Saturday Morning FUBAR

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

A fairly straightforward Danger Room scenario develops some unfortunate complications for Scott, Lil, Monet and Logan.


"So," Scott said as they took up their positions in the Danger Room, "this one's fairly straightforward." He took a deep breath, shrugging his shoulders to adjust his leathers. It was the truth; the scenario was straightforward, but the level of difficulty was high. The run was mostly for Lil and Monet's benefit, since both of them needed to get more comfortable with the brick role. He'd thrown Logan in mostly to see how that affected the dynamic with Lil; Logan himself didn't really need the practice with something like this, but Scott wanted to how Lil did working with with whom she was actually comfortable. Anything to distract her from thinking I'm going to send her home if she puts a foot out of line...

The holographic setting around them was a devastated post-Apocalypse New York; he'd chosen it for the bad footing and unstable buildings. It wasn't quite an eggshell drill, but the principle was the same. "We need to get to the end of the street," he went on. "I programmed lots of hostiles, but there will be innocent bystanders in the mix, too. So try not to squash any civilians."

"Do my best," Lil promised with a tight smile. Her eyes shifted from the scene to the shorter frame next to her. Logan. It had been a long time since she'd been able to run an exercise like this with him and the blonde was nearly giddy with anxious excitement. Cracking her neck and then her knuckles, the Amazon's gaze shifted once more to Monet. "You ready to show the boys how we do this, Sweetie?"

"Fuck yeah," Monet said, bouncing lightly from foot to foot and staring out at the room. "Can we start now?" She grinned at Logan and Scott.

Logan settled back on his haunches to sniff the air. "Monet leads, Diamond Lil backs her up, I'll flank, and Cyclops'll be in the pocket and coordinating?" he offered as he studied the scene. "Should be a bunny if we keep it tight." he said.

"Because I make a habit of programming 'bunny runs'," Scott murmured, not quite under his breath. "Especially for the resilient among us."

"Hip hop," came the blonde woman's remark with another dangerous grin as she moved to stand behind Monet. "We gonna get carrots if we're good? I prefer mine one or better in a white gold setting," Lil said wagging her ring finger at the men. "No chips."

"I hate carrots," Monet muttered. "We good to get this started already?" Unlike Lil, she found too much talking before the training run distracting and preferred to just get moving. She stepped forward into the Room, watching it like a hawk, waiting for whatever it was that would be about to hit them and trusting the others to fall into place behind her.

"Remember," Scott said. "Just to the end of the street. Computer, begin program." No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the drones started to emerge, taking up their positions. The rest of the scenario was still frozen, and Scott took the moment to find himself some partial cover to snipe from; it was a bit of a cheat, but the scenario wasn't really for him.

And there were a lot of drones. Most of whom were armed with the closest approximations of mutant powers that the Danger Room could produce - 'super-strong' drones, built to hold up against the physically enhanced as much as possible, drones capable of producing at least enough energy discharge to tag you, even a few who were conventionally armed but whose computer-generated 'score' for reflexes and marksmanship were in the enhanced category. And of course, there were the non-enhanced 'civilian' drones, nicely in the middle of things.

The warning chime rang out, and the scenario started.

The first thing Logan did was pop his claws on both hands. It was accompanied by the usual hot pain but, as usual, Logan ignored it. He took off like a shot, his footwork sure and steady even among the broken terrain. The first drone that popped up was a marksman drone. It lifted its weapon and drilled Logan across the chest with a series of tightly-grouped shots. It didn't save the 'bot, though, as Logan's claws passed through its weapon like it was made out of Swiss cheese. Another punch made sure the drone went down and out, safely "unconscious".

Even as Scott picked off hostiles from a distance, he was still paying close attention to what the others were doing, and the restraint Logan was demonstrating did definitely register on him. Good sign. The computer chose that moment to add a second wave of attackers - reinforcements, arriving in response to the 'distress call' he'd programmed into the scenario. Several of them made a beeline for Lil, including two of the biggest brick-drones available.

