[Calibrations] Calibrations Still Hurt

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Sheperd, OTA
WHERE: Tommy’s Calibration Room
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: June 10th to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Tommy’s Calibrations room potentially contains depictions of child abuse, bullying, and medical experimentation, and dogs used to threaten/harass a child. It depends on what you touch (each will have warnings in strike-through attached).

Arriving in this room means a literal arrival. A door opens, the one to Tommy's room here in Temba. No sooner does one step through the door than it closes behind the arrival, leaving them alone with a Tommy Shepherd who is lounging on a couch against the wall of a very messy room. Honestly, it pretty much relates to his own room at Temba's 'Young Avengers HQ'. At least there's an open window in the room to let in fresh air. The view is weird though as it's of the Las Vegas Strip at night, from a literally impossible angle. It's almost as if the window looks out into the middle of the road itself.

"Hey, welcome," Tommy says, kicking his feet over the arm of the couch. "Just give me a second."

He is flipping through a book, clearly reading. His fingers move quickly, until he seems to get to a good stopping point. Then he stuffs a bookmark in and sits up.

"Forgive the mess. Been busy lately."

And yeah, it's a mess. Not too hard to trip over a pair of goggles with orange lenses in the middle of what should be a walkway to the bed or the bathroom beyond it. Strangely enough even stepping on it owuldn't break them. It probably goes with the silver and green super hero costume slung over a low table stacked with books. Also on that table is a framed photograph of a house Baby Hands Reference.

The rest of the room is filled with scattered clothes, including a worn brown leather belt cw: physical child abuse too big for someone Tommy's size sticking out from under the couch. At least most of it seems to be Tommy's own clothes, but some of it includes shirts that are too small for him, or too big and far too yellow. Yellow definitely isn't as much his color so that's an interesting thing going on. Also on top of a pile of socks happens to be a mass of black and gold fabric that will prove to be a mask. Weird place for it, but okay.

Tucked under the pillow of the bed in the room is a strange metal collar cw: medical experimentation and dogs. It's mostly hidden under the pillow, almost as if to say 'out of sight, out of mind', and yet the placement might well mean it was on Tommy's mind any time he slept. Or maybe that's just reading into things. So maybe don't read into it so much and instead choose to focus on the old CRTV with built in VHS Player in the corner of the room. Is that some old western movie running right now? WHat's up with that?


[OOC: The secret to getting out of Tommy's room before the 'time limit' is to see the mess and volunteer to help clean up while talking to Tommy. Seeing a minimum of one memory can also cause the door to open and allow people to leave at any point. Also if you want a possible different memory or something specific, message me and we can talk.]

Comments

[sunglassesincluded]

He could of course simply grab the goggles still, but he doesn't. At least not right away.

"Different is an excuse used by the weak to justify their meaningless existence. What even are you compared to your brother? A child with a temper that believes himself to be fast. With such an overblown background, I would have expected more."

[doubled_speed]

Seriously? Tommy rolls his eyes because that's the only way to take the idea of 'believes himself to be fast'.

"I can literally outrun sound and you say 'believes himself to be fast'. And I can literally manipulate the speed of molecules around me, which is not nothing. So fuck the hell off."

He's young yet, and many speedsters don't come into the full breadth of their powers until later in life. And it wasn't exactly like a speedster like him was really ready to fathom the fact that he was powerful on his brother's level. Too much of his life had been spent with people like Wesker demeaning him for Tommy to truly see what he could be. He hadn't known another speedster beyond his uncle until the last few months back home.

"And what are you? Someone who thinks he's fast and definitely thinks he's better than people around him just because he's old. Yeah, that's all that impressive."

[sunglassesincluded]

There's only one thing Wesker can do in response to that one: Laugh. It's a low, dark chuckle devoid of any humor.

"Cute. But oh, are you wrong. Maybe one day you will figure it out, little mutt." And it's with these words that Wesker pulls the collar out from its hiding space to give it a teasing little twirl around his finger.

CW: Medical experimentation, dogs used for violence against a child

[doubled_speed]

No. Don't fucking laugh. At him. Tommy snarls and then... He sees the collar and moves forward to grab at it. Which is not soon enough.

Three walls and one wall with a metal door. Two of them are only far enough apart for the metal slab that counts as a 'bed' to be between them. Elsewhere in the room a metal toilet. There's no denying this is a holding cell. All metal walls, three strides from the door to the bed and three strides back. The teen paces those three strides over and over. No way he's more than a year older than in the last memory. Fifteen and straining at a cell. Three steps one way, three the other way. He looks better fed though, and under his white scrubs there's more muscles too. Pacing back and forth, back and forth, but only at human speeds.

"Back wall," a voice says from a speaker set overhead far out of reach, even standing on the bed or toilet.

