do but try and stay close, "Gotcha. Come on," I said to Ruth, grabbing her hand, "Stay with me! We're moving!"
Surprisingly, the city block that had been created in the Danger Room as our battlefield hadn't been too terribly destroyed. Sure, a few buildings were missing some walls, and the corner that had been blown off of that one complex was going to compromise its structural integrity until someone tore it down, but for a bunch of stupid kids, I felt like we were doing fine.
When Ruth and I made it to Hisako, she wasn't particularly enthused to see us. Probably because the plan had the two of us staying far away from the heart of the conflict.
"Sol, what the hell?" She demanded to know.
I pointed up at the Sentinel still trying to shoot Eddie out of the sky, "Throw me at that stupid thing."
Hisako's eyes lit up for a moment. If it was any other situation, she probably wouldn't have needed any explanation as to why this was a fair course of action. However, in the middle of a scored simulation, logic took hold, "As much as that would make my day right now, why?"
I pointed at myself, more specifically, my blue eyes.
By that time I had learned that my eye color correlated to how much juice I was working with. If I was low on energy, my eyes were red. Yellow meant I had a decent amount of power. Not much, but enough to be okay with doing things. Green meant I was in good shape. When my eyes were blue, I started feeling really itchy, fidgety, and uncomfortable.
"I'm overcharged, but I can't shoot it from here and hit it. It's moving too much," I told Hisako before I pointed at the Sentinal shooting energy blasts at Wing in the air, "Giant flying robot that you can't touch to tear apart," I pointed at Wing himself, "Flying guy with no other powers," I felt like I'd said all that I needed to, "Throw me."
Being grabbed by one of Hisako's armor arms felt strange. It was like being grabbed by nothing. No heat, no cold, just the feeling of restraint around you, which made sense because the armor was psionic. Mental energy wasn't material, so it wasn't like it would have traditional physical properties to it.
I felt like a cannonball all loaded up and ready to be fired, but I just had to make sure everything would go as smoothly as I needed it to.
"For the love of God, don't throw me like a girl," I said as I felt her cock her arm back to send me flying, "Throw me right."
I could feel the grip around me tighten a bit as Hisako turned her head to look at me, "What?"
There was more ice on her tone than Mr. Drake's backside.
Hisako was not pleased, but she could be as mad as she wanted to be. She wasn't the one who was about to be launched by a girl in mental power armor. Her posture for throwing me seemed off if I had plans on actually getting anywhere near the Sentinel. I wanted to make sure this was actually going to work, seeing as how we were only going to have one shot.
"Don't throw me like a girl. Throw me right!" I said with all of the miniscule authority I could muster, "If you throw me like shit and I go head-over-heels I'm not gonna be able to control myself or even see where I'm going. I still need to blast the damn thing, which means I need to see where I'm going so I can aim."
She seemed like she was a thought away from spiking me into the ground like a football, "You know, you're not in charge and you're not as smart as you think you are. I'm getting sick of your mouth."
I wasn't trying to be the smartest guy in the room. I saw a solution and if I was being a dick it was to best get my point across. It had worked for me so far.
Either way, we could argue semantics all day long afterwards, but at the moment, we were on the clock, "Be as sick as you want, just keep your goddamn wrist straight!" I snapped, "Throw, woman!"
And throw she did. I'm pretty sure a big part of her was hoping that she'd missed so that I'd go splat, but her aim was true enough to get me where I needed to be.
Damn, she had good aim. Either that, or Eddie saw me coming and guided it into my path. I barely had time to pump as much power as I could to my hands before I barreled right through the Sentinel's head, blowing it clean apart with a close-range shot. Chunks of metal and computer guts flew everywhere.
Great. We killed it… or deactivated it… or whatever you did to robots. One problem solved.
The next thing to take care of was my little falling problem, because I didn't have wings.
Any excitement I had over actually contributing to a successful objective for once quickly faded when I realized that gravity was a thing.
"Mission's over! Stop the simulation!" I yelled, as I saw myself hurtling back to earth at an alarming rate, "Off! End! Stop! Anything!"
