by Simon Archer
I wondered if I would have had sub-pack leaders in my pack, but that seemed like a recipe for someone to come in and dissolve my estate the same way I did. They’d all broker with me. Dealing with the nobles in the city was going to be a bitch once I dealt with the Baron, in that case. They all had packs and getting them to give them up may have been too directly against Wolf culture to not end in bloodshed.
I figured, after visiting both the worst and the best my Wolves had to offer, all of that walking and talking was enough time for Tinker to get at least some of the papers translated for me.
I found her and Hopper in the office, poring over papers as she handed them to her assistant, who was more paper than bunny at this point, while she simultaneously worked on a set of magical charms with tools from my bag. On her face, I definitely saw the bits and pieces of my binoculars had become a set of goggles, and many of my toolkits had been reshaped into strange mechanical wrenches and screwdrivers, chisels and crafting tools, completely reworking many of the things I had brought along for our early survival. Both she and Hopper were also in completely different outfits: Tinker in a long leather coat and suspenders over a plaid shirt like she was a mix between a scientist and a mechanic, and Hopper in a double-breasted old-timey medical outfit, with a skirt that went just far enough that it technically was at her thighs. Yes, that was all very fun to see.
I was willfully ignoring the charred black marks over the desk and shelves as they noticed my approach.
“Sir!” Tinker’s hands twitched, and the charms flew into the air. She caught them in her big, thick, leather gloves before they fell to the ground, slapping them down on the table before running around the desk to come to me. “There are so many things I’ve got to show you!”
“I’m excited, let’s see.” I walked over to see what she had made.
“First, the guns!” She pulled out my three babies, my pride and joy. I was a little worried she had messed with the delicate yet sturdy balance of the designs, but she seemed very capable of coming up with what she needed.
“This one, your smallest musket, I’ve added some special features.” She took it out to show me. “Since you’re using an infinite charm on this bullet-carrier in the handle, I shortened it and used the rest of the space to install a portable explosive you can throw and detonate. I also miniaturized some of the mechanisms inside the slider part so I could fit in some stabilizing elements and improve accuracy.”
“You shrunk the magazine, put a grenade in there instead, and you shrunk the action to reduce the recoil?” I clarified. It seemed she didn’t have certain technical vocabulary figured out in that big brain of hers. “How did you know how to make this? Didn’t Timberpine just teach you how to make charms?”
“There were some mechanical designs with the Hunter’s papers, so I just adapted what they knew as I took apart your guns to discover what makes them do their thing.” She put the pistol away to present the shotgun. “With this one, I found a way to make the pumping handle thing go by itself without making it heavy or losing any shooting capability, so you can fire it in one hand.”
“You automated the pump action without sacrificing weight or firepower.” I summarized with better terminology. “But how did you learn all of this so fast?”
“I just looked at it, I guess, and then I got it. It’s easy once you see all the things it can do.” She got out the rifle. “This one I added a lightweight blade at the end that shouldn’t make you shoot any worse, and I made a stand for it that folds in and out with these pressure things I used some charms on to keep them working both ways. You can stand up yourself and turn it on or off, and the little stand can make some feet for it instantly, and can go away instantly, too! It also can do it while you’re lying down if you want.
“A bayonet and a magic bipod stand I can use while standing myself?” More simplifying for my own sake. “So you can just look at something and learn everything about the science-y stuff, and yet you don’t know any of the technical words?”
“Not unless somebody wrote them down.” Tinker put away the rifle to take out the charms. “All of these papers and things didn’t have any in them from what I read, but I can always reread them in my head to double-check.”
“Hold on. You perfectly memorize everything you read?” I felt like a damn computer, just translating everything she was saying into something I could understand. “You read something, and then it’s just there forever.”
“Yeah, I’ve already memorized everything Hopper’s holding.” Tinker laid the charms out onto the desk as she brushed off some more papers.
Hopper’s papers all fell to the ground as her arms also fell limp in protest.
“What!” She shouted at Tinker. “Why did you have me hold all of these papers for you, then?”
“Oh, I just needed them out of my way.” She made some finishing touches on the charms as she presented them. “You could have just tossed them to the side.”
“My arms hurt, Tinker,” Hopper chastised Tinker for her absentminded behavior. “I was thinking I was helping. I don’t know all of this magic stuff like you do, but I wanted to be doing something useful right now.”
“You do useful stuff all the time!” Tinker looked up from her work. “Every time you showed up in Lord Hank’s story, you were fighting like five Wolves at the same time!”
“Yeah, but that’s in a fight.” Hopper’s hands closed as she put them up to her lips. “Now that nobody’s fighting, I don’t have anything to kick.”
“Hopper, you know you can take a break, right?” I told her. “You can just sit back, take five minutes, and relax until we’re ready to head over to the keep. You deserve it.”
“Everyone else is helping!” Hopper whined a little. “I don’t wanna be the only one being lazy just because Bugs is already cleaning the house, and nothing needs kicking. I want to still be doing something for everyone.”
