It was done. Sitting before Lightforge on the table were his welding goggles. He’d added a small box to each side of the lenses, but they weren’t particularly obtrusive. It would be easy to assume that they had always been a part of the structure, but that wasn’t the case. They held the new upgrades that he’d added to what had previously been a purely cosmetic item.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Identifier Goggles
Type: Sensor
Quality: Uncommon
State: Undamaged
While they may appear like ordinary goggles, this model has been upgraded to display some basic information about the people that the user interacts with.
He smiled and slipped the goggles over his head. He carefully adjusted the lenses to fit snugly on his face and began to look around. The view was exactly the same as without the goggles, which was to be expected as he was currently alone in his shop. If he understood how it worked, it would only show information on people and nothing else.
Idly he pulled the Pinwheel Flyer from his inventory and tossed it into the air in front of him. It whirred to life and hovered a few feet in front of his face. For just a moment, an outline surrounded the item as it hung in the air, but then it faded away. Good to know; moving objects took a moment to get scanned before the goggles could identify whether or not it was a person.
What came next was supposed to be the easy part: duplicating his invention. He already had the crafting recipe memorized, so it should have been an easy task. Of course, that was assuming that he had all the necessary parts just lying around, waiting to be used. He didn’t. He’d only found a single personnel scanner, and that had been mostly luck. If he wanted to create copies of this device for others, he was going to need a steady supply.
His first inclination had been to retrofit the more basic sensors that he already owned. He knew that there were only a couple of differences between the two once you opened them up. Maybe it would be easier to just find those parts? He had disassembled them with just that hope.
Unfortunately, he found that crafting materials, once opened, acted a lot like background items. They would slowly reassemble themselves if you left them alone for long enough, and they wouldn’t accept pieces from other components. They would pop out or just refuse to go together at all.
He had one last idea before he was back to wandering the streets, hoping to get lucky. He pulled two scanners out of his inventory and placed them on the workbench. One of the most frustrating aspects of the crafting system was that he couldn't upgrade individual parts, only completed items. But the whole concept of the system was to use them to create something new.
So what if he tried to combine two of something into a different version of that thing?
This time he activated the crafting system before disassembling the two scanners. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and so he started to combine them in whatever way he could. The system message surprised him when it appeared.
Item Merge Failed
Insufficient Level
Components Destroyed
Thin trails of smoke started to pour out of the scanners, which was quickly followed by fire. He shielded his face with his hands as the parts sputtered and sparked as the flames danced across them. Within moments the scanners were little more than molten slag on the tabletop.
Well. That was less than ideal. On the bright side, it was apparently possible to do what he’d been attempting, though he wasn’t at a high enough level to accomplish it. Of course, that didn’t help him at the moment. If he couldn’t find more Personnel Scanners then he would have to use other ideas to gain experience from his power set.
Lightforge grumbled and started trying to clean the melted components off his work space before they fused to the surface and became nigh-impossible to remove. He was complaining under his breath and scraping at the table when he heard the front doors open.
He smiled for his customer, but the expression slipped when he noticed that it was Lou Whitmore rushing through the door. The large shopkeeper was wringing his hands and had a look of serious concern on his face. No idea what this meant, but it almost certainly wasn’t good.
Lou said, “Hello. Is everything ok over here? I thought I saw smoke coming out the door.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah, a little bit. I ran out of an important part so I was trying to make a new one. It didn’t really work. Sorry about that.”
“Oh, that was all? Well, I suppose that’s not too bad. I guess the parts store was out of what you needed?”
Lightforge froze in place and he forced his mouth closed before he could say something stupid. So instead he found himself glaring at the portly man for several seconds. Finally he realized that there was no way out of this. He sighed and let his shoulders sag.
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“Parts store? I didn’t know there was one near here.”
“Wait, what? Where did you get all your parts?”
“Generally from broken robots. Like the ones from that first day.”
“Ah. Of course. Well, yes, there is a parts store near the boundary between Chancery Hills and Old Town. I think it’s called the Scrap Heap. I’m shocked you haven’t heard of it.”
“Yeah, I… I guess I haven’t really gone out of my way to get to know the area.”
That was an understatement. He knew a few landmarks of the area thanks to his time playing the game, but that was it. And he’d spent all of his time running around trying to fight criminals or working on the one mission that he’d gotten so far. The only stores that he’d gone to were convenience stores like Lou’s, and he’d only gone there for snacks.
Of course there were other stores. He’d known that. There were stores where heroes and villains could buy supplies, weapons, upgrade materials, and various other pieces of equipment that might be useful. In fact, many such shops would supply the exact types of gear that he would be able to craft eventually. The game’s developers had wanted to make sure that no one would fall behind just because they didn’t happen to know any Gadgeteers.
