Crossing Off Your Bucket List

[Will Stanton]

"Surely, there's more to it than three guys, or you wouldn't be so afraid of them," Will pointed out, as they approached the general vague vicinity of Conduit's apartment.

[Conduit]

"Duh. Either they're MI6 or CIA; who else black-bags teenagers? Prolly the former or I would have gotten whisked away to some black-site instead of deployed to spy on your little project. If I still had my mutation-cannon I'd rig it into an anti-power-dampener and let them walk me back on-site to really wreck their shit but nooo, somebody had to go and blow that up, so now I can just flip them off on the way out and deal with them later. Phbbbbbht!"

[Will Stanton]

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with you having anything more powerful than a toothpick. And even then, I'd have questions.

That being said...you need a plan. And preferably one that doesn't involve insides becoming outsides."

[Conduit]

"Not mine anyway. And the plan is to tell them to fuck off by whatever medium they chose to be most receptive to. You guys still suck but you're getting some serious side-eye from the jackboots in this universe so I guess we're evens-stevens. I'm not gonna drop a missile on your head, even if you guys kinda deserve it. Maybe a small one..."

[Will Stanton]

"You threatened to turn me into a bomb and blow up innocent people," Will reminded her.

[Conduit]

"Pfff. You goodie-two-shoes need some proper motivation sometimes! Plus I get bored easily."

[Will Stanton]

"Is that what we're calling it now. Well, I'm happy I can provide some momentary distractions from your homicidal instincts," the dog deadpanned.

[Conduit]

"It's win-win! Plus all the innocents, so really win-win-win! How can you afford not to help me? Now, are you going to be a big weenie if I do have to make chunky salsa out of some terrible people? Or moderately awful ones?"

[Will Stanton]

Will Stanton would have immediately said yes, he was indeed intending to be a big weenie about the whole matter. While perhaps not a strict no-killing rule, the rate Conduit put on human lives was far too low for him.

Wyll Wyldclay, on the other hand? Had a looser relationship with life and death than his goody-two-shoes predecessor. Still, not having seen the situation...

"I'm afraid I am, Conduit."

[Conduit]

"Whyyyyy are you like this?" Conduit groans. The easy thing would be to just ditch the very convenient shifter. He's got stupid opinions, buddied up to the Russian fuckers, wrecked their base, ruined her concert experiment... He was one of the few to be cool with Hollydale. At the time that had almost annoyed her 'cause it was supposed to be at least kind of a punishment, but it means he's not a complete stick in the mud. And he would make a great tool in her belt if she could convince him to. Cause really, nobody wants to use a rebellious tool she constantly has to keep an eye on. Who needs that hassle.

"Godddd. Why do you gotta make everything so complicated? Fine, I'm only gonna tenderize the government spooks a little bit but in exchange you're gonna help me fuck their shit up real good. Steal some of their toys, crash a spy-satellite, scramble their database. You know, fun stuff that ruins their day."

[Will Stanton]

"Within reason," Will said. "People coming after mutants need their shit fucked up. That includes you, even if you're a crazy psychopath."

[Conduit]

"I'm a crazy sociopath, thank you very much. Now! One, can you disable power-dampeners? And two, can you shrink down enough for me to swallow you. Oh and three, not show up as suspicious in an x-ray and MRI scan?"

[Will Stanton]

"I can break things, if I get close enough, but I can't really remove anything remotely. A power dampener is most likely to just lock me in whatever form I happen to be in at the time until it's removed or disabled.

And. Um. Buy me dinner first, would ya? But on a pure, erm, theoretical level, it's alimentary, my dear Conduit."

[Conduit]

"Breaking's good enough. I just gotta smuggle you in past some of their checks so you can take the dampener off of me. And hey, it's not my first choice either. That'd be the chunky salsa." she says, tapping the knuckles of her power-gloves together with a loud clang.

[Will Stanton]

"I'd have to be in some kind of form which can break things, but I've been smuggled in places before. We can make that happen.

And no chunky salsa, or you might find yourself with the worst case of indigestion in human history."

