Cognitohazard Room

(By CmptrWz)

Mark looked over his notes from the latest paintball training session and sighed. Everyone was doing wonderfully, but he had come to the realization that they were going to need to find a way to get some practice in against more abnormal things. Like capes. Or, more specifically, capes using their powers, as he had several capes running around in the sessions and none of them were using their tricks. He was distracted by a knock on his office door's frame, given that he had left the door itself open.

"Hey Mark," Taylor, currently playing Saurial, said as she walked forward with a manilla folder. "Danny asked me to pass this along to you on my way out."

"Thanks Saurial," Mark said as he took the folder, still amused by Taylor's multiple identity thing. A quick glance at the folder and he placed it to the side to be filed later. "I don't suppose you have any thoughts on how we can improve the paintball training we are doing?"

"What do you mean?" Taylor asked, tilting her head. "Actually, first, what have you been doing? I haven't been following that much beyond knowing that you were and that Alec is very good with the sniper rifle. The latter being mainly due to the amount of whining about it around the compound."

"He is a pretty good shot with that thing," Mark admitted, grinning a bit. "I have been having them run around in an unused workshop or two. Sometimes in teams, sometimes everyone for themselves. We did a couple runs of capture the flag as well to provide more goal-oriented tactics."

"Sounds like you have covered quite a bit, what do you think is missing?"

"I think we need to get some practice with cape abilities, but I am unsure as to how to do so."

"I'll give it some thought," Taylor said after a minute or so. "But for now I need to get going."

Danny wasn't sure who had done what, but for some reason a couple weeks ago Lisa had obtained one of the larger unused two-story warehouses for BBFO use. They had apparently had at least one full set of restrooms installed complete with showers, the inside was likely lined with EDM now as they had gotten another set of repeater equipment, and he knew there were now new doors leading into what had been the office area even if they had been left covered for the most part. He had tried to get Taylor to tell him what they were up to but she wanted it to be a surprise. He could have pressed, but figured it couldn't be that bad.

Today was the big reveal, and apparently he was being invited to see how Mark reacted. Which made him wonder if this was Mark's fault. Mark had admitted that he wasn't fully certain what was going on either, though.

"Looks like they have a new sign up," Mark said as they walked towards the warehouse. "Covered, so as to not ruin the surprise I guess?"

"That would be likely," Danny agreed. "Let's go see what crazy thing they have come up with now."

Taylor, as Saurial, met them at the new doors. Danny noticed that there were larger double glass doors under the covered sign, reminiscent of shopping malls and such. Though he suspected they may not actually be glass. The high security lock that Taylor had installed backed up that thought.

"Hello Danny, Mark," Taylor said as Danny took a peek inside the double doors, which looked to lead into a cross between a reception area and a storefront. She gestured them over to a good position to look up at the covered sign and, without another word, allowed the covering on the sign to vanish.

BBFO/DWU Indoor Paintball

Constructed by Brockton Bay Family Operations, LLC
"Ahl'n'gha ngnah ah mgepahl'n'gha"

"Mark," Danny said after taking some time to process what he was reading. "What ideas did you put in their heads?"

"Er," Mark replied, scratching the back of his head. "I might have said something about needing to run paintball drills against capes?"

So after a quick tour of the "reception" area (where safety briefings and equipment checks would occur and containing various lockers, a storage room or two, and leading to the restrooms and showers) Taylor led Danny and Mark to the actual arena. Which looked perfectly normal at first, if you ignored the fact that you were inside a two story warehouse. There were five story buildings at either end of the large space with another two or three stories of open air above them, surrounded by various smaller buildings with connecting streets, with open spaces painted to look like parking lots in front of those, which were separated by a small flowing stream/river with bridges over it bisecting the space. The ceiling had what looked like an observation area attached, accessible from a set of stairs next to where they came in.

"We figured around here you will almost always be working in urban areas," Taylor explained. "So we set this up with that in mind. The lights can be set to various levels, and whether or not the buildings have electricity can be controlled from the command post in the observation area. We also rigged the repeater equipment so that it can be on, off, or in jamming mode depending on what kind of communication you want to allow. The river is gravity fed thanks to some warped space and how much you open each of the two hidden dams determines how high and fast the water flows. At higher water levels basement access through the river becomes problematic."

"This is wonderful," Mark admitted. "Incredible, even. How does it help us?"

"Well," Taylor said, smirking. "I figure that we can either run your guys against the family, or invite the Wards to come play. Or both, having the Wards team up with your guys against us might be fun. Or the Protectorate, or New Wave? Lots of options. Of course, that is without activating the special modes."

A week later Mark had run his people through the facility a couple of times and decided it was far better than what they had been doing. It was almost like running sessions out in the docks, but inside where they had no worries about squatters, druggies, or random gang members. Which, admittedly, meant that they didn't get a fully realistic experience but they also weren't going to be spied on. Though most of the crew couldn't fully handle the "special modes" yet.

In addition to that Metis had somehow arranged for the Wards plus Glory Girl to face off against the family in a capture the flag game. Powers allowed and encouraged, even. Director Piggot, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia were in the observation area with a number of DWU personnel to monitor things. Danny even let Director Piggot at the control station.

In addition to cameras in various places in the arena they had set everyone up with helmet cameras. Part of the agreement was that the Family and the PRT would both get a copy of all of the raw footage and the Family would be permitted to make and post a video of each session online.

"That was AWESOME," Vista yelled as she followed Miss Militia out of the facility several hours later. Of those on the Wards team she was the least paint-covered, apparently nobody had bothered to bring spare clothing to change into afterwards. "Can we do that again anytime soon?"

"Probably not," Miss Militia answered, looking back at the other Wards that had participated. Who were in pretty bad shape, mentally speaking. The Family had at least waited until the third session to start hitting the building-specific power cutoffs built into the arena, though some of that was likely due to that being the first "night" session. Somehow Glory Girl was the only other member of their "team" that wasn't shivering and looking over her shoulder. Though fuming about the family finding a way to cover her in paint despite her forcefield wasn't really all that much better.

"Think they will come back to play some more?" Taylor mused as the group of heroes left. "I mean, they didn't even try Escher mode."

"Armsmaster actually agreed to try and bring a team of full protectorate members for that one," Danny said, coming over from the observation area. "Apparently that kind of thing might technically be against Youth Guard regulations without waivers from their parents or something, at least according to Director Piggot, but the adults can opt to try it without issue."

"Well at least we'll have something amusing to watch at tomorrow's math session," Taylor said. "I wonder how much Chris will flinch during the video once Lisa's done with it?"