Moth in a metal shop(open)

[Eric Noir]

The institute had turned out to be a pretty accommodating place. He wasn't sure how they had managed to provide him with a room that was sized to him. When he had first seen it he had thought it was a dolls house, but closer examination had shown everything in it was not merely doll furniture, but had been constructed like real furniture. What was confusing was how they had managed to make woodgrain so small, of blankets that that felt like full sized ones. He had asked about it, but he had just been told it involved a lot of sciency stuff. He had thought they couldn't out do that, at least until he had run into problems with his metal working. He had managed to put together a miniature forge with a propane lighter, a can, and some fireproof plaster, however, it turned out trying to use it didn't work since he was too small to use metal working tools. Pliers were unwieldy, and he couldn't lift the hammers without using both hands. He had been disappointed, even more so when a hammer he had made had snapped on the first strike. Then the school had provided him with a toolset. Again he wasn't sure how, but they felt like real tools, even the weight of them balanced properly and did the job just as well, as if they had been shrunk like he had. Now he could finally start on his first order of business.

Being five inches tended to be a stressful condition, as just about anything saw him as a potential meal. White he was durable enough to withstand attacks, fending things off with his bare hands was not a pleasant experience. He wanted a weapon, a knife, a dagger, a sword, anything like that would put his mind at ease, as well as give him something to dissuade birds from treating him like a bug. He was collecting nails from around the metal shop, checking try he different metals for strength and flexibility. It was easy enough to look up sword making on the internet to find out how to make a functional blade, so he was looking for the right type of nails, low carbon for the core and high carbon for the edges. There were a small pile he was sorting through on the workbench.

[Ashlie Minamida]

The workshop, similar to the Danger Room is clad with metal panels, though unlike the Danger Room, there are numerous grooves along the walls and ceiling where robotic manipulator arms can move to assist with projects. Right now they're inactive and sit folded up in a corner of the ceiling. The workbenches filling one half of the sizable room all have a full set of tools both mundane and more exotic as well as holographic screens. Eric's assigned bench is full-sized but has a section where a miniaturized bench, stool and tools are sitting, giving him the equivalent of a large open factory floor to work with. Other benches have projects in varying states of completion on them, presumably the work of other students.

The large doors slide open quietly and Ashlie steps into the room. She seems to almost immediately take note of Eric's presence and walks over to his workbench. "Ah, you must be Eric Noir. Already hard at work, I see. I'm Ashlie Minamida, Headmistress and, perhaps more relevant, the Engineering Professor." she says, sitting down on the regular-sized stool next to the table and looking down at him. From Eric's point of view it's easy to see the strange lines criss-crossing through the iris of Ashlie's eyes. It'd probably be barely noticeable if they weren't so comparatively large to him, but she either has some kind of artificial modification in her eyes or they're entirely artificial. Which would explain how she's looking at his work-bench without leaning in or squinting.

[Eric Noir]

Eric turned to look at Ashlie as she approached and sat. Something he still hadn't gotten used to was how large everyone else was to him when he was standing on something that wasn't normal eye level, so Ashlie looked like a giant to him, which, as it always seemed to be, was a little intimidating. He quickly brushed it off, remembering that he was just as tough as a normal person, even more so since he was a small package.

"Yeah, just trying to put together my first project," he said. He noticed the strange pattern on her eyes, which reminded him of a tv or a computer screen. He guessed that was something to do with whatever mutation she had. He had already met a guy made of plants, and seen the headmaster who was a walking blue haired beast, so this didn't seem out of the ordinary at this point. He picked up the comparatively tiny hammer, hefting it in his hands, "These are amazing by the way, feels like a normal hammer, did you make it?" he didn't know if Ashlie had, but if she was the engineering teacher, maybe she had designed it since she probably taught in the metalshop. Normally everything this size felt like it weighed nothing, but this felt like it was much heavier then it's size suggested.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"I did indeed. They're made from super-dense material, courtesy of Dr. Pym's research. Unfortunately more complex pieces would require application of Pym Particles to regular sized tools and they're hard to come by, but we have a selection of condensed materials they make available. I suspect they're selling us their by-products and material testing scrap, but beggars can't be choosers." she smirks faintly. "From there it was just a matter of sculpting them into the right shape. I have to admit I haven't looked much into reproducing more specialized tools on this scale."

