A few minutes passed and Cafas thought nothing of it. He really didn't mind that much. A couple minutes really didn't bother him that much. He was starting to calm down, in fact. He leaned against the wall for a minute so longer, fiddling with a thread sticking out of his shirt. Some girl passed him and smiled flirtily. She looked about his age, which raised the question of why she was at the mansion. He smiled back, if only to be polite. she was nice enough on the eyes, but there was Calley to consider. Luckily she kept walking, so he avoided that awkward conversation.

Another couple of minutes and he raised an eyebrow in the direction of the door. They sure were taking their time. It was starting to get ludicrous. Still, some time to himself was nice. He ventured a guess that Persi was just being a smart ass, and he had his doubts that Aiden wanted to be the first out the door, given how self conscious he seemed.

Give it a minute or two more.

A few more minutes and they were taking a lot longer than he had given them. Cafas was unimpressed, but he figured he knew who was causing the delay. "Persi, get out here, now!" His voice clearly gave away how annoyed he was getting with the constant delays Persi was making for him. Seriously, he tried to teach the kid how to not get his head kicked in and this was how he got repaid.

Persi shrugged at Aiden's answer. "Yeah, basically." Or, until Brute figured it out, anyway, but Aiden had to know that would happen, so he probably didn't actually mean forever. Besides, if Persi's actual goal was to stay in his room, he wouldn't have bothered with changing.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Brute did notice. Persi grinned, considered, and pushed himself off of the door.

He opened it wide enough to look through, almost wide enough to walk through, considered Brute for a moment, and grinned at him. "No." And with that announced, tried to close the door.

Cafas planted his hand on the door before Persi could close it and pushed against it, keeping it open. "The mistake you made is entering a contest of strength with me. You would have been better served trying to get out the window." And with that stated, he put a hand behind Persi and pulled him through the door.

"Come on Aiden." Cafas pushed the door fully open and motioned for Aiden to follow him. Cafas thought about giving Persi a chance to walk himself to the danger room. Then he laughed internally at his own optimism and began to pull Persi to the danger room. "See, Aiden gets an easier time of it, because unlike you, when I told him he had to do this, he, however reluctantly, realised it was probably going to be easier just to go with it."

Which of course meant Aiden got more liberties, like Cafas actually taking an interest in making sure he wasn't over working him, and not being manhandled between locations.

The Danger room door, as ever, was locked. Cafas went through the stupid protocols with it. Only X-men could open it. He supposed that was to stop the students killing themselves in it... Or doing other, weirder things.

"Welcome, lads, to the Danger Room."

Aiden shifted nervously. If Persi wasn't going to move..?

Utterly unable to come up with ideas and starting to just wish Cafas were significantly less patient, Aiden breathed an overlarge sigh of relief when Cafas finally called them out. He sounded annoyed. At least he already understood that it was entirely Persi, right? And it even looked like Persi had gotten tired of being an idiot and was going to just get this all over with.

Having lived with him for this long, Aiden really should have known better, and not been so surprised (and horrified) when Persi tried to close the door again. What was he thinking? ... Both on a respect level, which Persi never seemed to get anyway, and on a basic common sense thing; Cafas was older, larger, and one of the X-men, not some scrawny kid, as he quickly proved.

Aiden edged through the door as soon as it was clear, and tried to find it at all amusing that Cafas was essentially dragging Persi down the hall. It didn't work; there were too many people drifting past (also known as two random people who didn't even look at them) for something that wasn't really funny at all so much as sad at this point to have any chance of improving his mood. Instead, he just did his best to stay to the right side of the hallway, behind Cafas and Persi, and only looked in their direction enough to stay on track and not miss a turn. When they arrived at what was apparently the so-called Danger Room, he hung back even more, though far more because he didn't want, say, the suddenly less-occupied-by-being-dragged Persi looking at him that because he was apprehensive about going into the Danger Room. At this point, he'd take a little danger over the rest of this.

Well, that was predictable. "Going out the window would defeat the point." Not that Persi wanted Brute to know what the point was, of course. That would either make it harder to annoy him, or get Persi into more trouble than he could necessarily deal with.

Being dragged around was predictable, and really not all that annoying anymore. Persi let him. "It's not going to be easy anyway, so why should I bother with that?" Misery was the point of gym. Even if it could have been, he probably wouldn't have; making Brute miserable too was just too satisfying.

