[Open] Testing the Boundries

Tegan studied the control console of the SimDeck, which was essentially a giant mixing desk like the one you would find in a recording studio. The monitor displayed a gigantic bank of simulations that you could run, ranging from terrorist attacks to infiltration scenarios to natural disasters. There were many variables that you could account for, such as severity and "wildcard" situations. The wildcard function was an interesting one, and as far as Tegan could tell is was simply a function that would periodically introduce a random element to your chosen simulation. After a few minutes of playing around, she came up with a simple scenario to test the capabilities of the machine.

The simulation she'd chosen was a bog-standard brawl. The machine conjured up several armed thugs on the paneled deck, armed with a variety of weapons such as baseball bats and lead pipes. She allowed it to run, studying just how much the machine could accomplish. To begin with, the projected thugs simply walked down a street, swinging their chosen weapons, until they happened upon a group of civilians. Tegan watched with interest as the SimDeck whirred away, simulating the thugs attacking the civilians. A chill went down her spine as simulated blood sprayed from a civilian's mouth after receiving a vicious blow from a brick. The simulation grew more and more chaotic as the civilians were beaten to a pulp, and Tegan was very impressed that the machine accounted for the fact that civilians weren't entirely useless, with one of them fighting back and managing to disarm a thug and defend themselves for a while.

Before long, the simulation ran its course and the thugs inevitably won the fight. When the last civilian breathed its last, klaxons sounded and a robotic voice announced, "Failure. Retry the simulation and try harder next time."

Bit harsh?

With a smile, Tegan reprogrammed another simulation, this one a one-on-one fight, with the "wave" functionality enabled. She assumed this meant that the machine would keep throwing various targets at her until she decided she'd had enough. No need to stress herself out too much on the first go, right?

Stepping away from the console, Tegan stretched herself out as she took a step into the centre of the room, awaiting her first attacker. She let out a breath as she withdrew her sword from its sheath, and grinned as the machine chose another thug to come at her.

Easy. Slow and sluggish.

The first swing came from the thug, an overhead blow with a machete. Tegan simply sidestepped and returned with a quick upwards slash to the man's side. She nodded approvingly as simulated blood began to pool around the slash, and the thug was visibly weakened.

"This is powerful technology." She murmured beneath her breath as the fight continued on, Tegan easily overcoming the thug and awaiting the next surprise.

Little to her knowledge, anybody coming into the room would notice that she'd accidentally left the "wildcard" feature on.

Ada had been walking around the city on that day. After buying some snacks for later, she returned to the Academy and grabbed her stuff, thinking about going to the SimDeck to measure how much she improved since she arrived. She wasn't one for combat, prefering to sneak and use stealth and avoid direct confrontations, but inevitably she had to learn how to fight. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have much talent for fighting so she had to find ways to make her opponents quit the fight, like throwing sand to their eyes or kicking them in their parts. So she decided it was better to learn parkour and runing faster so she could escape.

She was thinking about what would she do in case someone attacked her when she arrived to the SimDeck. Before she left, she realized it was no other than her team leader, Tegan. Ada stepped in carerfully and checked the configurations she had, not caring about the combat in front of her. It seemed she wanted to practice combat, but either accidentally or in purpose, she left "wildcard" option on. Seeing how relaxed Tegan seemed to be, it was possible it was an accident. Ada tried to turn it off but it would mark an error that said she couldn't change it until the current simulation is over, and she couldn't hack it because the school systems were way too advanced for her to handle, so she took out her mask and cellphone from her bag she always carries and ran to the center of the room, trying to get her attention.

"Tegan, it's me, Ada. You left 'wildcard' option on, be careful" now that she thought of it, she could just call her from the monitor instead of entering the simulation.

She walked next to Tegan and looked around, prepared for anything the simulation might throw at them. A disarmed thug appeared some steps in front of her; he tried to attack her with a 1-2 combo, but thanks to her reflexes she dodged the jabs by moving her head to both sides. Ada used the brief time she had to counter, throwing a right hook that made him stumble and fall, then she grappled him on the ground and hit him with an elbow that knocked him out; she got up in an epic pose, just to ruin it by shaking her right hand. "Owchie"

Tegan noticed Ada enter from the corner of her eye as yet another thug threw a punch at her. She'd lost count by this time on how many she'd felled, but was still trucking on. She ducked beneath the hefty punch that was thrown at her, stepping forward to millimeters from her target and sinking her sword hilt deep into the exposed abdomen. She grimaced slightly as the all-too-realistic simulation let out a final rattly breath and disintegrated.

