Sue & Cecilia | Power training but really gossip

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In the midst of power training, Sue and Cecilia talk about being two girls with forcefields at Xavier's Mansion McCrazy. Backdated to Tuesday afternoon.


Sue's tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth as she focused on the forcefield in front of her, the sphere containing a red liquid slowly constricted into a cylinder before twisting into a cone. "Carefully, carefully," the girl muttered to herself barely aware of her training partner as she started to extrude arms from the side of the cone twisting them together and watching the red liquid spiral through them. "Almost," two more arms extruded out slowly winding together a a drop of liquid escaped from the edge of tip of the cone dropping down to hit the floor with a quiet plink. It was hardly any noise at all, but it was enough to shatter the girls carefully won concentration as the entire construct wavered and fell apart. The blonde slumped back in her chair with a huff, "Not even close," she complained with a sigh.

"Pretty impressive, though." Cecilia crossed her legs in her chair. "I mean, you're going to get there soon. And you're definitely way more in control of yourself than I was at your age." Or even now. She closed her eyes and concentrated. As she did, a faint yellow glow appeared around her body after a few seconds. "Come on, girl," she muttered. A translucent shell formed around her, and she held it for about 30 seconds. Then, she opened her eyes. "Usually it's not this hard," she admitted. "But I haven't done tapped into this in a while."

"Apparently using your powers is kinda like riding a bike; you never forget, you just need to get rid of the rust. Besides, around here, it's really easy to get practice at shielding," Sue confided with a grin as she sat up again and tucked her legs underneath her so she was kneeling on the chair, "Either someone's tossing coloured powder, or we're being invaded by demons, or swarms of angry killer potatoes. It's like they somehow managed to convert the entire mansion into one big danger room..." The teenager's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, "you don't think Mr Kane actually went and converted the entire house into a danger room? That seems like something he'd do." she said suspiciously before grinning at Cecilia.

"Oh, could you imagine?" Cecilia groaned. "One minute you're brushing your teeth, and then metal spikes come shooting out of the faucets. Actually," she murmured, "that maybe already happened." She feigned contemplation a moment before looking up and grinning back at Sue. "Nah. Doesn't seem so far-fetched. There are days when I can't remember whether I'm remembering something from my last time here, or if I've just got an active imagination."

"Well they do say it's the latest fad in toothcare, 'New super metal toothpaste, your teeth will gleam or your money back'", Sue returned Cecilia's grin with one of her own. "I'm pretty sure that if you can imagine it, then it's happened to someone here," the teenager glanced around the room and leaned forward to whisper consiprationally, "I hear that strange things happen in this mansion." she leaned back with a self satisfied grin.

"You don't say." Cecilia smirked. "Here I thought the mysterious interdimensional teleportation was just an anomaly. Not to mention the damn dragon." She shook her head. "How long have you been here, anyway?"

"Umm," the girl paused for thought, "One and a...wow, it's coming up to two years soon." She blink owlishly before grinning at Cecelia, "You know it really doesn't seem that long. Wait now what? Dragon?!"

"Oh, I've seen some things, chica." Cecilia grinned back. "Kitty Pryde -- don't think she has been around for a while -- brought a dragon egg back from Asgard, and it hatched." It was funny how casually she could talk about it now, given how much its presence had rattled it to the core. "Lockheed," she added. "Apparently he was harmless, not that I stuck around to find out."

"A Dragon... like flying fire breathing mythical lizard dragon?" the teenager queried before slumping back in her chair and dropping her head into her hands. "Wait what am I saying, of course it was a real dragon," Sue tilted her head up to look at Cecelia, "I swear one day this place is going to drive me crazy...Asgard? Norse god Asgard?" the girl finished in a small voice.

Well, if this wasn't a nice serving of deja vu. Sue's reaction - a kind of tightly controlled internal crisis - was so much like Cecilia's response to the mansion's mysteries that it was eerie. And the girl had a forcefield of her own? Actually, come to think of it, Cecilia might have had this conversation or some form of it with Shan or Alison Blaire or Madelyn. More than once.

"Well, yeah," Cecilia shrugged nonchalantly. "I mean, he was kind of a lizard with wings, not a full-grown destroyer of worlds kind of thing. Unless he got bigger. Never got the sense he was dangerous, anyway, but I didn't stick around much after he hatched. And as for Asgard," her grin widened, "I think you've got the right idea, but I wasn't there. Angelo might have been. Or Doug - Mr. Ramsey, I mean." She watched Sue's face fall slightly and laughed. "If it makes you feel any better, my adventures were way more boring. And totally less frequent."

