Danger Room: Terry/Scott

[x-siryn.livejournal.com]

With Scott back home, Terry gets to do her first Danger Room session. It goes...colorfully.



She could hear her heart pounding. That wasn't unusual. But at the moment it was so loud she was pretty sure that everyone else could here it too. Terry swallowed hard and resisted the urge to tug on the form-fitting grey leathers. Clarice had worked in piping in kelly green and gold. Clarice had already done this. Terry could do this too. No one died during their first Danger Room session.

But maybe people failed out. Maybe they looked at the first session as the final test. The one that they weren't telling you that you had and this was your one chance to prove yourself or they'd say 'thanks but no, you're not the right kind'. Maybe she was going to walk in there and find out she wasn't going to be able to do this.

She was certain they could hear her heartbeat. She pitched her voice above it, grateful that this at least she could control. "Um. Ready when you are." Her tone was even, beautifully modulated. She was fairly certain she was going to be sick.

The doors slid aside, as if that was an answer, and Scott stepped in. He was in leathers, but looked relaxed, as if he were out for an afternoon stroll. "I'm going to watch from down here," he said. "We'll have lots of tape from the cameras to give us the view from above." And he thought that maybe it would be more helpful to her if he was down there. Give the appearance that this was less a test and more the relaxed introduction to the Danger Room it was supposed to be.

The look Terry cast at him was almost embarrassingly grateful. "So, what is it that I'm doing?" She looked around the big empty cold room. Like Jamie and Clarice before her, she had been given only a vague idea of what to expect and a slightly better one of what not to. Namely, something not at all like the other two's experiences. Swallowing hard, she risked a quick glance up toward where she knew the control room was, wondering if Bobby had gotten her message.

"Think of it as a game," he said easily, not missing the look up at the control booth. "Just something simple, to introduce you to what this place can do." He touched the control panel beside the door, and motors whirred in the walls as the Danger Room started to shift. "A maze."

Terry didn't squeak when the floor next to her split and rose up. That would have been undignified. "So, I just have to get through?" That sounded easy. Much too easy considering what the others had gone through on their first run.

"That's all," Scott said, just as reassuringly. "From point A to point B - computer, show Soundwave point B." A patch on the far wall, high enough above the maze to be easily visible, lit up. "I can even promise that the maze itself won't change while you're in it, which is a promise I don't often make." He gave her a crooked smile.

Terry bit her lip and nodded. "Okay then. So...should I just start or is there a...time limit or something." Her nerves were slowly working their way over to adrenaline and she was bouncing on her toes at this point, trying to work out the best way through. Run and hope she made the right decisions? Try to predict the pattern?

"No time limit. We're just seeing how you do today," Scott said. "Getting a look at your reactions under stress..." He smiled at her again. "It's not as sadistic as it sounds, really."

The look that Terry gave him had nothing to do with his fearsome reputation as a writer of extremely sadistic training scenarios and everything to do with the fact that she'd heard that same tone a million times over the years, usually right before agreeing to a 'very simple' request. "Aye. Sure." She took a breath and squared her shoulders. "Right then. Here goes." She gave him another skeptical look and started into the maze at a jog.

Scott leaned back against the wall. "Computer, begin scenario," he ordered out loud, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he watched Terry vanish into the maze. "Always keep your eye on the target," he called.

Easier said than done. The walls were a good two feet taller than her five foot four inches and keeping an eye on the target only worked at certain angles and even then it took a little bit of jumping. There was a strange buzzing sound but Terry didn't know if that was just the room or something else. It was getting louder though.

The gun turrets weren't the only things that could come out of those little alcoves high on the Danger Room's walls. Although Scott supposed what was emerging now were guns, too - just of a different sort. With much more interesting ammunition.

Terry ducked the first dull toned...thing as it buzzed her head but took the second square in the shoulder. It didn't hurt--much--but she shrieked in alarm when it exploded and bright green paint spattered all over her. The next one dove for her face and she screamed again, better focused this time. There was a spray of blue paint in midair as her sonic waves hit it. Oh this was so not funny.

"They break easily!" Scott called out innocently. "Dodge, don't scream, Theresa..." She was so going to kill him. She would probably enlist Jamie's help for some form of creative pranking, and he'd have green hair for the next six months or something suitable in penance for being this evil.

Dodge? Was he joking? There were swarms of them! Terry wiped blue paint off her face and jumped forward just in time to get out of the way of two more--oh Mother of God, they were birds. She was being attacked by paint-filled birds! They spattered themselves against the wall, red and yellow starbursts marking their passage. As if that wasn't bad enough she was stuck in a dead end now.

"There's a distraction," Scott added. "Focus on the maze, not on them."

"Sure and that's easy enough for you to say!" Terry retorted and backtracked her steps, yelping when another bird took a suicide run at her ear. "Oh, gross!" Left, right, right...dead end. Damn it.

Scott laughed softly. "You don't think I've run worse?" he called out. "I'm being easy on you here, Terry..."

Terry didn't answer him being too busy throwing herself to side to avoid another encounter with color. Left, straight, left, right. She probably should have dodged the trio of attack paintbirds diving at her head but knocking them out of the air with a short scream was more satisfying. Left and left again. Where was the target?

Scott reached out and tapped the control panel again, so that the rate of fire for the paint-filled clay pigeons slowed, just a little. Not enough to be noticed, but enough to give her a bit of a break. She needed to feel as if she was making progress. The point of this first exercise was not to depress her.

Right. Right. Left. She was starting to figure out the pattern here and recognized the peculiar buzzing sound the birds made thought they still got past her defenses every now and again--she looked like Karolina there was so much paint on her greys. She gave a joyful yelp as she emerged from the last turn and saw the target in front of her. She slapped it hard with both hands, leaving purple and green smears behind.

Scott smiled, hearing the familiar 'scenario concluded' chime. He tapped the control panel again, and the maze receded back into the floor and walls, leaving him gazing at Terry from across the room. "Nicely done," he complimented her, his lips twitching suspiciously at just how paint-covered she was. "I think.... umm.... Clarice would approve. She thought the trainee leathers needed more color."

Terry was staring at her hands in horror then slowly, gingerly reached up to touch her sodden violet bun. "Is this going to wash out? Tell me this is going to wash out." Her hair!

"Of course! Would I drench you in paint and make it not water soluble? It'll even wipe off the leathers with no problem." Scott grinned. "Trust me, I've done this before."

She crossed the room slowly, trying not to tread in any of the puddles of paint still lingering from the birds. She could almost see her path through the maze just by looking at the paint spatter. "You're laughing at me," she accused.

"Yes. Yes, I am." He tilted his head sideways, regarding her with that same grin. "Once you're all cleaned up, I want a brief report - I know I've shown you the template for the training reports - as to what you think this was meant to accomplish. Beyond entertaining me."

"Entertaining everyone else when they watch the playback," Terry suggested as she stopped in front of him. She looked down at her hands again, then back up at him, an impish gleam in her blue eyes. "Hey, Scott?"

"Yeeees?" He didn't move. Fair was fair.

For a glomp from a stand still it was still pretty effective, effectively smearing his pristine black leathers with a riot of color. Terry giggled at him as she rubbed her hand over his face, knowing he'd let her do this. "Welcome home."