Dream Team: X-Students

1. Bling!
2. Anole
3. Pixie
4. Blindfold
5. Elixir
6. Hellion
7. Rockslide
8. Wind Dancer (or Ernst to play by the rules)

I think this team is the All-Star student team headed to crazy town.

With Schism approaching, I'd have them not choose between Cyclops and Wolverine, but between the X-Men and a promise from Mystique to teach them how to survive and thrive.

I actually really like Trance, so that makes me a little sad that she's down in the bottom with the Boogers.

Why wouldn't Prodigy make a good field agent? Doesn't he have access to all the martial arts training he absorbed from before? He should also have Cyke's tactical skills.

I also don't see why Blindfold is useless. Her pre-cognitive abilities could actually come in quite handy in combat situations. If the X-Men would actually take time to work with her and help her use her powers more coherantly, she would be a great asset. The X-Men are starting to look dumber and dumber to me for not utilizing all of the talent they have on Utopia. A myriad of other reasons as well, but that's a whole other thread.

I think there's a difference here between being useful to the team overall and being effective in a combat situation.  It's the Doug Ramsey syndrome.  Interesting power that's useful in many situations and Doug's a smart and likable guy.  But he's a liability in most combat situations because there's no real offensive or even defensive aspects of his talents.  Prodigy would actually be a better field agent than Blindfold in many cases from a pure combat perspective.  Both however are great tactical asset and could work well from the sidelines, coordinating efforts and providing direction.  But when you're facing the Juggernaut or a fleet of Sentinels, they're not going to do much damage... and might actually create more danger for their teammates who then have to worry about their safety while they're in the deep end of combat!

I don't think Blindfold or Prodigy are useless...

I just don't like pre-cog as a power. And Blindfold's version is so odd and out there that I just don't like it. If that makes me a bad person or someone who is lazy or whatever then so be it. I typically don't like time-related powers that aren't used by the villain itself.

Blindfold seems to be rather well versed in using her powers (so its hard to say no one has worked with her). Matter of fact she was on a team and nobody liked that one LOL...

Prodigy on the other hand, I am in full support of his participation in combat situations. I would actually like him to use guns but then I feel like he'd become some other stereotype character that will start more controversy...

Originally posted by das_boot My argument with Prodigy was pretty much that-- he knows all the martial arts he's ever absorbed and has the tactical knowledge of Cyclops at his disposal. The problem being that I don't think he's ever been shown to be trained in how to reconcile all of that information that he has access to, and be able to process it for a split-second decision in the middle of battle. Prodigy is a good candidate for a leadership role, but he will never be a NATURAL leader. All the information he has in his brain makes him a walking battle encyclopedia, but it does him no good if he's busy having an internal battle over doing what Cyclops would do, or throwing down with his martial arts skills. Arguably, having absorbed the fighting know-how from almost every X-Man in the mansion, he SHOULD be among their most formidable hand-to-hand fighters, but until someone actually trains him in how to use that knowledge the way that the people who EARNED those skill do, he'll always be a bit of a liability. My vote would be for Moonstar to take him under her wing again and train with him.

What constitutes natural leadership?  Prodigy regularly guided his team through successful Danger Room training missions, the very first time being a "safeties off" accidental program without supervision that would have killed them all had they not successfully ended the whole thing.  Then there was his instruction of the students to defeat Blob, or the plan to defeat Nimrod.  Pretty much every time he's been shown in an actual leadership role, things have gone well.  And that was all before he got his upgrade to Walking X-Cyclopedia.

As well, Prodigy has been shown to instantly and seamlessly integrate the skills of others into his own ability set.  He didn't even realize he was speaking Japanese the first time he took it from Surge, and when he needed the access codes to get into the Danger Room, it took him all of five seconds to figure out how to get them and then probably another five seconds to get them.  One can even take the "Too Much Information" arc into consideration, as while that was not real he showed the same leadership ability in that telepathic simulation as in anything else.  Not only that but between the connection he had with Moonstar/Frost's minds and his own powers, he seemed to display even greater intuitive abilities regarding those around him (such as realizing that Jay Guthrie's healing powers were intrisically tied to his wings, or that Surge's gloves overloading would be lethally bad for her).  He also displayed that he would have no problem reconciling and incorporating everyone's fighting styles into something that would work for him.

And even if one doesn't want to take that into consideration, after Quest for Magik Prodigy used training from both Shadowcat and Wolverine to disable Hellion perhaps minutes after even getting all that knowledge back, and while it was the same fighting method, one imagines that a 300 pound unbreakable killing machine and a 115 pound dancer probably don't move and fight in the same way.  And Prodigy being over six feet and nearly 200 pounds, he had to know right away, without ever having practiced those techniques, how to strike, where to strike, the amount of force needed to incapacitate Julian without actually knocking the guy out.

