Greater Than What We Suffer (Part Three)

That session stuck with me for days. Being grumpy was one thing. I could be pretty surly at a given moment on good days. But what I had said to Miss Frost had been a bridge too far. It didn't make me feel good, and it didn't do anything for anyone else either. If anything, it made things worse for at least two of us.

Nothing had come of it. I didn't get any detention or some other disciplinarian action taken against me. It was a therapy session. I couldn't get punished for speaking my mind in there. That didn't excuse it though. While it may have been the time and the place, it was done with the sole purpose of hurting someone else. I didn't want to ever be that sort of guy.

I hadn't seen Miss Frost since then, and I didn't look forward to any future run-ins, this time because of me. In the meantime though, classes started up again, and we all wound up settling back in on a normal schedule, even if things were still tense in certain aspects of campus life.

I was on autopilot, just copying verbatim everything our teacher was saying. Taking notes wasn't such a big chore. It was just tedious. If you were like me, you would let your mind wander, but pay just enough attention to get accurate information. It was a good thing our teacher was good at what he did. It made it easy to pay half attention.

I stopped jotting down the lesson in my notebook to take a moment to breathe. My eyes momentarily drifted up to the dark-haired man in the suit teaching at the head of the class.

The teacher of the business courses, Mister Jean-Paul Beaubier; Northstar. He spoke English with a Quebecois accent, but it wasn't hard to understand him. It just added some flair to his lectures. He was also interesting because his powers were kind of like mine. The closest I'd seen so far, even though there were some serious differences.

For instance: He could fly, while I couldn't. He was way faster than me, but I still barely knew what I was doing with my powers. Also, I could do more stuff with my light energy. I just had to figure out that I could first.

If he didn't have a full squad of students already, and if Ruth hadn't more or less convinced Miss Pryde to take me onto the Paladins, I wouldn't have minded having him as an advisor.

I let out a yawn that was louder than I would have liked and got a few looks for it, including from Mister Beaubier. He stopped the lesson gave me a stern look that was more in jest than anything else. All I could do was shrug and lower my head. He let it go though. I got good grades in his class. Hell, there wasn't necessarily any class I struggled with and I stayed out of trouble with teachers, so they cut me some slack.

Before anything else could happen, Mister Logan walked over dressed in flannel and a cowboy hat. He looked around for a moment before spotting me. Without missing a beat, he walked over and plucked me up to drag me out of class. He didn't say anything to me, sparing little more than a word to Mister Beaubier before we got to the door, "Hey, I'm borrowing Glowstick here for a bit. Got it cleared with the top brass... and Kitty."

It all happened so quickly and smoothly, even Mister Beaubier was surprised for a moment, "Alright then," He said, just before we made it outside, "Bellamy, make sure you read chapter 13 and finish the quiz at the end. Also, I need your topic ideas for the project at the end of the semester."

I heard him just fine, but my attention was more set on the burly, hairy guy with claws that had gotten me pulled out of class for... why did he pull me out of class? I could only think of one thing I'd done lately to be in trouble for, so I decided to try and run damage control quickly.

"Look, if this is what I said about Miss Frost, my bad. I was pissed, and I wanted to make her mad too," I said.

Logan turned his head my way, wondering what I was even talking about, "What?" He said before shaking his head. It didn't matter what I was talking about. It wasn't why he had come to get me, "...Yeah, I don't care about that. S'not why I'm here."

"Oh," That was a relief, if nothing else. At least I wasn't in trouble. It still didn't answer my question as to why we were doing whatever we were doing, "...Well, what is it then?"

He rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh. Whatever this was must have hit close to home somehow, "There's someone I want you to meet. Or, more like somebody I want you to help me find. You're from San Francisco, ain't 'cha?"

"Yeah, sure," He knew this already, seeing as how he was one of the people who came to get me from there in the first place, "Why me though? I would figure you wouldn't need anyone's help to find someone," Or that he would get someone better equipped for the job, like an actual member of the X-Men.

"I don't need you for the search. It's... complicated," He seemed hesitant to tell me anything, and I had a problem with that if he wanted me to do this with him.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Mister Logan turned and looked back at me as if he expected a wound up look to get me to keep going. As scary as he was, some things had changed, "If this is going to be another one of those things where you don't tell me what's happening because I'm a student, I'm going back to class."

He was shorter than me by a few inches, but he marched right up to me like a giant and stared right up in my face. I could smell beer and tobacco on him, as clear as day, "Ya wanna call your own shot now, is that it?" The sound of metal claws sliding between the joints of his adamantium knuckles drew my attention, but I didn't look down, "You made it through one near-death experience, and we're sorry for that. But you ain't the man around here. Not yet."

My wanting an explanation was not a challenge to his dominance, or whatever his intimidation trip was supposed to be. I needed him to understand that, with eye contact and confidence, "I don't want to fight. I actually want to help. All I want is to know what I'm here for. Is that too much to ask?"

I didn't come to the Institute to be a soldier, quietly taking orders and going where I was told. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to help people and make my own informed decisions on what I was going to do. If I never knew enough about what I was getting into before I was stuck neck-deep in it, I would never be able to do that.

It didn't mean I was never going to listen. But having some background on what I was potentially putting myself on the line for, and why it mattered to me or anyone else was kind of important. On the plus side, I heard his claws retract.

Fake it 'til you make it, baby.

Mister Logan wasn't pleased, but he must have seen enough of my point to let it go. That was good. He still beat my ass on a regular basis during late night training. There was no need to make that even worse, "It's a personal thing," He told me as we started walking again, "I'll tell you more on the jet. You know how to fly it without Nightcrawler holding your hand, don't 'cha?"

"Ooh, you're gonna let me fly?" This excited me. I only got to fly in controlled situations, and never very far or for very long. This was a cross-country flight too. Plenty of time to cut loose in the air.

"As long as you don't kill us."

Some time away from the school would probably do me some good anyway. What better place to get away for a while than my neck of the woods? Maybe more things would make sense if I spent a few hours or a day in my old stomping grounds.