(no subject)
The briefing was not very in-depth. It still glows on the projector's screen in the comsys room, the basic plans of the layout of the refitted Pegasus. Inside the Danger Room, the simulation is of the guts of the ship herself, drawn from photographic and video evidence provided by NASA. The quarters are close. Cramped. The temperature is a little on the low side, although whether this is a feature of the simulation is not immediately clear. Storm has claimed the pilot's seat with a certain grim regality. But the real issue this evening's session begins with the airlock. Beyond it, simulated chunks of metallic rock whose composition has been mocked up in approximates ... sit on the floor.
The Danger Room is a simulation, and there are limits even to the twinkiest of technologies. The Earth's gravity is the rule despite the illusion of outer space beyond the windows, beyond the airlock.
But the space suits are as real as the room's metal walls.
Zenith is more than a little distracted simply by the mechanics of moving around in a space suit, and by gawking at the simulation, no matter the explanations given to her about it ahead of time. She does not precisely seem to be paying attention to the real point of the exercise.
Guant in this false world as well as the real one, Erik's pallor is not flattered by the white of his space suit. He is leaned against the frame of the doorway that separates the cabin from the rear compartments, peering out through the cockpit windows with a distant scowl. He is not impressed, or happy to be here.
"We will be learning to manage in weightlessness over the course of the next few weeks." Storm's voice is a little distant, displaying a touch of thin distraction. Her hand is flat against the panel ahead of her, her head tipped down slightly as though the slight hunch of her shoulders is a block against a physical weight. "As this is only a preliminary course, we are getting in practice with. The actual meteorites."
Zenith keeps looking at Magneto. Though she made a show of not reacting to his presence at first, she's doing steadily worse at suppressing the urge to frown over at him in confusion and concernt as time goes on. "Well, I don't need that anyway," Zenith points out, and then drags her gaze away to look at the indicated rocks instead.
From the window to Ororo, Erik's chilly eyes flicker to study the weather witch as she speaks. His attention lingers there, quietly oppressive as it bores into the back of her head. Then Zenith speaks, and he glances to her, drawn features absent of expression while he mutters something along the lines of, "practicing a false sense of security."
The tension that marks the set of Storm's shoulders and the slow, measured way in which she resumes speaking suggest that whatever Erik may be doing to increase the stress she is under, as a matter of percentages, his influence is negligible in direct relation to what was already there. "No, I would suspect not," she says to Zenith. "The largest of the stones beyond our 'hull' is a representation of one of the earliest fragments we are projected to encounter. We will not know for certain until closer to the date how accurate these projections may be, but at some point, we will face it."
"So--can we actually move them or something?" Erik's remark gets a deep frown of confusion from Zenith, but she stands up from her seat to move closer to the window.
Magneto rubs a space-gloved hand over his face, high-tech fabric pausing to apply pressure to brow and nose before it falls rigidly away. The gesture does nothing to lift at the circles hollowed in under his eyes, and he sniffs, aggravated sinuses apparently not helped by being in a fake space shuttle either. He says nothing.
"If you would." Storm tips her head toward Zenith, courtesy precise. "Can you approximate weightlessness for it? I will have the Danger Room kick it into an appropriate trajectory." Her glance flicks toward Magneto, her fingers curling into a fist and then opening again to flex wide and flat in her glove. "Then we can ascertain the ... right amount of force."
"I can only make it lighter if it's more than my limit," Zenith points out, but she frowns at the rock anyway, Erik finally forgotten in concentrating on her powers. "There."
Magneto hums tunelessly to himself, with occasional snatches of what sounds like German muttered hoarsely along while he steps back from the doorway. He falls quiet again to look at the vacant stretch of the ship beyond the cockpit, and then back ahead to Zenith and Storm.
As the rock floats peacefully into the false night of the Danger Room's air, Storm murmurs into her comlink, communicating assumably with whichever of the others is hanging out at the access terminal in the comsys room and managing the simulation. Invisibly, a robotic arm extends to knock the fragment into an appropriate trajectory. As it floats towards them in its false weightlessness, Storm angles the illusory Pegasus in flight, veering to angle the airlock towards the stone.
"So--?" Zenith prompts, not sure what she's supposed to be doing next. The only sign of strain is her biting her lip as she concentrates on the rock.
Hum-muttering one last verse, Erik reaches up to draw his visor down over his face. Now he is just an animated space suit. Or really, a space suit, because he's not very animated.
Exhaling slowly as she turns slightly in her seat, Storm glances at the Magneto spacesuit. "Whenever you're ready," she suggests, her own powers being inoperable and she remaining as yet ignorant of any shiny new toys that may be in the offing for the less pursuantly superpowered. "Since Zenith is managing at a disadvantage, power-wise. Magneto will determine the requisite force to force the rock out of our danger zone. On the real mission, this will probably require multiple EVAs..." She trails off, a planner's distraction settling over her almost like a shroud.
Zenith looks a little worried. "EVA's? Like...actually going outside?" She tries to fidget with her hands, but the gloves prevent more than really rubbing her hand against her hip.
