A Delicate Balancing Act [Isaac]

"So, Where do we go from here?"

Isaac stroked his chin as his eyes scanned over the display before him. He was surrounded by various readouts of data and code, standing in the center of a dark room, it's perimeter outlined in white luminescent lines Well, standing wasn't exactly an accurate description, as this space was even strictly 'real'. The whole thing was merely a fabrication of his mind, a mechanism formed in part to help him comprehend all of the data that was flowing into him, but more importantly to prevent him from going insane with the complete and total sensory deprivation that often came along with his quirk.

This project was one that he had been working on for quite awhile, and though it's previous iteration had gotten him into a bit of trouble, he wasn't quite ready to give up on it yet. After all, every misstep was a chance to learn something, and the incident with the chatroom hadn't been entirely without its benefits. "Network itself is actually good base, we simply need to smooth rough edges a bit more." With a flick of his wrist, the display in front of him changed to something that resembled a twisting three dimensional web, with thousands of nodes interconnected by countless strands. He physically dragged the diagram out of the frame and examined the structure for several long moments before going to work. "Far too much aggression, and far too many superfluous nodes... Can strip these down, here, here, and... here." He pulled the offending nodes out a few dozen at a time and cast them aside, leaving them to float about as stands of data. Almost immediately after they were clear though, he saw more trouble spots and soon enough, small clouds of the luminous material filled the room.

By the time he was done clearing out the rubbish, the web had diminished in size, though only slightly. "...Honestly, features do not to need to be as complex as original spec either... its merely needs to be functional after all, can always improve on it later..." His eyes darted back and forth as he analyzed each cluster in turn, appraising them before he started picking away again. It was impossible to tell exactly how long he was at it, settling into a steady groove and occasionally swapping between a few more windows to adjust code as he continued to prune the web down. Slowly but surely it continued to shrink in size, but at the same time the structures and pathways became more detailed and orderly in appearance.

Eventually, what had been a chaotic mess of data was transformed into a complex yet recognizable geometric shape, almost like a mass of inset, overlapping honeycombs. After adding one last line of code, Isaac took a step back and looked over the construct one last time. "Now this... This I believe is closer to what we're looking for.... but only one way to find out." Reaching out towards the shape, he clapped his hands together and the whole thing collapsed inward to a single point, a solitary spark that flickered in the darkness.

"...Nadya?"

Responding to his voice, the spark erupted outward and illuminated most of the room. Isaac's eyes narrowed and he raised a hand as if preparing to extinguish the flare, but luckily it proved to be unnecessary. What at first resembled an exploding fireball quickly subsided and collapsed back inward, solidifying into a small orb with a soft blue glow. Well, certainly not the start he expected, but at least it seemed a bit more stable than last time... It wasn't screaming profanity and trying to tear the place apart.

"Time to wake up, can you hear me?"

The mass shifted to a green hue for a brief moment before returning to normal. "Is good, do you remember who I am?" Another green pulse and no explosive outbursts. So far so good. "Fantastic. And do you remember reason why I brought you here?" There was a slight hesitation this time, but the construct flashed red. Isaac studied it for several moments as if scrutinizing the response, but inevitably gave a shrug. It shouldn't have remembered after he discarded the data, and while the pause was potentially troubling, he figured he could just chalk it up to processing time as it tried to comprehend his question. "Good enough, I suppose. Very well, I believe is time for some testing. Come along, Nadya."

Isaac reached out his hand and the construct flashed green one more time before shrinking down to the size of a baseball. He took the orb in hand and turned for the far side of the room, a door materializing before him as he moved.

There was a slight crackle of electricity on the far side of the lab, where there were a handful of computer stations. A small drone that was wired up to one of the computers suddenly whirred to life, the single camera on its chassis almost seeming to blink as the aperture opened and shut a few times. As it finished powering on, one of its stubby arms reached to remove the cord tethering it to the PC, and the hover motor activated. Rising up into the air, the Hephaestus drone immediately began to make its way across the room while a voice called out from the speakers. "Adaptive Intelligence: trial 47, begin recordi-..." Isaac trailed off as he realized he wasn't alone in the lab. At the far side of the room a figure sat over what appeared to be some sort of mechanized skeleton in the making. Was... that a cat? No, no, that was ridiculous, the average feline knew nothing of robotic engineering, it had to be a student, one that he hadn't seen before. The aperture on the drone blinked a few more times before he realized that he was staring and shook himself free of the trance.

