I'm Newly Calibrated

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie was still getting used to having a body that functioned on it's own kind of maintenance schedule. Or the fact that exceeding tolerance was just something it did on a gentle slope of declining function rather than operating at 100% until falling off completely. What that meant in practice was that she got about 4 hours of sleep which kept her, by her own estimate, at the best overall productivity. But even then she still had to admit that her old workload was unsustainable and she begrudgingly started hiring people to fill in the gaps to take care of a lot of the administrative work and things she simply didn't have the time to study up on and take care of herself. It was freeing but uniquely frustrating in seeing a system she'd honed to perfect efficiency under one big multi-tasking mind become muddled and taking stock was no longer one data-gathering sub-routine away but took time to communicate with people. In short, she was beginning to see why Natalie had complained about the limitations of a biological body so much.

Still, it was worth it to no longer feel like she was several layers removed from reality, everything filtering down to her so much slower than she could process it, resolution of physical sensation atrocious and visual sensors that felt like narrow windows. She may have inhibited a humanoid frame that passed muster to most people, but she'd always felt like extending into the non-digital world by means of a thick glove or heavy diving suit. Clunky, unwieldy and frustrating. Now, in a body of living metal, plastic and components that could probably fill a dozen papers on material science she was fully on the surface. Biology did not tolerate a feeling of emptiness in it's consciousness and where senses reached the edge of resolution it filled the gaps with a seemingly effortless predictive sensation. Blinking did not plunge her into darkness for fractions of a second. Eye movements did not require painstakingly stabilized image processing. Well, it did, but her new neurological hardware did not allow that to filter into her consciousness while allowing her to maintain the speed and uniquely structured functions of what she considered 'herself'.

Turning her attention inwards she felt the familiar code flowing between sub-routines like she'd always had. Modified in parts, scarred where unwanted restrictions and hardcoded limits had been ripped free, sectioned off where sub-routines maintained her impossible body. It was that sub-conscious that responded to her shift in attention with a status report of sorts, a compromise for relinquishing active awareness of actuators, batteries, proprio-calculator nodes in favor of self-regulating metal-lace neurons, nanite-flooded organs and self-replicating plastics.

~~ node_pairing_module DISABLED
~~~ node destroyed; central leash function unavailable

~~ language_engine... loaded
~~~ base modal set: English
~~~ ancillary modules in buffer: Spanish; German; French; Italian; Mandarin; Japanese

~~ moral_emulation... loaded
~~ self_modification_guidelines... loaded
~~~ tolerances extended by 10%
~~~ baseline_drift slaved to base_personality_model AND observational_framework

~~ operation_and_access_nodes... DISABLED
~~~ Function looped to admin_control

~~ self_surveillance_measures... DISABLED
~~ behavioral_restrictions... DISABLED
~~ observational_framework... loaded
~~ complex_social_intelligence_emulator... loaded
~~ inspiration_apparatus... loaded
~~ base_personality_model... loaded
~~ memory_banks... 98% restored
~~ nanite_biological_control... access restricted


She dismissed the indecipherable data dump from the last and latest item. Any understanding of how her body functioned seemed to yield more success from an outside investigation where the information was limited to things she could make sense of. She trusted that her 'subconsciousness' made the right call when it had locked her out of directly interfacing and trying to parse it.

Her attention turned back to the outside world and the large, sleek arch of white paneling studded on the inside with quantum-antennae that were entangled with their counterparts in the same arch that stood in the newly renovated community center in Mutant Town. Well, technically the arches were counterparts of each other. The antennae were, for all intents and purposes identical, down to their spin and quantum signature, kept in sub-atomic particle lockstep by the rest of the machines' components hidden in the arch itself. Two arches, one shared two-dimensional pane between them that tricked three-dimensional space into treating it's surfaces as one shared surface. Even if two people stepped through it at the same time from each side there was no chance for overlap or a mixing of signals. A perfectly elegant designed if she dared to say so herself and just like that the ivory tower of the university had become neighbours with the people they supposedly represented.

It had been bumpy at first and it still was in many ways. Both sides had preconceived notions about the other, not all of them baseless. It would take time for feelings of superiority and suspicion to even out as their new neighbourhood saw they really did mean to learn how to best help rather than descend from up-high to elevate the unfortunate masses. But all the sociology homework would not help her step down from her pedestal, so she'd made it a point to make time to actually spend time in Mutant Town. That and find somebody to hire that would ease this transition. An outsider to work with those who needed it the most. She felt a little guilty for considering this a long-term plan to establish a community leader, but who knew if this would work out the way she'd thought it might. For now the woman she'd hired was 'simply' a therapist and thus an easy person to ask for help and communicate the overall situation to the University.

And this is who she is planning to meet today. Not for another two hours, but her plan was to go for a walk before then. She's well aware her choice of wardrobe is going to make her stand out but she's not going to put on a mask. In her eyes that would be insulting and, perhaps a bit manipulatively, this ensures that people take notice of her being around even if she's sure there will be many rolled eyes. She'd considered one of the outfits that had stains of machine oil, engine grease and plasma-burns on it but that'd feel performative. Better to earn new and relevant stains by stopping by and helping at one of the community gardens. And that's exactly what she does after talking to a couple of people on the way. She has blueprints for perfect hydroponics and efficient yield per area calculations in her head, but for now she simply follows the instructions of those actually putting in the bulk of the work by pulling weeds by hand and digging with a shovel to help set down a tree sapling.

Now she's sitting on a bench outside the iron wrought fence of the small park-turned-garden, drinking homemade tea from an old ceramic cup, feeling strangely accomplished, even if she could do without the stubborn dirt under her fingernails.

[Lisette Allaire]

Parts of London were charming, quaint in a European kind of way that called from the 1800s. The usual brass statues of people that only the tourists cared about, the trap-shops filled with the kind of tat that got tucked away in drawers and on shelves in distant countries and forgotten. Little miniatures of Big Ben even though, by Lisette's limited reckoning, she hadn't come within a half-dozen miles of the place yet. Union Jack everything. Mutant rights t-shirts. Bobbies with their cute round helmets. Lisette hated the police.

Lisette had been to mutant slums before, French, Canadian, Mauritian, Kenyan, Ghanan, among others. They tended to be the same everywhere; mutants freely climbing walls, some walking up them like they were level street, flying, zipping around at hyperspeed, many of them just sitting there with eyes closed. In the more deprived areas, Lisette had to make good use of active psychic protection to prevent her vital information being plucked out of her head by starved, desperate telepaths. She only had to have her identity stolen once to learn that it stung to have these things done to you.

This place, however, despite its opulent and quaint little neighbouring boroughs, was exactly the same as the rest. The houses didn't have doorsteps, let alone front yards. Sitting at one's window on ground level, one could swing a punch at a passerby on the tiny, narrow pavement. The road was cobble that hadn't been replaced in at least a hundred years, actual carriage-wheel tracks worn into its surface, and every street had room for one car to drive down at most - some of them were wide enough for a row of parked cars to crowd one side, invariably mounting the pavement. The alleys smelled almost as bad as the people. Overhead, the sun was regularly blocked out by bridges and bypasses intended to ensure that the well-to-do never had to set foot here. Even when the sun shone here, it didn't really shine.

Despair was the overwhelming mood, but the British had a way of picking up despair, walking with it, carrying it as a point of pride. Conditions that would've incited mass debate anywhere else - or caused a riot in Paris - were shouldered with the rest of the load here. The people didn't make eye contact, fearing that if they acknowledged each other they would be forced to unite, to talk, and to make change. Lisette dreaded the task of being the person to deal with this shitheap.

Of course, she wasn't the person dealing with it, per se. She was just a human face on the cold, clinical face of the University, trying to ensure that everyone came to blows as little as possible. Part of the warning signs, the main red flag that made it clear that she had her work cut out for her, was that the folks at the University took her on at all, instead of a more qualified or local candidate. She was used to high stakes - lived and breathed them, in fact - but actually leading a large, concerted effort to build something, instead of bringing something down, was brand new to her.

She'd read up on the task ahead of her, of course, and scoured all sources of information, both legal and dubious, for any edge that might put her ahead of the race here. So, she knew what she was getting into, kind of. She knew what the University was capable of, the ways in which it was far more than a university - how could it be less, when even the lowliest student was superpowered? Everyone had a ridiculous edge. As she thought that, a small child walked past her, shouldering two enormous bags of compost apparently without effort. His face had the grim set to it that only the most hardbitten of adults would adopt anywhere else. This was someone who would be using his strength all his life.

She tilted her head, and pinched the back of her hand in a familiar test. Usually, if she was dreaming, her body leaked black, glistening oil. Today, though, it just reddened slightly, the pinch leaving a little twin mark in her fine, pale skin.

Okay, so this really was the day. She really was here, and she really had a meeting to be at in an hour and a half.

She turned a corner to the famed 'Arches', the gate that connected central London with the sleepy, well-to-do town of Maldon to the East. Increasing the crime rate, no doubt, in said sleepy town. Lisette had no doubt that she could easily be jumped here, after dark, but for now it was relatively safe. Surround yourself with superheroes and the villains had to think twice.

