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VIP(izza)
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Jax, Tian-shin	2015-10-22 "That leg had some sass."
Location <XS> Danger Room - B2
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. Thursday after classes, Flicker is waiting to meet Tian-shin and escort her down to the lower basement. /He's/ sort of half-uniformed, boots and dark cargo pants and his X-jacket thrown on over a plain grey tee. "So," he's saying as they get off the elevator, "there's plenty of -- boring tedium we'll have to run you through. Orient you to the place, fit you for a uniform, show you how things work. Wanted to meet up with Jax first, though, give you a taste of what training is --" He pauses here, biting pensively at the inside of his lip as he looks over Tian-shin's clothing. Tian-shin nods, following Flicker closely as though she expects to get lost if she falls more than a step behind. "I'm a lawyer, I have special training in tolerating boring tedium." She had clearly dressed for class and not for any kind of training: a red short-sleeve tunic, black trousers, and red canvas shoes embroidered with black bats. Her hair she has bound up in an impeccable bun, secured with a ball-point pen. She carries a khaki canvas jacket over one arm and a black messenger bag over the other, a Chinese long sword slung across her back. "Oh! I could go and change, if you think it necessary, but I have pretty decent range of motion as I am. I don't mind getting sweaty, if that's the concern." "Well, if you don't mind you're probably good as you are, then." Flicker places his hand over a panel by the door, waiting for a moment for it to scan his fingerprints. "Boring tedium later," he cheerfully tells -- the door, rather than Tian-shin. "Getting sweaty, now." "Good afternoon, Flicker," the door tells him back. Just as cheerfully, really, as it slides open. A side door branches off into the control room -- Flicker gestures to it with his mechanical arm. "You can leave your stuff there, it'll be fine." The room past the small entrance vestibule is -- large. A huge grey dome that looks rather barren. Jax is trotting down out of the control room as they enter, a bright smile on his face. "Tian-shin, hi! Are you sure you want to do this cuz as Life Choices go you know it's kinda on the crazy side, right?" He has his jacket on too -- not leather, his is a heavy dark canvas in the same cut and style, glittering at the back where he's beadazzled a smiling yellow sun into it. "Oh! Sword! You come prepared an' everything, great." "It'd be another thing if we were doing this /before/ classes," Tian-shin admits with a demure but still slightly crooked smile. "Hi," this to Jax when she sees him, along with a bow. "Thank you for taking the time to orient me." She hangs her messenger bag on a chair and drapes her jacket over the back of the same. "I'm sure. I haven't had a history of making the sanest life choices, but then...we live in a mad world." Unslinging her sword, she looked ready to leave that, as well, but at Jax's last comment she carries it--still sheathed--in hand as she follows the two men into the domed chamber. "Do you always train new recruits with live weapons?" There's a glimmer in her dark brown eyes. "We do, at that." The slant of Flicker's smile is a little wry. Evens out a moment later: "Only the ones we trust with 'em." He flits to the center of the room, stretching his arms out in front of him. Slow. Almost lazy. "I don't know what Jax is talking about, though. Nothing remotely crazy about any of this. I -- uh, hope you're ready." "Wait, /orienting/? Is that what I'm doin', cuz, uh --" A flush of colour reddens Jax's cheeks, his hand rubbing at the back of his neck. "That weapon ain't really alive, is it? That'll make things interesting." Maybe he's joking? It's hard to tell from his tone. "Danger Room, start us on Secret Team, please?" He clasps his hands behind his back, rocking bouncily back and forth from heel to toe as he waits. But doesn't wait /long/. Around them the room shifts and changes, bursting to life with colour; a pastel blue and purple and pink world of columns and strange purplish pools of water, long waterfall-slides that (hanging in midair as they do) seem to defy the laws of physics, wavy crystalline walkways leading between rocky ledges. Somewhere behind Tian-shin, a disembodied hand -- large, deep jade-green, scuttles its way across the floor and splashes down into one of the pools before disappearing. Tian-shin unsheathes the sword and slings the empty scabbard over her shoulder as she walks deeper into the room, dropping her center of gravity and placing each step more meticulously than the last. "Now I'm ready." The quality of her voice has