"This is the danger-room?," Joe asked, looking out of a large viewing window built into the top corner of a dome shaped room, where the walls were made of a non-reflective metal, and featured three shutters at the end, which greatly resembled garage doors."what's so special about it?"
Harmony, who had been typing a code into one of the many computers that lined the small viewing room, spoke without looking at Joe. "The danger-room was created by Professor Xavier-He's the guy who started the X-men-over ten years ago. He originally intended it to only be a place for mutants to learn control over their powers and to experiment with them in a place where they wouldn't have to worry about any consequences,"
She pressed another key on the keyboard and a hidden door opened up next to Joe's position, which immediately made him want to look inside.
"Hey,"Harmony said before Joe could get a glimpse of what was inside."This is the girls room," She pointed to an empty wall. "The boys is over there."
Joe looked over to the blank wall with a puzzled look on his face. "There's nothing-"
"It's hidden."
Joe nodded awkwardly. "What's in there?"
Grace walked into the open space and out of Joe's view. "This is where our suits are stored, Joeseph." Harmony followed after her and laughed at the vibrant shade of red Joe's face had suddenly turned.
Joe turned away, not wanting to offend the girls, and went back to looking at the empty metal room, though he could still here Harmony's voice coming from inside,
this time with a slight echo.
"As I was saying, the danger-room was originally a place for mutants to experiment with their powers. But after the formation of the X-men, it received a re-vamp, and was outfitted to be what it is today, becoming a sort of obstacle course that caters to each of us."
How could that be? Joe thought. This was just an empty room, not an obstacle course.
He turned around, preparing to ask a question, but instead his jaw dropped. "What are you wearing?"
Instead of the skirt and blue shirt she'd been wearing, Harmony was now dressed in a pair of dark, skintight pants and a halter-top looking sleeveless shirt that gave Joe a rather generous view of her stomach. A large yellow X was emblazoned on her left breast, and a yellow metal belt was fastened tightly around the girls thin waist, the same large X forming the belt buckle.
"It's my suit. Each one is specifically made to cater to our strengths." Joe pointed to the girls stomach.
"That was specifically made for you?" he said, staring absently mindedly at the girl midsection. He may have been a mutant, but that didn't stop hormones from taking their toll on him.
Harmony pulled a hair-tie from her wrist and began fashioning her dark hair into a ponytail. "Would you mind not staring? I have to have my stomach exposed, it keeps the pressure off my diaphragm and makes my voice stronger."
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect...well...that." he looked away, out the window to the danger-room floor. "How do you train in here?" he said quickly, trying to change the subject.
"Every now and then a guy called Hank comes to the mansion and generates a series of new simulations for us to work with. We each have over a hundred specialised programs within the room's database that train us to work with different situations, and then an infinite number of group sessions that mix our personalised ones together. In order to get us to work as a team.". The girl had gone back to working at her computer.
"They include many different things. For example, I have one where I use my voice to stall a bunch of falling weights that eject from the ceiling...it's supposed to simulate a building collapsing or a cave in."
"And I have one where I fly from the top of the danger room to catch a package before it hits the ground." Joe turned to see Grace in her suit, which looked remarkably like Harmony's apart from the fact that her stomach didn't show, and she had a small cape that hung from her shoulders and was connected to the wrists of her elbow length gloves. Her hair was also in a ponytail, and a thin collection of the pale golden strands hung over her right eye.
Harmony stopped typing and pressed a button on the far wall, to which a small square retracted into the wall slightly before sliding up to reveal a rack with dozens of walkie-talkies and other electronic things. She picked up two, and threw one to Grace, who slid it onto her ear with one quick motion, then the other to Joe, who did the same, albeit rather awkwardly.
"I'll need you to type in a few commands every now and then, okay?," Joe nodded. "Good, I'll give you the signal, then just press enter." The two girls walked into the elevator, and Grace pressed the button, closing the doors and carrying them down to the floor.
Joe watched out the window and waited for the girls to come into view. After a moment, he saw them appear from almost directly beneath the window, then Harmony turned and stuck a thumbs up to him.
