By the time graduation came around, Gast and Grimoire were in regular correspondence with Bugenhagen and had even been out to Cosmo Canyon to see the birth of his grandson. They were out of touch for a stretch of time, only to find out that the settlement had been attacked, something that had taken the lives of nearly all the flame tailed natives and many of the humans. There was likely nothing they could have done to make a difference, but they still both felt bad to hear of the tragedy.
Bugenhagen had spent some time away from the canyon himself, several hours north in the small town of Marek at the foot of the Nibel mountain range, where he'd spent some time working for ShinRa Manufacturing. Not in their weapons development, he'd been quick to clarify, but with materia. Mostly with marketing it for domestic uses, and small teaching seminars in rural communities. Which was interesting, but it wasn't really something that either of them kept in mind.
And then Rupert Shinra came to Junon.
He had an idea, one that had been tossed around before but never taken to any sort of fruition as far as Grimoire was aware: manufacturing materia. It wasn't something he'd ever really considered before, but he loved a puzzle. Scientifically, using nothing but cold hard facts, it looked like it should be doable.
"You'd need some sort of containment, something to hold the mako in that wouldn't corrode from the acidity," Grimoire decided. "The actual actions it would have to reproduce would depend on how you were able to simulate materia formation…"
"Materia forms from concentrated mako," Rupert said.
"Yes, but there's more to it than that, or you'd only find new materia in crevices, not freely sitting in the bottom of a pool or spring," Grimoire explained. And of course there was the whole matter of the Lifestream and the supposed connection between materia and the spirits of the Ancients, which he supposed was really more Gast's range than his own. "Something prompts materia to form when mako is gathered. If we knew what that was, we'd have it down."
"I understand that, but is there any reason why we can't try sheer concentration?" Rupert asked.
"I suppose it's a place to start, but…" Grimoire tapped his pen absently, thinking about it. His gut said sheer concentration wouldn't be enough. Otherwise the ocean floor would be full of materia from mako flows and more would bubble up from the depths onto beaches. But maybe… "It might be a good idea to… encourage it. Seed the ground, as it were."
"Seed the ground how?" Rupert asked.
Grimoire was silent, working over the budding idea. If they just used concentrated mako, even if that was enough to cause materia to form there was no guaranteeing what materia would form, which was next to useless. What they needed was a way to give nature a little nudge, a suggestion of what it ought to do when presented with the right circumstances. What better way to encourage materia growth than a piece of materia? "…materia shards."
"What about materia shards?" He asked.
"We make something that will concentrate mako, and drop a shard of materia in it. It might encourage what kind of formation we get," Grimoire explained.
Rupert eyed him a moment, skeptical. "Where are you getting this?"
"Off the top of my head," he admitted, grinning. "But it makes sense. A fraction of a materia may not be enough to use, but in theory it should still contain the essence of the whole. The memory, if you will. So if something built up around it, the inclination would be to match what was already there, I'd think."
"Isn't it dangerous to break materia?" Rupert asked.
"Only if it breaks while you're in the middle of a spell," Grimoire said, waving dismissively; gods knew he'd seen worse than broken materia. "Otherwise it's little more than any other unactivated magical artifact - full of potential, but without active power."
Rupert seemed skeptical, but it was obviously a better idea than he'd had and he wasn't going to dismiss it out of hand. "Can you draw that up, then?"
Grimoire hummed, nodding. "I think so. Let me run a few things by Gast, and I'll give you a call."
"You want to do what, now?" Gast asked, staring at him not unlike Rupert had, but with a little less hope and a little more incredulity.
"We're going to design a system to manufacture materia," Grimoire informed him, bringing over his notebooks and wheeling a chair up to the table. "At Rupert Shinra's commission."
"Since when are the Shinra's into materia manufacturing?" Gast asked.
"No one is 'into' materia manufacturing, Gast, it's not a thing - yet." He grinned, flipping open his notebook.
"Don't you have a thesis to be working on?" Gast asked.
Grimoire paused, looked at the pile of newspapers around Gast - one flipped to a sudoku puzzle - and then gave him a flat look. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting your procrastination?"
Gast cleared his throat, closing the paper. "Fine. Show me what you've got."
Rupert's engineer of choice - one Rhys Tuesti - was probably half Grimoire's age, had never been to college, and was still merrily running rings around him on the practical aspects of the materia project. Apparently Rupert had taken notes and given them to the teenager, because when Grimoire and Gast arrived in Rakheim they were presented with sketches and a couple quick models of potential materia-growth chambers.
"This is amazing," Grimoire said. "Utterly genius."
"I just worked off of what you told Rupert, sir," Rhys said.
"Grimoire, please," he requested immediately. "Sir makes me feel old."
"Yess- er, yes." Rhys chuckled, rubbing a hand over his hair. "So, you like it then?"
"I love it," Grimoire said. "It's a brilliant starting point. We just need to find materials that will contain the mako, then?"
"Well yeah, cause it's caustic, y'know? Some stuff'll hold it for a while, but long term you're gonna need some heavy duty materials. Maybe somethin' different than what I've got, even, 'cause we don't want it corrodin' an' spillin' mako everywhere," Rhys said.
"No, no we certainly wouldn't," Grimoire agreed thoughtfully. "You know what we need…"
"A list of available alloys? Preferably listed by someone who understands them and can get them?" Gast suggested.
"A blacksmith who knows all that," Grimoire corrected. "But you were close. Someone who can work with Rhys in putting this project together physically."
