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Hm. The wall was warm. Not as warm as it would be in the sun, and not as warm as some of the air that was at least gradually drying his hair, but still warmer than would have been nice. Aiden shifted his weight back to his feet so he wasn't really touching it and sighed to himself. Oh well. Hopefully Cafas would show up soon and keep him from overheating twice in one day on his behalf. He pulled at the cuff of his right sleeve a little, having ended up with a shirt that didn't cover the wrist-tip of his scar as well as he liked. Cafas and Persi didn't have the distraction of impending exercise anymore. Of course, Cafas was probably going to comment on him wearing a long-sleeved shirt again, but he had been quite comfortable when he had put it on.

Hm. A cab. Aiden wondered who had called it. Thump. Aiden glanced sideways. Oh, there he was. Had he shown up now by chance, because both Aiden and Persi were there, or because the cab had arrived? Angling his head slightly as he looked at the ledge Cafas must have jumped from - really, surrounded by people who liked to climb? what were the chances - and guessed that the cab was quite visible from there. Probably the cab, in which case it had been Cafas who had called it.

Hopefully it was at least a better trip than the last time he'd been in a taxi. Once inside, Aiden did much as Persi did, though temperature concerns did dictate that he not crowd up against the door much either. He did lean his head against the side when the driver started trying to chat them up, though. The last driver he'd had to deal with had figured out real quick that it was going to be a quiet ride. Cafas wasn't going about things right to ensure that, so Aiden just tuned out the voices - Cafas being recognized as being in that thing people tried to call a movie from that monstrosity some people tried to call a book - and let himself drowse off a bit in the heat.

After a while, hitting the dummy really didn't seem all that bad. Truth be told, Ai was actually kinda-sorta maybe almost enjoying the exercise. Not the punching part - even if it wasn't quite as actively bad as he had thought, he still thought it would probably wreck his wrists in the long run, no matter how much and how well he stretched them. He had to do this for Cafas, though, so after only a few jarring impacts, he started pulling his punches, much as he was used to 'tagging' points on a tree to work on precision and accuracy and form, and touched the dummy with just enough force to confirm the hit.

So if he aimed there or there, the dummy would shift to catch his shot, but within this range it held still. Well, making the dummy move all the time made him look sloppy, even if he was picking specific details to aim for, and just standing there punching the exact same spot over and over and over was boring.

When a surreptitious glance around showed that Cafas and Persi were thoroughly occupied a fair distance away, and neither seemed all that interested in paying any attention to what Aiden was doing. Good. He could liven things up a little bit, and make up for potentially damaging his wrists and having to deal with such a shortened range.

Hey, he should have told Cafas that his movement was just from playing keeper. Being light-footed was extremely useful in soccer, especially with a brother who liked playing dirty in order to actually score. It was way too late now, though, and Cafas had dropped it, so he should be okay. He'd just have to keep that one in mind for later. There was an awkward sideways-sinky feeling somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach that this wasn't going to be a singular occurrence. Anyway, though, improving the exercise. Aiden didn't do anything fancy, just started moving from side to side and forwards and backwards a bit to improve his rhythm and keep from falling into a rut and basing each shot off the previous one.

What was Persi complaining about now? Aiden could kind of hear him being louder than he had been, but his focus was fixed on the dummy and he really didn't care what Persi was going on about right now. He could deal with it later. He'd probably have to, since Persi would undoubtedly rant about the training later. He shut out the noise for now and narrowed his attention until everything other than the dummy (well, and the floor and himself) faded out of significance. Step, step, touch the dummy just there, retreat, repeat.

Hm, was that someone calling him? He drifted out of focus, his movements slowing as he gradually came to a halt and turned to face Cafas. By the time his attention settled back to the real world, the light flurry of snow surrounding him had already settled to the ground, though his cheeks and arms were flecked with white; that faded as he padded, entirely oblivious to the wet ground and lingering chill in the air, or that the chill caught up with him a short while after he reached Cafas and Persi, though Persi was moving off (fortunately; Ai could keep from seeing him, for once).

He might notice later that this was probably by far the calmest he'd felt since everything had happened, but for now Aiden just shrugged at Cafas. "I'm fine, but I could eat," he allowed.

Aiden froze, only his eyes moving to track Cafas as he circled around him. Definitely feeling like he was about to get eaten right now. In a figurative sense, but if anything that was worse. Now he knew why Persi didn't like this. He really knew. Feeling himself shrinking beneath Cafas' gaze, Aiden abruptly realized that he hadn't actually looked that carefully at the demonstrated pose. Which meant, given Cafas' scrutiny, he was doing it wrong and he was going to get remedial gym for himself and not just for whatever this was and it was going to be way worse and there'd be way more attention on him

He blinked. "What? Fighting? I don't-" Running around with swords so that he could draw them more accurately didn't count, since it wasn't fighting and would never be applied to fighting. Fighting was what bully-type people did and led to bruises and bleeding and pain and nastiness. Even as he spoke (and flailed inside), he broke his stance to scurry a step away, though as usual he maintained his physical balance.

