Xaviers!

"This is amusing, but let me see what other functions this thing has in it," Natalie says as she begins polling the various systems in the Nat-nite to see what they were capable of.

There's a big chunk of components designated for processing power, a bristling array of antennae for maintaining connectivity among the swarm, actuators and such, a rotating set of tools built into the arm that got exploded and, probably of the most interest to Natalie, something labelled as 'VanDyne Containment Chamber'. A quick poke reveals it to be an electromagnetic trap of sorts for holding exotic particles while several conduits extend from the chamber throughout the nanite itself, distributing and stabilizing the shrinking effects of the Pym Particles. The chamber indicates it is sitting at a mere 3% of normal operating capacity. It is almost empty, having distributed it's reserves across the student body.

"I do have a containment chamber for 'VanDyne' particles. We might be able to reverse the deployment and vacuum them back into the container."

"Sounds like a plan. Do you need anything, or can you manage that as it is?"

The Nat-nite looks at the exploded blowtorch arm, "Maybe some actual means of intake? Still making sense of the system in here."

It's easy enough to trace back how the Nat-nite dispensed the particles in the first place, at least. The containment chamber opens up on the robot's underside, panels sliding away to reveal a circular shutter, a faint glow spilling out as it opens.

"Okay that... looks like the wrong direction."

"Or possibly it can be reclaimed that way," Tosh theorized/suggested.

"I can try a reclamation," she says, reaching into that portion of the system and seeing if it was capable of reclaiming the VanDyne particles from objects.

"Do you need a guinea pig?"

Not intrinsically, at least, though she might be able to rig something up by magnetizing the distributing conduits and creating a negative charge in the containment chamber. That'd definitely do something although none of the components involved are meant to be used that way.

"I've got something I can try, but I may only have one shot at it because the components really aren't designed for it."

"Then maybe you should try it on Bruce. He's the one of us most likely to figure out how to return the rest of us to normal size.

Of get squished into a million pieces, you know. Whatever happens."

"Why not just do everyone? What's the worst that could happen? Well, besides that..." a pained looking Drake asked as he approached on foot. The source of his pain was obvious, as one wing was more than a little battered by his crash.

"Can't that shrinky Avenger guy also get big? Or is that someone else? Are there big particles in there?"

"I'm not real sure how to check that. The system just knows it as the VanDyne reservoir."

"I'll do it." Victor rubbed his nose before he brushed his hands off on his shirt.

"Like Will said earlier, I'm one of the few who're used to this. If it doesn't work, I'll be fine until you guys can figure something out."

Natalie begins prepping the systems to work in reverse. "Well, someone needs to do it, so whoever's going to, get into position. We probably don't have all day."

Victor steps underneath the huge Nat-nite and the comparatively hangar-sized opening that lowers itself down towards him as the robot crouches until he's essentially standing in the chamber. There's a tiny bit of that bubbling energy suspended in the center of the 'room' and all over the walls are large magnetic induction pads of some sort. There's a loud electronic 'WHOOMPH!' and the panels begin glowing, the particles suspended in the center of the room being pulled apart until the accumulate against the induction pads. An electronic whine accompanies them seeping into the panels and Natalie is flooded with all kinds of warning messages about structural integrity and relative sizes of all kinds of components.

But the field of reversed polarity inside the chamber does seem to be working. It's a strange sensation, although not entirely unfamiliar to Victor as Pym Particles percolate out through his skin, gathering in strange bubbles that are whisked away towards the magnetic pads, his body surging in size with a sudden pop, the sheer force of it making him stumble, the basketball-sized Nanite that is balanced on top of his head not helping.

"Can you hear us up there, Vic?

And are there any more of those nanowhatsits left, Natalie?"

Natalie's field of vision has shot up suddenly and aside from some angry alerts about structural stress the Nat-nite seems to be holding up okay. It has shrunk down by a small fraction and it's store of Pym Particles has increased, but that's to be expected.

There is, however, a lot of 'angry' and concerned chatter coming from the nanite swarm. Current events have increased the Similarity Index and the swarm is running a lot of rapid calculations trying to come up with a solution.

"Maybe. But taking them on is shrinking my bot. And the network is really angry about me putting things back the way they were. I need to give them something else to do to reduce the 'Similarity Index' or they're going to start trying any number of things." Natalie reaches into a nearby nanite and has it suggest to the network that the received information was garbage data and should be discarded as invalid instructions that cannot be validated. She doesn't really expect that to work long term, but maybe it can throw the network into an 'academic debate' that will at least buy some time.