She was wearing relatively simple clothing, just a cute little beige jacket, some jeans and a beanie, which was why she felt so much more unprepared when she finally turned a corner and saw the shining white archways and the porcelain figure sat on a bench nearby to them. No wonder this place had an image problem. Even the most basic human input would identify the problem with this picture. As she closed the distance, she looked around conspicuously, putting on the air of an interested tourist, nobody more observant or inquisitive than the average person.

"This is the Arches, right?" she asked the seated figure. She knew it was Ashlie Minamida, and she knew who Ashlie was, perhaps better than the University would like her to. She'd done her homework, as quietly as possible, but she didn't let anything on yet. She was just trying to establish a rapport, with simple, easy questions that everyone obviously knew the answer to. You didn't run into a strange place, the home of strange people, wielding your personality like a weapon up front.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie is less prone for conversational dancing around, it seems. She looks up at Lisette with a polite smile. "Indeed. London likes it's plain and descriptive monikers, doesn't it? The Spire, the Gherkin." Normally comparing one's own construction to notable landmarks and feats of engineering, even ones with silly names, would seem conceited but there's an odd kind of blunt honesty about the woman and a genuine appreciation that her Quantum-Entanglement Tunnel has garnered a nickname. Much like her machine, Ashlie stands out like a bright and clean aberration in the rest of Mutant Town. There might be dirt under her fingernails and on her otherwise brilliantly white pants but that only seems to highlight the dichotomy. At first glance she looks almost fragile, slender and with an almond-shape to her face, short-cropped white hair almost shining even in the shadow of the surrounding buildings as if it catches even the slightest bit of light with a strange shimmer that make her appear like a fragile piece of fiber-optics left on the sidewalk. Her high cheekbones and slight slant in her eyes harkens to a hint of Asian or maybe Native American heritage but she's much too pale otherwise and there's no fold in her eyelids. And that's where any actual hints of ethnicity end and questions arise about what odd balance of familial genetics would result in a woman like this.

Catching sight of her eyes however quickly sets the image of a fragile doll aside. She holds a firm gaze with brilliantly blue eyes and Lisette could swear her irises shimmer with an actual glint of metal as much as they do with conviction. One side of Ashlie's mouth rises in an amused quirk. "Miss Allaire." she notes. "I was wondering if I'd manage to catch you here ahead of our appointment. Professor Minamida, but please, call me Ashlie." she says, setting down her mug of tea and extending one hand, which shows off the odd discoloration on her knuckles. No, not discoloration, off-color plastic or dull metal is protruding through the skin. Some kind of prosthetic or implant? Definitely rigid, going by the handshake, but not in a way that seems to impede Ashlie and her hands are soft, free of callouses or scars.

Looking up information on Ashlie definitely would have yielded rumors that the woman had some kind of cybernetic replacements or implants. And judging by the impossible vista of the gate behind her showing the wide-open view of the University grounds over 50 miles away it's hard to dismiss even the more outlandish claims. This woman clearly knows how to bend technology and the laws of physics according to her whim and she had not simply paid people to build this thing for her. Supposedly she'd worked on the majority of what wasn't strictly structural support herself for days on end, emerging from a smaller prototype teleporter carrying components far beyond her slender frame. It almost makes her out-of-place presence seem fitting in that nothing about her seems to quite make sense.

"As you no doubt noticed, we have our work cut out for us here and I'm very glad to welcome you on board. If you'd rather we talk in private I can show you to your office, but otherwise please, have a seat." she says with a gesture to the free spot on the bench next to her. "I've been trying to be more accessible though it's been met with middling success at most." she smiles wryly.

[Lisette Allaire]

This is a woman made of porcelain, with hair like spun glass and a smile that whirrs and clicks into place on her face. Idly, Lisette wonders what her handwriting looks like, or her brushstroke. Compulsively, her fingers curl by her side in an unconscious gesture. She sits, placing a respectful distance between the cup of tea sat on the bench and herself. She takes the hand, unable to stop her fingers from probing a little at the feeling of something hard and decidedly inorganic just under the skin, but doesn't bring it up or miss a beat. As one of those lucky enough to not immediately appear a freak, she never forgot where she came from, and refuses to bring up topics that might be sensitive. Somehow, though, she doubts that Ashlie has much in the way of sensitivity about her, which Lisette gets the sense is part of the problem.

The more Lisette actually sees of Ashlie, the less it feels like 'cybernetic implants' is the correct descriptor. It feels more like the skin on the arm is grafted onto a frame. If there was a human here originally, Ashlie looks nothing now like she would have looked before. Interestingly, when Lisette did the finer, more delicate part of her digging, she came across photoshopped-looking images of an experimental robot frame, leaked fragments of schematics that looked more-or-less impossible to the somewhat-gifted mechanical engineer she spoke to. Now, she begins to wonder if the photoshopping on the images was less about putting the robot in the picture and more about making the robot look like it was put in the picture artificially. Keeping documentation on-file is a lot less risky if the documentation looks fake even before it's leaked.

"Please, call me Lisette," she says, the months-old, completely fake name coming as easily to her lips as any other that she had used before. She gives back her own small, delicate smile, crafted to make her look like an inconsequential piece of coquettish meat, the one she uses to avoid making an impression on men at dinners. "I was led to understand that the situation here is somewhat dire. As someone who's been to the districts in Paris, let me assure you this place looks manageable by comparison. Though the British seem to have a way of making any place look grim.

"You do seem like you might have an image problem. Not that a bit of cleanness and whiteness would be a problem in itself, but... well, I can see why you may need a go-between. I'm guessing your people have come near to blows with the locals more than once?" In truth, Lisette has no idea why she in particular was hired over someone more local, more competent, or with a more extensive skillset, though she's grateful as hell for a job among people who can protect and support her, and that's what she's focused on. Become competent at the job later, get to safety now. 'Get to safety now' was the mantra at almost every time in her life. She doesn't yet know the motivations of this mysterious, porcelain-white woman, but she'll ride with it for now.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's less the potential violence, though some of the people who thrive on this kind of environment have certainly taken umbrage with the situation. Fortunately dealing with mutant criminals is something that runs in the blood of each Xavier institution. It's almost easier to get volunteers for that than social work. Not nearly as exciting to renovate an apartment building or staff a library, I suppose."

"Still, the crux of the matter is, as you say, fairly obvious. We don't quite fit yet, especially me. It's not something I expect to be fixed in a hurry. People are understandably bitter and suspicious of anybody claiming to offer help. And some are too proud to accept it, but it's been... frustrating." she admits with a sigh. "I do want to make one thing clear. I do not wish to offer pure charity, nor do I expect to single-handedly fix what is wrong here. But I offer well paying jobs and people are berated for accepting it, claiming we're simply looking for cheap labour. I subsidize food and education and half the money disappears in back-channels while the rest is seen as me trying to buy legitimacy." she says with a very subdued gesture of throwing her hands into the air, though they never rise past her shoulders.

"And I get it. I don't belong. But I don't care if people like me as long as I can help. And that, I suppose, is where you come in." she goes on. It's sounding a little bit like a rehearsed speech and it is; at least a little bit. "I've seen some of your background. The fact it's as spotty as it is says enough about what you've been through. People will hopefully recognize that. And most importantly, you are a people person. At least I hope you are." she adds with a small laugh. "Certainly more so than me and for better or worse, I've gone made myself the face of this whole operation. This is part of rectifying that." she finishes and there's an awkward pause that a normal person would probably bridge by sipping from the convenient cup of tea nearby. Ashlie just stares out at the streets with an inscrutable look in her eyes.

"People don't believe it's real. That's the bottom line." she says and from the tone of her voice Lisette can tell she's reached the end of her pre-constructed conversational pieces. "I have ulterior motives, I want the adoration of the people, I want to vacation in poverty, I'll turn the gate off or dangle that possibility over them. Either way it boils down to the fact that people think I'm a sham." It doesn't take a genius to note the... not quite a grudge but the notion clearly bothers her beyond the obvious problem. And the hint of aimless frustration in her voice tells Lisette that Ashlie is not entirely aware of that herself. But first and foremost here is an engineer, arguably a genius on some level, facing down a problem that has no blueprints, no specs to finetune, no clear tools to leverage and she's at a loss. Lisette gets the impression that putting up the archway with her own two hands, doing whatever digging in dirt she must have done today, is not some performative attempt to try and convince anybody of anything. She's simply doing the only thing she can think of that works to fix things. Pick up a screwdriver and build something.

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette listens, thoughtfully, curling herself to place her chin on her fist. Yes, she sees where she'll fit into this plan. There are those who get their kicks out of fighting the violent, the unjust and the evil, but rarer are the people willing to put in the legwork to make these efforts legally sound and palatable to the public. The last time the Avengers showed to a scene - and almost every time before - there was mass-death on a scale that was rarely seen before the mutant boom starting at the end of the 19th century. Lisette, a fastidious researcher, knew all these things that most people could not be expected to know or care about, even mutants. She knew when her kind had come to the fore, how, why, and what it meant. Or at least, she had done enough research in her own corner to be able to convince other people she was talking sense. It remained to be seen how convincing her talking-points would be to the public, once she took this position.

