"I know what you mean, well kinda, when I was about 11 my powers went haywire and I couldn't think of anything without me generating it. I would sit in the forest surrounded by a growing endless pile of junk. It took me a while to regain focus." He offers his best comforting smile. "Besides we are at a super school I'm sure there are plenty of people who can help you. Let me know if you need anything, man." Archie says.
Archie has always been quick on his feet and with his mind, generating whatever he needs for the situation, a steel shield for this, a backflip for this, a clone standing in the way and taking the hit. He employs a variety of firearms, bladed weapons, and anything he can think of.
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What Archie describes is quite similar to what he is going through. Good for him already being able to control his powers. "Thanks, Archie. I will be fine, I guess." But it did not stop him from getting anxious and it was still too soon to really trust those working for this school.
"Ah, and by de wey, sometimes some of my illusions could leak into your room, so don't freak out."
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After his incredible performance, Gui sits by Sam, trying to shake off the vision from this morning. He flinches a bit and massages his nose as pain courses through it. It was strange, as if he had done something bad, like peeping while she was changing clothes... he knew he could not be blamed about having a dream, but still.
"Hey. Good first class." He says to break the ice, then gives a long sigh. Only one way to get rid of the memory. To share. "Had e dream about you last night, by de way. We were deting and you called me e sweetie." He smiles at her. Just because.
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Sam's swollen nose turns with a quick snap toward Aquarelle, surprise lighting her green eyes like twenty flares in an emerald mine. If her matrix had a jaw it would be on the floor right now, but still it managed to stammer out 'Say something... AnyThing... now!'
"Dreams are statistically common to be manifestations of repressed fears." Her matrix left her body to stare at her in disbelief, since her host basically said you are afraid of being stuck with someone like me.
It looked back at him, his smile, warm and... she was confused, that is all. Out of her depth. 'Find another reason for the dream' her matrix insists. "Did you eat anything could have caused gastrointestinal distress?"
Her matrix gives up
Every time Gui gets knocked down, Terrier is there to pick him up and throw him back into the fray. "You don't have a choice! You push through to your primal self! Everyone has that survival instinct, so find it!"
Statian's injury stops the lesson for a moment while the Brain is tended to. The action resumes once she's carted off the proving grounds to the nurse's station.
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Elsewhere
Ms. Trask goes over the Daedalus curriculum and application closely, then turns it back over to Empyrean. "Quite a list of options," she observes, "but the option of not going at all is still available. Hypocritical as it is, you still have a standing invitation to resume classes at Halcyon Prep."
She flips through her threat analysis of the Daedalus Academy, shaking her head slowly. "I can think of a hundred reasons why you shouldn't go within ten miles of that school, but I'll ask you:
"Do you want to go?
"I..." Empyrean says, and hesitates.
"I want to go where I can do the most good. If the school will help me to do that... to learn to be around people and to help them... then yes."
Sam's eye widen just a touch, having never been smiled at by Andromeda before, her own lips curving virtually imperceptivity. She hears her matrix say something about 'manipulation' but misses it as a odd warmth starts to-
The curve of her lips becomes perceptible, but in the opposite direction. "Why are you lying?"
Andromeda's smile vanishes as she stops trying to maintain it. "Because I want you to drop it. If I get angry and put you through a wall you'll be hurt more than the wall would."
***
By the time class begins, the joy of flight is gone; Genius Class has set her boiling. Nominally there's an objective, new people to impress, skills to display, but really? She just needs something to hit.
So she doesn't hold back, even a little.
A column of force rips out of her, smashing into the bot, boring through it, near limitless energy pouring straight through it and into what lies beyond.
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Hivering near the end of the course Indy shouts over to Andromeda, "With all the squeeling it almost sounded like you were actually having fun. Why don't you cut loose and take a load off with some flying sometimes you seem to enjoy it. I know a good spot, open fields, skies, and very few birds you should join me sometime."
Indarius watched the giant mechanical monstrosity descend from the ceiling. "Can definitely feel where the budget was going..."
"Gonna be really hard to Hammer and anvil this. But I'll do what I can."
Weaving together a very complex spell, a string of icy tendrils shoot out and weave in and out of the various armaments of the Killbot, runic patterns start sprouting from them as Indarius's chanting intensifies. They solidified and expanded into large branches of ice providing an almost literal anvil to tie up the killbot temporarily.
Splintering off some of the excess magic he empowers Chroknight causing their hands and feet to glow with arcane power so that they weren't just punching metal with their bare hands.
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"So, have you two made any friends yet?" Chroknight asks Sam and Gui. "Any budding crushes? Spring romances in the air? I literally don't get much time to come and listen to the gossip so spill."
With a concealed flush to her cheeks (concealed due to the swollen nose) and a weirdly muddled mind, Sam turns to their newly arrived teammate. Her mouth opens "Aqu-" DON'T TELL HER WHAT HE SAID!!!! the matrix stops giving up and screams with all its mental nudging.
"My roommate controls arachnids and wants to be friends." Sam would normally be reporting on numbers and figures, but the muddling muddled "And my nose is broken."
---
Andromeda's smile vanishes as she stops trying to maintain it. "Because I want you to drop it. If I get angry and put you through a wall you'll be hurt more than the wall would."
Something dim pops in Sam's chest and then without considering the consequences replies "And if I was angered and lost control, I'd release a nano autonomous trigger (NAT) into your breathing space or food that would replicate in your organs to achieve optimal mass before-" Sam raises her hand, forms a first then opens it in a "PoP"
Sam realizes that dim pop inside her was irritation. Her dampeners need serious recalibration.
