Tech Support (Hatsu, Cee)

[Navi Holmes]

(Post-dated - March 15th, 2013)



It had taken only a couple hours for her things to be packed into a suitcase; those things that she would just need to move in and make sure that her computer would be fine once it was set up again. The tower was older than she was, but it was still in decent condition (what with all the upgrades over the years), and though Nevaeh was nervous as all belief, she agreed to let the computer be shut off for a minute as a test.

When it had restarted, she hadn't felt any different (still scared, but it didn't seem like her newly digitized form had gone anywhere), so the young girl agreed to be "turned off" for the relatively short trip to Hammel. She'd begged her father to come with her, but in the end it couldn't be done. He told her he loved her very much and that he would Skype her at the first chance he got, but he needed to be at work in a few hours. There was just no time.

So, the Institute recruiter and she were packed away into the vehicle and drove across state lines, the newest addition to the Hammel Institute for Gifted Students sleeping deep within her processing core.



((Ed, I'll leave meeting with Cee in the computer lab up to you, and will pop back up with Navi once her tower and such is set up and she reboots!))

[Hatsuharu Kenjutsushi]

Sure, it was a strange concept. But there was nothing this Recruiter could do about it. He was literally transporting a computer to Hammel with him. Hatsu really did feel for the girl trapped inside the device. He wished he had a way to help beyond transporting her as quickly as possible. But that was all he had, so that was what he was going with.

Once parked, Hatsuharu immediately left the car with the computer tower in his arms. He'd phoned ahead to make sure the resident expert was ready for him. After all, the sooner they got her out, the better - right? that made sense.

He made his way into the classroom, knocking with his foot given how full his hands were. "I've got her. She's..." He started, pausing and looking down at the thing he was carrying. "Trapped, I suppose." He'd explained what happened on the phone as best he could, but it wasn't exactly an every day run in.

[Cee Cohen]

Cee would’ve been excited for the challenge if he hadn’t been so worried about the girl inside. It wasn’t every day that you had a student who could literally transport themselves into a computer. The things he would like to ask her--

--once he’d successfully retrieved her from the systems and made sure she was okay. Yup. Cee might’ve been a little nuts but at least he had most of the right priorities.

He’d gotten all of his tools ready and, for once, was actually able to see due to actually wearing his contact lenses. He opened the door promptly at the knock and let Hatsu in.

“Trapped isn’t beneficial.” Cee worried his lip between his teeth. “If only I had one of those materialism beams from the first Tron movie this would be much more convenient. Here, set her down and I will get her plugged in.” He had the cords ready. “Have you ever experienced something like this before?” He was a good hacker, but he wasn’t sure this required any of his hacking abilities.

[Hatsuharu Kenjutsushi]

"I thought the same thing." Hatsuharu replied, deciding quickly that this was up there with some of his strangest cases. Possibly the strangest - how many people would believe he just recruited a hard drive?

As requested, the Recruiter placed the hard drive where allocated. Then he promptly stepped back. This kind of technology wasn't his thing.

"Never." He admitted, exhaling on a laugh at the fact. It made him feel a little useless, actually. That there was a girl stuck in a place and he was physically helpless to get her out. "You?"

[Cee Cohen]

Cee shook his head. “I have only been here for around two years, remember? Why would I have ever had this kind of experience if you had not?” The recruiter seemed a little nervous, though, to Cee’s contact-sharpened vision, and he offered the other man a reassuring smile. “It will be perfectly fine. All abilities are able to be triggered, correct? We just have to figure out hers.” And hope he didn’t damage anything in the process. He plugged the system in, checked the wiring, then exhaled. “Here we go.” He booted up the system and stepped back, rubbing his hands together. “Could she, ah, talk in this state? Should I get speakers or a keyboard?"

[Hatsuharu Kenjutsushi]

"Because I've been here for six months." Hatsuharu replied with a small laugh. Even during his years at Eisai, a child had never gotten themselves caught in a place like this.