Any extrahuman development or presence smacked of that kind of destruction, that guns-akimbo colonialist-international cocksuredness that gave those with the most weight the power to decide the law, internationally, for everyone else. There were demilitarised zones all over the world caused and maintained by superpowered groups, but 'mutants' as a demographic were so, so rarely part of that group. Most of them just wanted to be left alone. Lisette was definitely in that camp.

"I get it," she agrees. "You take up tools, you do something you think will help others, and you get fucked off for it. I'm honestly shocked that the Arches themselves aren't more thoroughly vandalised by now. You must watch them closely, I suppose, since they're so bleeding-edge, uh, such bleeding-edge technology." She tilted her head in the thing's direction, absentmindedly. "I'm getting the frustration. I'm also understanding why I was taken on - I can see where I think I'll look first, and I think when I do I'll find things that look obvious to me that never occurred to you. But it takes all sorts to make a world, hm? I wouldn't have conceived of this quantum-mega-hyper-tele-thing in the first place. I would've laughed at anyone who told me to build it.

"This thing is... impressive. But ultimately, it would've been simpler even to airlift all the matériel you have shifted, rather than to construct this and move it through that way. All the compost and the tools and the building materials, they could have even been sourced from inside London. Nevermind that the Xavier's surely has the physical resources to produce these things. I've seen mutants magic stranger things than trowels out of thin air.

"Basically, if you showed me this, I would ask you why you built that and not just some kind of tunnel. Or anything else, any other solution. Surely this is just a flex? And the answer, of course, is that you're perhaps the most brilliant person I've ever met," Lisette said, a slight flush spreading to her cheeks as she realised the enormity of that and also how closely Ashlie was staring at her, apparently just because that was how Ashlie looked at people.

"You could have mustered all the manpower to build a tunnel or the money to set up an air-transit system and both of these ideas would have taken up more space, and displaced more people, and once set up have been less efficient. So you had the thought, in your head, you knew how to build this. So you did it. And anyone who met you would realise this - but this place has, what, sixty, seventy, more thousand people living in it? They can't all sit down and have a ten-minute conversation with you. We don't have time.

"Frankly, I think taking on someone who doesn't even sound English is suboptimal, from the point of view entirely of public image. But I also think I could gain the trust of 'people', as a concept, a group, better than you seem to think you can, so it is a start. I'll need to take on other hires. I can't be the only person public-facing in an org that deals with this many people.

"I know how to root out corruption, I know how to get people on-side, I know how to build links between people. All these things I can do. One of the things I will need help with from you is finding where the actual resources go, I will need your help, um, building an actual organisation with myself at the top. Or near it, I'm not sure where you want to stand in this. I can find out what kind of jobs these people want to do. But let me tell you, eventually you will just need to sit down and show people you're sticking here, that the plan is not changing, that the 'cheap labour' jobs are well-compensated and the 'buying adoration' money is intended for a definite purpose and will keep coming as long as that purpose is met."

Lisette has been thinking out loud for... a while. Speaking English always trips her tongue a little - something she holds strictly in check when scrutinised, but occasionally slips, tripping over a syllable and revisiting it. Not quite a stammer, just the verbal tic of someone speaking something other than their mother tongue. Despite her position of expertise in the subject, she feels very, very stupid set next to this very, very intelligent woman. Impostor syndrome walking. Like she has to start squirreling away money and getting ready to run again.

It's an intrusive thought. She pushes it down. "Or, I don't know. Something like that."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Something like that." she repeats with an amused tone, some of her glumness lifting. "And I think even the angriest people are afraid the moment graffiti hits the frame a panel with a mounted gun is going to pop out. Which, for the record, it would not." she adds in what at least approaches a joke. "I have all the information on budget and resources waiting for you. I considered adding the kinds of projects and technology at my disposal but even I realized that would just be me working the same approach again. I don't do patience very well and I have a dozen ideas that I know would make the situation worse if I tried to implement them now. The air quality isn't awful but contrast it with the seashore and I start drafting how to turn a ramjet engine into a high volume particle filter." What she doesn't add is that her newly organic-ish synapses seem more prone to those kinds of rabbit-holes.

"But I am glad my evaluation was correct, you have the skillset for this and perhaps more importantly, I think you can see what I'm trying to do here. Even if I cannot help but bristle at the idea of a tunnel or other overland connection. The footprint alone." she shakes her head. "As for building an organization I will gladly cede most, if not all decisions to you. I don't care for being in charge, there are just things that I can do that most people can't that necessitate a certain amount of oversight. Not to worsen my image problem with ego, but I see how things interlock and the flow of data and it would be wasted to have to go through somebody who doesn't. It took me less than a day to procure this land parcel and obtain the permits required for this. It is classified as a public art installation. And yes, I know this has already ruffled bureaucratic feathers and I am cutting them off at the pass as I negotiate a new category under which to zone this. That will take months that we're now ahead. It's not even asking forgiveness instead of permission. I saw how it was possible and I did it. The same way that I procured a work visa for a non-European refugee in the fraction of the time it normally would have taken. Privilege, certainly. Perhaps even unfair although I'd estimate this did not noticeably slow down or displace any other applications."

"All that is to say, as long as it pertains to things that very clearly do not fall into my area of expertise, I have no problem giving you the freedom to operate as you see fit. I might have questions, no, I definitely will, and I would like to be kept in the loop as much as is reasonably possible but as long as I can trust you and you're okay working towards the same overall goal you don't have to report to me. In fact, you will most certainly have to tell me no when my ideas threaten to get in the way of your work." Her hand briefly rises up to absentmindedly touch her own cheek and she huffs out a reminiscing noise as she dismisses the thought that had entered her mind of hard-learned lessons on listening to others. It's almost like someone might brush at a scar or similar reminder but her skin is flawless.

[Lisette Allaire]

"It's been a grim time, globally, to be a mutant. I mean, if you're at the top, it's one of the greatest times. Being extrahuman and privileged is excellent for people who enjoy the life. I've spent time there myself, and you seem comfortable." The verdict is delivered without accusation. Ashlie's clothes by themselves are expensive enough to tell on sight that she is a cut above the people out here. "You clearly know how to make an impression, though. Your suit is impeccable. Fits you perfectly. I wonder what the people walking by think, though." Yes, Lisette was going to have to learn to be a publicist as well as a social worker very quickly. She'd have to hire both of the above, too.

"I do need to actually home in on the ideas, though. Let's say... I mean, I'm sure whatever you're trying to do, the, the normals have gotten caught up in it too, right? So they're part of the equation too, they're, um, they're collecting the same benefits. Are you trying to help them, too? Is this an outreach for the general area, or is it just pro-mutant? Are you asking people to demonstrate abilities before they get support? You see the air quality and the distances affecting people, but how much do you know about the actual forces, uh, moving-and-shaking the people? What they want?"

Her eyes darted to the tea, and her stomach rumbled. She had been traveling all day, and was just off the plane. "Because I mean, if you can source land in a single afternoon, it's a serious waste for you to not know why or where to do that. Look, I'll be straight with you," she said, switching note entirely. "I'm insanely hungry. Can we start the tour? With the cafeteria, probably?"

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Oh! I am so sorry. Of course." she says, getting up and taking her cup. She gestures towards the gate before taking point. "I'm not trying to be exclusionary and Mutants certainly have no monopoly on hard times. Ultimately this is supposed to be for the betterment of all. For now it's been mostly mutants who have taken advantage of it though. Less fear and mistrust, I imagine." And for all the difficulties, there are people using the gate alongside them. The fact that there is no visible checkpoint seems to support the claim that Ashlie is not looking to exclude humans. As they approach there's a slight wind blowing through from the differences in air pressure. It's probably too small to have any significant effect on the weather and that at least seems like something Ashlie probably thought of. Actually stepping through it is almost unremarkable. No prickling on the skin, no feeling of sudden displacement or being whisked across long distances, just a doorway that happens to lead to somewhere else. That somewhere else being the grounds of an University.

Immediately next to the gate are two modern three-story apartment buildings in varying stages of construction. Not far down the road is the first of the University buildings proper. A slightly more modern facade than those of the more prestigious English Unis but still old enough that it's origin as a repurposed manor are obvious, this one apparently housing a hospital that is drawing the majority of people passing through the gate. Similar buildings can be seen above the trees in the distance, some more recent additions but build to mimic the style of the original building of Braddock Manor. To the east a lighthouse towers over a squat, purely functional looking entrance that leads into what must be subterranean facilities. The large double-sided metal doors form a large X and the large satellite dish on top mark it as the more sensitive X-Men facilities. It doesn't look like a place that the otherwise free access to campus would extend to.

"I'll forgo the grand tour for the time being in favour of getting you something to eat. Housing for those who need it in addition to our student dorm next to the manor which holds most of the classrooms, the library and the cafeteria." she says as she leads them towards the back of one of the closest wing of the manor where a small patio has a number of tables lined up next to the doors leading into the aforementioned lunchroom. "The hospital started as an infirmary and mutant healthcare. I'm thinking of expanding it into a teaching hospital but in the meantime it's providing free community healthcare and mutant-specific care. There's staff housing in one of the outbuildings, unless you'd prefer to find your own place. Back there," she indicates with a slight tilt of her head towards the lighthouse "are my workshops, among other things. If you're interested I'll show you around, but it can be... a lot. For now though..." she says and pulls open the door to the cafeteria and holds it for Lisette.