Tommy's not exactly tall after all. He grumbles under his breath and moves against the wall, putting his hands against it. The door opens and not one, but two guards enter, one holding a metal collar. He stands still as the guards come up, and one still body checks him into the wall as the other raises the metal collar to his neck. It's a thick metal band that snaps into place and lights flicker on. Tommy wavers a bit, almost falling over, only to be hauled roughly to his feet.

"Come on, mutie freak. Big day."

The vision blurs as he's thrust from the room. When it refocuses he's in what is very clearly a lab. There's one way glass that no doubt someone is watching him behind. The room is... Well, it's sterile, and it's clearly for observation. In the middle is a treadmill, or something that looks a lot like a treadmill. It's clearly meant to compensate for his speed. The guards are still there. One works on chaining him to the treadmill. The chain clips on to his collar. The guards walk away and through a door, and then it reopens with multiple baying dogs straining on chains. These are chained behind the treadmill, in range for a single lunge to let them sink teeth into Tommy's legs. Tommy meanwhile cowards at the front edge of the treadmill.

The guards leave. The treadmill starts and Tommy's moving and trying to keep away from the dogs. The lights on his collar blink out, the treadmill accelerates, and Tommy has to turn around to run. It's speeding up with every second and Tommy's fighting to stay forward so the dogs can't get to him. There are tears in his eyes, and where the scrubs work up on his legs there's clearly scars from dog bites on his legs. This has happened before. This will happen again. The boy runs and tears roll down his cheeks and he runs faster and faster and faster because he can't do anything else.

The scene blurs again and this time he's chained to a gurney, face down. All around him are doctors in scrubs. His face hands through a hole in a round cushion, and a mask covers his face, anesthetic that isn't keeping him unconscious. No, he's just immobilized. A scalpel cuts into the arm of his leg. He doesn't seem to be injured, but they're cutting anyway. There are scars over all the major muscle groups of his legs. His back is bare and there are more scars there. Someone has been cutting him open to study him, some people are doing that even now. The lights on his collar blink more slowly now, and his body is... healing? Just a little. The clotting is happening almost impossibly fast, and one of the hanging bags is clearly a blood thinner.

Another blur, and then another damn room to be studied in. This time the collar is off entirely. In front of him large squares of materials. Brick. Concrete. Reinforced concrete. Steel. Titanium. There are holes blown through most of them. The steel hasn't exploded but it does look like a high caliber, perhaps naval caliber, shot has gone through it. Tommy stands in the middle of it all, staring at a... Pig?

"I don't want to do it," Tommy says, looking at the animal.

A speaker clicks on and a voice comes down from it.

"Subject, you know what happens if you refuse."

"It's a living fucking animal!" he shouts in frustration.

"Subject, complete your objective."

Tommy just glares at the pig. He's shaking, his legs are wrapped with bandaging. His arms are bandaged. Blood seeps through both and slowly into his scrubs. He's basically shaking with fatigue, sweat on his brow and down his neck, and more than that. His scrubs are basically glued to his skin, and he's still refusing.

"What's the objective?" he asks after a moment, because he clearly is trying to buy time.

"Subject, you know what-"

"What's the objective!?" he shouts.

Then he's screaming as electricity courses through him. When that stops and he's fallen he takes a moment to breathe.

"There is a glass capsule surgically implanted to the occipital lobe. You remember where it is from your instruction. You are to detonate only the capsule."

The boy pushes back to his feet and he's shaking, barely standing. Then his hands raise before them, the air around them distorts. And the pig-

The scene blurs and Tommy's shoved back into the cell. His scrubs are covered with blood. The blood on the back of his clothes seem to be in line with the earlier surgery that he's still bandaged from. The front... well the blood on the front comes from a split lip and a cut over his eye that likely came from him getting punched. Clothes are thrown in after him. The guard enters and disables the collar and strips it off. Tommy, weak and tired, doesn't get up.

A tray of slop-like food on a paper-like tray is put in the room with him.

"Two day break, fresk. The higher ups say if you don't continue with attack training tomorrow, I get to rough you up even more," the guard laughs. "Fucking mutie."

The door closes behind the guard, and Tommy groans as it does, like something has happened. Tommy sits up. Then he bites his lip to keep from tearing up again despite the sound of pain that tears from him.

And then the room again. Tommy's back on the couch, kneels curled up against his chest, glaring balefully at Wesker.

"You fucking happy now? Going to make fun of the fucking mutant lab rat? The literally tortured kid?"

[sunglassesincluded]

Now there is a lot to unpack here. It seems like he has unpacked an entire bundle of memories with just one single key item. And heavy memories for sure.

As a scientist that has conducted his fair share of inhumane experiments Wesker can understand what is going on. The scientific need in search for answers and results. But it's still too recent for his liking that he learned about Project W. That he came across the files that were too confidental to even be included in Umbrella's master archive.

Because Umbrella was literally founded to fund Project W. A project that had tracked and guided his very life all the way from before he has learned to even walk. A project that stripped him of his name and identity for the sake of science and only referred to him as Subject #13.

