Xaviers!

"Fortunately for you, I can't take a hundred shots this fast." she says, but she does make it hard to stop her as she steadily advances on the hoop and goes for a pretty straight-forward lay-up.

This time, the ball seemed to obey the trajectory Ashlie had set for it, rolling around the rim nicely before falling through to even the score up. Who needed advanced telepathic communication, anyway?

The ball bounced away for a few seconds, almost coming to a complete stop before it reversed course towards Sam.

"Now I'm curious," Sam says as she picks up the ball and starts dribbling down the court, "do you retain all this?"

"Do you keep the muscle memory or do you delete Hoops Dot Ee Ex Ee when you're done to save space?"

"A good question. Not consciously, but I seem to have encoded a lot of administrative maintenance into the nanites. I have yet to determine how much influence I can actively take on those sub-conscious processes." she says and for the first time in her existence she gets properly distracted, letting Sam slip past her. She lets out a brief laugh at it once she notices.

Some ro-butt, if they can't even remember what's been going on Will 'said', teasingly, as he went sailing through the hoop again. The headmistress is going to be a total scatter-brain until she gets all this sorted, isn't she?

"Just means you can get away with more," she sends to Will with a mental chuckle.

She stops at the three-point line and takes a shot.

"What was that, now?"

"I'm quite used to the default being multi-tasking, it seems. Getting distracted is quite a unique sensation."

"So your thought processes aren't automatically prioritized? How dreadful."

"Quite. All the multi-threading is taken up by proprietary biological processes. I need better access rights."

"Just center yourself. Take some deep breaths," she says, waiting for Ashlie to take up the ball.

"I'm not quite that distracted, Miss McManus." she says, sounding amused as she goes to pick up the ball. There's a weak electrical exchange again, but this time it's picked up and briefly propagates through Ashlie's hand as a faint tingle like goosebumps, except instead of hairs standing on end her pores extrude a matte-black metallic film that hardens into strange organic swirls, ridges and circuit patterns. That's what Sam and Ashlie notice. As for Will, he's suddenly flooded with signals from the nanites that mainly seems to consist of various trajectories as well as a repeated instruction of propelling himself into the hoop.

Will mentally gasped a little bit as the nanites' signal flooded his vulcanized system, absorbing the data they were transmitting to him.

Before, he had been moving on instinct, and a little bit of rascally impishness. Now, however, everything seemed so clear and logical -- hell, he'd been training to get launched, hadn't he? He could calculate precisely how gravity was going to effect him, and how the air conditioning created eddies to be navigated. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't miss -- and he certainly did not WANT to.

Ashlie's nanites got some feedback, synching up with the ball -- it was practically an extension of her now; a peripheral ready to be deployed. Harlem Globetrotters, look out; Ashlie "Curly" Minamida had a ball of her own.

And without thinking twice about it Ashlie casually chucks the ball over her shoulder in the general direction of the hoop.

Ashlie Ellen Ripley'd it up, and the ball soared through the air, course correcting ever so slightly to *swish* through the hoop, barely touching anything on the way down.

Wooooooah.

Again!

"I think the score's going to stay tied awhile so he can keep going through the hoop," she chuckles as she fetches the ball and starts dribbling.

"Well, as long as he's enjoying himself." Ashlie shakes her head, amused.

"I'm not judging you, Will." She chuckles, trying to fake Ashlie out before making a break in the opposite direction.

Despite Ashlie's 'cheating' she does eventually fall behind on the score as her body gets winded. Biomechanical changes or not, it's not a well-enough exercised body to keep pace with a shapeshifter. She manages to keep it within a couple scores but is finally forced to concede, hands on her knees and catching her breath.

"The machine is willing, but the flesh is weak." she announces between huffs of breath.

"Just means we can introduce you to another human concept, 'taking a break.'"

The ball, for it's part, bounced over to the rack on the side, hopping into place among the many actual basketballs the gym had to offer.

"How annoyingly necessary."

"I'm sure you could have overheated even as a machine."