Scott & Shiro

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Random Danger Room training with Cyclops and Kamikaze. They blow stuff up as a team. See? Shiro can play well with others if he just tries.


It was going to take a while to feel comfortable in the leathers without the visor, Scott thought, pulling his gloves on as he stepped into the Danger Room. He shouldn't expect to have reached that comfort level yet, not when this was what, his third time back in here?

"Afternoon, Shiro," he greeted the trainee already in there waiting for him.

"Hello, Mister Summers," Shiro called back, adjusting his pants. Damn leather. When he makes full team, he'll have to ask for a more comfortable uniform. Dead cow chafes, and only the miracle of Gold Bond gets Shiro through the day.

"You're not a student anymore," Scott pointed out with a slight smile. "You can call me Scott, you know." He noted the squirming, and refrained from commenting on it. "I'm going to break at least one of you graduated types of the 'Mr. Summers' habit, I swear."

"Do you have any idea how difficult it was to address Alison and Lorna as such?" Shiro asked, grimacing at his pants. "And with Lorna, I had both her and Alex bothering me until I could bring myself to do it. But I think that Alex is too amused that I still call you 'Mister Summers' to make me stop."

"Mm," was Scott's wry reply to that as he glanced up at the observation booth, then checked the clock. They still had a few minutes. "Sorry that you got paired up with the one-eyed man for this, by the way," he said, although really, he was no such thing. It was a good way to check how Shiro paced himself by making him take into account a teammate who wasn't operating at peak. "I'll try not to blast you by accident."

Shiro refrained from commenting on how honored he was to have the opportunity to train with Cyclops. He was trying to keep brown-nosing to a minimum. Instead, he just grinned at Scott and gave him a thumbs-up. "I will act as your other eye, then."

"Excellent. Because Alison programmed this run, so I'm going to be wishing for that other eye, I suspect." Scott's attention went back to the clock as it ticked down from the two-minute mark. "I'm expecting that the environment won't stay put," he said, "so you're liable to have more mobility than I will. If we've got airborne threats I'll try and cover your back from the ground."

"This is one of Alison's?" Shiro asked, just a little distressed. Scott's and Ororo's brands of sadism were often manageable. But Alison? She gave torture a new name. With a sigh, Shiro nodded.

"I believe I read in the file that she gave consulting credit to Nathan, too," Scott said, highly amused. "So yeah, we're in for a wild ride, I suspect..."

Good thing they didn't mark off for bad language, because Shiro's mutterings would have certainly earned him an automatic F. "Fabulous. I look forward to this." Also a good thing that Shiro had another few days of winter holiday, because he knew he'd need them to recover.

Scott gave him a sudden smile. "We're going to do fine," he said firmly. "And if we come out of this with bruises, we get to have our womanfolk fuss over us and tell us what idiots we are. There's a certain amount of fun in that, no?"
"Well, yes. There is that. Is that the clock?" he asked suddenly, trying to hide his blush. "Ikuzo."

Scott didn't stop smiling, but had to repeat Do not laugh a couple of times to himself as he turned, hearing the same warning buzz as Shiro had.

The Danger Room came alive all at once. The target, one of the smaller drones with both wheels and flight capability, rolled out of one of the alcoves and then immediately went airborne. At the same moment, the gun turrets emerged and started to fire, and the environment began to shift.

Instinctively, Shiro took to the air, both to get on the same level as the drone and to dodge the barrage of rubber bullets. Months of training taught him that melting the guns, though easy, was a big No-No. But he'd also learned how to almost solidify his personal force field so small things like bullets would melt if they hit him, and how to direct his plasma blasts to get rid of bullets aimed at someone else.

Like Cyclops. Wouldn't do much good if he were covered in welts from the damned projectiles.

Scott took a moment to absorb the approach Shiro was taking before he took his own. He had an unfair edge in that he knew what the Danger Room could do when it came to environmental shifting like he knew the back of his hand. In that sense, this sort of scenario wasn't a fair test for him anymore.

But a little extra challenge was added by the fact that he now had a blind side. Okay, more than a little. Maybe fairness wasn't such a concern after all. He saw a drone emerge and target Shiro from behind. A half-power blast sent it reeling backwards through the air.

"Thanks." Shiro knocked another out of the air as it approached him, and proceeded forward a few more yards until a Thwomp attacked him from the side. He cut off his power and let gravity do its work, only turning it back on a few feet above the ground to stabilize his fall. "Can I at least break those?" he asked rhetorically.

"Leave the Thwomps alone," Scott said reprovingly, and then had entirely too much to do for chatter. Half a dozen drones were advancing on him suddenly, and the floor dropped out from under him even as he threw himself forward and almost managed to reach the other side.

