The awkward moment when you are supposed to arrange for an X-men tryout for your girlfriend.

Mirror spent days (and nights) trying to figure out what to do with what seemed like his most difficult task as an X-man yet. Sam was no help at all (most of the time he wasn't around), and he was way too proud to ask Shin for advice. The whole X-team was busy; Gawain was on his own.

Not like Ami was difficult to train or anything. Actually, she was a quick learner, fast and sharp, and even though her ability was not combat oriented, she found creative ways for using it in training.
But coming up with a scenario that would not be impossible to complete, but still challenging enough to qualify Ami for the X-team...
Ugh.

Well, he could not keep putting it off forever; Ami was ready for a tryout, and the X-team could use some new members. Mirror just had to man up (huh), and schedule the DR session.

Now he was standing in the DR, all systems off, waiting for her to show up. Sink, or swim.

Sink or swim. That was basically it, wasn't it? She'd done tryouts before. Some people might have fretted over what to wear for a tryout, or how to best prepare. Amelia had done tryouts like this before. Okay, maybe not for the X-men, or other crime-fighting super teams, but soccer was fairly brutal, wasn't it? Yes. It was. And she had always managed to kick ass there, so...

She dressed in silence that morning. Slipped on her black yoga pants and white tank top. Put on the black zip-up fleece hoodie, in case the trip to the mansion was cold. Laced up and eaten her wheaties and fried egg so she'd be ready in both mind and body. Then, she'd taken the bus.

She could do this. Amelia knew it. Somewhere deep down, she knew she would make the team. Some time. Some day. And today was a good a day as any.

She walked into the danger room, pulling her hair back into a dark ponytail with closed eyes.

"Okay. Are we ready?" She asked, stopping a few feet from where Gawain stood.

>>"Okay. Are we ready?"

Gawain turned, arms folded over his chest; Ami was on time, and ready as ever. She was going to make a good X-man. He did not tell her that just yet.

"I don't know. Are we?" he smirked, walking over to her. He would have kissed her any other time, but right now, he was representing the X-team. All official-like. Yes.

"All right" he nodded to her "Here is the thing. We usually do tryouts for teams, but since everyone is on different levels of training, this time you are all by yourself. I am not allowed to tell you what to expect from the test, but I can tell you that it will be longer than any of your training sessions, and it will not stop until you get through to the end or you are incapable of continuing. I will be keeping an eye on you but I am not allowed to intervene. Any questions?"

Amelia shook her head.

"Sounds like what it should be," she said. "I don't expect you to go easy on me. I'm ready whenever you are."

At the moment, she was focused enough to ignore any cocky smirks he may have been giving. All she did was cross her arms.

>>"Sounds like what it should be. I don't expect you to go easy on me. I'm ready whenever you are."

Gawain nodded again.

"All right then." he grinned at her on the way out "Kick some ass."

He left her alone in the DR, walking up to the god room to start the program. He didn't design it on his own; he just found it and decided it was interesting enough for a test. Once it was started, he had nothing else to do but watch.

"Here... we... go." he muttered to himself.

The DR went dark for a few moments; dark and quiet. When the lights came on again, it was a huge hall, the inside of a palace, with long flowing curtains moving silently in the breeze, effectively blocking most of the hall out of sight. Light filtered in through windows near the roof; everything looked peaceful...

Darkness. Hopefully, the tryout wouldn't be in complete darkness.

That'd suck eggs. Amelia thought.

Darkness. Silence.

Oh, there had better not be zombies when the lights come back on. She would kick somebody's ass if there were. She'd had enough zombies to last a lifetime. Two, in fact. Hers' and his.

The lights blinked back on to reveal a huge hall. No zombies. What was there was a hell of a lot more impressive.

Amelia was your average girl. She liked school and science and sports and sequels. She liked anime, and she liked good movies. One type of movie she liked was the fancy Asian martial arts flick. Be it Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, or something a bit more Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, she liked it all. So when the room changed into a dang ripoff of a scene from Hero, she had to object.

