Team Dynamics (Part Four)

Forge had a gigantic research facility all to himself to use for whatever he wanted - Eagle Plaza. I had never seen it until then. He legitimately had a ten-story complex that spanned a whole city block of downtown Dallas, Texas, where no one lived or really entered but him.

If ever there was a public monument to being anti-social, this was it.

He had a hangar in his building for the Blackbird. That was how big it was. Where did this guy get so much money? Did he have a means to make money? He was an inventor, so I guess he sold patents for some of his stuff.

I landed the plane, smoothly, because of course I did, and started talking to the rest of the team, "Now, this mission is going to be low-maintenance. You know... boring," I said bluntly, "But, we're in a major nerd's secret research facility, so there has to be something to do."

David seemed intrigued, which didn't surprise me. The guy was a genius, even before his powers of knowing everything the people around him knew came into play, "Are you saying we can do what we want?" He asked.

"If Forge says so," I said with a shrug before turning in my seat to glare at Julian and Noriko, "Don't fucking fight. If you two jerks fight, I'm sticking the winner and stomping on the loser afterwards. And I guess I'll kick you off of the team too," I added as an afterthought.

Cessily kept a hand on Julian to keep him from saying or doing anything antagonistic, "It's nice that you have your priorities straight, Sol," She said sarcastically, a wry smirk on her lips.

"Right? I think so too," I said, playing along as I unbuckled and stood up, getting a few satisfying pops out of my joints, "Alright, let's get our wolf-bot fixed up."

Nori scoffed unbuckled herself, walking over to David, and putting space between herself and Julian, "Whatever. This place is big enough where I don't have to see Keller's face or hear his mouth until we leave."

"The next one of you to give the other shit can stay on the plane," I said with a pointed look. I got silence, but I knew this wasn't going to be the end of it. Needless to say, I was going to make sure Hellion and Surge never got placed on the same team again for as long as I was in charge. Problems for later.

I dropped the ramp letting all of us out of the plane, where Forge stood waiting for all of us.

He was Native American, with short black hair and a banging mustache. Apparently, he had a bionic hand and leg, but I couldn't tell which was real. His clothes kept me from seeing. From what he was wearing, it looked like he'd just stepped away from working on something.

For the first time since we'd all met up to embark, Noriko smiled. She liked Forge, as he'd been the one to create the gauntlets that helped her control her electricity powers.

"Hey!" She greeted excitedly, rushing to him in a blur of enhanced speed, "How's it going, Forge? How have you been?"

Forge chuckled at her exuberant greeting, not knowing that five minutes before, she had been set to bite people's heads off, "Oh, just working on this and that. You know how it is. How are my gauntlets doing? The upgrade working out for you?"

Noriko lifted her arms to show off the devices in question, "Yeah, they're much lighter-."

I stopped paying attention, because I didn't care, instead focusing more on our entire reason for being there.

Saberwolf seemed apprehensive – a new thing for him. He never seemed rattled by anybody or anything, but the guy who could look at him and see what made him tick was probably someone he had reason to be wary of. It would have been funny if I couldn't understand where he was coming from. It was like a fear of doctors, only worse because as an A.I., he didn't really have any rights.

No wonder he wanted me to look after him.

Forge came over to Saberwolf and looked down at his patient, "I can tell from looking at you what's wrong. Let's get you fixed up, shall we?"

Being Wolf's bodyguard for the duration of the mission, I took that moment to step in, "Ah-ah-ah, hold on one minute," I said, putting a hand on Wolf's head, "A little wolfie told me that you upgraded him last time without his consent."

Forge seemed confused, as clearly, this was news to him, "He had a problem with it? He didn't say anything to me about it."

Wolf finally took the opportunity to speak up for himself, "Because I was offline for the duration of my maintenance. When I was restarted, it was already done."

"Oh," Was all Forge could say, taken aback as he was. He looked between the two of us, and then at everyone else who had been listening with varying degrees of amusement, "...Well, this is awkward. Sorry, Saberwolf."

We still needed him to fix Wolf, so it had to be water under the bridge for now, "Just don't bad touch my dog again," I said.