My voice may have cracked.
Before I could hit the ground, a pair of arms put me in a full nelson, "Tancredi backs up all the way to the wall! It's almost gone, and he makes the catch! The crowd goes wild!"
Fast Eddie for the win.
The rest of the way down was comparatively gentle as Eddie guided me. Enough so that as he descended I could touch the ground with my kicking feet and come to a running stop, or a tripping and falling one at least.
Face down, ass up. It was not a graceful landing.
The feel of the ground changed from rough, uneven concrete to cold, smooth metal as laughter filled the Danger Room.
"So if I throw like a girl, does that mean you scream like one?" Fair enough. Hisako had to get her shot in while she could.
I pushed myself off of the floor with as much dignity as I could. What did I really have to be ashamed of, after all? I helped put a Sentinel down. That had to mean something, "If screaming like a girl means you fight like a champion, then yes, I screamed like a girl."
Eddie flew around us aimlessly in the air trying to work the kinks out of his arms, "I need to lift more weights," He said, "I almost dislocated my shoulders trying to catch you like that."
"In the NFL, that would not have counted as a catch," I said, touching at an abrasion on the side of my face. That was going to leave some road rash scabs later, "You didn't maintain possession all the way to the ground. That was a drop."
Eddie scoffed and flipped me the middle finger as he landed, "You're lucky it wasn't a 'splat'."
Our X-Men advisor Miss Pryde walked into the room all smiles. It was nice to see that something I'd had a hand in could make someone proud of me. Not enough of that going around lately.
"Well, it wasn't pretty, or safe, but you got the job done in the end, so way to go!" She applauded as she walked up to the four of us. It was then that she noticed the scowl on my face, "What's wrong with you, Sol?"
Oh, she could try and church it up with a pretty smile all she wanted to now. I didn't forget what she'd said earlier, "I'm still mad at you. You were expecting us to lose!"
Miss Pryde rolled her eyes at my ability to hold a grudge. What did she expect? It hadn't even been fifteen minutes, "Four students aren't expected to be able to take on two Sentinels their first time around!" It wasn't that easy to get me off of her back. I just stared at her until she felt uncomfortable enough to say more, "You're not the only ones who've done this simulation."
I felt my eyebrow automatically go up in curious interest, "And how many of the others failed it so far?" I asked.
You know. Because I was competitive and hated losing at things.
"Ten."
"Out of?"
She hesitated, "…Nineteen," For good reason, because after hearing that, I was livid.
"You didn't think we could pass a test with a 48% success rate?"
Once again, Hisako saw her chance to take a jab, and I couldn't begrudge her the opportunity, "Ooh, you can do basic math?"
"Making a point here, Armor!" I said to her before looking to Miss Pryde again, "As far as odds go, that's not even that bad!"
Yes, they weren't the best odds. Definitely not a sure thing. But it was damn near 50-50! I'd put my money on myself if the chances of success were that high.
Apparently being fussed at by a high school kid, even one with superpowers, wasn't even close to enough to make Miss Pryde fret, "To be fair, there are less of you, and your powers aren't nearly as destructive as some of the other training squads," She gestured to me and Hisako, "You and Armor have the only powers that can be considered offensive."
The two of us looked at each other and frowned. At least, I saw her frown. I'm pretty sure I did too, but the throbbing from the side of my face made it hard to know for sure.
"…Alright. Good point. I'll accept that."
"I'm so glad."
Sarcasm was unbecoming of a person in a position of authority. That being said, it was part of what made Miss Pryde an awesome teacher.
"Hey, telepathy is offensive," Eddie chimed in, poking Ruth's shoulder for emphasis, "I'm offended every time Blindfold reads my mind."
"Man, don't pick on Ruth," I said, moving over to the girl we were talking about to throw an arm around her, "She's the only one out of you three that actually wants me on the team."
"I want you on the team," Hisako said, "We didn't have any meat shields until you got here."
"If anyone's a meat shield it's you. That's basically what your power makes you good for."
