Chapter 6: Tinkering

Chapter 6: Tinkering

“Ahahaha!” Heather kicked her heels and clutched her stomach. “Oh my god it hurts.”

“I’m not getting it.” Brendon said.

On the TV screen was a still image of Hexen and The Mechanaut facing down a single dark-haired teen on the sidewalk, both of them radiating disapproval. The young man was faced away from the camera but Heather obviously knew who it was.

Under the image was the caption:

Hexen and Mechanaut see eye to eye on teen truancy

I knew I was gonna hear more about it, but from Heather? That burns.

“Did you guys wanna see what I was working on, or what?” Perry asked, crossing his arms and trying not to blush from the sheer unadulterated humiliation of having his parental scolding caught on camera.

“Sure. Sure.” Heather said, wiping the tears out of her eyes.

“But why was it funny?” Brendon asked.

“That kid was Perry. He got a talking to from the two supers on the scene. Including the cowl.”

“Hah!” Brendon chuckled. “That is funny as long as he didn’t get hurt, I guess.”

Ah, Brendon. Never change.

“Right this way,” Perry said, motioning for them to follow from the living room to his room, where his current experiment rested.

“Is it um...underneath the cardboard?” Heather asked.

On Perry’s desk was a seemingly innocuous single sheet of cardboard, about the size of two palms. Unremarkable, save for two thick copper wires sticking out of either side.

Perry had converted it into a battery by taking advantage of the corrugation to house the diluted chemicals. His Class perk had smoothed out any of the unfeasibility of the process, and strengthened the finished product beyond what was logical.

“It is the cardboard!” Perry said, slipping on some thick rubber gloves before he carefully grabbed the two wires and held them close to each other.

ZAAAAP!

“Holy-“ Brendon took a step back as electricity arced three inches between the two wires. “What the hell?”

“You made this, didn’t you.” Heather said. It was not a question.

“...Yeah.”

“So you got a Tinker power from your dad.” Heather said, appraising the cardboard with a critical eye.

Not by choice, Perry groused internally.

“What!?” Brendon’s jaw dropped, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “What!?”

He turned to Perry, his eyes twinkling. “Are you gonna apply to the Nexus and go fight crime and stuff!?” he asked. “Does your dad fight crime!? He’s a Tinker, right!?”

“Most Tinkers don’t actually fight crime. They work for the city and provide support items for the Wall and the Nexus,” Heather said. “Like Perry’s dad. It’s a lot safer and more productive than galavanting around in power armor. That take a special kind of idiot.”

“Oh...yeah, that makes sense. Not quite as cool, but makes a lot more sense.” Brendon deflated, taking it hook, line and sinker, as usual.

Thanks. Perry mouthed. Heather shrugged. There was a bit of an unspoken agreement between them to keep a lid on the amount of information about their respective families that got into civilian hands.

And while Brendon lived in the same neighborhood which was crawling with supers, that was more luck than anything else. He was still a civilian.

After his friends left, Perry sat down and had a real think about what Heather had said.

It takes a special kind of idiot to galavant around in power armor.

Was Perry that kind of idiot? He’d wanted to do what his mom did since he could remember. Because it was awesome, and even though his parents had ruined the mystique of the cape/cowl dynamic for him, it was still more appealing than working a regular job or being one of the Nexus’s pet Tinkers.

And would you have saved that woman from Dave if you were smart?

And that adrenaline rush... felt so good.

I guess I AM that kind of idiot, Perry thought, running his fingers through his hair.

New Quest: Make a suit of power armor, idiot!

Reward: (400XP)

Before we get to that, I need to figure out where to assign my extra points.

Perry pulled out his calculator and began running the numbers.

If I put all three points into Attunement, that would bump me up to 5 Attunement, arguably my most build-relevant stat.

Perry punched some numbers into his calculator.

1.05^5=1.2762

A little over a 27% boost in material efficiency from Attunement, where currently it stood at 10.25%

Perry glanced over at his Body and HP stats

Perry didn’t have to put cardboard on the outside, but he’d decided to do it because it made him look like a complete idiot. People wouldn’t take him seriously until it was too late, and a couple extra seconds of confusion could make all the difference.

Taking a page from dad, I guess. Plus the cardboard made it easy to modify the outside and concealed the guts of the armor. People would begin to assume it was high tech under the cardboard façade eventually, and he didn’t wanna dissuade them.

Now that we’ve got a material, I just gotta figure out a design for the armor and some spell-discs that I can actually fightcrimewith.

Perry flipped through his spell ingredient acquisitions from the day before.

