6028/Even the Lab is Full of Glitter

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Even the Lab is Full of Glitter
Date of Scene: 23 April 2021
Location: Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis: Fragments of broken Zodship make their way into the hands of the lab-geeks of Titan Towers, where Cyborg promises not to instantly integrate them into his hardware. Damian is grumpy, but actually manages to say something nice about Vorpal.
Cast of Characters: Victor Stone, Donna Troy, Bart Allen, Terry O'Neil, Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Damian Wayne




Victor Stone has posed:
Vic is stooped over his workstation, tinkering with some tech recovered from the wreckage after the recent Bizarro attack on the mad scientist parade. Technically, the bots there were the property of their creators, but once the misguided wannabe hero started laying waste to them, they became much easier to classify as salvage. And Victor Stone is not a man to let mad science salvage slip through his metal fingers.

Which is, at some level, why he's so happy to share his space with Nadia: her projects are not always well-considered or in accord with the laws of man and god, but they sure do result in some fascinating byproducts, even when they aren't entirely successful.

So here they are, tinkering away. "You'd think //one// of these guys would invent a decent portable teleportation device," he grumbles in his deep baritone voice. "I'm so sick of having my awesome vehicles upstaged by a //cat//."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Because bits of it kept falling off," the voice of Donna can be heard explaining in the distance. Other voices can be heard with her, though none of them are speaking with that Amazon projection. "It was supposed to do that, kind of like a lizard's tail, I guess. Every time we damaged bits of it, they'd shed the damaged section and regrow more. We've got video of it on the T-Jet systems if you want to see. It was pretty wild."

    The lab door slides open and in steps Donna, carrying a biohazard sample container, which she drops down on Vic's workstation amongst the junked bits of mad science. "I have more mad science for you, Vic!" She announces with a grin. "Probably requires handling with more care than the rest of this stuff, because Gaia only knows what this crystal is. Bits of Zod's ship. The Fantastic Four did clean-up, there was a lot of bits floating around and we grabbed you a sample to play with."

    Donna tilts her head to the side. "When I say 'play with', while this /appears/ to be inert, it's potentially very dangerous. Also there's a chance this was one of the parts of the crystalline structure that got uh... Kryptonited. So until we can be clear on that, it's probably best not to ask Supergirl to help with studying it."

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen comes by looking about to see what is going on. He is actually thinking about talking to Nadia, so he comes walking in with a stack of old videogame consoles. He comes walking into the room "Hey Nadia, you got a minute?" He sees the group of people and says "Am I interrupting?" He asks looking about.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"You know, my ears are burning, Vic." That's Vorpal. The //cat// in question, coming in soon after Donna, shooting Victor a grin. "I thought that after what we went through in the other world, you'd be grateful for my Rabbit Holes! I see that all of this time, you've been harvesting resentment!"

Turning to look over his shoulder at Bart, Vorpal shakes his head. "Not interrupting at all. Vic was complaining about my chaos magic and Donna was giving him an incredibly dangerous crystal to play with, you're all caught up as far as that's concerned."

He glances at the stack of games and blinks a little, "Are you getting into the retro gaming scene? That's... quite a few of them."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"To be fair, he's a really cool magic cat." Nadia chimes in from not far away, currently bent over another piece of robot salvage with a plasma cutter, face covered by a mask as she cuts away the robot's outer casing to get at all the fascinating bits inside.

"Teleportation though, we could probably do that. I mean the Pym Drives I made for the T-Jet already work by using fields composed of Pym Particles to warp Space/Time, in theory if we could create a sort of miniature scale wormhole that would be functionally akin to teleportation." She lifts up the mask, straightening up with a grin on her face as she heaves the cut chest plate off the robot's frame.

Nadia looks up at the sound of Donna's voice and then her appearance with the biohazard sample container. "Oooh.." her eyes get big with curiousity and the heavy chest plate is tossed aside, perhaps a bit too easily for her build. "What's that?!"

Bart gets a wave when he calls out to her though it's fairly clear whatever Donna brought has seized her attention for the moment.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     "Possibly one of our allies' most lethal objects. So leave it the hell alone." Robin pipes in, giving a very stern look towards Nadia. "Not something to be played around with haphazardly. If it were up to me, we wouldn't even have this."

