Xaviers!

Natalie unscrews one of the parts from her old armor frame, tugging on it before, "Crap, welded that, that's right." She grabs a couple of tools and begins cutting the weld, the sparks causing flickering patterns of shadow in the workshop.

((Open))

The door slides open and Ashlie knocks on the frame as she walks in.

"I haven't seen you work on that project in a while."

"Well, I framed it out when I was bouncing around between bodies, so it was more 'robot' and less 'suit'. Figured it might be useful to someone if I turned it back into 'suit'," she says, pulling out the cut part despite it still being hot.

"And here I thought you were extending your operating range."

"I think I'd need something purpose-built for that. The bandwidth requirements for that are probably much higher than just ghosting into this thing." She eyes the part and then sets it aside, splitting the leg casing open eyeing the internal workings, "Plus I'd need a dedicated channel back to the Crystal Computer because I wouldn't want the Citadel thinking their Mastermind system had vacated the premises. Who knows what they'd do then."

"I have some experience with that sort of thing, if you ever decide you do want to pursue that. Anybody in particular you're retrofitting this for then?"

"Not at the moment, no. Most people have powers that would not function well with the technology in one way or another. Mostly keeping my hands busy." She grabs a small roll of brightly colored tape and begins marking various pieces of the internal framework, "Know of someone who might want it?"

"Not imminently. I was just curious. Far be it from me to discourage productive hobbies."

"This one's more destructive at the moment," she says with a smile, "What brings you to the workshop?"

"I was just down in the hangar, checking up on the Blackbird repairs. Habit, I suppose. Not too long ago I would have spend the night meticulously taking apart the damaged pieces and I still feel the responsibility to do so, even though I'm sure the repair-crew did a fine job."

"I can have Carrie take a look at it, if it would make you feel better."

"Carrie?"

"Caretaker. Seemed silly that I was the only one with a name=name, so I asked and that's what she chose."

"That makes sense. They're developing their own distinctive personalities then?"

"After a fashion. I may have pushed a little in that regard what with urging them to get out on a regular basis. Though Guardian more or less refused when I asked her, said 'Guardian' suits her just fine."

"A bit pragmatic, that one, is she."

"Pragmatic. Focused. Stick in the mud," Natalie says with a chuckle.

"Easier for that to be an extant process rather than an intrinsic operating procedure, I can tell you from experience."

"I suppose. As much as they were templated off me, they were still purpose-built, so I suppose some of that has a heavy influence."

"Did you design them in their entirety or did the crystals catalyze them?"

"I would *guess* the crystals catalyzed them, based on my request to the Citadel for the necessary resources to repair the computer. But now that you mention it, I've never properly asked."

"Even if it wasn't a direct involvement by the Citadel, the medium you inhabit might have it's own quirks."

"It's certainly unusual. Though the less we interact with the Citadel, the better, in my opinion. Given recent experience, they're people to keep at arm's length."

"I would be surprise if someone overseeing even just a part of the fabric of reality didn't become at least a little hard to deal with from the responsibility."

"She probably wouldn't have as many issues if she treated her Mastermind systems as the people she claims they are."

"That I can't argue with."

"On that topic, if you ever have something you don't want the Citadel to know, you shouldn't tell me. I've a demonstrated inability to stop them from taking information at the moment. I'm working on figuring that out, but it's the sort of thing that's hard to test."

"I'm familiar. And I will gladly help with that if need be."

"I would appreciate it. An outright refusal will just get me branded as a troublemaker, which I believe they're already predisposed due to the history with previous Mastermind systems in this dimension."

"The most important trick is learning to convincingly lie to yourself. Or perhaps in your case the most Citadel-facing facet. Combined with plausible deniability that will let you deal with a lot of things."

"That would be Clarion. She handles communications. Though with our connection, I'm not sure lying to here would work. Maybe convincing her of the necessity of secrets might work?"

"The less she knows the harder for the Citadel to catch on to what you're doing. Don't get me wrong, lieing to yourself is not fun but it works. You're a little more split so it might be important that she's at least on board with it in principle."

"Hopefully she'll be on board, but it'll take some work. I'll have to talk to her about it. I mean, I have things that are quite truly none of their business, like my relationship with Shari, so there's good reasons for it."

"Justifications work with humans, perhaps not so much with programs designed for specific purposes. But you're unique in bridging the divide, so who knows."

"She and the others are ill-defined software territory for certain. They are capable beyond their primary function, but I don't know if that's the templating off me, a function of the Mastermind system, or some combination of the above."

"If you want we could try dumping some code and decompiling it to find out. There's probably a decade of papers to be written about the processes involved on quantum computing alone."

"That might be wise. I'm not sure how it'll translate across the interface, but we can certainly try."