changed--just a touch lower, just a touch more resonant. "It's live /steel/--in the sense of being actually pointy and sharp, not that it talks to me or goes off on its own." Her eyes widen fractionally as the room changes around them. "This looks...familiar?" At the splash she swivels, her whole body reorienting diagonally to the sound, keeping Jax and Flicker in her peripheral vision while she scans the rippling surface of the water. "What--that was a /lot/ of splash for a tiny rock." Flicker's eyes also widen, fractionally, when the room changes. The small stifled noise that comes from him sounds like an aborted choke of laughter. "Oh boy." Quiet. "Oh, /boy/." A small blip puts him at Tian-shin's side. "Not -- exactly a tiny rock. A shard. Jax, how many of these are there?" "Pointy an' sharp's gonna be a help!" Jax sounds brightly cheerful about this. "S' -- a few. An' we gotta get 'em all before any of 'em get outta here --" For all the odd tortuous dimensions of the crystalline room, there /is/ a door, large and pink and faintly glowing at the far end of one of the twisting slidelike pathways. "Oh! Tian-shin, look out --" There's a pair of long rubbery arms, joined together where normally a shoulder should be, grasping their way over the edge of the rock ledge they stand on towards Tian-shin's legs. A sudden bright beam of light from Jax zaps out towards them, making one of the hands let go; the conjoined arms swing precariously where they grip. Nearby Flicker, a half-a-torso with a stump of foot attached is slither-hopping out of the pool, making its way towards the nearest waterfall to start sliding down it. Tian-shin spins, following the direction of Jax's gaze--and his blast of light. "It feels like--empty space, with some kind of crystal inside. A shard?" A faint rising intonation marks her echoing of Flicker's word as a question. She swings her sword in a fluid arc at the precariously perched arm-creature. "Like a living creature. Sort of. Oh -- shoot -- I -- will have to explain later --" Flicker flutters down and away. Flitting off down the waterfall rapidly after the malformed torso. There's a splash, a blur of motion. He comes back dragging the uncreature by its foot, dropping it from high in the air onto the rock by Jax's side. Tian-shin's sword connects with a chnnnk of sound. Heavy clunk. As it pulls through the arms they not only sever from each other but poof into nothingness -- or. Not *quite* nothing. Two small fragments of shining crystal remain where the arms had been, starting to tumble down off the edge of the precipice the hands had been hanging on. Flicker drops down over the cliff, returning with the stones held in one hand. There are more creatures -- a mindlessly biting mouth attached to the end of a pair of hands, dropping off an overhead pathway towards Flicker's head; a trio of feet cartwheeling down a path right past them to head away towards the door; a fluttering ball that seems to be made of nothing but long rainbow-coloured fingers grasping up out of the water towards the hem of Tian-shin's pants with alarming strength. Four different legs crawl out of the pool to scatter in various directions, blindly. A long spindly noodle of arm coils up from the edge of the path like a snake, grasping out for Jax's ankle. Jax grimaces, reaching out a hand towards the rocks in Flicker's palm; a moment later a shimmering translucent shield forms around them, encasing them in a faintly glowing bubble that soon vanishes. The torso that he had dropped shatters and pops against the rocks, leaving behind a piece of small blue stone; this gets a shield of its own, too. "Mmmnh --" Jax's teeth dig into his lip as he dances back from the snake-arm reaching for him, though it is quick to slither after. Another beam of light shoots out -- not for the grasping hand questing after him but for one of the feet hopping away towards the door, poofing it into a shiny piece of yellow stone that slides away down the path. Tian-shin sinks low and slices sidewise at the ball of fingers. "Heads up, Flicker!" The warning comes without her even turning to look at the hands-and-mouth as they descend. Rising from her last attack, she follows the motion through a dance-like half-turn and brings the blade down on the arm reaching for Jax. Dropping low again, she kicks one of the legs off its admittedly indirect path to the door, back in Jax's direction. "Oh /geez/ what." Flicker /does/ stop to look at the mouth. He pauses exactly long enough for a /blink/. A shudder. Then a rapid blip away to collect the newest shard as it tumbles off towards the door, nabbing it off the path. The stone is wriggling in his colorfully painted palm by the time he gets back up to the others, a pair of fingers starting to grow in ghostlike