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Stepping back slightly as he caught the girl's slight movement backwards, Fiach couldn't help but duck his head and blush. He always felt awkward around people smaller than him, and this petite girl made him feel especially awkward. He was afraid that if he touched her, she might break, and took another step back at that thought.

Laughing a little nervously as she said she recognized his voice, he scratched the back of his head and blushed a little. "I know...I should have...I'm sorry I didn't..." His head ducked a little again, man did he hate making a bit of a fool of himself. People situations weren't his best area - darn Sionce for making him handle everyone all at once. Especially when everyone was concerned over their hackers!

Gently accepting the girl's hand, he shook it and smiled. "A pleasure to meet you as well, Miss Melee."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Suki enter the kitchen and vaguely worried over whether or not she'd leave it as clean as she found it.

Silently counting up how many people were in his shop, he fervently hoped no one would make a large mess. Firmly, he decided that if they did, then Sionce could most certainly help in the clean up afterwards.

In the kitchen, Suki happily hums a tune while she makes coffee. "I can't find the coffeemaker, so I'll just make one myself" she thought as she stirs the cup of coffee continously. "Two teaspoons of coffee, one teaspoon of sugar, two teaspoons of cream, and pour some hot water..." she sang as she merrily stirs her coffee. When she was done, she took a cleaning cloth to clean up. As she wiped off the spots left from coffee spills, she sang another song. "Wiping and singing, singing and wiping..." When all was done, she went outside with her coffee.

As she went out, she saw Fiach still talking to the girl outside. After a sip from her coffee, she approached the two. "Fiach, I'm done with my coffee. I even cleaned the kitchen for you." she said as she wore a smile on her face, "Might I ask the name of this girl here?"

Melee tilted her head to get a better look at Fiach, mouth twitching at the colour in his cheeks. She felt at ease around this man, an ease she hadn't felt around his sister. Maybe because he seemed so much like... No. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and also at his good-natured words, letting out a surprised laugh. "Not at all. Your service has been excellent so far." She chanced a sideways glance at her PDA.

Fleck was scrutinising Fiach guardedly, tail snapping in agitation. He ignored the greeting in favour of dissecting the man's latter statement. White Rabbit and an entity called Trisste...

< Melee, plug me in. I'll find the Rabbit quickly and we'll go home. > The hacker prowled the edge of the screen, eyes glowing. He hated operating at below 100% and a telling tension coiled in his shoulders like a spring.

"Whatever you say, Fleck..." Melee sighed exasperatedly. She nodded at Suki, giving Fiach an amused look as she noticed the slip. "It is very good to meet you. If you would both excuse me for a moment? It is just that... Fleck is impatient to get going." She flashed a smile before darting away to the row of computers, hooking Fleck into the system with little trouble. "Take care," she breathed, but the hacker was already gone.

"Oh wow, Raven- well, I guess I should call you Mr. Raven!- you're old!" The red head laughed, meaning old as in "all grown up." "I'm still in high school, but I'm a senior so it's my last year. I like art and music, and I want to sing on cruise ships when I grow up so I can travel to exotic islands for free and sing for groups of people in fancy dresses at the same time!"

Violetta grinned- she always liked telling people her dreams, it made her feel good inside, thinking about what she some day hoped to accomplish. Though, she did feel a bit sheepish at the same time, since Raven had a job in technologies. That meant he must pretty smart, something that, according to the school systems, Violetta was not. She had always managed average grades in most classes, but really had to struggle with math and technologies.

"It's really impressive that you work with so much technological stuff, you must have been really smart in high school. Did you have to go for college for long? What kind of things do you make? What does your corporation do? Do you want to work with computers forever and ever?" Violetta asked all this pretty quickly, a bad habit of hers- drowning someone in a series of questions much faster than they could respond.

