Post by Pyro on Oct 9, 2006 14:12:01 GMT -5
Stepping out into the training yard, she shot him a flirtatious look- or was that just Mystique being Mystique- and crossed to the empty center.
"I'm going to use the environment to my advantage, I'm just warning you." She smiled, putting her hands on her hips.
"Sure, baby, warn away," he said in a faintly lazy tone. He was wearing a pair of dark jeans, unusual for him as he was normally slouching about in combats, and a sleeveless shirt. Since he'd started working outside with Dharma, he'd grown far more comfortable with his own body and particularly liked the muscle tone he'd been developing in his upper arms. It was just an extra notch on the tally of his returning confidence.
Flicking his wrist in an easy movement, he ignited a flame in his hand.
Focus.
His green eyes steadied on her and he tipped his head slightly. "Do your worst," he said, almost tauntingly.
Smirking, she pivoted her hip just a bit. In a moment, she'd back vaulted at an angle few other humanoids could manage, and went careening backwards feet over hands towards a heap of rubble and miscellanea. Planting a hand on a rock, she arched her legs behind her and kicked crumpled McDonalds box towards him.
Knowing that wouldn't phase him in the slightest, she pitched a rock at his head with a spare hand before running just to his right and going to one hand, whirling her body to take his right leg out from underneath him.
He ignored the McDonald's box and focused briefly on the rock coming towards his head, launching a fireball with enough solidity to meet it head on and deflect it. He didn't see the attack from the right until it was slightly too late and though he managed to avoid being taken down altogether by the movement, it sent him off-balance and backwards a few steps.
Reaching out with his mind to the fireball which still blazed in mid-air - he was demonstrating a lot more control over his ability - it darted towards the fighting pair. He coaxed it gently into something a lot bigger - and a damn sight hotter. It made contact with the concrete surface of the training yard, starting to superheat it and making it pretty unbearable to the touch. It spread out in a circle around him, not dissimilar to the fire shield he had created back in the warehouse in Baltimore, only this time it was doing a job other than protecting him.
Too late he realised that now he too was, at least for now, confined to the area not yet touched by the heat. Still, it might give him those crucial few seconds he needed to watch and assess her next move.
Cartwheeling away from the superheated ground, she stalked around him like a cat, smiling. She was quite glad she was training with him; it helped her as well. She hadn't fought mutants with powers like his before; though she knew about the mutants Chamber and Gambit, the opportunity to fight them had never come to her.
Focusing again, she looked at the ground, and realized he was quite dangerous. He could torch her right now. The thought of his strength sent a shiver through her. She crossed her arms, and thought for a moment.
Vaulting towards him in straight flips, she winced as the ground burned her hands in the one place she had to touch, and locked her legs around his neck. Yelling with the effort, she tossed him over her own body, flipping him onto his back midair.
He prepared himself as much as he could for the impact, but when it came, it still winded him. It didn't cause a break in his focus, however, and a ripple of flame burst from his hand and boiled outwards. Almost unconsciously he kept the temperature moderately low. It was possible to use fire as a warning rather than as a simple means to frying everything to a crisp. She knew, all too well, that he didn't have to keep the heat element of the flame down, that a simple thought could increase the heat enough to melt the flesh off her bones.
It was a deflecting shot, again, hopefully enough to give him time to get back to his feet.
She managed to arch herself at just the right moment to avoid the flame, though she heard it curl the very tips of her hair as it barely brushed the flame.
Pivoting on an arm, she found the opening she was looking for. One long leg shot up and kicked his wrist hard, enough to stun it for a moment, but not enough to break. She could have easily from her position, but was only going for the source of fuel in his hand.
The lighter he led in his left hand clattered onto the floor of the compound, but he just shook his head at her and flicked his right wrist down - to which he had the glove igniter strapped.
"I'm fighting ambidextrous today," he said as a new ball of fire erupted in his hands.
He thought rapidly through all the new skills he'd started learning and he went for the same approach as he had gone with when Callisto had returned: the 'hoops' of fire that formed around her, not close enough to burn, but close enough so the heat was a warning that if she moved, it would hurt.
He didn't hesitate.
If he had come out here less than a day earlier, the thought of using that fairly risky maneouvre would have made him pause. He'd hurt Mystique once already. But this time - this time he didn't hesitate.
