(OOC: Hope it's okay that I start this. If not, let me know, and I'll move or delete it. Continued from Signs of Life, or Not)

As ordered, Chip headed straight for the Danger Room at a headlong run, managing to keep on his feet despite the rubble cluttering the halls.

Once in the DR, he paused to look around for Daria. Unless she had made a side stop, she should have beat him there. Not seeing her at first, he decided to go ahead and have a look at the computer. After all, she hadn't told him he couldn't, right?

He crawled under the console of the main computer, and began identifying the various wires hanging loose, and where they should go, or where they could go, if he did some extra fiddling.

Daria had made a stop, in fact. She'd teleported to her room to get 'paw prints', what she liked to call her system plans. She looked at Chip's feet sticking out from under the console and smiled.

"Hey there, looks bad doesn't it?"
She smiled and teleported beneath the console with him. "You're going to be a big help with mechanics. I love having someone who knows how things work. Once we put this lil baby back together I can reprogram it."

"Is the main logic board damaged? That's what we're most worried about."

Chip grinned as Daria appeared.

"Well, it's not pretty, but not as bad as I would've thought. Haven't... quite.... got-whoop!" He tugged at the console covering, which seemed wedged in place, until it came loose with a POP! "Um, let's see..... secondaries.... secondaries.... There we go!"

He pulled out the piece, then scooted out from under the console. He held up the piece that looked like a flat board with bits and pieces stuck to its top, giving the impression of a miniature city model. He examined the piece closely.

"Hmm.... Main memory's fried, but looks like the secondaries are okay.... Clock chip's fried.... Eh, that's no big deal No one looks at the time anyway. Yep... yep... fried, gotta replace that... that's okay...." He handed it to Daria. "I dunno, the board looks okay for the most part. Just gotta replace a few bits and pieces here and there. I can cannabalize my computer, and I've got a few spare bits somewhere..... What'd'ya think?"

He began searching his pockets and belt compartments while she made her own ruling on the board, pulling out various mix-matched pieces of machinery, some of it whole, but most of it in pieces.

Daria sighed and shook her head. "Okay, let's try and fix this shall we?" She pulled from her bag her laptop and a few wires. While she waited for her computer to turn on she plugged some of the wires, one end of which looked like a usb cord the other end looked like jumper cables.

"My computer's going to read the logic board." she explained. "When we get it fixed I'll install new passwords because..." she trailed off, her brow furrowing and her ears twitching. "Someone, of course, tried to hack into our system." She typed something onto the keyboard and hooked up another wire. "I can't tell how much information they saw but I know they couldn't download anything. The current security system we already had blocked them..." she smiled slightly and unhooked the logic board.

She handed it gently to Chip. "Get this up and running okay?" she looked at the pieces he was pulling from his pockets. "It should be easy for you it seems. I'm just gonna try and gather the secondary boards and get them in communication with one another. The security cameras will have picked up something." She took her laptop and sat next to the console. She began hooking up the wires to the secondary logic boards until she'd created a full circuit. Lastly she plugged them all up to her laptop. She sat studying the data that loaded.

"Aye, aye, Commander!"

Chip saluted dramatically, and went to work. He sat on the floor, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as he worked. Very quickly he became lost in the work. A second and third halo of items began to form, one of tools, one of junk. When he finished with one piece, he would set it aside without looking, his mind automatically sorting it into the correct pile.

Every now and then a little hum, or quiet grunt, would come from his throat, or a "No, that won't work..." or a "You go there....". Once there was an, "Oops....", accompanied by a wide-eyed look to see if Daria was paying attention. Then he returned to his job with a bit of extra diligence.

He wasn't sure how much time passed; time was a concept that didn't mean much too him really, unless he was competing in a contest or pulling a prank. Finally he held up the board, squinting closely.

"Here ya go, good as new. Sort of. Um... don't set your watch by it though....." He grinned, somewhat abashed, but didn't elaborate. "Oh! And here! I was working on this before the Raid, and fixing it earlier. I made rigged it so that it will communicate with the new board, and the security cameras."

He held out a little pyramid which looked to be made out of clear plastic, and began to float about two inches above his palm. "It's just a camera, but it's got a mini hover-engine, and the glass is reflective. Kinda like a primi-cloak. It's got a monitor on each point, so ya get all angles." He grinned. "If you hook the board into your laptop, you can control it with the arrow keys. 'kay?"

