As Tses ran through the hallways at the mansion, shoes dangling from both her hands, she tried to plot a plan of escape. To be honest, stealing someones shoes was somewhat childish compared to things she had taken in the past, but cabin fever had brought out the mischief in the mutant. Down one hallway, through another, she heard the yells and pursuit behind her.

Psh. Like he'd ever catch her. Kids.

To be honest, the yelling did sound a bit familiar. The subject she chose from was no one in particular, just some kid who happened to leave their bedroom door open, but the more she thought about it, the more personal the yelling sounded. Maybe she had crossed paths with this person before. Maybe she'd stolen from them before.

Maybe she kidnapped them before...

Nah. Stealing was probably more like it.

As she turned a corner, another familiar looking figure was stepping out from an impressive looking room with large, 'You shouldn't be here unless you need to' secure looking doors swishing open. Taking the chance, Tses dove through the opening, knocking the silver haired girl backwards with a thud onto her butt.

"Hey, you're not allowed to--"

Really big empty room. Great. There was nowhere to hide shoes in this thing...

Clyde was furious. After leaving his room unattended, door open, for only a couple of minutes, his shoes were gone – both the small and the large pair. Those were the only shoes he had, and he needed both pairs. Whoever decided to pull that prank had better turn them over, and fast. It shouldn't have been that long; they couldn't have gone that far. A quick search of the area located the culprit, stolen shoes still in hand.

The person holding them?

It was that crazy lady from the convenience store that Clyde only knew as “Joy Rider.”

“You?! Get back heah with those!” Clyde yelled as she took off running. He ran in pursuit of her. The psycho lady may have gotten away with taking his brother's car for a joyride and essentially kidnapping him, but he wasn't going to let her off for this.

A stairway and several remarks shouted at Joy later, he had chased her to the ground level. At the end of the hallway was Evelyn, leaving the Danger Room. Clyde would have called out to Evelyn for help, but Joy had already pushed past her. He too bolted past her, straight into the normally off-limits room. Strangely, even though he'd heard it was used for training, the room was vacant. But, at the moment, that wasn't important.

“Give those back NOW!” he shouted at Joy.

Tses hated dead ends, and she did a quick circle of the room as she entered, hoping for some place to hide the shoes. She could hear the footsteps quickly follow her into the room, then a clink as the door swung shut.

"Hey! You two aren't supposed to be in there! That room is off limits! I'll go get one of the x-men..."

"Off limits, sounds fun. So why is it off limits?" Tses darted back towards the door, taking one of the shoes and throwing it at Clyde's head as she did. She was running out of stalling tactics and the room was looking boring. "What I wouldn't give for a tree or something... Hey is this like a training room or something? Hey, room, you should totally make me a tree or something!"

"User voice not accepted."

"Hey blondie! You should tell the room to start a training sequence or something!"

"I'm not telling it to start a training sequence!"

"Voice activation recognized. User, Evelyn Summers. Commencing training sequence."

"Wait, I didn't--" The room let out a whirring sound and Tses slowly backed away from the door. She threw the other shoes at Clyde. "You might want to hang onto those..." Training exercise. Ha. What training exercise could the blondie actually use.

As buildings started appearing on either side, Tses started to second guess her doubt.

He heard the door shut behind him. He tried pushing it, but it wouldn't budge. Great, he was locked in the same room as Joy. Additionally, Evelyn was scolding them both. “Evelyn, she stole my shoes!” he called through the door. If joyride lady hadn't stolen from him, he wouldn't be in there.

He turned back to Joy, only to see one of his shoes flying right at him. “Ow!” Face shot. Not cool.

Distracted, he didn't catch what Joy and Evelyn said to each other. What he did hear was some automated voice informing them it was about to start a training sequence.

Joy threw the remaining shoes at him, which he caught. At the same time, there was a strange noise as the empty room came to life. Buildings were materializing out of nowhere. Never in his life had Clyde seen tech like this. Did training sessions mean fighting something the Danger Room created? Clyde sure hoped not, but he guessed they did. Unlike some other mutants, he didn't have a power that was good for fighting. Heck, he wasn't even athletic. Nothing was attacking him yet, but this was not good.

“Quick, wheah's the off switch?!” he shouted over the noise. He glanced all over the still-changing room but didn't see anything resembling one. This was bad. Very bad.

