Garrison and Adrienne - Danger Room

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Adrienne wants to learn archery, so Garrison sets up a Danger Room session for her, but her skills are sorely lacking, and thus she must be relentlessly mocked.

"For the last time, if you want the setting from Brave, you have to program it. I'm already getting shit from Scott, Hank and Forge about the number of 'alternate' settings for training programmed into the room's memory." Kane brought up the interface from the side of the Danger Room, fingers skimming through the holographic display with the practiced ease of regular use. "Besides, Disney settings actually have a negative effect on combat effectiveness. No one takes them seriously and performance goes way down across the board."

"Hey, don't knock Brave, it has Kelly Macdonald and Emma Thompson in it!" Adrienne protested. "Show some respect for Trainspotting and Much Ado About Nothing! And it doesn't have to be the setting from Brave, I just want something that looks different from the archery set-up in the woods outside. I just think we might as well take advantage of the rain that moved the lesson in here and go for something that looks nothing like ho- like the man- like home," she explained, or tried to explain. "Which I guess is the same justification everyone uses for programming 'alternate' settings into it. I mean, really? Why not have some fun with the big programmable, holographic room if you've got one? Hank and Forge need to get laid so they'll lighten up," she complained. She didn't include Scott in her tirade, though. She didn't want to think about the frequency of Scott and Jean having sex. Ever.

"Yeah, you don't have to do the maintenance and listen to Paige's laugh when she 'reviews' session tapes. Some of those people have taken to using the DR as a prop when getting laid." Not that he blamed them. The holographic interface was incredible, and he would have been stunned at the lack of imagination if they hadn't. "When did you take up archery? I don't remember you doing it before."

Adrienne stared down at the bow in her hands. "Just very recently. Yeah, you're right, I never really bothered with it before. I used to hang out with Vee when she'd practice sometimes, but I guess I was always more focused on improving my skills with the .38, and my hand-to-hand and sparring, so I didn't really think about archery. But in the last little while..." She shrugged as she pondered her reasoning. "No modelling agency to run, no recovering from kidnappings or ambushes during trips to India, Pakistan, Genosha, no threats from the Hellfire Club. No distracting money woes. Classes are winding down. It's been a long time since I had the free time and brainspace to take on a new summer project," she admitted with a happy smile. "Looking for a new challenge, and decided this would be it. Possibly because half the students won't shut up about this new Tolkein movie coming out and archery is more my thing than axes or swords. Or maybe Emma just planted the idea to learn archery in my head to fuck with me," she added as an afterthought, frowning pensively.

"You really think Emma wants to roam around your head and risk tripping on all the sex thoughts of us? It's probably your own thought." Kane tapped a couple of projected screens, and the DR began to reconfigure itself. "Alright, Robin Hood, course is starting momentarily. I hope you've been practicing." The room came into resolution, placing her high up the side of a tropical mountain path leading towards a jumbled shantytown. At the bottom of the island, she could see a tumultuous ocean crashing against the rocks.

"Wait, what?!" Adrienne shrieked. "I haven't! Not much, anyway! Also, aren't you doing this with me? And where's my Lara Croft outfit?!" She had to remember to tell Tandy that she recognized this as a setting from the new Tomb Raider video game Tandy had played. She figured Tandy would be proud.

"Your workout gear is fine. The goal is to reach the beach, with an island full of lunatic cultists attempting to stop you through the applicable of many, many bullets. You will need to make use of cover, establish clear fields of fire, and make decisions whether or not to engage a target or sneak past them. I'll be your referee for the round, so when I say 'yer dead', you are, in fact, dead. Eh."

"Oh, so just like our last winter vacation, then?" she teased, securing the quiver she'd brought in around her waist and adjusting its angle for easy reach. "Are there any traps I'm going to need to disarm along the way?" It was worth asking, although she didn't expect him to tell her and give more of the game away.

"Nah. There's a whole jumping, climbing, falling off the side of the mountain and breathing heavily in a tanktop section of the program, but I've limited it just to sneaking around and shooting arrows at people for now."

