xp_logs | Zanne and Nathan, Wednesday Afternoon

Nathan gets to introduce Zanne to the Danger Room. Zanne isn't quite sure what she thinks.

He was really not in the mood for playing trainer today, Nathan thought darkly, stalking out of the locker rooms in full leathers, his psimitar leaning on his shoulder. But Scott had asked, and 'I'd rather sit around and obsessively watch the news' hadn't seemed like a good enough excuse.

She had better be there and ready to start, he thought, pausing in front of the Danger Room doors and hitting the control panel.

Zanne leaned against one of the walls in the 'danger room' and picked at her grey leather training gear, feeling oddly uncomfortable. It wasn't just the leathers, (although she had concerns about how well she would be able to move in them,) but the idea of training with someone unsettled her, and she was both excited and dreading it.

Nathan grunted as he saw that Suzanne was indeed waiting for him, and properly garbed in her leathers to boot. "You'll get used to them," he said, seeing her fussing with them. "You'll be thankful for the body armor, too."

Joy. Zanne pushed off the wall and nodded to him in greeting. "I'm sure. I've been hearing all kinds of lurid stories."

"From the young and cruel, I expect," Nathan said. "They like to complain about the various horrors they're put through in the course of training. I would have given my left arm for a tool like this when I was their age. Computer," he said, looking up at the control booth, "Cable scenario forty-six." The holographic systems kicked in, producing a remarkably lifelike version of the wooded parts of the grounds.

"Young, I suppose. I am sure that I'll find out about the cruel. They do seem very enthusiastic about saddling me with some sort of juvenile nickname. Every one I have met has mentioned it." Zanne's breath caught a the room whirred to life, and she was surrounded by copse of trees. This hadn't been mentioned on the tour. "Are they real?" she asked, reaching out to touch one.

"Holographic," Nathan said. "A very sophisticated system - it helps with a closer approximation of reality, when we do group scenarios." There was a rustling in the trees, and he smiled slightly, waiting to see if Suzanne picked up on it, and what she did.

"Group scenarios. Right." Zanne was quite thoroughly distracted by the interplay of light over the tree leaves. She could even see blue sky and clouds through them. "This certainly is some hologram."

A drone wearing the shape of Nimrod rushed at her out of the trees, moving fast but almost soundlessly; good opponents rarely let you know they were coming, and if there was one thing you could say for the insane Hungarian bastard, it was that he was relatively competent.

Zanne didn't see the approaching figure until he was almost on her. A fist clipped her as she tried to dodge out of its way and she flew several feet back, landing hard on the ground.

"There's this concept called situational awareness," Nathan said, the tip of his psimitar glowing briefly. The Nimrod-drone was flung backwards, giving Zanne a chance to recover. "That," he said, inclining his head in its direction, "is a combat drone."

"Drone. As in robot?" Zanne climbed back to her feet, an embarrassed red flush coloring her face. Her arm ached where it had been hit, and she felt foolish for having been so distracted. The drone circled and started speeding towards them again.

"As in robot. We prefer to avoid destroying them if at all possible," Nathan said, "but feel absolutely free to break it if that's what you need to do to stop it." He couldn't help but appreciate how quickly she'd snapped into assessing the situation. Very different from the younger trainees.

"Good to know." Zanne moved to stand in a small clearing amidst the trees, the drone re-orienting on her and drawing closer. "That's what I'm supposed to do? Stop the robot?" Considering that it had knocked her off her feet with barely a hit...

Zanne waited for the drone to come within striking distance before she flung herself to the left, setting a small, tight freeze around her landing spot, just large enough to capture the robot's arm inside of it. The arm's movement halted, frozen in a single moment in time. Her attacker's momentum carried the rest of his body forward, and with a shriek of twisting metal, its shoulder began to throw sparks as it pulled away from its immobile appendage. Zanne released as it swung around and bounded back towards Nathan. Behind her the drone let out a cry of rage.

"Interesting." And he was starting to understand why Scott had mentioned him and Jean as possible training partners. "Scott said you freeze time." The drone 'recovered', and came hurtling at them. Nathan's psimitar remained leaning against his shoulder, but glowed again briefly - and the drone stopped dead, straining against Nathan's telekinetic grip. "What are your limits?"

"Um." Zanne's eyes widened a bit as she tried to figure out exactly how Nathan was keeping the seemingly very angry robot at bay. "Distance, for one. I have to be in the center of a time freeze, and the bigger it is the harder it is to keep up. Is...is the robot <em>swearing</em> at you?"

"Good programming. The man it's modeled after is a sociopathic son of a bitch with a temper problem." Nathan watched 'Nimrod' struggle, pondering for a moment just what he'd do if it was the real Veres. Not so sure about that after what he helped do to the kids, are you? "What about the number of variables you're freezing? Any affect on the range and strength of your field?" The Nimrod-drone went flying backwards and through a number of holographic trees. The effect was quite realistic.

"The more things I have to try to manage, the harder it is to maintain a freeze," Zanne replied, discomfited by the fact that she'd been fighting a simulation of a real person, and that she'd tied to break it's - his - arm. "I can only do so much at once. I found that out while being shot at once." The bullets had managed to penetrate a good distance into her field before they'd actually stopped, and she'd been lucky to hold onto it that long. "I'm not sure what my absolute limits are, though. I haven't really had to test them."

"If you ever find yourself facing this man, don't hold back," Nathan said curtly, picking up on her discomfort. "If you do, he'll probably kill you." There was no sign of the drone, returning, but there was rustling in the bushes from another direction. Nathan didn't look that way. "We'll run you through some of the multitasking drills, I think. I have a scenario that involves me getting shot at lots."

