"I'm pretty sure they're better with people who didn't already sign their lives over to them? I'm in a military contract that doesn't end until I'm a few years older, minimum. The IF probably wouldn't get involved, or at least it'd be all carrots no sticks, if some random person dirtside showed up with stuff. They might try to get me to explain, too, the trouble is there's no way they'd believe me without a way to get into my head and check. Monitor won't even work, my power blocks those too."

"Bleah. Better than doing it to random civilians, I'll grant, but still."

"They originally didn't even consider me for Battle School because the monitor didn't work. They have alternative tests that they use for other regions of the world and I took those, eventually, somebody really wanted me up there, but the IF is very big on knowing what we're thinking. There was this game back in Battle School that they were using for psych data, but the game started doing weird stuff for me and Sue, and they couldn't figure out what it meant anymore, and they had me writing up self-reports."

"That sounds...creepy and invasive, but I don't have a whole lot of experience with militaries to tell how bad it actually is."

"I don't have experience with any but the one. The game goes away after one graduates out, anyway, so I've stopped reporting. And I hacked all their records to see what they have on me. They've had some remarkable arguments about me and Sue."

"Ooh, what kind of arguments?"

"...If I tell you the juicy ones you need to promise not to put me in the awkward position of having to defend the International Fleet from an overreaction. Like, they suck, but they do some other unrelated things much less suckily, they are actually trying to solve a global extinction threat, and they are a bunch of different people who agree on stuff."

"...If I don't say anything but make faces will you feel the need to defend them, I can keep my mouth shut but I don't know that I can promise not to make faces."

"Oh, no, arbitrarily upset faces are totally par for the course, go nuts. Okay, so, back when Sue was in Tactical with me, there was this guy, I don't even know if he was regular gay or just space-gay - gender balance is fiercely male-dominated in Battle School et al, fill in the blanks - there was this guy who creeped on Sue. Beat on him and raped him and Sue is only a little older than me and we were both promoted fast, mind, so the guy's older. The authorities suck, so nobody says anything, and by the time I get Sue to tell me what the fuck is wrong with him so we can plan to feed the guy his own knees together, guy busts into our room. Sue freezes, I'm just about ready to commit murder, guy gets in a lucky shot and I spend the rest of the fight knocked out. Sue commits murder. And later I look at our records and we find out that the teachers knew what was going on and wanted to see how their promising future savior of the human race reacted to the stressor. They didn't sic the creep on him, but they did let him see how to override the palm locks. There were a couple very valiant psychologists typing NOOOOOO at the top of their metaphorical lungs, but nobody fucking listened to them."

Intensely upset faces!

"I know, right? Sue didn't get in trouble for icing the asshole. It was like nothing happened. Some people were awfully pleased with how he reacted to his stressor. Some of 'em think he's not good enough because he was too paralyzed to jump in as quick as I did."

"I should hope he didn't get in trouble for that. Well, that's some new material to add to the folder of 'things to think about if I need to be pissed off.'"

"D'you need that much?"

"Not really. It's just there's enough stuff that pisses me off that it's easier to put it all in one place. And putting it aside for if and when I need it is easier than trying to repress it or dwelling on it all the time."

"I don't get it."

"It's like...I can't tell myself that it doesn't matter, that I shouldn't be angry about it. But I can tell myself that I can be angry about it later instead of right now."

"And then later... never comes?"

"And then later ends up coming when I have access to a gym and can beat the shit out of a punching bag for a few hours."

"Fair enough. Not everybody can beat the shit out of Howlett instead."

"Well, I can do that, too, but not while I'm away at college."

"Fair enough."

"I wonder how Logan will react when I tell him I know his birth name. ...I wonder what made him start going by it again, I think the name legally on his paperwork right now is Logan L. Logan. Guess what the L stands for."

"Logan? Shot in the dark."

"You guessed it. I don't think anyone actually believes that's his original name, but so far all efforts to get it out of him have failed. ...I'm so tempted to tell anyone other than my sister, but I probably shouldn't. It's not really fair to breach his privacy by going behind his back to another universe."

"My one isn't especially talkative about his history, so I couldn't tell you why he switched back."