Strider

"Would it be safe for a human? No offense to your cooking, but seeing the drinks you and the new guy were showing off, I can't help but be slightly concerned." Edmond was finished up the adjustments to the suit, and all tests were indicating that it functioned properly. "Do you have ingredients?"

"I understand. On that same note though, as a favor between friends you must tell me if there's something I should look out for, or that I can do, if something comes to mind in the future." With that, Edmond moved on to his own projects, popping off the different pieces of his power armor, and inspecting them one by one. In the backplate, he began to condense some of the circuits, trying to make a bit of room for the hard drives he'd picked up in Seattle. If he could wire this right, he'd be able to record a fairly large amount of high quality combat data for later analysis, or per

"I don't need anything unusual broken apart right now, though the idea of splitting something like magic or flames is intriguing. Pertinent to the most recent project, could one, if they could see it and contact it, split off corruption from a soul or core?" "Anyway, is it too much trouble to ask you to maybe make me some stuff from time to time? I can probably collect a number of materials for you that might be interesting. Or. . . is there something else you'd want in return?" He really wanted the ability to make some kinds of parts on demand, and Mar seemed perfectly

"Oh yeah, really could have been. He could have died, don't think any of us want to have to explain that to LOTUS or whoever, or to clean up the mess. I might have stepped in myself, but my way of doing things tends to involve a lot of cutting things lethally. . .point is, good job. As far as healing goes, I think Isobel has some healing poppies or something that might numb the pain? There was also a catholic dude who was doing some healing I think, Atton? Don't really know everyone around here though. Bridgett, Spicy, you two don't have any healing stuff, right?" It was always a b

"That's amazing. And is this a combination of the chisel's abilities and yours working together, or simply one of the other?" He was curious, since the man had managed to make the chisel with a single fracture, had he done the same here, or was there some quality to the chisel that helped. Given the glow and the faint sparks, Edmond suspected there might be something. . . more at play here. That the chisel might have elevated or altered the qualities of his work significantly. "Can we mass produce this material?"

Edmond took the fabric, and began to inspect it. Did it seem to be a weave of steel threads, a thing enough sheet that was flexible, or something completely unique? "What would have happened if you'd struck it the way you wanted? This doesn't seem like a bad outcome, I've got to say."

"That's rather difficult to believe, at least if they're mundane dogs by the way I know. I was under the impression that the limits were, while partly in the trainers, also in the dogs' physical and mental ability. With a large enough number I could see calculations being possible. . ." Edmond brushed that aside however. "Let's see how it works though. It looks high quality, but it should be tested, I think."

It took Edmond some time to realize what Mar was doing, after the confusion snuck over him. It was an odd, hazy, primal feeling, almost ritualistic. When his senses returned to normal--not quite sharpening, because they hadn't exactly been dulled--Edmond took a step back instinctively. The thing in Mar's hands was a perfect chisel, created with a single strike. From obsidian no less, something which fractured in a concoidal manner, no flat planes to play with "W-well, impressive. I-How do you even do that? Is it a type of magic? Do you need a specific quality of stone? I can't see

"Care to give a demonstration of this flintknapping?" It sounded as though the man was just a skilled sculptor, but given his other skills, he'd have to be quite good at it? It could very well be something that he had different standards for. . . There were a number of unanswered questions, so it seemed better to just see it in action.

"So what it comes down to is, you don't really know? That's fair, at least you managed to get something that works." Edmond gave a small laugh, and then continued with more curiousity. "That'd definitely be useful, though it should be balanced against whatever specialty you'd be giving up. As far as materials go, is there anything particular that you need? I can keep an eye out or maybe help if there's something particular you need done. I can offer my small talents as an engineer, and, while I'm admittedly not very good at all, I've been practicing some small amount with magic, s

"Oh, excellent." If Atton had noticed, Edmond will appologize and indicate that nothing's needed. "Do we have any estimates on how long 'some time' will be? A few hours? Multiple days or weeks?" Edmond asked the android maid.

"Oh, that's high praise actually! So, what exactly is this corruption? Is it like. . . a magical virus, something that'd spread if given the chance, or is it something that's sorta contained and can't really grow on its own?" Again, his own inexperience with all this felt blindingly apparent. However, he told himself, there was no better way to familiarize with the more strange and unusual powers than a project like this. And he himself had helped with the amplifier. Sort of. It hadn't been totally necessary it looked like, but he'd made it nonetheless on request. Thinking aloud to

"Oh, that's lovely. But it's nice that it's got its sense of honor intact. I'm unfamiliar with a great deal of magic, Ritsu, how much do we know about the corruption and stuff that the Servants experience, and whether it's something detectable by the powered individuals in our group?" Edmond turned to the plush for a moment. "You say, regardless of your wishes, you're ordered to harm our group. Do you have other, contrary wishes that you're stifling to follow the mandate of God?"

