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xp_logsArtie and Sue are in a space station - this is neither plants, nor zombies but it is Very Sus
Artie looked around and whistled. This was a weird one. Space station. He spoke into his synthesizer. "If this is supposed to be space, are they going to suck the air out of the room on us?" Had he just given the computer ideas?
He turned in a slow circle watching for movement but there wasn't any. Yet.
Sue slowly turned, her bright blue eyes flicking around the room, staring uncertainly at the walls. "See, this is why I didn't become an astronaut or try to go to space. It'll be fun they said, it'll be an adventure. It's a floating deathtrap," Eyes closed, a deep breath, "Ok...we're not dead yet so...how do these movies go? We have to find the control panel?"
Artie nodded. "Control makes sense. Hold on; I'm going to send up a flare and see what attention I can get." Everyone probably already knew they were stuck here but he couldn't discount the fact that the control room was offline or that the observers had been taken out. He closed his eyes and concentrated, sending projections to most of the main rooms in the mansion, holding them for about thirty seconds before the strain of so many non line of sight projections hit and he stopped as pain stabbed into his temple. Ow.
Artie tapped Sue on the shoulder and pointed left, setting off at a jog.
The blonde sighed, eyes still shifting from the left to the right, not quite sure that they weren't going to be attacked by a horde of killer zombies or some alien creature when they turned the corner. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy horror movies, but more that she enjoyed when they happened to other people, that is to say not to her and her friends, life at the mansion could be horrifying enough sometimes.
Artie ducked under some sparking wires and shook his head. "Fuck, this is creepy." Stars wheeled by outside. And on the other side of that, was, presumably the walls. They'd been walking around for a few minutes, waiting for the other shoe to drop and Artie was sick of it. The scenario might have "find the bridge" or maybe "rot here until you die." Fuck if he knew which.
Time to break it. "Sue. Can you get this door open?" It was locked, which either meant the scenario wanted them to use it or it didn't, but it was a random door, identical to the last 7 they'd passed. The skin between his shoulders crawled, with the kill shoot vibe of a long hall and no cover.
A head tilted to the side, blue eyes observing it thoughtfully as the young woman reached out, running a hand over the door before reaching for the control panel. It was meant to be securely fastened to the wall but...well where there was the slightest gap in the sealing a forcefield could slip in, leveraging it open to spill its guts out. It wasn't like she had her tools, but then Sue had never really needed them before, it was but the work of a moment to start to twist the wires around,. If her father could see her now, hundreds of thousands of dollars, spent to make sure that she could hotwire a door and survive a killer scnerio. He'd be so proud.
"There, done."
Hands rubbed against one another as she stepped back from the wall with a proud smile, dusting off her hands as she nodded at the door that slowly started to slide open.
While Wanda and Betsy are sent to the Wild, Wild West, with a distinct lack of Captain Jim T West, President Grant, or DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Wanda blinked, momentarily disoriented as the Danger Room scenario seemed to glitch for a moment. It was only a second but everything shifted and suddenly...
"Well, that's new," she said, staring out over a dry, sandy stretch of landscape. A breeze ruffled her hair and she turned, frowning at the new scenario.
Betsy frowned and rubbed at the sand that was getting blown into her face. Then she froze, one hand still on her cheek. “I… can’t feel the others anymore. It’s like they have been cut off from where-ever this is.”
She turned to look at Wanda. "I do not think this was supposed to happen.”
At Betsy's words, that she couldn't feel the others, Wanda's face had hardened. "No, it is not - and do not concern yourself if I, too, disappear from your mental view - it happens," she responded, hands flaring red as she turned her head left and right. Her breath hissed through her teeth. The lines were busy, frantic, in a way she had rarely seen. She dropped her powers and rubbed a hand over her eyes as the sand swirled around her feet. "Something is rapidly changing things but what, I do not know. I cannot see what is pulling the strings but I intend to find out."
“Well, that isn’t ominous at all. All I wanted was some switchboard practice,” Betsy complained. Her eyes kept scanning the sandy plain, feeling more nervous than she let on. She had gotten far too used to always having people on her mental radar and now they were just… Gone. And there it was again. “Can you hear something? Like a buzzing noise?”
