School Spirit (Part Eleven)

The top five ranking teams were all included in the final event. It was the last chance for any team to take a jump in the rankings and medal, or even win the whole thing, and everyone involved had come with their working boots on.

All of us gathered outside of the Danger Room where Mister Summers stood in his X-Men gear. The Corsairs were his team, so I thought that it was a conflict of interest for him to be proctoring this thing, but if he was the leader of the X-Men, it was probably to put an official face to the final competition.

The Corsairs consisted of a full six student team. Three very hot blonde triplets, all telepaths with some freaky hive mind thing going on – Celeste, Mindee, and Phoebe, the Stepford Cuckoos, also known as the Three-in-One. A tall girl with pink skin and pointed elf ears, of whom I had no idea what her powers were – Callie Betto, Dryad. A short dude covered in quills like a human-porcupine hybrid – Maxwell Jordan, Quill. And some mostly unassuming-looking blond guy – Dallas Gibson, Specter.

I didn't know any of them, personally. No classes or anything. The only reason I knew the Cuckoos' powers was because it was obvious. That, and everyone knew who they were in the first place. But screw that. We had our own telepath. Quality, not quantity.

...Though, they were all probably stronger than Ruth was when they were working together.

The Paladins were the only team that didn't have a full six. We were down two people compared to everyone else.

Looking around, I realized, it was amazing that we had even managed to make it this far.

From the finalists, we had the teacher's pet team in the New Mutants, the top-of-the-food-chain hand-picked chosen ones jock team in the Hellions, and more. It was entirely reasonable to hang one's hat on going that far.

Of course, that was loser talk.

There was a decided lack of shit talking going on, despite how hotly contested the entire Field Day experience had been. Mostly because everyone's boss-man was standing ten feet away, keeping a watchful eye on all of us.

The man in question, Mister Summers, coughed into his hand to get our attention and began to speak, "First, before we get started, I'd like to say congratulations to everyone who made it to this point. You've all trained hard, worked well together, and learned as much as you could from your advisors. But we can only have one winning team."

"-Which will be the Hellions, naturally," Julian said under his breath, but loud enough to be heard over the dead silence of everyone else.

Mister Summers heard him and walked right over, looming over Julian and staring right at him behind the visor on his face. Getting a staredown from Cyclops was a pretty intimidating prospect, "Oh, I didn't know you had precognition. I figured that would be something you would share with Emma," He said, before turning to the rest of us, "Well, you heard Hellion, everyone. You can all just go back to your dorms. Field Day might as well be over."

Everyone took that moment to boo and heap trash-talk on Julian, and by extension the rest of his team.

Noriko snickered over from where she was standing with the rest of her New Mutants team, "Way to go, Keller. Now it's not just me. Everyone's gonna be looking to shit-can you during the finals," By now I had noticed that she had beef with Julian, which could have been for just about anything, given his personality. Even so, she seemed to take marked satisfaction in seeing him shut down. It was probably the only reason she'd bothered to learn my name before.

"Some people just can't handle the truth," Julian shot back, before wincing at a pinch from Cessily, "Ow! Cess!" Metal fingernails on human skin probably did hurt, to be fair, "Why!?"

Cessily was unforgiving in her rebuke, "Don't go setting people off before this whole thing even starts. Do you want everyone to try and take us out first?" Being in second place overall would have made them enough of a target as it was.

Mister Summers was able to wrangle control back and quickly get us all quiet again, "Now if we're through with variety hour, I'm going to explain the rules," That was all he needed to say to get us to shut up, "This is a team free-for-all, but with certain parameters you have to adhere to if you want to come out on top."

You could have heard a pin drop. No one was being a smartass. No one was ignoring his instructions. The words that would come out of his mouth explaining just how all of this would work was like precious oxygen.

All eyes were on him. He knew it, so he went on ahead, "It's a point-based system. To score a point, you must capture an objective and hold onto it until the end of the 60 minute time period. Objectives are small objects that you have to keep on you for it to count as being in your team's possession. There are 10 available objectives in total. All individual objectives are worth one point. The team with the most points receives the highest score – 10," He said, "You can use whatever means you see fit to obtain an objective and keep it away from the other teams. Does anyone have any questions?"