"If you get 'shot at lots,'" Zanne said, mimicking Nathan's somewhat nonchalant tone, "do you actually get hurt if you're hit?" There was a flash of movement to the right of them. She turned to see the droid lunge at them out of the trees. "Back up!" she yelled at Nathan.

Nathan tilted his head slightly, smiling rather enigmatically - and didn't move. He did, however, create telekinetic armor with a thought. The Danger Room's safety protocols wouldn't let the Nimrod-drone kill him, but bruises were a definite possibility, even with the body armor.

And the impact did knock the breath out of him, the drone bearing him to the ground.

"I told you to move!" Zanne ran after the pair as they slid across the ground, the drone beginning to rain solid blows on Nathan's body with surprisingly little impact. "Why didn't you move?" Slowing down as she approached the outside of the drone's reach, she threw a freeze over the tableau. Gritting her teeth a bit as she concentrated on holding it, she reached down, grabbed Nathan's arms, and started pulling him out from under the other man. "God, you weigh a ton."

#Interesting,# Nathan projected at her merrily, before she'd pulled him free of the frozen zone. #My brain is still working. That could be-# "-problematic, given my brain," he went on aloud once he was able to do so.

"Can you fling him somewhere, please?" Zanne asked, pointing at the drone that had roared to life as she'd stepped outside of her field, breaking it. "And you're not supposed to be able to do that." That was deeply weird. No-one ever remembered being frozen.

"Never frozen a psi before?" Nathan asked, looking at the Nimrod-drone. Considering for a moment, he lashed out with two precisely targeted TK-hits and broke both its 'legs'. It promptly fell over with a surprisingly lifelike howl. He rose, dusting himself off. "It's an interesting wrinkle. If you can't shut off a telekinetic or telepath's brain, you need to make sure you knock them out the conventional way."

"Apparently not," she muttered, grudgingly admiring the way he'd neatly cut the legs out from under the drone. "You're a telekinetic, then?"

"And a telepath. Or did you not notice me talking in your brain? We'll have to work on that. You'll need to be at ease with the telepathic switchboard, in the field."

"No, I got that," she said, eying the drone as it dragged itself across the ground. "That was obvious. The telekinesis was less so. You could have had some sort of forcefield or remote control to stop the robot." Was he going to let it attack their ankles before he turned it off? Or did she really have to break it? "Are there many psis on the team?"

"Computer, end scenario," Nathan said, and the forest shimmered and vanished as the lights came up. The drone stopped crawling towards them, and Nathan eyed it. It rose up off the ground, floating towards the repair alcove. "Yes, actually," he said. "Jean and Haller and I, one of the trainees..."

A distinct twinge of disappointment ran through Zanne as the forest disappeared. "I don't know if I met Haller," she said with a frown. "Australian girl with really curly hair?"

"Monet, yes." Nathan looked around, considering. "Computer, Cable scenario seven," he said, and Muir Island took shape around them. "No nasty surprises in this one," he said. "Just wanting to show you the range of environments we can reproduce. Computer, Cable scenario sixteen." The island shimmered, and was replaced by the Sahara Desert.

As Nathan cycled through the scenarios, Zanne was struck by how realistic they were. The island was scented with sea brine, and she could feel the dry heat of the desert blast against her skin. "These are incredible."

"They help with a sense of realism in training," Nathan said. "When I first started working with the team, we didn't have the holographic systems. There were pluses to that approach, too, but I think I like this better. I would have killed to have had this sort of tool in my former life."

"Military?" Zanne asked. That had been a curious way to phrase things. But then, Nathan seemed a little strange anyway. "Is it better or worse working with simulations of actual people? I'm assuming that there's more than just the one."

Nathan ignored her question; she'd probably read his file soon enough. "Well, they're not perfect duplicates. But we very often see the same opponents repeatedly, so working with these approximations is a good idea." He leaned down to retrieve his psimitar, then straightened. "We do tactical reviews, too - simulations in the Situation Room, mental exercises to go along with the physical."

Zanne nodded and watched Nathan check his pointy spear thing. It was an interesting choice of weapon and struck her as being rather caveman warrior-like. Was that how he saw himself? "Scott had something about the exercises at the interview. How often do we run them?"

"As often as you like. Minimum a couple of times a week - usually one done individually, the other in a group. And it's a psimitar," Nathan said, noting the direction of her attention. "Focuses and amplifies psionic energy. Helps replace the part of my brain I burned out helping stop a tsunami a couple of years ago."

Zanne was starting to experience information overload, and barely refrained from parroting back Nathan's words about the tsunami. "I see," she said instead, taking the safe route, trying to process all of the partial information he'd been throwing out about himself. It was very passive-aggressive of him. "So back to the Danger Room training, is there a schedule I should be checking?"

Moira would so be smacking him for the way he was behaving. Nathan grinned unrepentantly, but told himself to be decent and answer the question properly. "You should get it in your inbox soonish. Expect more individual runs than group runs until Ororo and Scott have satisfied themselves that they have a good grip on how your powers work - they need that, before they can start integrating you into group scenarios. I don't think it'll take too long," he said, more briskly. "You obviously have a good grip on how your powers work, which should speed things along."

What was he being so smug about? Zanne was very confused, but accepting the compliment at face value. "Thank you. I am looking forward to this. It is going to be an interesting change." Some things more so than others, apparently.