Xaviers!

Shari almost trips over herself running into the crystal cavern, holding the saxophone that she technically stole from the music room.

"Natalie! I need help! It's of the utmost urgency!"

Natalie's avatar coalesces with Guardian right behind her, "Shari? What is it?"

"There's a battle at hand."

Then, after a brief pause she holds up the saxophone and adds,

"I need to learn how to music better."

"A battle? Music? What?" Natalie looks at the saxophone, then back at Shari, obviously confused.

"Yes! I didn't know battles could be fought with music either, but Shane is putting together a squad and I'm on it and I know how all the buttons work..." she says, demonstrating an actually somewhat impressive finger-work on the sax "...but I am not very good at the music bit. Or at... knowing what's good music."

"I believe she is referring to the 'Battle of the Bands' that is being held in London," Guardian says, voice modulated as if coming through a helmet speaker.

"Oh, yes," Natalie says, "Well, how can I help? Good music is a matter of opinion."

"I don't know, you're the smartest person I know so I figured I'd ask you. And I also have a back-up plan that needs a lot of information gathering and maybe some engineering, two other things you're great at!"

Guardian looks at Natalie, "All yours then," and disappears.

"Okay, so you need to know what good saxophone music is like..." She says, grabbing some pieces from the internet. She doesn't know or care much for saxophone music, but she's trying to be helpful. "Let's try listening to this and see what you think," she says, playing something suitably jazzy.

"Hmm... I like it, it sounds messy. But Shane said he plays Rocks not, Jazzy-Jazz."

"Rock, as in rock-and-roll," Natalie says, "Saxophone doesn't show up in a lot of rock-and-roll pieces." Her mind races through some more searches, finally coming up with a rock-and-roll piece with a sax solo in it, though it has to play for a bit before it reaches the point of the sax solo.

Shari nods along to the music approvingly. "Yes, rock and roll. Okay, got it. But... can you not do other bits of the song with the saxohorn?"

"I suppose it's possible. I don't know much about how saxophones are played. Usually instruments play their parts of the music," she gestures and a hologram appears showing sheet music for the various instruments and parts of the song they just listened to, "to compliment each other, to produce an overall sound."

Shari stares at the sheet music for a while, not understanding it in the slightest but interested none the less. Finally she seems to come to a conclusion.

"It's a secret code! I get it! I just need the cypher."

"A secret...?" She looks at the sheet music, "I guess." Another wave of the hand, "You could try this." Some explanations popped up, "They're sort of tutorials on how to read it."

"Complicated." she says after looking it over. "There's a lot of layers of encryption. This is helpful, thanks, but I think I'll have to go to Plan B if I want to understand this by the weekend."

Natalie raises an eyebrow, "What is plan B?"

"Get the most comprehensive biography and music and just all around information of the best soxaphone players and become them."

"That's... also a big undertaking it sounds like. How would you do that?"

"Well ideally I'd have a Ritual Chamber, but I bet we can rig something up. I'd need some kind of sensory deprivation tank, an oxygenated suspension but I guess a breathing mask works. Increased density salt water to submerge in and a cocktail of drugs to inject into it. A data feed of some kind, ideally DNA samples and a brain-scan but I don't think we can get those on short notice and besides, I don't want to go that deep undercover anyway. Induction speakers on the tank should work..."

Natalie frowns, pondering the requirements. "Sensory deprivation shouldn't be too difficult and Ashlie and I have been reworking the salt water systems down here, so I can probably get that. I think I have some old devices in storage that I could cannibalize for the speakers... but there's no way to put this together quietly, unless maybe I put it in my room down here. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Sure, I've done it plenty of times. Why would it need to be quietly?"

"I suppose it doesn't have to be. I'm usually building unusual devices, so it won't be that out of the ordinary."

"You're not gonna get in trouble for it or anything, will you?"

"I don't think so? I might have to explain what it is I'm building."

"I mean, it's just a big tub, no need to make anything too crazy or fancy. I'm sure there's something we could use lieing around somewhere."

"Caretaker's looking around for something we can use. I could try using the hard light projectors to put something together, but I'm not sure if it would be 'real enough' for what you're doing."

"That'd work for the tank, for sure. In a pinch just filling it with salt water and starch probably works but ideally it'd be a, shoot lemme think, what was it... Inductive gel with physiological density and salinity similar to that of the target species and a cocktail of psychotropic drugs to increase mental receptiveness to the provided stimuli."

"Both of those are likely to raise questions. The drug cocktail more than the inductive gel likely enough. The inductive gel... I don't know. I might be able to mimic it. The drugs not so much, especially since you'd have to take them."

"The drugs go in the gel, but I'm not sure what the cocktail is or if what's in it even exists on this planet."

"Caretaker is suggesting that the Cerebra fluid might work. Based on specs, it's designed to help a telepath interface with the machine, which sounds like what you need."

"Worth a try anyway!"

"We're discussing a prototype and how much material we'll need right now. Pulling it together shouldn't be too difficult. Whether it will work or not, is a different matter."

"You're improvising an alien design based on a vague description. If it doesn't work that's more on me than you." she chuckles.

It takes a bit to get the Cerebra fluid and for Caretaker and Natalie to be satisfied that the hard light tank and fluid pump are working to their satisfaction. The tank looks suitably high-tech, befitting Natalie's sensibilities. The tank hisses open, unnecessarily maybe being hard light, but the effect is still appropriate. Inside is a breath mask connected to outside air. "What do you think?"

Shari clambers up the side of the tank with two additional arms and ribbed gecko-like fingertips to perch on the rim and lean over the opening. She gives it a sniff, then dips her finger into the Cerebra fluid and puts it in her mouth.

"Hmm... seems alright. And I appreciate the thought, but I don't need this." she adds, pulling out the breathing mask and flapping her... gills, probably, but they're sitting right on the edge of her jaw beneath her ears.

"Okay," Natalie says. There's a hiss and the breath mask is free in her hand before it and its tube start disintegrating into light and disappearing entirely. "Wasn't sure. We should be able to pipe the music you want into the tank."

"Crazy hardlight magic." Shari laughs. "Okay, just gather up all the best Saxomophone Jazz you can find. I need to make a couple more additions." she says, climbing back down from the tank and grabbing a duffel-bag she fetched while Natalie was assembling the tank. She upends it and out tumble a couple of books, mostly on Jazz specifically but some on southern US history, music theory and history. There's some loose sheet music in there as well that she probably grabbed willy-nilly from the music room as well as a cellophane wrapped bundle of definitely-not-oregano.

She starts taping the sheet music to the outside of the tank in a pattern that must be deliberate but seems random to Natalie. Occasionally she adds pages she tears from the books (good thing Basil's not around to see what she's doing to library property), particularly ones that have pictures of Jazz musicians on them. She only stops once she's pretty much enveloped the whole tank in at least two layers of paper and then starts tearing up the remaining books and pages, creating a pile that she sprinkles generous helpings of the Devil's Lettuce into, adding some of the liquid in the tank to mush it all together into a thick paste.

Now that her part of the work is done, Natalie mostly stays out of the way and watches Shari work, trying to analyze the pattern of the sheets and failing. "Do you know how long you're going to be in there?"

"I don't wanna go too deep, but I dunno how effective this is going to be compared to the real deal so... a day or two?"

Natalie blinks. "That's a little bit longer than I was expecting, but I'll keep an eye on you. And I'll be here when you get out."