No one did. The scores were all so close that whoever won and got the normal ten points for winning would be the 1st place team. No one wanted to ask how points would be distributed among the other teams. It was irrelevant. First place was the only place that mattered.

The doors to the Danger Room opened. I tried not to flinch. I really didn't want to go in there.

You don't understand just from me telling you. Most people who hear about it just think it's a high-tech obstacle course. Most of them also didn't have to go through the sheer terror I felt when it went out of control. It hurts. When you get hit it's for real. Even with the countermeasures in place, if something goes wrong, you can still be killed.

The room was trying to break its countermeasures so that it could do us in itself. But until then, all it could do was wait for one of us to mess up badly enough because of its meddling to off ourselves.

Mister Summers went in first and gestured for the rest of us to follow, "The final competition begins at 1200 hours. You've got ten minutes to get your last preparations ready," He held a bunch of compass-looking devices in his hands, "Each team that enters gets one of these. They'll help you find the objectives."

All of us went inside and headed off to our own little sections to huddle up. I rubbed my chin, trying to block out how I felt. Compartmentalization, like I said. There was a time and a place for everything. You could only deal with what was in your control, "Okay. Let's put our heads together and put something together here. I don't think winging it is gonna work this time."

Ruth seemed motivated. She stood tall and shifted her feet in excitement, "She wants to win, yes. Pardon. Tell her what to do, and she will try her best."

"Damn straight," Eddie followed up, giving Ruth a nudge of encouragement, "This sounds like a big old clusterfuck. What do you guys think?"

Hisako crossed her arms, trying to size up just where we stood among the others competing, "Dunno. We're the only team in this thing with any less than six. Any ideas, Sol?"

I looked around at the other teams. There were things that we could do that others couldn't, but to a man, if it came down to it, the team sizes would make the difference in anyone else's favor. A straight fight would be the worst thing we could find ourselves in, even if we were better.

I made my decision on how we were going to handle the competition, "Don't go for any objectives. If we do, everyone'll just target us because they all have the numbers advantage," I said, "Just hang back until they start divvying up some of the points and pick each other apart a bit. Then we take our shot."

We would go down early to take attention off of us and observe. From there we could start actively working to win.

Hisako's brow furrowed in worry, "Are you sure?" She asked, "We have to get the most here and now if we want to even think about winning Field Day. Shouldn't we use every second we can for that?"

She had a point. Needless to say, there would be one or two teams that would take the full-court press approach straight out of the gate. Even so, that wouldn't work for us, "This thing lasts thirty minutes, no matter what. Once we get enough, we'll get worn down trying to hold on to what we do get," I said, giving her my reasoning, "I say we scavenge. Pick up the scraps. Unless you want to be a fat, juicy target with lots of points for the bad guys to come after the whole time we're fighting."

When it got down to the final few minutes, it would be a mad dash trying to pick off anyone with a significant number of points. If that just so happened to be us, we were not equipped to fend off a multi-pronged attack coming from all sides.

What we could do was slip through all of the chaos and make plays that counted when no one was paying attention to us.

Either the hunter or the hunted. The lean, hungry predator, or the slow, overfed prey. Those were our choices. I knew which one I preferred. It wasn't the hero option, but I would have rather won than looked cool. Especially because no one would remember how we won, just that we did.

"I hope everyone did their cardio!" Eddie exclaimed, waving jazz hands before losing that manufactured enthusiasm, "This is going to be miserable."

Hisako quickly counted out the teams and the number of points available for everyone to take, "If everything is split evenly, there's two objectives for every team. That's not going to happen, but... theoretically, if we can get four, I don't see anyone realistically getting five. If we can get five and hold on to them, we'll be tied for first at the very least, no matter what."

That was the S-rank goal then. Five objectives.

Slowly, the room started to grow quieter and quieter. Everyone's huddle instead turned to something of a defensive formation.

Every team stood at the ready as time ticked down. Fifty seconds to noon. There had been no warning call to let us all know. It was just that everyone had been aware of the time. They were going to do this live-fire style. If you were ready, you were ready. If you weren't, too bad. You were warned. It was your job to be professional.

That in mind, it was time for last instructions.

