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Laurie comes by the 'Danger Gym' to learn some about fighting from Doug and Amanda. After some frustration, Amanda comes up with a rather...unorthodox solution to Laurie's problem.

Doug was wrapping his hands lightly when Amanda entered the "Danger Gym", and he nodded at her as he stretched and limbered up. "Waiting on our 'guest'," he told her, striving to be businesslike. Things between them had been a bit strained ever since they had their argument about the Hellfire Club and his part in it.

Amanda nodded in response. In deference to the whole "training" thing, she'd switched her Docs for sneakers and was wearing a pair of baggy cargo pants and a t-shirt. "Thanks for taking this on," she said, her tone similar. "You didn't have to, but I appreciate the favour."

Doug could think of a number of passive-aggressive retorts that he could make about friendship and favors, but he stilled them before he actually said them. Things were strained already, that sort of thing wouldn't be productive at all. The silence stretched between them as they both warmed up.

Laurie knocked on the door of the Danger Gym, looking ready for a workout in a pair of loose sweatpants and a tank top.

"Hey," she said, feeling the tension in the room. "Um, Marie-Ange told me you were already up here."

"Hey yourself." Amanda smiled at Laurie, a much more natural expression. "'M glad you decided to take us up on the whole training thing. You ready?"

"I don't know," Laurie answered honestly, relaxing under Amanda's smile. She'd been a little unsure as to entirely what this would mean, but Doug and Amanda were two people she had no reason to distrust, and they'd always seemed more then ready to believe in her abilities. "But I'm here to try."

"I figured Amanda and I would start out with a bit of a demonstration before working with you. Sparring in class gives you a good basis for things, but even Master Lee will tell you there's a fairly large difference between sparring with a fellow student, and the times when it will be for real." Doug somewhat naturally slid into 'lecture mode', as he was rather more comfortable and confident in his abilities and knowledge than he had been as a student, or even when he'd started working at Snow Valley.

"The other thing being, there's no way I can beat Mr. Martial Arts Body Language Reading Bloke over here," Amanda added. "But it doesn't stop me from learning. Or trying." She turned to face Doug and gave him a mock-bow. "Just watch the face, yeah? I've got a meeting tomorrow that a black eye'll draw attention in."

As much as there was a roughness to X-Force's training above the sort of formalized sparring that occurred in a dojo, the goal still wasn't just to pound each other into the ground and cause unnecessary injury. "It's not like I'm the 'goddamn Batman'," he replied to Amanda before turning to Laurie. "Amanda sells herself a little short. Against someone who's not me, or North, she can hold her own, and the magic tends to be a wild card. Mostly, don't assume that any power makes for an auto-win, especially if you can get the drop on someone," he said, lashing out a kick at Amanda's knee in the middle of the sentence.

Amanda jerked her knee up, letting the kick pass underneath, before lashing out with a kick of her own, aimed at his groin. "My spells are mostly defensive," she explained to Laurie, eyes on Doug. "Sure I can pop up a shield and hold it all day against most things, but sometimes I don't have that kind of time. Or there's some other reason I can't just hole up. So I tend to work what I can do without the magic." She followed that statement up with a punch aimed at the bridge of Doug's nose, where even a relatively soft blow would cause his eyes to tear.

Laurie had taken a seat along one of the walls, watching her friends spar carefully as they instructed her. It was certainly different then a lesson at the dojo, or during X-men training. They seemed comfortable with what they were doing, although there was a tension to the two that she couldn't quite understand. Something about their work, perhaps? She would never know, she supposed, she, like most of the rest of the mansion knew there were just some things you didn't ask Snow Valley people.

Doug twisted to take the groin kick on his upper thigh, and used an open palm to redirect Amanda's punch just enough that it slid past the side of his face. He slipped in closer and drove a knee towards her midsection, hard enough to knock the wind out of her, but still not quite full speed. "There's no such thing as a fair fight in the real world," he lectured as he disengaged. "So all those things that would get you a warning in class? Use them. Pull hair, gouge eyes, aim for the groin, whatever leaves you as the one standing at the end."

"What if they don't work, even then?" Laurie asked, remembering what Garrison had told her a long time ago. She hadn't yet faced a no-win situation, and while she knew there were ones in the training logs of the Danger Room, she'd never yet had to go through one. A Kobayashi Maru moment, it wasn't a training session she was looking forward to.

