08 / 10 / 09 - Bahir, Kelsey, Natalie
=XF= Analysis Hub - Second Floor - Titan Enterprises
The second floor follows the same T'ed pattern of the first, with tech and computer labs tucked along the left side of the hall. The right, however, is taken up entirely with the Analysis Hub.
Glass doors framed by wide panels of tinted glass grant entrance into the center of the junction of three rooms that flow into each other without clear delineation beyond open arched doorways. Running in a long swath through the centermost, a computer lab reaches from a cluster of desks to a large projection screen mounted into the wall. One archway leads to a large meeting room, complete with its own projector and innumerable whiteboards and bulletin boards mounted on the walls. The other, near the back, leads to a lab with a collection of electronic equipment scattered liberally throughout and at every desk.
Along the far wall of the hub, a number of open doorways lead to other workspaces that steal all the long windows. They're filled with desks and computers and smaller meeting rooms. Some have gathered personal touches that proclaim them as taken, while others are neat and clean, save for when they're being used as extra counterspace. The walls everywhere are covered in maps of varying detail and focus that are often the victims of pins marking information on current and continuing cases. Elsewhere, the walls drip paperwork and photos and scribbled notes on whiteboard.
Bahir flips a little football-folded note square at Natalie's desk which is Kelsey's memo, forwarded. You know what it says.
Natalie , hard at work on something that is clearly /important/, looks up as the square hits her in the side of her head. She turns to scowl at Bahir, brows drawing down down toward the frames of her glasses. "What the hell, yo?" says she.
Bahir pumps his arms up over his head. "Touchdown!" He doesn't play football.
Kelsey sits at her own desk, chin in hands as she watches the note sail from Bahir to Natalie, having so recently thrown her own at Bahir's head. "Huzzah!" she cheers for the contact.
"Asshole!" Natalie answers, scowling as she sweeps down to fish the football from the floor. Kelsey gets a sour glance as she goes through the tedious process of unfolding it.
Turning at Kelsey's cheer, Bahir mimes a high five in her direction. At this rate, he will antagonize everyone in the analysis department before the day is out.
High five! Kelsey returns the gesture with a grin. "Isnae this way more fun than talkin'?" Who needs other friends in analysis?
"Tons and tons," Natalie replies dryly. She peels the memo open and blinks first at Bahir, then at Kelsey. Her brows raise. She scribbles something swiftly on the back and then, refolding it with great care, flicks it back toward Bahir's ear. Smirking, she turns back to her terminal.
"It's like a little glimpse of American high school life." Bahir -- who /does/ have an accent, Natalie, thank you very much, which is not at all American -- watches Natalie as she writes back. He is delayed in his attempt to catch the note, and it falls on the floor. He leans over, sweeps it up, and flattens it to read.
"Boo, fumble!" Kelsey shakes her head sadly, disgusted at this poor show of athleticism from Bahir.
"What do you expect from a Bahraini?" Natalie answers, her gaze still focused on the computer where she works. The note reads, 'Is the math too hard for the poor little biologist?'
"Boo, your face." Bahir crosses out biologist, writes 'biochemist', folds the note and flings it back with an added 'No.' "Kelsey, Natalie's being mean to me."
Kelsey pouts her lips excessively. "Aww. Maybe ye should tell her how her words hurt your feelings." Pause. "An' quit failin' at American football so much."
"He's pretty much just a total baby," Natalie answers absently, showing off by snatching the folded note out of thin air with an expression of bored distraction. Did she mention she played softball? She unfolds it, reads it with a slow grin, and then scribbles a few short words. 'Fine,' the note says. 'Race you.' She flips it back to Bahir and then tugs a pad of paper toward her, pen poised. The video is cued on the screen in front of her. She doesn't do anything so crass as speed ahead - she doesn't /need/ to.
"Maybe American football should quit failing at being a sport. I play /real/ football." Attention forward, he once again completely fails to catch the note. Bahir's chair protests squeakily as he leans to grab it. Again. He says, "Fuck. No fair starting yet! Kelsey, count down from three."
Kelsey puts her hands up in a mediating expression. "Al-Razi's right, no cheatin'." She clears her throat dramatically before counting down: "Three. Two. /One/. Time that potential-speedster!"
