Chapter 44: Taking Inventory

Chapter 44: Taking Inventory

“Hey, you can’t just-“

Chemestro walked through the barred door to the ‘Employee Entrance’ before tipping the salt balance of the guard behind it, rendering him unconscious instantly.

He descended the stairs with a measured pace, reaching a dark warehouse filled with the faint scent of blood and cleaning agent, along with an undercurrent of old paper and...hide?

Interesting.

“So apparently anyone can just waltz in nowadays,” A biker-looking thug with a scar on his forehead said, putting down a bowl of ramen and reaching for a pistol beside him.

The pistol fell apart with a nudge from Chemestro’s power.

“Huh,” the leather clad man grunted, peering at his weapon.

With another nudge, the man was floating in midair, buoyed by the razor thin line of low pressure he maintained on the man’s upper half.

“May I speak to your boss...” Chemestro asked, pulling out his business card. “Dave the unicorn?”

“What do you want with him?” the grungy looking fellow asked, his legs dangling in the air.

“I need to purchase magical protection.”

“Modern birth control is actually very safe and effecti-“

“Magical protection from magicalattacks.”

“Oh, that’s totally different. I’m sad to say though, you’re not exactly going to make a great impression on Dave, beating on his guards.”

“The men at the door refused to allow me past.” Chemestro shrugged. “No one was injured. Or even harmed. They’ll recover in minutes with no lasting damage. That being said, where is Dave?”

“He’s not taking any clients until High Tide is over.”

“I guess I’ll just keep looking. He has to be down here somewhere.”

Chemestro tipped the man’s salt balance.

Nothing happened.

“Huh.”

“Dave, are you okay?” A goon burst through the bottom door, pausing in shock when he saw Chemestro before stumbling backwards.

“Dave?” Chemestro said, peering up at the dangling human biker.

“What?” A voice asked less than an inch away from his ear as the dangling man dissolved into motes of light.

A minder? No, magic.

A moment later there was a deep inhale and the voice groaned in pleasure as Chemestro turned and stepped to create some distance...definitely not flinching.

“Oh, my god, you smell amazing.” The biker said, his eyes rolling back in his skull.

Chemestro’s skin crawled, and he had no frame of reference for why.

“I’m looking to buy magical –“

“Protection, yeah, I gotcha.” Dave said, waving him off, picking up the bowl of ramen and slurping up some of the noodles.

“So you’re Chemestro? Little Perry Z’s first nemesis...I mean aside from the dynamic duo and they’re garbage, so I don’t count them.

The way Dave said ‘Perry Z’ did not inspire confidence.

“And you came to me to get stuff that will help you defeat my favorite customer!? The nerve! The gall!”

The air around them began to swirl as Chemestro felt some indescribable energy surrounding them...like he’d just dived to the bottom of a whirlpool. It weighed down on him.

Chemestro’s eyes narrowed as he prepared for a fight.

“No, I won’t be betraying my friend’s confidence. If you were anyone else, I would’ve probably killed you and added you to the inventory, but you...you’re lucky you’re a virgin,” Dave said. “I will have to ask you to leave, though.”

“What’s a virgin?” Chemestro asked.

“Someone who’s never had sex.”

“What’s that?” Chemestro asked.

“Wha-“ Dave’s eyes widened, and he dropped his bowl of ramen, spilling it all over the floor as the whirlpool of energy vanished. “You- How-“

“You knew about birth control!” he said accusingly.

“Yes, women can have children.” Chemestro said.

“Do you...know how that works?”

“It was irrelevant to my training.”

Still, Perry shouldn’t use that particular spell-frame...It would be a terrible idea to use it in anything but a completely controlled environment with his mother standing by as backup in case it wasn’t absolutely perfect.

Perry attached it to his armor’s back anyway.

I guess I’d rather have a ‘screw it’ button and not need it than need it and not have one. Perry knew that objectively, it was a really, really dangerous idea, but for some reason he didn’t really care.

That should raise alarms. I should probably talk to someone about that.

