The four scarabs are squatting in the corner, inactive. Her cat-guards and walker aren't in yet, but a quick text to Reception has her respond that the transfer is in transit.

"I'll do what I can to help." The other boy removes his reading glasses as she explains the situation, listening intently. Then he nods his head. "So, in effect, you are a server, and you have only so much hardware to spare to the different clients."

He taps the side of his glasses against his bottom lip thoughtfully. "I can try to identify inefficiencies, flaws or other issues with observation. I'll need to see examples live. Ideally, at least one with plenty of this synapse energy being available, and one where you run out - or outright crash."

R&D raises an eyebrow as she casually asks her tablet to try and solve the interaction between quarks and gluons like it's no little thing. But then her tablet dings its ascent, downloads the prerequisite data, and starts working to compress a year's worth of a supercomputer farm in one cloud computing. The scientist teen next to her begins to watch the tablet with interest - and intensity.

To her power's credit, her tablet lasts about 15 minutes. Long enough to calculate some examples of color change confinement, but still far away from any solution. 5 minutes in, Mystery is the first to report shut-down (she calls it a 'cat nap') as the priority call for synapse comes from the tablet. The diggers chime in one by one over the next 5 minutes. Her hover bike - given it wasn't using up much of anything parked - is the last.

Finally, the calculation program - after having opened thread after thread after thread of parallel computing to solve all the crazy amount of variables involved - finally conks right out. Her tablet doesn't shut off, but threads start crashing and the calculation ends up going at a crawl, with an estimated solution to be found sometime in 2150. Almost all synapse gets relinquished by the surge. It's been a while since she's had (almost) 100% back, and it comes with a brief, strange, upswelling feeling of energy.

R&D, who has been watching carefully, finally seems to snap back out of it and reaches up to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Wow... your power is wild."

"Sounds worth doing when you need a break.

"So, some things I noticed during that while thing." He puts his slim, reading glasses back on. "You're not a server - you're a battery. It's subtle, but I can make out the... we'll call it energy leaving you to go to different directions - mostly straight up. Except with the tablet, where all of it became this concentrated mass.

"First, there's a physiological component. Your body heat went up during that - subtly, but it did, and in turn your heart slowed down to try and keep you cool. I think your heartbeat increasing will bring in more efficiency in your synapse use... So improving your cardio and capacity to have a higher BPM will help with your capacity."

"But the bigger inefficiency is the second one. Your power leaves you by first going straight up, like a plume of smoke off of a fire. Far enough to leave through the ceiling... how high, less sure, I don't think I could really see it. But then it begins to curve and disperse to where it needs to go, coming back down through the ceiling and into the tablet. But it's not fool-proof - there's bleed. Motes of lightning come off the plume and grab onto surfaces, especially metal, before dissipating. If you could make direct lines of information, you could cut down on wasted synapse. Especially if you could transfer through contact."

"You also release synapse that isn't used - waste energy. You need to learn energy-manipulation techniques, so you can direct how your energy leaves your body, and from where, in what direction."

He removes his glasses, folding them and setting them aside. "Finally, your ... compiled code is split into a grid of some sort. Energy flows from the top, left most symbols, going straight down first until there's a column of it. Then it sweeps, like a scanner, reading all the rest of the rows simultaneously. So you'd have the best code efficiency by putting your heaviest computation as far away from the starting column, where possible."

"...I think that's everything I could see without experiencing it. This is a very unique looking energy, unlike, say, laser beam projectionists, where they make plasma. Yours barely makes any heat or visible light - I could barely see it - but it contains a lot of data. It might be brighter in a spectrum I can't see in."

"Hard to tell, but it's possible you could wind power within power," he agrees, watching the scarabs chitter at each other to coordinate with her orders.

Might depend at what frequency her power works on, if she could pump it through a fiber optic or heavy voltage wire. It'd open a pretty vast world of options.