She watched with an amused grin as Ada took out the next target, nodding in approval at the dodges and letting out a chuckle as Ada shook her hand.

"Good job, although tackling a target to the ground may not be the best idea." She said with a smile, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "In a one-on-one situation it's fine, but I doubt we'll ever be facing one guy at a time. Going to ground leaves you vulnerable to attack, you'll easily be targeted as you lift yourself up, and even worse may find yourself fighting a standing opponent on your back."

Tegan began bouncing on the soles of her feet, still with a grin plastered on her face. "Wildcard sounds fun, I was getting a bit bored of fighting guys with baseball bats with a sword. Bit of an unfair match."

Another simulation materialised somewhere off to the right, and Tegan promptly batted his knife to the side with the slim blade of her katana, before quickly dropping her left hand to the hilt of the small dagger on her hip while the thug fumbled, and delivered a brutal slice across the throat.

While she took out the other target, the machine reacted to the presence of Ada, and announced, "Secondary Meta element detected. Danger level 2 initiated."

Tegan flipper her gaze to Ada and raised her eyebrows. "Uh-oh."

Without a second of hesitation, the two thugs that had already been taken out sluggishly got to their feet and began shambling towards the pair of metas in a grotesque imitation of sentience.

Zombie simulations? Guess this is the wildcard.  [NB: Anything italiscised and boldened from now on will be transmitted to members of Tegan's team.]

While the closest SimZombie struggled to its feet, Tegan pushed it back down with the flat of her foot and cleaved its head clean off with her katana.

"Whoever said zombie films were anything other than educational?" She quipped.

"Well, I promised I would never kill anybody. So I don't know any other technique to knock out rather than stealth or punching hard in the face but since this is a simulation..."

It was a promise she made to herself, she didn't want her parents to see that she actually killed a person even if it was for a good cause. They didn't tolerate death in any form, neither does she. But seeing this was just a simulation, she made an exception. Even Tegan seemed like she didn't care, and she was her leader so...

Ada was really considering just running around until Tegan finished the simulation on her own, but the SimDeck wanted her to fight. When the system announced her presence, she returned Tegan's gesture with a worried frown, though her mask covered it. When the so called zombies started walking towards them, Ada was completely puzzled rather than scared. It was almost impossible for that to happen in real life, and she didn't see any utility in fighting zombies other than handling drunk people.

"A b-bit too stupid for my liking" she replied to Tegan's mental conversation. It was something she still wasn't used to.

Whichever the case was, she remembered the rules for fighting zombies that appeared on the movies, comics, etc. First rule: Don't fight a zombie with your bare hands unless you're extremely strong. Thing that Ada wasn't. She looked around and grabbed the machete lying on the floor from the first thug Tegan took out, and faced the one that was walking to her. Then she looked around trying to find anything else that could help her, to no avail. Direct confrontation was the best if not only option.

Ada grabbed the zombie from his left shoulder and lifted him up, digging the machete from the bottom of his chin, the tip showing on the top. Ada pushed the hilt of the machete up, the head of the zombie forming a ninety degree angle with his back, blood spilling from his open throat with the sound of his neck breaking. To finish him off, she removed the machete and sliced his head off with a slash from the side. She dropped the now headless zombie to the ground and he dissappeared; then she thought that maybe it was too much, until she remembered the second rule.

"Rule number two for fighting zombies: You can never be enoughly sure"

In the brief moment between the waves, Tegan turned to Ada with a grave look on her face.

"I dunno, Ada..." She mused, "Killing is bad, it's true, but... I feel it's an inevitability." She then cleared her throat and announced, "Simulation, cease."

The machine powered down and left an eerie silence in the room.

"In truth, I've thought about this. A lot. It's kept me up on several nights, tossing and turning in a fight against my conscience. On the one hand, yes a morally responsible person would never allow themselves to take the life of another, but on the other hand the rules of reality had taken a sharp 90 degree turn."

