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xp_logsEmma takes Sue and Clint to dinner to celebrate the completion of their robotics competition. Discussion of science ensues.
Clint tugged at his tie, loosening it a little. The last time he'd worn one had been when he'd come to look at Xavier's the first time and Maddie had stolen it. But this was a nice restaurant that Miss Frost was taking them to and he didn't want to look totally out of place. Andre would probably fall over if he found out Clint had come here without actually ironing more than his shirt collar to make sure it looked okay. But he was wearing a jacket, it wasn't like anyone was going to see the back of his shirt.
"I still can't believe how well we did," Clint said to Sue. "We beasted almost everybody else."
"Almost everyone, shoulda had him in the last match" Sue replied unhappily before shrugging and giving Clint a small smile. "I really really hate losing," she told him with a small laugh.
“Then learn what you can do better,” said Emma, “and do it next time. Or cheat.” Emma laughed at the expressions on their faces. “You do not have to take everything I say seriously,” she advised. “But losing can be useful. I haven’t been able to invest nearly enough time in your robotics studies, for which I apologise, but we will have time in the next few weeks to work out what he did better than you. You can even learn from those matches you won easily.” Emma sighed dramatically. “As Logan has doubtless informed you, it’s tough being the best there is at what you do. But it is very, very satisfying,” she finished, almost in a purr.
Clint grinned. "He's said that once or twice, yeah. But mostly when he's thrown me to the mat for the fourth time. And then he starts talking about dedication and stuff." He paused to consider the robot battles they'd taken part in, then shrugged. "The jet propulsion system needs work. I like the way that one robot just bashed everything with that hammer until they fell over. Brute strength, I guess, but not as cool as the jet propulsion would've been if it'd worked."
"Well if you had learned your lesson the first time then maybe Mr Logan wouldn't have to keep throwing you around then," the younger blonde teased, "Unless it's part of your secret cunning plan that you didn't tell anyone else about." She paused to consider her own experiences in the tournament, "The brute force approach was pretty effective," Sue agreed, "but it wasn't very elegant or efficient. On the other hand you can't argue with the results in the end. I could probably have built more protection into the robot's frame or shaped it so it would turn blows away more effectively."
“Knowing your enemy is also helpful,” said Emma, smiling graciously at the waiter as he discreetly topped up her wine glass. “You haven’t had much opportunity to work out what your opponents are likely to build in. And you’re both reasonably sophisticated thinkers for your age and level of experience; making your robot into a really big hammer isn't the way you think. But now you know that there are people out there that think like a hammer, so the trick is to stop your robot from looking like a nail. Fight, flight, diversion, evasion; there are many different options for defense. Could you use jet propulsion as part of the defense, perhaps? You need an exhaust for any kind of jet propulsion – can that be a weapon as well as a way to evade blows?”
"Perhaps the idea of looking like a nail is exactly what we need?" Sue asked curiously, "If it looks like a nail, and they think it's a nail then they'd approach it as a nail. Even if their robot isn't a hammer, they'd try to act like they were a hammer because that's what they think that's what it takes to defeat you." Sue grinned, "Misdirection, if they expect a nail but you end up with something completely different then the surprise might just be enough to throw them off their stride and give you an opportunity to get an advantage over them."
"Misdirection would only work up to a certain point, though," Clint said, frowning a little. "I mean, if you look like a nail, you'd have to be a freaking titanium nail not to get flattened by a big enough hammer, y'know? Which, okay - that's not actually a bad idea necessarily." He paused again to consider that. "Still, you need to be able to give as much damage as you're able to take. So turning the jet propulsion into a weapon as well as a method of evasion - directed air currents, maybe? If it gets hot enough, that could theoretically work, but you'd have to have some seriously impressive cooling systems in place to keep it from overheating and that takes up more room which makes it look less like a nail."
“There’s a reason Pierce built his Sentinels so damn big,” said Emma, her voice cheerful but suddenly as brittle as glass. “If you want to cover every option that can be used against you, you need to make your robots the size of an apartment block.” She sipped her glass of wine, careful and controlled. “And I suspect that would be against the rules of the competition. Focusing on improving one or two aspects to increase your chances of winning would probably be better at this point, rather than attempting to counter every possibility that could be thrown at you. So – how could the jet propulsion be improved? What went wrong this time?”
