Never Good Enough (Part Five)

For a small place, Salem Center had a pretty nice town square area. All the good stuff there was to offer was located in that area, so it was the only spot in Salem Center anyone went to... which kind of fit the name, to be honest.

I was used to San Francisco, where I could find and do anything I wanted if I knew where to look. By comparison, Salem Center was… quaint. Quaint is a nice word isn't it? Let's go with quaint.

Even so, I paid attention to every storefront we stopped in front of that got the girls' attention. I kept every store that they went into in the back of my mind. Every place to eat that got a comment as we walked past and got a whiff of the cooking inside, I catalogued.

The reason she had asked me to go with everybody else hadn't just been to create a gigantic buffer between the two us being alone. We didn't really know the first thing about what the other liked. If there was going to be an actual date, as in just the two of us, anytime in the future, it would have been best to be armed with some kind of personal knowledge going in.

That was way more foresight than I'd ever given the idea of a date. Fortunately, I was good at retaining information. If this had been Megan's doing, I had to give her more credit in finding a work-around to her nerves than I did. If it had been Hope's handiwork, I had to question what kind of evil mastermind rested within the Paragons squad.

She was getting annoyed though. I could see that, and she wasn't even the reason I was there. No matter what we went to go do or see, Megan kept one body between herself and me. She must really have thought there was something scary about me.

Nicky and Ben had stuck around for a little while, but wound up fucking off to the arcade after we had eventually passed it. I had no interest. Any game in there wouldn't have been better than what I could get for my consoles and PC at home. I played games enough on my own time. There was no appeal to doing it while I was out. Besides, I was much more in the mood to try my luck hanging out with girls.

As I walked down the street, I felt my hat get lifted off of my head. I growled and glared over at the person responsible, one Hope Abbott, "Do you mind? I could tell you where I get mine if you want your own so bad."

"Oh calm down, it's fine," She said, waving the hat in front of me before moving it out of my grasp, "Tell the truth. You're trying to turn the whole bucket hat look into a thing, aren't you?" She needled, just before it was snatched from her, "Hey."

Megan took my hat into her hands and looked down at it for a moment before she handed it back to me, "Well I think it works for him."

I properly adjusted my hat back onto my head and smoothed the brim back out, "The reason I wear hats is so I don't absorb every drop of light that's beamed my way," I said, making sure to give a thankful wink to Megan as I kept speaking, "The fact that I make these look good is an added bonus."

Megan slid herself back onto the other side of Hope, away from me. Damn it. Still?

"Okay, I'm starving. Do you want to get something to eat?" She asked the two of us. We both nodded seperately. Hope looked around to get her bearings and find the arcade from where we all were, "Okay, just wait here for a bit. I'll go grab the guys before we go."

Seeing that we were all going to separate, Megan perked up and almost jumped off of the bench, "Wait, Hope-!"

"No. No," Hope said sternly, holding up a hand and stopping Megan mid-sentence. Slowly, a very sly smile grew on her face, "Stay here, both of you. I'll be right back."

"No, don't you-," Megan was about to dispute, before Hope put her hands on her shoulders and leaned in close to tell her something. Whatever it was, it took the fight out of her, and replaced it with another, "…You're right. You're right. I should. I will."

This seemed to brighten Hope's day, "Good!" She said giving Megan a nudge, "It'll be fine. Be right back!"

And with that, she took off, leaving me alone with someone who didn't seem to want to be. I looked down at where Megan was sitting. She looked away. Whatever Hope had said to fire her up hadn't lasted long.

She was not comfortable being alone with me, and her being uncomfortable made me feel uncomfortable. I wasn't well-trained enough in my mannerisms to keep it from showing, which just made things worse.

It made me grumpy to think about that things weren't going well, and I had been so excited. She seemed like she had been too, though granted, it had been Hope who had done more of the talking when I'd gotten the invite, but that wasn't the point. Whatever this was, it was my fault too.

Just what was my problem? I figured Megan's deal was that I was an asshole, which was not the best trait for a person to have if you were going to be left alone with them. I didn't have that excuse. Megan was a sweetheart.