Stopping recounting one of the four hundred and three What If plans she has made in case she need to incapacity(or worse) her teammate, she takes in a tiny breath. She has no idea how to get through to her that she would like to help, 97% because it is a HARD problem to solve, and 3% because she... cares (which is a lot to someone like Sam).
But she doesn't say that and lets the matter drop, if the other woman desires it... for now.
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"Oh, dat is very true." Gui agrees with Sam, even if the 'statistics' part was a stretch. He had researched quite a bit about dreams and a common thread was that it was still mostly unknown territory. He then smiles wickedly. "But it is also equally common for dem to represent repressed desires and wishes." He should feel guilty about poking her like that.
"I had spicy food last night. Indian." He adds, stretching a bit, uncomfortable with his nose still. "I am looking forward to de next time dey serve it. Perhaps I will have anoder dream. I will let you know if I do."
Then Chroknight arrives. He lets Sam answer first. "Met e couple dudes from de dorms. Noting big."
Digits isn't a stranger to roughing it up. Since childhood they've passed through their share of 'retched hives of scum and villainy', and the crew of the Madcap drills together some as well...
...but Digits quickly learns that Terrier runs a tighter and tougher drill than anything Cap'n Tayo put the Madcap's crew through.
At the beginning, Digits manages to dodge and weave, and uses their portal gun to create mayhem: aiming to cause charging robots to suddenly bash into each other or the walls, and to redirect projectiles toward ones that stand still.
After a while though, their muscles are starting to ache. A robot strobes them with a dazzlingly bright light, disorienting Digits for a few crucial seconds. They drop and roll instinctively into a portal...but pop up too close to another robot, that manages to slam Digits in the gut, winding them.
When they walk out of class, sore and tired, they turn to Archie and Indy and say, "Oooof! That was a workout, eh? I'm starving!"
They aim to keep up a brave face...but they truth of it is that the onslaught (and the shear length of fighting for so long, when they're used to cutting and running) leaves them feeling insecure.
Hard Knocks
At first it looks like it's going well. Chroknight takes the lead, suggesting a strategy as they leap onto the fake rooftops to draw the murderbot's attention. Turrets whir on the dangerous contraption, tracking the nimble Janus and spitting out blasts of plasma that they deftly avoid.
Indarius takes advantage by conjuring mystical ice to give Chroknight a pathway to reach the murderbot and a nice funnel for Andromeda to do her thing.
The blunt-force telekinetic decides this is a perfect opportunity to cut loose. Coating herself in a force cocoon, Andromeda launches herself at the murderbot and slams into it even as the death machine trains its array of weapons at her! Homing missiles and concussive blasts carom off Andromeda's force field before she makes contact in a massive crash that sends a shockwave through the entire Rumpus Room!
Carlos and Ne'veah and smashed backwards into the far wall, Scythe brings up her metal wings to shield herself, and Terrier dives for cover before the blast. Johnny and Chitin brace themselves but still stagger back a few feet.
Indy and Chroknight see one of the weapons nodes of the murderbot break off, spiraling downward and spraying death in all directions! The faux rooftops of the battlefield are shredded with shrapnel!
The damaged murderbot responds by escalating the situation dangerously, disgorging a napalm-like flaming substance that coats Andromeda and splashes across the rooftops! Though her sheath is keeping the inferno from skin contact, she's still feeling the intense heat!
The murderbot announces, IMPLEMENTING DEFENSIVE MEASURES as a shimmering repulsor barrier appears around it as the machine starts repairing itself! In the meanwhile, the detached weapons nodes continues to fire wildly!
What do you do?
Standard non-oxygenated composition scrolls across Andromeda's field of view, a small respite from the otherwise amber haze.
She clenches a fist, knuckles cracking as her sheath expands the burning fuel away from her, then with a second clench she seals it away in a new field. A single pulse forces the oxygen out of the second field and she leaves the fire to starve.
"Hey, first nose break! Happened to me in taekwondo like forever ago. Got real upset, quit soon after." They glance at Gui, debating something internally. "Gui, we should have that talk later. After my Hard Knocks class. Need to clear the air from that whole fiasco on the fake bridge."
Chroknight watches in slow motion, giving them precious seconds more than their companions to plan ahead. Which was tactically useful. They had gone with a fairly simple plan which worked, but now things were getting chaotic. They needed to take time to reassess.
Chloe was no engineer, but from what she knew of energy shields, they usually went down if you hit them hard enough.
"Andromeda! Let me accelerate your time so you can pop that shield!" They call out in what was surely an awesome idea.
"I'm nom quimming" the nose starts to leak, making Sam's response to exist without the letter T. Despite the obvious discomfort, her green eyes narrow at information being passed, a clearing of something on the bridge. Sam loves information, but her matrix does stop her to ASKING (which she really really wants to do, so her matrix is holding back a rushing wave of questioning and deserves a vacation, a massage, and a very very large drink)
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Indarius isn't sure how Chroknight altering Andromeda's time flow would increase the power of her attack. If she was performing physical feats that'd make sense but who knows maybe they've got a trick up their sleeve. In the meantime his eyes track over to the machine turret spraying metal death everywhere.
