Finger-Painting With Fire (Part Six)

Sofia Mantega – "Office Hours"

I could not help but be excited as the new semester started. I was always excited to return to school. I did not much enjoy going home to my father. We often avoided each other when I returned. I much rather enjoyed being at Xavier's with my friends, with people who were happy to see me and be around me. I enjoyed training to be one of the X-Men. I enjoyed the idea of making a difference, helping others.

To that end, at the tail end of the previous semester, I had an idea. To stay plugged in with the goings-on around school and stay connected with other kids, I had suggested the entire team take part in some kind of outreach. Eventually, I was able to map out the idea and get it approved. We were given an office and everything we needed to make it official.

The plan was that there would be three of us scheduled to work at the desks on any given day. That meant there would be plenty of manpower available to run missions if needed, and at least once a week every member of the team would have to spend time working office hours. Bellamy and I set up the schedules, but the rotations would likely shift quite a bit. For the time being, however, since it was my idea, and he was our team leader who presented this to the headmaster along with me, it was only natural that the two of us would be the first to roll the initiative out.

It was the first time I could remember being in a position to help others where we did not need to throw our powers around to do so.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," Bellamy grumped as we worked to get the office set up and decorated, "This is gonna be a complete drag, Sof. Why are we doing this?"

Obviously, Bellamy was quite enthusiastic about it all. He did not volunteer for the first shift so much as I persuaded him to take it. It actually took less effort than one would think to agree. Bellamy can often be counted on to do the right thing, even if he complains about it the entire time he is doing it.

"It is good to open ourselves up to the student body," I insisted, smiling and trying to encourage him, "I believe things like this make us more approachable. Whenever trouble arises, our peers should believe they can come to us to help them with their problems."

Things like what happened with Jay and that monster Stryker, they could never be allowed to happen again. I believe things went as poorly as they did, that Jay felt the need to reach out beyond his friends, peers, and mentors, was because he truly felt a disconnect between himself and those that surrounded him. If things got that bad for him, they could get that bad for anyone.

Besides, enough problems sprang up around the school that we could help with on our own; non-violent problems. We were X-Men, even if only in a probationary sense. We were constantly told that the job would not be all about combat. A lot of us needed that idea reinforced.

I continued to share my reasoning with Bellamy, "We are meant to help mutantkind in the future, yes? Shouldn't we start with those closest to us first?"

He seemed deep in thought, and for a moment I thought I might have gotten through to him, "Have you been telling that to kids around campus?"

"I have," How did he know? "Why?"

Bellamy looked away and shook his head, "Nothing, just... that explains so much," He muttered the last part.

It didn't take long for us to start seeing students. There were flyers on every bulletin board around school. An announcement was even made about our office hours during the school assembly at the start of the semester. As the first few came in, I was ecstatic. When one person left, it didn't take long for another to come right in. Sure, what they talked to us about was mundane, many stopped by just to see if we were really there, but I was happy that there were kids eager to speak with us at all.

Many of the younger students tended to go to me instead of Bellamy, which was understandable. With his face constantly fixed in the idle scowl most of us were used to, he could be quite intimidating... that is, until you understood that he was just grumpy, as opposed to being malicious.

No, instead, Bellamy tended to be more popular with older students. They knew enough to be aware of many of his exploits around the school and knew that he was the leader of our team of would-be X-Men. We were public figures at the school – the equivalent of a varsity athletic team, but with higher stakes. That made him the captain. Many of our appointments didn't really seem to want anything of note – they were simply eager to interact with us in a setting where they weren't bothering or interrupting us. Students looked up to us, not that Bellamy realized it himself.

After the last of our most recent round of sessions ended, Bellamy threw his head back and let out a groan, "If I get one more kid coming in here asking if we do tutoring, I'm throwing a chair. They may or may not be in it when I do."

"You are exaggerating, Bellamy," I said, "This is not as bad as you make it out to be."

I actually liked it. As much as I enjoyed the more thrilling aspects of what we were training for, I found this fulfilling as well, in its own way. Bellamy was more the straightforward type who preferred direct goals he could manipulate the outcome of with his own hands.

He waved a notebook around in the air, "I'm trying here, been keeping a log and everything, in case something comes up that we should look into, but these have all been jokes. Last time I checked, there's bigger shit to worry about. I got fucking stabbed two days ago. Now I'm dealing with..." he took a moment to read to the notes he had taken during one of his previous meetings, "...The 8th grader with spike powers poking holes in his gym uniform."

