People Behind the Masks 1/2

[just_a_phase]

The various items she's made and programmed for the farm haven't taken up all of her time. Now that most of the major work is finished, they take up even less. That means Kitty can work on other things.

Projects of her own, old and new. Some in code, some in metal. Some will blend the two.

But there's one thing that keeps her out late in her office more often than anything else. It causes Piotr to come out and silently wrap a blanket around her shoulders. Sometimes he then sets a mug of herbal tea next to her, softly kisses her hair, and leaves. Sometimes he reaches his large hand around her much-smaller one and suspends or shuts down the program, app, or computer. Then he lifts her up and takes her to bed.

She has spent so many hours looking online for even the faintest of traces of the Red Room that the hours long-ago became days. Months.

You can't hide forever, she swears each night, and in the meantime--

--there is work to do.

---

She's known Iron Man since she was 14. She's worked with him. They're not friends, but they've been teammates.

But out of the suit--that's different and new.

After discussion, they had agreed to work in his workshop as opposed to hers. Common sense.

The case she carries by her side is heavier than it looks like it is by how she walks and holds it; she and he have technologoy and suits and armor to talk. His armor and a suit of hers that needs help.

The last few weeks, though, have had more interesting search results than ever before. And she's pondering over what she's read and seen on a screen, twisting the words and images about like an object she's trying to figure out.

She may need to bring that up, too. She's not sure yet.

First, she supposes, she should set the damned case down before she loses an arm.

Comments

[iron_avenger]

"Very well then, Katherine," he says with a slight edge that's either humor or annoyance. "This, you probably figured out is one big test lab. I have five suits here that various Russian operatives have tried to use against me over the years. I want to see you do your best to take them out while I collect the data. You have 30 seconds to prepare!"

[just_a_phase]

"This feels like Mortal Kombat," she mutters, and instantly her clothing pools at her feet thanks to phasing; it reveals the uniform she'd been wearing beneath the jeans and t-shirt.

Five seconds for that. Another five to smooth down her sleeves and pull up the uniform's collar.

Ten seconds for her hands to phase into part of the briefcase and remove a belt filled with throwing knives. Another five to slip it on.

Five seconds left, but she's ready to go.

"You want to see my best? You got it, Stark."

The "Mr" has been dropped, but her statement is just that: a statement of fact, as cool and controlled as her expression and stance.

Game face on. Big girl time.

[iron_avenger]

"Do you give Xavier this much lip on Danger Room Days?" he snarks, not looking up from his myriad screens.

"And Go!"

Level One: Guardsmans Armor.

During what the press dubbed the Iron Wars Scandal, he thought the Vault guards might have been the leak supplying his technology to the enemy. He was wrong, and he's since modified the technology so it was further away from the Iron Man suit. (Though this is one of the old classics.) Since that time, there's been opportunities for a sharp saboteur to get their hands on something akin to this though.

[just_a_phase]

"You don't already know? Someone has hacked recordings of sessions over the years."

First move: running straight to it, then phasing through it to get what she can only describe as a "taste" of the energy that it uses.

"Are you billing me for any damage?" This one is easy: taking out the exoskeleton involves nothing more than a spin the instant she's through it, one leg lifting as if to kick it and gliding through instead, shorting its main support out.

That doesn't mean it doesn't have more tricks.

Result: on guard and in defensive position...but not too worried, really, as she watches it.

[iron_avenger]

"Pics or it didn't happen on both accounts."

Meanwhile, the Guardsman wobbles from the momentary power loss, but the recovery is close to a second. Not bad, but, she's dealt with worse.

You would think this suit would be fighting wildly with haymakers from it's bulky design. Instead, it's startlingly fast, dodging, waving, looking for a weak spot. Kitty can see its job now: Wear down and contain.

Too bad for it world-class ninjas are faster and rarely leave openings.

[just_a_phase]

"What are you, fifteen?" she laughs, but her attention isn't pulled away from the target. (Enemy is far too strong a word to use here.) "Besides, if I were to say I have pics?"

Her mother told Kitty she's her father's daughter, but Tony can probably see Terri in her in the way she moves, even now, like she's dancing. In the way she's snarked back at him.

In the way, when she finishes taking the Guardsman down, causing a larger shortage first that results in a minor explosion and then just not stopping until the thing is finished, she looks up at him with a smirk as she shoves hair out of her face.

Though he never saw Terri in this context.

