First Daughter (Hadrian)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

44th Day of Summer, 512 AV Tock hated carrying her own things. She was a busy person. She had a lot of projects, and only three hands. While her babies were Automated and could follow her around, she had plenty of mundane tools, and they could be rather heavy, especially after a long day at work. Plus, it was a major pain to haul around supplies, wood, metal, and stone when she needed it. So she decided it was time to build a cart. And since she had an offer of assistance in her next project, she decided to call it in. Hadrian had told her to ask for him at the University, so that's what she did. Some quick asking around directed her to his office, which surprised her since she had expected to find him in the dorms, not among the professors. He didn't strike her as the teachery type. She let herself in without knocking and declared, "Oy, c'mon. Gots a project, an' ya done gots ta 'elp me carry some big 'eavy rocks. Which is funny," she snorted and gestured with her hand at the irony, "what since when we's done, she's done gonna been able fer ta carry 'em fer us, aye? Gonna put arms on 'er, what so's as she can even pick 'em up an' put 'em in 'er belly all by 'erself. Awright, lesgo!" she waved for him to follow, expecting that no further explanation should be needed.

[Hadrian]

Her reception was one of frozen surprise and wide eyes. She had caught him in the middle of an experiment, a small portal to the Void hovering above one hand while the other seemed to be attempting to mold Shield energy around it. Luckily the delicacy of it was not lost on him, and so when she made her orders known, he hastily allowed the invisible Shield energy to collapse into the Void, which hastened the implosion of the portal without his will holding it open. The Pull pulled its borders closed with a pop, and Hadrian stood up to follow her. I don't want to know, she heard in her own voice within her head. The hypnotic suggestion was simple and succinct, and that sort of thing was going to have to do until he remembered to lock his office door.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock frowned and stared at the strange... hole... thing that Hadrian was messing with. What kind of magic was that? She opened her mouth, then thought, I don't want to know... and shrugged it off. She had her own project to worry about, and that was more important than... whatever it was. Though there was just the slightest tickling of some doubt in the back of her head. Had she been more focused on it, she might have realized that the implanted suggestion had lacked her accent, I dun wanna knows... But she had already moved on to thinking about her still gestating daughter, and dismissed the niggling feeling as nothing more than a concern that she'd forgotten something at home. Whatever it was, she'd get it later. "C'mon," she said, waving Hadrian to follow, then grabbing his arm and tugging him along. "Got a backpack? O', I 'unno, anythin' what fer carryin' rocks? Needs, ahh, a dozen o' so, aye? Big ones," she held her hands out about six inches apart, indicating a rock that would easily weigh twenty pounds a piece. "Mebbe two dozen? Aye two dozen, 'at's better. Makes a dozen molds outta 'em. Awright? Lesgo, an' bring whatever ya done gots fer 'aulin..." She paused and did the math, realizing she was talking about almost five hundred pounds of rock. She tapped her chin, humming in thought, wondering if it would take more time to make, say, five trips back and forth, or to build the cart first, then use it to haul the stone...

[Hadrian]