Like Hungary all over again. Shiro flew forward and grabbed Scott's wrist. "You are a lot lighter than you look," he commented, taking Scott's other hand and flying them both back to solid ground before releasing a wide plasma blast to scatter a group of smaller drones. "Are you eating?"

"Probably not as much as I should, no. Although there's a reason my nickname was always Slim." No sooner had his feet touched the ground than the wall was folding outwards, trying to flatten him. He aimed a blast right at the mechanism, and it stopped with a shriek.

A turret aimed at Shiro, and he threw up his force field just in time to keep safe of the bullets. A small fireball disabled the gun. He pushed himself back into the air to continue their pursuit of the target drone, but almost immediately had to get back down when the ceiling lowered. "Oh, that is just cheap," he muttered.

Scott watched as a small horde of drones emerged and advanced on Shiro. Time to try his hand at target practice? He got six out of the eight, which was better by far than his average lately, but then the walls were closing in again and the target drone was nowhere to be seen.

Shiro blasted the other two, plus one behind Scott. "Kuso. We are getting cramped. I can fly us through until the room opens up again." Although he wouldn't be able to use the arm he'd be holding Scott with, and it would be difficult to keep a watch on their rear.

Scott gave him a quick, assessing look. "No," he said. "Get through. I'll catch up."

Shiro hesitated only for a moment before nodding and taking off through the makeshift tunnel. He flew straight past two drones who thought they could block his way, and straight into a third, wrestling it to the ground (a move he'd learned from Cannonball's training tapes). As it shut down, the room started to open up again, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Scott was roughly ten seconds behind him, amazingly enough. Sometimes the only thing to do was headbutt your way through, and he'd been working hard enough on his hand-to-hand since he'd healed up enough that he could compensate at least partway for the blind side, at least with the drones.

"Target!" he shouted to Shiro, seeing him just getting up from the drone he'd wrestled to the ground.

"Target? Target!" Shiro was instantly back in the air, which wasn't the best course of action. A dozen drones swarmed in on him. He gained altitude to get some space between him and the drones, and then proceeded to knock them out of the air.

He got six before the others latched onto his legs and arms. They were unexpectedly massive, so he couldn't keep himself in the air, and started to fall.

Concentrate, Scott told himself, his eye narrowing. This time, he got all six. Incapacitating strikes, although the last of the six would require some serious repair work.

A hit from behind sent him sprawling. He'd been concentrating a little too hard.

Shiro didn't have enough time to stop his fall, but he did slow down to soften the landing. At least he'll be able to sit down tomorrow. "Thank you, Cy . . ." Another muttered swear, and Shiro leapt forward, landing at Cyclops's side and blasting away the offending drone and its partners.

Scott didn't get right back up. The leathers had blunted most of the impact of the hit, but it had still been enough to stun him. A muttered curse escaped, considerably more profane than Shiro's.

Shiro slowly helped Scott back to his feet. "Are you okay?" he asked, wrapping an arm around Scott to help him keep steady, and using his free hand to disable the gun turrets that wanted to take advantage of the immobile targets.

Scott nodded, forcing himself to straighten. "The obstacles are appearing in the target's wake," he muttered. "Not in its path. And it's not moving randomly. Stay put." He watched carefully as the target moved, ignoring the way the environment started to shift around them again. Five-ten seconds for the guns, then the drones...

One blast sent the target spinning off what only someone with whose mutation gave him a natural grasp on geometry would have recognized as a course. "Now!" Scott said sharply. "Fast!"

Shiro let go of Scott and pushed forward as fast as he could, mentally noting that he'd have to apologize to Scott if he'd inadvertently burned him. While still no Cannonball or Jetstream, Kamikaze was no slowpoke, and caught the target drone in just a couple of seconds. He held on tightly, radiating more heat than usual in an effort to damage the drone just enough that it would stop resisting so much.

The Danger Room abruptly shut down, with one of those pleasant chimes that generally meant 'Well done! You win!' Scott took a deep breath, wincing a little as he straightened again.

"Good job," he said, looking up at Shiro.

"Doctor Grey is going to kill me for not having caught those drones sooner," Shiro said, dropping the target and landing next to Scott. "I apologize for my mistake, which caused you to get hit." He was going to have to learn how to fly with more weight.

"My mistake as well," Scott pointed out. "And we were swamped. Besides, I would have been down for the count a lot sooner if you hadn't fished me out when the floor gave way." He gave Shiro a crooked smile. "We do our best to watch our teammates' backs," he pointed out. "Ideally we manage it all the time. Realistically, sometimes we don't and it's not our fault. Whether it's that you're in dire need of help yourself or you have to make a choice between your teammate and your target... sometimes it gets more complicated. The key is to try and have the best of all worlds and not beat yourself up too badly when it doesn't always work out that way."

"Wakarimashita. I just don't want your wife to beat me up," Shiro admitted.