After a shower, Mark put on some nice, warm night clothes, and sat on the couch and relaxed. The screen was off, for now. Snow gently fell outside, and though it was not thick right now, soon it would layer the world in white, piling on the trees, only to topple off at the disturbances of wind and small animals, to make plopping, crunching noises in the night. The sun was about to set somewhere out there, though Mark couldn’t tell where right now, and Mark felt tired, and good… And a bit hungry, actually. With a casual flick of kinesis, Mark picked up Quark, encased in a thin web of adamantium, and peeled open the cover of Quark’s temporary ‘house’.
Now that Mark had enough adamantium to actually cover his AI, Quark had survived the entire day, which had been amazing. But they hadn’t met any tech monsters today, so really, the only reason why he survived was because of luck.
Quark flickered silver as Mark looked upon him.
“… I still want a proper house for you. That would increase your capability a lot, wouldn’t it?”
Now that Mark had actually asked a question, Quark responded, “A housing would allow me to function as a secondary scout and interface with things like wealth detectors, hoverbelts, artifacts of all kinds that require controls to function, freeing you from working those items, and I won’t be swept away or swayed by most minor technological Powers, and I will be able to separate more fully from COFR. The benefits to you to put me in a proper house are myriad. Shall I continue to list the benefits?”
Mark smiled a little. Yeah, he still wanted a housing. “No need. I would like to order a set of pizzas, though. Give me a random assortment of 5 of them, medium size, and make one mushroom and olive, another plain cheese, and another Mexican spice.”
Sally was still in her private shower, having only just stepped in, while Isoko and Eliot’s hoverbuses had already landed. According to their last messages, they were on the tram, riding together this way, and they’d be home in half an hour, right before the food got here.
Quark beeped, saying, “Delivery times are impacted by the snow. Do you wish to continue with this order? It might be an hour.”
Mark paused, his plans in sudden disarray. “Shit. I should have ordered before the shower.” Mark had a think. “Hmm… Maybe… That Nigerian place down the road is close? What’s their menu look like again?” As Quark brought up the menu in question, Mark mumbled, “Eliot loves… what’s it called… Suya! That’s it. Isoko loved that one, too… And this looks good to me, too. Let’s get a giant order of that in beef, chicken, and tofu, and...” He tapped through the menu, saying, “And jollof rice, a big order of that, and…”
Sally came up behind Mark, looking down at him, asking, “You buying food?”
“I am.” Mark looked back and asked her, “Pizza is impacted by the snow. It’s Nigerian food tonight. Eliot and Isoko love this place, too, and I kinda like it as well. Ever had that?”
Sally raised an eyebrow. She thought. After a moment, she shrugged. “I can eat anything. I want bread, though.”
Mark knew that Sally wouldn’t care about dinner, as long as it was good and there was bread, and bread was always going to be on the order anyway. But what kind of bread was Nigerian bread? Mark flicked through the menu and soon found what he was looking for. “Sounds like they make something called ‘agege bread’… Looks like normal bread to me?”
Sally sat down on the couch, her vector of Tactile Telekinesis transferring from the floor to the couch, keeping her supported even though the couch would have broken under her normal weight. They needed a bigger couch, for sure.
Sally turned on the screen, and simply said, “I like bread.”
Mark nodded as he tapped on his phone. “I’ll get three loaves, then— Ah! And some of this pounded yam stuff.” Mark finished off the order, and then looked at Sally. He went back into the order and doubled a few different things. Sally was not going to go hungry while Mark was around. Mark soon finalized the order and pressed ‘send’. Two seconds later he got a confirmation of the order, saying it would be ready in 20 minutes and they’d send a runner out to deliver the order. Mark told Sally, “20 minutes to dinner! They have a speedster on tap to run the food, too, so we don’t have to go get it.”
Sally smiled as she watched the news. “Thank the gods. I don’t want to even walk for a while.”
Mark grinned. “Chewing might even be too much?”
“Oh heck no! No problems there.”
News played on the screen, and Mark was comfortable. Sally was here, and she was comfortable, and he was feeling good, too. Mostly. Both of them were a bit worried about the meeting of friends, but Sally was ready for it and Mark was simply anxious.
Mark was also feeling full, but not in a traditional sense. Not in his stomach, but in his bones.