That could be useful He thinks as he strides and propels himself towards it with a leap and flap of his powerful wings landing next to the turret and trying to get close enough to grab and redirect it's fire back towards the towering killbot.
Andromeda skillfully sloughs off the caustic inferno coating her telekinetic barriers and sends the substance away harmlessly before the heat reached intolerable limits.
Chroknight tries to figure out the best way to get through the defensive barrier that the murderbot put up, and tosses out an idea to overwhelm it with a temporally-charged Andromeda. While they're focused on the barrier, however, they fail to notice a seeker missile that had blasted past them earlier had curved around and was again bearing down on the Janus!
However, before the missile could detonate its deadly payload, a figure interposes itself between it and Chroknight! The explosion is contained with a muffled whumpf! and Johnny turns around to look at them, his face smudged with soot but in a ruggedly handsome way. "Watch your six," he says with a cocksure grin.
Indarius meanwhile decides to use the murderbot's own weaponry against it, and snatches up the ejected node to redirect its wild fire. The turret fire splashes harmlessly against the shields, which appear to actually absorb the energy strengthening it further!
The damage from Andromeda's earlier hit now almost fully repaired, the murderbot goes back on the attack! Apparently recognizing Andromeda as the biggest threat, it launches a pair of cables at the hero, each tipped with grasping claws and crackling null-energy designed to punch through force barriers as it EMPLOYS OFFENSIVE COUNTERMEASURES! The Bull's telekinesis is powerless to stop the claws from grabbing ahold of her and pulling her in opposite directions!
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Indarius keeps the weapon trained on the murderbot, choosing to ramp up the assault by casting a short lived spell that accelerates the turret in his hands causing it to dump the remainder of it's payload in half the time.
His claws dig into the rooftops as he's pushed back by the increased force and struggles to keep the weapon on target. When the thing clinks empty he tosses it down looking at the wopping nothing that accomplished. His body trembles a bit from the adrenaline and the severe shakes from keeping that thing stableish. "Man, maybe I shouldn't give Phalanx shit for guns, these things are useless against monsters."
Then he notices the white hot barrel that had begun to melt and an idea comes to mind.
"Chro, can you accelerate the particles in this thing!? Try to overheat it from the inside force it to drop the shield!"
Hovering near the end of the course Indy shouts over to Andromeda, "With all the squeeling it almost sounded like you were actually having fun. Why don't you cut loose and take a load off with some flying sometimes you seem to enjoy it. I know a good spot, open fields, skies, and very few birds you should join me sometime."
Still riding high on welcome, familiar endorphins that couldn't all be programmed responses, Andromeda's smile is fierce and wide, too wide, almost like if she could feel the wind when she soared.
"You don't get it, do you Indarius? Flying is fine; it's better than walking, but what's actually fun is to Win."
***
NULL-CLASS POLYPHASIC DISRUPTORS:RECOMMENDED- I've got this I've got this I've got this Andromeda blinks away the warnings, joints creaking despite her sheath's support. She ignores the claws, ignores her body, and with a savage yank rips the claws off of the robot instead, hurling the awful things as far away as she can!
"Sorry, my powers don't work that way. Also, thanks for the save, pretty boy," Chroknight says as they take a moment to consider that plan of Indy's. "Tell you what though, Andromeda might be better at the whole heating things up. And you know what happens to metal that is superheated and then chilled, right?"
First though came rescuing Andromeda, so they took a few fragments of exploded missiles and accelerated their timeline while throwing them up towards the limbs trying to pull the Bull like taffy. They were off of their timing (ironic) since Andromeda brute forced her way out of the trap.
"Right. Hmm." They glance at Johnny. "You just tough, or can you do a gender-nonconforming hero a solid and toss them at a big threat?" They ask. "Andromeda, Indarius - we ready for a science experiment?"
They glance at Gui, debating something internally. [B][i]"Gui, we should have that talk later. After my Hard Knocks class. Need to clear the air from that whole fiasco on the fake bridge."
"No idea what you are talking about."
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Indarius throws out a tactical suggestion but unfortunately belies a lack of understanding of Chroknight's powers.
""Right. Hmm." They glance at Johnny. "You just tough, or can you do a gender-nonconforming hero a solid and toss them at a big threat?" They ask. "Andromeda, Indarius - we ready for a science experiment?"
Johnny shakes his head as he floats away from Chroknight. "Sorry; I thought not having your limbs blown off was worth you losing your Gold Star. But I don't want to have a failing grade too." He raises a fist to them, however. "You're doing great!"
Meanwhile, Andromeda fights through the pain of the pincer cables and rips them from their mounts on the murderbot! She flings them away carelessly, however, not immediately realizing they still possessed a charge of null-energy! They crash separately, one of them slamming into the far wall of the Rumpus Room, shorting out some sort of power circuit. The lighting panels simulating a daytime scene suddenly go out, plunging the entire place into total darkness!
The hum of the murderbot and ominous red lights in its targeting systems show that it's still functional and likely not hampered by the darkness in the least!
What do you do??
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Although he was largely unaffected by the drop in lights as his eyes quickly adjusted, Indarius suspected the others weren't so lucky in their biology. So eschewing the supposed plan that Chroknight had in mind he opted to re-even the playing field a bit.
Her recklessness causing more undue collateral
Pulling in trace amounts of ambient aether, weaving it into a small runic ball of light and casting it into the height of the room where it ignited into a radient sphere to bring back sight to those in the room.
"Kun'krein Sor'Vaal!"
