revivalproject | Network: Video

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Network: Video

[ The video opens with a fairly standard head and shoulders shot of Drake, who seems to have made himself comfortable at a desk or counter of some sort in the research building. The lighting is much dimmer than the bright flourescent of a regular lab setting, but workable and almost pleasantly ambient. He has a few small desk lamps and behind him are various machines and computers - or at least they look like computers, a few of which seem to be on, as they blink out different colored patterns in the background. There are screens and dials and big, boxy looking equipment scattered around, and who knows if any of it works or what they're meant to do.

He looks annoyed, as per usual.]

Hello! If I could have your attention for just a moment. I don't mean to interrupt everyone's happy fun times, but -

A beach party?!

Really? Right now? That's the response that a threat of this magnitude gets? Did you all miss how insidiously pervasive that complete memory stamp was? Or how it went on for a month, and would have gone on longer if the Agrii hadn't broken through?

Miss Starling wasn't too happy with me for expressing an admittedly prematurely low opinion of you all when I suggested that the ship might be too full of finger paints and coloured pipe cleaners to fit necessary equipment I wanted to bring back from Coruscant.

Well, friends, this idiocy is exactly what I meant. Thank you for confirming that I may as well be on a planet inhabited by talking ficus plants. This is-is-it's...I have never seen this level of incompetence and irresponsibility after such a direct, powerful, multifaceted attack.

I'm trying to find out what caused it and how to prevent it from happening again. And I expected the same or better of everyone else.

Mr. Kaplan provided a list of names of some people who were here during the time a race called the Atroma were present. He thinks they might have had a hand in amplifying the effects of his abilities. So if anyone knows a...

[ He looks down and a scrap of paper comes into view]

...Wanda, a...Soldier? Lance, and Keith? please send them my way, I need to have a chat. Or if you're listening, feel free to get back to me here or leave a message.

If any of you have even the barest hint of a sense of self-preservation, I would appreciate some help. I would ask elsewhere, trust me, but apparantly everyone's lost their minds and there's no one left who isn't a sudden hippy with the memory of a goldfish.

And by the way. The mobile analytic laboratory probe is ready for field work. You're welcome.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Drake may be better with faces than with names, but he's not particularly good with either. Besides which, he's only seen Billy once, briefy, as a tiny, postage stampe sized face on his communicator screen. Not to mention having his life flash before his eyes is a bit distracting.

He was also distracted by Tommy's monologue, finding himself thinking of the sheer impossibility of the claims.

Mammalian nerve transmission can't conduct a signal within a millisecond, much less a nanosecond! It takes at least that long just for an ion channel to open! No no no, stoppit, Drake, FOCUS.

"What -wheeze- d'you want?"

Oh Drake, if only you were right about how fast a brain could run. Tommy offered a smile, seeing the lack of belief on the man's face. If nothing else. He'll learn. Tommy has all the time in the world to show him.

"I hear you have it in your head that you're going to mess with my brother. See, here'e the thing. Scientists don't get to play with mutant powers."

Well this was a fine mess, wasn't it? Drake was fairly sure he hadn't threatened or physically accosted anyone since arriving (or...ever, really, he wasn't much of a fighter), and here he was pinned to a wall like a butterfly for at least the second time. It was reminding him far too much of his childhood, and he hoped there weren't any lockers or toilets nearby.

"What-" he managed to squeak, "What the hell - are you on about?!" At the mention of a brother, and of mutant powers, Drake's brain started a spin cycle of people he'd met and recent events.

"I don't know your brother, who's your br-"

Wait. Waitwaitwait, what was that, go back.

There it was. The similarities. Now he knew who this was. Or at least who he was related to.

"Billy. Y-you mean Billy."

"Bingo, dipshit," Tommy answered, his voice a growl before he smiled and bared all of his teeth. If he had learned anything from his grandfather, it was how to be menacing.

"You know what's not a good look? Military scientists 'studying' Jewish people to prove some point of another. You know what that looks like, don't you, Riley?"

By now, Drake's movements, limited as they were, were getting a little sluggish the more tired he got.

"I'm not looking to prove a point, I just - just want to find out what happened! It prob'ly won't even work!"

He took a forced breath.

"And I don't know anyone's religions! Why would that-"

Another breath pushed against Tommy's fist.

"Why would that even matter? D'you think I'm a Nazi?!"

Edited 2021-07-08 21:14 (UTC)

Well tired was for the best. If he kept flailing at Tommy he might hurt himself.

"Nazis don't always look like Nazis. Anti-mutant bigots don't always look like anti-mutant bigots. People who throw slurs around and assume Romani people are thieves and corrupt don't always look like that. But you know who does look like themselves? Scientists that want to pick apart your powers for their own fucking use."

He dropped Riley then and offered him a sneer.

"And if you want to see power..."

Tommy wound up and punched the wall where Riley had been pinned. Enjoy that nice hole in it now. And the absolutely lack of any bruising or cuts or blood on Tommy's hand in the process.

