Current Timeline
<@Cecilia> Cecilia had stopped practicing on the Marauders and Acolytes in the DR. While it had seemed a good idea once before she had began to feel like those sims were quickly becoming objects for anyone who came in here to vent their frustration on and that was a particularly troubling prospect.
<@Cecilia> Zombies had been the fall-back...but the smell of the corpses and their dead shuffling bodies triggered a hellish flashback that left her gasping and wheezing on the floor. So now she had been left with no choice but to practice on random mooks that bore no resemblance to anyone she knew and were never real people that were only separated from her by a few degrees.
<Lorna> "Hard at work, are we?" Lorna asked, stepping into the room. She eyed the mooks that Cecilia was working on. Well, they worked good enough to get warmed up and work off the baby weight. "Care for company today?"
<@Cecilia> Cecilia floored a full-grown man with a bash to the jaw with a shielded arm and dropped into a fighting stance as soon as she turned, but took on a normal posture as soon as she saw who it was. "I'm an overachiever," she said wryly. "Sure, really I only block out the time-slot so that if someone I actually don't like shows up I can tell them to shove off."
<@Cecilia> "Obviously you're not in that category," she said, offering a small smile. "Gotta preference for who to fight?" Please not zombies.
<Lorna> "Well, everyone has to put in their hours anyway, no harm in extra hours either." Lorna assured her though she had a bit of a laugh at why she blocked the time-slot. "Teamwork is probably one of the hardest things because of all the different personalities."
<Lorna> She returned the smile and thought over who would be good to fight. "I don't know, are you aimimg more for stress relief or practice?"
<@Cecilia> "A-fucking-men. Though I'd be less diplomatic and say it's the hardest 'cause of the lack of rationality." She raised an eyebrow. "It can't be both at the same time?" She grinned.
<Lorna> "Overall? Morale can be harder." She admitted, frowning slightly. "Especially in things like what is going on now, people's faith gets shaken." Lorna moved to stretch and think. "In that case are you up for what Danger has put together for Kraven?"
<@Cecilia> "Mel does a good job on that front, I'll give her that, but even she can't hold everything together," Cecilia sighed. Thank God she wasn't the leader. No fucking way would she be holding up as well. "...I'll be facing him in the flesh again at some point. Can't deny reality forever, might as well...yeah, we can try that."
<Lorna> "Danger, if you would, Kraven scenario eleven, please." Soon enough the room shifted to an abandoned meat processing plant. "There's only so much the leader can do, God knows I remember how it was. People pull together when it gets important, though."
<@Cecilia> "You were team leader?" Cecilia asked. "What back when you were a student?"
<@Cecilia> She eyed the new surroundings and created shield armour over herself in anticipation of an attack. "...How much force would you say I should use here?" She had done this with Rachel once before, but she hadn't seen Lorna in the field, she wasn't sure if her fuzziness on kneecaps would go over as well.
<Lorna> "And for a while afterwards." Lorna replied with a nod, kicking off of the ground and taking in their surroundings. "I passed the mantle onto Mel after she proved herself to me on where she stood once the whole X-force incident was found out. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to continue leading at the time and I was getting too out of touch with students as it was I found."
<Lorna> She frowned at Cecilia's next question. "What levels of force do you use?"
<@Cecilia> Cecilia averted her eyes at the mention of X-Force. "I don't run bloodbath scenarios - I'm not Ed - but I'm not exactly gentle. I've been known to punch throats and kick vulnerable places. I've used firearms and other weapons in sims." Her mouth flattened. "I kneecapped Ed the other week when he attacked me with a forcefield spike, drove another through a cultist's shoulder when he tried to kill me."
<@Cecilia> "...I wouldn't kill anyone. I know my powers have some really sinister uses, but I haven't. I never intend to."
<Lorna> "I believe in using the least amount of force possible while still being sure you're incapacitating the person. Sometimes you may have to go to extremes but also sometimes mistakes happen and you do more damage than you intended." Lorna replied, keeping her eyes open and floating over a trap on the ground.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia made a platform and walked over it. "Same side of the spectrum, then. That's good. Mayday would've been able to tell us where exactly on the alignment system we are but..." she shrugged and ducked neatly under a wire. Well, no need to get into that.
