The Courier leaned back in frustration. The Scroll and his Pipboy ran off of two systems that had such heavy differences that it was proving to be near impossible to be able to combine the two. As such, the Courier believed he would need to reverse engineer the technology used by the Pipboy and integrate it into the Scroll.
A majority of the Pipboy's system was converted with a fair degree of ease, with the additional power opened up by the scroll allowing for a much less bulky gauntlet. A comparison between the Remnant materials and those of his Pipboy revealed that the latter was composed of materials that had a higher degree of durability. As a result, the Courier had it form the outer shell of the device, the thickness around the arm being halved due to not having to have electronics wired around the entirety of the arm and the shell being repainted to a near-black blue in order to aid a small bit in stealth. Due to utilizing a touch interface rather than requiring numerous knobs and buttons, the surface on the outer forearm was able to be completely flat, with a slight recess where the display of the scroll was housed. The display in question was modified, through trial and error to utilize the see-through paneling of the Pipboy. While the end further up the forearm was thicker than the other, as it housed the nigh-eternal power source of the Pipboy and the mechanisms to utilize VATS. On the opposing end were two buttons, one to activate the device, the other to switch between the functions added by the scroll and a slightly modified Pipboy interface. Main modifications were to have the browsing converted over to work better with a touch screen interface, addition of the aura measuring of the scroll to the health screen, potential viewing of allies' health included at a cost of replacing the Vault Boy graphic with text, and to use more than one colour. It took roughly five days to get everything properly wired up, and two weeks to get everything programmed fully. He likely could have done it in a week if he pushed himself, but rushing leads to errors, and errors in any part, especially VATS, would lead to an unexpected death. In addition, it took a bit of time to work a few custom encryptions while not interfering with the existing communication software.
During the time he had spent building up the hybrid system, the Courier had done a bit of research upon Aura and Dust. It wasn't overall too extensive, as much of his focus was upon learning the software and hardware utilized by technology of Remnant, but he managed to compose a decent level of basic knowledge. While a majority of the studies performed upon dust seemed to rely upon the assumption there was a soul, the Courier wasn't fully certain of this. Based upon personal experience and some reading into dust, the Courier was going to be working upon the assumption that Aura was the product of a mutualistic relationship between active Dust within the bloodstream of an individual and the individual. Semblances would be manipulation of this relationship upon the Dust within the bloodstream, as well as, in some cases, outside the body, utilizing similar methods to human psychics from back home. Dust would enter the bloodstream through its presence within the other living organisms in the world, biomagnification increasing the amount of Dust gotten. The fact that meditation could unlock a person's aura could be explained away as most Dust gained was inert, and meditation caused the active Dust that had been gained from both parents to begin to activate the rest. While there could be information he was unaware of and the Grimm were a strange outlier, it was a working hypothesis for the current point in time. This did leave the Courier at a bit of a disadvantage, but if Dust enhanced his higher brain functions to the point he could slowly activate the passive with any small scraps of active dust within his meals, he might be able to remove that disadvantage. His would not be able to match up to someone who had lived on the planet their whole life, unless he did something drastic, but it would at least be something.
On the subject of Dust, the Courier found something interesting. Whereas back home different industries would have to run off of vastly different materials, Remnant's civilizations were able to run all their industries off of the same substance. There were some minor differences in the varying types of Dust, but for the most part all the industries could be satisfied by this one material. However, if the statistics he found were correct, even the highest qualities of Dust were less efficient at doing the tasks than the resources back home. The two main examples that came to mind, gunpowder and nuclear power, both proved to be more efficient than the Dust utilized by the technology in this place. However, the Dust that was used to perform those tasks could easily be used for other tasks, effectively causing the substance to follow the phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none'. Admittedly, with a world on the brink, that was the best substance that could be utilized, but this did make the question of running out a disturbing question. Especially when no one really seemed to know exactly what resulted in the creation of Dust. While it wasn't sure where several resources came from when it first started being used, it was figured out before technology reached the point in time the civilizations of Remnant managed to get to. If the Grimm were ever beaten back, the possibility of a future resource war from the increase in population was a very real threat. At least there was nothing on the scale of a nuclear weapon at the current time.
Shaking his mind to clear his thoughts, the Courier decided to head out to get a drink from a nearby bar as an act of celebration at the finishing of his improved Pipboy. Besides, he needed a job, and he frequently found paths that netted him a fair amount of money. At very least it wound up allowing him to get his name out there so jobs that paid good money came along.
A bit shorter of a chapter this time around, but the descriptions were a bit long and this is more of a transition than anything. Anyway, opinions upon how I explained Aura, Semblances, and Dust from the perspective of an individual from Fallout, as well as the design the Pipboy was modified into?