"Roger that," Adrienne answered, trying to mentally shift into Professional Mode. "I can do sneaking." She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and went into her mental Repository to access the memory of having Read the bow she was using when she'd first picked it up from where it had been left in the woods. Its previous users had been given quite a lot of instruction, which she could now tap into in order to gain knowledge of technique and fundamentals. Between that and her previous training at the gun range, she hoped she could put together a decent showing for a beginner archer. Decent enough to impress her boyfriend, anyway. Which was the most important part, of course.

Notching an arrow in the bow but keeping it slack, she set off down the path towards the town, keeping her eyes and ears open and moving slowly but purposefully. A snapping twig had her stepping off the path into the underbrush, where she crouched until she spotted one of the aforementioned 'crazy cultists' stooping to check the ground for footprints on the trail. She drew the bow and fired, but had hesitated too long while the man had been crouched, and he'd straightened up as she was getting the shot off, so while the arrow progressed on the trajectory she'd intended, there was no longer a target there by the time the arrow arrived. And now she'd just alerted the cultist to her presence, and he was rushing over. Great. Garrison had said they'd stop her with bullets, but this one didn't appear to have a gun, thankfully.

Getting to her feet quickly, and wishing she'd brought something stabby with her, she struggled not to panic. The arrows were the only things she had to fight with, and at least they were pointy, which was better than nothing. As the cultist rushed her she used her sparring training to dodge, pivot, and kick at one of his knees. When he stumbled, she held the pointy end of the arrow in one hand and the fletching in the other and bent the fletching end back like a switch, loosing it towards his eyes, hoping the fletching would act like a whip strike. After that she followed up quickly by stabbing the pointy end in one of his ears and kicking him in the crotch.

The repulsion technology of the DR simulated hitting a person well enough, but the holographic image blinked out immediately. Kane wandered behind her, making notes.

"That would be zero points. This isn't hand to hand training, babe. You only get points for arrow kills or passing them undetected. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the DR is programmed not to notice me at all."

"Wait-what?!" Adrienne looked extremely put-out by this. "Christ! Not fair!" She started at him with a murderous look for a number of seconds before she stamped a foot and turned away. "The smart thing to do right now would be to figure out how to hack the programming to make it not notice me, either. Or murder-ify you and wear your skin so it thinks I'm you."

"You signed up for this. I was perfectly happy with my idea of hanging a maintainence sign on the door and having sex all afternoon in the indoor pool. But no, you wanted to practice your archery and you- now, what where the exact words - 'badass ninja skills I'm getting'?" Kane made a shooing motion with his hand. "By the way, lag too far behind and a hunting party coming after you. I'd get moving."

"I did not say that," Adrienne protested, trotting off down the trail once again and ignoring the sex comment. "Ninjas don't use bows and arrows. Everyone knows that! I said 'badass Robin Hood skills'. And I'm not protesting the practice, I'm protesting the lack of points for using my wicked improv skills and killing the dude even though I mucked up the archery," she whined, muttering "point-hoarding Nazi" under her breath.

As she ambled along she tried to weigh the pros and cons of the hunting party coming after her, deciding that it might not be a bad thing to stay in one place and hold some ground for a little while. So she jogged a little ways further, then went off the path into the underbrush, doubled back, and climbed high into a tree. After staking out a V section of the trunk up in the canopy of leaves, she made sure her quiver was within easy reach and that an arrow was notched.

When the party came into view, following her tracks, she zeroed in on the spot where she'd gone off the path and stared at it, bow drawn, until one of the hunters crouched down to examine the spot, putting himself in her field of vision. She didn't hesitate this time, loosing a shot that, while it went wide of the mark she was aiming at, was still accurate enough to lodge itself in flesh. Without hesitating she loaded another arrow and drew the bow again, firing at the now-surprised hunters. A second arrow found its mark, and then a third. But by the time she was drawing her fourth arrow the remaining hunters had scattered, fanning out and heading in the direction the shots had come from. Moving targets were much more difficult to hit, and two more arrows went wide before a deep breath and some mental scolding to focus had her hitting another hunter. But by this time the hunters were firing their weapons in her direction, and she had to take cover behind a section of the tree to avoid a flurry of bullets. "Shit!"

