Chương 55: Tinkertalk

Having an entire class of people judge your every step for an hour was both insightful and incredibly embarrassing. Like, of course sending a body double up ahead only worked in my favor if whoever spotted it immediately attacked it. But if my opponent had even two brain cells to rub together, they would hold their fire, and wait for a Samantha that looked a lot more convincing to show up not too far behind. Of course, now that I knew that they knew, that just meant I had to switch it up a bit.

Throw a wrench called 'uncertainty' into their perception of the world. God knows nothing is as paralyzing as crippling uncertainty and lack of confidence. Regardless, this seemed to be how most BatTac II sections would go. We'd get dumped into an unfamiliar scenario, stumble our way through, then figure out what went right and what went wrong afterwards, before going in again and repeating the process three to four times in a day. Just looking at the itinerary was stressful.

Four out of five days in the semester had at least one BatTac I or II course. Every second Saturday there was a larger segment, from morning until about five or six PM, with the goal to exhaust us mentally, physically, and emotionally in scenarios that were in part all too familiar. Find the mimic. Catch the child-snatching witch. Last stand. Kaiju attack.

"Kaiju attack is the best," Addy exclaimed at the end of an exhausting first week.

"I'll take your word for it," I mumbled tiredly. I felt as boneless as that wet towel I'd whipped Addy's butt with in the changing room — revenge for her victory in Cat & Mouse. The high-pitched sound of her voice was worth the indignant death glare that earned me. And in all fairness, she had a very nice butt. Hmmm, butts.

"You really shouldn't," Orianna said, draped over two floating orbs that were carrying her back to the dorm.

"Kaiju attack means fighting a simulated level 70 or 80 threat as a group. Usually we need extra lives to get it done. Sometimes, they even invite a famous Custodian to play the part of the monster. All in all, the Custodian-side win-rate is… depressing."

"The challenge makes it more fun," Addy countered.

"Only if you can actually do something about it," Orianna shot back.

"You have a big flaming sword. All I have is some cheap jewelry and metal orbs the size of coconuts — one now, since Rebecca ate the other one."

"And yet you don't seem that annoyed," I pointed out.

"Are you two… getting along nicely?"

"Yeah, are you?" Addy asked and— wait, what was her stake in all this?

"I mean, I suppose a living, intelligent mimic ball is more effective than a metal ball. And she has a fun sense of humor." Orianna sighed, looking at the ball of jell-o that was Rebecca rolling after us. She seemed to enjoy rolling quite a lot.

"I just wished we had a better way to communicate." Addy and I gave each other a look.

"You forgot it, didn't you?" Addy said. I spluttered defensively.

"I didn't forget it, I was… I was multitasking."

"Multiforgetting."

"It's — I thought she was going to say something."

"How?" Touché.

"Let's check the moment we're done here. The workshop is only closed on Sundays, no?" Orianna was just looking at us both weirdly. Right, context, context.

"We got an invitation from the tinkers in workshop 7-pi," I said.

"Wherever that is," Addy muttered.

"We might spend days looking for the right room." Orianna's eyebrows rose.

"And this is about…?

"Concerning the whole 'Becca can't talk' issue," I said.

"We found someone to fix it."

"They said they'd have a prototype done by the end of the week," Addy added. Orianna's eyebrows rose even higher. They didn't fall even as we entered the dorm and deposited our smelly gym clothes near the communal washing machine.

"I feel that this comes as somewhat of a surprise," I noted. Orianna laughed nervously.

"Tinkers aren't known for short-term item delivery. Or for taking new clients, swamped with Academy Projects and making money for magical materials as they are. You must've enticed a freshman, or spent quite a pile of soulcoins. I should know; all I needed was two balls made of slightly magical metal, and it took me three months to requisition them both."

"That's the thing," I called from my room, changing from normal day-to-day clothes into slightly chic party clothes. I checked on the fairy, just to be sure he hadn't woken up yet.

"We don't know any tinkers personally and we didn't spend any coins at all." The only answer I got was silence. Still in the middle of choosing whether to go for loopy or stud earrings, I poked my head out of my door, only to see Orianna frozen in place, teeth chattering wildly.

"I-it all makes sense n-now," she chattered through clattering teeth.

