Salty spray filled the air, and the world's noise was absent, save for a constant, almost melodic roar, and a moan in counterpoint. Lightning flashed in the clouds, too distant for the crack of thunder to be heard, but near enough that the sky had turned a yellow-greenish purple. The storm was approaching, and the atmosphere on the beach was charged with the tension. Closer to the horizon the ocean was choppy, the dark waters capped with white as the waves broke. The storm was hardly the only thing to be concerned over. Among the tide crashing onto the shore was an invading force of pirates. Zombie pirates to be more precise. Not the same sort of undead pirates from the Disney movies. There weren't any ocean creature features to them, no changing of appearances based upon the moonlight. Putrid skin was rotting away, jaws were slack, held in place by only fibrous muscular tissue, useless in it's state of decay for anything more than that purpose. If not for the saltwater and slight lingering of fish, the pirates festering flesh and decrementing would overpower ones nose. With a mindless menace they advanced upon the beach where one barefoot teenager stood unarmed.

But Locke wasn’t unarmed, not really. Beneath his feet was an army to command, solders that would not tire or feel the pain of wounds. He might not be the undead, but he was far from defenseless. Locke was the one called Earthwalker, and having him stand on a beach spelled doom for his targets. Without blinking an eye, and with a grin that would make the devil hesitate, Locke flicked his fingers towards the advancing force. The sandy beach leaped in response, each individual granule practically singing in joy for it's usefulness to him, causing a wave of land that struck at the nearest pirate. Locke did not stop for a moment to make sure that his first target had been stopped. With his mind controlling the earth he stood on, Locke was intimately aware of movement around him. There wasn't a need to see his opponents to know where they were, which was a good thing. Legally Locke was blind in his left eye. It perceived neither shapes nor light, and his right eye was incapacitated in judging distances accurately. Being a mutant kept such problems, for the most part, inconsequential. While his wave of sand struck, Locke focused on the wet sand beneath another zombie's feet. He didn't like dry sand nearly as much. It shifted too easily to maintain the shape that he wanted. On the positive side, it moved quickly, and usually if Locke was working with sand, there was more than enough for him to keep his golems replenished. One such golem was making its way up from beneath one of the pirates, entombing the corpse inside of it while swinging an arm as wide as a barrel into a group.

Kendra had helped the Californian to come up with this Danger Room program, much to his surprise. She had always been against his horror movies, and Locke got the feeling that while his stepmother had accepted that he was a mutant, she still wasn't fond of him using his powers to try and change the world. However, she agreed with him that Locke couldn't ignore this part of him, and she could see the way that Locke dedicated himself to the perfection of his powers. Maybe she had thought that it was better for Locke to fight something that was little more than computer data than to say, go off and try to convince a volcano that it shouldn't kill him. Locke might not be a resident of the Institute anymore, but that didn't mean he had to stay away. College had placed him in a frat house, minus any of the things that would actually constitute a fraternity, such as a dedication to intellectual advancement, and organization of any sort. He had been thrown over the fence, walked around a landmine of undergarments in various states of funk, listened to drunken karaoke for five hours straight, and had to clean up enough beer bottles to pay for his first month's cellphone payment. Such an environment didn't allow him to use his powers, and with the media firestorm that covered what happened to his friend Gina, made it unsafe for Locke to train there. On almost a daily occurrence he'd been coming back to Xavier's to train either outside or in the Danger Room. In a world full of insanity, Locke could always find peace in loosing himself in the earth.

The golem, which Locke had dubbed Fluffy, tromped up and down the beach. It had no mind of its own, only moving based upon Locke's desires, and held together only by his will, yet it almost gleefully was dealing with the zombie pirates, One of the undead was lifted up, and dangling by a leg, was used to smash another. Of course a zombie can't be used for a weapon for long, and the captive re-animated corpse was tossed into the ocean like a frisbee.

Rebecca's confidence was slowly building after almost a month of being back in the real world. She was speaking much more like a normal twenty year old girl, and she was regularly wandering around the Mansion and the grounds. She was refamiliarizing herself with the halls and she was barely jumping back in shock when she came across mutants with horns or fangs or other unexpected physical attributes. It was one thing to readjust to a normal life, but Rebecca left her normal life behind in Scotland over a year earlier; she was living a mutant life in a mutant city, and that meant being ready for surprises.

She was making a return to her normal self, but that did not mean she was past her child-like curiosity when it came to exploring the vast Mansion depths. On the lower levels, the halls were significantly different than those in the School and Living sections of the building. Instead of cozy wood and carpeting and paintings, there was chrome and reflective surfaces and minimalist decorating.