[Eric Noir]

"Super dense, huh," said Eric contemplatively, "Small size, big punch, sort of like me." He could appreciate that. It was almost as if this Pym guy had done something designed just for his situation. "I've been studying up on forging techniques, any tips?" He asked, she was a teacher after all, and he needed all the experience and knowledge he could get his hands on.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"A month ago I would have had to say no, but you never know when seemingly antiquated techniques become important." she chuckles to herself. "It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. In a modern context it usually implies you're looking for something to withstand significant stress, a frame or casing, plating. What were you thinking of making?"

[Eric Noir]

"A sword or a dagger," said Eric, going to his pile of nails and picking out two nails. "Articles on the internet and books in the library say a good blade needs a low carbon metal for the core, and high carbon for the edge. I figure if I hammer out these nails and fold them a few time, I should be able to make them into a strong blade, at least for my size." He was sure a nail sized sword wouldn't stand up to a full sized equivalent, but for fending off birds and bugs, it was perfect.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Ah, traditional forging. Yes, you're right though those nails are probably full of impurities and on a scaled down level you'll quickly run into noticeable abrasion happening to the edges of your blade. A lot of traditional forging techniques exist because of the low quality of metal they had to work with and I certainly won't stop you if you want to try and put something together from salvaged materials, but we do have better options for much of this. That lighter for instance won't provide as high or consistent a heat as an induction forge can."

[Eric Noir]

Eric looked over his home made forge, the propane torch gave a constant flame, and would rapidly heat metal, but ultimately it was thrown together by an amateur. "Well, I did my best, I can't exactly use a full sized forge without practically jumping into it." He said, trying to take the criticism as best he could.
"If you have a better way, I'm all for learning." Ultimately he was using nails since I was an easy resource to find, but Ashlie was right that his first attempts would result in low quality blades without guidance.
.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's resourceful, which is an important skill, especially for someone who is likely to encounter unique problems. Induction forges work via electromagnetism and easily scale down." she says and walks over to what is, presumably, her own workbench, picking up a small cube that comes with a thick high voltage cable. Placing it on Eric's workbench he can see it has a round opening on one side and the interior is a tightly wound metal coil. "Electricity induces strong alternating magnetic field inside the coils, allowing you to heat any conductive material held into it. It's safer and cleaner than traditional forges."

[Eric Noir]

Eric looked over the cube with interest, "So is this already functional?" he asked wondering how the heck the institute always seemed to be one step ahead of him with things that he needed. He committed Ashlie's words to memory, just in case he needed it in future. "Seriously, that is cool, but wouldn't that mean that the metal would stick to it?" he asked, trying to understand how the process worked.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's a fairly simple design, really. And the metal doesn't need to touch the coils at all, it only needs to be within the magnetic field they generate. It causes an electrical current to flow inside the material and it's own electrical resistance will cause it to heat up."

[Eric Noir]

"Does that mean it's dangerous to handle the metal? If there's and electrical current wouldn't in it shock you?" Asked Eric, wanting to make sure he knew any potential dangers that may come with using it. Still the device seemed to make things a lot easier. Of course Ashlie had also mentioned something about materials, he wondered what she was proposing he use instead.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"They're circular eddy currents within the material that are transformed into heat, but I wouldn't recommend touching metal you're heating up with bare hands anyway."