She unclipped her katana and dagger sheathes from her back and hip and lowered herself to sit on the stairs leading to the console, and she gestured for Ada to join her.

"In a perfect world we could simply incapacitate and arrest the bad guys, which would be great... but they're gonna have super powers too. I know the growing population of the school seems like pretty much every single meta out there is rocking up to the front gates, but I've got a horrible feeling that not everyone is too keen on joining a team of superheroes. We're gonna be fighting people with powers, too.... and they're gonna be fighting tooth and nail to win."

She shrugged and ran her fingers through her ponytail, a worried look on her face.

Ada kept killing every zombie that appeared near her in a wide variety of fatalities like splitting them in half or throwing them around. She was so exhausted that she couldn't speak, only the adrenaline keeping her on her feet. Finally, Tegan decided it was enough and Ada gave a deep breath while taking out the machete from a zombie's head. She cleaned it, and left it on the ground so it could vanish like the rest of the simulation. She had her hands on her knees, struggling to recover her breath while listening to her squad leader. She joined Tegan on the stairs and took off her mask to breath correctly, keeping the trenchcoat's hood up.

No matter what, Ada would rather be killed before having to end someone else's life. If Tegan decided that the only way to stay alive was by killing, it was her own business. She leaned closer to the wall and laid her head on it, her legs crossed and extended on Tegan's direction. She wasn't really good at giving advice, but she could try to cheer her up at least in her own way.

"Being honest, I don't think we have to worry about that. First, the oldest metas are fifteen, like me; which means that they would first need to be self sufficient to start a criminal career. Second, remember we're Sentinels, we work as special operations; if a war or a robot invasion broke out, the Valiants or Centurions would be called for duty. Not us."

It was at this time that she wondered, why were the Sentinels created? Ada knew that her team had a lot of potential in infiltration, but the rest of the Sentinels' purpose was unknown for her. She thought that maybe Tegan was overthinking it, so the best way to distract her was to enter something else on the SimDeck. Also, she had to be careful with her thoughts when she was around.

"How about something to train our stealth skills?"

She got up and walked to the monitor. After toying around with it for a while, she found the stealth missions and gestured for Tegan to come over. Ada extended her hand as if she was selling the screen and awaited for her decision.

"Pick a card, squad captain"

Tegan glanced up at Ada as she turned to walk towards the console, a frown playing across her brow with pursed lips. Much as she was loathe to admit, Tegan may have stole na quick glance into the mind of Ada to check if the message was getting across. Apparently it wasn't. Tegan thought it was a little hypocritical of Ada to argue that metas couldn't break bad if they were only 15 - did she not remember how old she was herself? Classes hadn't exactly been plain sailing up until now, and Tegan was relatively sure that her level in a vast variety of skills would already be considered pretty impressive, even by an adult's standard.

The young girl stood, and stretched her back out until a loud crack sounded across the room.

"That's better." She said with a smile, then walked over to the console to take a look at the simulations with Ada. As far as she could tell, there seemed to be difficulty levels associated with each one. There was a raid on a warehouse, data recovery, prisoner liberation, bomb disposal... a fair amount of pre-programmed simulations. Tegan mused over the different possibilities in her head, trying to come to a decision as to which one they should do to hone their skills. Data recovery was the obvious choice.

"Ada, you got Clara's number?" She asked, feeling it would be better to train as a team.

No matter what, Ada retained her point of view. How could a villain operate correctly if he had to be home before ten o`clock? Or if they received calls from their mothers saying they forgot their lunch money? It was something that just couldn't work out in Ada's mind. The sound of Tegan stretching her back gave her the chills. Ada herself stretched her fingers all the time, but of course they didn't make such a loud sound. Ada lowered her hand and putted on her mask again after she decided she had enough rest. She saw her choosing an option and then thought about her answer.

"I think so, let me check"

Ada took out her phone from her left pocket and looked her name in her contacts list, finding it pretty quickly given not many people know her number. She wrote a text message and sent it, saying that Tegan and her were on the SimDeck training, and it would be a lot better to train as a team, according to Tegan. Ada didn't mind Clara coming along, she actually enjoyed the girl's company.

"I just sent her a message. Do you want to wait for her or start by ourselves?"