Evelyn tried yelling something back at Clyde through the door, but as the simulation started, all communication went out the window. All Clyde could hope for was that Evelyn would find a more senior x-men to get them out before Tses got the two of them killed.

Tses, however, was somewhat delightfully prancing around the fake city. "Think if you steal something in here you can take it out of the room? Probably not, that'd be cool though. Hey, don't look so worried. It's a training simulation. What danger could you really be in?" He was yelling for an off switch, but her attention was caught by something else...

... a very realistic looking monsters slithering through the middle of the city. "What the heck....Hey pipsqueak, what type of simulation is this?"

Brilliant. The Danger Room was making so much noise that he could no longer hear Evelyn from outside, and Joy Rider seemed thrilled about being in the simulation. Clyde lingered near where the exit was, in case it opened up. He sure hoped Evelyn was busy trying to fix this.

He heard Joy trying to ask him about the simulation, but he didn't know any more than her. “It's Clyde, not pipsqueak,” he corrected her. He turned to face her... and a strange creature that was slithering along the street.

“The thing said it's a training simulation,” Clyde stated, a note of uneasiness in his voice. “Flight simulations don't kill people. This shouldn't eithah...”

Or not. The monster looked too real to be harmless. This was probably designed for people with combative powers. Joy's explosives might be useful, but his age shifting definitely wasn't. Slowly, Clyde backed away from the creature.

Pipsqueak babbled something about his name, and Tses tuned him out, flicking on the green energy across her arms. It didn't do anything, but at least it looked like she could sort of be destructive. The monster slithered closer, and growled at her. She glanced over her shoulder, looking for something useful.

"Flight simulation... That would be really fun. Think we can summon a jet in this thing? I've never flown a jet before. Hey, where're you going. You're not scared of the big bad---" A giant jelly ball flew over her head, and landed on a nearby building. The metal instantly sizzled and started melting in front of her. "---acid spitting monster..."

It was just a simulation right? It couldn't actually hurt them, right. "So, uh, how realistic is this room supposed to make things, anyway? Real enough to ... injure you?"

Was Clyde scared? Well, it was kind of idiotic not to be. He was trapped in a simulation that might be capable of killing him. His fears worsened when he saw the creature spit something green onto a building. That substance ate through the metal with ease. So this was acid saliva? Crap.

“Beats me, I've nevah been in heah befoh!” Just to test, Clyde reached out to touch a simulated streetlamp. His hand met cold, solid metal. “But this... feels real.” If the lamp was tangible, that probably meant the monster and its corrosive spit were as well. That would mean the simulation was potentially lethal.

Desperate, Clyde looked up and tried to call out, “Deactivate? Stop? Shut down?” Evelyn turned it on by speaking, so there had to be some phrase that would turn it off. But would the Danger Room even listen to him?

The roar of the monster drowned out some of Clyde's yelling, and a wad of spit went flying close to his feet. Another wad clipped Tses' shirt, and she yelped slightly as the hissing started to sink into her clothing, stinging her skin.

"Ok, real, real, definitely real. Move!" Ripping off the sleeve before it could do more damage she grabbed Clyde by the arm and yanked him towards the nearest building, throwing a few small explosives over her head at the monster. Why the heck would they put something like this in a school with kids? This place was crazy...

"Shut it off! You live here, you should know how to turn off the dangerous electronic rooms!" She accused him as they ran into one of the simulated buildings, a roar and a smash echoing behind them.

Clyde's eyes went wide as the spit burned through Joy's sleeve. It was real indeed. He dropped all of the shoes as Joy started pulling him out of the street. While running along with her, he felt a sharp pain as a piece of rubble cut into his unprotected foot. He continued with a limp into a building to escape from the monster. Temporarily.

Things were looking bad. The creature was right on their tails, preparing to strike again. There was a large red stain on his sock, and his foot hurt like hell.

“I told you, I've nevah been in heah! I don't know how this works!” He carefully enunciated each word as he shouted, in case it wasn't clear enough for her. He didn't see an off switch, and the room didn't seem to be responding to his commands. Think Clyde, think, he thought to himself, staggering towards the back of the shop. “Maybe we're supposed to stop that thing, but, heck, I don't know if that will end this oh bump it up to Level Two.”