"You're telling me you somehow managed to spend any amount of time living here without falling into adventure like every other day?" Sue asked with a smile, "Seriously what's the secret? I mean in two years here, I've been on more adventures that I didn't even think were possible, though calling them adventures is being just a little on the generous side. Although it sounds like being attacked by giant killer scorpion statues and floods of potatoes is just scratching the surface. If these walls could talk."

"They probably can," Cecilia said dryly. What had been her secret? Nothing she could pinpoint, really, unless you counted having relatively weak powers, no desire to fight and a general dissociation with mutantkind. Well, no, that wasn't entirely true either. "I had really strong sense of self back then," she finally answered. "I didn't want - I wanted to be a doctor, and that was my focus. So I helped with Red X, and I worked in the med-lab, but I stayed away from most of the crazy. And the people who seemed to be crazy magnets." She played idly with the gold bangles on her left wrist. "Other than that, I guess I was just lucky."

Sue looked at the walls quizzically, "I wouldn't put it past it," she agreed, "atleast they'd talk to Miss Frost if no-one else." the teenager grinned at Cecelia, "You have no idea how hard it is to try to get anything past a teacher how can basically look back in time to see what happened. So that must mean you stayed away from everyone at the mansion then? If there's one thing I've learned it's everyone here is a crazy magnet," the blonde teased.

"I wouldn't say that," Cecilia objected. She pursed her lips for a second. "Well, okay, I kept my distance from some. Mostly the magicians, although one of my better friends was -- well, let's just say she didn't adhere to the laws of physics. But," she pointed out, "I was only here for a few months. It was easier to stay out of trouble, and I just hung out in the medlab all the time anyway."

"I'm pretty sure most of us here have a off again on again relationship with the laws of science," Sue noted with a grin as she vanishing for a moment to illustrate. "The magicians do seem to get in trouble surprisingly often, although I guess the rest of us can't talk. I swear my life wasn't so...exciting before I came here. At least it's not boring," she stated with a laugh, "So you weren't a student here then? When you first came I mean."

"Oh no," Cecilia snorted. "I mean, I was a student - I was in my last year of medical school in Manhattan and then things happened." She hesitated. Bring up the Columbia incident seemed to fly against Cecilia's assertion that mutants could stay away from the day-to-day insanity of the mansion if they were so compelled. But if Sue didn't know her mutant history, a passing reference would raise more questions than Cecilia felt ready to answer.

So she decided to just gloss over the details. "Well, you know how it is," she said after a second. "Something public happens with mutants, and the rules seem to change. So I got outed as a mutant at a time when being a mutant made you a persona non grata. And I ended up here for a little while. Long enough to be bothered by all the insanity, but not long enough to get intimately involved. And as soon as I felt like I couldn't - that I didn't fit here anymore, I split and went back to my real life."

"So basically the same as any other time then?" Sue noted with a smile, "I'm pretty sure that anyone who gets outed these days doesn't really get a great deal out of it, well almost anyone," she allowed, "So how was it? Slotting back into your old life after living here? The mansion kinda has a way of getting under your skin, I honestly couldn't imagine not living here and being wrapped up in all of this." the teen tilted her head as she looked at Cecelia, "So how does it feel to be back now? It's not like you don't know what life here is like and how the 'crazy' gets everywhere after all."

Wow, that was a lot of questions. "Well," Cecilia said, "going back to my old life was fine. I mean, I hung out in Salem Center for a little bit just to... you know, make sure I could keep my powers in check or whatever. But honestly, residency... you're so busy, it's just easy to forget about things. No time to think. And I was doing what I wanted to be doing, so..." She trailed off.

"I was happy to leave," she finally said. "And I'm happy to be back. But both were equally weird."

"I can only imagine how busy you were as a resident," Sue noted before crossing her legs and leaning forward, "So you know you're sane and have that scientific objectivity," she said consiprationally, "So is the mansion crazier now? or when you were here before?" the teenager asked with a smile as she leaned back.

"Less crazy, I think." Cecilia nodded, leaning back a little in her chair. "Well, okay, maybe just as crazy? I've probably seen more crazy since then, so maybe the baseline level of crazy doesn't really strike me as odd anymore. Or," she shrugged, "I'm in the midst of a quiet spell. Which is what I really suspect is going on here."

"Don't worry," Sue comforted Cecelia with a grin, "Around here, no quiet spell can last for too long. before you know it you'll be up to your neck in all kindsa crazy. It's like a natural law of the mansion, 'build it and the crazy will come'."

"Yeah, thanks." Cecilia rolled her eyes as the younger girl's smile widened. "At least this time, I'll be better equipped to deal with it. Mentally, anyway. Maybe not so much powers-wise." She studied Sue for a second. "How'd you end up here?"

