2015-06-21 A Non-Fae Invasion!
This scene is rated Everybody
Warning: N/A
2015-06-21
Players: Samuel, Drake
GMed by Who GMed?
Title: A Non-Fae Invasion!

Early evening, and the start of the midsummer night is about gloaming around the horizon, sending its golden light through the large windows and sending highlights off the oak furniture and more modern additions. This magnificent view is going entirely unheeded by the occupant of the room, as Sam is seated on a bean bag, leaning against the footboard of his bed while looking up at the TV mounted on the wall. Schematics scroll past, technical information and readouts, even a few heat signature and other spectrum scans…. it's almost like a Star Trek episode.

And certainly very little, if any of it, would make sense to the visitor who comes a-knocking.

Knock. Knock.

Drake rocks casually on his heels just outside the door, hands stuffing into his pockets again.

"'s open." comes the shout from the room, and indeed against all logical sense, Sam hadn't bothered to lock his door. Few enough people came in, and all of them were very familiar with what was going on, the young mutant not exactly known to be a social butterfly. The only time that door was ever really locked was at night, and getting through the door would be the least of a would-be burglar's problems.

Drake opens up the door and strolls in. "Saaam?," he drawls inquisitively. He pauses only a step inside the door at the sight of everything laid out. "Huh. Keeping yourself busy, aren't'cha?" He nudges the door shut again with a heel. "I wanted to see how you're doing, after the whole… y'know… sitch."

Sam look over towards the door, and the TV screen fades to innocent cartoons until the mutant recognises Drake, and then the schematics come back up. He pats the floor next to the bean bag. "Pull up a chair or something, or grab the bed, 's all good. I'm just looking at finding out why the Sentinels are immune to my powers." From which it might be inferred that he's planning on taking the fight to the Sentinels.

Drake has a few theories of why this might be. But none of them are worth sharing. They'd do nothing but raise more alarms. So Drake moves forward and assumes a seat at the edge of the couch. "Well, hopefully it won't matter. They'll call off the program permanently and everything can go back to normal." He leans forward, folding his forearms over his knees. "So. How /are/ you? How's the sparking out?"

"Why would they call of the program?" Sam counters. "They didn't last time, just put it on hold an' we ended up with better Sentinels. B'sides, it's not as if Ahab is just gonna walk away." At last check, Sam's IQ was slightly higher than average, but lately it's been clear the young mutant is … evolving further. "I tried those exercises." he continues with a non-sequitur, the TV screen going blank as his attention transfers to his visitor. "They're really hard, but… haven't had any accidents since."

"Diplomacy. Professor's working on it. You never know, things could change. Don't give up hope just yet." Drake rubs at the tip of his nose. "Anyhoo… yeah, the exercises are probably gonna be frustrating for a while. But as long as you keep at it, and I mean /keep/ at it, it won't be a problem anymore." Hopefully. Everyone's a little different.

"Diplomacy? They killed Doug!" And that seems to be the end of that matter for Sam. "Once I have Nimrod's CPU and put it through a blender, then I'll stop. Until then, I'm gonna keep looking for a way to hurt them."

Drake exhales a sigh. "Iiii know," he drawls miserably. "But you throwing yourself into the fire isn't gonna make things right. If you can find a chink in their armor, that's cool. But you can't get yourself mangled." He moves a foot to bump at Sam's bean bag. "We don't wanna lose anymore people."

Samuel looks equally annoyed and aware, giving your foot a look and then settling back with a sigh. "This is like the first Sentinel problem all over again. An' that was not fun, lemme tell you. Those big things came within two inches of killing me, they even blew up a donut place I was eating in just 'cause I was inside." Another, deeper sigh precedes the admission. "They scare me. So I wanna fight them, as Tech Star. 'cause they forced Tony to hide, I wanna appear as a new suit, make them wonder what's going on."

Drake shakes his head slowly. "There's no way the faculty's gonna let you do that, dude. It's too risky." Beat. "Besides, they'd know it's not Tony. Unless Tony's a mutant. They track us down by when we use powers, not just by.. like.. looking at us. Or that's the gist I'm getting." The teen runs a hand through his hair, mildly disheveling his bangs. "You're smart, Sam. That's a lot more useful than you making yourself a target. If they show up again, let others do the gruntwork. They might bring some pieces or components back, and maybe they'll have you come in to help analyze it."

"They know it's not Tony, they'll have to worry who it is." Sam replies, getting increasingly restless. He'd been absent from a lot of activities, and although his suit hadn't launched in some time, it was currently sitting in the garage waiting to go at a moment's notice. "I just hate sitting around doing nothing. If I can get close to Nimrod, I can shut it down. If I can close to wherever they're holding the mutants, I can free them all. There's no other mutant like me, nobody can hold me anywhere I don't wanna be kept." Ah. Probably worth keeping that one in mind. "Promise me, that if someone brings back bits of these things, I get first look. Promise me that."