'Fuck this,' I thought to myself. There wasn't anything about her that should have made me wary, and nothing was going to get more casual if one of us didn't at least try to take the first step.

I had to try and loosen her up somehow, and there was only one way I could think of to do it – run my mouth. It usually seemed to do the job, so why not here? Just as long as I didn't do anything weird like throw an arm around her.

I plopped down on the bench next to her, making nothing of it, even when her head seemed to dart my way for a moment. I gave her a look as though I were asking what the problem was, and quickly cut it out. No, Bellamy. Don't be a jerk, and don't scare the poor girl. Just talk to her. Get to know her a bit more. We got along well enough in most cases. Things were just... she seemed to like me, then she seemed to want to be anywhere else but near me.

"So, it seems like you guys are a few people short of a full squad," I said, trying to get some kind of talk started. Something easy, "Are they back at school, or did they have something better to do?"

Megan smiled a bit in return, "Mark went off on trip to go get some album," She said, "He's been chatting about it for weeks, but I don't know who it's by. I just remember I'd never heard of them before."

"Are they any good?" Megan just shrugged. Well, there went that avenue of conversation, "Right. Well, what about your other teammate? I don't think I've met her at all."

I knew Megan had another teammate, Jessica Vale. I had seen her before. I just never came across her.

Megan let out a sigh, "Jessie never really seems that into what we're doing," She told me. Yes. Tell Bellamy your problems. Let me soothe your soul, "Because she can see stuff, whenever she sees something, she just doesn't try. If she sees us win, she says we won without her. If we lose, she says she saw us all lose anyway, so it's not worth it."

That seemed the exact opposite of how I was trying to get Ruth to look at her powers, "Isn't the point of precog the fact that you can change things after you know what's supposed to happen?" Woe be if I had actually let her fall into the trap of looking at her precognition so negatively. I convinced her that if something bad happened, "Maybe she sees all of the failing because she knows she's not going to try when she sees it."

Seeing the future automatically changed it, or at least that was the theory most people lent themselves to. It probably helped in desperate situations.

Megan's fretful expression turned a 180, "That's what I said!" She said with a little flutter of her wings. She seemed happy that someone agreed with her, "We tried, but Ben told us to just leave it alone at this point. Maybe she'll come around eventually? I don't know."

I wanted to help, but I didn't know how the Paragon worked as a unit. Any advice I could give might have messed up their dynamic, "If talking didn't work, that's probably the next best bet. Maybe your advisor can do something?"

"Maybe," She seemed to be considering it as an option, "Ben's been trying to figure this out. I don't think he wants someone else involved, even Miss Sinclair, and she's supposed to be teaching us."

I raised an eyebrow under my hat, "Are you sure you should have told me about it then?" I asked. Because I damn sure wasn't a Paragon.

Megan nodded, an adorably serious look on her face, "You won't go around telling people or using it against us in Field Day events. I think you're a good guy, Bel."

"I'm a guy. I couldn't tell you for sure if I was good or bad," I took my hat off and brushed my hair down with my hand as I leaned back on the bench, "But if you say so, I guess I'll have to live up to it," I didn't get an answer at first and turned to look over at her.

Megan had leaned over my way, very close to my face. Dangerously close. Before I could ask what was up, she leaned back, having gotten what she'd apparently wanted, "Hey, your eyes are blue," She pointed out, "I thought they were green. They were last night, I think."

I chuckled, a bit out of relief. And here I'd been thinking that she wanted a kiss or something. That would have been awkward if I'd have acted on my assumption. See? Not good with people, "My eyes change color depending on how much light I'm charged up with. Blue means I'm as charged as I'm gonna get, I think," Safely, at least, "I've never gone past it. Then there's green, yellow, and red means I'm low."

She seemed to accept my explanation, but that didn't mean her curiosity was satisfied, "What happens if you run out?"

That certainly wasn't the kind of conversation we needed to have during a happy outing, "Don't worry about it. We shouldn't be talking about depressing things."

It took Megan a moment to put two-and-two together without being explicitly told, "Oh," She realized that she was about to get me to talk about something that would kill me, "Well, why don't you just try to stay at blue all of the time? That means you're full right? So nothing bad will happen if you keep that much power all of the time."

