Chapter 44

Eccentric

”Remmi, your buildings are weird.”

That puts a grin on my face as I come up next to Ayre, standing before my cabin. “This is an old design. Rustic. Quick and easy to build from natural resources. Honestly, a more modern design would have more in common with what you’re familiar with.”

Ayre arches an eyebrow, ears twitching doubtfully as he frowns at me. “Really? Your people went from this to Imperial design?”

I give a wiggly hand. “Ehhh, no, not so much the same design, but the same construction methods. Solid foundation, wooden frames. We don’t use clay bricks or plaster, but our equivalents aren’t unrecognizable.”

”What do you use, then?”

”Concrete and sheet rock.”

Predictably, the frown returns. “Remmi, those words mean nothing.”

I just shrug. “Don’t blame me, that’s what they’re called. Concrete is a paste made from lime, silicates, gravel, sand and water, and it hardens to stone in whatever shape you put it in. That means we can make seamless foundations that are perfectly level without having to cut individual stones or bricks for every project.”

”Riiiiiight,” Ayre draws it out. “And the rock sheets?”

I prop my palms on my hips. “Really, that’s just plaster inlaid with fibers to hold it together, and then treated to make it resist mold, water and fire. It comes in sheets and you just put it over the frame and insulation and fasten it down.”

Ayre turns back to the log cabin before us, arms crossed over his belly - and, if I might add, hip cocked to the side, I don’t think he even realizes he does it. He juts out his bottom lip and chews on it thoughtfully.

”Remmi, that doesn’t sound different at all. It just sounds like you pay someone else to do all of the work ahead of time.”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “Maybe! I did say they weren’t unrecognizable! My people caught the assembly line bug a century ago and can’t let it go!” I tug the elf by the arm on up onto the porch. “Come on, I’ll show you the inside!”

Once we’re there, it doesn’t take long for Ayre’s confused expression to return. He seems bewildered at seeing the entire interior of the cabin at once. “This is how your people lay out a home?”

”Nah,” I wave the idea off. “Since this is just a temporary structure, everything’s just sort of put in a vaguely useful place.”

”Oh, good ...” Ayre actually sighs with relief. “For a moment, I thought that maybe your people had a habit of taking up big, open spaces with nothing in them just to be obnoxious.”

”Eh?”

I look over the four walls in confusion of my own. The whole cabin couldn’t be more than four, maybe five hundred square feet. If I got down on my belly, then head to foot, I might just fit four of me along one wall.

... Would that make the place sixteen square Remmis?

I push the mental image of misshapen, chibified versions of myself from my mind and force it back to the topic at hand.

”It isn’t really that big, though,” I insist.

Ayre looks back at me, ears parallel with those big eyes and his lip’s stuck out again. “... Are you serious?”

I make sure to nod with extra zeal to reassure the elf. “Absolutely! Like I said, it’s temporary and more for storage and so I have my own bed to sleep in.” I pop my fist into the palm of my other hand as I gasp. “Oh! I’ll bet it just looks that way to you because of the lack of walls! I didn’t see much point in including any, so the open floor plan makes everything look way bigger than it really is!”

”Remmi, how many houses have you been in? I mean since you’ve come to Furinshao.”

I wrap one arm under my chest while my other hand rubs at my chin. Have I been in any native homes? I really have to rack my brain over it. I’ve been in a temple, lots of inns ...

”One!” I unfold my arms to point victoriously back at the elf. “I’ve been in Yorin’s little house!” But then I frown. “I kinda just assumed it was temporary, too, though.”

”I’m sure it is,” Ayre confirms, “and it’s smaller than a permanent home. But for only one person?” She holds her arms wide and motions at the four walls while turning about in the middle of the floor. “Remmi, this would be comfortable for a small family!”

I give Ayre my best Gary Coleman side-eye. “How big a small family?”

Ayre stalls a bit at that, looking around the interior again. “Um ... with walls? And not shared with storage? Not that there’s a lot of that ... A couple and a child, maybe?”

I take a turn at measuring the space with my eyes again, too, then roll them. “I dunno, Ayre, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree. Could a family of three live in here? Sure, but I can’t imagine calling it comfortable. Two people, tops. And that’s not exactly spacious. It wouldn’t even have a living room!”

Ayre follows me over to the pantry as I begin moving the supplies we picked up from my pack to the shelves and barrels. “Remmi, your temporary storage shelter has its own bath!”

”It has a tub,” I correct as I upturn my backpack to dump all of the potatoes into a barrel, then repeat it for the onions, and again for turnips. Being able to decide what comes out makes this so much easier. “You’ve still got to get the water and heat it up, yourself. At least until I can learn how to use elemental stones.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

”That’s normal out here,” the elf insists. “You heard the bath house lady, stones are expensive! And your tub is big enough for two people!”

I turn on Ayre and hold up a determined finger. “It is not for two people. It is for one person to recline in!”

”Who reclines in a tub?! You sit in it! Put sitting blocks in either end of that thing like a normal person, and you’ve got a miniature bath house in your house!”

”Agh!” I finally just wave my friend off. “I’m starting to think Imperials just have a fetish for cramming everybody together like sardines! Besides, where I’m from, space isn’t at such a premium that you have to obsess over the usage of every square foot.”

I finish stowing foodstuffs and toss one shoulder through the backpack straps again before slamming the pantry door shut. “Come on, we lost most of the day in town. I can show you the shooting range and you can give it a spin while I get a frame together for your bed!”

* * *

*Ayre*

Eccentric.

If I had to pick a single word with which to describe Remmi, that would be it. She’s obsessed with details, but you’d never know it from the way she flits about from one project to another. Even her absurdly high Agility can’t quite keep up with how quickly her mind moves.

