This was more like it. Lee hadn’t had any formal training, but she’d been able to give Michael a run for his money.

Lee wanted to know what Quin considered a real fight. As the other woman threw out examples, Quin shook her head until the end. When Lee asked if Quin meant a fight where people would be dead or unconscious at the end she just looked at Lee and nodded.

”One of the clowns got me by the hair.” Quin said, ”I managed to use my powers to get away, but it was close.”

She paused for a moment, ”And I don’t remember any of it, but when they found me that night I had blood all over my clothes and face and hair.”

Quin shrugged as to whether or not they were going to grapple, ”I wanna go for real.”

Quin was shaking her head as Lee tossed out fighting examples. Shaking her head until Lee got to the end of the list. Finally! Someone who actually shared her idea of what a real fight was. Because even with as dangerous as the MMA fights had been in the city before it was legal in New York, there were still some rules there. And even though deaths did happen, as Tony had experienced, it wasn't the purpose of the fight.

One of the clowns had also gotten Quin by the hair on top of everything else that had happened. That…

Lee took a deep breath and shook her head slightly to get rid of the memory. "Good. In that situation, you need to do everything you possibly can to get free. It doesn't matter how, you just need to get that hand out of your hair as fast as possible. If you don't, you're dead." Was it harsh? Yes it was. But Quin had said she needed to learn how to win real fights. That was real.

A simple shrug about whether to grapple or not. Followed by Quin reiterating that she wanted to 'go for real'. Lee shrugged.

Then immediately moved forward before even raising her arms first and immediately stepped in to sweep her legs from under her.

Lee spoke and Quin knew that she knew. You didn’t talk like that unless you’d been in the situation before, unless you’d felt the sheer panic of helplessness while someone or something tried to end you.

Quin didn’t know what she should have expected after she told Lee that she wanted to fight for real. That Quin wanted to know what to do in the kind of situation that got you hurt or killed if you weren’t prepared.

There was no preamble, no warning, no signal that they were starting, but suddenly Lee was moving forward to sweep at Quin’s legs.

Quin wasn’t in a ready position, but this was something she’d done hundreds of times. As the sweep came through, Quin dropped forward onto her right knee, her right arm and shoulder redirecting the kick as she reached through for Lee’s back leg, intending to pull the other woman down.

Quin was not taken off guard because Lee hadn't made sure that she was ready. That was good. Real fights wouldn't wait until you said you were ready. A lot of the ones that Lee had been in tried to get the jump on you without you knowing there was going to be a fight until after it started.

But Lee also was not expecting the younger woman to pull the move that she had.

It wasn't as though Lee had many options here; Lee currently has only one foot on the floor, and Quin had grabbed it.

Completely off balance, Lee felt herself falling backwards. Even as she hit the floor, Lee was starting to scramble back before Quin could get a lock on her leg. Bending her free leg, Lee brought her foot up to use Quin's shoulder as a springboard, pushing to put space between them as Lee pulled her other leg away from Quin's arms.

Scrambling backward, now using both her hands and feet, Lee put enough space between herself and Quin so that the younger woman wouldn't be able to easily reach her before quickly climbing to her feet.

Quin had absolutely been caught off guard by Lee and most people would have ended up flat on their backs from the sweep that had come out of seemingly nowhere. The advantage that Quin had in that particular situation was that aikido specifically focused on that kind of situation and she had acted more out of instinct than anything.

The problem was that once Quin had Lee on the ground, she had absolutely no idea what to do, especially when Lee used her free foot to push off of Quin’s shoulder and scramble backwards. That had definitely ever happened before.

Quin had the advantage on reach, but Lee moved too quickly and before the redhead could gat get ahold of Lee’s legs, or anything for that matter, the older woman was climbing to her feet.

QUin followed suit and stood quickly, ”I guess I should have expected that…” she said, planting her feet and getting into a ready position. That was the other thing about aikido, it was purely defensive. Quin would keep at a safe distance out of reach moving against Lee’s line so the other woman couldn’t reach her until Lee made a move.

"A real fight is never going to ask if you're ready," Lee pointed out as she watched Quin getting into a stance now. "A lot of times, you'll be lucky to see the first attack coming."

Lee started circling around Quin slowly, her arms hanging fairly loosely in front of her, around mid torso. Having never been formally trained, Lee didn't really have a ready or fighting stance. Not that one would have ever really helped her much in the past.

"When you end up on the floor," Lee continued as she feigned a lunge forward to punch with her right before going back to circling. 'You need to either get control and leverage over your opponent, or you need to get back to your feet, preferably putting space between you first, like I did."

Another lunge forward with a feigned right punch. Only this time Lee followed it up with a left cross.

