Conspiracy X : Who: Tessa (BINARY), Inez (BRICK) and OP

bricked
2007-11-19 18:25 (link)

Inez, like Tessa, appears to have completely recovered from the panic and stress that was the aftermath of the Halloween party. She's just come from her own room - where she still keeps her stuff, even if she's spending most nights with Hank - in a clean t-shirt and jeans after a heavy workout session in the gym. She walks past the door of the rec room, then stops and looks back in, raising a curious eyebrow as she sees Tessa spaced out in front of the stereo.

"You know, it's traditional to end up staring blankly at the television," she says, grinning a little. "Has the stereo done something to deserve that kind of attention?" Tessa, of course, will likely not hear her. It's not like the Texan's yelling to make herself heard or anything.

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onesandzeros
2007-11-19 18:43 (link)

Tessa hears the voice and vaguely registers what the voice is saying, but when she turns around to face Inez she has no idea what the other girl has just said. She blinks several times, to bring herself back into the real world.

"The stereo is not doing much, but I think that is good," she says with a small smile. She doesn't really know much about Inez, only that the girl is dating Hank and that she's really strong. "The television is boring though - I cannot talk to it at all, it is too simple. I can hear the broadcast stations but I cannot reach them, they are too far away." She sounds a bit like Hank, to be honest, and it really hasn't occurred to her that Inez is talking about watching television. Maybe she would have thought of it eventually, but hey, it takes a country girl a little while to get used to all this finery.

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bricked
2007-11-19 18:51 (link)

Inez's brow furrows and she blinks a couple of times trying to figure out what Tessa's talking about. Then it clicks - she's the girl who talks to machines. "No, no, no. I don't imagine the TV would have much to say, but most people who space out like that are *watching* it." She comes into the room, crosses over to the couch, and settles into it - she's even gotten good enough about being careful that it doesn't really show except as a sort of tension right before she picks something up or moves it around.

"Did the stereo have anything interesting to say? Or is it, you know, just a stereo? No grand plans to take over the mansion and destroy us all?" Clearly Inez has maybe watched a little too much of the sci-fi channel. She grins at the other girl and tilts her head. "So how does your... thing... work, really? Is it like having a remote control, or different?" Eloquent, Inez. Tres eloquent.

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onesandzeros
2007-11-19 19:30 (link)

Watching! Tessa laughs slightly, more than a little embarrassed that it took her this long to figure that out. She notices that Inez sits down rather carefully on the couch, as though it took concentration to master that simple task. She's about to ask but finds herself at the business end of a question instead.

"The stereo says little, but it is not too complicated. The Blackberries though," and at this Tessa grimaces slightly, "they talk too much. It was nice at first because I had trouble with English, but I had no trouble with the Blackberries. But now they keep talking and talking..." Tessa pauses to turn to face Inez and prop her chin on her hand. "I think they are getting...what do you call them? Like people - personalities." Yes, she had to cheat and look it up online, but now that she's learned to use her Blackberry without actually looking at it, Inez would never have to know. This is, of course, assuming that Inez didn't see the brief unfocused look in Tessa's eyes as she was cheating.

In response to Inez's following question, Tessa shrugs. "I do not know everything yet, about what I do. For it talking to a computer is the same as talking to a person, but we do not use English, we...talk." Truthfully Tessa has no idea that she mentally manipulates coding - she's only just learned what programming languages are, much less every detail of how they operate. "Shin says I maybe use programming languages, but I do not know those languages yet."

Instead of going more in depth about her trial-and-error experiences with machinery, she turns the tables on Inez instead. "You must be careful when you sit down." It's a question, but Tessa states it as fact. "Your power is strength, yes?"

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bricked
2007-11-19 20:26 (link)

Inez grins at the thought of her Blackberry developing a personality. "I guess so long as they don't start telling my secrets to y'all, it can talk to whoever it wants." Strange to be talking about a machine like that, really, but Tessa would be the expert, right? The thought that they might be picking up personalities makes her pull her own out of the carrying case on her belt, and look at it curiously, completely missing the glazed look in Tessa's eyes.

"So you just talk to it, like it talks to other things? That's... kinda neat, really. I wish I could make 'em work so easy." She slips the device back into its case, then gives Tessa a wry smile at the other girl's question.

"I have to be careful all the time. I'm strong, I'm tough, I'm even quick - just better all 'round, in a lot of ways, but it means I break things easily. When you can crush rocks with your hands, a blackberry's pretty breakable." She shrugs. "I've gotten used to it, I guess. Josh had a lot of trouble."

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onesandzeros
2007-11-19 21:00 (link)

Should she be honest? Tessa isn't sure if reading someone's browser history is the same as "telling secrets" but she decides that she probably shouldn't say that just yet. No use telling strangers, and she wants Inez to like her, not run off screaming about crazy stalkers. "They do not tell me what you think, but they like to talk," Tessa says somewhat awkwardly. "Do you have trouble with them?" Tessa asks, curious. "If it helps, your Blackberry likes you." That was kind of a lie - Tessa couldn't quite tell yet if any Blackberry other than her own had a truly distinct "voice", but Inez's sounded just as cheerful as the rest of them.