"You gotta be kidding me..."

She was going to be fighting people with martial arts skills and swords? Amelia checked herself to make sure she had a ghost hand floating in front of her at the ready. The hand flexed in and out of a fist. Then, it swung in an uppercut at a curtain several feet away. Just as she thought, it went right through it without disturbing the cloth. She manipulated clothing, not cloth, so that meant no awesome falling curtains for her. Unless she figured out how to turn one of their swords against them.

The 'they' in question had yet to appear, however. Amelia waited with bated breath.

Of course she'd know where she was. Gawain smiled to himself as he watched. The setting was impressive, and if he knew his girlfriend well, she would be one to appreciate it.

What came next was Chinese imperial guards. A lot of them. The poured into the hallway like a sea of extras only Chinese movie budgets can pay for, fighting against opponents who were only a blur of green and black, and seemed to be everywhere at once. People shouting, weapons breaking, swords flashing, curtains tearing.

None of them even noticed Ami; not unless they bumped into her, that is. She was not a threat, and she was not the main opponent of either side.
She just happened to be there, in the middle of everything. In a great place... to get caught up in the crossfire.

Being ignored was a good thing. At least in this case. Amelia didn't do anything to draw their attention any more than she had to. She'd seen the movie. She knew what was coming. She simply side-stepped the whole fleet of guards, moving through the hall quiet and unobtrusive as she could, ghost hand resting on her shoulder. She went straight up to the real challenge.

There at the top of the stairs at the end of the hall stood her opponent, amid the billowing green shrouds. His hair was drawn back in a top knot. A neatly trimmed mustache and goat chin were on his face. He was dressed in black robes with an Asian sword strapped to his side. It probably wasn't a katana. She was no weapons expert, but she recalled katana usually had a curve.

How was she going to protect against a sword, even if it wasn't a katana?

Amelia shot a defiant glance up towards wherever the God Room was, then jerked her attention back to the emperor.

At some point between the defiant glance and the returning of focus, he'd unsheathed his sword. He held it tip pointed downwards at waist level. Another hand rested on the sheathe at his side.

Damn it. This didn't leave her much time to come up with a plan.

He raised the blade's tip to point her way. This was the part where she was supposed to rush him. If she'd had a sword. But she did not. So she simply raised a hand and fell into a fighting pose ripped off some martial arts movie. She flexed her fingers, the classic 'come at me, bro' gesture.

"Come at me, bro." She suggested, knowing full-well it wouldn't translate to Chinese.

Did she really just...?
Gawain chuckled, watching the fight. Because Ami would totally challenge a Chinese martial arts god with a sword, armed with her bare fists and her sass. She refused to get lost in the sea of guards and stick to dodging hits; she wanted the main opponent. Oh well. She got his attention.

The emperor rushed at her, sword drawn; on the other side, the fighting was getting closer with every guard that fell.

Now would have been a great time for some new power like a spirit sword to manifest. But as the guy came rushing at her, no such abilities came to the forefront of her mind. So. She settled for letting the thing on her shoulder hop off and float in front of her to absorb the emperor's rush. A fist hovered. A fist struck. The guy had not been expecting a semi visible fist to strike. He took a step backwards, revising his strategies while Amelia shook her fist.

Okay. People running into her fist still hurt. And he was still hella hard. And that hadn't wounded him. If anything, it had just made him mad.

She could hear the fighting getting closer.

Okay. She had to fight smart.

She'd skipped the grunts and gone straight for the boss. She would not John Egbert this and die.

Amelia sent the fist flying at the emperor as a distraction. He swung his sword at it horizontally. And as all of that happened, she let the psychic construct vanish into nothing and started running for the shrouds.

