My usual haunting hours of around one or two in the morning were still the best time to act. After all, I never came across anyone in the underground parts of the mansion that late at night. All of the other times I skulked around to exercise and do this or that, I had never been caught.
Of course, that had been before the first Danger Room incident when it had been discovered what I had been doing. No one had caught me since then, but that didn't mean that no one had forgotten. I was mostly right. I didn't run into anyone. I was followed, instead.
I wasn't turned on to this until I stopped moving while I had been trying to quietly move along in the underground corridors, "Hgn..." My body simply wouldn't budge an inch.
"Oh don't worry, that will only last for a short time," I heard inside of my head. Crap. I couldn't do anything but remain in place as I heard heels click off of the floor. Eventually Miss Frost walked in front of me into my line of sight, "Long enough for you to start explaining to me just what you're doing down here, Mister Marcher."
"Sure," I said, feeling control return to my body, "Just as soon as you tell me if you've been screwing with the wiring in my head."
Normally, being so direct usually threw people off in situations like this. Not tonight. She rolled her blue eyes nonchalantly in response, "Who else, pray tell, would it have been?"
I felt more amazement than outrage at how easily she copped to ganking up my brain with telepathy, "Ugh. At least you'll admit it," I muttered.
Miss Frost didn't let that one slide, "You already know that it happened. There's no reason to hide it now," Wow. She didn't regard me as any sort of threat at all. What if I'd had some kind of explosive temper? Well, I guess she wouldn't have cared about that much to begin with, "It wasn't a mind wipe. It wasn't mind control. It was just a subtle suggestion that what you were worrying about wasn't important."
"And you knew I'd gotten past it?"
"Dear, I felt it when you broke through the block I put on your thoughts," She almost sounded impressed, "I've been keeping tabs on you every so often for the last two days. I mistakenly thought things were all clear when you got through the combat exercise without breaking it, but here we are."
Indeed, "Why'd you do it?" I asked.
"Many reasons. You would have eventually caused fear and panic among the students. Even if your Danger Room theory had no legs, you're absolutely convinced that you're right. That kind of certainty is persuasive,"
"You said reasons. That means more than one."
Miss Frost paused for a moment, a frown tugging at her lips for a moment before she came forward with another reason, "With your mindset the way it was, you would have performed poorly in Field Day. Not just today, but throughout the entire competition. You would have been preoccupied," She explained, "That would have been a shame. I wanted to see how talented you really were, and I wasn't disappointed, until now at least."
She actually thought I was good at this? Wow. Until she'd said something, I thought she figured that I was at best just some kid that went to her school. At worst, I believed she saw me as some sort of troublemaker.
Looking back, I'm a little ashamed to admit that because of her 'better-than-you' attitude and the way she came off whenever most people talked to her, I believed as far as students went, she only cared personally about the ones in the Hellions; her handpicked squad of X-Men hopefuls.
Miss Frost continued explaining her circumstances and just what had been going on recently about my suspicions, "We spent yesterday running test after test, and for the sake of heeding your warning, we didn't hold any exercises using the Danger Room's systems. Again, we didn't find anything," My heart sank at what she said next, for two reasons, "Tomorrow, the practical exercise will be held inside of the Danger Room, operating under its full systems. But the Paladins may not be competing."
Fear started creeping into my heart. Not at the possibility of danger befalling me and others like me, but at the thought of rendering my friends' hard work meaningless, "You're going to disqualify us?"
I did not think this through. I did not think this through whatsoever. Sometimes, I thought I did, but no. I was thinking of plans of action. Ways to go about doing the things that I wanted to do. Not what the fallout would be afterwards, which was usually way more important in hindsight.
There was no way I could have faced any of my friends if we were barred from competing because of me.
I didn't want to believe it. There was one day left. Miss Frost wouldn't throw us out when we were so close to the end, "Could you... really do that? Now?"
She looked at me with an expression of pity. I would have preferred her to be angry, "I don't want to, but I'm well within my rights to. You were going to sabotage the Danger Room," She said, "Mister Marcher, I'm willing to look past this, because I want a clean resolution to Field Day. But I need you to work with me. Let. It. Go. If there is a problem of this nature, it is our responsibility to manage it. Not the student body's."
