fandomhigh | Defending Yourself [Monday, Period 1]

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self-defense class

Defending Yourself [Monday, Period 1]

"Welcome back. Hope you all enjoyed your weekend." Max eyed his students. "And that you took the time to do your homework."

"Today's lesson is actually going to be short because I'm going to try leaving most of our time for some demonstrations, but there is something I'm hoping you all pick up on today: each of you has a set of instinctive reactions when threatened. Everyone has different ones, of course, but the lesson to learn is that most of them are useful. Maybe not all the time, or in all situations, and it's useful to be aware of when to fight your instincts, but it's also important to realize that no matter how new you all are to the concept, each and every one of you has some ideas about how to defend yourself. And not all of those ideas are bad ones."

"For instance," another look around, this time with a grin, "I gave you a homework assignment last week I gave you a homework assignment with very little guidance, and I'm willing to bet that you all managed to do it. And I also suspect that most of you came up with something the others didn't, if only because of the way you think about things."

"So let's see them. Everyone take a moment to show us what you've brought, and explain why you picked it. And feel free to talk ideas with each other."

And then Max's grin turned downright evil, and he nodded toward the door that wasn't part of the usual classroom setup (thank you, Danger Shop!). "While you're doing that, you'll find a list of your names in ~~totally random~~ order by the door. If you're at the top of the list, come on through for a personal evaluation." That totally wasn't going to be an ambush so that Max could evaluate your instinctive reactions to surprise attacks. Unless it was.

Hint: it totally was.

[Continuing my no-sign-in experiment! If it really is a problem for you, feel free to leave an OOC comment, or hit me up via email! Or AIM! Or LJ PM!]

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Angelica's first instinct was to concentrate on using her powers to create a soft glow around herself so she could see better.

Of course, that made her all the more visible to whatever might be lurking out there as she nervously peered around the room.

Glowing, huh. Lucky for Max he was on the other side of the door. (He'd totally seen that trick on some TV show somewhere.) He concentrated on staying silent and giving Angelica a second or two to see what else she might do.

"Hello?" Angelica said nervously, stepping further into the room. It was hard to see what was beyond her circle of light.

She was so going to do badly on this test.

Once she'd stepped past the door, Max made his move. First he stepped forward, scuffing his foot slightly to give her a fraction of a second of warning or so. Then he yelled "Boo!".

Yeah. Really.

Fortunately, Angelica had been expecting something, so she didn't entirely freak out and lose control of her powers. She did, however, shriek a little and spin around, her powers flaring brighter and hotter, but she struggled to hold it back so she didn't accidentally harm Max.

Then it probably didn't help that Max was also doing his best to look very threatening, and also continuing to come toward her with his arms extended. Because scaring her wasn't really the point. Max wanted to see how she'd defend herself.

Fortunately they were in the Danger Shop, so even if this wasn't his smartest idea he wouldn't get hurt too badly.

Angelica darted away, trying to keep some of the furniture between her and Max. "I really don't want to hurt you," she said.

But asking please wasn't really going to stop someone from coming at her in real life, so she tried to make her voice more firm. "But I will if you don't leave me alone," she said.

Max just chuckled. "You really think you can?" he challenged as he kept moving forward, perfectly content to pick up desks and chairs to toss them easily out of the way as he did.

She couldn't bring herself to use her powers on a living being, but she could do her best to bluff. "Yeah, I will," she said, fighting the quaver in her voice at how easily he was tossing the desks and chairs aside. She held her hands out in front of her, concentrating to superheat the air around them so that they became wreathed in flames.

Hey, that was actually pretty impressive.

Max paused. He didn't retreat, but he stopped advancing for the moment, waiting to see if she'd do more than that.

"Come any closer and I'll set you on fire," Angelica said, making the flames jump from her hands a little bit, not close enough to burn Max, but to let him know she had control over it.

Mostly. She hoped.

Max didn't look like he was sure he believed Angelica. He didn't look like he disbelieved her, precisely, either, though. After all, this clearly wasn't just an illusion, he could feel the heat.

But he still didn't back off.

Well, if he wasn't going to cooperate by running away, Angelica wasn't just going to stand there and wait for him to try to attack. Her heart was racing, but she pushed past that to focus on lifting herself up in the air. She bounced somewhat ungracefully against the ceiling before finding her balance up above, keeping as much space between her and Max as she could. This would be the point where she'd flee if there wasn't walls and a ceiling in the way.

"Not bad," Max allowed. In fact, more than that. Flying was pretty useful in his experience.

"But where are you going to go?" Definitely more useful outdoors than in.

"Just wanted to get up here so I can take better aim," Angelica said. She threw a small fireball very carefully toward Max's feet, or, rather, a couple feet in front of him. Ohgodohgodohgod don't hit him don't hit him.

It didn't hit him. Not that Max moved to dodge it. He just stood there and watched.

"You're not actually trying to hit me, are you?" he asked. Because sometimes he was good at stating the obvious!

"I can't hit you, you're my teacher!" Angelica said.

She wasn't sure she could hit him even if he was trying to attack her for real.

Max sighed. "Okay." Then he stepped back, and shook his head. "I guess we're done for the moment."

He raised an eyebrow. "Did you learn anything?" Because he certainly did. Angelica was going to need to learn some aggression.

Angelica lowered herself back to the ground (landing on her feet but without a lot of grace). She stared down at her shoes and bit her lip. "Um, that I'm not going to make anybody back off if I don't really sound like I mean it when I say I'll use my powers?" she said.

"Well, you don't necessarily have to use any powers," Max allowed. "But you do have to either find a way to get away, or make them think you pose some sort of threat. Even if it's just that you'll kick them really hard in the shins."

"I could kick someone," Angelica said eagerly. "I just don't want to hurt someone with my powers because I could kill them or something."

"So why didn't you kick me?" Max asked, as if this were a completely reasonable question.

"...because you're a teacher?" Angelica said hesitantly.

Frying him wouldn't be much better, Angel.

"And how do you know I'm not a really evil teacher?" Max asked.

Hey! People had thought it of him before!

Because her evil teacher was back in Massachusetts!

"You'd get fired if you really tried to hurt your students," Angelica reasoned. "Miss Frost used robots to test us, so it wasn't like we'd be really hurting someone."

Defending Yourself [Monday, Period 1]

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