"Better than a power that doesn't work if it's overcast outside or the sun goes down."
"Shows what you know. Clouds don't affect it that much, and the moon still gives off some light that I can use, so bite me."
It was hard to figure out just how pissed off at me Hisako was at any given moment. We argued all the time, but I never really felt any sort of real animosity toward her. It was just… automatic. I did honestly like her as a person. I thought her powers were cool, and it was nice that there was someone my stupid jokes annoyed enough to banter back at me.
Talking to brick wall excuses for living beings wasn't fun.
Eddie and I would egg each other on when it came to being stupid, and that was great and all, but there was something to be said for the challenge that came with going back and forth with someone and trying to come out on top.
You know. Because I was competitive and hated losing at things.
XxX
My vision slowly came back into focus, giving me a good view of the gym floor… with drops of red on it. The coppery taste of blood sat on my tongue. I ran my tongue over the fresh cut that had opened on the inside of my bottom lip and winced.
On one knee, I looked over and saw Mr. Logan stood a short ways away looking bored. Sorry if my pugilistic endeavors weren't enough to tickle your fancy, you psycho.
Mr. Logan, or Wolverine as he's otherwise known, was the main self-defense teacher. Yes, the guy who met me and got into a severe car accident because of my driving within five minutes of making my acquaintance was the person who was in charge of beating me to a pulp… or teaching me how to fight.
"Get back up, kid. Your round's not over yet," He demanded, gesturing to the clock that still had a little more than three minutes left on it. I had been failing epically for less than two to try and land as many good shots on him as I could.
I hate losing. I don't know if I've said this enough.
Eventually I got sick of it and decided, hey, I can take a few shots just as long as I get to land one good one. Just one, good enough for me to hear his jaw click or all of the air fly out of his gut. That was a mistake I wouldn't forget anytime soon.
Ever felt what it's like to get punched in the face by a guy with an adamantium-coated skeleton? Padded headgear only does so much to protect your head from something like that. He might as well have used a bat. Thank God I had a mouthpiece in.
I hopped back up to my feet to try and make a show that I wasn't actually hurt, "Don't knock my teeth out," I requested, carefully sliding back toward with my hands up and my chin tucked low.
He made a show of slipping my punches without even moving his feet before he popped me in the forehead with two solid jabs and got out of my way, "Move your head more. Just keeping your hands up won't help if you don't make yourself a harder target."
There were about two minutes left. I was going to get the most out of it, even if it only entailed me getting my ass kicked. I hate losing, even if it's against someone in something I have no chance it.
Every other day, students could attend self-defense classes. Strictly hand-to-hand. No powers. It was optional to take. Even if you weren't interested in it, everyone learned the basics and practiced with each other. For those of us who did have an interest, we were given more hands-on instruction.
We would actually fight the teacher. Oh, joy of joys.
It had been the first time that I'd been to the advanced class, and I was excited. I volunteered first, because I was full of energy, which was a mistake. Knowing how to protect yourself a bit did not prepare you for something even as light as a spar against the Wolverine.
I pressed forward again. His footwork that he'd been teaching us over the past few weeks had done all of nothing for me to get him out of position, but he said to keep moving, so I that was what I did. Even though he'd been punching with the same speed and force as the one that had dropped me minutes before, he didn't land another clean blow for the rest of the round.
Small victories, though. With seconds left on the clock, his arms stopped defending quite as tightly around his stocky body as before, and his chin stopped being tucked so tightly to his chest. It was an opening that I jumped all over, even though it could have been a trap. What was the worst that could happen? He'd hit me again? I was already bleeding.
I jumped in and landed a hard roundhouse kick to the body and a hard follow-up jab as I straightened back up. The alarm signaling the end of the round went off, and every bump and bruise he'd given me over the last five minutes started throbbing at once painfully with every beat of my heart.
He totally let me have that one. I knew it. But I really didn't care. Actually making solid contact almost made me do a little dance while I was pulling off my gloves and headgear. That had been a brutal experience, and a nifty little introduction into real fist-fighting.