Hadrian didn't even have time to heave a sigh of relief but he was strapping on his satchel and locking his office behind him. At her question, he glanced at the bag that was handy for carrying books, papers, pens, and occasionally other magical supplies, but not at all for rocks, especially of the size she required. He slowly shook his head. "No, but... well, if you have a spare, I can do the carrying." He figured he could Flux extra strength into his body to make up for what his body lacked, and knew he would ache more than he ought before bed or in the morning. There was always a price, he noted to himself as he rubbed his hands together, deathly cold after the Voiding, as sometimes happened to him. "Or some of the carrying, anyway. I'm not exactly a strapping knight or sailor or something." But his combination of Flux and Morphed muscles had worked well enough on Mura when he had needed them. He would just have to leave the muscles behind and not go quite so crazy with the magical strength. Then his mind took a tangent and he blurted out a question: "Do you know how to make keys? I want to make keys." He blinked. "Well, not today, I suppose." But the question stood as he kept apace with her toward wherever they were going to find the rocks or do the work.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Still focused on the problem of hauling five hundred pounds of rock, Tock distractedly answered, "I done knows 'ow fer ta make locks. Ain't done keys 'fore, but I knows a guy at work, 'e could show me what 'ow she's done. O' I can improvise... ya'd done been surprised what 'ow ya can lock somethin' wit'out keys." It really depended on what Hadrian needed. Her locksmithing skills were somewhat limited, but she had several ideas about hot to make a gadgetized lock that wouldn't even need a key. But for the moment, she was preoccupied with her current problem. They were up on the hills already where the University stood. They'd have a good half a bell to a full bell walk to get far enough up into the rocky areas where she could find decent stones for mold carving. Another bell at least from there to walk back to her house. And they'd need, if they hauled fifty pounds a piece (the most she could conceive of carrying) five trips, times two bells per trip, which would mean they wouldn't be finished until after midnight. Or, she could stop at home now, buy or build a cart, which would take several hours if she was making it from scratch, but then take just a single, two-bell trip up into the hills and back. She decided neither option was efficient enough, so she'd combine them. She led Hadrian back to her house to collect her babies. She already had Grippy and Handy with her, since she never went anywhere without them. She gathered up Choppy and Naily, along with a few miscellaneous supplies. She also as an afterthought packed something for dinner, since she didn't expect to be home in time to eat. When everything was gathered, she looked longingly at Cutty. He would be a big help on the current job, but she couldn't trust him to walk anywhere without malfunctioning. She'd been managing to work around his problems, to a certain degree, but a lot of that involved carrying him wherever he needed to go since he couldn't reliably walk there himself. She couldn't carry him all the way up into the hills... With a sad sigh, she left him at home. "C'mon," she told Hadrian. "Ever chop down a tree 'fore?" She grinned. "Well, my baby's done gonna does the choppin'," she patted Choppy's handle lovingly. With everything they needed, unless Hadrian had another stop to make along the way, she started leading him up past the University and into the sparsely wooded foothills that would have everything they needed. They had plenty of hours of daylight left, especially since the sun didn't set in summer until pretty late. More than enough time to chop down a tree, build a cart out of it, and use it to haul back the rocks.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian quietly chewed upon her response, the wheels in his mind whirring as he followed her out. Part of his attention was going over the little experiment in Shield and Void interaction that she had interrupted, another considering his plans for magecrafted keys and gems, and even some attention given to not tripping over his feet. But he was not so far gone that he didn't catch her glance at Cutty. "Do you want me to carry Cutty?" he asked. "I have no experience chopping wood, but I could carry him. I'm stronger than I look." Well, he wasn't really, but he could fix that with a few threads of djed artfully Fluxed through bone and sinew, muscle and ligament. People would just have to get used to him doing things that oughtn't be possible. He wouldn't answer the questions as to how, but he would do what needed doing. And he was here to help.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock stared at Cutty when Hadrian offered to carry him, fingers touching her lips, eyes filled with hope and doubt. She wanted to bring him, but she didn't know if she could trust Hadrian to carry him. After all, Cutty was her baby. Her sick baby. After a long moment's consideration she nodded slowly and said, "Jus' be careful wit' 'im, aye? 