Paladin Business (Part One)

Mister Rasputin, Laura, Hisako, Eddie, Ruth, and I all kept our heads down until we had our ducks in a row. There were still things that needed to be squared away, but once that was done with, our little personal mission would be a go. The oddest thing hadn't been just how easy it had been to get everyone onboard for a sojourn into space. It was how willing they all seemed to be to go along with a plan I was concocting.

I had more or less expected support from my running crew. They had followed me into more half-baked schemes than this before. Mister Rasputin though? It was kind of weird for a grown man pushing 30 to be willing to let me run the show. I remember asking him about it.

"Why not?" He said to me, "Scott led X-Men teams when he was your age."

No. Hell no. Not the same thing. Not at all. I was not Cy-fucking-Clops. I was So-fucking-Laris, with everything that came with it. But whatever. I talked the talk to get him invested in the first place, now I had to walk the walk to pull everything together. That was what I got for shooting my big mouth off.

My plan involved a ton of moving parts – three in total – and if any one of those failed to materialize, the entire scheme would likely go up in smoke. I had contingencies in mind, of course, but for two of my three necessities, if the people behind them wanted no part of it, it would put us on the clock before we were discovered and likely shut down.

The first thing I needed was a teleporter. I knew three. One was a teacher, one was in superjail, and one was my ex. These factors immediately took one off the table. I'll let you decide which one that should have been, but I will tell you which one I wound up going with in the end.

I managed to catch Megan between classes and pull her aside to a stairwell to talk. Getting her alone wasn't particularly difficult. It wasn't as though we hated each other, and a good portion of the heat our respective parties had against each other had subsided since the breakup. Don't get me wrong, it was still awkward to speak to her about anything other than squad stuff, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't simply power through. So, I did.

"I need your help," I started out as directly as I could.

Megan seemed to find it hard to believe, "You need my help?"

"Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yep."

"No lie?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

Megan's wings fluttered while she looked at me with uncertainty, "I mean... Bel-Bel, not that I'm just saying no without hearing you out, but what the heck can I possibly do for you that you can't do for you?"

She really had too high an opinion of me if she thought that there wasn't anything she would have a better handle of than I would.

I couldn't tell her everything so easily, but I at least owed her a general synopsis of what I wanted, "I need you to take me somewhere really far, really fast, then take me somewhere else really far, really fast. Then I need you to go back to school and pretend you have no idea where I am."

Imagine my (lack of) surprise when she didn't roll with my half-assed explanation, "When you say it like that, you make it sound really shady. Why does it sound shady?" She asked.

Because it definitely was. Oh, if only you knew, you smart little cookie.

"Everything that's gonna happen is for a good cause, and I don't think I'm doing anything illegal," I assured her, "It's just that this won't be mission approved, and I want you to have plausible deniability," Because I cared. Even though Megan was my ex, I didn't want her to get in trouble for whatever dumb shit I wound up getting up to.

"That doesn't make it sound any better, you know!" She exclaimed before sighing, "How bad is it that you won't even tell me what 'it' is? Will it get you expelled?"

"I'd put money on it that it won't get me expelled," I said with full confidence.

Megan narrowed her eyes at me, "Will it get you killed?"

On that, I had less confidence. Still, I couldn't bring myself to lie to her, "...I mean, there's probably a better chance of me getting killed than expelled, but-."

"Bel!" Megan stomped her foot fitfully, "Take better care of yourself, you dummy! You're gonna run off and do something you can't tell me about and you're pretty sure you'll survive? What's going on in your head right now?"

A lot. There was a lot going on in my head. But it wasn't her problem anymore. Any responsibility Megan had to shoulder my copious amounts of probably self-imposed baggage vanished the moment we stopped hooking up. I knew what I was trying to get her into was big. Too big to try and rope an unwilling party into. The more we spoke, the worse I felt about getting her involved.

"Forget it," I said, giving her a pat on the shoulder. I went to walk past her and leave, "Don't worry about it. I knew it was a big thing to ask for, but a closed mouth don't get fed, you know?" I would figure something else out.

"Wait," Megan placed her hand over mine before I could step away, "I never said no. Just... talk to me, okay? I don't even know what any of this is about."

I frowned, "You're gonna be late for your next class," I was trying to let her off.

She grinned and winked at me, "I can just say the team leader needed me for something. I'm sure it'll be fine then," At that, the grin fell a bit. She sat down on the stairs and coaxed me to sit with her, "Even if I can't help with what you want me to do, I can help by listening. Please?"

