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Lorna entered the training grounds with a pointed purpose on finding one Emma Frost. She herself, was late, she knew she was, to training. But to be fair there had been a /lot/ going on in the young mutant's life as of late. Not all of it planned, in fact most of it wasn't. Evil electronics, crazy girls showing up in the park and a giant green thing destroying part of the city?
Lorna totally didn't sign up for any of it.. Though she did commit to finally working on that codename that had been her homework. Yeah, it was late, but to be fair, she'd needed to research.
Also it helped that Erik had lectured her a little bit on doing her homework and not disappointing her teachers.
Yep. Research.
So it was that Lorna entered the training hall in a sort of breathless sprint, bending double as she caught her breath after having run over from her dorm.
*
As soon as Lorna arrives, so unladylike, late, and out of breath, Emma stops whatever she was doing with whichever other student she was doing it and turns to observe the young woman, curiously. She waits a bit, probably to let Lorna catch her breath, before she speaks up.
"Nice of you to join us this evening, Miss Dane. I see you have already been working on your physical fitness portion. Perhaps another lap around the room to stretch yourself out, and then we can begin on your training?"
*
A groan peels from her lips and Lorna struggles upright, closing her eyes briefly against the thought of /more/ running. She was decidedly not in physical shape, much less the kind that most of the students aspired to. She was always out of breath.
"Yes, Miss Frost." She mumbled, fighting back the urge to roll her eyes and heave a sigh. She knew better than to argue.
So with a distinct air of misery, Lorna starts her lap around the room. Slower than normal, but at least trying to pace herself. She'd learned from trying to keep up with the faster kids the first few times when it had had her in stitches on the side of the room holding her side.
Eventually Lorna comes to a halt after her lap, bent double once more and breathing hard, her hands on her thighs and her ponytail falling into her face.
*
"Miss Dane? I take it that your physical regimine is not keeping up?" Emma inquires, calmly, impassively. She eyes the younger woman curiously and waits for her to recover.
"So. Might I inquire, Miss Dane, what has so monopolized your time that you were unable to be on time for your training session today?" Emma launches, once Lorna finally manages to breathe upright and return her sweating self to some semblance of 'ready'.
*
Lorna pushes her hair back from her face with both hands, standing up straight, read in the face at both catching her breath and for being admonished in front of everyone else training. She hated being late, even more so she hated disappointing people. That flickered so clearly on her face that one really didn't need to be a telepath to figure it out.
"Sorry Miss Frost," She swallowed around the dry lump in her throat. "I uhm.. I was up late last night. I slept in and my alarm clock didn't go off.." It was a lame excuse, the reason being that she had a /wooden/ alarm clock for that express purpose of not being late. Emma had seen to that months ago.
*
The platinum blonde telepath eyes the currently brunette-ish magnetokinetic young woman coolly, and waits for a good long pregnant pause before she finally speaks. Almost as if she's trying to leave the impression of pale ice blue eyes boring deep into the girl's soul.
"Miss Dane. I truly do encourage one to practice the social niceties of 'white lies' and the sort as needed. One should be proficient in these things, and carry them off with aplomb as a tool for the future. But perhaps you might remember my own talents, next time, before attempting something of the more bald-faced variety?" Emma offers. Because yeah. The telepath knows that line wasn't kosher at all.
*
Lorna's face turned a brilliant shade of red then, and wrapped her arms around her middle as she averted her gaze from Emma sharply at the scolding. "I wasn't trying to be rude.." She whispered, staring down at her shoes as she toed the ground. Her middle flickering through worry for the redhead that was decidedly not Jean back in her dorm.
A soft and pleading mental note followed from the young woman and Lorna remained silent otherwise. A string of please don't make me talk in front of everyone. Please. Please. Please.
*
Emma eyes the girl very directly, and then nods. "Come with me, Miss Dane." the platinum blonde offers, before leading the way out of the big training room, and then into one of the side rooms, pointing towards a chair. "Sit. And, if you please, work on levitating the table while we discuss this."
Emma settles into one of the chairs in the room and waits for Lorna to sit, and to get started with the attempted hovering. Then she begins her questioning. "So. About this young woman apparently ensconced in your dormitory room? The one about which you did not inform me, nor any other staffer?"
*
Lorna settled onto the chair like a puppy with its tail between its legs, or maybe a kid that had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Her head downcast, her shoulders drawn high and her gaze averted. As Emma asks her to lift the table by its metal legs, Lorna bites her lower lip fidgeting nervously in the chair and holding out both of her hands toward said table. It wiggled, rattling side to side under Lorna's half-hearted attentions, and a leg might have lifted up off the ground before it crashed back down with a thump as Emma spoke.
