ArchivedLogs:Trial Basis

Trial Basis
Dramatis Personae Logan, Peter, Scott Summers, Taylor	2013-04-18 Detention. LASER detention.
Location <XS> Danger Room
Welcome to detention. LASER DETENTION. Okay, not /actually/ detention. But it does have lasers! Two squads; one lead by Logan, the other by Scott. Peter's on Scott's team. Beneath each of them, four students - each armed with a pulse rifle and clad in a 'space-suit' (really, just a nifty-keen leather-like outfit with a helmet - blue for Logan, red for Scott). When the pulse rifle hits any of your four extremities, the suit causes those extremities to 'freeze' in position, rendering them immovable - when it hits your torso or head, your entire /body/ goes rigid, thereby taking you out of the game. The goal of the game is to 'activate' the other team's gate. The gates are on opposite sides of the room - Blue team's gate on their side, red team's gate on theirs. Activating the gate requires two players to reach the gate and hit the respective switches simultaneously - meaning you need at least /two/ people on a team in order to win. Throughout the large, spacious room, there are rocks, flotsam, and (grey) 'corpses' - really just grey 'space-suits' that have been 'frozen' and left to float. Yes, float. Because - did we mention that you are playing laser tag in ZERO GEE? Because yes, it will be happening in zero gee. The gates will 'open' - exposing each side to the other - in five, four, three... Snug inside a suit of his own, and floating carefully behind some boulders, Logan is swearing. Alot. In several languages. "THIS is your idea of a training sim?" he asks of everyone and no one at the same time. Then he mutters: "And if anyone mentions that the Prof WANTED zero-G stuff, I'll..." and his words deteriorate into animalistic growls. He does mentions something about rearranging someone's body parts and grafting several random animal bits in their place. "Are we good? Tactics, bub, tactics. It's your show - so show me what ya got." Scott is the sort to be comfortable with just about any situation he's thrown in - or at least, he is very good at acting like it. He clutches his pulse rifle to his chest, his finger outside of the trigger area in a display of discipline. He always did have one of those inscrutable looks to him. He turns briefly to Peter - he did have that charismatic voice that commanded attention. "Alright, Peter. This exercise is to demonstrate teamwork and thinking in terms of space. This is your element, and I'm not bad in it myself. There's a couple of ways we can do this, but I want to give you the chance to call the shots and we'll run it on a plan you create. I want you to be creative - it must include at least one signal for us to execute an op. Give it a second to chew on it, and let me know what you want to do." Scott always had an interesting approach to teaching. Today was 'Give Peter leadership opportunities' day!" Taylor shifts in his space-suit, hovering just behind Logan. As the timer ticks down, noting the opening of the gate, he comments to Logan: "Hey. /Hey/. You've read... Ender's Game, right? Because this is Ender's Game--" "I... I'm in charge?" Peter asks on Scott's side. "/Me/?" He looks to the gate, about to open - then back to Scott. Then back to the gate. And then, quite promptly, Peter points at the gate in front of him. "You're really tall," he says, "so you go up front." Presuming Scott does as Peter orders - when the gates open - Logan and his team would find themselves confronted not with a bunch of students shoving themselves out of the enemy gate at random, in a chaotic formation - but rather all the students /behind/ Scott Summers, forming a massive conga line - all kicking their feet off at once, /drilling/ toward Logan's team - guns bristling around the mutant teacher, firing outward. They are using Cyclops as a human meatshield. Logan blinks. And blinks again. "A FUCKING CONGA LINE???" he bellows into the mic in his suit, and with a growl, he DIVES out from behind cover (the man's a veteran at zero-G stuff anyway) and begins firing. His trajectory takes him closer to a half-fallen light-post of some kind, and he grabs it with a hand to swing himself around and send off another few expert, parting shots at his opponents before ducking behind cover again. "Screw this for a joke. You wanna lead, BUB, lead like an X-MAN, and not some two-bit, after-hours stripogram on acid. Bub." The Wolverine is displeased. Mmhmm. Scott does a remarkable job, for his part, of calmly executing the plan, floating forward in zero-G with an aplomb you might not expect from him. He is firing forward this way and that, and pretty soon he is taking a shot there to his arm, there to his leg...there goes his arm, he is completely frozen in place and may now only float vaguely in front of the rest of the group, hanging limply. He arches a brow when he hears Logan's voice, but he tastefully decides to keep quiet and see how Peter and the rest of the