strangetrip | [GP] training day

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[GP] training day

There was a trope that in prison there wasn't much to do except work out or read. As colorful as Madonna Inn might be, it was still a prison. And look, somebody had put together a library.

Put fifty some people, many of them military, adventurers, vigilantes, or superheroes of one stripe or another, in a prison with none of the urgent missions or near-death experiences they were used to, the fitness center was going to be a popular place. Maybe almost as popular as the bar.

... Probably not quite that popular.

There were free weights and weight machines, treadmills and ellipticals, yoga mats and exercise balls. A room set aside for classes, if someone decided to lead. A large square had been taped over an area of the floor off to one side as a make-shift sparring space. Sports equipment had been brought back from Bonesville for those who preferred more organized games. And those who had been stuck here longest remembered there hadn't always been a salmon ladder.

In other words, something for just about everybody. And you could usually find someone in there if you were looking for a spotter, workout buddy, sparring partner, friendly competition too.

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"Projections?" Kitty eyed the party of five and then looked back to Emma. "Neat trick."

She was dressed similarly to Emma, hands taped for bag work or sparring, whatever the occasion offered her. With a smile for Emma, she stepped into the knot of Victorian street fighters.

"Let's try this a different way. You and them against me." It had been awhile since Kitty took on this many armed opponents. She expected a few bruises out of it, and a good solid workout. Plus, it would teach Emma to use her abilities against other mutants. "I'll go easy on you guys at first. No powers until you've knocked me down a couple of times."

"Multi-tasking. These guys are one of my go-tos for less dangerous situations." Like outside-the-bar fights.

Emma had given some thought before to how to fight someone who could alter their density. Not that she really thought she'd attack Shinobi, but she'd considered what she could do if she had to. Unfortunately, other than knowing he had to breathe eventually, she'd not come up with much.

Kitty – this one, from what she'd said – had been one of the original X-Men. Even six on one, Emma was fairly sure she was outmatched. But she'd been outmatched with Nina. And Sage. With Remy and TJ. Mariko had mostly avoided using her powers when she and Emma sparred, but even she'd been on one team or another longer than Emma had had any training at all. In other words, she definitely needed the practice against someone with powers.

She didn't say any of the excuses or minimizing comments that crowded her thoughts. Her various teachers and sparring partners had taught her that much. Mostly. Instead, a question. "Armed or unarmed?" Kitty didn't have a weapon. She also probably didn't need one, but Emma would give her the option of how Emma and the Five of Wands fought.

Kitty watched Emma process the 'suggestion' and realized she'd done exactly what any of her old team leaders had done. Stepped in, assumed authority, began teaching. Once, she might have apologized for that, but she'd learned not to. If she'd assumed authority then the only thing to do was use it to benefit Emma. If Emma didn't feel she'd earned the authority, she wouldn't grant it again.

"Unarmed. I don't have a katana with me and I doubt Yana wants to lend me her Soulsword." She could, and Kitty could wield it, but that was like swinging a lightsaber in the middle of sticks and stones. "I'm guessing these are staves rather than blades?"

Her projected 'allies' remained, but their various clubs disappeared. Emma dropped the one she carried outside the fighting space. "I have options for swords, not with these guys, but most of the swords aren't as directly useful in combat as the wands." The more she could rely on the nature of the card, the easier it was for her to maintain and control the projection, and the Five of Wands were depicted in mid-fight. "But at some point, it's all psionic energy given tangible form, whether it's a sword or a club."

Kitty nodded. She remembered that from Dani's psionic arrows and Pete's hot knives. It was interesting, the way different energy projectors shaped what they did, but not today's issue. Right now, she had five Wands and Emma to worry about.

An attack like this always had a story. Either she was wanted dead, or alive, and the tactics would be different. In this case, because it was a spar, she assumed alive. "Your objective is to get me off the mat, as though you were grabbing me off a street."

When Nina had started training Emma, it had been about self-defense, and even now Emma was more comfortable on the defensive in a fight. But as her control over her projections had grown, she'd had to practice forms of attack to be able to manipulate them better. And she had worked on tactics with Scott, when she didn't feel like she was imposing too much on his time. Kitty had chosen a good challenge, pushing Emma out of her comfort zone and drawing on skills she needed to practice, while Emma had to multi-task by fighting and projecting five fighters, in concert. Getting rid of their weapons had been one thing, but with this card it was all five fighters or none.

With a thought, she spread the five out around the mat. Pilot and Checked Hat, for now, she kept between herself and Kitty, focused on defense, to give herself time to observe and plan. Eyepatch and the brunette attacked simultaneously, one high, the other a leg sweep low and from behind, testing as much as expecting to land hits, and the blonde circled, waiting for an opening.

It had been awhile since Kitty had faced a disadvantage in numbers, but not nearly long enough for her to forget that the key was to keep moving, feint and rush into the gap that responses left, take a blow if it meant she could disable a different opponent. Unlike sparring with a well-matched opponent, there was nothing beautiful about it, except the grace of her movements and of Emma's mind. Instead, she scrambled and scrabbled and fought for every inch of mat she retained.

As promised, she held off using her powers for most of the spar and when she did, she used them only defensively. Dodge, strike, phase to avoid a kick instead of somersaulting to stay in bounds. Strike, counterstrike, phase to let the attacker at her back fall through to the one in front. And so on, until she tired and Emma had taken enough blows to start losing her grip on her projections.

She bent over at the waist, hands on her knees and breathing hard. "That's going to hurt tomorrow," she said wryly, glancing over at Emma.

