Chapter 2
Taryn spent the rest of her first day wandering around the school, familiarizing herself with the many rooms and hallways. She found her dorm, which she found strange at first, considering not even she knew that she would be going to the school. However she knew that Professor X was a great telepath, and probably prepared things as soon as she got close to the school. She tossed a book bag carrying her things into a corner of the room, and was glad to see the other half of the room was empty, meaning she didn’t have any roommates to share the space with.
Early the next day, an announcement was made declaring a “field training day.” Apparently students would be paired up and put in real life like holographic training simulations to see how well they can respond in the field. At least that's what they were being told, but after reading the mind of the unknowing history teacher, Hope found out the truth. What wasn't said was that behind the “field training day” was a risk assessment. They were planning on gathering data on students' powers, and how well they could control them. Who’s been making progress with their studies and who hasn't. After an incident that involved two students fighting each other with their powers a few weeks prior, risk assessment was definitely in order. The school needed to start keeping better eyes on the students or what happened could happen again.
Hope was sitting in her room painting, her brush gliding across the white blankness of the canvas, the beautiful spectrum of colors filling in the void that was once there. The more time went by, the more Hope lost herself in her art. Her father was the one who had taught her to paint, and it was important to her. Taking a look at the painting, it was a tree painted through the 4 seasons, each representing a part of the tree's life and the cycle it was doomed to repeat. It spoke a personal message to Hope, but one she probably wouldn't get until later. As she went to lay her brush back on the canvas an announcement was made once again.
“Hope Dayspring and Taryn Hughes- report to the danger room,” Xaviers voice echoed through the halls of the school. Hope sighed, setting her paint aside. She stood up and grabbed a dark red leather jacket fixing her hair back as she walked out of the room. Slowly, she made her way through the hallways of the school, her footsteps echoing through the hallways.
Coming down the stairs leading into the basement, Hope's footsteps echoed louder. Further down the long, brightly lit hallway, she came up to a door with a large X on it. As Hope approached, the door’s locks released silently, and the door slipped into 4 pieces opening in the form of an X. The room was huge, the wall round like a dome instead of the usual square one would expect, with lights which were most likely the holographic projectors between tile like squares on the walls.
“Well this isn't creepy at all.” She said as she wandered in the middle of the room. Now that she was here she was ready however the other students hadn't arrived yet.
Taryn wandered through the halls as she tried to remember which way the danger room was. She finally found her way in, and saw Hope in the middle of the room. She pulled her hands out of her jacket pockets and looked at her, shrugging. “What's goin' on? Did you hear that too-” her words trailed off as she looked through the window to the control room. “Oh my god-”
“Hello children and welcome to the danger room. I'm sure you heard the past announcements that this will be a field training exercise, designed to test your abilities in the field. For those of you who have been here for a while now, you will be assessed on whether your studies are paying off. Treat the threats in this simulation as if they were real because they are. Now before we begin any questions?” Xaiver said so casually speaking through the intercom his voice coming from every corner of the room. Hope sighed knowing Xavier was lying.
“Nope I'm ready.” Hope said bluntly with her arms crossed.
Taryn was almost in shock of seeing the professor for the first time, but tried her hardest to shield her mind from him. How embarrassing... She took a somewhat defensive stance and nodded once. No matter what happened, the last thing she wanted was to screw up in front of the Professor. “Ready…”
“Again, the simulations are real. Your powers will affect them as if they'd affect anything else,” Charles said and that was that. Everyone was officially ready. The window into the control room turned into a mirror, revealing the reflections of the two. The room around them began to change from an empty room to an entire town square during the day time. The clouds were moving, the wind blowing, it was all so real. Cars were parked on the streets but there were no people. Hope walked over to a car and touched it even applied pressure to make sure it was real and it was.
'Wonder how they managed that,’ Hope thought as she walked back over to the group. “Well since we're here and this is obviously a training session maybe we should come up with a plan,” Hope proposed. If they were going to be attacked some time soon they had to be ready. “But maybe let's walk and talk, so we don't get like bombed or something,” she said as she started walking down the street towards the neighborhood homes.
As they walked, Taryn looked around at everything. It was like they'd teleported out of the school. “Yeah I think we pretty much have the same basic powers. Telekinesis and telepathy.” She kept her eyes focused on their surroundings, getting ready for anything to attack.
“Right. The real question is where are the bad guys? Isn't there supposed to be some scenario going on or-” she was in the middle of speaking when the sound of cars and trucks could be heard from afar. The vehicles came speeding down the street from in front, and behind them, a man from a car peaked out of the window of the car with an assault rifle and began shooting at them. A red psionic force field protected them from the incoming bullets, each bullet creating a rippling like effect with each that hit it. Hope grabbed Taryn and pulled her to the side and into a nearby home to get them out of the way of fire. "Purifiers… How do we wanna handle this?" Hope asked as she made her way through the house. Bullets began flying inside and Hope got down sitting behind a wall.