I passed a kid black kid my age with glasses who was next up to take on Mr. Logan.
"Your turn," I said, smiling at him. He nodded at me gravely and leveled his focus on the instructor that had kicked me to and fro for the last five minutes. Following that was probably an unenviable position, but how could anyone wind up much worse than I did?
I sat down on the sideline, ignoring the quiet laughs from some of the other guys in the room and dabbed at my nose and mouth, pulling my hand away to see the skin coated in my own blood. My nose felt like it was on fire, and I wasn't going to be eating anything with salt until the cut in my mouth closed up.
"Do any of those hurt?"
I looked over and saw some of the other students that were sitting in on the advanced hand-to-hand course. Thus far, most of my student interaction had come from Hisako, Eddie, and Ruth, because I was on their squad. Most others didn't bother saying much to me, because why would they? There was no reason to. I wasn't particularly interesting. I didn't come with some kind of backstory as to why I was there that was so novel everyone had to take notice. I was just… there.
The question came from a girl with brown hair done in a long ponytail. She spoke with a slight accent that led me to believe she came from some sort of Spanish-speaking country. Her name was Sofia. I'd heard it used enough that day to remember.
"Uh, you're gonna have to tell me what all of 'those' are," I said, frowning. I could see her cringing as she looked my way directly while I was talking. I must have been quite the sight, "I only know about the nose and the mouth."
She looked at who I figured was her friend, a blond girl who seemed markedly more hesitant to look at the mess that was my face. She must have been more timid, "Your nose, mouth, eye, and God knows where else you got hit that we can't see," Sofia said.
"Yes. All of it hurts."
I would feel better after I slept, if what Dr. McCoy told me before was correct. That in of itself was another problem, but one thing at a time.
"So is this normal, or did I just catch him on a really bad day?" I asked, continuing to make conversation as the other kid from before did his sparring round. To my consternation, he did a lot better technique-wise than I did, and it looked like Logan went a lot easier on him than he did on me.
"I don't know. It's definitely not normal," Sofia told me, watching the match as it progressed, "Mr. Logan never beat one of us that badly during a spar before. He would normally just correct us when our form was wrong and continue."
Well he certainly did that for me, if 'correcting my form' meant beating me to a pulp every time I gave him a big enough opening to do so.
"What?" I asked, sort of put off by the idea of being singled out during something as painful as combat practice, "Is… is this like a new guy initiation/hazing thing?"
"I don't think so," Sofia asked, her features scrunching up in what I figured was concern, "Are you certain you're alright?"
Don't look like a punk in front of the girls, Bel. You're a manly gentleman.
"I'm like 60% sure he pulled his punches," I said, trying to focus on the fight and see what this guy was doing that I wasn't that kept Mr. Logan from wailing on him the way he did to me, "I kicked the guy - hard. He barely budged. He's rock-solid. If he'd actually wanted to lay me out, he would have."
I heard a faint 'VRRRR' humming noise and felt a slap against the back of my head. I turned in the direction it came from and saw one of the other guys in the line with a green glow around his hand. Sofia turned to glare at him, only getting what he likely considered a charming grin in return.
"Is that a new guy initiation/hazing thing?" I asked, annoyed, but not flinching or even bothering to rub my head from the contact.
"That's a 'Keller' thing." A blue-haired Asian girl sitting nearby said, scoffing at the juvenile antics of some of the other guys in the class, "You never really get used to that."
Yeah, sometimes it was easy to forget that the Xavier Institute was still a place full of dumbass, impulsive kids. Not all mature, cool, and level-headed like me.
I tried to piece it all together on the spot before I hauled off and shot at him from fifteen feet away over a lineup of people.
This guy thought Sofia was hot, and probably figured I was making some kind of move on her. Not likely, but that was what he thought. Top-of-the-food-chain guys like him never thought any further than a step or two in any direction. He clearly had some kind of crew/posse/unit/whatever-the-fuck-people-were-calling-themselves-these-days, and those guys basically saw me just get my ass handed to me, painting a big ol' target of vulnerability on my back.
