Summary:Following the sabotage by AIM at the RESCUE Campus, Toni brings Io and Domino up to speed on events. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
   |
It's been a day for Toni.
The Foundry has been evacuated so its structural integrity can be examined, her lab is a mess, her one set of sort of working armor is now decidedly nonfunctional, and she again has a mild concussion.
She's going to have to start wearing a bike helmet around the lab at this rate.
That said, after being released from medical attention, she's made a point to go seek out those who helped with the recent…well, near disaster. So she's gone looking for her interns! As she thinks of them. Even though they're really not in most cases.
The dust never has a chance to settle and the bad news keeps coming. Neena, after thoroughly checking herself over for any nanite hang-ons, had her arms crossed but was too restless to hold still. Then she was reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose, muttering "Really..REALLY hate those guys…"
At least they can't blame her for AIM infiltrating their systems, right? That's..something.
There's still a plethora of questions in need of answers but where Neena wants to start is with Toni Ho. They've still barely had a chance to talk. Why not try to start now?
Mark up another timing win, Toni's just getting away from medical. The albino waves her over, still being followed by Karl. "How're you feeling?"
The sound of a motorcycle can be heard as Io uses her RESCUE membership and credentials to get past the dust and emergency clean up crews and whoever and whatever else is going on. Io pulls up short and then Io is looking for someone in charge and she's directed towards Toni. So it's not long before the blue-haired punk-techie is heading to Neena and Toni, "What the fuck is going on?"
Hank spent the time after the attack in medical, and making sure there were no more fatalities. Not on his watch.
He might even have been the one to check over Domino and her new best friend Karl.
He really was pretty upset about the event … the loss of personnel is exactly the sort of thing that tears at Roni like flensing knives made of toxic metal.
As it happens he was about to check on Toni himself, he trusts medical, but she's a friend. So…he's there when Io makes her very diplomatic entrance and falls silent. After all, he's a guest here, she is staff.
Hisako needed a bit of time to collect herself properly after they finished handling the crisis. Fortunately, she wasn't injured, didn't even have nanomachines to worry about latching onto her - but she would have accepted a medical check-up in any case, just in case she missed anything in all the excitement.
And she's *still* wondering whether this is a normal day at RESCUE.
But at this point, she's finished her check-up and is sitting in the infirmary waiting area, sweater currently folded over her lap.
"Oh, greeeeat. Nothing like having a second concussion two weeks after the last one." Toni say deadpan, then sighs. She has stitches too! Having a roof fall on your head, not something she'd recommend." She waves tiredly to Io as she arrives. "Hi Io. AIM tried to kill me and unleash a nanoplague. All stopped now. New metahuman in the medbay from it." She wrinkles her nose. "He's thinking of calling himself Rustbucket. Oxidizes metals by touch and regenerates, which is the main reason he's still alive." Karl snorts a bit. "Mebbee he should wait until after he out of th' clinic before he goes pickin' nom de plumes." the Texan Overwatch trooper notes dryly. Yes, Domino's life is now a buddy cop movie. "Oh, and my armor is thoroughly trashed now." Toni says absently. "Had to burn out most of its systems to get a force field fast enough to keep myself from being crushed by a lab falling on me."
She lifts a hand, waving to Hank as she sees hinm heading in as well, then smiles at Hisako. "Hey. I promise all first days aren't this crazy." she offers to her. Which is a blatant lie, really, based on recent experiences, but she's hoping to make it a thing.
Incoming Blue Biker! Io is almost immediately recognized. "Someome left a fork in the microwave" Neena nonchalantly replies while nodding toward the nearby ruined Foundry.
Toni's explanation soon has the albino deadpanning "Oh, so that's how new metas are born. I was wondering."
Karl actually gets a smirk out of her though it doesn't linger when she catches sight of a Looming Hank nearby.
Back to Toni, she says "Hey. Your armor may be toast but you're still in one piece. We're going after this guy, right? Consider this my formal request to be on that team."