"I don't have the authority to promise you that," Drake notes gently. "And I'm sure they've got some scientist-types who'd want to have a look at it, too. But I'll suggest it. I mean, like I said, you being techno-smart is a big asset; especially when it comes to something like this. I dunno why they wouldn't wanna have you at least look at it. We're on the same side here, after all."

But the increasing insistence is noted. He doesn't like where it's going at all. Moreover, if Samuel took off and broke policy, his claim of incaptability would almost certainly be put to the test.

"You know that, right? That we're on the same side? It's not just you and the giant bots; it's /us/ and the bots. There are a lott'a perfectly capable people under this very rooftop."

"Yeah, plenty of people who can twist those big cans into pretzels and all that…" Sam notes as he stands up, paces back and forth a few times and then runs a hand through his hair, sighing. "So why aren't they doing anything?!"

With another sigh the young mutant throws himself headlong onto his own bed and stares up at the ceiling, holding up a hand after a while. "Sorry, cheap shot. I just… want to be doing something, not just looking at those schematics for the fiftieth time and seeing nothing new. B'sides, you didn't come in here to listen to me rant, what's up?"

Drake watches with a maintained, quietened expression as Sam lets loose the crux of the problem. He doesn't believe that Sam didn't really mean that - he understands the frustration. He's in a similar boat. Hell, his power is essentially Sentinel-poison; he's the last thing they want to encounter. But he also knows how mortal he is, and that getting shot by an anti-aircraft round or whatever these newer giant robots are packing would suck so hard.

So Sam's outburst is met with a modest sigh. "Options are really limited. Going on assault could have serious backlash and destroy our hopes of being accepted. We've /gotta/ be careful."

"'Sides," continues Drake as he pivots a knee on the bed, "I sort of did come in here for that. I wanna make sure everyone's okay and not about to get hurt, or panic, or freak out too hard. So, no need to apologize or anything."

Beat.

"But."

"I did have this thought…"

Samuel sits up and seems to decide to stop discussing the Sentinel issue. "I'm okay, aside from, y'know… Cypher… Sucks so hard, man…" And while Sam and Doug weren't particularly close, they were still team mates, and friends. "And I'm starting to sleep normally again after that lunatic got into my room so I s'pose everything's sorta okay." It was perhaps a bit strange to see a penguin shaped nightlight in his room, but at least it seems to help him sleep. "Me an' Kian are friends again too, we kinda buried the hatchet last night. We were gonna skip out an' catch a movie or something soon, before we get another school wide lockdown."

When you mention your thought, it seems you suddenly have his undivided attention. "What kinda thought is it that makes you come to a kid like me?"

"Weeell, it's just…" Drake grins a little. "See… okay. I think it'd be cool to have nightvision. Maybe infrared, too. But mostly nightvision. I was trying to figure out how to do it without being, like… I dunno. With it being /my/ style, y'know?" He grins wryly. "A guy's gotta have style, right? So here's what I'm thinking - lemme know if it sounds impossible…"

Drake suddenly pops to his feet and dips his hand back into his pocket. When it returns, it's holding an angular eyemask. "What if you could hit a trigger or something up here at the temple, and the eyeholes are covered in nightvision lenses? Or.. or something like that. I dunno. Does that sound crazy?"

There was a time Drake wouldn't have even considered something like this as remotely feasible. And then he spent a year at the mansion. And given this is basically Samuel's field, and how he might be taking the recent happenings, this could be a good thing for everyone.

And Drake, unfortunately, is erring on the side of 'extremely vague'. He has no idea just how much Samuel knows around the mansion. So, while awkward, he's trying to spin it off as a personal project of sorts.

Samuel watches the mask, hears the vague explanation, and then holds up a hand. "Gimme a moment." He slips off the bed and heads for his wardrobe, walking inside and disappearing for a moment. When he returns, the boy is carrying a slightly dusty cardboard box which is casually upended over the bed, spilling out so many high tech projects and gadgets that it would make a SHIELD technician weep to see them so casually mistreated. Rooting through it, he eventually finds what he was looking for, and plugs a small battery pack that used to belong to a smartphone into back of what looks remarkably much like a Cyclops visor. "Try this on, see if you like it. There's a little scroll wheel at the back that cycles through the spectrum, an' a rocker switch just next to it. Flip that up if you wanna return to normal view in a hurry."

Drake leans back a little as the box is upended on the bed. His head tilts, attempting to pick out a few devices - or scraps of devices - that he may recognize. There are bits here and there, but nothing that stands out. That is, until the visor is fished loose. It happens to look a lot like a certain someone's, and that amuses him greatly. Of course he slips it on and cycles the nightvisio-

"ACK!"