Her wandering led her to a familiar door, but she was struggling to remember exactly what was on the other side. It was clearly not a classroom; classrooms were in a specific area, and if a class was held down in the area she was in, pretty much every student would get lost on the way. As she was standing there, analyzing the door, the door (or rather, the system connected to the door) was analyzing her as well. After a few moments, she was recognized as an authorized entrant. "CODENAME LODESTONE, ACCEPTED. SIMULATION IN PROGRESS."

The door slid open, and a wide-eyed Rebecca entered to find she was stepping on soft sand. Did the Mansion have a sand room? Accepting the situation more quickly than she should, Rebecca picked up her feet one at a time, removing her socks so she could feel the warm sand on her toes.

Looking around, Rebecca noticed a male figure in the distance. After plenty of time looking around Facebook, the internet, and student records in hopes of recognizing her friends again, she vaguely remembered a name to put to a face and body.

It was Locke! Not someone who she knew very well, but she was on a team with him! Running through the sand, excited to see a somewhat familiar face, she called out, "Locke! Hey, Locke!"

And then she noticed the other things around Locke on the beach. Well, first she noticed a beach; from the scent of salt in the air to the expansive ocean before her. There was no way that was in the Mansion.

As she took her steps onto the beach, there was even a big expressionless thing made of sand and earth dangling...

Was that a ZOMBIE?

"Uh, Lock--ACK!" Rebecca jumped backward, falling on her bottom behind Locke to get away from the zombie pirate that just laid a decaying hand on her shoulder.

Something was off, which, given that Locke was at a beech inside, surrounded by zombie pirates, said something. He had booted up this program for himself, needing both the experience, and the catharsis offered by a good training session. By for himself, Locke had meant that he was going to be the only one to try and defend the beach. He wanted to explore the speed aspect of his powers, and to work with something that he wasn't the greatest with. There was the presence of someone else in the Danger Room, someone human.

He was going to say something, either end the program or tell whoever had entered that they should leave, but there was a small problem with that. One of the pirates that he had thought he dealt with had gotten back up, and rather close to the person who had entered the room. Close as in right behind them. It had been critical to Locke when he was planning this scenario out with Kendra that these zombies wouldn't take one hit and be done with. Maboadi had been challenging, and he needed to continue to press himself. She had argued with him, but it looked as though she hadn't decided to have it be an easy little event. These zombies were acting the way that any good horror movie zombie should. An army that would keep going until you had utterly destroyed them. If this was an invasion of skeletons things might be different. The sand was a blunt force, enough that an animated pile of bones would have been eliminated. Pirate zombies on the other hand had muscles and skins to keep them together, along with organs to give them weight. Granted it wasn't the most healthy tissue, but it still existed.

Whatever the person had said was lost as Locke took action. His powers were primarily for defense, and he had someone to defend. No time for explanations, Locke grabbed onto the person by their shoulders, knocking the zombie hand off, and shoved them down hard to the ground, keeping his body as a shield above them. He knew that his powers would keep him from being harmed by the sand, but there was no guarantee for whoever wandered in. As they hit the ground, Locke in a crouching position, an arm sprung out from beside them in an explosion of sand. It struck the zombie, knocking it back and forming a sort of barrier that wrapped around them. Fluffy by the water was allowed to smother a couple of the pirates. One of the first ways to deal with zombies is to make sure that the corpses are buried deep enough. Their defense was dropped in favor of another strike on the immediate problem. Locke didn't bother to focus deep enough on the sand to make another golem in front of him. Quickly abandoning the sand allowed him to make a distraction that slowly was battering down the zombie. ”Who's this?” Locke asked, his voice sounding as if the sand that they were on had rubbed together to form words. He couldn't be bothered with looking at who he had forced to face plant into the beach. When using his powers the more of his attention he was able to put on the materials that he worked with, the more he could do with it.

Rebecca was anxious, but Locke was a good teammate and came to her in her time of distress. He discarded the zombie hand away from her shoulder and...

Shoved her down. Not exactly the most gentlemanly or conscientious a teammate had ever treated her, whether on the X-Men or the football pitch. Rebecca was busy spitting out sand when Locke asked who she was. Was she not supposed to be the amnesiac on the X-Men roster? It should not have been too much to assume that, as the only redhead with access to the Danger Room, Locke could surely hazard a guess to her identity.

Then again, maybe Locke was also a bit distracted by the zombie pirates.

RIGHT, ZOMBIES! In her current state, plenty of things still startled Rebecca, but it was a safe bet that most sane people were scared of zombies. How was she supposed to defend herself against zombies??

Except... they were not just zombies. They were pirates. Rebecca's metal-sense was still vague and unreliable since her return to the world, but in an adrenaline-fueled state, it was kicking in enough to pick up the gaudy collection of chains, earrings, and of course swords carried by stereotypical pirates.

