Perception Is Belief (Part Four)

The day of the Field Day meeting came, and we were all a bundle of nerves. Ruth was fidgety, trying to scan whatever minds she could for any warning of potential detonation. Hisako was tense and ready to armor up at any second. Eddie bounced on his toes, but every time he went up, he lifted off of the ground a bit. When I leaned close to Laura, I could hear the growl building in the back of her throat, just short of letting it out.

I don't know how much everybody knew, but it seemed like it was more than just the Paladins keeping an eye out for anything shifty. It might have just been me projecting onto the tension of all of the competing teams being amassed in one place. Waiting for the other shoe to fall was utterly painful. I wasn't even listening to what Mister Summers was saying in regards to the competitions, teamwork, and preparation… and how we were the future, and blah. Who cared about that? A fucking kid was going to explode.

All of a sudden, he said something that triggered some déjà vu in my brain. This was it. This was when it had happened in the vision. Ruth recognized it as well. She reached out and grabbed my hand tight in anticipation. We were both expecting an explosion at any moment… only nothing happened.

Mister Summers' speech continued to its conclusion, and that was that. No major snafu. No loss of life. Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. That left me and my team as the last ones standing in the field with our metaphorical dicks in our hands.

"That's it?" Eddie exclaimed, as though he felt robbed, "We've been thinking that shit would go down for days here, and nothing? Dude… blue-balls."

Hisako gave him a smack on the arm, "It's a good thing that nothing happened, you goon. Are you saying you actually wanted someone to go boom?"

Eddie looked rightfully chastised, "No... it's just... I mean, what now?"

With seemingly nothing happening, I felt Ruth let go of my hand. The lack of action had to be a load off of her mind, "We do today's challenge and move on," I said, "Or do you not want to win today's Field Day?"

The guy just wanted a chance to prove himself as real X-Men material. He was just a little overzealous about it sometimes. That was all, "Of course I do!" Eddie exclaimed, "Now we can actually focus on it. Come on. We got so close back in spring. We can pull this off!"

We finally headed off to gather with the other teams to prepare for the first event. Much to my chagrin, it didn't involve fighting. We were meant to solve a series of clues that would tell us which one of the senior staff we were after, then we would capture them.

We were fucked on the first part, the clue-solving part. Not that we were dumb. It was just that our smarts didn't extend that far. Hisako was book-smart. I was street-smart. Laura was tactically-intelligent. The New Mutants would possibly smoke us there. David could probably do that on his own. The second part though, with Laura as our secret weapon to track for us, we would blaze through that part once we got that far.

Again, Eddie, who was hungry for something bombastic to prove himself, was not pleased, "A scavenger hunt! How is this X-Men stuff?"

Hisako smirked at him before dropping some knowledge, "Remember the time Sol and Blindfold got kidnapped and the X-Men had to find them in New York? Or the time Sol had to find Laura when she got kidnapped? Figuring out how to find people is definitely X-Men stuff."

I added to my friend's good point, "I heard some dude who used to go here named Madrox is a detective now, or something," It was pretty weird to find out about people who went to Xavier's who weren't active X-Men and had lives elsewhere. Just an example that everyone had choices.

As we waited to get our assignment from Mister Rasputin and the area cleared out with teams getting ready for the okay to search, we got close to the Paragons. Way too close, as in I was ten feet away from pink hair, and Megan and I made eye contact.

So awkward.

I couldn't remember ever being at a loss for words to such a degree. What could I say that wasn't going to be laced with anger, or pathetically sad? Neither was good for me. I just ended up staring and looking dumb, "Uh..."

I couldn't be all cliché and say something like, 'How have you been?' It had been four goddamn days since she broke up with me. The answer probably would have been along the lines of her not being able to so much as look at me without it being a problem, because it definitely was for me.

Megan wasn't any better. Complete deer in the headlights reaction, "H-Hey, Bel," At least she could string together two words.

Idly, I noticed that our two teams had put themselves between us, as if they were expecting some sort of nastiness that they would have to defend us from. That was where I reached my limits to the drama.

"This is so stupid," I muttered and broke ranks, walked away with as much dignity as I could muster after I spent ten seconds stammering and another ten assessing the situation.

There was no chance I was going to let some kind of b.s. feud between 11 people start over a breakup.

Eddie caught up to me first, "Hey, Sol," He floated nearby, keeping up with me while everyone else caught up, "Why'd you walk away?"

Hisako grabbed me by the arm to stop me from going any farther, "I swear, you'd better not still be kicking yourself over Pixie. We talked about this; I don't think you did anything wrong."

"Hell no," Eddie cosigned, gesturing to Laura, whose eyes were set to the floor, "You had our teammate's back, like you were supposed to. We can go back and I'll give Pixie a piece of my mind if you don't want to-."

I had to stop him right there. I appreciated the loyalty, but for everyone's good, that was as far as it could go, "Do you want to have some kind of stupid Hellions-New Mutants beef? Because this is how petty shit like that starts," I said. The two of them looked thoroughly chastised, "Guys, it's not... it's not worth it."

Both Eddie and Hisako didn't know quite how to react, "...I'm not used to this whole 'zen', 'bygones be bygones' Sol thing. I miss the 'cock of the walk', 'beat me if you can, survive if I let you' Sol."

By this point, Hisako had let go of me, "Yeah, I'm not comfortable without you cutting an angry ninety-second speech, finding a way to shoehorn in compliments for yourself no less than three times."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. It was always fun to find out just what my friends expected of me, given what they'd experienced thus far, "Fine. I promise, if we win and there's some kind of award ceremony afterwards, I'll give a super-long speech that'll make half the school want to take a swing at me. And I'll make it a point to flip them all off at the end. Happy?"

Eddie meekly raised a hand, as if he were in class, "Can I flip them all off instead?"

Despite myself, I smiled. I couldn't stay in a bad mood around the Paladins, "Yes, Eddie. You can be the one to flip them all off. But we have to win first."