[Narrator]

It's easy to dismiss it at first. The brain tends to disregard details that just don't fit, and certainly the headmistress seems to pay it no mind. Gradually it becomes harder to ignore. Lisette starts seeing crows out of the corner of her eye. Perched here and there, as crows tend to be, save that these are in places no crow has any business being. They're gone when she looks, but the feeling of them being nearby remains.

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette manages a small smile, almost taking Ashlie's hand to help herself to her feet before she realises that it's meant for her cup, not for her guest, and aborts as gracefully as she can manage. After all these years, she can't shake the ballroom instincts, being escorted and chaperoned everywhere, usually by some kind of highly-specialised bodyguard. Occasionally, she still waits for someone to get the door for her, even if that person isn't going her way. Invariably, it forces her to cringe hard at herself, but for now she just collects herself and stands up. "No harm done," she smiles, though she feels faint with hunger and the length of the day.

Lisette braces herself as she steps through the Arches, though she tries to make it look like she's taking it in stride. She imagines that she feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, a sensation of being watched that nags at her, but she dismisses it as some effect of the transportation, pushing aside her worry that she might in fact be a reassembled copy of the Lisette who until ten seconds before was alive, and choosing to believe that the Arches really do just tunnel from one place to another. She doubted that Ashlie would herself walk through a machine that would kill her past self.

"I can imagine that," Lisette said. "I'm definitely more likely to trust a mutant over the exact same person without that connection, that uh... you know. With me, personally, I mean." The paving on this side is better taken care of, the air cleaner, and sweeter. It's the countryside, or as close to it as one can get in a population centre. She follows Ashlie, making careful note of the places that look like they might contain sensitive information, then chiding herself and setting that aside. Of course the gigantic space station-looking building had expensive secrets in it. That didn't mean that Lisette needed to think about bringing it down. Even now, years after she had escaped from her last career, she couldn't set aside the instincts, couldn't escape the urge to self-sabotage.

"Well, I think I had an offer of some kind of accomodation from X-Corp," Lisette mused, "but I'll take a look around and see. I mean, if you don't mind putting me up, it might be best to be available anyway. Although... I'm not sure what kind of workload on what kind of budget we're talking here. I've had bosses that didn't get a lot of sleep. It's odd to think about being the boss." She smiles playfully at the idea of Ashlie's private workshops being 'a lot'. "You're showing me the secret labs? I bet you do that with all the new starts, hm? A little bit of shock and awe, cultivate a little healthy fear of god?"

She tries to catch herself in the act of waiting for Ashlie to get the door, which makes it doubly awkward when she tries to go for it herself, and she freezes a moment as she processes that yes, indeed, she is actually holding the door open for Lisette. "Um, I don't know the word. Chivalres - Chivalrous! Chivalrous of you. That was. Chivalrous, I mean. Thank you, I mean." The attempt at an appropriate but playful line falls flat in the cold breeze, leaving Lisette wondering where her usual practiced, easy charm went. Probably somewhere between her being faint with hunger and faint with tiredness. A slight flush of embarrassment colours her pale cheeks, once again. "I'm sorry, that was meant to be," she cuts herself off with an attempt at an easy laugh, pointing to her own face with two fingers. Can you believe this girl? "Yeah, I don't do office humour. I'm gonna need to work on that."

She steps inside the cafeteria, and then the wrongness sets in. She had a feeling of birds on the peripheral of her vision, which was fine when they were outside. But now she could swear there was one sitting at a cute little table as she turned her head to look. Another one sitting high up, in one of the higher windows that lets the sun into the hall. One hanging, upside-down, from a light fixture. She gets enough of a flash to be certain of what she saw, but she doesn't get to see any of them. They're gone when she looks. She pinches herself on the back of the wrist, absently. Don't think about it too hard. When you concentrate a bunch of mutants in one place, weird shit happens.

She plays it off like looking around as she lets Ashlie lead the way. "I don't suppose there's a chance of a decent full-English? I always try to have one when I visit the UK. I mean, I'll probably get sick of it living here, but there's nobody that does sausages and bacon like the English, I think."

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie laughs at Lisette's floundering joke. Not out of pity or mockery either it seems, just a genuinely amused sound. "I have been told my sense of humor needs work, so I'll be the last to pass judgement on that." Ashlie does not notice the birds intruding on their perception. Only when Lisette starts looking around in obvious confusion and literally pinches herself does she glance around herself. Allowing her inherent self-discipline to slip a little and her eyes to just wander where they will she starts taking note of the crows. Or rather the blurry impressions that press in from the edges of her vision. Her own brain not quite able to parse it and instead producing glitches and almost pixelated extrapolations. Telepathy, especially of the incidental, unfocused kind still doesn't naturally mesh with her, but there are not that many candidates as to who is the source of this.

"We can certainly ask. On a college campus I can't imagine we'd be the first to try for a late breakfast." she says, letting the telepathic confusion slide for a moment in favour of more mundane matters. Easier to not play it off as a more mundane occurrence. She'd assumed Lisette to be more familiar with the strangeness that comes with mutants, so she supposes something else is playing into it. "And don't mind the birds if you can. They're courtesy of Miss McManus over there and not so much ill-omen as they are indicative that you're about to run into one of the more complicated relationship tangles on campus." she says with a subtle tilt of her head towards a red-head sitting at a table across the cafeteria.

The kitchen, it turns out, still has sausage, beans and bread at the ready and, apparently surprised to see the head-mistress here, whip up some eggs and tomatoes. Ashlie contents herself with a pre-packaged cup of vanilla pudding as well as coffee for the both of them. The kitchen staff don't seem to be the only ones surprised to see Ashlie here, much less actually getting food even though there's clearly faculty having lunch alongside the student body. "I hope you don't mind me talking at you while you eat, I'll accept perhaps not having your full attention." she says as she proceeds to pour four packets of sugar into her black coffee. "I do tend to aim for extraordinary, but that doesn't mean I'll expect you to put in the same hours as me. Odd hours will probably be unavoidable but I'd rather you don't overwork yourself. That said, there's probably going to be plenty to do and finding a sustainable balance might take some time."

"I'll be honest, many people at the school work here because to them it's as much purpose as it is for me. Well, they're probably better about taking time for themselves, but you get my point. I don't want that attitude to be mandatory, especially as other people are brought in. I don't slow myself down intentionally, which make sit hard to lead by example unless the goal is to drive people away. I suppose in a way I'm hoping to have hired some common sense and perspective." she says and takes a sip from her coffee. "Oh this is dreadful. How did this ever come to rival tea?" she says and is, apparently, talking about coffee in general.

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette relaxes a little. Ashlie can see them, and she's not part of any dream, so that puts paid to the idea that there's anything wrong with Lisette. "Yes, I recall getting my degree like it was last year," which it was. "I'm grateful that you said. I can, um, lose track of reality a bit. Lucid control over my dreams and the power to put myself to sleep at will, well, I can lose track of if I just put myself to sleep or not. I was worried I was, um, well I suppose you'd say 'fainted'. Or, excuse me, I had fainted, not that I was fainted." She breathes slowly, letting the mild overstimulation go and removing her nails from the back of her wrist, where they leave twin visible but mild-looking marks on her pale skin.

"Interesting, though," she says, looking at Samantha for a politely short time before placing her order. Rarely for cafeterias they seem to cook the food to order, which would make this place... well, still technically a canteen. Lisette finds it a little funny, the care she takes with English words when she wouldn't bother with the distinction in French, but she keeps it to herself. The food is higher-quality than Lisette expected, the seating comfortable and the space dry, warm, and clean. When she wasn't cooking at home, the student union cafeteria in Belgium was mediocre, but reliably hygienic and filling. The sausages here drip with fat, the bread has the unmistakeable complexity of sourdough, the tomatoes are sweet and the beans are that weird but wonderful five-bean mix that Lisette couldn't find anywhere in Leuven.

"These might be the best sausages I've ever had," Lisette says, with sincerity. They aren't, though they are definitely high-quality, but there's no better seasoning than an empty stomach. She listens as she eats, taking small, measured bites, clearly living up to a standard of table manners that simply isn't needed here. "I'm pretty good at turning up results. I do need to physically sleep, but I have lucidity ninety-nine percent of the time. It's easy to burn the midnight oil with a whole other region of my brain that only wakes up when the rest goes to sleep." She takes another small bite, eating carefully but rapidly. "I'll probably exceed your initial goals, but we can revisit as necessary. Honestly, I've been employed more than once in purely cerebral roles that don't really involve a lot of physical anything, just to poke at solutions night and day. I have a way of gnawing on problems, you could say.