Sending out three streamers of flame from his fireball, he made an attempt to 'hoop' her in.
Mystique froze, not daring move in any direction. She was breathing hard, the skin over her ribcage taut, a beautiful riot of color as the flame reflected off her blue hue.
Her mind was whirling as she paused, gold eyes shifting towards Pyro. She was aware he'd had two hands in the equation, but how to get that strapped on contraption off of him, she hadn't quite figured out yet.
She smiled. "Very good. This is impressive. When did you figure this out?"
He shrugged. "When Callisto came back to the island." He didn't take his focus off her for a second, knowing that the moment he dropped the flaming barriers between them, she'd launch herself at him. "I can make them smaller if I want or turn them off. Gives people the opportunity to talk to me before I decide whether to kill them or not."
Pyro felt particularly wary as he stood there. He was faintly aware of just what a good fighter Mystique was and he suspected she hadn't yet used all her tricks.
Something was very exciting about this. It wasn't all that often someone caught her in a way she couldn't easily slip out of.
Before his eyes, she shifted into a form he'd readily recognize. The blonde hair, the gloves... Angie.
"Please let me go..." she whimpered. "I didn't do anything wrong."
Other than a very brief flicker of the eyelids, his expression remained the same. "I'll let you go when it suits me," he said, casually, rather enjoying the moment of power.
The rings of fire burned a little closer to her.
"And it doesn't suit me yet."
The cry of fear came through Angie's lips as something quite erotic, and as she froze her breathing even more, she looked up at Pyro.
"Please," Angie whispered, the end of the sound changing as her form melted into another young woman he'd recognize.
Kitty Pryde.
"Oh god, Pyro what are you doing?! Let me go!"
That one got a reaction from Pyro.
"Stop it," he said, between clenched teeth. "I know what you're doing and it's not going to work." The rings squeezed a little closer still.
Kitty's scream mimicked one he'd known all too well, from a rather infamous reaction on Alcatraz. The news had looped it- less of panicked fear than surprise and anxiety, it was the perfect sound for the moment.
"PLEASE!" She urged him. "I love you John... please don't hurt me!!"
That was enough to break his focus and even though the loss of concentration was momentary, Mystique felt the heat in the fiery rings lessen enough to break through if she so chose.
"Stop it," he roared at her, fury welling up inside him as he attempted to focus again.
Backflipping quickly, she kicked him square in the chest with both heels to set him off balance if not knock him over entirely. She knew she only had a fraction of a second before Pyro reacted and this time, it wasn't likely to be so restrained.
Turning her hips as her legs flew through the air like helicopter blades, she kicked his other wrist. It was strapped to him. Damn.
Another kick to the chest and he was down. She put a foot on his wrist to pin it down and tried to get a look at the contraption that had been invented while she had not been a part of the Brotherhood.
And there she was standing above him, Kitty's X-Men uniform clinging to her subtle adolescent curves, her long brown hair a bit stringy as it hung around her face.
He reached out with his mind to the remains of the fiery hoops and concentrated hard. In mere seconds, the fiery eagle was there, swooping down at her, a distraction more than a weapon.
Staring up at her, he was more than a little disturbed at the 'Kitty' look.
Dropping to her stomach beside him to avoid the flames, her fingers tore at his wrist, trying to hook a finger beneath the source of fuel. Once that little problem was eradicated, it would only be a matter of causing him to lose track of the remaining fire he could manipulate.
The look on Kitty's face was one of concentration and determination, her teeth clenched tightly as she worked as fast as she could.
The buckle system was fairly complex, deliberately designed so that it wouldn't release easily and after he'd let her fiddle with it for a few moments, he began to struggle to release himself from underneath her. The fiery eagle continued its dive-bombing, but here Pyro was starting to discover the flaw in his mutation - at least at the moment.
He'd not long been in possession of the full range of his skills, and the mental effort required to maintain the constant attack was starting to tire him out. He could feel the eagle's structure starting to break down, despite his best efforts and the fact that he couldn't concentrate both on it and Kitty/Mystique's attack was definitely turning the odds in her favour.
She didn’t want to destroy the piece just for a training exercise, so she reverse somersaulted over him and stood, shifting to her natural form once again.
“Nicely done on that one… you’ve thought that through.”