Io looks at Toni, and as the young woman seems to be standing, speaking, and interacting she doesn't bother to ask Toni how she's feeling. It just isn't how Io's brain works. How her brain works is summed up in her response of, "Well, keep him the fuck away from all my shit," in regards to 'Rustbucket' even as she seems to exude an aura that she will personally kick his ass if he so much as puts a scrap of rust on any object she has the remotest attachment to.
There's a frown, too. "Nanoplague? Asshats. Need me to talk to the little buggers?"
But, before she can go further Neena shows up, and Io nods to the albino with familarity. "Hey," she greetsto both her and Hank. Then, directed at Toni while looking at Hisako, "Whose she?"
Toni nods to HIsako as Hank as they head off…got to get her home, apparently. "Hisako Ichiki. Mutant with the power of creating psychokinetic armor around herself. Very handy when fighting off nanoswarms, as it turns out." She glances to Io, frowning. "…sorry. We had to use an EMP. You weren't here and they were spreading and devouring anything metal, including iron out of red blood cells. They're all shut down now."
Toni looks back to Neena. "And yes. We're going to be dealign with the Scientist Supreme, we owe you some bad, bad days over today." she says simply.
Toni looks back to Neena. "And yes. We're going to be dealign with the Scientist Supreme, we owe him some bad, bad days over today." she says simply.
"It ranked pretty high on the 'things I didn't need to see' scale" Neena agrees with a grim expression. Though with the idea of 'nanoswarms' now the current subject of discussion she slowly turns to give Toni a suspicious look. That her request has made it through is met with a slight nod but there's an important question which still needs to be asked: "What -were- you doing with that sort of nanoswarm tech?"
Io's eyes narrow at Toni. She does -not- look happy. In the least. Toni is, perhaps, lucky that she and Io had a measure of understanding between them. Otherwise the blue-haired technopath might just have something worse than a coniption fit. "How bad?" Any consideration for Hisako, or Neena, or anyone else is pushed aside for the loss assessment to technology.
Toni, perhaps, can appreciate the dark mood that suddenly has surfaced over Io. She'd only just recovered from the last EMP the team endured.
"Two dead." Toni says bluntly. "As far as we've been able to tell, Dr. Lewis was working on metal reclamation nanites for cleaning up old rusted metal easily, and an AIM agent who was working at the Wellspring added in some medical nanites designed to help restore hemoglobin quickly for anemic patients. The two tried to synchronize with each other, ended up with a mess of a program that prevented them from being turned off to be fixed, and then started eating any metal in range and draining the iron from Dr. Lewis blood. If his meta gene hadn't kicked in with regeneration he'd be dead." She sighs. "An EM field might work in the future, but those two strains were in containment labs for a reason, they were not intended to ever be used together. Tamsin knew that and was hoping it'd destroy the lab then destroy my lab with me in it."
At the official number of fatalities Domino goes right back to looking grim. It's hard to justify their losses as being collateral damage since no war was being waged. None of this should have happened. Even the mercenary is opposed to meaningless losses. Maybe this Tamsin guy had an idea in mind but it's not looking very justified to her."
The albino also releases a long breath then preemptively speaks out to Io. "Steady…" She saw what happened the last time something tech related didn't go her way. It had been ..curious.
"That's some kind of fortunate he was a meta. Maybe next time we can have a remote 'off' switch for these things that doesn't risk frying everything in sight."
Io makes a sound of disapproval. "You should've called. Fine." She rubs her face, then tells Toni, "Jesus. I should've asked for fucking hazard pay." Then she runs her fingers through her hair, still having a rather severe look about her person. Neena's statement gets a, "No shit," measure of approval from Io. "That's going to be my next project. Then, our vehicle. Apparently I can't do anything with RESCUE without half my friends getting fried."
Surly, much?
"We literally didn't have time Io." Toni says patiently. She's aware where Io is on this, and that it would piss her off. But she's not going to apologize for what people did to save the campus and people in it. "Yeah, we're well over our quota for EMPs for the decade." She rubs her face, then nods to Neena. "We're going to come up with more safety features. WE had a remote shutdown, Roni tried it, but their programming was too scrambled to respond to the code." She leans back in her wheelchair. "AIM is a problem for the future, I"m sure Posse is going to be reworking security checks after this too. But, Io, I'd like you to help Dr. McCoy with Unity. So I'm going to hope that no random attacks occur with that.