Lou gave him directions to the parts shop, and Lightforge closed his own storefront for the day. He grumbled and groaned as he made his way across the neighborhood. He was mentally kicking himself the entire way there.
----------------------------------------
The Scrap Heap turned out to be a very apt name for the store that he found. It looked like it had started life as a mechanic’s garage, but that had been a long time ago. Now the garage was packed full of piles and piles of components, parts, and items in varying states of damage. There was a little bit of everything, and Lightforge found that he had no idea what most of the things even were.
It also looked abandoned. He checked the inside and around the front, but there was no one to be found. The last thing he wanted to do was trespass, but he did need to find the parts that he needed. He cleared his throat loudly.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
He called out twice more before he finally got a response. There was a mighty crash as a pile of parts moved and items went flying all over the place. He leaped back and started summoning his weapons, but paused as he got a better look at what was actually happening.
There was a person flailing around in the pile of junk, trying to get out from underneath all of it. He ran over and helped pull them out. It was a young woman with dark skin and curly hair that was pulled back tightly to keep it out of her face. She was dressed in sturdy overalls and work gloves, which she promptly used to wipe the sleep from her eyes. Or at least she tried to; all it did was wipe grease all over her face.
She shrieked when she realized what she was doing and took off at a sprint towards the office of the shop. She made this attempt with her eyes closed as they were currently covered in filth. Unsurprisingly, she ran straight into a wall and crashed to the ground. More of a surprise was that she popped right back up and felt around the wall, searching for the door. Once she found it she audibly sighed in relief and scurried inside.
For a few minutes, Lightforge just sat there, staring at the spot that the young woman had jumped up from. Upon closer inspection, she hadn’t been sleeping in a random pile of junk. This particular pile of junk was actually a bit of camouflage, and the inside was actually the opening to a small room with a bed and a few other essentials. It seemed that some additional junk had been dumped on top while the owner had been asleep.
Finally the young woman stumbled back out of the shop, face clean and still damp from the quick wash that she’d given herself. Despite the run, the crash, and the water, she somehow still looked bleary eyed and only half awake. As if to punctuate that point she stretched her arms out wide and yawned.
She took two steps in the direction of her hidey hole before she noticed the Lightforge was standing there, looking at her with a deeply confused expression. She sighed and tried to wave him away.
“What’s the big idea? Don’t you know it’s rude to wake someone up when they’re taking a nap?”
“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were asleep. Why were you sleeping in a junk pile?”
She waved a hand dismissively in his direction as she finally began to appear awake.
“I tried sleeping in the shop, but people kept waking me up to ask me stupid questions. So I found a better place to nap.”
“Outside? Seems a little dangerous.”
“You must be new around here. Do you know who I am?”
“The shopkeeper here?”
She sighed again and shook her head. Everything about her body language screamed that he was a complete and total idiot. She spoke slowly and over-pronounced her words as if speaking to a child.
“The name’s Sam, and I’m the only supplier of parts in the area. I’m impartial, and every single one of you super fools needs my help sooner or later. If anyone attacked me or my shop, they wouldn’t survive the hour. And I’d be taking bets on which side gets to them first.”
“Wow. Sounds like you’re exactly who I was hoping to meet.”
“That’s nice. But get lost, I don’t deal with rude customers.”
His jaw dropped at the offhand dismissal, but he forced himself to stay calm. He drew a deep breath and then another. Finally he looked Sam right in the eye and made his voice as apologetic as he could manage.
“I’m sorry I woke you up, I really didn’t mean to be rude. My name is Lightforge, and I’m a new Gadgeteer in the area. I need some parts.”
Sam’s eyes lit up and she bounded over to him, hand outstretched and a wide grin plastered to her face. Lightforge could practically see the dollar signs flashing in her eyes.
“A Gadgeteer!? Now that’s music to my ears. Now understand, I only sell the most high quality materials here at my shop.”
She motioned emphatically to the piles and piles of rusty, broken scrap that littered every inch of the space. Lightforge raised an eyebrow at the sight, but he said nothing. Sam’s sunny disposition only grew as she continued.
“But at the same time, there’s always more money to be made with a Gadgeteer handy. You buy the parts here, turn them into something nice and shiny, and boom! We both turn a tidy profit.”
Lightforge smiled as he caught Sam’s enthusiasm. He had come looking for a single part, but he was quickly realizing that would be a waste of the chance that was sitting in front of him. He stepped closer to Sam and motioned towards the store’s office.
“How about we take this inside and talk business?”
“Sounds perfect. I can just feel it, this is gonna be the start of a beautiful partnership.”