xp_logs | Danger Room: Catseye, Angel, Yvette, Garrison, Paige (Reply)

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Friday afternoon finds Catseye, Angel and Yvette under the watchful eye of ones Dominion and Husk...

"You know, the more I see the bright yellow Danger Room uniforms, the
happier it makes me." Garrison Kane said in a whisper to Paige
Guthrie, as they both stood waiting for the three New Mutants on their
training roster file into the Danger Room. Like all the X-Men, they
had their turn in working with the New Mutants, and ended up looking
at running a scenario for Catseye, Angel, and Yvette. "I mean,
seriously, look at the contrast; purple-yellow, scarlet-yellow, bright
red-yellow. It's like a cross section of college football uniforms."

Tapping her fingers against her forearms, Paige smiled a little. She
had to admit, she'd been pleased when she and Garrison had come up
together in the rotation; there was something about being thrown at a
vehicle that bonded people. That, and if he gave her hell about her
absence from the team lately, she'd feel no guilt about tossing him
through a wall. "Who thought grey was a good idea, anyway? Nothing
should be subtle with the New Mutants, it just increases the chance of
us not noticing them doing something stupid."

"True, very true. Personally, I think that all teenagers should go
through the humiliation of uniforms they hate." Garrison stepped
forward and clapped his hands. "All right, listen up! We've got a long
session ahead of us, so I hope everyone is ready." Kane smiled, and
the Danger Room behind him suddenly shifted shapes, now bright uniform
colors and blocky 8-bit graphics. "Today you will face the challenge
based on a video game system obsolete before any of you were born.
Which is a shame, since we left in some of the cheats."

Cheap, plonky Casio based 8-bit themes began to play, and everyone
paused as a strange mushroom like creature trundled by slowly. "Your
goal is to rescue the braindead princess. Fun, eh?"

Angel pointed as the walking mushroom creature made it's way slowly
away from them "Man, if I end up with a craving after this scenario,
I'm so blaming everyone in this room." She straightened her uniform
with care, suddenly incredibly aware at how garish the colors were
compared to her shiny new trainee uniform. But this was a New Mutant
exercise and not a trainee one, so it was bound to be different.

Well. At least she assumed since she'd yet actually done any physical
training because the amount of reading was frightening.

Letting out an excited squeal, Catseye took a running start and leapt
onto the mushroom, delighting when it was squashed flat. "BurningGirl
cannot eat, nonono! It is time for playing and fighting, not eating."
She bypassed the blocks and paused in front of the flower that was
protruding out of the green pipe ahead of her. "SharpSkinGirl, can you
cut the flower so it doesn't eat everyone?"

Yvette grinned, eyes flashing brightly. "It is like the gardening,
yes?" she said, eyeing the bright red flower. It was taller than she
was, which meant she was going to need a bit of help reaching it.
"Angel, please to be giving me the boost?"
"One small spiky ball of death, coming up!" Angel responded, making
sure there was enough space between the two roommates before she
blasted up and off the ground. She remembered this from that day in
New York and they had started to work on it during some of the New
Mutant exercises as well - speed up, grab, twist and throw.
But she had to adjust, had to make sure she didn't actually let go
this time or else Yvette would completely miss the chomping plant and
might have even ended up in the nearest wall.

Yvette braced herself, hands flexing slightly. She'd taken her gloves
off as they'd entered the room, having found by experience that it was
not always a good time to yank them off in the middle of a situation.
As Angel grabbed her by the collar, she let out a small squeak - she
always did - and let her roommate's momentum carry them up and over
the flower. A slash with her long fingers neatly decapitated it.

Pleased by the noise the flower made when it disappeared, Catseye
shifted into BigCat form and leapt onto the pipe, then down onto the
other side. Training sessions were the only time she felt truly
comfortable using BigCat form, since BigCat recognized the members of
the New Mutants as part of its colony and not prey. The mountain lion
pounced onto two Goombas and leapt up onto a row of bricks to face a
turtle with wings and a red shell. Perplexed by the oddity, the cat
paused. "Mrrow?" Turtle! She batted at it with her claw,
interested in feeling what the wings were like, but instead of moving
it, the cat noticed one of the team lives on the scoreboard
disappearing. Catseye roared in frustration and jumped on the turtle,
knocking its wings off and then turning it into a shell with another
jump. It began rolling away, and worried that it might strike her
friends, she shifted back into girlform. "Look out!"

"You are now down to two lives. Run out of lives, and it is game over.
Meaning that you fail the test. Not that you die. We think.
Regardless, you'll also owe Paige and I quarters. Hundreds of lovely
quarters." Kane clicked off the mic, leaning over to Paige. "If they
actually give us the quarters, there's a new pinball machine at
Changs. MSG laced chop suey and multiballs after the session?"