Shoomp. Zenith's visor goes down as well, apparently of its own accord. Erik is helpful. That accomplished, Magneto spacesuit flexes its thick hands and stumps over to the airlock to begin the process of opening it.
"Yes." Storm stares at her hands, one pressed tight against her leg and the other curled again into a fist, braced against the nearest control panel. "Out ... outside." At the beginning hissing sound of the airlock opening, she snaps her own visor into place with a physical twitch that resembles a shudder.
Zenith eeps in surprise, and would have looked chagrined, if one could see her face properly. "Sorry," she mutters. "Why can't we do it from in here again?"
"We could," says Erik, low voice crackling drearily over the com that broadcasts into the interior of all of their helmets, "if you fancy the idea of electromagnetism passing through the complex husk of our ride home." With one final deadly hiss, the airlock is open, and Erik swings out into the simulated abyss.
Unfortunately, it is not that well-simulated. For now, there is air out there. There is gravity out there, for one thing, and the solidity of the metallic floor beneath their space boots. (Its image is unsettling, the starfield continuing on indefinitely beneath their feet--) There is no requirement for the tethers to attach to their suits, no real /need/ for the helmets that protect their heads from a vacuum that isn't. Even the illusion of weightlessness does not apply at the moment. But between Zenith's powers and the technologic interference of the Danger Room, the pocked stone of the asteroid fragment floats toward them.
Inside, Storm has fallen silent, looking from this panel to that screen through the shade of the visor. The faint unevenness of her breathing is a quiet betrayal, audible through the transmission of their helmets like an irregular crackling.
"Oh." Zenith will shut up now! The quality of her silence suggest she sees no reason /she/ has to go outside in that case, but she doesn't mention it. "I'm just floating, not pushing, right?" she says, and the rock looks like it's thinking about veering a little from its current path.
It is, perhaps, more awkward to try and walk in gravity than without it in these suits. Erik's steps stumble occasionally, until his temper wears thin, and one more step pushes him up off the ground in a fair imitation of weightlessness. He does a lazy flip in the air, heels over ears in the direction of the Doom Stone. He is taking this very seriously. "Alright in there, Ororo?"
"Fine." Storm's voice is thin and a little flat. She watches Magneto's behavior narrowly from her vantage in the cockpit. "Just float it, Zenith, please. We will arrange a turn for you soon enough."
Zenith's lips quirk at Erik's flip, and her feet start to lift off the ground, but the rock dips by a similar amount, and she makes an inarticulate noise of frustration, and just floats the rock, and not herself.
Still spinning in the wake of the flip, albeit at a much slower pace, Erik slowly lifts a gloved hand, and pushes. The rock spins away with fair force, and an invisible force sweeps lightly through the cabin, flickering monitors and sending several warning lights to blinking and buzzing. There is a slight pause, while Erik keeps moving. Then a mild, "Sorry."
"/That/--" Storm catches herself and closes her mouth, lips thinning in a firm press. It takes a moment for her to regain control of herself. One of the warning lights bleets a little longer than some of the others and she stares at the little red blinker for a disoriented moment. "All right," she says, her voice measured in a slow extension of syllables. "For a first attempt. Of course, it would be preferable not to break the ship every time we attack a target."
The crackle from Zenith's radio is /probably/ just a louder breath. Any resemblance to a suppressed laugh at Erik strictly coincidental. Storm's manner is starting to dawn on her, though, and she leaves the rock to float and clumps back to get a better view of her.
"Mmm," says Erik, perhaps a little noncommitally. His voice is more crackly than it was before. Odds are, his space suit is not feeling much better than the ship. He keeps spinning slowly off in no particular direction. Mutants in spaaaaaaace.
Clenching her teeth as she swallows, Storm rises suddenly from her seat. "I think, perhaps, enough for now," she says. Perhaps it is temper that draws her voice so sharp and flat. Whatever the reason, as the simulation cuts out, it leaves behind ... the shell of the room, a few mock-ups of metallic stone, the robotics that line the room, and three mutants in spacesuits. Highly agitated, Storm is manuevering for the doors to the comsys room.
Zenith wastes no time in taking off her helmet at least, scraping sweaty tendrils of hair away from the back of her neck. "I'll do better next time," she offers worriedly, but lets Storm go without any other impediment.
Magneto completes his ongoing slow-motion turn as the simulation ends, and his space boots find solid ground again. His visor shoomps back up into his helmet with...a few sparks skating out of the gap, which. Probably isn't good. All the same, he shakes his head at Zenith (sort of -- not a lot of mobility to do so) and sets to taking the helmet all the way off. "You did very well, my dear. Nothing to be concerned about."
"/You/ were fine," Storm says over her shoulder. It is difficult to stalk properly in a space suit, but she gives it a game try on the way to the outside world and her real clothing.
"Oh." Storm gets a "Thanks!" from Zenith, but Magneto's approval brings a smile and a noticable degree of relaxation from her earlier nervousness. She nods in vague farewell to them both, and lets them go on their way.