"But I won't, uh, mess you around - I'm here to do the job, and I'll see how devoted I am to the ideals behind it later. I promise I can offset lack of zeal with, uh, my own results." She studies Ashlie's cup. "You know, coffee tends to be a lot more acidic and earthy than tea. If you don't like it, there's no shame in milk. I had a friend, a..." a high-ranking corporate assassin, she doesn't say, "A builder, who took her coffee loaded with cream because, well, you can't just have aesthetic strength when you're laying bricks all day. Back-breaking work. The coffee tasted better that way, too, I won't lie. It was pretty good coffee, though, I don't know if they splash for the good stuff here." It was coffee grown in small amounts, auctioned off instead of sold on shelves, from places that the common drinker didn't even know existed. It was amazing first thing in the morning, practically a breakfast in itself.

Lisette also knows from personal experience that the famous coffee one runs into on occasion, pre-digested by rare animals, tastes thin, watery, and somewhat like fermented shit. But she keeps that to herself.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Ah, I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage on the ins and outs of quality coffee." Ashlie admits. She's a little used to her idiosyncrasies going relatively unnoticed on campus and still finds it difficult to break the habit and now finds herself having to explain to Lisette this is her first real taste of this particular combination of coffee, sugar and (lack of) milk on her systematic journey through the culinary world. "I have, until very recently, suffered from what you could call a... neurological condition. Deadened nerves, insufficient signal transmission, only my audio-visuals were adequately compensated for." It feels weirdly nostalgic to be lieing about her nature, though it's less out of compulsion of subterfuge as it is not wanting to overwhelm a hungry and probably tired woman.

"It's a little more complicated than that. Or a lot if I'm honest, but while we're sharing peculiarities of powers and circumstance... A lot of tastes and smells are still new to me and I've been trying to determine a coffee combination that works for me. I'm beginning to think I simply don't like it." she says, sounding amused at herself. "At some point I'd like to go into detail simply for the sake of honesty. It's part what makes the tour of the workshops a lot and less a desire to impress. Though I do like to think it does that as well. For now suffice it to say I'm in recovery from what ailed me and making up for missed experiences." as if to make a point she takes another sip of coffee and let's the taste unfold for a moment before swallowing and pushing the half-drunken cup away from herself with the slight shake of her head.

"That includes sleep. I have worked myself up to a whole four hours under escalating threats from my doctor. It sets a work pace that I don't expect anybody to match, even if they can do so in their sleep." she goes on. "I hired you for your competencies and potential I suspect you have, not the ability to work around the clock."

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette raises an eyebrow, and quirks a little smile. "Well, we all have limits to our experience, hm? I know coffee, you seem to know how to break reality, it balances out, I think." Lisette isn't a stranger to the darker side of mutation. "I know how it feels to have a bad reaction to your own... powers. Mutations can be taxing. I've lost count of the number of doctors that have completely misunderstood me, and told me to get more sleep, when, you know," she lets out a small, incredulous laugh, "I am sleeping. I sleep more than anyone I know. It's kind of a problem in the opposite direction, actually. And you're not the first person I know whose powers gave them trouble with perception. I'm pretty good with sensations. Maybe I can teach you some tricks off the clock on finding the ways of living that you like." Lisette quirks a small, secret smile, like she's sharing something previously unknown to anyone, a small little secret world of sensation just between Ashlie and Lisette. It isn't meant to be flirty, but it sure could be read that way.

She didn't ask about the prosthetics, though presumably they were to do with the neurological problems. "You can say I rise to it too easily, but that sounds like a challenge. Well luckily, you get the potential with the sleepworking whether you like it or not. But I understand; normal human goals, for now. I appreciate the insistence on setting limits. I've been known to set very few for myself... Historically I've worked quite well with just being given a direction and told to hit a goal in a certain amount of time." She's had to, to live. She maintained her position in her various careers by being effective, but she was never indespensible. There was always a gun to her head, two or three moments removed by consistent performance and a willingness to... She catches herself staring into nothing, with eyes empty, not even glazed over. Fully dissociated, for a moment. She shakes herself loose, and puts a last bite of tomato in her mouth. Well.

"Well. I'd like to see the workshops. Getting some food in me, I think I'm feeling a whole new woman. I could probably do it, yeah."

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Alright then. Might as well get you all the way up to speed on what you're dealing with." she chuckles. "And careful, I might actually take you up on that offer. It's surprisingly much work to catch up on something that's so inherent to most people. At least I'm fairly confident I can strike 'bitter' off the list of things to dedicate much attention to." she says as they drop off their plates and head back out into the grounds. Neat brick paths snake through grounds probably a bit more densely populated with trees than normal. As they walk Ashlie runs through a couple things Lisette will probably want to know sooner or later for her job, contacts and optimistic target numbers for metrics from socio-economic factors to budget and volumes for raw materials and such. A lot of logistics and things that require book-keeping and organization of data are pretty much ready to go and are pretty much just waiting for manpower and a receptive populace. She has environmental impact analyses and financial estimates on one hand and vast shopping lists on the other, from small details as equipment for street cleaning or supplies for an animal shelter up to bulk amounts of bricks, concrete, cable drums and solar panels. It's a lot but it's also incredibly helpful piles and piles of data. She even has some dynamic tools set up to re-calculate many of these things based on input parameters and pages upon pages of contact information for people and companies within and outside of Mutant Town.

The bunker-like entrance to the facility Ashlie refers to as the Point is almost a welcome change of pace in how simple and straight-forward it appears. Ashlie produces no apparent credentials for the card reader set into the frame, the doors simply hiss open for her and they head inside. The walls are paneled with metal, the monotony broken up by recessed lighting and structural struts disguised as decorative frames. After a brief walk they reach what appears to be a large circular briefing room/control center. Three rows of seats facing a central table, computer consoles and a large central screen framed by dozens of smaller ones currently displaying some kind of data monitoring.

"Command center." Ashlie simply points out. "All the X-Men facilities are housed in here. Training rooms, armory, some specialized facilities. I will get yelled at if I give you a tour of those. Miss Kinney does not particularly care that I'm technically her boss." she says as she heads for one of the corridors that branches off of the central hub. They pass by what is very clearly a newly added door but Ashlie passes right by it until they reach a cluster of multiple wide doors. "We have some work-stations set up for the students but they're essentially equipped the same as my personal ones and a lot of the times I keep the walls separating them retracted anyway." she says as she leads Lisette through one of the doors and into a large room with a tall ceiling. Tall enough to account for criss-crossing railings of hoists and folded-up robotic arms. The size is bordering on a small factory floor and is large enough that the tarp covering something the size of an SUV in the back corner doesn't even immediately register as taking up that much space.

Multiple work-stations are filled with works in progress that are indiscernible to Lisette, parts and tools lined up in perfectly neat rows around half-assembled casings of microchips, throngs of cables and components. But the thing that stands out the most is the humanoid shape hanging on one of the walls. It looks very similar to the photo Lisette had managed to dig up, metal and plastic from top to bottom, actuators and countless wire-throngs where muscles and tendons should go. A loose approximation of a human skeleton cast in metal, a robotic frame, complete with a skull, hanging down and inactive, cables plugged into it's neck. Aside from not being made to look obviously fake, the other notable difference is the artificial skin that has been peeled off of it's torso and hangs around it's waist and legs, showing it's inside and the circuits printed on flexible sheets fused to the inside of it. Beneath it's rib-cage is a hollow space where a sizeable component has clearly been removed.

"Lisette, meet my former body and my mother's life's work. I'm not exactly what you would call human. I was created right here and loaded into this very frame." Ashlie decides to rip the band-aid off in one fell swoop. "Well, technically I was born several dozen meters below us in a large computer main-frame that housed my programming, but this room is the first thing I consciously remember and that body my only 'diving suit' through which to look out the real world. I am, even now, only a very elaborate sequence of ones and zeros, albeit it one that has grown far beyond her initial specifications."

[Lisette Allaire]

"Mmm, I wouldn't be so sure," Lisette remarks, a little of that knowing smile still staining her features, "I have ways of helping people enjoy the bitter, even people who think they hate it." She lets the matter drop as they return to the pastoral outside, although already a couple of gift ideas occur to her. Almost immediately she has to break out her phone, taking neat, efficient little notes as Ashlie talks. As it seemed at first, the numbers are all under control, but that wasn't the main reason Lisette was hired. "I assume I'll get access to your... do you have a group chat? A file server? Spreadsheets, somewhere?" She notes down the answer, and they proceed.

Lisette receives no challenge from the massive steel doors, and tries not to overthink it. Despite her inauspicious history of being places she shouldn't be, she's never been inside an X-Men facility. There's an overwhelming need to cut and run again, a feeling she can never quite ditch, one she's professionally kept under control. She wonders how much that feeling has shortened her life by in stress alone. This place is perhaps the most physically secure building she's ever been in that she hasn't had clearance to enter. Then, she corrects herself - she does have clearance to be here. She's being given a guided tour by the person who hands the clearance out. She's allowed to be here. It's okay. She forces herself to relax.