Clearly, superhero high school was still high school, complete with all of the familiar dressings and trappings.
Fun times were soon to be had by all.
XxX
One of my worst problems was passing the time.
Not during the day, I mean. There was plenty to do between classes: exploring the Institute, squad training, and more. No shortage of interesting activities there.
Nighttime was a different beast altogether.
When curfew hit, we all had to be inside of our rooms. That was fine, because most people actually slept. Not so much for me, because I was effectively rendered an insomniac courtesy of my powers. The nature of them made it much harder for me to feel physical fatigue.
If I went outside where the amount of energy I took in wasn't so bad at night, I could get myself down from green to red in an hour or so if I didn't stop for anything. But by the time I walked across campus, through the dorm and back to my room to get myself ready to go to bed, my eyes would be yellow again.
Eventually, I just stopped trying to sleep. If it happened, it happened. It was a waste of time to try, and if staying up wound up tiring me out, great! That was the point. It never did though. In the few weeks I had been at the Institute, I had only had more than three hours of sleep once.
It made homework a lot less of a worry. I could knock it out whenever I wanted to. Say for instance, three o'clock in the morning. Why not? It wasn't like there was much else to do.
Fighting the still life became too much to keep at bay with the riveting pastime of studying to use as a weapon against it. One night when I ventured outside of my quarters, I learned that the aforementioned curfew was only as effective as the guards who were awake to enforce it.
As long as I wasn't stupid and didn't decided that running amok on the lawns where all of the goddamn motion sensors and security measures were set up, I had my run of the place.
It was a nice environment for nighttime walks. The air was fresh and clean. It was quiet. What more could you ask for?
…Some entertainment, for one, but a nice stroll around the premises was good enough on most given nights. Beggars couldn't really be choosers.
"Kind of late to be up and about, isn't it?" I heard someone call out to me before I got to the entrance of the hedge maze. From inside, Mr. Logan stepped out, dressed in his more casual attire of jeans and flannel. He nonchalantly lit a cigar as he stepped towards me. Silence reigned until he got enough of his fill of tobacco to raise the point again, "Well? I'm waiting? You got an excuse?"
"H-Have you been watching me this whole time?" I asked, trying to gauge how much trouble I was in.
"I can smell you moving around some nights. Never seem to be up to anything, but the moment you let your guard down around here, something bad happens. So, what are you doing, kid?" He asked again, "The curfew is actually for your protection."
"I can't sleep. Ever," I said bluntly, laying my cards on the table. If I wound up on someone's shit list, so be it. These were extenuating circumstances in my opinion, "I can get like, an hour at most, even if I wear myself down as much as I can. Then I'll just wake right back up."
"A little young to have insomnia, ain'tcha?"
"It's how my powers work," I held up my hand, making it to glow to show him what I could do, "I absorb light. Even moonlight. I haven't gotten around to getting to town to buy curtains that'll shut out the light completely."
"Neat."
"Yeah, I like it. Most of the time, anyway. Side-effect, because there's always light, I'm always charged. I miss sleep."
"And I know how important a good night's rest is for you growing boys."
I blocked a laugh with a snort. Dignified, "So, I'm just gonna ask, because I'm curious. Whether you feel like answering or not… meh," I was already in trouble and thought that he didn't think much of me in the first place. Making it worse wasn't really an issue, "Did I do something to piss you off? Like the car crash. Was that it?"
He seemed confused until a look of realization crossed his face, "This about me stomping eight shades of shit outta you earlier?" He ventured.
"It's about you stomping eight shades of shit out of me… sir."
He took his time to answer. I hadn't taken Mr. Logan as someone who measured his words carefully when I first met him, "I didn't bust you up because I don't like ya. I really don't care one way or the other. I've had enough kids around here latch onto me. Don't really need one more," He explained coolly, "I did what I did because you're one of the only ones takin' it serious."