Rebecca truly wanted to be in a position where she could calmly respond to dangers of her situation, revealing the tactical mind developed through sports and missions and training. Unfortunately, that level of composure was a ways off from where she was. Instead, she would have to sacrifice the idea of precision and targeting in favor of a quick, powerful show of force. Rebecca focused on her spot in the magnetic field and simply pushed the field outward like an explosion, ready to push any metal in her proximity away from the origin point (her,) and hopefully doing more good than harm.

There wasn’t any response as to who Locke had just shoved down to the ground, but he was confident that it wasn’t a zombie. They moved with more ease than the zombies did, weight shifted from the balls of the feet to the heel, and there was no staggering. The silence was more than a little annoying to Locke though. He wasn’t blind when he used his powers, but he didn’t really see what was going on. With striking the zombie near them Locke didn’t exactly have the luxury of looking down and seeing who he was defending. There was another wave of them approaching, and Locke realized that he hadn’t told Kendra just how many of the pirates he wanted to fight. She had to have put a limit on it, but the Californian had no clue what that number was. He hoped that whoever he was protecting had a power that could help them, and that they would use it soon.

Such a hope though was probably better if he didn’t have it. There was some metal closer to Rebecca than what those zombie pirates wore and carried, and unfortunately that metal was quite close to Locke. Close as in, he still had metal pins in his leg. When Rebecca did, whatever it was that she did, those metal pins had a reaction. Locke’s leg felt as though it was catching fire from the inside out. He didn’t even remember that he had the pins in his legs at this point. His knee jerked out underneath him and Locke went sprawling onto the ground. His eyes flew open as the shock of the pain overtook him, and what defense he had been able to offer crumbled. Locke was able to see for the first time who he was in there with.

Seeing Rebecca with his face partially in the sand made her look strange, but that might have been one part the angle he was seeing her at, and one part eyes that were watering up. Once he was able to figure out what he was looking at, Locke was able to remember Lodestone from the island. She had been flying on a metal disc for most of it, which is why he didn’t recognize the way that she balanced her weight. Well, he did want for whoever entered the Danger Room to have a power that could be useful, and there was no doubt in Locke’s mind that Rebecca could help him out. He should call out, end the program. After all his leg had decided to rebel against him, and was causing him no end of pain, but Locke wasn’t the kind to give in. He propped himself up as much as he could with his arms. ”Ship,” Locke managed to spit out with gritted teeth. He slapped a hand onto the sand and a wave of sand traveled along the shore, burying two of the zombies that had been knocked back by Rebecca’s attack.

The good thing that happened: Pirates did indeed fall when Rebecca used her powers.

The bad thing that happened: Rebecca discovered that one of the magnetic signatures was coming from Locke's leg.

In terms of evaluating proper treatment of a teammate, Rebecca certainly seemed to one-up "shoving them into the sand." Rebecca, still down on the ground, crawled to her teammate's side, muttering emphatically and apologetically, "Oh Locke! So sorry, so sorry sorry, so, so sorry..."

The muttering continued until she was at Locke's side and he spat out a one-word command. Rebecca was confused, looking around until she spotted the large vessel in the water off shore. Her assumption was that he was informing her to board the ship, but that struck her as a problem. "B-but... how dae Ah get up there? Ah'm nae in my armor." She lacked her normal battle luxury of flight without any metallic armaments.

In the corner of her eye, Rebecca spotted another pirate approaching. After a quick, "Ack!" of a reaction, Rebecca channeled her ability in the direction of the ghoul, careful not to catch Locke in her attack again. The push did not knock over the zombie, but it did pull the sword out of his sheathe. Remembering every zombie-related trope she had access to, Rebecca called the sword back through the path of the zombie's head. She could feel her stomach revolting with illness at the resulting explosion of brain matter, but the zombie halted and the sword fell into the sand before her.

She could hear Agnes's voice in her head chiding her, telling her that she was not in the mental condition to be near a weapon, but the desire to self-preserve took precedent and Rebecca picked up the sword, trying to disregard the stray flesh bits on the blade. "Um, Ah have a sword now. Hope that helps." Could not hurt, right?

Apologies were given by Rebecca, and ignored by Locke. Being polite was always a good thing, but when you're surrounded by zombie pirates, Miss Manners could be excused. Locke understood that she felt bad about the whole trying to kill his knee thing, but there wasn't much that could be done about that right now. They could however, do something about the pirates. Keeping his right leg as straight as possible, Locke struggled to get up quickly. Lodestone was doing her part to defend them, but she hadn't understood what he meant by "ship".