<Lorna> "I'm painfully lawful good though, once in a while though situations push me to neutral good...and the fact that we're vigilantes sort of messes with lawful as well." She chuckled. "I'm afraid Mayday isn't the first or last nerdgirl we're going to have here."
<@Cecilia> "No, probably not." Cecilia said, not really wanting to think about how that friendship had gone to shit. "But it never hurts to have people with brains. I'd take ten of a similar personality over anything else."
<Lorna> "I figure the world needs everyone...that's what I tell myself when I see Paige coming at Ripley with glittery pink snuggies, anyway." Lorna had to laugh at the image, catching sight of a few swirls of fabric and pointing it out to Cecilia. "I believe we've got lackeys about to come our way."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded, stepping behind some machinery and waiting for the cultists to come closer. Once one was reasonably close stepped out, clotheslining one with a shielded punch to the mouth. Stepping over the body she neatly scissor kicked a second in the solar plexus.
<Lorna> "And it seems to me your hand-to-hand non-lethal is fine so we don't need to worry about how much force, huh?" Lorna asked as she joined into the fight, bowling one cultist into another before taking some of the metal piping to use to tie them up.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia grinned as she watched the pipes bend and twist. "Gotta be one of the most useful powers out there. I think I got a new power-set I'd switch mine out for now."
<Lorna> "I have to admit, I'm pretty fond of it. You've got a good one though...but messing with gravity? Rarely gets old." For instance, take in the floating cultists they now had trying to get to them.
<@Cecilia> "Indeed," Cecilia said, taking in the floating enemies before turning around and squinting down the hall. "...Sorry, I thought I heard something."
<Lorna> "Shall we investigate, then?" Lorna asked, looking down the hall as well.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded, checking her shield armour a few times before setting at a loping pace down the hall.
<@Cecilia> It was just as well she did - she didn't even see the first blow coming. Within seconds, Kraven had popped out from an enclave, one of his larger hunting knives glancing off the part of the shield that protected her heart. "SHIT!" She exclaimed, slamming him against the wall with a forcefield to buy herself time to fall back.
<Lorna> "Tsk, tsk, cutlery!" Oh how she loved the ones that used knives, that came right over to her, pulling whatever other metal weapons he had on him on over to her. "You all right?" Lorna asked, landing and cutting off the exit to the hall as best as she could.
<@Cecilia> "Yeah, I'm fine!" Cecilia said, creating a series of shields in close proximity to harass the hunter and hopefully confuse him. "I just feel psychosomatic pain whenever a blow hits me. Same as it it actually did land. Every mutation comes with a price, yeah?"
<Lorna> "If my price is my hair then I came out great." Lorna laughed as she watched what Cee was doing. "Does air get through your shields?"
<@Cecilia> "That depends," she admitted, giving Lorna a shifty eye while keeping the other on Kraven. "The more energy I have the stronger the shield and the stronger the shield the more I can block out...but if you're asking if I can suffocate people, I can and I have."
<@Cecilia> "Apocalypse," she explained.
<Lorna> "I wasn't sure if you could do it without augmentation but yes, that's what I was getting at. Just as long as it's not taken too far that's also an option. How best would you take this one out though?"
<@Cecilia> "... I got several combinations I could do." She eyed Kraven. "From what I've seen of him and the energy levels I have now. I'd likely try to surprise and distract him with one attack - likely shield decoys - follow that up with a stronger attack like a concrete tidal wave, then once he's down go for close range combat with shield strikes and the armour."
<@Cecilia> "Follow that up with a KO from either decisive strikes or cutting off his oxygen until he passes out…then I'd disarm him and find some goddamn chains or something to restrain him…if there was a tranquillizer on hand I'd use that to make sure he doesn't get up anytime soon. I'm not taking any chances."
<Lorna> Lorna simply inclined her head and motioned Cecilia on forward into action. "You know what you're about"
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded and lunged forward, creating a shield mask over his face, following this up with a shield straight into the ground as he instinctively grabbed his face that lifted the concrete right off the ground. "RAAH!"
<@Cecilia> She didn't expect him to remain on the ground for long and just as she'd expected he was up almost as soon as he was down. Without much hesitation she drove a force field spike through his right knee cap.
