Date: September 20, 2010
Participants: Aleksei, Timo, Derek
Summary: Aleksei calls the other guys to talk about someone trying to drop a comsatt on their school
Aleksei has called both Derek and Timo to come over. He sounded pretty urgent, but also calm; whatever it is isn't happening /right now/, apparently. He tries Linus again, and frowns as the phone reports out of service. Turn on your blasted phone, Linus! He paces, waiting for the others, and goes downstairs to watch for them.
Timo doesn't come in costume, but that doesn't mean he doesn't come quick. He slips out the nearest out-of-view spot he could find, walking over to the front door of Aleksei's place and rings the bell.
Derek takes the longest to arrive, because darnit, when you have a new car, you drive it! He roars up the drive and skids to a halt, then hops out and hurries up to stand with Timo, waiting. "Yo. Any idea what this is about?"
Aleksei nods for the pair to come up to his room, and when there he shuts the door and turns to them. "We may have a problem. A big one. I was at the park today, and saw something coming towards us out of the sky, or at least it looked like it. I changed and helped stop it, along with Daybreaker and this other woman, Scimitar. Don't know anything about her, but she's apparently on our side." He gestures, he paces, etc. "/Any/way, the thing was his big communications satellite. Someone had re-programmed it to fall out of orbit and decellerate it enough that it didn't burn up on re-entry." He takes a breath. "I talk to Scimitar about it. She said it was aimed right at our school. She says it would have destroyed the main school, and the damage from that would have destroyed the rest of it." His mouth sets in a firm line. "Someone did that /deliberately/."
Timo blinks, "Why would someone want to destroy the school? Well, ok, guess anybody who doesn't like school might want to, but that'd place it on someone who actually goes to our school."
Derek just stares at Alek for a long moment, then shakes his head. "That's just nuts. Are you sure it was aimed deliberately at the school? What sorta satellite was it? I mean, telephone, television, military?"
"Commsatt; one of the big ones. Bigger than a semi truck," Alek says. Yeah, Scimitar seemed pretty sure. She's going to analyse the data and gave me this thing to call her later." He holds up the slender credit-card-like phone.
Timo frowns as he looks at the phone, "She gave you that? You sure it's not bugged? Most cellphones you can use to track people… or, at least, they do on TV. Might all be a trick to track you back and find out who you are." Usually so optimistic, he apparently takes secret identity seriously.
Derek, on the other hand, positively lights up when he sees the phone. "Dude, can I see that? That's gotta be the thinnest phone I've ever seen. Does it have any features, or is it just a phone?" He sobers a bit at Timo's words, however. "Oh, yeah. GPS tracking and stuff, that's all real."
Aleksei frowns at it. "Given her tech, yeah…" he says. "OK, I'll use it somewhere else, then. It's a one-use thing, she said, so I doubt it's more than just a phone. Hopefully," he says. "I haven't seen her around the area, yet. But.. I mean, that's pretty serious. Someone's got the know-how to take over a satellite, and aimed it like a bomb at our school." He flops onto one of the beanbags. "Have you guys heard anything weird at school, that might be a clue?"
Timo shakes his head to Aleksei and says, "No, nothing like that. Most of the rumors around school are about who's dating who, who's getting beat up by who, and so on. I'll keep an ear out, though. Maybe hide invisible in some computer classes, watch for anybody who's really super-talented."
Derek thinks for a long moment, then shakes his head as well. "But I can do some snooping, too. Like, in the teachers lounge or the principal's office. Maybe even the locker rooms, because people're always talking in there."
Aleksei's eyebrow goes up. "How are you getting into the teacher's lounge or the office?" he says, surprised and curious.
Timo gives a bit of a laugh at Alek's last question. "There's a couple hundred, probably. Find the most bullied kids and start there. Especially ones whose teachers don't take them seriously either. That'd be enough to drive anybody nuts."
Derek nods then. "Absolutely. Take the bullied ones, then sort them down to the smartest, the ones who're best with computers. I mean, look at those kids who shot up that school twenty years ago in Montana or Wyoming or Colorado, or wherever it was. They'd been bullied a lot, but they weren't nearly genius enough to drop a satellite on their school."
