Issue 1 Downtime

Tommy slammed the buttons for the danger room, and stormed in.
((open thread))

Ross, who'd been wandering around getting the lay of the campus (still. He really was bad with directions in this place, right now he thought he was in the academic building), stopped nervously when he saw Tommy storm in. "Uh... are you okay?" he asked, peering through the doors, blissfully unaware that it was his proximity that was keeping them open.

"You'd best back up," Tommy said, his skin igniting into flame.

"Oh, okay," Jackson said, backing up... into the Danger Room door that had closed behind him. Shit. Shit. Well... okay, nothing bad can happen, he thought, obediently backing toward a corner of the danger room, still in the room but farther away from Tommy.

Tommy, not noticing Ross had stayed in the room, had summoned up a large open field, with a large, vaguely Napoleonic army on the other side of the field.

He cracked his knuckles.

Oh. Okay. Big army. Kinda simple, simple is good. Not like they can hurt you, maybe you can fake it, Ross thought, swallowing as he watched the approach of the army, waiting for Tommy to do something first.

And do something he did, lashing out with great balls of fire, streams of it, blasts of it, jetting forward in large blasts from the palms of his hands, as he confidently strode forward.

Ross swallowed. All right... I'll just keep over here and see what I can do...

And the answer at first, was get shot. Pain radiated over him as he felt the bullets slam into him, closing his eyes as he charged forward at the little group of soldiers at the end who were firing at him instead of Tommy. He felt stabbing pain as their bayonettes jabbed him, his clothes ripping but his skin resisting the edges painfully. "OW!" he shouted as he bowled over one soldier, grabbing his rifle to rip it out of his hand.

Tommy was absolutely routing his side--this was not set up as a training exercise, per se, so the French were fleeing even faster than they would in real life!

Ross, in the meantime, had gotten a rifle away from the soldier and was standing again somehow. He... well, didn't know how to reload it. So he was reduced to using it as a short spear with its bayonette, jabbing it at the soldiers surrounding him to drive them back, lunging with it at other times to take them down.

Anyone else would be dead in seconds from the ten soldiers he had on him. Ross, though, had the benefit of not being able to die going for him as he worked his way through them, taking them out when he had the chance one by one, his cries of pain from the gunshots and stabs being inflicted on him sounding something like a battle cry.

Surprised at the lack of resistance, Tommy turned--and seeing Ross in trouble, he angrily fired a blast of fire at...well, somewhat BEHIND Ross, but still.

Ross let out a yelp that... well, let's face it, under the circumstances, stabbing at soldiers, nothing really sounded cowardly because he wasn't running away. And that was his saving grace. He felt the heat behind him, felt his shirt singe off, and was actually somewhat surprised that while it felt unbearably hot, it didn't hurt. Gotta remember that. He lunged furiously at one of the soldiers... no technique, no precision. He just smashes at the guy with his bayonette, getting hit in return in a fury, but then only one of them could get pierced.

"Fall back!" Tommy called, shooting more fire.

Ross backed off, taking a wild string and, miraculously, accidentally hamstrung a soldier so he could get away. His clothes were ripped, the back of his shirt singed away, and his shades had broken off to reveal his glowing eyes... but he 'miraculously' didn't have a scratch on him. Tommy could make of that what he liked. And like a good sidekick, he backed the hell off when told.

Fire fire firey flame.

And then:

"What the HELL are you doing in here?"

"The door was closed!" Ross protested. "Sorry, didn't mean to butt in, but first the door was shut, then the door was gone, and... sorry! Don't worry about me, I'll stay out of your way!"

"You could get yourself seriously injured in here!"

Ross blinked. "No I can't," he said. He pointed down at his clothes that had obviously been stabbed and shot and his body that hadn't. "Do you think they missed?"

"You're only invincible until you are not."

"I've had a bomb blue up under me," Ross offered. "Do you have something that's going to happen that'll be worse than that?"

"That's what life does--throw worse stuff at you until you collapse. You silly sod, you could have been incinerated."

"I thought that this thing couldn't kill you," he said. "But really I can't! People have tried and I just can't get hurt!"

"It doesn't have to be injury. A sickness, poor genes, a distemper in the blood--you'll never quite know what could strike you down, next..."

"Well yeah, but being in here won't get me those things, sir," Ross pointed out, looking more like a student getting dressed down by a teacher now.

"It's...

...terribly sorry," he mumbled.

"No, I shouldn't have been in here," Ross said quickly, glowing eyes shifting across the ground uncomfortably. "I'll go if you... well, okay, I don't really know how to get out. But I'll stay out of your way, sir!"

"No, no, it's...it's quite alright. You just say 'arch' and the door shall reappear."

Ross was about to say something, then stopped. "Seriously? Just like Star Trek? Huh."

"Do you... maybe would you want help? I've been... well, I've been trying to figure out how to be a superhero, but it's kind of hard on your own," he asked tentatively.

"...a superhero?"

Ross nodded. "Yeah! You know, save people, great justice, beat bad guys?" He gestured vaguely to where the soldiers had been.

"...and what is it, exactly that you do?"

"Well, I... uh... I stopped some people robbing a bank," he said uncertainly. "Well, I helped do it. But they wouldn't have been able to stop them without me!"

"And how did you do that?"

"I... blocked a bullet so the security guard didn't get shot and could fire back," he said, looking uncertain.

"And then?"

"They handcuffed him to a stretcher." He looked up, almost pleadingly. "I said that I needed to learn more how to do it!"

"...so you got shot, and you fancy yourself a hero, now?"

"Well no, but the whole town did! And... I kind of stumbled on some people blowing a bridge up for some stupid reason and stopped them by falling on the bomb, so everyone thought I was a big hero, and they gave my parents their house back, so I kind of have to learn how to do it so I can be one or they'll be on to me and will take my family's house away," he blurted out, not really able to come up with decent cover stories.

"...wait, what?"

"...Um... in short, I don't think I am one, I just have to be one, sir."