He nodded, went to the wall sized computer and pressed the enter button, and immediately, one of the metal shutters on the far side of the far side of the room raised and a series of large metal hula-hoops on a motorized arm emerged from the space inside. The arm clicked, and the hoops fell into a pile on the floor infront of the mutant girls. Harmony opened her mouth slightly and they floated up into the air, forming a figure eight pattern in the air. Grace raised off the ground slowly, starting to navigate her way through the hoop formation.
After a few minutes of warming up, Harmony began rearanging the hoops as Grace flew through them, causing the flying girl to think faster on her feet-or in the air, as was the case.
The girls went on with this exercise for almost fifteen minutes, with Harmony making it harder and harder for the other girl to manuever, often flipping the rings right before Grace flew through them, needing her to stop suddenly and speed up when needed, effectively pushing the girl to her limits.
"Joe?," Harmony's voice erupted in his head so suddenly that he turned around, thinking she was behind him before remembering the device in his ear.
"Joe, if you can hear me, press the head-set into your eardrum before you speak." Joe did so, feeling a little foolish about his lack of knowledge on the device, and spoke.
"What is it?"
"I need you to open another simulation okay? type in ATLAS, then get down here."
Joe scrunched his brow. "I don't even know what I can do yet. I'd be in danger."
Harmony looked up at him from the floor. "No you won't. This is just a quick obstacle course...it'll be fun."
Joe thought to himself for a second, then walked to the computer and typed Atlas into the database. He hit enter then walked to the elevator, hitting the down button.
When he came out on the danger-room floor, he turned in circles a few times to get a grasp on how big the area was. If he threw a football as far as he could from one side he would probably only make it halfway. "Ready Joeseph?" he turned to Harmony and Grace, the latter of whom was floating a few feet off the ground, and noticed that they'd been surrounded by a group of different activities, like what you found in gym class.
"Are you sure I should be doing this?...I don't think I could handle falling rubble or weights."
Harmony smiled and shook her head. "I told you, this is a simple obstacle course, there's nothing dangerous about it. I just assumed you were getting bored doing nothing up there."
Joe smiled and Harmony lead him over to the course, where the two girls began instructing him on what to do.
They carried on like this for a while, with Joe picking up on the routine rather quickly. Jump over a bar, then climb a wall, then crawl under a net that hung a foot or so off the ground. It was actually kind of fun when he got the hang of it.
"HEY...WHAT ARE YOU WASTING YOUR TIME DOING THAT FOR?," The group turned, with Joe halfway up one of the walls, to see Leapfrog and Toro waving to them from the viewing room.
"LET'S SEE WHAT THE NEW KID CAN REALLY DO" the smaller boy ran out of view, to what Joe assumed was the computer.
"Wait Liam, Joe doesn't know what he can do yet" Harmony said into her earpiece. "We're just running through an obstacle course."
No answer.
"Liam?...we're not running anything serious with Joe," No answer.
Leapfrog had yelled to them from the viewing window. He wasn't wearing a headset.
"LIAM?...LIAM DON'T CHANGE THE SIMULATION!," The girl yelled up to the window, but Leapfrog couldn't hear them, and Toro had gone out of view as well, most likely to the computer with the other boy.
"ACTIVATE-SIMULATION-7881" a computerised voice echoed throughout the room.
"They can't hear us. Joeseph, get to the elevator, we'll keep you safe," Grace spoke so softly, it seemed as if she wasn't alarmed at all.
Joe did as she said though, he didn't want to die his first day here. He dropped from the wall, landing on his back, then jumped up and began sprinting the hundreds of yards to the elevator bay.
"JOE!..DUCK!," The boy turned to his right, finding a large circular saw blade flying at him, and froze on the spot.
"JOE!...WEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Harmony's voice screeched around the room, and with the sound of a fork hitting a glass, the blade flung itself up into the air and out of Joe's way.
Before the boy could start moving again, he felt himself lift off the floor and looked over his shoulder to see Grace carrying him from beneath the armpits. "GRACE?...