<@Cecilia> As he roared in pain she slammed a shield down on him from above and put a dome over him before turning to Lorna, panting. "And that's how we do things in the Bronx."
<Lorna> Lorna smiled as she saw Cecilia at work. "Well, that went pretty good, are you up for trying something a little different, then?"
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded. "Yeah, bring it on."
<Lorna> "Danger, please run Black Air conclusion, replace X-men combatants save with current roster members." Sometimes it was interesting to replay one of your greatest hits. "Now this was before I was leader of anything, luckily, I wouldn't have known what to do at this point."
<@Cecilia> "Black Air?" Cecilia said, watching the walls shift from concrete into a stainless steel interior.
<Lorna> "My freshman year we had our British students abducted and forcefully conscripted pretty much. We went and got them back." Lorna had to explain quickly because soon the place was just pouring with soldiers and gunfire.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia created a shield to soak up the gunfire and began pushing forward, moving the shield along with them. "So what exactly are my chances of being abducted while I'm a student here, again?"
<Lorna> "Some people make it through. I only got abducted because of a cave in and Malice." Lorna kicked off the ground and took to destroying the guns as the other X-men Danger provided for the set-up started doing their thing. There went Mayday webbing up the stairs and there was the feeling of a boost from Fabian, Penny went pelting into the crowd all hard edges and spinning sharpness.
<@Cecilia> "...Still not that comforting," Cecilia admitted. She felt the boost hit her and smiled at the simulation of Fabian...only to feel exceptionally stupid a second later. "Did everyone make it out of this?" She asked, wincing at the feel of armoured rounds from the guns.
<Lorna> "Yeah, everyone came out. A few of us were a little worse for wear but we all came out." Lorna methodically ripped apart the guns...and then she remembered that this place had tanks. Oh, that was something she still couldn't pass up.
<Lorna> "I'm pretty sure if you flicked Shiro's nipple afterwards he wouldn't have had any idea."
<@Cecilia> "...Yeah, I'll bet." Cecilia said, clearly not thinking about Shiro as the DR version of her boyfriend climbed up the stair in front of her. She tore her eyes away from his simulated ass before she made a fool of herself and focused on the corridor. "Holy shit, they had tanks?!" She said, taking in the sign on one of the doors.
<Lorna> "Correction, I had tanks." Lorna grinned as she made the tanks start to roll, giving them shelter from the bullets pelting down. "Basically we were just a distraction in this part of the mission, we had an infiltration team in the complex so our job was just to draw fire until they were out...so I played with tanks."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia laughed and ducked behind the tanks. "Ho-ly shit, Lorna! I never missed you in the field more than I do now!"
<@Cecilia> She eyed the group firing at them. "There's a terrible move I could do to take out all of them - but I won't."
<Lorna> "What were you thinking?" Lorna asked, peering over the tanks she had gathered.
<@Cecilia> "It's easier to show you," Cecilia said. "Not a lot of people know I can do this..." She looked at the cluster of men firing at them and threw a dome around the group. Almost instantaneously the bullets they fired glanced off the inside of the dome, taking them down with nothing but a splatter of red in the bubble to indicate they'd even been there.
<@Cecilia> "...I learned that by accident while training in here," she said quietly.
<Lorna> "...yeah, yeah we don't do that."
<@Cecilia> "Clearly not," Cecilia said, checking around the tank for more enemies before crawling out. "But you see why I'd be concerned about being mind controlled or captured by a less than altruistic group."
<Lorna> "We all have that capability in us though. That's the kind of thing everyone should avoid...but yeah, we're not going to be doing that here again." A few of the soldiers were streaming down the stairs now, a few trying to get at Mayday.
<@Cecilia> "...No, I won't. I promise." Cecilia said, bowling over the soliders who were trying to get to Mayday. "I'm sorry if I scared you."
<Lorna> "I wouldn't call it scared. I just...I'm okay with that level of violence when the DR is set to something ficticious like say someone decided to play out LOTR scenes or the like but that had always struck me as different because it could have happened."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia decided not to tell Lorna about Lukas' Sherlock Holmes sim. "...I have less problems when they're not actual people that existed," she admitted. "I quit fighting a few sims 'cause of that...I personally don't like doing combat fantasy too often. I don't like to make fighting feel like a game." She shrugged.