Daria would glance from time to time at Chip and smile. The kid was really into the job. With Mike not nearly as Adept in the mechanics of things Daria would have been on her own if it weren't for the kid. Programming was easy, building things took time and many hands.

At one point Daria briefly disappeared to get more wires until all the secondary and tertiary logic boards were all hooked up to her laptop. Eventually, she'd have to find a desktop or another computer to hook them up to. She'd need her laptop. For now, though it was fine.

She took the board from Chip. "This looks great, as long as it hooks up to my computer, we can fix any issues. She took the liberty of ruffling the boy's hair. Thanks a bunch, Chip. She hooked the last wire to the Main Logic board and waited for it to be read. In the meantime she studied Chip's camera.

"This is...awesome...you know if Mike and I are going to be gone from the mansion, it's going to need some line of defense in our absence so I've been planning a high tech security fence. There are robots rebuilding the mansion and they're work is important and needs to be guarded. In lieu of Camera's I couldn't come up with an idea for something less obvious. But this...this gives me an idea." she glanced at the logic board which was almost finished loading. When it was done she found the controls for the camera and saw it move at her command. Her tail and ears flicked in excitement.

"Can you make more of these? Like enough to cover the grounds, the mansion the interior? Because they're almost camouflaged, they can move around almost unseen. We could add a few lasers in them, I've got a screening program so they can decipher enemies...When we have more we can upload different patterns so they act like cops on different beats, you know?" her eyes were lit up in excitement.

"Sure, the engines are a breeze to make. Lenses too; I've got tons of lenses to cut from." Then he frowned slightly. "The casing might be an issue though.... I got that glass from Grandpa during my last trip home...." He thought for a moment. Then suddenly his eyes grew wide and he snapped his fingers

"Oh! Oh! Oh! I got it! I'll be back!" He jumped to his feet and headed for door at a run. Just before leaving he skidded to a halt, and looked up at the floating pieces following him. Quickly he retrieved and replaced various items and his tools, then with a flick of the wrist the junk pile flew over to a corner where rubble from the attack lay, and set itself in a neat pile atop. "I'll take care of that later," he remarked, then headed out the door.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quite sometime later, he returned. His arms were piled so high with random scrap, it looked like the pile had legs and was moving by itself. Also another cloud of items followed behind him, floating but dropping and bobbing, as if he were having trouble keeping it afloat.

He deposited his cargo in an area away from Daria, so he wouldn't interfere with her work, then sat down and began working. Over the next hour he alternated between making the mini hover-engines, mini cameras, and the casings.

Unlike the prototype, most of the new models were made out of either metal or eyeglass plastic. As an alternative to being reflective, he used a roll of camoflauge window covering, liberated from the garage. One of the older kids had purchased the roll to put on his truck windows. The original use was to make it where he could see out of a window, while others couldn't see in. When stuck onto the metal, it made for a simple, yet effective camoflauge. By the time he would finish, he would have ten workable hover-cams.

On top of that, he'd raided his room again, and managed to com up with enough of the special glass to make three more, making a total of fourteen hover-cams.

Hours had passed by the time Daria arranged them in workable order on her laptop. As programs for tracking and recognition loaded Daria teleported away for a while. When she returned she had sucessfully loaded the mutations of of everyone registered at the mansion. Daria then put up new, virtually impenetrable firewall and blocking systems to create a network that was basically impossible to hack into.

While more things were loading she showed Chip a small device shaped like a little battery. "I present to you the first laser to run on kinetic energy." She clipped it on the bottom of one of the hover-cams. "This small capsule will save up energy as the Hover-cam moves and then can fire lasers formed from that kinetic energy. They're a new invention that I was going to give to the x-team but this is a much safer way to test it." she laughed.

She handed it to Chip so he could look over it and then went to check her computer. she moved her finger along the mouse pad. The hover cams floated around the room, trying to get out so they could go on their programmed routes. She reigned them back in, "Awesome, they're all working so well!" she grinned. She pointed to the desktop computer she'd brought with her. It was actually just the Monitor and keyboard. "We'll hook that up to the consoles, hard drive and wireless router. And, of course, to the logic board..." she trailed off as something on the screen caught her eye.

