xp_logs | Nathan and Monet, Saturday afternoon

OOC: Backdated to Saturday afternoon.

Monet was fairly firmly ensconced on the couch in her suite, doing her very best to not breath or move the right half of her torso and arm at all. She was well aware that she was being an utter wuss about her ribs at this point but they hurt.

There was a light knock at the half-open door of her suite. "Ribs, huh?" Nathan appeared to have not just tea, but some sort of cookies on a little plate on the tray floating beside him. "I know about ribs, let me tell you... apparently mine are like matchsticks at this point, with how often they've been broken."

"Hey... Thanks for the tea." There was a little colony of mugs on the floor next to the couch. She settled back with his offerings. "Dude. That really sucks. At least mine aren't broken. And I know that it's going to take more than a ton of ...anything landing on me to break them. It's a good thing to know."

"Mmm. More appreciating your invulnerability within its limits, less testing of them, I'd say." Nathan settled into a chair opposite the couch. "So what did happen, if you don't mind me being a nosy old bastard? As you pointed out, it takes rather a lot to even bruise you."

"Honestly? I'm not really sure. I think it might have been me, actually - I slammed a drone into the wall and then everything went to hell." Monet rubbed her good hand across her forehead. "Dude, I broke the Danger Room and almost killed Scott."

Nathan laughed, if not unkindly. "I think Scott's had a lot worse than that, kiddo. A certain amount of fetch and carry for him once you're feeling better might be a good way to apologize - I gather he blew out his knee again - but you don't need to kick yourself too hard on his behalf. And the wall, huh?" He considered it, then shrugged. "Too hard a hit in the wrong place, maybe. It happens. Frankly I'm stunned we haven't had a more serious training accident before this. What we do isn't precisely low-risk even in drills."

"Yeah, but those weren't me." Monet frowned. "I might have gotten a control box or something? And yeah, I'm amazed we haven't done something like this earlier."

"We lost a number of people in training at Mistra," Nathan said, his eyes distant for a moment. "Live-fire exercises, jumping out of helicopters, that sort of thing. The normal military does, too."

"Jesus." She shook her head. "We've been lucky, haven't we?"

"To not have lost someone in training? Well, we're not military - but then again, the military doesn't generally have the challenge of incorporating the safe application of mutant powers in their training and operations. But yes," Nathan said judiciously, after a pause, "I'd say we've been lucky."

"We're not, but seriously, we do things that are as least as dangerous. Dude, I should have known that it was going to go to hell and not fucked it up like that."

Nathan's eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh?" he inquired mildly. "You should have known, huh? Did you develop a secondary mutation of precognition while I wasn't looking? Kudos - that'll be really handy to tell us which bureaucrats to bother with."

"I should have known that reacting like that to drones was a bad idea, okay? It's not rocket science. I fuck up like that in the field and I'm going to be the only one still mostly standing at the end. That's not good," Monet sighed.

"Okay, then. Reacting like what?" Given all the things going boom, she clearly hadn't been 'debriefed' yet; Nathan had no problem stepping into that role. "Break it down for me."

"Uh... I was being air support, basically, when I was attacked by um. Three? Three drones. I broke one, ran away from the other and cannonballed the third one into the wall." Monet frowned for a moment, thinking. "I think that was when the lights went out, and Lil got flashblinded. I don't know. They came back on, the room was fucked and Scott told me to get to the control booth. I was mostly there and then it collapsed on me. I was out after that."

"Mmm," Nathan said. "Level of force issue, maybe. Should you have hit your opponent that hard if they were flesh and bone?"

"No!" Monet said. "I ...probably wouldn't have, unless we either knew they were invulnerable or we didn't have any other choices. And I don't know if I could have, then. But Nate, I was being attacked by drones!"

"Which we are supposed to treat like people," Nathan pointed out, if gently. "And yes, I know it takes a mental leap to do that - it takes a mental leap to not kick the shit out of someone attacking you, too. That's part of why we train the way we do."

"I know that! But there three of them coming at my head and I'm supposed to be air support for the guys on the ground, not pissing about dealing with things attacking me in mid air."

"And do you think that you're ever going to have the luxury of doing only one thing at a time, in a combat situation?" Nathan inquired, still mildly. "Multitasking is sort of the order of the day."

"We might have very obliging people to fight?" Monet asked. "No," she continued. "I know that. I can, but I fucked up this time. It's just ...really hard to not hit people all out and this's even after Cain spent all that time doing those eggshell drills with me."

"If it was easy, we wouldn't have to train at all. Seriously," he said, "don't worry about it too much. Think about it, figure out what you did wrong and what you would do differently, but don't brood. And yes, that's me telling you not to brood." His lips twitched. "I very often preach what I don't practice. Doesn't mean the advice is no good."

"I'll try not to." Monet sighed. "At least no-one died, right? That has to count for something." And they could very easily have died.

Nathan rose, leaning over briefly to squeeze her shoulder (gently). "You'll feel better when the bruises fade," he said. "I can almost promise you that."