Still, he let reassurance wash over him when the other man smiled in his direction. It was as if he was being calmed by the notion that things would be fine. Still, he always worried to an extent. Sometimes things came to an unfortunate end. And those were the types of cases he preferred to forget. "I'd have to guess that it is more than technopathy." He mused. They worked with technology, not in it. As far as he knew, anyway.

"When last we spoke, I typed to her and she responded as such." Hatsu explained. "But speakers might allow her to speak. I can't be certain, though."

[Cee Cohen]

“Ohhhh.” Cee smiled at him. “My apologies. I don’t usually encounter recruiters. My duties tend to be restricted to the students already recruited, you understand. And since I began this profession I have only once assisted in a recruitment case. Plus, I don’t get out much.”

Well done, Cee, for giving the understatement of the year.

“I’d guess so as well,” he said. “Technopaths don’t get into the system physically—just mentally. I wonder what she is seeing in there. If I were to have any power, I would hope to have hers. Not that, ah, I would at this moment.” He to finish plugging everything in, then nodded. “Keyboard, speakers and microphone it is.” He had all of them plugged in within moments, then he smiled at Hatsu. “And…on!” He powered it on, then stepped back to let the recruiter work.

[Navi Holmes]

There was an interesting sensation of the dark becoming a little lighter, and the consciousness that was Navi Holmes stirred inside the processor. She blinked and looked around, sort of floating where she was in a bit of black as various "lights" clicked on - processes and applications booting up, she guessed distantly. The small girl still felt really sluggish after all of this, and only as the device booted itself to full power did she start to feel a little normal.

Then it came back. She was stuck inside the computer.

The realization made her shiver, and a white screen suddenly lit up a little ways to her left. It wasn't very big, but then again the space didn't seem very tall or wide, either. She looked at it for a minute, then shivered. It wasn't like when she could see outside at home, but... she could at least hear some background noise. Shuffling mostly. She hoped Hatsu was there - he promised he would be.

"He-hello...?" Navi ventured, rubbing her arms a little. She wasn't cold, but she wasn't warm either. "Mr. Hatsu? Are you there?"


---



Outside, a young African American girl appeared on the screen like an overlaid sprite, fidgeting and looking around as if lost. Her pixels cleared up as the OS finally settled down and finished booting, and she looked just like she had shrunk and fit on the other side of the glass. She obviously couldn't see them, but it looked like the speakers had done their job - her voice came out loud and clear.

[Hatsuharu Kenjutsushi]

Hatsuharu folded his arms and leaned forward, watching the man set up the excess pieces they might require before turning things on. Once he did, Hatsu instantly felt himself lean forward a touch more. He almost felt nervous. Nervous or anxious, he couldn't really define what was going on in his head.

He just hoped it worked.

When he heard her voice, he felt a quick flicker of relief. They were hardly out of the woods yet, but her voice was like a light in that darkness. "Yes Navi, I'm here." He said clearly, unsure as to whether she could even see him. But he smiled at the sight of her anyway. "This here is Mr Cee. He's going to try and help you. How are you feeling?"

[Navi Holmes]

The familiar voice came from everywhere and right in front of her at the same time, sort of like at the movie theater when people were talking on the screen. She still couldn't see past the white light of the screen (she thought it was the screen, at least - there was that weird glass-like thickness to it like the one she had at home), but now that she knew there was someone else there who knew more about computers... well, it didn't make Navi less nervous, but she wasn't panicking after her weird little nap...thing. Had she actually slept?

"Umm..." she started nervously, twisting her dark fingers together and biting her lip. "I'm... okay. I don't think I've forgotten anything or... or anything like that." That was something that had worried her initially, when they wanted to shut the computer off to move her. "I don't think I'm having any weird, um, reactions or anything. I can't see you guys or anything, though..."

There had been a mention of side-effects at her house, but without her coming out of the computer it was hard to tell whatever they were. And while being inside a computer was cool and all... it was a little creepy and lonely. And she wanted out. But... she didn't know how. "Ummm... Mr. Cee?" she asked. "Have you ever met a um... a person like me before?"

Not a meta - she guessed they were probably (impossibly) at the school already. But... someone like her - someone that could go inside computers and things.

