> "I'm both baffled and scared. It's so awkward I can't help but laugh every time you make a joke that I'm quite sure isn't really a joke..."

"Oh." Well that would be because... "I'm not really joking, Mr. Devon. I'm sorry if I was too flippant about some things." Awkward indeed. Maya smoothed her skirt down against her knees and politely ignored the call that made her phone vibrate against her chair cushion. She'd told Cafas she was fine. And she was a big girl. He could just sit tight and not worry until she called him back.

> "...I know we all have our story, but I feel for those challenges. I'm not sure I'd have the same spring in my step as you do."

"Sure you would." When your choices were to make it work or die trying, you made it work. "You seem like a very positive person." Or naive. Did that mean Maya was no longer naive? If she could identify that someone else was?

"I would like for your vision of Sanctuary to come to fruition. Please let me know if I can support you in any way."

And, well, he'd really invited the question since he'd mentioned working with his powers. "Can I ask why you're called Tempest?"

"Yeah," Devon drew a laugh out into a sigh and back into a short, sad laugh. "I know you're not joking. I figured you were trying to be light for my benefit. No need to apologize at all," he shook his head, brow narrowing as he held out a hand in insistence.

"As for me, no, I'm not the most positive person," he shook his head. "Yet, I'm trying to be. I've had and still have some challenges I struggle with through the day to day. But here I am, nearly finishing my degree with a decent place and a fair talent or two. I'm not even working as long through my temp agency since Sanctuary is paying me a little. I have far more than many here, including the ability to hide my mutation making my life day to day far easier than theirs. Different colored skin, claws, gills, an extra set of eyes, over sensitive hearing due to exaggerated and furry ears... Then kids who barely understand their gift or can't handle to be around people."

"Suffice to say I've had my years of wallowing in self pity and focus. I've stepped out of my comfort zone and hopefully into a bigger community I can actually aid. I'm glad you believe in my vision. I really want those here to be able to see something positive in their future. If you want to help, any way you can is appreciated even if it's just volunteering in the kitchens or coming and hanging out with the kids."

"We have nurses helping, some teaching first aid. We've got self defense, neighborhood watch, community outreach like helping paint buildings or clean up litter... We're trying," Devon said wistfully, leaning back in his chair. "As for Tempest, have you ever read the play? I'm a Shakespeare fan."

"I guess Prospero's little tantrum fit my own in my youth - troubled as it became - though the spirit Ariel was something I liked more in a childhood sense. I used to play games... They became real and now I control the weather. I'm atmokinetic: sunshine, ice, winds, fog, you name it. I can see and feel those changes too, like the pressure changes you caused," Tempest added with a short set of nods. "Like I said, a lot of time with myself and my power though I'm always learning, never want to stop but it was time to get out there."

Devon glanced out the window, his blue eyes searching the skies and catching at the glowing of the lampposts he'd cleaned himself. When he looked back there was a serenity that had settled over his features. While he looked tired, there was a strange sadness too.

"I've spent years staring back at myself and I'd really like to be proud of what others see."

Maya brutally quashed the little thread of jealousy that tried it's best to take root in her mind. Mr. Devon seemed to be at a beginning to his life, or maybe a crossroads. Maya's life was very much... sunsetting. She still regretted that she'd never completed college. Her parents would have been so proud.

"I'll see what I can manage, volunteering-wise." She could cook. And watch kids. Her ability to help may depend on her solidity-factor.

And, embarrassingly enough, Maya had to shake her head about the Shakespeare play. She'd owned and operated a bookstore for years. She should have gotten through all the classics, surely?

At least she understood the part about the weather.

"Oh. Sorry about that! The pressure helps me see sometimes." So, not a sea storm. Any storm. She thought she saw a bit of a mental storm brewing behind his eyebrows, but after a moment of looking out the window, he returned to what she'd come to expect of him.

"It probably doesn't mean much, since we've only just met, but I'm proud of what I see so far." Oh. Was her mom card showing?

