xp_logs | Monet and Cain, Tuesday afternoon (Reply)

Cain gives Monet some much needed powers training.

The thing Monet tended to notice most about Cain was that he was really bloody tall (and potentially cranky). She was tall enough herself to be able to look most men in the eye. She could look him in the chest. "Not that I'm much bothered by whether or not I am allowed in there, well, am I allowed in? I've heard Marius's stories about the Danger Room and it kerthumping people." She'd also heard his stories about training with Cain.

"It's the doc's idea," Cain said gruffly, calling up a familiar scenario with a barely-suppressed smile. "Seems you can't keep from breaking stuff, so maybe a little 'kerthumping' will give you some
motivation."

"So... do I get giant robots? Because, seriously, been there, done that. Or llamas? Cain, do I get llamas? They can be really vicious at times." Monet tugged her hair back from her face and tried not to look
too excited.

Cain shook his head as the door opened. Inside, the Danger Room had reconfigured itself to a simple eight-foot-wide ditch with an idyllic picnic scene on one side. And on the other... a troop of Girl Scouts.
Whoever had rigged up the child-sized humanoid drones with berets and sashes needed to be commended, Cain thought.

"So help 'em across," he said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. "Shouldn't be anything to it."

"...fuck me. Those are really creepy. I mean, really, really creepy. They look like they're going to try and eat me. They can't, can though, right?" Monet floated over to the Girl Scouts' side of the trench. The drone put its arms up to be carried and Monet picked it up. Carefully. A little buzzer went off. "What does that mean?"

Cain checked the screen. "That's Sally. Sally is six years old. And you just broke eight of her ribs and punctured a lung. Fail. Try again."

"Oh, what? Does Sally have brittle bones or something? I barely touched her. Does she have a reset button? It, not she." Okay, maybe picking them up like they were normal kids was a bad idea. Monet made her hands into a sling and nudged the back of the next's knees until it collapsed against her. It toppled forward and landed in the ditch half way across.

"And that was Molly," Cain continued, not bothering to contain his amusement. "We hope Molly can swim, since you just pushed her right into a raging river. You can bend steel, but can't keep from breaking the good china? No wonder your folks sent you back here."

"Screw you." Monet jumped down into the ditch, fell and righted herself again. Eggs. It was like holding fragile eggs that would set off annoying buzzers if she broke them. At least she didn't have to worry about holding something small, as well as fragile. Gently, gently does it. Arms around Molly's torso, so loose as to almost not be holding it. Don't move, at all, and float up and forward until she was out of the ditch.

A snort came from the door. "Congratulations, you're the world's most expensively-dressed forklift," Cain teased. "But what about the rest of them?"

He pressed another button, and two of the 'children' began slowly wandering towards the dropoff into the ditch.

"Hey! That's cheating." Creepy drone 1 was closer to the edge than 2. But allowing time to pick it up carefully, cradling its torso between the palms of her hands would take too long. She slipped one arm around it, and lifted off floating toward 2 and grabbed it by its sash, stopping the drone just as it reached the edge. 2 kept walking, the sash tore and it fell. 1 was slowly sliding out of her grip. She shot across and dropped it three feet above the ground, before going back for 2.

Cain just watched as Monet floated back and forth, ferrying the drones one at a time, doing her best not to grab them directly. After about a minute, he hit the red button on the console and watched the drones slow to a halt. The floor of the ditch rose level with the rest of the Danger Room, and the chamber faded to its default appearance of metal panels gridded with glowing blue lines.

Nodding his head, he walked out towards Monet. "I'll give you this," he said curtly, "you found a pretty quick workaround. Strong as you are, you're gonna be pretty dangerous to folks who ain't at leas partly invulnerable. Leastways until you get a handle on it again."

Monet nodded. "Yeah." She shrugged. "Bigger things are always easier to hold, anyway. You don't have to grip, just get your hands in place. It's little things that I'm screwed on right now. Also! And you should be proud, I totally did not grab the head of that one that tried to walk into the ditch, even if it would have been easier to get hold of."

"You thought quick," Cain said again, "but you ain't got the problem fixed yet. Ever hear folks talk about a girl by the name of Siena Blaze?" At Monet's blank look, Cain sighed and glanced away, an expression of something like shame crossing his face. "One of the first times I went out with the X-Men. This girl, whatever it was she could do was like a walking bomb. Screwing up energy, like this explosion that just kept going. Cyclops and Nate were tryin' to keep the jet in the air, Hank and Drake couldn't get in close, so I had to go in and try and shut her down."

He looked down at the floor, mumbling something to himself before glancing up at Monet. "I didn't realize that she wasn't no stronger than a normal sixteen year old girl. Swatted her upside the head, just a tap. Shut her down right quick. Right into a broken skull and a coma. That was two years ago, girl ain't woken up since." He looked into Monet's eyes, a brief moment of vulnerability peeking through the invulnerable exterior. "I know you ain't throwin' on the leathers anytime soon, but the plain truth is, folks like us can hurt a lot of people if we ain't careful. We got a responsibility, no matter how tough it is."

Monet shook her head, momentarily lost for words. "Fucking hell. I got my strength gradually enough that it was never much of a problem before." "That's Sally. You just broke eight of her ribs and punctured a lung." She looked Cain in the eyes. "Can I come back and work on it again tomorrow? I've got to get this fixed or... I've got to get this fixed."

"S'what I like to hear," Cain said with a nod. "I'll draw up a schedule."

"Fantastic. Can we have llamas next time or does this not go that far?"