Xaviers!

Natalie parks near a restaurant name Intimo-Fresco. Once inside, it appears she made a reservation as they're shown to their table directly. "Hopefully it's good. I've heard good things."

"I'm sure it will be fine," Will smiled. "Smells good, at least, which is a good first start."

He was a little confused at the slightly fancy nature of the thing, but shrugged it off, looking around with a bit of a interestingly-confused expression.

"My mum got me hooked on Italian food growing up. She's Welsh, but she loved eating it."

"I'm surprised she was able to find decent Italian cuisine in Britain!" Will laughed. "Boil until grey, isn't that the national dish?"

"Only for British cuisine," she says with a laugh. "There's some decent restaurants in Cardiff."

"I've been there a few times; big cities usually have something worthwhile. I'm more of a city guy than a country guy, at least."

"Not enough signals in the country for my taste," she nods as they're offered their menus. "I much prefer cities."

"Riiiight, right, I guess that would be spookily quiet to someone like you, especially now."

"I like having electronic devices around. It's like its own sort of music."

"It's a good thing you were born now, then, and not, like, 500 years ago.

Then again, I think we could say that for most of us."

"Well, 500 years ago, I'd probably feel just like a normal person, since there'd be no devices to bother me> I wouldn't ever know what my power was."

"A fair point. Or maybe everyone was like that, but it went away because it wasn't useful. Maybe you're a throwback," Will teased.

"That just means I'm hip and cool now, right?" She smiles at him.

"And available in vintage shops throughout the country."

"Nope, only one of me. Well, in this universe at any rate."

"Only universe that matters at the moment," Will smiled.

"Indeed," she says, raising her glass of water, "To doing cool things in this universe?"

"I can drink to that," Will smiled, doing just that and clinking glasses.

"One of the better ways to kill time, at the very least."

"I'll probably be killing a lot of time with my next project. The Headmistress is allowing me to work on an..." She thinks for a moment and chooses her words carefully, "augmented armor suit as a personal project. It's a big undertaking."

"Wow. That's a heck of a project. Going full Stark?"

"Nothing so lofty, but as close as I can get with an uncertain budget and none of Stark's genius," she says, "But maybe some day."

"Don't sell yourself short; I've had first-hand experience at the kind of things you can do. It's very impressive. And there are ways around budget problems, I'm sure."

"Other than the circumstances, I enjoyed working with your programming so to speak."

"I meant it when I said you're welcome to do it again sometime; it was actually quite enjoyable.

Maybe it can help with your super-suit."

"Sure, if you're up for it some time. I wouldn't want to take you away from more important things."

"I'll be honest with you; I don't have a ton going on at the moment."

"You're having dinner with me," she teases.

"Got me dead to rights with that inescapable logic."

After the waiter takes their order, Natalie watches him thoughtfully for a long moment before asking, "I know you have to miss your home, but is there any good stuff you've found in this dimension?"

Will paused and thought about that for a bit.

"I don't want to make it sound like this is...some kind of forgotten hellhole or something. There's plenty of good stuff here," Will nodded, after a moment. "The issue is, there's not...really anything good here that wasn't also present, or close to it, back where I'm from. Plus, this dimension is slower than where I'm from. Imagine getting zapped back to the '70s -- except worse, because you've already been through all that, so even new inventions or current events aren't super surprising."

Natalie makes a thoughtful noise. "That would be frustrating," she finally acknowledges.

"I mean, it's not exactly the same, so I guess I've got to...Zen in on the little details or something. And who knows, maybe something majorly different will happen between now and the 2030s, but..." he shrugged. "Until then, lots of the stuff I enjoyed get put on repeat, I guess. It's just...the past is neat. It's a fun place to visit, but nostalgia doesn't last forever."

"There are whole sections of the internet that would tell you nostalgia does last forever," she says, teasing and trying to lighten the conversation.

"There are quite a few things on the internet which can scar one for life," Will laughed.

"I almost live there. I think I'm becoming immune to the scarring effects. Not sure what that says about me."

"I suppose if you're there all the time, it becomes normal."

"Which should be a truly frightening thought."

"I'll try not to think about it, then," Will smiled.

There was a bit of an awkward pause. "Yeah, the tech stuff is really cool."

Natalie gets awkward as well, "Yeah..." Her face closes down a bit.

"You doing alright?"