xp_logs | Angelo and Scott, Danger Room (Reply)

Angelo reports to the Danger Room for his first scenario. He's a bit surprised to find Scott preparing to run the scenario with him. It goes rather well.

This was the first time he'd been allowed to use the Danger Room, and Angelo was quite excited about it, even ignoring the persistent tiredness. It was only when he went down to change into his leathers and found Scott doing the same thing that he paused, blinking.

"...did the call go out for the team an' I missed it?"

Scott smiled a bit wryly as he pulled on his boots. "Well, if the call had gone out for the team, I wouldn't be suiting up, would I? I thought I would maybe-" He paused, then went on in a firmer voice as he got up off the bench and went over to get his jacket. "I'm going to join you on this scenario today."

"... okay", came the confused but accepting answer. "Do I get to know what scenario it is before we go in?"

"The aptly named 'Bunker rescue'," Scott said. "I've been having fun with the new holographic systems. We get into the bunker, find where one of our teammates is being held, and get them back out again."

"Sounds... simple enough", Angelo acknowledged warily, knowing it almost certainly wouldn't be.

"Don't look so uneasy," Scott said, and finished donning his leathers. He waited for Angelo to do the same, and then inclined his head in the direction of the door. "I hope you don't mind that I'm in on this," he said as they headed towards the Danger Room. "I'm not really doing it to keep an eye on you, I just..." He smiled a bit oddly. "I thought it was maybe time I got back into training myself. Rather than just sitting up there in the control booth playing God."

"Nah, I don't mind", Angelo assured him. "Might even be better to have my first run not be on my own."

"Oh good." Because he'd wanted, very badly, to have his first DR run with someone who wasn't already an X-Man. It wasn't that he didn't trust them not to look sideways at him... okay, maybe that's precisely what it is.

"So", he said a little nervously as he followed Scott into the room, "how do these things usually start?"

"Like that." Scott stopped, hearing the familiar chime that announced the beginning of the scenario. The room shimmered around them, the hallway of a dark, low-ceiling bunker taking shape. Scott shook his head slightly. "Pretty impressive," he murmured under his breath, then reached out and nudged Angelo around the corner to where they could stop for a moment out of sight.

Angelo blinked, turning away from peering warily down the hallway, but went willingly enough. "Yeah?"

It was a hologram. Just a hologram, Scott told himself. He knew that, so the concrete and the damp smell should not be having any effect on him. Except that he could hear water dripping somewhere, and maybe he shouldn't have programmed with that much attention to detail. He took a deep breath, then let it out.

"Room to room search," he said. Even his voice sounded hollow. "We need to check and clear each room."

Angelo glanced at him sideways, not much liking either that note in his voice or his sudden pallor, but nodded. "An' the scenario puts in enemies?"

"Right. Remember all the self-defense work you've done," Scott said, and stepped back out into the hall, moving swiftly and silent down to the first door. He leaned an ear against it, listening, then tried the doorknob.

Angelo was right behind him, half-turned away to keep an eye on the corridor.

Nothing in the room. Scott straightened, leaving the door open. "In case we need somewhere to duck into," he murmured to Angelo, keeping his voice low, and started down to the next door. It was unlocked as well, but when he opened it, he startled a man - or rather, a drone wearing the holographic shape of a man, just inside the door.

Angelo moved forward, shoulder to shoulder with Scott, eyeing the drone. "So are you one of the good guys, or not?" he asked wryly.

Scott was already moving, all but leaping on the 'man' and knocking him to the floor with a few well-placed blows. The noise was minimal, which was the idea. And for all the perfection of the hologram, it was still like hitting a combat drone. "Shh," he murmured to Angelo, with a tiny, crooked smile. "Talking bad."

"Talkin' bad when they don't already know you're there", Angelo muttered back, returning to the doorway to check outside.

"Wastes time." Scott moved past him and out into the hall. He paused. "Next door's for you," he murmured, keeping his voice low. "Remember, if we wake up the whole place we may find ourselves in the middle of a melee."