outline back out of it. He drops it to the floor beside the stone that's just appeared from the snake-arm, crushing it again beneath a heel. Both stones settle back into -- temporary -- lifelessness. Another quick hop away and he collects a wayward leg, struggling against alarmingly strong /kicks/ for a disembodied limb as he brings it back to the others. "Wo-o-oah, that's faster than -- I expected --" Jax is quick to encase the two newest shards in a shield-bubble once Tian-shin and Flicker have dispatched them, the sphere vanishing shortly after he does. Tian-shin's ball of fingers split apart, momentarily collapsing into a spread of fingers scattered across the ground before all vanishing into a dozen small pieces of rock. As Jax starts to encase those, the chomping teeth make their way down, latching on to the back of Tian-shin's blouse now that their original target has flitted away. "-- Ghh!" The shield vanishes. Jax's nose crinkles as he reaches -- hands suddenly glowing, a radiant heat coming from them -- for the fragments of limb-mouth attached to Tian-shin. A strange high-pitched shriek comes from it at the contact; it twists around to bite /him/ after it lets go. The leg Flicker holds kicks at the teleporter harder, launching off his chest to bop its way over towards the source of the shrieking noise. "They grow back?" Tian-shin sounds only slightly incredulous. "Right. That's why you have to--" She nods at the latest of Jax's bubbles, then grits her /own/ teeth as the bizarre mouth-construct chomps down on her clothing, tensing as the heat from Jax's hands draw her. When the mouth releases her in favor of biting him, she takes half a step back and narrows her eyes at the the thing. A small burst of flame blossoms in the air beneath it, near enough to lick against Jax's already glowing hot fingers. Then, turning, she dispatches the leg that just escaped Flicker with a surgical jab of her sword-tip, already stooping to sweep up the resulting shard. "Nf." Flicker shimmers backwards. Momentarily looking like he's going to topple over the edge of the rocks -- though he catches himself just as quickly, blipping back onto solid land and dashing off to corral the trio of feet racing off to slide down the water fall. These get carted up high into the air. Dropped to shatter on the rocks, leaving behind a trio of jagged stones. Where the myriad of fingers had split apart earlier, two very tiny slivers of rock fragments have slipped down over the edge of the path, rolling their way down before wriggling back to life. Two small bluish fingers go wiggling their way down, creeping off towards the door. Jax isn't paying much attention to these tiny digits, more focused on the overheating mouthhand in front of them. Briefly wreathed in flames, it glows hotter and hotter before crumbling, leaving behind a (still very-hot) ember that clunks to the ground. Jax bubbles his one together with the shard of the leg Tian-shin just chopped, scooping up the trio of stones fron the feet after this. There's still one leg, kind of angrily STOMPING over to kick at Tian-shin. THUNK. In the back of her calves. Tian-shin spares the leg kicking only a faintly incredulous glance before hacking it in twain with a snap of her sword. She bends to pick up the shard it leaves before running after the two errant fingers. She steps on one, then the other, gathering the fragments when they appear again. Hurrying back to Jax's side, she passes him the small handful of stones while casting about for any further shards at large. "That leg had some sass." Flicker drops to set down beside the others, mechanical hand flexing at his side as he looks around, too. "You two good?" Jax bubbles the most recent shards, stifling a small laugh at the leg. "Oh -- oh. I -- yeah. Um --" His hands stop glowing, eye casting around for a moment until the door shimmers and vanishes. His bubbles all reappear, gem shards floating within them above their heads. "That's all'a 'em! -- 'kay, Cere," (it sounds an awful lot /like/ 'Siri', out loud,) "end sim. -- D'you feel oriented yet?" There's amusement in his voice as he looks at Tian-shin, the room melting back into a grey dome around them. "I'm good. You?" Tian-shin does not straighten up out of her fighting stance until the Danger Room returns to its unconfigured gray. "That was...not what I expected. I'm not sure what I /was/ expecting, but not a--" She gestures at the dome overhead as she sheathes her sword. "--holodeck full of disembodied, candy-colored limbs." But then, she smiles what, for her, qualifies as a reasonably unguarded smile, showing just a little teeth and ducking her head. "Thank you both, I feel pretty oriented, except..." She fishes a VIP(izza) card from her pocket. "...can someone explain this?"