"Why hello there. Who might you be?"

The drone's Camera zoomed in as the cat pulled his ID out of his bag, and Isaac's eyes scanned over the pass. 1-A, huh? Having non-support students in the lab was rare enough, but someone from the hero course working on a robotics project? Now that was something interesting. "Pleasure to be meeting you, Isamu. And yes, lab rules state there are to be no remote experiments for safety purposes, but I do not see what this has to do with... Oh." He trailed off, finally realizing what this had to look like for someone who didn't know him. "Ah, well, this is not... quite remote access, you will see. One moment."

The drone flew closer and there was another burst of electrical sparking. A moment later, matter began to slip out from the metal chassis, a stream of particles that quickly formed into the shape of a body crouching on the lab floor. As it grew to be larger than the vessel it just left, the details filled in and soon enough a boy with pale skin and messy white hair rose to his feet, violet eyes locking on to the student in front of him. Being after hours, he wasn't in his school uniform, instead wearing a sleeveless vest and a pair of cargo shorts. With notably short stature and younger features than most freshmen, there were few that would guess his actual standing.

Isaac took his student ID from his vest pocket and flashed it to Isamu before extending his hand in greeting. "Isaac Viktorovich Korzhakov. As I said, is a pleasure to meet you." He let his hand hang for a few moment to give the cat a chance to reciprocate the gesture, but even if he didn't, the boy's eyes soon moved on to the construction on the table. As much as he liked to meet new people, he was perhaps more interested in the mystery of whatever project was before him. Robotics were his main area of study, and he had just as much interest in other's work in the field as he did his own. "Is rare thing to be having other visitors the lab so late, may I ask what you are working on?" He asked as he moved in a bit closer for a better view, the curiosity plainly evident on his face.

"Eh, is something like that..." Isaac scratched his head at the hero student's question. The boy didn't mind explaining his quirk at all, but it was always a bit of an interesting exercise, though it tended to be easier with the more technologically savvy individuals. "Not just computers, but object must be mechanical in nature, must have circuitry and power. Not just inhabit and control either, knowledge and manipulation as well." It was the first time he'd ever had someone refer to the ability as 'scary', but in the sort of society they lived in, he could at least understand the sentiment. When most of the world was digital, his reach was far greater than most might suspect. "Like having a new body, better than this one at least." He held up his hand after the greeting was finished, showing the cat just how shaky and unsteady the limb was.

As Isamu went over his project, Isaac stared on with great interest, able to recognize the shape quickly after the cat began to describe it. It turned out that the robotic assemble was just meant to be a toy of sorts, but even still it was exciting enough to see other people's work. As he watched, the skeleton swayed back and forth in an attempt to keep the ball balanced, ultimately failing when tipped past a certain point and the rest of the body tried to compensate. Before the other student even started explaining the setup, the Russian's eyes were already scanning back and forth across the table, identifying as many components as he could and working out how they interacted with one another. "Ah, I see, so it uses input from pressure sensor to calculate weight distribution and attempts to compensate for shifting balance... Certainly makes sense, but spine is missing a few joints... perhaps is design constraint though and you cannot do anything about it. Flippers as well seem to be capable of movement, but leverage and body weight do not allow for for control, unless..."

The white haired boy trailed off into mumbling as he turned the issue over a few times in his mind. It was in his nature to try to solve any sort of problem that he happened upon, and constraint-based engineering offered some of the most delectable riddles. After a few moments, the trance broke and Isaac turned back toward Isamu. "Best solution is obviously to add more joints for precision, but I assume this is impossible. Have some suggestions if you're interested though. If you cannot change exterior, then change interior. Put weight on track inside skeleton that can be moved to shift center of gravity for entire structure. Combine with current joint system and it should allow you to fine tune movement a bit more... something like this..." As he explained the idea, Isaac pulled a piece of paper from the desk drawer and began sketching out a rough draft, oblivious of the fact that his drone had started moving on its own, and was beginning to wander around the lab behind him.