The breath huffed out of Amanda as the knee connected, but she still managed to get in a swing at Doug's eyes with her open hand. "There's going to be times you're gunna get hurt," she replied, a little breathlessly as she shifted to get some space between them. "So you go for survival. Try and minimise the damage, keep enough of yourself together so you can cut and run when the chance comes."

"And what if you can't run?" she asked softly, a fear she'd had from the start. There would be times when she couldn't, she'd always known that. She had always hoped that when those times came, she'd have backup that could get to her in time. "What do you do then?"

Doug heard the subtle emphasis. This wasn't a generic 'you', she was asking them specifically. He met Amanda's eyes, and an understanding passed between them, the realities of their work. "It's not about what we'd do," he told Laurie. "I think you know that answer. It's about what you do then. Making the choice beforehand that you'll do what it takes to keep yourself and your teammates safe."

"And you hang on, wait for your chance." Amanda added, quietly. "Back when Belladonna took me... I couldn't fight back. I tried and I lost. But I knew my team would be there, eventually. Or if not them then there'd be a chance for me. So I just hung on, no matter what Candra did to me."

"What if you're not strong enough?" Laurie asked, speaking one of her biggest fears openly now, with these two people she'd come to trust despite the barriers she'd placed around herself. "What if they break you?"

"Then they break you." Amanda's response was simple, factual. "No-one can withstand torture, Laurie, not if the torturer knows what they're doing." She exchanged looks with Doug and went on. "We have a policy, with the Trenchcoats. If one of us gets caught, we hold on for 48 hours, then we tell them what we want. The 48 hours gives the rest time to lock down things, make sure there's nothing left open to trace back. And that's not just the Juniour Trenchcoats - that goes for Pete and Remy and the rest of them too."

Doug nodded his agreement. "That's the biggest thing you need to understand in general," he said, the sparring with Amanda having gone somewhat aside, though he kept an eye out for any sneakiness. "This is the real world. You can't always tell the bad guys by their black hats, and the good guys don't always win. You may get in a messy situation, but you also have to have some faith in your own skills and your teammates'."

"It's harder then I ever thought it would be to trust other people. Well, to trust myself that I'll know when to trust others, really." Laurie answered honestly, a small spiral of anxiety unfurling in her gut, but she pushed it away. "It's always felt like there's something I have to prove, something that would make everyone see that I deserve to be there. I wish I could just know sometimes, so I wouldn't have to keep questioning things anymore."

"You will know. The first time you're in the shite and you've got someone watching your back before you even realise it," Amanda replied. "Laurie, I know what it's like, to feel like you have to prove you ought to be there. When this whole gig started..." She waved at the room, encompassing the brownstone and thus X-Force as a whole. "...I didn't have any powers. I'd burned them out and I was happy to see them go, but I wanted to do my bit, make up for the fuck up I'd made of my life up until then. And I did it, 'cause I had a team I trusted and who trusted me."

"Will they ever trust me?" Laurie asked, looking over at Doug, and then back to Amanda. "I don't give them much of myself, when it comes right down to it."

Doug shrugged. "Maybe it's time you started? What you give is what you get, and all that." He carefully didn't look sidelong at Amanda when he said that. He hadn't stopped trusting her, so it kind of hurt that she'd stopped trusting him. But that was between them, not so much for Laurie to know.

The very faintest tint of a blush coloured Amanda's ears, but she just as carefully didn't look at Doug. "It takes time," she added. "You can't expect them to change their minds just 'cause you want them to. They have to work through their own shite as well."

Much more, and they were in danger of getting into after-school-special land instead of training. Time to mix it up. "So, you think you're ready?" he asked Laurie pointedly.

"I think so," Laurie said, but she seemed less then certain. She stood gracefully from her seated position and toed off the worn canvas sneakers she'd been wearing. "I assume you guys have rules for these things?"

Amanda's grin turned positively evil. "Nothing permanent," she replied, moving to lean against the wall and watch. "Otherwise, anything goes, pretty much."

---

More than half an hour later, Doug broke off with a somewhat exasperated grunt and shook his head at Laurie. "You're still way too tense," he told her. If he had to guess, he'd say it was Laurie's perfectionist streak and paranoid fear of doing the Wrong Thing. "You need to learn how to loosen up more. If you're that tense in a fight, you'll never get anywhere."

"We've been at this a while," Amanda chimed in. "And there's too much over thinking going on. Maybe a break?"

Laurie had broken off at Doug's words and gone to get a small drink of water, nothing substantial or she'd end up throwing up, but she nodded at Amanda's suggestion.

