Owner Pose
Madison Evans     With Xiomara safe, and in the hands of qualified medical care, and all the captured criminals from the warehouse secured or handed over to authorities, Madison finds herself at loose ends - and far too filled with adrenaline still after the evening's adventures to even consider going to bed - never mind that it's a school night. So instead, the young teen is pacing around in the labs, hoping for some concrete news about Crush's condition - and muttering under her breath.
    "She still might tell my mom. Gosh, I'm going to be in so much trouble - how am I gonna keep all this stuff secret?" Why couldn't her mom just be //cool// with it? That would make things... so much easier.
    Her boken is still in her hands - and periodically she runs through a few practice drills - swinging smoothly through blocks, thrusts, and parries without much need for conscious thought.
Victor Stone     Vic's got a personal project off to one side in the labs--which is pretty obviously a (probably fruitless) attempt to map out the weirdness at the center of the Tower--and he was going to try to go back to that after bringing Xiomara back to the Tower. But Madison's still there, pacing back and forth, so despite Cyborg sitting and staring at a computer monitor and glancing over at the pacing girl and then back to the computer, he finally sighs and gives up even pretending to start back in on that.

    "Will she really be /that/ upset?" he asks, raising a brow. "I mean, we're the Titans, we're not... villains or anything. We're /the/ premier team for young superheroes, you won't find a safer group with better training."
Madison Evans     "She'd ground me for life!" Madison counters immediately - and melodramatically. "Six o'clock curfew for the rest of time! Until I'm old and grey and in the old folks home and using a wheel chair and //everything//. You don't know my mom," she says seriously. "She's- well. She's pretty protective, and she made it very clear as soon as she found out I had 'super powers' that I wasn't allowed to do any super heroing until I'm done with school - and I'm pretty sure she means college, not high school." She lets out a sigh, then performs a few more slashes with her boken - following this up with a lunge.
    "I can't believe one my of TEACHERS was there tonight..."
Victor Stone     "Yeah, Colette's been hanging around with the Titans... oh, for a while now." Vic shrugs. "I mean... it'd be nice to have parents who... cared that much about the superheroing, but I get that it's frustrating. You've got powers, you want to go help people... makes sense."

    He spins the computer chair to look at Madison more fully. "Do you think /meeting/ us would help? Like, a tour of the Tower? See how secure things are, how we've got state-of-the-art training facilities, stuff like that? I mean... you could hurt yourself if you don't know how to control your powers, right?"
Madison Evans     "A- ...tour?" Madison asks - straightening up from her lunge. She looks almost... floored by this idea. "I- well, I dunno," she admits. "Do you think it'd help? She's been pretty adament..."
    She blinks again then adds, "But- wait. It's not like //I'm// a Titan or anything. That's... you! And Irie! And... well. All the rest of the Titans!"
Victor Stone     Victor eyes Madison. "Well, no. You're not a Titan /yet/. But you're hanging around a lot, you've just been on a mission... you've got the right attitude, and a good head on your shoulders. The other day..." He has to stop, gaze flickering back to the monitors.

    A sigh. "The other day, when we met... Troia... you reacted to all the weirdness with, well... /wonder/. Excitement. Trying to solve the puzzle, trying to keep us all together as friends. You're not a Titan yet, but I think you could be."
Madison Evans     "Well I mean - that's because it was //cool//. We were on a shattered moon! With ancient buildings! And gardens!" How //else// are you supposed to react to that? "...I still wanna go see one of those gardens," she mutters under her breath. "I wonder what 'Plants From Outer Spaaaaaaace' are like." Yes. She says it exactly like you think she does.
    "...you really think I could be a Titan? Gosh. My mom would lose her-" There's a brief pause. "-mind." Did Maddie almost curse? For once? Huh.
Victor Stone     Vic smirks at the girl. Oh, he can hear the curse word she didn't say. "I think you could be. I mean, it's not just up to me. It's up to you, and everyone else. The Titans, we're /family/ more than anything else. We don't recruit people to fill a spot in the roster, like, 'oh we need someone who can levitate things!' We've got people who go away for months or years and come back and their room's still waiting for them." He frowns, then shakes it off. "I just mean... if you want to be a Titan, you do what you're already doing. Hang out, see if you fit in. At some point everyone just kinda agrees you're on the team."