Now that Betsy had pointed it out, Wanda could hear an underlying buzzing noise that was almost, but not quite, hidden under the howling of the desert wind. Before she could confirm that she could, something started to shimmer in the distance and she nodded to it. "Looks like something's happening over there. Shall we?”
Betsy shrugged and started walking in the direction of the glimmer. “Might as well. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we... Get out of here. Where-ever here is.”
At least the wind was mostly on her back now, so she didn’t have to constantly brush her hair from her eyes. Distances in this place seemed strange as well - parts of the mirage flickering in and out of focus in the horizon were starting to solifidy in to ramshackle buildings, but it was impossible to say whether they were a day’s walk away, or right around the proverbial corner.
Memories of a time spent trapped in a mental desert teased at Wanda's mind but she firmly pushed them away. There was always time for worrying over past trauma later, after they'd gotten out.
After a few steps towards the shimmering mirage it seemed to suddenly grow closer - or had they managed to cross more land? - and Wanda could make out flickering wooden buildings with porches, many of them businesses from the looks of it. She squinted as ghostly people began to appear as well. "Is that...a saloon?”
“Looks like it,” Betsy said as she stopped to inspect the scene materialising in front of them. She reached out a telepathic tendril, then frowned. “Those people though… They are either not really there, or not really people. I am not sure which option I like less."
"The lines of chaos are all over the place, I cannot describe it." They paused as the town continued to flutter around them, never really gaining true permanence. But what was gaining more clarity were the figures in the dusty road ahead of them, five across, blocking their way forward. All dressed in western garb, including the guns. Wanda exchanged a glance with Betsy. "You have got to be kidding me."
Betsy eyed the mens’ weathered faces, then looked down at the guns. “On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think it is that they just wanted to ask us for tea?"
The 'men' didn't even bother to say a word, let alone anything about tea, before the bullets started to fly. Holograms they might be but everything about it seemed far too real. "Find cover!" Wanda barked, twisting sideways and rolling through the sand to seek dubious cover behind a horse trough. From where the bullets were hitting, they appeared to be doing damage - she was not about to press their luck to see if that was for show or not.
As soon as the shooting started, Betsy took off running and dived behind the flimsy wall of the nearest hovel. Normally she trusted the Danger Room’s safeguards to kick in before anything too bad could happen, but nothing about this situation was normal and there was no point in taking chances. With no weapons or telekinesis she had little defense against non-human offenders but she grabbed a decent sized rock and threw it at the head of the closest gunman.
It passed right through as the mirage shimmered and then snapped back into focus and opened fire again. Wanda noted that it had stopped firing, however, during the attack. The strings of chaos were moving back and forth, faster than she would normally have thought they could, but if Betsy could disrupt them again, maybe Wanda might be able to get a hold of some of them. "Try that again!" she called out, ducking another barrage.
Trusting the other woman to have a plan, Betsy picked up a second rock, this time aiming for the man’s shoulder. It flew through the figure just as the previous one had, but at least it made him stop firing for a second.
As the rock passed through the hologram's shoulder, Wanda snapped up as many of strings as she could, calling them to her even as they flickered in and out as much as the men in front of them were doing. But she managed to collect enough in her mind to curl them into a ball and push a pulse of chaos through it, blasting it in bursts through the corrupted strongs. There was a sound of sparks and a bright flare as the cowboy in front of them exploded in a burst of red, angry light. Wanda flinched and covered her eyes - she wasn't sure what she'd blown up but it had made a spectacular mess.
"That is not part of the Danger Room!”
Betsy reflexively covered her eyes at the sudden brightness. When she lowered her arm there was none the shrapnel you’d expect following a normal explosion, just an empty space where the man had stood. The other cowboys seemed unconcerned but were regrouping to cover up the sudden gap in their formation. “Well, whatever it was that definitely seems to have worked on it. Can we do it again?"
"We're going to need a bigger distraction. Where's a stampede when you need one?”
“They seem to be staying in a mostly straight line. I might be able to get several of them in one go, if I found a good rock. Or ideally a bowling ball.”
