Starring:
Summary: Nova and Natalie meet within the Kirby Plaza building. Natalie practices her ability, and Nova doesn't squish her.
Date It Happened: 18th of May, 2007
How To Speak Moon In One Easy Step
Kirby Plaza Building
Natalie is heading through the building. She's currently in a bit of a snit. Bennet wants his project done, Candice wants her to practice, and just…GRR…It might be scary if the blonde weren't such a consummate nerd. She has her hair done behind her in a simple ponytail, glasses on, and is trying to move Way Too Many books from one room to another.
Not at all resembling the consummate nerd is Nova, moving down the hallways from another direction. Her strawberry blonde hair is down and a little damp, as if she'd just been showering, and her attire is casual - track pants, a t-shirt, running shoes. Maybe someone's been working out at the gym! Because they totally have a gym. The tall woman rounds a corner— and stops when a mountain of books with legs is heading her way.
Natalie can't really see past the mountain of books, not easily, anyway. Which means that unless Nova takes evasive action, the mountain of books is about to walk into her. Natalie, not the strongest blonde on the block, is straining enough with them as it is.
Nova does start to think about stepping to one side, but the damage is done, because who wouldn't be walking relatively quickly when wanting to set down the heavy thing they're carrying? Her hands go up to try and keep the impending avalanche of paper from occurring, but no chance. She does catch a few, though. "Sorry," the tall woman says, rather gruffly and insincerely. Not her fault! She was /just there/.
Natalie winces as the books clatter to the ground. She sighs, shoulders slumping. "It's okay. It's not your fault." She moves to start stacking up the books again. Stupid research materials.
/Damn straight/. But nice that the girl can admit that, so, Nova takes some mercy and she kneels down, taking what books are on the floor, then holding out a hand for the ones Natalie is holding. "Here, lemme do it," she says, Australian accent now seeping into her words as she strings together a proper sentence. "Where are you taking all these to, anyway?"
Natalie blinks a moment at the accent. Ooh, interesting. "I was trying to find a conference room no one was using or something like that. Someplace where I could spread all these out and work."
Stacking one book atop the other, Nova handles the weight of it with ease. You have to be a 6'2" she-tank for a reason, after all, like carrying people's books. "There's a meeting room I just went by," she says, starting to walk. "It'll probably be empty, you can work there, I reckon."
Natalie smiles. "Thanks a lot. I haven't seen you here before…are you an agent?" she asks, curiously. The other woman is so big, she's got to be powered, right?
"I've been kinda busy," Nova says, actually casting the other woman a smile, of sorts. It's a stiff smile, but hey, she made an effort. Leading the way, she shrugs a bit. "I'm an agent. The human variety." Always need to clarify that, she doesn't want people thinking she can pull any magic tricks out of her arse, right?
Natalie blinks at that. She seems surprised. "Oh! But you're so…" Big. She stops, awkwardly. Fumbles with the books and papers a moment longer, then says "I love your accent."
Cute. No really! Not even sarcastic. Nova's smile flickers into something more genuine for a moment at Natalie's unfinished statement, and she tilts her head towards the partially opened door that she stops at. "Get that for me?" she says, then chuckles. Almost shyly. "Lived in Aus most of my life," she explains. "Can't seem to shake the accent. Anyway. You powereds aren't the only ones that get to be a bit extraordinary."
Natalie hurries over to help with the door. "I can help…if you like, with the accent." she offers. "I'm a linguist." It's what she was hired for. Not the accent part. The linguist part.
And into the room they go. Curtains drawn over windows, dimming the area, a long fake-wood table for people to sit around, a whiteboard on the wall. Almost a typical conference room you'd find in any office building. Who knows what people talk about in here. Nova sets down the books onto the large table, and raises an eyebrow at the other agent. "So you're Natalie Foster," she says, with a tone of confirmation. She reaches a long arm towards her, offering a hand to shake. "I'm Nova. You can—" A slight squint from storm-blue eyes. "Do that? With accents?"
Natalie nods. She starts to get the books set out across the table, and only then realizes that Nova's hand is out. She reaches out, and shakes the taller woman's hand. "Oh, yes. Accents are easy. Easier than regular languages."
"Can't say sounding like a New Yorker wouldn't be handy," Nova admits, withdrawing her hand once the shake is done. Her fists rest on her hips, looking down at all those books now that she can see them spread out and not flying at her face. "You can replace people's languages, is that it?"
Natalie nods. She concentrates a brief moment, as she looks at Nova. The next time the woman opens her mouth, she's gonna sound as Noo Yawk as if she was born here. "Linguistic remapping." she offers, considering Nova.
"I don't eve—" Okay, woah. Already, the differences are apparent as that first 'o' crops up, Nova looking disarmingly girlish for a moment, hand coming up to touch her fingers to her lips, wide eyes going wider as she looks at Natalie, before grinning. "Linguistic remapping, huh? That's what they call it?" she says, in her shiny new accent that comes as naturally as anything. "No wonder we snatched you up."
Natalie grins a little. "That's what I call it, actually. It seemed the most appropriate to what I do. And it's sort of limited in application, unless we want to put somebody undercover, or we need to intimidate somebody, I guess."
"I don't know," Nova says, absently, actually listening to herself speak. God knows she can't do an accent when she wants to, so… it's almost fun to hear herself. She's focused on Natalie, however. "I can't imagine it wouldn't be an effective way to suitably scare someone for a day. That can always come in handy." More subtle than Nova is used to, too.