Clint didn't really know anything about the Sentinels but he made a mental note to look up information on them. He didn't know Miss Frost all that well despite the fact that she'd been teaching them for the past year, so he wasn't entirely sure but he'd have put money on the fact that something bad had happened. Maybe that was why the other Miss Frost was so worried about the coffeemaker taking over the world. "Well, it wasn't exactly refined and, based on the pieces left after it got smashed, I'd say the cooling system I had in place failed. That, and there was a lot of damage to the inner shell - I'd have to watch the video to see if that happened before or after it started overheating, but my best guess would be that the cooling system failed because the outer armor failed pretty badly and the inner shell couldn't handle the rest of the damage. From there, it was just a total systems failure."
Sue took a sip of her water and leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as her mind replayed the events of the battle. "We're constrained by size," she mused, "If you were willing to trade off the size and power of the jet you could build in some redundancies against the cooling system breaking down. But there's not much you can do about the armor failing, maybe use a stronger material or set it up as segmented plate armor so you're protected against any one piece failing and would improve the airflow which would help with the cooling too." The girls fingers traced shapes in the air as she spoke, an image of the next generation of robot resolving itself in her head before she caught herself and opened her eyes with a start giving Clint and Emma an apologetic look.
Emma leaned forward and tapped on the table lightly. “Don’t ever apologise for thinking,” she said firmly. “Don’t ever apologise for being the smartest person in the room.” She gave a small, cold smile. “Occasionally it makes sense to play dumb – it can be handy to have people underestimate you. But not when you’re doing this. Brainstorming. Creating.” Emma drew a slightly shuddering breath. “Robotics. Engineering. This... this is wonderful”. It wasn’t often that Emma allowed her passion for what she did, what she loved doing, shine out, but she put it in her voice and her face for these young people. She let her pride in them shine through as well. “I have done things with my work – I’ve re-made men. I’ve let them fly again. I’ve let them speak again. There are children in the world who would never have walked except for the work that people like us have done. People who think and learn and change the shape of things and explore the outside edges of what is possible. I want you to feel comfortable with working through these problems now. Talking through them. Drawing on napkins. Arguing. Using the knives and forks to make circuit diagrams. If you don’t want to have an engineering argument in public, I can get us a private room right now.” Her voice was low but firm and a soft telepathic echo reinforced her words. “Don’t hold back. Don’t be normal. Be extraordinary. And never apologise for it.”
In an effort to keep the ridiculous chibi hearts he was pretty sure were now floating through his brain out of his eyes, Clint slanted a look toward Sue and said, "I don't mind having an engineering argument in public." Then he smiled. "Modular armor would be effective, but I'd want to work in the ability to shift the armor itself around so damaged sections could be moved to cover areas not vital to functionality. And we'd need to be careful that something with claws couldn't get a grip on a section and just rip it off. That'd suck."
"I'm in, I've never actually had anyone to talk about engineering in public before, well there's my dad but we don't really do the public thing," the teen said sitting forward eagerly in her chair not even trying to hide her admiration at this point. "Why don't you want to let it rip off your armour?" Sue challenged Clint, "If you used magnetic couplers to hold it in place you could always release the armour and magnetize it at the same time. Imagine that, he can't get the piece of metal off his claw which renders it useless as anything other than a club for the rest of the fight. It could turn the fight around entirely."
“Or some kind of flexible plate? So when it gets torn off, it closes around the claw, rather than just being stuck on the end. It would be interesting to see what would be more difficult to deal with.” Emma got a speculative look in her eyes. “Could you do that, Sue? With your force field? If someone punches you, can you collapse the force field inwards at the point of impact and wrap the edges around whatever has hit you? You could really pull someone off-balance with something like that. Or keep them close enough to hit them a lot. Or even wrap it around them completely and use it like handcuffs; I haven’t even thought to ask if you have to be in contact with your force fields or if you can separate them from you.” Emma brought her thoughts back to the immediate problem. “Anyway, if you can wrap them, even if you can only do it close to you, it may give us a quick and dirty way to test a few of the concepts out.”