He cycles it back off. It's already well-lit in the room, creating a lot of feedback. Drake slips the visor off with a chuckle. "That's cool as Hell. But I dunno if the full-on visor is really /my/ style. Now, masks like that? I think I can rock something like that."

This is also partially because the point is to give Samuel something to do - a distraction. A pre-made device, as cool and sentimental as it potentially could be, doesn't really do them any good. The rest of the reason? He's used to wearing an eyemask, and he's curious to see what Samuel can come up with. Sliding glass? Holo-lenses? His imagination is running wild with things that may or may not even be scientifically possible.

"Oh, yeah, never turn on the nightvision in a lit… never mind."

Sam grins at the 'accident', and takes the visor back, unplugging the battery. "Just a proof of concept, I can build this in any kinda shape you want. The problem, as always, is gonna be power, 'cept… never mind, it's not gonna be a problem for you." He shows you the inside of the visor, taking it half apart with a few practiced motions. "The trick is the micro cameras at the front. It looks like you're seeing through the visor, but you're actually seeing the back of a screen projecting what you would have seen if it wasn't there on your eye. Because it's really close, your eye gets fooled into thinking it's really there, and then it's just a matter of changing the amplitude at which light passes through…" And just as Sam seems about to launch into a full technical breakdown of the visor, he catches your expression and cuts off the technobabble in mid flow. "Never mind. Works through magic."

Drake nods along. He's not dumb. He graduated with high marks in science! But highschool science doesn't usually include high-level technological engineering. Calling it magic is a little patronizing, though. Nevertheless, Drake lets it go.

"I could keep it powered just by contact," admits Drake. "But maybe if it had a little backup battery or something? I dunno what something like that would require, but.. uh.. well, this is your field."

"Anyway, if you like, I can try to arrange to have a movie delivered for you'n Killian!"

"I'm thinking on putting it on main induction charge spool for power, with an hour battery backup. But that's as much as I can give you, batteries are so ridiculously outdated." Sam is used to people not knowing what he's on about, and 'magic' seems to be his default fallback position. So far, it has always worked. "We were really hoping to just leave the school for a while, y'know, catch some fresh air, be kids for an afternoon."

Drake ohs. He scratches against the side of his head. "Eeyeah. I hear ya. As soon as we get a little wiggle-room, man. We've just gotta be extra careful."

He clears his throat and moves on. "An hour's backup should be fine! Once it runs out, I could just recharge it off my own reserves." Of which he has plenty. But an hour is a nice, long grace period to avoid using powers.

Samuel nods and is now engrossed in the design phase, it seems, totally immersed in figures, data and specs. One of the nearby tablet PC's springs to life, and the autoCAD program loads, sketching in designs and circuits even while the mutant looks at the eye mask. "So, you're good with the full spectrum? Or did you wanna specialise?"

"Well, full spectrum would be more useful-" Err, "-cooler, y'know?" Drake grins slightly. "Would specializing give it a longer charge or something?"

Samuel shakes his head, putting the mask back down. "No, but some people don't wanna be able to see in some spectrums, y'know. Like, they don't want to have nightvision in case they suddenly end up in a very bright area. I'm gonna put in some automatic dampers, by the way, I figured out how to do those after I built the visor, they'll stop the infrared and night vision from overloading in a bright room."

"I knew you'd be the one to see about this," nods Drake. He props a hand to his hip and tilts his head. "Do you, uh.. need me for anything else? Are you pretty much set? Anything else you wanna talk about?"

Sam is utterly engrossed in the design, but something does seem t trickle through. The Tablet switches itself off, and the blue glow that had started to build in his eyes diminishes. "Actually, yeah, there is one thing…" He shifts his weight slightly, as if getting ready to jump up and run away, but he plunges ahead with the question. "D'you think… I mean… do you think it'd be possible for me to train with… with you guys?"

Ohhh, that buildup. Drake has no idea what's coming. Is Samuel about to ask what his chances are with Jubilation? That'd be a heck of an awkward question. But what he /does/ come out with gets a pause. Having only /just/ officially transferred to the X-Men, and previously being an extremely active member of the New Mutants (and perhaps going a little extra-curricular with it), he's not sure how to answer. "With… us?," he asks, head turning slightly in hopes of getting some clarification.

With a tilt of his head and the raising of an eyebrow, Sam indicates quite eloquently through sheer body language that he's fairly certain you know who he refers to, and are likely trying to stall having to answer the question. "With the faculty. On the lower floors. The ones I'm not s'posed to know about, but where I've already trained a couple of times with the Cuckoos the last time the Sentinels stomped through the city."

