Hey readers, sorry this came so late. It's been a busy few weeks. Passover took time, for one thing, but a family member was hospitalized (they're alright now, thank god) and I had to watch their kids for a bit. And then there were other issues, like the vaccine leaving me useless for a day or so. Not that I regret receiving it, of course.
Anyways, here's the chapter. I'm not completely happy with it, but at this point I just want to get it out and move on to the next one. I hope you can still enjoy it. As a side note, I'm considering switching over to using the Celestial Forge V3 for this fic. Not quite certain about it, but by the next chapter I'll have made my decision on that.
Next chapter will also probably have actual cape activity.
After my discussion with Rabbi Hoffman concluded, I waited in his office as he contacted the organization he wanted me to meet. It was mutually agreed that I should listen in, to make sure there were no breaches of trust occurring. Though religion meant believing without evidence, that didn't mean I had to have blind faith in everything around me. Still, there was hardly anything worth listening in on.
I imagined there was some internally used jargon in play, because the rabbi didn't seem to be very direct at all about what the issue was from what I could hear yet arranged a meeting for me all the same. Just about the only input I got was agreeing on the time, 10:45 AM tomorrow. To be honest, the time didn't matter to me at all.
My schedule was nothing if not free.
More important to me than the "when" was the "where" of the meeting. A local bagel store, apparently. I was not going to complain, my empty stomach made sure of that. Even on a normal day I could and would eat four bagels in one sitting, a detail which showed on my gut, and in my current state I could probably make it to six.
I wouldn't admit it, but the thought of food kept me distracted for the last few minutes of the call so I wasn't entirely sure if I missed anything important. And, being too meek to speak up, I just let it slide and hoped that future me wouldn't regret it.
Though I was just about ready to slip out, find a discrete door in the shul to access my pocket dimension or just return to the place I had been borrowing, and sleep away the hours rather than endure the hunger awake, the good rabbi had other ideas. "Alright... Yes, thank you again for being available on such short notice. Right, you stay safe too. Laylah tov," he concluded, wishing the voice on the other end a good night before hanging up and letting a drawn out sigh escape his throat. He then turned back towards me, right as I was reaching for the door knob.
"And where do you think you're going?"
"Uh… W-Well, since we're done here, I was going to get out of your hair."
"I see. That doesn't answer my question, though. Where?"
"...Nowhere important."
Hoffman shook his head. "I thought so. You have nowhere to stay, and if I let you go then you'd just run on back to some unused building or, god forbid, a bench in the park. Am I correct?"
I could only respond by breaking eye contact. He understood what that meant.
"It's going to rain tonight, Eli. You're not going to be on the streets."
Technically speaking I wouldn't be. Pocket dimensions were good at getting a person indoors. But I was still sticking to the "drug tinker" story and that wouldn't account for a personal reality. "Look, I'd hate to be a bother. It's only for one more night and-"
"You're also starving," he interrupted. How could he tell?! "You look awfully surprised for someone whose stomach has been rumbling nonstop since we started talking." Oh. "Honestly, do you think I'm an am ha'aretz? It isn't hard to figure out. Now you wait right here while I get some things together and then we can walk to my house."
"N-No, really, I don't want to bother you…"
"Bother me?! You must have forgotten that I invited you for a meal just this morning, when I had no idea how badly you needed one. Come up with a better excuse. I won't accept it, though. This is final."
I shrunk back before slowly forcing myself back onto the ottoman. The man made only good points, frustratingly. If there was faulty reasoning I could protest it, but my pride meant I wouldn't make myself look like a petulant brat by arguing a point I couldn't support. As much as I felt guilty for relying on him like this, the fact remained that I had little other option.
Debts would have to be paid, though. Even if they insisted I owed them nothing, which the rabbi probably would, the burden would still rest on my shoulders for a while. Exactly how I'd settle such a debt would be a matter for another time, though.
I let myself slip into a fugue as I went over my tinkering options. So far, when it came to abnormal creations, the only things I knew how to make came from the Chemist gear. Fallout chems, and a bunch of mundane chemicals that went into them, for the most part. Those provided a decent start, but if my options didn't expand soon I'd quickly hit a wall.
But where was that wall, currently? Contrary to how it had first seemed when the gear slotted in, the knowledge granted wasn't all available at once. After it had been shoved into my brain, it became like any other piece of memorized information, albeit a firmly entrenched one. It didn't come to mind unless I was actively searching and thinking about it, which meant that, because certain Fallout drugs were more iconic than others, I hadn't really been looking at the more niche options. So long as mentats and stimpaks were occupying my attention, useful possibilities were ignored.
