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 Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 12:52 pm
By this point, the two speedster sisters decided to enter the room after hearing about the 'Summers'... they were in civilian clothes, but this couldn't hide their energetic nature. The girls knew they wouldn't be able to help Kai with this...
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Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 1:06 pm
Kesshou looked to X23. "It would be better if I go, but it's not necessary for me to go alone. If you would like to come I'll have no objections."
She then thought for a moment. "What are your abilities again?" She looked at Songbird. She had never actually talked to the girl before and had no idea that she had met her alter self before.
Kesshou looked over to the girls when they fully entered. "Speedsters. You two are more than welcome to be back up, just in case manure occur-ith."
"And your ideas Mr. Kurt?" She looked to her elder X-Man.
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Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 1:41 pm
Songbird shrugged, "I use sonic constructs to create vitually anything, from hard sound wings to allow me to fly to creating walls, shields or weapons. Heck, I recently smashed some Soviet tanks outside Central city with a giant 'Slammin Sammy.'"
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Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 1:58 pm
That got Apex's attention. "You've smashed Soviet-era tanks with sound constructs?" he asked her, his eyes hard. He reckoned that if this was true, this woman was incredibly dangerous... and needed to be observed and studied in case they ended up fighting. That simple glove construct she had made earlier hadn't slowed Apex down, but this was something wholly different.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:57 pm
"huh?"
"Oracle? You're not mad at us are you?"
((RC's voice ringing through Oracles communicator))
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:35 pm
Oracle took a breath before responding to Kai, "RC, we found the Summerses. They just checked in to a hotel in Las Vegas. We're getting together a tail for the two I.O. doctors. Thought you aught to know."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:59 pm
Kesshou nodded, looking at Songbird. "You'd be useful to come but hand back as instant back up."
She then looked at Apex. "So, do you have any thoughts on this mission now?"
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 1:31 am
Apex looked to Kesshou dispassionately.
"I don't see why you keep asking me for my opinion. You say you trust me, but if you trust a heavily-armed man who is trained to take down the entire Justice League, who you have only just met today and who can likely kill you more quickly than you can blink, you're an idiot," he said bluntly. "But if you really want my thoughts, I'll say this: Walking in blind is obviously stupid. That's why you're discussing finding the base. But simply finding the base will not be enough. You must get a detailed sense of the capabilities of those in this base; how many people there are who can fight, how much training they have, et cetera. You'll need to memorize the internal and external layouts of the base, which will require stealing schematics, likely from some central computer hub. Whatever you plan on doing must be planned meticulously. For the vast majority of people on this planet, that means taking weeks in advance to scout everything out and prepare for every possible eventuality-- and even those that are not possible, just in case."
"Your problem, I'm guessing," he continued after a brief pause, "is that you don't have weeks. You're going in blind and will need to improvise, and improvisation when it comes to a rescue operation like you plan on doing is more often than not a very bad idea, unless you can, like my master or Batman, go from planning ahead for every eventuality to working on the fly." Apex paused again, and leaned forward, putting his hands on the War Room table and frowning, looking to Kesshou.
"My question to you now is: Do you have that ability?" he asked simply, and with utmost seriousness.
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 7:56 am
The girls were fully intending to back out on the offer of being 'back up'... they definitely were not ready for field work, and their training today proved that... but before they could say anything, Apex stole the floor with his thorough and logical break down of the problems about the mission as a whole... and, being rational themselves, the two speedsters silently agreed with the man's odds. It was unfortunately an issue that they didn't have enough time to plan out what was needed....
"Maybe... we can help with that."
The younger out of the two spoke up. Impulse looked at Apex a moment.
"With the time issue, I mean."
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:15 pm
Kesshou looked Apex in the eyes. "I never said I trusted you. I stated I trusted your opinion because you have experience. Besides the goal of the X-Men is to unite the world in unification between the races. How does one do that if not through trust?"
Kesshou paused and stared at the man. "And, yes, I can do that. I've been on several field missions and, more times than not, everything goes wrong, no mater how much planning there is. That's why I'm going to follow the Summers and do exactly what you said, steal the database."
She looked over to the younger girl and smiled. "I figured you could be useful. Just had to get it out of you how." She patted the speedster on the head before looking back at Apex.
"Also, risking the lives of others is not something I do. Which is why I'll initially go in alone and, if I think it would be too much for backup to handle, I'd rather die than call for help. My life means nothing compared to those of millions."
Kesshou was more than willing to risk everything of her person to save anyone, no mater what they needed to be saved from. Getting Apex to speak about the mission was a step towards saving him from himself.
