8/9

8/9 Emma Frost: mentor The White Queen gives the Hellions their school, their training and their connection to the Hellfire Club. She also decides which questions her students are allowed to ask. Emma's telepathy makes that authority difficult to escape. She can inspect thoughts as well as behavior, and the captive New Mutants face the threat of having their minds altered to make them accept her instruction. She does teach. After the first clash, she reviews the Hellions' performance and stresses cooperation. Empath's treatment of Jetstream gives her a particularly ugly example of what happens when one student puts himself above the team. But her priorities remain her own. The Hellions' agreement with the New Mutants does not persuade Emma and Sebastian Shaw to release their prisoners. Her classroom also exposes how differently she approaches individual students. Catseye needs persuading to take a human shape and attend the lesson. James wants to know when his training will bring him closer to revenge. Empath has to be made to acknowledge that his conduct endangered someone else. Teaching this group requires more than demonstrating how a power works. Tarot gives Emma another problem. A card reading might influence a student's loyalties in a way the headmistress has not arranged. Emma considers what that could mean rather than dismissing it as a harmless distraction. Even an ordinary classroom interruption becomes a question of how much control she has over the person in front of her. That puts a hard boundary around the students' independence. They can develop their own friendships, rivalries and sense of fair play. When those choices interfere with the Hellfire Club's interests, their headmistress is willing to overrule them.