“You shoulda called the Princess.”
Logan had looked over the selected choices that Scott had given to him, and shook his head. The only benefit he could see to the team was that they’d gone to school together for a while, and that gave them a ‘team’ base. They knew each other, and knew what each other did, but being the new X-Men? He wasn’t sure if any of them were the right choice.
Across the table, Scott sighed and shook his head. The Princess in question? Molly Hayes. She had ‘hero’ing’ experience, and she’d been a member of a team before; unfortunately, she had a somewhat… unfortunate heritage. Scott wouldn’t have minded sticking Bruiser at the head of the team, but if some nosy anti-mutant extremist did some digging and discovered the Pride, then it would be easy to turn that against them.
“She goes by ‘Bruiser’ now, Logan. And she’ll be fine with the Avengers. Our choices aren’t too bad. Truth is, without us running around and fighting Magneto, I don’t think many young mutants get inspired to be X-Men.” Scott shrugged his shoulders, “Do you think this roster even remembers us?”
"They almost definitely remember Wolverine.” Leaning back in a chair with feet propped up on the table like she owned the place was Jubilee, one bubblegum bubble away from being completely, so, like, over this whole thing. "It’s not like you can blame them, you leave an impression. Sometimes it’s even a good one!” Back when Jubilee first arrived with nothing more than fireworks, a sense of fashion, and a dream she never thought she’d be here; making decisions and mentoring the next generation of kids. Hell, she was basically still a kid herself. At heart. "What’s the problem with these guys exactly?”
“Ah, hell, Jubes one of them can’t even remember what she had for breakfast! One ‘em ain’t sure if she’s dead or alive, and that sure as hell ain’t gonna be something I can teach!” As Logan started, Kitty Pryde shot Jubilee a look that seemed to shout “You got him going on purpose!" “Ya got that Greek kid who explodes — yeah that’s gonna look good on TV, Summers. There’s that girl whose powers are reliant on her emotions, and she’s a fuckin’ teenage girl—”
“Hey! I was a teenage girl when I started too!” Kitty Pryde had to put a stop to it there, before it got out of hand. She knew Logan well enough to know that while he wasn’t a big talker, he would have no issue with rambling if it meant he was blowing a hole in Scott Summers’s plans. “Look, Logan. They’re good kids, you just have to give them a chance. If anyone can train them up to be good at this, it’s you. You did alright with me. Not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty good at this superhero thing.”
“Tch.”
"Hey now, I explode. Well...I make things explode. It’s more useful than you think, and when you hear ‘explode’ you’re already thinking of uses.” Jubilee returned Kitty’s look with a wink and a grin that all but confirmed that she absolutely did do it on purpose. It was quality entertainment and it served to satisfy her own curiosity about the group that could one day follow in the footsteps she helped leave behind. That was worth a Logan rant. "Besides, can’t one of them punch things like really hard? I thought you’d be all over that, Wolves.”
“You explode with style, I think Logan is saying there’s a fundamental difference. You have pretty fireworks… This guy? He turns into like… sand. That’s wack.” Kitty Pryde wasn’t much better than Jubilee, but at least she wasn’t pushing him to make fun of the new recruits.
“Can we focus?” Scott asked, a desperate plea to get everyone around the table to reel themselves back in and get back on the subject at hand. Maybe involving Kitty and Jubilee was a poor choice…
"I see things are going well.” The office door opened and through it stepped Jean Grey-Summers, who promptly made her way towards the head of the table. She didn’t sit there, that was always where he sat, but she did sit next to it, but not before pointing towards Jubilee’s feet and promptly telling her, in so many words, to get them off the table. "I take it there are some concerns? I’ve worked with a few of them personally and they show promise. We can’t start choosing members based on how quickly they can dismantle an enemy.”
"Why not? Isn’t that kinda what we did? I know Wolves wasn’t along for his conversational skills.” Jubilee really wished that Jean didn’t come in; she was really liking having her feet on the table. It was comfortable.
Of course, Kitty Pryde opened her mouth to speak next, but she was shut down by a look from Scott, who then turned his attention to Logan. “Look, Logan. They’re not the A-Team. But you’re the best at what you do, and I know you, of all people can take them from what they are now, and transform them into what we need them to be. Teach them how to fight — Jean, Kitty, Jubilee, and I will take care of the rest. I know what you’re thinking. I wish we were done fighting too; I thought… with Charles’ death, maybe it would stop. But that wasn’t the end of it, that can’t be the end of it. We have to keep going, and we have to keep moving forward. It’s getting bad out there, and if we want the next generation of mutants to have a chance at fairness, at equality… Then we have to do this. We have to ask these kids — that’s what they are, I know that, but we weren’t much better — we have to ask them to show the world that mutants can still stand for what’s right.” Scott paused, taking a second to let his old teammate digest what he’d said, before he added. “We can’t do it anymore, but these kids?”
“They can astonish them.”
There were two kinds of responses to the sudden speech from Scott and they were localized entirely between Jubilee and Jean. Jubilee waited until the end of the speech before yawning. It wasn’t technically a mocking, insincere yawn but the timing was suspect at best. She could’ve easily drawn attention to it or over exaggerated it, but then it would’ve been far more obviously a slight against it. Maybe the speeches would work on the new kids, but Jubilee had heard it all before and at some point they all sort of just blended together.
Jean, on the other hand, simply had one comment to make after the fact. "Well said, Scott. It’s important to remember that none of these kids come here seeking to be heroes, most of them just want a place to belong. And just because they might be a bit unorthodox doesn’t mean they don’t have what it takes. The X-Men are more than just heroics. They can do this.”
“Yeah, yeah… I’ll do what I can, but I ain’t makin’ no promises, and I ain’t gonna baby ‘em. I’m gonna go see if my old simulations are still in the system.” Logan said, shaking his head as he stepped away from the table. He didn’t much care for the ‘speeches’ or the ‘words of wisdom.’ They wanted him here to teach the kids how to fight? Fine.
“Alright. We’ll gather the recruits together to meet in the courtyard, I’m sure they’ll be happy to get out of class.” Scott seemed satisfied that he’d gotten Logan to agree to help at all; he couldn’t ask for much more than what he’d gotten.
“K.”
“Who’s getting who? I’ll get Soren and Soren’s girlfriend.”
"I didn’t know your wall thing meant you were a homewrecker too, Kitty.” Jubilee just couldn’t resist the opening. Jubilee was well aware of how...protective Ana Sofia got when it came to Soren but if Kitty wanted to jump on that landmine of a relationship then more power to her. "Leave the mental patients to Jean, and I guess that leaves me with the scraps. Perfect. Good meeting, team.”
“Jubilation with the scraps. Just like when we were teenagers…” With that final line, Kitty Pryde disappeared through a wall, phasing away from her problems.
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