NOVEL NEXT 2.17 Something Glitters
"Now then, how shall we make our escape?" Tapper asked. His compatriots ate their fill and had their fun, and Tapper could sense that the restorative benefits of camping were reaching their end. "We could attempt to break back through to the surface, or maybe follow one of these metro tunnels straight to the city!"
Salazar coughed and spat out the last bite of his stew. "What?? No we can't, no one travels those tunnels and lives!"
"I have actually already done so, both in a vehicle and on my own two treads!" Salazar looked down at Tapper's legs with a quirked eyebrow and Tapper continued, "I originally used a pair of caterpillar treads for locomotion, before they were destroyed in a fight with a mining robot."
"...I know I say this a lot, but you three are crazy. Why would you use those demon tunnels on purpose? Especially without getting lost."
"Oh I was thoroughly lost, Mister Salazar!"
Before Salazar could say anything back, Ricky stuck his head out from the car, where he had been rummaging around for tools. "Why do you keep calling everything demons? Trains are demons, gremlins are demons, it's all just phase shift instability stuff."
"Yeah, that 'stuff' being life from seemingly nowhere that hunts people and eats their souls. Demons. And it's not all trains, just the possessed subway system. The trains flying above are more like avenging angels." Salazar's eye glinted with a hint of wistfulness when he mentioned the trains, but Ricky's scoff snuffed that out just as quickly.
"Angels? Dude, they're just maglev trains. They're awesome and I want to ride in one, but they're old fed tech."
"They're not just old, they're ancient," Salazar snapped back. "Older than almost anything here, just about one of the only federal systems still standing. And they'll skin you alive if you try to get near one without a ticket, but if you show them the proper respect then they'll keep you safe. Angels."
While they bickered, Phanya tried to whistle. Ms. Uxral could whistle sharp and loud enough to get anyone's attention, but Phanya never quiet learned the secret to a good cutting whistle. Tapper noticed her efforts, blew a loud train whistle from his sound effects library, and everyone winced from the blaring noise.
"Um, thank you Tapper," Phanya said, and he gave her a thumbs-up of encouragement. "But Sal has a point, the tunnels are too dangerous and we'd just get lost anyways. We gotta go up."
"Well, before we do that we kinda need to fix the car," Ricky said, holding his arms open to demonstrate just how little was holding the two halves together. He ducked back inside and quickly reemerged, holding an updated version of his gizmo: The same rifle stock and coiled mainspring, but now with a narrow black box extending from the front, and the familiar mess of gears covered everything.
Salazar seethed at seeing his repurposed belongings, but caught himself. "Why did you attach bug skrat to my food fixer?"
"Because these bugs are full of surprises! Look here," Ricky said, flipping over this gizmo to show the underside. A pair of small mandibles were bolted onto the opening of the food fixer, and Ricky excitedly pointed out a series of ridges where the chitinous appendages meshed together. "Check it out, natural gearing! That's how the pillbugs were able to lock on when they grab you. I think it'll help form stronger chains, so long as I have the timing right. And the locust bugs had the same gearing in their hind legs, I bet I could do something weird with that after a couple days of tinkering."
"Ricky."
He didn't even look up at Phanya's chastising tone. "I know, I know, I'm not. Point is, the upgraded gizmo should give us a more permanent fix, but it's missing something. So what else do we have?"
"You've already helped yourselves to damn near everything I own," Salazar grumbled, and everyone ignored him.
Phanya shrugged and said, "Don't look at me, I don't have some secret tech in my pockets. Nothing I know about, anyways." For sarcastic emphasis she turned out her pockets, and a small leather pouch fell out to hang from a belt loop. Phanya noticed Ricky's confused look and explained, "Oh this? Just kinda appeared the first time I looted some raiders."
Tapper chimed in, "I also have one! I keep it safely in my chest cavity."
"Right. But you've never looted any people, have you Ry?" Phanya worked open the drawstring pouch and pulled out a handful of random coins. "It's money, I guess, but damn if I know how we're supposed to spend it." Simple metal coins of copper and silver glinted in the fire's light, each with a stamp on one side that was too worn down to read and a plain number on the other.
Tapper started to explain how the coins changed to a credit chit for him, but stopped when a different kind of glint caught his eye. A sudden desire, deeper and more hungry than mere curiosity, drove Tapper to pluck the coin out of Phanya's hand and hold it up to the light. It was noticeably larger and thicker than the other coins, without any signs of wear on the ornate royal seal emblazoned on the face. But the filigree scarcely registered for Tapper, and the fine details slid right past his perception.
It was gold. Pure, solid gold! He had never seen anything like this coin before. Logically Tapper knew that gold was just another metal, hoarded as currency in ancient times but now used almost exclusively in electronics manufacturing. Emotionally Tapper knew this was different, there was something about the coin that his normal sensors couldn't pick up. Instead his witchly senses felt a great deal of internal pressure from the coin, as if he could simply squeeze this piece of gold and it would burst with energy.
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It was fascinating. It was magical, but not like any dedicated enchanted item. This was the magic of potential, and with a start Tapper realized it sang a similar siren song as the mall's dungeon core. The call's strength was a fraction of a fraction and posed no threat of overwhelming Tapper, but that also meant he could collect every piece of gold he found. His emotional center drooled at the thought of Tapper sitting on a massive hoard of gold, and logic strained to reassert itself.
