Amira felt strange as she walked away from her meeting with Emma Frost. She leaped at the chance Frost had offered: a chance to avenge her people against the country that kept Israel stocked with the weapons it used to hold down the Palestinians. Add to that the promise to send badly needed money to the charities, schools, hospitals, and towns in Palestine…but there was something bothering her.
"What happened to me back there?" She asked herself silently. "I was practically foaming at the mouth at the chance to get at a bunch of American soldiers and mutants I've never even heard of. Weird." Then, just as suddenly, she felt a strong impulse to stop thinking about it. So she did.
Checking the clock on the side of one of the campus buildings, Amira groaned. "Great, now I'm late!" She hurried off to the gym, nearly colliding with Vladimir who was apparently heading the same way as her.
"Forget someone?" He asked her wryly. Amira flipped him off.
"I notice you're not exactly on time either." She pointed out.
"I kind of got wrapped up in packing." Vlad admitted. "Excited?"
"I guess so." Amira answered. "Does anything feel a little…off about all this?"
"Off?" Vladimir asked with a frown. "What could be 'off' about settling the score with GI Joe and the Misfits?"
" 'Settling the score?' " Amira wondered silently. "When have we ever run across them?" She asked him.
"I meant for all the times they humiliated the Hellions," Vlad said, apparently unaware of the irony that he was being rewarded for doing the exact same thing. "Besides," he said in a near growl. "Don't you have something you want to pay the Joes and Americans back for?"
"Oh yes." Amira said ferverently in a near whisper. "I do."
"Sixty years of displacement, expulsion and exile. That's what I have to payback." Amira thought to herself. "Sixty years of slaughter and oppression. Of Deir Yassin, Dawamieh, Qibya, Black September, Sabra and Shatila, the list goes on…"
Hounded across the Middle East after being kicked out of their homes by the Israelis. Oppressed and massacred by Israelis, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and treated as pariahs in the Arab host countries that sported Palestinian refugee populations.
Tens of thousands of her people murdered, hundreds of thousands expelled time and again, millions languishing in refugee camps in diaspora…the largest refugee population in the world.
…Yes, Amira definitely had something to pay the Americans—Israel's (and Jordan's) chief ally—back for. Oh yes. They all did. All the Omegas.
Semira's native Eritrea was ravaged after a thirty-year long war of independence against an American-backed Ethiopia. Takashi's extended family died in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. His own traditional upbringing idealized a way of life that died with the American occupation of Japan. Jacques looked on as his native France was routinely scorned, denigrated, and belittled by Americans. A huge fall for had been a very powerful country. Rodriguez saw his Mexico ravaged by American business under "free-trade" laws and Mexicans who tried to find work in America subject to harassment and death at the hands of border patrols and vigilante groups. Phelan had family in Northern Ireland, poor Catholics hit hard by the violence and terrorized by Ulster units wanting to remain part of Britain, another ally of America.
They all had reason to be angry with the American government.
But the thought remained. "What does any of this have to do with these Misfits?" She asked herself. She took a quick look at Vladimir. It appeared as if he was asking himself the same question.
Then the same impulse she felt before overtook both her and Vladimir, as they were…encouraged, to stop thinking about why—and how—the Misfits and GI Joe suddenly became the focus of their rage. It just seemed less troublesome to not think about how they reached their conclusions.
If they had continued their line of thought, it was possible that they would have concluded that they—and their friends—had been chosen specifically because of the historical and personal baggage that accompanied them. But realizing that would've spoiled Emma Frost's plans, so they didn't. Frost had made sure of that.
"Think Naomi will be happy to see us?" Vladimir asked a minute later, unaware that anything was amiss.
"She's always happy to see me." Amira said. "She just tolerates you."
"Slanderer." Vlad said in mock anger. "She adores me."
"It's no different than the adoration she'd feel for a lost puppy." Amira scoffed. "It's sheer pity, nothing more." She looked up ahead. "Here we are."
"I know where we are." Vladimir rolled his eyes. "I've been to the gym before."
"Maybe, but not regularly." Amira snickered. "If you did, you wouldn't be looking so chunky. Too many Double Stuf Oreos, I think."
"My weight is perfectly fine!" Vlad grumbled. "I am not chunky!"
"I know. It's just funny seeing you get all worked up and worried about it though."
"Drop dead."
The two made their way through the gym and towards the indoor pool. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the pool itself, save that there was a dolphin swimming in it.
"Hi Naomi." Vlad waved. The dolphin reared back in the water had gave its own imitation of a wave with its flippers. It gurgled and barked in the strange speech of dolphins.
Naomi leaped out of the water and twisted in the air before diving in again. "Show off." Vlad said good-naturedly as he picked up a bright beach ball. "Want to play?" Naomi threw her head back in approximation of a nod. "Here you go girl!" Vladimir laughed as he tossed the ball.