I thought he was screwing with me at first, "What? You mean the training?" I thought it went without saying that I would. When people were punching at your face, it was intelligent to put your best foot forward, "You told me to fight you. Of course, I'm taking it serious."
"And that's what I'm talkin' about. Everyone else treats it like a class, which it is, but… grr… you know what I mean."
I did. Even most of the students in the advanced course didn't take it that seriously. On the sidelines they would chat and screw around until it was their turn, possibly because of the thought that a teacher would never really hurt them. Maybe it was because I didn't really have any friends in the class, or because I was really interested in the nuances of how to hit and not be hit, but I paid rapt attention.
"What about that one kid, David?" I asked, remembering one of the kids from earlier who did quite well from what I saw, "He did much better than me."
To my surprise, Mr. Logan shook his head, taking a moment to breathe out the smoke from his cigar grumpily, "He's really not learning anything in there. Just standing near me, he knows everything about fighting that I do as long as he's around. S'how his powers work," The man told me, "He'd get a better feel for fighting that'd be more useful to him during team sims than working with me. Nothing'll ever stick because he'll lose it as soon as we get far enough apart. You though. It looked like you wanted to fight. You actually try to pick up what I'm hammering into your head, even when I'm literally hammering it into your head."
Well yeah. That was the entire reason I started attending the school in the first place; to learn how to not get beaten to a pulp by the bad guys, "I'm at superhero school. If I had problems with getting slapped around a bit, I probably signed up for the wrong thing."
Mr. Logan gave me a lopsided grin, his teeth chomping a cigar, "Just needed to make sure," He seemed somehow satisfied by what I'd been saying since the conversation started, "Figured you were gonna tell until the day ended and I hadn't gotten an earful. If I'd have bloodied anyone else's nose like yours, I'd have been sitting in an office having a conversation with Slim and Frost about being too hard on the students."
"I'm no wuss," I replied. Did I really give off the impression that I would snitch instead of trying to solve my own problems? And that wasn't even a real problem. It was just a trial to deal with, "Just as long as I can learn something while you're ripping me to shreds in front of all the other kids, I'll deal with it. I can't wait to make your face look like you did mine. One day."
"Feel free to use that receipt… whenever you're good enough," He said, basically challenging me to get good enough to rearrange his face on my own terms, "…What are you doing right now?"
I looked around at the empty courtyard we were in. Not even the sprits of the dead X-Men and other students that probably haunted the place were awake at that hour, "Not sleeping," I said with a shrug.
"Want to try again right now?"
And that was how I found a new way to spend certain nights when I couldn't sleep: getting my ass handed to me by Wolverine. Apparently he got just as bored as I did at three o'clock in the morning.
Recreational drinking and smoking had to lose its luster at some point, I guess.
XxX
My face had looked worse than it actually was after Mr. Logan had beaten me up the day before. The blood had been the most graphic thing about it after I had washed it all off. Even without the overnight recovery that an actual good night's sleep would have provided me, I had mostly recovered by the next morning, leaving only a few decent bruises behind.
There weren't enough on me to get odd looks from any teachers of students, so I just went about my day going to all of my classes until I was needed elsewhere near the end of the day.
On my way to my destination, I stopped off and grabbed an apple from the cafeteria to munch on while I walked across campus. As I reached the courtyard, a green glow surrounded my apple and yanked it out of my hand, sending it flying somewhere far off-campus with a low-pitched humming noise attached to it.
"You've got to be kidding me," I said louder than I intended. It was just an apple, but it had been a good apple with plenty of crunch to it and everything. I had been enjoying that.
After the day before, I didn't need to turn and look for the person responsible to know who did it. I saw the guilty party walking my way flanked by two other members of his usual crew.
I had been given a quick synopsis of who they were after hand-to-hand training by the blue-haired Japanese girl, Noriko. She was clearly not a fan of them.
The Puerto Rican kid with dreads was Brian Cruz, aka Tag. He was basically the ringleader's number one running buddy with a weird power. Apparently, when he touched someone, he used a form of telepathy that could either repel them away from something, toward something, attract others to them. It was a really convoluted explanation.