His leg wasn't going to support the weight of his body, Locke knew that much without testing it out. Keeping his balance on one leg in sand, and keeping his eyes and earth senses constantly roaming was challenging, but was not nearly as bad as trying to make a golem. The more contact he had with the sand, the easier it was to create and maintain Fluffy. "The ship, can you take it out?" Locke asked, stumbling, but still fighting off a group of zombies. He bit his lip hard, trying not to cry out as his knee buckled, and he kept shifting his balance back and forth.

He didn't expect Lodestone to sink the entire ship by herself. Without the wooden planks the metal holding the ship would sink. Maybe if she could just compromise the ship's integrity. Locke's knowledge of zombies was extensive. The undead did not care about pain, or if they were missing a body part. They just kept moving. He also knew that they didn't have the dexterity that the living did. Swimming escaped them, and trudging through the ocean would slow them down. Maybe with that bit of time the two could establish a better defense.

Rebecca was busy levitating her new sword around her, trying to remain aware of any impending zombie attacks, as Locke was doing what he could to right himself after her accidental assault on his limb. Pinpointing the nearest zombie, she sent the sword flying toward him. Her control of the magnetic field was... unrefined. More like the control she managed in her earlier days as a mutant, absent of advanced dexterity or elegance, but she did not lack power.

The sword hit the zombie, the blade hitting the shoulder of the being, doing little besides leaving a possible dent in a withering collarbone. It took a few hacks (rib, forearm, other rib,) before Rebecca managed a clean hit of the neck. The blade cleaved into the flesh, but not cleanly, and not enough to finish. There were three more attempts before the sword managed its way through the neck and severed the vertebrae, but the ghoul finally fell.

It was in ineffective and time-consuming way to deal with the amount of zombies shambling, and that concerned the already shaky Rebecca.

Locke spoke with another commanding question, jostling Rebecca out of her worry for a moment. Looking out at the boat, it was a daunting task; plenty of nails and small pieces of metal to deal with, and certainly out of her range unless she did some swimming. (Hopefully that was still instinctively ingrained in her talent pool.) "Um... it'd be a challenge, bit Ah could try. At least dae some damage." Surely she could try focusing on an important section of the ship; the right placement should be enough to sink a vessel that depends on security and watertight craftsmanship.

"Ah'll jist... um..." The girl's attention, if only for a moment, left the concerns of the ship and the undead horde as her eyes spotted something new. "What's that thing?" It was some large creation looking like it was born on the beach, and it was more intimidating than the zombies on their best day. Watching it, there was an urge to panic, but it quickly displayed a deep desire to crush and smother pirates. Until further notice, Rebecca was willing to believe that the Earth Creature would leave her alone as long as she avoided gold necklaces and rotting. "Nevermind, it seems like a friendly. So... I'll swim? And you can cover me up?" She meant "cover me," but the battle codes were still rusty in her vocabulary.

Alright, so Locke’s program had the zombies, which might not be the easiest to deal with. Some people just can’t handle the undead. Locke was alright with Lodestone being upset over that, but he heard her questioning Fluffy. ”Really?” he asked, his attention still on the golem, ”You don’t remember Fluffy from the island?”. As he continued to work with the golem, Locke’s eyes were miles away, and as was the norm, his voice was drying up, becoming more gravely than usual. It was as if his vocal chords had turned into the material that he worked with. Concrete tended to make his voice raspy, as if two cinder blocks had been dragged across each other. What effect would sand have on him in the end? It gave Locke an idea of something to try in his next session. His earth sense formed a working substitute for eyes, but could the earth make a rough vocal system? Talking was just vibrations that came out of the mouth right?

Why would Lodestone have questioned something that she had seen before? It wasn’t because Locke hadn’t used his powers on the island. He had hardly landed before he started having to use his powers, first with getting Jorge out of the quicksand, then with fighting back stampeding animals. Fluffy had been a very present force on the beach that day, plus Locke had been walking around with his portable golem defending his back from his battered backpack. ”Don’t tell me you’ve lost your cool,” Locke said, hopping slightly as he burried the last of the zombies that were currently at the shoreline. There was a brief period of rest before the next batch would emerge from the ocean. There were no lifeboats for the zombies to have gotten to shore with, but that hardly stopped them. They climbed up and over the ship’s rail and fell like lemmings into the ocean.

”No can do chief,” Locke said when Lodestone asked him to cover her as she swam into the ocean and out to the ship. Some people thought of the ocean as a gigantic ocean for the fish and whales and all that swam in it. Gross enough of an idea to entertain, but when you add in a rotting corpse, you could practically feel the slime covering your skin. That wasn’t why Locke didn’t want to offer Rebecca protection in the ocean. He had gone swimming in the Pacific before. ”I can’t hold the golem together underwater, and I can’t keep balance against those waves.” There went the idea of Lodestone handling the ship. ”Can you use those as water ski’s?” he asked, pointing towards the swords from their fallen foes.