Xaviers!

Nash was in the workshop at one of the tables. He had a large number of parts spread out in front of him, some of which were absolutely tiny.

It wasn't apparent what he was doing. He seemed to just be standing there at the moment.

((open))

The door hisses open and Ashlie walks in. She has her blazer slung over her shoulder and is in the process of rolling up the sleeves of her blouse.

"Good afternoon, Mister Riley." she says, sounding unusually cheerful.

“Hello Ms. Minamida.” Nash says as he reaches for a small part with a pair of tweezers.

"Hard at work, I see." she says as she walks over to one of the unused workbenches and pulls up an empty design board on the holographic screen.

“Got all the parts made and I'm finally ready to assemble it.”

He picks up a far larger piece, presumably part of the device's frame, and places the small piece at one of the corners.

"Just the basic computer or did you add anything to the design already?"

"I've got parts for the tracking device launcher, but that is it so far. Everything else is still just plans."

Nash pulls up another small part with the tweezers and puts it into place, before reaching to pick up another piece.

"Impressive miniaturization. Is that your power at work?"

"Hmmm." He thought for a moment while continuing to put parts in their places.

"I guess it helped with making the small parts."

She nods. "It might be worth considering breaking with usual designs in favor of using your power to it's full extent. You could probably work on a scale unavailable to others." she says as she starts adding designs to her draft. She's not actually moving her hands, they just appear and rearrange themselves in front of her.

"Maybe." Nash said as he continued assembling the device.

"it is something to look into I guess."

"Fitting more into less space is a very sought after skill. Don't underestimate that."

"It's more of, I'm not sure just how small I can go. Never really tried to find out."

After putting one more piece into place, he picked up another larger piece that he placed on top. He still had more pieces to go, but this part at least was done.

"Then you should try to find out." she says, pulling up what looks like some sort of engine on her design and magnifying it to fill in more details.

"I guess I will."

Nash looked over to better see what Ashlie was up to, while still working on assembling his device.

Ashlie doesn't seem to be working on an overall design, mostly just designing components and modules of various kinds. She's really fast at drawing up a design but 99% of the time they're not feasible and she scraps them immediately, only occasionally keeping one to design a number of permutations on until she finds one that improves on the overall design. It almost looks like she's evolving electronic component designs to be the most effective for whatever purpose. In this case she seems to be trying to improve parts of the QuinJets engines.

"Trying to supe up the jet?"

"Possibly. I'm also considering other applications, just in case. I'm trying to minimize the effects a technopath could have on various systems."

"Is there a particular reason you're doing that?"

"Yes, I strongly suspect I will come into conflict with one sooner or later. This is a proof of concept. If it works I can attempt to translate the concept to other crucial equipment or even myself."

"Makes sense." Nash says as he goes about connecting up a circuit board.

"Wait... yourself?"

She smirks slightly. Part of her is tempted to continue to lie just because it would be her choice to do so. A strangely tempting thought.

"Yes. I'm afraid I have been somewhat misleading to you and everyone else. My eyes aren't implants in the sense that they replaced biological ones. In fact the only thing remotely biological about me is my skin and even that is mainly a plastic mesh infused with skin tissue."

What?

Nash stops what he is doing and uses his powers to scan Ashlie's head.

A mix of plastic-weave and skin cells, a titanium-alloy casing, a sophisticated array of interface devices and sensors, several sub-processors and some kind of dense data-core. No brain matter, no skull, just dense and complicated electronics.

"You're not kidding."

"Why would I be joking about something like that?"

"I guess you wouldn't. I... just had to check it out to be sure."

"You don't have to excuse your curiosity."

"It just seems kind of rude."

"What precisely where you looking at?" she asks with an amused smile on her lips.

"Just your head." Nash said plainly.

He did start looking embarrassed until a few moments later.

She chuckles. "Don't sweat it. Although that head is proprietary technology."

"I'm not sure how some of those parts even work." Nash says finally getting back to assembling his device.

"As much as I encourage curiosity, I'm afraid the blueprints of my body are confidential." she smiles.

"I'm not planning on building a robot so your design is safe from me."