The giant guy made of rock was Santo Vaccarro. He was a big-ass rock golem. That was his power. Superhuman strength, as durable as a solid rock structure, basically what you could imagine. According to Noriko, he was the heavy of his squad. That much was easy to see. He was massive, and I was pretty sure that one hit from him would turn me to paste.
That led us to the main man. The one who put the Hellion in the Hellions squad: Julian Keller. Rich, tall, dark, and handsome, with powers that were way too overpowered for someone like him to have. He was telekinetic.
That much should have went without saying by now.
"What do you want?" I asked, still holding up my hand as though there were an apple in it. Hopefully that properly conveyed my annoyance at the situation, "What do you need? What?"
I was irrationally angry about getting an apple yanked out of my hand and thrown a mile away. It was just a stupid apple. No big deal.
…But I wanted it.
When people did things like that to you, you weren't supposed to visibly react. That was what I was taught. Retaliate in your own way later if your pride felt the need to, but don't react and give them the immediate satisfaction – at least, that was what dad said. Thanks dad.
"That was just Julian's way of saying hello," Santo said, grinning at me. It was a weird sight, but hey, open mind.
"You were getting awfully friendly with Sofia yesterday at practice," Julian said, looking at me as though he were turning his nose up.
Okay, my hypothesis and Noriko's rundown of the Julian guy had been correct. He wanted the hot girl I was talking to about getting my ass kicked. So this was about staking his claim? I didn't have time for this. Maybe later, but not right at that moment.
"I'm a people person. I try to be at least," I replied, "Seeing as how I'm on a first-name basis with only three people at this place so far, I figured it was a good idea to introduce myself to more people. Branch out, you know? Like this," I said, reaching out a hand in an effort to extend an olive branch, "Hi, I'm Be-."
"Yeah, I don't care," Julian said, cutting me off without even bothering to look at my hand, "You might want to find someone else to get friendly with. There are plenty of losers for you to sidle up to."
That was what I got for trying to bury the hatchet, "Or…?" As if I needed to be told.
"Just some advice. I'd hate for things to get hard for you around here."
"I probably wouldn't," Santo said, stepping up closer to tower over me, "I wonder what his powers even are."
"Probably something useless," Julian laughed, "At least Alleyne's lame powers kept him from getting a beatdown as bad as this guy got. He probably doesn't even have a squad. Who'd want him after seeing that?" The reminder of seeing me in dire straits yesterday got Santo and Brian to chuckle at my expense.
I would have normally stood there to argue more, as I enjoyed a rousing set of banter now and again, but I had somewhere to be, and I was too mad to be a functional smartass. From there, I completely altered the path of the conversation, "Who's your teacher-advisor?"
Julian seemed befuddled at first that I didn't react to his insult, but quickly recovered, swelling up pridefully, "We're on Miss Frost's Hellions, the top squad in the school. You really must be new, huh?" It was easy to see why his head was so big. He was rich, his powers were awesome, and the school's headmistress had recruited him to be taught by her directly.
I nodded, a thoughtful look on my face as though I were contemplating what to do next. There had been no contemplation. I'd decided what I was going to do the second my apple got launched, "Good. That means I'll get in less trouble for this than I probably should from my advisor."
I quickly pointed my hands in a pair of fists at both Julian and Santo. The former barely had time to react and put up a weak telekinetic film around himself before I fired both cannons and knocked them clear off of their feet.
Brian was too stunned to react to outright defend his friends. Instead he ran to their sides, making sure they were both alright.
Was it petty of me to blast both of those guys in the chest and send them flying halfway across the lawn? Yes. But it was incredibly cathartic. Plus, they could take it. One had a telekinetic force field and the other was literally made of rocks. They were fine. I sandbagged those shots anyway.
In the weeks I had been working with what I could do I had figured out more about my powers. If I fired a blast with my hands open, it exploded on contact. If I did it with my fists, it was concussive.
The more you know.