'Fine,' I eventually decided. Even if I didn't get as far as telling her what I wanted, I could at least share what I was thinking. That much wouldn't hurt, "...My teacher has been flying around in deep space for the last eight months, and I haven't done a damn thing to get her back this whole time."

"Bel-Bel... you can't blame yourself for that," Megan said, shaking her head, "You're just a student."

I let out a laugh, "Nah, Pix. Not anymore. We're supposed to be X-Men. I should be able to do something now, even if I wasn't good enough to back then."

"You, you, you. It's always you," Megan muttered. I was keenly aware that she hadn't let go of my hand, gently running her thumb across the back of it, "Why is it that whenever anything goes well, it's always 'us', but whenever things go wrong, it's 'you'?"

"I dunno," I tried to joke, "The burden of leadership?"

"Bel-Bel..." She said chidingly, "...You're kind of self-centered, you know that?"

I felt my eyes go wide, "W-What?" I was more than willing to cop to my personality flaws – I had many to choose from, after all. Egomania was a new one though. My expression must have been funny, because Megan couldn't help but burst out laughing at the look on my face.

"You are!" She said between giggles, "You totally are! I see it now! I always felt like there was something weird about how you always treat yourself, and that's it! I finally got it!" She celebrated as though she had figured out a puzzle that had been stumping her for months.

I wasn't totally onboard with the idea, even if she seemed certain of it, "I'm gonna be honest, Pix, I really wasn't expecting that one."

Megan settled herself down, waving her hand in the air as if to mollify me, "No-no, not like how most people think of being self-centered. Like, not like, you're God's gift to the world and you can do no wrong. But kinda in reverse... like, anything that goes wrong around you is your fault because you should be good enough to deal with it."

"It is, and I should be," I said. That was part of being leader, wasn't it? Successes were because of the collective. Failures were because of the guy in charge. Things went wrong because the guy calling the shots dropped the ball.

Was I wrong about that?

Megan frowned and put on what I had come to learn was her best impression of what I looked like most of the time, complete with deepening her voice to try and mock mine, "'Hmph. I'm Bel-Bel. I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't fast enough. I didn't account for that one-in-infinity RNG b.s. that would never happen again in a million years. I suck.'"

"I don't sound like that," I insisted.

Not out loud I didn't, anyway.

Megan took my face into her hands and stared deep into my eyes, almost like she was trying to hypnotize me, "Listen to me. Not everything is about you. Not everything is your fault, even when it happens to you, or to people you love. You can't control or influence everything that happens around you. Okay?"

From the way she held my head, she squished my cheeks, "But-."

"-No buts, mister," Megan shot back as she eventually let me go, "Jeez. No wonder you're so grumpy all the time if that's how you feel about everything," She seemed exasperated with me, but amusedly so, "So... Miss Pryde."

"Right," I took a moment to get myself back on track, "I'm gonna go find her. I'm at least gonna try," I said, "I owe her that much."

"And you don't think Cyclops will let you? Or that he won't at least okay a search?"

"If he would, it would have happened already, wouldn't it?"

"And what do you think you can do that he can't? Especially if you aren't doing this X-Men style?"

I didn't answer. This was the part I didn't want getting out in case I couldn't get any help, "You're asking a lot out of me to tell you that much without you being onboard..." I told her.

Megan took a moment to mull it over. The late bell for the next class had rung a long time ago. After what seemed like a minute or two of silence, she made her decision, "Alrighty. I'll help you. But-!" She held up a finger, preempting any thanks I might have been prepared to give her, "-But, I want a favor."

I quickly nodded, "Name it."

I didn't have a problem with owing her one. It wasn't like I'd planned on just enlisting help for free. A lot of my positive relationships operated through a delicate balance of favors.

"Ah-ah-ah," Megan wagged her finger in my face, "You're not telling me everything, so I'm not telling you everything. Not right now anyway," she said playfully, "Fair is fair, Bel-Bel."

That it was. Touche, pretty girl.

So, one part of the plan was set in place. It was up to Mister Rasputin to secure the second part, without which we couldn't initiate the third and begin our search.

We needed transport. We needed something fast, something that could hold at least seven people – comfortably. That wasn't the kind of thing that I could get access to on the sly; me or anyone else on the Paladins. But Mister Rasputin had the means to, or at least he knew people who could. He assured us that he could, and we trusted that he would.

That trust paid off two days before we planned to set out. All I got was a quick call that lasted all of five seconds.

"Hello?"

"It's ready."

"Cool."

That was the breadth of the conversation. No more spoken aloud than what was needed, just in case the wrong person was listening. It was times like this where what we were planning really did seem shady. Either way, that meant step three was a go.

No one involved was a fan of step three.