"Anyone who's had to deal with energy manipulation and has experienced directing it is who you'd ask. In the dragonflies, Stream can flow like energy, and Oso can make shells and barriers. C-Shell and Heat Shock from Steel Nova, though it's more about wrapping themselves with it. Isn't really anyone with directed beams in Haven's YPA."

Gary does indeed come to mind - besides Flight, his main thing is directing narrow, concentrated beams of the stuff.

He smiles again, and it's like another light clicked on that was missing in the workshop. "Sure. My thoughts would be to rig an copper spool to make an inductance source, plug in an oscilloscope, and see if we can't do some math to figure out some numbers."

In the middle of building their little Synergy-builder, she gets a message that her walker is in the garage, and the two cat soldiers are brought down in basic, open-front crates. A bit scuffed up and some charring, so after a bit of buffing they'll be good as new.

They end up needing 18 inches of wire-spooling to get a field sensitive enough for the oscilloscope to pick up her interference, finally getting a measure. "You won't be interfering with anyone's Wi-Fi, that's certain."

Seeing little beetles crawling around the two soldiers and her walker with a damp cloth and holding little bottles of rubbing alcohol is adorable in all sorts of ways (though she imagines some people would find it unsettling.)

As her software starts to come up with ever funkier shapes to try and maximize power reception/emanation, R&D just gives her a grin as he tosses his hair back with a hand. "Tinkering, esoterica, and learning cool stuff is what I live for. You, Seshat, are absolutely welcome. I'll try to think of some projects your unique ability and insight can help me with."

"Have you considered three dimensional carving?" He wonders. "Thin layers of wafer thin engravings within range of one another might be able to count as one program, which could multiply your code density."

And for the next little while, they end up talking shop. She learns that while he has a lot of knowledge, theories and ideas, what he's lacking is experience to get to test his ideas - the YPA thing is pretty recent. So he ends up learning quite a bit from her experiences and tests, while she gets to hear theories and ideas that seem basic, but applied or combined in novel ways to give her some serious fodder to think about. Logic, lateral and three dimensional thinking seems to be his specialty. Goes well with his analytical sight.

Around the time her soldiers and walker are literally shiny clean, both of them having a scarab per shoulder, they've managed to come to a decent arrangement of tools and space where they won't step on one another's toes, and are both given a fair bit of food for thought for future projects.

However, an interruption comes in the intercom announcing Hound-8's arrival, and Seshat gets a summon.

Building her code straight into the fabrication process turns out to be a dud. Either it's indeed not personal enough, or there's some... separation between the layers of code she needs to find a way to overcome. Far as her sense of her power goes, it's trying to be multiple devices at the same time rather than one cohesive block.

"Hm... if we could harness a phasing hero's power, somehow, into an engraving tool, it's possible you might be able to write through a substrate," he muses, though his train of thought is interrupted by the call to action. He gives her whole ensemble, once gathered up, an impressed look. "You cut a pretty intimidating figure, Ms. Seshat," he jests.

He chuckles and sets his glasses down, replacing them with a pair of thin, light-adjusting glasses instead. "Sure, why not go up in style instead of using just a regular elevator?" He heads over, sets his foot on one of the walker's legs, then eases himself up until he joins her. "Nice dashboard."

When the walker gets going, he even puts a hand on her shoulder to steady himself until he gets the feeling for the motion. For Seshat, it's pretty impressive what removing the latency of her brain to her tongue from her tongue to her mask from her mask to her power from her power to the machine and compressing it down to just mind to mask to machine does. It walks where she wants it to talk instead of "where she wants it to walk but with a margin of error and timing."

"You might ask Garra, he does that, but I don't know how well you could work through him. He's also kind of impatient and hyper and not really suited for precision work."

They head to the cargo elevator and make their way up to the garage, then head outside where everyone else is gathering up. R&D hops off to go join Garra - in his black half-helmet - and a girl in a really colorful, silky looking outfit with a really long looking scarf, and long, wavy hair dyed in similar colors.

Iry is in her golden outfit, wings buzzing as she floats next to a slim, shorter and younger girl in a more classical, unicolor bodysuit with a domino mask, and a bigger looking boy with feathery wings mostly clad in a (modified) trenchcoat.