    He smirks again. "But we're gonna have to work on your moves. I mean... good moves, with the boken! But throwing the thing at someone? That'd work better with a lightsaber." A pause. "I wonder if we can actually make you a lightsaber. Or something like it."
Madison Evans     Oh, Victor said the magic word - and now Madison is bouncing up into the air on the tips of her toes. "That's what I was trying to do!" she agrees excitedly. "Jedi can throw their lightsabers! But I don't know how to make them. I mean- there's lots of people who're worried that, you know, I'd be too dangerous with a lightsaber - I'd kill people, or hurt myself, and I don't want to do that - so I thought maybe a stun saber, but Jedi are supposed to have //lightsabers// and what if I'm supposed to stop a truck carrying away hostages and my lightsaber can't cut through things? No good! So- maybe we could make two - if we could figure out how to make them - or maybe we could even make one that has, you know, two settings so I can toggle it from stun to lightsaber and back, you know?" Yes. Madison has been putting a lot of thought into this.
    Some of her enthusiasm drains though as she adds, "But I'm not really good at building anything."
Victor Stone     "Well... the thing that keeps you from killing people is... a lot of training so you're good enough that you don't /have/ to kill people." Someone's spent a loooot of time with Donna Troy. Fortunately it's so ingrained in Vic by now that this doesn't make him melancholy. "And the desire not to do so. But Jedi try not to kill, right? So that's... I mean, that's just on you, and making sure you know how to use the thing."

    Vic spins around in the chair one way for a moment, then back the other, then turns back to the monitors and minimizes the three-dimensional map of the twisting weirdness of the Tower. He pulls up a drafting program instead, and says, "I don't know how we get the power source... but I /think/ I can imagine... alright, look, a lightsaber wouldn't be made out of an actual /laser/. It's almost got to be plasma kept in place by a forcefield. Presumably the kyber crystal generates the plasma, since that's what powered the Death Star, too, and the casing in the hilt generates the forcefield."

    Vic's never, /ever/ thought about building a lightsaber before. Nope.
Madison Evans     "Well, that's why I've been training," Madison agrees. "That's why I've been learning sword fighting. But it's hard to use a weapon that can cut through anything on... people without doing some real, //serious// harm. You know? But I'm learning as much as I can."
    As Victor starts talking about the science of lightsabers, she bounces her way closer, her boken held low by her side. "If Jedi are real - then kyber crystals must be real too, yeah? But - Jedi are supposed to be guided to them. Maybe I haven't been guided to one yet because I'm not ready?" she asks dubiously. "...or maybe it's because there just aren't any on Earth. Which would be a problem..."
Victor Stone     "The Danger Room might be able to help with that," Vic muses as he starts to sketch out a prototype for a lightsaber hilt. "We go in there to practice our tactics and moves on virtual enemies. Nobody gets /seriously/ hurt, but it's a good way to practice, especially for people who have crazy powers like Do--like... some of us."

    He furrows his brow as he continues the sketch. "We might have to talk to some people and find out... /are/ there any kyber crystals out there? Or something like them? I mean, Wonderland's real, who knows what else might be. But if not, we've just got to find something that can create a plasma. There's been some good work with making photonic molecules, too, but making them at scale... mmmf."
Madison Evans     "The Danger Room?" Madison repeats. "You're telling me that your Danger Room is- ...safe. Shouldn't it be called the Safe Ro- oh, I guess that's a thing already. The Safety Room? I mean- it just seems like a misnomer." Her eyes are locked onto the plans a she talks, a hopeful, eager expression on her features. How can she truly be a Jedi until she has a lightsaber, after all?
    "Umm. What's photonic molecules?"
Victor Stone     "It's basically... light, photons, don't normally have mass, right? Theoretically, if they could interact strongly enough, they could act as though they /did/ have mass, and bind together to form molecules. It might not be powerful enough to make an actual lightsaber, though. We might have to depend on plasma."

    What's taking shape is definitely a lightsaber hilt, but with two switches, one for power and one to switch between power sources. And two power sources: one an empty space where Vic notes 'kyber?' and another where he puts in a more normal power source. "So I'm thinking... the forcefield on its own, if you turned it to the right frequency, might be good enough for stunning people. Turn off the plasma power source, adjust the forcefield, boom, stun saber. But then you flip to the normal lightsaber mode and the forcefield adjusts and then the plasma beam comes in."
Madison Evans     "Could it be powerful enough to make a stun saber?" Madison asks with curiosity, as she tries to follow what Victor is telling her - and not fully succeeding. "Because then that could be a our plan for making one of each!"
    But as Victor explains his plan - an eager smile takes Madison's expression again, and she nods her head eagerly, bouncing back up onto her toes. "Oh! I didn't know forcefields could do that. But if the plasma is off - I mean, it won't look the same, will it? What will just the forcefield look like? I wonder if that works in my favor or not - strategically - if people can tell I'm switching modes? I guess it would probably depend on the situation..."
Victor Stone     "Uhhh... you know, I don't know? The color comes from the kyber crystal, right? So... would we need to color the stunning part to be the right color...?" Vic frowns thoughtfully, and makes a note off to one side: 'check about color of stun.'

