Danger Room: Terry/Bobby with Scott supervision

[x-siryn.livejournal.com]

Terry and Bobby have their first training session together. Danger room sessions are never supposed to be easy but the consequences of this one are more extreme than intended. Oh, and they fail too but that's not the problem.



Terry tugged her gloves on and gave herself one last look in the locker room mirror. Grey leathers looked dark next to her pale face; her hair had been scraped back and neatly coiled against her head. This wasn't her first DR session. It wasn't even her first since the upgrades to the graphics system with the new holographic technology. But it was her first in one very important way, a new training buddy.

She took a deep steadying breath and went to meet her partner for this session. While there was never an easy Danger Room session, she had a feeling that this one might be a notch or so above the usual level. It was, after all, a fairly significant step. Her smile was forced in both cheer and confidence. "Hi, baby. Ready?" she asked.

Bobby looked tense, wound up as he eyed the door, then glanced at Terry and smiled. "Ready as I'll ever be," he replied, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He hadn't been this nervous about a run in a while--working with Terry as an equal, keeping her safe without putting himself in danger...it was gonna be a tough line to walk, but he had to start practicing it now. Better in the DR than in the field, on an actual mission, to find out if he could handle it or not.

She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it briefly before keying in the code and letting the room scan her retina to verify identity. Bobby was scanned a moment later and the doors slide open to reveal the clean, bare lines of the Danger Room. Soon it would be filled with whatever new torment had been designed, realistically envisioned by the holographic system. Terry's problem was the opposite of Bobby's. She doubted not his ability, but her own. He was better trained, more experienced, had finer control. She was the liability here. To some extent she had to rely on him to protect her but not so much that it cost them the mission or his own injury. As they crossed to the center of the room, every step seemed to ratchet up her heart rate.

"All right." Scott's voice over the control booth's external mikes was level, almost entirely expressionless. "One of you has done something like this before. One has not. Hence it's a test for both of you."

The walls of the Danger Room started to shift, preparing the underlying structure of whatever the new holographic system was going to feed them in terms of a scenario. Scott continued, still in the same near-monotone.

"It's very simple. Stop the bad guys. Protect the innocent. Don't get killed."

"It's never simple," Bobby muttered under his breath, watching the scene filter in, solidify into a nice, cheery urban warzone. "...Goody." He looked over at Terry and gave her a small, encouraging smile. "Stay close until we know what we're up against."

Terry needed no encouragement to do just that. Fires burned out of control around them and there was in the distance the sound of explosions and gunfire. She turned her head from side to side, taking in the aural landscape, using it to orient herself. Shouts and swearing filtered it, far enough off that she doubted Bobby would hear them. Much closer there was the choked sound of pained screams. It was nightmarish. "He said protect the innocent. Should we be looking for victims?"

Bobby nodded, scanning the immediate area. "You'll find 'em better than I will. I'll keep an eye out for trouble, you see if you can find anyone that needs attention." It was hard to see her in this landscape, to know she could be hurt no matter what he did or didn't do. But that was part of the point of this, wasn't it?

Terry nodded and took a deep breath, trying to sort through the noise and distortion to pinpoint where there were people in need. "This way," she said at length and tugged him off to the left, moving quickly but not hastily. There was a faint hiss then a loud explosion just beside them that made her scream and jump back. Loud enough for anyone to hear was the sound of coughing and someone scrambling over rubble.

"How'd you like that, flatscans!" From the smoke emerged a soot-covered mutant, his hair wreathed in flames. He was laughing, madly, and tossing flame back the way he came to the sound of more explosions. The rain of ash and rock couldn't obscure the screaming that began anew as the mutant attacked.

"Aw hell," Bobby muttered, springing into motion with a brief glare in the direction of the control room--or where he thought the control room was. Yeah, yeah, fire and ice, he got it already. "Terry! I'll handle him, you find the victims and field triage them?" Okay, so it was probably a good thing he wasn't doing much leading at the moment--orders clearly weren't Bobby's strong suit. Not authoritative ones, anyway.

Terry hesitated, not wanting to leave Bobby, then nodded and ran for the rubble. She slipped and nearly fell on some loose stones and looked up to see the 'victims' coming over the rise, big ugly guns that Terry didn't recognize in hand and bloodied faces with expressions that promised death. "Mutant scum!" They targeted the pyrokinetic and for a sick, sudden heartbeat, Terry didn't know who the bad guy was. Help the innocent. Right. Terry drew in breath and screamed, knocking the men off their feet as gunfire sprayed the air over her head.