"Thanks," Devon grinned, running a hand along his temple, through his dark hair and to rub the back of his neck. "It's been a journey and clearly there's plenty more for me to learn," he chuckled into a sigh again. "It is nice to hear someone who clearly knows a thing or two about the City, and knows the darker side of whatever Sanctuary use to be, show faith in what I'm doing. That you want to help," he paused and again opened his arms in a wide embracing fashion, "in whatever way you can is even better. We all need help here and there, especially those here."

"So the pressure is that part of your power then?" Tempest asked, turning his head slightly as his voice turned a little playful. "If you don't mind my asking now. I'm certainly willing to show you mine later if you'd like a demonstration, but I'd rather not indoors if..." He stopped, brow furrowing. "Does the Sanctuary have like a practice room or something for whatever they used to do? You did mention underground training facilities, correct?"

"Maybe we head down while you continue and then we can really see what's down there?" Devon suggested.

"Yes." That one, at least, was a simple question to answer. The pressure was definitely in her power set. "I'd love to show you, but I'm mostly used to navigating this building from the vent system. So I suppose that's a warning that my route may not be direct." Another power-related statement simply presented as accepted fact. Maya had clearly come to live with and accept her powerset.

Maya stood and brushed her skirt down with a practiced motion. It was good to ditch the formal workwear for what she felt most comfortable in. "I'm sure Ms. Lisa will be able to find us." That woman knew an unnerving amount about everything. "If you'll follow me."

The air pressure in the ventilation system above flexed and Maya made for the door. Once out of the office, Maya hesitated. The peculiar constricting of the air in the vents spread until at least half the current floor was mapped.

It was almost like inhabiting the veins and arteries of a body. It took her a second to orient.

Ah. There. Around a corner and Maya knocked at a door before opening it to some stairs. The air vent mapping moved with them as they dropped down a level. The air was musty down here and made Maya wrinkle her nose. Well. At least there was no secret army training happening.

"This is a meeting room." Maya pointed as they passed a door. 'War Room' is what the equivalent label said at the Mansion. She couldn't read the label here. "This is a basic gym. Simple weights and smooth walls." Some of the air filtered down from the vents to double check the area. It really was stagnant. "Oh. I think that's a pool." But it was drained for now.

Maya caught herself before she walked into a wall in the here and now. That was what happened when you were focusing on elsewhere. She put her hand out to touch the wall mere inches from her nose and swung a left. She kept her hand on the wall so she wouldn't have to worry about it sneaking up on her again.

"This room here."

She stopped at a door that was a long walk from all other doors. Whatever was inside was a very large, open, and empty space. It wasn't exactly the same as the Mansion's Danger Room, but the layout along with a God room and the rooms mechanisms had her sure that this was the place. Maya reached up to feel the label placard and let her hold over the air inside the vents and the room dissipate so that she could focus on what her fingers felt.

Training Room.

Well that was nicely vague.

"This is the one you should be interested in gaining access to. If there aren't normal ways, I have a few tricks still." She stepped aside to let Mr. Devon see if he couldn't gain entry.

"However we need to get there," Devon grinned, "The journey is as important as the destination, right?"

He followed her, feeling and seeing the distortions she caused. It was an impressive manipulation she had clearly long practiced with. It certainly gave Devon joy to watch another marvel with their power, but truly so with one he had familiarity with. He had no idea how she'd recognized a door was there in the wall or how she'd open it, but she did. Glancing back, he saw Lisa watching from her desk.

Devon swallowed and followed Sanctuary's Ghost. There was a war room! What kind of wars should a place like this have? None. Still, war might come to them. Look at Odessa. There was a gym. He felt the currents and watched them drift toward Maya. He nodded as she spoke.

They went deeper and then she almost walked into a wall. He was about to ask if she was okay but she kept going, touching at the walls like a child testing their limits. It was curious to watch. How many times had she come down here? How much did she really know about this group?

"Thanks," Devon replied as she moved for him to near the doors. "A training room huh? Okay then," he inhaled deeply. "I have a feeling I'll be able-" he touched at the door, searching for a handle, but it slid open, "to open it."

The room was large though smaller than the Danger Room of X-Men fame, but he didn't know that. It was dusty, unused, but replaced panels and scorch marks spoke of a certain use. A panel nearby opened for input. "Lisa was watching us come down. I think she ensured we could move about freely... I guess we're allowed down here."