Sue tilted her head as she considered the question, "I've never really tried to mold my forcefields around someone's punch like that," she admitted, "I've been working on flexibility and shaping them with Dr Reyes, mainly focussing on weird shapes but..." the girl fell silent as she ran through the scenario in her head before nodding, "I could do that, I'd need to practice but I could totally do that." The younger blonde glanced around the room, her gaze settling on the table next to them, Sue focussed on a chair , holding her breath as she wrapped it in a forcefield temporarily cloaking it. Sue turned back to face Clint and Emma letting the forcefield drop before anyone else noticed and letting out the breath with a small sigh, "That's as far as I can go...for now." She noted with a bright grin. "You think we could get our hands on some scraps of electro-hardening polymer to play with too?" she asked eagerly.
“With the might of Frost Enterprises at your... well, my disposal?” replied Emma. “Of course we can.” She nodded for a moment, letting her mind range over the possibility of a polymer-shielded robot that could electrify and mould the polymer around opponents. As she mulled, she changed the topic slightly and touched on the demonstration Sue had just given of her mutant power. “It’s good to keep working on your powers,” she said. “Finding new ways to use them. It would be interesting to see what you could do with moving objects – if there’s a limit to the speed you can track and enclose. It might be an idea to work with Clint in the Danger Room.” Emma grinned suddenly. “Clint throw the ball. Sue catch the ball. Clint shoot the gun. Sue catch the bullet.”
"Dude," Clint said, looking from Sue to Miss Frost and grinning. "That'd be awesome - we should totally try that. Though maybe with arrows first and not bullets. I can fire a shotgun but not anything else. My dads were kind of weirded out by the shotgun thing." The electrified polymer-shielded robot idea lodged firmly in his brain, carving out a little niche for itself and making itself at home. This was going to be so awesome - something he could work on over the summer when he had free time. All in all, the holiday was looking like it'd be pretty amazing.
Clint tugged at his tie, loosening it a little. The last time he'd worn one had been when he'd come to look at Xavier's the first time and Maddie had stolen it. But this was a nice restaurant that Miss Frost was taking them to and he didn't want to look totally out of place. Andre would probably fall over if he found out Clint had come here without actually ironing more than his shirt collar to make sure it looked okay. But he was wearing a jacket, it wasn't like anyone was going to see the back of his shirt.
"I still can't believe how well we did," Clint said to Sue. "We beasted almost everybody else."
"Almost everyone, shoulda had him in the last match" Sue replied unhappily before shrugging and giving Clint a small smile. "I really really hate losing," she told him with a small laugh.
“Then learn what you can do better,” said Emma, “and do it next time. Or cheat.” Emma laughed at the expressions on their faces. “You do not have to take everything I say seriously,” she advised. “But losing can be useful. I haven’t been able to invest nearly enough time in your robotics studies, for which I apologise, but we will have time in the next few weeks to work out what he did better than you. You can even learn from those matches you won easily.” Emma sighed dramatically. “As Logan has doubtless informed you, it’s tough being the best there is at what you do. But it is very, very satisfying,” she finished, almost in a purr.
Clint grinned. "He's said that once or twice, yeah. But mostly when he's thrown me to the mat for the fourth time. And then he starts talking about dedication and stuff." He paused to consider the robot battles they'd taken part in, then shrugged. "The jet propulsion system needs work. I like the way that one robot just bashed everything with that hammer until they fell over. Brute strength, I guess, but not as cool as the jet propulsion would've been if it'd worked."
"Well if you had learned your lesson the first time then maybe Mr Logan wouldn't have to keep throwing you around then," the younger blonde teased, "Unless it's part of your secret cunning plan that you didn't tell anyone else about." She paused to consider her own experiences in the tournament, "The brute force approach was pretty effective," Sue agreed, "but it wasn't very elegant or efficient. On the other hand you can't argue with the results in the end. I could probably have built more protection into the robot's frame or shaped it so it would turn blows away more effectively."
