Logs:Boom and Zoom

Boom and Zoom
Dramatis Personae Kyinha, Scott	2024-03-10 Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
Location <XAV> Danger Room - Xs Sub-Basement
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. Today the Danger Room has created a beautiful, sunny desert valley, with hardly a cloud in the sky; a simulated Blackbird hovers in the center of the room, and outside observers would note that it remains mostly stationary as, instead, the beautiful scenery blurs past it, presenting it with buttes and sharp angles and narrow canyons and churning white-water rapids and occasional flocks of birds to navigate. If not for the speed with which it's moving, it would be almost serene. Inside the "Blackbird" it is another story -- the cockpit is lit up with red, blinking lights and chorusing alarms, the most prominent of which is warning its pilots that they are being pursued, with three yet-unidentified flying objects on the plane's radar slowly converging on the Blackbird. Perhaps the simulation will decide who/what these are when it gets to that, but for now the assailants are still just dots on the radar and, honestly, Scott, in the pilot's seat, is more concerned about the engine, which is running with a noisy, rough growl quite unlike its usual sound; he's shooting a very slightly piqued frown over his shoulder. But there is not too much concern in his voice; when he says, as plain-spoken as ever, "You wanna get that or shall I?" he could have been talking about the mail. "I'm a biologist, not an engineer," Kyinha replies conversationally, leaving out the part where he's also a mathematician for aesthetic reasons. His academic background notwithstanding, he is prying open the starboard engine nacelle service hatch. "It's the airflow management system," he says, exasperated, "again. You'd think the diagnostic computer would know what inlet unstart looks like by now. Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" He's not serious, probably. He might be serious. "I'm not an engineer either," Scott points out good-naturedly, but he's ceding the controls to his co-pilot anyway, standing and striding almost unhurriedly toward the air intake further down the plane, one hand stretched out to the wall for balance but not quite preventing him from moving at a sharp angle with the way the plane is yawing. He says loudly over his shoulder, "I was going to start by kicking it." This probably isn't serious; a moment later he shouts, "Okay, I'm cutting the other engine in three, two --" and then there is a thunk. The engine stops making that noise. "You're a better one than I am." Kyinha drops back into the co-pilot's seat and tries -- but doesn't try too hard -- to keep them level. He was already looking ashen for want of sunlight, and at Scott's warning he pales a little more. Eases up on the controls in preparation. Still holds his breath when the engines cut. The loss of thrust only just barely pitches the Blackbird forward, but she is slowing, and those dots on the radar are suddenly gaining a lot faster. "Oh, they're catching up," he pipes a fraction of a second before the leading bogey overtakes them, afterburners blasting blue-white from its feet. "Eh, Cyclops. You have protocols for dealing with giant flying robots, right?" Scott waits until the plane's speed is steady again before he makes his way back to his seat -- "Sure I do," he says readily, "How big exactly? That will affect the --" before the first of the giant flying robots pulls up in front of them, already leveling an arm cannon at the cockpit. At the end of the barrel is a quickly-growing sphere of glowing energy, charging up. "Ah," says Scott, glancing down at the radar, where the other two robots have pulled up to flank the Blackbird. "Do you know the five D's of dodgeball?" "Nope." Kyinha says, adjusting the throttle. "In soccer, usually you want the ball to hit you. But I assume one of the Ds is 'dodge'!" He banks hard to port when the leading robot fires. Which promptly stalls the Blackbird. Which might have been intentional, since it causes them to drop a couple of hundred meters very precipitously, narrowly missing the energy beam. However, it's also about to send them into a tailspin, with the two robots that were behind them in hot pursuit. Scott braces his hand against the dashboard -- "Two of them are 'dodge', actually!" he shouts. "Dodge, duck, dip, dive, dodge." It would have been very cinematic if the Blackbird had been swerving in time to this list as Scott rattled it off, but alas they are mostly freewheeling away from the robots flanking them. Scott, his teeth gritted, tries to manually restart two, three times before the engines roar back to life. He shoots a look at the radar again, and puffs out a breath. "Now the protocol says, get us the hell out of Dodge," he says. Having the throttle opened up in readiness had probably seemed like a great idea to Kyinha right up to the moment the engines kick back to life and slam them back in their seats -- while they're still in a spin. Maybe it still seems like a great idea to him, because he looses a loud whoop as he pulls the Blackbird into a (slightly) more controlled snap roll. "You missed a trick not saying 'punch it' there," he tells his captain brightly. Mercifully, he levels the plane out before he hits the afterburners, leaving the (evidently non-hypersonic) robots to wallow in their exhaust. "Oh, I did," says Scott, sitting back in his seat as the Blackbird zips out of immediate danger again. "Well, this is what we train for."