    "I ought to get some more eyes on this. Nadia, maybe, or Damian. Just in case one of them has a neat idea. And we /definitely/ need to ask around and find out if anyone knows where to get a kyber crystal, because failing /that/, I mean, it's a pretty powerful kind of plasma we'd need." He drums his fingers on the desk for a moment. "I wonder if... Troia might know anything? I mean, the tech in her place is pretty advanced..." And maybe they're not getting Donna back. Maybe it'd be better to just make friends with this other version.
Madison Evans     "We can tell her we need to talk to her about something, and that we could talk to her about it while strolling through the gardens," Madison suggests - a little mischief reflected in her eyes. "Two birds - one stone. I mean - you have to be curious about the gardens and like... the shielding or whatever they must have? I mean- How does the window that's not a window work? Because there's like- vacuum outside the window, and apparently you can fall right through it. Just How Does That Even?!" she ass.
    Okay. She's a little distractable sometimes - but it's a valid question.
Victor Stone     Vic nods, even smiles. but it's a sad sort of thing. "It'd be... nice, I guess, yeah. I wondered, but... probably some kind of low-level forcefield that keeps in air but lets larger things through? I don't know. Worth a shot."

    He musters up a bigger grin. Madison doesn't yet know that 'brooding' is often Vic's default setting. "So... is this a good start, do you think? I'm gonna dig into some of the speculation on how the physics of it all might work, look into some metallurgy, things like that."
Madison Evans     "I think so," Madison says eagerly. "Umm... How can I help? I want to help. I mean - a Jedi's supposed to construct their own weapon after all. Do I get to help design the aesthetics of it?" she asks in a curious tone.
    She's going to have to research lightaber aesthetics. There was a wookiee Jedi, after all, who made one out of wroshyr wood. And hadn't one been made out a krayt dragon... tooth? Or horn? Hrm...
Victor Stone     Vic laughs and then says, "Then we'll teach you how to build the thing, and you can put it together yourself. But let me make sure you get the right materials and so on. You can definitely help design the aesthetics, but some of it's got to be practical. Room for power sources and wiring, stuff like that."
Madison Evans     Madison nods her head eagerly. "Of course! I mean. Not just practical from the engineering sense, but practical from the useability sense. It's got to fit in my hands properly. For a comfortable, firm, reliable grip. And we need to work out the controls in a way that they're accessible and easy to use - but can't be triggered unintentionally. All that sort of stuff."
    She bounces up on her toes eagerly - and then abruptly is moving in on Victor to try to give him a hug. "OH. EM. GEE, THIS IS SO GREAT!"
    Mads! Consent, Mads! Consent!
Victor Stone     Vic blinks at Madison for a moment and then laugh and shrugs and goes ahead and gives her a hug. He's become pretty used to exuberant people--Gar climbs up on his shoulder all the time, after all.

    "You're welcome," he says. "You seem pretty cool, and Irie really likes you. I think you ought to be a prospect at least, if you want. Although maybe we'd better talk to your mom first."
Madison Evans     "I'm telling you, my mom'll //lose// it," Madison insists - almost solemnly, as she pulls away from the hug. "But... I mean. I guess we can try. She knows Irie already, after all. And otherwise it's just- well. Continuing to lie to my mom which... I don't really like doing, to be honest, but it's hard. If I can help people, I should help people. Not helping seems... like a bad moral choice. But lying to my mom isn't a good moral choice either."
Victor Stone     "Well... we'll see. Maybe she'll see us as responsible adults who can help train you in your newfound powers?" Yeah, keep dreaming, Vic. "Really, though, I mean... I've known of several people who got hurt because they had powers and didn't train with them. She should at least be making sure you know how to control yourself."

    He pauses, eyeing the screen. "Maaaaaybe we keep the lightsaber to ourselves for now, though."