"Well, Dr. McCoy told me that's bad too," I said. If we were going to talk about it no matter what, I just had to get through it, "If I get too much, I'll get overcharged and burn out... and then, well, you know."

Megan was kicking herself, I could tell, "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

While it wasn't my favorite thing in the world to talk about, it was just a part of my life. It didn't put me off that much. It was a part of me, the same as if I had asthma or anemia or something, "It's not a big deal. I just don't talk about it. It's not an issue, and it's not anybody else's problem, Megan," I assured her, putting a hand on her arm, "It's fine. All I have to do is use up as much of it as I can everyday. It's not as hard as it sounds," Especially since I almost never slept, "I'm just glad you think there's something interesting about me, even if it's just my powers. Most people look at me and only think about the cool parts of what I can do. Not the inconvenient stuff."

Megan shook her head, "No, It's not just your powers. I want to know about you," This time, she tried to work through whatever embarrassment she was feeling, "Ugh, that probably sounds so weird. Ohmigod! Why can't I do this right? Hope told me not to talk so much. I do that a lot, and she said some people think it's annoying. Well, a lot of people think it's annoying."

I wasn't going to let her stop now. Once or twice before, sure. But she had been holding herself back so long, and it was clear that she had, "Go on ahead. I'm listening. Trust me, you're doing better than I probably would be. I suck at talking to people. I always seem to make them mad or think I'm weird."

If talking helped her feel comfortable, so be it. Besides, I didn't mind all of the talking. The more other people said, the less of a chance there was of me saying something dumb

Megan wasn't completely sure, but being reassured did something for her confidence. She drew her tongue across her lips in thought as she measured her words, "When I first met you, I just thought you were cool. You have a robot wolf who lives with you. You joined the Paladins and helped your team get to the final event in Field Day. You've fought a supervillain before! You've fought Mister Logan!" She actually lifted off from her seat in the bench with her wings.

As good as all of that was for my ego, I couldn't help but think that this was a rose-tinted sort of view. I also had a rap sheet of incidents. I had a list of failures. I'd let people down. I'd let myself down. I'd gotten people in danger for one reason or another. I believed in myself, sure. But my kind of self-confidence – the kind that you developed when you didn't expect anyone else to believe in you – was always rattled when someone else seemed to believe in you just as much or more than you did.

All I could do was sit, my ears wide open, just like my mouth, as she flew around and continued, "But it's more than that. The New Mutants like you. You even got the Hellions to like you, mostly. You come off all grumpy and stuff, but when I actually talked to you, you didn't blow me off. You actually talked to me. You seemed happy to. You seem happy to talk to anybody. You just don't try to hang out with anyone."

I recovered long enough to respond with some kind of retort, "I'm used to keeping to myself. I think deeply and bask in the glow of my own inner reflection," That line of b.s. didn't hold up for even five seconds, "That was a complete load, by the way. I get anxious meeting new people, so I just don't do it."

There. I said it. I admitted it. I was no social butterfly. More of a social spider, just sitting in my web waiting for potential acquaintances to trap themselves in my web of interaction so I could drain the friendship from them. And that was an awful and startlingly graphic metaphor. I might have problems.

Megan laughed, but it was a warm, comfortable one. It seemed that if I could get her talking, she was in her element, "You're... nicer than you act, even if you don't seem like it at first. But it's not just that either. You're never afraid of anything, no matter how scary it seems," Her smile fell a bit and she let out a sigh as she landed in front of me, "It's encouraging. I wish I could be like that. I can't even fly during practices without a helmet. Even though I've been training all year, I'm so scared of crashing."

It was nice to hear that she thought that way about me. But she had made one grave miscalculation in her outlook of Bellamy Marcher. One I could not allow to go unchecked, "Megan, I'm scared of everything," I said bluntly, "Everything I've done since I've gotten here has scared me shitless. Everything."

It was like she didn't want to believe it, even though it was coming straight out of my mouth, "What? But all of that stuff, you actually did it. You went through with it. You pulled it off. All of it!"