I frowned and walked over to his desk. He noticed my approach and leaned forward properly in his chair as I stood over him, "Taking two hours to be here and do this is not a waste of time. Just because someone else's problem isn't very important to you doesn't mean it isn't important to them," I said, "Not all of us will be X-Men or superheroes. But we all have things we struggle with, need help with."

One of my favorite things about Bellamy as a leader was when you challenged him. His nature was quite stern, which made him the kind of person equipped to handle a fighting force. He was never easy to argue a point against, but for a friend, he would always attempt to see things from a different perspective. Even when he had only been squad leader of the Paladins, he never threw his rank around to have the last word. Unless he was giving a direct order, he would take the thoughts and concerns of his teammates into consideration. That approach went beyond the field for him.

We were all important enough to listen to, which meant he cared. He was not as unpleasant a person as he preferred to paint himself as.

He looked me straight in the eyes, never looking away even when he growled in what I could only take as acknowledgment of my point, "...Goddamn it... I know you're right, that this is all just some harmless counseling. But I'm bad at this. I try to keep my personal problems away from others, big or small. Now I'm supposed to just help people with theirs?"

I smiled, "No one is asking you to be a psychologist," I assured him.

At that, Bellamy smirked, "Yeah, we already have one of those, last time I checked," He said, referring to Dr. Garrison, "He's more for trauma though, I guess."

"Just do what you always do whenever any of us ask you for help or advice."

"I'm not exactly equipped to talk people through the same phase of life I'm still working through."

I rolled my eyes. So dramatic. With a flick of my wrist, I produced enough wind to playfully blow him back a few feet in his chair, "You say that, but you're missing my point. You don't always end up giving advice. What you do always do though, is listen," Even then, he sat and listened to the last student we had just been talking about, "And despite what you were saying about that boy, what did you end up doing for him?"

Bellamy shrugged, "I texted Max and sent him his way," Maxwell Jordan was another student on campus. He used to be a member of the Corsairs student training squad. Though he and Bellamy were more loose acquaintances than friends, they got along well enough, "I figured who better to give him some tips than the kid who's literally called 'Quill'?"

"You see?" I offered, "You helped."

Bellamy looked away. According to Hisako, he never did that. This was one of his tells that someone was wearing on him, "I didn't do anything. I passed the buck, is what I did."

I could feel the grin pulling at my face. No, I was not going to allow him to downplay this, not when I could see he was so close to cracking, "Do not be obtuse, Bellamy. You deferred to the expertise of another, and it will help him."

Bellamy stammered for a moment, trying and failing to come up with another way to downplay his actual efforts today, "T-Take your optimistic ass back to your own desk, would you? We've got more kids to see!" He ordered.

"Of course," I did as he asked, feeling very pleased with myself. It was normally quite difficult to catch Bellamy on the short end of an argument. As I went to let the next set of students know we were ready to see them, I caught the tail end of Bellamy's grumbling.

"...I swear to God. Team leader my ass. I sure don't feel very in charge of you people sometimes."

Like I said, Bellamy can often be counted on to do the right thing... even if he does complain about it the entire time.

Scott Summers – "Peer Review"

The world needed the X-Men, but the ones it had wouldn't be around forever. When we were gone, someone would have to step up and take the reins in our place. That had been the idea when we made our newest X-Men team, comprised of our brightest students from each of the training squads that had been active over the last year.

It was a good crop of kids, all with good skills and lots of heart. Me, Emma, and other members of the staff would do everything in our power to get them up to speed. They had already seen their share of action, but they still had a long way to go. Still, their potential made me feel a little bit better about the future of mutantkind.

To that end, however, I found myself focusing on one in particular. The would-be leader of the team, Bellamy Marcher. I say 'would-be' as if there was any consideration to the contrary. Had Bellamy not attended the school, I couldn't think of who would have been the leader instead. Maybe many things would have been different if Bellamy didn't exist, but in this reality, no one else on the roster made enough sense to be in charge.

It wouldn't have been wrong to consider him my current pet project. I was putting a lot on his shoulders and keeping on him to make sure he could handle it. It wasn't just about the fighting, the strategy, the management and organization though. No, if I was going to try and mentor him, he needed the whole leadership experience.

"Peer reviews?" Bellamy asked, looking confused. I'd had him meet me in the mission briefing room after a training session with his team so we could talk, "I thought we already went over those before school let out for winter break?"

"We went over your reviews of everyone else," I told him, tapping a finger on the stack of files that sat in front of us, "These are everyone else's reviews on you."

His gaze drifted between the files and me, as if he were trying to come up with some method to excuse himself. Had there been a shredder in the room, I had little doubt Bellamy would have attempted to do away with them then and there.