Steel Nova's trio is there - C-Shell has a kevlar vest on, Heat Shock hasn't changed, and then there's Keratin. A blonde, a rather curvy one, and she's wrapped in some sort of thick, off-white plate armor that looks to have no real joints that Seshat soon realizes is bone.

The Falcon Scouts are three boys, one with a red shawl-cape sort of thing going, one in a dark, meshed bodysuit, and one more in more regular civilian clothing.

And, of course, Stream and co. are gathering up, Kordes having changed to include a wild looking, beaten up electric guitar over her back.

Hound-8 is there too - tactical, clean Hound-8 - as well as who must be Pharmacon, Mr. Bardem favouring a pale, close knit outfit with a couple layers for a sort of doctor-y vibe while being practical, talking to one another.

Seshat certainly draws looks with her mecha, feline bodyguards and fluttering, shiny beetle companions - especially all buffed and cleaned up. Trying not to look smug doesn't quite work, though, as Stream gives her a snicker. "Hello, Ms. Ate-the-canary. Nice setup.

"Okay, Dragonflies, didn't get the chance to properly introduce you cause of briefing, but, this is Seshat, tinker, MacGyver, and apparently can bring her own back up, which I'm on board for. Seshat, this is Oso, barriers. Distable, matter energizer. Kordes, musical artillery."

"Okay, I'll admit, that's pretty cool," Kordes mentions, after popping a bubblegum. She steps up to the walker, running her hand along one of the symbols. "You do commissions? That glowing stuff would look pretty wicked on one of my guitars."

"Mostly I'm just a sucker for glowing stuff. But if you can make me an amp-built-in-guitar with more juice, bass and volume than what I've got here, I could really blow shit up."

"Kordes, you already blow shit up."

"Yeah, but unless I'm dragging a full amp and a car battery, I can't do the full-body volume or crank it up. If she can make something that puts it all in the guitar without making it unwieldly, that'd be sweet. Mobile, high grade artillery is a lot better than static."

"Awesome!"

"Oh boy," Stream sighs over-dramatically. "Now you've done it. Well, I guess we can never have enough firepower."

Everyone gets snapped out of their chats as several armored vans come in through the gates, parking nearby.

"Ladies, gents," Hound-8 speaks up, stepping forwards from her chat with Pharmacon. She tucks her hands behind her back. "We've been lucky that no mice decided to play while the cats are away so far, but we can't be complacent. So, you have your assigned zones and the trucks are coming in through the gate. So board up to your HQs, follow your captains, stay sharp, stay in contact. GRF units are inbound, and expected to come relieve you in three hours, give or take." She nods at the vans. "Off you go."

Stream looks from walker to van, then shakes her head. "Just follow our van. Besides that it'd be a tight fit that doesn't really need to happen, and if we need to get it out in a hurry we'd be hosed, having you already be out and in a ready position is an advantage. I'm not expecting an ambush, but I'd rather be prepared for one anyway."

"Plus I kind of want to see people's faces while you wander by." She grins at her while stepping over to the passenger's side of the van as everyone else prepared to go.

Going 'wait, there's a store there' didn't exactly translate to a very fast re-aiming process. This, though, is a lot better as it is - all that's really missing would be some sort of feedback, then it'd be like they were her very legs or something.

She certainly draws looks from drivers and pedestrians. Not often you see a government van accompanied by some sort of movie-construction and its posse. They take the path north, across the bridge to Eden's Landing. The ASRI facility - being the core branch of the international program - is huge. It's a sprawling building on two stories, with a separate campus that is actually built out over the water. Even from outside, Seshat can tell this thing is filled to the brim with high tech, workshops and labs made specifically for the study of superpowers.

They roll (and walk) into a garage station area, a small private parking lot ahead. There's a couple of SRI security officers on either side of the door to greet them. "Seto Dragonflies," says one. "Dr. DeNyle is expecting you in the central conference room."