Meanwhile, Kristian slowly meandered around in the background, poking around at random machines here and there. Finding an under construction computer off in the corner, he fiddled with it ever so slightly. His older brother, Elias, was really good with computers and he been trying to teach Kristian a thing a two. Apparently though, he hadn't taught enough. Sparks flew from the machine and Kristian quickly covered his hands with his long hoodie sleeves, putting them over the sparked part. Once that was taken care of, he quickly moved away, not wanting to be around if the machine caught fire and/or blew up. Things had a habit of doing that to him.

Melee murmured a quick prayer for safety, wishing she knew more about the perils of Cyberspace. Sure, she had basic knowledge of trojans, phishing, spyware and the more malicious bugs - what internet user didn't these days? - but it had never been something to be concerned about. Nothing a good antivirus and firewall couldn't fix. Or the local technician, if it came to that.

Still, real danger like this? It wasn't something she'd been prepared for and worry ate away at her mind. Fleck had been close-mouthed about the subject, as immovable as a bundle of data could be.

< An ever-shifting plane > he'd volunteered. < Not bound by laws like yours. > As cryptic and eloquent as ever.

Melee jumped as she heard the crackle of electricity close by, dark thoughts momentarily forgotten as she looked up to see Kristian fleeing a smoking machine. Fiach wasn't far behind him, and she winced at the expression on his face. This didn't bode well...

Though Dean usually had trouble sleeping, once he managed to fall asleep he slept like a rock. His phone vibrated on his bed stand rather loudly, but he was asleep at a decent hour for a change. With it being rather cold out, he'd climbed under his blankets to warm up and became so comfortable that he actually fell asleep without any pills. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to relieve himself before bed and thus was awaken by a 'call of nature.'

On his way back from the restroom, a flashing red light catches Dean's attention. He rubs his eyes a bit, though one was simply a solid white sphere to hold an eye's place, and blinks quickly to enable his vision to focus. Realizing that he has a message, Dean lifts up the phone and dials his voice mail.

"Infected," he says quietly with a sigh. Dean wanted to go back to sleep, but knew that he should get his laptop checked out in order to protect little Zest. He closes his phone and sets it back down, moving to his closet to quickly get dressed in some jeans and a t-shirt. He shoves his wallet, keys, and phone into his pockets, puts on his shoes, and grabs his jacket. It was too late and too cold to be running around without it anyway. He'd actually taken his laptop with him to work to show something to his coworker Jacob, so it was still packed in its case and ready to go. Grabbing it, Dean hurried out the door, barely remembering to lock up behind himself.

And, with that, Dean put his legs to work by running (rather quickly) to the shop. He stops outside, hearing a bit of commotion as he catches his breath. Opening the door slowly, he calls out, "Hello? Fiach?"

Kristian looked over at Fiach and shrugged, then turned away, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of shame. He should have known better than to mess with something that wasn't his. What if he had permanently damaged it? Well... he didn't know what, but he certainly didn't want to find out.

Violetta nodded as the boy spoke to her, not really even noticing that he didn't answer all her questions. Subconsciously she already knew that it was rather unlikely for anyone to answer so many in such a short amount of time. On the conscious level, she had already forgotten exactly what she had asked. (xD)

"I don't think you give yourself enough credit. Languages, math and technology are the hardest ones, and the most useful. I mean, when are you ever going to use history, anyways? No one's ever come up to me and been like," - at this point she deepened her voice, as if to impersonate an older man- "'Say young missy, can you tell me the years the civil war started and ended and what the leading causes were behind it?'"

At this point Violetta cut herself short, looking over to where Fiach was saying something to Kristian, and the shop keeper did not look happy. The red head continued to talk to Raven, going off on a new tanget. "Oh noes... I think Kristian is in trouble. I know he's my big brother, but I really worry for him, he's just so bad at communications. I think it's because of his speech problems, ya' know? It was always easier for him not to talk then to try and talk right and his mom actually encouraged him to keep quiet. She was embarrassed by him and said it made him sound retarded- which he isn't, Kristian is sooooo smart. But she was a real witch... Do you have any brothers? Or sisters, I guess. Since you're a boy, a sister to you would be like a brother to me, or at least I think."