"Treed, and now they have the ability to flank you. Not exactly your best choice there, Eisenhower. DR scores you two possible kills out of four hits. Not bad."

"Oh, go flank yourself," Adrienne muttered down at him, although she beamed when he gave her the 'not bad' comment. She was looking around for a means of escape and decided to try moving through the treetops to attempt to get out of the line of fire. She jumped to a neighbouring tree easily enough, but misjudged the distance to the next tree and fell, hitting the repulsor-field-softened floor of the room with a thud and knocking the wind out of herself.

"Very skillful. Ninja-like even. It's like being ambushed by a folding lawn chair." Kane said dryly, walking behind her.

"There is... no one... in the world... I hate... as much... as I... hate you right now," Adrienne wheezed as she struggled for breath, still facedown on the ground.

"I'm not the one who fell out of my tree like a drunken Ewok, Robin Dork." Kane nudged her with the toe of his shoe. "Second hunting party is on their way, Lara. I'd get moving."

Adrienne swatted at his foot as he nudged her and rolled onto her back. One side had taken the brunt of her weight, so she probed that side of her face, then her shoulder, then her hip. She could already feel the bruises forming. "I wish I was an Ewok, because you have sex with me, so that would make you a Furry." She got to her feet gingerly, testing her weight to make sure nothing was broken. "Yeah, yeah. Hunting party. Got it. Remind me again?" she added in a curious tone. "How many points do I get for stabbing you with an arrow?"

"Not a damn thing. But they will shoot you to death with holographic bullets, and then Logan will post your humiliating score on the message board and you'll be stuck covering rounds at Harry's to live it down."

"Well, I buy my way out of embarrassment with alcohol all the time, so it's not like that would be anything new," Adrienne answered, trotting off down the path once again.

Upon hearing the snap of a branch up ahead she took off for the jungle, moving steadily but still slowly enough to be careful that she wasn't making noise or leaving much of a trail. A formation of rocks, fallen logs, and moss caught her attention and she ducked behind it. The path was still in her line of sight so she watched the hunting party approach, find her footprints, and venture off into the jungle after her. She notched an arrow in her bow and kept it in her hands but didn't draw it, still hoping the hunters wouldn't be able to pick up her trail.

She might have gotten away with it, too, except she spotted an enormous millipede crawling along one of the rocks, and before she could remind herself that it wasn't real, she let out a squeak. A rain of bullets immediately flew her way.

"I think your cover is compromised." Kane said, infuriatingly pleasantly as the holographic bullets passed him harmlessly.

Adrienne's pithy reply couldn't be heard over the sound of the guns firing. Figuring it was now useless, she took the arrow off her bow and returned it to her quiver, putting the bow on her back so she could try to crawl away. Unfortunately it wasn't difficult to track her progress, and a number of bullets hit her before she finally just stood up and threw up her hands in surrender, knowing she'd been killed multiple times over.

"Of all the regrets I have, I think the most painful one was not being able to talk my girlfriend out of reading those Hunger Games books, and encouraging her to take up the bow. Damn you, Hunger Games, for taking a life so cruelly, and so young... although not as young as she liked to claim, eh?" He mock eulogized, taking a seat on a fake rock facing the scene of her 'death'.

Adrienne just stared at him for a moment, looking shocked by what he'd just said, and then lunged at him in an attempt to tackle him.

Garrison was knocked off his rock by her tackle, although as they hit the ground, it was obvious that his grip on her was primarily to make sure she didn't land badly and hurt herself accidentally. He smiled as he looked up at her. "Dear Penthouse, I never thought it could happen to me... although, I should warn you, we do record Danger Room sessions, and having sex here means Guthrie will watch the tapes later and claim you've got fat ankles and I have no technique or something."

She stopped trying to strangle him and got to her feet, still looking indignant. "You make another age joke and we're never having sex again, here or anywhere else," she threatened, glaring at him.

"So I need to send back the MILF shirt? I had to pay shipping and handling. I don't think they'll refund that..."

"I'm impressed you managed to find one in your size."

"Oh, the X sizes go all the way to eleven, baby."