"Everybody on the team had to do one of these?" Bellamy said, sounding desperate. He would have preferred to fight every member of the X-Men back-to-back than sit there and read those reviews, "Are we going to go through all of them? You can't be serious."

I felt my lips tug upward, "The joys of leadership. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish."

"We have to do all of this now?" He asked, "Whenever Emma has some mundane crap for me to do, she at least pulls me out of class to do it."

That was because Emma had come to favor him, even if she would never admit it out loud. I liked Bellamy too, but I wasn't about to let him skip class for his extracurriculars. Xavier's was still a school, after all. Emma had little compunction about skirting the rules a bit for those in her good graces.

"I don't get what your problem is," I said, needling him further, "You don't sleep, so you have more hours in the day to get things done, right?"

"You're enjoying this," Bellamy (accurately) accused me, "Why are you enjoying this? You have to be here too."

That was a good question. Why was I enjoying it? I had the reputation of being a stick in the mud, but that didn't mean I liked doing all of the mundane and monotonous things that my position as headmaster and leader of the X-Men required. Quite the opposite, in fact. Perhaps it was because I had the opportunity to pass that misery on to the next generation.

Judging from the amusement I felt at watching Bellamy scowl at the stack of printouts in front of us, I could safely say that was most than likely the case.

"These are all submitted anonymously so you can take the critiques with an unbiased approach," I said, trying to move things forward, "Shall we?"

"Go ahead," Bellamy said, sounding defeated.

I took the file from the top and opened it, passing a copy off to Bellamy before I cleared my thoat and started reading, "'I do not have any major issues with Solaris as leader of the team. Despite only being active for two months, he has managed to find a way to balance most of the enmity between the more contentious members of opposing squads from previous years. He is diligent and spreads his attention across the team, taking great care to focus on fixing areas of weakness instead of allowing us to rely solely on our strengths. If there is any area at the moment where I could say I find him lacking, it would be in his approach to tactics. He relies heavily on hard-set combinations specific to certain team members that, while admittedly effective with practice, could prove to be a problem if any members are disabled in the field. I suggest more interchangeable sets that can be used with any members, no matter the composition of the squad. Furthermore-.'"

"That's Prodigy's," Bellamy offhandedly interrupted.

I stopped reading, "W-What?"

Bellamy repeated himself, "Prodigy. You know? David Alleyne? This is him. I'd put money on him writing this long-ass thing," He tapped the pages on the table in front of him, "I was thinking maybe Laura at first, but then you just... kept... reading. Then I saw two extra pages stapled behind the comments," He explained, "I doubt anybody else but Prodigy would have filled out three pages for this. Not unless they wanted me sacked bad," We were only halfway through a single page of what had been written, "So? Am I right?"

"I will neither confirm nor deny," I said, "These are meant to be anonymous."

"I'm pretty sure you organized these in ABC order too, so Noriko is probably next."

I stared at Bellamy long and hard before taking the stack of files out of the room to shuffle them out of his sight. I could hear his laughter through the open door. Smartass.

From that point on, he listened and responded to the feedback of his teammates as we went over them, but a game also emerged for Bellamy where he would attempt to guess who had written the review while I was reading it. To 'make it fair', he would only give himself one guess.

"'-We believe that the team would benefit from additional use of-.'"

"Unless somebody on the team writes in the 'royal we', that's the Cuckoos."

"'-I always think it's crazy that this grumpy dingus is in charge of all of us and the team hasn't imploded yet. He's actually really good at keeping people in line without being overbearing about it, which if you've ever spoken to him for ten minutes, you'd know was amazing.'"

"There isn't one compliment on this page that isn't backhanded, so I'm gonna say this is Armor."

"'-I wish Bel would take better care of himself. It's always kind of scary whenever he puts himself in a position to get hurt just so someone else doesn't have to.'"

"This is definitely Pixie's handwriting. Don't... don't ask me why I know that."

The quickest one only took him the first two sentences of the review to figure out.

"'We have all the parts to make this an all-timer X-Men team. As good as things are now, a slight change in leadership would-.'"

"Hellion. Nobody else is gunning for my spot. They're all too smart to want any part of this job."

Though I never confirmed for him whether he was right, out of the 16 we went through, he hit on an impressive 13. If nothing else, the results of that ridiculous game meant that he had at least made the effort to get to know his team and what made them tick.

I figured it was a good start. Leading a team of diverse, potentially volatile teenagers promised to be difficult, but I expected great things. I felt Bellamy was fully capable of living up to those expectations. If nothing else, it would be interesting to watch him try.