Bobby was facing down the pyro, trying not to think about John, icy swirls of mist surrounding his hands. "Don't do anyth--" At the sound of Terry's scream, Bobby turned, already half-running toward her to see what the problem was. "Terry!"

He was nearly at her side when he felt more than saw the blast of fire coming toward them both. Without thinking, he grabbed Terry, shielding her body with his as he turned his back on the mutant, eyes closed as he made his core temperature plummet, hoping the resulting chill in the air combined with him taking the direct hit of flame would be enough to keep Terry safe.

Terry sucked in air that went from hellsmouth hot to bone-achingly chill in a moment. All around her the air was choked with frost and fire, the ground beneath her hands groaned in protest and froze with an ear-splitting crack. She closed her eyes, concentrated on breathing and began to choke as the fire outside the cold ate oxygen. "Bobby," she gasped, aching with cold.

Bobby stepped back from her and turned back to face the mutant, barking over his shoulder, "Stay low!" He splayed his hands in front of him, icing the guy's hands to his elbows. That should distract him for a minute or two, anyway.

...And speaking of distractions, Bobby's eyes suddenly registered his hands held out in front of him. They were...were... "What the fuck??"

Terry looked up, her breath harsh and gasping. It caught in her throat with a strangled sound and her voice sounded tiny when she forced the word out, "Iceman?" Not Bobby. Ice. From the heels of his boots on the frost cracked ground to his usually soft brown hair. He was covered in it and it moved with the suppleness of skin, like Paige in a husk. It was impossible. She gaped at him and shoved herself to her feet. She started to take the step that would close the distance between them when a shift of rock on rock caught her attention.

The scream caught the leaping feral full in the chest and blew it back out of sight. "Cyclops, enough! Shut it down!" Terry shouted, not regulating her voice at all.

From the control room, there was no response.

Bobby tore his eyes from his hands, wincing at the scream, then Terry's voice ringing out. "Shit, this is..." Not the time to process. The scenario was still running. "I'm okay. Keep going," he told Terry, voice uneven.

"You could be... you're covered in ice!" Was she the only sane person here? They had to stop. Get Bobby to Amelia or Moira. This wasn't normal!

Bobby was pretty sure he was more than just covered in ice, and he had no idea how he was supposed to...go back to normal, but hopefully it wouldn't be difficult to figure out when the time came. "I feel fine. Kinda weird...but fine." Weird was to be expected, when you had turned, to the best of your knowledge, to ice.

Terry's response was forestalled by a sudden tremor in the ground. The simulation was still running and that meant they were still in the middle of a war zone. Sucking in a breath, she gave Bobby a panicked look, "I...you're the senior team. What do we do?"

"Um." Okay, Bobby really really hated being in charge, but he had to think, and fast. "Split up. Look for survivors. Stop any bad guys you run into. And stay in radio contact, okay? If you get anything you can't handle, let me know and I'll be right there." He didn't like this scenario, but he didn't like any of the other scenarios, either.

Splitting up was the sensible thing to do but more than anything Terry wanted right now to just stay near Bobby, until this whole awful thing was over and they could go find out what he'd done. But she nodded anyway and tried to hide the fear in her eyes. She strained for a moment to hear above the cacophony then pointed a shaking hand toward a distant building. "I think there's people in there." She bit her lip against a whimpered, 'Be careful?' and looked away, "I'll go the other way."

"You too," Bobby whispered, biting back an endearment. This was hard enough as it was. Before he could talk himself out of it, he jogged away, toward the building Terry'd indicated, aching to look back, make sure she was okay. At least they had the radios.

"See anything?" he asked through the open line, his eyesight somehow sharper in his new physical state, but in a disorienting way.

See? No. She'd rounded the first corner into an obscuring haze. Smoke and mist mingled around her; she resisted the urge to cough. "Nothing. You?" Sound turned strange in this kind of setting and the debris under her feet sounded unnaturally loud while the chaos outside seemed muffled. Unconsciously, she moved more slowly, steps uncertain and jumped at every unexpected movement. There was someone screaming nearby and it was getting louder. Terry dropped into a defensive stance, squinted through the haze and took a deep breath...and coughed, the smokey air seizing her lungs until she was doubled over, unable to breathe, unable to stop.

