Xaviers!

Cam rolled his eyes, and kicked open the subwoofer, exposing the electronics inside.

"Quite the other way around, actually.

See, the directional microphone in the cart," he said, pointing at the frisbee-like thing that was perched precariously atop his Pile o Junk, "should allow us to pick up on any sonic disturbances, which can then transfer down to us. Now, the subwoofer would work, but there would be excessive interference -- it would pick up everything. In theory, however, a human voice box might be more selective. After all, it can't produce all the sounds you hear in nature, can it?"

"I... guess." she says, not entirely sure that's necessarily true for her voice box. "Still not really sure what this is supposed to do though."

"People say one thing to your face, and another thing to your back. My roommate, for example -- threw me out of the room, and then tried to make nice afterwards. Very suspicious, wouldn't you say? This way, we can try to hear what people are saying when they think we're not there."

"Huh. Alright, let's kick it!"

"Alright, hold on to your hat.

Note -- add getting a hat to your checklist."

Cam pointed the microphone in the general direction of the dorms, and flipped a switch.

An electric current ran from the microphone, down the wires, through the mechanics of the subwoofer, back along the wire, and towards Shari's throat! It was an odd tingling sensation -- not painful. Yet.


"And you're on in three, two, one...."

"Hey, that ting--" she makes a weird gacking noise when the machine kicks in, her face twitching a little as the machine kicks in.

"...and I was like, no way but......can you believe how much work that class piles on you......could be fun though, maybe I'll sing up for it..."

Her voice kinda warbles and changes pitch and intonation as what people in the dorms are saying overrides her voice-box, which shifts in response to the different voices.

"Hrmmm...getting a lot of interference, and you're not exactly being clear. Try to concentrate on one at a time! And we're trying to find shark-breath here, so see if you can't focus in on something that smells like herring or something," Cam said, walking behind Shari and placing one hand on each of her hips, trying to preposition her to get a better consistency.

"Herring? How's that gonna help?" she manages to squeak out through several voice-shifts. She does try at least, but she's not really sure how she has an effect on this anyway. Plus her mind easily wanders from herring to fish to swimming to water to...

"With this very unpleasing, sneezing and wheezing, the Goliath he crashed to the ground!" Singing in the shower, apparently. Judging by the grin on Shari's face she seems to be highly amused by this and continues belting out the song. "Buuut she was bliiinded by the light! Wrapped up like a douche, another rumor in the night! Bliiinded by the light..."

"Wait, are you picking up the classic rock station? I don't think those are the right words at all," he said, grabbing one of Shari's hands and lifting it in the air as it if were a radio antenna looking for a better signal.

"What do you mean not he right words? This is just someone singing in the shower, I think." she says, though the moment she stops talking the shower/singing reasserts itself and Shari mimes holding a microphone for proper effect. "She said I'll turn your sun into something strong, like the song with the funky break!"

"I don't think they said anything of the kind! No no no, this is all wrong! I wonder if we can reverse the polarity on this," he muttered to himself, checking inside the subwoofer and examining the parts again.

"Hey, what would reversing this even do? Can you send my voice into the dorms through thin air? Cause that'd be kinda awesome."

"I have no idea! Possibly!" he said, switching around some of the plugs. "Might let you correct those dang lyrics."

He walked back over to Shari, and tried to fiddle with the wires placed on her neck, flipping them around so they cross over one another. "Now, hold still...." he said, sticking his tongue out as he tweaked his human piece of apparatus.

"Very reassuring. Do you actually know what you're doing or are you just bashing things together till something happens?"

"You just described science there, my dear assistant. If we knew what would happen, why would we bother to do it?"

"I find it scary that this makes a certain amount of sense."

"I always make sense. It's the rest of the world that goes crazy."

"Well, lemme know when you're done rekafoobling the polamarity."

"Neither of those are words. Give it a shot, and tell me how it feels."

"Like swallowing a battery. I assume. We don't need to test that." she says before turning towards the dorms and clearing her throat.

"Hey everybody, I've got an announcement to make. Cam has graciously decided to throw a party in the common room! There'll be pizza, beer and music and everyone's invited!"

"What the HELL are you doing?" Cam hissed at Shari.

"I believe it's called 'throwing a party'? Come on, it'll be fun! It's... a social experiment!" she grins.

"It is not going to be fun! At all! It's going to be terrible. All kinds of...all kinds of people will be there? And where am I going to get that kind of money for pizza and beer!" he hissed.

"Oh relax, we'll figure something out! Plus I feel like you could use a little... nudge in making people like you and who doesn't like parties? Or at least free food! It'll be fun!"

"I don't like parties! Damn it," he muttered, kicking over his subwoofer, with sparks a flying.

"Have you ever been to one?"

"Yes! I went to high school. They're terrible. All the cool kids doing cool kid things, while you stand in the corner just waiting for a meteor to come in and blow the whole place apart.

Or "social outings" where they take you to interact with the less troublesome inmates, under the watchful eye of Herr Shrink. Nasty, the whole lot of it."

"All the more reason to be the one throwing the party! That way you get to be the cool kid. Besides, you're among fellow freakshows now, half of which probably imagined a meteor blowing up their school! And if you don't throw it, I might!" she says, her grin growing a little more maniacal as her face begins to flow into a fairly decent mock-up of Cam's, her hair mussing itself up as it turns blonde.

"You wouldn't dare," he glowered.

"Somebody has to show these imbeciles how to throw a proper celebration!" she says, doing an at least passable imitation of Cam's voice.

Cam growled.

"You'd better get the damn music ready," he grunted, packing up the remnants of his destroyed machine.

"You got it!" she grins, her face rubber-banding back to her previous one.

"And we'll discuss this afterwards," he said, as he walked off.