2013.03.25 - Practice and Thanks

The Danger Room.

In some ways this room is one of the most advanced rooms the X-Men have at their disposal. With its ability to create and generate solid holograms, it can look like it's actually anywhere and anything that the X-Men can imagine. But this room is not just holograms. It also has movable walls where anything from flames to robotic coils come out and attack people, where spiked pits open in the floor, and the like.

In other words, this room can and does live up to its name.

But what's going on in the room right now? Robots are attacking. Robots of various sizes and shapes. Robots that just look generic, instead of looking like anything in specific. Robots that attack with laser, bullets, fire, coiled, swords, and what ever. No two robots are the same. Some are big and tall. Others are short and small. Some are insanely fast. Others haven't moved an inch from where they first appeared.

And of course those being attacked, like one Laura Kinney, are fighting back. Laura, or X-23 as she probably wants to be called at the moment, is currently clawing her way through one of the larger robots chests, while a second, smaller robot tries to fry her to 'death' with flames. And yet despite that, she calls out to her fellow trainee in this scheduled session.

"You okay Jocelyn?"

Jocelyn has long-sinced fully-charged herself for this battle. With all the attacks being made against them, Jocelyn's energy shield is working pretty well. A laser beam is fired from a robot in front of her, and the girl gauges it briefly before determining it wasn't dangerous, and it strikes her, the bolt absorbed by the girl. She's also got a pair of robots that are currently on her specifically. One large one which is wielding a rather obscenely large sword anime style and the medium sized robot that just shot at her with a laser. She points her hand at the laser robot and releases the laser back at it's face, causing it's head to explode. Of course, that robot is quickly replaced by one of those fast robots that is smaller, but is firing off a mix of lasers and ice at the teen. She takes to the air and starts working on dodging some of that fire.

"Doing alright here. You?" the girl responds as she punches at the large sword-wielding robot's head. She dents it, but it keeps coming, taking a swing at her with that sword which she has to then dodge.

It probably is more than a bit possible to smell the burning flesh and hair even as that taller robot Laura was working on falls, and she turns to fling herself at the fire spewing robot. All though it is hard to actually see her inside all those flames. Instead it's almost like a silhouette, at least for a moment or two before she hits the second robot and with two swift motions causes the flames to suddenly stop.

Of course in regards to how she's doing...

There is a silence regarding that. If she wasn't busy fighting, she'd shrug. But instead...

"I'm operational." is eventually said before that second robot falls. And yet as the clawed girl jumps clear, she turns to watch her room mate fight for a moment or two.

Lasers fire up at the flying girl from that speedy little robot. Most of them get dodged by her, though again, a few of them plink her and just get absorbed. The ice she makes more of an effort to avoid, because she can't absorb that, and when some nasty sharp icicles start flying at her, the girl holds out a hand to start pulsing a kinetic burst about five feet in front of her to act as a shield, which the icicles shatter against.

Some of the electricity from the fallen robots, however, gets yanked up by Jocelyn, and she turns to blast it in sharp shots at the bigger robot, putting little holes in it, but not doing any serious damage. Then she starts flying at a more rapid pace, to which the little robot starts firing more rapidly. She flies right past those holes she put in the big robot, and the little robot continues firing in rapid succession, the laser beams going into the holes of the large robot.

BOOM!

The larger robot stops mid-swing and bends over, no longer operational but not falling. Instead, it drops it's sword.

The bang from the ground would tell anyone who wasn't watching that the little robot was no longer a problem either.

And of course as both that big, and little robot are dealt with, something odd happens. Namely all the rest of the robots freeze in place. At least for the moment. In one case it looks almost like a laser beam hovers in the air, unmoving. Sure Laura turns to start to rush towards another robot that's not too far from Jocelyn, but the robot itself doesn't react.

Then again Laura herself doesn't react to things like her burns healing up right before the eyes of anyone who may be watching her as she rushes towards that frozen robot.

"Have you talked to Doug since you got back?"

"Yeah, we talked. He understands," Jocelyn responds, even as the robots freeze in front of them. That's a little bit odd. The Danger Room rarely did things without a reason though, and instead of rushing the robots, Jocelyn scans the room with her energy sight, just to see if there was anything that seemed out of place.

"Actually, cleared up a few things between us. I have a tendency to put my worst foot forward around him". Which was ironic, given his ability to read body language.

The scan would reveal that unlike back when they were fighting, when they would of read as solid, just like real robots, the robots now read as /holograms/ themselves. In other words just pure light. The kind of light that Laura learns all to well about as she leaps at, and passes right through that robot she was going after, before crashing face first into the floor.

"Good." is muttered even after that crash. "You'll need him."

"What will I need him for?" Jocelyn asks as she flies over in Laura's direction. "The room stopped solidifying them. They're just holograms now. Pure light". However, she's more focused on her first question than the room at the moment, even if she's smart enough to know that the room could change things up at any time. And she was pretty sure she hadn't broken the Danger Room. Even she couldn't break the Danger Room during a spar.

After another couple of moments, the robots finally start to move again. Only now, their attacks just appear to pass through what ever they hit. And they still continue to read as pure light holograms.

No danger at all. Right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Laura though doesn't pay them too much attention, even as she sniffs the air, as if trying to check for something, before she finally responds to Jocelyn.

"You were on the run. Like me. Knowing someone like him is always needed for when things go... Really bad. So you will need him."

Jocelyn nods. "I'm hoping that things are going to stay settled, at least for awhile now". There was always the option of Domino, too, but the woman had a more...explosive style of doing things. Doug was better at the whole talking thing.

"Thanks for the stuff. It did help out. And for coming after me". She looks around the room. "You ever see this place do something like this?" she asks, looking over at the younger girl as she speaks. Something didn't feel right.

And it shouldn't feel right. because yet again, without a warning, there's another sudden change. Once again the robots are solid, and their attacks are 'real' (or as real as Danger Room attacks ever get).

Laura starts to say, "No..." before she takes the blunt of one sudden attack as a big bright red beam of energy hits her hard and sends her flying into a far wall, before the giant robot that did that turns and tries to fire on Jocelyn.

Jocelyn darts towards Laura, taking the hit from the laser, absorbing most of it but some of it still getting through, causing her to wince. She holds her hand out and fires a laser beam back at the robot, though it isn't a strong enough blast to do more than scuff it. She was caught a little off-guard. She does move to get in front of Laura long enough to shield her with energy absorption and her own resiliance, at least until the girl can regenerate and get back into the fight. She knew long-term that Laura would be fine, but she would need at least a few seconds to recover. So Jocelyn would buy her a few seconds to get back into the fight.

When one of the robots strikes her shield, she's able to point her hand out and send an explosive burst between a couple robots, taking them out of commission. The aim is more precise than it has been in the past, if Laura is paying attention, and it strikes the necks of the two robots. She'd been intending on working on aim lately, so now seemed like as good of a time as any.

Not only are both of those necks struck, but it actually takes the heads right off of the robots. In fact, it appears to cause an extra added effect. Because once those two heads come off and those two robots fall, all the rest of the robots in the danger room start to fall as well.

Thus by the time Laura is back on her feet...

There isn't much left for her to do.

"Let my guard down." Laura admits, sounding like she's chiding herself. "Thank you. Sorry."

"You'll have my back in the future," Jocelyn says. "Besides, if we never make a mistake in the Danger Room, it means we're not really working very hard". She watches as the robots fall and the program ends. "Come on. We'll go raid the kitchen and then see if there is something interesting going on in the lounge or something," she suggests to her roomie.