Kaboom: Jay and Shiro in the danger room

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

Shiro takes his aggrivations of his ended relationship with Kali on the danger room. Jay gets up in the cross fire and the pair collide, temperments shifting when the scenario escalates.

Taking two steps at a time, Jay went into the control room, rounding the corner, looking for one of his bracelets from his earlier session with Garrison when he noticed the room was on. Not only was it on and running, the person under the screened panel was Shiro. He leaned over the panel and went to hit the intercom but accidently hit another switch instead, unsure of which one was pressed. His eyes darted to the screen and then back to the panel, fingers hoovering over the board until he hit the intercom again.

Shiro was hovering a few inches off the ground, his ankle still too hurt to stand on properly, panting and sweating as he faced the three remaining drones. He'd designed them to take the form of Hand ninja, an easy target for his frustrations, and their battered forms littered the streets of Tokyo. The three still standing had evaded him thus far, but with their fellows out, they had no choice but to attack. As Shiro gathered in his energy and became to shape it into a massive burst of nuclear flame, the scenario lagged and the drones almost reset to their original forms. They returned just seconds later, and Shiro quickly dispatched them. "Computer, end mission!" he called out before turning to look up at the control room. Whoever had disrupted him was going to find themselves forced to live in a tub of aloe vera for the rest of the summer.

Jay leaned back and scratched at the overgrown hairs on his neck, giving a helpless shrug before he left the control room. A few seconds later, he opened the door to the danger room and paused as it closed behind him, wings already out at the ready. "Trainin'?" he inquired.

"I bow before your acute observational skills," Shiro replied sarcastically, almost spitting the words out. With the ninja drones gone, Shiro now found himself redirecting his rage at Jay. Who, coincidentally, was the original target of his ire. "What are you doing in here? You are not an X-Man. You are not cleared to be here."

"Just cause Ah don't prance around in leather don't mean Ah ain't allowed to use the room," Jay countered with a frown, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Since when did you get all high n' mighty?"

Since you fucked me up. "Since I reserved the Danger Room for myself for the afternoon. You will note that I set up solo training. Solo as in alone." Shiro's fists were clenched so tightly that had he not been wearing gloves, his nails would have been drawing blood from his palms. He shook as he spoke, as if the mere act of talking was an exercise in control.

Jay looked normal, if not a little miffed that Shiro was being a royal ass to him, wings responding to the tension and climbing down his spine where he could feel the tremble course through them. "Why you so mad?" he asked, maintaining his posture.

"I spoke with Kali. She was none too thrilled about what I had to say." And to compound on her rather primitive and hurtful reaction, she'd also admitted (though Shiro wasn't entirely sure if she was honest or just trying to piss him off) that their relationship had been a joke all along, that she'd only gone out with him out of pity. Shiro Yoshida was no one to be pitied. Just thinking about what she'd said antagonized him even further. "So it has been a bad day and it needs to burn. That might make it marginally more tolerable."

No one ever took well to their boyfriend going gay... or straight. "It's for the better, trust me. Toughin' through somethin' that don't work only makes life harder." His arms uncrossed and he stepped towards Shiro, mocking a post for a fight. He put up his fists and mocked two blows to Shiro's face, though he never connected. His movements were painfully slow and uncalculated compared to someone like Shiro but he knew he could still give a good solid punch if need be. "Maybe you just need to scruffle instead of using your powers huh? Get all that pent up energy out."

Shiro waved away Jay's hands and shook his head. "Present me with a challenge and then we will see. I doubt some redneck gai-jin could give me the workout I want."

That got Shiro a shove. "Ah aint' some redneck gay-jin-thing, whateveryoucalledme." Asshole was right on the tip of his tongue though he bit it down, realizing that he was far too quick to grab at name calling now days and arched his wings, taking immediate flight. "Fine, you wanna challenge, then lets have at it - Computer! Run Garrison thirty six! Modify two teams, red n' black." He smiled. "Hope you can see the red."

"Gai-jin," Shiro corrected, but waved it off and immediately fell into a defensive position. He wasn't familiar with Jay's training regimens, and had only briefly looked them over that one time the previous week. He had, though, seen Jay decapitate Apocalypse so he knew he was about to face something more powerful and more wicked than the vapid boytoy he liked to pretend to be.

"C'mon Sweetheart, let's see if you can keep up." Jay flew off over a landscape of broken buildings, beneath a soot blackened sky littered with large pieces of metal on fire, occasionally hitting the ground as if satellites were returning to earth. Jay dodged a piece easily and circled a building, catching sight of two black snipers. A quick scan for Shiro, whom he knew was not far behind and Jay arched into a dive at the two who was on Shiro's team.

