Wednesday: What was the school board thinking giving Jamie Madrox a teaching position?

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Today the classroom... was a classroom. No scientific equipment. No duplicates in lab coats. No couch pillows.

Just Jamie, a projector and a screen.

"Good morning," Jamie said officiously. "Today we're going to try something different. I'm going to talk. Hopefully, you'll listen."

"I'm sure you've all been affected by recent events at home," Jamie said as he turned down the lights to the room. "And if you've been on the island long enough, you probably know that sooner or later it's probably going to start coming to us. It's also possible that you might decide to take on whatever danger is out there on your own. If that's the case? Here's some food for thought."

Jamie clicked on his remote and an image of a blonded haired kid in a x-man uniform appeared on the screen. "This is Douglas Ramsey. Back in the day, he and his friends were known as the New Mutants. They were all students at a school not unlike Fandom. Except without gremlins. And unlike most of the mutants you see around here, Douglas's power was not the flashiest. He had the ability to decipher any language including computer languages. One day they decided they were going to try and save a race of genetically altered creatures on their own. When his girlfriend Ra-"

Jamie paused a second to swallow before continuing. "When his girlfriend was in danger of being shot, he threw himself in front of the bullet and sacrificed himself."

He turned and gave the classroom a serious look. "Now if he and his friends had waited until an adult showed up instead of going off on his own? He'd probably still be alive today."


Jamie clicked again on his remote and an image of a man in a odd looking Apache warrior costume appeared on the screen. "This is John Proudstar. He was a member of the X-men with... a bit of a temper. When trying to defeat an enemy, he ignored his friends and leaders to try and take on a bad guy all by himself. He jumped on the enemy's airplane and tried to prove himself as a warrior. Instead the plane blew up and killed him. The enemy? He survived."

"And finally," Jamie said as he clicked on the remote, "We have Jay." The image on the screen changed to a handsome boy with a guitar and wings on his back. "Jay was also a mutant. He had the ability to fly and had a incredible healing factor. One day he showed up at a school with both wings amputated. He was tricked by a leader of a fundamentalist group who was trying to eradicate the mutant race. He told Jay by giving up his wings to God that he would be able to save his friends. Instead Jay accidentally told this 'man of God' when most of his friends were leaving school. The next day those buses were bombed and most of his friends perished. When Jay confronted the culprit, on his own, he was shot and killed."

Jamie turned and looked at the class. "Not to long ago I was sitting where you are now. I thought I knew exactly what I was doing and nobody could tell me any different. As a result I threw myself into a time device and got myself sent to the future where I was thrown into a mutant internment camp where I was beaten, had my head shaved and then given a tattoo on my face. Then someone attached a grenade to my chest and blew me up. Not long after that I was trying to save a friend who was stuck in that internment camp. For my trouble I got stabbed through the chest."

He gave the class a small smirk. "Clearly, I got better. I was also extremely lucky."

Jamie then turned off the projector and turned on the lights.

"I'm not telling you anything you don't already know or might have experienced," he continued. "All I'm asking is that in the days to come... think about what you do before you throw yourself into a situation. Don't throw away your life needlessly. All right? Good. Lesson over. Next week we'll go back to doorknobs."

[OOC: Today's class involves talking about character death. Avoid if you wish.]

Comments

Sign In!

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Boggling at the fact that Madrox was serious for once.

Re: Sign In!

[whitequeensfire.livejournal.com]

Angelica Jones

Re: Sign In!

[glacial_queen]

Karla

Re: Sign In!

[randomspanish.livejournal.com]

Freddie Benson

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[wwiii]

Warren Worthington III

Lecture!

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Where you can pretend to listen.

Or wait for Jamie to pull something weird on you.

(Nothing weird will happen. Sorry.)

Re: Lecture!

[whitequeensfire.livejournal.com]

Angelica shifted extremely uncomfortably in her seat when John Proudstar was shown. She hadn't known him, but she knew his brother, and how he wanted to make the X-Men pay for his death. And Empath had forced her to go along with the plans for vengeance.

So, yes, squirming.

Re: Lecture!

[glacial_queen]

Karla had been watching the projector mostly so she could avoid whatever craziness Jamie had concocted. But then she'd started looking at the pictures and listening to the stories and...