Magneto finishes unfastening his helmet before moving to pursue Storm, lest his head catch on fire in an untimely fashion. With the largish helmet tucked securely under his arm, he glances vaguely in the direction of the nearest camera, and paces after her with only minimal difficulty when it comes to walking.
Getting undressed from a spacesuit is quite an affair. Without the confining helmet, however, Ororo is content to wear the rest of the bulky thing at least for the moment. Out in the comsys room, she exchanges a few terse words with another of her fellows, who swiftly thereafter leaves. Then she occupies one of the room's few seats, tapping repeatedly against the table with a pen. The computers continue running as is their business, finding her irrelevant.
It is not precisely possible to be quiet when one is stumping around in a space suit. So there is no question at all that /someone/ is coming. That the someone is Erik becomes clear when he lowers himself into one of the room's other seats, and leans to set his damaged helmet onto some sort of control panel or keyboard. Or something.
The chairs swivel. Ororo turns hers towards him, narrowing her gaze as she subjects him to a moment's study. Tension and wear are showing in her face. Her hair is a little tousled and wild, from the repeated passage of her fingertips -- already, since the removal of the helmet.
His own white and silver hair ruffled by the helmet's passage, Erik meets Ororo's narrowed eyes and evident tension with a hollow sort of blandness not unlike the look of one who's been up for several days in a row watching late night television. That was a long sentence. He watches her that way for several seconds, hardly blinking, then slants his attention to her helmet. "You're unhappy."
At that, she smiles. It is a tired smile, the humor in it touched dry with irony and matched to the expulsion of breath through her nose in a light snort, and she turns the chair away again with a push of her booted foot. Not /quite/ tired enough to be totally spinning in the chair. "You, too."
Magneto's brows twitch upward in lazy acknowledgement of the return observation. He does not argue with it, but sinks deeper into the back of his swivel chair, padded gloves open over either armrest. "I am used to it."
"You don't appear to be taking this very seriously," Ororo says, although by all appearances she is addressing the air in front of her. Abandoning the fidget with the pen to let it roll across the table, she props her head with the splay of forefinger and thumb along her cheek and jaw, and frowns into the middle distance. At this angle, she presents him mostly with her profile.
"Ah," says Erik. "Well." It takes some work, but he manages to drum the fingers of his right hand slowly over its arm rest. He is back to watching the back of her head, which is not all that informative, really. "It's only the end of the world, after all."
Her free hand curls into a fist, resting against her lap. Storm turns the chair again, this time to look at him with a glare too dulled and drained to have much fire behind it. The impression is really more sullen than otherwise, almost childishly so, after the fashion of the teenagers who live upstairs -- probably not what she would prefer it to be. "And yet," she says, "here you are."
Magneto does not shy from the opportunity for eye contact. His glare is washed of color and feeling, pale and vacant, though lazy, leonine confidence remains firmly intact. He is not afraid. Of anything, anymore. "If you are not going to be able to do this, it would be wise to initiate some form of alternative sooner, rather than later."
Her pride answers first, in the lift of her head, in the brightening glitter of her vivid blue eyes. But she does not have the words to answer with at first; only anger, hot and worthless. It turns inward swiftly enough. Ororo cannot maintain the eye contact for long. It breaks as she looks away and down, jaw setting.
"The others will sense it, in time. Unconsciously, perhaps." Anger is recognized, but has little to do but fall dead against a countenance that cannot be moved to react to it. "Our fears remind us that we are not invincible. There is no shame in that."
"No shame," Ororo repeats in a low voice, practically muttering. She pins the bridge of her nose between her thumb and middle finger, brow crinkling as she closes her eyes. "Hah." The single syllable is an ocean of shame. She shifts again, planting her hands at either side as though preparatory to pushing herself to her feet. "To save the world, my team is going to go into a small box, be blasted into an airless vacuum, and do battle against the forces of nature."
Jaw worked around a sigh that does not get fully suppressed before it's pushed out through his sinuses, Erik lifts a hand into a gesture that is both lazy and rather inscrutible anyway. "All the more reason for their leader to be operating at an optimum." There is a pause there while his eyes fall to the floor, and his special spaaaaace boots, then lift again. He makes no move to stand, himself, content to loiter in a place he has no real business being. "I am not Charles. I cannot read your mind, nor will I change it. But do whatever you feel is best. Not whatever you wish you felt."
Once upon her feet, though she rises a little more slowly than usual, Ororo balances with her knuckles pressed to the table and frowns down at it. She does not say anything. Then she turns and starts for the locker room and the long slow struggle out of her suit. "To hear the same advice from two such distinct sources," she says, in a tone of grim acknowledgment, "bears thinking on."
"If everyone listened to me, we'd be the dominant species." It is unclear whether or not Erik is serious, or if he means this to be encouraging. His expression and tone are unfathomable, and he does not really seem to care how it is perceived, for better or for worse. Once Storm has started to go, he looks at his helmet, and remains where he is. Perhaps he will have a nap.
It is going to be a long end of the world.