open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

[initiatesnpc]

Date & Time: August 5th, mid morning.
Location: Anywhere characters happen to be/the VR.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: From August 5th to August 8th, characters are plunged involuntarily into the VR Program.
Warnings: Potential violence within the threads.

When the chance arises, she's quick to take it. The programming is incomplete, she knows; the simulation isn't ready — but she's not likely to get another shot at it. And so she moves, slipping through security codes to input the command. The machines hum to life with nothing but a flicker of a green light in a dark room, and it takes only seconds to establish connections. The signal is sent out; the weapons respond.

In a single pulse, reality drops away.

There will be darkness at first as the mind realigns itself to the signals being sent it. Slowly, the darkness fades, forms take shape. People take shape. The setting is terribly familiar, plucked from the user's own mind. It might feel like a dream at first, with events playing out as if predestined, the would-be dreamer moving through a familiar and unalterable route in them. But as things begin to feel more and more realistic, as more senses more fully connect to the simulation, awareness will change. This is not a dream. This is more than a memory.

Welcome to the VR.

Only 20 minutes later, in some underground quarters, Doctor Sponde is roused from an undignified sprawl. He's hastily briefed and shuttled toward the command center, looking grim. He knows the problem demands an immediate fix, but… well, this is some complex machinery. It could take some time. It could take days. He gets to work.

Comments

[latkje]

"My apologies! It must have slipped my mind." He couldn't look at Emma, he had to keep focused, keep parrying, but he tried to keep his tone light. It was somewhat disappointing to think these people weren't really trying. On the other hand, not really trying suited him just fine.

Nash fumbled through one of his pockets— it had to be somewhere— pulled out a small packet of powder, and threw it into "Juliet"'s face. That would blind her, and he could use that opportunity to engineer a knock-out blow with the hilt of his dagger.

"If I don't fight back, will they stop?" Nash asked, exhaling deeply. It occured to him that Emma was teaching at him.

[myownbestfriend]

"You could try playing dead and see if it fools the simulation. That didn't occur to me." Her diamond form made her far more difficult to hurt than the VR had apparently taken into account, so none of the opponents she'd stumbled across had managed to do worse than knock her around. Not that her ego would have allowed her to feign defeat, so the point was moot. If Nash wanted to be a test dummy, though, she certainly had no objection to that.

[latkje]

Nash would say he didn't have much dignity, and he might even be right about that, but lying down in front of a dragon and pretending to be a corpse was not something he was itching to try.

"Well, I can't fight a dragon." This was true. He couldn't fight a dragon, not by himself. "Unless…"

Whoever it was who thought up this whole crooked thing had given him the swords.

[myownbestfriend]

"You can fight this dragon." Emma cocked a hip and folded her arms. "I think this is all supposed to be a training exercise."

It would explain why the Hellfire Club had suddenly become incompetent. Still, it was repeatedly breaking Shaw's nose that had made her realize that hanging back might be a good strategy. Shaw's inconvenient little mutation was something she'd put a lot of thought into beating--if someone turns your force back against you, the solution is not to engage.

Or to drop house on him, but she didn't have Magneto around to take care of her problem this time.

[latkje]

"It's been a while since a lady showed such faith in me," he delcared, all exaggerated mannerisms. "I'd hate to disappoint it." If this was a training exercise, and none of it was real, then none of it would count, right? Nash's weapons were a set of twin blades, but he only drew one. That was more appropriate to the romantical setting, he decided. The knight, fighting a dragon, with a whole set full of fake flowers and crumbly old walls behind them. He spun the sword around once before getting to work— Emma was right, it was much easier than it should have been.

"This could be a scene from Scarlet Moon court poetry," he added, more sarcastically, "if only the dragon weren't wearing that dress."

[myownbestfriend]

Emma settled down on a broken piece of masonry, propping her chin in her hands to watch Nash fight. Her back was to a wall--she was confident in her appraisal of the situation, but no point in taking chances.

"Why is the dragon in a dress?"

[latkje]

"The dragon is supposed to be Juliet's nurse. It's a play." Obviously that explained everything.

[myownbestfriend]

"Ah. You, I presume, are Romeo?" She didn't even blink. One of her former teammates had a sentient dragon that used to spy on the X-Men for SWORD. Another sentient dragon playing Shakespeare hardly seemed worth remarking upon.

[latkje]

"Are you kidding? I'm one of the Capulet guards. They wouldn't let me audition for Romeo." Which honestly, didn't bother him that much. Who'd want to star in this production? Whoever was in charge of casting seemed bent on picking precisely the wrong person for the role.

It turned out the dragon was predictable. Not what she ought to be. Nash found he could make steady progress with a simple pattern of parries and strikes. Rinse and repeat.

"You're awfully nonchalant about this, you know." Were plays this awful commonplace in other worlds? He shuddered at the thought.

[myownbestfriend]

"Not even the star of your own memory." She found Romeo and Juliet tiresome in the extreme, but it was still better than that self-indulgent off-off-Broadway nonsense people at least had the sense not to try to get her to finance. Emma clicked her tongue in either sympathy or disapproval. It could be hard to tell with her.

"What's there to be jumpy about? I'm not fighting the dragon."

[latkje]

"You know what I meant." He didn't know much about Emma, but she didn't strike him as stupid. If she wanted to dodge his question, though, he'd know a little bit more about Emma.

If Nash could have shrugged while also fighting a dragon, he would have. "I guess I'm stuck as a supporting player. But if you get too important, you'll never get anything done."

[myownbestfriend]

"This is not the strangest thing that's ever happened to me. It's not even in the top ten." Really, it was just a training exercise gone bad. Those happened like clockwork.