So I started digging through my knowledge, thinking about random desired chemical effects and seeing what recipes sprang to mind. It was, honestly, quite enlightening. It wasn't just chems, though there were many that I didn't know about just sitting around inside my mind. I had been chasing stimpaks when there was apparently something called a Refreshing Beverage that blew it out of the water for a relatively minor increase in components. And, apparently, I could also create fireworks that could change the weather. I knew that cloud seeding was a thing, but I was pretty sure this was a few steps beyond that in effectiveness.
And then there was the syringer formulas. Now those gave me ideas.
Auto-smelter (Azeroth) (100CP)Hearthstone (Free)
Now the new gear that just slotted into Mechanus gave me no ideas. Oh, sure, just go and give me an automatic and efficient smelter! That will be great for all the ore I don't have!
In all fairness, I probably would receive some raw ore from a gear down the line. But, considering that the provider chest I was given an hour ago came with metal already in ingot form, I felt a little bit annoyed.
And then there was the hearthstone. I could feel the weight of the rock in my back pocket. A way to teleport to a set location was useful, but there was one little problem. It could only bind to a safe location that I own. Me. The person currently going through a lot of trouble to get to the state where I could legally own anything. Maybe my pocket dimension would work, I'd have to test it out, but I wasn't optimistic.
I was broken out of my pondering by a snap right in front of my face. "Yingele, I'm ready to head home. If we don't start walking now, dinner will get cold," Rabbi Hoffman informed me. I still felt uncomfortable intruding, but by this point I'd probably be easily guilt tripped if I continued to resist.
He only wanted to help, after all.
"Fine... I'm ready."
Dinner was an awkward affair. Since the rabbi had called ahead while I was thinking, no one was surprised to see me. But, even so, it was awkward. I wasn't going to tell them what my actual situation was, since that was information I wanted to limit access to, but of course they were all going to be normal human beings and try to make conversation.
No one wanted to act like there wasn't a stranger at dinner, for obvious reasons.
And so I had to dance around their inquiries with all the grace I could muster… which was not much at all. Still, I managed to pull it off well enough. Maybe it was Classy Contortionist helping my body language, but the rebbetzin and her children seemed to realize pretty quickly whenever I just didn't want to talk about something.
Eventually it was over. I didn't eat as much as I wanted to, both because they weren't expecting an extra mouth when cooking and because my guilt over the former caused me to keep my meal light. I guzzled a lot of water to fill the emptiness in my gut. Rabbi Hoffman noticed, I believe, but he didn't bring it up. Probably was willing to settle for giving me something to eat, no matter how little.
After dinner I was led down into the basement where they had a guest room. It was a simple setup, just a queen-sized bed and dresser. There was a closet stuffed with random junk, probably used for miscellaneous storage.
Didn't matter, as long as I had a bed I was more than happy. If I needed space… well, I had a door with a keyhole right here.
Speaking of which, I really wanted to take a look at my newest acquisitions. I wandered back upstairs to tell the rabbi, who I learnt had the first name of Chaim during the meal, that I was going to do some "parahuman stuff" and therefore shouldn't be disturbed. He promised to pass on that I was very tired and shouldn't be woken up. That would hopefully prevent anyone walking downstairs and seeing my personal slice of space.
Once a token amount of privacy was secured, I inserted my key into the guest room's door and opened it up. The initial entryway was unchanged, though that wasn't unexpected. The chemistry workshop further in was similarly untouched, save for the provider chest which I quickly checked.
Yep, that sure was a lot of resources I had no idea what I'd do with. I wasn't sure how much I trusted the lead containers around the uranium to shield me, so I closed the box soon after taking a quick inventory.
Next came the smelter, which was in a large room off to the side. Without any raw ore to use with it, I finally moved on to the last point of interest. The shipyard.
An innocuous door, exactly like all the others, opened up into a hallway that led into a frankly enormous room… No, it was more like a hangar. It would probably take me over an hour to walk around the perimeter, and I knew that it would only grow bigger once I actually had the knowhow to build a ship. Right now it had no ports whatsoever, since it specifically had equipment to automate the building of any ships I knew how to construct.
Yessiree! It was just a giant empty room!
What a fucking letdown.