“I’m sure there’s some job that needs people around here,” I said, thinking about what she could do to feel better. “Maybe Bugs can direct you to someone who needs--”
“You can try out the charm on this belt I made for you.” Tinker held up the belt in question, which had a glowing rune on the buckle.
“I like it, Tinker.” Hopper took the belt and put it on, still sounding sad. “I really do. It’s one of those belts that goes with everything, but I don’t think--”
“It’s a magic belt!” Tinker interrupted her. “I said, ‘try out,’ not ‘try on.’ I need you to test it for me, see if it works.”
“Oh. What does it do?” Hopper asked the lingering question.
“Well, if I did it right, it should be perfect for you.” The inventor looked over the charm on the buckle. “I tried to make it do the opposite of what the generators do since I saw how those work while dangling above all the machines and stuff. It’ll make a big area around you that should weaken the effect of the generator stopping the portals from opening up. I don’t know how big the area is, and I don’t think you’ll be able to make a portal to Lord Hank’s world, but you should be able to make portals around here. I need you to learn more about what it does.”
Hopper put her hand out, and a portal appeared just by the front door of the office. Looking at it, it was just a strange purplish static-y mist, not leading anywhere. Hopper then put her other arm out, making a portal right next to the first, mirroring each other. In between them, the portal’s electric, purple haze disappeared, showing a strange funhouse version of the office, with infinite versions of it.
Hopper stepped in between the portals as Tinker, and I watched her discover her powers for the first time. The backside of the portal was still static-y and purple, which got me thinking that these only worked one way. As she stepped inside, the funhouse reflections showed versions of herself, but they were all facing the same direction as her. Reaching through the portal, she went to poke the shoulder of one of the portals, and the other portal’s duplicate of Hopper did the same to her, tapping her on the shoul
der in the exact same way that she tapped the shoulder of the duplicate she was focusing on. She gave her own shoulder a few scratches using the portal, smiling to herself like a child who just found a BB gun. A devilish giggle came out of her mouth as she looked through both portals.
“Please be careful.” I couldn’t help but worry, what with the defying of the perfectly good laws of nature we all abided by being a recipe for disaster, I just wanted everyone to not be losing limbs or something.
She released both the portals, looking out through the hallway for her next target. With a hand out, she opened another portal about three-fourths of the way through and one right beside her. Looking through the portal in the office, it was as if we had a doorway right through to the hallway. Looking through, I could see the office way at the end of the hallway, facing the opposite direction, and the three of us inside the office looking through the portal. Hopper stepped through the portal, into the hallway, and I turned my head to see out the office door through the same hallway to see Hopper standing thirty or so feet away. But she was also right through the portal in the office, not two feet from me.
Ugh, my head hurt.
The portal in my office closed, but the portal next to Hopper in the hallway didn’t. The picture of the office in it disappeared, leaving the static-y purple haze once again. She pointed her hand to the side, making another portal that created a picture of more hallway in the first one, stepped through, and closed it behind her. Then, the next portal opened up to a new location nearby in the mansion, and she jumped through with a victory cry, disappearing.
While I was still trying to keep the endless maze of understanding quantum physics out of my head, Hopper cartwheeled past the office door outside, having made a path of portals leading right back here. Moving out through the door frame to see where she went, I saw nothing in her place but the hallway, at least until another portal showed up, and she jumped through it, making yet another portal as she disappeared yet again.
“Please. Careful,” I said to the air, hoping she heard me somewhere with her super hearing.
“I will!” Cartwheeling by the office door again, I heard Hopper affirm that she heard me before disappearing yet again into nothingness.
27
“So, you wanna see the charms I made now?” Tinker displayed the charms with a showy wave of her hand while we were alone in the office.
“Yeah, let’s see how else we can laugh in the face of nature.” I walked over to see what else she had to show.
“I left the full-cup charm on your pistol.” She previewed her charm collection. “But everything else I took off for you, plus the one on the powder horn and the ones I just made so you can put them where you like.”
“What are the new ones?” I picked one of them up.
“That one you’re holding is an ice charm,” Tinker explained. “Makes things cold and icy.”
“With the lightning and fire, I think that’s all of the painful elements collected,” I commented, picking up the next charm. “And then this one?”
“Oh, that’s for silence,” she said, taking it from me and placing it on a hammer she made. “Watch!”
As she slammed it against the desk, making a sizeable round dent in the wood. However, you would have only known that from watching, as it had made absolutely no sound. It was like I was watching the hammer on ‘mute.’ She then took a screwdriver-like tool, scratching it against the side of the hammerhead with no scratching noises. With her demonstration done, she put her finger against the charm, and it glowed at the edges touching the metal until it popped off on its own right onto her hand as she set it down.
“That’s really something.” I picked up the charm again. “How big of a thing can it silence? Could I make a silent boat or craft for stealth tactics? Or maybe silence an elephant? Do charms stick to living things? Could I make something like a suit of armor silent?”
“They don’t stick to alive things.” She informed me, to my slight disappointment. “You can put a rock in a box, put the charm on the outside or the inside of the lid, and you wouldn’t hear it rattle around inside. However, if you were trapped in the box, you would hear yourself and the stuff in it, but not anything outside of it.”
