[centre][h2][colour=444c38]Baruq[/colour] and [colour=2c75ff]Cereza[/colour][/h2][/centre]

Cereza lay back on her bed, absently running through some specs on her laptop as she stared at the ceiling. It had been a fairly uneventful week, to be honest. She’d sort of settled into ordinary school life; having to deal with an entire class full of students who weren’t entirely focused on the lesson was an experience after years of it just being herself and her brother getting personal tutoring from a teacher, and having to share a room with three other people - well, two actually, since Tierra had been pulled out of Beacon - meant that the blonde had endured a few sleepless nights before she finally grew used to listening to the snores and breathing of her teammates.

Thinking of Tierra made the hacker frown slightly, her mind still lost in the world of electronics that was her laptop. She’d messaged her brother just as the technophile had said she would. [colour=f2fd43][i]’Stay out of it. You can’t do anything.’[/i][/colour] had been his reply, which made it obvious that [i]something[/i] had happened that involved his fledgling gang. Cereza hadn’t pushed; she trusted her brother and loved him too much to say or do anything to compromise him, and there had to be a reason for him to say that. Who knows? [colour=2c75ff][i]’Perhaps Tierra had been approached by Midas for recruitment before she started here?’[/i][/colour]

She’d kept track of the news surrounding Tierra’s case, and all evidence pointed to the Faunus girl. And hadn’t that been a surprise to find out from the news; the tiny girl hadn’t even had any obvious Faunus traits. And just as Midas had told her, there really wasn’t much Cereza could do without making it obvious someone had meddled. The evidence was solid; Tierra was a shoe-in for a Manslaughter charge.

The sound of her program letting out a beep pulled the lithe girl from her thoughts as it finishing calibrating,and she uploaded the new program to the CPU in Droed Gwyn, updating the firing programming. It would take a while to finish the upload thoguh, and Cereza glanced around her empty dorm. Viola and Argent had been spending time together as the silver-haired knight was teaching the violet witch how to use the gladius the duo had picked during Initiation, and Cereza had joined them occasionally for sparring practise or homework. The team was...not close, as of yet, but they were at least acquaintances by Cereza’s books.

Since she didn’t particularly feel like searching out the fairytale duo at the moment, Cereza indulged a little in a hobby she’d picked up in the last year of living with her brother; surfing electronics. She cast her semblance out as far as it could reach, pushing her own boundaries as part of her exercise in control and strength, and dipped into the various scrolls of the people around her dorm room.

Mostly the blonde just gleaned a few boring tidbits; one girl was dating two boys at once, and it seemed neither boy knew it, another young man was chatting with his sister via text messages. There was one groups of students clustered close together, one of their scrolls recording whatever it was they were doing.

She sent her semblance upwards instead, curious about what sort of things the upper years got up to on their scrolls. One scroll was absolutely teeming with girl’s numbers, and another was used almost exclusively to write assignments on. Cereza continued stretching her semblance, feeling it grow thin and a headache start as she finally reached the top floor of the building. It wasn’t too bad, just a slight pain starting in her temple, so she pushed it just a little bit further.

A program was running just on the edge of her reach, the coding twisting and turning in such ways that Cereza’s interest was piqued. She slipped into the CPU with ease, but the sheer complexity left her reeling as the language was something completely different to anything she had ever read before. As a hacker she prided herself on knowing how to break into and manipulate any system she came across, something that was made easier by her semblance, but this programming left her with nowhere to even start. It was like an audio player trying to read a text file; the programs were simply too different.

Snapping her semblance back to herself and rubbing her eyes at the slight headache that accompanied the feeling that accompanied her return of spatial awareness, Cereza sat up and swung her legs out of her bed. Leaving her weapons sitting on the desk beside her bed, she didn’t even bother pulling on her boots as she padded her way out of the dorm room. There was no way the technophile was going to leave such an interesting bit of coding unlearnt; and meeting the person who had created such a masterpiece of programming that could confuse and experienced hacker such as herself could never be a bad thing.

The young woman, much shorter than usual due to her lack of heeled boots, knew that she had to go upstairs to find the source of her curiosity, and she rode the elevator in impatient silence. As she reached the top floor she cast out her semblance once more, making sure not to slip too far into the programming and lose track of her surroundings. The interesting CPU system seemed to be somewhere around the middle of the building, and she followed the feeling to a dorm room beside the fifth-story kitchens.

The program was no easier to understand standing right outside the room than it had been lying on her bed, and she knocked sharply on the dorm room door.

Heavy steps could be heard on the other side of the door, accompanied by a gruff voice. [colour=444c38]“Gimme a sec,”[/colour] someone said, and a cabinet clicked loudly. Moments later, the door opened to reveal a rough skinned young man, [colour=444c38]“Can I help you?[/colour]” he asked politely, observing his visitor.

[colour=2c75ff]“Are you the owner of the program currently running in this dorm room?”[/colour] The blonde asked, craning her neck slightly to look up at him.