"Holy...cow...!" She exclaimed. "Hurry, Chip! Help me set this up!" she ran to start hooking up the new screen and key board.

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Chip eyed the mini laser like a cat eying a canary; he was dying to get his hands on it to take it apart and see how it worked, and if he could duplicate it. But he restrained himself for the moment. A little.... Maybe just a quick peek....

"We'll hook that up to the consoles, hard drive and wireless router. And, of course, to the logic board... Holy...cow...!"

"What?? I didn't do anything!" Chip snapped his hand back from trying to open the laser casing, and the camera floated away freely. He exhaled in relief that Daria had been talking about something else entirely.

"Hurry, Chip! Help me set this up!"

"What's going on?" he asked, both excited that something was happening, and that she hadn't noticed his attempt at tinkering....

He craned his neck to see what was happening on the computer screen.

When the computer was set up text came onto the screen. It was basically unreadable to someone who didn't understand computer coding. Daria began typing and slowly the code translated into more readable information. A list of files, a list of links-it was an entire network of the camps.

Daria spoke as she typed so that Chip could understand what she was doing. "It looks like whatever tried to hack into our system got hacked by our system!" she grinned. "And the information extracted is extremely vital. We've got all the names and records of the prisoners..." she trailed off. Emerald Lupin's name popped up along with Ruby. She clicked and was painfully informed of their weight loss, their punishments, the jobs they were forced to have. As much as she didn't like Deathstar...grave digging?

She realized Ruby was fourteen now and Emmy was seventeen. Daria held back a hiss, she'd missed their birthdays, her little girls...

Daria swallowed hard and continued to read until she could read no more.

"Bastards..." she said scrolling down. Then she saw chatrooms. She clicked on them but it required a username and password. She easily hacked into it, the password being as stupid as 'guard'. The conversation disgusted her even more.
Mutie_BEAter: Hey you get an eyefull of the wolf girls back?
Beast_tamer:Shit yea it seems the girl likes it rough. Prolly why that other mutie beat her sensless.
Mutie_Beater: Yea I bet you she enjoyed it.
Beast_tamer: As soon as no one is looking Iwanna tame that little wild thing.
Mutie_Beater: Wut about her sister?
Beast_tamer: The fox? well I bet I could make her a vixen if I restrained the wolf girl long enough.

"SHIT" Daria cursed loudly and let out a frightening hiss. She'd almost forgotten than not only was chip not used to her feral instincts but he was only a few inches away from her.

(OOC: Sorry, was rushed. Hope it works)

Chip interpreted the code as if her were reading a children's story; it was that easy for him. He didn't like what he saw anymore than Daria did, though he understood less of the implications. He recognized quite a few names on the register. However, the chatrooms left nothing to misinterpret. Daria's hiss startled him backwards a bit. He stared at her, his expression unreadable.

"We'll get them out. Won't we?" His voice was suddenly very small, and doubt-filled. Suddenly the whole situation came down on him, and his usual optimistic demeanor wilted visibly, begging some kind of reassurance, comfort.... anything.....

At the sound of his voice Daria was brought back into reality a bit. With Tricity gone she was, technically headmistress. The sound of a child's voice was sometimes the only taming element in her demeanor. She turned to chip and ruffled his hair again affectionatly. Smiling with a gleam in her emerald eyes she nodded.

"Of course, hun! There is no way we'll let those freaks the camp hold our family hostage." she assured him. She sighed and saved all the info to her account, accessible to her computer and then locked it as she had everything else on the database.

"I'm going to draw up some blue prints for this fence we have to put up." She stood, tucking her laptop back in her bag. She looked at the boy..."You're holding up okay, right, Chip?"

His smile returned a little bit with her reassurance, and he nodded.

"Yeah, I'm all right. I wish we had everyone home though." He paused and reached out to pull something from his halo, the metal wrist cuff he'd been working on earlier. "I wanna get Ted to try out his cuff. He can set it to shock him just enough to make him transform, like Neena asked. And find out who made the Xmen training cut." He glanced at the computer screen, and his smiled faded again. He knew they'd been talking about Ruby and Emerald; they were the only fox and wolf girls on campus. He also knew about Emerald's temper.

"The DocProf can heal anything that happens to them, can't he? It won't be permanent?"