Still, I remained positive. I'm sure that if I got a gear that let me know how to make giant ships instead of the shipyard I'd be upset about lacking the facilities to construct them. I'd need this once the knowledge came around.
Well, that left one thing to test out before I got to tinkering. I took out the hearthstone from my pocket and focused on it. If I could bind my pocket dimension… Well, that opened up a lot of options. A few seconds passed. I guess it was bound? Didn't know how to tell, so I walked a few steps to the left and tried to warp.
Then Mechanus started spinning. It was like every last gear was being spun around and clashing. I felt faint and nauseous and overall terrible so I dropped to the ground before the unpleasant sensations forced me to fall. One very loud thought, strange as it was to ascribe volume to such a thing, was pushed into my brain just like how the info from Chemist was.
Except way worse.
Error: Risk of permanent dimensional isolation.
Modifying SubComponent [Hearthstone]
Modifying
…
...
Modification Complete
Uploading Error Report
The headache intensified as I got a good idea of exactly what sort of hell I had narrowly avoided. Everything was in the info of the "error report" I was given. Apparently the hearthstone would have worked on places in my pocket dimension.
Even if there wasn't a door opened.
Needless to say, such an occurrence would have left me trapped inside forever. But whatever force had stopped me from even trying to warp had also now modified the hearthstone so that it could no longer bind here.
The fact that my powers could be altered on a whim was frightening, but honestly I don't know what I was supposed to do about that. This only happened once I nearly ruined everything for myself, though, so I'd try to be optimistic and assume such incidents would only come to fruition for my own benefit. I'd puzzle out the ramifications of this existentially terrifying event later, right now I had some toys to make.
As if to apologize for the inconvenience, Mechanus accumulated another piece of energy as I entered my chemistry workshop.
My goal for the night was simple: Make some chemicals for self-defense. The Chemist gear had some info on ammunition for a weapon called a syringer. The actual weapon was beyond me, but the payload would be equally effective delivered at close range by hand. The best part was, most of them were nonlethal and even the dangerous ones were much weaker than straight poison. And since I didn't have to fire them from a gun there'd be no reason to limit the dosage as much. The short durations could be overcome with quantity.
I decided to start off with endangerol, a compound which would supposedly make a person more vulnerable to damage. Not sure how that would work, maybe some sort of anti-clotting agent to increase the severity of wounds, but it would be useful. At the very least, I could probably make some cash selling it as an anti-brute measure.
First component was Med-X… Which is to say, morphine. I always found it funny how the damage resistance chem was literally just morphine in Fallout. Felt a bit weird to use Chemist to make something completely mundane, but I wasn't complaining. The synthesis even gave me a chance to experiment with Right Tools for the Job. Getting any tool I needed when I needed them really sped up the workflow. That particular gear came in handy even more than expected once I started putting the morphine together with everything else.
Turns out that chemical catalysts are tools. Made sense, since the reaction didn't actually consume them. My workshop was well-stocked but still missing things. Now I had really good access to time savers. Time truly was the most valuable resource for me right now, speeding up a synthesis even slightly was perfect. Hell, if it worked for enzymes I could probably get a catalyst for all sorts of organic reactions.
After making some endangerol, I filled my endless bucket with it. And then an idea came to my mind. This was a weapon, even if it didn't harm on its own. I could make weapons look better. Putting two and two together meant that I could do some extra designing. I lacked the technical skill to modify the delivery mechanism at all, so no art museum worthy syringes just yet, but the actual compounds could use some color coding for easy identification. And I knew exactly how to add coloring that would barely affect the brew's effects.
Unnecessary? Yes. Satisfying? Hell yes.
My lovely orange vulnerability causing soup looked great, the shade exactly mimicking the color of a road construction sign. A color that warned of incoming danger. I wouldn't mistake this for any other chemical in my collection.
After bottling enough of the stuff to replicate with my bucket, I got to work on other solutions.
Highly concentrated Mind Cloud, which would muddle an enemy's senses enough that I could sneak away right under their noses or launch a counterattack. I colored it a deep purple, with silver flecks. Another gallon bottled for replication.
Yellow Belly syringes would be an emergency measure, since I couldn't trust them. They would supposedly cause enemies to flee out of pure terror. But if fear was the outcome of injection… Well, fight or flight. People were unpredictable when frightened. The last thing I'd need when threatened by someone I wanted to go away was to make them aggressive. After adding some sickly yellow color so that I could tell it apart, I put the solution away.
