Nathan and Marie-Ange in the Danger Room

[x-tarot.livejournal.com]

Marie-Ange and Nathan in the Danger Room. Trainee exercises! A lesson learned - sometimes, a lot of the time, it's okay to ask for help. Sometimes you have to learn it by having drones pound on you for ten minutes first.



It wasn't until the drones started slamming into her walls that the scenario became, in Marie-Ange's mind, entirely unmanagable. She'd thought maybe "Survive" as a mission parameter meant that she needed to maintain some kind of defensive stance.

Disableing the first few hadn't been difficult. These drones were designed, at least, she'd thought, to drop when hit. The first five or so -had- dropped when she hit them with a staff. The next set took a bit more trouble, and she had expected that. Planned for it, even. That it took a few more hits to make them stop moving, that she got hit a few times, bruises and scrapes were part of the training.

The problems started when the fallen drones got back up a few seconds later, pulling themselves back up to their feet and joining the small horde that she was trying to knock back.

Marie-Ange had hoped that imaging walls and holding them steady for a minute would end the scenario. It was -not- working. The drones just started pounding on the walls, making them harder and harder to keep stable, and giving her a terrible headache in the process.

Behind one of the Danger Room's wall modules, Nathan watched Angie carefully, monitoring her telepathically as well to make sure that he jumped in at the right moment even if she didn't see the point of this as soon as they were hoping she would. Scott was undoubtedly doing the same from the blacked-out control booth.

Between the thud-thud-thud in her head, and the concentration it took to keep those walls up, Marie-Ange wasn't having much luck coming up with any good ways to stop the drones. She had a sinking feeling that this was one of Those Scenarios. She'd heard, as much as everyone had, about the waves of drones and the Escalating Scenarios. She'd just hoped that her turn would be a long time coming. She was just simply not prepared for this many at once.

She wasn't sure if she ever would be.

Damn it, Angie, yelp for help already... Nathan grimaced. Admittedly, she was under the impression that this was a solo scenario, so maybe she didn't realize that it was an option. And she was stubborn. That much he knew. As much or more stubborn than Shiro in her own way, really, and very determined to excel in training.

Someone, she thought, was a sadist. Probably Cyclops. He had the reputation, and didn't seem to mind when the trainees told him that they thought he was. Possibly, he could have minded, but if he did, he certainly didn't show it. There were just too many drones to deal with.

"I give up... End scenario. I surrender!" Marie-Ange yelled, hoping to be heard above the constant thumping. "I am not sure what more I can do, and I know someone is listening!" She'd just obsess over the tapes later and see what she did wrong. Maybe it was one of those scenarios where she was never supposed to engage the drones in the first place. Though, she hadn't thought anyone needed to remind her to try negotiating first.

Damn. Not at all the reaction she was meant to be having, and Nathan wasn't surprised when the drones kept coming. Scott could have ended it there, but this was too good an opportunity to make a point, to make sure that she saw it. Very often surrender wasn't an option, and she was missing the most obvious choice...

It wasn't ending. In fact, there were -more- drones, if the level of noise and increased feedback in her head meant anything. Maybe the Danger Room was broken... No, that was definitly not right, there were too many safeguards and she -knew- there was a big power off switch. Besides, if that were the case, someone would have come in to help. If no one else, Kurt could teleport her out.

...

If one of Marie-Ange's hands had been empty, she would've smacked herself with it. "Can I at least call for backup?" She yelled.. "Please?" She didn't really expect that to work, but it was definitly worth a shot.

And Nathan stepped out from his hiding place in one smooth, telekinetically-extended stride, landing right in the middle of a knot of drones, his psimitar coming around in a wide sweep and dislocating knee joints as the drones went flying. "That," he told Angie repressively, "took five minutes longer than it should have. What, you give up first?"

The walls came down in a shuffle of stone reverting back to nothingness, to reaveal Marie-Ange, scowling. "No one said I could ask for help!" She was not pouting. Not in front of Nathan. She might pout later, maybe in Doug's room where someone who Understood was there. Or at least someone who would nod and smile and not tease her. Of course, Doug couldn't talk right now, which helped.

Her slight irritation was taken out on one of the drones, who recieved several hard whacks to the head with the end of her staff. Perhaps the irritatoin was more than slight, Marie-Ange noted to herself. The drone deserved it though. That was one of the ones that had gotten back up.

"You needed to be reminded of that?" Nathan asked archly, launching himself up off the floor in a burst of TK through his psimitar and landing ten feet to the left, where he could take out the new group of drones rushing Angie. Scott's voice murmured in his earpiece, reminding him not to break the drones too badly, and Nathan held back a subvocalized retort with an act of sheer will and a wry grin. "If you're in over your head, that's the first thing you do, Angie. Sorry," he said, and sent a drone crashing to the floor, "second. And really, there's nothing wrong with retreating and yelling for help at the same time. Done it myself, plenty of times."

"Outside on a mission, yes." Another poor drone ate the butt end of her staff, this time quite literally. Or, it would have if it had a mouth. Instead, the end of the staff smacked into where the drone's mouth would have been, and it fell, hopefully staying down this time. "But I cannot ask for help in exams, and I thought these were much the same..."