Angelo just nodded and crept forward to the next door, opening it to find the room in question empty. He left the door open, just as Scott had done with the last two.

Scott was checking the door on the other side of the hall, and as he did, a 'man' barreled out and into him, knocking him to the floor. Face-down, too, damn it.

Angelo snapped round, half-startled, but already moving to Scott's aid, reaching to haul the 'man' off him. The skin of one hand's fingers stretched out to grab the drone's shoulder and drag it back.

Scott scrambled back to his feet, incapacitating the drone while Angelo still had a good grip on it. Too much noise, though, and Scott muttered an amused curse under his breath as an alarm started going in the background.

"Four more doors," he said to Angelo. "You take the two on the right, I'll take the two on the left. Shut these ones if there's anyone in there." It was amazing how much of an obstacle a door could be for a minute or two, if you couldn't knock or blast it down.

Angelo nodded, starting towards the first of the doors on the right. "S'pose there's no way to know where the 'hostages' are."

"Less talking, Sancho," Scott said, but without the edge of exasperation that might have been here had he been talking to someone who'd been in the Danger Room before. He moved faster than Angelo, quickly checking the two on the left. The first was empty, and the second - a holographic Sam, unconscious and looking a little the worse for wear, was tied to a chair inside, his two guards just starting to react to the alarm.

Angelo's two rooms had both been empty, and he quickly made his way to the second room when Scott failed to reappear, just in time to see him engage one of the guards.

That left the other for him.

There was an alarm going off, so there was no point in keeping quiet. Scott blasted the guard facing him - in the chest, and just hard enough to knock the wind out of him - just as the man raised a weapon. Leaving the other for Angelo, he went past the fallen guard to Sam's chair.

Angelo, not having Scott's advantages, had gone straight to hand-to-hand - with powers. He was testing out the use Nathan and Shinobi had once suggested for his powers, to cut off the drone's air supply long enough to knock it 'unconscious'.

The drone was about the right weight, Scott thought, getting 'Sam' over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. He turned just in time to see the Danger Room apparently decide that yes, Angelo had sufficiently choked his opponent. The drone collapsed to the floor, and Scott gave Angelo a tight smile.

"Now we get out of here. I'll lead us out - I can't use my optic blasts easily if you're in front of me."

Angelo let go of the fallen drone, flexing his skin absently before he retracted it. "Makes sense", he said with a nod, not eager to be called on talking too much again.

Scott went for the door without another word. They actually got almost back down to the intersection in the corridors - where there was, presumably, an exit from the bunker - when they started taking fire. Very glad I left these doors open, he thought, and immediately took cover in one of the empty rooms, trusting Angelo to follow him in.

Follow? Angelo had dived for cover the moment the firing started, only by luck and proximity choosing the same door Scott was going for. Just avoiding a collision, he turned to stand to one side of the door, waiting.

Scott stuck his head out the door very briefly, and pulled back immediately as the gunfire - blanks, of course, but still -
intensified. "This is going to be awkward," he said, shifting the Sam-drone on his shoulders. "Suggestions? They're firing from back where we started."

Angelo glanced around the room automatically, looking for other doors. "If there's another way out, we take it, try an' get round them. If not... keep low, hope they fire without really lookin' an' shoot over us."

"Here," Scott said, "take Sam." He handed over the drone, waiting for Angelo to get the weight properly settled. "The only exit is the way we came. So we have to get back there." He tapped the side of his head. "I don't need to be right beside them to take them out, remember." He leaned back out during a brief break in the gunfire and blasted - not at the empty air of the corridor, but at the wall of the corridor itself, at just the right angle. The blast smashed through the wall, blunted by the obstacle, but still enough to take out the two 'people' shooting from just around that corner.

"Nice", Angelo said with a crooked grin. "I was just thinkin' about what I'd have done... guess that's one more thing to learn."

"Well," Scott said, "what this is supposed to teach you is how to rely on what your teammates can do, too. So we can call this lesson one." He fell silent, listening. No more gunfire. No shouting, or other sounds that might indicate approaching pursuit. "I think we have a window. Shall we?"