Logs:Collaboration

Collaboration
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Hive, Ion, Jax, Matt, Shane	2019-06-01 << -- going to take that fucking kapo -- >> (cw: violence) (Part of Prometheus tp.)
Location <XS> Danger Room
The room is large and circular, a geodesic hemisphere of hexagonal ceramic panels. It is the Danger Room, and is thus often full of danger, but is presently not in use and is thus remarkably danger-free. Safest room in the school, probably. There's a claustrophobic feel to this facility overall, much of which is underground in a Cold War-era bunker. Here, on the detention level, that sense is much stronger even without straying into the cell block proper. The last security checkpoint sports heavy, thick double doors with physical locks that the hackers cannot open remotely. Two gun slits flank the doorway through which the guards are firing on the straight hallway -- only about six meters long, but with absolutely no cover -- leading up to it from the industrial elevator, emergency staircase, and utility closet. Through the bulletproof glass of the checkpoint two guards can be seen watching them nervously, clutching MP5s, ready to relieve their comrades. To those with the senses to see past the door and wall, the two guards manning the gun slits are plain to see, kneeling for stability. A shimmering barrier of shielding goes up over the gun slits, affording the hallway a brief reprieve. In black tactical pants, boots, dark jacket, Jax has left his usual vibrance far behind. He trusts Hive to relay his instructions to the others -- his conception of what their up against, how to tackle it, comes through clearly in mental landscape, in concepts if not actual dialogue. A mental picture for Shane of the guards manning the gun slits. Direction for Ion to scout the next section, ensure it isn't wired for dampening before they proceed. A questioning towards Hive -- about how many detainees might be behind these doors. For Flicker, only, an alert to be ready once Jax blows the door open. Jax's thoughts get reflected smoothly back to the others. << Eighteen, >> murmurs back the sussuration of Hive's overlapping voices. << There are two more guards approaching from the cellblock. Another checkpoint down at the far end. >> Ion hasn't been anywhere in sight, but he's clearly getting the message all the same. He appears in short order with a snap, a pop, bright-eyed, fists clenched. He doesn't waste any time but presses his hands to the wall, vanishing briefly /into/ it to map a path through the complicated circuitry within. It's only a heartbeat before he reappears. Sends a crackling surge of energy through the wall, running along the paths he's just been scouting, sizzling and frying the machinery that lives within. "You good, Sunshine." The confirmation comes just a moment before Ion blips away, vaguely sensible still across Jax's hived awareness as he disappears to the other half of their team. Shadowing Jax quietly, Matt is dressed much the same, in painfully generic gray and black tactical gear. He doesn't /look/ like he's doing much, but his power has been tightly entwined in Jax's, bolstering the photokinetic's endurance and reach alike. At the moment, he's also augmenting any of his teammates within about twenty paces of him, though with less precision and active managing. To Hive, though, his vigilance on that latter front is obvious, his senses straining in readiness to pull back from or dampen unknown powers. Flicker is dressed as blandly as the others, matte black tentacle worn for an arm today. Keen at the best of times, today his hypervigilance extends itself outward. Through Hive's mind, riding the shared awareness to keep careful track of the guards in the hall. Touch lightly against the detainees in the cells beyond. His arms have folded across his chest, a brief prayer -- your guidance -- rising forefront in his thoughts as Ion disables the power suppression. Shane says nothing, either. Only a nod of acknowledgment to his father as he crouches near the door. One clawed hand braces against the floor, his posture coiled and tense. The moment the power suppression grid drops, a telepathic presence ripples out from the cell block, questing with a kind of uncertain desperation edging on outright panic. It digs into the minds of the two guards in the cellblock hall and they stop in their tracks, turning to open one of the cell doors. << Might be getting backup. >> Though Hive is /generally/ keeping their teammates apprised of the whereabouts of guards and detainees alike in a constant background /awareness/ of information, the telepathic presence in the cellblock is briefly more specifically echoed back to Jax. Though Hive's long since announced their presence and intentions to the would-be rescuees, they make themselves known again now with a soft mental brush against the minds in the cells, an update of information: << Power dampener's down. My team is about to come in. There are guards with guns just outside -- it'll be chaotic, but one of us can teleport you out. >> There's a flare of light, bright and sharply defined, the moment Ion gives the okay. The handle of the door -- and an entire chunk of wall around it -- sizzle, crumble, fall away in charred and half-melted scraps seared out of the wall. Jax shoves the door open, the