The world might be stable relative to recent events, but Aiden's part of it was starting to get quite real. He wasn't quite sure if that had more to do with having to race out of the mansion on a moment's notice - and then having to find his own way back - or from having to look someone from the previous chapter of his life in the face and know that he could well be in danger from this everyday woman with no particular strengths, no weapons, no towering mob at her back.

It was kind of hard to look badly at mutants when he was afraid of an unarmed human. At any rate, casual training, whether for self-defence or active combat, wasn't going to cut it anymore. Working with Cafas was good; the guy might have issues choosing hair colour but he did know what he was doing, and it was a lot easier to see the point when Ai let himself trust the guy. He was getting a better feel for being surrounded by snow too, even if that wasn't a focus of the training at all.

It wasn't just training with Cafas that Aiden was paying attention to, though; as the temperatures dropped and the school year settled back into their rhythm, it was a lot easier to find quiet places on the grounds where he could work by himself. As long as getting better at that had more of a point than playing video games, it was an easy matter to cut time out of that. He.. may have also been cutting some time that might have been more appropriately attributed to homework, but plugging numbers into equations and writing essays about whether or not some dead guy meant this or that or that other thing that no one in their right mind would agree with really didn't make that big of an impact on Aiden. He had other priorities. Not wondering if he could be by himself outside the mansion without getting attacked by anti-mutant crazies happened to sit pretty high on the list, but being able to do more as backup than point people in the direction they were already heading and holding onto insanely loud alien spawn kept it company.

So he'd do what Cafas said, even if it seemed to be distinctly harder to keep up than it had been before. Even when he didn't exactly feel tired doing it.

Psssssssssssssssht

Cafas looked over to the door.

It was Aiden, right on time.

Psssssssssssssssht

"Weights gym, MMA Octagon, weapons training dummy."

Wibbly wobbly lighty wighty stuff

The gym materialised around them.

"Today, we're going to take all that weights form training we did the last couple times, and put it to good use!"

He'd seemed alright at it. He was even toning up a bit, which was good to see.

"Same lifts, but take the weights we've been using so far and quadruple them. 5 sets of five reps each, adding weight each time set. Just add the smallest weight you can. Don't add more if you don't think you can handle it."

Cafas found the olympic bar and started loading plates onto it. Their routine started with dumbbells, Aiden had a better grasp of those, so Cafas put the barbell lifts later.

"Between sets you're going to tell me how you feel you're progressing."

Yaaaaay more weights. Aiden had one semi-useful thing to say about the exercises: they didn't really make it snow. Well, and Cafas put enough emphasis on form that he could at least keep his attention on that. Mostly. His thoughts did wander occasionally.

He wasn't looking forward to another heavy session, but he complied without complaint. Weights weren't the end of the world, and they could theoretically help prevent the end of his. It was also a half-decent opportunity to see just how much old music he remembered... and how much he could still translate.

... Quadruple. Well, Cafas was the expert. Aiden got himself set up and settled. All the details of positioning and angulation and stress. Check. Let's see... he should probably -lift- start on -lower- something easy. Hmm. There were -lift- all those -lower- Back-On songs. He probably remembered -lift- most of them pretty -lower- well still. Wait, no, he'd -lift- start with -lower- Guren no Yumiya. It was pretty good -lift-. Might as -lower- well.

Thinking about music and form also helped keep him from thinking about how much longer he was going to be doing this, and how unpleasant it would be by the end. He set the weights down. "Could be worse," he told Cafas dryly as he upped the weights. The awkward part with Guren was always the opening... german did not roll off his mental tongue very well.

Well, his form had held up since their last session. The new level the weights had been taken to were throwing him a little though. "Watch that you're not slipping from form. It's tempting to try and compensate for the weight with other muscles, resist that urge." Cafas stacked some weights for himself. He had taken to training Aiden in his own training slot, so he had to get his own work out in.

"Could be worse,"

Unf

"Not what I asked mate."

Unf

"Positive responce, what improvements..."

Unf

"Have you noticed?"

Hmm maybe he had miscalculated his weight... He finished his set and checked the weights. No, they were right, in keeping with the progression he was trying. Maybe he had just hit a plateau. Might be time for a week off from the weights. He put the weight down and stripped off a few pounds.

"Another point, never be embarrassed to remove weight if you can't lift it with good form. It's the smart thing to do. You'll do more harm than good if you lose form and keep going."

Back to the lifting.

His own sets were a little longer than Aiden's, he had different aims though, and he got through them a little faster.

He was paying attention to his form. Mostly. With the less impatient parts of his brain. ... such as they were. Okay, okay, he had to pay more attention. Fine. ... Yeah, he was a little sloppy. Fine! He fixed it. Hopefully it would stay fixed.

