Jack smiled as Laura lifted the girls off the ground. He hadn’t given her enough of a

boost where she could slam them all into a wall, but she could carry them back and

forth to practice. That was the important thing.

He still needed to work on things, and he had Corle’s ring. He wanted something like

it for Bea. He needed to look into it. Everyone was clearing the house. That gave him

time to put in some brain work.

He didn’t want Beatrice to be out in the middle of nowhere with no one to help her.

He wondered if this was how his parents had felt when he had joined the Army.

He smiled to himself. He could understand how it felt now.

He placed the ring on the table. The gem glinted at him. He could almost feel the

mana flow through it without using his personas.

The first thing he needed to do was figure out how it worked and if he could take it

apart without wrecking it. If he could set things aside, he might be able to put

different powers in the thing so Bea could carry it like a concealed weapon. He didn’t

know if there were more artifacts out there, but he kind of expected to run into some

if they stayed long enough.

And he didn’t want to put something together where the girls killed each other using

them.

Josie came into the dining room, cup of coffee in her hand. She made a face as he

hovered over the ring.

“Gift for Elaine?,” asked Josie. She gestured with her cup at the ring.

“I took it off Corle,” said Jack. “It’s a blaster and a shield generator. I want to take it

apart and see what it can do, and if I can make others.”

“Don’t make it where the girls can punch holes in each other’s heads,” said Josie.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Jack. “Maybe. What you doing?”

“I’m going to walk over and talk to Fass and Guin about what I can destroy to hurt

the Montrose so much they have to put everything on pause and think about their

scheme,” said Josie. “When I get back, I am going to look for a way to find Sawtooth

and the Lich Queen.”

“Unless someone calls, I am going to be here looking at this,” said Jack.

“Aviras?,” said Josie.

“I sent him with the girls to look at the Hall and the people,” said Jack. “Maybe Harp

can teach him some sword work.”

“It’s a dangerous thing to give him the means to fly around,” said Josie.

“I think he will do all right,” said Jack. “I think a lot of his problems are with the need

to suck in so much mana at a time. And he needs to be on a diet. So hopefully letting

him fly will reward him for being a good guy.”

“All right,” said Josie. “What do you have against Bea joining this expedition of

hers?”

“I don’t have anything against it,” said Jack. He looked up from the ring. “I just don’t

trust it, and I don’t trust her boyfriend. His creep factor is higher than the bank’s

when we first got here.”

“I think you said the Exchange was like a Labrador,” said Josie.

“His is like a St. Bernard,” said Jack. “He hasn’t done anything out of hand, but I

don’t like him.”

“Objectively, or subjectively?,” asked Josie.

“Both,” said Jack. “This field trip makes no sense as far as how he leaves a clerking

job to track across to the other side of the country. Why would they let him join? Why

couldn’t he train up with a group like Fass’s? He didn’t impress me at dinner as

someone who knew what he was doing. The speed of his moving in on Bea is

something which could be explained away as different cultural norms, but I don’t like

that when I look at some of the other things.”

“So what do we do about it?,” asked Josie. She sipped her coffee.

“I’m going to look at this ring and see if I can make Bea something she can use for

her own protection,” said Jack. “I would rather go on this expedition with her and

deal with things my way, but I don’t want Bea thinking that I am interfering with her

romance because I hate Todd’s guts. That will make her cling to him more.”

“Like the Pears?,” said Josie.

“Exactly,” said Jack. “When I get rid of Todd, I want clear evidence that he was

trying to do something to Bea, and hoped to get away with it.”

“All right,” said Josie. “If we get something, how do we let Bea know without letting

her think that we wanted him gone?”

“I haven’t worked that out yet,” said Jack. “When I do, I will bring you in as my

accomplice to do the dirty deed.”

“I don’t need to be your accomplice,” said Josie. “I can murder someone on my own.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Can you explain how it was for the greater good?,” asked Jack. He sat back down

and stared at the ring on the table.

“I don’t think so,” said Josie.

“Then we’re going to have problems selling it to Bea,” said Jack. “And we still have

to do the rest of our quests in the middle of this. The Lich Queen seems the worst,

while Sawtooth could be anyone operating anywhere.”

“We need a way to gather more information that is better than the Pony Express

we have now,” said Josie. “We need something like the Internet.”

“I will get right on a source for information as soon as I check out this ring,” said

Jack. He winced at the ding in his head. “All right. Got a reminder quest for that one.”

“I’m going to go about my business,” said Josie. “We’ll look for a way to sort out

the rest of the Society’s jobs when I get home. Maybe the model upstairs will

help us.”

“Didn’t you say it covers the city?,” asked Jack.

“I did some alterations and I can take pictures of everywhere,” said Josie. “It told

me that there are Montrose at sea. We might need a pirate boat before things are

done.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Jack. “Maybe we can use the quinjet for that. Now go and

do your thing. I want to look at this ring while everything is quiet.”

“All right,” said Josie. She stepped out and locked the door behind her. She headed

down the street.

Jack went back to looking at the ring. He needed a way to look at its guts. How did

he do that?

He decided the best thing to do was a scanner like he had figured out how to create

with Mister Fantastic and Majik. That should let him look at the nuts and bolts of

things without worrying about taking the ring apart and ruining it.