Jay was fast, but Shiro was faster. The air around him ignited as he rocketed to intercept Jay, passing just inches in front of him and calling up a wall of flame in his wake. He quickly looped and returned to engage Jay, firing off two warning blasts to force him away from the snipers.

Jay fanned his wings out, halting his flight but not the momentum and the metal curled around him as he sailed right through the fire, breaking out of the wall. He flared them out and banked left, dodging one blast but running head long into the other, scorching his face and the length of his left side.

A keen broke from his lips as he recovered momentarily, crashing into the pair by skewering them with the points of his blades. His wings arched back immediately and the bodies were launched behind him, directed to intercept Shiro's fight.

Shiro pulled up and spun to avoid the corpses. With a snarl he launched another blast at Jay, this time very much not a warning, and then launched off down the street, hunting for the red snipers. They found him first but were unprepared for the speed of his assault. Their guns were useless against the torrent of nuclear fire.

Jay arched his back and bent away from the blast, throwing his wings up that dropped him down a fraction, narrowly missing the flames. He banked left and climbed fast. He was on Shiro in a heartbeat, grabbing the back of his collar and summersalting over to throw Shiro with his momentum.

That was a classic maneuver among flyers, and one that Shiro had trained with all of his flying teammates. He allowed Jay to throw him instead of struggling out of the grab (though he was quite surprised by the strength of the other man's hold), but instantly righted himself in midair and responded with an omnidirectional wave of plasma that seared the air around them.

Jay's wings curled around him, barely reflecting the blast with a surprise and dropped several feet. He fanned them out, soaring for a moment and pulled them in tighter, turning in an arch and narrowly missing another blast. His fingers curled into themselves and he hissed, drawing them to his chest from their third degree burns. He could feel Shiro behind him, easily tailing him when he pivoted abruptly, colliding head on into the other mutant.

Shiro realized what Jay was doing a second too late, and didn't have the time to avoid crashing into him. He released another uncontrolled burst of plasma but didn't compensate for the impact, so the force of the blast also affected him and repelled him from Jay. "I think I owe you an apology, gai-jin. This is the a good workout indeed."

If Jay had been his easy going self, he would have asked Shiro what a gai-jin was, but instead, he screeched his pain from the burns and his wings thrusted out from the blast, a dozen razor edged feathers darting towards his opponant.

"What the hell, Guthrie?" Shiro shouted as he dodged wildly to avoid the feathers. He opened his mouth to further castigate him when he realized that he hadn't missed one, and it was now embedded halfway into his arm. "What did you do?" he asked, his words coming out in a drunken slur, before the world turned white.

He awoke minutes later on his back. The scenario had ended, and the Danger Room had reverted back to its normal state. He tried to push himself into a sitting position, but his arm gave out and he fall back down with an oomph and hiss of pain. "Guthrie?" he called out hoarsely.

At some point, seering pain struck Jay before realization did that he was on his back, fingers mindlessly clawing the air gasping for a breath. His skin boiled over his body and tingling mixed into it brought him back to a sanity he wished he never knew. The rise and fall of his chest was slow, but quickly sped up to something akin to panic, hyperventalating because he felt he couldn't move, while his healing factor kicked into hyper drive.

"Guthrie? Jay?" Shiro called out again, his voice rising with panic. With a pained grunt, he wrenched out the blade from his arm and held his other hand up to the wound to cauterize it. The familiar odor of burning flesh reached him, and he turned to spot Jay a few meters away. He lay still but was breathing. "Fuck. Jay!"

He felt as though he were glued to the floor, unable to move, unable to do anything and then it sank in, that feeling crawling across his skin, into his muscle and he opened his mouth to his pain. Something inaudiable escaped instead and his spine arched as though it was forcing him into a roll on its own, a primal instinct he never realized he had. On his stomach, he pressed his forehead into the ground and the corners of his eyes wetted and even though he knew pain, reliving the intense pain all over was unbearable. He opened his mouth again and it came out as a wounded half screech, fingernails dug into the flooring and he was able to feel every piece of charred skin that dropped to the floor.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Shiro was acknowledged but he couldn't respond, couldn't even formulate a word that sounded anything coherant to convey what he needed. He knew he would get better, he would heal but logic was always thrown out the door, always ignored and fell back to the very basic thought when his pain tolerance was tested again and again.

Awkward though it was to fly without extending his arms and legs, Shiro managed to get aloft and move over to the intercom by the doorway. His hand shook violently as he reached to press the button. "Phoenix, we need medical in the Danger Room." He turned to look at Jay again. Had he been standing on his own power, he'd have fallen to the ground. "Now. Guthrie . . . Jay is hurt."