Natalie nods, but she makes a face. "I don't like the idea of using it like that, though. Candice says I should practice, but it's not like I have volunteers lining up at the door."
"I guess not," Nova says, with a vague smile. She's studying Natalie for a few moments, then nods once. "Here, put my accent back, if you could."
Natalie thankfully can do just about every English-accent variant herself, so it's just a moment's focus to restore Nova to her normal accent. "There you are."
"Thanks," Nova says, but that doesn't seem to mean that conversation is ending. More of a test, perhaps. "Part of what we do, here, is to make sure people like you have got a safe arena to practice, without drawing attention to yourself or harming anyone." A flicker of a smile. "If you reckon you can set me back to normal afterwards, it wouldn't be the first time I've been the guinea pig for this kind of thing."
Natalie blinks. "Are you sure?" she asks Nova, uncertainly. "I mean, I've been able to undo it before, but I really -haven't- used it on a whole lot of people." She doesn't have a lot of practice with her set. Hard to come by.
"As long as you're not testing it out willynilly, I don't see the problem," Nova says, in a tone that communicates that there would /definitely/ be no willynilliness. "Don't do anything you're /too/ uncertain about and," shrug of two muscled shoulders, "I'll get something useful to do."
Natalie considers. "Well, all right…" She concentrates, looking at the blonde. This time she concentrates a lot harder. It's not so easy.
Nova braces herself a little, trying to… see if she can feel any differences. When she speaks, it's cautious. "What was that?" she asks, non-demanding, listening to herself. She glances down at a book, uncomprehending of the title. Must be some other language, and she doesn't give it much thought, at first.
Natalie takes out a blank sheet of paper, and slides it and a pen over to Nova. "Go ahead and write down your name and a couple sentences from your favorite book." If she does it without looking at it, she'll think it's normal enough; she's telling her brain the right words. Just that her brain isn't parsing that right, so the instant she tries to read it, it'll be obvious it's gibberish.
Leaning over, Nova takes the pen and starts to write as instructed. All seems to be going well - her name is pretty easy to spell, and as for a line from a book… her brain locks, so she writes out a lyric instead. "That alright?" she says, glancing at Natalie, then down to the paper— which is looked at again. It may as well be… Yiddish. Or something. "…crikey."
Natalie smiles just a little. "I'm gonna have to say no." It's a pretty purposeless scrawl. "I scrambled your written language center."
There aren't even letters in there, just… meaninglessness. Nova picks up the sheet of paper, and raises an eyebrow over at Natalie. "Nice work," she says, a tone of professionalism in her voice. "I didn't even realise what I was doing." She tries again to write, a few times, concentrating… but it's like letters don't even exist, in her world.
Natalie smiles. "Okay…Now I'm going to try something a little different…" And trickier. She's never tried restoring and removing at the same time. But let's give it a shot. She looks at the tall blonde and concentrates hard.
Nova actually waits, saying nothing. A glance towards the books, and they still may as well be written in French or Gaelic for all Nova is concerned. "If you go ahead and fix it…" She trails off, hearing… moonspeak. Yes, moonspeak. That is how she identifies what she's hearing, as it doesn't sound like any language she's aware of. "You're good, Foster," she says, eyebrows lifting. "You. Can you hear what I'm saying?" Bloopbleeblahbloo. Let's hope Nova doesn't actually /sound/ like this.
Natalie nods to Nova. She understands her just fine. She goes ahead and takes the pen, and writes down "I fixed your written centers, and scrambled incoming verbal centers this time." She then slides that over to Nova. Only problem is, it -isn't- fixed, and the tall blonde can't currently read any more than she can understand speech. She's cut off from incoming information.
Nova picks up this piece of paper… it looks like scrawl. Moonwriting? Nova's gaze snaps back up to Natalie - is this some kind of joke? - but she doesn't get annoyed right away. She could! But this girl seems sweet, and there are hiccups like this all the time. She turns the paper to Natalie, and shakes her head. Can't comprehend.
Natalie gets that "Oh shit" look on her face. That's not what was supposed to happen. Okay, Foster. Time to fix this. Dump English into the written, then the verbal. That should put her back to normal. The look on her face is enough to tell her that something is wrong, but she gamely tries to fix it.
That 'oh shit' look does not go missed on the taller agent. Nova arches an eyebrow, very much a 'fix it or be in for world of pain' look on her face… but when she glances again at the paper, she relaxes when she can read what Natalie had written to her. "Might want t'work on the fixing it, bit," Nova says, and relaxes a little more when she can understand what she's saying.
Natalie looks back with the classic look of geek towards jock: that unspoken pleading of "Don'tSquishMePlease." "I haven't had a lot of chance to practice it." she reminds, plaintively, looking like she expects to get pounded for it.
"Well, that's what this is for," Nova says, almost assuring Natalie that no fists will be flying quite yet. The piece of paper is set down casually, arms coming back up to fold her over her chest. "So I'm gonna guess that didn't go quite the way you expected it," she asks, prompting.
Natalie shakes her head. "No. Although I'd never tried an upload and a scramble at the same time before. Maybe they don't go together." She makes a face.
"Way I see it," Nova says, a little kinder now, "you can make your ability your bitch." She's not the most articulate, no, but she can get her point across. "Enough training, and I'm sure you can work it out." She takes a step back, smiling a bit brighter. "Catch me later if you want to try this out again, I don't have a lot of sit down work to do around here."
Natalie nods. She looks grateful for the not-squishing thing. "Thanks, Nova." A sheepish smile, and the linguist moves to grab her notes, and start getting out the information again. Stupid project.