Eventually Tapper tore his eyes away, although his fingers kept idly rubbing the delicate surface. "Ahem. Phanya, where did you find this coin?"
"Oh, that? Found it in the mall. Remember when Zero knocked me through the waterfall? There was a treasure chest behind it, a whole setup just to hide that one little coin. Couldn't figure out why, and in all the excitement I kinda forgot about it. Do you think it's, y'know, special?"
Social algorithms prevented Tapper from laughing at his friend. How could she possibly not see the value of gold?? But he could not blame her for the lack of witchly senses. Instead Tapper kept his voice even and said, "Oh yes, quite special indeed. I believe this is a potent resource. It should be quite the boon for us, Phanya!"
Ricky perked up from his work and asked, "Resource? What resource — wait what the heck is that!?" He sprang forward and snatched at the coin, colliding with Tapper in his haste and sending both of them tumbling. The brief struggle sent the coin flying and Phanya bounced it off her foot before Ricky could grab it, holding the treasure well outside of his reach.
"Ricky! The hell is wrong with you?" Phanya demanded, her attitude shifting to the stern voice used for babysitting unruly kids.
He rolled over and held his hands up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry! Just, between the gem Kakisi ate and the gremlin's horn, you guys tend to use up the special stuff before I have a chance to actually take a good look at it. I think I can actually use that coin, I just don't know how yet." Phanya gave him a familiar look that she expected him to continue. "And um, sorry I tackled you, Tapper."
Tapper stood and his joints re-orientated themselves, slightly slower than usual so he had time to check his emotional center. For the briefest moment Tapper almost fought back against his friend, which meant that he would need to build a new firewall in his emotional center for all things golden. He carefully said, "It is quite alright Ricky, gold is just a resource. By definition it is meant for spending, not hoarding, and I believe this coin can improve your gizmo. Somehow."
"Yeah, exactly!" Ricky scrambled to his feet and hauled his contraption onto a small table. His voice dropped low so only Tapper could hear the conspiracy as he explained, "See, I was trying to do too much with only the Chain spell. Your spells get exponentially more powerful when you combine two words, and I even used my Level 3 feat to help." Ricky pulled out his journal, a hand-bound gift from Ms. Uxral, and flipped open to a bookmark. Scratchy handwriting covered the page, and it took a few attempts for Tapper to read the latest entry:
[Feat: Gizmore
Oh, the wonderful intricacies of innovation! When creating an artifact with two spell components, you can choose to spend an additional point of mana to roll your spellcasting die for each individual component. You can also do the same thing when creating a gizmo with one component, with the second dice acting as a blank 'fine details' quantifier.]
Tapper beeped in appreciation and said, "How fascinating! Of all the strange mysteries regarding our shared system, this is the closest I've seen to a straightforward upgrade. Even if I still cannot fathom what it means by 'rolling dice'. Or what a blank quantifier is."
Ricky nodded along. "Right exactly, super straightforward. And my mana pool bumped up to 3 when I leveled, so I can afford it, but this thing is not happy with me. Probably because I'm trying to use the Split spell in a weird way; instead of splitting the gremlin's chest open, I'm trying to split up my own mana flow to create the linkages of the chains. But these gears just do not want to channel the mana properly, see how the timing is off here?"
He pointed out a spot where two gears intersected at an impossible angle and Tapper's eyes unfocused on their own. No matter the manual intervention of his own faculties, reality simply would not allow Tapper to follow along. "Unfortunately, I do not see how. It is both curious and frustrating that, despite being a machine, your form of magic is completely alien to my own, as if the different classes erect hard boundaries between them. And yet, we both instantly recognized the magical potential of that golden coin, even though Phanya could not."
Ricky dug the coin out of his pocket, holding it up to the car's small overhead light. "Yeah, I know this can help but how the heck are you supposed to spend money on magic?"
"I believe this is one of those scenarios you are intended to feel out, not think through," Tapper said, giving his friend a stiff shoulder pat. "My Witch instincts have not steered me wrong yet, so trust in your Artificer instincts."
Ricky didn't respond, but he stared at the coin with harder concentration and slowly drew it inwards. By the time his eyes started to cross the coin started glowing with its own internal light, bright and sudden enough to make Ricky wince. The golden coin turned into golden motes of light in his hand, scattering into the air and settling onto the artifact. It rested like pollen for a brief moment before the artifact absorbed the motes, taking in the golden light as its own.
Both spectators were stunned into silence, until Ricky suddenly gasped. "Oh of course, that makes way more sense!" Any further musings fell into subvocal mutterings as Ricky started darting around his artifact, working with renewed clarity that only made sense to him. Tapper watched him for a moment before concluding that he couldn't offer any further assistance, mostly because he could not possibly understand what adjustments Ricky was making. He found Phanya and Salazar still discussing plans next to the fire, though the latter stopped and quirked a look when Tapper approached.
"I know you junk villagers are poor, but was that the first time the you two have ever seen gold or what?" Salazar sneered.
"Shut up, Sal. Tapper, can you help Salazar see what sorts of weapons we can salvage to break the ceiling? I'm going to, uh, think up a battle plan on where to stick them." Tapper saluted Phanya and urged Salazar along to climb on top of the vehicle, despite the mercenary's complaining.