"Round two?"

[iron_avenger]

"You're closer to that level of expertise than I am. What areHere comes Pikachu! Note the timer."

The orange armor he based on Shockwave's cybernetics crackles with deadly electricity. Under one such spark, Kitty can see "2....1..." She barely dodges the shockwave boom of thunder emanating from the machine before it resets to 30.

"I evolved this one slightly!"

[just_a_phase]

"And yet, which of us just referenced Pokemon?"

She almost gives him an exasperated look after dodging, having rolled to her left while passing since she didn't know what sort of attack--

It's electricity based.

"You know I can phase, right?"

Doesn't mean it doesn't have another kind of attack.

(Doesn't mean she actually likes phasing through energy attacks, for a variety of reasons, but it ain't like this is a Sentinel.)

But like hell she'll shut up. Much better to make a run for "Pikachu" and once she's close--

--unphases just long enough to grab its left arm--

--and phases again, still running, and takes the arm with her.

"I'm calling it Sparky, instead," she says between breaths after turning and sliding to a stop.

[iron_avenger]

Sparky keeps coming - while shooting an arc of electric power from its stump to the arm in Shadowcat's possession.

The timer ticks 6...5...4...

[just_a_phase]

She heads back towards it, the arm still in her hands.

It's just clicked to 2 when she phases the arm into its center and leaves it behind her in its middle as she takes the paces necessary to whirl and crouch.

It should explode.

"Should" is something she is always careful about, however.

[iron_avenger]

...1...

The feedback is more intense than she expected, but the explosion is eerily quiet. The suit takes its arm back and the loop feeds from body to limb, body to limb, body to -

The limb explodes out with an intense, teeth-jarring death rattle. The convulsions from the peeling, dying thing spread like leprosy to the rest of the torso and leg, slowly melting them into a pool of electrical energy.

Energy that fires up two more Guardsman armors.

[just_a_phase]

Of course.

Just...

Of course.

"My mother ever think to tell you you're a sadist? Cause I hear you can get help for that sort of thing," she snaps, preparing for something she already knows that she is going to hate.

She always hates this.

Running between the Guardsmen means she can drop quickly between them, grabbing at their bases as she sucks in a breath.

Holds it.

Pulls them into solid concrete with her until all three disappear.

[iron_avenger]

"Stop trying to compliment me and get the armor!"

That trick to finish the Shockwave mock-up, but the Guardsmen just punch right on through it and keep lumbering towards her.

That's when the reading get more unique. He's had data on her shifting before, but not in real time. Real time data shows something very, very strange. If he were to compare it with anyone's power set it's almost like Wanda's. On a subatomic level, Shadowcat is shifting, phasing not out of reality, but to different frequencies of reality. Electrons are forced to do something electrons are supposedly incapable of - form predictable patterns leading to a certainty of their location AND direction before winking out of his readings for a spit second more. An adjustment to his sensors finds something even more powerful.

He's so engrossed in the impossibility before him that he doesn't notice what she's doing to the Guardsmen armors.

[just_a_phase]

She had grabbed a section of pipe from beneath the concrete before phasing back out; it required the palm of her hand only solidifying around it, then her hand and the pipe section joining the rest of her body and phasing up out of the floor.

She hates doing what she just did, because the feeling of stress from being solid is more noticeable than it normally is once she unphases. It will be for the rest of the day, at least, and she'll phase in her sleep tonight.

And the urge to phase further is there now; she already knows what she'll probably end up doing, as these aren't the last targets in her surprise pop quiz.

But right now? Kitty's just fucking annoyed.

Sections of pipes and concrete physically joined with the Guardsmen when she let them solidify beneath the floor. One has lost an arm and has pieces through its torso; the other has some through its entire leg and the top left of its head.

The good news is that they're definitely both affected in different ways from the attack, sparks flying and the one with the concrete in its leg off-balance.

The bad news is they're definitely not done with.

But she can enjoy some stress release because of that; the pipe is strong, but thin enough she can twirl it once to get a feel for the balance and length.

And then she uses it two ways.

The first is hitting the sections that already are damaged, her body phased and only the pipe solid.

The second is phasing the pipe through other parts of the Guardsmen, unphasing only it for far less than a second each time to damage them, and then phasing her makeshift weapon again and instantly--

--attacking again--

--and again.

Body phased, pipe phasing and unphasing, and her body moving from one position to strike to another quickly and smoothly each time.