The dolphin bounced the ball on her nose before hitting it back towards Amira.
"About time you gave me a turn!" She said as she tossed the ball back. "Go get it!" Naomi raced after the ball and managed to catch it on her nose again before it hit the surface of the water.
After about ten minutes of this Amira said, "All right that's enough. Time to go home." Naomi gave a sad squeak of acknowledgement and then shifted forms, turning into a perfectly normal looking, if cute, eight-year old girl in a bathing suit with no signs that she had just been a dolphin.
Amira was waiting with a towel when Naomi climbed up. "You have a good time?" Amira asked. Naomi nodded and said something eagerly in Hebrew. "That's nice."
Vladimir regarded the two girls with the same puzzled look he had when he first met them. He had no idea what would cause a young Jewish Israeli girl like Naomi to bond with a Palestinian teenager like Amira. Possibly it was the fact that they were both mutants. From what he understood, the two girls were already close before the recruiters for the Massachusetts Academy came. Amira had insisted on bringing Naomi along to the Academy when she was recruited.
Naomi, unfortunately, spoke only Hebrew—though she understood English, even if she couldn't speak it—so only Amira understood what she was saying. Naomi tugged on Amira's arm and pointed to Vlad, asking her something in Hebrew.
Amira flushed. "We are not." She quietly hissed at her. "Quit it!"
"What'd she say?" Vlad asked, blinking.
"Nothing." Amira answered quickly. Clearing her throat. "We should probably get back soon to help her pack her things."
"Wait, pack?" Vladimir looked incredulous. "She's a kid. You can't bring her with us!"
"I'm not leaving her behind! No one else can even understand her!" Amira insisted. "Besides Miss Frost set us up with a secret base of our own, away from Cobra and anyone else who could come looking for us, didn't she? She'll be safe there."
"But—" Vladimir protested, wilting under the fiery glare Amira fixed on him and the confused look on Naomi's face. "Fine." He sighed. Amira nodded resolutely.
"Good." She said. "Glad that's cleared up. I'm going to talk things over with Naomi, tell her what's going on. You go do…whatever it is you do. Plot the overthrow of capitalism or something."
With a martyred sigh, Vlad shook his head and headed out. He still had a few things left to pack. Vladimir made it halfway to his dorm before he encountered fellow student Solomon O'Sullivan, an Epsilon.
"Hey Vladimir!" Solomon said as he saw him.
"Zdrast'ye Solomon." Vladimir returned. The two had very different ideas on how to secure the best possible future for mutants. Solomon planned to become a show business agent, become influential and powerful and get into the media to change the perceptions ordinary people held of mutants. Vladimir agitated for workers revolution to sweep away the old order to create an egalitarian society more tolerant of mutants. Solomon believed in change from above, Vladimir in change from below.
Regardless, the two had an amicable enough relationship. "So what's this I hear about you and your friends tearing the Hellions a new one?" Solomon asked, with an amused grin.
"Believe me, it wasn't quite like that." Vlad said. Vladimir had asked Solomon to believe him. He didn't say it wasn't true. Solomon was smart enough to notice the distinction.
"Sure." He drawled. "Why don't we just ask Spyke? There here is now!" Solomon pointed behind him. Vlad whirled. Sure enough, coming towards them was the leader of the Hellions and probably one of the most liked persons on campus—except, ironically, by most of the other Hellions.
"Hi Spyke." Solomon said genially. "Vlad and I were just talking about what happened earlier between his friends and the Hellions." Vladimir paled.
"I didn't want…I mean I didn't…" He started to explain. Spyke just gave a casual wave.
"I'm not going to beat you up for knocking the others down a few pegs." He said. "I had to do the same thing myself after I took over. Those dolts were just upset at being beat by the Misfits and X-Men and thought they could make themselves feel better by beating up some other students. They thought wrong." Vladimir gave a reluctant nod.
"That could very well have been the case." He said.
"So, what's this I hear about you heading up another team of Hellions?" Spyke asked Vlad. Solomon blinked.
"I hadn't heard that." He said to Evan. "Where'd you hear it?"
"From Miss Frost." Spyke said simply.
"I spoke to hear earlier in the day about this." Vladimir admitted. "We're leaving for a new base, I don't know just where. I suppose Miss Frost didn't want there to be any…friction over us Omegas being promoted for beating the bulk of the Hellions."
"Don't sweat it." Spyke said. "I'm sure you'll win them over when both our teams complete our objectives. We'll handle the X-Men…and you'll take care of the Misfits and GI Joe."
"Da." Vladimir agreed, the same powerful urge he felt in Emma Frost's office coming back in full. "We will take care of them…permanently."
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