Diving right into the design process, Isaac's pencil danced across the graph paper in front of him. His unsteady hands required the assistance of a ruler to trace the crisp lines he needed, but soon enough the image began to take shape. He started with a rough outline of the skeleton Isamu already had on the table, then went to work with an eraser. The center needed to be cleared out to make room for the motorized rail, and while he was at it he could clean up some of the other joint positions as well. All in all, the cat's design was rather impressive for what he was trying to make, it was merely in the boy's nature to optimize whatever he could.

Being to caught up in his sketch, Isaac hadn't actually registered the warning about his drone. The tunnel vision that crept in whenever the gears in his head started to turn was strong, and his focus was only broken by a sudden of cacophony of noise from behind. They boy's head snapped around to see a toolbox spilling out across the floor, having been knocked off one of the benches. The culprit, his drone, then proceeded to tip a box of screws over the edge as well before moving on to the next object. Isaac blinked as it took him a moment to process what exactly was happening. How was the Hephaestus even moving without him inside it...?

Oh.

"Nadya! What do you think you're doing?"

The drone turned, the camera aperture going wide with fear in response to his shout before it darted off in the other direction, knocking over a stack of books as it moved. Isaac immediately rose to his feet to give chase, but his leg moved awkwardly he lost balance almost immediately. Unable to catch himself, the white haired boy tumbled face first onto the floor. "Блядь!" He cursed aloud in his native tongue as he tried to shake away a wave of disorientation, then turned his violet eyes toward the cat. "Quick, grab it! And watch out for the welders."

He cursed again while he tried to pick himself up. Sure, he'd been surprised to see a new student in the lab, but how had he let that slip his mind? Leaving an untested AI unsupervised was a pretty dumb mistake, especially in a lab full of all types of potentially unstable prototypes.

Isaac shook his head again in an attempt to clear away the stars and then rubbed the spot where his head had hit. No blood, but he could already feel a bit of a bump forming. That would be an unpleasant bruise later, but for now they had to deal with the situation at hand. "Customized industrial drone, is called Hephaestus. I use for lab work, interchangeable parts but fairly standard equipment. Drone is nothing special, but I was about to run experiment with Artificial Intelligence, who has decided she was bored. Is less than ideal, I know." As the distortions in his vision started to fade, he glanced to the drone as it continued to flee across the room, them back at Isamu. "I'll be fine in a moment. If you can hold drone still long enough, I can take control again. I only need to touch to use my ability."

With the explanation given, the hero student took off and Isaac once again tried to pick himself up. With his legs still recovering from the minor spasm that caused the fall, it took a good deal of effort just to keep them steady while he braced against the desk and pulled himself up. What a useless body... By the time he rose and finished regaining his balance, the support student looked over to see the cat preparing to pounce. It didn't seem like Nadya had noticed his approach, still flitting about in apparent panic even as Isamu moved into position.

At first it seemed like the cat's sneak attack would be successful, but as he launched off the ground, the drone suddenly jerked around to look at him. 'Motion detectors...' Isaac remembered instantly. The drone darted to the side as if cowering away with a few fearful chirps emitting from the speakers, a high pitch whine rising up from the equipment at the same time. Its movement alone wouldn't have been enough to evade its hunter, but when the whine reached a fever pitch, all the drone's systems activated at once. A pair of welding lasers shot out to the sides, burning a swathe across the opposite walls, the cameras fired, a screech of feedback sounded out from the speakers, and the hover motor overloaded, sending out a wave of force in all directions. It only lasted a brief moment, but the subsequent pulse knocked over one of the desks and scattered a cloud of loose papers about the room.

As a result of overloading all of its systems, the Hephaestus dropped to the ground, lying inert for a second or two before powering back up and taking to the air once again. Isaac watched the entire event with just as much interest as exasperation. It was like the drone didn't know what it was capable of, and just lashed out at a perceived threat instinctively... and the way it was behaving... curiosity, exploration, fear. It was almost like the beginnings of intelligence, though a bit on the primal side. He wanted to jump into the data immediately, but first they actually had to get the thing under control.

Their odds of catching the drone were much higher if they were both working together, but the thing was hovering high enough that Isaac would never have a chance of reaching on his own. Luckily, there was something on hand to help out with that issue. He hadn't finished his maintenance on the Raiju since the last class session with Itsuka, but he didn't need the bot at full power for something like this anyway. "Hang on, let me get something to help." He called out as he rushed for the partially disassembled frame and dove right in with a crackle of electricity in his wake.