"T-there really is something off about you people. The system knows it. It's playing f-favorites, doing experiments. E-experiments end in failure more times than they don't; that's how you learn from them. Scientific method and all that, right?

"And that means… that means it's relying on me to be the immovable rod that holds everything together. Me! I-I can't do experiments, not like this. I know exactly what my life is going to look like. I'll finish my 3rd semester at level 30, then graduate at level 40. Accept the summons to work for a Canadian Custodian as a sidekick for five years, then strike out on my own. I'll get [Teleport Object] through a displacer essence at level 40, [Swap] at level 50, and a [Confer Toughness] at 75.

I'm a ball specialist, but by then I should be able to control more than just a handful of balls. I'll take safe publicity quests for fifty years, then spend my retirement traveling the world, teaching public safety. Maybe I'll take on a mentee or two. Yeah, a mentor in retirement, that sounds nice."

"Retirement?" Addy, who'd been listening in from her own open door, chuckled darkly.

"We're Custodians. We go into retirement when the threats to earth are gone, which is never, or we die. Have you looked at the real-death statistics? After level fifty, one in ten Custodians make it to the next bracket of ten. The rest die -die, go missing, or are retired due to injury."

"Addy, please."

"What? It's true." I chopped Addy on the head.

"That doesn't mean now is the right time and place." Orianna was hyperventilating. Pretty sure you're not supposed to be the glue holding us together. I'm afraid that's supposed to be me. Glad I have [Sticky] now, haha. I leaned over the couch and tossed a blanket over her head. There was a sigh and muffled thank you as she calmed down. Must be a vampire thing, to enjoy being enveloped in so much darkness, but then again, the blanket was very soft.

"Hey," I said in a gentle voice.

"No one's demanding you carry any of this weight alone. We're all Custodians in our own right. Addy and I are a bit more experienced on the danger-front; you seem to lean more towards the academic side, if my tanuki's studying habits are to be taken as a lower end minimum."

"Hey!"

"What? It's true. You are mine, by right of conquest." What a delectable blush. A new color. I have to collect them all. Like Pokemon! I gave her a cheeky grin before returning to Orianna.

"What I'm saying is… don't beat yourself up if you can't do everything right out the gate. And don't feel like you need to take on an extra load because of any of us. Talking with Becca and making sure she doesn't feel lonely is already more than enough. I'm sure you'd have hit it off if she could talk."

"M-maybe," came her voice, muffled through the covers.

"So, you don't know where to go, and need a guide? … I suppose I could help." She stayed under the covers for a contemplative moment. Then they burst up, carried away by her metal ball.

"Alright. I'm coming." She had a hand on her heart, as if trying to calm it.

"I said some pretty nasty things, now and… before. Sorry, just… sorry."

"Is that whole hyperventilation stuff a fear-caster thing?" Addy asked.

"I… no. A little bit. Panic happens for no reason sometimes, am I right? Haha, no? Alright, I'll just go die of embarrassment in that corner over there — ack!" I gave the harmless vampire Custodian a hug.

"Hey, it's fine. Embarrassing things happen, and panicking isn't one of them. If you ever need a shoulder to lean on, or a friend who'll listen, we're a rest-stop for weary souls such as you."

"Wow. Lethal and sweet. What a combo."

"You should see her out in the field," Addy muttered.

"Killed an Ur-Mimic before the system gave her a moniker."

"We both did. It was a team effort."

"She blew herself up with a tiny nuclear bomb." Addy leaned in to Orianna, whispering conspiratorially.

"An exceedingly, incredibly small one. They'll open the road again in half a year."

"You two really are a perfect fit for each other," Orianna said with an uncertain smirk.

"I don't know how I didn't see it."

"Extenuating circumstances, I'm certain."

"I'm still a bit afraid of Adelaide."

"Wooh!" Addy fistbumped the air.

"Not something to be happy about Addy," I said in a sing-song voice before shooing her away.

"Now git, finish your lipgloss stuff, and let's get Becca a voice." +++ The 7-pi tinker workshop was a secret and… forbidden place. If the tinkers, alchemists, and other people we encountered on the way there were to be believed. But what was a tinker exactly? A tinker was a person, usually magically enhanced, who crafted and created both wonders and horrors, consuming whatever material they could get their fingers on.