"You really are some kind of peculiar" Dom tells Io. Dipping forward to massage her forehead, she grumbles "Still got a looot of catching up to do with this place…"
To Toni, she suggests "Wireless remote. Don't blame me for thinking like a merc but a long range point and click interface seems like a no brainer. Maybe it triggers a signal only they can detect. I don't know. That's something for people like you two to mull over."
The idea is just as quickly dismissed from the pale lady. "We've also met our disaster quota for a while, right? I'm gonna go see if they need any help with cleanup. May as well make myself useful."
Io exhales out of her nose, frowns, then nods to Toni, accepting the other's reasoning even if she didn't like it. Narrowed eyes look to Domino, "And you aren't?" She shrugs it off, looking back to Toni. "Alright. I've wanted to talk to Unity anyways, so that'll work out. She's pretty complex, but didn't really have the time to examine her and get to know her. We'll see how that goes."
There's the slightest of pauses, "Seems you're going to need me more than part-time, though."
Toni mmms. "…well, wasn't expecting that." she says after a moment. "You want to be full time?" She glances to Neena. "…and apparently Posse hired you full time too?" She doesn't sound upset by this, just a bit suprised. But then, she'll fully cop to being out of the loop for a couple weeks
Neena pauses before getting very far, suddenly looking a little surprised as well. "She did?" ..Huh. Well, that's… Alright. "In that case, I have a lot more to do to work out -this- situation" she declares while giving her entirely ORANGE pass a flick with a fingertip.
The talk about the other subject doesn't escape her notice, either. "Do I even want to know what a 'Unity' is?"
"A VI that Toni found in one of her old buildings, apparently AIM used it as a base. They woke it up. Lots of shit happened. It's programming got activated, some shit went down and then Roni had a hissy fit when I tried to talk to it, so I had to put it to sleep for a bit. Then SHIELD took it over and confinscated it. Hope she's doing okay." Io doesn't sound hopeful.
She shrugs back at Toni, "If I don't, you're going to either all kill yourselves, or get every computer in New York destroyed. So, pretty much have to."
Toni nods at Io's explanation. "It's biotech….an AIM project, like she said. The first time we ran into it it attacked Hank…it's the reason he's all furry at the moment, it stole some of his genetics and messed up the serum he was using to help stay unfurred, perhaps permanently. Made him go berserk. Also, it has tentacles. Io talked it into going back to sleep and SHIELD's had it since then, but I'm hoping with Io she can talk to it and maybe keep it from being hostile." She smirks at Io. "Probably not that bad, but….I don't deny we've been having a craapy few weeks."
"And we're right back to 'AIM,' 'doom,' and 'gloom'" Neena says in a tired voice.
Although both of their descriptions of Unity leaves the albino -staring- in complete silence through the full duration. "Another day at the office, huh. I'll tell you this much, for a group called 'RESCUE' it sure sounds like there'll be plenty of things for me to shoot at. For the record, I don't see this as being a problem. Though it'll be a lot easier when I'm allowed to carry my gear across the border."
Not that she's bitter about being all but -completely- frisked earlier, or anything.
As if she's noticing the ramping up of attitude she holds up a hand without another word and meaningfully points in the direction of the Foundry before setting herself into motion towards it. Let's..maybe not end this encounter with her bitching to the head of the organization.
"I'm going to go see about getting everything fixed. And back online. Assholes." Not Toni. AIM. She starts muttering under her breath, giving the barest of waves towards Domino as she suddenly departs to the labs to see about figuring out what electronics have been fried, and how salvagable they are. No doubt there won't be sleep for Io tonight. Or, maybe tomorrow night. But the computers around the campus will be back up and running, some better than ever, thanks to Io's dedication and her intimate desire to improve the lives of the body electric.