Chapter 4:Powers Revealed
As the doors opened up she spotted the professor and another being that was blue. She wondered if it was any relation to Kurt. "Ah welcome Laura, this is the Danger Room control room. We can control the simulations that go on below from here. I thought it would be good to show you what some of your peers can do. Then from there we will let you run through it and slowly increase the difficulty so that we can see where you are with your skills." He gestured for her to come and join by the computers overlooking the vast complex. "This is our resident doctor, Mr. Henry McCoy. Hank, if you will begin the session. I will introduce you to the students and they will show you a little of what they can do.
As Laura looked on, into the room she noticed the scenery changing from the dull metal into a field. Kurt had explained all that they did in here but to see it was breathtaking. Surrounding the field on all sides were trees. Immediately she started thinking of all the different strategies this terrain would allow.
"First, this is Ororo Monroe, otherwise known as Storm," at that an ebony woman walked ahead of the crowd of students. She levitated into the air and clouds appeared above everyone. "She is one of the eight adults here, her powers allow her to control all aspects of the weather, tornadoes, thunderstorms, and you get the picture." Storm lowered herself back onto the ground and nodded at Laura causing her to smile.
Next a young man walked out. He was very toned in his uniform and the visor that he wore made him look mysterious. Targets rose on the field and the man raised his hand to the visor and a red beam came out and destroyed everyone. "Scott Summers, Cyclops, is another instructor here, he is also the leader of the X-men. As a child Scott was in a horrible accident causing damage to his brain. He will never be able to fully control his powers, causing him to wear that visor. As you can see, he has a unique ability to emit powerful optic blast from his eyes that have the power to destroy some of the strongest materials."
"Unlike his brother, Havok, better known as Alex, emits a plasma blast from his hands. Havok and Cyclops are immune to each others powers and others like them though." At this Havok and Cyclops began shooting the beams at one another to no avail then Havok aimed at one of the targets obliterating it much in the same way Cyclops had moments before. "Young Alex is part of the new mutants though he trains with his brother very often."
A redheaded girl flew into the air and looked down at the broken targets. As she was doing this, they started floating in the air and moved into the corner of the room out of the way once again. "That is Jean Grey, like me she has the powers of telepathy, but on top of the that she also has what we call telekinesis, the ability to move objects just by thinking about it. She has come along way with her powers and is very talented. She is another of the instructors here along with Scott, Logan, Hank, Ororo, Piotr, Remy and myself."
"Here is Remy Lebeau and Piotr Rasputin now, they were once Acolytes working for a very powerful mutant named Magneto but now they attend the institute as instructors while still learning some things here and there. Remy also known as Gambit has the ability to kinetically charge inorganic objects. While Piotr, Colossus, can turn his skin into a metal form and in this form he possesses superhuman strength and endurance." While he was explaining this, the one they called Gambit, picked up what looked like a bowling ball and it started glowing red. He handed it to Colossus and he threw it a good 50 feet easily. Upon hitting the ground it exploded but it was only enough to look like fire works. "Fortunately Gambit can control how much kinetic energy he puts into these objects."
After that, the professor went on introducing her to the rest of the students. There were a lot of students and she was hoping they would all welcome her as much as Kitty and Kurt had. She was greatly interested in the powers of Bobby, Amara, Ray and Jamie. Rogue and Danielle scared her; the thought of someone just touching you and absorbing your life force was nothing to be excited about. And Danielle could make your worst nightmares come true to certain degree. She had a feeling the she would get along great with Rahne because of the animal within them. Sam and Paige Guthrie, she didn't know what to think of. She was jealous though to a certain extent because even if they had no friends they had siblings there to be with. Angel was a site to take in. She hadn't seen him last time she was here so when he spread his wings, it took her by surprise but he was older, and she wondered why he wasn't an instructor.
"So, Mr. McCoy, what can you do?" Laura asked, as she looked up to the Blue man in front of her taking in his whole appearance this time. He was a beastly figure but something about him showed that he was no harm.
"Like you, child, I am very agile, I have razor sharp claws, though not as long as yours," he smirked, "and unlike you I have a strength greater than most human beings." He showed as he easily lifted a desk in the side of the room. "But that's enough about me, I believe the other students would like to see you in action once again and see what you can really do. Kurt if you would be so kind." The next thing she knew Kurt was near her. He grabbed onto her, winked and teleported them into the room below.