So Samuel means the X-Men. Drake knows very well what the answer to that would be - what it /has/ to be. "That's.. not.. likely gonna happen." Whatever this Gen X program is Scott has in mind, he can't speak for. New Mutant training is rigorous. X-Men training, however, is /dangerous/. There's zero room for screwing around, and there's not a chance Samuel would be let in. What he's asking would, in no uncertain terms, cost Drake his new position if he allowed it.

"There are some programs that you could maybe get into. I can check in on those for you, if you want. But with the faculty?"

He affects the constantly blue-ball'd interviewee's voice from Family Guy: "There's jast no whey…"

He can sympathize! It has to be frustrating! But hopefully he'll understand.

Samuel shrugs and seems to understand. "It's cool. It's just… I've trained with Logan, and I've trained with a lot of others. I'm in pretty good shape, I can defend myself, but… when it comes to fighting, I'm pretty much having to make it up as I go along. It's not a problem in my suit, but I'm not always gonna have my suit with me. I'm not asking to go the whole full force do or die training stuff, just… y'know, a bit more combat training than I've been getting."

"We'll see," is the best Drake can offer, and his voice carries undertones to that effect. "Don't try to take on too much at once. What're you involved in as-is?"

"This is kinda the time for honesty, so here goes…" Nothing good has ever started with those words, but Sam plunges on. "I'm nominally a member of the New Mutants, but… we were gonna go on a mission to rescue Doug and that… that obviously never happened. I dunno where we stand right now, or even if we still have a team. I'm also doing some solo work as Tech Star, but that's really low key. I've worked with the Avengers at one point, and Tony called me his protege a couple of times, but I dunno if he was serious or not. I'm also… I'm also really occasionally working with SHIELD, through Tony and Altea. Oh, and I'm helping other kids with shop projects, didya know Jose wants to build a robot for robot wars? Got so many ideas for that one…"

Drake blinks, then nods and stays quiet to let him get out everything he needs to.

"The New Mutants are still a thing," nods Drake. "But it's being restructured. You're actually lookin' at the new New Mutants trainer, comin' into effect real soon. Scott's implementing a new group, too, and I think he wanted you specifically to be a part of that. I'm not /too/ clear what it entails, but I'll make sure he takes into consideration what all you've done."

Just like Drake is doing now. Samuel has ties with SHIELD, as young as he is. SHIELD is trying to uncover X-Men secrets. It would be a bad move exposing him to anything that would make him a delicious target for mind-readers, or could destroy what they have built here. On the plus side, it doesn't sound like Samuel is at risk of being bored.

"Low key is good. That's how I did extra-curriculars. As long as you keep protocol in mind." This is something he intends to give as a refresher course when training resumes. "I'd say to wait and see what exactly Scott has in mind for this new group. If it doesn't feel like a good fit for you, I'll talk to'em about what else we could do. Promise."

"Observe, contain, assist if requested, bug out once police arrives." Sam repeats, actually smiling. "I know the protocol. I have been doing this for a few years, y'know?" And while the young mutant smiles, it is very easy to forget that he's been one of the youngest mutants ever to come to the school, and certainly the youngest that ever took the field. Aside from staff and faculty, nobody has been in residence longer than young Sam. "I appreciate everything you've done, and thanks for keeping everything in mind. I know I can act like a little kid sometimes."

Drake snaps his fingers and points towards Sam. "Bingo." He's pleased - genuinely pleased. Sure, it's only a recitation of the general guidelines is certainly a step in the right direction. Sticking to protocol is extremely important, and denying one's own impulses in favor of adhering to the rules, even when you don't particularly agree with them, is a sign of maturity. He'll remember that. "I'm glad you're being reasonable. And don't sweat it. I get where you're coming from."

He spares a glance to the door, then back to Samuel. "Anything else on your mind before I jet? It's gotten kind'a late on us."

Samuel shakes his head. "Nah. Just tell me though… did you notice those six laser tripwires you set off on your way in? I'm testing a new grid, dunno how well hidden they are."

"Huh-uh." Drake quirks an eyebrow with a bemused grin. "Getting paranoid in your old age, Sammy?"

Samuel shrugs. "Just don't want to have another burglar in my room. Y'know, this time Jose might not just happen to walk past an' warn me. Besides… it's not paranoia when they're really out to get you." He adds that last with a wink.

"You mean that weirdo who popped into your room? I heard about that," Drake mumbles. "That's just… yeah. Well." What can you say about it? Samuel had a fairy prancing around in his room or something, he has no idea. And the recounts he got were equally vague and confusing. "Welp, I'm out! Thanks for workin' on the nightvision-and-other-vision-things for me!"

Samuel nods. "Should have it in a few days. Have a good one!"

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