Oh. So they were actually do this then? Jude rolled his wrists and evaluated his clothing choice. Jeans and a tee-shirt were not as flexible as an X-uniform, but you didn't always get a choice when you got the call to go out. At least he had shoes on.

Level 5 was above his solo-training comfort zone, but 101 had a nice ring to it.

There was a door, an obvious start point. Was there also an obvious end? Okay. No big. Just. Go.

Jude flung open the door hard enough that Cafas would have to catch it or get smushed by it. (Or, it would just have to bounce off him. That was fair and far, far more likely.) And he didn't wait or hesitate. The encounter was described to him as clear the building so that is exactly what Jude aimed to do.

The first room was easy. Maybe it was built to build confidence.

There were only two guards. They were totally unawares when he'd grabbed the door. By the time Jude was through it, they were starting to stand. The power mimic pulled the closest one by his shirt to keep him off balance until he was close enough to knee him in the gut. If the table weren't between this bad guy and the second, he would have tossed this one at the other.

As it was, Jude swung his first victim around and back toward Cafas.That meant he'd be out of the way. It wasn't that Jude wanted to see Cafas hit by a body. Or, not only that.

The second man was able to reach some kind of alarm just as Jude was reaching him. The frenchman had to dive to catch him and even then their combined forward momentum carried them both right into the alarm, setting it off.

Jude cursed under his breath.

Next room.

Jude took off with less complaining than Cafas was used to. Maybe there was a reason he'd actually been put on the team.

Then again, maybe not...

Cafas was pretty sure Jude didn't know Cafas was intangible during the simulation. That made throwing the door into him a bit too cheeky for Cafas to accept.

"Try not to slam doors into team members."

He called it out while stepping into the room just behind the younger mutant. The two guards in the first room weren't meant to be challenging at all. The first one was handily winded, but then thrown backwards out of sight. The second managed to make it to the alarm box before he could be subdued.

"Don't let your opponents out of sight."

It was all the warning he was about to give, seeing as Jude had very purposely thrown the first guard into him. The holographic enemy had phased right through Cafas, gasping for breath. Now he was back on his feet. He phased through Cafas again, crouching to tackle Jude. Luckily for Jude, the second guard had been knocked out by the impact with the wall.

"Alarm could have been avoided if you'd properly assessed the guard's positioning."

There was eye rolling and turning to tell Cafas where he could put his sight and then surprised face punching.

Jude did as Mirror had once upon a time instructed him and imagined putting his fist one foot beyond the face of choice. Ah. But. He didn't have his knuckles wrapped this time. The face was a bad choice.

"Mother fffff—!" No. That wasn't intentional. Jude shook out his hand as the man dropped with a broken nose.

"It'z a solo party so I don't have to worry about hitting allies withs doors." Or bodies. Not that either had phased Cafas. Jude stomped his way through the second door. If he wanted to count as an ally, Cafas would have to pick up some slack.

Whoa. Jude blocked an incoming strike by instinct, near giddy that his arm seemed to have worked all on its own. He caught the attacker's arm with his other hand even as the man finished the movement and the teen turned his body to help his attacker continue to follow through with his own momentum long after he'd meant to.

Of course, the fact that he threw the guy right through Cafas was purely incidental. As was the following smirk, an expression that did not last long when he had to awkward dodge a kick.

No table in this room. Two attackers plus the one he'd tossed out made three total. It was automatic to reach for his power to even the odds, but that wasn't what this training was for. Jude skipped back another pace to dodge again. There were two on him. One using mostly kicks and the other making motions like he wanted to grab or grapple.

Jude had no compunctions against kicking the kicker in the nads, which he did when the aggressor made a move to kick again. Kicks, Jude felt, were his strong suit. But it did make for an easy grab target for the grappler.

He was body dropped to the ground before he'd really registered that he'd been caught.

Ooooh that had to hurt. Cafas winced as Jude closed fist punched one of the enemies fair in the nose. Not for the hologram either. Cafas' hands were pretty much rock from the practice he had and he still tried to avoid hits like that. "Open hand strike next time, otherwise nice reactions." Jude at least managed to grasp the technique of the blows, he listened to his reflexes as well which was also good.