I knew what I'd been doing, and I'd also knew that sticking around after that was a bad idea. I wasn't getting a free shot twice if a fight broke out. I didn't run, but I definitely walked away briskly while Julian shook the cobwebs off.
"GODDAMN IT, WHERE ARE YOU!?"
I was halfway to the medical wing by the time Julian flew up into the air hollering for me to come out as he tried to spot me from above. Well, that plan failed epically. Showing him up in public only seemed to make the bullseye that had been painted on my chest flash red for him.
"THIS ISN'T OVER!"
Then again, I hadn't beaten him from pillar to post in front of enough people to emasculate him. It was more like I'd gotten a cheap shot in. I was probably going to pay for it later. But I wasn't right then. Live for the moment, and all that jazz.
I had a smile on my face all the way to the medical wing.
XxX
I wasn't as smooth as I thought I was. When I got to where I was headed that day, Emma Frost was waiting for me. Now, I'd never seen her in-person before, as our last encounter hadn't been face-to-face. When I first saw her, I wondered who the lady in the white bustier and cape was, until I heard her speak.
"Ah, Mr. Marcher. You wouldn't happen to know why Mister Keller was flying around the school asking about you, would you?"
Her voice rang familiar in my head, and quickly linked up with all of the other nifty info I'd been getting lately. My blood went cold and the smile was quickly wiped off of my face.
I figured I'd have had at least an hour before I got into trouble.
Whatever. She didn't have anything on me, as long as I played it cool I'd be fine, "Didn't even know he knew who I was," Which was true. Julian didn't know who I was, at least not when we confronted each other. He never said my name once, even when he was rampaging about in search of me.
Miss Frost raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't show that she knew anything more than I was saying, "So you didn't, oh… blast him and Mister Vaccarro in the face in the courtyard about ten minutes ago?"
"Sure didn't."
It wasn't in the face. It was in the chest, and it was a baby tap. I more or less shoved him down with my powers. Get it straight if you're going to accuse me of something.
"Don't be a smart-aleck, Mr. Marcher."
Oh, yeah. Telepath. Duh. She can read my mind and all of that good stuff.
"That's right, I am. I'm glad you remember."
Well, it's not like I lied to you. Everything I said was the truth.
"Withholding information is almost the exact same thing."
I stared at her long and hard, the only other verbal thought in my head at the moment being a pronounced, 'Really?' until I finally said something else, "…You know what? I think I'll just start saying whatever comes to mind around you. You're gonna read it anyway, so what does it matter?"
"And what are you thinking about saying right now?"
"That yes, I blew Julian and Santo away, and I'm not sorry," I started answering with no filter, "Those two wanted trouble. They got two barrels full."
"You realize that you're in quite a bit of trouble, don't you?"
"I was expecting to be in the middle of something else by the time anyone who cared found out."
"Yes, well 'best laid plans' and all that," Miss Frost said, sizing me up for whatever reason, "Seeing as how you have an appointment with Hank today, this will be all for now. Rest assured though, Mister Marcher, we will be having words about this later."
I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts limited to a simple, 'alright'. Seemingly pleased for the time being, she departed the room and left me alone.
"Oh, good afternoon, Emma."
"Hank, darling."
Dr. McCoy soon entered in her wake and fixed me with a pitying glance, "Oh, I was wondering what had her looking so miffed."
I let out a sigh. It seemed my luck was still running true with new people when it came to the headmistress of the entire school, "Oh, you know me, doctor. I'm just so great at those first impressions."
Man, random drug tests are fun, aren't they? Holding your bladder for hours because you know you're going to have to be expected to produce on-the-spot later, and then you have to put forth the effort to show self-control and not fill up the little cup they give you to use.
Not out of courtesy for the drug test person or anything – they're wearing gloves – but because I really don't feel like getting pee on my hand. I mean, I know I can just wash 'em afterwards, but it never feels like it's enough.
…Yep. You all needed to share that with me. You're welcome.
So, that's all I've got for you this time around. I hope you enjoyed.
Kenchi out.