Scott and Haroun, Monday morning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott heads down to the Danger Room and finds Haroun there exploring how to juice up his offensive power. They have a brief chat about the practicalities of carrying weapons and the versatility (or lack thereof) of their mutations. Then Scott shows off, just a little.



Haroun stood in the Danger Room, waiting for the program to cycle the next batch of targets. He held two pistols, one in each hand. Their magazines were dry, but each pistol had a targeting laser under the barrel. When that beam intersected with one of the targets, a "hit" was registered. So far, he'd been through sixteen waves of targets, with an accuracy rating in the low 90th percentile. But he didn't look too happy about it. "Next wave, please." he told the Danger Room, which obligingly sent two yellow discs flying across the room, to be tagged by Haroun at the apex of their flight.

Scott had headed down to the Danger Room with the vague idea of doing some programming in the control booth. He was surprised to find the Room in use - no one had been scheduled for this morning - and more surprised to find Haroun down there, with guns. Making a thoughtful noise, he settled into the chair, calling up the parameters of the last scenario he'd been creating on the screen in front of him and keeping one eye on Haroun, assessing his marksmanship.

The next few waves were all shot down in midflight, but when it got up to six targets in the air simultaneously, he missed two of them. Barely. Snarling, he waited impatiently for the next wave of targets. He hadn't even registered Scott's presence at all, so focused was he on his shooting. For this round, he lofted himself up into the air to down the next wave of two wildly erratic discs.

Yeah, there went the frustration level again. Scott waited until Haroun had taken care of the next wave, moderately successfully, before reaching out and tapping the console to call a temporary halt to the proceedings. He flipped the exterior mike on. "Not bad in terms of accuracy rate," he told Haroun.

Haroun turned around to stare up at the Booth. Scott. Lovely. "It needs to be better." he said, landing and holstering both guns by instinct. "I don't pack much offensive punch. This will help me even things up a little."

Interesting. Not that he hadn't been fully aware of the fact that Haroun obsessed just a little over the subject. "What type of weaponry were you planning to carry?" Scott asked deliberately.

Haroun shrugged. "Was planning on swapping it around depending on mission needs. Concentrating on handguns for the moment, although I'm not half-bad with a SMG. Carry a couple different types of ammo in a heat-shielded pouch so I can do stun rounds, tracers, hollowpoints, explosive, whatever might help take the Bad Guys down. Can't always risk going hand-to-hand, and I can't use my power in combat." he groused.

"On the other hand," Scott pointed out, his lips twitching a little - it was a good thing Haroun probably couldn't see it - "you can use your power in situations other than combat. To be honest, I'd trade with you."

Haroun laughed bitterly at that. "I like Flight, don't get me wrong. But I'm not blessed with a damage sponge to keep me from breaking my arms if I try to do an aerial ram." he said bitterly, letting his frustrations out. "And just being a scout or a taxi isn't real appealing."

Gah. Scott kicked the pep talk part of his brain hard. A little help, here... Why hadn't he done a psychology degree, instead of engineering? Would have been a lot more useful in his current occupation...

"You realize," he said dryly, opting for humor first, "if I okay you carrying guns on missions, I'm going to have to do the same for Nathan once he's on active status? And then the two of you will probably be trying to outdo each other with who can have the bigger gun..."

Haroun snickered. "You're safe on that score. He wins the dicksize war by default." He put the guns down on the table in front of him, and then floated up to the observation window to be able to look Scott in the eye. "Nathan's got a gazillion offensive uses for his powers. Save the added punch for those of us who don't."

Scott gave him a thoughtful look. "So you don't have a gazillion," he said steadily. "Does that mean you have none?"

"That depends." he said. "I can do an aerial ram once. Then I'm out for six weeks or more while my arms recover from being broken from the feedback. Or I can do it with my legs and risk unique multi-million dollar pieces of hardware." he said with a grimace. "I can carry people around for short amounts of time without them burning. Can't go fast enough to do sonic booms without flaying the flesh from my bones. My only option, if I have room to pull it off, is the snatch-and-drop. And that's if I'm strong enough to lift someone."

It did make sense. "I'd obviously prefer you to go for non-lethal ammo," Scott said after a moment. "Unless of course we're in heavy combat..."

"And I'm perfectly fine with gel rounds." he said with a grin. "Nonlethal takedown is the normal rule of order, unless one of ours drops first. Then the kid gloves come off. Maybe I can get that Forge kid to design something with an internal magazine - switch from gel to APDS with a toggle or something."

Scott chuckled. "Let's not go too far with turning the kid into our resident techno-wizard," he said. "At least not yet. Although I hear he did well in Vegas?"

"Not bad. I wasn't on-site to oversee - my part was a little different. But from what Nathan said, the kid kept it together pretty well and pulled through in the clutch. That's a good start, I think. Been meaning to talk to him, but with finals and Alison and the 'Bird I just haven't had the time to do it right. Once classes are over I'll make a point of it. And speaking of making a point of it - would the pupil-blaster like to come down here and show us mere mortals how it's done?"

Scott laughed. "I'll be down in a minute. Need to grab my visor."

Haroun nodded, flipped Scott a thumb's up, and then descended to the floor of the Room. "This should be interesting." he said to no one in particular as he waited for Scott to arrive.

A few minutes later, the doors opened and Scott came through, adjusting his visor. "I'm half-tempted to ask Forge what he thinks of the visor," he said, joining Haroun. "See if he can suggest any improvements."

"I thought we didn't want to turn him into Mr Wizard the Team Armorer?" he replied with a grin. "You're going to breeze through my poor program. I know it." he said with a melodramatic sigh. "Begins in five, four, three ..." he said, and then pressed a button to start the actual discs flying.

Scott took a deep breath at the count, his hand going up to the control of his visor. Haroun had set up a fairly complicated program, about the same level as what he tended to practice with. Maybe it was an adaptation of one of his programs? But then the discs were flying, and Scott let loose with carefully measured blasts.

Haroun kept his eyes on the targets, watching them get blasted with almost machine-like precision. "Impressive" he said once the demonstration was over. "You come in, cold, and ace the highest level of difficulty that my program has." he said enviously. "Guess I need to train more."

"More training is always good," Scott said, "but remember, this is what I do." He smiled. "Plus I've got that spatial awareness kink to my mutation, so I have an unfair advantage."

"Yeah, I know that, but I'm competitive. Maybe I should see if this spatial awareness can be duped via millimeter-wave radar..." he mused with a slight grin. "Anyway, I think the Room's yours now, right?" he said, checking his watch to be sure. "Feel free to dismiss the program and go do whatever it is that you do in here."

"I was just down here to get a jump-start on some programming, actually," Scott said. "I'd offer to let you test-drive the new scenario, but given that it's designed for Lorna and Nathan..."

Haroun winced. "Way out of my league, man. Those are our two biggest hitters." Haroun tried to keep the envy out of his voice, and mostly succeeded. "Any scenario that might make them break a sweat would probably kill me."

Hmm. "You know," Scott said, "I could use some feedback on it. I'm trying to throw them a few curveballs." He smiled at Haroun, an edge of challenge to the expression. "And given that you are a team leader these days, you ought to be more involved in this side of things."

"All right." he said with a grin. "Show me what you have so far, and I'll see if I can find a few places to turn things up a notch."

Comments

[x-polarisstar.livejournal.com]

"Way out of my league, man. Those are our two biggest hitters."

Lorna would be shocked to hear him say that. In fact, consider OOC!Lorna utterly floored.