"Betsy," she called, "distract them. I'm going to try to break something."
Wanda didn't wait for a response and knelt in the fake sand, eyes half closed. All the strings were moving so fast, she had to concentrate, she had to search and dig and push. But if Wanda Maximoff was anything it was stubborn. The strings were her old friends now and she called them to her. The scenario or whatever it was fought back but she was stubborn and mad and powerful. From what she could see, as Betsy threw rocks, was the town around them start to flicker and the men, still shooting, were more see through. For a brief second, her knees were on Danger Room floor before it reverted back to sand.
It didn't feel like enough when Wanda let all that energy go as several of the 'cowboys' started to advance on Betsy but she hoped it would.
And the world around her turned to red.
And finally, appropriately, Alex and Alison are stuck in a musical. A dangerous musical with flamethrowers.
The lights dimmed around them.
Alex raised an eyebrow, looking around, eyes landing on Alison. Well this was certainly... new. It felt like they were standing in a spotlight. "Uh... jail break, maybe?" It was a weak guess. Something didn't feel... right.
Six beats of music echoed through the air, followed by the descending sound of a bow on strings, and then...
How does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower Somehow defeat a global superpower?
"... What the actual fuck?"
Alison tilted her head, listening as words flowed over and around her in rapid fire. Idly, she lit up one of the submelody lines, letting the pulsing ball of light hover over one empty hand.
"It's pretty," she commented, "although I can't say I'm familiar with the song. So, if this is a joint exercise for you and I... what are we actually going up against?"
"If this is what I think it is," and if it was, Kyle was going to owe Alex actual money for making him go through this shit, "then I'm guessing robot Alexander Hamilton."
Movement drew his attention to their left; he turned to see what looked like a weird gold and grey cloud moving toward them. "Or... climate change?"
He's constantly confusin', confoundin' the British henchmen Everyone give it up for America's favorite fighting Frenchman!
Metallic feet hit the ground in time with the beat as the golden cloud condensed itself against the blackdrop. Somewhere over her head, Alison recognized the beat drop as the melody line changed and the pace kicked into high gear to the tune of 'Lafayette'.
Her first thought was "Jesus, that's one hell of a tempo change."
Second was "...is that a flamethrower?"
She didn't exactly have time for a third, as things got very hectic, very quick.
And then there were flames.
There were actual flames.
Actual fucking flames.
"There is no way that's historically accurate!" Alex yelped, dodging as a burst of fire flew at him, automatically grabbing Alison in the process.
"You can file a complaint once he catches us," Alison shouted, turning and ducking down behind some sort of barricade. She wasn't quite sure what it was in the dark, something something randomly generated danger-room terrain. "I guess the training simulation has started, then?" She called out to the booth.
The booth, unsurprisingly, did not respond.
"I'm just saying, if they're going to have robots rapping about history, it could at least-" A burst of flames hit their barricade. "Right, focus. But where are the others?" He tried tapping the communicator in his ear, frowning when all he got back was static.
Alison also tapped at her communicator, getting nothing but a burst of static in her ear. "Dammit," she swore. "I'm getting nothing but static. Maybe this is one of those 'go in blind and regroup' sort of things? I think I remember hearing about drills like that while I was at school once or twice?"
I go to France for more funds Lafayette! I come back with more
The temp dropped again, almost ominously.
Guns And ships...
"Maybe." Alex leaned out to fire a blast of energy at the attacking thing. "Guess that means we actually have to move and find the others, though."
"What else is new?" Alison asked, quirking a brow.
She paused.
"Hold up, is Roshambo a person? I always thought it was another name for Rock-Paper-Scissors."
"I think it's a place? I dunno." Alex peeked around their hiding place, then raised his arms, energy blasting the robot... thing back. "All right, well. We gotta move. Let's move."
"Wait, no, hold on, this is actually legit bugging me," Alison said, half focused on the incident and more focused on 'what the hell?' "If it was a place, wouldn't it be 'rendezvous at Roshambo? Like, you can't rendezvous with a pl--"
Another gout of flame drowned out her complaint.