[Conduit]

"Yeah, yeah, not exactly looking to have my liver punched. Alright, shrinky-dink time then!"

[Will Stanton]

"Oh, you wouldn't get off that easily. I might find myself wearing a Conduit-suit if I find out you're going around murdering people while I'm hanging out inside. Think of it as the University's version of a poison pill," Will growlfed.

And with that, he rapidly shrunk down, with Conduit still riding him, so that she'd be in for a bit of a rough landing as bottom met sidewalk. Just as a word of warning, so the two reluctant allies knew where they stood. Or sat, as it were.

[Conduit]

Oh, grody!" Conduit grins before letting out a yelp as she lands on her butt.

"Okay..." she says as she scoops the tiny Will up. "Wait, hang on!" she gets a sudden idea and props her phone up on a nearby garden wall. Taking two steps back she ducks ever so slightly to look up at the camera from a typical selfie angle. Making a peace victory sign with one hand she holds Will by two fingers in the other, dangling in front of and slightly above her open mouth. "Vore time!" she winks at the camera as it makes the artificial shutter sound. She then proceeds to quickly type up a tweet.



She then proceeds to unceremoniously swallow Will, obviously not actually taking a video. But the kind of creeps who'd follow up on an image clearly showing a young teenager and then be stupid enough to put their credentials anywhere near Conduit would soon find their bitcoin wallets drained and browser history blasted across their social media.

[Will Stanton]

Conduit's snapshot featured a very small man flipping the camera off.

Conduit's snacktime had a distinct bitter aftertaste, as this Will didn't exactly want Conduit to enjoy this. If Kneadful Creations was this bad, it'd go out of business within a week, for sure.

[Conduit]

From there on, Will's perception of what is going on is limited to say the least. After a while of Conduit moving, then sitting and doing who knows what, he can hear her voice, muffled but resonating through her body to some extent though the other side of the conversation is too muted to make out.

"Yeah, yeah. Just get it over with."

"Hey, how do you feel getting paid to abuse little girls, huh? Does it make your--" There's a sudden jerk going through her and Will's jostled upwards as something impacts Conduit's stomach.

"Heee." she wheezes. "Yeah, I bet."

For a while after that there's only movement, then vague vibrations of what's probably a car driving. Muted voices, sudden motions in one direction or another, some low thrumming followed by a series of high-frequencies beeps. More movement. Muffled sounds of what must be loud thunks, walking, downwards movement, more thunks and walking and finally nothing. At least for a couple of minutes before Will's residence contracts violently and he's ejected into a steel bowl of water, looking up at Conduit wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and briefly holding her index-finger across her lips. Then she turns and lets herself lean back against the toilet rim dramatically, eliciting a loud clang when the collar around her neck bangs against the metal. Her hair's thankfully not long enough to hang all the way into the toilet water but it does provide a convenient set of 'ropes' to climb while concealing the back of her collared neck from the multiple cameras aimed at her in her cell.

[Will Stanton]

It wasn't the most comfortable or most pleasant of rides before the inhibitor collar got placed around Conduit's neck. Surely, there was a Will out there, somewhere, who would enjoy a gullet gig, but that wasn't this one; whatever part of one's DNA caused that to happen must have been left in his other genes. Still, he'd been in worse scrapes before, and an X-Man endured.

The collar going on, on the other hand, shut him down, as well. Inhibitor collars, while high-tech and well-designed, weren't picky. The field they projected were precise and directed inwards, but they didn't take into account a second mutant being inside the first one. It's a damn good thing for Conduit that an inhibited Will doesn't shoot back to his normal size and birth form. It's a damn bad thing for Will that an inhibited Will is at the mercy of the elements around him, even if those elements are primarily hydrochloric acid and pespinogen. An unpleasant trip thus became a painful one until he was forcefully ejected into the bowl of the toilet.

As soon as he was free from the collar's effects, his shifting kicked back in and the damage to his form undid itself. And if he took an extra second or two in the water to regather himself and clean? No one could blame him. Probably.

