Kitchen Table Planning

John trudged into the kitchen feeling slightly awkward. Beth sat in what had been his seat, a glass of water in hand.

“Yo,” she said, a small smile on her lips. “Looks like you’ve had a good morning so far.”

Heat burned John’s face and ears and he cleared his throat before saying, “Yeah, you could say that.”

“You’re the only guy I know who’d be evasive after fucking three girls at the same time,” Beth remarked with a laugh. “But I guess that makes you the better guy.”

“Well, um, we didn’t actually,” John began before decorum silenced his tongue. Beth still caught what he was going to say and adopted a slightly apologetic look.

“Guess I had some bad timing,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“Just a bit,” Aeolia chimed in as she landed on John’s shoulder. “But we were kind of at an intermission when you barged in.”

“Hey, I texted you guys before,” Beth said defensively, pointing to John’s still charging phone.

“Yeah, that’s why I can’t be too mad at you.” Aoelia smirked as she glided down to an open seat, shifting to her full height.

“We did let our amorous desires override our normal sensibilities,” a fully dressed Senka said as she walked in. “Well, I believe it would be more accurate to say Vivian let her desires overrule our sensibilities as she kicked things off by kissing me.”

“You can’t blame this all on me!” Vivian called out from her office.

“True, it does take two to tango. Or four in our case,” Senka stated. “But you can’t deny you started things.”

“By that logic, the ultimate inciting incident was you asking to join in,” Vivian countered as she entered the room, a few pieces of paper gently pinched between her fingers.

Senka considered the redhead’s point, head tilting to one side in thought. The spirit nodded to Vivian, giving her the point in their little argument.

“Well, with that settled,” Vivian said, approaching the table, “how about we get to some actual work.”

“That the beacon thing?” John asked, moving the various pieces of loot he had on the table either into his Inventory or onto the nearest counter.

“Yes, it is,” Vivian replied proudly as she placed the larger sheet down. “Everything checked out. Well, almost everything. There is one final thing I was waiting on before, well, everything happened. And actually, we’re just in time for the transmitter to run out of power.”

“And that’ll do what exactly?” Beth asked, looking at the crisscrossing lines and symbols of the array.

“It should produce a signal that indicates loss of power instead of getting cut off by a hostile Barrier or other interference,” Vivian replied, holding up the transmitter. “More of a just in case sort of thing, but good to know works. It should project an outlined arrow pointing to where the dead transmitter was and give me a light mental tug to let me know something happened.”

A few seconds later, the array on the table projected a wire frame arrow pointing to Vivian. The redhead bent down over the array to inspect it, a satisfied smile on her face.

“Everything’s up to par,” she said happily. “Now all we need to do is set these in something more permanent than paper. Think we can use some of the raw metal we have to do that? Make something like a flat disk or plate?”

Her question was directed at John and he said, “Don’t see why Craftsmanship couldn’t make something like that, basic shapes were something I could always do with it. Still working on something, so my mana’s not as full as it could be. Got about a half hour left until it's done.”

“You can make two things at once?” Beth asked.

John shrugged. “Yeah, I made a useless piece of junk out of a dead pen.”

“I wouldn’t say it was completely useless,” Aeolia remarked with a grin. “You got one of those vine hounds off my back with it.”

John smiled. “Yeah, guess it did. If I still had it, I’d rename it ‘Mostly Useless Bauble’. Getting back on track, want to try with the smaller one first in case it blows up and we lose the array?”

“As if I didn’t write two of these to start with,” Vivian informed him, handing him the array paper. John took the page then focused on his mana bar, running the math on his mana expenditure.

“The thing I’m working on is about half done,” he said. “I’ve got about 72 mana to work with so I think we can just go with the instant option. Can’t see it being more than the 48 I’m spending right now.”

“What are you working on, anyway?” Beth inquired.

“Well, I didn’t want to do anything to the whip without your input, so I only explored some of the options,” John explained. “So after looking at what I had at hand, I decided to see if I could work the Woad arm Aeolia and I got on Monday into a more workable healing tool. Something anyone could use instead of the healing being an Evocation. So I bought a book on staff crafting and used one of the sap balls and wood pieces to make what Craftsmanship is calling a ‘Staff of Invigoration’. Might not be exactly what I wanted, but at the very least it’ll be skill experience.”

“It would be good to have something like that,” Vivian said thoughtfully. “We’ve been lucky so far to not need any major healing, but…”

“Let’s not entice fate to change its plans,” Senka coolly remarked. “But being prepared is good. Hopefully it will be an item of significant quality.”

John nodded and extracted three of the iron units salvaged from the Composite Gears and placed them on the table atop of the array, then adopted a thoughtful expression.

“Okay, let’s see if three units of material will be enough,” John said, casting Craftsmanship on the assembled items, his mind focused on the shape of a disk.

Select the item you wish to create:
Beacon Disk (Three Units of Iron, Beacon Array)

“Looks good so far,” Vivian supplied.

John grinned at her as he tapped the display. “Now we just need to see the price.”

Select Crafting Method:
Instant Craft: Create selected item instantly for 36 mana.

Slow Craft: Create selected item over time. Spend 1 mana every 2.5 minutes for 3 hours. Total Cost 36 mana.

“Well, at least it won’t drain me,” John remarked, selecting the first option. The materials vanished and were replaced with a plain, drink coaster like disk of dull iron, Vivian’s array etched onto the surface.

“Looks like everything worked,” Beth said, leaning over to examine the disk.

