Back we go again! Finally home, out of Parisian streets. Neat.
Spoiler: Winning Votes
[X] Check email about hired Minion (Costs 1 Action)
[X]Innovate: Create something new. Might be Garbage. Might be Gold. (Cost 2 Action)
-[X] Create an armor module. A custom made armor that can combine with any Jackbot to give you a boost, depending on the bot.
And with the winning votes said, lets get to work.
Your jet arrived back home sometime around the evening and it still felt like you were floating.
Paris... was a complete and total success. You got the Wu, made some nominal allies, and broke through a wall you thought was just part of life now. Compared to the hopeful wishes of 'don't come home in a body cast', that's a pretty damn big leap!
It barely even felt real, being back in your old Lab again, looking at all your bots and materials still strewn about, bursting with potential. You hadn't felt like this since you were a kid! it was amazing! It was intoxicating!
It...it was too much. You felt your brain throb with all the ideas you had and everything you could DO now swirling through your thoughts, you...you had to sit down.
With barely a moment of effort, you collapsed at your computer, suddenly exhausted and head burning.
Ah SHIT, it was hitting you how much you could do, it was too much! Just...just have to distract yourself for a moment, focus in on something and steady the stream of thought...
Creative sparks may ignite but I am a furnace. Creative sparks may ignite but I am a furnace. Fire may burn but steel shall shine.
So forth you simply repeated in your mind with your eyes closed, keeping the words your Nainai had whispered to you all those years ago. With each repetition, you felt your mind and body start to relax more and more, till you were sitting straight and calm. Then you opened your eyes.
Only to screech as Wuya was an inch from your face, rocking back far enough to tip the chair off its wheels, only barely stopped by the Third-Arm Sash racing down to brace your form.
"Aaaaaie! What the hell Wuya! We talked about this!" You squealed at the specter, mind now disorganized for a different reason.
"Pah. Live a little, the heart pumping faster only helps you until it doesn't. I'm more interested in what you did right there." Wuya seemed to grin as she waved a tendril dismissively.
You just stared blankly for a second, fixing your chair and rolling back over, not breaking eye contact even as your hands went through the motions of opening your email to see if you missed anything important.
"You mean me spazzing out for a minute till I got it under control? That'd be my brain deciding its bigger than its skull themed-britches. Was a real problem when I was younger, all these ideas about what things could be that it hurt me to actually see them. Had a whole phase when I was 10 where I wore a blindfold, but that backfired when I started touch-tinkering. Nainai saw and decided to help me focus on stuff when she saw that though. Was simple stuff, phrases than don't really mean anything but sound cool and distract me enough to shift my focus. Haven't done it really in...want to say 3 years? Just kind of took me off guard." You explained openly as you perused your mail.
It wasn't like any of this was a secret, or really hurt you to explain. It was a thing that happened then, and apparently now. Weird but no more so than anything else. You were really more concerned with your mail. Junk, junk, ad, story update, ad for something you built, story, story, renew gaming subscription that was getting dangerously underused, junk. Still no damn emails back, this was nearly 2 weeks since you sent those out!
Whatever, you were actually doing better than you had expected this last little while, and barring that one break-in, security was hardly even an issue yet! You had time probably.
You decided to turn your attention back to Wuya, who was now circling around the air whispering in thought. You don't actually know if she was aware she did that, but it helped you get some insight into whatever she was thinking, however little it helped.
"Interesting. A simple method, but effective. Is it similar to Xinyang? Or simply an act of reflection? Hmmm..." She hissed through the air before abruptly turning back around, facing you fully again.
"Your words. How did they make you feel echoing throughout your mind? Calm, able, focused? Better than you were before? More confident?" She stated one after another directly in your face, nearly searing your eyes with her spotlight eyes before you flipped your goggles down.
"I...guess all of the above. Its literally just something to calm me down and distract me from overheating my brain, or whatever the biological term for that it. I'm good with machines, not fleshy things." You said non-plussed, not really getting the sudden interest and more so wondering about what you would be building first... engines, cars, new bots, transforming cars that turn into robots with-!
"Because you are casting a spell on yourself."
"FUCKING WHAT." You shouted out as you jumped out of your chair, train of thought derailed, decommissioned, and dismantled for scrap in that single instant.
"WHAT. DO YOU MEAN. I'M CASTING A SPELL." You nearly frothed at the mouth at the thought. Mystical artifacts were one thing, but YOU could be magic? YOU could be the overpowered Isekai protagonist? WHERE DID HE SIGN UP.
Wuya simply shrugged.
"Yes. It seemed a simple thing, seemingly condensing and 'sharpening' your Chi into a more focused and condensed shape. Nothing complex or the like to change the physical form, but enough to strengthen the mind. A minimal, but still unexpected development for one so...uninitiated as you to the world at large." She explained as if this was not ground-breaking news.
"Wait. Wait. There's a lot of things to unpack there, so lets take this step by step. Okay. First. I've been doing this since I was a CHILD. Are you telling me, all this time, I'VE HAD MAGIC I COULD HAVE BEEN LEVELING INSTEAD OF PLATEAUING WITH ROBOTS!?" You started off calmly before completely flipping out and screaming full force at the second half, going so far as the use the Third-Arm Sash to grab the small table you had set off to the side specifically for when you had to flip a table.