"Right never mind this can wait let's move!"
Artie looked around and whistled. This was a weird one. Space station. He spoke into his synthesizer. "If this is supposed to be space, are they going to suck the air out of the room on us?" Had he just given the computer ideas?
He turned in a slow circle watching for movement but there wasn't any. Yet.
Sue slowly turned, her bright blue eyes flicking around the room, staring uncertainly at the walls. "See, this is why I didn't become an astronaut or try to go to space. It'll be fun they said, it'll be an adventure. It's a floating deathtrap," Eyes closed, a deep breath, "Ok...we're not dead yet so...how do these movies go? We have to find the control panel?"
Artie nodded. "Control makes sense. Hold on; I'm going to send up a flare and see what attention I can get." Everyone probably already knew they were stuck here but he couldn't discount the fact that the control room was offline or that the observers had been taken out. He closed his eyes and concentrated, sending projections to most of the main rooms in the mansion, holding them for about thirty seconds before the strain of so many non line of sight projections hit and he stopped as pain stabbed into his temple. Ow.
Artie tapped Sue on the shoulder and pointed left, setting off at a jog.
The blonde sighed, eyes still shifting from the left to the right, not quite sure that they weren't going to be attacked by a horde of killer zombies or some alien creature when they turned the corner. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy horror movies, but more that she enjoyed when they happened to other people, that is to say not to her and her friends, life at the mansion could be horrifying enough sometimes.
Artie ducked under some sparking wires and shook his head. "Fuck, this is creepy." Stars wheeled by outside. And on the other side of that, was, presumably the walls. They'd been walking around for a few minutes, waiting for the other shoe to drop and Artie was sick of it. The scenario might have "find the bridge" or maybe "rot here until you die." Fuck if he knew which.
Time to break it. "Sue. Can you get this door open?" It was locked, which either meant the scenario wanted them to use it or it didn't, but it was a random door, identical to the last 7 they'd passed. The skin between his shoulders crawled, with the kill shoot vibe of a long hall and no cover.
A head tilted to the side, blue eyes observing it thoughtfully as the young woman reached out, running a hand over the door before reaching for the control panel. It was meant to be securely fastened to the wall but...well where there was the slightest gap in the sealing a forcefield could slip in, leveraging it open to spill its guts out. It wasn't like she had her tools, but then Sue had never really needed them before, it was but the work of a moment to start to twist the wires around,. If her father could see her now, hundreds of thousands of dollars, spent to make sure that she could hotwire a door and survive a killer scnerio. He'd be so proud.
"There, done."
Hands rubbed against one another as she stepped back from the wall with a proud smile, dusting off her hands as she nodded at the door that slowly started to slide open.
While Wanda and Betsy are sent to the Wild, Wild West, with a distinct lack of Captain Jim T West, President Grant, or DJ Jazzy Jeff.
Wanda blinked, momentarily disoriented as the Danger Room scenario seemed to glitch for a moment. It was only a second but everything shifted and suddenly...
"Well, that's new," she said, staring out over a dry, sandy stretch of landscape. A breeze ruffled her hair and she turned, frowning at the new scenario.
Betsy frowned and rubbed at the sand that was getting blown into her face. Then she froze, one hand still on her cheek. “I… can’t feel the others anymore. It’s like they have been cut off from where-ever this is.”
She turned to look at Wanda. "I do not think this was supposed to happen.”
At Betsy's words, that she couldn't feel the others, Wanda's face had hardened. "No, it is not - and do not concern yourself if I, too, disappear from your mental view - it happens," she responded, hands flaring red as she turned her head left and right. Her breath hissed through her teeth. The lines were busy, frantic, in a way she had rarely seen. She dropped her powers and rubbed a hand over her eyes as the sand swirled around her feet. "Something is rapidly changing things but what, I do not know. I cannot see what is pulling the strings but I intend to find out."
“Well, that isn’t ominous at all. All I wanted was some switchboard practice,” Betsy complained. Her eyes kept scanning the sandy plain, feeling more nervous than she let on. She had gotten far too used to always having people on her mental radar and now they were just… Gone. And there it was again. “Can you hear something? Like a buzzing noise?”