Aiden sighed as he settled into his second round. Improvements? He hadn't been convinced he could lift this much all that long ago. Did that count? This was really more entertaining when he got to run music through his head, but he really should pay enough attention to keep himself from slipping up. Again. Much easier to keep from getting told off about it when he caught it early like that. .... and that.

"I suppose it might be getting easier," he said eventually. "Maybe." And he wasn't dead. Felt a little bit like he might be in a hurry if he dropped this much weight on himself, but he figured that wasn't enough of an improvement to satisfy Cafas.

Injury was bad. Getting injured was not something Aiden felt like doing. If anything, he might have slightly more reason than most people to want to avoid it, since rectifying his lack of knowledge about how the healing side of his mutation worked was really low on his priority list, and he didn't want to find out by having something go really weird in a very permanent way. As long as he paid attention, boring as that was, though, he felt like he was doing fine.

Positivity was clearly not Aiden's strong point. He was glad that hadn't changed, having someone positive around him for once might confuse him... Well, if he wanted to be like that. "Inspirational workout music. Moderate volume."

♪ ♫ ♪ Let's get down to business... To defeat the Hun! ♪ ♫ ♪

That'll do.

The rest of the lifting went by pretty quickly (lifting really didn't take that long) but they were just getting started. Cafas doubted Aiden appreciated 2 hour sessions, but that was the way things went. "Good, that took a bit over the half hour I wanted it to, but the weight was new to you. Now get in the octagon."

"MMA sparring pads."

The fact the pads appeared on their bodies was likely the weirdest part of the entire danger room. He wasn't sure he liked it. He could almost feel the simulated pads building themselves around his legs, hands, head and torso. Their sudden weight and tightness of the straps were disconcerting as well.

When Aiden made his way into the ring the gate swung shut. Cafas disliked how presumptive that was. "Alright. Hit me."

Inspirational music. Really. He had plenty in his head and it was undoubtedly better -

...

Really.

Really.

He was probably going to think way too much about this later. All the stuff about how offended he should be, how freaked out he should be, and whether or not it meant that Cafas had mental balance issues if the first song he thought of was from a Disney movie. Having real music was helpful, though, and it meant less talking. Less talking made everything better.

Get in the octagon.

Not saying that would have been nice. Aiden was not fond of those words. Not. One. Bit.

It was almost as nasty as the abrupt constriction as the danger room obligingly suffocated him in simulated protective gear. Aiden hated being weighed down, not being able to move properly. Even if they did a good job of not actually restricting movement, it messed with his perception and he did. not. like. it.

So. He was trapped in a ring with Cafas, buried in heavy pads that didn't actually exist but did for all intents and purposes otherwise imaginable, and Cafas wanted Ai to hit him.

Ai balked. He didn't quite back up - not that he really had anywhere to back up to - but he definitely didn't get any closer to Cafas. How was he supposed to hit him, even with all this stuff on? Kind of especially with all this stuff on... Really, though! It was awkward enough hitting a training dummy or simulated 'bad guy' that he knew full well didn't exist. Cafas existed. Cafas was real. Aiden logically wasn't going to so much as bruise Cafas, but - the very idea - he just - couldn't hit him.

There was the hesitation. Cafas didn't appreciate that at all. Hesitation could mean life or death on a mission. How to convince Aiden to actually hit him though? He didn't have any solid idea. Hmm this was throwing a spanner in his works.

It's not like he's about to hurt me through all this padding.

"That wasn't a suggestion, it was an order. Hit me. Now." Yes, orders, notorious for working! Well, his hand had been played, now he waited. It wouldn't do if Aiden couldn't hit people. What use was an X-man incapable of fighting? None. At least, not unless they were amazingly charismatic. Aiden lacked that as well however.

If he doesn't hit me soon I may have to speak to C.S. and get Aiden off the roster pending further training.

An order.

To hit him.

Aiden ground a 'but' between his teeth before it could even think about leaking out and making Cafas mad. All his logic was struggling just to hold its ground against the sheer force of the emotion trying to outright panic at the idea, though. Orders were orders, and he had to trust Cafas. Trust. Was that what this came down to? Trust wasn't logic. Trust was emotion. Emotion might be saying he couldn't, but trust was saying he had to.

He really thought way too much. It was just too easy to hang out in his head and build ideas and dreams into full-blown worlds full of monsters and pain. He wasn't going to hurt Cafas. With everything he was wearing, he wasn't going to hurt himself. Things were probably only going to get worse if he didn't follow Cafas' direction, and he'd deserve every iota of everything he got then.

At least he could concentrate on form. Every joint at precisely the right angle, every muscle tensed or relaxed just so. Trust and logic, huh? It had better be enough. Aiden didn't put all of his strength into his strike, but he did put enough trust into it not to pull it.