"Oh come on. He's got no chance," Natalie answers, glancing up at her screen with a smirk. On three, her pen starts to move, sketching quick estimates of distance and running down a list of sums that she doesn't even bother to do on paper - they're already in her head, and it's only the answers she notes.
Bahir has a degree in math, sure, but his degree is not as ~special~ as Natalie's, nor has he spent much time lately keeping his skills polished. THAT'S IT. HE IS OUT OF PRACTICE. << Throw something at her for me, would you? >> he asks of Kelsey, shamelessly seeking unfair advantages.
Kelsey is aghast. AGHAST. "Two second penalty for tryin' tae cheat, al-Razi." Of course, it probably won't matter if Natalie wins anyways. And she's not even timing anyways.
Natalie takes the time out of her writing to glance up and /lift her brows/ at Bahir. "Low," she calls, shaking her head. "Very low, Bahir." And then it's back to her figures. Not only is Natalie's math degree ~special~, but she also has one in physics. Which means that even if she ends up sloewr, she'll be more /right/. So ther.
Bahir looks up to glare over his shoulder at Kelsey. "Fucker," he mutters. "If you /really/ wanted to steal my boyfriend, you'd have cheated for me." The logic is there. Somewhere. There's no way that he is going to beat Natalie to total.
"You make no sense." It is true. Kelsey watches between the two of them, waiting for someone to finish.
"Oh, are you going to steal Percy?" Natalie wonders conversationally. "Not really very nice, you know. He's seeing someone." She writes as she speaks, working through figures deftly, but with a steady pacing that's unhurried. It's the distance that takes the time, really. Estimated heights and comparisons of length and other various bits of mathematical and physical magic to transform fuzzy security videos into a semi-accurate numerical descriptor of the space between here and there. Once that's done, the actual /speed/ is easy. And it looks it, too, when Natalie's pen stops and she glances up to watch Bahir.
The stop of Natalie's pen causes Bahir to lift his head. He covers his paper with his hand and glares at her. "No copying."
"Well, if he wasnae seein' someone it wouldnae be stealin' and /that/ wouldnae be verra excitin'." Kelsey's logic is impeccable. Much moreso than Bahir. She straightens up a bit when Natalie sets her pen down, throwing up the touchdown sign with her arms. "We have a winner!"
"Oh, /seriously/," Natalie says with a roll of her eyes. She leans back in her chair, waiting. Bahir has to finish, after all.
"I hope you've broken it to Andrew," Bahir says, bending his head back over the work. He trudges, already beaten, and works on it for a little while longer before he says, "Fuck it. Over two-hundred meters per second. I'm not going to try to get it any closer."
"Finish," Natalie grumps, flicking her pen back and forth to tap it on the table. "Check my math." Not that it's wrong.
"Well, no point in it /before/ I steal Percy." Obviously. Kelsey waits for Bahir to check Natalie's work, being a linguist and all herself.
Bahir doesn't bother to finish. He stands to cross over to Natalie and check her math, instead. Checking is quicker than calculation, and shortly he says, "Seems fine."
Natalie rolls her eyes, disdain and annoyance settling over her feature as she mutters, "Fine, I will check it /myself/." So saying, she spends another several moments matching figures to screen, double checking as she goes.
Kelsey sighs dramatically, leaning back in her chair and setting her feet up on her desk. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Why are math people so slow?
"How accurate does it need to be, anyway?" Bahir asks, sitting at the edge of Natalie's desk and looking back at Kelsey. "How about 'fucking fast'?"
"I don't know," Natalie murmurs, jotting a few quick numbers and then circling one several times before she looks up. 513.435 mph. Glancing at Bahir, she adds, "But it seems better to err on the side of 'as accurate as I can make it', don't you think?"
Kelsey offers a nod of assent to Natalie. "Aye, best ye can get. We're just tryin' tae get a handle on what we're dealin' with."
"Well, yes. Still. There's a point where it gets 'ridiculously fast', don't you think?" Bahir asks, eyebrow arched. "Maximum speed is one thing. The time someone can hold that speed is another."