And while he wasn't born a mutant like Tommy - Well. Not in the same way, at least. He was still born better on a genetic level compared to most humans, of course, but he had never been obviously different. No. He was just better and raised to be improved further.

Would he consider himself a mutant these days? His body has certainly mutated as a result of being injected with the Progenitor Virus. He has felt his cells changing and evolving one after another. He has shed his human self and become something greater. Something more powerful and he has embraced it willingly. He has become the next step in huan evolution and it's up to him to lead the rest of humanity into that change.

And now here is Tommy. Hailing from a world where people are already undergoing that very change and yet still allow mere humans to treat them as if these superior beings were beneath them.

He regards the collar still in his hand for a long while, his previous sneer replaced with a pensive frown.

"Why didn't you just kill them?"

[doubled_speed]

That's the million dollar question, wasn't it? Tommy scoffed that it was the only thing he got from Wesker. Of course answering his questions was impossible.

"The day Billy and his friends broke me out to rescue Billy's boyfriend I almost did. Definitely destroyed some Mandroids and their pilots were probably injured when those crashed. And was about to make some fucking paste out of the two worst scientists that night, but they stopped me. Said they were there to find a hero, not a villain, and they wouldn't let me hurt the people who spent a year fucking me up."

They wanted to understand how to better control humans, how to bioengineer what he could do to add it to 'normal human' soldiers. And they'd wanted to forge a weapon. That much he knew. He had given in at some point. He'd learned how to blow up a small part of a human brain. With more practice he probably could have made it look natural. Great for assassinations.

"But then? I couldn't."

He gestures toward the collar Wesker still has in his hand.

"Before my abilities even manifested, like you saw with Frank, they'd already come up with technology to suppress mutant abilities. They're all caused by a specific gene, a mutation on the 23rd chromosome. We're not human in their eyes. Scientifically baseline humans are Homo sapien sapien. Schools don't go over that, you know? It's considered too deep for high school or some BS, especially since until the recent day there has only been the one subspecies known. But us? We're Homo sapien superior. One altered chromosome and we're subhuman to them. Doesn't matter that my parents carried the gene, and I only got the mutation because of them. I'm not human, and they have devices and can outfit entire rooms and labs to keep us from our powers. When it turns on it's like getting punched in the gut and you feel half asleep, like your head is in a cloud. It kills some mutants actually, to have their powers suppressed. Sometimes you change so much when it manifests that you can't live without it."

Which had of course meant M-Day had killed plenty of mutants, but that's a whole other thing.

For now he looks at Wesker, tries to meet his eyes with defiance in his own. He's not good at it with how stripped bare he feels before the asshole.

"I didn't fight back because I couldn't. It's like being here in the waiting rooms, or in a storm, but worse. Because you know if you could just get at whatever's powering it and break something, you could be whole again."

[sunglassesincluded]

Luckily, Wesker has never had any ambitions to be a hero. He is fine with being a god. And as such he doesn't have to be heroic or leave anyone alive that's in the way of his goals.

The collar in his hand receives a little squeeze when Tommy indicates it, almost as if testing its stability against whatever strength he has in this dream. That these odd mutations that seem to happen in Tommy's world are bound to the 23rd chromosome however is... Interesting. Tommy has mentioned to have female family members with similar mutations, so Wesker concludes the mutations can't be exclusive to the y-chromosome at least. It's either the x-chromosome or both. Also a detail to have in mind.

Though all this aside, it doesn't surprise him that the regular humans tried this hard to maintain the upper hand. He can only assume it will be a losing battle for them on the long run. As it should. They don't have the right to consider themselves above those that have clearly evolved past their reach.

"I understand." Wesker eventually says after a somewhat drawn out exhale. "The humans in your world are scared of you. And yet their feeble attempts at keeping the upper hand will only delay the inevitable at best." He sts the collar back down and raises from where he has been sitting. "I will take my leave now."

[doubled_speed]

So Billy's the middle point between them. God and hero.

As for the collar, it groans just a little under Wesker's squeezing. Perhaps the man could even break it if he really tried. Tommy can't. His strength isn't enough for that.

"And now you sound like my grandfather," Tommy sighed. "He grew out of it though."

[sunglassesincluded]

Wesker has to snort at that, almost bemused by that comparison.

"Why? Did he decide that the warmongering humans deserve pity? Or protection?" His tone turns darker again, almost bitter. "After what I have seen here I am certain that the humans in your world are by no means better than the ones that love destroying themselves back on my Earth and long overdue to face judgement for their actions."

[doubled_speed]

"Yeah, can't imagine why the holocaust survivor would be tired of violence when he doesn't need it anymore," Tommy grumbles.

He stands and shakes his head. Wesker doesn't get it.

"I hate to 'not all humans' it. But fucking hell, it's true. The ones that deserve it should face judgement. But most of them don't deserve it."

[sunglassesincluded]

"Hm. I have yet to meet one that doesn't." Wesker remarks and, as promised, finally leaves.