“How big can the box be?”
“About three horse-drawn carts…” She made measurements of an imaginary thing in her hands. “… cubed.”
“That’s pretty big, I think.” I tried to picture the strange measurement she decided to pick, then just remaining satisfied that it was bigger than I’d probably need. “Do you have a cup around? Let’s try to duplicate some of these a couple of times, or really an infinite number of times for the Wolves’ weapons, too.”
“The full-cup doesn't work on any charms, sir.” She warned. “Trust me. I tried that already. I was going to pour out a bunch of full cups and make millions of charms of all the types. It only makes duds appear. Thankfully, it doesn’t eat the first one in the process. Now we have a bunch of fake ones.”
“I can find a use for the fake ones.” I put a hand to her cheek. “Could you make more yourself, though? It looks like you were only able to make one of each of the new ones.”
“Yeah, it takes a while to make the small materials for it.” She answered. “And there’s special little formulas and measurements to make, so you can’t just make another one of the one you have unless you know the schematic for it. Then you have to make it balanced just right, or it doesn’t work, and you have to enchant it yourself every time, which can get exhausting, and it also takes forever, so you can’t get a whole bunch of them done as fast as you want, and I’m sorry.”
“No worries, I’m just talking logistics.” I picked up the next one. “How about this bad boy? Some kind of crazy laser or something?”
“No,” she murmured, not laughing at my joke. “It was supposed to be a ‘Feather’ charm, but it’s busted. It’s still got a charm effect, but it doesn’t work right.”
“Busted?” I looked at it. “You can’t fix it, then? Is it going to break on me?”
“No, it’s busted.” She took it from my hand. “It doesn’t work how it’s supposed to. It was the last one I made before I started reading more from this office, and I think I stretched myself out too far. I wanted to make as many charms for you as I could, but I made a busted one instead.”
“What’s so busted about it?” I asked, looking at it. “Does it make things heavier instead?”
“No, it just doesn’t turn off when it’s supposed to,” she said. “Well, I mean, it does, but only for a second, then it turns right back on again a second later.”
“You can turn charms off?” I asked her, kicking myself for not finding Tinker sooner. She was a treasure trove of information and gadgets that would have made life so much easier.
“Yeah, anyone can,” she said, grabbing the fire charm on the desk. “You just do this.” She rubbed her finger on it from top to bottom, and it stopped glowing. Then she went back from bottom to top, and it glowed again as before. “See? Easy.”
“That would have been handy to know,” I said as I tried it myself with the lightning charm, finding it just as easy as she said. “Can they all do that?”
“That’s the usual way they’re built to.” She put the fire charm back down. “You can change them to do that with another kind of touch, but that’s the way they did it in the schematics for the others.”
“Can you make it just a tap?”
“Yeah, but do you want that?” She took a look at the charms as she thought about how to change them. “What if you accidentally slip your hand over it, then go to shoot, and you’ve got the wrong one? Or you accidentally put too many charms on at once? That seems really sensitive.”
“I need sensitive,” I told her. “I want to be able to switch what kind of shots I need on the fly. Switching guns can kill if you time it wrong, and we’re only running into crazier kinds of things as we keep going, so I need the special bullets as quickly as possible. Who k
nows what the Baron can do, if Timberpine managed to make himself unkillable with charms?”
“Will do, sir.” She picked up some tools from the desk and started her work. “Do you want me to get rid of that busted feather charm?”
“Definitely not,” I told her. “So far, it’s one of my favorites. I’ll be keeping it until I come up with a special gift for you.”
“For me?” She halted her work for just a moment to blush at the surprise. “Why am I getting a gift? And what does it have to do with a busted charm?”
“This beauty is certainly not busted.” I looked it over, figuring out the perfect place to put it. “Especially if the momentum stays the same at both weights. The way it is now is actually perfect for the idea I have. It’s gonna make you a force to be reckoned with, for sure. Do you think you could swing a big stick?”
“I think I can handle your big stick,” she said confidently with a smile. Her cheeks flushed the moment she realized the innuendo she just made as she turned around to hide her face.
“I’m sorry.” I backed away a bit. “Does my breath smell bad?” I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. I didn’t want to assume she meant it like that, in case she wasn’t trying anything right now. Respectful and all that.
“No, no!” The pink of her cheeks grew darker and darker as she turned to face me again. “I just, I didn’t mean what I said. I mean, I did, I think I could make use of it if you gave me the stick. It’s a good gift. I could keep a firm grip on it and-- not like, you know, I mean, like, the handle. It’s got a handle, right? Because it’s just a wood stick for swinging and nothing else. You were asking about a big wooden stick. That’s actually perfect because I like big wood. I mean--! Yes, I think I’m capable of what you're asking. I can swing. Gift it to me, please. I want your stick. THE WOODEN ONE! MADE OF WOOD! From a tree. A regular tree with branches and birds. Is your wood hard? LIKE FROM AN OAK TREE! Hardwood trees! Or cherry or hickory or maple. It doesn’t matter. I would love all of your hardwood. Why can’t I stop talking, please say something--?”