Chase stepped out of his lair, taking in a deep breath of the crisp evening air before a pointed ear twitched, hearing the sound of rustling paper. He kept his eyes closed and his hands held behind his back.

"Drawing again, Spicer?" He asked, hearing the younger man yelp and curse with surprise.

"Y-Yeah." Jack stuttered. "How long have you been there?"

"It doesn't matter, are you working on the armor that we spoke of yesterday?" Chase glanced over at Jack and saw him put down a green colored pencil.

"Not at the moment, I needed to take a break." Jack admitted.

"Why's that?" Chase turned his head all the way towards Jack, watching the pale man play with the corner of his paper.

"The UV light that I'm shining on the mask won't polymerise the liquid monomer." Jack stated. "So then there's no formation of a self-propagating photopolymer wave-guide within the monomer reservoir." Jack let out a huff and looked at Chase, seeing the same confused face as yesterday when he was explaining what metallic microlattice was. "It won't stay together."

"I'm disappointed to hear that, Spicer." Chase said as he moved his head back away. Jack felt his entire body droop, sad that he had disappointed the older man.

"Sorry, I'm trying my best." Jack said softly.

"I assumed as much." Chase paused for a moment before walking towards the others man. "Are you in need of an assistant to help you make the metallic microlattice? I can send one of my warriors down to your little lab to assist you in any way they can."

"No, no, no, I don't need one of your cats-"

"-warriors."

"-in my lab messing everything up." Jack finished.

"My warriors will not ruin your lab, they are trained and well disciplined." Chase stated.

"Whatever you say, but they're not trained to deal with highly expensive and rare equipment." Jack protested. "The monks have already destroyed enough of it and fixing them is sometimes worse than making them from scratch."

"Alright, just see to making the microlattice as soon as you can." Chase said before moving his hands to his waist and leaning over, looking at Jack's paper. "What are you drawing this time?"

"I was coloring, actually." Jack admitted.

"I'm glad to see that you took my advice and fixed my picture." Chase mused, seeing the drawing of himself now filled with color. "You even colored it."

"Yeah, I needed to get my mind off of the microlattice before I ripped my own hair out." Jack muttered. "Making it shouldn't be this hard."

"Do not overwork yourself, Spicer. I know from experience that a stressed mind does not function as well as a relaxed one." Chase stated.

"Yeah, yeah." Jack sighed. "Still sucks though."

"I understand and not to change the subject or anything, but I've noticed that you've attempted to shade the drawing." Chase noted.

"'Attempted'?" Jack asked.

"I see how you've tried to fade the colors into a darker shade, but did you use black to do so?" Chase took the paper so he could get a closer look.

"Is there a problem with that?"

"You're not supposed to use black to shade other colors, it's very rare for it to turn out nicely and you lack the technical skills to accomplish such a task." Chase gave Jack the drawing back.

"Well, what am I supposed to do then?" Jack asked with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

"For starters, you've made my eyes way to orange, they're not that bright in normal lighting." Chase poked the eyes of the drawing with a gloved finger, the sarcasm going completely unnoticed.

"It's a little too late to go back and fix it." Jack said.

"Then you'll simply redraw it if you wish for the quality of the drawing to be better than what an infant can do." Chase stated as he knelt down in front of Jack.

"Redraw it? It took me hours just to draw one of your damned hands!" Jack snapped.

"Do not raise your voice at me, Spicer." Chase said with a glare that made a shiver of fear travel down Jack's back. "You lack discipline and control, perhaps teaching you something like the art of drawing and coloring will help you be less useless around here. The only reason that you are allowed to stay here currently is the metallic microlattice armor that you are working on." Jack's look of hurt was ignored as Chase grabbed several colored pencils and flipped the drawing over to the blank side. "We'll start off simple with red." Chase held his hand out, the pencils sitting there and waiting for Jack to grab them. Jack let out a sigh, figuring that this was going to be the only way of being with his idol without getting injured and took the pencils.

"Wait, if we're shading red, why do I have orange and purple?" Jack flinched after asking the question, fearing he was going to get punched.

"Have you ever seen dark red before in real life?" Chase asked instead, watching Jack reopen his eyes.

"Yeah, I guess." Jack said.

"Think of how that red looked, think of freshly shed blood. Have you ever noticed that when the color is dark, it looks as if it has a hue of purple." Jack answered with a head nod this time. "And an apple that is not pure red, how the fading color seems orange." Chase grabbed a spare red pencil and shaded in a small circle, the outer edges darker and growing lighter towards the center. "Most would find this to be enough, but if you want the drawing to look realistic and not child-like, you add in separate colors as the shades." Chase took a purple pencil and colored the edge of the circle, going inwards and stopping a third of the way, one end thicker than the other. "See?" Jack only watched the man in awe, shocked that he had never learned this technique. "Then, with the orange, you do the opposite." Chase grabbed an orange pencil and repeated the process as the purple, only starting with the center and coloring towards the edge. "You also can go back with the red to blend in the two other colors to make the shading smoother." Chase grabbed the red pencil again and did as he said, the colored ball now finished. "Simple, yes?"

"That's so cool." Jack said in a soft voice.

"Now, I expect you to practice with the red until you get the concept and I will lay out other color combinations, so you may practice and learn those as well." Chase went through the bag of pencils Jack had laying next to him and sorted out several more trios of colors before standing back up. "Do not spend an excessive amount of time practicing your coloring, I still want the metallic microlattice armor done as soon as possible. If they accomplish what you claim that they can do, then I want my warriors to be protected with the highest quality with no unnecessary delays." Chase put his hands behind his back agsin and waited for an answer.

"Of course, I'll go back to it first thing in the morning." Jack promised.

"Good. Now, when you've mastered shading with the red; clean up and come in for dinner. One of your machine's managed to convince me to allow it to make something called a 'waffle' and I'm sure he's going to try to poison me to some degree, so I wish to have a taste tester." Chase had started walking away during his explanation, but stopped to speak over his shoulder. "Think you can handle that, Spicer?"

"No problem!" Jack said a little too loudly and held a thumbs-up towards the warlord. Chase only looked away and walked back into the lair, leaving Jack alone again.

Jack couldn't believe it, he was invited to dinner, twice! Two nights in a row, too! He couldn't help himself from letting out a small squeal in joy. Maybe after completing the microlattice, he would fully convince Chase that he wasn't useless and he'd allow him to stay permanently. That'd mean more private drawing lessons, more dinners and more time spent with idol without being hit or thrown off a cliff or horrendously insulted and treated like trash. Jack didn't really know what he truly wanted from Chase, but some form of a friendship sounds good enough at the moment.


Well, looks like this is going to be a full story. I have so much planned for this plot and I didn't want to keep the story as only a one-shot.
Thank you to Freaku for your review, you were the final push to convince me to make the story much longer.