Wham

A lot happened at once. Muscles tensed, relaxed, breath exhaled. All of it trained to the point of instinct. The result, a pain free experience of being punched in the gut.

Well, he didn't pull it, that's good.

Cafas took a step back smiling.

"Excellent. The first time you consciously decide to punch someone is the hardest. Just gets easier to do from here. Not the decision, that's always about the same, but acting on it." The decision was usually split second anyway. Just something Cafas knew he had to do.

Cafas cracked his neck and fell into a defensive stance.

"Again."

Punching Cafas felt precisely the same as punching anything else.

That thought just added to the nice big mound of nearly nauseating discomfort. Cafas was smiling, though. If Cafas was smiling, then he shouldn't feel bad about it. Except that just made him feel bad about feeling bad about it.

Confidence was definitely not written on his face, regardless of what Cafas said. He had known that it wouldn't stop at one, right? He had to have. There was no way that he could have made logic won without logic pointing that out. He swallowed. Cafas wanted him to punch him. Cafas was happy when Ai punched him. He would not get into that too much, and just trust him.

Or, you know, try. Because it really felt like the big part of him that wanted nothing to do with this was scrabbling against that trust as hard as it possibly could to find some flaw, some weakness that would let it bring the whole thing crashing down.

In the meantime, Aiden locked his attention onto form and punched again.

Aiden wasn't liking it. He knew that. Cafas hadn't liked hitting someone for the first time. It felt weird. Even in protective gear hitting someone felt innately wrong. Some point after that though you stopped getting that feeling. At least, he had stopped getting it.

He hit him again though. That was good. He could follow order that far at least. He doubted Aiden would hit anyone who hadn't asked him to, and who wasn't padded up. He'd work on that somehow. For now, this was a big step.

"Good, you seem at least capable of hitting someone, even if it is me. Now, try and hit me again. Keep going until you've hit me, let's say, five more times."

Cafas set himself up and prepared to dodge and block as necessary. He would tone the skill of it down to the average trained person. It wouldn't do Aiden's confidence any good if Cafas defended himself at his actual skill level.

Let's see what he's got.

Capable of hitting someone.

This was the path he'd chosen, wasn't it? He wanted to help people, and the job came with this. Punching people and probably doing a whole host of other things he really didn't want to do, and was really not sure that he could do. So long as he didn't think about how far that could go, though...

Five more times. And Cafas shifted his stance. Well. At least it would give him more to think about, right? He wasn't going to try to start out overdoing things, though, especially with the way his stomach was still offering to turn over. He looked over Cafas' guard, tried to guess how fast he would react - could made him shrink back down into a little ball and want to die - gave himself a nice hard mental kick in the rear, and sent a nice, boring punch from his right. If he focused on problem-solving he didn't have to think about the rest of it. Problem-solving could take up a real big chunk of attention if he did it right. So. Where would Cafas move? How much effort was he going to put into making this worse than it had to be? Most importantly, how soon could Ai get out of this and go curl up in an empty corner?

Cafas dodged lazily around the blow. He almost felt like Aiden hadn't been trying. If he kept up that level of effort and creativity he would never hit Cafas.

The rest of the five blows landed over the next minute or so. Cafas had kind of expected that. "Okay, five hits landed. Now, keep trying to hit me."

By the time the time he had assigned for unarmed training was done there was snow settling all over the ring and it was getting slightly hard to see. He'd been hit a fair bit, and he'd pulled up short of hitting Aiden a few times too. "Right then Frostbite, let's go do what you actually came for." Cafas opened the gate and left the ring.

"Police batons, two."

Cafas grabbed the batons from the air as they appeared and moved to the weapons dummy. He handed one of the weapons to Aiden. He knew Aiden liked to use two weapons. Cafas however could not teach him that. So one was what he got in training. Though what he did outside was his own business.

"Right, you know the drill by now. Nothing new today. Today I want to see take what you have and push to your limit with it."

It was always good to see what someone considered to be their limits.

Trying to hit Cafas had turned into a seriously disturbing sort of monotony, even if it still took a conscious effort to start every single one, by the time he finally called a halt. All his physical discomfort was at least now entirely attributable to psychological effects, at least. He didn't even really feel tired from the earlier weights. He did have to pay a bit more attention to his footing, but that was a lesser evil.

And then: freeeeddddooommm! At least from the worst part of training ever. By far. By so very, very, very far. Aiden didn't bolt, though. He managed to walk calmly out of the ring to accept a (single) baton from Cafas, and let his hand simply follow it around for a moment. He was probably too picky about weight, but it did make such a difference...

He was glad for the change, though, and nodded to Cafas with at least some of the relief he felt. Push his limits? Definitely easier at this than that. He rolled his shoulders out of habit more than necessity, took up his stance, and set into a fairly long but continuous combo series with a great deal more enthusiasm and effort than he had up to that point that day.