Taryn tried to think quickly and went with the first thing that came to mind. “How's this?” She reached both hands out, pulled the guns from the cars closest to them and sent them flying blocks away. She pushed the cars themselves back too, buying them some time.
As they were focused on the shooters in the front shooting through the windows, Hope saw Taryn push the Purifiers back. “Ok how about this let’s split up and do our own thing, huh? Ok,” Hope said as she got up and ran into the house’s kitchen, where she found a back door. Going outside, Hope was met by six purifiers. They immediately started shooting at her, but the bullets were stopped by her psionic force fields. She reached her hand out and telekinetically grabbed the purifiers wrapping them up in her scarlet psionic energy. Swinging her arm to the right, she threw one purifier into another, sending them both flying. Reaching both of her arms out at two other purifiers, one in front and one behind her, she sent the one in front of her flying backwards and pulled the one behind her towards her and clotheslined him. As the remaining two purifiers started opening heavy fire on Hope, two more came. She lifted her hand in the air lifting up all four purifiers, and then threw her arms down slamming them onto the ground.
“Not as tough as you look,” she said as she made her way around to the front to try and flank the purifiers. While telepathically reaching out to Taryn. “How are you doing, we good?” she asked as she saw one of the purifiers getting ready to throw a grenade in the house. When the purifier pulled the pin and threw the grenade, Hope caught the grenade trapping it in a force field as it exploded. Because of its force, it was getting hard to hold so she sent it into the air and let it explode not too far above the house.
Taryn levitated herself above everything to see the situation better. She saw two of the purifiers that Hope sent flying start to get back up, so she threw them against the wall of the nearest building and pushed their own cars against them so they couldn't move. She lowered herself back onto the street and the other purifiers started shooting at her. She kept a hand extended, deflecting the bullets. She tried to telepathically reply to Hope, but the focus it took to do that distracted her from the guns.
“Your definition of good might be quite different from mine-” A bullet made it past her deflections and grazed her arm. She raised her other hand and stopped the bullets in front of her, instead of redirecting them. A feeling of anger grew within her, and she started to move the bullets slowly back toward the purifiers. The more they shot at her, the more ammo she had against them. Just as quickly as she started to move the bullets toward them, she stopped and let them drop, careful to not drop her own defenses. She did however, fling the truck in front of her to the side of the road, making it smash into the building, going halfway inside.
Three cars. Six purifiers took cover behind the car and took turns firing three at a time so when the first three needed to reload, the next 3 took over. Hope was able to sneak up behind the six purifiers and extended her hand out to them, her eyes glowing a scarlet read as she dominated their minds. The purifiers' temple areas and irises glowed a deep red and first she stopped them from shooting, then with the slight flick of her wrist she placed a mental suggestion in their minds to put them to sleep. All of their bodies fell down to the ground and thudded when they hit the ground.
“Seventeen down.” Hope said to herself, walking out onto the street. “We’re all clear out here!” She yelled. ‘Where are the last 8 purifiers?’ she thought as she looked around. Her iris glowed a deep red as she did a shallow mental sweep of the area. Turning around and looking down the street, she saw the last truck. Six purifiers on the sides, one in the driver's seat, and one standing on the back of the pick up truck with a rocket launcher. He fired it and a missile went flying towards Hope and Taryn.
Taryn deflected it, making it turn around and fly away from them, however as the rocket started to veer off to the side, she gripped her shoulder where the bullet grazed her, and held her hand out to correct its path, making it fly straight toward the remaining purifiers. As she held her hand out, her mind immediately went to the articles she'd seen of Magneto doing the same to the humans who attacked him and then X-Men in Cuba, and a hint of a smirk appeared on her face…
The purifiers began to try and run away. It was just a simulation. Hope knew they'd get in trouble for this, but this in particular was out of spit. Hope's pupils glowed a scarlet red and when the purifiers began to run away, they heard a whisper in the back of their minds. “Don’t move,” she said, her words echoing in their heads, freezing them in place. And while the missiles inched closer to them by the second, Hope looked up at the control room window. She couldn't see them, but she could feel their minds up there. Before the missile reached the purifiers, it just vanished, and the simulation around them began to disappear from the small town they were in and began fading slowly back into the danger room.
“We may be in trouble.” Hope said to Taryn, who looked around as she continued holding her arm.
Taryn released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding in, and blinked a few times before slowly lowering her hand, feeling instant regret. “Shit…” She followed Hope's gaze toward the control room.
“That’s enough for today ladies. Return to your rooms,” Xavier said. It almost sounded as if he had a bit of concern in his voice.
Hope sighed. “Finally,” she whispered under her breath as she started heading towards the door. She was hoping to blow off some steam using the danger room but it seemed like that wasn't an option. Looks like she'd have to find something else to lash out on.
-
-
Hope left the lower level basement of the mansion, walking down the left wing hallways. Her grey high heel boots clacking as they hit the wooden floor of the hallways. It didn't take a rocket scientist, psychologist or telepath to tell, but Hope was angry. Why? Hard to say since she didn't completely know herself. There wasn't much to go on, just what she thought. What she saw. One peek into Xaivers mind was enough for Hope to lose all trust in him and this school. But maybe she was jumping to conclusions...she needed to know more.