“Yes, it seems that everything translated over properly,” Vivian added as she dipped her head down next to Beth’s to inspect the device, her face nearly brushing against Beth’s.

The shorter girl’s skin took on a faint pink hue and she cast a side glance to Vivian before lightly touching the disk and asking, “So, how does this work anyway?”

“It’s pretty simple actually,” Vivian explained, extending a finger to point at the various components of her work. “The central portion is the mana reserve and control center, and the circuit around it directs the signal back towards the receiver array. I wasn’t able to work out how to make it automatically synchronize to it, so we have to power up each transmitter right next to the receiver but other than that, and only having a charge time of around ten hours, everything worked out great.”

“It certainly looks like a fine piece of work,” Senka chimed in, lightly placing a hand on Vivian’s shoulder. “Not that I know a lot about such things, but I can see how much effort you put into it.”

Vivian blushed at the praise and contact and muttered, “It’s not all that impressive. There’s a lot more I can do to make this system better. Something to give it a longer charge time and a better sequence regarding the range to start with. Maybe some kind of communication function? Voice might be hard but Morse code should be doable.”

“We’ll definitely need more raw materials to work with,” John said, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “We need three pieces of metal to make each transmitter, plus it’s probably going to take at least four to make the receiver. I think we’re going to need to do some farming.”

“What about all that raw ore we got from the golems?” Aeolia brought up.

“It might take more mana to convert them into usable metal than just breaking down more gears,” John replied, drawing from his experience of recycling a pen. “Plus, we can get in some training.”

“Wouldn’t mind giving a crack at using Thornbite before we look at upgrading it,” Beth said, unable to keep a smile off her face from her little pun.

“It would be interesting to see how a plant based weapon will deal with armored enemies,” Senka remarked. “I know your sword worked well against them, but it still has the advantage of weight.”

“I don’t mind a challenge.” Beth grinned at the spirit. “So, what exactly can we fight that’ll drop the stuff we need?”

“Robot spiders and soldiers,” Aeolia answered. “Are we going to wait until your crafting project is done before we head out?”

“It would make sense to wait,” Vivian proposed. “It lets John recover most of his mana, gives us a new tool that could be useful and gives me the time to write up the arrays for the rest of the beacons. Plus, we should call Teri and see if she can or wants to join.”

“Well, we’ve got about two hours to kill,” Aeolia said, getting up from her seat and stretching her arms above her head, causing her breasts to strain against her shirt. “Think I’m going to do a little more practicing.”

She cast a glance at John and grinned.

“How about you join me? You’ve been going on your game instinct but maybe I can give you some pointers on how to handle your sword,” Aeolia offered.

“I think he already has some experience in that department,” Senka said, a hand failing at hiding the amused smile on her face.

Aeolia’s brow twitched slightly and her lips curled into a harsh grin as she met the spirit’s gaze.

“I know,” was her simple retort. Senka feigned a look of hurt and placed a hand over her breast.

“You wound me,” she moaned, a smile creeping onto her face. “How ever will I recover from such a blow?”

Aeolia let out a small snort of amusement. “We can talk about that later. We did leave things off on a cliffhanger.”

She cast a slide glance at Beth who threw her hands up in front of her.

“Hey, I thought you guys were under attack,” she defended herself.

“Which is why you’re still off the shit list.” Aeolia grinned at her. “Hell, I’ll even be nice. You had the right idea and went about it in an ok way: sneaking in and grabbing a weapon. Might be hope for you yet.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Beth flatly responded.

“Getting back on track,” John cut in, “I think I’ll take you up on that offer. Don’t want to spend any more mana, so working on something physical sounds good.”

“Any other takers?” Aeolia asked, looking at Senka and Beth.

“I will pass on further physical training,” Senka replied. “I think I will spend the downtime relaxing and doing a bit of research.”

“Research?” Vivian repeated. “On what?”

Senka smiled softly and shrugged her shoulders. “On anything that catches my fancy. My knowledge of things is limited and secondhand. I wish to know more.”

John felt a small pang of guilt and said, “Sorry I’m not more worldly.”

“It’s not like you planned to serve as the soil from which I sprang from,” Senka countered with a reassuring smile. “And you haven’t left me bereft of knowledge. I just wish to find things I don’t know and expand my horizons.”

Vivian slid over to the spirit and pulled her into a sideways hug.

“Well, if there’s anything you want to pick my brain about, I’m all ears,” the redhead said, a light flush on her face.

“Same here,” Aeolia echoed. “If you want to know about fighting.”

“I believe I’ve already taken you up on that offer,” Senka replied with a grin. “It was fun. We’ll have to do it again.”

“Um,” Beth uttered, scratching the back of her head awkwardly, “not sure if you’ll be up for some parkour, but if you want, I can show you some stuff.”

Senka bowed her head to the unsure acrobat. “If I am in need of help in that area, you will be the first to know.”

The spirit flashed one more serene smile to everyone, quickly kissed Vivian on the cheek and sauntered out of the room, giving her hips some extra sway.

“Well,” Aeolia loudly said, “we aren’t getting anything done just sitting around.”

“Technically, I’m still crafting the staff,” John cheekily remarked.

“And now I’m not going to go easy on you,” Aeolia retorted with a flat expression on her face. She shifted size and flew onto John’s shoulder. “Let’s get going.”

‘Yeah, I think I might regret making that comment,’ John thought as he got up. ‘Well, no pain no gain, I suppose.’