SoK Chapter 193

The morning came quickly, and though TJ wanted to jump into his experimentations with the variety of materials he had, instead, he sought out Luz. The little girl was happy to play with him for a little while as he helped to prepare breakfast. It turned out that, without the support of the New Republic, feeding her had become much more complicated than before. The established systems and supports that came from the New Republic being established on ASU’s grounds combined with the people that Sven had assigned to various different menial laborers simply didn’t exist in the nameless settlement TJ was creating. There were no cereals, no vegetables, no food other than that which they had carried with them, and TJ hadn’t been willing to poke the bear even more as they pulled out of the settlement, so they’d come with basically no additional food. Fortunately, TJ could tell that children’s bodies had been markedly changed with the Integration. They were still children, the vulnerable and weak, but they could do much better off of a less-balanced diet than before the System came in. TJ remembered how colicky Junior had been, and how he and Mari had eventually realized that their son had a sensitivity to tap water. Sensitive. To. Water.

Thanks to all that was holy, his kid had grown out of that even before Mari’s death. Now, Junior always wanted to drink water from the hose when they were outside. Did it matter that the door was 5 feet away and there was cold water in the house? No. Something about drinking it from the hose made it taste sweeter to the kid. And the fact that he wasn’t gagging and nearly dying on the water while he did it was just an additional plus for TJ. After all, if it didn’t hurt anything, why would he tell his little boy “no”?

Luz ate the “soup” that TJ made for her from the soft green parts pulled from the base of the grasses, something TJ and his cousins had called “veggie treats” as kids, then boiled together with the tenderest meat he could find, which turned out to be flank of the bunyip. Fortunately, the little girl was hungry enough that if she had any complaints, she didn’t feel the need to voice them at the moment. Instead, she’d eaten every spoonful put in front of her and then asked for more. After her second serving, she happily trundled off to explore, and TJ turned to Molly as the little girl made her slow escape.

“Yeah, I’ll do it.” Molly answered the unasked question and waved at him a couple times while drawing out the words as if it had been a terrible imposition. Unfortunately for her, her faint smile betrayed her lack of reluctance. She strode off and caught the little girl, tossing her in the air and catching her, making the little Luz erupt in giggles.

“If I’m not back here around lunchtime, make sure you track me down and make me participate.” He called off after the girls, and though Molly didn’t acknowledge him, he knew she could hear him. Instead, she put the toddler on her shoulders and jogged towards Tessie, where he was sure the teens would end up hanging out while keeping an eye on the little girl. Beyond that, there were several other adults hanging around that would make sure that the teens didn’t get too distracted to actually ensure Luz didn’t get lost.

Then, his more pressing responsibility taken care of, TJ went to find Michelle. She had largely been keeping herself away from the rest of the vague impressions of buildings that were being constructed, instead making the beginnings of a complete forge all by herself. She’d only made a… TJ couldn’t remember what it was called, but the place where the actual melting and heating of the metal took place. Was that the forge or something else? He didn’t really care, and instead of continuing to think about unimportant things, he approached the Blacksmith. Unsurprisingly, Sam was nearby as Michelle went about preparing the forge for the day, focusing on doing something with a rock to harden it. TJ wasn’t sure how specifically she was doing it, but it was obvious she was using a Skill of some sort that was making the stone capable of functioning as her anvil. Only then did TJ realize that he hadn’t seen her working back on campus, and what her situation there had been.

She looked at TJ, her eyebrows raising up to her thick, curly hairline. “What can I do for you, fearless leader?”

TJ grinned a little. Then, he shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve heard a little bit about some of the materials that I’ve been able to acquire over the past couple of weeks. The stuff that’s metal, I’m generally gonna entrust to you, but I wanted to run some ideas by you, maybe do some experiments all together with a couple other materials. Does that sound all right?”

 “I’ve heard a little bit about some things, but nothing solid. You have, like, some metal claws, right?” Michelle asked, her joking demeanor shifting to a much more serious, but excited one.

“Asanbosam claws, yes. But I’d honestly consider those to be the least remarkable. They’re sharp, and I’d call them probably a couple steps above regular steel, but nothing more noteworthy than the metal that shows up in a higher quality untired Sacred Weapon. Instead, I have some relatively unrefined ore from a Copper tier Elite.“ TJ said as much as he pulled the hunks of golem out to display. Michelle immediately took them from his hands and held them closer to her face as she muttered a couple unintelligible things to herself.

“I’m pretty sure that this stuff from the golem is going to be better than whatever the Asanbosams had, but you’ll have to put a lot more work into getting them workable, at least, that’s what I assume. More than that, though, the most interesting thing that I don’t know if I want you to do anything with just yet is this.” TJ pulled out the lantern from the will-o’-the-wisp as he said as much. “This is all that’s left of a monster that was able to turn itself invisible and use fire. I don’t know a whole lot about it, but it’s called a will-o’-the-wisp, and I think that this could be a good step in finding out how to create equipment that grants Skills.“

“You’ve already done that though.“ Michelle disagreed.