Pretty much, all the elements have already been established that would allow Prodigy, or anybody else like him, to be capable on a battle team.  It's just that this is the X-Men, a franchise line that traditionally does a very poor job of elevating characters like Prodigy.  So people are trained (for better or worse) not to believe it until they see it.  Which is the problem, really.  The writers won't do it because they don't think the readers will buy it, and the readers won't ask for it because they don't think the writers would ever want to do it.

Both sides independently have to come to their conclusion that Prodigy would in fact be useful.

Then again, if Prodigy was an action girl under five-foot-five with the exact same powerset, he'd have been front and center in so many battles you'd think he bought tickets.

1. Anole

1. Dust
2. X-23
3. Mercury
4. Stepford Cuckoos
5. Hellion
6. Pixie
7. Armor
8. Anole

@ Ciel:
LOL.. You sarcasm is duly noted, but the female characters are for the most part are so much better than the males. I might have added Gentle as #9 and Surge as #10. If Icarus qualified he would have made my list...

Theese aren't necessarily my favourite characters but I think they'd work well in a team together, I tried to use characters that aren't really used much or having had much focus in a while (hence no hellion, anole and rockslide etc).

Generation X

1. Surge
Head-strong team leader, too powerful and brash for her own good, would often find herself at odds with her boyfriend, and co-leader, Prodigy who second guesses her somewhat impulsive decisions. Good at heart, she just has a lot of anger inside of her and needs grounding a lot, something Prodigy is only too happy to do.

2. Prodigy
Co-leader with his girlfriend, as the only none superhumanly powered member of the group, David can often be overshadowed by his more powerful colleagues, but he's an expert tactician and serves as the voice of reason among some of his friend's more wild flights of fancy and, had it not for his intervention, they'd probably have suffered a lot of casualties.

3. Graymalkin
Joined the team simply to get away from Utopia, he's still learning about himself, trying to figure out who exactly he is and how he fits in among this. As a result, he often finds himself not being trusted by his teammates as much as he'd like but has developed firm friendships with Prodigy and Dust who treat him like a friend rather than a ticking time bomb.

4. Mercury
Still depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and full of self-loathing, Cessily has decided she wants to see more of the world than Utopia allows and so she follows Surge on their mission. Sticking mostly to herself and often goes missing for hours in order to try and see more of the world. Using an old image inducer she swiped from the labs before they went off on their way.

5. Dust
Sooraya hasn't had much focus for years but she's an interesting character, I see her fulfilling the moral role of Storm in this title, however, while she will voice her thoughts she simply lacks the authority of this woman and should she get shouted down, and often does, she won't press the issue and will simply follows orders, even if she doesn't see the sense in them.

6. Match
As a relatively blank slate, I'd give him the role of the trickster on this team, the kind of fun loving guy who's not afraid of a challenge and has a strict thirst to prove himself to his arguably slightly more experienced teammates, a trait that often gets him into trouble that he needs to be rescued from.

7. Trance
Everyone's always looking for Hope, and it's never her that they're looking for, she gets irritated, frustrated and feels overlooked as the 'lesser' Hope so she jumps at the opportunity to go on the road with Nori and the crew. Would eventually form a kind of love-hate relationship with Match, who tends to call her Hopeless.

8. Gentle
Nezhno, quite simply, is going to die and, hell, he's accepted that, right? Mostly yeah, but that doesn't stop him from resenting the fact he's holed in a warzone, it's kind of difficult to be all zen in the middle of the constant fighting so when Prodigy comes up to offer him a place on the search and rescue team he takes the job, figuring he'd be better off in the big wide world.

Premise

Ernst and No-Girl are missing, presumed kidnapped but they can't say for certain. Emma simply can't spare any of the other X-men to go searching for them so she approaches Nori and david to form a splinter cell of undercover X-Men to go in search of them. She gives them free range to pick their team and sends them off on their merry way in an old hippie van (which a few *ahem* upgrades) and some image inducers, giving them the alias of hippie students on the roadtrip of a lifetime.
The Cuckoos are constantly in contact with them via Cerebra to update on their findings regarding the two mutants who's movements are extremely erratic, just what exactly are those two girls doing, and how does it connect to Cassandra Nova?
The villains they would come across would be old-time spiderman, daredevil, hulk etc. villains and the overarching villain would be Cassandra Nova who has a plan but where did she come back from and what ties does she have to Ernst in particular?

Marvel wouldn't do it because it just sounds good. XD

Anole: Team leader
Pixie
Cuckoos
Hellion
Elixer
X-23
Match
Trance