The male called Jay hit her the worst. Wings. Healing factor. That sounded too much like Warren--and he'd been killed. Shot, and killed. Because she'd needed an excuse to cling to Warren more.

Re: Lecture!

[wwiii]

The more Jamie talked, the more Warren wanted to sink down behind his own wings and hide from the words that he was hearing. He knew how bad it was out there for mutants, and with his entire world gone, he knew intimately just how dangerous this situation was, too.

Giving up his wings to God.

It's what we want.

He tuned out the rest of what Jamie was saying from there, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on his desk. Maybe a world that could do things like that to people wasn't one worth saving, anyhow.

Re: Lecture!

[whitequeensfire.livejournal.com]

The picture of Jay made Angelica glance over at Warren for obvious reasons.

"You okay?" she said, which was a really dumb question, and she immediately felt stupid for asking it.

Re: Lecture!

[wwiii]

Maybe it was a dumb question, but Warren was lifting his head from his desk (even if his gaze lingered there) and shaking his head.

"Not really," he murmured. "I know he's trying to tell us not to run off and do something stupid and get ourselves killed, but this..."

It kind of felt like a checklist of reasons to firmly believe that there was nothing they could do, tailored to knock the wind out of the mutants in the room especially. Which he didn't figure was Jamie's intent, so much as that was where his experience sat, but Warren and rational thought hadn't been good friends these days.

Re: Lecture!

[annieadderall.livejournal.com]

Annie was prepared for something crazy today. After radio, she actually wanted something off the wall for once.

And then the teacher was serious and Annie became convinced they were all gonna die.

Re: Lecture!

[wrongkindofsith]

It wasn't so much that the point of the lesson went over Cara's head, as that it didn't have all that much impact on someone who'd been taught that her life was someone else's to toss needlessly away.

Re: Lecture!

[likethestore.livejournal.com]

K-Mart actually wasn't all that surprised that Jamie was being serious. He seemed to thrive on confusing the crap out of people, so really, this made perfect sense.

How her brain came to this logic, she wasn't sure.

But she got his point. And she wasn't throwing anything away. She hadn't survived this far by being stupid.

Re: Lecture!

[momslilassassin]

Ben was listening carefully, adding these new names to his own internal list of the dead.

If it was bringing up memories of his last war (or the one before that, or the one before that...), nothing showed on his face. Ben was in full-scale Professional Jedi mode.

Re: Lecture!

[whateverknight.livejournal.com]

Squall nodded throughout the lecture. It was weird to see Professor Madrox making sense, but this was definitely the time for it if there ever was one.

At the end, he held up a hand, because the teacher had missed an important point. "So, when you go up against something dangerous," he announced, "don't do it alone. Always go in teams of three."

Re: Lecture!

[walkswithcoyote]

Mercy just sat very very quietly.

Re: Lecture!

[iwishiwasbig.livejournal.com]

Dave waited for some kind of sick, horrifying twist after Jamie started off talking about all the dead people. Annnnd it didn't come. Instead of being horrified and kind of offended, he was horrified and depressed.

After class, he was just going to hide under his bed until everything got better, thank you very much.

Re: Lecture!

[selfhelphero]

Billy had been trying not to think about the possibility of whatever was out there coming for the island, so that set him in a not-so-happy place to start with. After Jamie was done, Billy wasn't sure whether to be impressed by his seriousness, or annoyed that he was being, in Billy's mind, so hypocritical.

The TA!

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Who is probably the biggest boggler of all.

Re: The TA!

[notmyownage]

It was a good lesson, if a little "scared straight". Too bad for Jamie that Claudia was still a seventeen year old kid, and as such still pretty convinced that she, personally, was immortal.

Someone might be working on plans for a Tesla stun grenade in her class notebook during the lecture, yes.

But she was totally boggled. Really!

Re: The TA!

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Jamie attempted to peek over Claudia's shoulder to see what she was working on.

"Let me guess. My Christmas gift?"

Re: The TA!

[notmyownage]

Busted. "Did you want an electrified beachball thing for Christmas?"

Talk to Jamie!

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

He's here for you

OOC

[multi-madrox.livejournal.com]

Probably the only serious class of the semester.

Sorry!