Once he knew what it looked like on the inside, he could decide how to use the

information to make more rings if he wanted.

He wrote down what he needed as Mister Fantastic, even drawing a sketch of the

device for ease of use. Then he switched to his Majik persona and created a ring

around the ring and infused that with information gathering magic while building

a screen to act as a tablet so he could see what his scans were doing.

Jack switched back and frowned as the scans showed different things the ring could

do, the mana cost, and the recharge factor. He thought maybe it was like something

out of a game system with the tree and associated functions flowing along like limbs

with the recharge as the trunk. Someone had built the thing like he had the quinjet.

He closed his eyes and slipped away. He stood in a workshop. He could see things

moving around as different designs were moved along a display screen to be

considered. He spotted the ugly guy from the Society meeting limping along on his

prosthetic legs. He was calling for more of this and that to some underlings across the

shop.

“A goat with a gun sucks,” said Jack as he walked up, hands in his pockets.

“I like to amuse myself sometimes, Jack,” said the ugly guy. Squinty eyes twinkled

in his wrecked mug of a face. His chest and arms were like a gorilla. Jack had no

doubt that if he let the guy grab hold of him, he was going to have a tough time

breaking that hold.

“I must have fallen asleep while I was checking out this ring that I salvaged,” said

Jack. “It’s all magic and everything.”

“I have made a few of those,” said the ugly guy. “Loaded them down with

enchantments and such.”

“I don’t know any of your names,” said Jack. “I don’t want to call you Mister Ugly

Guy while we’re talking.”

“My name’s Hap,” said the ugly guy. He smiled. “Do you have a picture of this ring?”

Jack looked around. He saw a pile of scrap paper on a nearby work station. He

grabbed the top sheet and a pen. He became Mister Fantastic long enough to draw

a picture of the ring and the magic tree he had uncovered. He gave the drawing to

Hap when he was done.

“This is Warner’s old weapon,” said Hap. He frowned as he looked at the magic

tree. “It was kind of like a Green Lantern ring.”

“The guy who had it threw force bolts and created a shield with it,” said Jack. “He

didn’t use it to fly around.”

“You can do a lot more than that with this if you had the mana, and the ability to

imagine things,” said Hap. He smiled. “It was one of my better things. I wondered

what he had done with it when he stopped accepting our calls.”

“I took this off a guy who was using it to enforce his will on people,” said Jack. “It

was a pleasure for me to do so. I want to give it to one of Josie’s Ducklings, but I

wanted to make sure I knew what it could do first.”

“It can do almost anything,” said Hap. “You just need the imagination to do the tasks.

A lot depends on whether this Duckling has enough mana to use it. If not, she will

need a battery to power it.”

“I wonder if a voice command would be better than trying to imagine things,” said

Jack.

“You would have to put that in,” said Hap. “Warner seemed to get it.”

“Warner is a fan of comic books,” said Jack. “The people that he associated with, and

the person I dealt with in particular, seemed to have problems with visual

identification and imagination on top of that. On the other hand, he was trying to

wake up the Dark Rider, so I assume he knew enough to figure out what would

happen if the Rider hit the city and turned everyone there into minions.”

“Good thing you stopped that,” said Hap. He smiled slightly.

“Tell me about it,” said Jack. “How would I add a voice command to the ring

so I can give it to Bea and she doesn’t blow her head off by accident.”

“This is the code you need,” said Hap. He went to a tablet and called up a sentence

of a code. He printed that out and gave it to Jack. “Good luck with your do it

yourself.”

“Thanks,” said Jack. He looked at the code so he would remember it as Mister

Fantastic when he woke up.

“How do you like the system so far?,” said Hap.

“It’s a little vague, and leaves a lot of room to maneuver, and I wonder if it would be

easier just to give us the target and point us at them,” said Jack. “On the other hand,

taking on our own quests is like giving us giant reminders in our brains to get things

done.”

“But do you like it?,” said Hap.

“I have only been on the job for a week,” said Jack. “A nice addition might be a

countdown timer to tell us how long we have to do the jobs for you guys.”

“I will talk to the others about such an addition,” said Hap.

“Thanks for everything,” said Jack. “This is a great workshop. I might have to copy

this in the real world.”

“It’s mostly automated,” said Hap. “Most of the real work goes on in my head.”

“So no real work then,” said Jack. He grinned at the technologist who grinned back.

“Go about your business,” said the bigger man. “Enjoy your goat with a gun.”

“One day I am going to get you together with Josie and see which of you has a better

time of it,” said Jack.

“The Notorious Josephine Fox is well known for her temper,” said Hap. “That’s one

of the reasons we picked her to bear one of my watches.”

“What are the others?,” asked Jack.

“Those are not mine to disclose,” said Hap. “Remember the code, and good luck

with your adopted sisters.”

“You’re invited to the wedding when we have it,” said Jack.

“Thank you,” said Hap. “You have to live to have a wedding. Good luck with that.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Jack. He saw the door out of the workshop and woke up

on the couch. He held the paper with the code in his hand.

“Let’s see if I can make this work,” said Jack.