I did. Those things happened, and I didn't die. That was a plus. Even so-, "And every day, it's never good enough. I'm not, I mean. My team made me the leader, I didn't think I was good enough. I still don't. When I had to get away from the Reavers, the whole time, I was scared I was gonna die, and Ruth was gonna die, and it would've been my fault. And don't even get me started on the Danger Room."

She seemed to visibly deflate. Her wings even drooped, "I don't understand."

I didn't mean to burst her bubble. I just wanted to be honest, so I kept going, "I fuck up a lot. I get slapped around a lot. And when the bottom falls out in any given situation we end up in, I'm just as lost as all of you are. I swear, I'm no magic man with the mystical key. I just don't want to fail."

"But in the Danger Room, you got us all out. You did that. It wasn't a fuc-... err, screw up," She replied with some fire, censoring herself from dropping a swear.

Maybe she was right, but not being able to keep it from happening in the first place was a screw up. Nothing would change my mind on that, "I bought us time," I said coolly.

Megan wouldn't hear anything of my attempts to downplay what happened, "That was still more than what a lot of other people did! If you think you're a screw up or you're not good enough, why'd you even try to take the lead?"

I shook my head at a loss for how to explain it all eloquently. I gave that up, "Someone had to," I eventually said, "It's the same with everything else. I do things like that because if I look around and I see no one's coming up with the answers, I think to myself, 'Why not me? Why can't I do it myself?'" I told her, eventually figuring out how to put what I wanted to say, "...Hey, you know what my favorite part of hand-to-hand training is?"

"No?" She seemed confused about what I was getting at.

"Grappling. Because it's about control," I said, feeling more comfortable with where I was trying to get to with the conversation, "If you're not stronger than the other guy, use technique and get leverage. If the other guy has better technique than you, create a situation where leverage is useless. That's how I dumb it down, at least," Yeah, I felt better. More like I was making my point, "What I'm trying to say is, I like when I have control over my own fate. I like it when there's a plan, even if the plan has no chance. Just the idea that there's a way out if you look hard enough, try hard enough, think hard enough. I mean, we're the fucking X-Men, or we're gonna be. Just look at what the other ones have pulled off. We can do anything."

Megan suddenly snapped her fingers and pointed into my face,"That! That right there! What you just said, or what you meant," She said brightly, "Screw ups don't think like that. They don't handle things like that. I think you were made the leader for a reason. And I think it was a good choice."

How could you argue with someone who believed in you. If you spent all of your time doing your best, it was actually nice to have people recognize it and compliment you in their own way, "Thank you," I was finally able to say, "It's nice to know that someone else might think I'm awesome. Driving my own bandwagon is kind of lonely."

"How about a ticket off then?"

A massive shadow settled over the two of us in the sunset. We turned around to find a guy that stood well over a foot taller than me right there. His skin was greyish-green and haggard. He wore some kind of sleek armor that covered his body, arms, and leg, and a red hood that also served as a cape. Across his face, covering his nose, stretched a piece of metal.

"Who are you?"

"You can call me a messenger," He said. Awfully big messenger then. Scary-looking too, "But that can wait. I'm not here for you, child. Where are the X-Men?" He smiled, promising nothing good, likely no matter what my answer was, and I had no clue to begin with. They weren't at the school, and he probably knew that.

"Uh… the school is at the edge of town," Megan said warily, pointing in the proper direction, "The X-Men aren't there though. I think they're on a mission."

I looked her way and slowly shook my head. Oh, honey. No. Don't give the big scary guy intel.

He seemed exasperated by this information, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation, "And you have no idea where they went?"

"They really don't tell us anything," I said before realizing I probably should have been trying to persuade him to leave us alone, "…But they should be back soon. Tonight even," So go away before they come back.

The odd -looking man let out a sigh of patient acceptance, "I see. This is very frustrating. But thank you. You have both been very helpful, mutant children," I saw his body tense. Here we go, "Now about that message…"

I was left with an opening though. He made eye contact with me, "Sure. Go ahead and leave it after the flash."