The final chemical of the night would be Pax. I had no idea how well it would work in practice, but there was something very elegant about peace in a syringe. A dose could apparently deescalate most situations. I expect that, if it works as advertised, I'll be carrying a lot of this stuff on me. I left it unaltered, finally getting tired of playing around with coloring.
I was starting to get tired. Probably best if I checked the time, since I didn't want to be too sleep deprived during my meeting. Midnight was my self-imposed limit. Just had to step outside of my dimension and look at the clock in the guest room and… 2:17 AM.
Mentats were one hell of a drug. Well, guess that meant I should rest now. Just one last job before I could call it a day. I ran back into the lab and started to fill up syringes. One Yellow Belly, two Mind Cloud, one Endangerol, and three Pax. I was going to prepare even more, but then I realized that I kept getting air bubbles mixed in. Turns out that even with the knowledge of how to fill a syringe properly I still needed to be well rested to perform it well.
No way I was going to risk killing someone over something like an overlooked air pocket.
I crawled into bed, appreciating the comfort of an actual mattress under my body, and began to drift off.
Engineering Basics (Dead Space) (100CP)Well, shit. Good thing I was lying down, because the amount of information shoved into my brain would have made me fall down otherwise. I was now an engineer. Not a particularly good one, very average all things considered.
Though that was still pretty damn good considering that this was space engineering. The engineering used by a society that was traveling space and colonizing the cosmos. Unfortunately not quite enough to recreate anything too crazy from scratch, but a very good foundation for projects. Heck, since a lot of the knowledge was related to spaceship maintenance I was already one step closer to finding a use for my shipyard.
Still needed a lot more gears, though.
I took a quick mental inventory as I sank my head back into the pillow. Some of the tools I now knew how to use were familiar, mainly the plasma cutter. Dead Space tech, then? Nothing particularly interesting there that I knew of, at least on the tech level. Not that it was unimpressive, but it also was pretty basic compared to the average scifi.
Well, kinesis and stasis would be awesome. Real shame that there was literally nothing about how to go about making those modules, just knowledge on how to best leverage them in mechanical work. Same with most of the interesting aspects of the setting. I wasn't the jack of all trades, but just a master of none.
Still probably put me near the top of this world's non-tinker engineering. I just wouldn't be pulling off as much tinkertech shenanigans with Engineering Basics alone. The holographic interfaces would probably be doable, though, given the resources. That would be cool. Not very useful, but cool.
In fact, maybe I should start right now! I opened my eyes… and saw the red face of the digital clock loudly displaying 2:40 AM.
Yeah… Sleep sounded good.
I slept well, especially compared to the trouble I had on the previous night. Normally an unfamiliar bed would keep me tossing and turning for a while, but I was just too tired for that to bother me. I probably could have slept even longer, but at 8:30 a knocking at my door roused me. The rabbi wanted me to come to shacharit with him, and I saw no reason to disagree.
A bit of prayer couldn't hurt in my situation.
An hour and a half later I was standing in the Black Shul's coffee room once again, slowly nursing a cup of decaf as Chaim spoke to me.
'
"I told them your name and what you look like, so they'll find you. Don't go looking around for them in the store, OK?" he instructed me, a serious expression gracing his face.
"Alright. You really don't have any idea who they might be sending, though?"
"Of course not. I'm just a contact, not a member. I've got nothing to do with their decision making. Anyways, you should get going now. You don't want to start off on the wrong foot by arriving late."
He was right about that. Being early was the only option, in my opinion. It showed diligence and made me seem more eager and open to discussion.
Also I was hungry. Getting a bagel sooner rather than later was only sensible. So there I went, a simple twenty or so minute walk from the shul. My nerves were eating me up. No way around it, this meeting would be crucial. If everything went well I'd be able to start taking action, get some capital, and actually start thinking about the future. If it went poorly I'd lose all of that. I was prepared to offer up a lot if needed.
I was playing through various permutations and what-ifs about the imminent discussion while walking. Anticipation was always the worst stage of a stressful event, that period of time where I couldn't change anything but wouldn't stop running a worst case scenario in my head. It was all pointless, doubly so in this situation where I barely knew anything going in, but good luck getting that through to my broken brain. If I was sitting down, I was sure I'd be having one hell of a case of jitters.
Would have been nice, much more comfortable than having to trap all the nerves inside of me. But it also would make a bad impression, so it wasn't feasible.