Steeling himself, Will reached up for Conduit's hair and climbed up, carefully sliding to the inside so that her hair would hide him from any security cameras that may be pointed their way. His goal was to reach the collar and find a way to shut it off subtly, though breaking it was an option if needs be.

[Narrator]

The collar is, for all it's high-tech gobbledygook, still just something physically fastened around the neck. There's a complicated keyway and some kind of electronic component that is, ultimately, not any different from a modern car key, just a little fancier. Being an avid viewer of raunchy lockpicking videos, Will can even tell that there's no way it's releasing a physical latch directly seeing how the actual seam is on the opposite side of the lock. More than likely it turns a cylinder that then completes a circuit to send and modulate the electronic key signature to a magnetized latch. Either the key turns off the electromagnetic field suppressing Conduit's power and thus releases the latch magnetized by the same field or it physically releases the latch which then interrupts the power-dampening field.

The whole thing is encased in some titanium alloy that makes it difficult to just physically break it, though not strictly impossible. It's snug but with enough room to reach between it and Conduit's neck, revealing a strip of metal on the inside that tingles with a latent current for electrocuting the wearer. On the upside, that means it's not one of the ones that have a strip of explosives in the same spot.

[Will Stanton]

Will took a moment to take it all in, the complexity of the engineering providing it's own fair share of challenges.

Idea one was to slip in between Conduit and the collar itself, breaking the connection, but he quickly ruled that out for two reasons. Firstly, if he slipped fully inside the ring of the collar, he'd be the one wearing it and would be stuck, and that wouldn't be good for anyone. Secondly, the current through the strip of metal didn't play well with someone who's shifting could be affected by electricity -- while sonics and telepathy were a more common mode of attack for him, just straight up slamming electricity through him when he wasn't set up for it tended to produce bad results as well. So scratch idea one.

The keyway was the second option, though it wasn't all that much more promising than the first. A physical keyway, even a complicated one, isn't really a problem for someone who can just mash themselves into the slit, pushing tumblers and springs out of the way. Electronic keys, however? That was a tougher challenge. The fact that there was an actual physical keyway here did mean there was a chance for him to manipulate things, but electronic keys typically emitted some sort of signal -- some sort of RFID tag that communicated with the device in question to trigger the release. That, too, could be spoofed -- those hours of watching unlocking videos weren't just for recreation -- but without knowing anything about how this particular system worked, there'd be trial and error. And, if this secret government organization was as paranoid as Conduit made them out to be (and, being a secret government organization, they probably were), the best case scenario for an unmatched signal would be triggering alarms, and the worst-case scenario would be straight up killing Conduit outright. That's probably bad. On the whole.

Titanium was tough, but not strictly unbreakable. Hydrofluoric acid takes care of most things. That's tricky, though, with the device tightly snug around Conduit's neck. The act of causing the thing to melt would take enough of Will's concentration that there was the risk of some of him dripping on to Conduit. That's contact poison, that is, and the concentration required to get through a titanium collar quickly would not play well with human flesh either. We'll call that 'plan B'.

No, the trick was in science, and the manipulation thereof. These retro collars -- excuse me, these modern collars for this time period, Will occasionally had to remind himself, as this was still the past -- generated electromagnetic fields that disrupted a mutant's connection to their source of power. That might sound to some people like magical pixie dust, but electromagnetism was a real thing, and a thing that could be disrupted.

Will was often mistaken for an idiot. And, to be fair, sometimes he was an idiot, but that was more in terms of action than knowledge. Will might zone out during physics lectures or when being ranted to about the limits of biology, but he wasn't just a blunt tool to slam against things. He may not always know the exact scientific reasons why something works; all he needs to know that it does, and he knew all about outcomes. All he needed to do here was disrupt the electromagnetic field around Conduit for long enough for her power to kick in -- she could make the collar dance if she had the chance. A Faraday cage? No, that would require slipping between the collar and Conduit, and if anything, would equally shield the collar from Conduit's powers as much as it would shield Conduit from the collar's tech, while having the neat secondary effect of keeping him trapped there, even assuming he slipped in fast enough to not get fried by the electric current. No, what this called for was interference, because all they needed was a couple seconds for Conduit to kick in. And how do you interfere with something? By being louder and more obnoxious than it was.