"It was late when I got back and I didn't want to wake anyone up! I wanted to tell you Miss Frost, just not in front of everyone else. She's really nice and definitely needs help and is definitely a mutant too." She worried her lower lip, her hands falling back to her lap as she leaned forward.
"Please don't be angry."
*
Emma sighs in a mildly exasperated tone. "Keep trying, Miss Dane. I want you to get better at this, but I also need you to learn how to concentrate your focus on your powers and still keep your mind limber enough to converse passably while working." Like walking and chewing gum. Or something.
"The number I gave you is available twenty-four hours a day. There is an answering service for calls when I am unavailable. Like it or not, something like this should be shared before it happens, whenever possible." Emma admonishes, firmly. She doesn't yell. Emma never seems to yell. But neither are her words ice cold and biting. She's scolding and educating, not cutting the girl to the quick.
"Tell me about this young woman. How did you meet? Why did you bring her to your dormitory room? What more do you know of her?"
*
A sharp exhale and Lorna lifted her hands up again, gritting her teeth as she focused on the table again, her emotions already a fluctuating torrent that impedes her powers. The table rattles once more, but this time jumps, pushing up against the far wall instead of lifting up off the ground. A blush crosses Lorna's cheeks and she struggles to try to lift it and carry on the conversation with Emma.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think." She mumbled, and that was honestly true. The young woman /had/ been more than a little freaked out about what had happened in Central park the night before. She'd only called Professor Xavier to get Hope to go to sleep.
The table groaned slightly under Lorna's concentration, the metal denting slightly.
"I found her in the park, she was calling for her dad—" She muttered, distractedly, trying to smooth out the dent in the table. "She at first was going on about partying too hard and waking up in the park alone. I was worried someone slipped her something.."
A wince and the table jumped in the air and crashed down again as Lorna's focus slipped. "Then I got her to open up some and was gonna drive her to Westchester but then there was a green monster in the park and she ran off to stop it.. I don't know what /it/ was. And she used my powers, like borrowed them? But I still had them, and like, she could do stuff way better than me. I just mimicked her." Her brows pinched and the table shakily lifted off the ground, hovering a few inches off the floor shakily.
*
"There, stop!" Emma calls out, just as Lorna gets the table to hover. She points to the secretly green-haired girl. "Feel that. Close your eyes, breathe even, and just feel that connection to the table. To yourself. To the air and the earth around you. Breathe. Feel it. That, Miss Dane. That is what you are looking for. Try to hold that, crystalize that in your mind."
Yes. Emma delayed talk of the mysterious girl, calls to Xavier, mutant powers and fights with big green goblins to work on trying to train the girl's instincts for her powers. Go figure.
"What is her name? What have you learned about her, and her father?" Emma inquires, waiting pensively for answers. "And … how did that go? Trying to stop the green monster?"
*
Lorna jumped in her seat as Emma called for her to stop, and the table wavered and nearly crashed to the floor before Lorna caught it. She exhaled a shaky breath, green eyes wide as she tried to focus and do everything that Emma told her to. She was able to mildly follow instructions. Her breathing at least held. Ultimately, the table continued to wobble and list and ended up with more than a few dents in it due to Lorna's clumsy grip.
But she held it up. Mostly. One side listed against the wall when Emma started up the questions again.
"Her name's Hope, she was talking about how her dad was supposed to meet up with her at Xavier's institute. But that he wasn't there yet or that they didn't know he'd be there? I dunno? I called the Professor and asked and he told me to bring her to a cafe instead. With the big green rage monster thingy?" She tilted her head, biting her lower lip.
Her focus slipped and the table crashed to the floor, and Lorna dragged both of her hands over her features and into her hair. She had a massive head ache forming. "She was able to bend a lamp post around it and throw it into the river. I just kinda helped. I mean, I /did/ manage to catch a woman who was falling out of her apartment with a bit of metal.. Well, okay, I kinda just grabbed her and threw her back into her apartment with a fire-escape, but yeah.." She squirmed, she had been trying to catch more than one person. Luckily someone else had been there..
*
Emma leans close to Lorna and reaches out, lightly touching her forehead. For a moment, Lorna will experience a crystal-clear, intensely focused and undiminished gestalt of her state of mind, of thought, of feeling and concentration, when she had the table in the air perfectly. Emma holds that at the forefront of the girl's mind for a good, long five-count, and then lifts her fingers away and ends it. "That. That is what I want you to strive for, when you practice today. You need to be able to seek out that kind of focus, at need. We will work on meditation exercises later."
That said, Emma takes it all in, and nods. "Very well. Get back to training. I will see to Miss 'Hope', and get in contact with Mister Xavier to confer on the young woman's status. We will discuss other matters later. You may go, Miss Dane." Emma could care less about the table. What she cares about, though she would be loathe to admit it aloud, is her students. Just her students. The rest of the whole damned world be damned.