'E dun feel good... an' don't 'urt 'im!" Despite the fact that Cutty was made from a heavy saw with solid metal poles for legs, she worried about him. He would remain completely motionless as Hadrian carried him, since he was unable to move once Tock had told him to 'Stop.' The others came along under their own power, Choppy waddling along on his stork-like legs, and Naily rolling along the ground at her heels. She led them out of the city and far enough away where no one would hear or care if they cut down a tree or two, but still close enough to avoid most of the dangers that were found out in the wildlands. Once she spotted a decent sized tree that looked like it had enough wood to cover most of what they needed, she set Choppy to work. "Forward... left sweetie, okay stop," she directed him verbally until he was in a good position. "Leg up, grip!" Following her commands, the axe raised his metal leg and braced it against the tree, digging his metal claw into the bark. Positioned like that, his axe was horizontal, aimed right at the tree. "Aaaaaand, Chop! Good boy! Who's my baby, aye? Yous is... yes yous is... yes yous is!" She giggled and praised her beloved baby as he started chopping the tree, the axe swinging back on the metal axe, propelled forward with extra force by the springs hooked onto him. "Awright," she said to Hadrian, taking Cutty from him and setting her baby aside. She kissed the saw's blade and patted him lovingly, then said to her companion, "My baby's take awhile what fer ta git the tree down. We can finds us some good rocks, an' what pile 'em over 'eres..." she pointed to a spot out of the way of the tree. "Flat ones done been best, aye?" She searched around a bit until she found a pair of decent ones to use as an example. Rough, jagged, or round ones she discarded, since the more material she had to remove, the longer it would take to make the mold. Once she had two semi-flat stones, each a bit bigger than her hand, she held them up to show Hadrian. "See?" she said, "aye, lookit 'ere..." She crouched down and set them on the ground, pulling out a gouge to scratch a crude outline into the stone. It was roughly the shape of part of a hinge. "Gots ta been big 'nough what fer 'is," she said, indicating the size she'd drawn. "An' each one's what gonna needs two together, aye?" She lifted the two stones and pressed their flat sides together. "Flatter's better, what fer less work makin' 'em fit. File 'ese down, cut a shape in 'em, an' we done got molds. Use 'em fer 'inges." The arms she was planning to put on her baby girl cart would be multi-jointed, so she needed multiple hinges. It'd be much faster to have enough molds to make all the joints at once.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian nodded, trying to be reassuring, and carefully, gingerly even, picked up Cutty and found a convenient way to hold it -- him? -- that would also be comfortable were it able to feel. Well, perhaps it could. He wasn't sure what all Tock had taught it before waking it up. He followed along, and the saw wasn't all that heavy, so he didn't bother Fluxing energy he might need later for carrying rocks. While she set Choppy to work, he watched, coming back to himself when she took Cutty away. She didn't seem upset, so he supposed he had carried the animated saw properly. "Flat ones, right." He paused, then said, "Or... I can just make you stones of the proper size and dimensions." Yes, he was also a geomancer. But he didn't like to brag.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"Makes 'em?" she asked in confusion. "'Ow?" She didn't know any kind of magic that could shape stone, but she was immediately interested. A carver by trade, she was highly interested in anything that had to do with crafting, including methods of working wood, metal, or stone. She was an expert with a set of chisels in her hands, but her methods were still mundane. "'Old 'at thought," she told Hadrian as she saw Choppy needed an adjustment. She gave him a few more commands to adjust his position on the tree and the angle he was chopping from, then set him back to work again. Once he was set, and keeping an eye on his progress so she'd know when to pull him off the tree before it fell, she lifted two jagged, oddly shaped stones and handed them to Hadrian. "Shows me," she said. "'Is big," she held her hands out about six inches by four. "Square as ya can git 'em." She didn't know how perfectly he could shape them, but he could save her a lot of time in carving if he could make the basic shapes of the molds for her. Though unless he also knew enough about hinge shape, metalsmithing, and mold design, she was fairly sure she'd need to do the detailed parts herself. Still, having perfectly flat and squared stones to start off with would be a big help.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian eyed her hand gestures, guessing she meant about half a foot by a third of a foot. Rather than split hairs about geometry, he nodded and held his hands in roughly the same shape she had, meanwhile extruding res which he was able to produce much faster now than ever before. It manifested as a pane of green energy and hovered there as he took his hands away, looking up at her. "If that is the right size, I just need to know how deep you want it." The rectangle had angles as close to ninety degrees as he could imagine, and would be more precise than he had the ability to measure. It wasn't a great amount of res, and he hadn't done anything crazy with it, but the degree of control he had over his energies was impressive if one knew anything about reimancy. "Then I can transmute it into stone. Did you have a stone preference?"