Unfortunately for Aiden's mental balance, though, the movement put him in the perfect position to see Persi hauling his shirt off. Again. His gaze jerked to the fake-tiled floor by his feet. No no no why did he always do that? It wasn't as if they had been doing all that much yet, even if it was too hot to do much of anything willingly, except that none of this was willing so that really didn't apply, but at any rate he needed to stop thinking or his thoughts were going to start circling around and get to something he really really really didn't want to think about, especially here and now and near people.

The rational part of his brain clued in to what the self-preservation part was doing just before his hand slammed into the dummy. This was a good thing, because his hand was most certainly not in the position that Cafas wanted and he probably would have at least sprained something. Since he still didn't have the faintest idea how the supposed healing ability he supposedly had (the existence of which he was starting to doubt, other than its extremely obvious remains), his hand would be quite happy later for the rational part curling it and shifting the angle of his arm so that he did indeed strike the dummy with the heel of his hand.

For now, though, his hand and forearm were insisting that this was not a good thing to continue if he wanted his wrist to be as flexible as he liked it to. It made for a very effective distraction from the stuff in the other part of the room.

Aiden wasn't sure if it was good or bad that he seemed to have succeeded in making the girl stop talking. It probably meant that he had ended up being rude, but she was being quiet. Although she was still there... so had he been rude and then not even really accomplished what he should have? That would be really unfortunate...

Wait, there was cheesecake? Hm. He wasn't hungry, per se, but if there was already cheesecake... no. Consider who it was made by and who was telling him about it, let alone who had access to it. Who knew what was in it or on it by now? It wasn't worth the risk. The brief interest faded from his face far faster than it had emerged, and he shifted what attention had slipped away from the TV back to it. The cheesecake on the screen seemed rather less appealing now.

"That's all right," he said flatly. He had almost forgotten that here, even the people who looked normal weren't, and at least the ones that didn't look normal were easier to remember and often gave some sort of clue as to what they could do. People like her... they were an unknown, and unknowns were worthy of concern all on their own.

Well, it seemed that someone liked stating the obvious, Aiden thought rather acidly. He had been hoping for solitude, after all. "I don't usually get hungry on a full stomach," he said more politely than his thoughts were trying to run. And honestly, cooking shows tended to be more likely to make him want to cook than to eat, but he was not particularly interested in cooking at the time being, and certainly not in his current location.

Largely unaware of what the woman was doing, being able to see only irregular bits of movement in the TV-lit darkness, Ai tried to ignore whatever it was she was doing and focussed as well as he could on the TV. At her continued words, though, he flinched. He'd survive without being able to see the buttons. "It's fine," he said stiffly, trying to kill the line of conversation without actually being rude. Besides, people didn't have to stare. Just knowing it was there was bad enough. Actually seeing it was much worse. Staring went way above and beyond tolerable.

Wait, was that a marbled cheesecake? Aiden totally sucked at making cheesecakes, but how could anyone dislike them? His interest piqued despite his most unfortunate company, he leaned forward slightly. Well yeah, he knew you had to let it cool slowly, but it never seemed to help him anyway. He probably just wasn't patient enough. Then again, if he was making cheesecake, he wanted to eat cheesecake. He didn't want to eat it in six hours either. Preplanned cooking defeated the purpose.

Whether it was because it was starting to warm up, this place was getting to him, or because having a roommate was horribly awkward, actually sleeping at night was becoming a rare and unusual occurrence. Some nights, it was nice and obvious as to what was causing it. Horrible memories trying to swallow him alive tended to be the main culprit. Other nights, nothing in particular stood out as insomnia-causing. He just couldn't fall asleep.

This was one of those nights, and they were almost as annoying as the other ones. He wasn't in any particular mood, neither positive nor negative, though in one sense that was still an improvement. Persi hadn't done anything particularly annoying in the last few hours. He'd just finished a game again and wasn't feeling the urge to start on a new one. He wasn't in the mood to read. He just couldn't sleep.

And so he prowled out of his occupied room and down the hall to the one television set he knew the location of. It was a sort of semi-public living room - not a normal living room, because it wasn't in a house and it was set up for rather more people than were in just one home, but it was just limited to mansion people, and usually only used by students because what adult in their right mind socialized with teenagers? especially teenagers that might break the whole room by twitching wrong? - and only a few things mattered. It should be empty. It had couches. And it had a TV that should work and so should distract him until he could actually fall asleep.

Reaching the room in flesh as well as thought, Aiden saw that the first requirement was currently fulfilled. The room was dark and empty, and so he kept peering over the tops of his sunglasses as he worked his way into the room and onto what was hopefully the most comfortable couch. He scrounged for a remote before he sat down, and luckily managed to find one fairly easily. Plopping down, he flicked the TV on, and immediately started jabbing at buttons at random to try to find the volume or mute button. When the blaring voices cut out, he let himself fall over in the ringing silence. He should have seen that coming. After a few moments to let his heart slow down from the rush of adrenaline, he warily held down the volume down button until the renewed blast of sound had faded to a near-murmur. Why were TVs always so loud at night?

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.