In an instant the whole world went dark and Isaac once again found himself floating in the void. It didn't stay that way for long however, as various displays lit up and data started to scroll past while the machine began to boot up. The boy's eyes scanned each as it passed out of habit, even though all of the information was already in his head. "Alright, diagnostics check... All joints reading active, power reserves at full, structural integrity at 83%, only left hand weapon is functional, armor is at 34%, and fuel reserves are empty... Oh well, shouldn't be needing most of that here." He mumbled to himself, reading the data aloud as more and more displays popped up around him. The whole process took only a few seconds, but within the system it felt like several minutes. When the camera and the rest of the sensors finally powered on, Isaac's perspective suddenly shifted again, pulling him out of the void and into the lab, his new body laying atop one of the tables. The sensation was rather jarring the first few times he experienced it, but by now the boy was rather used to the sudden displacement that came from his quirk.

The apertures took a brief moment to adjust before the whole frame began to stir. The Raiju's internals were exposed in several spots, as nearly all of it's armor plating was in the process of being replaced and several panels had been removed, but even still the bot could move without much difficulty. As it rose to its feet, Isaac could hear Isamu calling out to him. Sure, his warning could have been a bit more precise, but those types of tools were standard fair in the UA's labs, so he hadn't thought much about it at the time. As for trying to slow Nadya down with a logic bomb... "You know this does not actually work, yes? Programming variables have finite precision, and calculation stops as soon as that limit is hit. Maybe a half a second at best, not enough to be useful. And as far as remote control goes... is supposed to be piloting AI, can easily ignore remote's instructions because that is how program was designed." None of that was particularly helpful with regards to the current situation of course, but it was true.

While he was giving his explanation, the cat disappeared from view for a moment, leaving Isaac to finish running his start up tests and Nadya to continue to buzz around like a trapped bird, growing even more nervous at the sight of the sizable robot. She was flying high enough by this point that she wasn't in danger of knocking things over anymore, but it also appeared that she was getting better at controlling the drone. It was learning how all the equipment worked even in the blind panic. How very interesting...

By the time Isaac was done making sure that the Raiju wouldn't explode or collapse under its own weight, Isamu had reappeared and gotten into position for another go at the drone. Nadya turned and the camera focused in as the flashbang rolled across the floor and successfully grabbed her attention. As it went off and the cat made his move however, the drone's motion sensors once again caught the movement from behind. Again it darted to the side and fired off one of its welding lasers while the hover motor surged. All in all it was a much more refined response than the last time though. The welding beam was aimed at where the flashbang had gone off, apparently having been detected as a threat, while the wave of force from the motor was directed straight downward to pop the Hephaestus higher into the air. The burst was far more controlled this time, but it still caused the drone to plummet to the ground after it's launch, and in the short span it took for the equipment to reboot, the hero student had followed up with some sort of grenade.

Nadya nearly got back into the air, but the adhesive caught one of the drone's arms before it could get clear and tethered it to the floor. Almost immediately its panic spiked again, and both welders went hot. Seeing his chance, Isaac sprang forward as quickly as he could, cracking the tiled floor as the Raiju dove into a tackle. The lasers raked across the mech's form, but there was little they could do to stop it's advance. The hulking mass of metal came down on top of the drone and Isaac immediately locked the thing's arms in a vice grip, pointing them into one of the few remaining armor plates on the Raiju's leg so that the lasers couldn't cause more damage to anything else in the room. "Well done, my friend. Now, I will be back in just a moment. Me and Nadya need to have a little chat." As he spoke, a cable extended out from the Raiju's free hand and snaked out toward a port on the Hephaestus. The moment it connected, there was a light crackle of electricity and both bots suddenly went silent.

The moment the connection was secured, Isaac once again found himself back in the dark room, a door materializing on the wall behind him that lead into a long hallway. Switching off his external senses, he immediately turned for the opening and started walking, only to find himself at the far end in what seemed like an instant. The flow of time was always a bit odd when he was in the machine, and for that matter so was distance. It didn't always make sense, but with how often he used the quirk, he'd long since gotten used to its oddities. The room he entered on the other side at first looked just as he'd left it, but the moment he stepped inside the whole thing shifted and contorted. The room stretched, growing larger as masses of data rose up to fill the space in confused clusters. Even after they finished forming, the dazzling display of geometric patterns continued to shift about and distort, giving the whole scene an otherworldly feel, but to the boy's eyes it really just looked like a particularly untidy room in an apartment.