The legendary Danger Room... was not impressive. Persi saw no reason to pretend that it was. "Sorry, I fail to see the danger." He also saw no reason to put any effort into pretending he was actually sorry.

The blank danger room really just looked like a really high tech aircraft hangar. For small aircraft (which was still an impressive size). Cafas dragged Persi in and left him in the main simulation area. Once Aiden was in, the door closed and locked. He assumed that was so none of the students could walk in on a simulation and get hit by anything.

"That hardly surprises me. I doubt you have the slightest idea what hard light is. Not like with all those nice drawings of yours anyone would expect you to understand science fiction." Sarcasm, as far as the eye could see. "Except it isn't fiction, it just takes mutants and a whole damn lot of funding to make it happen. Now, you two stay here." Cafas moved off to the controls, safely tucked away from the simulation. He supposed that was a wise precaution.

Cafas switched on the microphone and went to work on the control interface. He had what he wanted put together pretty quickly. It was a nice simple UI really, and if you knew how to code it you could do some pretty impressive stuff. His knowledge was far from complete, but he knew enough.

"Alright, you two start warming up, and don't be too freaked out by the room, it takes a little getting used to." As he said that the scene shifted into an indoor basketball court. It was pre-made, so it was easy enough to load for warm ups. "Jog lengths. Persi, before you protest, this is to stop your muscles and tendons getting damaged. I want you to stretch your fingers and warm up your arms as you do so." He spawned in a generic person to show them how to do that. "If you like drawing at all, or gaming, these ones are pretty much the most important to do."

Right, now what sort of patterns to program in...

Persi was kind of right. Big open spaces had their own lack of appeal, but there was nothing obviously dangerous about it. Of course, Aiden didn't really recognize anything specific beyond generalities, and it was probably called the Danger Room for a reason. He'd keep his mouth shut for now about how un-dangerous it seemed to be.

Things started clicking for Aiden, at least, at the mention of hard light. Seriously? That wasn't just fictional? And this school had an entire room set up to use it? Well, it was probably here for the X-Men. And maybe to help with students who accidentally broke things and people otherwise. It must have taken a serious ton of funding to get this place built. With that in mind, Aiden looked around with considerably more interest, finally relaxing a tiny smidgeon, though he kept his arm up to cover his scar. With a hard light generator...this room could be anything, and anything included a whole lot of potentially dangerous things.

A more or less standard gym was not full of potentially dangerous things, though, and while the rather abrupt shift did catch Ai momentarily off guard, he did little more than blink and look around again. And then sigh. Jogging lengths? Really? Yes, yes, warm ups were important and Persi probably didn't have the first clue about them, but running back and forth was really boring. Orders were orders, though, so after absentmindedly rolling onto his toes to stretch his feet a little he settled into a smooth jog. He quickly realized that he hadn't run in about a month, and that he shouldn't have given up on finding somewhere to amble in private.

This, however, was not private, and jogging even lightly while his arms were effectively crossed was really awkward. It also meant that he couldn't follow Cafas' orders and do the arm stretches. Still, neither Cafas nor Persi had really even looked at him and his arm arrangement was awkward enough to be noticeable. So, as he ran, he gradually lowered his left arm, keeping a wary eye for any undue attention, and began mirroring the NPC's stretches.

Persi had never heard of hard light before. The phrase seemed a little bit stupid, among other things. He wasn't going to say that though; he couldn't tell whether Brute was implying that he was too stupid to know of it, or that he ought to know the empty room was for it somehow.

He followed Brute over, and hovered a few feet away to watch him do... whatever he was doing. It didn't make much sense to Persi, but he didn't really care.

...Okay, rooms were not supposed to do that. Even Hogwarts--no, actually, Persi supposed the Room of Requirement did that, it just didn't do that while anyone could see. That... was kind of cool, but not at all reassuring. There were way too many ways Persi could see this going drastically wrong. Granted, gyms weren't high on that list, but then he didn't trust it to stay a gym, and even if it did, gyms weren't exactly good. He frowned at it, and looked for anything that might be hiding ambushes that could accidentally hit Persi again.

Aiden didn't seem particularly bothered... so either he didn't know Brute very well, or he did know what was going to happen. Either way, Persi wasn't reassured.

Nor did the orders for stretches reassure him at all. He frowned at Brute and stayed where he was. "If it's that important, how come we didn't do it last time?"

Aiden set off up the gym floor. Persi was predictable. Cafas sighed. "Last time you were punching thin air and my hands. The air offers no resistance, and I know how to catch a punch to avoid injuring you. Today, you will be punching something a little more solid, so you stretch your hands and warm up your wrist."