Diamond Lil was in full brick mode, swinging at anything in her way. A flying kick into the closest bot's head sent the drone tumbling back into another and before they hit the ground, she was already focused on a third. One of the big boys. She wasn't surprised when it charged, coming at her with surprising speed. Lil took the first hit square across her jaw and stumbled but quickly regained her footing before returning the favor. A hard cross was followed by a swift kick to the torso and the blonde woman smiled as it crumpled then couldn't resist a stomp to the chest to make sure it stayed down.

Scott found himself with considerably less opportunity to observe his teammates as some of the reinforcements figured out that it would be a good idea to get rid of the sniper. As always, things got a little hairier for him when he had to go hand to hand. He knocked one drone down with a glancing optic blast to the shoulder, then ducked beneath a powerful swing from one of the bricks who'd decided to pay attention to him instead of to Lil. Time to find some higher ground. As he ran up the pile of rubble to his left, managing to keep his balance on the chancy footing, he caught a glimpse of aerial drones masquerading as fliers. Heading for Monet, not for him.

Monet had already taken up a vantage point in mid air. She ducked one drone only to be hit by a second. And third. Spiraling out of control across the room, pursued by all three, she managed to smash the little flight jet things on one, sending it crashing to the ground. She ducked one of the remaining two and grabbed the other, hurling bother herself and it at the wall. There were sparks.

Sparks and a lot more, suddenly. Several meters away, at a spot you could have connected with a straight line to where Monet had hit the wall, there was an explosion. The blast sent fragments of the Danger Room's armor plating flying outwards like shrapnel, and the holographic landscape shivered - but bizarrely, did not disappear.

Scott looked up sharply from the drone he'd just turned and downed. "Computer, end program!" he called. Nothing. The holographic sky abruptly flickered from fully light to pitch-black, and Scott swore as they were plunged into darkness. "Abort! Computer, abort the damned program!"

"What the fuck is going on?" Lil called into the darkness. One minute, she was surrounded by drones, the next they were under a blanket of pitch black... though she could still hear the bastards moving around. "This better not be some kinda - FUCK!" The blonde cursed as a bright light erupted only a few inches from her face, coming from the chest of one of the drones as it exploded and sent her to her knees.

The Room went dark and Logan reacted. "Regroup!" he yelled into the darkness - even with his eyesight, the Room was dark enough to make making out where his fellow X-Men were difficult. He caught the flash of light out of the corner of his eye and made for it like a shot. "Everyone, sound off!" he yelled again, so he could get a fix on where everyone was.

Unless Scott was one helluva actor, something'd clearly gone wrong here.

Scott caught the brilliant flash of light in his peripheral vision. Goddamn it, that's a strobe! He hadn't programmed any of these drones for 'try and blind the invulnerable person', and going off in the dark like that, it would temporarily flash-blind whoever had been looking at it. Shit, if the safeties are off we really do have a problem. There was a hissing, staticy noise in the darkness suddenly, like all the sounds in the program had been sped up to incomprehensibility, and then the lights came back on.

And something was clearly wrong, beyond Lil on her knees rubbing at her eyes. It was like the different parts of the holographic landscape were moving at different speeds, as if it was randomly fast-forwarding and reversing up and down the street. Scott's eyes widened as the building opposite Monet shimmered and flickered between 'intact' and 'half-collapsed'. There was a grinding, ominous noise as if the modular pieces that made up the skeleton of the projection were having trouble keeping up.

"Computer, abort!" he shouted again, and realized that someone was going to have to get to the control booth. He turned and headed back down the pile of debris as quickly as he could, willing it not to change shape on him. "Monet!" he yelled at the airborne trainee. "Control booth - someone's got to cut the power!"

"Got it!" Monet called. The control booth was high up on the wall and largely obscured by the building opposite her. She'd have to fly though a narrow gap between it and the wall to reach the control booth and hope that the program didn't chose this moment to change anything. She was halfway there when another series of sparks shot out of the wall. And then the framework the holographic building was built upon collapsed on top of her.

The safeties are most definitely off, was all Scott had time to think before one of the flying drones slammed into him on his blind side, moving too fast for his prosthesis's warning to do much good at all. He had the sensation of being briefly airborne, and then the drone was slamming him against the wall, hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Before he could do more than begin to react, it spun neatly - he'd programmed some very agile fliers for this program - and flung him away.