"So you weren't..." Devon internally chided himself for speaking slowly but the drama of the moment was leaving him slightly awe struck. "You weren't part of this group, right?"

Maya tried her best to solidify enough to use her eyes. She so wanted to see what was inside the door that'd just swung open, but it just wasn't in the cards, not after such a long day.

"That's good, I suppose, that Lisa's trusting you." And silly that that woman had all the keys and all the secrets. She had been there forever as the neck that turned the heads, so it only made sense. Still, if Maya had been in Mr. Devon's shoes, she would have been frustrated.

> "So you weren't... You weren't part of this group, right?"

Maya turned to face the man because he seemed nervous. He had every right to be nervous if he'd really been hanging out with someone who'd been a member of the Order. "No, sir. I'm a member of the X-men team. I've done my best to discourage murder and mayhem either by making friends or using force." She shrugged. "You can probably guess which method I'm better at."

So, now seemed like a great time to walk into that room and explore the place. Maya smiled and stepped past Devon. Did they have scenarios pre-loaded in here? Did Lisa have control of the room somehow? Or just the door? The aeromancer ran her hand along the wall to better guess what it actually looked like. The panels were rough, or maybe that was just the edges. It was hard to compare against the well-funded and sleek Mansion room.

"Yeah, trusting me, sounds great," Devon chuckled awkwardly. "I guess it is good," he added quietly. She was growing more solid and he watched, listened to her carefully. Someone with abilities such as this were dangerous, but he was finding that he trusted her.

Learning she was an X-Man certainly worked in her favor. He didn't recall seeing her at the rally in Times Square but there were many people there. Of course there was the possibility she was lying, but if so, why go through all the trouble of helping him and then showing him down here? Discouraging murder and mayhem were good goals.

"I'm glad to have made a friend then, especially one of the X-Men," Devon said with a touch of cheer entering his tone. He followed in after Maya, noting her explorative curiosity.
"I assume then your interaction with the Order was related to your work... I'd heard that someone had been here, this Order, but they were gone and buried. The source of that information warned me but I wanted to do what I could to learn about them. Guess I should have confronted Lisa about it."

He pointed over to the panel that seemed to open, "I'm guessing that controls things but we should likely not mess with it. I might have to ask about how all this works but we need to keep it locked up. Imagine if a kid came down here? Geez. What were they thinking?"

Hmm. Was her interaction with the Order for the X-men or work? "I suppose you could say that. I met some Orderlings out in the wild. Some on the Mansion lawn. Dated one. Saw some in the Romanian internment camps." Well, possessed one, anyway.

"They all had a penchant for violence. Punch first and ask questions later. Mostly, though, we were able to find common ground. Eventually." At least, they often found a common enemy. Except for some of the clones and Isabel, that was as good as it got.

"One of my friends still lives here, but she's really turning a new leaf, you know? I think the police are still wary, but she was never indicted for anything." That Maya knew of anyway. She probably should have been, but Maya was proud that Isabel hadn't stabbed anyone in a long time. Zephyr was such a good influence on her.

And it seemed that Mr. Devon had found something. Something with a flat display that was absolutely no help to Maya's spatial vision. "There's a room of this type at the Mansion for people to test their limits and keep their skills sharp. It has a console control, but also it's voice activated. Assuming you have a program picked out, all we have to say is 'Computer, run scenario.' and it kicks into gear."

The door to the room slammed shut.

Coincidence? Lisa? Or was this one voice activated too?

The Order sounded diverse but so did her experiences the way Maya told it. Violence though, that was not surprising. A secret group operating out of a shelter was likely to have some strong criminal and dangerous undertones. Kirsi had been right.

"They all had a penchant for violence. Punch first and ask questions later. Mostly, though, we were able to find common ground. Eventually." Ghost said.

"It seemed your friendly method worked. They actually teach and encourage that for some, but authoritative for others," Devon mentioned idly. "It's good you found common ground." He nodded as he came around the perimeter of the large room.

