Issue 1 Downtime

Having resisted the urge to head to the danger room and crack open some simulated skulls Nailah had opted to let off some steam on the treadmill. Calling it exercise probably would be pushing it because it doesn't seem all that productive to just be going full bore.



((Thread for Nate))

Nate walked in, hands wrapped as if he expected to do some boxing. Whether he was surprised to see Nailah here was hard to tell. He nodded to her, "Professor Weaver."

Shit, didn't Sam say something about someone new? History professor? Is that him? Fuck, what was his name again? Something unusual...

"Professor...?"

Nate shook his head, "I haven't been called Professor in years. Nate Davis. From X-Corp."

Right... he was at the meeting... Get it together Nailah.

"Right. Of course. You kept people... off our back over the portal." She's a bit short of breath from running but she shows no signs of intending to slow down.

"Indeed. That's an interesting workout methodology you've got."

"I sleep better when I exhaust myself..."

"Most people don't need to exhaust themselves to sleep well. A good solid workout usually suffices. But I can guess that sleeping well may not be exactly easy after recent events."

"Must have been... hard to figure... that one out..."

"I'm sharp," Nate said, tapping the side of his head. "So let me take a stab at it for a second. Now that you're back, you don't think that you can go back to your old life and you're not sure that things can ever be normal again. The things you saw and the things you did are what keeps you up at night. And when you do sleep, you wake up in cold sweats with your heart racing. Am I at least in the neighborhood?"

This stops her running and she lets the treadmill push her off.

"If my shrink told you that..."

Nate looked at her, "I wouldn't need to talk to your shrink to know that. I'm speaking from personal experience."

She's not really sure what to say to that for a moment but then her general annoyance gets the upper hand. "And you're here to generously bestow your wisdom on me?"

"Hell no," Nate said. "The last thing I wanted was someone to tell me how I should feel or give me advice on how I should proceed." He tested the bindings on his hands. The shift started at his fingers, rippling up his arms and splitting at his shoulders to run up to his face and down to his feet, the pure white fur ruffling slightly. "What I wanted was to fight something. So I thought maybe you'd want a fight with someone who won't ask you how 'that makes you feel' and doesn't give a damn if you get rough. I promise I'm more satisfying than the Danger Room." He smirked which carried with it a direct challenge.

"You know what? That sounds like an excellent idea." she says and with a flap of her wings and a mumbled "Hedj red'i!" she sends a wave of force at Nate before launching herself at him.

They're going to love seeing "replacement gym equipment" on my expense report.

Nate grinned and dodged to the right, sliding out of the way of the wave. "I see powers are fair game. Cool." He vaulted the front of the treadmill, hitting the conveyor belt and running with it, shoving himself towards her.

Supported by her wings she jumps into the air to avoid his tackle, aiming to come down on top of him as he passes under her, claws on her feet extended. "You asked for rough!" she smirks.

His body shape suddenly changed, width sacrificed for length as he shifted to his four-legged form. She did feel fur and skin as he slid between her legs, popping up again behind her. "Oh yeah, I did say that didn't I?" He took a sweep at her legs as a small bit of fur on his back began to turn pink.

Not reacting fast enough to dodge her legs are swept out from under her though she does manage to roll herself over so she lands on her back, knocking the air out of her, but facing Nate.

Nate snorted and stepped back to touch his back, before saying in snarky tone, "So how does that make you feel?" He grinned.

"Pretty damn good." she says, jumping up on her feet again, hands faintly glowing with magical energies.

Nate didn't wait for an invitation, feinting high before swinging a punch low.

Feints against her tend to either work extremely well or not at all. This time she's not fast enough in recognizing it and Nate swing connects with her stomach, knocking the air out of her once more. Though it also makes her lose her focus and the magical energies she was gathering are released in an uncontrolled blast that sends the both of them flying, Nailah landing in a sliding crouch to avoid getting knocked over.

Nate's location wasn't immediately apparent, though there was a dislodged set of weights in the direction he'd been thrown by the blast.

"Already hiding somewhere?" she asks as she prowls towards his 'place of impact', her eyes darting around in case he'd already pulled himself up.

As she got close to the location, she heard from off to her right, "You used powers first." Nate burst back into her consciousness awareness as he leaped towards her, aiming to tackle her to the ground.

"Oh boo hoo, Mr. Shapeshifter." she says though the tackle does catch her by surprise and she goes down. As she hits the ground she's already fighting back though, having wedged her leg between herself and Nate she does what every cat does in that situation. She starts kicking at his stomach while her hands grip into his fur to keep him in place.

She gets a couple of good kicks in before he shifts again and there's no fur for her to hold onto. He rolls away and up into a crouch. "Just sayin'..." He grins at her, his eyes still yellow.

"You're the one who asked for rough." she pants before pushing herself up in a twirling motion that goes into a kick aimed at Nate's head.

Nate blocked the kick with one arm, his other arm across his stomach. "All I did was offer," he grinned, twisting his arm around to try and grab her leg.

She lets it happen and while her wings keep her up follows through with another kick from her free leg.

Nate took the kick, flexing his jaw. "Good kick," he said, yanking on her leg as he shifted and attempted to climb her to force her to the ground.

It doesn't take much to pull her back to the floor though something about this whole thing doesn't seem to sit right with her. Baring her fangs she hisses and presses her hands against Nate and while she not nearly has the strength to push him off the energy gathering in her palms and turning to flames can't be too pleasant.

There was a cough from the corner of the room.

Nate kicked off and backed away from the flames as they singed him before the cough caught his attention and distracted him.

It took Nailah a couple moments of deep breaths to let the flames in her hands dissipate, though she's still shaking faintly. Sam's cough goes entirely unnoticed by her.

For emphasis, she made another show of clearing her throat, arms crossed.

Under other circumstances, Nate might have looked sheepish, but his blood was still pounding a little bit and so he went back to watching Nailah.

Nailah is glaring daggers at him, though it's obvious that something about that had set her off and what she's really shaken by is something entirely different. "Don't do that again..." she hisses.

"Aye, we can agree on that," she said a bit icily.