"WE get bullied and we're not dropping satellites on the place, and I could, easy," Alek says, rubbing his eyes. "OK, OK. We have only a thousand suspects or so. And that even supposes it's someone going there now. It could be some nut who went there 20 years ago and now has means for revenge.."
Timo shakes his head quickly, "No, the school was built after the quake, I think. So, it's someone there now, or who graduated in like the last year or two. Most likely someone there now. And someone who's only a little nuts, they chose to do it on a weekend and not when everybody's in school, so they're not homicidal."
Derek taps his chin. "That narrows it down though, doesn't it? It's the school itself they wanted to destroy, not the whole student body. Is the school built on top of something maybe? Something they wanna get their hands on?"
"I don't suppose anyone has x-ray vision, do they?" Alek says. "Yeah, it might be something the school is on. And I dunno; there are still janitors and people there, sometimes. They couldn't be positive they wouldn't kill anyone." He ponders. "Which I guess makes it more likely it's a student. We're not there. It's easy to think /no-one/ would be."
Timo raises a hand, "Not direct X-Ray vision, but I can sense the light anywhere near me, even through a wall, and see what's going on. Takes a bit of concentration to see through walls and so on, but I can do it."
Derek pouts a little, casting a glance at Timo. "So unfair. I'd love to have x-ray vision. It'd make…uh, finding out stuff a lot easier."
Aleksei flashes a smile and tosses a Nerf ball at Derek. "What sort of stuff do you wanna find out, eh?" he says.
Timo grins and says, "He wants to see into the girl's locker room, probably." He leans back in his seat and says, "Anyway, I can try looking under the school."
Derek dodges the ball…mostly, as it clips his shoulder. "Just stuff," he says, grabbing up the ball and tossing it back. He quickly hides a blush behind his long bangs. "Not necessarily in the girls' locker room. There's all sorts of stuff to see. Like…uh…the inside of trees. Or engines! I could figure out what's making a funny noise without having to pull out every little part of the engine." He glances at Timo again. "Maybe we should just -go- under the school and see what's there. I mean, if there is anything."
Aleksei nods to the pair. "Yeah, probably.. I wonder if we'll know it's important if we see it?" He shrugs. "We can try tomorrow and see what's there."
Timo nods quickly at that and says, "Good idea. Might have to teleport in though, if there was an easy way to whatever's under the school, I doubt that anybody'd be dropping a satellite on the school to try to reach it anyway."
Derek shrugs a bit. "That shouldn't be a problem for us though, and I can take Alek. I'd hafta, ya know, sorta envelop you in darkness, but then we can teleport down to whatever's down there."
Aleksei shrugs. "I'm not scared of the dark or anything. That's cool," he says, sitting there and thinking. "I guess.. hmm, come back a couple hours after school?" he suggests.
Timo nods quickly in agreement with Aleksei and says, "That's probably best. Don't want to be searching around while the school's all crowded. But that's close enough to school hours it won't be suspicious if we're seen."
"But you'll use your x-ray vision first, right?" Derek wants to know. "I mean, to be sure we're not teleporting into, like, solid rock or a big pool of crude oil or something."
Aleksei hmms. "If it's that, though, Timo can't see into it; there wouldn't be any light there for him to use. Just if there's, maybe, a room under the school no-one else knows about, or something?"
Timo nods quickly to what Aleksei says, and says, "Yep. And, there's the fact that I can only go if there's a clear path. I don't really teleport, I just turn into light. I can maneuver but I have to be able to get where I'm going, there has to be a path in that light can go through."
Derek ahs, nodding again. "Well, if there's a room down there you can't get to, I can teleport you, too. Just hafta do it separately, so your molecules don't get all scrambled together." He says it with a completely serious face, but there's a twinkling of mirth in his eyes.
Aleksei watches Derek, smiles slowly. "You lie, dude," he says, tossing the small Nerf ball at the boy again. "We're not going to come out joined at the hip or something, are we?"