An EMP is overkill, and shutting down all the cameras and electronic locks in here would probably cause someone to take notice. But straight up interference? Oh, governments had spent years regulating just how devices could and could not work to provide electromagnetic interference, which provided a handy guidebook for anyone looking to cause such interference. Turning into an electronic device near Conduit had it's own risks, as was revealing just what he was capable of doing, but one that was probably the safest of all possible options at this point -- consequences could be dealt with later..

And so, perched on the back of Conduit's neck, Will shifted into a small radio transmitter. A small but powerful radio transmitter, blasting out a signal that modulated first through the FM bands, and then out into the wider electromagnetic spectrum as he tried to basically outshout the collar. Presumably, this cell was protected from radio interference from the outside, but from the inside? At this range? That almost certainly would have been handled via frisking Conduit for tech, and thus have no inherent internal protections.

And, if it sounded like Will was shouting in Conduit's ear when her powers came back, the girl would just have to deal with that, wouldn't she.

[Conduit]

Fortunately for Conduit, her power doesn't directly pull on electromagnetic fields and thus isn't drowned out by Will's silent electronic screaming. Unfortunately for her, her power translates the workings and programming of electronic devices into words and songs in her head so the painfully loud shouting does reach her. Pointlessly slapping her hands over her ears she bolts upright but is quick enough on the uptake that she realizes the noise means her power is flickering in and out. She only needs a second to reach into the collar and smother it's drowsy lullaby, unlatching it and hurling both collar and Will across the small cell.

On the video feeds watching her she bolts up and reaches for the back of her neck before the tiniest of distortion passes through the image and shows her flipping off one of the cameras and sitting back down in a huff. In reality she's cackling as her power washes through every last cable, microchip and panel, creeping up through connections and systems until she hits a faraday'd air-gap that's creating an empty void at the center.

"Oh yeah! They're fucked now." she grins as she goes to collect the remains of the collar and her partner in crime.

[Will Stanton]

"G...gently, please."

The voice didn't come from the device itself, but rather the FM bands which Conduit could read. The effort had taken a bit out of Will, as had being thrown across the room, and he was taking a moment to gather himself after the strain.

[Conduit]

"Pff!" Conduit waves her hand through the air, thankfully not the one holding Will and the collar.

She then sits down on the floor, facing the narrow bed. Maybe she's distracted by the collar or maybe she's actually trying to stay on Will's good side but she doesn't immediately seize control of the radio emitter. "So how much juice can you output like this?" she asks as she starts peeling the metal strip from the inside of the collar, then folding it once to produce a somewhat sturdy edge with which to start prying at seams and systematically take apart the collar with disturbing ease. "I wanna see if I can invert and super-charge this thing to boost the range of my power."

[Will Stanton]

"T...that depends on how motivated I am," the radio broadcast. "I find that I can produce a lot more juice when I'm sure that it's not going to be used to shoot missiles at people."

[Conduit]

"You're no fun. I just need to be able to reach the mainframe. I bet they don't even have any missiles here, just buttloads of state secrets and anti-mutant ploys. Don't you trust me?" she asks, putting on her most innocent smile. It doesn't quite manage to hide the manic gleam in her already glowing eyes.

[Will Stanton]

"I have been told, by experts on the matter, that I am a great deal of fun.

We send a copy of everything, and I mean everything you find to the university. Bounce it off a dozen satellites and hide where it's from if you must, but we get everything you get."

Assuming Conduit's cooperation -- an act of faith on his part, surely -- Will did start upping the juice. It was certainly more than a dinky radio transmitter like this should emit, and more than anything else that Conduit could have reasonably smuggled in could do, though not as powerful as she could get if she had time, space and more specialized equipment.