"I can punch with enough speed to go through your rib cage, grab your heart, rip it out, and show it to you before it even stopped beating. Hell, I know people can actually survive a few seconds like that, my boyfriend back home died like that before his friend brought him back. But I think we could get you staring at it longer."

Nazis, mutants, Romani, where was all this coming from?! But then he was dropped on his ass and before he could scramble away, Tommy had put his fist right through the wall. Drake lifted an arm to shield his eyes as bits of plaster and powdered concrete pattered down from the hole as Tommy withdrew his hand.

That was Drake's cue to backpeddle a few feet away, eyes wide and trained on the hole while physics equations concerning stress and pressure points along with the faint thought of 'great, something else I have to fix' flashed through his mind. The calculations were replaced by a vivid picture in his head of his very own beating heart (which was hammering like a rabbit's).

Come to think of it, it was probably trying to maintain his blood pressure, which...he could feel was dropping suddenly. Oh Jesus, he didn't want to be alone and unconscious with this psychopath.

But there he went. His face went white, his eyes rolled, and he flopped lifeless on the floor. His last thought before that was a silent apology to his kids, in case he never saw them again.

Heritage, Drake, that's where it's coming from. Tommy shakes his hand out, dealing with the faint sting as he looks at the little scientist fleeing from him. Yeah, that's how it should be. Okay, maybe he could see why his grandfathers got like they did. There was power in that fear. A power he remembered from his time in super juvie.

BUt then the guy goes white as a sheet and his eyes rolled and...

"Oh come the fuck on!" he shouted, throwing his arms up in frustration. "I haven't even blown anything up yet you fucking delicate fop!"

Annoying. Tommy grumbled under his breath as he moved to Riley's side and started nudging the idiot with his foot.

"Wake up, Drake. Wake up before I carry you to the fucking fountain and drop you in it. YOu're so fucking lucky I'm not going to let your stupid ass drown."

It took a few moments of oxygen slowly permeating his brain again, but eventually Drake felt something touch him.

Then it touched him again, more firmly this time.

Someone sounded frustrated. Was it himself? ...no, the accent was wrong. What happened?

All at once, the events of the past few minutes crashed into his head in a dizzying maelstrom of images, shouts, and remembered imagery, and he sat bolt upright -

- too fast. That was too fast, and Drake put a hand on his head with a wince and leaned forward to put his head between his knees.

"Seriously?" Tommy asked, rolling his eyes.

"I swear to the Demiurge that if I've wasted my good threat material on a fucking coward who faints before there's even blood, I'm going to be mad."

This idiot could be a threat to his brother, and he didn't like that.

Drake sat like that for a few moments, taking deep breaths and processing what was being said.

Demiurge?

Coward?

GOING to be mad?!

Wait, COWARD?

He scowled up at the teen. "It's a blood pressure thing, not a cowardice thing."

Imagine him when he was mad, Drake. Wouldn't that be scary.

"Dude, you fainted clean away. That's totally coward shit," Tommy countered, arms crossed over his chest. "And it ruined a perfectly good threat."

Drake didn't think it'd ruined any threats. He thought that Tommy had gotten his point across quite succinctly, thank you very much, and if he could keep him talking about literally anything else, maybe he wouldn't offer any more free demonstrations.

"It's called vasovagal syncope. It's a medical condition and I take fludrocortisone for it. Not that it's your business."

His case was thankfully a faily mild one compared to many sufferers of syncope, some of whom have multiple episodes a day. If fact, he would never have been a candidate for medication at all if he didn't work under conditions that could present triggers for it at any moment.

Totally ruined his thread. He absolutely is certain of that, thank you very much. All he hears is blah blah I'm trying to justify being a coward.

"Uh-huh. Because that's just what I need. Some idiot that faints studying my brother when he's probably got dangerous shit around."

Perhaps it had ruined the threat, because once Drake had climbed to his feet, holding the wall with a grimace, he swept his arms to gesture at the room.

"Look around you, mate. What exactly d'you think I'm going t'do?! This is all analytical equipment! The only dangerous shit in here is you." He pointed sharply at Tommy to punctuate the statement.

"No," Tommy answered, pointing at Drake. "The machines are nothing. They don't think, they don't care, they don't feel. They report. It's the person using the equipment that makes it dangerous."

And thus all of this was dangerous.

"And military scientists? You're all scum."

Drake got very quiet and his face went impassive. It was the only way to keep from completely imploding, because right up there with personal attacks were attacks on the value of his work. He risked his life every time he set foot off-world - hell, every time he showed up for work! - and he sacrificed sleep, health, time with his family, all for the sake of a world who would never know his name. People who cut him off in traffic and scammed little old ladies out of their life's savings.

"You don't know me." He said evenly. "And you don't know what you're talking about. Now if you'll excuse me, I was working up a list of questions I'd like to ask your brother."