<Lorna> "Those are actual people that existed, though." Lorna pointed out. "Or at least representative of them, and any practice is a practice to use the skills we should be using in a real fight. Get ready, here comes the heavier part of the fight." Lorna recognized the point in the fight where she hadn't been able to keep bullets back much longer.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia winced as the bullets came down like a heavy rain, wincing. "No force fields either, then? Goddamn, you must've gotten tired."
<Lorna> "Do what you can." Lorna chuckled. "Redoing fights is a way to see where we can improve." Their radios came to live with the report from the infiltration team saying they were almost out.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia smirked. "Improve, huh?" She backed up a little and waiting until all her fake teammates were out of the corridor before slamming a shield into the ceiling a few times at the end of it, making a cave in that cut off the soldiers from their group. "And we're off."
<Lorna> Most of the soldiers were cut off but a few that had been closer got to the edge of the tanks and opened fire again, Lorna too busy to block them off from their targets.
<@Cecilia> Cecilia didn't get the chance to put up a full shield around the group before they opened fire and so she got to watch in absolute terror as bullets tore through both Mayday and Fabian. "NO!" She screamed. "NononononoNO!"
<@Cecilia> She didn't even think before she reacted, with one fell stroke she sliced through one solider at the waist, then another fell with a spike through the chest and one fell in two halves with a vertical cut. She rushed right over to her two friends. Trying to put pressure on multiple wounds frantically. "No, you can't die on me!"
<Lorna> "...Cecilia, I told you all ready nobody dies in this simulation." Lorna turned around, frowning disapprovingly at the reaction she had. "Danger, pause program."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia came out of that flashback - the second one today - with a start. "...Oh Christ," she hissed, taking in the bodies on the floor and standing up. "Did you know this would happen?!" She asked, pointing at Fabian and Mayday. Hoping the answer was 'no.'
<Lorna> "Shiro and Bobby were shot in the original fight, Bobby didn't even know it because he was iced up, Shiro cauterized his own wound and we got out fine. I know it's a natural reaction to panic but things usually look a lot worse than they are." She knelt down to show Cecilia the damage to their uniforms. "The suits took most everything, they'd be fine...but your reaction..."
<@Cecilia> "...I didn't think I just reacted," Cecilia said, wiping her mouth with an obviously trembling hand...she was absolutely screwed. If she walked out of this without being put on forced leave she'd be surprised. "I'm aware it's not an excuse."
<Lorna> "That's why we want this kind of thing to happen in practice, don't worry, Cee. You're not in trouble. You're not running down here specifically to do things like this. I just...it's a reason to be careful." Lorna sat down beside her. "You've got a lot of guilt in you, yeah?"
<@Cecilia> Cecilia eyed her carefully. "Doesn't everyone - for something? The only people who don't feel any guilt at all are the really bad people - they're as light as a feather."
<Lorna> "Exactly." That earned another smile but it faded. "You've got enough, I don't want you to find out what killing someone feels like, too, no matter what happens."
<@Cecilia> "Have you?" Cecilia asked, curious. She shook her head. "My father was murdered," she said simply. "I was almost became a victim as well. I've no intention of ever becoming a murderer if I can help it...but I like to think I'm realistic. If there is no more options I'm not opposed to it, if there's a life to be defended."
<Lorna> "The woman Malice was in before me. Bobby and I had just been sealed off from the rest of the team and she came at us and I went to incapacitate her and when Malice went into me the woman went limp and the motion I was all ready doing snapped her neck."
<Lorna> She stood up, offering Cecilia a hand up as well. "And if you're in a position to kill a person you're in a position to do a lot of things to them. That's why we train the way we train, so you're always going to have options."
<@Cecilia> Cecilia nodded and took the offered hand. "I wish Ed knew that."
<Lorna> "That's the problem, he does." Lorna sighed, looking around them. "I don't suppose you're a coffee drinker?"
<@Cecilia> "I am, actually." Cecilia smiled. "Wanna see if the machine's working today?"
<Lorna> "Oh, dearie, that machine is my bitch, there's no if here. Danger, end program."
<@Cecilia> "Oh, I like you," Cecilia said, smiling. "I could get used to magnets."