"GRAAAAAH!" The man roared when the force of a flash grenade went off right in his retinas. He put his hands up, as though touching and rubbing at his eyes would do anything to help him. It did help, me that is. Because I saw something sharp attached to his gauntlets on the back of his right hand. No one with gauntlets on had any good intentions planned. So I shot the most dangerous target available. It just so happened to also work out that it was right in front of his face.

I preemptively knocked him down with an explosive blast, but he moved to get up the moment he hit the ground. I basically shot him in the head, and he didn't stay down. That did not bode well for my chances.

"Megan, we should probably run. Now!" He confronted us in the middle of Salem Center. Clearly he had no issues with starting something in broad daylight, so being in public wasn't going to help us.

"Y-Yeah!" She didn't need to be told twice to run away. That was good. Some people were too proud to try and get away. I should know, I worked with one of them – Hisako, "But wait, weren't you winning?"

Before I could answer, or she could take off, we were interrupted, courtesy of a body check to the back that wouldn't have been out of place in the NHL. Both Megan and I fell to the ground, "He was opportunistic," I turned to my back and went to fire a shot, only for him to step on my arm away before I could take aim, "I can respect that, but it won't happen again."

I let out a yell and tried to move him off, but he just ground his heel into my forearm. Megan lunged at him to try to get him off of me, but he swatted her away. It pissed me off, but more importantly it gave me an opening. When he returned his attention to me and lifted his other leg to stomp my head, I pressed my fist to the bottom of his boot and fired. He flew off of me like a rocket. I got up and took off after him.

I jumped into the air the instant he hit the ground, intending to pounce on his head like a tiger and pulverize his head with light. He rolled out of the way and back onto his feet, but when I landed, I used the intended blast to fly his way before he could reset. He sidestepped me and just let me fly past him.

Damn. Of course he knew what he was doing. That was just great.

I felt hands wrap around my ankles and feared the worst. I knew I was about to get ragdolled. Only, I didn't. I was lifted off of the ground with an upside-down view of our enemy as he charged after me. He seemed surprised to see my face. Even more surprised to get shot in his face.

Megan had gotten a hold of me, and had given me just enough of a pull to where I could flip to my feet safely. Atta girl. I couldn't have asked for a better assist in the moment even if Eddie had been there. Didn't even lose my hat, "Nice."

That feeling didn't last long. Our enemy didn't go down. He took my closed fist blast like a punch to the face, "The X-Men didn't disappoint when I met them, and it seems their young don't either," He unhooked a weird circular weapon with barbed blades from his armor, "But I am Ord of the Breakworld. I have been fighting for decades longer than you have been alive. You are a warmup for me."

I clenched my teeth and fired a shot with both hands. He deflected them with the armor on his wrists and ran at me. My eyes stayed locked on his weapon as he began to swing it at me. I couldn't back him off of me. He was strong. So strong, even when I started channeling juice to my body to make myself faster and stronger, he still had the advantage. Even when I tried to push him off of me when he got too close, all I got for my trouble was an elbow to the face.

He never let me get too far, even when it would have been easy to.

Ord was smart. He didn't know what Megan could do, other than fly, but instead of coming in to help fight, she was staying away from us even though she could see I was getting my ass handed to me. That made things easier for him. Either she was standing by for whatever reason until I was defeated and then he could move on to her, or she had some kind of power that she couldn't use while I was close to him.

My arm got cut. I grabbed my wound and headbutted him as a reflex. That was a mistake. He had a head like a cinder block, both in size and how hard it was. None of this was working. Ord grabbed me by the collar and headbutted me right back.

I was mad. How long was this going to be a thing? As much as I kept getting better, I still wasn't good enough. It was never enough. No amount of team training. No amount of late nights getting my ass handed to me by Mister Logan. And here I was, getting smacked around by this seven-foot freak who looked like a space Assassin's Creed reject.

He swung his blade thing at me, and in a fit of rage I swung at him. It was here this day that I discovered something else when I channeled a blast in a particular way.

Closed fist = concussive. Open palm = explosive. Single finger = piercing.

Knife hand = slicing. Awesome.