"Not yet," Bobby replied, squinting through the haze and the darkness. That was better. "Something moving to my left, checking it out--hey, are you okay?" he asked, hesitating and turning to look back the way he'd come as she started coughing over the radio.

Through the shifting mists, a figure appeared, hurtling headlong toward her, aflame from head to toe. Terry had a half second to make a decision and threw herself aside, hoping that wasn't someone in trouble. She scrambled up a broken wall and out of the haze, gulping fresh air. "I'm okay," she coughed out finally. "Just caught a bit of smoke." And where there was smoke there were people on fire. God in heaven. "There's a man on fire. I don't...I don't know if that's bad."

"Is he conscious?" Bobby coached, turning back around and heading for the place where he'd spotted movement. Fuck, he should be with her, what if she got hurt, what if something happened that she couldn't handle and he was too far away to do anything?

"He was running?" She didn't really intend for it to be a question but she couldn't help the slight upward intonation. Carefully she took a deep breath and climbed down from her rocky perch, trying to follow the sound of the man's screams. "I think he's hurt but...he didn't stop at all. I think..." she stopped as the ground shook. "I don't know what to do!" This wasn't like any DR run she'd ever been in. She was blind, could hardly breathe, separated from her partner and had no clear objective. She moved more quickly and soon discovered the burning man lying face down in the street. Flames still licked over his body but he didn't seem to be moving at all.

"Shit. Stay there, I'm coming back," Bobby told her. Screw this. They'd do better as a team. Splitting up had been a bad idea, he was having trouble concentrating on his own area with Terry so obviously upset, not to mention this new manifestation freaking him out in the back of his mind the whole time.

Which was probably why his guard was down when he was hit from the side by someone and thrown to the ground with a painful crack that made him cry out.

"Bobby!" Terry turned away from the man on the ground, started to run for where she'd left him behind. The rush of heat behind her was barely warning and not nearly enough. She turned back to face an inferno and realized they'd been quite neatly duped. She screamed, slamming the pyro back. She ran for Bobby, not caring now about their mission, just not wanting to be alone.

Bobby groaned, trying to roll over with who or whatever it was on his back. "Terry?" he said over the comms, voice strained. "Careful, I think it's a trap..." He surged up, pain shooting through his abdomen, but he managed to throw off his attacker, at least.

Terry stumbled to a stop when a lanky form dropped down in front of her, hands like knives flexing. She backed up, looked for a way around and felt familiar heat at her back. To the right, a form rumbled up from the ground, dirt and rocks grinding into the form of a small woman. So...definitely a trap. "He set us up to fail," Terry whispered though the comms would pick it up.

"Terry?" There was a thread of panic in Bobby's voice, in response to her whispered realization. "Terry, talk to me...what's going on?" He sat up, looking around for who or what had hit him, but he seemed to have fled. He was more worried about Terry, anyway.

He pushed to his feet, limping in the direction of the point he'd last seen her, clutching his stomach.

Flame and rock shot up in great molten gouts as Terry's scream reverberated through the air. Abruptly the war-torn city faded, the pleasant robotic voice that Hank had included in his upgrade informing them that the simulation was over. The room was cold and stark again, already featureless. Terry lay on the cold metal for a moment, then carefully sat up, cursing and wincing. "I'm sorry, Bobby. I messed up."

"It's okay," Bobby said quietly, holding out an icy hand covered in a maze of hairline cracks. "Like you said. We were set up." He glared up at the control room.

Terry reached out, not to take his hand but to touch it lightly. She stood on her own, movements stiff and slow. She would be a giant bruise tomorrow. "You're not just covered, are you?" she said softly, her voice breaking. "It's more than that."

Bobby held up his hand, examining the white-blue ice. "No, I'm not just covered," he confirmed quietly.

She wrapped her arms around herself. "Can you change back?" As soon as she asked it, she wished she could take it back. What would she do if he said no?

"I don't know," he whispered. He hadn't tried yet, and was kind of afraid to, for that matter. "We'll just go see Amelia, sweetie. Don't worry. I'm sure I'll be fine." He managed to sound more confident than he felt.

"Aye. Sure it will be." She had no more confidence than he and said no more as they left the Danger Room.