Tomward’s floating dazzler: (neophyte difficulty)

Nope, takes too long to grow the crystals. Should get started on growing those ASAP, though. Good crowd control.

Perry grabbed the phantom jellyfish salts and some string, placing them on top of his Glowstone growing tub, to be given his complete attention later.

Kolath’s floating Armaments (intermediate difficulty)

Ingredients: Areonite, vivant root, mindtaker ichor.

Render the Areonite into a liquid using a forge. Mix with powdered vivant root. 1 pinch per jangle of areonite. Pour into molds of the desired shape. Be aware that the floating armaments are five hundred times bigger in every measurement, and plan accordingly.

At this stage, the areonite alloy will begin to react with the vivant root, and most likely degrade within three weeks.

Make sure there are no bubbles or holes in your pouring, as those will result in holes in the floating armament. Finish the final details with jeweler’s tools as desired. Make sure any weapon is sharpened, as a casting will not come out able to cut flesh.

Once the details are complete, inscribe a unique symbol in mindtaker ichor on the finished product anda matching one on the controller themselves. Accuracy in the crafting of the anima and the control symbol increases the longevity of the casting. A poor casting will only last for a minute or so. Excellent castings have been known to last days.

King Javneh went into battle against the Murk with six perfectly cast floating armaments, and was said to have fought for seven days before –

Boring..., Perry skimmed the impromptu history lesson.

Consumes the areonite alloy upon activation.

OOooh, yeah, now we’re talking. Perry set those ingredients aside, being sure not to touch the bad Areonite. The silvery metal had rootlike streaks of black oxidation running through it, which would no doubt foul up the spell, save for Perry’s Spendthrift perk minimizing contaminants.

Hopefully. I really don’t wanna necrotize my tissues. I like my tissues.

Perry tired to look up the melting temperature of Areonite, but couldn’t find it.

Guess I’ll just have to science that shit. What’s next?

The next spell had notes written in his mother’s handwriting in the margins.

Sacrifice to Gintax: (intermediate difficulty)

Ingredients: Bone, Areonite

Create an alter out of bone (any kind) in the design pictured below. Accuracy is vital. Kill something with an areonite dagger on top of the altar to charge the death-metal with the power of their life-force. Can be used to self-heal, or power unlife.

This spell is forbidden for many obvious reasons, but it is detailed in this book to spread awareness. If you spot someone creating something like this, seek a representative of The Council.

Mom’s notes were as such:

TRAP! The ancient Zalesh language shown here are actually insults to the blood god. The council were power-hoarding jerks, and any credulous dipshit who attempted this would invoke Gintax’s ire. Below are the proper symbols, inscribed from a successful casting by a necromancer I re-deaded.

The areonite dagger does not have to be the cause of death, merely present, and I have found that Gintax is just as happy with roaches and mice as anything else.

They actually make really good roach motels that pay magical dividends.

Perry didn’t have any bones at the moment, so he set that one aside.

I’ll come back to that one.

Dregor’s Flacidity: (advanced)

Ingredients: Corsian bat shriek, dried Gol fruit, Hul horn, Muck-slime, silver bowl.

Mix the powdered Gol fruit with the Hul Horn in the silver bowl, 1:5 Ratio. Add muck-slime until the mixture becomes a paste. Coat the inside of the bowl. Induce the Corsian bat to shriek towards the bowl, such that the silver begins to hum. Face the concave side of the bowl towards the intended recipient. If the spell was successful, the target will lose rigidity and melt. This is harmless to living creatures, and they regain their shape in a few minutes. Inanimate objects re-harden when the effect is over, but do not regain their shape.

Note: This recipe is labeled as Advanced as it appears to be very difficult to reliably achieve. Dregor invented the spell as a joke, but it rarely worked beyond the first time.

Still, it HAS worked, often enough to consider it a true spell. If an unreliable one.

I like this one. It sounded like the silver ‘bowl’ acted as a satellite dish, and when it resonated with the bat-screech, transferred those vibrations to the mixture and concentrated them on a single point.

It made sense it didn’t work very often. Not every silver bowl had the exact same dimensions and not every bat screeched the exact same way every time.

Perry intended to control the variables.

He wrote it down, along with a few notes about how it could work.

Alright, we’ve got two spells we like and can begin to work on right now:

Dregor’s Flacidity and Kolath’s floating Armaments.

Perry glanced over at the death-metal sitting ominously on the desk.

He jotted down another note.

Test Spendthrift’s contaminant mitigation properties on harmless reactions before live-testing Floating Armaments. I like my tissues.