The walk passed in the blink of an eye, it felt like. They say time flies when you're having fun, but for me it flies even faster when something unpleasant is coming up. I checked my watch, an old and cheap digital model I borrowed from the Hoffman house. 10:32. A little less than fifteen minutes to go, but realistically it could take even longer. Punctuality wasn't some sort of inviolable law, after all. But I'd operate under the assumption that things would occur right on time.
I opened the door to the uncreatively named Big Bagel and walked up to the counter. If I could finish eating beforehand no one would have to see me messily devour anything. Hungry as I was, even with a half-decent meal last night, I couldn't guarantee table manners.
There luckily weren't many people around to see me, just a few teens eating at a table by the door and an elderly man reading a newspaper by a window. I was never a fan of crowded dining, even before 2020 came along and made such a thing literally dangerous. With a spot in the corner completely empty, I wouldn't have to settle for where I sat.
After tapping on the counter to get the attention of the young man behind it, I made my order. The most basic of basics, a lightly toasted bagel with cream cheese and lox. I stood there as I waited, rather than take a seat. Shouldn't be that long, and I'd hate to have to stand up again after getting settled. An accumulation of energy in Mechanus was noted and brushed aside. More energy was good, but it was useless to speculate about what it might get me later.
Several minutes later I paid, handing over cash on loan from the rabbi, and went to the corner table I had chosen. After quickly washing my hands, I settled down, said a beracha, and began to utterly devour my bagel and lox. Now this was comfort food! Just eating it was easing my nerves a little bit.
Before I knew it, though, I was down to the last bite. While savoring it, I once again checked my watch. 10:45 AM. The time had come. I looked around the room, and then at the door, as if the other party would show up perfectly punctually. Well, it was a bit of an absurd assumption, wasn't it?
Then the old man by the window slowly stood up, leaning on the table to get to his feet, and started walking towards me, moving quickly despite relying on a quad cane. Now that I was paying attention to him, it struck me that, aside from the newspaper, his table was empty. Not just free of food and drink, but also clear of any crumbs or napkins that would imply a prior meal. All signs pointed to him having just been here to sit and read. Or waiting for someone.
By the time I had put that all together, he was already standing at the seat across from me. "Yingele, are you waiting for someone?" the man asked with a yiddish accent, his W sounding more like a V. There was a thin smile stretched along his gaunt and wrinkled face, though I didn't need to see that to realize what he was getting at.
"For you, I, uh, think?" I replied, sounding far less certain than I felt. The nerves were acting up again, even though I had finally calmed down a minute ago.
The man let out a breathy laugh. "Yes, for me. Eliezer Meth, right?" he confirmed while adjusting his gray flat cap.
"Um, yes."
He held out his hand. I accepted the handshake, noting how unexpectedly firm it was. "Oh, wonderful! I have been waiting to meet you since last night. Most people call me the gabbai, but my name is Ari Shuster. Use whatever you like, I'm not particular."
Shuster was kind of intense. For someone that looked to be at least in their eighties, he spoke with the energy of a man in their prime. It did make sense though, if he was a gabbai, or at least was close enough that he'd be called one. It was a position that required a fair amount of work and people skills, not something that the timid and meek were meant for. A personality opposite my own.
"Uh… Shuster, then."
"Very familiar, aren't you?" he countered with a raised eyebrow.
"S-Sorry, I thought-"
"Ah, I'm just teasing you, boy! I told you, call me whatever you like," the man assured me, before letting the smile slip off his face. "Now that we've gotten to know each other so well, why don't you and I get to business?"
I nodded in agreement.
"Wonderful! Now, to start, I've got a small shayle for you, something that's been bothering me. That alright?"
"Go ahead."
"Great," Shuster smiled, then leaned towards the table. "Are you actually a cape, Eli?"
"I… Huh? That's why I'm here, even if I wasn't there's no way I'd say no at this point."
"You don't understand, yingele. It's not about you, it's about me. I've got a power of my own, you see."
That was surprising, though it probably shouldn't have been. Sending a normal person to meet me when I was presenting myself as a tinker with reproducible tech would be absurd. It just was hard for me to think that the first parahuman I saw in person, those wards that passed in the subway tunnels notwithstanding, would be someone like this. Old and frail, even with his energetic tone. Not the image I had constructed in my mind, in all honesty.
"Er, so what does that have to do with this?"