"While we still work theory, I assume," Gast checked, sighing in relief when Grimoire nodded. "Fair enough. Do you know any blacksmiths?"
"Well, no. But surely we can find one," Grimoire said.
"I used t' work for one, before I joined Rupert's team," Rhys said. "But I don't know that he's the kind you're talkin' about. He wasn't fancy, just worked traditional materials. He might know somebody, though."
"It's a good enough start for me, we'll ask."
As it turned out, the blacksmith in question really wasn't familiar with a lot of the 'cutting edge' materials being developed, but his son had spent some extensive time traveling and was a safer bet. He was currently working in Corel, so Rhys made his way north to talk with him and see if there was anything to be learned.
Jackson Goffe was working with one of the local mining families that had a son in the weapons business, and was happy to meet with them. He listened attentively to their needs, nodding absently, then told them to stay put. He came back shortly with a bracer with three linked slots, a gleaming silvery blue. "This is one of the best bracers we make. It's made entirely of a material you can get over on the eastern continent, they're calling it mythril. And I think it might just be the answer to your problems."
"I've heard of it," Rhys said, accepting the bangle to inspect it.
"It's extremely sensitive to materia, and can conduct it better than holding it by hand," he said. "It won't activate your materia without will, but it would help… amplify the effect of it. If your theory is right that you can just seed new materia, this is the best material to encourage that. Like an echo chamber. You have to work it at high heat, but it should hold up just fine."
"Great." He nodded. "We'll look into that, then. I don't suppose you have time to look into assistin' with machinin' any parts? Just t' get started."
"I could see about it, yeah. Let me get my partner in on it, though; he's worked with mythril more than I have on big pieces." Jackson nodded, turning back to the shop. "Hey Dominic!"
A mountain of a man ducked through the doorway, looking at them curiously. "Yes?"
"These guys need some help machining some mythril for a device they're making," he explained.
"We've got the funds to compensate you," Grimoire added.
"Yeah? Could give it a go, I guess. You've got designs?" Dominic prompted, holding out a hand for the notebook Rhys had. "Huh… never seen a thing like that. But sure, we could put one together."
"We only need one, I can put more together later," Rhys said. "I've just never worked mythril before. I'd appreciate some tips."
"Sure thing." He nodded. "Let me see what supplies we've got on hand. Might need to order some things before we can get started."
"Of course." Rhys accepted his notebook back. "I just appreciate the help."
"You bet. What's your name, huh?"
"Rhys Tuesti." He offered a hand to shake, nearly covered by the blacksmith's.
"Dominic Wallace. Pleased to meet you."
After a little work with the more experienced smiths, Rhys felt comfortable going back to Rakheim to work on machining and constructing the containment chambers the materia were going to be developed in. It took a couple weeks to get enough of them put together for testing, but eventually they were ready to be filled with mako and seeded with materia shards.
Then came the waiting. They opened the first after just a couple weeks and found faint crystallization had begun on the shard. The next one was opened after a month. The one after that after two months, and so on, until finally they hit their goal at eleven months. Compared to the years it could take natural materia to form, it was an enormous step forward.
The materia was too small to really get a proper spell out of, but it was undeniably forming an actual baby materia, of the same element as the shard that had been used to seed the chamber.
The next idea was to create some sort of agitator, to mimic the current of a mako spring and try to promote faster generation. It didn't take long for Rhys to make the needed adjustments, but when he did, something strange happened.
"It's charged."
Rupert glanced up, arching a brow as Rhys came in, one of the containers cradled in his hands. "What?"
"The mythril is holding an energy charge," Rhys said. "You get a little buzz when you touch it."
Rupert rose from his seat, going around to touch it. Sure enough, he felt the hairs on his arm rise, seeing a tiny shock go between his finger and the machine. "It's like static, but stronger… electric."
"Exactly. Something about the agitator we put in the mako is reacting with the mythril," Rhys said.
Rupert nodded slowly, arching a brow as the realization hit him. "Rhys… this is electric. You're generating energy."
"It is," he agreed, thumb rubbing along the side of the container. For a moment they were silent, trying to process the realization. "We could harness this."
"If it's still viable on a larger scale…" Rupert nodded slowly. "Draw up a design for a bigger version and a generator that can store the generated power. I want to do something with this."
"Yessir." He nodded, heading back to the other room.
Running high on the unexpected discovery, Rhys spent two days carefully determining as much as he could about how the energy was being generated before he began construction on a bigger processor. This one wasn't seeded with materia, but still filled with mako that was being churned just as rapidly by its agitator. He'd also equipped it with a large generator capable of siphoning off the power that was being produced by the mako processor. But while it was impressive to see the gauge go up, part of him wanted something more concrete.
By the time Rupert came down to see his progress, he'd rerouted half the workshop's lights and now had them being powered by the generator.
Needless to say, he was impressed.
He waited outside while Rupert explained it all to his father - ultimately, after all, the owner of the company had to be behind it. Materia development was one thing, that directly benefited them as a weapons manufacturing company. This? This was a whole other beast. But he knew, deep down, they needed to do something with this. It was too incredible a discovery to just ignore, or sell off to someone else.
When Mr. Shinra left, Rupert came out with a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. Rhys felt a smile spread over his face. "We get a greenlight?"
"Not quite," Rupert admitted. "But good enough. He's giving me the resources to start my own project. We can make this work. We will make this work. From now on, you'll be working with me instead of my father. This is our project now. We're going to make mako energy a household name."
"I'm right with you, boss." Rhys grinned. "Let's do this."