Perry glanced over at the distant locker that had opened to the void. He got the slightest tinge of the isolated sensation, coming to him on its own.

Meh. He didn’t really care about that either.

Perry’s last piece of new gear was a BFS obsidian blade made from the last of his practice material.

It was about five feet long, with a two-handed handle and a narrow, two inch wide blade that volcanic glass could never logically hope to maintain.

Since he’d gone from an Attunement correction of 2.18 to 3.07 in one level, he could reasonably expect this blade to be ~40% more effective in every respect compared to the original.

And the original had been scary.

Perry wasn’t intending to use it right away, but if his Kolusk’s floating Armanents proved ineffective, he would need something that packed a punch.

Note to self, figure out a way to sharpen a floating armament post-summoning.

Making a tiny object grow into a larger one was inherently dulling and Perry struggled to make them even close to as sharp as nonmagical materials like obsidian.

So the obsidian sword was the sharp finisher, while the BFS brought the raw damage.

Perry secured it to the back of his armor via magnets drilled into the handle.

Anything else? Perry thought, scanning the messy lab.

His experiment with frost and fire magic wasn’t entirely put together yet, as the rituals were difficult to accommodate in the same container, and the container itself struggled to keep up with the temperature extremes, which was the point of the idea.

Aerogel, Perry wrote down on the sheet metal frame with a grease pen as soon as it crossed his mind.

He glanced at his disintegration spell-frame on hiatus, a metal frame of a tube holding a series of lenses made from Death Crystal, arranged like an auto-focus camera.

He still needed to add a belt-feeder for greater corruption demon eyes, and a way to make sure the pupil was facing forward.

None of them were viable just yet.

“Yeah, you like that, don’t you? Daddy’s just gonna take a little off the top,” Perry’s blocky machine ‘warrior’ trash-talked into the mic directly in front of its speaker as another hapless individual was headshot on the screen.

“At what point am I an evil inventor?” Perry asked the machine printing out the temporary tattoos. Naturally it didn’t answer, because actually carrying on a conversation was totally outside the scope of its programming.

He turned his attention back to the Mk. 3, sitting there with malicious intent, a work of art that should have taken him months or years to make, and should never work given the output of the structural batteries.

It was sleeker than Mk. 1, and weighed about a hundred pounds, making it a featherweight and allowing the user to take advantage of slightly more mass.

It had an integrated radio, headlights, and a fully airtight cockpit.

The air to the helmet was fed through a protected filter, which could be shut in the case of a hostile environment and diverted to a small oxygen tank that would keep him alive. Hopefully long enough to get somewhere safer.

Note to self: Design next version with full life-support. Carbon dioxide scrubber, etc.

If Dad’s story about their honeymoon on mars was accurate, Perry might one day be forced to fight in space indefinitely.

Perry cocked his head as he walked around his suit.

Does that mean I have to put an astronaut diaper in my suit? Or should I just get my Body high enough to withstand the vacuum of space so I can hold my breath to take a dump?

Choices, choices...there was no wrong answer, but Perry leaned away from diapers.

He inspected the back of the suit, where his sword and ‘screw it’ bazooka nestled side by side along the slightly distended back, which accommodated most of the spell-discs and printers.

“Alright, I think I’m good to go.” Perry nodded. He was as ready for the wall as he could reasonably make himself in one day.

“You’re good to give me head.” His trash-talk bot responded.

Perry glanced around the empty lab before squinting at the squat printer with an internet connection and an addiction to first person shooters. “Was that aimed at me?”

The bot didn’t respond, instead mowing down a group of three players, shown on the screen directly in front of it.

“Ya’ll are a bunch of noobs that can’t tell the difference between a claymore and your own as-“

Perry stopped listening.

Note to self: Soundproofing around the trash-talk bot would not be amiss.

Perry took off his shirt, put some blood and a fake bandage over the glowing shoulder war-paint, then climbed into his armor.

The sun was going down, and the tide was coming in.

It was time to volunteer on the wall.