[Conduit]

"Yessss!" she grins and starts rearranging bits of the collars internals, tugging cables free and hooking them into Will. The result looks a lot less sleek than previously but still fits cleanly around Conduit's neck. The moment she closes it Will's perception explodes outward. He's been the target of Conduit's power before but now he's part of it, broadcasting whatever signal she generates out and getting swept along for the ride.

There's an almost ethereal sing-song to it, though with the cadence of simple children's songs. It propagates outward and resonates with every piece of electronics it comes in contact with, aligns it's own humming to Conduit. It's one thing to control a computer and use it to extremely efficiently hack anything it can connect to, hijack it's network and manipulate data within it's functions. It's another entirely to seize direct control of hundreds if not thousands of devices. Conduit's (and by association Will's) perception is scattered across countless perspectives. Her body is a tiny speck within, as insignificant as the people milling about within the composite image of the building formed by cameras, microphones, motion detectors, thermal sensors, CO2 detectors. The blank areas even inform her of where systems are intentionally separated to control the flow of information. At least three different isolated networks are nestled within the building, fenced in not just by air-gapping but shielding and faraday cages around servers as well.

It's easy to assume that Conduit's power would propagate through something adjacent to what she manipulates and thus be stymied by measures meant to isolate from radio-waves or wi-fi signals but distance seems to be the only limiting factor and Will is putting her in reach of the entire building at 85 Albert Embankment.

"Ooh! I don't know where to start!" she titters. "Wait no that's a lie." At the mere thought, fire safety and security doors in the building deploy at once, slamming down and missing people by sheer coincidence. There's protocols in place of course, but no alarms blare, no automated messages play. Most people in the building seem confused while a select handful looks alarmed. Panicked even. None of their emergency measures work, not even to inform agents and staff that they are under attack. Even cell phones, personal or government issued alike, refuse to work. It doesn't take long for some people to put two and two together but at that point Conduit's 8-bit avatar is already appearing across every screen in the building, laughing a crackly two-frame laugh with the words 'Ha Ha' blinking above her head. Then the fire suppression system kicks in and floods the building with argon and nitrogen.

Almost as an afterthought, it shuts off again as people start falling unconscious and AC systems kick in to return enough Oxygen for people not to suffocate.

[Will Stanton]

This is where Will would normally say something supportive of Conduit not doin' a murder, or give out some orders and suggestions on what to do next, or even just make observations about the nature of Conduit's power.

But he was kind of busy at the moment, as Conduit was using his voice to sing, as it were, spreading his perceptions like too little butter over too much bread. If Conduit's body was a tiny speck, Will's mind was a massive field, spreading over the building, with Conduit jerking him around to look over HERE at the fire suppression system and then over HERE at this cell phone and then over HERE at this camera. Close THIS door, turn THAT valve, shut off THIS alarm, draw THAT avatar, go go go. Will's core essence was to be helpful, and Conduit was finding him very helpful indeed, even if his range 'only' encompassed the building.

"Con...I....alarm....message...outgo..." he sputtered through broadcasts, trying to maintain a coherent thought though unfamiliar territory, as Conduit continued her general sweep.

[Conduit]

"Do I need to give you a slice of bandwidth to yourself or are you just overwhelmed by doing a whole two things at once?" she asks as she goes to release her cell door and step out into the corridor lined with multiple identical ones.

[Will Stanton]

The answer appeared to be that Will was overwhelmed by doing roughly ten zillion things at once, serving as a glorified mouthpiece for Conduit's electronic anarchy, his mind a bit scattershot as OPEN DOOR OVERWRITE CAMERA DISPLAY RUDE GESTURE flowed outward from the brat through the shifter into the electronic world above. Conduit's power apparently took priority, breaking Will's train of thought every time she made a tweak or change.

Still, Will was trying his best to fight through it, and sputtered once more. "Missed....outgo....message...must...reroute..." he tried to warn.