To Tessa, Inez's powers are doubly impressive because she herself is so weak. Logan told her that the first couple weeks of training were going to be incredibly difficult, but Tessa is starting to think that it will be years before she'll be considered "passing" by Logan's standards. "Training is easy for you then? Do you need to take training with Logan?" The idea of crushing rocks is more than a little intimidating. "How long did it take you to get used to your powers?" She smiles at the memory of Josh breaking the keys of his Blackberry constantly. "Josh broke his Blackberry quickly, I remember."

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bricked
2007-11-19 21:44 (link)

Inez thinks about that for a second, and shakes her head. "Not so much trouble - I mean, they break easy, but everything does, so I just stay careful. I broke one right after we got to England, but that wasn't my fault." She flushes at the memory of the unlocked locked post, and shakes her head. "Well, it was my fault for being silly but it wasn't like I could really help myself, y'know?"

Inez shakes her head as the questioning continues, though, and shrugs. "Training's not easy. I mean, I don't have any trouble with the weights that Betsy or Josh or even Logan use, but I have special ones that the others can't even really move, and I don't spar with anyone but Logan and sometimes Agent Pierce." Her brow furrows again, and her mouth curves down in a frown. "Logan mostly teaches me how to pull my shots so it doesn't look like I'm a freak when I hit someone." Yeah, she said the f-word.

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onesandzeros
2007-11-21 08:42 (link)

"Only one is not bad," Tessa smiles. The smile could be from using a new phrase successfully ("not bad") but mostly it's from pride in Inez's abilities to control her power. Granted, all Tessa has done with her power is type without using the keyboard and accidentally switch peoples' powers by blowing a machine, but that's really not much at all.

Tessa has always assumed that everyone uses the same weights and is genuinely surprised that Inez has her own set of weights. "They make you a special set of weights?" she asks, impressed. "Black Air gives us a lot of luxuries." Yes, new vocab word. She gestures towards the top-of-the-line surround sound system and the large television behind her. "We are only students, but we get all this just for us."

By now Tessa has distinguished that Inez's accent is definitely not British, but she also knows that the other American students don't sound quite like she does. "Can I ask a personal question? When you talk - you are American, but you do not sound like the others?" She ducks her head slightly, afraid that she'll offend the other girl. She's always going around saying the wrong things these days. "You do not have to answer, if you want."

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bricked
2007-11-22 00:33 (link)

Inez shrugs; even one was more than she'd like to have broken, and she's been ultra-careful since, but she's not going to go into all that. Instead she grins at the barrage of questions, and blushes a bit.

"No, no. Well, sorta. I guess the Black Air folks kinda did some training here too. Agent Pierce's almost as strong as me, and I use the same stuff he did. But they really do give us a lot of stuff - I sometimes wonder why we get so much." She shakes her head; that line of thought isn't a terribly comfortable one just yet.

"I'm American, yeah, but I'm from Texas. You get other accents from other places. Heck, you even get it here in England!" She gives Tessa a wide grin. "You can tell the difference between someone from Brooklyn and someone from New Jersey, and someone from Texas and someone from South Carolina. Don't they have the same kinda thing in other countries?"

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omg I fail at life, i.e. replying in a timely manner.

onesandzeros
2007-11-27 08:47 (link)

Tessa honestly doesn't mean to be nosy, but really, when you think about it she's been living in a proverbial hole for the last few years and it's only natural to be curious, right? So far she's been fortunate that no one's yelled at her for her inquisitiveness, but that's mostly luck. Hopefully she'll know when to stop pushing, but that remains to be seen.

It bothers her somewhat that Inez doesn't know why Black Air has spoiled them so, because she has always assumed that everyone else had the answers and she was just new. "Well, what is it you say? Do not look a horse in the mouth? Or is it a gift?" She could have said it in Albanian but she has long since learned that most people do not "pick up" languages like she does (or Hank, for that matter). "I know it means to be thankful for gifts. I think." Maybe she needed to brush up on her idioms a bit more.

She grins back at Inez. "Yes, but I can only tell difference with Albanian," she laughs. "Where is Texas? It is in America, I know," she amends, "but America is big, no?"

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It's okay! We sort of both do.

bricked
2007-11-28 07:32 (link)

Tessa's questions don't really seem to bother Inez; she's had plenty of time now to get used to the idea that kids from other places aren't going to know things she takes for granted - like the difference between East Texas and New Jersey. She probably wouldn't have a clue where Kosovo was on a map, anyway.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," she says, grinning. "Basically, just be happy you got a gift. Texas is in the southern part of the US - it's the biggest state, if you look on a map. America's huge, it's crazy. I actually kinda like England more." She tilts her head, inquisitive. "What was it like growing up for you?" She doesn't quite want to admit that she's forgotten exactly which country it is the other girl's from.

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