I swung a vertical chop at him, and a wave of light the length of my forearm to my fingertips flew out. Had I been aiming down the middle instead of just at his weapon to stop it from killing me, I'd have killed him instead. Granted, I would have died too, but it would have been mutually assured destruction. As it stood though, I stopped him from hurting me and took a chunk out of his shoulder at the same time. A literal chunk.

I had hurt him, significantly. Finally. And with that, it was time to go. I wasn't any kind of full-fledged superhero. I was a trainee. We didn't fight bad guys for real. We weren't supposed to anyway, for good reason. With that in mind, I turned and did my best impression of a track star and ran for it. My left arm was slick with my own blood.

Megan flew up beside me, and took my hands so she could try taking off with me again. She could fly faster without me, but the idea was that Ord couldn't fly, so he couldn't reach us before we got somewhere safe.

"Bellamy, are you alright?" Megan asked when she noticed the blood running down my chest, side, and back from the cut on my shoulder.

It was pretty deep, but I couldn't even feel it. Adrenaline was a hell of a thing, "It could have been way worse. I'll be fine. We've just got to get the hell out of here."

She wasn't strong enough to hold me up and fly fast enough to get away from this guy at the same time. He was big, fast, strong, and he could fly. That was totally unfair, and yet… we had to deal with him. More specifically, I had to fight him, or at least try to.

I swung my legs forward and let go of Megan's hands, throwing myself right at the guy in front of us. He went to swat me out of the air, so I shot at him. He put his hands up to fend off the concussive blast I sent his way, basically wading his way through it.

I couldn't budge him back as he tore through my blast, and eventually I got within his reach. Thus was the curse of forward momentum.

All I can say is, I thought I had gotten used to being hit. All I remembered was seeing him swing at me, feeling a lot of pain, then waking up when I hit the top of a tree and fell through the branches to the ground. I saw red, I was completely breathless, and the side of my face throbbed every time my heart beat.

That was with my powers making my body tougher. Maybe I should have invested in a helmet instead of Megan? And perhaps some body armor as well. While I was on the ground, laying on my side, I touched down at my belly where I felt a lot of pain and felt something squishy and wet. There was a lot of blood around me as well.

"Ssssshit..." I muttered, basically trying to hold my guts in with my bare hands. He cut me. Of course he cut me. Why wouldn't he? Because I came at him like a screaming howler monkey in some banzai attack? Well, this was what I got for it. I wasn't going to scare someone like him into not reacting, so he did. Boy did he ever, "Oh... that's not good. That's really not good."

I rolled over to my back. With my view of the sky I could see Megan landing, but I could also hear heavy steps on the ground. I turned my head and saw Ord standing a few feet away.

"Ohmigod, Bel! Oh, no-no-no, there's so much blood!" Megan was fretting over me, words coming out of her mouth a mile a minute, but I couldn't hear any of it, "You're gonna be okay! I'll get you somewhere, just... don't die! Please!" I just knew that while she was freaking out, that guy was going to kill her too.

"Pixie, I'm already dead!" I snapped, breaking her from trying to comfort me, "Run already! Get away from him!" I wanted to shoot him, to give her a chance to flee on her own without me weighing her down. But I couldn't even see well enough to rattle off a shot that could even convince him to stay back. Yelling hadn't helped.

Ord grinned at me. I hated it. I wanted to carve his face off with a laser. Unfortunately, I was more concerned with other things than a tit-for-tat get-back. Thankfully, he seemed to be done. He put away his circular blade. My blood and pieces of my flesh were still on it.

"Send the X-Men my message, girl. I don't think this one will be able to any longer," He just had to taunt the dying boy. Asshole, "The mutant abomination will never be a threat to the Breakworld," And with that, he left. Not a moment too soon.

Everything started to go dark. I normally stayed pretty warm, but things started feeling cold. The glow of the sunset felt so good. It just made me want to go to sleep, and I never felt like that. It had just been such a long day, and I was so tired.

"Bel, no! You're scaring me! I'm not being funny, please don't go to sleep!" Megan yelled, but even though she kept talking, her voice grew quieter and quieter to me, "Come on! We're getting you help! Gotta get you back to the Institute! God, you're heavy!"

As I went out, the last thing that went through my mind and came out of my mouth was one thing.

"...Never good enough."