Something she's good at

This time Emma straight-up couldn't read the wheel from her position. She just waited for spiral to announce what she got.

"Listicle Hour!" Spiral shouted. "Honestly I'm kind of bored of these mental challenges, but whatever."

"What the hell is 'Listical Hour?'" Emma said.

"It's simple. We'll give you a category and you have the list a certain number of items in that category. You'll have a minute to do so and every incorrect answer will deduct two points." Spiral said. "Once the minute is up we count up the number of correct and incorrect answers and if you've met the point threshold you win! Are you ready?"

"Do I have a choice?" Emma asked.

"You always have a choice. Just remember there's a couple dozen mutants hoping you make the right one so they can see their families again." Spiral said.

"Ugh," Emma groaned. "Fine. What's the category?"

"I thought you'd never ask." Spiral looked at her cue cards. "Given it's the first episode we wanted to do something classic. You have one minute to name twenty points worth of X-Men. We will accept no alternate X-teams, no honorary members, and nothing outside of your home 616 universe. Ready, set, go!"

"Scott, Jean, me," Emma started. "Beast, Bobby, Angel, Tessa, Charles, Kitty, Storm." She paused after getting the obvious ones out of the way. "Banshee, Kurt, Logan, Laura, Synch, Polaris." She had started to move towards more recent teams after seeing the Logan-Laura connection. "Firestar, Dazzler. Um, shit. Prodigy, Frenzy? Cannonball. Who else?"

"30 seconds left," Spiral warned.

"Fuck fuck," Emma stammered. "Hope Summers, Rachel Summers, Elixir—I remember training him. Who are the new ones? Do they even count yet? Rasputin IV, Miss Marvel. Oh! And Colossus and Magik. Then there's—"

"That's time!" Spiral interrupted. "You named 28 names, good job. Sadly there were some mistakes."

"Bite me. I've been both fighting against and fighting with the X-Men longer than anyone not named Erik. I don't believe that I got some wrong." She blew some of her hair back and tried to look more intimidating than she could kneeling on the floor.

"Well, ya did," Spiral pushed. "Prodigy was never an official member—"

"I remember the Hellfire Gala where he was nominated! The one where everything went to shit! My friend died there! Emma fought back.

"Yeah, and so did Prodigy." Spiral read off the cards. "He never went on a mission with the official X-Men team until he was revived, and at that point all his missions were outside of your mainline 616 universe, instead taking place in alternate timelines. That doesn't count for our purposes."

"That's such bullshit!" Emma crossed her arms.

"Heh heh." Spiral looped a little bit of the chain around her foot and pulled. Hard. Emma had no protection and her hands were preoccupied so her face slammed into the floor with a loud BANG. "Now you only got one other one wrong. Elixir. He was an X-Men-in-training but never on the official team."

"Oh God," Emma picked herself up the ground. "I think you might have broken it!" She held her nose in her hands.

"Come on it's nothing your doctor hasn't done to you," Spiral said. She look back at her cue cards. "That deducts 4 points but that still leaves you with 24 so you win! Pick a reward case."

"Oh God! Can I get some ice?" Emma said.

"Fine if I get you some ice will you stop complaining?" Spiral said.

"Yes!" Emma shouted.

"PAs!" Spiral shouted as she cupped her mouth with two of her many hands.

"Now Emma," Spiral said in her announcer voice. "Before our impromptu commercial break, you had won your first challenge!" The audience applauded her. "That got you your first reward case. Please pick that case."

"Ow," Emma groaned. She standing again next to Spiral and had an ice pack pressed against her nose. "You mentioned all these transformations but you can't fix my nose?"

"We figured you would want your usual guy to do the job." Spiral said. "Now pick."

"Fine. Number 1." Emma said.

"Show me, number 1!" Spiral pointed to the case with her cue cards. The case popped open and showed a sign saying $100,000,000. "Woo. That's a pretty penny. Where are you going to spend your new one-hundred-million dollars?" She nudged nudged Emma with one of her elbows. "That's more money than most people see in 10 lifetimes."

"I'll go to fucking Disney World." Emma muttered through the ice pack. "I'm already rich." She waved her hand around her. "I don't need this shit."

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth sweetie," Spiral said. "Now let's move on. You have a wheel to spin again."

Emma didn't even pause this time. She just grabbed the wheel and spun it with all her might. It's spun and spun around until eventually it landed on "Race with Spiral."

"Oh no," She looked terrified and she stared up at the wheel.

"Oh yes," Spiral smiled.

In a shimmer of golden light a track appeared directly in front of the two women. It went from one end of the stage to the other. Each of the two women were in their own little track.

"First to there and back wins," Spiral said. "Here, I'm not supposed to, but I'll give you a 30-second head start." And with that she paused and started counting on her fingers. She had enough.

Emma tried with all her might to push herself to move. All she could manage was flexing her pelvis back and forth. She frantically waved her arms like it would do something.

"You done?" Spiral said. "Well let me see if I can catch up."

Spiral slowly walked to the edge of the stage like it was a catwalk, swaying back and forth and keeping a still stride. She struck a pose when she was at the edge and then walked back from facing the audience to Emma. Once she was there she stroked Emma's cheek with her mechanical hand.

"I'm sorry baby, but better luck next time." Spiral said. And with that she passed the threshold to win the race. The golden lights turned red and a loud buzzer noise rang out.
"Pick a case."

"2," Emma said, silent otherwise.

Author's Note: This one is a twofer because that's how I'm handling cash cases. I want to truncate them as much as possible. And finally a physical challenge! I kind of didn't want to Ring Out to win because it would hurt her chances it actually succeeding at them. But oh well.

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