Not that I imagine your wrist gets much time off.

Cafas was thankful that Aiden had started immediately. Of course he seemed reluctant to do the arm warm ups. He did do them though, so that was enough for Cafas. "You mess up the muscles and tendons in your hands and wrists, Persi, you won't be drawing, potentially ever again. You ruin you leg and it's going to make it very hard to climb trees, so off you go." Cafas looked away from his program set up to look at Persi expectantly.

He was not going to get irritated if the kid just stood there. He wasn't responsible if the kid failed to warm up and got himself injured. He shrugged and went back to work. the program wasn't making itself.

Had Persi really never had to stretch before? How long had this training/remedial gym thing been going on anyway? And hadn't he had gym classes before? Everyone had to stretch. Everyone.

Wait, they were going to be punching things? All right, Aiden was officially no longer interested in this. Leaving now would be nice. Curling into a ball in the corner and forgetting that the world existed would also be nice. Aiden didn't hit things. Ever. The closest he came was kicking soccer balls, and he much preferred to be on the receiving end of them. Or maybe hitting trees. Same difference, though. Aiden didn't hit things.

But Cafas. So, fighting to get his breathing back under control again after that insistent bout of anxiety, Aiden did his best to convince Persi to behave. Not that it had ever worked, as recently and rather dramatically demonstrated. "Persi... wrecked joints and muscles aren't fun. You really want to sit in bed for a week straight because you can't do anything?" Hey, grumping at Persi's ignorance was distracting! "Been there. It sucks." And he'd managed to sprain both a wrist and an ankle, so he could neither walk nor play video games, and could barely even read and that was painful so he had done as little as possible.

Persi glared and folded his arms. "What am I punching? I'm not punching anyone." It was really, really tempting to punch Brute, but still. Persi wouldn't be able to hit him hard enough to not be laughed at, and anyway, he'd already told him he refused to hit people. He certainly wasn't going to go back on that now, it would just give Brute another excuse to mock him. Persi would prefer not to do that.

Not that it really made a difference. The threat of not being able to draw was... a pretty effective one on Persi. Not being able to climb trees wasn't quite as bad, but still mattered. On the other hand, Persi really didn't want to do what Brute said.

(Know what happens? They kick you out.)

...Fine. Persi glared at Brute, but turned and began running. And imitating the stretches; not with any particular intention of doing them correctly, but since he was trying to focus on them and not anything else, he ended up doing fairly well anyway. Of course, all he focused on was what he needed to fix and how awkward it felt, so it still seemed like he was doing horribly to him. He couldn't decide whether that was gratifying--not what Brute wanted--or shameful--Persi still sucked at this. His mind seemed to settle on both.

"You're punching hard light constructs." Cafas did not bother to respond to the rest of that. He wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of expressing any opinions in retaliation. Cafas liked his brain cells for one, and was not about to subject them to the sort of nonsensical morality that was prescribed to by people who had never had to save their own damn life.

When he had decided that they had been stretching long enough (which amounted to probably five minutes) He switched into the actual simulation. The world faded out of existence for a second, then back in. The room they were in looked like it could have been the bridge of some star ship. Standing in it were two crash test dummies. Other than that, the room was empty. The floor looked to be made out of ten inch square tiles. Everything had slight sponginess to it. That was to protect people who fell over more than anything.

Cafas stepped away from the controls and into the room. "Righto guys, real training begins now. Persi, you know the basic punches, go practice over there." He pointed to a spot of the room about ten feet away. One of the crash test dummies sprung to life and jogged over to take position where Cafas had pointed, fell into the same stance Cafas would expect of Persi, and waited. "The dummy will catch the punches just like me, it'll show you the correct technique again, and it's not going to be as forgiving as I am about really sloppy technique, so do try to make it a little convincing."

Cafas turned to Aiden and smiled. "Right, I don't know what martial arts you know, if any, but I'm going to teach you some boxing punches and some proper ducking technique, which sounds stupid, but really is designed so you never lose sight of your opponent, so it's actually pretty important. Now, watch me, and try to do what I do." Cafas fell into stance and, just like he had for Persi, demonstrated the movements in slow motion.

"See how I'm not clenching a fist, that's to avoid breaking my fingers, you want open palm with fingers curled down like this. It'll stop you clipping anything with a finger and breaking it that way. Hit with the heel of the hand." Not that Cafas tended to use that technique as often as he should, but he had pretty dense and strong bones, where as the two boys looked like they had bird bones.

