xp_logs | Danger Room Test - Nica, Kyle and Darcy

Kyle and Darcy are doing a test run of the DR version of Malice. Nica isn't as bulletproof as she thinks she is.

TW for Malice-ness

"We've got this one locked down to just the early morning hours, at least for now. Curated audience and shit." Kyle had already sworn Darcy to faux-secrecy on the subject of "Kyle actually can adjust and program the Danger Room", insisting that if anyone found out they would make him learn other nerd stuff.

The effect was diminished by the Mario Kart/Green Day mashup t-shirt he was wearing, and his grin as he pulled up the program and sent the development notes to Darcy's email.

"Anyway, I've run it a few times and Gar has, and I wanna run it past you guys, like, at least you first, maybe Doug. But Nica's our early bird so she talked me into letting her run through once first." He plopped down in one of the spinning chairs in the Control Room. "And then I owe you drinks later because anytime we're gonna re-fucking-traumatise ourselves, it's vodka time."

"Sounds good," Darcy agreed, covering her mouth as a wide yawn escaped. She was dressed casually, leggings and one of Doug's soft, broken in hoodies acting almost like a dress on her shorter frame. "So how accurate is this supposed to be? With all the data we've got... do I need to pop a Xanax? Heck, do you need one?" She took a long sip of her coffee after she asked, fingers rubbing soothingly over the small orange bottle in the pocket of her hoodie. "I brought them with, just in case."

A chair was a good idea. She grabbed the other spinny chair, and set her coffee securely beside the console as she decided to take a pill, just in case. "The Danger Room's ridiculously smart, right? Probably for the best to stop the nerve jangles before they start." The small pill landed in her open palm and was tossed back with ease, followed by a coffee chaser.

The door opened, and Darcy lifted her hand in a wave. "Morning."

"Morning." Nica waved as she entered the Danger Room and then tugged at the sleeves of her X-Men uniform jacket, adjusting the fit. "I'm all ready - how're things in the control booth?" There was a definite air of deliberate casualness about the young X-Man, but whether she was trying to reassure herself or the other two mutants was hard to tell.

Kyle waved - for the moment, the control room window was clear and tabbed the microphone. "All good up here. Remember this one's supposed to beat you up, so no shame in ghosting out. We're not trying to win, just testing." He pulled up the documents Kane had made for the tests, and tapped at the screen to click off a few options. "Like the gorilla, only purple, bitchy and knows your driver's license name." His tone was very carefully light, but the strain showed in his jaw and the way his claws twitched.

"I'll be fine. Sticks and stones and all that jazz." Nica flashed them a brief grin. "I wouldn't have volunteered if I couldn't handle it."

Darcy very politely didn't raise an eyebrow, and kept her voice professionally neutral as she spoke to the mic. "Collins has a habit of getting under the skin of even the most unflappable, happy people. Don't let VI hurt your pride if her version gets under yours, that's the whole idea of training this." She flicked it off, then turned to Kyle. "I'll buy the first round of apps with those drinks if she actually taps out instead of treating this like she's getting bonus gold stars for toughing it out."

Kyle held up a water bottle from the other side of his chair. "Xanax doesn't do much for me, and I'm the sober danger room admin, but yeah, it's apps and drinks after this no matter what." He tabbed the mic. "I set it to sewers, no smellovision, so no environmental bullshit. Going live in three... two." At once, he hit the scenario start button, and settled in as the Danger Room rippled into a large concrete and steel culvert. A stream of water emerged from one of the pipes, and the irregular plink of dripping could be heard. It was a familiar scenario, designed to push the tolerances of the enhanced-senses group, so he was familiar. "Malice prototype live in fifteen seconds."

Nica nodded, shifting to infra red so she could track the target in the near-darkness, dim red light outlining her body. "Ready or not, here she comes..." she murmured under her breath.

"Mm right, healing factor. Always forget how much that can muck with medication." Darcy pulled out a small notebook, flipping to a fresh page and letting it rest on her knees. "Do we have the Morlock tunnels programmed? I know, kinda random, but with the idea that parts of the Underground are compromised..." she trailed off as the prototype went live, giving a faint shudder at the new Laurie. "So that's what she looks like now? Her, but just... the 'attempting to be nice facade' completely stripped away." New nightmare fodder was fine. Maybe it'd help divorce the better memories from the fragmented, super shitty ones.

Kyle glanced down at the control room. "Yeah, this isn't quite them, but we have 'em. Also some sewers in London, some sloth tunnels in Argentina or some shit, some weird underground mall in Toronto.." He watched one of the consoles tick down, and then scroll code past rapidly as it loaded the conversation and communication aspects of the prototype. None of the scrolling words made a lick of sense - he knew how to ask VI for things, he knew how to use the Danger Room to tweak designs and scenarios, but the flickering words on the screen were as good as gibberish. "And yeah, fucking creepy, right? Not the first time she's been purple with claws, but last time..."