Quin knew that a real fight wouldn’t wait for you to be ready. Then again, Quin supposed that Lee’s assumption was her fault and the action had been completely unexpected.

Lee started to circle and Quin tried to keep to the other woman’s weak side, but it was hard to tell what was what with Lee’s lack of stance. This was frustrating but it was also exposing another hole in Quin’s knowledge that needed to be patched.

Not everyone was a trained fighter, not everyone would be in a predictable ready stance tailor made for what Quin knew to do.

Lee lunged to throw a punch and Quin narrowly avoided the fist. Getting leverage on the ground. Quin nodded, trying to keep her focus on the task R hand. Ground work was something Quin knew and was confident about, she just hadn’t expected Lee to be so quick to crawl away. Again, Quin had expected a counter hold or an attempt to do…something other than what had happened.

Lee struck out again and this time Quin moved, intending to to try and get ahold of Lee’s arm as she struck. The punch was a feint though and instead of initiating her own throw Quin walked right into the left cross that Lee threw.

“Shit…” Quin hissed, stumbling backwards. It wasn’t the first time she’d been hit, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Resetting her feet, the redhead waited, blinking and attempting to get reset. No more talking.

Lee's left hit exactly as planned and Quin stumbled back. But the younger woman got right back into position, ready to continue.

And continue on they did. The rest of the sparring match went rather similarly: Quin would manage a throw here or a block there, but overall Lee was more successful with her strikes and throws.

After Lee got her into a grapple that Quin tapped out of, Lee let go and stood. "The aikido can definitely be helpful," Lee told Quin. "But Michael is right in that you need to learn more for offense. Getting someone on the ground is no good if you don't know what to do then. Starting off on defense is good, though, especially if you're in street fights and things like that. Gives you more of a chance to see what you're up against."

And that’s pretty much how things went. Every single time Quin thought that maybe she was getting the upper hand against Lee, the smaller woman would somehow get loose and manage to press her advantage.

Quin took a few more hits, got a couple of throws in herself, but overall the redhead knew that if they were keeping score she’d have lost this fight.

Finally after getting caught in a grapple that Quin thought she should have never let herself get put in, Lee stood up and started to speak.

Similarly climbing to her feet, Quin nodded to Lee’s words. Aikido was helpful. Quin knew how to fall, she knew how to fight against a larger or stronger opponent who was attacking from head on. She knew how to redirect the energy of an attack to deflect it back on her opponent. Quin didn’t know how to fight though.

Lee though defense was a good place to start though, even in a street fight.

”That's just it though…” Quin said, ”In a street fight it doesn’t ever seem like there’s time to see what I’m up against. I’m on the ground or someone has ahold of me…”

She shrugged, ”I’ve used my powers to get me out of trouble a few times…but what if eventually that doesn’t work?”

Ah, so less a street fight and more of an all out attack that she needed to fend off. Not that that was better in any sense, but it did give Lee a few ideas of what they should probably start with in addition to the younger woman simply learning to punch.

And she had used her powers in fights before. That was good, though Lee was curious about whether Quin's powers could be made even better use of in a fight.

"We can definitely work on how to get out of holds," Lee let Quin know. "I know that I've had to fight my way out of enough of them. But what's your powers? Maybe we can figure out a way that they would be more helpful."

The fact that they had already proven useful to Quin in a fight was encouraging. And sometimes all it took was a little bit of out of the box thinking to find yourself a huge advantage.

They could work on getting out of holds. That meant that Lee was going to be willing to work with her again. Thank goodness, despite the fact that she’d clearly lost the sparring bout, Quin felt better about the whole thing than she ever did working with Michael. He was a good teacher, and was always willing to show moves and counter moves, but letting it happen organically today had felt much more natural.

Lee had also said that she’d had to work her way out of plenty of holds and Quin assumed that the first thing most people did against Lee was try to throw their weight around. She didn’t have that problem quite as much because of her height, but Quin had dealt with her fair share of underestimation.

What were her powers?

”Synthetics.” Quin said, exerting a gentle tug on an empty plastic water bottle that someone had left behind here when they’d worked out. Without much preamble the bottle flew across the room and into the redhead's outstretched hand. ”I can do what I just did, and…” she trailed off, putting her hands on either end of the bottle and pushing, with her hands and her power and wadding the plastic up into a ball. She rolled it in her hands for a second and then held it out for Lee to see. It was far more round and smooth than it would have been if she’d just smashed the bottle into a round shape. ”I pulled vinyl titles off the floor and wrapped them around the clown’s faces.” she said grimly.

