Sam has already learned a great deal about leading beside Dani. The Ship period hands him a much less orderly version of that job. Their home is gone, their teacher has chosen a…

Sam has already learned a great deal about leading beside Dani. The Ship period hands him a much less orderly version of that job. Their home is gone, their teacher has chosen a direction they cannot follow, and the classmates arriving from X-Factor have their own experience of surviving without reliable adults. Look at the movement around #74–76. Sam is helping people through the aftermath of Inferno, facing what has happened to the school, and then becoming part of a larger team. Nobody gets a comfortable interval in which to establish how the new arrangement works. Leadership has to happen while everybody is tired and upset. The newcomers also change who he is responsible for. Rusty has already led the X-Terminators. Tabitha has no interest in being quietly impressed by someone else's authority. Rictor and Skids have learned to be suspicious for good reasons. Sam cannot assume the old class's routines will simply carry over. Asgard gives that pressure a spectacular setting. His connection to the dwarf Eitri and Eitri's daughter Kindra makes the danger personal. In #85, Eitri identifies the weakness in the Deathsword, and Sam puts himself in its path to break it before Dani can strike Odin. There is a practical quality to that moment. Sam has a particular ability, a narrow opening and somebody who needs him to move now. The enormous stakes do not require him to become a different person. They require him to trust what he has learned. His protective instincts remain recognizable through all of this. The same boy who worries about getting his friends home is willing to put his blast field between them and something they cannot survive. He has grown into the responsibility, even when the responsibility keeps getting bigger.