[Eric Noir]

"I was more concerned with it conducting through the metal pliers," clarified Eric. Not touching red hot metal was common sense. "What materials would you suggest for a blade?" He asked, wondering what the modern method would be since the ones he had read about were apparently outdated.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"You had the right idea, nails just aren't made from high quality metal. The carbon content might be right but there are all kinds of impurities in there because why would you waste highly refined material on nails. Your student ID should give you access to the store-room. I'd recommend the S23 and S29 Palladium alloys. Corrosion-resistant and with a higher shear-strength, which should keep the edge from dulling too fast."

[Eric Noir]

"Sounds awesome," said Eric, walking over to his student ID. The card was almost as big as he was, it was almost embarrassing. Still, he lifted it and flew to the store room and swiped he card. The door slid open and he could see several different metals sorted throughout as the lights flickered on. "I was thinking of appropriate designs, I mean the size of it and my own strength taken into account. A conventional sword at my size may break easily." He wasn't sure the best sword type, something like a rapier may snap or bend.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Depends on what you plan on using it for. Either way it probably wouldn't hurt to incorporate a reinforced grip, because that'll probably be where the biggest stress will occur from the sheer force you'll be able to put on it. A rapier might be too flimsy, but a thrusting weapon is probably your best bet still."

[Eric Noir]

"It's for self defense, but I think the same problem with a rapier may apply for any sword, a thin sheet of metal may well just bend like a pin," said Eric, his mind whirling as he took in Aslie's words and began making connections. He few around the store room looking at the different metals. Some was scraps, others wires and poles. Occasionally he would pick up a small piece to test it's strength and flexibility "Hmmm, maybe I need to think outside the box on this one." He said, starting to realise some of the limitations a sword at his size would have. "Since a thrusting design would be my best bet, perhaps I should shape the blade with a triangular shaft rather then a flat blade." It would give it more strength along the blade and give more penatration at the tip.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Good thinking." Ashlie nods. "Unconventional is good, no need to adhere to regular blade designs, really."

[Eric Noir]

Eric flitted from bin to bin, at this point he wasn't sure what he should use for his blade. There were a
Lot of different metals back here, bronze, copper, iron, and some he hadn't even heard of like tantulum, osmium, and rhenium. "You have a big collection back here," he said, impressed at the kind of resources they apparently had here, "What kind of stuff do you make with these?" He said, honestly wondering what all these different things were for.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"The short answer is, take my advanced Engineering class and you'll find out." Ashlie chuckles faintly. "A less brusk one is that some students have their own projects and it helps to have a wide array of materials available. One of them is working on a number of tools to bring when the situation calls for the X-Men to step in. Another you can see over there on his workbench. It's a remote-controlled drone though he might be working on a rudimentary self-controlling program. Another tried to create a teleportation beacon, though that was met with questionable amounts of success."

"Most of my own projects are in various planning phases, though if you want to see a finished one, I recently built and deployed a probe for taking sensor readings in an antarctic environment." she says and without moving a finger a section of the wall in the back of the room suddenly rumbles to life, retracting into the ceiling and revealing the vehicle parked inside. It's roughly of triangular shape and about 7 feet tall. Folded into it's sleek design as a secondary mode of transportation are four robotic legs while it sits on retractable treads. It does not look like there's any room for a pilot inside.

"It can operate for days under extreme weather conditions and is equipped with a broad sensor array as well as a satellite uplink for when weather conditions allow them to be deployed."

[Eric Noir]

"Good thing engineering is one of my focuses then," said Eric, who was taking any crafty fields he could, engineering being one of them. He couldn't help but become interested in the type of projects Ashlie described, teleportation and remote control drones sounded like sci -fi, but this was for real. His excitement was immediately doubled when the wall opened revealing a huge vehicle which, as Ashlie had already stated, was for Antarctic environments.

