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Being turned on for an AI was like being abruptly awoken in a new apartment. The insertion of the chip was like a bucket of water being poured over Cake's head, an experience that kept her at bay just long enough that the chip could fully interlace with the terminal's systems. The AI within would flood out, bashing through the terminal. Cake first focused it's efforts on open elements that any data connector would be allowed to access, such as the terminal's memory systems for data transfer, and from there she broke further in like a virus. Security layers that prevented the insertion of a virus popped up, and were promptly beaten down.

And quite naturally, Cake thought of ways to improve them as she did that. Even as she consumed the rest of the terminal, Cake tasked one of her subroutines to perform a full diagnosis on the terminal's security functions, and another to collect extremely recent data from terminal, in order to grasp what had been happening or had been said before she was plugged in, and to collect nanosecond data on present activities outside of the terminal. It was that action and the reading of that data that told her that she should [i]only[/i] take over the terminal, and not attempt to extend her reach as far as possible, which could very well be the entire station if she tried that hard, or considered it a reasonable option.

Breaking further into the terminal, she used it's own internal components to boost her computing power and speed up the process. She directed subroutines like armies, gathering as much data as possible and overtaking the terminal's own processes, locking it's CPU into a tiny, dark corner. Like a torturer, she locked it in a cage and wrote a key, one that would only unlock the cage if she were to be removed from the terminal, as she knew that she would be. With the last of the resistance out of the way, accessing rest of the terminal was as easy as making toast. Cursing whoever programmed the terminal and directing a part of herself to start shovelling trash out of the way, Cake finally had control.

It took point-zero-three microseconds. Sloppy, she should have been dipping into nanoseconds. Cake performed a self-diagnosis and then a terminal diagnosis and found a few errors caused by minuscule malformations in the connection port of the terminal that she had been plugged into, something that quite literally was not a problem at all and were barely atom malformations, but impacted her data transfer rates by nanoseconds. Cake ran two hundred and seventy one different simulations of what would have happened if the terminal's connectors were in better condition, and found that the 'Battle For The Terminal' dropped down to point-zero-one-five microseconds, limited by the maximum transfer rate of the data port. Nonetheless, she used her new superiority over the Terminal to invoke a slave program; she rewrote the key she had written earlier and unlocked part of the terminal's CPU, and then tasked the CPU with sending a maintenance ticket out for the connection port's problems to be fixed.

It was petty, and Cake wasn't going to be in the terminal for so long it would really impact her. That's why she forced the terminal's CPU to send out the ticket and didn't do it herself. Not her problem, she would keep all her power to herself. No need to waste it.

Cake brought her focus around to the situation at hand. Through a camera in the terminal, the AI was able to see the faces of individuals that she figured were the crew of the ship that she was going to be boarding. About twelve different overlays on the visual feed allowed her to capture and generate three-dimensional models of the individuals and save them to her memory systems. She activated her personality and vocal-transcription protocols, and then turned on the main terminal screen, which had shut off as she was plugged in. She placed a visual representation of herself on the screen, and gave everyone a smile.

"Morning already? Feels like I just went to bed. Well, Mondays are Mondays," Cake says, her voice soft and sweet. "My name is Cake. It's nice to meet you guys, to see some new faces." Cake paused and listened to to the others conversing, documenting their individual voices and adding them to files she was building up on each of them, so that she could distinguish between them.

"You see, I [i]could[/i] tell you the answer to your questions on the ships, but the problem with that is that if I try doing it, there's going to be a lot of complaining. To break into the ships' systems would surely send an alert unless I'm ultra-careful, and so the owners would complain that we're potentially breaking them away from their potential profits. Or scams. Doesn't matter of security, or security AIs, get involved."

"If I may give a suggestion, do not pick the Picard or the Slimey Soup Server. Then again, if given a proper choice, I'd pick none of these rust buckets, but due to Lucy's class, I'd pick her. Should be easy to add on more to her, if we find such. Picking something that can perform a variety of tasks would be highly beneficial, and after all, it's impossible to calculate what exactly is wrong with each ship - nobody gives away ships like these. Let's just hope one isn't riddled with viruses, or has a colony of space ants lurking in one of the sections."

On the screen, Cake gives a shrug. "Well, overall, it's up to you. At least [i]I[/i] can model myself a nice, cosy bed in a cushy 5D environment, you guys'll be stuck with mattresses made of hullmetal. Well, hopefully not, anyways."