Clara had been reading over Lyra's published works when she received the message from Ada. She didn't like to dwell on the past, but the woman Clara now considered her mother had tried her best, and largely succeeded, in shielding her from what exactly had been going on in Nevada. Now, though, it made sense. It made sense in a way that sent shivers down her spine. A world where everyone is a meta is not a world anyone should want to live in. Clara had expectations on her that she'd never asked for, and she'd never had a chance to say otherwise. Clara could never lead a "normal" life, and that was just the way it was. Speaking of which, she had training to do, and Ada's text gave her reason enough to get up off her ass with a smile on her face, and get to work. She put on the suit that the school had given her, the only one that went invisible with her. She still didn't really know what it was. It was tight, latex-y. Everything about it screamed 'generic D-list superhero'. She hated it. Couldn't it have been something a little more... practical? Normal-looking? It can't have been that hard to get something that suited her better, at least. For now, though, she'd have to make do. And as she made her way to the SimDeck, make do she most certainly did.

"Hey, ladies. Sorry to keep you waiting. Shall we get to it?" Clara greeted, announcing her presence with a wide grin.

"I guess we should wait." Tegan replied cheerily, and leaned on the console, taking care not to accidentally push any buttons.

As she sat, Tegan studied the girl in front of her, looking for any clues about her background. Her gaze may have come across as slightly psychotic, but Tegan was simply innocently scanning for any clues to unlocking the puzzle before her. Ada's outward appearance was actually rather intimidating. Black trench coat, gas mask and a hood. It was clear she didn't like to betray much about herself, which Tegan found rather disconcerting. If they were supposed to be teammates, they needed to know each other very well.

While Ada had her mask off, Tegan dedicated herself to memorizing her features as much as possible, she felt like this would be a rare opportunity. She mused silently to herself as to whether this was a good or bad quality. On the one hand, she could travel in public without being heralded as a hero, but on the other Tegan could tell forming a proper relationship would feel slightly alien if she was constantly talking to a reflective visor.

"How'd you end up in a place like this, Ada?" Tegan announced suddenly, breaking free from her silent reverie. "I can imagine it's quite the ta-"

Tegan's question was interrupted by the mechanical sound of the doors sliding open, and Clara walking in. Tegan flashed the new arrival a smile, and gave a small wave.

"Hey, Clara. That was quick!" She said with enthusiasm, lifting herself from the console and crossing her arms across her slim build.

"Hey Tegan! Yeah, I just made it straight over when I heard from Ada. So, what are we wanting to practice first?" Clara asked excitedly.

She took a good, long look around the SimDeck. She'd only been here a few times before, and the sheer scale and technological complexity of it blew her away. Clara was fairly eager to work on her combat. She could turn invisible, sure, and that made her invaluable for stealth, but she didn't have any other cool offensive powers like Josh's telekinesis, so she'd been working herself to the bone at Aikido and Kendo during their martial arts classes just to make sure she could hold her own in a fight, and while she was definitely getting there, she still had a long way to go. Clara looked at Ada's imposing, muscular build with a hint of jealousy. Her petite, slender frame would never allow for her to have such a body, she could work as hard as she wanted at her martial arts, but she'd never have as much power as that behind her punches, that much weight behind her throws. But maybe her dexterity could help her come into her own. Maybe she could figure something else out. That was why she was training in Aikido, after all.

It took Clara a minute to register that Ada didn't have the gas mask on. She looked at Ada's face studiously, finding that it wasn't quite what she'd expected to be behind that mask.
"Hey Ada, thanks for the invitation." She said with a small nod towards the girl.

Ada didn't receive the answer she expected from Tegan, she expected to hear about entering a short combat to warm up, but she decided to wait. It's not like Ada minded too much, she had a lot of patience so she could wait for Clara as long as it was necessary. Hearing that they had to wait, she took off her mask and walked to the wall next to the console, leaving her mask on the floor and laying on the wall with her arms crossed, her gaze down trying to distract herself so that the time went quicker.