In the Danger Room, the hologram of Malice crouched, fingers just brushing the concrete of the sewer tunnel. They'd put her in the battle ready clothes Garrison had seen her in, blonde hair brilliantly contrasting against the purple skin and grey fatigues. She stood, movements a little unnatural on her slender frame - they'd based it on Kyle's memories of Genosha, scans of Laurie from before the first time she lost her arm, and Kyle's own fighting style, and hadn't quite meshed yet. The hologram stood and crossed her arms, and took a single step towards Nica. "Monica. I won't deign to use your codename, you barely deserve one."

Nica raised her eyebrows. "Okay, going in hard with the mean girl attitude, I see," she murmured to herself. Out loud, she said: "I'm here to take you in. Are you coming quietly, or are we going to get rough?" Obviously it was going to get rough, but Nica preferred to give people a chance to do the right thing, even in the DR.

Faux-Malice laughed, cold and condescending. "You would never even touch me." She waved a clawed hand dismissively at Nica and then leapt, landing inches from the younger woman's face. "Poor little Monica here to arrest the scary doctor, poor little Monica, has to look into the eyes of the monster she created." She shoved at Nica with both hands. "You did this to me. I know what it's like to be where you are. Never good enough, so you always have to volunteer for the worst jobs. Did they send you after me because you made me, or because Garrison Kane is sending the next version of me after me."

"Nasty opening salvo," Darcy murmured quietly. It made her wonder what this Faux-Malice would say to her, should she go a round or two in the DR. Maybe she'd test it later. With alcohol and no witnesses. "Guess she keeps the frog in the pot approach for people she wants to fuck. Or use." Her eyes were firmly on the downstairs, watching, calculating. Ideally, she wanted this version of Malice to be verbally nasty enough that people could get used to the hurt, instead of it burrowing under their skin in the field. Festering. Sowing Laurie's special blend of mistrust and hurt like a slow-acting poison. Her abilities were going to be bad enough to face. They were going to need something to minimize her pheromone powers. But for now... they could at least turn the words into background radiation, something the teams could shrug off and talk out with each other or in therapy.

Nica had involuntarily taken a step back when "Malice" had gotten in her face. Not because she was worried about physical harm - her light form was intangible, after all - but to get some distance from that intense, insane glare. "I-it's not my fault," she replied, voice only hitching a little. "You made your choices way before I ever got involved, or you wouldn't have been in that machine in the first place. Hurting Darcy, lying to everyone? All you."

"You threw the switch, Monica." Malice said, with a disdainful shrug. "You made me. I am so much worse than what I could be. I was growing a new arm, you destroyed my nerves, my brain. Doctor Essex saved me." She flicked her claws in and out, picking invisible little pieces of dirt from underneath. "I wanted to be the best I could be. Can you blame me? You want to be the best. You named yourself after all of energy. You don't get to judge me. I did everything, I gave everything, and the X-Men ruined me and they will ruin you too. None of this is my fault."

"You keep saying that often enough, maybe you'll convince yourself," Nica shot back. The slightly robotic repetition was helping her to pull back emotionally. "I'm not you. No matter how much you want me to believe that."

Darcy raised an eyebrow from her seat in the control room. "Absolutely the sort of revisionist history she'd use, but not entirely correct. The nerves were already shot. Our brains were both already fried. At worst, Monica just exacerbated the problem that was already there, leading to the medical issues I heard about later. But the experimental process itself could've been doing that. And she's not any more like Laurie than any other person that's driven to be highly successful."

"Yeah, we're only going off Danger Room stuff and my texts." Kyle explained. "Still haven't gotten to dumping all her journal posts in, or like, emails." He made a face, and patted the console in front of him. "VI's helping, but I only can handle so much at once."

In the Danger Room, Malice inched forward towards Nica, a sneer on her face. "How are you not me? But you can't be me, you're a failure." She flicked her claws in and out, eerily like Kyle did when he was angry. "You can't even save me right, how could you ever be an X-Man?"

That shot struck a nerve. Nica stepped back again. "I tried," she retorted, but the previous conviction was gone. Because had she been trying to save Laurie, or stop her? "I did what I could."

"I can help dump data in," Darcy replied quietly to Kyle, still watching the goings-on below. "I mean, I'll need a Xanax to keep the edge off, but that's why I have a prescription for them." Her fingers tapped a staccato on her notebook. "I think Malice is getting under her skin. She's losing ground."

"Did you? Or did you just unplug me without thinking, because you won't ever be as smart as you think you are?" A purple haze lifted off the faux-Malice's skin as she spoke. Malice lunged, lightning fast and swiped at Nica with her claws. "Monica Rambeau, thinks she's smarter than doctors."