You were rich enough to be eccentric, but MAGIC!
Wuya merely looked confused, tilting her head slightly and raising an eyebrow if she had any.
"Yes? Everything item and being on this planet and off of it has Magic, most just simply either don't have enough to be impressive or actually try to nurture the talent. If that has changed, I am unaware, but I assume it still rings true."
Aaaand there went the excitement you had. You weren't super special awesome? Damn it, that was disheartening. Wait...
"Do...do I have a large amount of magic cause I was doing a 'Spell' for so many years without noticing?" You tried to connect it back to your newfound hope. Surely ALL of those manga had some spec of truth to them?
"Eh, most likely not. Most Spells involving internal processes and functions, baring the highest forms of such, use such little energy or gather such from the surrounding to make any kind of change either negligible or non-existent. Most barely could even be described as Magic, and to most it isn't." Wuya shrugged, pushing the nail further into your (mostly) abandoned dream of running through life with a fireball in one hand and a miscellaneous ball of gears in the other.
"Oh...okay then. Anyway to check how much a person has though? Or grow it?" You asked desperately.
"The only ways for magic to grow is to expand your mind in directions not meant for mortal comprehension, by expanding every drop of it from yourself in magically linked or rich environments, or by killing and or becoming well-known enough for 'magic' that the World decides you must in fact be. You can gather why few truly do such." Wuya stated simply and calmly, making you feel a bit depressed again, before you remembered the amount of money resources, and time you had still.
You puffed up, decided that you would eat, drink, and chant your heart whenever you stumbled across any kind of magical site.
Until then, it was time to tinker, putting all thoughts about magic spells and focusing shit to FOCUS IN ON A NEW JACKBOT! MULTIMEDIA PORTS FOR DAYS!
Wuya was put into the background as you stopped focusing on her to RIP! TEAR! CONSTRUCT! A new Bot!
Rolls Required: 45. Roll 1d100 plus 25 Robotics Modifier, minus 1d8 Mania. Total equals... 61! Moderate Pass!
The sprocket connected to the fuel valve, the fuel valve connected to the AI hub~ The AI connected to Heart Module which would fit whatever you fucking wanted into it.
"Ah-ha! Finished! And quite nice if I do say so myself!" You panted as you came down from your fugue, palms and face sweaty and temples lightly pulsing, but it was done! The newest tool for your arsenal of Evil!
It wasn't really all THAT much of an upgrade, but an upgrade it was still. Using a 'Plug-and Play' mindset with its design, you'd essentially created a Jackbot base that could plug in and wire with different armor modules, weapons varieties, and even utilities to perform different functions. It was an all around better design with the only overall flaw you could immediately see being the weakness of the links as compared to the standard welded or already cast Jackbot shells ready to go. A down-turn of defense for utility and on the fly customization.
Not bad for a crazy kid with a Witch in his ear.
END OF DAY 1
END OF CHAPTER
GAINS!
NEW BREAKTHROUGH!
-YOU HAVE A MANA BAR!- You are now aware that you have MAGIC. What you do with it from here or this knowledge purely depends on you.
NEW TRAIT!
-Idea Overflow- You look at the world and see all the ways you can make it BETTER. Unless you can distract yourself with something, or focus yourself to a single goal, take a minus 1d6 to Detecting or Locating objects or People in technologically covered areas. Does not apply in Natural areas. On the other hand, when you focus on a goal, or a singular project or design, GAIN a 1d10.
NEW BOT!
Plug and Play Jackbot: A Jackbot designed with the express purpose of changing out parts and armor to suit in the best possible way for any encounter. It's personality hasn't formed yet, but you can only wait and see based on who it interacts with.
END OF GAINS!
Well well ya'll stumbled into some interesting things. I'm sure most of you are probably wondering what happened with this chapter, eh? Well some things have changed now.
The biggest is that we hit Level 7, completely bypassing Level 6. These Levels aren't just for stats and the like. They're supposed to represent growth along a path with numerical values added to them. To us they're just that, but for Jack? They represent him going into a situation he should have logically been defeated or ruined physically in with flying colors and surpassing any available expectation for himself.
So we get a returning problem coming back. His brain coming up with so many ideas for SO MANY THINGS, something that hasn't happened since his first starts into super-science. Or, rather, it resurfaced after being in such a rut for so long that our body just kind of forgot what to do for a minute. It will be mitigated again, but it will take some time.
Also, for the Jackbot, I had a sliding scale of things we could do with the focus on 'adaptable port for Jackbots to attach to us. Anything below the passing mark was just us making a phone charger that worked anywhere with any kind of plug or solar charger. Straight on the line or up to 55 would make a little gauntlet for the Third-Arm Sash to put on that might or might not have worked. 60 to 80 was what we got. A way for Jackbots to connect for a super bot or to switch for every situation. You can probably guess what the highest rolls would have yielded.
That's all for now though. Till next time!