Tses turned and stared at the kid in rather real disbelief. Level up?! "What kind of nutt jobs are you people? I've heard of some realistic video games but why the hell would you want the monsters to be able to kill you for real!" The building shook, and the monster roared angrily. Tses formed another explosive and threw it into it's open mouth. A few moments later is had a rather painful burp and retreated a small way.

"Do you at least get weapons in this thing?" She grumbled, glancing around the room. Office pens and paperclips didn't seem so threatening. She glanced outside the window. It was a rather realistic looking New York, but this was a financial district, swords and other collectible weapons would be likelier in a comic shop or a tourist trap several streets down. And Clyde injured himself. Lovely.

Grabbing a stapler off the desk, she ran back to the door and threw it at the monsters eye. It slammed into it's target and earned another roar of pain as it continued to back pedal away. "I can only blow so much up, so if you can find something useful, now would be the time pipsqueak."

Why would someone want the monsters to be able to kill for real? Clyde's thoughts exactly. “Look, I'm not the one who designed this, okay?” Seriously, whoever did should have put in an emergency shutoff switch or something of the like. If there was something like that, he was not seeing it.

To Clyde's annoyance, Joy still didn't seem to understand that he was as clueless as she was about the room. “I don't know. Maybe if it 'simulated' a gun shop oh something,” he grumbled. Amid the chaos, he hobbled over to the one thing in the back he saw that could be remotely useful.

He smashed the glass pane in the wall and started pulling the hose out. “Catch!” he called over to her, tossing the nozzle in her direction. His fingers were on the water valve, ready to flip it on. He sure as hell hoped they could stall that creature until help arrived.

The kid was sure full of excuses. 'Not the one who designed this bla, bla, bla... I don't know, bla bla bla'. She lobbed another explosive at the monster and exhaled through her nose, trying to stay calm. Stealing shoes had been amusing. Being stuck in this room was more annoying, and certainly not worth the laugh. She was half tempted to throw one of the explosives at the kid, but then he handed her the hose and took that opportunity away.

Eh, whatever. She'd get back at him another time. She turned the hose at the monster and stuck her tongue out at it. "Hope you can swim, ugly!" She yelled, and waited for the water to flip on. When it did, it sprayed into the creatures face and it screeched, carelessly spitting more acid at the building in an attempt to defend itself. The water diluted it's attacks, however, and left a sizzling puddle of spit. It took a few moments, but it started to slowly retreat, defenseless against the torrent of liquid. Tses emphasized their point with a few explosives, and it slowly vanished around the corner.

"I'm not sure this is one of those situations where out of sight out of mind is a good thing..." Tses slowly remarked, and tried to get a better view of where the little terror was. Instead, the ground gave a slight rumble. "And that...can't be good."

Joy's previous reckless antics may have irritated Clyde, but he was glad to see that she at least had the sense to spray the monster as he'd intended. To his surprise, the monster was backing off in the face of the hose's stream, which was more than he'd hoped for. “Wow, I guess it didn't like that,” he said in disbelief.

He must have spoken too soon, because right after he said that, he felt the ground shake. Limping forward a few steps, he tried to look for the monster. He still didn't see the creature, but he had a guess about what it was doing. Warily, he looked down at the floor. “I think it might be tunneling beneath us... $#!^... Let's get out of heah!”

He started to stagger towards the entrance as fast as he could, making sure to avoid stepping in the acidic puddle. Crap crap crap the monster was probably seething with fury!

Tunneling. Of course. Why wouldn't the acid spitting monster know how to tunnel under the frickin' city? Because that's what every acid spitting monster seemed to do when it attacked people. Tses spat out a colorful description of what she thought of the situation, and raced for the entrance, grabbing Clyde by the arm and dragging him after her. Dumb kid not wearing shoes. Didn't he know it was dangerous to walk around barefoot?

"Just keep moving, someone's gotta shut this thing down eventually, so long as we stay ahead of that neither of us will be visiting the Doc. No wonder you have to have a healer. You're all frickin---" A roar erupted behind them an a hole appeared in the middle of the building. Tses formed a large explosive with her powers and threw it over her shoulder into the creatures mouth. "Nutts!" It burped the explosion.

Meanwhile, outside the danger room, Evelyn had disappeared and gone to get someone to shut off the simulation. It wouldn't be long before the two teens inside had some explaining to do.

Mostly Clyde, because it was totally his fault.