Speaking of his reflexes Cafas very nearly forgot he was intangible as a body phased right through him. Nicely done. Try to trip him next time, throw him at the ground. The smirk on Jude's face, Cafas was happy to see, didn't last long. He barely moved out of the way of the kick in time, and certainly not on balance. The new pair forced him another pace backwards before...

Ouch...

This time Cafas felt a little pity for the hologram, which dropped like a sack of rocks. Jude was dropped shortly after as a grappler took him off balance. The hologram quickly was on top of Jude. It looked like a classic ground and pound. This would hurt if Jude didn't do something quick, and yet again Cafas could hear a thrown body getting back up. Sounded like it was damaged, but not out. Cafas wasn't sure if that was a feature of danger level five or four.

"Your situational awareness needs some work. Also, when out-numbered, try not to leave yourself exposed just to attack one guy."

Not that Jude was in much of a position to listen, judging by the fist the hologram was pulling back.

Jude grabbed at his grappler’s lapels with his hands and tried to roll his face off to the side to avoid the incoming hurt. There wasn’t a whole lot of room to move, though so the most he managed for it was taking the hit on his cheek instead of straight on his nose. Honestly, he was probably doing the hologram a favor, judging by how his hand still hurt.

He had already committed to the maneuver, though, sacrificing his face in order to get the grip and the leverage he needed. Jude heaved the guy as hard as he could to the side, swinging a leg up and over so that he ended up on top.

He didn’t really know what to do once he was there other than wail on the guy so Jude gave that a go. He hit him wherever his guard wasn’t up, sometimes still where his guard was. The hologram under him tried to reverse just as Jude had, but the teen was brutal. He didn’t care about his hands. He didn’t care about his face. He didn’t care about stupid Cafas or the stupid Danger Room or the stupid Xmen.

For one pure moment, he just cared about decimating this stupid hologram.

Cafas' (brand new) phone gave a buzz in his pocket as he watched Jude take a hit in the face. It didn't look pleasant, but Jude looked like he was about to roll on top of the struggle. Cafas pulled his phone out and checked it. A text from Ghost! Cafas nearly forgot about the hologram as he swiped to unlock.

You're a best kind of friend. I you face. Muah!

The accompanying photo told Cafas she was clubbing, and apparently drunk. There was no other excuse for the pouty lipped peace sign photo. He could hear struggle and punching in the background. While he was shaking his head at the first photo, another came through. A blur of club and some nonsense garble. Looked as if she'd fumbled her phone.

Dork.

A gentle smile crept onto his face as he typed out a reply... Send. He didn't take a photo. No point showing her Jude beating a hologram to death.

Wait...

He snapped his focus back up, remembering the sound of the thrown guard standing up. For the second time that day he watched a hologram run through him from behind. The kick it threw at Jude's head was vicious. The guard Jude was punching had gone limp while Cafas had been typing.

"DUCK!"

Level 5 didn't have many safety nets...

Duck?

It was just loud enough and just panicked enough sounding that Jude looked up and over at Cafas which was, of course, the opposite of ducking.

The hologram he'd tossed out earlier was back and leading with his foot.

If his cheek wasn't broken before, it was now. Jude was thrown back and away from his pummeling target, skidding across the ground of the empty room in a short moment that felt like an eternity of stars.

Then it was the hologram's turn climb on top of Jude and wail. The teen was too dazed to do much more than throw his hands up to put up some kind of measly defense. Jude was usually better than this. He was too distracted today. Shouldn't have agreed to a level 5, even while supervised.

Jude took a boot to the face, hard. The ground and pound he was about to receive seemed all the worse for how dazed his defense seemed. One punch, two.

"TERMINATE!"

He hadn't ducked! Why hadn't he ducked? Kealey would have known. Cafas threw himself down next to Jude, knees first. First thing first, he seemed alive. Of course he was alive, the Danger Room self terminated before it killed you. Well, on most settings. Cafas had a few... He hoped he'd never find out if the safety net was truly off.

"Jude, mate, you there? How many fingers am I holding up?" That was a thing right? He didn't know what it was meant to test, but people did it. He really needed to take First Aid. The answer was three.

Damn it Cafas, level five? You knew he wasn't thinking straight.

Jude's face was... A mess would have been generous. Nothing the Doc couldn't fix was a more accurate term. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He barely registered except to pull it out and type a quick reply to:

Uh. Sorry. :,< Im trying new friends and making new dthings.