Amelia vanished behind a green curtain. Yeah. She'd stolen that trick from the movie. Maybe she could steal the guy's belt from his waist and use it to wrap the sword if he got in close enough without that blade pointed at her guts.

There had to be a joke in there about an emperor and his clothes. There had to.

Gawain found himself grinning once again as Ami punched the guy and then got lost among the curtains. She might not have been the best fighter, but she was smart enough to know that. That alone was a huge advantage in a fight.

Shifting through screens Gawain finally found her; she was moving silently among the curtains, just like the emperor was. Guards have been more few and far between in the past few minutes; which meant that now there were twi ither martial artists dressed in green, stalking around...

... and then came the scream of silk when it is cut in length with a sword...

The curtain fell fluttering as the line of silver cut across its horizon.

Amelia spun. There wasn't much time to put up a defense. She'd worn a hoodie that day. It had probably saved her life.

The hoodie flew in a bundle of sleeves and ends as the swordsman locked his eyes on her, and it quickly eclipsed his vision. There were a lot of ways one could have done this maneuver. Grabbed him with her ghost hands while wrapping his arms up with the hoodie. Kicked him in the shins and ran while her hoodie played a distraction. Covered his face, then smashed it with a clenched fist. She opted for a strange combination of the few.

The hoodie tumbled, and then it clung. Like an octopus, it gripped his face. She clamped down on it with her mind, and she would not let go. Meanwhile, in arm-land, Amelia had chosen to grab those things before he had a chance to start blindly swinging them. Potentially hazardous, it was. Put the blade closer to her chest as she pressed the arm into it and started shaking it, but she was a risk taker. And with a few jabs and swings (and that lovely distraction of him being unable to see her, thanks to the octo-hood), she was able to beat his hands into submission and jerk the sword so it sailed free.

There was the scrape of metal as the blade moved across the ground. It landed a short ways away, on the floor beneath a curtain, by a column.

The unseen hands relented with their grip on his face, and the hoodie fell. Now was the time to put it to a new purpose. She wrapped it up, sleeves and all, into makeshift handcuffs around the guys two arms.

Amelia lifted her leg and kicked, right at his chest. The emperor skidded across the floor, back, back, back. Stopped himself on a dime, as if by invisible wires. Straightened up at her and glared. She smirked right back at him. "Take that, Samurai Jack."

And then he jumped good. The look on her face quickly mutated from confident to 'oh crap'.

Martial arts masters, oh yeah. They weren't all about their swords...

Defeating a martial artist with a hoodie: because weapons are too mainstream.

Gawain grinned, leaning back in his chair as he looked at the screens. Ami was doing just as he expected her to do. He had his doubts when she told him she wanted to try out for the X-team, but she did hold up her end, and used her powers in creative ways that made her an opponent to consider.

For most people, anyway. The guy was still a martial artist.

Gawain folded his arms, watching. He had tried the simulation before he threw Ami into it, but he was not entirely sure he had seen all the tricks the emperor had up his sleeves...

Flying, it seemed, was just one of the many tricks up the guys sleeves. Or at least, jumping so high, and running on so many pillars and walls, it seemed like he was flying. Dude hadn't even cast off the hoodie yet. Which was good, because Amelia was still clinging to it with her power. She let go.

Off it went, tumbling. And then it shot back up held by two hands in an attempt to wrap around the guy's legs. The attempt went south. The hoodie fell to the ground limply as her ghost hands vanished. He'd just flown out of her range.

"... oh."

And now the hoodie was out of her range. And he was rushing back her way like a freaking bullet.

Amelia ducked down and started pulling at a shoe.

Gawain leaned forward in his seat. This show was just getting interesting.

"Come on Panda..."

The hoodie was gone. At this rate, she was going to run out of clothes, and at this point in the game, he did not even think that was funny.
Okay. Maybe one stray cheeky comment. Carefully kept inside.

The emperor did look scary, flying around like that. Gawain drummed his fingers on the desk.

"I hate action movies..."