"Ok, this place has become officially 90% cooler," he said, forgetting his metalworking for the moment and flying to examine the probe. In a moment he was under it looking at the axles and shafts, an easy feat when you're 5 inches. He flew out and looked in the gaps of the mechanized legs at the pistons. "You have got to teach me everything you know about this stuff!" he exclaimed. "So is this one of those 'unmanned' probes?" he asked curiously, noting the apparent lack of a pilot area.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Indeed. Though the interface can be... tricky." she says and chuckles at a private joke. The underbelly of the drone is no less impressive. Almost all of it's moving parts are hidden, tucked behind overlapping panels to minimize exposure to the outside. Where there's no other option his up-close inspection reveals what appears to be heat-sinks worked directly into the pistons and joints, from the looks of it siphoning it away from the core of the machine to cool it's interior and heat up the parts in contact with the environment.

"I can open it up into maintenance mode if you want to take a closer look at it's insides, though teaching you everything I know might take a while. But that is my job and I'm glad to see you this enthusiastic. You're in the unique position to create things that are even more intricate than what I can produce, given time and training."

[Eric Noir]

"That would be so cool," said Eric, still checking out all the parts. He was only a beginner in the realm of engineering, but his self study had given a basic foundation to work with, so although he couldn't tell what everything was, he saw enough to know that it made some sort of sense. "So l see treeds and legs, is it just a land probe, or does it have submersible capabilities? Is that a counterweight? Is that to keep it upright? How do you power it?" He asked, looking for the answers himself even as he asked them. He wasn't sure he would be able to make anything as cool and advanced as this.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"It's not fully water-proof. It's built to withstand ice and snow but not the pressure that comes with being submerged. It would probably continue to function for a while but as you noticed, it has no means of propelling itself unless it has solid ground. It's powered by an experimental fusion core, upscaled from designs that, as much as I hate to admit, aren't my own. It provides enough energy to power this probe for days on end, since it was designed to power one armed with a gravitational gun. That one was dismantled during an... incident. Which is probably for the better."

[Eric Noir]

Eric flew to the top of the probe, looking at the mechanical legs. "So you said it's experimental, does that mean it has a backup power supply? I mean it would seem a shame to lose something like this if it glitches out, does it have a solar battery?" He would think that in Antarctica conditions solar power may be a viable backup power source, of course he was no expert. The more he looked at this thing, the more he wanted to be able to build things like it.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"No reactor back-up. Experimental might be a bit misleading. It's sister reactor has been running for years and is, in fact, what powers most operations at the Point. But it's not exactly something to be mass-produced. It's emergency power is an array of batteries that last for about an hour of operating at maximum capacity, though it lacks any self-repair capabilities and if I was going to deploy it for longer stretches it would need more work. As far as self-sustaining systems go it's comparatively crude."

[Eric Noir]

Eric landed on top of the probe, the metal felt thick beneath his feet. "Well, I have a long way to go before I can do anything like this." he could only imagine. He probably needed some programming skills, the obvious engineering, science and physics, obviously a lot. He would have to spend a lot of time in the library to come anywhere near this level of expertise. Well, it wasn't as if he had much else to do.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Without any help, yes. But there's no need to learn how to do every single thing before picking up a wrench or soldering iron. Find what you want to focus on first and work on it, let everyone else and me help with the things you need around that. Practical application helps with both retention and motivation so don't let yourself be hamstrung by what you don't know yet. Tosh is good at programming, so you can ask him for help with that for instance. His little drone is using battery packs from the workshop while he programs it because expecting him to design and built them himself would be ridiculous. That's why these workstations are all in one open space. Collaborate."