"Then the whole thing with Ms. Badawi. You can't say you don't recall that, given that whole fiasco is the reason all of us are at this school to begin with," Chroknight says to Gui. "Look, if you don't want to talk, fine. I want to talk to you, in private, so it's up to you if you show up or not. I'm going to go warm up - I'll see you or not after Hard Knocks."
They pause only briefly to look at Sam. "There's a nurse's office where you can get that fixed, you know. You don't have to suffer."
"Oh come on, I got to suffer because this is just for the newbies?" Chroknight calls out to Johnny in annoyance. They shake their head before redirecting their attention to the task at hand.
"Thanks for the night light, Indy - hold on a minute -"
They push the tempo up, everything slowing down for them as they run across the rooftops towards the murderbot. Things that they touch they can synch to their tempo, so if they synched up the energy barrier and had it suddenly drawing off far more energy at once than the murderbot could generate...
"That feels really, really weird!" Chroknight shouts as they thrust a hand up into the barrier and cause it to act as if it was running for hours in a few seconds to overload its energy reserves! "Andromeda, now's your chance to disable its weapons!"
When they walk out of class, sore and tired, they turn to Archie and Indy and say, "Oooof! That was a workout, eh? I'm starving!"
Archie walks out of class alongside Indarius and Digits massaging a bruised elbow. "Hell yeah I could eat, making that many dupes always makes me hungry, for spicy food. I hope they've got like some Szechuan cuisine or something." He groans at the dull ache in his elbow.
"Say, that portal gun seems pretty useful, you should show me how it works so I can make 'em, then I can dual wield them. That'd be f$%#ing awesome. I'd be like Chell from Portal 2, but slightly cooler cause I'd have two portal guns." He says while motioning like he has two portal guns and makes some sounds with his mouth.
Once they're about halfway to the cafeteria he leans over to Digits.
"By the way, you're from outer space right? You ever smoked before? You have any alien drugs I could try?" He whispers to Digits so that Indy doesn't hear.
"Then the whole thing with Ms. Badawi. You can't say you don't recall that, given that whole fiasco is the reason all of us are at this school to begin with," Chroknight says to Gui. "Look, if you don't want to talk, fine. I want to talk to you, in private, so it's up to you if you show up or not. I'm going to go warm up - I'll see you or not after Hard Knocks."
"De shooting got us here, not my decision to bring her back when she begged me to. I have visited her in de hospital. We are good. And, no, I am not interested with talking with you in privete, not until you stop being such e bully."
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Sam's eyes follow the conversation, back and forth and directs as clarification toward Chronknight "That 'fiasco' was the situation where you left the explosive accelerant spreading without informing any of your teammates." the flatness comes back into her voice indicating something, though it has an added wobble due to the injury.
She doesn't get up for the nurse's office, instead stays sitting next to Aquarella after Chronoknight goes to warm up "I am aware my ability as a conversational partner or empathic listener is limited, but if you wish to talk, I will attempt." the red headed and red nosed girl offers.
The lights were on, the shield was down, and Andromeda was ready.
Once again she smashed a grinding pillar of force into the automaton, but this times instead of keeping it safely pinned, she snatches up more of the debris in a carelessly powerful grip and wedges it into the 'wound,' forcing it open until a final blow could be struck.
After the lights are brought back up by Indy, the combination of temporal manipulation and telekinetic brute force, the murderbot appears ripe for aggressive disassembly. However, before the trio can turn it into scrap, the death machine powers down on its own!
Terrier clears her throat with a growl, affixing a control unit on her belt that she had clearly just activated. "All right! Exercise is over! Leave a few pieces still intact for next week."
She glares at Johnny. "Mr. Wheeler, what have I said about jumping in? This class is about pushing limits. If they can't watch their own back, who's going to do it in the real world?" In response, Johnny manages to both look sorry but also like he won't hesitate to do it again.
The Hard Knocks class continues while Indy, Andromeda, and Chroknight recover. The lights go out once Indy's spell expires, which makes it hard to see when Scythe, Carlos, and Ne'veah begin their own exercise. The feral trio engage other types of combat drones in the darkness while Terrier watches on, her golden eyes reflecting the sparks and flashes of the fighting.
Just as Johnny had predicted, at the end of the Hard Knocks class, only Andromeda and Indarius had earned Gold Stars. Chroknight essentially passed, but Johnny's save had negated her chance for an advanced score.
Scythe comes up to Andromeda after the class. Her blood-streaked face (with her own) looks unsure. "You, uh, could take the shower before me. I don't mind."
Johnny floats over to Chroknight, rubbing the back of his neck. His dyna-cloth practice outfit is torn in several places, but he is unscathed. "Sorry again for keeping that missile off you. Sometimes I just act. If you want me to not jump in next time-- Well, not that there will necessarily be a next time. But if there is, say the word."
Chitin chuckles as he finds himself standing next to Indy. "I remember when I first fought that stupid murderbot. Dr. Dread really knew how to make them, huh?"
Some of the technically-gifted students and teachers have the Rumpus Room back to functionality by the next Hard Knocks class. The follow-up class, as with later ones, all involve high-stakes combat that has the real possibility of doing real harm to the participants. Chroknight, Andromeda, and Indarius are always bruised, scorched, or battered after the class.