Sue;s smile dimmed for a brief moment before flashing back to it's original brightness, "Oh you know your normal mad scientist plot. Girl gets super powers, discovers evil super villain's plot and gets the mad scientist fired. Year's later he comes back seeking revenge, kidnaps our heroine and preforms his dastardly experiments until the heroes come and save her and they all go to the mansion the heroes live in and they all live happily ever after."

"Sure," Cecilia said, eyebrow raised, "sounds pretty typical." Minus the part where it didn't. It's not that Cecilia had a perfect childhood by any stretch of the imagination, but hers wasn't overly complicated by the realization she had powers. Some of the kids at the Xavier Institute seemed to have suffered so much, and in that regard, maybe Cecilia was lucky.

"Well, you're here now," she finally said after a silence that was maybe a moment too long. "And I think it's a pretty good place to be for a teenager. Or are we supposed to be calling you young adults now? I can never keep track."

"Young adults?" Sue repeated, "I've been called a young lady before a few times, but that's mainly if I get caught doing something wrong." The blonde gave Cecilia a cheeky wink, "those rare few times," she told the older woman with a laugh. "Mostly people call us the kids. I've kinda given up on trying to keep track of the proper nomenclature." the teenager leaned back and looked around the room, "It's not a bad place," she agreed, "though it's not quite the city."

"No," Cecilia agreed, "it's not. I've never lived anywhere like this before, and there's so many damn trees, it's honestly a little staggering." She sighed. "Sometimes I miss the Bronx. Well, okay," she added after a pause, "very rarely. I think I just don't like being surrounded by white yuppies when I'm in Salem Center."

"And they have horses,and a moose!" Sue pointed out, "I'd never actually seen a live moose till I arrived, and only saw horses a few times and now they literally live right outside my window, and I'm pretty sure that those horses are out to get me," she confided in Cecelia with a grave nod. "Well it's not like you don't get white yuppies hanging around the city either," the blonde pointed out, "So what do you miss most about the city?"

"The noise," Cecilia said without missing a beat. "I grew up in the Bronx. I actually liked the rhythm of the city - the sirens, the horns, the trucks, the window A/C units. Hell, reggaeton, even." She leaned forward. "Sue, I moved into an apartment in Salem Center, and it was so serene I almost went crazy. San Diego was too quiet too. Tegus - the capital of Honduras - was noisy. But we'd go into the country sometimes, and it felt stiflingly silent." She shrugged. "I like background sounds. Without them, you assume every little creak in the night is someone out to get you."

"You're right," Sue agreed after a second's thought, "It is waay too quiet out here, it's funny how you miss the little things like car horns blaring all the time. For me I think it's the people, I just had to look outside the window and you could see thousands of people rushing past all busy with their own lives, you don't get that out her. I used to sit in the lobby with the security guards and we'd just pass the time people watching and making up stories about them. It's not the same making up stories about leaves or blades of grass."

Cecilia laughed. "Hang out in the med lab sometime. You'll get your fill of stories, trust me."

"I'd take you up on that, but you know, Med Lab," Sue said wryly, "But then isn't that a required part of the medical process? The patient coming up with the most outlandish excuse possible to explain things away," she teased, "Although, given this is Xavier's the outlandish would be entirely plausible, how could you tell?"

"Ah," Cecilia shrugged and gave a cryptic smile. "You learn the signs. Big trade secret. Afraid I can't say more, or you'll be too good at lying to your physician about your vices once you hit your twenties." Okay, maybe now she was projecting.

"You know," Sue said slowly as an impish grin spreading across her face, "I do believe that sounds like a challenge Dr Reyes. I'll have to acquire some medically relevant vices first though, and I'm sure Dr Grey-Summers would love to hear that you've been encouraging the tender young students under your care to pick up all manner of dastardly vices." the teenager teased the older woman.

"Please," Cecilia scoffed. "None of you have been tender since you got here. I was at that snowball fight. I know. And besides," she crossed her arms, "don't think I can't handle Jean Grey." She rolled her eyes.

"We are too tender," Sue counter with a grin, "It's just we've been corrupted by malignant influences. I saw you at that snowball fight too. Such a horrible corrupting influence you are to us," she told the doctor with a laugh, "like distracting me when we're supposed to be doing powers training," she teased. "Hold on, take Dr Grey? Is this experience talking? Wow, I really need to start hanging round the medlab more, seems like that's where everything interesting happens."

"Oh no," Cecilia grinned back. "Not experience. All that mind-reading, telekinetic stuff is my Achilles heel. I just talk a big game to compensate for the fact that I'm a defensive healer who can block incoming punches. Speaking of which," she stood, "we should probably get back to it before one of the other adults — the real adults — criticizes our lack of discipline."