Xaviers!

The doors hiss open and Ashlie steps into the room, taking a pointed look around at the projects Will scavenged to cobble together his containment unit.

"Professor Terrance. Will."

Melissa's stance relaxes slightly at Ashlie's entrance. "Headmistress," she says by way of simple greeting.

"Just great," Will muttered under his breath.

"Heya, ASHLIE."

"I dimly recall giving him the task to keep an eye on you." she says, gesturing at the Will in the test-chamber. "I take it that did not quite work out."

"In that he currently has no eyes, that is correct. You picked an idiot, headmistress."

"And now he's conveniently too dangerous to be let out."

"Mmm. Well, that's what you get when you buy unregistered strange materials from foreign governments, headmistress."

"Yes, sometimes it goes a little crazy and kills someone."

Will yawned.

"Well, it's great talking to you, as always, but I'm sure you got some bleeps to bloop elsewhere."

"Let me put it this way. The freedoms you're currently enjoying are conditional to your counterpart here being able to being able to actually act as your chaperone. And don't think I'm unaware of the fact that you've tried to ditch him multiple times already."

"So, what you're saying is, I need to have him on me at all times in order to remain free, correct?"

"What I am saying is that you don't want to add wrongful imprisonment to accidental manslaughter. You're on thin ice. Stomping around being a smartass is not what you want to be doing right now or I will built you matching accommodations." she says, pointing a robotic finger at the detained Will.

"I haven't wrongly imprisoned anybody. I've BEEN to a world where a Will ended up absorbing everything; that's not something you want to see.

What does this blob need to count as a working chaperone, headmistress."

"Being able to communicate and autonomy."

"Communication, got it. And communication implies a certain degree of autonomy, naturally, though you've got a problem, there."

"I really don't. You on the other hand might."

"Au contraire.

To get this thing into a point where it can communicate, someone is going to have to direct it. That goes against your rule of autonomy.

But, if you want, I can work it out so he can communicate, with a bare minimum of outside interference from me. Would that be acceptable?"

"You're implying he won't recover on his own. Why should I believe you?"

"You don't have to. Heck, stick it in a little terrarium in your office for ten years, sprinkle in some crumbs from time to time. Might be worth a few laughs."

He'd spend eons dormant and Professor Terrance didn't seem to have disagreed with Will's assessment of the thing's mental faculties.

"That might be preferable to leaving it in your hands."

"Then be my guest," Will said, tossing the container containing Will to ASHLIE. "I'd advise either sticking him in the containment unit or building your own; if you use mine, the remote their on the counter will trigger the electric shocks."

Ashlie clumsily catches the sample container with a very mechanical motion and looks at Will with an unreadably neutral robot-expression, then over at the so called containment unit. She did have to admit that adding some safety measures such as electric shocks probably were appropriate and she walks over to transfer the small sample of Will into the larger tank.

"You better apologize to the students' whose work you cannibalized here."

"Eh, alright. If they notice, that seems fair."

"You'd think so." she says, watching the small glob of Will after swiftly moving it through the airlock.

The blob didn't do much after reaching the center of the cobbled-together contraption. It seemed to be fairly secure in there, however.

"So much for the all-consuming blob."

Will shrugged. "It's got about ten bazillion pounds of sedatives in it at the moment."

"How long until they wear off? Approximately?"

"Left to their own devices?" Will mused. "Eh. I dunno; I'm no doctor. He heals fast, maybe 8-10 hours? Or a day or two."

Ashlie stares quietly for a moment as she thinks.

"Get me the coffee Laura keeps in the briefing room. The whole bag of beans."

Will snerked. "Whatever you say, headmistress," heading off to do just that.

"The Will in there is... rudimentary. There's mental building blocks, but the mind has suffered a lot of damage," Melissa says now that the other Will is off on an errand.

Ashlie patiently waits, taking the time to check up on some of her more clerical duties she can complete remotely while keeping an idle camera-eye on the small lump of clay.

Will returned shortly later with the beans.

"This looks expensive. I'm not dealing with a pissed off X-23."

"She could use a more resilient punching bag." Ashlie simply says, taking the beans and transferring a good solid handful of them into the container where they fall on top of the little lump.

"You're dealing with the wrong one, then. Grind up some punching bags and shove 'em in there, and you'll probably get someone who gets off on being hit."


As the coffee beans touch the lump, the entire container shakes. The beans get pretty much immediately absorbed, the color of the blob turning from a sickly grey into a deep brown. It started bulging out, as well, quickly pressing against the sides of the inner, smaller sphere.


From a telepathic point of view, action was happening, as well. Nothing overly complex at this point; more like simple words and basic phrases. Not exactly anything to have a great conversation with, but clearly a scale up on the rank of sentience. The thoughts were also coming fast and furious.

moremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremoremore.

"Might want to take it easy on the coffee. His mind is racing right now."

"Step one in rebooting him is activity. The next one would be uplifting the kind of activity and if I understand his vulnerability to symbolism correctly then this should help make him smarter." she says, finding a CPU on one of the workbenches and placing it into the airlock along with a stick of RAM.

"Going to attempt to reprogram him, are we? I have a couple suggestions on that end, headmistress," Will snerked.

The RAM and CPU clunked down a little bit -- hard to squeeze them through the aperture, after all -- but a little bit of shaking and bumping got them down the tubes towards the clay, where they were greedily gobbled up, the sounds of expensive electronics cracking as they dissolved. The blob couldn't really grow any larger, per se, but it definitely got denser as the blob's mass increased.

Small green lines began to appear over the mocha surface of the blob--or sphere, as I suppose it more closely resembled now. They were faintly glowing, pulsing on and off a little bit.

Telepathically, things got a little...well, weird.

moremoremoremore...4d 6f 72 65 6d 6f 72 65 6d 6f 72 65 6d 6f 72 65 6d 6f 72 65 2e 20 20 4d 6f 72 65 2e 20 20 4d 6f 72 65 2e 20 20 4d 4f 52 45 2e

"I'm fairly certain those thoughts are hexadecimal," Melissa commented, "but I don't speak computer. No offense, headmistress."