They also get a good sense of the combat capabilities of the other Hard Knocks students. Scythe and Carlos both have impressive regenerative powers, though Indarius recognizes the same supernatural resilience that Caio possessed while Scythe just healed whatever injuries got past her metallic wings. Ne'veah can change herself into a much larger panther-like creature with rippling muscles and teeth and claws that can rend metal. Chitin's armor plating is incredibly durable and allows him to withstand most damage and is super strong. Johnny's invulnerability even exceeds Chitin's, plus his own flight and superstrength make him the class's top student.
"You should shower first; I have to concentrate and it might take a while. Besides, you have your blood all over." A thought strikes her as she recalls a bulletpoint from Scythe's dossier. "Do I stink really bad?"
Sam goes to the nurses office, which unfortunately will not simply heal away her wound. "You need to understand pain before you'll be able to embrace victory!" the way too cheery staff member beams at her.
A sliver in Sam's mind contemplates a very small bomb in each of the person's teeth. But it is ignored. After cleaning and resetting, she gets a bandage over the swollen organ and she is released.
Sam goes about her normal day at the moment, finding a place to work outside on a bench on her tablet, concentrating on quantum field mechanics and frequency manipulation and miniature dental explosions. Interrupted by a waving little spider on her knee, looking up to see her roommate with two boxes of lunch and a hopeful expression on her face.
Sam blinks, tilts her head for a second, then puts down her tablet, her threads cleaning the spot next to her for Jessie. "Hello..." greetings are awkward.
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After the lights are brought back up by Indy, the combination of temporal manipulation and telekinetic brute force, the murderbot appears ripe for aggressive disassembly. However, before the trio can turn it into scrap, the death machine powers down on its own!
Terrier clears her throat with a growl, affixing a control unit on her belt that she had clearly just activated. "All right! Exercise is over! Leave a few pieces still intact for next week."
She glares at Johnny. "Mr. Wheeler, what have I said about jumping in? This class is about pushing limits. If they can't watch their own back, who's going to do it in the real world?" In response, Johnny manages to both look sorry but also like he won't hesitate to do it again.
The Hard Knocks class continues while Indy, Andromeda, and Chroknight recover. The lights go out once Indy's spell expires, which makes it hard to see when Scythe, Carlos, and Ne'veah begin their own exercise. The feral trio engage other types of combat drones in the darkness while Terrier watches on, her golden eyes reflecting the sparks and flashes of the fighting.
Just as Johnny had predicted, at the end of the Hard Knocks class, only Andromeda and Indarius had earned Gold Stars. Chroknight essentially passed, but Johnny's save had negated her chance for an advanced score.
Chitin chuckles as he finds himself standing next to Indy. "I remember when I first fought that stupid murderbot. Dr. Dread really knew how to make them, huh?"
Indarius doesn't have a whole lot of issues following the combat in the dark, thinks about holding on another light, but figured it'd likewise be against the grain of the exercise.
Indarius quirked en eyeridge at that bit of knowledge from Chitin. "Wow how'd they get their hands on a Dreadbot? That's kinda crazy actually, good to know we can stand up to it though. I remember hearing about when the Alliance had to fight it."
He cocks his head back and forth, "Probably not at full power if I had to guess, which is for the best heh. By the way you did good out there. Next time if we all get thrown into it, we should cut loose a bit, feels good hitting something like that once in a while."
Indarius hits the showers after class, mostly soaking in the heat to soothe his aches. Not sweating has it's perks, but even then he used some livht body wash so that he dodn't get any weird lizard stink.
"We've got a bit of a free period now that class is over, who wants to get something to eat?"
Chroknight is a little disappointed they didn't get to fully wreck the murderbot, but they supposed it was easier to refurbish a partially wrecked one than to get a whole new unit. Budget conscious teaching.
They settle for a bit watching the others go through their paces, awkwardly finding themselves isolated from Indarius and Andromeda. It wasn't like they were avoiding them, but...
Am I being a bully? I don't get it.
Gui's comments really stung Chloe. She never saw herself as that, but as Chroknight was she causing problems in the team? Sitting still deliberating this stuff was irritating. Wanting to go somewhere else or fight one of the other robots trying and failing to kill the extra tough class members.
Eventually, Johnny 'Perfect Abs' came floating over, his uniform just the right amount of torn to be appealing to the right demographic. Dude should have his own primetime young adult drama. Least he can't see my eyes in this helmet.
"I would rather not die, so anyone watching my back is welcome. You got the lottery winner though - looks and flying brick powers, a real Captain Stalwart type! Did you get your powers from a cereal box prize like me? Maybe an extremely photogenic irradiated water bear bit you?" They joke, tugging on the ring finger of their right hand.
"Seriously though, do you see me as someone who needs protecting? Am I not the fearsome Chroknight to you?"
She doesn't get up for the nurse's office, instead stays sitting next to Aquarelle after Chroknight goes to warm up "I am aware my ability as a conversational partner or empathic listener is limited, but if you wish to talk, I will attempt." the red headed and red nosed girl offers.
Gui watches Chroknight leave, glad for Sam siding with him. At least he thought she did.
"I am not sure how much you know about what happened." He starts. "I had just met Beebee, Ms Badawi, and den Mourning Dove appeared and started shooting. She got shot and soon Chroknight arrived." She did got there pretty fast. Probably her time powers.
"She asked to teke Beebee awey, and I did dat... but she did not want to leave. She kept looking back with every shot, worried."