He wasn't sure whom her friend was, but he wasn't going to ask. There was no need, especially if she wanted to keep the identity secret considering the police might be after this woman. It was the same line of questioning he resisted earlier and again about dating a member of the Order. There was some tragedy in this place. Sanctuary certainly needed some hope.

It wasn't surprising either to learn the mansion had a training room for the X-Men. It must have been pretty impressive. This wasn't nearly as impressive, let alone out of maintenance. How long had it been? A couple months or something she'd said?

"What-" Devon's eyes widened as the doors slammed shut. "Oh no."

"Initiating training program alpha 2 gamma."

"Er, stop initiating training program alpha 2 gamma?" Devon asked loudly, but to no avail. His eyes swam with darkness as he looked to the ghostly visage of Maya. "Well looks like this place has voice recognition to some degree..."

A series of posts shot up from the floor with tethered lines between them. They looked barbed and quickly the sound of electricity crackled along their lines. "Well fun, a maze? But to what?" Devon asked. But that wasn't all as panels opened high on the walls to reveal either taser guns or projectile throwers. "Well shit."

The air grew warmer, more humid as the scent of ozone filled the room. Farther outside, storm clouds eagerly began to gather as gray rolling clouds but inside Tempest demanded his power gather. A moment's breeze became a circulating curtain of building winds around him.

The command was probably supposed to be shorter. Stop program. Or maybe he just needed to sound more authoritative? Either way Maya was amused. There wasn't anything that could hurt her here and in the worst case, she'd pull Mr. Devon into incorporeality before he went and hurt himself.

"Maybe there's a button at the far end? Like that gladiator show, you cross the finish line and hit the button and everything stops trying to kill you?"

Maya had seen others manipulate her element before. Heck, her brother had a near identical power set to hers. What was surprising, however, was the accumulation of power inside and outside of the building. Clouds tickled at the edges of what she could comfortably "see."

"Can you focus your power to stay inside this room? Otherwise the Sanctuary may get a quick wash upstairs and outside."

A buzzer sounded and quite suddenly the weapons that had come out from the walls started shooting large, non-lethal projectiles. Maya hopped to avoid one and her form dissipated into mist before a slew of the others could impact her body. She commanded an avalanche force of sideways wind to put the rest off course before Mr. Devon took a beanbag to the face.

This course really wasn't made for her. "It'd be no fun if I just went straight to the end and turned it all off, right?"

The beanbag shooters powered down and the mechanical arms retracted before coming back out with a differently equipped weapon in place...

"Maybe there's a button at the far end? Like that gladiator show, you cross the finish line and hit the button and everything stops trying to kill you?"

"Yeah that makes sense," Devon said loudly, speaking over the sounds of the mechanical weapons and his own buildings protective winds.

"Can you focus your power to stay inside this room? Otherwise the Sanctuary may get a quick wash upstairs and outside."

"Yeah..." Devon said, his pitch black eyes sliding in her direction though it might have seemed hard to tell. "You can feel that? I don't need to, but sometimes I still do. It won't rain unless I want it to." He gave a curt nod just as the buzzer sounded.

Maya was impressive, becoming a mere wisp of a woman to avoid quite a few shots and then blowing another from smacking him right in the face. Devon grinned; she was good. "Thanks, yeah, I don't think we should skip it that way-"

Long rifle-looking canons rose up along the wall with two obvious tubes running into their sides. A clear liquid churned through them as they clicked into place. A little click was the only warning before they began to shoot small spurts of flame, mostly to keep people from jumping over the electrified lines and posts. Then however one nearby spewed a line of fire that quickly was to become a cone.

Devon shifted in front of Maya immediately and crooked his head in a cant as he rolled his arms upward. The gusting winds rose and pushed away from them as cool air pummeled into the warm, humid effect he'd already gathered. A sudden focused downpour before him rained sideways, dousing a large subsection of the flaming cone and sparing them its wrath as the cut through it.

As the rest of the cone died and the weapon subsided, the wind around Devon shifted again as he gestured upward, creating a localized rain some twenty feet in diameter. The air was competing with humid heat and cool lows, churning the space above them into a fog-like, miniature cloudiness. With enough time, Tempest might have produced an atmosphere.