"It might help, maybe talk about what Doug's seeing?" Laurie replied, placing her drink bottle against a side wall again.

"I don't think talking's your problem, Laurie. And if anything, talking more is probably going to reinforce your tendency to overanalyze. I'm just at a loss for another way to go about this," Doug said, running his hand through his hair part in frustration, part to flick some of the sweat he'd worked up away.

"Well, if she's thinking too much, there is a way around that," Amanda suggested, a grin appearing. "Go somewhere where thinking's discouraged."

Doug blinked at Amanda, then looked back at Laurie, then looked back at Amanda. "I have a very bad feeling about this."

---

"I'm not entirely sure I'm the best person to enjoy a place like this," Laurie noted, pushing around the drink coaster that had been left on the table as Doug went to fetch them drinks. "You both know I don't drink alcohol."

"See, that's exactly why you need to come to places like this," Amanda said, leaning back in her chair and looking at Laurie speculatively. "You tend to assume it's just about the drinking." She gestured at the club around them - this early on, the dance floors weren't crowded, but those who were out there were the serious dancers, the ones who clubbed for the music and the movement, not for the pick ups. "Silver's about being able to relax, be who you are. And most of your problem is that you're terrified of doing that. So, you come out, you dance, you relax and maybe even enjoy yourself."

Laurie looked out at the dancers, slightly envious of how free they looked within the music. While she'd always been an okay dancer, it was usually the more traditional ballroom she'd been taught in school. She'd never quick picked up the steps for freestyle club dancing.

"What if you can't dance?" she asked with a wry smile, looking back at Amanda.

"Then you learn. That's the whole point. You need to learn how to relax, how to not take yourself so seriously. Whether it's on the dance floor, on the mat, or when it's for real." Doug still had a wary feeling about whether this would work, but he trusted Amanda's instinct. And everything he'd said had been true.

"And you're hearing it from one who knows. Doug had no idea how to dance when I first met him," Amanda said with a twinkle in her eyes as she reached for the drink Doug had brought. "The first step? Don't think. Feel." She grinned suddenly. "Doug, why don't you show her what I mean?"

Oh, there was the cause of the bad feeling, Doug noted with a shake of his head. He took a long pull of his drink, then pointed at Laurie's. "Spare me the 'evils of alcohol' speech," he forestalled Laurie. "It's entirely legal, and as long as you're not overdoing it, it's merely a social lubricant. For that matter, the only difference between that and coffee is that caffeine is a stimulat and alcohol is a depressant. So, really, it's the same principle as you drinking coffee, which I know you do." He grinned. "Also, I paid the bartender quite a bit to make you a top-shelf drink, so just drink the damn thing already," he instructed.

Laurie didn't know about legal, she wasn't twenty-one yet, having only just turned nineteen a month or so ago. Still, she was with friends, and they'd take care of her if she should make a bit of a fool of herself so who was she really hurting by giving it a shot? With a sigh, and rolled eyes at Doug, she picked up her drink and took a sip. It was nice, the slight bitter taste of alcohol hidden beneathe several layers of what she thought might be anaseed, the drink also seemed to be violently green coloured and Laurie wondered if people knew that in nature anything that colourful was most certainly poisonous.

"Okay, so now I've taken a sip, what exactly is it that Amanda wants you to show me, Doug?" Laurie asked with a grin. She could feel the warmth from the alcohol already, and realised that no one would ever had to spend a lot of money trying to get her drunk.

Doug had intentionally gotten Laurie a rather 'high test' drink once he'd begun to realize where Amanda's thought process might be headed, but also had been careful to get one that masked the alcohol under the fruity flavor. He could tell from the slight dilation of her eyes that the initial hit of alcohol was already working its way into her system. He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of her chair. "She wants me to show you how she taught me to dance." He smiled at Amanda. "Believe it or not, I wasn't always the jet-setting international gad-about you see before you."

"Have fun, you two," Amanda said with a wave of her fingertips and a wink. "Just do whatever he tells you, Laurie."

Laurie allowed herself to be pulled, glancing back at Amanda as they went, a suspicion forming in her mind. Just how had Amanda taught Doug to dance, she wondered. "Should I be afraid?" she asked, even as the smile she sent her friend belayed the seriousness of the question.