group take this assault. "SHIELD!" Peter roars as Logan swings out toward the side - and suddenly, Peter - second behind Scott - throws himself out to the side where Logan's caught himself, reaching out to catch one of Scott's frozen arms - linking wrists with him. A blast from Logan's rifle hits Peter's arm; the arm goes rigid - locking him in place. Now forming an L-shaped piece of moving cover. The next shot hits Peter's faceplate - his armor goes rigid, forcing him to cease moving. The conga line moves up - the next student behind Peter takes up Peter's previous position. When Taylor swings over from the /opposite/ side of Logan - trying to pincer them - the next student promptly flings themselves in the way, firing as he links hands with Scott's /other/ arm. Blam, blam - Taylor's hit, frozen - and so's the second member of Scott's team. Forming a large chunk of /comprehensive/ cover for the next member of the Conga line to hide behind - sniping shots at Logan, now, as the shifting - growing - shield continues to move toward the enemy gate! Pew pew pew...! Logan has little choice for now, but to duck behind cover again, as shots pew pew above him. He never stops muttering. "If ya were thinkin' this'd put me off guard, Squirt, I hate ta break yer bubble but..." He ducks down again, and actually slings his pulse rifle over his shoulder. Then, with both arms he grips the sides of the debris behind which he'd been hiding, and hefts it up... A moment later, he braces himself and hurls the chunk of building (taking full advantage of the micro-gravity in the room) forward toward the advancing line. The plan might have worked perfectly but for the reaction pitching him backward a bit, and one of the incoming shots hits his left leg - freezing it in place. The large chunk of wall however... is incoming. Scott is the one to take the full brunt of this debris (by intention, you furry bastard?) and oofs in the gut. And yet - note this: since he seems to be more or less in the middle of the line, and since his fingers are FROZEN shut, it does little to shuddder the line APART...it just slow the line down a tad. "Peter, you might want to get a move on," he suggests, winded from being struck in the tummy. "Oh come on - they're - you're just re-enacting Ender's Game!" Taylor shouts, floating along the far end of the room, still frozen. "You cribbed this strategy from the book!" "Yes, and it's AWESOME!" Peter responds, furiously scowling at Logan as he escapes the incoming Legionairre-styled shield. "We're totally going to win--" "No, Peter, you /spaz/!" Taylor replies. "It only works when you've got team-mates to spare! YOU ONLY HAVE TWO TEAM-MEMBERS LEFT." Peter blinks. And twists his head, trying to look behind him. Taylor's right; Peter's brilliant plan has one critical flaw: You need two team-members to 'activate' the enemy gate. And Peter just sacrificed... three of his five team-members for operation MEATSHIELD. Which means... if either of these remaining two get fragged, it's game-over. "Uh, you two... DON'T GET HIT. THAT'S AN ORDER!" Peter shouts above the ensuing ruckus. Pew pew pew! Peter's team-mates seem to have accepted Parker's order with great aplomb. They manage to hit another member of Logan's team, right in the face-plate - along with Logan's leg! Bringing it down to 3 against 2 - and the 2 are behind a big wonking /shield/ plunging right for the gate. Except... there's also a rock coming for /them/. The two team-members squeak - and abandon ship, both kicking off their meatshield in opposite directions. One for Taylor, grabbing him to use as a shield - the other for a floating chunk of flotsam, getting leg-hit and arm-hit in the process. The Peter-Scott-Redshirt meatshield gets whacked by the rock, thunking against all three of them and bouncing them back in the opposite direction. "ARRRGH!" Peter shouts. "BIG ROCKS -- MY ONE WEAKNESS! HOW DID YOU KNOOOOOOOOO~W--" Yeah, Peter's pretty much a spaz. Logan... lazy bastard that he is, lets the boulder do most of the work for him. He and he sole-remaining teammate just... mosey along behind it, taking pot-shots whenever, wherever possible... hopping, hopping... he has little choice (one leg is--grrr!) Logan would attempt to slash the stuff off his leg, but that would compromise his suit (and if this were in space, that would be... bad), and given the game's rules, it's unlikely the sim would allow it. Still, it doesn't stop him from hopping along. Closer now to the objective, Logan nods to his companion and bellows a roar (probably deafening anyone listening too closely on the coms). "NOW!!" then he the other push away from the ground, either side of the debris, heading straight for the gate, pulserifles blazing. Logan's trajectory is a bit... ballistic with one leg, as he looks like a half-frozen meat popsicle with a blaster and a bad attitude. "Last... sim... like... this... EVER..." he grunts with each hop. "What the fuck is 'Ender's Game'? Round the Bender's Game is