Paige raised her eyes from where they had been sternly focused on the
girls below, chin in both hands. She leaned to balance on her right
palm, stretching the other out to firmly shake with him. "You're on,
mate. I raise you loser buys spring rolls. Also, you're weird," she
said, using the movement to click the mic on. "Hint, kids. Mario was
a plumber."

Plumber, huh? After carefully dropping Yvette back to the ground
level - the smell of uniform that was slightly crisping was starting
to grow stronger - Angel flew around for a moment before spying the
next giant pipe. She hovered and stared down at for a moment before
deciding that there were no giant plants about to eat her.

"Right," she said, projecting her voice to carry. She dropped lightly
onto the pipe and stepped gingerly onto it. "I don't think anything's
going to - holy craaaaap!" The last part came out in a high
pitched squeal as the bottom dropped out from underneath her and she
disappeared in a blast of blue flame - obviously hers.

"Angel!" Memories of the infamous laser tag game resurfaced at the
sight of her roommate disappearing. Yvette scrabbled her way up the
pipe, clinging to the sides. "Angel? Are you being all right?"

There was a groan and then a response, "Do you know what you sound
like when you scale metal, oh roomie of mine?" Her voice sounded
tinny but there, somewhere underneath them. "Hey, uh, why am I in
forest? In a really old bit that doesn't look real?"

Catseye covered her ears at the sound of Yvette's claws on the pipe,
letting out a cat-like yowl. She jumped off the rocks she was still
standing on and shifted to BigCat so she could leap onto the pipe next
to Yvette. The large tongue licked Yvette's elbow in sympathy for her
concern for Angel and shifted back. "We should go in and find the
forest and BurningGirl?" she suggested. "Catseye wants to see the
forest!"

Yvette considered the pipe. Obviously they wouldn't lose another life,
if Angel had made it down there safely. "You to be going first, yes?"
she suggested to Catseye. "So if there is the falling, I do not hurt
you?" Then she grinned. "And you can be blocking your ears so you will
not hear my hands on the metal."

Nodding emphatically, Catseye shifted once again into BigCat, ignoring
the crippling hunger pains in her stomach, and jumped into the hole.
The landing was harder than she expected, but she dashed away quickly
and mewed to Yvette to let her know it was safe to come down,
bounding over to Angel to put some distance between herself and the
sound of Yvette's claws on the metal. She took in the forest with
curiosity- the perspectives of the landscape had all changed, with
forests and paths and round little creatures shooting circular things
in various directions, and it was very interesting. She shifted back
into human form again. "Catseye does not know how to kill these
monsters," she informed Angel. This wasn't like the other game at all.

There was a scrabbling sound and the screech of Yvette's skin on metal
before the small red girl popped out. Blinking at the new scenery, she
tilted her head at her friends. "So, what are we to be doing now?"

"What game is this?" Angel asked, knowing that everything they
said could be picked up by their not quite sympathetic Overlords.

"You'll have to figure it out. By the way, there's a Tri-Force of
Power to find along with the Princess." Kane leaned back in the chair,
watching the displays. It was time to throw the last twist at them;
the traditional boss fight. Just past the forest, the castle appeared.

"Think they'll find the boomerang?" Garrison said turning to Paige.

Paige stared at him in something like exhausted sarcasm before wrinkling her nose and sitting up. "Oh. Right. This is the part where I'm optimistic," she said. There was a pause. "Well, I suppose there's hope yet?"

"I still say they'll end up hitting themselves in the ear with it
first." He flipped the mic back on. "Make your way through the forest
to the castle. Remember your objectives."

"Catseye forgets the objectives," Catseye whispered, blinking back
hunger pangs as she went dodging the circles that were approaching,
assuming they meant no good. She entered the castle, scooping out the
main room for her friends. There were bats everywhere, and a door on
each wall. The catgirl nearly shifted into BigCat to play with them,
but she remembered her error from earlier and managed to restrain
herself. "Bats!" she cried out, bounding back out to Angel and Yvette.
"Can BurningGirl flame them? Then there are three doors- Catseye
thinks maybe we should each go in one after the bats go away?"

"Burning - gah. I can take care of them pretty easily." She stuck
her head in through the door to take stock, eyeing the flying
creatures with something like disgust. "I know they're fake but, ew,
gross!" Angel wasn't going to have any issue with blasting the flying
rats, real or not, from the sky.