Doug had a bit of a twinkle in his eye. This was a bizarre sort of fun, the situation that was playing itself out. There was a playfulness to it that there hadn't been when he'd gotten the lesson himself, but that was water long under the bridge. "That depends on whether you want the advice Amanda gave me now or later," he replied, as a slower tune with a driving bass line came on and he got a bit more in Laurie's personal space.

"Maybe now would be good," Laurie squeaked as she noticed the lessoning of personal space. She blushed deeply at the squeak but looked Doug directly in the eye, lifting her chin slightly both because he was taller then she, but also simply because it made her feel slightly better about the whole thing.

Doug leaned in even further, slowly swaying his hips in time with the rhythm coming out of the speakers, such a low register that it was a practically inaudible thump vibrating through their bodies. He left Laurie plenty of time to pull away, but she stood there as he leaned in to whisper in her ear "Dance with me like you want to fuck me."

Laurie slapped him, it was as instinctual as breathing and her eyes widened in shock as she did it, "I'm so sorry, I didn't..."

"No, you did." There was no accusation in Doug's voice. He'd seen it coming, as Laurie had had to lean back away from him to do it. And he'd let her. "You acted on instinct, without thinking. Let that be your lesson, you need to learn to do that more." He grinned. "And next time put your shoulder into it, like you mean it."

Laurie blinked at him for a moment, she'd expected anger but not this. She smiled slowly after another moment or two, somewhat shyly, and then placed her hands against his chest, moving closer. If he wanted her to dance...like that, then she'd have to be a lot closer then she was normally comfortable with. "Are you ever surprised?" she asked, curious now.

"Plenty." Doug smiled and encouraged Laurie closer by putting his arms around her waist and pulling her lower body more toward his. Maybe the talking would distract her from overthinking her reactions. "None of us are infallible, not even the Professor."

"I find that difficult to believe," Laurie replied, rolling her hips slightly as she'd seen others around them do. She could feel the blush tingling across her skin, this had to be one of the most embarrassing..."I don't think your bosses are ever surprised, cantankerous and scary, but not surprised."

Doug could tell she was thinking and worrying again, but she was doing better than before, so he simply continued dancing, encouraging her by his body language. "Oh, even they get surprised. Not as often, because they tend to be pretty paranoid, but it happens."

"Speaking of surprises..." Amanda murmured in Laurie's ear, breath tickling the other girl's skin. She slid her hands onto Laurie's hips, pressing against the girl's back and moving in time with Doug and the music. "You're still thinking too much. Close your eyes. Feel the music. Let the moment move you, not the other way 'round." She grinned at Doug. "Now you see why I let you go first. How's the face?"

Laurie had jumped slightly when Amanda spoke, but she deliberately relaxed when the other girl grabbed her hips. They were trying to help her, if in a slightly unorthodox way. It was time to stop overthinking this, as Amanda had said, and so Laurie closed her eyes, placed her hands slightly higher up on Doug's chest and relaxed into the beat of the music she could feel throbbing almost in time with her heart.

Doug's eyebrows raised at what had clearly been Amanda's plan. He knew Amanda was 'equal opportunity', as it were, but he didn't think Laurie was into women. Then there was the fact that Amanda hadn't been single for very long, and on his part there was Marie-Ange... And now he was the one thinking too much, analyzing intentions and reactions.

He chuckled and moved closer, so that no matter what way Laurie moved, her hips and torso would be brushing up against either him or Amanda. "Like I told her, she needs to learn to put her whole shoulder in it if she means it." The slight red mark from her slap was already fading.

Things were...different with her eyes closed, the music had switched again, still slow but with a low drum beat that throbbed in her ears as she moved her hips, feeling both Amanda and Doug close. She didn't want to think, thinking meant being uncomfortable, and embarrased and running away. Instead, she stepped closer still, sliding her hands downward to his waist, she didn't speak, but her breathing was soft against Doug's ear as she moved.

"Mind over matter," Amanda continued to murmur. "Stop thinking about how you look, how other people might see you. It's about the moment and that's all." She swayed in time with Laurie and Doug, the three of them almost melded together. "Fighting's the same. Don't think about what you're going to do, just do it."

Amanda's words were almost an undercurrent in Laurie's mind, her focus on the music and the feel of the dance almost completely overwhelming. It was this self-same ability at concentration that allowed her to control and manipulate her mutant power, the one that rarely allowed her a rest from analysing and assessing situations and people. Turned elsewhere, focussed on a driving beat, and stamping, swaying limbs it was a revelation of freedom.

Music beat, Laurie danced, and listened to her friend's words.