Doesn't know what he's talking about? Less than the beat of a heart and Tommy's in front of Drake, shirt hauled off, and close enough for the faint tracework of scars to be visible. Ones that followed the lines of major muscle groups. If there weren't so many of them they might just be from a reasonable surgery. But there were many, cutting over each other.

"This? This is what people like you do. They see a potential weapon and they exploit it. Doesn't matter that you can't fully sedate a speedster, that our bodies shake that stuff off. If you scream, it's only more fun. And I won't let my brother experience that. I'd rather break my oath to him and explode something vital. I'm not letting him be a test subject."

Torture. All the marks on his body could only amount to that. Improperly sedated, against his will, all to figure out how he ticked.

Was it that surprising that he was angry?

When Tommy suddenly appeared appeared right in front of him, Drake instinctively flinched away and then immediately looked like he regretted it. But then he saw the scarring, and the patterns, and before he even heard the accusations, his mind started whirring and one of its many busily processing subroutines began spitting out results like an old fashioned ticker tape machine spitting out a snaking line of stock analyses. Before he could catch up with his train of thought and pull the breaks, it crashed through his mental barrier and out into the world, manifesting as a shocked recoil and an expression that was openly sickened.

"Oh- My God."

Obviously. Obviously, this was why he was being so damnably, ridiculously, unreasonably sensitive; it was because of a traumatic past experience (or, more likely, many, many traumatic past experiences) with, he noted dismally, military scientists. After realizing this, everything else Tommy said took on a hazy, muffled, cottony sort of quality, and he only heard it insofar as it was being filed away in some dusty cabinet in the basement of his brain to tap annoyingly at the floorboards if he was ever reminded of it.

So instead of addressing it, Drake whispered, "Who did this?"

"You weren't listening," Tommy rolled his eyes when Drake questioned him. "I already told you. Scientist shits who I got given over to. One little mistake when powers come in, and bam. 'Super juvie' where they decide it would be REALLY USEFUL to have a speedster that can cause explosions as an assassin. But first you have to find out how they tick."

He laughs at that. He'd gotten free thanks to Billy. Billy and his need. But Tommy was thankful anyway.

"Happened to our grandfather too. Of course for him it was justified as okay because he was only a Jew in a camp. He wasn't a person.."

Well, that did sound useful, Drake might have admitted if he were thinking even remotely along those lines, but also unstable and dangerous. Just as a sort of objective rule, it seemed like the smartest baddies out there who made use of suoersoldiers also ensured that they were pliable to the point of not having a will of their own. Wouldn't want a tank to one day decide it fancies smushing you in its treads, after all.

Seemed like a bad idea all around. But if Drake were thinking about that at all, it was with some small spare bit of random access memory dedicated to background processes.

Other than that, he was almost past being offended by the accusatory tone and cynicism, instead brushing past it to say, "You sound American. Was this a branch of the American military? Or a privately owned institution?"

Honestly, what it sounded like to him was a gross violation of the Geneva Convention.

Oh, the people that had taken him as something to be turned in a weapon had gotten that turns back against them. If it hadn't been for Billy and his friends, people would have died. And in very messy ways.

"Government funded military contractors running a private detention facility as their own little play ground. I wasn't their only project. I made sure there wouldn't be any more."

To say the building was rubble was an understatement.

The military - and it didn't matter whose military - frequently made the wrong call in Drake's opinion. But this was beyond an annoying tendency to rush in with guns blazing or the constant demands for solutions or results when listen science takes time and meticulous attention.

This was -

He didn't even know what this was. Drake had thought that unethical human experimentation in the States had largely seen its end in the 70s after the Tuskegee and MCUltra scandals. And not even those had actively vivisected people. Then again, he'd never heard of superpowered humans, so considering that variable in addition to the possibility of a world that hadn't caught up with the Helsinki Declaration's standards for human rights, he could, he realized, certainly see any government on the planet looking the other way. All you needed was the right justification for those who needed it, and someone willing to do the job regardless.

"I'm sorry that happened to you. We don't have mutants in my world, but..." He hesitated, thinking about mentioning that they did have aliens, but decided against it. "But I can tell you with confidence that the people I work with would sooner stand before a court martial than stand by while violations of medical ethics go unchecked."

It wasn't even like anyone could BECOME like Tommy. Ever. He was born this way, it was his genetics. Those you can't replicate.

"Good for them. Doesn't mean I trust them, or you, with my brother."

Drake held his hands up.

"Understood. Don't blame you. At the same time, it is his decision whether or not to participate in any voluntary research, isn't it? I expect, after that display, he's powerful enough to say no if he wants to. Even if he weren't, there's nothing I, or any of this stuff, can do to hurt him. It's all just measuring equipment. I want to ask him some questions and run a few scans, that's all."

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CW: graphic description of possible violence and theoretical disemboweling

Re: CW: graphic description of possible violence and theoretical disemboweling

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cw: referenced non-consenting medical procedures, experimentation, torture

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