"Without getting into the fine details, I can obtain a lot of information about parahumans that I make contact with. Only parahumans, though."
I think I could see where he was going with this. "So when you shook my hand earlier…?"
"You catch on quick, Eli! Yes, that's what I was trying to do. Now, obviously it didn't work."
"But I do have powers!" I shot back, protesting against his incorrect diagnosis.
"Calm down, yingele. I've gotten false negatives before, mostly from strangers. Alternatively, you could be acting as a proxy for the real tinker. I'd have to be meshugenah to accept what my power tells me without even asking for your side of things. All I want is a shtickle honesty."
OK, that was reasonable. I couldn't actually confirm any of what he was saying, but whether or not he had a power giving him reason to doubt it was still fair to want some proof. I couldn't exactly tinker on the spot, but I had another way to show that I was a bona fide parahuman. "Alright, I understand. Just watch carefully, I'll give you a bit of proof."
I rolled up my sleeves, held my hands out to clearly show how empty they were, and grabbed a napkin off the table. The Right Tools for the Job was a good trick to have because it didn't discriminate. I could use it in virtually any scenario. So if I decided I wanted to cut this napkin cleanly in half…
"Well, that's convincing. Those scissors are too large for you to have used simple sleight of hand, not to mention that it would be odd for you to prepare a demonstration like that when claiming to be a tinker. I believe you."
"Great! Just so you know, what I did was-"
Shuster held up a finger and shushed me quite loudly. "Don't worry about it. If my power worked on you then I'd know all about it, but that's no reason to be so free with the information. If you really want to tell me then by all means do so, but I wouldn't if I were you."
That was pretty kind of him, though I suppose I should have expected as much from what Rabbi Hoffman told me of this group. If they helped Jewish capes in general then it really shouldn't matter what said cape was capable of. Well, as long as they wouldn't push the matter I was happy keeping my secrets.
"So does that mean you'll help me with getting an ID and the like?"
"Of course! Better you go through us and draw little attention than fumble through it alone and cause issues. As for payment… Well, if you're as good of a tinker as you claim to be then maybe you'll treat us favorably once you're established, hmmm?" he not-so-subtly hinted, a gleam in his eye. "We don't like to strongarm others, so please consider this a 'request' rather than a 'transaction' to adhere to."
Body Shop (Smash Up) (200CP)
Land of Confusion (Free)
Excuse me, what? Mechanus, what the fuck?! Apparently I now had the world's greatest body part collection in my personal reality, literally containing parts from every species in the world. It was like the most fucked up retelling of Noah's Ark imaginable. I didn't even know what I might use these for, though surely a future gear would grant some options.
My surprise didn't show at all, however. In fact, my shock only lasted a few moments before I regained control and accepted the Body Shop as a thing I now had. That was thanks to the arguably more valuable pinion attached to it, which simply made me better at rolling with whatever bizarre things might happen. Given what my life currently was, I'd probably be using it regularly.
It would probably be best to start talking now, before I made a mockery of myself. "Well, uh, that might take a while? I don't really have a solid timetable worked out, after all," I remarked, giving a helpless shrug. I was totally reliant on Mechanus, in the end. Live or die, sink or swim, it all depended on how the gears fell down. "I'd feel terrible just taking from you and leaving it all as an IOU. Is there anything more immediate that I could do for you?"
Shuster let out another breathy laugh, this time really chortling. I was surprised that no one else in the store seemed to even pay the slightest attention to us. "I think we'll have a very fruitful relationship, Eli. I was worried you'd be another shanda for the goyim, like so many young capes in the community. Take it from an old man that can't do anything on his own but get information, giving others reason to trust you is a good way to stay alive. You can only betray someone once before your promises become dreck."
Fair enough. I was never good at interpersonal matters, but it really was common sense that people would be less likely to harm you if they could trust you. "So, is there something I can do?" I asked again.
"Oh, there's always something to do. The question is what you'd be willing to do. As I said, we don't enjoy strong-arming others. I've got a few things in mind, I'll contact you, alright?"
"How?"
"Oy vey, I almost forgot!" the older man exclaimed. He withdrew a nondescript phone from his jacket pocket. "A burner phone. We'd have needed to contact each other when the fake documents and ID were done, so I took the liberty of getting you one in advance to make that easier."
I accepted it graciously. He hadn't forgotten, surely. More likely, Shuster had been waiting to see if I'd bring it up myself. If I didn't, it would show a lack of attention to details. "So how long do you expect I'll be waiting for?" I inquired. "Are we talking days? Weeks?"