"I could hear de sirens, but dere was no ambulance around yet, and Beebee kept saying she was fine and dat she wanted to go back and check. I tried to convince her dat we would only be in your wey, but she would not listen... and she seemed totally fine." He says, trying to remember as much as possible. "In de end, I agreed to bring her back, because perhaps I could help in some way. Like, de ambulances were not dere anywey and if I left her alone, she would have returned on her own."
"But den, when we were getting close to de kitchen, she felt woozy and almost passed out. Not sure if it happened suddenly or if she was hiding it... but den Chroknight was on top of us, yelling, saying she would not trust me again." He shrugs.
"Leter, I have visited Beebee in de hospital. She was not angry at me. She actually believes dat if we had stayed back, she would have passed awey and Chroknight would not be dere to rush her to de ambulance. I tink she might be right, or perhaps dis is just some wishful tinking."
With a long sigh, he turns to Sam. "What does your logic say? Did I f&#~ up?"
When they walk out of class, sore and tired, they turn to Archie and Indy and say, "Oooof! That was a workout, eh? I'm starving!"Archie walks out of class alongside Indarius and Digits massaging a bruised elbow. "Hell yeah I could eat, making that many dupes always makes me hungry, for spicy food. I hope they've got like some Szechuan cuisine or something." He groans at the dull ache in his elbow.
"To the cafeteria then!"
"Say, that portal gun seems pretty useful, you should show me how it works so I can make 'em, then I can dual wield them. That'd be f$%#ing awesome. I'd be like Chell from Portal 2, but slightly cooler cause I'd have two portal guns." He says while motioning like he has two portal guns and makes some sounds with his mouth.
Digits casually tosses the gun to Archie. "Give it a look! Honestly, it's a prototype that I liberated from a Trynxus R&D lab. I've been trying to reverse engineer it for a while now. The main thing I've nailed down so far is that the quantum entanglement matrix is calibrated on a delicate n-dimensional crystal that was grown using xenomycological lattices in zero-gravity. That much is fairly straightforward...but energy signatures also suggest the lattices might need to grow while bathed in a symmetry-breaking cascade like the one that happened when matter first won out over antimatter, shortly after the big bang. Leave it to the f^&king Trynxus to harvest that!...
"Heeey, speaking of you making things...can you just make a hot meal to order? Does anything weird happen when people eat things you create? (Bad-weird, I mean; not good-weird.)"
Once they're about halfway to the cafeteria he leans over to Digits.
"By the way, you're from outer space right? You ever smoked before? You have any alien drugs I could try?" He whispers to Digits so that Indy doesn't hear.
(Not catching on to the importance of whispering) Digits replies, "You know it's surprisingly disappointing how few space drugs are compatible with human anatomy. Some are just sad...and a lot are pretty fatal, though I've developed a pretty tough gut biome over the years. If you've got fun Earth substances, I'm happy to give'm a shot.
"The main thing I could offer in return is some of these mushrooms. They've helped me see some pretty sweet things–and were key, honestly, to me making as much progress as I have so far on figuring out how this Interstitial Quantopological Tunnel Projector works."
Digits casually tosses the gun to Archie. "Give it a look! Honestly, it's a prototype that I liberated from a Trynxus R&D lab. I've been trying to reverse engineer it for a while now. The main thing I've nailed down so far is that the quantum entanglement matrix is calibrated on a delicate n-dimensional crystal that was grown using xenomycological lattices in zero-gravity. That much is fairly straightforward...but energy signatures also suggest the lattices might need to grow while bathed in a symmetry-breaking cascade like the one that happened when matter first won out over antimatter, shortly after the big bang. Leave it to the f^&king Trynxus to harvest that!...
Archie catches the portal gun and look it over a bit. Then blinks at Digits in blank confusion after their explanation. "That was a lot of strange alien technobabble... But yeah! Those damn Trynxus!" He shrugs and hands the gun back to them. "That stuff goes way over my head to be honest. But I can't generate organic material, other than copies of myself of course, so no live animals or plants. This also means I can't make oil or gasoline, but I can generate man-made substitutes, like propane. "
"The main thing I could offer in return is some of these mushrooms. They've helped me see some pretty sweet things–and were key, honestly, to me making as much progress as I have so far on figuring out how this Interstitial Quantopological Tunnel Projector works."
Archie smiles at Digits"Mushrooms eh? I'll tell you what, we can do a little trade, you and me can go over there behind that building before we eat and smoke some of my stuff. Then at a later date you can show me what you got." Archie offers a sly grin and gently tugs Digits by the shoulder away from the cafeteria towards an innocuous nook or cranny
"You've got to try this stuff. It has many names, Weed, Pot, Mary Jane, Devil's Lettuce. Whatever its called, its pretty awesome." Archie reaches into his bag and pulls out a dented cigarette case, he pops it open and pulls out what appears to be a hand rolled cigarette.
"Hold still." He gestures behind Digits ear and pulls out a Bic lighter. "Ta-da! Magic!" He smiles. Then brings the joint to his mouth and lights it. He takes in a long drag, holds it, exhales. Archie coughs once or twice, then extends it to Digits. "You don't have to light it again, just do what I did."
The fight was over, the exercise complete and... she felt a little bit better. The fire was out, the steam no longer building up inside her chest.
She just felt... hollow. And hungry. But she was still a jangle of firing endorphins and adrenaline and didn't feel like staring at her plate while everyone stared at her and watched her try to peel back her sheath.
A thought bubbles up inside her, and she tamps it down. If she accepts the apology she just gets closer. How does that actually help her.