  Robin looks at the crystal, then back to Donna. "I suggest keeping hard logs of who accesses this. And I insist that it be done in pairs, for checks and balances, this should be treated like an infectious disease culture." What he isn't saying, but what would be obvious to Donna and perhaps others, is that this is how Damian remains protective of someone he cares about. Even if it's a...prickly way of going about it.

Victor Stone has posed:
With a quiet, drawn-out 'ooh' sound, Vic swivels on his chair and rolls over to peer at the technology? salvage? rock? that Donna has brought him. His artificial eye has a little telescoping lens on it, making him look a bit like a jeweler, which is oddly appropriate as he transfers it to a stationary containment chamber and peers inside. "I usually don't ask Supergirl for help, anyway," he says with a disapproving half-frown. "Asking Kryptonians is like stealing the teacher's guide. Takes all of the fun out of figuring things out on your own." After only a slight break in conversational rhythm, he adds, "Thank you, Donna, this is a great present."

He grins down at the crystal circuitry he's viewing through his cyber-loupe. "Make sure everybody knows I've got it here, though. I'd hate for my Roombas to stumble on the little super-kid's unconscious, irradiated body because he didn't know to stay away. They'd probably be emotionally traumatized by having to bulldoze him down the laundry chute." He might be attempting to goad Robin, just a //little// bit, but the laundry chute protocol is a very real thing that was instituted by necessity, as a floofy fallback when certain Titans got old enough to legally drink and pass out in inconvenient spots. He addresses him more directly with, "Maybe let me handle the lab precautions, kid."

Vorpal's commentary does draw his attention away from the crystal for a moment, and he raises one eyebrow over his weirdly magnified and distorted red eye. "I mean, I'm assuming you're also pretty grateful for my ability to keep advanced vehicles up and running, after that little adventure," he says with a half-grin. "You keep doing your thing, just let me keep doing mine."

He glances over at Nadia when she makes her suggestion about a teleportation kludge they could attempt. "An Einstein-Rosen T-Tunneller?" he proposes. "Sounds dangerous. Sign me up." He turns back to Vorpal, and his eyes narrow. "It's on, Fancy Feast."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna rests a hand very lightly on Robin's arm for a moment. "Not put in the most tactful way, but Robin makes a very good point. /If/ this sample contains Kryptonite impurities, which we don't know, we don't want any risk of it falling into the wrong hands. So uh... tightest security protocols would be advisable. Also it is kind of significantly radioactive, so... yeah."

    "On the other hand, who knows..." she finds a relatively clear stretch of spare workbench and uses it as a seat. "We might find something to help our Kryptonian friends. Some neutralizing agent or something. On the other hand this may have no such impurities. Most of the bits of ship that came off were either knocked off by Thor or shed when we redirected Zod's heat-ray vision back at the ship. In which case it may just be bits of some cool self-reproducing Kyrptonian technology. Please don't integrate it into your chassis just yet though, Vic."

    Donna rubs her eyes and stares at Vorpal. "Vorp. Would you listen to these two? They're planning to make wormholes. You'd think at least Vic would be sick of them."

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen looks over to Vorpal, and says "They are all retro games, but they are fun. I was hoping might find Nadia not doing anything but seems I chose a bad time. I was hoping might be able to set these all into one console that ran at super speed, something that might be a challenge to Madigan and me, but I wanted it to be a surprise, I mean finding out she was part of G.I.R.L. was a surprise for me, which might make working on this harder without her knowing about, it but seems, I may have to go to someone else. Maybe Rob could do it."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia briefly glances in Damian's direction and just shakes her head for a moment like it's not even worth engaging with. "One," she points at Vic. "Two," she points at herself. "That is a pair. You don't learn anything by not working on things.

With that said she steps forward towards the container examining it from different angles, lots of looking but no touching yet. It was given to Cyborg after all, though her curiosity is more than evident. She does grin though when Victor says he wants to try the teleporting car idea.

Nadia pulls her attention back from the container just long enough to nod in agreement with one of Donna's later comments, "That's true, Supergirl did ask last year if it would be possible to make some sort of armor or suit that could ward off Kryptonite while withstanding her powers. With an actual radition sample that might be possible to work on, maybe, it's hard to say without actually studying it."