"No rain upstairs, just here, but I think it's time to move and turn this off!" Tempest shouted hastily, but grinned as he turned to May. Water dragged his black hair down over his face and dripped off his nose. "I don't want to get cooked," he shook his head and started to move, eyeing the weapons and the electro-lines warily.

More guns. Maya directed a breeze that would take her at a lazy pace through the maze. This training facility probably wasn't set up with a learning algorithm if they just swapped one kind of gun for another, but that was okay to let Mr. Devon stretch his mutation and let loose a little.

There was a curious click before several of the weapons started emitting what appeared in Maya's oxygen-based spatial vision like little bits of void. The air was licked clean or slurped up or... devoured by fire.

Maya yelped and tried to form up into her corporeal body as quickly as possible to avoid exploding herself or feeding the flames. But she had limits. Changing to air was quick. Changing back from air meant Maya had to coordinate a lot of loosely associated particles and stuff them back into a corporeal package. It was sort of like trying to wrangle and contain an ant hill. It took full attention and time or else some pieces were likely to wander off.

That's why she wasn't operating at full mental capacity when she got enough weight back to find her feet. It was fire. Her worst enemy. She realized that she had to get away. Now. Fast! So she did.

Right into some fencing.

It didn't hurt. She'd probably lost too many nerve endings for that. But it did make her body seize up until she was locked up tight, only partially solid and out of control.

She would have loved to appreciate the retreat of the cone of oxygen void. It was good that Mr. Devon had stepped in. He'd been able to wrangle the moisture in the air as well as differentiating types of air in ways that Maya had never quite grasped. She would have loved to give him a high five for that. Just as much as she would have loved to take a breath, finish safely forming up into her corporeal body, and get to the end of the maze.

Tempest wasn't sure if Maya ran or flew into one of the tethered fences. She looked more corporeal than she had but he wasn't sure if that was a product of the electrocution. Could she see them?

He charged in her direction, pushing the moisture harder in the room to rain further. The conflicting pressure systems and air patterns made the air rife for his next move. Lightning was simple enough to call but stronger, faster when the weather stormed. Granted upstairs and outside it was quite humid now, but he'd roll it back once he and Ghost were safe.

As he neared Ghost he lifted a hand in a rocketing motion, a clap of thunder echoing throughout the room as he shot a bolt of lightning into the nearest flame thrower. The others in the room began to shoot plumes of flame but none were close enough to the couple. The air around Tempest sizzled and smelled of ozone as he let the gusts circling him soften enough to not toss Ghost around.

Electrical tethers and tasers meant little to Tempest when he could command lightning. He grabbed one of the fence posts and jerked it to the ground in order to help free Maya, too late remembering the lines were barbed. They lashed at his arm and hand, raising blood that smeared down to the floor from the rain. He grunted but it was nothing compared to the idea of being burned here.

"Hey I blew up the flame thrower near us, we're okay for the moment. Can you disentangle yourself? I don't think I could short it all out without hitting you," Tempest said earnestly.

Something jerked when the tension in the fence changed and her whole body moved enough to make Maya cry out.

She was locked up tight like one big charlie horse. Thoughts weren't exactly her strong suit right now. Had she fused with the fencing? Her clothes? Mr. Devon was saying something. It seemed important. Almost as important as the burning that she was starting to feel in her arms, legs, and chest.

She would be a lot more excited to be actually feeling something if that feeling were not straight up terrible.

Breathe. That was the thought that bubbled up to the surface. She needed to do that in order to turn herself wholly incorporeal and to stop hurting. Oh. And that whole living thing.

Maya fought until she managed a gasp. With that ragged intake of breath, she and everything she'd been touching went fully incorporeal: chunks of fence wire, bits of ground, Devon too if he'd dared touch her. She wasn't discriminating. She also wasn't waiting around to make this scenario end anymore.

One quick swirl to orient herself in the room again and Maya whooshed at breakneck speeds past the flamethrowers and to what she was guessing was the end of the maze. She'd tried the whole cutting wind thing before and she gathered and compressed the air density to make it happen again. She knew it worked on... less than metal. So every flamethrower she passed got its tubing slit open.