Blair looked at the man in front of him.
"I know your ability is extremely useful. But fully unleashing your mutant powers, displaying godlike combat prowess on the battlefield, and single-handedly slaughtering everyone in sight? That's pure fantasy.
"During training, nobody cares what kind of mutant ability you have. All they care about is whether you can keep up when running, whether you can shoot straight, and whether you fall behind during a march under load.
"Don't you think an environment like this can actually make us feel pretty comfortable? Because we're treated equally. There's no discrimination. The only thing we get is the exact same look of contempt from our officers when they see a bunch of rookies."
Henry laughed.
"Ha. Yeah. They discriminate against everyone equally. Add and subtract, and I guess that counts as no discrimination.
"But don't you wonder why the U.S. military went to so much trouble to organize a military unit primarily composed of mutants?"
"I don't know either. Maybe they want to see if anyone can distinguish themselves. In the end, perhaps they'll select the cream of the crop and form a new mutant special forces unit?"
"Selected from the Marine Corps?"
"Why not?"
Blair spoke seriously.
"Let me tell you about the history of the Marine Corps, and you'll understand. We're a very special branch.
"Originally, we were riflemen aboard ships during the Age of Sail, mainly conducting amphibious landings. There weren't very many of us. A single ship might have had only enough for one squad.
"Then, during World War I, those riflemen from the ships were pulled out and incorporated into the Army as organized units. They performed very well on the battlefield.
"But after the war, the Army, whose funding had been cut, tried to abolish those formations and make itself the only branch responsible for fighting on land. To be honest, they'd wanted to do that for a long time.
"The Navy, unwilling to be placed under the Army's control, naturally fought to preserve the force so it could retain its amphibious capabilities and conduct small-scale wars under naval command.
"The Marine Corps was finally formally established as a separate service in 1947, at the same time as the Air Force, and in 1952 it attained equal status with the other military branches. Marine generals became eligible to attend the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings.
"Do you see it now?
"This is a military force willing to break boundaries and innovate, fighting the toughest battles in the most difficult places.
"Those are precisely the qualities we mutants need right now."
Henry, in full nitpicking mode, asked another question.
"Even so, there was no need to gather all the mutants together. And isn't this rather convenient? One nuclear bomb and you could eliminate all of us potential threats at once."
"You should be glad that this kind of arrangement—where an entire recruit battalion is reorganized into a formal combat unit—is something that only happens during wartime in the United States.
"Normally, once rookies finish training at a recruit depot, they're distributed among various combat units as replacements."
"I really don't understand why that's something to be happy about."
"Think about it. Aside from the officers and senior NCOs, everyone in the unit you're joining will be a newly enlisted rookie just like you.
"No veterans will come along to bully you."
"All right. From that perspective, I suppose it is something to be happy about."
"And judging from this arrangement, there's one thing that's very obvious.
"Whether or not the United States is actually going to war, they're damn serious about it."
Henry lowered his voice and leaned closer.
"So where do you think we might be deployed?"
"The most likely destination, aside from Iraq... where else could there be?"
Blair was simply stating the obvious.
"True."
"Isn't having a chance to serve our country a good thing? We have to demonstrate our value first before we have the leverage to demand more things.
"I'd already left the military before the war in Afghanistan began. By the time I wanted to enlist again, I'd missed the opportunity.
"This time, I've finally got another chance. I don't want to let it slip away."
"You're treating yourself like the 442nd Regimental Combat Team during World War II. Willing to pay any price to prove your loyalty."
"The 442nd Regimental Combat Team? Were they mutants too?"
"No. They were a unit made up of Japanese Americans.
"After all, Japan and the United States were at war with each other during World War II. Those Japanese Americans fought harder than anyone else on the battlefield to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States."
"That's normal, isn't it?"
"Normal?"
Henry was astonished.
"Against a country where your own ethnic roots originated?"
Blair Aoxing wore a serious expression.
"Henry, you need to understand. America is a nation of immigrants.
"If you've studied the history of its founding, you'll know what kind of people the original immigrants were.
"Put bluntly, they were the failures of their original countries. That's why they fled to this New World.
"Whether they were forced to leave or had no choice but to stake everything on escaping, their relationship with their original countries was already extremely weak.
"So if they demonstrated loyalty to America on the battlefield, could that really be considered betrayal?
"Wasn't it their original countries that abandoned them first, forcing them to come to this land?"
It sounded like twisted logic, but for a moment, Henry couldn't find a rebuttal.
He could only point at the Apache.
"But you people aren't immigrants."
"I won't deny that some of the suffering Native Americans endured during the era of westward expansion came from white people.
"But that was more than a century ago. People have to look forward, don't they?
"And besides, do you think the descendants of a family should bear responsibility for the mistakes of their ancestors?"
"You've put it that way..."
Henry helplessly scratched his nose.
If the man himself had chosen to let go of the past, was Henry really going to keep preaching about blood feuds and the idea that vengeance remained justified even after ten generations?
It was easy to tell other people to go die when you weren't the one dying.
"So what about you? I haven't heard your reason for joining the military.
"Don't tell me it's for the money. I know about your success in Hollywood. You've earned more money than you'd make from five years of military pay, haven't you?"
"Me?"
The fact that he had joined the military had seemed strange from the very beginning.
And now that he'd practically lost all of his Kryptonian superpowers, the only thing he had left was an invulnerable steel body.
It was almost as though his mutant identity had become real, while being an extraterrestrial had been nothing more than a dream.
A Kryptonian in a military camp...
Henry, who didn't even know whether he should consider himself a mutant or a Kryptonian anymore, seriously contemplated his circumstances.
But perhaps Blair's topic had piqued the interest of the others.
Someone came over with a mischievous grin and hooked an arm around the acting squad leader's shoulder.
"Blair, you don't know? The newspapers already came up with a theory about why Henry joined the military."
"What?"
Henry laughed.
"There's a reason for my enlistment that even I don't know about?"
"Wasn't it because your girlfriend dumped you, and you enlisted in a fit of anger?"
"My girlfriend? Who?"
"Charlize Theron. Who else?"
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