Smirking, she wondered how upset he was about her exploiting the girls in his life for her own purposes. Oh, if he only knew…
He got up to his knees and let the fire eagle dissipate into the air of the compound until all that remained was a single flame that he drew to himself, but didn't totally extinguish. "Like a lot of complicated things," he said, getting to a standing position - man, those ribs were going to hurt later - and brushing himself down. "...the mechanism's really sort of simple. There's a trick to it."
The young man felt faintly exhilarated after such an intensive training session and he stood there, barely able to stop the smirk that spread over his face. "It makes a difference having someone to spar with," he said. "How'm I doing, d'you reckon?"
She smiled, walking towards him.
“The problem with our abilities- or maybe, it’s perfect- is that we have entirely different.. talents.” She let the innuendo linger for a moment before continuing. “I could have knocked you out by now, but you could have torched me just as easily.” Mystique nodded a little. “You’re…” she struggled for a word that wouldn’t make him overconfident. “You’ve done a lot of work since Alaska Pyro. It shows.”
"Thank you," he said, accepting the compliment modestly. He snatched the flame out of the air and it died away. "I wish I could move like you, but I have to work with what I have. Even since Alcatraz, I've got more abilities. I'm getting almost...itchy to use them."
"Some point," he said as she got right up to him, "I'd like to practise against you with your guns."
“My guns? I’m unsure that’s really safe.”
Taking his hand she inspected the wrist device. “Who made this for you?” She said curiously. Inspecting it closely, she ran her fingers along the various locks and braces, seeing if she could devise any weaknesses. No matter how strong a plan was, someone would always find the soft spot sooner or later. She never wanted to see Pyro in that situation.
"We have Angie here if the worst happens - but I'm pretty sure that I've got something up my sleeve that will work against gunfire. I'm never going to prove it without the opportunity to test it." He let her fiddle with his ignitor.
"Python made it," he said. "I designed it, but have no idea how to make stuff, so he helped me." A brief smile. "I'm kind of proud."
Without looking up, she hooked the back of his left knee with her heel, unlatched the wrist piece with her left hand, slipped her right arm around his neck, and spun him around until she had him in a choke hold, cutting off his air.
“Almost perfect,” she whispered, holding the instrument out with one hand away from them both. Kissing behind his ear, she breathed in his scent, momentarily distracted by just how attracted to him she was. “Never let your guard down.”
"I'm going to use the environment to my advantage, I'm just warning you." She smiled, putting her hands on her hips.
"Sure, baby, warn away," he said in a faintly lazy tone. He was wearing a pair of dark jeans, unusual for him as he was normally slouching about in combats, and a sleeveless shirt. Since he'd started working outside with Dharma, he'd grown far more comfortable with his own body and particularly liked the muscle tone he'd been developing in his upper arms. It was just an extra notch on the tally of his returning confidence.
Flicking his wrist in an easy movement, he ignited a flame in his hand.
Focus.
His green eyes steadied on her and he tipped his head slightly. "Do your worst," he said, almost tauntingly.
Smirking, she pivoted her hip just a bit. In a moment, she'd back vaulted at an angle few other humanoids could manage, and went careening backwards feet over hands towards a heap of rubble and miscellanea. Planting a hand on a rock, she arched her legs behind her and kicked crumpled McDonalds box towards him.
Knowing that wouldn't phase him in the slightest, she pitched a rock at his head with a spare hand before running just to his right and going to one hand, whirling her body to take his right leg out from underneath him.
He ignored the McDonald's box and focused briefly on the rock coming towards his head, launching a fireball with enough solidity to meet it head on and deflect it. He didn't see the attack from the right until it was slightly too late and though he managed to avoid being taken down altogether by the movement, it sent him off-balance and backwards a few steps.
Reaching out with his mind to the fireball which still blazed in mid-air - he was demonstrating a lot more control over his ability - it darted towards the fighting pair. He coaxed it gently into something a lot bigger - and a damn sight hotter. It made contact with the concrete surface of the training yard, starting to superheat it and making it pretty unbearable to the touch. It spread out in a circle around him, not dissimilar to the fire shield he had created back in the warehouse in Baltimore, only this time it was doing a job other than protecting him.
Too late he realised that now he too was, at least for now, confined to the area not yet touched by the heat. Still, it might give him those crucial few seconds he needed to watch and assess her next move.