She sctratched her cheek and tried to start a train of thought about anything; she actually forgot the team leader's ability, and she thought about her past. Ada lost herself in her mind, and didn't realized Tegan asked her something "I wonder what my parents would say if they saw me. Would they praise Shawn for giving me so much power, knowledge and control or ditch him? Either way, they are gone and I will do everything I can to expose every injustice in the world... but if I could just see them one more time... I miss-"

Ada's thinking was interrupted by the doors opening. She looked up to Clara and smiled. Then, she realized she was unmasked so she picked up her mask from the floor and placed it back, becoming the hero version of the common Ada Pearce. "Hello Clara, it's good to see you. Our leader here was selecting a stealth mission because... I forgot the reason" she thought about sharing the zombie apocalypse experience, but she refrained herself or else Clara would probably get distracted from the reason of the meeting. Talking a final breath, she stood up correctly and slipped her hands in the trenchcoat's pockets, waiting for something to happen.

"Good to see you too, Ada. Alright, that sounds good. I'm ready whenever. Although, I should let you both know that I'd like some combat practice after the stealth sim. I really need to sharpen up on that, because I don't want to be bringing the team down on that front. I've been working super hard at it recently, and I'm getting there, but it can't be too long until we're running real missions so I have to be sure I'm up to scratch first." Clara said with a smile, making her thoughts known to the others. It wouldn't be good to avoid communication in a team, especially when this was about something that could cost lives if she didn't work on it.

Tegan turned her back to the pair and began studying the console once again, flipping through the various settings to create a scenario for the small team.

"Ada and I just did a combat simulation - the power of this machine is really rather incredible. Creepily realistic." Tegan said as she was adjusting how many guards would be patrolling around her designated mission. "I hope you have no qualms with zombies?" She asked, looking over her shoulder with a smirk.

She turned the final dial with a flourish of the hand, and nodded with satisfaction as she gave the machine one last check to ensure the data recovery operation would go as planned.

"Ok, metas. Simple operation. Labyrinthine warehouse, various traps and checkpoints, patrolling guards and a big old supercomputer in the middle with the USA's stolen nuclear launch codes. It's our job to steal them back, without alerting the enemy to our presence. Bonus points if we can steal any plans or wipe any important data along the way."

Tegan looked at the pair with a smile, waiting to hear their response. She felt a small pit of nervousness building at the base of her stomach, this would be her first experience of properly leading the team. A plan was already formulating in her mind, but she couldn't help the nerves that would inevitably come.

Ada prefered to use stealth, since that's how she accomplished her hacker missions with Shawn. But if she had to be in a hero team, she had to find a fighting style that was comfortable for her. So far, she liked simple martial arts, mainly because it was almost impossible to kill someone that way. She thought about Clara's purposal about combat practice, and thought she could also use it to test her skills by doing something else than shadow boxing or hitting training dummies. Ada frowned behind her mask after Tegan gave a hint about the previous training, and she just hoped Clara didn't get distracted from the main mission. In the end, she sighed and listened carefully to the report.

She thought about her first step. Probably she would have to connect almost inmediatly to see any dangerous security sistems, and aid Tegan and Clara in anything they could need. Ada herself would constantly move to avoid the security guards. It was actually nothing new to her, the objective being almost the same as her hacker missions, but this time she had to cooperate with someone.

"Alright then"

Ada started walking down though the stairs, focused on her plan. She stopeed and turned to her teammates "Permission to enter through the roof" She wasn't always the charismatic and relaxed Ada; when she was in the middle of a task, she became a very serious person. They were a team, and she trusted Clara and Tegan, so she hoped they also trusted her enough to let her climb to the top of the building.

Clara raised a curious eyebrow at Tegan's mention of zombies.
"Zombies?! Well, I guess that's one way to shake things up..." She remarked, grinning. She would have said more, but when it came to her training, she took things relatively seriously. They could screw around between missions.

Clara listened to Tegan's brief carefully.
"So, high pressure situation, sensitive high-value data, difficult to navigate around, swarming with guards. All in a day's work, I suppose. So, what's the play here? Get Pearce on surveilance and lookout to guide us around? With my invisibility, I'm happy to do the bulk of the stealth maneuvering if needed. We could even get a high score on this one!"

Clara nodded in response to Pearce's request.
"Alright. Tegan, are we taking the same entry point and backing her up, or are we splitting here?"

[Will reply in the next few days. Been cramming for an exam on Monday. Do forgive my tardiness!]