Not knowing what to expect from our to-be battlefield once the Danger Room did its thing, I kept my eyes peeled on everything around us, "Blindfold, when the time starts ticking down, I'll be asking you who has an objective, so you've got to keep track of that in this whole mess. Can you do that on top of what else I'm going to ask you for?"

"She appreciates Bellamy believing in her, thank you," Ruth said, smiling at me gratefully, "No, she will not let you down, yes. Not again, no."

I liked her drive, even if I didn't agree with her sentiment. She never let me down. Not once, "Are you sure? It'll be a lot. We're gonna try that thing we've been working on," Ruth glowered at me. Even if her eyes were covered by her blindfold, the rest of her face reacted so spectacularly, I could feel her consternation at me, "Alright, alright. Don't get all offended, sheesh. Let's kick some ass."

"Too sweet?" Eddie proposed, holding up the intended hand-sign.

I responded in kind with my own, "Too sweet."

We were dorks. It was great. Even Ruth did it. Hell, she did it gleefully.

Once again, Hisako was not amused, "You two are going to run that into the ground," Too cool for little team idiosyncrasies, it seemed, "It still looks dumb, by the way."

I let out a hum of passive acknowledgment, "Those your last words before we start?" I asked, trying to be a pain.

She took a second or two to honestly think about it and answer, "Actually no. Don't shoot anymore Lux Bombs."

I was unfamiliar with the term. I'd certainly never said it before. What did 'lux' even mean? And how did I make a bomb for it? "What's a Lux Bomb?"

Hisako looked at me like I was stupid for being uninformed. I later found out that 'lux' was Latin for light. Why she did a translation into Latin instead of Japanese, I never thought to ask. Was that racist to wonder? "The light bomb you made yesterday. That's what I'm calling it," It made sense to her, so she stuck with it, "You set it off outside, so I'm not sure how big the blast actually was or how much this room actually alters distance. Don't do it. You might kill us all."

I had no plans to do so, seeing as how even if it didn't kill us all, using it on one of the other students might have killed them. I wasn't that much of a jerk. I had limits.

I found a sense of amusement at the idea of her giving half enough of a damn to label that stupid move as anything at all though. I wasn't the only one either, as Eddie spoke up, "You're naming Sol's attacks now? You gonna do that for all of us."

Hisako turned to look at him with a grin, sticking the tip of her tongue out between her teeth, "Get something worth naming, and I might. If there's a term for Fastball Special – which we also do, by the way – I don't see why not."

Without warning, the environment around us began to change. In a matter of seconds, we weren't in a big metal room anymore. We were in a thick jungle. The sun was out, but there was so much plant life around us, it almost seemed dark. It was humid, almost oppressively so. Animals and insects could be heard all around us.

Play time was officially over.

Eddie looked around and immediately began to complain, "Man, I hate jungle simulations," Everyone else put a finger to their lips to signal to him to be silent, "Oh, sorry," He whispered.

I nodded to him before looking over at Ruth. She knew what I wanted. It was part of the plan we had worked out, and also something that we had been working with Ruth on for a while.

It took a moment to take effect, but when it did we all felt it. It was like several outside thoughts were all dropped into our minds at the same time. For the purposes of the exercise, Ruth had linked out conscious thoughts so we could coordinate without speaking.

It wasn't as easy to get together as you might have thought. First of all, it took forever for Ruth to figure out the right balance to keep it all together and still manage other things as well. Secondly, Hisako thought to herself in Japanese, which none of us spoke. So when she was addressing us, she sometimes had to think a thought to herself twice.

We would work like this to maintain stealth and long-distance contact for as long as possible. None of us were ninjas or anything, but then again, neither was anyone else. Any advantage our team could take, we would.

"Should I fly up and get a look at our bearings?" Eddie asked all of us together, "We know we're in a jungle, but nothing else."

"Not yet," Hisako thought out loud for the rest of us to hear, "You're not the only one who can fly. And we don't know how close anyone else is or what their view is. You might tip off another team on where we are, or worse, get yourself caught in a dogfight."

She had a good point. Subtlety was the name of the game here. Our whole plan was doing our best to pick and choose our fights after we had gotten a look at how others were fairing.