[Cee Cohen]

Oh dear. Cee stared, open-mouthed, caught between something like horror, sympathy, and something that was oddly like fascination. Okay, it was entirely fascination. If there was ever a cat who would’ve been killed by curiosity, it would’ve been Cee. It was a wonderful ability, but that didn’t mean the girl was particularly enjoying it at this moment.

“Hold on,” he said. “I have a thought.” And he went diving over his desk to start rifling through drawers. Eventually he surfaced, triumphant, with a webcam in hand. “Let’s see if this works.” While Hatsuharu and Navi were talking, he plugged it in and stepped back, eyes scanning the screen as his fingers tapped a beat on his leg, waiting to see if the fix had…taken, so to speak.

He started a bit as she spoke to him, glancing at the recruiter, then back at the screen. “Hello!” he said, voice a little higher than normal. “I’m Cee. Nice to meet you, Navi. I haven’t met a person like you but I’m not too worried! We will figure out how to, um, get things working.” He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

“Do you remember what happened? How you, um, got in there?”

[Hatsuharu Kenjutsushi]

Hatsu held back the temptation to breathe a significant sigh of relief. At least she was feeling okay. Or as okay as she could given her current... Situation. "I am... Glad you feel as good as you possibly can." He replied, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. But this whole circumstance was very strange. He didn't want to seem alarmed by the fact that she couldn't see them. "We'll figure something out. Mr Cee is a very capable man indeed."

And true to his statement, he watched the man return with a bright idea in the form of a webcam. Once it was hooked up and operational, Hatsu stood behind the other man and offered the device a smile. Then a small wave. Positive thinking, and all that.

[Navi Holmes]

Well... if the recruiter wasn't worried, maybe she shouldn't have been. But that still didn't make her feel any less weird; she could feel her fingers twisting together, and could smell the clean, slightly electric air(?) inside the room(?) she was in... Seriously, who knew computers had rooms like this?

And then, a notification came up out of nowhere, just blipping up right behind the small girl. The only reason she noticed was because of the flash of different-colored light that accompanied it. Startled, she jumped and turned, noticing for the fist time that some weird... control station, it looked like. Now that she thought about it, it looked a little like a service panel straight off the Enterprise. Huh... what was that doing in her computer?

"Umm... just a sec." Flashing a quick smile, Navi wandered over to the panel (which was not as far as it looked) and browsed it. The little icon was flashing, and only after a bit of hesitation her curiosity won out and she pressed the little button that looked something like a camera.

Almost immediately, the screen turned black, startling her, but before she could cry out it started booting up again. And then... she could see.

This she did start at. "Oh! Mr. Hatsu! Mr. Cee! I can see you!" The dark girl's face broke open into a wide bright smile, and she jumped up and down excitedly. She could see again. "What'd you DO, Mr. Cee?

And then, there was the all-important question: what did she do to get in here? Now that she was able to see the people she was talking to, the pre-teen shook her head and held up her hands in a classically clueless gesture. "I dunno," she started, thinking back. It hadn't been that long ago, really, but something like sixteen hours without sleep should have been wearing on her. It wasn't. Weird. "The OS was having a hard time booting and kept going into a loop of pre-boot. I tried to type in some code my dad taught me because I thought it was a virus or something. But that didn't work, 'coz when I was reaching back to unplug and replug the keyboard, the whole thing shocked me. Sir, he may be old, but HAL's never done that before."

Yeah, she and her dad were science-fiction geeks. Sue them.

"After he shocked me, everything sort of... I dunno. My fingers looked like they had wires running through them, and the next thing I know I'm here." She knocked a little on the glass with a knuckle, which to her sounded like knocking on a thick window, but to them would sound like someone tapping the screen from the outside. Helpless and sheepish, the little girl turned big brown eyes up at them. "I'm... I'm okay, though, I think. I don't need to eat, or... or sleep or anything. And I can breathe and feel all my toes and things... I think."

It was hard to figure out what you were feeling when the idea of feeling inside a computer was odd. Even if she HAD seen The Matrix. Ew. Hopefully THAT wasn't happening in here.