Not at all deterred by the sudden labyrinthine layout of the device, Isaac walked forward into the mess as if it were the most normal thing in the world, eyes ever scanning back and forth. It only took a few seconds for them to catch something amid the clutter; a flash of blue light in the corner of his eye, quickly darting between the data clusters in an effort to stay concealed. "Nadya..." With a wave of his hand, the tangled masses in that direction unwound themselves and sank back into the floor in an orderly fashion. By the time they disappeared from view however, there was nothing but an empty corner of the room behind them. "Come now, this is no time for hide and seek."

There was some more movement behind him and he turned to dismiss another data cluster with a swipe of his hand, then another as he saw a streak of blue rush out from behind it. There was nothing but more empty space beyond. Truthfully, he could have just cleared the whole room in an instant, but given his current goal it would have actually been counter productive. No, he continued cleaning up the mess one node at a time as the construct moved, until there was only one left. "You're out of places to hide, Nadya." He said as he approached the last cluster. The second he got near it, the structure grew significantly and the whole surface began to roil with a shapeless threatening energy, almost like the growl of a cornered animal. Isaac stopped his advance but didn't show any signs of being intimidated, simply repeating with a much more stern tone: "Nadya..."

The mass of data practically dissolved as it realized the display hadn't had the desired effect, and a moment later the blue construct shrank further into the corner of the room. Finally able to get a clear look at her, Isaac actually found himself rather surprised at what he saw. When he'd left her only a few minutes before, Nadya had appeared to him a simple floating orb, but what he saw now was a good deal more complex. Her form wasn't fully stabilized, but it was animalistic in appearance, the size of a small.... cat. Yes, that was it. It was vaguely feline in appearance, clearly having mimicked aspects of the only other living thing she'd seen so far. "Fascinating..." The boy mumbled as he took a step closer and kneeled down, watching the fledgling AI retreat ever further when he began to reach out. The gesture gave him a bit of pause and he stopped his advance again. "...This happened out there as well... rudimentary fear response, experimentation, observation, adaptation... you're learning, and..." Even as he spoke he could see Nadya's chosen form becoming slightly more solid in appearance. "...stabilizing."

He honestly hadn't been expecting this sort of result from today's experiment, especially not after how poorly the last round had gone. This version wasn't trying to take over the network or tearing itself apart, it was slowly prodding at its environment and exploring its capabilities. Nothing it had done in the lab had been at all malicious in nature, just natural curiosity and self defense mechanisms. Perhaps he could tone down the fear response a bit, and an override protocol wouldn't be the worst idea in the world, but any thoughts of wiping this one out and starting over had already vanished from his head.

Isaac's expression softened and he started reaching out again, moving ever so slowly until he finally reached the cowering form. All in all, it was an exercise very much like earning the trust of a small frightened animal, and he took his time. "...Is alright Nadya." The cat-like construct stiffened slightly at his touch, but slowly the fear shifted to mild confusion as it realized it wasn't going to be destroyed. "...No scolding this time, but is very important that you listen to me from now on, da?" She hesitated for a brief moment as if processing the request while his hand stayed in place on her head. Clearly she wasn't sure, but after a few seconds Nadya responded with a quiet chirping noise as her body pulsed green, which the boy rewarded with a few gentle pats of the head. "Good, now come here. A few minor adjustments before we go back out, I think."



When the Raiju finally started to stir again, Isaac found that most of the lab had already been picked up. A brief glance around revealed that only visible remains of the rampage were the two overturned tables, the burn marks on the walls, and the adhesive that still held the Hephaestus in place... all of which could probably be cleaned up without too much trouble. Certainly not the biggest mess he'd made in his time at UA in any case. Turning, he caught sight of the hero student at one of the other desks, presumably filling out the paperwork that came with such incidents. "My apologies for the mess, Isamu. And allow me to be thanking you again for your assistance. How long was I out?" He asked as he stood and used the drone's bulk to easily right one of the massive work tables. He had neglected to pay attention to the clock when he dropped in, and it was nigh impossible to judge time on the inside without it. If the condition of the lab was anything to go by, his 'chat' with Nadya hadn't been quite as quick as he was originally hoping.