Johnny and Yvette. Post Danger Room Conversation

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Johnny asks Yvette about Red X after a Danger Room run



The simulation in the Danger Room faded away into light and nothingness as Johnny fell - he'd missed a landing, twisting in mid air to land on his feet while the drone he'd been dodging floated down to the ground and deactivated.

He took a deep breath and then another one and gave Yvette a shaky grin as he began to pace around the room trying to walk off the buzz he was feeling.

"Are you okay?" She asked, giving him an echoing grin; the Danger Room was quite the adrenaline buzz. Her features were slowly returning to normal, crags and spikes evening out. "That was the close call at the end there." Ruins of shredded drones lay at her feet.

Johnny nodded. "I'm fine. I tried to change direction mid jump and ... missed everything." He picked up a piece of drone and turned, throwing it at the drone lying in the far corner of the room. It hit its head and clattered to the floor. "Can we talk now, debrief after? I need some... Talk now, please?" He bent and picked up a metal disk from the wreckage on the floor and threw it like a frisbee at the wall where it ricocheted off and hit the drone in the corner again.

"Of course." Yvette beckoned him towards the door. "Come on. We can have a drink and chat up in the control room before we do the debriefing part."

"Thanks." He poured them both glasses of water from the sink in the control room and leant back against the wall. "I gotta ask, is that Red X stuff you used to do still a thing?"

"It is," she affirmed, looking a little surprised at the question. Then again, they had been quiet for a while. "The Genosha situation made things difficult for us for overseas response, so we have been working hard negotiating with those countries to let us enter when they need us. It perhaps has eaten into my, how you say? Recruiting time."

It had been the first safe topic Johnny had been able to think of, his nerves still buzzing from the exercises. "You do the recruiting for it now?" The tiny red woman seemed a lot more confident than she had been the last time he'd lived at the mansion but still... She wasn't necessarily the one he'd have picked as the thing's thinger.

She chuckled. "Yes, I do. It is my speciality for X-Corps - I manage the Red X things for the mansion," she explained. "I wanted to try and get people as excited about it as I was when I first joined."

He moved across the room to pick up a stress ball someone had left in there and began to toss it from hand to hand. "Sooo... what's your sales pitch?" Johnny asked.

"Are you interested in joining?" she asked, eyes brightening. "Because that would be very good. We need more interest from the older residents as well as the younger students. The summer leadership courses will be starting soon..."

Their training sessions together had taught Johnny that Yvette operated under some pretty cast iron self control most of the time. Looking at her now, animated like this, rather than operating with her usual extreme self control he realised that she was really kind of cute. In a sharp, pointy slice your face off kind of way. "I think I am," he said with a smile. "I'm helping Lorna out in the kitchen but I've really got a lot of spare time on my hands right now, so yeah. Why not?"

"Very well, then, you get the "so you want to be a life saving person" pitch," Yvette replied, leaning forward in her chair. "I have the information brochures in the office, but I can talk to you about training and what is needed and expected."

Johnny nodded. "Sweet. How about we go and get them after we debrief?" He was calm enough to manage that now, or at least, calm enough to fake it and that's all that mattered.