Hope he's better at this than Persi.

Once Persi had given up on being stubborn and annoying, Aiden had to admit that, while his running could use a bit of improvement, at least he was half-decent at the rest of the exercises. So... why was he making this so difficult for himself? Was he really so set on trying to make Cafas' life difficult that he was willing to make his own way worse?

When the room faded and then reappeared, Aiden slowed to a halt. Far more interesting than a gym, though he wondered briefly if it was pulled from anywhere specific or had been individually designed. He didn't see anything that screamed any particular universe, so he couldn't say. He shifted his weight slightly. Squishy floors were not his favourite, but he supposed that he could treat it like moss. Better than trying to accept what appeared to be tiles, which were supposed to be rigid, with the apparent squishiness, which tiles should not be.

Oh hey, the dummies moved. On their own.

That was fancy.

With his curiosity gradually overriding the whole swirling vortex of anxiety, self-consciousness, lack of confidence, and general fear and paranoia, Ai didn't respond quite as strongly to the idea of punching things as he might have otherwise. Rather than anything dramatic, he just froze up for a moment, but since he really hadn't been moving much before hand, it wouldn't look like much. He tried to focus on the idea of ducking - he'd ended up rather better at trying to get in the way rather than getting out of the way, but it was the same idea really - but Cafas seemed determined to torture him with punches first.

Okay, starting to see a bit of why Persi was so unhappy with all this.

He was also not going to go Persi's route and do everything in his power to avoid doing whatever Cafas said, while in front of Cafas, and in doing so make his life even more of a living hell than it was already capable of being. So, after as short a period of hesitation as he could manage, he managed to put staying on Cafas' good side ahead of wth no I'm not punching things on his internal priority list, and at least let himself drop into a balanced stance - not really what Cafas was demonstrating, but where he was most comfortable and had the greatest blend of stability and range of movement. He really didn't want to - no. Current priorities. He forced himself to look carefully at how Cafas had bent his hand and slowly mirrored it. His wrist really would have preferred to rotate quite differently, but he made do with the awkwardness.

Hard light constructs. Because that was informative. It was apparently all that Brute was going to say though, and as long as it wasn't people, it didn't really matter.

Getting to stop running was a relief; Persi was already sweating and tired. It seemed a little early for that, but they were inside, and apparently Brute could basically mind control the room through the computer, so maybe he'd made it extra warm or the floor sticky or gravity higher or something. Or all of them; Persi would not be at all surprised by any of it. Either way, he was tired enough not to really react to the room changing.

The floor, however, was weird. Persi scowled at it as he started walking over, then sent a glare in Brute's direction while he tried to figure out how to walk on it. That didn't seem to be possible; every step just kept feeling weird.

The dummy... probably didn't have a mind. Even if it did, it probably wasn't Brute, so after a moment of eyeing it Persi gave up, and started trying to get himself to stand the way he was supposed to.

It turned out this was a lot harder without having unlimited rage to lean on. And Persi still suspected that Brute had messed with gravity or something. Within a few minutes he was even more exhausted; his arms hurt from it, and his hair was sticking to his face like it had been glued there. His clothes weren't much better, though it took a few more minutes for Persi to give up, back up a step, and pull his shirt off. He folded it to delay as long as he could, but didn't feel at all recovered before he had to go back to punching the... whatever the dummy was.

Aiden's stance was not what Cafas had shown him; And yet, it looked natural, comfortable, and practiced. Cafas did a brief circle around Aiden to examine it. He seemed stable, and his movements were still flowing well enough. Still, it raised a question. "What form of fighting do you already know? That stance is closer to my actual fighting stance than what I'm showing you right now." The movements kind of gave it away too. the kid knew how to shift energy through his body. That was pretty rare among people who'd never practiced.

Interesting.

And there was Persi, getting undressed. That was a little odd. He shouldn't have been that tired that quickly. Cafas made a point to check the read outs when Aiden was working with the dummy. Speaking of the dummy, he waved it over. It came and stood by him. "keep practicing those punches with the dummy while we talk. Punch the palms. It doesn't feel pain, but it will adjust your form if you're too far out. Actually," Cafas turned to the dummy, "His stance is fine, don't adjust it."

He spared another look to the exhausted looking Persi. "Persi dummy, slow it down a bit, he's looking pretty wiped out."