Armor's right," I thought to everyone, "But he can take a quick look. Just pop your head up above the canopy and get a glance around. Blindfold can project what you're seeing to the rest of us, right?" I asked, directing the tail end of that thought to Ruth.

Ruth nodded. She looked happy to be able to contribute to the rest of the team. Good for her. I knew she could be outstanding. All she needed was a push, "Yes, she can do that, thank you."

That was all our resident flyer needed to hear. In a matter of seconds, he had taken off upward, and we all got a quick look at just where we were supposed to be.

There was a jungle, a crevice at one end of the location, and a mountain at the other edge. The instructors must have wanted a variety of terrains for us to have to deal with.

When Eddie was finished, he dropped back down to the ground. I greeted him by handing over the thing we were supposed to use to look for objectives, "Wing, you've got the searching thingamajig. We need that," Eddie looked at the device and went to hand it over before I stopped him, "No-no-no, you keep it. You're faster than all of us. If we need to get to one in a hurry, you're our man."

And so, our approach was set. From there we had the thrilling task of sneaking our way through the jungle. The quietest person out of all of us was Eddie, because he didn't have to touch the ground to move. Ruth wasn't a slouch either. For a blind girl, her footsteps were incredibly soft.

She led the way, because she was the best person available to show us where to go. Hisako was right behind her, in a position where she could move to defend her immediately if something happened. I was behind the two of them, because I could shoot through Hisako's armor if we needed it.

We were doing recon, and thanks to Ruth, ten minutes in, we stumbled upon a quick look at some of our competition.

Other teams had taken the approach of splitting up as well, and with the way they had done it, they had no problem attacking groups with higher numbers than them.

I watched with my own two eyes, two members of the Hellions, Santo and the girl in the niqab, Sooraya, take on all six members of the Paragons. It was amazing.

Sooraya had turned herself into a human sandstorm, while Santo ran through it and hit everyone within arm's reach. Eventually, he was able to get his hands on one of the objectives – a decent-sized ring that flashed multiple colors.

The big rocky giant, grinned, despite the angry grains of sand bouncing off of his frame, "Thanks for the points, suckers!" He said before running back off through the sandstorm with a glowing ball in his hand. It dissipated once he was gone, leaving six slightly beaten-up, disgruntled teenage mutants without an objective. Some more than others. Through the sand, I saw Nicky and Mark get nailed. It was a surprise that they were getting up.

We had other things to worry about though. That had been an effective attack.

At least now I knew what the objectives looked like.

"Shit," I thought loud enough for the rest of my team to pick up on.

Eddie elbowed me as he fired back a thought of his own, "What?"

"Well, as you can see, the Hellions split off," I told them all as we started to slip away. Maybe Julian really was a better leader than I'd given him credit for, which was not a good thing for me, "The team that has the powers to take advantage of working like that actually did it. Fantastic."

Hisako dropped a timely truth and logic bomb on me,"Would you rather they stayed together? I don't want to fight that team's full line up. I don't want to fight them split off from each other."

Ruth took a moment, as though she were searching for something. "Santo and Sooraya, Julian and Brian, Cessily and Kevin. Yes, that is how the Hellions split up, thank you."

So sand powers and living rock guy in Sooraya and Santo, telekinesis for Julian and... whatever Brian's powers were, plus Cessily's living liquid metal and the ultimate bad touch from Kevin. Bad touch as in, whatever living thing he touches decays.

"...Okay, I'm willing to fight one of those combinations," Hisako told us, changing her last statement, "Seeing as how I'm the only one of us that can actually touch Kevin as long as I'm armored up, that combo seems like a cakewalk."

This was good. We could already start making plans on how to deal with the Hellions now that we knew what their approach was. Depending on who we got to first and who had a good amount of objectives, we could go in and out and start victimizing them, one group at a time.

And that was when was smashed from above with 150 pounds of claws, fur, and teeth.

"Holy shit! Bel!"

I heard Eddie yell out at me, but I had problems of my own to deal with. Namely, the creature scratching into my arms and shoulders, mouth wide open as he tried to stretch and bite off my face.

A closed mouth doesn't get fed, but in this case, an open mouth got a throat full of explosive light blast. Because it was something the Danger Room made to mess with us (me), there wasn't any gore to shower me in. It just broke apart into holographic pixels.