He was already hauling Jude into his arms by the time it had sent. He wasn't going to risk the injuries being more serious than they seemed. He'd seen guys hit their heads before and not wake up. He really didn't need that now.

"You're gonna be okay mate, I'll get you to the Doc, just try to keep awake for me." That much he did know. Awake was good, sleepy was bad. Cafas was running out the Danger Room doors trying not to jostle Jude, making for the infirmary.

Jude was there, but he was still in slap-mode. He slapped Cafas' fingers away. He woulda slapped them away again if they came anywhere near his face once more. He was mad. At himself. At Ghost. At Cafas. At holograms. At himself. At the Danger Room.

Cafas helped hoist him to his feet and that put a damper on his slap affectation. The world was a spinning top of metal and bright light. Sorta just sucked the fight right out of him.

"Whoa."

> "You're gonna be okay mate, I'll get you to the Doc, just try to keep awake for me."

His eye was swelling shut. Jude knew this because he tried to glare at Cafas and instead of narrowing, his eyes simply shut. There just wasn't enough room to narrow without shutting. He explored the tender, hot, and puffy cheek with his free hand and made liberal use of Cafas with his other.

"Zhat was rotten. I shoulda-" He huffed and even that hurt. "I was dumb and too focused. Next time... Maybe DocProf will fix me up and I can go right back to it?" He was eager to wipe this black mark off his record, but the look on DocProf's face when they rounded the corner into the clinic meant that the wizened old man had heard him.

"Not a chance." He headed off that conversation with a firm no even as he was putting his hands on Jude's face. "And don't think you're getting away, Cafas Johnson." He explained about the limitations of his power in regards to concussions. Someone would have to babysit.

Jude let his power swap to DocProf's again. Just in case.

>"Zhat was rotten. I shoulda-"

Ducked.

>"I was dumb and too focused. Next time... Maybe DocProf will fix me up and I can go right back to it?"

Cafas was about to answer when he crossed Doc Prof's infirmary threshold.

"Not a chance."

The Doc was already there and healing. The man was uncanny. Then again, when was the last time Cafas had run into the infirmary cradling someone? It wasn't often, that was for sure. Cafas lay Jude down on the bed.

"And don't think you're getting away, Cafas Johnson."

Cafas had felt his phone buzz on the run up. He'd been out of breath and reaching for it when Doc Prof spoke. He went on a bit about how he couldn't really do concussions because of their nature. Cafas nodded along. He'd received this information before, but it always helped to keep in mind.

"You know me Doc, I'd have stayed anyway given it's partly my fault." He had nowhere else to be anyway. Better to sit around keeping an eye on Jude than passing out in a bar again. He finally got his phone out of his pocket. He addressed Jude before it however. "Sorry. Level five was too much. I knew it going in but... You kinda pissed me off. Still, you're a team mate. One who was protecting someone I care about to the best of their ability. I shouldn't have done that, it won't happen again."

Going from past experience, that's getting thrown in my face like so much tabloid.

Finally, he looked down at his phone.

Yoga take care of thbt boy, Cafas or so help me, I will

please?

Cafas began typing a response as DocProf finished up and began moving to his office. He paused in the doorway only long enough to drop a final piece of advice. "Tell the boy's mother he's here. She'll be worried." Cafas shot him a look that said 'way ahead of you'. His reply sent and Cafas settled in to what promised to be a relatively long night of keeping up a conversation. "In brighter news, before you took that kick you did a pretty solid job on the second room."

Healing was awesome. Smirks looked better on non-swollen cheeks. Apologies were even awesomer.

Jude was always in that weird space with one foot in adulthood and one foot in his own mouth. He was a kid. But he wasn't. He was a teammate. But he was still new to the team. He was especially new to working with a sort-of mother figure who could make mistakes and did so with alarming regularity. Equally new to the idea of a (cringe) not-even-a-little-bit father figure.

That's why apologies were awesome. Step one of stopping your @*#$-up.

"You kinda pissed me off." As if the paper throwing and the shouting hadn't been enough of a clue. He was mad at Ghost, but she wasn't here so Jude just had to suffice with being angry at the one who was here.

Dumb Cafas. With his dumb hair and his dumb smile. Damn straight Jude was protecting his Ghost. But... "But I can't be zhat person for her. So." He shrugged. "So you should go somewhere else withs your dumb face. DocProf's here. He's just being lazy." Jude rolled over so his back was to Cafas so that he could frown freely at the wall.