I immediately realized my mistake when Saberwolf wheeled around on me, "I am not your dog, Bellamy Marcher."

The A.I. was not pleased at being claimed, not that I could blame him. I immediately started coming up with excuses, "No! I meant dog as in 'd-a-w-g'" I explained to try smoothing things over, "You know... 'dawg'. Friends, peeps, crew, comrades, dunnies. Whatever the fuck people are calling each other nowadays."

I grinned and held up my hand for a 'too sweet'. Laura stared at me, knowing that I was full of shit. I manually turned her head away to look in a different direction and kept smiling. Wolf also stared at me for a few uncomfortable seconds and then proceeded to ignore me and walk away after Forge. That was fair. I had made all of that up on the spot, after all.

We had free reign of the building, within reason of course, but I was relishing in the fact that I had a chance to not have to babysit for a few minutes. Mirage could keep track of whatever crap they got into while I was treating them like functional adults.

I found the nearest comfortable surface I could and got off of my feet. Despite having just taken a flight, I kicked my feet up and lay down, "And I thought leading the Paladins was hard," I said to myself, before noticing that Laura hadn't gone anywhere. I started talking to her, "I had enough trouble trying to get four of you motherfuckers to respect me. Now I've got to convince fifteen of you to get with the program?"

Laura walked over and sat down with me by my feet, "You don't think you can control the team?"

I looked down the length of my body at her and grinned, "Oh, I can control the team. But it's not like I'm a 'my way or the highway' kind of guy," If someone had a better idea of how to do something than me, I'd listen to them. That was always how my style had been. And if someone was really being subordinate, I had no problems slapping the taste out of someone's mouth. In fact, the prick in me was kind of waiting for an excuse, "If I can't trust some people to work together with others without killing each other though, this won't be good."

Green eyes scanned me carefully as Laura chose her next words, "Do you really think their grudges would come up in a life-threatening moment?"

It shouldn't have needed to even be a question, "Stryker's attack was a week ago. If that didn't make people shape up and figure out that we need each other, I don't want to know what it'll take," Any petty squabbles should have lessened in importance after burying actual people, "I don't know... maybe that's just easy for me to say because I don't have beef with anyone right now."

But I used to. I used to have beef with Julian, in fact! Enough that I'd been prepared to have static with the entire Hellions team at one point because of it. And we never really buried the hatchet officially; we just... let it go. We didn't even avoid each other until we stopped being mad. We just slowly got over it. He was still an asshole, I was still an asshole, we still made each other mad, but it just ceased being a thing.

"I wish I could just make them fight and get it over with..." I remarked idly before my brain stopped on that point, "Wait. Why can't I just make them fight and get it over with?"

Laura raised an eyebrow, not quite following my line of logic, "You want them to fight now?"

I nodded and explained myself, "I'm pretty sure I said it to someone before, but you probably weren't there. The New Mutants and the Hellions have heat that's lasted longer than I've gone to school with them because they never threw the fuck down."

Part of the reason Julian and I got past out issues was because we got to slap each other around a bit at some point and beat some respect into each other. THEN we worked together with things trying to kill us on two separate occasions. Julian and Nori never did the first part, which was important with two headstrong people. Fighting was never really allowed directly.

Well, I would allow it. No one had to know about it but us, and if I really tried, I could find some way to make it happen. All it would take was a little creativity, and a lot of discretion. I wasn't going to do this for everyone who had problems with each other, but I felt like those two needed it.

...Besides, it would probably be really funny to watch. That was the jerk in me thinking about it.

Laura was skeptical and with good reason, "I'm not sure getting teammates to fight is the best idea to mend fences."

Eh, sometimes fences needed to be torn down completely so you could build new ones.

"Mmmph..." I grunted in thought, repeatedly nudging Laura with my foot to try and annoy her, "Well, everyone else better figure it out quickly, because eventually, we're gonna stop getting gimme missions."

"Hopefully no time soon," Laura said, completely ignoring my attempt to pick on her, "I like doing things that don't involve hurting others, or being in danger," She eventually side-eyed me sharply, "I would stop that if you want to keep your leg."

