Xaviers!

Once the immediate surprise of their arrival had died down some and people had gone to sleep, Ashlie moves away from the encampment to check on the jeep parked in the cave in the nearby hills. She climbs into the back and starts opening panels on the large energy core, growing increasingly dissatisfied as she pulls out fried cables and components. Her internal battery reports 14% charge remaining. Too many things happening in succession and no time to recharge. In the absolute worst case scenario she could start the jeep and hook herself up to the car battery. Horribly inefficient and they'd run out of gas soon enough, but it's an option. But for now she has enough energy to work on the core.

Soon enough she has all the destroyed parts she can easily get to pulled out and lined up next to the jeep. The row of blackened and burned components is disheartening, but at least she was able to confirm that there didn't seem to be any microfractures in the casing of the reaction chamber. Inside was impossible to tell right now but then she doesn't need it to run at peak efficiency for now.

"I suddenly think I understand how Will feels about broken things a little better," Tosh winced as he looked at the damage. He should probably be watching for "dragons."

"Indeed. If we can't get it fixed up, that's what I'll be in about 28 hours too. And without the mainframe at the University I can't restart. Not that it matters without electricity."

"Then we need to get to work fast, 'cause I like you and I really don't want to be on my own to get us home. I'm sure you've noticed I'm a terrible liar. Fionn's already suspicious."

"You really are. I was particularly impressed by how you chose a more foreign name." she says with a completely straight face before breaking into a faint smirk to indicate she's joking. "My creator would be very pleased to see me be better at it than a human."

"You do have a flawless poker face," he chuckled, "And I've no clue why I did the name thing... that was a terrible idea."

"We're strangers here, we might as well embrace it to some extent. We look foreign, a Japanese name might not have been that terrible an idea. They'll trust us more once we've helped them with their 'dragon' problem."

"I just hope our fishy friend isn't required. That would be... hard to explain."

He was glad that she didn't point out that his name was already Japanese enough to begin with.

"If it does we will try to explain as best as we can. I suspect Fionn might be an early mutant if his stories are to be believed, they might be more accepting than we assume. But let's not test this unless we have to." She looks up at Tosh. "If you're not too tired, would you mind helping me clean some of these and see if we can salvage enough to put together one functional power coupler from them?"

"I think I can keep it together that long," he nodded. "Honesly I'm more worried about interruptions by the velociraptors prowling the night."

"One problem at a time." she says, tossing him a burnt out power coupling.

He caught it and got to work with what tools came with them.

"Hrm... I need a brush or something... a rag maybe."

"Of all the things we're missing... Here." she says, shrugging out of her jacket and handing it to Tosh. Her blouse would probably be too thin to be comfortable in an unheated cave but then again, her problem tends to be excess heat if anything

"Sorry. It's a nice jacket too," he said. The jacket slowly became a bunch of sooty rags as he worked by the light of Tosh's cellphone.

"This would be so much easier if I could shift just my eyes."

"Hang on." she says, putting the piece she's working on down to reach over and flip on the Jeep's parking lights.

"It's a jacket. I have three more like it hundreds of years from now in a closet. Hardly the first one to be ruined by soot and oil either. Strange, isn't it? People prefer to see the leader of an institution clean and proper rather than like they actually do any work."

"Hah! Why didn't I think of that?" he laughed. "And yeah, leadership is like at least fifty percent looking the part."

"It's ridiculous. So much wasted effort."

"I readily admit that humans are ridiculous creatures. The mutant ones perhaps even more so."

"Only due to circumstance and because someone once got it into their head that there's such a thing as 'normal'."

"I'd love slash hate to see the place where Bruce was the relative statistical commonality."

"There'd certainly be fewer delicate electronics." she smirks faintly as she takes apart yet another component, tossing broken parts on a pile while carefully setting aside the usable ones.

"I think we have enough to put together a flow regulator and a couple of power couplings now. And then is the moment of truth to see if it can still maintain a stable plasma stream."

"Well then let's get busy!"

He suddenly looked embarrassed.

"I mean...get to cobbling bits together... not... nevermind."

Ashlie chuckles. "I got what you meant, Tosh. Somehow I didn't assume you were suddenly hitting on me."

After some rigorous tinkering, he said, "Okay, I think that should do it. Time for testing?"

"I suppose there's no reason to delay the inevitable." she says as they're putting the salvaged components back into the machine. After making sure they disengaged all the now empty circuits and parts she initiates the start up sequence.

"Magnetic sheath is holding. Acceleration is slow but above minimum parameters... So far so good. Particle cohesion is under 60%, some of the field arrays must have gotten damaged but without a nanoforge we can't do anything about that. Reaction chamber seals are intact. Here goes nothing." She reaches into the assembly and manually twists the control column to divert the plasma streams into the reaction chamber. The whole thing is humming and rattling a little louder than it should but and after a couple seconds one of the power couplings explodes into a shower of sparks and a thin tendril of smoke but the rest of them seem to hold.

"Six percent efficiency. From an engineering stand-point that's terrible, but then again, this was meant to sit inside a gyroscopic stabilizer surrounded by armor plates, not be drifted through a space-time distortion."

Tosh jumped back with a curse when the coupling exploded, but quickly relaxed.

"It didn't explode and kill us. I think that alone is a win."

"There was only a minuscule chance of that. Though the possibility for horrible plasma-burns was substantial." she deadpans, though she's probably joking, right? She did spend a significant amount of time with Rob, so who knows...

"Also a win."

"I think I've got it from here. I just need to fashion a makeshift connector and my batteries should be charged in a couple of hours."

"Do you want me to stay or sneak back?" he asked.

"Your call, but this shouldn't be much trouble and you really need to get some rest. When's the last time you slept?"

"Last night. However long ago that was."

"Only several hundred years from now. Sounds like we both need to recharge."

"Well, I don't think a cave is going to cut it for me, so keep your fingers crossed I don't get ambushed by dire chickens."

"Call for help if you are." she says, tapping her ear to remind Tosh of his ear-piece.

"Will do," he nodded. "And you do the same," he added before heading out.