“Knowing your enemy is also helpful,” said Emma, smiling graciously at the waiter as he discreetly topped up her wine glass. “You haven’t had much opportunity to work out what your opponents are likely to build in. And you’re both reasonably sophisticated thinkers for your age and level of experience; making your robot into a really big hammer isn't the way you think. But now you know that there are people out there that think like a hammer, so the trick is to stop your robot from looking like a nail. Fight, flight, diversion, evasion; there are many different options for defense. Could you use jet propulsion as part of the defense, perhaps? You need an exhaust for any kind of jet propulsion – can that be a weapon as well as a way to evade blows?”
"Perhaps the idea of looking like a nail is exactly what we need?" Sue asked curiously, "If it looks like a nail, and they think it's a nail then they'd approach it as a nail. Even if their robot isn't a hammer, they'd try to act like they were a hammer because that's what they think that's what it takes to defeat you." Sue grinned, "Misdirection, if they expect a nail but you end up with something completely different then the surprise might just be enough to throw them off their stride and give you an opportunity to get an advantage over them."
"Misdirection would only work up to a certain point, though," Clint said, frowning a little. "I mean, if you look like a nail, you'd have to be a freaking titanium nail not to get flattened by a big enough hammer, y'know? Which, okay - that's not actually a bad idea necessarily." He paused again to consider that. "Still, you need to be able to give as much damage as you're able to take. So turning the jet propulsion into a weapon as well as a method of evasion - directed air currents, maybe? If it gets hot enough, that could theoretically work, but you'd have to have some seriously impressive cooling systems in place to keep it from overheating and that takes up more room which makes it look less like a nail."
“There’s a reason Pierce built his Sentinels so damn big,” said Emma, her voice cheerful but suddenly as brittle as glass. “If you want to cover every option that can be used against you, you need to make your robots the size of an apartment block.” She sipped her glass of wine, careful and controlled. “And I suspect that would be against the rules of the competition. Focusing on improving one or two aspects to increase your chances of winning would probably be better at this point, rather than attempting to counter every possibility that could be thrown at you. So – how could the jet propulsion be improved? What went wrong this time?”
Clint didn't really know anything about the Sentinels but he made a mental note to look up information on them. He didn't know Miss Frost all that well despite the fact that she'd been teaching them for the past year, so he wasn't entirely sure but he'd have put money on the fact that something bad had happened. Maybe that was why the other Miss Frost was so worried about the coffeemaker taking over the world. "Well, it wasn't exactly refined and, based on the pieces left after it got smashed, I'd say the cooling system I had in place failed. That, and there was a lot of damage to the inner shell - I'd have to watch the video to see if that happened before or after it started overheating, but my best guess would be that the cooling system failed because the outer armor failed pretty badly and the inner shell couldn't handle the rest of the damage. From there, it was just a total systems failure."
Sue took a sip of her water and leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes as her mind replayed the events of the battle. "We're constrained by size," she mused, "If you were willing to trade off the size and power of the jet you could build in some redundancies against the cooling system breaking down. But there's not much you can do about the armor failing, maybe use a stronger material or set it up as segmented plate armor so you're protected against any one piece failing and would improve the airflow which would help with the cooling too." The girls fingers traced shapes in the air as she spoke, an image of the next generation of robot resolving itself in her head before she caught herself and opened her eyes with a start giving Clint and Emma an apologetic look.
Emma leaned forward and tapped on the table lightly. “Don’t ever apologise for thinking,” she said firmly. “Don’t ever apologise for being the smartest person in the room.” She gave a small, cold smile. “Occasionally it makes sense to play dumb – it can be handy to have people underestimate you. But not when you’re doing this. Brainstorming. Creating.” Emma drew a slightly shuddering breath. “Robotics. Engineering. This... this is wonderful”. It wasn’t often that Emma allowed her passion for what she did, what she loved doing, shine out, but she put it in her voice and her face for these young people. She let her pride in them shine through as well. “I have done things with my work – I’ve re-made men. I’ve let them fly again. I’ve let them speak again. There are children in the world who would never have walked except for the work that people like us have done. People who think and learn and change the shape of things and explore the outside edges of what is possible. I want you to feel comfortable with working through these problems now. Talking through them. Drawing on napkins. Arguing. Using the knives and forks to make circuit diagrams. If you don’t want to have an engineering argument in public, I can get us a private room right now.” Her voice was low but firm and a soft telepathic echo reinforced her words. “Don’t hold back. Don’t be normal. Be extraordinary. And never apologise for it.”