Normal human ingenuity already led to the lightbulb, the smart-ad, the nuclear bomb, and waterboarding. Enhance that even just a tiny bit, and suddenly people were creating deadly lasers that ran on happiness, or a rubber ball that always bounced 0. 1% higher with every consecutive bounce. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. And they did use any materials they could get their grubby hands on.

The corridor leading to the tinker workshops was poorly lit, not due to lack of funds, but because someone kept on stealing lightbulbs, wire, and even candle holders for personal projects. Or so the story went. I wasn't going to ruin my first impression by something as plain as a rumor. The fluorescent art on the wall was pretty nice though. Kinda reminded me of street art, if the artist was on drugs.

The left wall was plastered with it as we walked along the hallway, workshops only ever visible through doors made of metal, wood, or plexiglass on our right.

"OUT THE WAY!" came a yell from a door to our right. Someone ran into the hallway and slammed an overflowing beaker full of foam and angry little fish into the wall. The wall rippled, disappearing the mixture. Somewhere in the distance, there was a boom.

"Clem?" Clem, surprise on her face, waved her hands at me. They were marked green and blue.

"Mmph!" her mouth was closed shut beneath a medical mask and copious duct tape. The lab coat suited her. Behind her a feathered bird-person and a guy dressed like a six-foot gnome, both in a lab, were fussing over a frankly ridiculously large chemistry setup.

"Seventeen Gigaschmogules," the birdman crowed through his welder mask.

"17% improvement over the last one." Said the man-gnome.

"Sadly, I believe nitroglycerin isn't the answer. Let's start from variation #4, but this time with more Dogwatah." Akira was there too, cycling on one of those exercise bicycles you'd find in a gym. This one was hooked up to some arcane device that looked like a mixture of a bellows and a Rube-Goldberg-Machine á la mouse trap. Clem looked like she wanted to join them and discuss their results. She seemed to have found a place where she could put her skills to work.

"I, uh, sounds like you're doing important work in there. Won't keep you from it for long. Could you maybe tell me where I can find workshop 7-Pi? We have an invitation." A gasp rustled through the assembled crowd.

"The chosen ones," muttered the birdman.

"The legends are true," the man-gnome whispered reverentially. … what? The birdman rose to his full height, which was taller than any human had any right to be, and pointed out the door with his chicken-y foot.

"Take a triple left, one right, four lefts, one right again at the point of greatest hazard, oh honored one. The door you come across will be made of finest plastics and stolen copper wire none dare remove. Speak the entrance phrase, and thou shalt be granted entry but once."

"Uh-huh." And I thought I was supposed to be the theatre girl.

"And what, pray tell, is this phrase?"

"The fuck is an OSHA?" The entire room answered, though Clem's answer sounded more like "Mph Mppk M' Mn Mnpph?" Addy closed the door, gagging, at which point I realized that the entire room smelled of brimstone.

"I think they were taking the piss out of us," I said.

"What does this have to do with pissing?" Addy asked. Orianna cradled her face in her hands.

"Can we please just follow their directions?" We continued down the hallway. Every room we passed was filled with stranger and stranger oddities. The giant plants were back. I couldn't tell whether it was a great success or a failure that they weren't immediately turning into mulch. We reached the end of the hallway, where a trash-chute was haphazardly installed in a wall plastered with warning signs. Hazardous materials, radiation, toxins, dangerous animals, the list went on.

"The place of greatest warning."

"Warning, extradimensional void only to be used for non-recyclable volatiles?" I read.

"Well, I suppose we aren't going into the trash chute. Time for the lefty-righty dance."

"My favorite," Orianna grouched. Now lessee, left, left, left, right,... why does it feel like the room is tilting? The room tilted and the trash chute expanded until it encompassed my entire field of view. We didn't fall into it so much as we were engulfed by it. Darkness pressed in from all around Addy, Orianna, Becca, and I. My heart beat faster and faster. In the darkness, there was a door ahead. A normal, wooden door. I gave it a knock.

A loudspeaker popped out of the void, attached to seemingly nothing on a spring.

"INVITATION OR RESIDENCE?"

"Invitation?"

"CONFIRMED. ENTER CUSTODIAN SAM, CUSTODIAN REBECCA, AND SIDE HOES."

