Stark

Jean had already taken a shower herself and changed into a fresh pair of jeans and a simple teal hoodie and was now waiting for Harry to finish washing himself up.

She was leaning against a wall in the hallway outside the changing rooms. She let her thoughts wander to pass off the time.

The new student was certainly an interesting person. He had apparently just gained his powers but was already that adamant to gain control of them. Most of the people she had seen come here were careful and meticulous in trying out their powers, usually within the supervision of one of the teachers here.

He had been out at night, by himself, practicing with seemingly no worry for his own physical well-being. She had seen him sneaking out of the mansion and had followed him, wondering what he was up to.

She had seen him repeatedly falling into gravel, usually face first as he tried to burst into a sprint. It was almost a comical sight, seeing him preparing to run, then being surprised by the amount of force that appeared, then trying to catch his balance by flailing his arms around before falling down. Though the blood did take out a lot of the fun in this situation.

The amount of times Harry had fallen and struck against the gravel would have discouraged most people from trying again, yet he kept going, again and again.

She would have thought that maybe his powers granted him some immunity to pain. Likely an aspect of his regeneration powers, but no. The pain filled groans and the occasional shouts had revealed that he felt pain.

He must have been inflicted with hundreds of wounds during his run, yet he didn't stop. Even if he was completely covered in his own blood and had his clothes torn into shreds, he was calm. He was able to joke around and didn't look at all distressed about his situation.

If it had been her, she would have stopped after the second fall. Falling into gravel wasn't a very enjoyable experience. Jean was honestly quite impressed. It took a certain amount of stubbornness that most people didn't have to do something like that.

And while Jean was more accustomed to blood than other people, the fact that Harry had paid next to no attention to the amount of it on himself made her pity him a little. People who were able to ignore blood in those amounts had almost always gained that through some experience that involved lots of gore.

It wasn't abnormal for mutants to face persecution. Some were subjects to horrible amounts of violence at the hands of bigoted humans. Some were even experimented upon. Both were fates she hoped no mutant would have to suffer through.

"So, do we do the tour now?" Jean was broken out of her musings by Harry appearing in front of her.

She must have been pretty deep in thought if she didn't notice him approaching her.

"Sure." She replied.

She pushed herself off the wall and started walking towards another hallway. Harry was walking next to her.

"This mansion really has a lot of hallways, doesn't it?" Harry asked as he looked around. They were being as quiet as they could be to avoid waking anyone up.

"It does, the professor is actually quite rich."

"Is this place something he had made specifically for a mutant school?"

"No, it was apparently his family home before he modified it to become a school."

Harry nodded to himself as the tour continued. They talked quietly during the walk. Jean was showing Harry some of the interesting secrets they had discovered while also pointing out the rooms that were utilized as classrooms and Harry was constantly asking questions about anything that piqued his curiosity. Jean found out that activating that curiosity was pretty easy.

The tour continued for an hour, with all the stops they had to take as Harry kept asking her questions regarding their current location.

/-/

Jean finished the tour in the lounge area of the mansion, where there was a television, a couch and a couple of armchairs. There was a pool table alongside an air hockey table. A table was situated in one corner of the room, alongside a few counters that ended with a fridge that was stocked with sodas and the like.

Jean sat down on the couch and Harry made his way to one of the armchairs situated next to the couch, facing the TV.

"You should now know your way around the place." Jean said.

"Sorry for taking so much of your time."

"I don't mind." She said, looking nonchalant. "I had nothing to do anyways."

'You could have continued training.' He thought to himself. She really was nice or maybe saying that she was nice was an understatement. Helping a person you had just met a few hours earlier that was covered in blood from head to toe required a little more than just being nice.

He smiled in response to her words and turned his attention the TV that Jean switched on. A handsome man was presenting the stock prices. Harry wasn't terribly familiar with such broadcasts.

"It's been three months since Tony Stark's return and his announcement that the Stark Industries will get out of the weapons business." The charismatic voice of the man rang out. "The stock prices of the company are getting lower and lower as shareholders are scrambling to get out before they declare bankruptcy."

There was an attractive woman sitting on the other side of the man to whom he turned to.

"Kate, what do you think of the situation?"

"Well, Mike." The woman stood up and walked in front a board that had news articles all over it. "Tony Stark has been avoiding the public's eye for months now."

She pointed to a news article that had big bold letters summarizing the article regarding Tony's announcement before directing her finger to a whole bunch of other articles.

"On the other hand, Obadiah Stane has been in the eye of the storm for the past three months." She said with a smirk on her face. "Trying desperately to reassure the people that the company was still going strong and that there was internal dialogue happening."

"What internal dialogue?" Mike asked.

"Oh, if I had to guess." Kate turned towards the camera and stared right at it. "I bet they're trying to file an injunction against Stark."

"They did say that Stark is suffering from the aftereffects of his disappearance."

"Exactly, they get Stark out and then everything will go back to normal." She said. "Dear listeners, now is not the time to sell, but to wait and buy."

"The giant will rise back up once the mental block has been removed."

Jean sighed before switching the channel to display an episode of Pokémon that was showing.

"What do you think?" She asked towards Harry. "About that whole situation."

"I mean, the man got kidnapped by terrorists that used his own weapons. That's got to sting."

"Do you think the decision will stick?"

"As long as he stays as the CEO, yes."

"How long do you think that'll be the case?"

"No idea," Harry said. "Do you have some stakes in the company or something?"

"No, I'm not rich." She looked at him like he was stupid. "Why would I have anything staked on it? I'm just happy that they're not making weapons that hurt people. Especially mutants."

"They make weapons targeted at mutants?" That was news to him, then again, so was everything that had to do with mutants.

"They collaborated with some government projects in the past. The projects were supposedly only for defense purposes but people with different ideas got a hold of them." She sighed. "At least that's what the professor told us."

"Oh," He replied. "That's not so good, then."

"Yeah, you could say that."

Following their little discussion was silence as neither of them spoke. The only sound was coming from the TV in front of them that was playing an episode of Pokémon.

Harry looked at the clock situated on the wall next to the TV and noticed that the time was only half past six. There was a full hour and a half of time to kill before class started. He made himself comfortable in the armchair he sat on and started paying attention to the show in front of him.

He had always liked Pokémon.