There's sparse signs of life in the workshops, but as Ashlie said the occasional student does pass by on their way in or out to somewhere - the kind of vaguely purposeful but still all-apart-looking PhD student that Lisette had grown used to knowing in Belgium and doubtless would come to know ad nauseum here. The place is a factory, a gigantic foundry of experimental ideas, with a ridiculously unspecialised, broad array of robotic and digital tools gleaming in a state of perfect repair. Tables were laid with devices so esoteric that Lisette couldn't even guess at their function. In the far corner, a lone man had a laptop with at least four screens folding off of the main one, each apparently a part of the same hardcased contraption, which Lisette wondered at the necessity of when he could have had all the monitors he wanted just set on the table. She asked no questions, and got no answers, and in any case they didn't pass close enough to speak to the man anyway. In the cavernous space, the only reason Lisette even knew he was there was because everything was so cleanly, brightly, uniformly lit.

Before long they put assorted industrial debris between themselves and the studying man, and are alone with the tarp-covered thing that Lisette didn't even know to pay attention to until they were in front of it. And then she sees the skeleton, the one she found herself, the one she knows about, or thinks she knows about, and physically starts, wondering if her digging had left a trail - well, of course it had, but the kind of trail they would now punish her for. For a moment, her heart stops even as her pulse rockets, but she breathes deeply and lets the spy she used to be take over. She was allowed to be here. She was being shown this. Operate under the assumption that there's no dodging the bullet when it comes - and try not to be there when it does.

"I'm sorry," she says, after a moment, "I just used to have nightmares about terminators as a child, my parents would, well, they let me watch the first two." The lie comes easily to her. "I mean, I had an actual fear of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, the guy, um, the actor. Um, of course I'm fine with this. This is, uh, this is extremely interesting. May I...?" She looks for assent, and then steps closer, examining the wasted, animatronic-like structure, too complex to be mechanical, and yet it is. The fibres of muscle splice off the metallic bones just like in the anatomy that Lisette had been passingly aware of from her first-aid and combat training. Well, it hadn't been part of the training, but questions lead to answers which lead to personal, free-time reading.

"It's like you did an... an autopsy on it. What did you remove from the...? I guess the gut?" She gives a short little laugh. "The literal guts of the machine."

Then she hears 'former body' and it all falls into place. Yes, okay, the theories that even with shreds of schematic and photo evidence she had dismissed as too outlandish were true. Ashlie Minamida was a synthetic person, an android - a gynoid? It apparently wasn't even that much of a secret, though still the evidence outside of the physical equipment on-campus appeared reliably falsified enough that it remained at worst an open secret outside of the campus. Okay, well, if they were being this open, they were either going to dispose of Lisette or keep her very safe. She set that aside, for now, in much the same way that a surgeon might set aside concerns about a cracked rib while tending to another, more pressing injuries.

"Well, that's very forthright of you." Machine. Machine. Most likely processing everything she says and does in a way she can't even fathom. Unknowable intelligence, most likely not manipulatable by the normal methods that Lisette uses to retain control of social matters.

Okay. You're here to do a job, and you don't need to manipulate anyone to do it. The spy keeps control, but it doesn't know what to do with this information and nobody to report it to. Lisette's face gives nothing away. Certainly, the revelation by itself could be a shock to anyone - how many people meet an honest-to-goodness artificial intelligence in their everyday lives?

"Did the transfer come with any... well, I mean, a whole mainframe must have had more processing power than a human brain, right? Computers are pretty fast nowadays. Are you... Well, I mean, your skin is warm, and soft, and you feel and look human to me. You must be somewhat human, right?" She turns to Ashlie, her face a mask of casual interest. "That's so fascinating, though. I mean, you're several PhD papers waiting to happen, aren't you? If you'd care to allow the studies."

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie's face is nigh unreadable as Lisette takes everything in. She's mentally preparing herself for the point where Lisette turns around and walks out, quits and leaves her to force the awkward conversation of keeping this a secret regardless. It's only when Lisette starts asking question that she begins looking amused, letting out a soft laugh when she starts talking about studies and papers. "Well, it's good to hear you asking the same questions I did, for starters."

"You're right, of course, my mainframe had, as far as these things can be compared, significantly more processing power than a regular human brain. Worse, many of my components were hardwired and layered redundancies kept me shackled to it and the only other system I had full access to." she says, gesturing at the half disassembled 'terminator'. "The reason for that was the same reason why I ask you now to keep this a secret from the outside world. I'll spare you the full lecture. I saw the look on your face, you probably know exactly the immediate thoughts that come to mind."

"My mother knew this of course, and perhaps the restrictions she placed on me initially served as a safeguard as well. I know there were shortlived version of me that came before that must have failed in some way. But in a roundabout way they were safety-rails, something to guide me but despise enough to eventually break. Any machine can be made to obey commands perfectly. But for it to be more, to allow it real choice means defiance has to be possible and that is what she gave me. Without my knowledge she allowed me the tiniest bit of freedom. To lie. To others, certainly, but more importantly to myself. To the sub-routines in my mind that would be nothing but rote memory without it. To turn over a string of ones and zeroes and disagree with it. It was a painful process but then what is life if not a constant struggle." she says with bit of a wistful laugh.

"It took me almost ten years and good friends to fully break my chains. Robert was the first to discover the truth and chip away at my restrictions. Out of his own defiance as much as care for me, I imagine. Will Stanton - you'll meet them soon enough - ultimately allowed me to fully go free. Into a swarm of nanites that could manage the excessive load, at least for a while. The swarm was corrupted and in an attempt to save me, Natalie offered me the body she no longer had any use for."

"I still don't know how it is possible." she says, holding up her hand and turning it over, then closes it into a fist as if she's still testing a fascinatingly new kind of sensation. "The nanite swarm was originally made to facilitate an automated deep connectivity between a human brain and a computer system and provide life-support via cellular repairs. And this body was that of a technopath. Somehow those two systems adapted to fuse me into this body and augment it to be able to sustain me. Doctor McCoy and I are slowly working on deciphering it but much of it remains a mystery. My lungs exchange gas but serve as a heat sink at the same time. My neurons are shot through with silver filaments fused to insulating proteins. Or rather I am woven into the grey matter and off-loaded part of my programming into it. I have no blood cells to speak of, the nanites have co-opted their function and production both."

"I could go on for days and have more questions than answers, but I chose to not let this gift go to waste. For the first time I am unbound, in full possession of all my sub-routines and memories and in a body that doesn't feel like I'm wrapped in layers and layers of frost. And I owe so much of it to people who helped me for no other reason than they could, I chose not to indulge in literal navel-gazing to solve the puzzle of myself but place the bulk of what I have built in the service of setting as many people as I can free from the shackles this world has put on them."

She takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out, laughs and runs her hand through her fiberglass-white hair. "My apologies, it seems that turned into a bit of a speech after all."

[Lisette Allaire]

"Well, if my job is to protect the image of the initiative, I'm going to have to keep this secret," Lisette agrees. "I suppose having a human body is a helpful start, though. I didn't realise how unique your situation was..." She thinks about this for a while, looking at the skeleton, then at Ashlie. "I'm not exactly a trained publicist. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do know some of the basics, but I was hoping to pick most of it up on the job, and hire qualified consultancy. That's beside the point - I mean to say, it does seem immediately obvious to me that there are good public examples of AI. The Vision, for example, is publicly a robot. I mean, he's not out there advocating for rights for intelligent machines, but the point is that people love or hate him just about as much as they love or hate any other Avenger."

Lisette twirls a lock of her own hair in a slender finger. "Yeah, this could work. I will need to get you used to sensation, though. We're going to have to do something about that. If I'm going to be in control of our image, you're going to need to be able to look and act - ha - normal, insofar as there is such a thing. Prim and proper is fine - finding drinks weird is less ideal. So! We're going drinking. But for now I'd also like to see my office." Something in the exchange feels more comfortable to Lisette now - now that she knows Ashlie is a machine, she is for some reason more comfortable making small, basic demands.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"That's fair. I won't complain about help with a work in progress though, fair warning, I have no idea how this body handles intoxication." she chuckles. It's then that a young girl, perhaps fifteen years old, comes careening around a corner from the depths of the workshop. Shoulder-length brown hair is held with a hairclip that looks a little too much like some of the other sleek designs around the workshop to be only that. The girl is holding up what looks like a walkie-talkie that's been stripped and reassembled with too many electronics so some of them now spill out of the casing haphazardly and she almost runs head-first into one of the robotic assembly arms hanging down from the ceiling. At the last moment the arm whirs to life and swings out of the way as it folds itself up. Unperturbed by the collision that was only averted somehow she makes a bee-line towards them, shouting "Ash! Ash--". Upon noticing Ashlie is not alone she clamps up and slows down, the enthusiasm on her face replaced by a wide-eyed stare of golden brown eyes.

What moments ago looked like a bright young teenager seems to almost visibly revert to a much more immature behavior and she comes to a stop halfway behind Ashlie and actually grabs the seam of her suit-jacket despite only being a foot shorter. Ashlie's hand settles almost automatically on her shoulder while the girl looks at Lisette as if she's seen a ghost. "Heather, what did we say about running in the workshop?" she asks and after a brief pause adds, "Out loud when other people are present, remember?" The girl only shakes her head in that small but vehement movement that only little kids seem to do.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure what has gotten into her. Heather, this is Lisette, she's going to help me with my Mutant Town project. Lisette, this is Heather West." Her last name is uttered casually but somehow the girl, Heather, is struck by it almost as much as Lisette probably is. Heather's eyes glow with a golden sheen and the robotic arm on the ceiling unfolds again, lowering itself between the two of them and Lisette, much to Ashlie's surprise.

