Xaviers!

Will waited for Sam just outside the front gates of the school, her hair out of the usual ponytail she wore and in more of a free-flowing look down the back, wearing a slightly out-of-season sundress.

"Hey," Sam says with a faint smile as she approaches.

"Aren't you cold?"

"It's warmer here than Antarctica," she smiled. "Plus, I've only recently re-discovered fashion sense, so I'm taking advantage of it."

"Okay, so it wasn't the best question for someone who was beneath the polar ice cap," she chuckles.

"To be fair, this is MUCH nicer. Better company, too," she laughed. "Shall we?"

"If you've already checked the immediate area for Nazis, ninjas or vikings, sure." She grins, heading out from the gate.

"They've actually done a pretty good job of cleaning it up. They were helped, apparently, by some sort of temporal-rewind thing. But I wasn't paying too much attention--what would I know about time travel?" she said, innocently.

"You're probably the best of us at time travel, you just specialize in a single direction."

"Is that anyway to talk to your elders? Why, in my day, we knew how to respect someone for getting lost in time and space," she mock huffed.

"In my day, you ask for directions," she smirks as they walk.

"Well, just wait until they come out with the Engines. Having to use a phone for GPS is so...I mean, flint knives and bearskins," Will laughed.

"The engines?" She quirks a brow.

"Mmm. Next big thing--next gen Facebook and stuff like that.

You, uh..." she said, looking for words. "You've got this little earbud, right? And you wear that, and it sends you all sorts of real-time information--newsfeeds, and where your friends are and what they're doing, and sports scores and weather reports and all this kinda stuff. And it's all sent to you, bam bam bam bam bam," she said, snapping her fingers. "A constant stream of things.

And people wear, uh, little throat-mike things, right here," she said, gesturing to a spot on her collar. "And you'll get these people walking around muttering into them, you know, like they're...uh...updating their Twitter status? That's a thing, right? And they'll use them, like, I might say into it, 'Simon and I want to get some lunch, where should we go?'. And, uh, the engines will know who I am, and who Simon is, and what kinds of food we like, and what we've eaten recently, and how much variety we like. And they'll know where we are, and what restaurants are around, and what they serve. And they'll know which ones are crowded at the moment, 'cause they know where everyone is, and they'll know which ones are having good days, because everyone else is muttering into their throat mikes, talking about how good the food is, and the engine can chunk through all of this information and tell us that we should go to Luigi's on 12th street, and so we do."

"And then a lot of people wore little contact lens-type things, and it could display the directions to the restaurant, and let you preview the menu, and all sorts of stuff like that."

She gave a half smile. "I seem to remember most telepaths hating it. Enough trouble with one set of voices in their head, or something like that.

Maldon's a lot...quieter than I remember."

She makes a face.

"It's not like I need more access to Facebook and Twitter."

Will chuckled. "Nor do you need special devices to know where your friends are. No RavenNetwork out there, yeah?'

"I'm... not really sure how the ravens work and all."

Will cringed a little bit. "Of course not. I'm sorry, I keep..."

"It's okay. Just... pretty new, aye?"

"Yeah. And I'm trying to treat you like, well, you. That's one reason I wanted to get lunch with you, you know, so I could better get to know you, and not rely on, well, you know..."

"The impossibly perfect goddess you knew, aye."

"Pfft. I think one of the reasons she kept me around was so I could kick her butt if she was getting too high-and-mighty," she laughed. "But yes. It's kind of nice, just talking to Sam. We've never been, you know, equals. Friends, yes, but she was always my boss or my teacher or whatever."

"That's... what the part of your head that looked like Willy Wonka said. You've never known 'just Sam' or something."

"If I remember correctly, that part of my head is a little bit of a smartass," she smiled.

"I'm sure there was a sarcastic bit in there that I'm not 'just Sam' or whatever."

"Eh, next time you see him, you have my permission to punch him in the face, really hard, if he gives you any lip," she laughed.

"I don't... think I should be... you know, punching brain things."

"I bounce back from a lot.

You really concerned about that?" she asked, after a moment's pause.

"Well it's... an attack, aye? You can't just go attacking things in people's minds because they annoy you."

"Not without asking, at the very least. It's no good if you're just going around looking for fights. That's violating something private."

"And I guess I don't understand the symbolism fully yet. You don't want to punch something someone needs, and all."

"Generally speaking, no.

Man, you can study that symbolism for years and still not know all of what's what."

"Best not to punch what might be a load-bearing face."

"Well, if you ever need to practice, I'm fairly malleable," she smiled.

"Literally you are, but... I don't know. Feels like you deserve some time to get comfortable, aye?"

She nodded. "It'll take some time, but I'm trying to get there. Carved out a little piece of something that feels like home in the lighthouse."

"Well that's good, aye? It seemed awfully dusty there, earlier."

"Yeah--not quite sure why it was boarded off like that, and don't feel like asking the robot, even if she does reappear."

"She's not 'the robot' any more than you're 'the clay."

"Then I suppose it's pretty accurate, isn't it?" she said, a bit firmly.

"I dunno. She made a pretty big thing out of disrespecting my wishes and trying to hurt my friends. A pretty big burnt bridge, that."

"I... I don't really know what all happened there, but you were in a bad way, Will."