guards within briefly blinded by a sudden blackness wrapping itself around their faces. Nearly the same instant that the door opens -- that the entryway is fully visible -- Flicker is in motion. A quick blur that departs from Jax's side. Reflexively squelches the (deeply ingrained) (panicky) reluctance that /wants/ to stop his motion. Closes his eyes and relies, instead, on the guidance of Hive's awareness spread out around them. Vanishes from the hallway into the first of the closed cell doors beyond. "Hey -- I'm here to get you out. I teleport. My team can get out out of here, if you take my hand." Shane springs through the door, as it opens. He moves fast and low, launching himself straight for the nearest of the guards. One hand planting on the floor, his legs sweep out in a snapping spin of a kick, aiming for the knees of the nearest guard as they attempt to rise. The guards inside the checkpoint had withdrawn to the far end of their little stronghold at the flash of light, aiming their weapons at the door in fearful anticipation, firing blind three-shot bursts that kick the barrels of their guns up and quite uselessly away from Shane's low attack. The occupant of the cell that Flicker enters is already on their feet, arms wrapped around themselves, eyes wide with terror. "They're going to kill One!" Frantic, pointing at the door. "One! Two shots." The extended index finger transforms into a gun hand. "Bang, bang." The two guards in the hallway, telepathically driven, have stepped into cell number one, guns raising to aim at the person sitting cross-legged on the cot. Flicker's eyes widen. He is gone in a flash. Back out into the hall. Down the hall. Just a brief instant blur that doesn't even /stop/ by the two guards in cell one. Grabs them, reappears out by the hallway ceiling to drop them to the floor. Flicker's sudden change in direction -- and the /reason/ for it -- are echoed mentally as well. This time to Matt and Jax both, the desperate telepathic presence highlit in psionic landscape for Matt. Following the others forward, Matt pauses a moment beside the destroyed door, concentrating. Hive's mental direction leads the questing forward edge of his power to the detained telepath. He carefully suppresses the outward reach of the telepathy, ready to clamp down on it entirely if necessary. Then he starts moving again, falling in behind Jax. Jax doesn't go far after the others. Pausing near the doorway as he takes quick stock of the hallway. There's another heated ray-burst of light -- the guns of the two guards Shane is attacking split apart in their (likely scorched) hands, charring and severed into burned pieces. The other pair of guards have, for the moment, found themselves ensconced in a shimmering translucent dome. As soon as he's released the guards for the drop to the floor, Flicker is back inside cell one. Some of the detached clarity that propels his rapidfire movements has, for a moment, stuttered as he looks to its occupant. << -- were going to /kill/ them? -- >> A mental flash of memory stirs bright and sharp from a different cellblock, long ago, (<< -- going to take that fucking kapo -- >> << Kill him while we /can/ -- >>) and is shoved back down with a fierce rush of protective anger. "Hey. My team is here to get you out. Can you come with me?" The telepath's power thrashes wildly against Matt's control, reaching out and groping for /him/ -- for /any/ mind -- but unable to do what its owner wants it to do. Hive can hear them now, their thoughts a whirling chaos of sensory overload about to tip over into a full-blown panic attack. The guards who have been disarmed in the checkpoint fall back against the wall, clutching their hands where the detonation of their weapons have melted gloves into flesh. The other two stop shooting at once, having just experienced what the shimmering forcefields were about and not keen on being trapped in a bubble with ricocheting bullets. The guards Flicker snagged crash to the hallway floor in a clatter of body armor and weapons, and lie groaning together in a heap where they've fallen. When Flicker returns to cell one, the occupant is still only halfway through rising. They're a lanky, light-skinned person with neatly buzzed black hair and a hunted look, eyes staring wide at Flicker when he speaks. << No, no no, you can't, they'll /kill/ me! >> Something flexes in their mind which Hive can't quite follow, an immense strain driven by terror. Spreading out from cell one, a rapid wave of suppression shuts down every single mutant power operating within a twenty meter radius. And then a five meter radius. And then ten, where subject one strains desperately to hold it. "Go away!" they roar at Flicker before physically charging at him, bony fists pummeling with startling strength and vehemence. Shane has sprung back to his feet after his first attack, following one kick with a swift one to the second guard as their guns fall apart. He's just turning back toward the first when the ripple of dampening makes its way down the hallway. His eyes get wider -- wider -- wider, swallowing up much of his face as his gills begin to flutter, rapidly. The clawing panic in his mind is sharp, a desperate harsh gasp that -- doesn't actually make it through to the /air/. Just silence. The shields fall. Jax takes a half-step