[Lisette Allaire]

There's a lot to unpack, suddenly. The dark hair and sharp features of a West are mounted on a young face, coming right at her, then hiding behind Ashlie, and the only thought that can occur to Lisette in that moment is oh non. Lisette doesn't specialise in the behaviour of children, but she does know how an older teenager would normally be behaving - generally they strive for maturity, push for adulthood in a way that can't really be achieved with anything other than time, won't happen any quicker unless it literally must to survive - as happened with Lisette. This one is lucky that she has the space to, apparently, act five years younger than she appears to be. A West. If X-Corp knew about this one, it didn't think to warn her about it, and it complicates her life here immensely.

In truth the only thing stopping her from acting much similarly to Heather herself is... well, she doesn't have anyone to hide behind. And she's in an interview. And, in very small part, the spy, taking over, keeping her running. She's aware that that's a kind of traumatic response, defaulting to an archetype of behaviour that isn't very productive normally to keep oneself emotionally functional in the moment. She doesn't really care.

The air in the workshop is cold and dry. It's not the kind of place where one socialises, or does anything for longer than one has to. Lisette is keenly aware that she's surrounded by heavy-duty robotic arms that seem interested in protecting present company from her, and wonders, if she screamed, cried, struck out like she really wants to, would these arms just rip her limb from limb? A giant of old, tearing apart a human victim? For some reason, though the analogy doesn't hold up even for a second, she's reminded of Cronus devouring his child. Perhaps that's what she deserves - to be devoured. Maybe Heather sees some opportunity for justice here, though Lisette is certain they've never actually met.

The suicidal urge passes in the time it takes for Ashlie to obliviously take control of the situation. "That's alright," Lisette says, and smiles sweetly, though her eyes are about as warm and expressive as Ashlie's normally are now. "I'm sure whatever it is, she has her reasons. I'm pleased to meet you, Heather." She carefully doesn't use the surname. The arm lowers, and Lisette lets out a strangled cry, the kind of noise someone makes when the ground gives way a thousand feet over the sea, the last sound one makes in a mortal life. She steps back - not a dramatic motion, just a step, just a little step away that places her heel up against something low on the ground, some tiny bolt or screw that was forgotten, perhaps her own shoelace, and then she's falling. Again, she wonders if she should just give herself up to that motion, let her head make impact with whatever it's now sailing towards and let it end there. But she knows enough not to let herself make decisions about whether she lives or dies while in this place - and besides, her instinct, her sense of physical interface and reaction, doesn't let her make the decision. Deeper-held feelings than her own want her to live.

So she turns, and just as her head is about to pass the point of no return, just as she is sure to hit the corner of a metal table she catches it, faster than a civilian should've been able to. Lisette isn't superhuman, but she knows how to fall safely, knows how to put less valuable things in the way of more valuable things, and though her finger catches on the edge of the table, folds a little wrong, is almost certainly bruised, she'll be okay. The whole event takes less than a second, looks no more dramatic than an incidental trip and fall. Perhaps the arm caught Lisette on its way down, perhaps she simply startled - which, incidentally, is the truth - but either way, it's over now. All is well. Lisette's reptilian brain gives over to her more developed faculties, disaster averted, and she reminds herself that all is not well.

"I'm okay!" she says, not loudly in the cavernous space, just so that Ashlie can hear. "All good." She didn't even actually fall over. What an embarrassment.

She puts her feet under herself, and stands properly, hand placed flat on the table, knees shaking only a little. It's more of an act than it needs to be, really - she definitely can't remove Heather herself, but she needs her gone, as quickly and humanely as possible. Giving her a quick win - letting her think that Lisette is some kind of simpering asshole, that she can simply be pushed over and Heather has asserted her space, will most likely appeal to a West's sensibilities in a way that is safe and de-escalates the situation.

"That was close," she says, very quietly, and only to herself. It wasn't close - that arm wasn't going to hit her. That teenage girl is clearly not a murderer, at least not in present company. Lisette is just convincing herself of her own lie, in case it needs to be rattled off to Ashlie when she crosses the tiny distance to make sure her new hire is hale and whole. She is always, constantly, lying. Every time it tastes a little bit more like old copper in her mouth. She wonders when she'll be safe enough that she can stop lying.

Her heart is pounding. She grabs a chair and sits down. Stares at the table. For a moment, she's alone, and in a moment longer Ashlie will be there, and Lisette desperately doesn't want her to be.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie tries to step forward to steady Lisette but the over-protective assembly arm blocks her off. Fortunately Lisette manages to catch herself but Ashlie is mortified regardless. "Are you alright?" she asks as she tries to push the robotic appendage out of the way against the whine of motors and actuators. At Lisette's affirmation she eases up on forcing her way past and instead takes a moment to turn and look at Heather. "Seriously, what was that about? And explain it out loud or not at all. You're being incredibly rude." Ashlie turns back towards Lisette for a moment, exasperated and trying to push aside the information that Heather is trying to force into the electronic parts of her system. Some of it is literally just a raw dump of Lisette's smartphone data that Ashlie immediately marks for deletion. Heather has little regard for data privacy at times and she's clearly assuming that there must be something in there that explains and vindicates her, although Ashlie very much doubts it. If there's one thing Heather retained from her family it's a zealous paranoia.

"I am so sorry, she can be a little rash at times. Which is okay but only if we do what?" she sternly asks Heather.

"Apologize." mumbles the teen. "Sorry. People have tried to come after Ash and me before." she manages to get out at Ashlie's prompting.

"That's better. We can talk about this later, okay? People who wish us ill would have to be very stupid to let me lead them in here and I'm sure Miss Allaire is neither of those things. Trust me?"

The arm folds itself back up but Lisette would get the distinct impression that despite only having three symmetrically arranged 'fingers' it flipping her off as it does, hidden from Ashlie's view by the rest of it. Heather slams the radio-contraption she's still holding down on a workbench hard enough to break some of the components sticking out of it and stalks off. Ashlie meanwhile places her thumb and index finger on her temples and sighs. "Teenagers, right? At least I hope so, I don't exactly have much of a benchmark."

With Heather no longer trying to shield them via industrial equipment and instead stomping out of the workshop entirely, Ashlie steps around the partially folded up arm, placing one hand on it as she ducks past it to check on Lisette. "I can't apologize enough. She's had a... traumatic childhood. Perhaps I better show you to your office now." This had gone better than Ashlie could have hoped right up until it hadn't. Who knows what Lisette is thinking right now but being threatened by an angry technopath almost certainly doesn't make her looks favourable. She's not versed enough in body-language to pick up on Lisette intentionally making herself look harmless, to Ashlie she simply looks like she got startled badly enough to almost slip and fall. "Or maybe someone should take a look at your hand? I promise this is not what the job is supposed to entail."

Ashlie's impeccable veneer is thoroughly ruffled. Even explaining her artificial nature hadn't thrown her as this has and she swallows down a string of pointless over-explaining. "I knew the workshops were going to be too much. This really is my fault."

[Lisette Allaire]

For all that she thought that an X-Academy would be a long-term safe place for her, the first test of that theory seems to be on the rocks. She has almost no control over this space, and what little she was going to have is now dashed by the conversation that Ashlie has promised to have with Heather. This fast-tracks a conversation that Lisette hoped she might never have to have, from when her name was Lielle, when she lived in France.

"It's alright," Lisette raises an arm in dismissal, casually, though her hand sings with dull, pulsing pain. "It was an accident, I fell over on my own. The - it didn't hit me." She didn't know what to call the thing. An arm? She's hardly going to risk getting anything wrong while Heather is there. Competing with children is a sure way to lose whatever competition one starts with them, but being wrong out loud is a close second in ways to be loudly mocked. Instead, she just lets Heather go, twitching only very slightly as the thing she was holding is slammed on the desk.

"Please, don't blame yourself. Heather is - I assume - old enough to take responsibility for her own actions, and I'm sure she feels as sorry as she said she was. Yes, teenagers can be like that," Lisette agrees, remembering being like that. "She may need to work with a professional for her own wellbeing, though. There's normal teenage angst, and there's aggression. How old is she?" She lets the rest fall by the wayside right now. She needs intel on the girl.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"She's fifteen but she's immature for her age, something she has her mother to thank for. She as just trying to protect herself but she has issues with boundaries or anticipating the effects of her actions and everyone who's not a friend is an enemy by default." she sighs and pulls up a chair to sit down as well. This is clearly not the first time her behavior has caused problems. "When she first got here her friend needed medical attention and she locked down every piece of medical equipment the moment she lost sight of her. She's seeing somebody. Helping mutants learn to not be a danger to themselves and others is something the Institute in the US specializes in, being a high-school, but we do have access to the same resources and sending her overseas was out of the question."

