Xaviers!

Natalie is sitting on a stool in one of the workshops, the guts of a small computer across the desk in front of her. She picks up one of the parts, studying it carefully before she begins putting it into the super-small, starved-for-space case. She picks up another part studying it intently before frowning and putting it into a small bucket that she's labeled with the sign "Faulty".

As she works, one of the computers in the room fires up. After a moment, a drafting/design program opens and the system begins sketching out some sort of body suit. Natalie seems completely unaware of the other machine as she continues to be focused on her computer building.

((Open))

"'Build a gaming rig,' they said," Trev muttered, apparently to himself, as he walked into the workshop lugging a large computer tower, "'It'll be easy,' they said,"

Trev grunted with effort and lifted the computer up onto a work table. "Well they were full of shit weren't they?"

At this point Trev realized he was most decidedly not alone in the workshop. "Oh shit. I'm sorry. I didn't even notice you working here. I can get the hell out of here if you're working on something."

"No, there's plenty of room," she says, somewhat absently. "Problems with your machine?" She picks up another part, scrutinizes it and wedges it into the tiny case.

"Probably just problems with the user," Trev chuckled, now slightly on edge as he realized that he'd walked in on a scenario out of one of his fantasies--a hot girl tinkering with computer shit.

"Never built a machine in my life. Thought I followed the instructions to a T. Stupid thing won't even boot."

Natalie makes a thoughtful noise and then looks at his machine. She reaches over, but stops short of touching it. "May I?"

"Be my guest," he smiled, taking a step back to give her room to work.

She plugs the case into the wall and then rests her hand against the case, closing her eyes. "Power supply is fine," she says softly. "Wait... video card has a short."

Trev cocked his head at the girl as she just started touching his machine and started diagnosing with her eyes closed "...wh..oh, cool! You're like a...uhh...technomancer?"

"Technopath is the term X-Corp uses, but might as well be," she says, starting to take his box apart to get at the offending part. "My name's Natalie."

Trev blushed a bit after clearly letting his geek flag show. "Right. That's what I meant," he chuckled.

Technomancer? Really?

"Trev," he smiled. "Thanks for the help Natalie. And nice to meet you."

"My pleasure," she says, disconnecting the power and pulling the video card. Behind them, the computer continued to make modifications to the design. She scrutinizes the video card, frowning at it like it's a misbehaving child. "Doesn't look like there's any permanent damage. If I can find the bad piece, I might be able to replace it so you don't have to return it."

"Oh wow. That's awesome! Thank you so much," he replied, watching her with interest, but taking notice of the computer working by itself. "What were you working on in here before I barged in?"

"Building a small machine of my own to experiment with," she says, glancing towards the computer she was putting together. "Nothing expensive, just something to practice with." She doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the other computer apparently doing its own thing.

"Power like yours is going to be popular around a place like this with so much tech," Trev remarked, looking around at all of the high tech gadgets surrounding them in the workshop. "So I'm sure you'll get lots of practice whether you want it or not,"

"It comes in handy from time to time," she says, looking over the video card more closely. The autonomous computer goes through a save cycle and starts tweaking the bodysuit design, adding what looks like circuit diagram callouts to the design. She pulls out some tools and begins testing various parts of the video card. "Still learning some things, but who isn't around here?"

"True," he agreed, "I just need to work out a few more things and then I'll probably finally be able to fly."

"If I don't break my neck in the process of trying at least," he chuckled.

"That's what the Danger Room is for or so I'm told," she responds, bringing over a magnifier. "So I take it flying isn't your primary thing?"

"I have a super scream. I can manipulate sound waves I produce to do a number of things. In theory flying is one of them."

"So I add that to my list of powers I'm jealous of," she says, picking a part off of the video card and fishing around the workshop for a replacement.

"It was less useful than you'd think for a long time," he replied, "Hard to re-learn how to yell without breaking things, and even harder to learn to direct the sound so you're only deafening the people you're fighting."

She smirks, "Still jealous. Although I apparently make a kick-ass DJ."

"Yeah?" he grinned, "what do you play?"

"Club music mostly. Dance, techno, trance, that sort of thing," she says, grabbing a pair of safety goggles.

Trev's grin spread even further. His stomach fluttered. This girl was awesome! Trev probably has a crush.

"That's awesome! You should do it on campus sometime. The XUB could use some decent music for a change."

"That would involve getting up in front of people I have to be around all the time," she says, as if the implications of her statement are obvious.

"Could make a mask like Deadmau5" Trev suggested.

"Yes, but people would still know," she says. The autonomous computer pauses briefly as she focuses on soldering the replacement part in place. As her focus stops, the computer starts up again, beginning to hunt through other systems for relevant information.

"Not if you give yourself a cool stage name and hire a chubby, loudmouthed, geeky dude to be your security detail," he chuckled.

"I've always heard that if the job you want doesn't exist, then you need to make it, but I'm not sure this is what they were talking about."

"Well. I mean I volunteered, but if you want to call it a job with pay..." Trev joked.

"Well, considering I've only done one event so far and that was only because a friend sneaked me backstage, I'm not sure there's a real need for a security detail yet."

"Fair enough," he smiled. "So is my video card dead?"

She tilts her head and runs her fingers across the board now that the new part is in it. "I think it should work." She offers it back to him, "Want to do the honors?"

"Sure," he smiled, taking it and reattaching it, then plugging the thing back in. "Guess we'll see..." he said hopefully as he pushed the power button and the machine whooshed to life and started to actually boot.

"There you go," she says with a smile. "Looks like it's running fine."

"Holy crap. Thank you so much." Trev grinned.

"...I...uh," he fumbled a bit bashfully. "Well, could I buy you a drink to thank you for this?"

She raises an eyebrow and the autonomous computer pauses. "I suppose, if you think it's necessary. I really didn't mind doing it."

"You saved me at least an hour on the phone with customer support, and another week or two without sweet graphics in brilliant 4K. That's gotta be worth a beer or coffee."

You are terrible at this.

"I'd take a coffee," she says, "Tomorrow afternoon after classes?"

Trev smiled broadly, "Yeah. That'd be great."

He reached out as if to lean onto the work bench non-chalantly as he spoke, but he was about six inches too far away from it to do so, he therefore nearly fell over trying to catch himself when he found nothing to lean against.

He turned beet red, "God fucking damnit."