"Hey!" Addy and Orianna yelled at the same time. I turned the doorknob, and walked into a remarkably normal-looking lab. There were no giant plants nor experiments going on. The chalkboard wasn't on fire, and except for a few small notations was completely blank. There was only one person here. A grimy, oil-covered and entirely androgynous person, sleeping on one of the lab countertops without even a blanket to warm them.

"Hello?" I asked as everyone filed in after me. The door closed with a quiet mechanical snap. The figure groaned, but didn't move.

"We're here for the device for slime-Becca. The, er, Mimic Queen?" Still no response. They looked like a normal person, a bit androgynous, with small cat-like ears poking out of a scruff of hair. I walked over and poked them. [User has declined release of any private data, up to and including designation and level.] It's the same thing the system did for me… I suppose that implies they're a Custodian with a similarly difficult story to explain.

"Mffngh… on the table…," they mumbled, before snoaring loudly.

"One of — hngh… they work… maybe…"

"They're aware of people even in their sleep," Orianna said reverentially.

"Must be a lot of Mind," Addy commented.

"Sense too. No idea why you'd need Sense in your build when you've got tools a million times more precise and specialized."

"... fuck you too…" the tinker mumbled. I pulled Addy away before she could commit a crime.

"I'm sure she's more amiable when awake. Now, I see three things on that table over there, so let's have a look?" The three objects each differed wildly. One looked like a miniature typewriter. The second one was a stone ball with barely visible engraving on its surface. And I wasn't sure if the last one was truly there, or if it was just a reflection off of one of the nearby windows. That's real sunlight. I heard the outer rooms in the main academy building are extra prestigious.

Must be one hell of a tinker if they can whip up three solutions to a problem in a week or two. Becca inspected the second one, which briefly looked like a steel apple with a big 'A' embossed on it. She lifted it in one pseudopod, shifting it across her outer membrane. Was she afraid that if she engulfed it, she would dissolve it or — aaand she just ate it. The apple disappeared with a fizzle, a few bubbles bubbling out of Becca's body with an audible plop. Nothing seemed to happen.

"#2… dud…" the tinker mumbled in their sleep.

"Adjust the… more dogwatah… Seventeen-point-two…"

"Well, two more tries left," I said, feeling the nervousness scratch at my throat. If none of them worked, then there was little chance of a quick solution. Maybe it meant there wouldn't be a solution at all. Then Becca wouldn't even have the reassurance that someone was working on it. Come on, please. I know she's not a saint, but at least give her something. She took the half-visible one next. I could only tell that she was even touching something by the way her body deformed as she consumed it.

There was a flash and a zap. Becca went completely still, before a ripple on the top of her body spread through the rest.

"A." she said.

"A. AAAH. EEE? III! SO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO—""She can talk," I said.

"She can SING!"

"Quite loud, in fact," Addy said, covering her ears.

"Sounds like someone is synthesizing sound and wiring it through a trashcan."

"I can feel her voice through the soles of my feet," Orianna commented.

"She's saying her first word." I could barely contain my excitement.

"What is it, Becca? What do you need to tell us?"

"HARD," she said.

"TALK. HARD."

"So longer sentences are still a no-go?"

"YEEES!" Becca said while also wobbling 'yes' at the same time.

"PURRRACTICE. REQUIRED." I looked to Orianna.

"Any idea what that thing she ate even was?"

"Please, I didn't even know this room existed until five minutes ago. Whoever The Academy is rooming here must be pretty important." Her gaze rested on the tinkerer, squinting at the light coming through the blinds. The tinkerer made no moves to, well, move. Curious, I approached them, eyes widening as I saw why they were lying on one side. The left side of their body was the color of ivory.

Bleached-white six-sided cylinders grew in haphazard, tumor-like protrusions, closing over one eye and trailing into their mouth. Their skin was visibly irritated wherever inorganic material met organics. The rest of their body seemed washed of any color and harsh features, to the point that it was hard to look at their face and say with certainty that they had once been human. Their face was clenched in a frown as I rolled them over.

Behind me, Addy gave a sharp intake of air, while Orianna hid behind her notebook.

"Sam. Get away. That person is bone-turned."

"Some sort of disease?"