I just grinned at her, having finally gotten to her, "You and I both know you won't cut my foot off."

She popped her claws and set them against my ankle, "Are you sure about that? After all, we can just get Forge to replace it," She asked, an eyebrow raised in challenge, "Right at the joint. It would be clean."

I sat up properly and took hold Laura's hand in mine, running my fingers over her claws with my other hand. I'd never touched them before. I didn't think she'd even let me. And yet, she did, "All of your flirting is so predatory," I remarked.

Laura watched what I was doing closely, her breathing measured and tight, as though she would scare me away from what I was doing otherwise. Even I wondered what the hell had gotten into me.

I'd never actually gotten a good look at her claws until then. They were quite warm, despite the metal, probably because they literally rested in her arm until they needed to be out. I didn't play around with the sharp edges, aside from tapping the tip of my index finger on the end of them. Even doing that much easily drew blood.

Laura's claws disappeared back inside of her hand. She grabbed hold of my bleeding finger and slowly brought it to her face, "I wasn't flirting. But if you assumed I was, and you were flirting back, you must like it," Holding full eye contact with me, she put my finger in her mouth and swirled her tongue around it.

My brain fucking turned off. It froze on the last image my eyes saw and my mind couldn't move past it. All I could focus on was the feeling of what was happening. I took a mental snapshot of every second, until it finally ended. It had seemed like an eternity, and yet still far too quick for my tastes.

Speaking of tastes, Laura seemed to savor the taste of my blood before getting up and leaving me where I sat, "That was me flirting," She matter-of-factly said in parting.

The loud voice in my head that told me to take her back into the Blackbird and mount her like a lion had to be brutally smothered. It caused me physical pain not to pursue her, but we were on a mission, and I couldn't. I knew that I couldn't, and damn it, more importantly, she knew that I knew that I couldn't.

It had long since been time to dispel once and for all with the fiction that Laura Kinney didn't know what she was doing. She knew exactly what she was doing. The girl was an assassin - thoughtful, methodical, patient, knowledgeable - and she was carrying out a hit on my sense of propriety and restraint.

The moment I felt like Laura was out of ear shot, I clamped both hands over my mouth to muffle my voice and let out the loudest yell I could, thrashing around in my seat, "RAAAAGH! Why the FUCK is she so fine!?"

Was such an outburst unbecoming of a team leader? Maybe. But no one related to the team saw it, so no one could judge me.

I don't think any of you really understand what was running through my head at that point. It was so hard trying to be good. It honestly took every fiber of home training I'd had instilled in me by a loving family to keep from chasing her down and throwing her over my shoulder caveman-style. But on the bright side, I'd come to one important decision – that it was officially on.

Before, I had done things to Laura just to try and get her to react like a human being. After months we were finally getting somewhere with that. But now, if she was set on trying to drive me out of my mind, there wasn't any reason I couldn't play that game too. She wanted me, after all. And while the feeling was, admittedly, mutual, I was waiting out the grace period of my breakup. Not because of what others would think, but out of courtesy of Megan being good to me for as long as she did.

...Though, wasn't the accepted theory for mourning a relationship one day for every month it lasted? If that were the case, I'd long since worn that out. That meant it was time for the equivalent of emotional terrorism. She was going to jump my bones before I jumped hers. This I solemnly vowed to myself. My pride demanded it.

...What had I been doing again?

...

Oh! I was supposed to be sitting in on Saberwolf's tune-up. He was going to be pissed when I finally got there. It had totally slipped my mind once a pretty girl's tongue had slipped around my finger.

I looked down at said finger and the red nick that had been leaking blood not too long before. I stuck the finger in my mouth and walked on to find Wolf and Forge. Having that finger in my mouth was the closest equivalent to having Laura's tongue in my mouth that I was going to get that day.

Why didn't I do that when she was still there? It definitely would have thrown her off. Hindsight was, of course, 20-20.

"Goddamn you, Laura."

I felt like I was going to be saying that a lot more in the future.