[colour=444c38]“Probably.”[/colour] he replied [colour=444c38]“Trying to fix a timing error in a project.”[/colour] he observed  [colour=444c38]“Why? And how did you know?”[/colour]

[colour=2c75ff]“My semblance allows me to manipulate computer programs,”[/colour] She responded quickly, trying to see past the man into the room. [colour=2c75ff]“I’m a programmer by nature, holding a Cert 3 in IT. I‘m interested in your programming, as it’s unlike anything I’ve found before. Would you like some help with the timing error?”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Be nice, but anything I wrote’d probably make yer eyes bleed.”[/colour] He opened the door and gestured for her to enter the dorm; scattered bins of machinery littered most of the space while a bed sat in one corner alongside a beanbag and hammock [colour=444c38]“Not much of a programmer, pretty much all brute force.”[/colour]

[colour=2c75ff]“You haven’t been traditionally trained? That explains a lot,”[/colour] She commented, ignoring the piles of parts and making a beeline for the computer she could both see and feel. [colour=2c75ff]“Where’s your base program? If I can find that, I’m sure I can figure out the rest. Do you mind if I dive right in?”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Help yerself kid, should be open.”[/colour] the faunus offered. “Watch your step though, some sharp bits lying around and I MIGHT have dropped an unstable dust crystal earlier.”

Cereza only peripherally heard his warning, slipping into the chair at his bench as her fingers steepled and her neon eyes flared brighter in response to her semblance becoming more active. She dove in much deeper than her cursory surfing had allowed her to before when coupled with the distance, and followed the pathways laid out before her mind. She murmured to herself as she rode the data waves, [colour=2c75ff]“Oh, now [i]that[/i] is an ingenious way of doing things. And, huh. If I do [i]this[/i] that part will run smoother.”[/colour]

The dorm was silent for a few minutes as Cereza lost herself in the world of Baruq’s computer and Baruq fiddled with another of his many projects he had running at the moment. The silence was broken after rustling emerged near the dorm window and it clicked open, allowing a dark haired girl to climb in, hopping over the bench. She looked over towards her teammates work station for a moment, watching the strange girl stare as Baruq observed the screen. [colour=0f52ba]“Hey, bro, who’s the girl?”[/colour] she inquired, attempting to break their concentration.

[colour=444c38]“One of the newbies I think, came asking about the program I was working on.”[/colour] the tusked youth responded absently.

The koala eared girl tilted her head, confused, [colour=0f52ba]““...Okay then. I guess I’ll leave you to it.”[/colour] she shrugged, crossing the room and exiting through the door.

[colour=444c38]“What is your name, anyways?”[/colour] the faunus asked, sitting down atop a heavy cylindrical item.

Cereza blinked, glancing away from the lines of coding that were speeding passed the computer screen as she finally registered that someone was talking to her. [colour=2c75ff]“Hmm? Oh, Cereza. I’ve gotten rid of some of the redundant pathways you’d set up and streamlined some of the coding, which should let the program work faster and smoother.”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Baruq.”[/colour] he returned, [colour=444c38]“As long as it doesn’t fire between barrels and tear itself apart,”[/colour] he joked, [colour=444c38]“I’ve got more a hand for machines than computers.”[/colour] he noted, looking over the now functional bit of code, [colour=444c38]“Thanks for the help Cereza.”[/colour]

[colour=2c75ff]“Thanks for letting me look at your program. It’s very interesting.”[/colour] She replied, standing up from the workbench. [colour=2c75ff]“I’ll have to bring Droed Gwyn and Llaw Du up here one day and show you the programming on them; they’re fully computerised without a single trigger or switch - other than the manual power switch that is - on them.”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Fully computerized could come in handy for my current pet project, but in general i try to keep things as mechanized as possible.”[/colour] he patted the drum he was using as a seat and a glow spread across its surface. As he drew away his hand a translucent form appeared in front of him. [colour=444c38]“Then again I grew up on simple technology so I may be biased.”[/colour] the mechanic informed, rotating the aural hologram in his hands.

The blonde shrugged. [colour=2c75ff]“It means no one can steal my weapon and use it against me, as they can’t exactly control the blade positioning or fire my pistols without triggers or switches.”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Not a bad idea, gives a distinct advantage. Although I find pure weight an equally effective deterrent. Two hundred pounds of cobalt steel and tungsten carbide.”[/colour]

[colour=2c75ff]“Two hundred pounds...that’s almost half again my weight.”[/colour] She eyed his muscular arms and shook her head. [colour=2c75ff]“I suppose, not everyone is as muscular as you are.”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]”Last estimate I could lift almost half a ton,”[/colour] he joked, waving a hand to dispel the simple projection he had been messing with

[colour=2c75ff]“Half a ton?”[/colour] Cereza said, taken aback. [colour=2c75ff]“And I thought Cordovan was strong.”[/colour]

Shaking her head to clear the thoughts of her brother’s associates from her mind, she offered her fellow technician a smile. [colour=2c75ff]“It was interesting to meet you, Baruq. I’ll bring my weapons up one day and we can compare programs.”[/colour]

[colour=444c38]“Sounds good. Have a nice evening, Cereza.”[/colour]

[colour=2c75ff]“You as well.”[/colour] The blonde gave a slight wave as she picked her way out of the room and made the way back to her own dorm. [colour=2c75ff][i]‘I wonder if I can incorporate some of his programming methods into my firewalls…’[/i][/colour]