Cartwheeling away from the superheated ground, she stalked around him like a cat, smiling. She was quite glad she was training with him; it helped her as well. She hadn't fought mutants with powers like his before; though she knew about the mutants Chamber and Gambit, the opportunity to fight them had never come to her.
Focusing again, she looked at the ground, and realized he was quite dangerous. He could torch her right now. The thought of his strength sent a shiver through her. She crossed her arms, and thought for a moment.
Vaulting towards him in straight flips, she winced as the ground burned her hands in the one place she had to touch, and locked her legs around his neck. Yelling with the effort, she tossed him over her own body, flipping him onto his back midair.
He prepared himself as much as he could for the impact, but when it came, it still winded him. It didn't cause a break in his focus, however, and a ripple of flame burst from his hand and boiled outwards. Almost unconsciously he kept the temperature moderately low. It was possible to use fire as a warning rather than as a simple means to frying everything to a crisp. She knew, all too well, that he didn't have to keep the heat element of the flame down, that a simple thought could increase the heat enough to melt the flesh off her bones.
It was a deflecting shot, again, hopefully enough to give him time to get back to his feet.
She managed to arch herself at just the right moment to avoid the flame, though she heard it curl the very tips of her hair as it barely brushed the flame.
Pivoting on an arm, she found the opening she was looking for. One long leg shot up and kicked his wrist hard, enough to stun it for a moment, but not enough to break. She could have easily from her position, but was only going for the source of fuel in his hand.
The lighter he led in his left hand clattered onto the floor of the compound, but he just shook his head at her and flicked his right wrist down - to which he had the glove igniter strapped.
"I'm fighting ambidextrous today," he said as a new ball of fire erupted in his hands.
He thought rapidly through all the new skills he'd started learning and he went for the same approach as he had gone with when Callisto had returned: the 'hoops' of fire that formed around her, not close enough to burn, but close enough so the heat was a warning that if she moved, it would hurt.
He didn't hesitate.
If he had come out here less than a day earlier, the thought of using that fairly risky maneouvre would have made him pause. He'd hurt Mystique once already. But this time - this time he didn't hesitate.
Sending out three streamers of flame from his fireball, he made an attempt to 'hoop' her in.
Mystique froze, not daring move in any direction. She was breathing hard, the skin over her ribcage taut, a beautiful riot of color as the flame reflected off her blue hue.
Her mind was whirling as she paused, gold eyes shifting towards Pyro. She was aware he'd had two hands in the equation, but how to get that strapped on contraption off of him, she hadn't quite figured out yet.
She smiled. "Very good. This is impressive. When did you figure this out?"
He shrugged. "When Callisto came back to the island." He didn't take his focus off her for a second, knowing that the moment he dropped the flaming barriers between them, she'd launch herself at him. "I can make them smaller if I want or turn them off. Gives people the opportunity to talk to me before I decide whether to kill them or not."
Pyro felt particularly wary as he stood there. He was faintly aware of just what a good fighter Mystique was and he suspected she hadn't yet used all her tricks.
Something was very exciting about this. It wasn't all that often someone caught her in a way she couldn't easily slip out of.
Before his eyes, she shifted into a form he'd readily recognize. The blonde hair, the gloves... Angie.
"Please let me go..." she whimpered. "I didn't do anything wrong."
Other than a very brief flicker of the eyelids, his expression remained the same. "I'll let you go when it suits me," he said, casually, rather enjoying the moment of power.
The rings of fire burned a little closer to her.
"And it doesn't suit me yet."
The cry of fear came through Angie's lips as something quite erotic, and as she froze her breathing even more, she looked up at Pyro.
"Please," Angie whispered, the end of the sound changing as her form melted into another young woman he'd recognize.
Kitty Pryde.
"Oh god, Pyro what are you doing?! Let me go!"
That one got a reaction from Pyro.
"Stop it," he said, between clenched teeth. "I know what you're doing and it's not going to work." The rings squeezed a little closer still.
Kitty's scream mimicked one he'd known all too well, from a rather infamous reaction on Alcatraz. The news had looped it- less of panicked fear than surprise and anxiety, it was the perfect sound for the moment.
"PLEASE!" She urged him. "I love you John... please don't hurt me!!"
That was enough to break his focus and even though the loss of concentration was momentary, Mystique felt the heat in the fiery rings lessen enough to break through if she so chose.
"Stop it," he roared at her, fury welling up inside him as he attempted to focus again.
