School Spirit (Part Thirteen)

Mountains didn't just feel like they were moving. I felt confident that this was a thing. If it was, the Danger Room was a shitty representative of reality. The farther up the mountain Hisako and I climbed, the more it felt like we could feel shifting just beneath our feet.

It took a while before I realized it at first. I blamed my concussion for that. Either way, we had already started on our way. Turning back without even trying to get to what we had come for would have made our choice a monumental waste of time.

Besides, maybe I was wrong? We weren't there yet, and I hadn't seen any vents on the way up so far.

Instead of me, it was Hisako who spoke up about it first, "Are we almost there, or what?"

Took the words right out of my mouth, "I think so. Of course they put this thing at the summit, didn't they?"

"Why did they make this a volcano?"

"I don't think they did."

I stopped moving when I heard Hisako's footsteps stop. I looked back to see her looking at me with an expression on her face that I could only figure was she had picked up on what I was putting down. And here I'd gone out of my way to keep from saying it directly this time.

I didn't need to. It had been enough of a topic recently that even with the minimum amount of prompting, she was on to me, "Are you on about the Danger Room again?"

"No, I never said that," Technically, I hadn't. Being technically correct was the best kind of correct, "...But since you're bringing it up-."

She let out a sigh before continuing on ahead of me, "Sol, you've got to give this a rest," She said, "Nothing that off has happened in here."

"My bleeding jaguar wounds beg to differ," I shot back. It wasn't enough to convince her though, no matter how random that attack had been.

"That could have just been a preset environmental hazard. We don't know how this place was supposed to be set up."

"This was not a volcano when we started," I said to her. And did they normally feel like they were churning? Whatever knowledge on volcanoes I'd kept from middle school was lacking, "I might have eaten a mouthful of pixie dust and taken a knock to the head, but I remember that much. I know you do too."

She wasn't blind and she wasn't dumb. Hisako had been on this mountain with me, the entire time I was unconscious while the others were off doing hoodrat things to get an objective. If things had changed like this, she absolutely noticed.

"What else can we do?" She asked. And there it was. She was finally caving a bit. Even if she didn't quite believe me yet, the seed I'd planted before was finally beginning to sprout, "You might be right, but I already brought you here when the noises and movements started."

If the Danger Room wanted to, it could just start an eruption right here. There wasn't much we could do about it. And by 'not much', I meant 'absolutely nothing'.

Still, things weren't that cut and dry.

"I don't think it'll just blow with us right here," I said, trying to think back to the jaguar. I had gotten the drop on me. It could have taken a nifty bite out of my throat before I shot it, "I don't think the Danger Room can kill us by itself."

The thing had me dead to rights the night all of this started, and yet it didn't finish the job. It didn't, because it couldn't. No matter what, it was still a machine. Even with sentience, there were proxy programs in place keeping it from doing certain things.

No matter what it wanted to do, it couldn't just do it. It would have been like a human being just deciding that they weren't going to breathe anymore. You could consciously try, but you could only go so far in your attempt before instinct kicked in.

Maybe we could get out of this unscathed? Well, mostly, at least.