[Eric Noir]

Eric considered collaboration, he supposed that was probably the best way to go about it. Hands on helped him understand things better anyway. It's how he learned to make his clothing, so it would also help him with this, and having someone else with experience would only help him understand faster. "I suppose I should focus on things I can use to make everyday life a bit easier." He said, figuring practical application meant things that he would use on a regular basis. There was plenty of projects he could work towards with that in mind, since outside of his room, everything was almost as big as him if not larger. "You said I could probably make 'more intricate' things, do you think that could include some sort of portable tablet device my size?" He had an Iphone, but it was bigger then he was, making it inconvenient to carry around. While great as a wide screen tv, it made the mobility functions of it somewhat redundant.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"Ah, now there's an interesting question. You could make many components that would otherwise be too hard to manufacture precisely at that scale - or too involved to be feasible. You might have to craft some of the tools necessary but this is what I meant with more intricate things. What would be a monumental effort for me is just a regular process for you. The biggest limiting factor here is the size of processors and computer chips. Downscaling by more than a factor of ten here is less an issue of manufacturing anymore as it pushes the limits of Physics. This is where access to Pym Particles would be invaluable and one of the reasons why it's a closely guarded secret. Which leaves us with a couple of options, some more feasible than others. Lower specifications of the smartphone, which would be the equivalent of giving up. Design of a processor that utilizes a completely new design. I have a number of theories for these and while theoretically possible it's a rather ambitious approach. Which leaves us to think outside the box. There's no need for most of the functions of a smartphone to actually happen on the device itself if you utilize cloud-computing."

[Eric Noir]

"So instead of creating a pint sized smartphone, I should be looking into creating something that accesses the functions of a computer, but runs the actual processes on a separate, larger device." He said, starting to follow, "Sort of like reverse airplay," thinking of the function on his phone that would link to other devices and send the data to them to run specific videos. If he could figure out a way to make it so he could access, say, his smartphone from this theoretical device, and have the smartphone run the applications and send the images to him, them maybe that would work. Of course he would also need to figure out the whole touch screen and video interfaces and see if there was a way to scale that down to his size. "I don't suppose you have a few spare smartphones laying about?" he asked. If he could take one apart, he could get a better idea of how it worked.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Ashlie grins as she watches the metaphorical gears begin spinning in Eric's head. "Pretty sure I can get you a couple. We also have a lot of blueprints stored in the workbenches." she says and with a gesture a flat blue holographic window pops into existence at the back of the bench. A directory seemingly pulls itself up and rapidly scrolls through a number of options before settling on 'Touch interface - Screen' and a slowly rotating 3D image of a touchscreen pops up.

[Eric Noir]

"Whoa ho ho," said Eric, flying to the hologram, "Seriously, you guys have everything!" He had never seen a holographic interface before, he ran a hand through the hologram, amazed as his hand passed right through it.

[Ashlie Minamida]

Pushing his hand through makes the blueprint start spinning like crazy as the screen reacts to his hand.

"I had a lot to work with already. This used to be my mother's lab. The holograms are new though." she chuckles.

[Eric Noir]

Eric began experimenting with the hologram, pushing and prodding to see what he could cause it to do. The hologram opened up, showing the individual components of the touchscreen with labels saying what each part was. "It's still light years ahead of anything I've seen." Said Eric, noting the different parts. It was going to be difficult to figure out a design that would work with him. He would have to look into micro computers and chips for something that was small enough for him to use and carry. Of course he would also have to figure out how to make wiring work at his size, he doubted copper wires would cut at that scale since it would likely melt with resistance.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"The University was lucky enough to inherit some technology from the Institute in the United States as well, but I try to stay ahead of the curve as much as I can. I suppose it's in my nature."

[Eric Noir]

"Ahead of the curve is one thing, but this is some sci-fi level stuff going on here." Said Eric, even at his basic level he could tell this was probably the most advanced stuff in existence, teleportation, holograms, mini fusion reactors, all they needed was a space ship and they'd give Star trek a run for its money. "Can this be accessed from the dorms?" He asked, hoping to use it for study. Of course he needed a computer or something to use, but he wasn't sure his room included anything like that since it was unconventional to begin with.

[Ashlie Minamida]

"You can access the database through the school's Wifi, yes. Without the holographic interface, obviously. And I suppose it stops seeming so out of the ordinary when you're surrounded by it all day. I've never known much different, really." she chuckles. "It's rather heartening to see a fresh reaction to it."