Today had been a very large day, in so many different ways. Mark hadn’t even been trying to cultivate adamantium, but it had happened anyway, and he hadn’t had an opportunity to shed the stuff in his bones yet. It felt heavy inside, like full grains of sand in a dust storm, instead of the ephemeral fog that it usually felt when Mark was actively cultivating the stuff.
… Briefly, he wondered if it would be an issue to do this in front of Sally, but then he decided not to hide what he could do, and he went for it.
Mark breathed in, and then he breathed out a cloud of adamantium that rapidly flowed into a dot that held in front of him. The first breath was always the smallest one. Mark took a bigger breath and then breathed out a minor cloud of dust that swirled into the new marble—
Sally jolted a little as she noticed, and she almost went back to simply watching the show she had turned on, but then she focused on Mark, on trying to understand what he was doing. She didn’t look at him, though. Not directly. She was trying not to freak out—
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She gasped, just a little. Realization had struck.
Mark breathed out another cloud of adamantium and joined it to what he already had, and that was the last bit inside of his bones. The marble in front of him was egg-sized. He smiled a little, telling Sally, “Looks like today was about a 200-gram day.” Mark held out a hand and turned the new egg of adamantium into another spike, to lay against his skin, to join the others already there. “A fourth of a kaiju blade. Just the edge, though. No one makes a full-adamantium blade.”
“… Is that normal?” Sally asked, her voice sounding odd. “That… amount?”
“Nope. Today was a big day.”
“… Even still. Holy shit, Mark. That is what? 20 million goldleaf?”
“The current market rate is something like 38 million per kilo, so this was 7.5-ish million—” Mark corrected himself, “7.6 million.” He added, “It’s mostly a weapon, though. Not really a thing with a price tag.”
Sally raised her hands in defeat and said, “Fair enough, but I still feel you should secure yourself a future for yourself through your money, in addition to your actual power.”
Mark hmm’d, not responding with words.
The show continued. Sally and Mark didn’t speak.
A little while later Sally asked if Mark wanted anything from the kitchen to drink. Soon, they were drinking sodas while waiting for dinner and for Isoko and Eliot.
“Do you get tired with Giant Strength? With Retribution?” Mark asked, making conversation to kill the silence, and because he had the sudden need to know about these sorts of things.
“Oh yeah,” Sally said. “Not when I’m in the middle of a battle, and when Retribution is running well. But four hours afterward? I usually crash pretty hard. Do you get tired with Healthy Body?”
“Not often, and especially not when I’m using Union. I can’t sleep for shit some nights, though, so I’ve been putting myself to sleep just so I keep a good schedule.”
Sally raised an eyebrow. “You don’t need to be in a battle to use Union, do you? I guess I just didn’t… realize that.”
“It’s as easy as breathing. Harder to do in a wasteland, and in winter.”
“You got the full Union, yeah? What other kinds of tricks can you do?”
“There’s this one trick I want to try regarding taking in understanding and giving back understanding, with regard to languages. It’s actually a complicated thing to do, but Inquisitor Lola Turner —my mentor— tells me I should be able to get into a new place and learn languages without needing to buy the spellwork to increase language capability.” Mark asked, “I heard that there’s a Minder spell you can pay to get cast on you in any big city, so you can learn the language. Did you get that done?”
“I did.” Sally easily went into a story, saying, “It was a weird fucking experience, let me tell you…”
They talked about important nothings for a little while.
Soon, there was a knock on the door and Mark went and answered it. The delivery guy, who was only wearing a teeshirt and shorts, handed Mark a very large bag made of thick paper and cardboard-like handles. The bag seemed to have a support structure, and it needed it. It was a lot of food! 230 goldleaf worth of food, which was practically a week’s worth of expensive groceries. The delivery guy bowed, said thanks for ordering, Mark thanked him for the food, and the guy turned into a blur to race away, back into the snowing night.
Mark walked into the house, smiling as he said, “Food’s here!”
And man, did it smell good.
Sally was already in the kitchen dining room, ready and waiting and smiling, with a fork in one hand and a knife in the other. “I smell bread and it smells delicious.”
Agege bread turned out to be some of the best bread Mark had ever eaten. It was soft and a little sweet and it went incredibly well with the spicy beef and everything else. From the expression on her face, Sally was in love.