"Okay, let me get this straight. It's trying to make things different enough that it can just faff off on the orders it was given."

"And that either means make the campus different, or make us different. Right?"

"You may be on to something, Janice."

Will closed his eyes for a minute, his hair receding, and his body changing shape -- as much as it could with his limited range of shifting thanks to El Microbots Enormo. He removed an arm; replaced a leg with an obvious metal fake, and gained as much weight as he could reasonably do.

"That do anything to the 'similarity index'?"

"They're from Conduit's world, right?" Tosh said, "That me didn't have shifting powers. That's one difference. I'm younger too. Maybe if I show it another form, the number would change."

Will's shifting causes a minor decrease in the numbers, but nothing hugely significant. Appeasing their misguided directive seems like it probably won't work, considering the scope of what that would entail.

"No. Wait. That's too small scale. We need a difference big enough to blow their minds. Like, oh... Maybe show it that our San Francisco isn't a radioactive ruin. Though we'd need to prove that somehow. "

"I can't reach the campus network or I'd tap into a news feed in San Francisco. And I can't even get them to tell me what spec they're altering to. So showing them how it's different from Conduit's world might be barking up the wrong tree."

"Alright, then," Will said, snapping back to his default shape.

"Why don't you keep trying to work with them, as they've lost any and all interest in speaking to us. The rest of us can head off to the point and try to figure out a way to reverse this stuff."

Victor did the whole anime-protagonist-staring-into-the-death-cannon thing, though he did flinch and raise his arm to shield his eyes from the glow. The group was probably lucky that he'd made the final cut-the sudden change in altitude had made him sick and disoriented when he first started experiencing it with his own powers, but by now he was used to it; what was unfamiliar this time was that he wasn't the one controlling it. The stumbling footsteps must've made the floor around him shake and he was quick to stop himself - there were people underfoot after all. He couldn't hear Will or the others at all, carefully reaching up to pluck the webcam-like bot from his head and leaning at the waist to plunk it back on the floor. And then he did something that was likely unexpected - he shrunk down again.

True, it wasn't to the small size he'd been before, this time just a couple of inches - which to the others had him like an apartment building instead of a skyscraper. But at least he could see and hear them now.

"Okay, that totally worked! Who's next?" He said excitedly, not knowing about the fallout going on in the nanite's network over this little stunt.

"I'll see if I can at least keep them spinning their wheels," Natalie says, "Vic, can you take the others out to the Point?"

"Hey there, little big man! You OK with being an Über-Uber?"

"I think I can handle that. Though it's definitely weird to be the one offering a ride when I'm usually the one hitching one." Victor looked around for something to carry his fellow students in - he didn't trust his hand in case a gust of wind or something carried them off.

With one over-sized Nanite broken by Will's stubborn head and the other compromised by Natalie the only immediate threat is the angry puddle of nanites wielding a jury-rigged hard-light projector that the silvery liquid congeals around, growing six robotic hard-light legs and giving chase as Vic scoops up the rest of our miniature heroes and hurries towards the Point. With Natalie throwing digital chaff into the swarm's network the hard-light flickers occasionally, forcing the nanites to stumble and briefly come to a stop as they restore functionality. And so the group manages to build up a decent gap by the time they reach the Point. The doors are already open and as Vic hurries down the metal corridor Natalie can pick up faint traces of Ashlie in the, to her still distant, cables in the walls.

>> "...reconfigured the......ellite dish........oadcast an inversi......ignal..."

"Right! They're still out there," Will said, in his Take-Chargy voice.

"The rest of you, get to the laboratories. There's gotta be some kinda tech Natalie and Tosh can put together to reverse this anti-shrinking catastrophe. Janice, Drake, you keep them safe as they're getting there; fire and bad luck and all that jazz. When in doubt, smash, right?


I'll buy you guys all the time you need."

And with that, Will backflipped out of Vic's grasp, quickly fading into the background as he spread out like a glider, turning around to go back and face the nanite swarm.

"I can hear Ashlie," Natalie says, sounding worried. "She's saying something about the satellite dish being reconfigured. The cables are too far away. I'm only getting bits and pieces."

"We've gotta... uh... take your body with us too, right?"

"Like I'm not leaving you here to get eaten by ants."

"Of limited importance at the moment as I can live without it," Natalie says. "There's another frame down here that I can jump to if I need to, but I'd prefer to get this fixed first."

"Unless Vic volunteers to be my hands, you'll need to unshrink me before I can help. And thank God I keep an extra set of clothes in my workstation."

"I can't fly right now," Drake sighed, "But... you can count on me."