Taryn jogged a bit to catch up to her. She saw a look in her eye in the simulation, before she looked up toward the control room. While Taryn did it out of anger, something about Hope's reaction seemed… different.
“Hey,” she said, finally catching up to her. “What was that back there?”
Hope didn't stop to look at Taryn at all. She could feel her coming a mile away, so she wasn't surprised when she came up behind her, and her suspicions were right. The look on Hope's face wasn't simply “rage” it was distrust, spite and a sense of betrayal.
“What was what? I don't know what you're talking about,” She said feeding her a load of crap, hoping it was enough to get her to leave her alone. Somewhere along the line, it seemed she forgot while maybe not as powerful Taryn was a telepath too. Plus it was kind of obvious she was lying.
She tilted her head a bit. “I haven't even been here a full day and I can already tell you're probably the best telepath here. You know what I mean... back there in the danger room. The look you gave the professor- that was personal.” She grabbed a hold of her shoulder again, remembering that it was still seeping blood, and felt a shooting pain from the pressure. She used her telekinesis to pull the skin closed, and hold it, to at least stop the bleeding for a bit. “I know it's none of my business but I'm not exactly his biggest fan either... What've you got against the man?”
Hope sighed as she moved Taryn’s hand away from her shoulder. She put her hand up to her wound and hovered it above the skin. Her red psionic energy formed a shallow mist that poured into the wound, the edges of the wound glowing as Hope closed and healed it along with the tear in her jacket. The red psionic energy quickly faded away after that and Hope pulled her hand away from Taryn's shoulder.
“I got into his head. It was only for a short time but, Xavier is keeping secrets about my father from me. I feel like he's hiding something from me but I don't know for sure so...I'm gonna find out,” She said bluntly, crossing her arms. She was hesitant to speak and once she finished looked Taryn dead in the eyes. “And don't try to stop me,” She said bluntly, her pupil glowing a deep scarlet red.
She looked from her shoulder back up to Hope and thanked her, then she chuckled a bit. “Stop you? Why would I do that?” She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. “If he's hiding something about your father, you deserve to know what it is. It isn't his place to keep that from you.”
She tilted her head to the side a bit while she was thinking. “You know, come to think of it, there's a lot about Charles that I don't agree with... His whole stance on 'keeping the peace' with humans? Where did that get us? It's been thirty years and they still fear mutants. Magneto was right- he always was. If they can't respect us, maybe they should fear us...maybe.” Growing up, Taryn did a lot of digging around for any info she could get her hands on about Erik and Charles. Not only were they some of the most infamous mutants, but they were at the forefront of the ongoing battle between mutants and humans. To say she was curious about any hidden info she could find on them was an understatement.
“So I take it you lean more towards Erik’s ideals… They're both two sides of the same coin, different ideas and polar opposites, but you have to admit they both make good points. One thing we can agree on is that whatever Xavier is keeping from me I deserve to know.” Erik was a bit...informal? Most kids at the school would only know Magneto by...well...Magneto. Hope's father however was good friends with the infamous and powerful magneto, despite being a “super villain.”
Taryn knew she was right. Erik was't entirely right about everything, and neither was Charles, but regardless, she knew where she stood.
“I could help you if you want…” She thought about Charles for a second and felt a wave of paranoia floor over her. What if he was listening? He couldn't see into Hope's mind very easily, but with the little control that Taryn had over her telepathic skills, her mind was an open book to almost anyone. “You'd have to help me first, though... If Charles decides to look into my mind he'll see you coming from a mile away… I'm not as good as you at all the, erm- mental stuff.”
“I see… I have to admit I'm not as experienced as Xavier. When I was kid my dad blocked my telepathic abilities to keep me sane...they only came back 3 years ago when my dad died. But my Aunt is a telepath too and she taught me a few tricks.” Hope subtly hovered her hand near Taryn's head. Hope’s irises glowed a subtle red as a stream of scarlet red energy flowed from her fingers into Taryn's temple in the form of neurons. The effect caused a discoloration in Taryn's eyes, turning her irised red from a moment.
“That should do it, but it's not a permanent solution. Guess we're gonna have to teach you how to get better at using your telepathy.” Hope put a psychic barrier in Taryn’s mind which not only protected her from mental intrusions, but also masked her mind, making her harder to notice even to telepaths like Xavier.
Taryn chuckled, her sense of cockiness growing. “Wouldn't it be ironic if I got Xavier himself to teach me how to protect my mind from him…” She turned to go to the dorms, rotating her shoulder, still feeling a weird sensation where her wound was. “That'll come in handy at some point…” she thought, referring to Hope's psionic healing.
Hope turned away, walking in the opposite direction. If she was going to be breaking into the mind of one of the most experienced telepathy in the world, she needed a plan.