The cuts that it left on me didn't go away though. They hurt and bled. I looked at the red covering my arms and breathed sharply through my teeth, "That fucking jaguar did not exist a second ago!" I choked out, louder than I should have.

Eddie flapped his arms to try and get my attention to calm me down. It made him look like a bird, "Bel, shh! Use the link," He urged, even though he was talking out loud, the same as me.

I was hurt and upset, and I wanted to use this as fuel that the Danger Room was trying to take a chunk out of my ass, but it wouldn't have done anything. I knew that, "Forget it. Nothing we can do but keep moving."

"Are you alright?"

I would have been better if we actually had first aid equipment on us, but that wasn't the case, "Sure. They're not too deep." All I could do was try to suck it up for 45 more minutes and then sprint to the medical bay to get stitched up.

And then, all hell broke loose.

We were still fairly close to where the Paragons had been attacked when the Danger Room decided to spawn a jaguar on my back. With the momentary ruckus that little run-in had caused, they were able to shake off their cobwebs and come for us themselves.

A big wave of fire set the trees around us ablaze. Burning leaves up above us started dropping from the branches. We all started running around to keep from getting lit up. I looked around and could see a big fireball attached to a human body trying to hide behind some trees and fired a shot to try and pick it off. Yes, I could see you, Ben. Stealth isn't your strength when you've got a flaming head.

Hisako saw where I fired the shot and got a look at Ben, the same as I did. She engulfed herself in her full body armor and charged right at him, ignoring his attempt to roast her in retaliation.

I turned to see what else was going on in time to see Nicky flying at me, set to pounce on me like the wolf boy he looked like. Good old Eddie shoulder-checked him in mid-air, sending him flying away from me.

I took a quick glance around to see just what else we were dealing with. It was just horrible luck that this was happening. Neither of us had an objective anymore. Working out some kind of deal would have been better, but unfortunately with adrenaline running high on both sides and the fact that they were still probably stinging from being caught with their pants down by the Hellions kept us all from thinking about it before we wound up coming to blows.

There was a light blue specter darting around. I didn't know what it would do if it hit me, but I had to dodge it three or four times. It was a good thing I had already been on my toes, because I wound up having to dodge a blast that narrowly missed hitting me right in the body.

The source? Tall, dark hair, the kind of looks girls fell for, and the musical tastes that made girls think he was deep. The music thing was mostly for his powers though. Mark Sheppard, a.k.a DJ.

"You really want to go shot-for-shot with me, DJ?" I asked, charging up my hands. He was now my primary threat. Ben was tough with his fire powers, but as long as Hisako was focusing most of her attention on him, he couldn't afford to pay more attention to anyone else. Mark was mine to deal with for the time being, "I don't know everything about how your team fights, but I know I'm faster than you."

I was firing pure light. Whatever his blasts were made of, if we went up against each other I felt confident that I had the upper hand.

Mark shrugged, the sound of blasty, gut-bucket rock blaring through the headphones around his neck, "Maybe. I guess that means I've got to-," Shoot first, which he went to try and do. Unfortunately for him, I practiced quickdraw shooting all the time, "Ow! Fuck!"

I winged him in the shoulder just before he could fire. His shot hit dirt, he went down, and I felt good.

...For about five seconds.

Before I could actually follow up on DJ while he was down, my vision was filled with wings and the girl attached to them.

"Sorry, Bellamy!" Megan said before flapping her wings in my direction. The last thing I saw was pink dust flying my way. The last thing I heard was Megan's voice over the sound of my own coughing, "Nothing personal!"

The best laid plans often went awry. My plan hadn't even been solid. It was temporarily passable at best. Even so, there was still nothing you could do about those plans when you ate a face full of PCP, or whatever the hell Megan's powder was made out of.

From there... well, I can't really describe all of the things that I saw. I can give you a quick rundown of a bit of it though.

Hot girls, some of whom I knew. Some less than fully clothed, to say the least. I'm not ashamed.

HP bars, experience point meters, dialogue prompts, and other video game stuff.

...I'm pretty sure I was also a member of the Toon Squad from Space Jam for a few minutes.

Don't you judge me. That movie is amazing.