WHA?,"
"Joeseph stay still, I have never carried someone as heavy as you before." He tried his best to not fidget, but found it hard being suspended so far off the ground with only the strength of a teenage girl to hold him.
"SAM!" Harmony's voiced echoed again, and the two flying mutants looked to the left, seeing another giant saw blade gliding towards them.
Grace tried to raise the two above the blade's flight path, but, due to the sudden change, she lost grasp on the boy. She tried to grab his wrist, but the blade chose that moment to glide through, separating the two, and Joe began to fall..
He stopped suddenly. Harmony had caught him in her voice, but again, started to fall when one of the blades hit her in the back and caused her to lose concentration.
That was when it happened. He must have realised that there was no saving him, known that he was falling to his death, because his vision became cloudy, and bright colours started to flash in front of his eyes.
That was the last thing he remembered before blacking out.
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"Is he going to be alright Miss Grey?" Grace's emotionless voice was the first thing Joe heard when he regained conciousness.
He didn't open his eyes, but he knew he was in his bed, he recognized the feel of the sheets.
"He's going to be fine. His mind just isn't attuned to releasing that much psionic energy so quickly." Jean's voice was soothing, and her words gave him comfort.
"He's psychic? like you?" this voice was Leapfrog's, Joe felt slightly angry just hearing him speak.
"No, but it seems those flashing orbs that come from his eyes are some sort of energy manipulation."
"So I'm psychic, but not psychic?" he opened his eyes, and found every mutant in the mansion apart from Scott and miss Munroe standing around his bed.
Jean smiled to him, and put her incredibly soft hand on his forehead. "Your still a bit hot. Don't move much for a while okay?" he nodded and the woman left his bedside for a moment, letting the others, apart from Lachlan, climb onto the bed.
"Bro..I..I'm sorry, I didn't know that you couldn't control yourself yet..." Leapfrog said, he was obviously angry with himself.
Joe raised his hand, cutting off the other boy. "Don't worry about it. I'm fine, just a little dizzy." he smiled to show he wasn't angry at Liam, even though he was. He just felt it best not to make enemies here.
Leapfrog smiled. "We're cool?" Joe closed his fist, and Liam bumped it with his own.
"We're cool."
Jean walked back over and gave him a glass of water. "I'll have to do personal classes with you until you learn to release your energy. Otherwise..." He sipped his drink as the woman watched.
Jean put her hand to her mouth. "Could we have a moment alone?" she looked at the other students, who looked at each other.
"Of course professor," Lachlan said. "X-men, out the door, first one to the lounge room versus me in street-fighter." The other mutants sighed before shuffling out the wooden door into the hallway.
Jean closed the door, then took Joe's glass and placed it on the bedside table.
"Joeseph, I'm going to tell you about Professor Xavier."
"I know about him, Harmony told me he created the X-men."
"Yes, but I want to tell you about how he died," Jean sat down next to him on the bed, and began looking down at her hands. "About eight years ago, I started to get headaches every few days, some of which lasted for hours. Professor Xavier tried to figure out what was wrong, and discovered that because I'd been storing so much of my potential energy without regularly releasing it, I'd developed a...well, a kind of balloon of energy, which both gave me the head aches and made me unstable with my powers."
Joe looked at the woman with his mouth open. He already knew where this was going.
"One night, during an attack on the mansion by a mutant called Bishop, I felt myself strained as I tried to hold him off of the Professor. My mind became foggy and too much of the energy inside my head released...and the blast killed both the Bishop and the Professor,"
Jean looked up to the boy, tears had formed in her eyes. "Ever since then, I've had to release my psychic energy everyday, because I was afraid I'd hurt Scott...in fact, I was afraid to even start the school up again, because I didn't want to hurt anybody. But, I was convinced that I could control it, and Scott and Ororo forgave me so I," She looked him directly in the eye. "You mustn't tell anyone. None of the other students know. And you must also promise me that you will take special care with what you can do, alright?"
Joe nodded to her. "I promise."
Jean smiled and wiped her eyes."Good. As I said, I'll have to do special one on one sessions with you, to teach you to release excess energy safely..."
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