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open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

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.

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[ Well... ] I fuck with their stock a little bit if they legitimately start t-- no, that's not even the same thing though, like, reading people's minds? You can do that? All that ooOOOOoooOOoOOOoo telepath stuff? And you didn't tell me? I'm hurt. We could have been having fun with that. There are some hilarious people here, and it's boring.

It's dangerous to go public. There are people who'll try to kill us.

[616 is an unrelenting hell for everyone, but mutants especially. Though it's not necessarily clear to Tony that Emma's talking about mutants, given that the MCU hasn't got any.]

Secrecy is a habit I've never unlearned entirely.

Yeah, that's not unnerving at all even without the telepathy aspect. You wouldn't think someone who could turn carats would be so discreet. I wouldn't, anyway. Think that, or be discreet, either one.

Who's trying to kill you? That sounds like a hilariously bad idea.

[Briefly, Emma considers how much to tell him--easier, she decides, to lay emotional mines now against the day she has to fight for Tony's sympathies against any Avengers who might show up later.]

I didn't always have the diamond form. It's a secondary mutation, triggered by being at ground zero of a genocide.

[She doesn't have to fake solemnity covering anger as she continues.]

My powers are from something called the X-gene. It's hereditary, and only became common in the last couple of decades. Some see us--X-gene carriers, mutants--as a threat to the human race. They give themselves names like "Friends of Humanity" and "the Purifiers" [that last is an outright snarl before she regains control; Stryker's fanatics killed a busload of her depowered students after M-Day] and then they build robots to hunt us and launch antitank missiles at mutant schoolchildren.

[ He's appropriately appalled by this information, like, you know, any sane person. Which he doesn't always associate with, kind of more the case where he Venn Diagramme's his way into that category there, lurking somewhere in the middle. Sane if for no other reason than he appears to be able to rationalize.

You did say 'genocide', right? ]

What the hell, how is this considered okay, that's horrible, what world are you from. That's worse than mine. That's worse than New York by itself. Kids are off-limits, I don't care who you are. [ Not to mention, fuck, anti-tank missiles, he knows exactly what those can do to people, particularly ones who aren't in tanks. ] 'Friendly fire isn't', all that bullshit. Evolution almost by default can't be a bad thing.

[Emma sets a chair upright and sits, looking soberly up at him.]

I know Nazi comparisons are considered terribly gauche, but this sort of thing has happened before. You want to know why I didn't tell you I was a telepath...if I don't trust easily, Tony, it's because the world has never given me reason to. Even now, I wouldn't be telling you if the Anthony Stark I knew at home hadn't proved himself a man who does the right thing in the end.

[Though sometimes it takes the guy a while.]

[ He shifts his weight a little bit - there's a number of reasons he's uncomfortable right now: unconscious father figure over there with a brand new coma, the fact that she's talking about another version of himself who seems to actually be worse, and hey, that's kind of a weird look he pretends not to let pass over his face. ]

'In the end'? And before that?

[BACK THE GODDAMN SUPERHUMAN REGISTRATION ACT, though Emma had been darkly amused by all the non-mutant superheroes suddenly being horrified that they would have to register.]

He...doesn't always consider the cost of his actions.

[She does genuinely like Tony, but he is not exactly the king of thinking things through.]

Then he lets his guilt be used as a lever to move him.

[ That is not as different from himself as he was hoping. ]

At least we're consistent.

There are far worse faults to have.

[Trust Emma. She used to be a supervillain.]

[ He just wants to brood here for a little while, okay. ]

Like what?

In all the time I've known him, he's never been cruel.

[Which is a major point for Emma, given her chilhood and long tenure in the Hellfire Club, and a claim she herself can't make.]

Edited 2012-09-14 20:54 (UTC)

[ Again with the consistent. Tony liked to fuck around with people, push their buttons, put them through extraordinary social gauntlets and see how they would do with them, and then how they would deal with him once all was said and done. He loved being difficult, but cruel was a line he'd never once managed to cross, nor was it one he wanted to.

He shrugs some, not a whole lot of effort but enough to mean something more than indifference. ]

Has he ever been good?

[All the gravity of the moment can't keep Emma's lips from twitching at the double meaning.]

Frequently.

[ Hey wait he saw that. ]

See that's just not fair. That's on par with, 'it happened, but you were asleep so you won't remember that it happened.'

What's "fair" got to do with anything, Tony? You've never played fair a day in your life and you know it.

[That's not an accusation. Emma thinks anyone who plays fairly is an idiot.]

Of course I haven't. It's my advantage. You can't also be paying not-fair, it just means we'll both be losing.

[She laughs.]

Tony, darling, in this particular game, I control the board.

How come every time we have a weird gameboard metaphor in our conversations I suddenly no longer want to play games with you ever?

Because your sense of self-preservation is stronger than your behavior suggests.

[Angelic smile.]

I always feel like I'm in some kind of philosophy class with you.

Philosophy? This is Advanced Topics in Banter.

[One thing she can't get from Scott is that lightning repartee. In fact, that's mostly been missing from her life since Hank left Utopia.]

Ahh, no wonder it felt like I was doing so well for a while. That's totally different.

I'm going to have to grade the rest of the class on a curve.

[That was an unqualified compliment. Maybe because it was concerning something so inconsequential.]

[ Aww, you really do like him. ]

Thanks for the warning. Being scarce after tests is usually safer.

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myownbestfriend - 2012-09-20 15:48 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

fe_male - 2012-09-21 16:06 (UTC) - Expand

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