That bag of jerk had it all: money, fame, a... lady friend.

> "In brighter news, before you took that kick you did a pretty solid job on the second room."

Jude added experience to Cafas' list of transgressions as he rolled his eyes at the wall. "You probably would 'ave wrecked that whole sim."

>"But I can't be zhat person for her. So. So you should go somewhere else withs your dumb face. DocProf's here. He's just being lazy."

Unfortunately for both of them, that was not going to happen. Cafas had just told both DocProf and Maya he would stay. That may as well have been a binding contract. "Maybe he is, but I owe him a lot of favours." He'd likely never be able to repay the man for the amount of healing he'd needed as an X-man. "Anyway, I have nowhere else to be." Especially not with the dangers of training alone highlighted. How long would Jude have had to lay there before someone found him, had Cafas not been there?

He wouldn't be the first either. I've been knocked out a few times.

>"You probably would 'ave wrecked that whole sim."

101 on level 5? Cafas couldn't recall his record on it. How long had he been above level five? Years at least. "Yeah, probably, but you've got no idea how many times I've ended up right where you are to get to that point. Hell, I have no idea." How many more for level six? Seven and eight he'd rather not even think about. After that... Well there just weren't enough safety nets to risk it. He'd made sure he was ready first.

So many broken bones and concussions...

If Jude couldn't get back to training, he really didn't want to talk about it. He wasn't one to play a game for 2 hours and then talk about it for 4.

And really. Cafas had absolutely nowhere else to be?

"You could go find her." Jude let that one sit for a long while before he said anything else. Actually, if Gwen was around he might have to pester her into helping. He ought to get at least one freebie after hiding her in his room for more than a year. It'd been hard to convince the staff that he needed his space for mutation reasons.

Or, you know, he could try to get to know his teammate.

Jude sighed. "Why do you have pink hair? Does it grow that way?"

>"You could go find her."

He couldn't, no matter how much he wanted to. For one thing, he took Ghost's threats a lot more seriously than Jude's. Then there was how much of a lecture he'd get from DocProf. Both those things kind of paled in comparison to his sense of personal responsibility. He'd gotten Jude here after all.

I'd say he'd listen to her more than me or Doc.

"Maya has requested I look after you tonight. Well, there was no real time-frame on it, but DocProf provided that." Surely she had only meant for the length of his current injury right? He saw no reason for that not to be true. Risking her wrath over a miscommunication though? He really didn't want to get laptopped.

>"Why do you have pink hair? Does it grow that way?"

The question caught Cafas off guard. While it was something he'd been asked about a lot recently, he normally didn't get it from the X-men. His mouth was running before his brain caught up. Standard interview response. "Nope, naturally brownish. It'd save on dye if it did grow like this. As to why, I don't know, I guess I thought it was cool when I was younger and now it's morphed into part of my identity. I've thought about letting it go back to natural but it just seems... wrong, somehow."

Where did that question come from? Bit of a topic change.

Cafas ran his fingers through his hair absent mindedly. It really only served to mess it up, but he'd hardly been presentable to begin with. He checked his phone, forgot what time it had said and had to check again. If they were going down the getting to know each other line, it may well be a long night.

Wouldn't kill DocProf to get an X-box or something in here...

Cafas’ moxy was commendable even if there was no accounting for taste. Ugh. Pink hair. Even if it was part of his identity, didn’t the guy know that identities could change all the time? Especially if he'd wanted it to. But far be it for a teen to point that out to a grown ass man. He kept his superior opinions to himself.

Maya had requested it, eh? Maya? Jude wrinkled his nose at the wall. Nobody called her Maya. He didn’t much care to dig into those implications so he latched onto the safer part.

“You talked to her?” In an instant, his accent was stronger. He rolled back and regretted it when his vision spotted gray. Wait. It was worse than that. “You told her?” Jude sat up and his vision spotted black.

Humiliation time. She must think he had been wasting his time here at the Mansion to get knocked on his butt by a bunch of holograms.

Nope. Yep. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and was fully intent on going right back to the Danger Room. “C’mon. Doesn’t have to be fighting. Weights? Peaceful resistance training?” Or blinking rapidly so that your vision can clear and you get your equilibrium back? Jude was so gonna blast that class out of the water.