Natalie shrugs, sliding the bit of paper over toward Kelsey. "I don't know. I mean, we do have the tw-- Beaubiers. It's not like we can't counter 'fast' to some extent."
Well, it looks like Kelsey's going to have to finally /stand up/. Lame. She hops out of her seat, stepping over to Natalie's desk to take a look at her final number. "That is pretty ridiculously fast," she agrees, frowning. "Fast enough tae cause the blurring just by the speed?" She looks back up to the other two.
Bahir eyelashes flicker as he glances at Natalie and then away. "Gives us a possible baseline for time at that speed, too." He shrugs at Kelsey. "You can get blur with shitty surveillance equipment at much lower speeds. Depends on the frames per second."
"Easily," Natalie answers, leaning back in her chair. Her eyes linger on Bahir for a moment longer, a flash of regret showing, and then she looks back to Kelsey. "That's only a couple of hundred miles per hour short of the speed of /sound/. Far faster than the beat of a hummingbird's wings - or any land mammal that's not a mutant."
Kelsey chews on a hangnail, looking thoughtful. "Cannae say much til we head ate Mexico an' talk tae the guards, but the whole security issue seems /weird/ without somethin' mutational goin' on." She's talking out loud, thoughts slipping out as they come to mind. "I really think we've got more than one mutant."
Bahir snorts, arms folded over his chest. "Mutants are fucking ridiculous." He has no opinion on Kelsey's thoughts, but just asks, "Why?"
Natalie glances briefly at her computer screen and the images frozen there, then back at Bahir, her silence echoing the query.
"Timin's awful convenient, the alarms not goin' off til our resident speedster leaves," Kelsey says, voice slow as she tries to figure it out for herself as well as explain it. "An' just the whole--unless their security is /ridiculously/ incompetent, it really seems tae me that somethin's keepin' them a bit more unnoticed than is generally possible. An' that /plus/ that kind of speed seems...unlikely." Her mouth twists a bit, bottom lip chewed between her teeth. "It's a lot of assumptions, though."
"How much time elapses for it to go unnoticed?" Bahir asks, pushing off Natalie's desk to fold his arms behind his head, hands hooked at the nape of his neck. He glances between Natalie and Kelsey, and shrugs. "Not really my area. Talk to Sal, maybe. She's all over that surveillance stuff. Parker. Or one of Pete's crew. They're all experts at breaking into things, right?"
"Twenty..." Natalie pauses to glance over at the timestamp on her video, then finishes, "-three minutes. And some change. Awhile."
Kelsey holds her hands up in a vaguely surrender-ish gesture. "Aye, it's not my area, either. It's just enough tae make /me/ think it's weird." The timestamp Natalie pulls out seems to refuel her theories, though. "That is a /long/ time for someone tae not notice."
Bahir's eyebrow arch, agreement mild. "Uh huh."
"It's awhile," Natalie echoes. She lifts her hand to cover her mouth on a yawn, then widens her eyes as she catches sight of the time. "Shit," she says. "I'm supposed to be hitting firearms." Her chair slides back as she turns to slide her mouse around the computer screen, closing and saving here and there. "Good luck."
Kelsey starts chewing her lip again--bad habit--and adds some idle little tongue clicking as she considers. Natalie's abrupt start-of-departure catches her attention for a moment, and she smiles quickly. "Remember: dinnae shoot any fellow agents."
"See you, Natalie," Bahir says as she heads off, going back to his desk to pick up a paper and start folding into another footballish shape. "/Most/ people don't have trouble remembering that." UNLIKE KELSEY. And Kitty. And Maverick. And ... fuck.
"... /so/ wasn't planning to," comes Natalie's rather disturbed reply. She gives Bahir a rueful smile, then tosses a wave to the both of them and disappears.
X-Factor sucks. Kelsey waves quickly, a bit distracted with all the thoughts running through her head. After a minute, she seems to realize she's still standing by Natalie's desk, and makes her way back to her own. To RUMINATE.
LIKE A RUMINANT.
NO LIKE A THOUGHTFUL, INTELLIGENT PERSON.
RUMINANT.
DO WE KNOW ANY OF THOSE?
Calculating cows.