"No, it's not like that..." Monica began to protest before dodging back away from the claws. She might be intangible, but instincts were instincts and she still needed to work on standing still while people and things sailed harmlessly through her - Nica considered it impolite in normal situations and in combat, sometimes you forgot to think. "I wasn't trying to be smarter, I was just trying to stop things from getting worse! To stop you!"

Malice's head tilted, and she stared, birdlike at NIca. "I was in a medical pod. I was harmless. You did this to me. You. Not me. It was never me. You wanted to kill me. I did nothing wrong. I was harmless. I was harmless." She took another step forward, and before she could say anything else, Kyle had hit the 'end' button on the Danger Room controls, and tabbed the microphone.

"Yo, I think that's enough of that. This is supposed to be mean but we're not at the personal shitty attack level of mean yet." The hairs on his neck and arms were raised, and his claws scraped against the desk.

"Laurie does like to jump to those if it'll get her a win, though," Darcy murmured quietly. She wasn't sure if Monica could hear her through the mic, but it didn't matter. "Anything she can use to score open that soft flesh, open someone up to mistakes or thoughtless miscalculation." She forcibly unclenched her own hand, reaching out towards Kyle. "Probably a good place to stop for now, though."

Down in the Danger Room, Nica was panting slightly, still wrestling with the welter of emotions the encounter had raised. "She was right. I was scared," she admitted at last. "Of Laurie. I remembered that Halloween nightmare and all I could see was her coming out of that pod as some kind of monster, so I...." She gulped, apparently forgetting the audience in the observation booth as her powers slipped her usually tight control, her glow intensifying. "I didn't wait. I just reacted."

Kyle's hands hit the microphone bluetooth pairing button at the same time he stood up. He was speaking into a headset before he was at the door. "VI, shut down as fast as you can, I'm heading in." He glanced over his shoulder at Darcy, hoping she was following, and then fled the control room to head straight to the Danger Room. His voice came over the speakers before he'd even gotten the door open. "Nobody's fault there except Essex, sure as shit not yours. She knew who he was. She's not stupid, she knew."

"Vi, would you lock down the recording from this until Garrison Kane has accessed and watched? Just him, Kyle, and myself for now, please." Darcy knew Vi, but she wasn't familiar the same way she was with Lemon, so she kept her requests polite and tone respectful. "Garrison can expand viewing permissions as he feels necessary, of course." She glanced down from the Control Room window, where she could just make out Kyle joining Monica in the dim lighting. She gathered her things slowly, giving the two a few minutes to... comfort? Talk teammate to teammate? A little healthy trash talk? Regardless, she knew she wasn't one of Monica's preferred people, and wouldn't want someone she disliked down there if their roles were reversed.

Even if that person had as much sympathy for her as she currently had for Monica. Maybe especially then. There was nothing for it, though. Darcy would use cold, hard logic in the face of Monica's fear. Talk about the realities of not always having the time to weigh the consequences. Her footsteps were light on the stairs as she crossed from the Control Room down to the Danger Room, grabbing an unopened water bottle before dropping it quietly to the floor. Bare feet barely made a sound as she moved across the floor and came to a stop just at the edges of the other two, hand automatically reaching out to pass Monica the bottle. "Hydrate, it's good for you."

As Kyle had reached her, the intense light had dimmed back down to something more like her usual glow and now Nica took the offered bottle automatically. "Thanks," she managed, her voice shaking slightly. "I'm sorry, I thought I could handle it. I didn't realise..."

"Nothing to apologize for." Kyle said. "I should've remembered you were there for the haunted house nonsense too." He peered through the fingers of the hand he'd slapped onto his face, and blinked a few times and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Okay, safe for eyes. Look, that she cut you that hard that fast is like. I mean. I guess it means we've got this thing going in the right direction, but also, it was supposed to hit you in the soft spots, so if this is on anyone, it's on me." Despite the absurd shirt and messy hair, he was all professional, back straight and feet unmoving, strangely still for Kyle. "This program got real personal real fast, but this is why we're building it. Malice is going to hit hard and personal and you're on her shit list."

Nica nodded, dropping her powers even more so she was solid enough to take a long draught out of the water bottle. "No, I get it. I just... I didn't expect that last part. I've never really mentioned it to anyone, so it was a surprise, hearing it coming out of her mouth. It was like she was real, you know?"

"That's the idea," Darcy said quietly. "She's a little more personal for a lot of us. There's more material to work from, we have a better profile on what she does when she's trying to get under someone's skin. So we can program VI to be more realistic than the people we only encounter in the heat of battle. And despite what she said about being harmless... maybe she was in the moment. I certainly went after her with everything I could manage when we fought, even though she clearly came out on top there. You reacted to neutralize a threat with the limited time and data you had. That's exactly the sort of thing you've been taught during these training room sessions, isn't it?"