In an effort to keep the ridiculous chibi hearts he was pretty sure were now floating through his brain out of his eyes, Clint slanted a look toward Sue and said, "I don't mind having an engineering argument in public." Then he smiled. "Modular armor would be effective, but I'd want to work in the ability to shift the armor itself around so damaged sections could be moved to cover areas not vital to functionality. And we'd need to be careful that something with claws couldn't get a grip on a section and just rip it off. That'd suck."
"I'm in, I've never actually had anyone to talk about engineering in public before, well there's my dad but we don't really do the public thing," the teen said sitting forward eagerly in her chair not even trying to hide her admiration at this point. "Why don't you want to let it rip off your armour?" Sue challenged Clint, "If you used magnetic couplers to hold it in place you could always release the armour and magnetize it at the same time. Imagine that, he can't get the piece of metal off his claw which renders it useless as anything other than a club for the rest of the fight. It could turn the fight around entirely."
“Or some kind of flexible plate? So when it gets torn off, it closes around the claw, rather than just being stuck on the end. It would be interesting to see what would be more difficult to deal with.” Emma got a speculative look in her eyes. “Could you do that, Sue? With your force field? If someone punches you, can you collapse the force field inwards at the point of impact and wrap the edges around whatever has hit you? You could really pull someone off-balance with something like that. Or keep them close enough to hit them a lot. Or even wrap it around them completely and use it like handcuffs; I haven’t even thought to ask if you have to be in contact with your force fields or if you can separate them from you.” Emma brought her thoughts back to the immediate problem. “Anyway, if you can wrap them, even if you can only do it close to you, it may give us a quick and dirty way to test a few of the concepts out.”
Sue tilted her head as she considered the question, "I've never really tried to mold my forcefields around someone's punch like that," she admitted, "I've been working on flexibility and shaping them with Dr Reyes, mainly focussing on weird shapes but..." the girl fell silent as she ran through the scenario in her head before nodding, "I could do that, I'd need to practice but I could totally do that." The younger blonde glanced around the room, her gaze settling on the table next to them, Sue focussed on a chair , holding her breath as she wrapped it in a forcefield temporarily cloaking it. Sue turned back to face Clint and Emma letting the forcefield drop before anyone else noticed and letting out the breath with a small sigh, "That's as far as I can go...for now." She noted with a bright grin. "You think we could get our hands on some scraps of electro-hardening polymer to play with too?" she asked eagerly.
“With the might of Frost Enterprises at your... well, my disposal?” replied Emma. “Of course we can.” She nodded for a moment, letting her mind range over the possibility of a polymer-shielded robot that could electrify and mould the polymer around opponents. As she mulled, she changed the topic slightly and touched on the demonstration Sue had just given of her mutant power. “It’s good to keep working on your powers,” she said. “Finding new ways to use them. It would be interesting to see what you could do with moving objects – if there’s a limit to the speed you can track and enclose. It might be an idea to work with Clint in the Danger Room.” Emma grinned suddenly. “Clint throw the ball. Sue catch the ball. Clint shoot the gun. Sue catch the bullet.”
"Dude," Clint said, looking from Sue to Miss Frost and grinning. "That'd be awesome - we should totally try that. Though maybe with arrows first and not bullets. I can fire a shotgun but not anything else. My dads were kind of weirded out by the shotgun thing." The electrified polymer-shielded robot idea lodged firmly in his brain, carving out a little niche for itself and making itself at home. This was going to be so awesome - something he could work on over the summer when he had free time. All in all, the holiday was looking like it'd be pretty amazing.
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