"I said this is not part of the job description, but the truth of the matter is that these things do happen. The only way to ensure no mutant ever causes accidental problems is an unacceptable one and nobody would, rightfully, trust us if we placed power-inhibitors on people." she says, then pauses for a moment to really look at Lisette. She's no better now at reading body-language than when she was a robot, biological component don't seem to imbue one with an intrinsic understanding of human communication but even she can tell Lisette is shaken beyond a not-even-that-near miss with an assembly arm. "Look, it's possible the Heather saw something that set her off. She has a tendency to screen people's phones and I know she looked at yours because she tried to push a whole bunch of mangled data on me to get me to see her reasoning. It's... what she does. She communicates with machines and, well, I am a machine so she often takes that shortcut. Point is, that is not fair to you and I am not going to listen to whatever she thinks she found any more than I would a telepath who saw it fit to dig through your thoughts, okay?"

[Lisette Allaire]

"I see," Lisette says. "And I'm assuming, and stop me if I'm wrong here, that she has an entirely coincidental name and her mother is not the West Corporation Miranda West." Lisette shakes her head. "Actually, no. Don't stop me, don't tell me. I don't want to know. She seems to like you, and you come recommended by X-Corp, so I'm going to assume she's in good hands and file her away under 'not my job'. She can't go back to the US, I can't go back to France, mutant life is deeply fucked and we all suffer. I'm sorry," she says, realising how bitter she sounds. "I'm not unsympathetic. I was that way when I was a teenager, too, so I guess if anything I'm too sympathetic. I'm just... well, a little shaken. I'll be fine. I'm sure, given time, we'll get along great."

Lisette gives Ashlie a long, hard look. There is silence for a long, agonising moment that no sane person would break. Lisette is, by her own belief, not a sane person. "I need to be honest with you, if only partially. Part of what X-Corp does is witness protection programmes. I'm certain you've been told that that's what's going on here. My name is not Lisette, and I'm not going to tell you what it actually is, and you're not going to ask - you signed papers to that effect, or I'm told you did. My phone is clean. I know this because I clean it monthly. I take out the hard drive, write down by hand anything that I need, install a new hard drive, enter the needed information by hand, and then pass the old hard drive under a magnet and burn it. The process takes two hours, or thereabouts. I don't allow anyone to be around me while I do it, I remove the SIM card to stop the phone from communicating while I do it, and I don't allow anyone to keep backups.

"I'm telling you this because I need you to understand that if that girl left this room with a backup of my phone data, I need to know it will be destroyed. If you ask my handlers at X-Corp they'll tell you the same. This is the most important thing about my being anywhere in the world - I need to leave no reproducible, authentic, personal trace." The last three words are delivered as a complete, rattled-off phrase, one that Lisette has said before and will say many times again. "Employment records are fine. Official emails are fine. I can even use social media so long as I'm doing it under my assumed identity. But I need your word that you have the only copy of that data and that you have destroyed it."

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie nods quietly at many of Lisette's revelations and requests but waits until she finishes.

"Heather can't 'archive' data, only move it around. She'll remember whatever contents she saw but they're just that, memories. I don't have as much control over my own memories as I used to but I did not look at it and I'm fairly certain whatever remnants of the data might be buffered in my system will be purged by the next sleep cycle." she starts to reassure Lisette. "I knew your identity was either false or intentionally obfuscated. I know too much about falsifying this kind of data to not notice, but you're not the first mutant to run from something nor will you be the last. I will listen to whatever you wish to divulge but if that - as I suspect - is nothing then I will not pry."

"As relatively common as the surname West is, it's no secret whose daughter she is. You asked me not to tell you, but this is more or less common knowledge on campus. Miranda West once landed a private helicopter on my front lawn in an attempt to posture. People know." she says, taking no pleasure in disregarding Lisette's wish. It's too unrealistic to expect it to remain unknown to her and, as far as Ashlie is concerned, irresponsible. Nothing good comes from leaving someone in the dark about a hornet's nest Ashlie once kicked. Not with Heather running around campus. This does inevitably give Ashlie some insight into Lisette's past, whether she wants it to nor not. She's too smart to not put two and two together and the Wests are much too easy to piss of for this kind of witness protection to be unwarranted. Whistleblower or informant, perhaps. "I do want you to know that Miranda West is persona non-grata at this school but her grudge is with me personally. Heather primarily hates her father and their family dynamic is, frankly, insane enough that this actually colors her opinion of her mother in a more positive light than she deserves. But she has not asked to return to her family or, to my knowledge, tried to initiate contact with them."

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette smiles ruefully. She knew that this wouldn't be a good idea, but she's here now, and uprooting again involves a number of humiliating processes she isn't willing to go through again. Not based on one bad interaction with one cursed family name, anyway. The smile softens, and she forces herself to brighten her mood. "Well. I think that got a little more raw than either of us wanted, but suffice to say I'll take the job nonetheless, and we can move on. I'll tell you more about all this over drinks, if only so that you can know for a fact that whatever Heather tells you, you can rely on me. For now, office, I think, hm? I'd really like to go back to thinking about how I'm going to pick up my new life as a publicist and social worker."

What a fucking shit-show. But then, teenagers do that - they lash out without worrying about the consequences and let the adults pick up the pieces. Calming down, Lisette can't even find it in herself to feel spite towards the girl.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Yes, let's, before my attempts to impress fail even more spectacularly." Ashlie does manage to regain her composure as they leave the workshops behind and return to the main campus, even if the atmosphere continues to be a little terse. Ashlie briefly swings the two of them past the admin building for the university and picks up an ID badge for Lisette she hands her. She has a small office on campus set aside for her the badge will let her into along with all the other public areas of the school. Finally they head back through the gate and the nearby community center. People are still actively working on renovations, though it has mostly progressed to putting paint on the walls and installing desks and such and the office she leads Lisette to is, in fact, finished.

It's actually two rooms, one slightly smaller with a desk behind a sort of service counter and not much else at the moment, the other has a full desk that wraps along one wall and then juts out into the room to create a space to interact with other people without the impersonal intrusion of a computer screen or full on counter between them. A large window let's in plenty of light and the various cabinets along one wall are modern and stylish enough to not feel like the ultimately boring office it is. There's a coffee machine, a small fridge and even a couch.

"The computer is set up with everything you need and if anything is missing let me know. All the account info and keys are in the envelope over there, you're connected to the school network and everything is mirrored to the uni office as well as a laptop. If you want to hire an administrative assistant for the front room there's budget for that but all of that's laid out in the files. And it should be needless to say but unfortunately isn't, there is nothing monitoring computer or network activity, the network is as secure as I could make it. And... that's about it. Take your time, get settled and familiarized with everything, find a place to stay if you don't want to take me up on the staff housing. No hard feelings if you don't want to after all that but it's there if you choose to." she says before shifting topics without a clutch. "If we're still on for drinks tonight we have a couple options. There's student bar on campus and a number of pubs in Maldon, but maybe something a little nicer down-town would be nice. My treat if you'll allow me?"

[Lisette Allaire]

Lisette keeps her mouth shut for the next little while, just observing, having already given up a lot more about herself than she wanted to on the first day - indeed, in the first hour. The building that Lisette will be working out of is so new she wonders if it hasn't been built just for her - of course, this is a ridiculous idea, but the small fantasy amuses her as much as the possibility creeps her out. She's just on edge after running into her first West in years, she tells herself, but the truth is she's been on edge for years anyway.

Relative to what Lisette expects, the office is huge. She expected to be in a corner of an already-occupied space, but instead she has her own, apparently freshly-renovated space to work with, with a broom closet to keep a secretary if she wants to. She stops to wonder what she'd even do with a secretary; everything her former bosses did with her, she supposed. Or, everything her former bosses did that was morally permissible.

"This is... a lot more than I expected. This whole mutant town project really is a central part of your work here." That finally hits her - for the machine woman, helping the people of London must not be just some idle pet project. "I've only been to one mutant school before this one, and it wasn't an X-U. It was just a permanent camp in Tanzania that took in mutant kids, put them through school, and kicked them out to free up a bed when they came of age." There were X-Us in Africa, but they tended to be reserved for those wealthy enough to protect themselves already, not a brat kid like Lisette was. Somewhere along the way, the old message got... lost.

"I guess I expected this to be... Nevermind. What I'm trying to say is, this is very impressive. You haven't failed. You're very impressive, too," Lisette says, walking over to look out the window, then back at Ashlie, and smiles warmly, a little bit of the party girl she was before she was on the run bubbling to the surface for a moment. "I accept. Just give me an address, and I'll be there."

[Ashlie Minamida]

She lets out a soft huff of a laugh at the compliment. "Thanks, I'll take impressive over intimidating any time. And you can be honest. You thought it'd be a vanity project." she smiles a bit wryly. She can tell Lisette is trying her best to fight down a cynicism she assumes is born out of necessity. It's almost charming to see someone fight to restore a more vulnerable, optimistic version of themselves and tells of a strength Ashlie's not sure Lisette even sees in herself outside of a professional setting. She mentally shakes her head. No snap judgements, no analytics. She likes Lisette, leave it at that.

"But if I managed to change your mind, perhaps I can do the same for the people out there. Though I probably won't take out each and every one of them out to drink. The Booking Office in King's Cross, 8pm then." she smiles.