Backflipping quickly, she kicked him square in the chest with both heels to set him off balance if not knock him over entirely. She knew she only had a fraction of a second before Pyro reacted and this time, it wasn't likely to be so restrained.
Turning her hips as her legs flew through the air like helicopter blades, she kicked his other wrist. It was strapped to him. Damn.
Another kick to the chest and he was down. She put a foot on his wrist to pin it down and tried to get a look at the contraption that had been invented while she had not been a part of the Brotherhood.
And there she was standing above him, Kitty's X-Men uniform clinging to her subtle adolescent curves, her long brown hair a bit stringy as it hung around her face.
He reached out with his mind to the remains of the fiery hoops and concentrated hard. In mere seconds, the fiery eagle was there, swooping down at her, a distraction more than a weapon.
Staring up at her, he was more than a little disturbed at the 'Kitty' look.
Dropping to her stomach beside him to avoid the flames, her fingers tore at his wrist, trying to hook a finger beneath the source of fuel. Once that little problem was eradicated, it would only be a matter of causing him to lose track of the remaining fire he could manipulate.
The look on Kitty's face was one of concentration and determination, her teeth clenched tightly as she worked as fast as she could.
The buckle system was fairly complex, deliberately designed so that it wouldn't release easily and after he'd let her fiddle with it for a few moments, he began to struggle to release himself from underneath her. The fiery eagle continued its dive-bombing, but here Pyro was starting to discover the flaw in his mutation - at least at the moment.
He'd not long been in possession of the full range of his skills, and the mental effort required to maintain the constant attack was starting to tire him out. He could feel the eagle's structure starting to break down, despite his best efforts and the fact that he couldn't concentrate both on it and Kitty/Mystique's attack was definitely turning the odds in her favour.
She didn’t want to destroy the piece just for a training exercise, so she reverse somersaulted over him and stood, shifting to her natural form once again.
“Nicely done on that one… you’ve thought that through.”
Smirking, she wondered how upset he was about her exploiting the girls in his life for her own purposes. Oh, if he only knew…
He got up to his knees and let the fire eagle dissipate into the air of the compound until all that remained was a single flame that he drew to himself, but didn't totally extinguish. "Like a lot of complicated things," he said, getting to a standing position - man, those ribs were going to hurt later - and brushing himself down. "...the mechanism's really sort of simple. There's a trick to it."
The young man felt faintly exhilarated after such an intensive training session and he stood there, barely able to stop the smirk that spread over his face. "It makes a difference having someone to spar with," he said. "How'm I doing, d'you reckon?"
She smiled, walking towards him.
“The problem with our abilities- or maybe, it’s perfect- is that we have entirely different.. talents.” She let the innuendo linger for a moment before continuing. “I could have knocked you out by now, but you could have torched me just as easily.” Mystique nodded a little. “You’re…” she struggled for a word that wouldn’t make him overconfident. “You’ve done a lot of work since Alaska Pyro. It shows.”
"Thank you," he said, accepting the compliment modestly. He snatched the flame out of the air and it died away. "I wish I could move like you, but I have to work with what I have. Even since Alcatraz, I've got more abilities. I'm getting almost...itchy to use them."
"Some point," he said as she got right up to him, "I'd like to practise against you with your guns."
“My guns? I’m unsure that’s really safe.”
Taking his hand she inspected the wrist device. “Who made this for you?” She said curiously. Inspecting it closely, she ran her fingers along the various locks and braces, seeing if she could devise any weaknesses. No matter how strong a plan was, someone would always find the soft spot sooner or later. She never wanted to see Pyro in that situation.
"We have Angie here if the worst happens - but I'm pretty sure that I've got something up my sleeve that will work against gunfire. I'm never going to prove it without the opportunity to test it." He let her fiddle with his ignitor.
"Python made it," he said. "I designed it, but have no idea how to make stuff, so he helped me." A brief smile. "I'm kind of proud."
Without looking up, she hooked the back of his left knee with her heel, unlatched the wrist piece with her left hand, slipped her right arm around his neck, and spun him around until she had him in a choke hold, cutting off his air.
“Almost perfect,” she whispered, holding the instrument out with one hand away from them both. Kissing behind his ear, she breathed in his scent, momentarily distracted by just how attracted to him she was. “Never let your guard down.”