She then flashes Bart a grin, "That shouldn't be too difficult, maybe, I will have a look at it later. It probably shouldn't take too long except for the super speed part, but even then just because systems are normally geared towards human speeds doesn't mean they can't be made to go faster it will just likely increase strain and wear out faster... maybe more durable components, I will think on it!" She says even as her attention is drawn back to the new shiny, multi-tasking.


Terry O'Neil has posed:
"You would think, but there is one thing I have learned- mad science often oversteps caution. This is the point where I say 'This is how you end up in Wonderland,' correct?" Vorpal chuckles and crosses his arms. He gives Cyborg a mock glower, and says "May the best teleporter win, Chrome Crusader! I've got the advantage of magic, let's see what you can do!"

Bart's revelation causes him to raise his eyebrows. "I thought that the challenge for speedsters was to do something at regular speed... you know, a test of patience? If you want a real challenge, find an emulator and have it perform at half the speed and play together. The first person to throw the controller in impatient frustration loses!"

"It's a good point nevertheless. If word got out that we have a potential anti-Kryptonian resource, half of Metropolis' villains will want to get into our lab. On the other hand, if it proves useful next time that asshole Zot comes back... and he sounded like he might just."

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Robin's gaze looks towards Vic, and not for the reason Cyborg originally goaded him on, starts to glower. "Maybe this team is not fully equipped to handle a substance like this." A pause before continuing his retort, with a dagger's sharpness. "And you are not the only one in this room who can engineer advanced vehicles. There are some of us who can do just that -WITHOUT- the aid of cybernetic augmentation." The addition of a hand on his shoulder just returns him to a frown instead of a scowl, and his hood raised up now, steaming in his own anger.

  "I am sure that is what Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin said, right before he dropped the screwdriver on The Demon Core."

  Robin's white eyelets peer back from under his hood. "Perhaps the learning should start with how to make an acronym. Genius in Action Research Laboratories is G.A.R.L."

  Then one last point from Terry has Damian grumbling. "There is a reason why I had to jump through hoops to get that batarang. There are security protocols, containment safeties. I..." He can't. Just can't. "Why am I the only one insisting that this thing be treated without a laissez faire attitude?" He comments, out loud, but in a manner of inward thinking.

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic looks at Donna, then shakes his head mournfully. "Thor's hammer versus General Zod's spaceship... and nobody even thought to sell tickets." That's not entirely true. The T-Jet has all sorts of image capture black box tech, and several streaming services have inquired. That's not really his side of the business, though; he peers back into the containment unit with a grin. "Still, no matter what its history, this will be full of all sorts of amazing stuff that I'll definitely discover by plugging it directly into myself five seconds after you leave the room."

Donna's probably known him long enough to take the teasing entirely in stride. He's always saying stuff like that, but he never acts on it. Well... //mostly// never.

The same certainly cannot be said for Damian, who as far as anyone can tell, has never taken anything in stride in his life. He leans down to peer at the angry teenager curiously. "Do you ever get //results// with this business?" he asks, gesturing at him vaguely. His tone is neither angry nor, as much as he can manage, condescending. He's asking out of what seems to be genuine, detached curiosity. "The yelling and the insults and the temper tantrums. Does it ever get people to actually do what you want?" He shifts one metal shoulder in a shrug. "Like, I'd need a spare hand or two to count all the bullets I've taken for Nightwing. You ever consider watching the way he handles people and, like. Learning? That's what we do in the labs, generally."

Which gives him a thought; he straightens back up, sees that Nadia is already peering at the sunstone. He scoots to the side and waves her closer to the fragments; he's never been a jealous hoarder where SCIENCE!!! is concerned, and she has a valuable perspective all her own when it comes to this sort of thing. He also doesn't bother diving further into the topic of their lab's hazmat protocols; he said his piece there already.

Instead, he turns to Vorpal with a chuckle of friendly amusement. "Give us a few prototyping rounds, then I hope you'll be willing to help out with the testing." Testing, he says. Definitely not some kind of competition. Heaven forfend.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Don't make it personal, Robin," Donna says quietly. Then at a more normal volume, "You're not the only one who's taking it seriously, just the only one who's talking about it seriously. We're not the Bat-Clan, we're the Titans and we do things differently. We're friends, we joke around. Particularly Vic. That doesn't mean he's not taking it seriously, it just means he's enjoying himself when he's doing it. When you get to know him better, you'll see that."