back, his eye widening as well. His own reflexive panic at having one sense abruptly shut off is quenched /forcefully/, shoved back down together with the fierce urge to reach for Shane. Instead, he focuses his -- their -- attention rather /intently/ on the panicked individual responsible for the suppression, a strong mental /push/ of their hivemind in that direction. There's a sharp wrench inside Flicker. His attempt to shift out of the way of the punches goes nowhere -- around him the world is suddenly far too fast. The staccato report of bullets -- the sound of yelling -- some mental voice -- the echoes of his teammates' panic -- all blurring together. His attempt to lift his right arm to ward off the punches results in a jerky kind of stuttering, tentacle hitching erratically. "No, we're here to get you /out/, we --" He is backing away (interminably slowly) into the hallway, mind leaning back into their shared consciousness with a frazzled desperate edge. Their hive mind shifts promptly at Jax's impulse. Stretching outward, telepathic fingers coiling towards the person in room one with a brief mental pressure that bears down -- bears /inward/ -- digging in to sink their mind in with the other. To draw back the field of negation. To /strongly/ suggest that maybe! We should go with Flicker instead. Save panicking for later. (To steadfastly ignore the undercurrent of panic that Hive is Totally Not Feeling themselves, right this moment.) Matt realizes what subject one is about to do before the rest of his team--if only by a fraction of a second. His power stretches out in a doomed attempt to slap the other metamutant down, but he knows before he's quite committed to the action that it's going to fail. In the same moment, he is drawing his pistol--also knowing he would have it out much too late to do any good--and /hurling/ himself the two guards in a bid to bodily tackle them just as the bubble goes down. Subject five -- the telepath who had sent the guards to kill subject one -- looses a ghastly shriek when the suppression field encompasses them. Without their power, their thoughts are briefly, wholly accessible to Hive, but make almost no sense in their state of overloaded agitation. They hurl themselves against their cell door, smacking their head and fists against the reinforced glass window over and over and over. At least until the suppression field drops again. The crumple to the floor beside their door, still sobbing wildly, clutching their head as blood trickles down over their face. Under Hive's influence, subject one stops hitting Flicker and drops their suppress field at once. They haven't actually stopped panicking, however, and just stands in front of Flicker in the hallway, hyperventilating, unresisting. The two still-armed guards in the checkpoint do not resuming firing immediately. It seems to take a moment for them to register that the shimmering dome has gone. Once they do, they level their weapons at Jax and Shane respectively -- just as Matt slams into them both. Admittedly they are not /small/ and do not go down under this desperate attack, but it does at least foul their otherwise certain point-blank aim. There's a shimmer in the air nearby Jax that starts to bubble -- dies soon. The first of the spray of bullets that had been sent for his chest slams hard and cracking into his body armor. The next two, jarred upwards in Matt's tackle, crunch through his skull in a spray -- far less visibly gory than it /should/ be, given immediate and blinding flare of searing light that ripples out from him in a scorching blast around the suddenly, rapidly crumbling -- -- Nothingness, actually. The guards, the panicked minds of the detainees, the imminently collapsing compound vanish mid-explosion, leaving Jax cradling his head on the floor among his team in the middle of the cool sterile dome of the Danger Room, the other half of their raid crew gathering themselves across the room (in some frustration at the abrupt termination -- /they/ were doing well, it seems.) "Simulation ended," the DR's calm voice is informing them. The wrenching feeling only spikes, in Flicker. The sudden quiet only sends his thoughts spinning faster -- grasping fruitlessly for the no-longer-there Subject One, wrangling a keen wave of guilt, struggling hard to get /away/ from the intrusion of Other People in his mental space (/even/ while another part of him only digs in harder and more desperately to Hive.) << I'm sorry I'm sorry I -- Oh, God, Jax -- >> There is, oddly, little comfort in seeing his teammates alive and whole here in front of him. Only a crushing /looming/ feeling, the days between now and the raid seeming not nearly -- "I'm sorry," he's saying aloud, voice steady regardless of the whirl in his mind. "I made the wrong --" << (not wrong) >> << (would do it again) >> "-- call with that first cell. We can do it again. I can do it again." The expanded awareness that has come with sharing Hive's psionic field is folding back in on itself, shuttering off from Jax and Flicker's consciousness. Whatever state of readiness, vigilance, alertness, had been animating their charged telepathic mindscape now fades away -- just a lingering seed remaining mute and small nestled deep in the base of their minds. Within the entwined mental space of their hivemind there is only silence.