"It is, it's just..." Nica gulped down some more water, trying to give herself time to sort her thoughts. "I wasn't thinking that, when it happened. I wasn't reacting to an actual threat, I was reacting out of my personal fear. And that reaction hurt someone." She looked down at her hands, glowing fitfully. "But I guess we all can do that, can't we?"

Kyle waved a hand full of claws, fully extended. "Yep. And this is maybe cliche, but this is why we're doing this. Better have her talk shit here, and lose our cool here, and then figure out how not to do that. Next time you'll come in prepared for her to hit you in the soft bits." He barked a dry little laugh. "I'll show you some of the recordings of the early runs. Fake Malice tried to pull the dog boy Kyle thing on me. Almost pissed me off enough to lose my cool."

Darcy shrugged, trying to be pragmatic. "Your personal fear, sure. But that fear is based on a real understanding of what sort of threat her powers are. And she was..." Darcy trailed off, wrapping her arms around herself and looking down at the floor. "I don't remember... everything. But our fight... there was a point where she was demanding, almost begging that I stop trying to stop her, because when our powers combined into a feedback loop it had a real potential to be deadly. We didn't get a chance to do a lot of testing, but the little we did... it was..." She stopped for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase it. "We could've been terrifying together, given the time and incentive. I don't like thinking about what could've happened if she'd played it differently, been a little less impatient, brought me into things deeper. Let Essex get hold of us as a unit. But she was already damaged when she went into that pod. You might have caused more damage, but you didn't do all of it. I did my fair share, and I was actively trying to kill her."

When she finally looked back up, catching the younger girl's eyes, her eyes were kind but her mouth was firm. "I read the reports. Yes, you were hasty. Now you know not to stop electrical things like that unless there's an imminent life or death situation. But you were reacting to not just your own fears, but the very real potential consequences about what Essex is capable of doing to mutants in his grasp. And then you brought her back despite that fear because your intel said she was still one of us. Do not keep beating yourself up over it. She was lost to us well before anything you might've done."

Nica gave Darcy a grateful smile. "Thanks. I hadn't thought about it like that. It helps, some." Then her expression clouded. "This must have been so hard for you. Both of you. I'm sorry if I made it harder with my..." she waved her hand vaguely. "Blah."

"It was always gonna be bad, you couldn't make it worse.' Kyle explained, with a wave of a hand, claws now tucked into the nail beds. "We've never had an enemy that was one of us before, not like this. It's already about as bad as I can imagine. All this.." He waved, indicating the Danger Room, and then nodded with his head at Darcy. "Gar keeps correcting me every time I call her Laurie, that she's just Malice now, but I think it's maybe dangerous to think about her as a different person. She's still Laurie Collins, and every single part of all of this, all the trauma and nightmares and every time one of us has to come down here and try to prepare to deal with her, that's on her. You don't blame me for bruises when I'm throwing you around the mats, right? Same thing. She chose to work with Essex. Every single time one of us has to deal with the aftermath of her shit, it's on her now."

"I think you've only been making it harder on yourself, if you've been bottling things up instead of talking to someone. That's not healthy, and it could cause things to go poorly in the field. Bottling things up because I thought I was a big girl that could handle my own shit instead of relying on people is part of how Laurie got close enough to me to do the subtle sort of whammy she did. I know we're not close, but... you remind me a lot of myself, in some ways. I'd hate for you to make some of the same mistakes I did because you decided you could or should shoulder your burdens alone." Darcy rubbed the back of her neck, feeling extremely awkward. "If you ever want to talk... not just this stuff, but classes, whatever. My door's open to you. And, y'know. My arms too, if you ever want or need a good hug. I hear I'm decent at those."

Nica finished the water while the others were talking and looked sheepish. "It's an old habit, keeping stuff to myself. After my mom died, I figured Dad had enough on his plate, you know? And then once I manifested, I had to keep that secret from my friends at school... I guess I just got in the habit of trying to cope with things alone. But I'll try to remember I don't have to." She glanced at Darcy. "Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about school, I just didn't know how to kick things off. Maybe we could start there?"

"That sounds good. The field changes, obviously, but the basics are pretty much the same. I'd love to sit down with you about it." Darcy gave her a small, genuine smile. "And I can give you contact information for the therapy practice I go to if you want. I know several people have gone to Dr. Grim, but I go to his partner, Dr. Stearne. They're both discreet and fairly in the know."

"Thanks," Nica replied with a responding smile. "I don't know if I'm ready for the therapy thing, but if I need it, I know who to call."