    Donna twists her neck one way then the other to stretch it, her eyes falling on Vic for a moment to share a glance. "Vic has run the Titan's labs for almost a decade and he handles weird and dangerous pieces of technology like you handle a sword, Robin. There is nobody on this planet I would trust more with this sample than Vic, and if you're nice he might let you spend a few days working with him so you can see for yourself how serious he is behind the jokes. You're a talented engineer yourself Robin, but if you want to learn from the best, he's standing right in front of you. If you make friends with him, you'll be thankful you did for the rest of your life. Consider it."

    She takes a deep breath, leans back and puffs out her cheeks. "If it makes you feel better, Robin, there are secure containment facilities deep under the tower where things like this get kept. We /have/ been doing this a while."

    Her attention wanders to Nadia and Bart's conversation. "No Nadia, I'm not going to ask Pallas to build a magical, unbreakable controller for you," she says with a smirk. "Honestly Speedsters pressing buttons at top speed, I'd be more worried about thermal management. Maybe you can come up with a custom controller that measures muscular twitches or something, no moving parts."

Bart Allen has posed:
Bart Allen looks over and says "Yea, I am ok with those type of challenges, but Madi, does not seem so much into that type of thing. So figured would find something that would work. The last time we went semi full speed on a game, we rebooted it and never got to see who was better." He sets the games out of the way and rubs his hair, and looks to Vorpal. That was before we went to the pizza place.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia brightens in Donna's direction, "Those are both brilliant ideas!" Even if Donna already said the first one wouldn't be happening.

She heads over to where Victor is, getting a closer look at the sample. For all of her seeming happy go lucky, carefree, easily distractable ways at times, around actual SCIENCE!!! she is observably quite careful, like someone who pretty much grew up with lab protocal as part of their life.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Sure, I don't mind helping out with the testing. As long as I'm supposed to end somewhere in /this/ universe. That, I can get back from." Vorpal grins, and gives Bart an interested look. "You're going to have to tell me how the Arcade date turned out. But I imagine it went well... "

He trails off, and is about to say something when Robin speaks, but Vic and Donna beat him to it. Instead, he summons a soft drink out of a Rabbit Hole and takes a long, thorough drink from the bottle. Presumably to quench his test. But by the brief look that crosses his face, it's probably to keep his tongue from saying something he might regret.

He takes several gulps. By the time he's done, half the bottle is gone. "... Pallas can make magical unbreakable controllers? I mean. Gar is pretty rough on controllers. It'd be a great birthday present. Just saying."

Damian Wayne has posed:
     The subtle glow of the mask closes, shutting his eyes. The teen was too serious for his own good. Bringing his heartbeat down, and quiet deep breathing, Robin opens his eyes again

  Joking was not in Robin's repertoire, if it was, it would probably be morbid or worse. "I just do not want someone harming the wrong person. Zod probably should have been dealt with, but he ran away. We have friends out there that this can and will kill. If it ends up being Kryptonite." His tone was normal, even having a grave chill. If there were any question about who his father is, it couldn't have been more obvious now. Despite his more youthful timbre, it was the exact kind of thing Batman would say. Veiled expressions of caring and all. "It should be treated with that respect."

  After that, not a word, Robin isn't shut down. But he isn't there in the conversation either, schrodinger's Robin, as it were.

Victor Stone has posed:
As Donna says her piece, Vic clasps his hands under his chin and nods slightly. They get each other; they've been working alongside each other closely for years, and at this point, not only can they communicate without speaking, they can often communicate one thing while saying the complete opposite. That's family for you.

But hearing her put it all into words makes him realize that he didn't. After a second, he looks to Damian again. "Maybe I'm a little too used to the Tower being a place where we're all on the same wavelength and can joke around a little," he says evenly. "I don't have to explain to Donna or Cait or Gar that I'm going to be careful, but you don't know me like that. So I'll say it out loud: I'm not going to leave a chunk of Kryptonite in the recycling and get your space boyfriend killed. You can relax." He pauses for a second, reconsidering. "At least, I think you can. Further observations may be needed."