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:56 pm
"You don't trust me? Good. You shouldn't trust anyone," Apex retorted to Kesshou. "You can't necessarily 'steal' a database, but you can steal what's in it, and risking the lives of others is as inevitable as a mission going south; sacrifice of some sort is inevitable when you're out in the field, be it from yourself or others. 'Several field missions' is not enough to convince me, a veteran of the Iraq War who has been the apprentice of the world's deadliest mercenary for five years now and who has been on countless field missions across six continents in that span of time, that you are ready or prepared, physically or mentally, to go on a mission like this-- much less lead a team, which you apparently are too stubborn to do anyway. Going alone and without proper backup or planning ahead, then refusing to call for help if you're able to and when you know you need to, is a sign of being an idiot. You think what you just said about your life in comparison to millions of others means you're being noble; it just means you're blinded by so-called 'heroic ideals' to the point of absolute stupidity, because you're willing to forgo logic and reason to waste your life for people who do not know you and never will know you; people who will never know or care that you even exist. And I have no time to waste on someone so utterly reckless, so I believe I'm done here," he continued.
Though Apex did not quite realize it, when he had spoken the last line of what he said, the line about being stupid for risking your own life for strangers... he was thinking about himself. It was yet again a moment where his training under Deathstroke conflicted with the training of the US Marine Corps. Then again, he had not joined the USMC to protect anyone or out of a sense of patriotic duty. He had been young (well, younger than he was now), and he had been angry. He was still young and angry, so what had his service achieved that was really worth it? Nothing, in his mind. Nothing at all.
With that, he stood up straight and began to walk out of the room, not giving Kesshou or anyone else a chance to speak to him. He had ripped apart Kesshou's supposed 'plan' by exposing everything that was wrong with what she was saying twice now. If she still did not want to listen to him and wanted to remain convinced that she was in the right, when proof that her ideals did not work in this situation was literally staring her down and telling her it wouldn't work, then that was her problem, he figured. He had made his decision: These people, or at least Kesshou, were not worth helping if they were willing to throw themselves in blind like she seemed prepared to do. "If anyone needs me, I'll be outside," he said, his tone apathetic, and then he left to go outside the base and do some katas. It would allow him to take his mind off of all this.
X23 watched Apex, and due to her superhuman senses was able to pick up on a very subtle shift in Apex's pheromones when he had been speaking. It was... hard to discern what the shift was, however. After Apex left the War Room, she walked over to Kesshou and opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. She looked over at her adoptive mother, and then to Kesshou again. "Does he... not understand?" she asked. She had been trained to not really care about anyone either, but... for some reason she was more willing to accept Kesshou's outlook on life than Apex was; it was still difficult though. And as she considered that shift in Apex's pheromones, she realized what it had been: A very, very well-hidden sense of despair. But why?((... Damn Apex is cynical in this guild... Yeesh. Do I play a good cynic? Also, after looking over my post it seems kind of... aggressive; but that's just me in Apex's mindset. I don't have anything against Kesshou, but it seems he does. I also just realized... My character Paragon would probably say the exact same things Kesshou has said. It's funny, 'cuz Apex is basically Paragon's Anti-Heroic Counterpart.))
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 8:45 am
Nightshade inwardly sighed, stood back up and walked toward the door, "I'll talk with him." Once the veteran vigilante exited the War Room, and once that door shut behind him -- Des sought out Apex speaking in a plain calm voice, "Though I agree about the 'bad intel' and 'being blinded', I think you're a little too rough on Kesshou. Besides, I can think of better ways of keeping track of the Summers -- whether I tail them from the shadows and/or plant tracking devices on them to lead us straight to their base. Also, if I get in trouble, I can either port out of there or bring in the cavalry. How I doing so far, from one professional to another?"
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 8:53 am
Apex didn't respond at first; he was too busy throwing out punches toward thin air that were too fast for the Korean War veteran to see. However, he spoke after a few seconds.
"Sounds good to me," Apex said, before leaping into the air and delivering a roundhouse kick. "But if they wind up having anything that can contain you as a shadow, you're screwed," he said as he landed. He looked to Des, his gaze as dispassionate as ever.
"As for the cat-girl, it doesn't matter to me if I'm rough on her or anyone else; I've never had the courtesy of people being polite apart from my mother, so why should I be any different from those that have berated and belittled me all my life? That's just how people are. The people that actually give a s**t about each other are so few and far in-between as to be inconsequential. The rest are animals." he stated, revealing his harsh, nihilistic view of life to the other man.
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 8:57 am
Nightshade slowly nodded and cupped his masked chin in a gloved hand, "Yeah, what do you think the odds are that I.O. might have something to counter my Darkforce? Especially since they've been tinkering with a metahuman eugenics program for several generations. They may have come up with somethng, but Darkforce is a rare ability."
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Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 9:02 am
"They don't need to use tech necessarily," Apex replied, and he unslung his Power Staff from his back and began practicing with it. "They could have magic users, or have done experiments on the Homo Magi; who knows? And that's precisely why someone needs to map out that base, wherever it is, and get the most accurate assessment of I.O.'s capabilities as possible. Going in blind like the cat-girl wants will just get people killed. Why doesn't she get that?"
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