So she reaches out to the friend who's safely out of reach.
My Phone: first day at the new school
My Phone: not as friendly as the old school, no guides but there are Killer Robots
My Phone: hows bebe
With a long sigh, he turns to Sam. "What does your logic say? Did I f$!$ up?"
Sam's matrix tells her that this is a moment to provide comfort not logic, but "Bringing a wounded non combatant back into a volatile situation is illogical" Sam slips out her tablet, connects a small device in input/output, her fingers then dancing away on the screen.
A 3D projection of the battlefield from that day comes up, showing where Aquarelle and Bebe were (according to the GPS on his and her cell phones which Sam pulled to perform post analysis). Chronoknight she was tracking due to their suits frequencies, and ambulances are extremely easy to hack locations from. Those all have color in the projection, all the rest is grayscale.
"To answer your other questions." a thin green line stretches from Aqu and Bebe to the approaching ambulance "Given distance, progressive reduction in walking speed, medical reports of her injuries, " Sam lists out twelve other variables, the line grows steadily redder "There would have been a 72.857% chance of complications, such as lose of organ functions, comma, brain damage due to lack of oxygen, perpetual limp," there are even more of these listed "With a 24.562% chance of fatality." both numbers appear on the sides of the thin
Sam stops typing, looks up and finally gets to the point "While the decision you made was illogical, for the end goal of saving the non combatant..." she presses a button on her tablet, the projection moves forward in time, and as Aqu and Bebe move toward the battle, the numbers increase alarmingly, until Chronoknight appears and then the complications spike down to single digits while fatality goes to 1.909% "The decision, statistically, was correct."
Then several other scenarios are played out to show alternate paths to take that potentially would have reduced the spikes of danger before saving, how team communication would have resulted in even better results, so on and so forth.
The matrix is unsure inside her head about whether this will help or not, so stays silent.
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"Illogical..." He frowns and trails off. So his reasoning was off. He did screw up and did had a bad idea. If not for Chroknight, Beebee would be likely dead and he alone would be the one to blame.
He was just lucky. It was just a coincidence. He...
Guillaume sighs, then looks up into the sky and slowly begins to smile. "Beebee is alive because of a coincidence." He grabs reaches for his pendant and closes his eyes, still smiling.
"Do you know what coincidences are, Sam?"
"You should shower first; I have to concentrate and it might take a while. Besides, you have your blood all over." A thought strikes her as she recalls a bulletpoint from Scythe's dossier. "Do I stink really bad?"
Scythe looks puzzled at the question. "I... don't know. But after class most girls argue over who gets to shower first. I was trying to be... nice."
"Seriously though, do you see me as someone who needs protecting? Am I not the fearsome Chroknight to you?"
Johnny shrugs his shoulders high, looking honest and bracing himself in case the person takes it badly. "Not really. And not really. I don't know the fearsome Chroknight. I didn't know if that missile was going to be able to hurt you, but I wasn't going to take the chance, even if it meant pissing you off."
He offers a hand for a shake. "It's cool that you're not. A couple students here take it personally."
Indarius quirked en eyeridge at that bit of knowledge from Chitin. "Wow how'd they get their hands on a Dreadbot? That's kinda crazy actually, good to know we can stand up to it though. I remember hearing about when the Alliance had to fight it."
He cocks his head back and forth, "Probably not at full power if I had to guess, which is for the best heh. By the way you did good out there. Next time if we all get thrown into it, we should cut loose a bit, feels good hitting something like that once in a while."
Chitin's head swivels back and forth. "No idea how they got it. And before careful what you ask for. If you fight one of the bigger models, you may regret it."
He leans in. "And I don't know about cutting loose. If that was a real fight, I think Andromeda would have caused a lot of casualties." He gestures to the shredded and partially collapsed faux buildings.
Sam goes about her normal day at the moment, finding a place to work outside on a bench on her tablet, concentrating on quantum field mechanics and frequency manipulation and miniature dental explosions. Interrupted by a waving little spider on her knee, looking up to see her roommate with two boxes of lunch and a hopeful expression on her face.
Sam blinks, tilts her head for a second, then puts down her tablet, her threads cleaning the spot next to her for Jessie. "Hello..." greetings are awkward.
Jessie takes a seat in the cleared spot. "Hi! I hope you're not dietarily restricted or something. Tuna salad sandwiches, falafel, and a snickerdoodle. I got a little of everything."
She leans in to inspect Sam's injury. "It's not as bad as what I thought. Ms. Foster is crazy. I don't even want to watch the Hard Knocks class. It's got to be insane. And my poor spiders! What are they going to do against killer robots?"
"Oh." Andromeda doesn't smile, but she does relax. "You don't have to do that. I only speak nice as a second language. After you shower though, do you want to talk about the exercise? I didn't really gather any data on whatever you fought."
"Do you know what coincidences are, Sam?"
Sam tilts her head, not understanding the direction of the question, even if she should based on data collection algorithms on her teammates "Statistical event based improbabilities?" her questioning tone means she doesn't believe that is the answer he is considering and is curious at his.
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Sam tilts her head, not understanding the direction of the question, even if she should based on data collection algorithms on her teammates "Statistical event based improbabilities?" her questioning tone means she doesn't believe that is the answer he is considering and is curious at his.
"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."
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Sam opens her mouth, then... stops. The issue is not with her mind which has had no problem discussing the improbability of a supreme being, but with, well, other parts.