Now that Betsy had pointed it out, Wanda could hear an underlying buzzing noise that was almost, but not quite, hidden under the howling of the desert wind. Before she could confirm that she could, something started to shimmer in the distance and she nodded to it. "Looks like something's happening over there. Shall we?”
Betsy shrugged and started walking in the direction of the glimmer. “Might as well. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we... Get out of here. Where-ever here is.”
At least the wind was mostly on her back now, so she didn’t have to constantly brush her hair from her eyes. Distances in this place seemed strange as well - parts of the mirage flickering in and out of focus in the horizon were starting to solifidy in to ramshackle buildings, but it was impossible to say whether they were a day’s walk away, or right around the proverbial corner.
Memories of a time spent trapped in a mental desert teased at Wanda's mind but she firmly pushed them away. There was always time for worrying over past trauma later, after they'd gotten out.
After a few steps towards the shimmering mirage it seemed to suddenly grow closer - or had they managed to cross more land? - and Wanda could make out flickering wooden buildings with porches, many of them businesses from the looks of it. She squinted as ghostly people began to appear as well. "Is that...a saloon?”
“Looks like it,” Betsy said as she stopped to inspect the scene materialising in front of them. She reached out a telepathic tendril, then frowned. “Those people though… They are either not really there, or not really people. I am not sure which option I like less."
"The lines of chaos are all over the place, I cannot describe it." They paused as the town continued to flutter around them, never really gaining true permanence. But what was gaining more clarity were the figures in the dusty road ahead of them, five across, blocking their way forward. All dressed in western garb, including the guns. Wanda exchanged a glance with Betsy. "You have got to be kidding me."
Betsy eyed the mens’ weathered faces, then looked down at the guns. “On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think it is that they just wanted to ask us for tea?"
The 'men' didn't even bother to say a word, let alone anything about tea, before the bullets started to fly. Holograms they might be but everything about it seemed far too real. "Find cover!" Wanda barked, twisting sideways and rolling through the sand to seek dubious cover behind a horse trough. From where the bullets were hitting, they appeared to be doing damage - she was not about to press their luck to see if that was for show or not.
As soon as the shooting started, Betsy took off running and dived behind the flimsy wall of the nearest hovel. Normally she trusted the Danger Room’s safeguards to kick in before anything too bad could happen, but nothing about this situation was normal and there was no point in taking chances. With no weapons or telekinesis she had little defense against non-human offenders but she grabbed a decent sized rock and threw it at the head of the closest gunman.
It passed right through as the mirage shimmered and then snapped back into focus and opened fire again. Wanda noted that it had stopped firing, however, during the attack. The strings of chaos were moving back and forth, faster than she would normally have thought they could, but if Betsy could disrupt them again, maybe Wanda might be able to get a hold of some of them. "Try that again!" she called out, ducking another barrage.
Trusting the other woman to have a plan, Betsy picked up a second rock, this time aiming for the man’s shoulder. It flew through the figure just as the previous one had, but at least it made him stop firing for a second.
As the rock passed through the hologram's shoulder, Wanda snapped up as many of strings as she could, calling them to her even as they flickered in and out as much as the men in front of them were doing. But she managed to collect enough in her mind to curl them into a ball and push a pulse of chaos through it, blasting it in bursts through the corrupted strongs. There was a sound of sparks and a bright flare as the cowboy in front of them exploded in a burst of red, angry light. Wanda flinched and covered her eyes - she wasn't sure what she'd blown up but it had made a spectacular mess.
"That is not part of the Danger Room!”
Betsy reflexively covered her eyes at the sudden brightness. When she lowered her arm there was none the shrapnel you’d expect following a normal explosion, just an empty space where the man had stood. The other cowboys seemed unconcerned but were regrouping to cover up the sudden gap in their formation. “Well, whatever it was that definitely seems to have worked on it. Can we do it again?"
"We're going to need a bigger distraction. Where's a stampede when you need one?”
“They seem to be staying in a mostly straight line. I might be able to get several of them in one go, if I found a good rock. Or ideally a bowling ball.”