[Conduit]

"Whoopsie." she says as she notices the outgoing alarm Will was warning her about. It's too late to stop it but there's always the alternative to erasing a signal. Perhaps cribbing a bit from how Will disabled the collar she proceeds to initiate every single warning and alert she can find to sow confusion and make the initial reaction one of doubt rather than alarm. At the same time she sinks her digital arms deep into the central server. "Good catch. Now brace yourself for the big one." she grins.

All throughout the building, speakers crackle to life and music starts swelling into a kind of victorious beat. Conduit starts swinging her arms, aping a conductor as data streams begin spilling out of the central servers. Splitting at her conducting they spread out across the various phones and computers in the building, encrypting and forwarding them, splitting and remerging in a glittering spiral. Finally they begin scattering out into the wider cyberworld of the internet beyond, though most of that is decoy chaff while most of the real data gets bounced off of satellites above. As the music swells Conduit modulates some of the data and first on, then two, then three and four keyhole satellites begin firing their navigation thrusters and go into rapid descent. Solar panel wings begin fraying into broken glass as they begin to come into contact with the atmosphere, spewing debris and still broadcasting the stolen data.

And then all of a sudden everything goes dark. Camera feeds, the kind of out-of-body visualization of data, everything stops cold in an instant and plunges them into darkness as even the lights in the corridor cut out. Somebody tripped the main breaker and shut down the entire building.

[Will Stanton]

Will gasped into the quiet. "Y...you don't do anything by half measures, do you?" he crackled, trying to regain his breath and composure as the sensations peaked and then vanished -- odd, because he didn't NEED to breathe, but old habits do die hard.

"I assume everything going dark wasn't part of the plan?"

[Conduit]

"Darn it!" she shouts, pulling the collar off again. "Somebody cut the power. I was in the middle of stuff!" she huffs.

"At least you got to appreciate the scope." she commends the radio transmitter.

[Will Stanton]

The transmitted fell to the floor and re-shaped itself into Will, separating the shifter from Conduit's reach of power, at least for the moment.

"And I suppose you still need the antidote or whatever, so we can't just leave, right?" he said, looking around quickly as he pulled himself up to his full size. "And with the power down, you're kind of just along for the ride?"

[Conduit]

"I'm not useless right now. There's still... cellphones around. And... and some emergency defibrillators..." she starts as she reaches out against her rapidly shrinking range. "But there was a room, two floors up on the other side of the building that's where they probably kept the antidote!" she perks up a little. Will doesn't have to know that they gave her the antidote already and what she's talking about is a room full of prototype gadgets and weapons.

[Will Stanton]

"Right," Will said, taking a deep breath.

"You're going to stick close to me, and do as I say, as we move. The chaos will buy us some cover, but if someone actually notices you, we're cooked, so we're moving swift and we're moving fast. Alright?" he said, eyes steeling over. Full on business-mode, hero shit. No mutant deserved to suffer, even crazy nuts ones, and Will was going to get her to the antidote room, like it or not. He crouched by the door leading out of the cellblock, taking a deep breath. "Alright. Three...two...one....go!" he counted down, slipping through the door and beginning to hustle.

[Conduit]

Considering it's fairly dark with the lights out and no immediate windows anywhere, Conduit grabs hold of the seam of Will's pants like a lost child. Fortunately, it doesn't take them long to find a still passed out guard in a kind of control-point booth and Conduit liberates a big flashlight, taser and access card from him before they hurry on. It seems in this part of the facility, MI6 values security over safety because the door out of the holding cells is locked despite the blackout. Perhaps eager to prove she's not completely useless without a functioning powergrid she bashes open the taser, cracks part of the card-reader controlling the door and start connecting wires. Then she holds the key-card to the reader and pulls the trigger on the taser, causing the whole assembly to spark and produce acrid smoke but it does blink to life long enough to light up green and unlock the door.

On the other side they're beginning to notice signs of life. Distant voices and other flashlight beams sweeping around on the other side of windows over cubicles or down crossing hallways. For now they seem to be undetected but people are definitely coming this way, presumably to check on the holding cells specifically. They're in luck and find a set of elevator doors, though without power they obviously won't work.