I hated everything about this. I didn't want to let it go. I was informed. I was invested. I couldn't just forget about it. I wanted to make a difference.
But it was hard to do when no one believed you were right.
"Fine," I said. I had finally given up. There was no avenue left for me to go. Anyone who knew what I thought about the Danger Room thought I was nuts, and I couldn't prove the thing was sentient without forcing its hand, which I couldn't do. Case in point, what was happening right now.
A one-word reply didn't convince Miss Frost. She felt the need to drive her point home, "I don't just mean through Field Day," She said, "You're free to continue working on the new central computer with Katherine to replace the current one, but beyond that, nothing more. I will disqualify the Paladins if this comes up before the end of tomorrow. I will suspend you from squad duty if it comes up afterwards... if that's what it takes."
Message received. No rabble-rousing from this student, otherwise she would sanction my ass.
"There is nothing personal about this. I don't have anything against you. All things considered, I actually like you, believe it or not. But this school cannot exist in a state of chaos. Do you understand?"
Again, my background as a son of a movie theater owner was affecting how I dealt with things. Maverick heroics only worked in the movies and the comic books. The plot of those demanded that the hero would get past the authority figures that wanted things done by the book, no matter how improbable, because that was how the story progressed.
And then in the end, when they were proven right during the course of their crusade, all would be forgiven and they would be seen as the incredible champion that they were.
Yeah. Movies, comics, and video games were nice like that. Life didn't settle itself in so neatly most of the time.
This was the first time I'd felt legitimate failure. I'd come up short before, but this time I'd been shut down entirely. I couldn't convince anyone in a position to help me that there was a need to take immediate action. The only thing I could do was sit back and deal with it.
Yelling wasn't going to help. I couldn't fight the system. Not this system. The best thing I could do was take it all in stride, head up, chest out.
"No, I don't understand. But... that's not the point, is it?" If this was how everything was going to go, I would wash my hands of it. Whatever happened later wasn't my problem anymore, "You win. I'm done. I've tried everything I can do. Even if I was prepared to risk getting kicked out of here to get what I'm after and shut the Danger Room down, you would stop me anyway before I could. So getting the boot wouldn't even be worth it."
Miss Frost could tell how down I was. My spirit wasn't quite broken, but it was just as worn down as my mind and body, "If it helps, I can redo the mental blocks. I can even wipe the entire thing from your mind, if you'd like."
In her own way, that was an offer of help. A way of trying to soften the blow, perhaps? Maybe she still thought I was slowly losing my grip on the waking world because of insomnia. Maybe I was?
The offer was tempting, because I was still going to think about the Danger Room stuff once I left. But there was no benefit to expunging it from my mind. Nothing other than blissful ignorance.
"No," I decided quickly, shrugging my shoulders, "Even if I said yes, I wouldn't be able to hide it. And when Miss Pryde found out, she'd probably try to kill you," It was the reason I didn't run to her in the first place after I first thought Miss Frost had done telepath stuff to me. That, and the fact that I hated getting others involved in my business.
For the first time since I'd seen her that night, Miss Frost smiled at me, "You're probably not wrong. She would absolutely try," The attempt at disarming wit didn't get so much as a rise out of me. It was all over my face, and soon it was on hers too, "Go get some rest for tomorrow. You've had quite the day. You look exhausted."
"Yeah..." I mumbled, turning and walking away. My head hurt, and it wasn't because of any mind meddling. My heart hurt, and it wasn't from any kind of physical trauma. I was at a loss, "Yeah."
Conflict, embarrassment, frustration, fatigue, pressure, fear. It was all adding up. Every step I took felt heavier than it should have.
Miss Frost bid me with a touch of counsel before I got too far away, "Don't ever lose that enthusiasm you have. You care. That's a good thing. Just try to rein it in a bit more," It was hard. I kept to my own affairs when I could, but when I was involved in something, anything, I was in all the way, "You're still so young. There's no need to rush to bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. The world will do that on its own in good time, trust me."
Fair advice. Absolutely rock solid. It fit. Unfortunately, we were who we were. Mutants. And with that, came a laundry list of people and things looking to kill us.
Some of them were farther away than we could anticipate or know about, and others were closer than anyone wanted to consider.