Unfortunately, sometime in the interim the pile of rubble had already started to vanish. Scott hit one of the modular risers still in the 'up' position first. But he'd twisted in the air, trying not to land head-first, and the movement sent him off the edge of the riser and to the floor below.

---

Spikes of adrenaline were perfectly normal when Scott was in the Danger Room, and Jean had learned to ignore them bleeding down the link years ago, and small flashes of pain were hardly uncommon. Mild concern wasn't even that odd, if he was working with trainees or some of their more... disturbingly inventive teammates.

Real alarm, though, particularly when followed by a sharp burst of pain and then dead silence was more than enough to break through Jean's concentration, and she was already on her feet and moving as she reached out telepathically for Monet - they'd worked on the younger girl's telepathy enough for Jean to be able to get a fairly accurate sense of the situation, and then she was moving even faster.

"Zanne!" she called out as she raced past the Situation Room, where Zanne was on coms duty. "Get to the Danger Room, now! Something's wrong."

---

Well, this was certainly new. As far as he could tell - and it was hard to see in here - Monet was down and buried, Lil was blinded and useless, and Scott'd been KOed. That left him. "Wolverine to Medical." Logan said, attempting to make a radio connection outside of the Room. As he spoke, he started heading for where Scott had fallen, dealing with whatever drones crossed his path by the simple expedient method of eviscerating them. Friend, foe, didn't matter. Scenario was out the window, he had more important things to deal with. "Lil, sound off!" he barked again. "If you can, follow the sound of my voice."

Everything was white. Bright, glowing white. "Fuck, Logan, I can't see a damn thing!" Lil called as she struggled to her feet only to be knocked down again by the flying fist of one of the drones. The blonde cursed under her breath and lashed a leg out, hoping to connect with whatever was still gunning for her. She had no way to know how many were there, no idea how many were still armed or active. The Amazon's foot found her target but the effect wasn't what she'd desired. Instead, the drone toppled, landing on the lower half of her body. "Shit. Would someone fucking help me over here?!"

Well, he knew what was next on Lil's training to-do list. "Calm down and listen to my voice!" he told her. "You and I are the only two up. Scott's down, Monet's down. You're invulnerable, act like it. Home in on my voice." he told her. "Nice and easy." he said. "I'm going to go check on Scott then we'll dig Monet out. Already tried a call to Medical." he said.

Lil groaned and pushed the bot off of her legs before slowly getting back to her feet, preparing herself for another hit. "You could at least fucking telling me if there are anymore damn drones near me," she hissed, keeping her eyes shut and her ears open. When nothing slammed into her back or face, she began to carefully make her way to where Logan's voice had been coming from, wary of the broken and uneven terrain.

The program was still clearly trying to adjust, and the drones paused, holding position for the moment, obviously waiting for commands from the computer. But in the next moment, the flickering of the holographic buildings only got worse, and then the drones were moving purposefully again, targeting the X-Men still on their feet. To make things worse, the damaged wall belched sparks once more, and another panel tore away with a shriek of twisting metal.

It dropped several feet before abruptly becoming suspended in mid-air. "Is everyone okay in here?" Zanne called as she stepped around the corner of a building. Jean's explanation of what was happening hadn't been very clear when she'd dragged her out of the coms room, simply that something had gone wrong in the Danger Room. "What happened?"

Flashing red lights were never what one wanted to see in the Danger Room's control center. Flashing red lights and alarms were worse. Flashing red lights, alarms and sparks was really, really disturbing. Luckily, Hank had long ago seen the need for the DR to have some serious emergency failsafes. Like, for instance, the big red power button ("the emergency off switch is always big and red," he'd said...) which Jean went straight for. Whatever was going on in there needed to stop now.

It, at least, was still working; the holographic systems shut down instantly, the modular pieces of the Danger Room grinding to a halt as every drone in the place froze. The room was plunged back into darkness momentarily, before the overhead lights came on, illuminating the mess left behind.

Monet had spent the last few minutes slowly struggling out from the mound of scaffolding and armour plated wall segments. Finally pulling herself out as the chaos in the room stilled, she swayed dizzily and sat down hard. "Fuck me dead and bury me pregnant. We fucking broke it. Shit."