"Well, uh, you did something wrong, and I'm trying to figure out what it is. Maybe when the smoke's clear we can go back in, and try making a new batch? With a little help this time." And Liliya'd probably get first dibs on the cookies if she helped make them. She nodded to herself, that was fair, there might not be enough to go around to everyone, and if she was an integral part of making sure anyone got cookies, it was only right that she have some priority in getting some. "I picked up a potion of healing or something from the last world, but I'd prefer to keep that unless none

"Oh Mar, I'm sure there's some use for something that induces sobriety. Humans tend to lose some fine motor control when drunk, so this would allow them to regain that after a fair amount of drinking, I would think. And. . . if that still seems useless, perhaps you could reserve it as punishment for the unruly, or enemies that we take alive?" Edmond asked all this as he leaned against the workbench, watching Lancer carefully. Given that the plush had recieved little instruction on what queries to answer, it would be quite interesting to see what the first things it attempted would

"Yes! I can do that, and I've got just the supplies!" Edmond said a little too excitedly. He began to rummage around in the pile of circuit elements on the table, and began to pull out what he'd need. A number of resistors and capacitors, for the base system, those two inductors would work nicely for a simple band-pass filter. Solder for all the connections that needed it, and then the microphones and speakers. He'd actually remembered to pick these up? That was perfect. The variable resistor would work perfectly for gain control, and. . . five minutes later, it was done. He handed the greenbo

"The vest I've got isn't actually Kevlar, but a variant on it. We tend to just call it a kevlar vest because of the first few forms of the material that were used and became common names. Kevlar is a fabric, made of long chain hydrocarbons. They're aligned so that they have great tensile strength, enough to be woven into vests to protect from stabbings and low caliber bullets. I don't know the specifics of its chemistry beyond the long chains and a few specific interactions that strengthen the bonds between chains. Oh, the chains are also very well organized I think, almost with a crystal stru

Liliya watched the fiasco unflinchingly. Like, she could have gotten involved, and man it would have been easy to avoid stuff, but why bother? The Navin guy had it under control quite admirably, no need to waste effort on something pointless like this. "Did anyone record that, I wonder? Anyway, I dunno if I ever caught your name?" Liliya said to Bridgett before continuing, "But here's a little advice that my ma used to tell me; If you care about your house, don't leave the kitchen for more than 5 minutes while cooking. If you've got something on the stove, even shorter. It ain't a

"Oh, not too bad, not right now. The last mission before this though, could have used you there. It was a fiasco, which make sense given that it took place on Solomon's world . . .But I got this thing, and things have been going a bit better after that." Edmond nodded over at the surgery on the plush. "I'm not really sure on the specifics here, but one of the servants that the enemies had got turned into a stuffed toy. They were corrupted or something, so I think the goal is to keep the toy alive and remove the corruption? Because the toy is alive, somehow. I don't think it's too d

". . .Wait, the bag?" Edmond had asked, when Mar snatched it up. It was just a standard plastic grocery bag that he'd picked up back in Seattle, nothing special. But apparently he'd managed to do something with it. "So since it's a foam, we shouldn't have to worry too much about it shattering any more, I suppose. So we can make the Servant solar-powered, it sounds like? I'm curious though, how do we want to actually. . . hook it up to her, for lack of a better word." He was still a little unclear on the details of how they'd gotten the plush servant, or whether it was still evil, b

"Cookies? Damn, that would have been nice. But," Here Liliya narrowed her eyes, glancing around the room. "Why the hell would blasting the fire be a good idea??" She was going to pry into this a bit, because it felt like a bad cover story. The girl was flustered, and her story didn't make much sense. Did they even have flour? And how had she managed to burn the food so soon after they left the last world? It hinted at maybe some form of sabotage, or at least something the girl wasn't explaining.

Edmond skimmed through a few of the tablets, before letting out a short whistle. "That's quite a bit you have there. I take it this means if I come across strange materials, you'll want to take a look at them?" He paused, pondering. "You know, this rather reminds me of some of the stuff back on my world. It's not magic, it's part of materials science and not nearly as powerful I think, but in broad sweeps it seems similar. Certain materials can be put together, not even alloyed, and have completely different properties at the interface, or certain odd crystal structures can be made

"If you'd like, we can look at the acid later, see what it does. But for now, if the flaw of your lensite is that it acts like glass. . . do you have any materials that act like plastic or rubber but might be transparent to the magic? If you could layer it like ballistic glass, well it wouldn't keep individual layers from shattering under impact, but you might still have some surviving layers underneath to preserve the function." "Or, given that it's magic, maybe there's something you could coat it in to just. . . redirect force that hits it? I still don't know much about this stuf

Liliya jogged in the general direction where the smoke seemed to be coming from. Was the castle on fire? It was all stone right? Could she be hallucinating from the poppies or something? She felt fine, mostly, and still had her mental clarity. Probably wasn't the poppies, honestly, but it was worth keeping in mind. She entered the kitchen, slowing from a jog. "What's going on, what's on fire?"

"Where's the ore from? The place we were just from? Maybe Silef's got some idea." "But if it's anything like nonmagical ores, you're probably going to want to figure out what mineral the metal's mixed with, then get something that reacts strongly to the unwanted stuff, and mix the two at high temperatures. Shocking could also work, but again, you're gonna want it at high temperatures, molten. . . Could also try an acid that dissolves away the stuff you don't want, I've got a small bit of nitric and hydrochloric back in my room." "The magic thing might be quite convenien