“Well,“ TJ waffled his head back and forth, “I wonder if because this is metal it’s different, but it feels that way. Maybe we can better understand what it’s made out of, instead of just saying that something is ‘magical because it’s from a magical creature,’ because that’s pretty flimsy. Honestly, I trust you to understand a whole lot more about the makeup of materials than I ever will, because my Occupation and Class aren’t truly suited to crafting. Instead, I have some capabilities to craft, though limited. Though, I imagine it will continue to shift as I evolve.”

“Well, no shit it’s going to shift. All of us are going to be changing, haven’t you realized?” Michelle scoffed as she took the lantern from his hands. TJ chuckled a little to himself as she called him out on it. “But I’m happy to take a look at it. I promise I won’t do anything to the bulk of it while I’m doing this experiment, but I’ll probably have to cut some of it free to get a better look at how this thing works. Do I have your permission for that?”

“Of course. Now, I wonder if you have any insight on how to get my own feathers or scales working alongside these thunderbird parts. You know, I’m looking to upgrade and fill out my equipment, and I wonder if I can make a new cloak from this. After all, I think that I don’t use my cloak very often, and I need some real armor.”

“Well, how much do you know about what each part of the thunderbird does? Where do they get their magic from? Where do they store it?”

TJ smiled as he engaged in conversation with the excited Smith, happily leaning on his own intuition and experience as he plucked feathers, dissected claws, and inspected eyes and mouths. With two of the more replaceable thunderbirds in his possession, TJ was more than willing to take apart one of the monster's corpses to see what was found inside them. After all, the more information he had now, the better his final result would be.

He didn’t find anything to do with their lightning generation that took him by surprise. Their feathers, which he’d felt as they continued to move through the air, generated electricity simply through friction with the air. There was some principle there that he half understood because of his enlightenment to do with storm creation, but there was something magical and beyond his current comprehension that accelerated the collection of lightning. Their feathers underneath the outside ones, whatever those were called, down? Anyways, those ones had some influence over the wind, which is why the monsters were able to move so quickly, so TJ thought about how he might be able to incorporate these two aspects into whatever equipment he ended up making with the thunderbird materials. After all, while the thunderbirds weren’t at all using Storm themselves, TJ was positive that if they evolved even a single tier, they would absolutely not be thunderbirds, but Storm birds.

The eyes and talons both also had significant affinity with wind, though he wasn’t particularly impressed by them individually. To his surprise, though, the part of the thunderbird that was most attuned with influencing the wind was actually the monsters’ bones. Like most birds, the bones were hollow, but TJ could sense the swirling essence of wind was contained within every one of its bones. The thought of creating a knife like his Wendigo Blade with these bones, instead focusing on the talents of a thunderbird, quickly came together in his mind. The end result wouldn’t be something as well suited for harvesting materials as the mostly attributeless Wendigo Blade, but would instead be better suited for him personally in combat. He wouldn’t really use that, given his continued focus on enhancing his abilities as a coatl, but ideas of how to create arrows with these materials flashed through his mind. Most arrows or bolts or any ammunition that anybody was using were created by sacrificing some measure of MP. Nobody was really using physically created ammunition, so would these be good materials for a deadly weapon? If TJ created a spear for Farid to throw and then handed it off to the Acolyte, how would that work? He was effectively positive that creating an arrow for Tessie would work fine, but how about a different type of Sacred Weapon, one that didn’t use ammunition, but was completely formed by the Xkill?

TJ‘s mind continued flashing through various possibilities as he, Michelle, and Sam spoke in depth about what different materials could do and how they could be combined to different effects. The Neophyte was not the only one of the three who felt like their conversation was only just beginning when Molly came and poked TJ hard in the ribs.

“You said to come get you at lunchtime. It’s lunchtime.” She chuckled as TJ exaggeratedly twisted away from the aggravating movement with a faked grimace.

He raised both hands in mock surrender. “So I did. How’s Luz been? Is she grumpy or getting along well?”

“She’s actually pretty excited to be potty trained, funny enough. She saw someone digging out the place for the toilets, and was very curious. I’m not sure how much she understood, but she wanted to sit on the toilet, so there’s that.”

“Do we even have a toilet seat?” TJ cocked his head as he asked.

“Yeah. People who weren’t working on the settlement decided to go to Tempe Marketplace and see what they could find there. Ransacked a bunch of bathrooms for toiletries and so on, so we have a couple toilet seats, even if we don’t have any flushing toilets.”

“Did she almost fall in or anything?“ TJ felt his protective instincts flare up, and he pushed them down. They wouldn’t let the kid fall into the toilet, unused or not.

“Not almost, but she definitely wasn’t sure how to sit on it.“ Molly shrugged as she said as much. “I don’t know why you’re asking me so many details about this.“

TJ waved off her complaints and looked at Michelle and Sam. “I’ll be back. Don’t take anything else apart without me, I wanna make sure I’m understanding everything.“

“Fine by me. I need to actually get this all into working condition, I’ve got to replace a part of my left hand’s gauntlet and it’s been driving me crazy.” Michelle immediately turned to the space she had claimed as her forge. Her rock glowed gently as she did something, and TJ nodded and led the way back to lunch. There, he ate with the toddler before calming her down and laying her down for a nap under the shade of an impromptu stone shelter. Then, finally, he could begin acting on the inspirations and thoughts that he had had while talking with his two companions. But which piece of equipment did he want to settle on first?

It only took about 30 seconds for him to make the decision.