Marie-Ange frowned, while pushing another drone back, shoving it quite delibrately at Nathan. "This was a trick, I think. I was supposed to have to ask for help..." And he'd been in the Danger Room the whole time. He'd known. "That was sneaky."

Nathan batted the drone at the wall with a thought. "Of course it was. We wanted to test your first impulse. Can't really do that by warning you ahead of time that you had that option, could we?" Another flip took him out of the way of a flying drone, and he pushed off the wall before landing at her side, ready to shield both of them. The drones were still coming, of course; Scott wasn't ready to give up on the scenario just yet. There was still testing Angie's offensive capabilities to be done. "Although really, it didn't take you too long, given the circumstances..."

Between using the end of her staff to fling one drone into another and dropping another to the floor with what appeared to be large stone bricks, Marie-Ange decended into kindergerten. She uttered a single sarcastic "Nyah." complete with sticking her tongue out. "I would bet that I asked for help before Kamikaze -or- Husk would."

Nathan grinned at her, suddenly and hugely. "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it might... uh, incriminate me. Or something." He sent another few drones toppling to the ground. "Comparisons are insidious. Yes, that's the saying I was looking for."

Giggling was not conducive to a productive Danger Room session, which is why Marie-Ange did not giggle. Despite wanting to. Also, she was never quite sure if Cyclops wrote those sorts of things down. "Vision cannot maintain proper battle composure" or something. She could imagine it typed neatly on a screen and everything.

The drones were -not- stopping, she noticed, and she strongly suspected that Nathan doing the bulk of the work was not the goal of this particular scenario. Also, she had a definite sneaking suspicion that the drones were coming faster. And that despite this being good for her, Cyclops took entirely too much amusement out of designing scenarios that made his trainees curse his existance.

Nathan kept his eye on her as the drones continued to advance. This part of the test wasn't an all-or-nothing proposition; once she started to wear down severely, he'd call an end to it, as agreed. "You never got your tattoo," he said, very deliberately intending to distract her.

"Doug ... objected." It was a mild description of the arguement they'd had, and never resolved, over the issue. Marie-Ange still felt fairly certain that there was a way to resolve it, she just hadn't managed to figure out quite what yet.

Two more drones came in, far more closely then she'd have liked, one nearly clipping her shoulder before she shoved it away with the staff. This was definitly -not- efficient, even if it was mostly effective. The staff had been a minor mistake, she couldn't find another card with both of her hands busy..

"Did I ever tell you I had a tattoo?" Nathan spun and lashed out at another pair of drones, noticing that they weren't targetting him, at least not in such numbers. Most of them seemed to be trying to get through him to Angie. #Nice, Scott,# he thought at the silent presence in the control booth.

"No..." Marie-Ange said, very slowly and just a bit skeptically. Though, now that she thought on it, she had half a suspicion that if Nathan did, it was probably Domino's fault. Maybe she could get Domino to talk Doug out of his instinctive dislike of the idea...

Buzzing low over her head, one of the drones finally managed to knock the staff away from Marie-Ange, and it clattered to the ground before dissolving into nothing. "Merde..." She muttered, and pulled a pair of cards from the nearest pocket. There -had- to be a better way to do this...

She was starting to get cliche with the method of last resort, but that particular card she could recognize by touch. A knight on horse, complete with sword and shield appeared between her and the drones. At Marie-Ange's mental direction, it pushed away the drones that were closing in on her.

#Shut it down,# Nathan sent. #That's her last-ditch effort there, I think.#

And the other drones slowed, then stopped. Nathan watched as the flying drones retreated to their storage racks and the larger combat drones to their alcoves. The lights came back up to full, and the Danger Room started shifting around them, modules returning to their 'off' position.

"So," Nathan said cheerfully, looking down at Angie. "How do you feel?"

"Like I need a shower." Marie-Ange was fairly sure Nathan meant something else entirely, but there was a time and a place for answering on impulse. This was probably one of them. "Also very silly for not calling for backup sooner."

"If you knew you'd had the option and hadn't, that would have made you silly," Nathan said, then smiled almost playfully. "Or Shiro. One or the other. But since you didn't, I'd judge that you came to the conclusion that you should pretty quickly. And I'll put that in the evaluation."

"I probably should have known from the start." Marie-Ange answered. "I should ... I should not keep thinking that all these scenarios are stacked against me." She brushed sweaty hair away from her face and neck and rubbed at her sore shoulder. "At least, not to the degree that I sometimes assume. I know better."

"It speaks to a certain persecution complex," Nathan said whimsically, then inclined his head at the doors. "Come on," he urged her. "You can go and take a nice, hot shower before the review. Which I'll be doing, actually."

Hearing that Nathan was going to do this review was a relief. It wasn't that he was easier on her than any of the other X-men, and in some ways, Nathan was harder - but he was Nathan, and criticism from him was a lesson to be learned, and somehow easier to digest. He and Alison, for similar reasons had rapidly become Marie-Ange's favorite 'teachers', in this particular set of lessons. "I am going to live in the shower..." Marie-Ange suggested playfully. "I can just put my pillow in there and never leave.."

"Pruny is unattractive," Nathan pointed out as the doors opened for them.