"A few days, I'd reckon. Not my job to put the documents together, though, so I can't get any more specific than that," he explained apologetically. As if they weren't doing so much for me already. "As for any jobs to pay us back, you can expect something by the end of the day."
"Oh, er, it's fine. Not like I need it done this second. I can wait a few days."
"Wonderful. Is that everything, or do you have any other questions?"
Did I have questions? Yes, plenty of them! But after he had already advised me to be careful with my own secrets I didn't feel comfortable probing him for his own. "Uh, no, not really. So should I leave or…?" I let the question hang.
"I'm going to leave now. You, on the other hand, need to bentch first," Shuster reminded me. I flinched, realizing he was correct. I had been so caught up in worrying about the meeting that I forgot to say the normal blessing for finishing a meal.
"Right! I'll get on that!" I replied quickly, face flushed from embarrassment.
Ari Shuster chuckled softly, clearly more amused than upset at my lapse, and slowly began to rise from his seat. Standing up was seemingly difficult for him, so I started to move over and help him, but before I could someone else already reached his side. One of the teens that had been here this whole time got Shuster to his feet and handed him his cane.
"Well then, shalom," he plainly stated, bidding me farewell, as he walked outside. All of the teenagers followed him. For the second time today I realized that I had overlooked the people around me. Of course they wouldn't just send an old man that, by his own admission, couldn't do anything but gain information! It would be foolhardy to just blindly trust that I wouldn't act violently. And now that everything was settled they wanted to make sure I knew that they weren't fools.
I could respect that.
Master Craftsman (Forgotten Realms) (300CP)
Alright Mechanus. Very funny! Now where's the real gear that I'm getting? Hmmm, this is the real one? Really?! Well, isn't that something. Only three accumulations of energy, the same amount that got me the useless gooery, had now made it impossible for me to make something shitty. Literally the worst results I could get would be considered masterworks!
I'm not complaining about it, I'm really not. Master Craftsman was awesome, unless masterworks was actually referring to a lower quality than I expected. I am, however, maybe complaining a little bit about the overall pricing of each gear in the clock. Because, really, this seemed to be far better than literally everything else I had obtained thus far.
A global boost in quality to everything I make, with my most phoned in creations still being incredible. I could probably make my chems way better now…
Oh hell, that meant I needed to completely remake all of my syringer solutions, didn't it? There was no excuse to be stuck with last night's work when I could literally do better in my sleep.
Which meant I had stayed up late last night working for nothing.
No rest for me, I guess. Back to work.
Perks this Chapter
Auto-smelter (Azeroth) (100CP)
This Auto-Smelter will smelt down any raw ore placed inside it into high quality ingots. This smelter is completely hands free, except for actually placing the ore inside. For further incentive, if you purchased The Mine you will be given a group of magical constructs who will mine your ore, place it in the Auto-Smelter, then sort out the finished product. They can not be used for anything outside of their primary functions stated above.
Hearthstone (Free)
You gain a magical rock with a rune carved into the surface. When held in your hand and focused on this rock will bind to a safe location that you own allowing you to transport back to that location at any time as long as you channel your focus into the stone uninterrupted for three seconds. If you lose your new pet rock it will reappear within your inventory or warehouse courtesy of the GM's.
Engineering Basics (Dead Space) (100CP)You're a real Mr. Fix-It, y'know? Malfunctioning fuel intake? Easy. Faulty asteroid defense cannon? Turn it off, then on again. Non-responsive communications array? Shuffle the working emitters around a bit so they're symmetrical. Undead monstrosities? Depends on what you mean by, "fix." Does using a rivet gun to blow them apart count? Yes? Then we're good.
Body Shop (Smash Up) (200CP)
A good scientist pushing the bounds of human knowledge always has a use for raw materials. Here is a collection of preserved body parts from every species in the world, updating in future Jumps. Just never ask where it all comes from.
Land of Confusion (Free)
These are strange times. So many weird things happening all at once. Fortunately, you know how to just roll with whatever strangeness the world throws your way, whether magic-using robots or pirate leprechauns.
You do keep your sense of wonder and awesome, you'll just be spending a lot less time saying "...what?"
Master Craftsman (Forgotten Realms) (300CP)
You are exceptionally skilled at crafting things. At your worst, your results are masterwork.
Banked CP: 0