"Betsy," she called, "distract them. I'm going to try to break something."
Wanda didn't wait for a response and knelt in the fake sand, eyes half closed. All the strings were moving so fast, she had to concentrate, she had to search and dig and push. But if Wanda Maximoff was anything it was stubborn. The strings were her old friends now and she called them to her. The scenario or whatever it was fought back but she was stubborn and mad and powerful. From what she could see, as Betsy threw rocks, was the town around them start to flicker and the men, still shooting, were more see through. For a brief second, her knees were on Danger Room floor before it reverted back to sand.
It didn't feel like enough when Wanda let all that energy go as several of the 'cowboys' started to advance on Betsy but she hoped it would.
And the world around her turned to red.
And finally, appropriately, Alex and Alison are stuck in a musical. A dangerous musical with flamethrowers.
The lights dimmed around them.
Alex raised an eyebrow, looking around, eyes landing on Alison. Well this was certainly... new. It felt like they were standing in a spotlight. "Uh... jail break, maybe?" It was a weak guess. Something didn't feel... right.
Six beats of music echoed through the air, followed by the descending sound of a bow on strings, and then...
How does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower Somehow defeat a global superpower?
"... What the actual fuck?"
Alison tilted her head, listening as words flowed over and around her in rapid fire. Idly, she lit up one of the submelody lines, letting the pulsing ball of light hover over one empty hand.
"It's pretty," she commented, "although I can't say I'm familiar with the song. So, if this is a joint exercise for you and I... what are we actually going up against?"
"If this is what I think it is," and if it was, Kyle was going to owe Alex actual money for making him go through this shit, "then I'm guessing robot Alexander Hamilton."
Movement drew his attention to their left; he turned to see what looked like a weird gold and grey cloud moving toward them. "Or... climate change?"
He's constantly confusin', confoundin' the British henchmen Everyone give it up for America's favorite fighting Frenchman!
Metallic feet hit the ground in time with the beat as the golden cloud condensed itself against the blackdrop. Somewhere over her head, Alison recognized the beat drop as the melody line changed and the pace kicked into high gear to the tune of 'Lafayette'.
Her first thought was "Jesus, that's one hell of a tempo change."
Second was "...is that a flamethrower?"
She didn't exactly have time for a third, as things got very hectic, very quick.
And then there were flames.
There were actual flames.
Actual fucking flames.
"There is no way that's historically accurate!" Alex yelped, dodging as a burst of fire flew at him, automatically grabbing Alison in the process.
"You can file a complaint once he catches us," Alison shouted, turning and ducking down behind some sort of barricade. She wasn't quite sure what it was in the dark, something something randomly generated danger-room terrain. "I guess the training simulation has started, then?" She called out to the booth.
The booth, unsurprisingly, did not respond.
"I'm just saying, if they're going to have robots rapping about history, it could at least-" A burst of flames hit their barricade. "Right, focus. But where are the others?" He tried tapping the communicator in his ear, frowning when all he got back was static.
Alison also tapped at her communicator, getting nothing but a burst of static in her ear. "Dammit," she swore. "I'm getting nothing but static. Maybe this is one of those 'go in blind and regroup' sort of things? I think I remember hearing about drills like that while I was at school once or twice?"
I go to France for more funds Lafayette! I come back with more
The temp dropped again, almost ominously.
Guns And ships...
"Maybe." Alex leaned out to fire a blast of energy at the attacking thing. "Guess that means we actually have to move and find the others, though."
"What else is new?" Alison asked, quirking a brow.
She paused.
"Hold up, is Roshambo a person? I always thought it was another name for Rock-Paper-Scissors."
"I think it's a place? I dunno." Alex peeked around their hiding place, then raised his arms, energy blasting the robot... thing back. "All right, well. We gotta move. Let's move."
"Wait, no, hold on, this is actually legit bugging me," Alison said, half focused on the incident and more focused on 'what the hell?' "If it was a place, wouldn't it be 'rendezvous at Roshambo? Like, you can't rendezvous with a pl--"
Another gout of flame drowned out her complaint.
"Right never mind this can wait let's move!"
