No More Tricks, No More Excuses

Changes

"Step 2 A," Khan iterated as if he were reading assembly blueprints, tossing a newly-completed photon-converger rifle to Thad, "check the perimeter."

The teenager caught the weapon thrown to him, the unexpectedness of it bypassing his football skills and making him fumble it briefly as his sister walked up beside him, phone eternally held out.

Lizzy gave the familiar thing a look. "I thought all her dad knew about was building doors?"

"The only thing I Applied my skills to was building doors." Khan corrected the assumption himself. "Engineering is engineering. Sure, my daughter's the one who's got a thing for sci-fi nonsense and anime, retro-future, Gundam weapons," he spun around to face them, pointing their way and trying his best I'm a cool dad now face he could, "but that doesn't mean her old man can't give it a try!"

Another rapidly-assembled weapon flew through the air as he tossed it their way, with Thad properly catching this one and then passing it to Lizzy.

"Ah but one thing building doors all my life does give me a better angle on is Practicality." Khan removed the remaining items from the bag parts they'd gathered during the hour leading up to that moment, starting to put together something that initially looked similar, but quickly began to look very different. "Uzi's too focused on power and intensity, Epic Devastation and all that." He shook his head with a smile. "Didn't even consider it would be easier to keep the power intake amplifier on a separate platform and swap out power cells with each shot."

The final item he'd produced looked at least like the rear 1/3rd of the photon converger weapon, obviously missing the rails and line barrel, along with being noticeably wider. It bore several resonance prongs, onto which Mr Doorman began placing a collection of the same glowing green power cells the weapons were fueled by. When he squeezed the large trigger, instead of a blast erupting, separate charging meters lit up on the side of the device and began slowly building their way toward full.

"Anyways! Step 2 B, descend into the gaping crevasse of the unknown." And he leapt down with no further warning.

The two highschool drones looked at each other, and then down into the dark descent.

"I am so Not going down that hole." Lizzy declared.

He knew she would anyways, but still, Thad played it up just to make sure she stayed on board. "Oh. So, no secret lab battle pics to post and dunk on Rachel with?"

Lizzy's pink eyes narrowed, and circled her visor in a roll. "Ugh."

And down they both went as well.

***

"Is the secret elevator . . . labeled?" N felt it couldn't hurt to ask, but got the same really? look from all three female drones at once.

In Russian. "Your boyfriend is insufferably dense." Doll remarked to V without looking her way.

The comment left Uzi with an dejectedly uncomfortable expression setting, and caused both N and V's eyes to switch to dot-in-circle, though for V that only lasted a fraction of a second before hers filled in again and her yellow eyebrow lines lowered.

"Watch it." She said back.

Doll ignored the response and walked away in her chosen direction, holding her hands out together with her bug drone perched atop them, waiting to see if it alerted to any sensor proximity. Uzi went with her, or at least followed a step or two behind, leaving N and V to follow at the rear together.