Now, Sam is dimmed inside in a lot of ways, but she is capably of recognizing physical beauty, as subjective as it is. So she knows Aquarelle is attractive. On top of the clinical acceptance of this, she has found herself noticing once or twice the presence of the occasional staring on her part, just to collect data of course.
Well, all that is to say, she does recognize that fact. But this... his closed eyes, his relaxed reverent voice, and That Smile on his lips, full of what she is assuming is true and soft love, at least her matrix is telling her that, in an awed kind of way.
So it is not her mind that has problems contradicting him at this moment. But those other parts suddenly cannot find it within herself to do anything to negatively affect that smile.
So she shut her lips and swallowed hard in an attempt to remember how to breathe.
... one ... two ... three ... reboot.
Her brain wakes up and she answers "'God' is an unprovable problem." she means as in a math problem and is not aware that this might be insulting. "To prove their existence would destroy the foundation of faith, which is belief without proof." she has read, plenty about the subject. Her father has faith, and has weathered his brilliant daughter's attempts to disprove with colossal patience.
Her mind, which was scrambled before, suddenly cross-references the quote. Bright surprise suddenly erupts on her face, making her own smile come out, since intellectual surprise rarely catches her "Oh. Clever." she admits.
Guuuuuuuh, he's so nice. How did he end up here?!
"Yeah...well. You know. Uh. Gottago," Chroknight says suddenly, rushing away.
Chloe: Beebee is doing better. Hopefully out of the sling soon.
Chloe: It's boring here without heroes
Chloe: But my dad thinks it's safer
Chloe: Did the Killer Robot try to take over your school?
"In de bible, dere are numerous passages where Jesus gets frustreted with his apostles, because he was trying to teach dem his message and dey would not understand." He says, opening his eyes. Sam had a pretty smile.
"At first I tought de apostles were too simple or ignorant... but de ting is dat dey only understand his teachings after dey believed in him." His smile turns into a smirk as he gets up. "You can never prove His existence unless you have faith in Him... but if you do, you need no proof."
Looking back at the Hard Knocks class, he adds. "I really do not want to watch dis. How about you? We could go to de infirmary and den eat someting."
Sam nods with a clear frustration at the proving, but doesn't say anything further. "I can review the feeds later and sustenance is a necessity." Sam agrees.
Sam accepts the food with a nod of thanks "A balanced collection of protein and carbohydrates." she leans in to let Jessie inspect the injury "Your spiders vs Killerbot... they could combine with my nanobotbytes, acting as a delivery method into its most internal components bypassing the layers of security."
Then Aquarelle arrives with more food and some drinks "Aquarelle, this is my roommate, Jessie Donlevy, my roommate, arachnid controller" Sam introduces the cute girl with a bouncing bob of hair, including observed traits such as effortless and precise, expressing she finds Jessie's control of masses to be rather impressive. .
"Guillaume Roy-Côté" the fluid rise and fall of Gui's name in Sam's plain tone are technically perfect but lacking completely. "... my teammate, a sensory manipulator." Sam describes Gui's ability also with descriptors like effortless and precise, but including creative and artistic as well, indicating she also finds his powers impressive.
Then she realizes she has two lunches now, and her matrix is ordering her to EAT BOTH.
Jessie blinks in astonishment when Sam suggests a practical use of her power by combining it with hers. "Oh, wow. Nanobotbytes? Like, microscopic machines? I can sense microscopic arachnids like dust mites, but I pretty much ignore them since they're so small."
She looks up and smiles politely at Gui. "Oh, hey! Yeah, that's what I do. Nice to meet you." Jessie's eyes bounce back and forth between Sam and Gui. "I can, um, sit somewhere else if you're eating together. I don't mind."
"Oh." Andromeda doesn't smile, but she does relax. "You don't have to do that. I only speak nice as a second language. After you shower though, do you want to talk about the exercise? I didn't really gather any data on whatever you fought."
About a half hour later, a much cleaner Scythe finds Andromeda. Her hair is still damp and hanging loosely around her shoulders since she apparently did little else than bathe, towel off, and get dressed. "What data do you want? On myself, Carlos, and Ne'veah? Or the Slaughterdrones?"
Sam cocked her head to the side and asked simply "Why?" her mind had been thinking of microscopic spiders (and increasing her database on the level of Jessie's power) and pathogen delivery so the question took her off guard.
Gui stumbles a bit with Jessie's introduction. Spiders? Dozen questions pop in his mind. Did she carry them with her? In her hair? In her clothes? Were they crawling somewhere right now? Oh, that was horrible. He needed to stop thinking about them, otherwise he'd begin to feel them on himself.
Testing the tray on the table, he sits. Were there spiders under the table? Merde, merde! He needed to think of something else.
"Oh, uh, nice to meet you." He manages a polite smile a waves. Thankfully the table was between them, so he wouldn't need to shake hands or whatever.
"She tinks we are e couple, I tink." He says to Sam, then smiles again at Jessie. "We are just casual. Noting serious yet." Sorry Sam, but he needed a distraction.
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Sam's threads, which had still been correcting the area around them, minus harming the ever present and numerous spiders that a constant around her roommate, FREEZE at Aquarelle's words.
Her matrix says with no conviction Banter, It's Banter.
That didn't help the miniscule fluster inside her, like a single soda bubble in that dusty old can of coke you found in the shed from 1983. That little bit makes Sam suddenly interested in her food.