Concentrating, Angel gathered a large fireball in her hands and
focused on the fact that the bats were flying in one group. Some were
ahead or behind but for the most part, they were flying as a creepy
group. The sudden blast knocked into the majority, instantly setting
many of them on fire. Those that didn't were soon set on fire by
their friends...

And then something slammed into the back of Angel's head and she
shrieked, trying to go up in flames as the holographic bat wiggled
about.

"That's your second life gone. Those are quarters you're owing us
happening." Kane toggled the comm, and punched a couple of buttons
before leaving the control room, Paige holding down the fort. Garrison
was supposed to watch the boss fight in person, to see how they
handled Gannondorf. The name alone entertained the hell out of him.

"Be still!" Yvette told Angel, managing to stab the smoking hologram
with a finger to make it go 'poof!' "There, it is gone. I think we
need to be careful. We only have the one life left!" She pointed at
the door on the left. "If I am taking this one, and Catseye is taking
the middle one, and Angel takes the last one, then we can be making
sure, yes? But there might be the traps, so we will have to be making
with the care, yes?"

"Yesyesyes!" Catseye agreed. She headed to the middle door in
girlform, keeping her knees bent to reduce her size as she stalked
carefully forward. When three skeletons appeared in the room, however,
she shifted to BigCat once again and attacked, dodging left and
striking right to take the first one in the chest with her claws,
pulling a leg off of the second and knocking it down before jumping
onto its chest, and circling around the back of the third for the
element of surprise to finish off the last. Two bats swooped down from
opposite ends of the room, but the catgirl ducked to gauge their
flight patterns, hiding behind a stone wall. When they returned, she
pounced, timing her jump to land on both at once, squashing them into
the floor. When she landed, a small chest appeared in the middle of
the room. Catseye approached it closely, sniffing liberally. She
pulled it open with her tail, and looked inside, a curious noise
escaping her as she found a v-shaped piece of wood. Not wishing to
tarry any longer, Catseye took it in her teeth and went into the room
where Angel had gone.

When the purple cat entered the room, the smoke was just clearing.
Angel brushed bits of smoldering skeleton bits from her shoulders and
hair. Beyond her, though, it was simply a dead end and she was
turning back to trot back to the main room when she spotted Catseye.

"What is that? Oohh, a boomerang!" Angel gently took it from
Catseye's mouth and nodded towards the door. "Come on - if you found
a treasure and I found nothing, than Yvette probably found the actual
main door."

There was a crash and Yvette appeared, looking a little wide-eyed. "I
am finding the door," she said, glancing back the way she had come.
"But there is the big, blue, blurry... thing." Another boom. "I think
we are needing the teamwork now?"

"Teamwork, che - whoa, that's a really big thing." Angel stepped out
of the door and kept to the wall as the boss - because, really, that's
who it had to be - started for them. "Oohh, no, bad ogre
thingimajig!"

And then her jaw dropped as the fireball she tossed at its head
bounced off the shield and didn't do a thing. "Yeep!"

Catseye was working on pouncing on the bats in the room and keeping
her eyes on the skeletons and these odd black things that looked like
chocolate kisses that were moving around the room in a sweeping
fashion. She dodged back to Angel and headbutted the hand that held
the boomerang, then dodged towards the big bad guy to indicate that
Angel might try throwing the thing at it. Before the bad guy could
touch her, however, she was on her way to a skeleton, hoping that
Yvette was taking care of the chocolate kisses.

Yvette had no clue what was going on - she hadn't had a lot of
experience with video games of any sort. But she did realise that the
blobs shaped like chocolate kisses would make them lose another life,
one they couldn't afford to lose. Screwing up her eyes, she cautiously
poked one long finger at the nearest one - after all, it had worked on
the bat, hadn't it? She was rewarded with a 'blip' noise and the blob
disappeared, and she beamed. At last, something she could do!

Angel side stepped a swing by the boss, jumping out of the way and
barely managing to avoid one of those chocolate kisses that Yvette was
busy swiping at. The pixel thing was starting to get annoying and
obviously the boomerang had something to do with the end bit. She
dodged another blow and cranked back her arm, hoping that her team
mates were watching her back, and let the boomerang fly.

For a moment it looked as if it was going to hit the shield head on
but then it arced around as the boss raised the shielding and slammed
against the back of its head with a loud POP noise.

The room began to digitize, and settled back into its normal grey
featureless cube. Sitting in a chair in the middle of the room was
Garrison, waving lightly at them. "Well done. Paige and I are buying
Chinese food in town for you passing. Oh, and--"

Kane coughed into his hand and spoke with a slightly affected accent.
"Sorry Mario. Your princess is in another castle, eh."