more like it." Scott watches blankly as Logan hurtles along with his buddy towards their gate, his lips pursing a tad. "It's crunch time now, team - whatever you're going to do, you ought to do it /now/," he calls out. The remaining two team members on Scott's team see Logan and friend darting for the gate - so /they/ hightail it too. One's only got a leg and an arm; the other's unhit. As they kick off toward it, the unfrozen one's pulling Taylor along with him - using him as a human shield - as they both fire shot after shot toward Logan and his pal. PEW PEW PEW-- Now /they're/ at the gate too, and now /they're/ activating their switches - with the benefit of having a Taylor-shield between them to block any /incoming/ shots. PEW PEW PEW. Both gates are at risk of being activated; the only question is - WHICH GATE SHALL ACTIVATE FIRST?! Logan growls. For a terrible sim (at least HE thinks it's terrible - but then, when is Logan ever NOT grumpy?), the other team are still cutting it waaaay too close. The only good thing is, though... it's hard to shoot whilst trying to activate a gate. But it's also hard to activate a gate whilst being shot AT. The Wolverine makes a choice then - which is typical of the Wolverine, the feral killer who doesn't play well with others, who wins by any means necessary - and he suddenly knocks his teammate into the oncoming fire from the opposing team (a meatshield of his own!). Amid cries of anger, shock and dismay, the Wolverine turns about, and there's a telltale *SNIKT!* as six claws spring out of his knuckles, which he then jams, all the way to his skin, into the controls of BOTH gates-- --effectively shutting them BOTH down, and preventing ANYONE from 'winning' the scenario. Red lights come on, a warning klaxon sounds and a monotone feminine voice declares: "Sim malfunction. Sim malfunction. Rules of engagement violation. Score disqualified. Unable to determine winner. Please exit the Danger Room. Sim malfunction..." Logan... just growls. Scott drops to the floor on his shoulder with a grunt, as do most of the kids. He rubs his head a little, cringing to himself. He pushes himself to his feet quickly, and starts reaching his hand down to help other kids off the floor, one by one. "/Logan/!" he seethes in a stern voice, brushing off the front of his now-materialized tee. He looks around the room, and it seems clear that despite his displeasure, he's not about to bitch out a professor in front of a bunch of students. He rubs at his neck and sighs. "All right, group. Professor Logan and I will be reviewing the footage and having a brief 1 on 1 evaluation with you based on how well you worked with the team." By 'Professor Logan and I', he probably means himself, but the invitation is obviously there. He cringes a little - this didn't go as planned. WHUMP. Peter hits the ground, squirms, and promptly rolls to his feet - oblivious to the fact that the simulation just ended amidst a shower of sparks and a rolling computerized grumble of errors. "OhMAN that was awesome, I did /awesome/ didn't I--" Peter begins, glancing up at the others -- "I mean, /everyone/ did awesome, uh yeah--" This is how teamwork goes, right? "--and that entire /thing/ was just nuts and awesome and can we do this /next/ week maybe--" "Peter - you're not going to win any points by pretending," Scott says wearily, walking towards the door after Logan. "Battle tactic:" Logan mutters over the top of Peter and Scott. "If the objective cannot be achieved - deny said objective to your enemy." He flexes his hands and the claws retract. "There's somethin' about killin' conga-lines in combat too... somewhere." He glances over at Scott before stalking away himself. "What, did I break your precious rules, Boyscout? The Professor's office is that way, if ya wanna cry, bub." He ignores Peter, and leaves the Danger Room, muttering about 'one-eyed boy-wonders'... "...is he making fun of Jax?" Peter puffs up all /defensive/ like near Scott, like he's about to go after Logan and give him a /STERN/ TALKING TO, but then - Peter blinks - looking at Scott with obvious and earnest confusion: "Pretend what? Points? Are we - wait are we keeping track of /points/? No one told me we were keeping track of points--" "I--Peter, listen. We'll go over it in the /eval/," Scott says pointedly, not even bothering to look at jittery Peter, as he is currently too busy fantasizing blowing a hole out of the other side of Logan from the back. "For now, just get back with the homework and I'll tell you if we'll do another exercise like this in the future. You remember when I said we're doing this on a /trial basis/?" A voice sounds over the intercom, audible within and without the Danger Room: it is the feminine voice of the central computer, saying: "Attention everyone. Attention everyone. Cyclops is a pussy. Thank you and have a nice day." "But what ab..." Peter begins, glancing up just as the announcement comes over the com. Eyebrows grinding. "/Trial/. /Basis/."