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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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."

"And how do you know I'm not a robot?"

Okay, so now he was beyond the teaching portion of this discussion, and into the being ridiculous portion.

"I can't assume you're a robot! What if I'm wrong!" Angelica protested.

Max might regret it if she assumed wrong!

Max chuckled. "Fair enough."

Then he shrugged. "Still, I think we're going to have to work on your aggression. At least when it comes to defending yourself."

"You're pretty comfortable attacking robots?"

He was right about that. She was still far too timid.

"I've done it before in the danger room at my old school," she said, nodding. "They were programmed to really hurt us so we had to be really careful."

She wasn't always happy having to fight simulations, but it pleased Miss Frost, so she went ahead and did her best.

"But if it were a real person attacking you, you'd be a lot more hesitant?"

Like that wasn't pretty obvious from today's exercise.

"Well, yeah," Angelica said, shuffling her feet. "I don't want to kill someone."

"There's no in-between?" Max asked.

Now he was considering whether to work on aggression or control. Maybe Angelica would be more comfortable fighting if she didn't think she'd kill someone she didn't mean to.

"With a power like mine there's not much room for in-between," Angelica said. "I could really hurt someone if I wanted to. But I don't want to."

Re: Step through door number 1

furious-maximus.livejournal.com - 2012-01-09 22:56 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Step through door number 1

whitequeensfire.livejournal.com - 2012-01-10 04:17 (UTC) - Expand

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