"Alright, Laura, we'll start out at a relatively low level and increase it slowly depending on how well your doing. The main objective of this is to make it to the next objective and destroying the threats." Mr. McCoy said over the loud speakers. She nodded her head and unsheathed the claws in her fist.
She started running as a couple lasers rose from the ground, she easily dispatched of them. Objective completed. Next the scenery changed a bit to glass walls and there were three robots in the room with her. She could hear some of the students saying things about sentinels but she figured she would ask Kurt about it later. She ran towards the first to robots and jumped into the air, while in the air she unsheathed her foot claws and turned herself sideways and sliced the heads off of both sentinels. She rolled onto the ground and easily found her footing. She ran up behind the next sentinel, did a back flip bringing her feet up quickly and sliced both arms from the robot. She then stuck four claws into its back. Objective completed. The room turned back into a field but nothing surfaced, she looked around confused. Logan ran at her from behind but she was quicker. She sidestepped and sweep kicked him causing him to fall to the ground. She backed away ready to do battle with the Wolverine.
Wolverine brought himself back to his feet. "Alright kid, now claws, this is strictly hand to hand combat." She retracted her claws and leapt at Wolverine, but he saw it coming he grabbed her in mid air and threw to the side. "Come on, you've got to be quicker than that." She got back and ran at him again but this time before he could grab her, she ducked underneath his arms jumped in the air and delivered a roundhouse kick that Logan would be feeling later on, healing factor or not. They then threw punch and kick combos at each other for 5 minutes until Wolverine pinned her to the ground. "Looks like there's a little more I can teach you." But much to his surprise she raised her legs underneath his arms and threw him off her. At that she jumped on top of him and unsheathed a single claw saying that she was the victor.
"Alright, that'll be enough" Hank said over the loudspeaker. He then turned it off as the other students ran to join Logan and Laura. They congratulated Laura on defeating Logan and it looked like things would end up getting a little better around here. "The girl is amazing Charles. I want to bring her into the med-lab and run some test but judging from what I have seen in here today, she will be no problem to add to the team of X-men."
"Interesting," Hank said upon surveying the x-rays he was taking of Laura's skeletal structure.
Jamie had started helping Mr. McCoy out lately. It all started as his punishment in a prank war with bobby but he found that he liked learning some of the things Mr. McCoy had taught him down here. "What is it Mr. McCoy?" As he was saying this Laura walked in and sat down on one of the beds in the med lab.
"Well unlike Logan, Your skeletal structure isn't coated in adamantium. But your claws are. I wonder why they would just coat your claws in it." Hank said as he looked over the young lady.
"Oh I can explain that, my mother told me about it the day she helped me escape." This brought a look of surprise to Hank's face. The professor never said anything about the girl's mother helping her escape. "You see after they coated my claws with the adamantium, my mother couldn't bear it. She didn't want them to do to me what they did to Logan. So before they had a chance to do the rest of the Weapon X modifications, she helped me escape."
"I don't mean to intrude, Laura, but if your mother helped you escape, why'd you kill her? I mean it just doesn't make any sense to me." Jamie asked, he didn't mean to upset Laura, he was just curious as to how someone could do that.
The girls face dropped just thinking about it. She didn't want to kill her mother; it was the animal instinct in her that told her to do it. "You see before I killed the lead scientist of my project, Zander Rice, He placed a trigger scent on my mother. He knew she was the one that was responsible for my escape so he wasn't going to go without a fight. I tracked down her scent and hunted her down. The scent was like any scent they would train an animal to react to, when I smelled the scent I was to track it down and neutralize it. I'm sorry for what I did to her but in the same sense it was truly the end of the Weapon X projects. No more people will have to suffer what I did. Everyone who knew of the things going on on the inside are dead. All the software that contained all the secrets is destroyed. They simply won't be able to use the same data to create another monster like myself."
Hank shook his head and at that moment the professor came in. "Child, Laura, you are no monster, you are a human being, they may have tortured you but you will find your retribution here. The children are beginning to come to terms with what you did before. They don't blame you anymore for that. I sensed their excitement when you showed Logan up this afternoon. You may have hurt his pride but you gave us all a look at what you are truly capable of." The professor wheeled in front of her and rested his hand on her shoulder. "I would like for you to join me in my study after you get cleaned up. I wish to speak with you about some things." With that Laura and Jamie left the medbay and went to their rooms to get cleaned up from the afternoon activities.
To Laura this was turning out to be one of the greatest decisions she could have ever made.