Had Lee mentioned whether or not she was a mutant? ”You?” she asked, figuring at worst she’d got told the other woman wasn’t, in fact, a mutant, or that it was none of Quin’s business.

Lee frowned in slight confusion when Quin simply said that her power was synthetics. What in the world did that-

That thought was pretty much answered when a plastic water bottle flew into Quin's hand and she proceeded to wad it up into a ball. Not a sort of round shaped water bottle, but it looked like an actual ball.

That could potentially be quite useful Lee thought with a nod. Depending on how much plastic she could work with at a time.

Quin had wrapped vinyl tiles around one of the clown's faces? Lee nodded again, though her eyes were slightly wide. Yeah. Yeah, that was definitely a help in a fight. Lee was sure that she would be able to come up with ideas for something like that. The question would be whether her ideas were things that Quin would be able to actually do.

Before Lee's mind was able to dig into those thoughts, Quin turned the question around on her, which was only to be expected. "I siphon energy from people," Lee said with a slight shrug. "It's normally not a whole lot. But when I do have a lot of energy, my speed and strength increase. There's many other nuances to it, but those are the basics."

That little widening of Lee’s eyes told Quin that the other woman had understood what Quin had meant when she talked about how she’d subdued the clowns. It had been an act of desperation and Quin still couldn’t really believe that she’d done it. That was part of why she was here.

Quin could tell that Lee got it when the redhead demonstrated her powers. It hadn’t been to show off, it was just difficult and long winded to explain and so much easier to demonstrate. Sure there was a lot more to it, but in casual conversation like this it got the point across.

Lee reciprocated with information of her own and Quin nodded. There were a ton of clarifying questions she had now, but it would have been impolite considering the fact that Lee had only shared the basics.

Speed and strength? That definitely had to come in handy during a fight, though if Quin thought back she didn’t think that Lee had done anything extraordinary during their fight. That meant the other woman either hadn’t had the energy, or hadn’t used it to keep the fight fair.

Yeah, Quin had some work to do.

”But yeah,” she said, still fidgeting with the bottle in her hands, squishing it and pulling it and pushing it back together like it was silly putty. ”I just keep thinking that it would be better if I could just stay out of situations where I’ve basically got the choice between using my powers or….” she let the words trail off, ”Because what if I reach for them one day and they’re not there for whatever reason, or there’s no plastic…”

Quin was worried about the possibility of going to use her powers in a fight when she really needed them and being unable to, either because she was unable to use the power period, such as if there was an adapted around, or if there was just nothing synthetic in the area that she was able to manipulate.

Yeah, Lee could most certainly relate to that worry. That was one of the main reasons that she had continued training the last 6 years.

"There being no plastic around has an easy solution," Lee started. "Attach something to your keys, put an extra layer of plastic on your phone case. Keep a few different types in each of your bags. Depending on how finely you can mould it, put your hair up with some plastic instead of an elastic, use it as jewelry. As long as you're not stripped, you'll always have something to use, at least."

That was the easy part, Lee knew, and she wouldn't be surprised if Quin had already thought of at least some of it.

"But I completely understand where you're coming from," Lee continued much more somberly. "If I could depend on always being able to use my powers and touch my attacker, I wouldn't need to know how to fight even half as good as I do. I would simply worry about learning proper form for punches and kicks and leave it at that. But that hasn't always been the case."

It hadn't been the case when they were dealing with Pulse. And it hadn't been the case with Anton. "I've been very lucky…" Lee finished softly.

Lee had plenty of suggestions for how Quin could make sure that she’d never be without some kind of plastic to use. They were good suggestions and Quin did tend to make sure she carried things with her all the time. She’d never even thought of the hair tie idea or the phone case. It was a little embarrassing that Lee had thought of them so quickly. ”Those are all good ideas, I’ll figure out how to incorporate them.” None of that would provide her with much volume to work with, but maybe she could work on doing more with less…

It also made sense, how would anyone in any of these fights know what she could do? Surely nobody would think to remove something as innocuous as plastic from the area.

Lee kept talking though and pointed out that there were times when she couldn’t depend on using her powers. Quin tilted her head at that, what kind of times would those be? She’d heard a time or two about people who could negate mutant powers, and she’d heard about the ways the police detained mutants with strong powers, but none of that seemed to be particularly likely to happen.

“I guess I have been too.” Quin said, “It’s a lot sometimes to have all that time missing…but the alternative to being here and dealing with it all is that nobody came after me that night.” A fuzzy memory resurfaced…there hadn’t been any plastic around her, either when she woke up or where they’d put her after the fact. Maybe Lee had an even better point than Quin had thought…

That was just the thing though. ”That’s why I’m doing this. So that I don’t have to wait for someone else to do the saving.”