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Summary: Theo questions his motives in returning. Rashmi answers.
Date: June 29th, 2020
Log Title Making the Difference
Rating: G
The Underground - Living Area
Army barracks would seem like a five star hotel compared to this place, but cots and hammocks seem to fill the area. There are some side rooms where mutants tend to fit four to six to a room and there are even some holes in the wall a mutant or two seems to have made home. Like the rest of the tunnels, its damp and musty in here and not much light save the same electric and gas powered lamps found in the rest of the tunnels. Everything from small children to older mutants sleep in here and it can be seen from the people who cant get out of bed. In this room there is a small corner thats been sectioned off with old sheets and blankets to form a medical area with what stolen medical supplies the mutants have managed to gather.
Late night in the tunnels; much quieter now, that the noncombatants and injured have been moved far, far down, leaving only those who fight to haunt the upper Underground. Rashmi's own section of the Living area, flickering with light softened by the dingy cloth screens tacked up on all three sides, keeping the glare out of the faces of those trying to get some sleep. But the rattle and rustle of papers, the occasional scratching of a stub of charcoal can still be heard, as the Rebellion leader attempts to make good on the responsibility suddenly dropped on her shoulders, and make the fight one worth surviving.
Hardline carries a robotic…something slung over his shoulder. It's not a bot like some of his protectors, but it seems unfinished, whatever it might be. There was enough food to feed the refugees for almost five days, several power generating devices, laptop computers, and a collection of his own work.
Theo had disappeared just after Dingo turned against the resistance, without as much as a good-bye, and comments he made would lead people to believe that he was gone for good, willing to leave the resistance to their fate. But instead, here he is, acting as if he never left. He is followed by Proto, who carries a folding table with him. Proto is significantly larger than he used to be. Twelve feet tall when he stands on two legs, he now has six appendages, and has hard tank level armor covering his body, and wheels on the elbows. His headlight emits from the shoulder, and the green slit eye glows steadily in the dark room. "Hey Rashmi," the slightly worn look gracing his face.
Rashmi blinks, looking up from the notes and maps and reports that litter the crude wooden slats bludgeoned into something vaguely desk-like, looking over her shoulder. "Oh… Theo." Surprise laces her words, but neither positive or negative, a cool eyebrow arched for emphasis. "Changed your mind, I guess?"
Theo gives a nod to a corner, and Proto moves to place the folding table on the ground, opening it up. Theo doesn't answer immediately, but flops the disconnected device onto the table as if it were some sort of jointed metal rug.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "It was practical." His tone doesn't even sound convincing to himself, though. He brought almost all of the supplies that he had with him. He's committed himself now.
"Mmm-hmm," is the speculative reply, her notes pushed aside as she turns, hands dropping to her lap, fingers tapping against each other restlessly. "I heard about all the food. Practical, mh? The whole Rebellion can stretch that into maybe a week; for you, it could have been months. Yeah…. practical."
Proto settles down into a laying position, as if it were some sort of dog, and Theo sits on his back. "One year, three months." he answers. He's acutely aware of how much he's just given up, and he doesn't seem the least bit proud. In fact, there's a certain vinegar in his voice, as if he resents having made the choice. He lifts a toolbox off of one of Proto's rear arms, and sets it on the table.
Rashmi nods slowly. "One year, three months," she repeats, tone speculative as she turns back to her work. "That's a long time… A *very* long time. And you gave it all up, on the off chance that, what, the war will end in a week? …You don't strike me as the gambling type, Theo. So…. Why?"
No, Theo has never been the gambling type, and since before he left Xavier's, he had adopted a strategy of avoiding a fight unless he was assured complete victory. "You're right," he agrees, "I'm not." He has avoided eye contact, and stops, but he now looks up and back at her squarely in the eye. "I don't know, to be honest. I've spent the last ten years of cutting my conscience until it stopped bleeding. Searing it until it stopped screaming, so that I could do what I needed to do to make certain I win." He looks away, and opens the toolbox, but stares at it as if he doesn't know which tool he wants. "I should have stayed gone. I meant not to come back."
"But you didn't." Rashmi looks up, holding Theo's gaze with bleak, impenetrable neutrality; the words she speaks, could either be blessing or damnation for all the evenness of her voice. "But I think you know why. You just don't want to admit it, in case you don't win."
Theo laughs. Not a true laugh, but one of those laughs people give when they are afraid. "Do I?" he asks. "I've spent my life making certain that I know the answer to everything. I know how things work. I know how people work." He pulls a socket wrench from the tool box, and points it at her as he adds, "I'm smarter than most people, and more disciplined than the rest so that I am always at the top of the game." He pulls the wrench back, and attaches a 3/8 socket onto the end. "But right now I sit here, and I don't know. I know so many answers to so many things, but I don't have a single answer to anything worth knowing. So if you know, please enlighten me. Because I've got nothing."