He glances over at Terry, then. "I don't suppose you've got a big gulp of Cheerwine in there?" he asks with a snicker.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Oh great. Now you're /collaborating/ with the cat, Vic?" Donna says, rolling her eyes theatrically and grinning while doing it. "So you're going to science one tear in reality, and he's going to magic another, and you're going to shove them together and see what happens? I'm not entirely clear that it wasn't Vorp opening a rabbit hole in the mouth of a wormhole that got us in that messed-up place to start with. You know... I'm going to predict it right now. You're going to end up sending the rest of the world into the inside of a singularity, and there will be just four of us left on Earth."

    Donna folds her arms and faux-glares at Terry for a few moments. "No. No magic controllers. And if you think Gar is bad, you should have seen the number of controllers I wrecked before I was persuaded force doesn't help."

    She smirks at Vic, kicking her feet idly, then stares at Damian for a few moments. She may have no intention of letting him Schrodinger out of conversation, even if she hopes that particular conversation is over. Even if Nightwing does things differently, the Titans have dealt with Robin's father often enough in the past, and there's a point where you learn that with the Bats it isn't worth continuing -- you just have to hope something got planeted in there to fruit in its own good time.

     "Yeah. Zod should have been dealt with. However we didn't exactly have time to prepare. Four Titans, the Fantastic Two, Captain Danvers and Thor. There were at least four Kryptonians, probably more. The had a large spaceship like nothing we have seen before. The fact that we got them to depart without anyone being seriously injured was a major win - we will deal with him some time in the future when we have a stronger hand to play. In the meanwhile we learned a lot about him, and hopefully from this debris we'll learn a lot about his technology. What did you think of the great General Zod's tactical performance, Robin? Because I'd say that's one area we have a very real upper hand, wouldn't you agree?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia half-listens to the back and forth between Victor, Donna, and Damian but it is really the new and unknown SCIENCE that has her attention even if Terry's rabbit hole does get a once over when he summons it. She's seen them used before, even been through them but somehow never gets bored of trying to puzzle out how they work. One day she will solve magic and a unified theory of everything will be complete.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     Damian gives a nod from under the hood, baby steps to being able to...coexist with people closer to his age. It's a slow go. But at least he is not moving around the tower via air ducts to avoid Terry.

  "Thank you, Cyborg." Capital C, his name, not just a designation of the amalgamation of cybernetic and organic.

  Robin's eyes glowed just a little bit towards Donna, ever so slightly. Like he knows what she is doing. Part grateful, part resenting the fact that he could be manipulated so. "The crystal spiders have much to be desired. In terms of tactical performance. I have to admit." He lowers the hood, because he has to look at Terry, not with a scowl, not with any sort of scorn or hate. "The use of your...portal to redirect the heat blast was novel." He may have been surly when he was falling from the discarded crystal petal, but he was genuinely impressed. "The Titans would have kicked his ass without the batarang. We sent him packing with his tail between his legs." Then he steps forward, toward the Crazy Cat Thing, holding up a hand for what normal humans would call a 'high-five'. Supposedly a congratulatory gesture shared amongst teammates and friends.

Victor Stone has posed:
"It's teamwork, Donna," Vic says innocently. "He'd make a great control group. He can retrieve a prototype if I can't. He could even //be// the prototype, since we know he can portal back if we miscalculate." Now he's just rattling off 101 uses for a magic cat.

"As far as Zod's concerned, I think we might have something better than Kryptonite," he continues, tapping at his chin with a quiet //tink, tink// noise. "We've got files. Every villain, every magic spell, every trap that has caused a real problem for Superman. I bet at least half of them can be repurposed into a Zod defense."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Sorry, Cy, I only carry one soda around at any one time since the Incident With Gar. It's not wise to carry massive amounts of sugar where he can easily get at them. I still contend he almost vibrated himself into another dimension..."

He pauses for a second when Robin speaks, and Donna can probably hear the record scratch, sense the train of thought almost derailing as it takes a turn too fast, edges away from wildcatting and goin' out whittlin'. Through and through, he stares at the raised hand and then he finally realizes what is going on. Robin isn't trying to do some sort of bizarre one-hand martial arts death technique on him. He's trying to-

Heavens help them all.

After one second of hesitation, Vorpal high-fives Robin, up to the last second bracing himself for an electric shock or something of the sort. When that doesn't happen, though, there is a sense of... relief. But it is also a little unsettling.

"Right then..." he says. Fishing for something familiar, his figurative hands go for the most famliar, most go-to thing the Titans have.

"Anyone up for pizza? I'll put the order in. My treat."