If Emma stopped moving, she was going to lock up, so while she dropped her projection, she made herself keep going, walking a slow circle along the edge of the mat. "Yeah," she agreed, although she was rubbing her temples as she said it. She was going to be bruised tomorrow too. Nina hadn't believed in taking it so easy on her she wouldn't know what she was doing in a real fight, and today with Kitty was the same.

"Too bad we don't have any skylilies here." Her head was throbbing worse than her body. Sure she'd had a physical workout, but the mental/psionic one had been more intense.

"Skylilies?" Kitty had never heard of them and she didn't know if they were related to the soreness they were bound to suffer tomorrow or something else.

She did, however, peer at Emma who was rubbing her temples the way Jean used to when she overexerted herself psionically. "You might want to talk Kash or Pike if that headache keeps up. Jean always said that aspirin didn't do shit for psi-strain, but magic might."

"Aspirin doesn't." Stronger painkillers could take the edge off, but Emma didn't think this would need that, or talking to one of the healers. "Skylily tea, on the other hand, does. But since skylilies won't exist for another thousand years or so, and I don't think the Askani sisters have any reason to send us a care package... If I need to, I'll see if magic helps.

"It doesn't feel like it's going to be that bad. I just haven't pushed myself practicing the way I should've. The more what I want the projections to do differs from what the cards are meant to do, the more effort it takes."

You didn't grow up X-man and not learn to hear resistance before it formed, and whatever authority she'd asserted in their practice, it didn't extend to anything else. Kitty didn't want it to.

But she was curious. "The Askani sisters sent you a care package in your timeline? Was Ray there?"

Ray didn't mean anything to Emma right away, but she thought about it before shaking her head. She didn't even know if that was a mutant name or a given one. "They sent it for Nathan. Cable. He planted a grove with the different seeds they sent, along with T-O, and writings and other stuff." She wasn't sure what all had been sent, only that Nathan had been dying, and Sage had somehow contacted Mother Askani, and they had sent what they could.

"Cable." Kitty suppressed a sigh. "Ray, Rachel, is Cable's sister. Jean and Scott's daughter. Also the Mother Askani." It didn't occur to her not to share that information, because it was known in her world.

"Ray's one of my best friends. I guess I'm not surprised that she wasn't around if the Askani were sending Cable gifts. She was probably in the future somewhere still."

Emma stopped walking as her mind drew connections with what Kitty said. "Wait. Nathan... is Jean and Scott's..." That was... Time travel was so confusing, and she was used to future, present, and past not being linear. "I guess that explains the similarity in powers. And that would mean Nate is too."

She shook her head. "What will be, is."

Kitty gave Emma a wry smile. "Yeah. Welcome to the four-dimensional Summers' family tree." She hadn't missed the reference to Jean and she couldn't resist asking, "So Jean's alive in your reality?"

"Yeah. She wasn't for a while, I think," or something like that. Her bond with Scott had been broken, that Emma remembered. "But that was before we got there. To the castle. I don't know her all that well. My cousin and Scott are close, though. He's been training her, and he helped me when I was studying tactics." Close was true, but vague enough. Sabine's feelings were her own, and Scott would never betray Jean.

Kitty smiled but swallowed hard. She missed Jean. It had been a long time since she'd felt the touch of Jean's mind on hers or hugged her oldest friend. "I'm glad she's with Scott in at least one world."

"I'm sorry," Emma said quietly, recognizing loss in Kitty's reaction. She'd heard enough stories of what things had been like back at the school, and from TJ and Mariko and the school and X-Men in their worlds. Jean had been at the center of so much, and it seemed like it had always been Jean and Scott together. Emma had mostly been too intimidated by Jean to get to know her, and of the telepaths, Nate – who was apparently an alt-relation – had been the most comfortable for her.

"Not your fault," Kitty replied with a tight but genuine smile and one arm around her waist as though she could protect herself from the pain of memory. "It's just been a long time, is all."

Responsibility and sympathy weren't the same, but that wasn't the point. "Loss is still loss. Time may make missing people we care about easier, but we still miss them."

She shook her head. "Now I sound like Sabine."

And who do you miss? Kitty wanted to ask, but Emma was a private person and she didn't want to pry. Besides, she obviously missed her cousin.

Instead, she said, "I've been missing Jean so long that it feels almost comfortable and familiar. It's the people I was with just before I left and the people who've left here that I miss the most."

Emma got that too. The difference between missing Mémé or Sister Thérèse compared to missing Dani and Sabine, or Pyro. She nodded.

"Being used to death is part of that too, I think. There's a sort of closure, and just the lives we've led, death is something we have to accept. Being cut off like this, people showing up or being taken away, it's different. Or maybe that's just me."

"It's not just you." Kitty picked up her water bottle and took a swig. When she lowered the bottle, she'd also swallowed the lump in her throat. "Wyatt leaving was hard, but I think he's where he belongs. Lara..." Nope, that lump was right back. "When she got here, she was fleeing for her life. Worrying that she went back to that, that she was killed, or worse, and not knowing...it's the worst."

"I could try to find out sometime." What was the use of having powers if you couldn't use them to help people? Sabine wasn't the only one with a vocation; Emma's just worked differently, and the results weren't always as easy to see.

"The tarot doesn't lie. To me. I mean, I can't promise how much I'll be able to see. I don't think my gifts were meant with pocket realities in mind, but I have been able to read for other people about things that haven't happened here."

"Normally, I'd say no, but..." Kitty frowned and thought about it. She didn't want to find out that Lara hadn't survived, but if she knew, at least she could grieve and make some kind of memorial. And probably Lara was fine. She had as many lives as Kitty.

"Let me think about it for a few days and get back to you? I really appreciate you offering. I just want to make sure I know why I'm asking before I say yes."

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[GP] training day

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