"An old fae curse. One of the worst kind, from the phony war. There's no known cure, only remedies and procedures to slow the spread. Expensive procedures. A high level Custodian working in the field might be able to afford it… might. She must be ancient, must be one of the first—""Is it contagious?"

"No, but touching them is considered—" Addy gave an audible squeak as I grabbed the tinker and lifted them — her? — them on six arms and carried them over to an all too worn couch. The frown had loosened by the time I'd put them down, and there was less tension in their face.

"... a bad omen."

"Well, good to know." I tucked a pillow under their head — definitely wearing a wig — before turning to the others.

"There. Any objections?" Addy wanted to raise some. Orianna too, though she seemed more aware of how I'd take them. Which was poorly.

"Why is there so much red tape around being kind?" I asked.

"That's not a fair question," Addy said.

"Then let me reformulate: Why every time that I try to do something nice, make a friend, or even just learn more about any given person does it feel like I'm waltzing through invisible glass walls?

'Take day courses as a wereperson, night courses as a vampire', 'don't make friends with the tanuki', 'get away from the person who literally spent her time bringing your friend's voice back'." With growths like these, every second awake had to be agony for them, assuming they weren't constantly hopped-up on morphine-level opiates. And yet, they still went out of their way to help us.

"Just looking out for you…" Addy mumbled.

"I appreciate that. But that can mean a pat on the back instead of a sword in someone else's heart. Don't fall for preconceptions." She grimaced, before walking up to the tinkerer and bowing her head.

"Apologies. And thank you. You provided a good service." Her stare afterwards was directed straight at Orianna. A challenge.

'I can do this much, what about you?'

"I-I suppose… I should be grateful, more than I am. And that I should show it. Thank you." The tinkerer didn't respond. But the strain had left their face completely, leaving the face of someone who was less aware of the world around them, someone drifting off into a deeper, more restful sleep. This was as good a time as any to leave. Becca swallowed the third item, the miniature typewriter, but it didn't seem to do much. Still, one out of three items worked, and that was good enough.

We left through the same door we'd come in through. It opened into an internal plaza, with the odd student or staff walking from one place to another, closing behind us. When out of curiosity, Becca opened it up again, it revealed a broom closet. No sign of any secret tinker shop.

"I didn't mean to raise my voice there," I said somewhat sullenly.

"But I am serious about this. I think the system sent me here to learn as much as to make friends, and critically, I want to do both. I don't want to keep on stumbling in the dark, stepping on the toes of skeletons falling out of closets left and right."

"Maybe you should get a flashlight then," Addy mused and I couldn't help but laugh.

"If only it were so easy," I sighed before slapping myself in the face.

"Alright. Becca has her voice back—""VOICE."

"— exactly, which means now we can celebrate! With a party." Addy groaned. Orianna didn't look too excited either. Becca was busy enunciating the word 'party' in seven different ways, each creating uniquely patterned ripples across her body.

"Oh come on, I can't be the only one who likes parties. Right?" Orianna fidgeted with the hem of her shirt.

"I, er, have always focused on my studies."

"The last party we went to together was the death of me," Addy said.

"Literally."

"I, uh…" Crap, was I going to have to revise this whole party-infiltration plan into a one-person deal? That was never going to work. I needed an inside-guy, er, girl. Any good heist always had an inside girl.

"That doesn't mean I'm not going to follow your plan, dorkarella," Addy said, giving one of my left hands a pat.

"Wants and needs, remember?"

"Yeah." Which only left Orianna. For a moment, I thought she was going to hide behind her notebook again. And while that was her primary reflex, it only took a second for her to lower it, brush a lock of hair out of her face, and clear her throat.

"Oh fine. I suppose you two did clean house for team cheese."

"Yesss!" Plan infiltrate-the-parties-and-figure-out-why-vamps-and-werepeople-hate-each-other was a go! Definitely need to workshop that name. Maybe I just need to abbreviate it.

"Plan: ITPaFowVaWhEO …" Addy snorted.

"What sort of demon are you trying to summon?"

"Hopefully not the land-owning kind," Orianna said dryly.

"They'll demand a contract over a study group."

"Talking from experience?" I asked. She nodded glumly.

"They're always the top scorers in law classes." Orianna was interested in law classes, noted.

"Anyways, we're already dressed for the occasion, so let's get to those parties. Team cheese, move out!