Danger Room, Rogue and Jackpot

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

Rogue shows the Danger Room to one of the newest trainees.



"And this," Marie said with a flourish, gloved hand gesturing to the door. "Is the famed Danger Room, where your greatest dreams and nightmares can come true." As the door swooshed open, Rogue grinned over at Jennie. This was her favorite part about new trainees - showing them around and seeing their faces and they finally saw the "secret" parts of the school. "No worries though, we won't be startin' ya off with anything too scary. Just a kinda protect the citizen thing to give you an introduction to what the room can do. Feel free to ask any and all questions as we go through this, Ah know this is new and a lot to take in."

"It's a big empty room," Jennie said, nodding. "Truly I am filled with awe. And foreboding. Yes." She stretched to the left and then to the right. Her new uniform was surprisingly flexible, for all that it was gray leather. "Please take note that was first run jitters and not any true sarcasm. I like my head attached to my neck."

Walking over to the console, Marie tapped in a series of codes and the room shifted around them. A general cityscape, with holographically projected buildings, trees and even traffic. A series of bots, with semi-humanoid features projected onto them took up various positions around the room. "Awe and foreboding are a good place to start," Marie said. "Just remember that Ah won't be helping you, but Ah will shut things down if they go to far and you can call out for the program to stop if it gets to be overwhelming. Your job is to take down the enemy without any casualties. Any questions?"

"Wow. Hi." Jennie said, taking a step back as the room shimmered to life. She'd heard stories, but the reality was something different. This was it really, she really was doing this, wasn't she? "Um, this stuff's like, non-lethal, right?"

"Of course," Marie said, her grin growing wider. "We only really turn off that setting for Wolverine, Juggernaut and myself." Nodding at Jennie, Marie than went over to lean against one of the building walls, watching Jennie as a red bot entered the scene. It was obviously one of the targets, sharp appendages clacking against each other as it made a beeline for one of other 'bots.

Jennie squinted, trying to read the bot. In her right hand, a disk of red light formed. Quick as an eyeblink, she sent towards the swiftly advancing 'bot. There was an almost comical shower of sparks at the bot slowed and then tripped over it's own feet.

The bot clacked angrily as it righted itself and was quickly joined by a couple others. The three 'bots then started off in opposite directions, with plenty of innocent drones in the path of each. Marie just grinned, relaxing as she watched the situation unfold.
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The younger girl frowned in concentration, two hands glowing red, then switching and glowing red and white. A red disk hit a bot in the back, screws in the "hands" coming lose and the sharp blades dropping off. The other white disk allowing a pedestrial to avoid certain decapitary fate. A third red disk spahsed against the third red bot with seemingly no noticeable effect. But it took two steps forward and then fell over with a loud CLANG!

As the third 'bot fell over, though, it shot something at a nearby building, the wall exploding inwards with chunks of debris showering down towards a group of bystander drones. One got knocked in the head and fell over, while the rest began circling around aimlessly in a bit of a panic.

"Shit shit shit," Jennie hissed. More flashes of white, as most of the bystander bots were able to dodge the falling debris, but there were too many and Jennie was just not quick enough. She swiped at her sweaty forehead and tried to circumnavigate as best she could. Unfortunately the unharmed killer bot chose to re-appear and even though Jennie flung a red disk at it. It decapitated its bystander before it blew up.

"Ouch," Marie drawled with a wince as she watched the decapitated bot's head bounce a few times on the ground. "Remember, this is your first run...it's not gonna be perfect. Just do the best you can and we'll go over it later." While Marie was talking, the headless 'bot began zooming around with no distinguishable pattern.

"Perfect, we are not trying for perfect here. No explodey would be nice," Jennie muttered to herself. One flash of red and the headless bot fell over with another loud clang. It's limbs twitched like it was still trying to run on the ground. "I'm not going to get in trouble for breaking these things, right?"

"If we get in trouble for things like that, Ah'm never gettin' out of trouble," Marie said with a wink as she moved to stand closer to Jennie. "Ah think one day, Ah killed about forty of them. It was fun. Had enough of a taste or you ready to keep going?"

Jennie winced when her other headless bot smashed into a wall. "I think we're good here. I have been thoroughly schooled."

"You didn't do so bad," Marie counseled the younger girl. "Seriously, that was a pretty good run, especially for a first time. But hopefully this might help you start to realize that what we do isn't easy. You have to think through how one action might affect another and also realize that part of the reason we train as a team is that it is so hard to take care of all the angles by yourself."

"I wasn't expecting to come in here and win at everything right away anyway, part of my powers is accepting that not everything's going to come out like I expect." Jennie said with a wry twist to her mouth. She flexed her ungloved hands for a moment, thinking back to a night the previous fall. "You have been warned about my power level, right? I gotta balance otherwise ...it gets bad."

"Don't think Ah could've had a better warning," Marie said with a false sense of cheerfulness. "Seeing what happened when your power gets strained means that all of us will be watching to make sure you don't push it like that in the field."

"Oh, that's right. You were there." Jennie dropped her arms and sighed. "Sorry, haven't quite gotten around to reading that file yet." One of the first things Jennie had done when she'd been given access to the team files were to look up everyone one concerning her. And she had decided to save all of those for last. Possibly she would need to be inebriated to get through them as well. "It's a thing of joy to know that my stupider antics have been recorded so future generations of this team can watch in horror."

Marie arched an eyebrow at the brunette. "You should see some of mine. Honestly? You'll have more that will be recorded for posterity. It's just part of the deal of doing what we do. Oh, and just read about Nathan and the coatrack whenever you're feeling extra down. Ah know that tends to make me feel better."

"I saw that! I wanted to print it out and hang it on my bulletin board to read whenever I'm feeling down. And Kyle really has been kidnapped six times. Someone really needs to speak with him about that. It's become something of a fetish for him." Jennie grinned. "I also saw the bit with quicksand. It makes me wonder if I could do something like that."

"Only one way to find out. Ah tend to be a pretty good test dummy for things like that." Typing in another code, the scene around the girls dissipated and the injured bots either scuttled off or were collected by other drones. "As for kidnapping thing, yeah, Ah think we've had enough of that all around. It's getting to be the biggest club and Ah for one prefer my clubs exclusive." A wink took the edge of Marie's words.

"I now belong to the 'have swapped DNA with your peers, and not in the fun way' club." Jennie said with a shrug. "Slightly disturbing that there is such a club and it's existence has long pre-dated my initiation, but there you go." Jennie cracked her knuckles then her neck again. "So, how'd I do?"

"Ah don't want to hear about the fun way. Or if there is a club for that too," Marie said, her face twisting in mock horror. "You did pretty good," she continued, gesturing for the younger girl to head to the locker room. "Just need to think about the chain of events...not that we don't have a nasty habit of property damage wherever we go, but you want to try your best to minimize the destruction you cause. Sometimes you could end up doing worse things than the person you're trying to take out, if you don't think things through first."

A briefest flash of memory, wetness on her fingers and an echoing scream. "Yeah," Jennie said, with a smile so cheerful she surprised herself. "I think I'm aware of that fact."

Oblivious to what was under the surface, Marie smiled back. "You'll get there. Just takes practice...and most of the practice is fun, so that helps. Now hit the showers and then we can go review...meaning you tell me what you would do differently looking back on things."

"Okay!" Jennie said, and then paused at the doorway. "The thing about the cameras in the showers, that's a myth, right?"