"Because you're afraid," comes that even voice, each word like a stone dropped into a still pond. "You sit there in your base for five years, fixing up your machines and treating the Sentinels like a logic puzzle, and you think you have everything under control. Maybe even that your nanites'll take them all out and you'll even have people *loving* you for deciding to help out." A stub of charcoal is used to scratch notes next to a hastily scrawled map, paper set aside. "Then you come out, and you take a look around. And you see that the world has fallen to hell a *lot* farther and a *lot* faster than you could have imagined. And that's the worst part; *you had no idea it could get like this.*"
Theo busies himself undoing four bolts, and exposes a circuitboard as Rashmi speaks. "No," he says. "It was always like this," he answers. "It's been like this since before history books remember. It didn't always look like this, but our world not reflects the hearts of the people in it." He tosses the wrench onto the table, and leans back. Proto uses one arm to provide a back for the seat which has none. "Maybe I did it because I look at Ahab, and all the hell he's caused. I look at him, but I can understand how he thinks. And I can't help but think, if it had been a few weeks later…I would have been Ahab. We might've seen the same hell, only I would've caused it. I don't want to destroy the sentinels, I want to control them. If mutants are bested by them, what chance would the civilian population have against them?"
"Maybe I want to tell myself that I'm not quite that evil. Maybe I'm just tired of hating, but it's all I know how to do anymore."
"Have you ever thought that you might be overthinking things a little, Theo?" Flexing cramped fingers, Rashmi turns on her seat, stretching her neck and eyeing the younger mutant. "You've always, *always* told yourself you were fifteen steps ahead of the game. But you've just shot *right* past probably the most important part of the proof that half of your maybes are invalid, and one was always right."
The technopath smirks, and shakes his head. "Okay, Dr. Phil, so then what? Now I've destroyed myself by throwing my food to the masses that are going to be dead in a few weeks anyway. So I learned that my hating has gotten me nowhere, but what's left? Look at Lucas, look at you. Look at Connor, at Daisuke. What's left except hate?"
"Funny thing about that," Rashmi says, her tone growing distant. "People always ask me these questions just after I've managed to get used to the idea that everything's different from what I thought." A shoulder is lifted, in the casual half-shrug that had always meant the answer was just barely obscure enough to mention. "Turns out that we all might have been wrong about a few key things. Turns out even more, you're probably going to be instrumental in verifying that, if you want. I can't go into specifics just yet, but I can tell you this much; James is to be contained, alive, now. And, if you really, *really* want an answer about what's left? The job. That's how I've kept my head on straight, all this time; it's all about the job, and the job is ending this insanity so people can have a life to live."
Theo lets out a sigh. "There will be no end," he says. "The only consolation I find is that I can make certain my enemies burn in hell just a little bit longer than I do, because they'll get there first. He pulls a grapefruit sized bomb of some sort from a pocket on his cargo pants, and throws it toward Rashmi in a manner that suggests she is to catch it. He doesn't seem very concerned with the inherent danger of the action. "This is how you contain the hounds. Assuming they don't have powers that aren't mutant based," he stipulates. "I'm using one of these to try to wire it to Proto's power source. This is how you get Heather, or James. The has enough juice that when you set it off, it'll neutralize all mutant powers for about a hundred feet, and for about thirty seconds. If I get them hooked up to a bigger power source, we can keep it operating for longer."
The ease with which Rashmi snatches the bomb out of the air, even as her gaze is locked on Theo, suggests that perhaps her own abilities have undergone some manner of growth, since last she pleaded with the young ex-Brotherhood supervillain. "I'll make sure this gets where it needs to go," she says, solemnly. "Which'll probably be Heather. James… a lot more minor, at the end of it all, and I think I know how to deal with him." The bomb is turned over and around on her fingertips, eyes turned ceilingwards. "Look, Theo. Ten years ago, you'd've gotten a lot of feel-good nonsense out of me about all this. I'd've told you how I believed in you, that you're not actually all that evil, whatever. Lawyers like words, after all, and that's never been something I've been spare on. But these days, all I'm interested in is facts. And looking at the facts, you'll never be Ahab."
Theo seems to have abandoned working on his device for now, and he gets to his feet. "Yeah, well, I guess we'll see," he responds. "I've got a few more of those, but they aren't to be used flippantly. If you use it one someone, you better make sure they don't escape. You kill them, or you capture them, or whatever, just don't let them leave. As for Heather, my probes are already searching for evidence of her. No sign yet, but once they find her, I'm set to spring the trap."
Rashmi's eyes follow Theo as he rises, the bomb set aside on her desk. "I'll make sure it's not wasted, Theo." Levering herself off her seat, to the tune of popping and crackling joints, she makes her way around the impromptu workbench. "You do the same. And when you finally sack out tonight, and you stare at the ceiling wondering if you ever were hopeless, I want you to think about something. You're here. You left everything behind to come back. You gave up a year of perfect security in the process. You didn't have to, but you did." The redhead's head tilts to one side, a lock stringy lock brushed away from her face. "And when the lights go out, and you've got no other company but yourself, I want you to remember this night. Because you've made more of a difference, here, than you ever could have turning the world to dust."
