Team Dynamics (Part Three)

She was serious.

Before I knew it, I was sat in the Blackbird with Laura, Noriko, David, Julian, and Cessily. Two members of the Paladins, two members of the New Mutants, and two members of the Hellions were all represented. The latter of those two groups notoriously had bad blood between them. To keep two thirds of the team from killing each other, Mirage, a.k.a. Dani Moonstar, had been brought along as our senior X-Men member to give overall orders.

...Granted, I didn't expect any real orders to be given. She was there to babysit, and we were all smart enough to know it.

One of the perks that came with being considered a real team meant that I could fly the fucking plane now. David flew co-pilot, because he was the only other person on the team that could do so. That left poor Laura to sit in the back, straddling the proverbial line of keeping Cessily company and keeping damn near mortal enemies Noriko and Julian from getting particularly nasty with each other.

"What was that?" Julian barked after a particularly barbed line from his counterpart across the aisle, "Say that again! I dare you!"

"You heard me, Keller," Noriko shot back, taking particular pleasure in riling him up, "Or are you as bad at listening as you are at school, or at being an X-Man?"

Straight for the jugular, it seemed. We were twenty minutes into a ninety minute flight and my head had begun splitting already. None of this was going to end well. It didn't take much longer to ramp up further.

Julian had a venomous place he could go to whenever arguments reached a certain point, and he would do so without hesitation, "I don't have to take that from someone whose teammate got us killed and fucked the school."

"Don't dump what happened with Jay on the New Mutants!"

And that was enough for me. Things were about to get ugly.

"Prodigy, take the controls for a sec, please," I asked of David. He nodded and did so, knowing fully what I was about to do. He'd seen me gritting my teeth for the last several minutes.

I got up and started stomping towards the back. On my way, I stopped where Dani Moonstar was sitting, seemingly taking notes on everything happening, "You could do something about this any time, you know," I said, as I moved past her. Not that I expected her to. If she was going to, she would have by then.

She seemed just as annoyed as I was, but didn't make a move to put a stop to it, "I'm just here to see how you all do and report back in. This is your team, Solaris."

In other words – you do something about it. Message received.

"No, it's not," I complained out loud as I found myself amongst the others, "Not yet. Because if it was, I would have known better than to put those two on it."

A perceived slight sent both of their ways got Julian and Noriko to stop fighting for a moment, "Hey!" Nori was offended that I lumped her in with Julian.

The same went the other way for Julian, but it was more regarding a questioning of his capabilities, "What's that supposed to mean, Marcher? You saying I'm not good enough?"

In a fight? Sure. But in everything else? I wasn't convinced at all. Not if they were doing this on a real assignment, "What it's supposed to mean is that if I held guns to Prodigy and Wind Dancer's heads and told you two to be decent to each other for 12 hours or I'd pull the trigger, you'd both have some dead-ass S.O.'s."

"Don't joke about that," Julian said gravely. Ironic, given that he was the first to jump on the 'dead students' platform.

"I'm not joking," I said, making a note to apologize to David later, because he was dating Nori, and I knew he'd heard me, "I know we're just going to get Saberwolf fixed, but this is an actual fucking mission. Get your shit together, or I'll do my best to make sure neither of you get picked when real stuff comes up."

Me saying that, and with such confidence, left both of them stunned. Nori quickly beseeched her senior X-Men advisor, "He can't do that. Dani, can he do that?"

If she was looking for support, or reassurance that I didn't have that much pull, she was let down, "Solaris is in charge," Dani said noncommittally, though she looked disappointed, "I'm only here to observe and report."

"Observe and report," I repeated, with the ugliest sneer I could muster to display my own displeasure, "Which means quit making yourselves look bad, because that's making me look bad! I'll turn around and switch you two out with people who can actually work. It's not like we're on a deadline here."

No one told me I couldn't do that. Until I was told I couldn't do something involving what was supposed to be my team, I wouldn't say that there were no options off of the table. I'd spoken to all of them, they'd assured me that they could work. If they went back on that and showed me they couldn't, I didn't have time to play peacemaker. They could ride the bench until they shaped up.

If I could only take five people on every mission, I would make sure the ones who went didn't make things even harder.

"There aren't any New Mutants. There aren't any Hellions. There aren't any Paladins. We're-" I stopped myself when I realized we didn't have a designation yet. That would have to change soon. I liked the process of naming things, "...-Whatever our team name is going to end up being. But the point is, keep all of your petty rivalry shit at school, because if this is how you're gonna be, none of us need either of you."

I stomped back to the front of the plane and plopped down in my chair, taking the controls back over from David. I could still hear Julian and Nori arguing, but they were doing it under their breath. Whatever. As long as they didn't start duking it out, and I couldn't hear what they were chirping about syllable-for-syllable, I'd deal with it. I had an aircraft to handle.

I felt like an annoyed middle school teacher. The dynamics on this team didn't bode well. At that point, it was a shame that we weren't expecting any action. I could have used the outlet of punching something in the face.