If it weren’t for the fact that she produces a perfect cut every time or never misses a spot of sealant or plaster, nobody would be able to take her farcical approaches to crafting seriously.

Her target range is an excellent example of this. Most would suffice with an area of trodden dirt and some scarecrows in mock-armor at varying distances. She mud-bricked the entire thing, level enough to keep a marble from rolling, with a marked-off shooting line and a low wall denoting the boundary.

She doesn’t even have scarecrows. Instead, she made silhouettes of a man’s head and torso, just flat planes painted with red, circular targets. It’s cold and practical in a way that disturbs me for some reason I can’t place, but when I asked, she simply explained that scarecrows are a fire hazard. Apparently, the rounds come out hot enough that they risk igniting loose, dry grasses.

There’s always a reason. No matter how bizarrely she goes about something, she always seems to have some sort of ready explanation for it. Somehow, that just makes it weirder.

The worst part is that she’s not even happy with this. She talks eagerly about capstones for the wall, a thatched canopy to keep sun and rain off of us while we practice, partial walls, windows and other obstacles to simulate targets behind cover, and even tracks to move the targets from side to side to increase the difficulty. She even wants the targets to pop up randomly somehow, and bemoans the difficulty of doing so with her available resources.

And thanks to her strange Hidden Skill, she’s able to keep talking about all of these improvements she still wants to make even as she’s manhandling a tree into a bed frame and comically shoving the full-sized pieces into her little bag.

I can’t help but wonder if any level of improvements would ever satisfy her. For someone who so endlessly complains about how much she hates building things, nothing ever seems to be good enough to get her to stop.

She finishes shoving the last of the ... tree into a pocket plane like it’s as normal as chucking it into the back of a wagon, then glances to me for a moment before digging around in her bag to pull something back out. I lower my bow to turn toward her as she heads my way.

”So, what do you think?”

I glance back over the target range as she sweeps her arm across it. “Well, it confirmed a suspicion of mine.”

”Oh?”

”Over-engineering is definitely a your-people problem.”

Remmi’s face puffs into a pout that makes me giggle. I can tell that I didn’t actually offend her, though. That pout has more of a glare to it than this one does.

... Is it okay for a Hero to make faces like Remmi does? Honestly, I still have trouble even thinking of her as a Hero, even having seen it twice over now. Once from her own sheet, and once before that from the Essence, itself.

I think it’s for the best that she’s like this, though. As far as she is from the loud, boisterous, battle-hungry stereotype, clad in heavy armor and hundreds of pounds of muscle, I never could have been comfortable around someone like that. A figure like that would be too intimidating, and he’d either leave me behind without realizing it or drag me into a fight I wasn’t ready for just because he lacked a sense of scale.

Oh, Remmi definitely lacks a sense of scale, too, and she’s got an impulsiveness to her that demands action, but she’s aware of it, and she’s willing to pace herself so I can keep up. I’m not just an extra to her.

I’m a friend.

”So, hey, before it gets too dark,” Remmi asks, still keeping what she pulled from her bag behind her, “your bow proficiency extends to crossbows, right?”

I frown in thought of what this might be about. “Yes. Not all of the skills carry over, and since I’m considered specialized, my proficiency doesn’t count as highly toward them, but I can use them. I don’t like them, though. They’re too slow and reloading them is too much of a hassle.”

”And a repeating crossbow would solve those problems, right?”

My frown deepens, again from confusion. “Yes, but in exchange for a different set of problems. They’re extremely weak compared to anything in the same size range, and are considered horribly inaccurate. Proficiencies don’t differentiate between them and regular crossbows, though.”

I widen my eyes as I make a connection. “Oh! Crossbows handle a lot like your gun, don’t they? Do you mean to say that your proficiency includes them, too?”

Remmi’s face illuminates into a huge grin as she nods eagerly. “In fact, I had to use a repeating hand crossbow at the Hero Trials since I didn’t have my pistol!”

She’s told me about the trials in passing before, but never seemed to want to go into much detail over what happened. Now, I wrinkle my nose, as if having caught a whiff of why.

”A repeating hand crossbow?! Remmi, how did you take out anything with that?!”

Her grin turns impish as she waves a finger. “Big, glowy weak spots!”

Ah, right ... Of course, now I can see what’s in her hand. That hand, anyway, and she follows my gaze to what looks like a box magazine for a crossbow ... except it’s upside-down.

”You built one, didn’t you?”

That pout returns. “Am I that predictable?” It doesn’t last long, though, as she brings her other hand around with an excited expression, revealing another inverted box and the most bizarre-looking crossbow I’ve ever laid eyes on. “I was hoping you’d test it for me and share your feedback!”

I take the proffered weapon into my own hands, but can’t help but comment, “Remmi, that’s not the face of someone who hates crafting.”

The pouting scowl springs right back, but I ignore it in favor of examining the crossbow.

It actually has two bows set opposite each other, yet their strings are partly shared, so that to release one is to draw the other. For a moment, though, I’m not sure they even are bows. My sense of familiarity is thrown off by seemingly too many lines, and the arms each have steel pinwheels at the ends. The arms don’t hold one continuous crescent, either, but independent ones connected to a mounting bar.

I can see the cut-out underneath where the bolt box is supposed to go, which explains why she built them upside-down. She probably imitated the design of her pistol’s magazines. The reason for going in from underneath seems to have been to free up the top for what it takes me a moment to realize is a sight. Holding it out in front of me, I can look through the simple square to see a red point held perfectly in the center of it by three strings, two of them seemingly adjustable with small wing nuts.

Everything else appears surprisingly normal to what I would expect on a repeating crossbow. I can identify the trigger assembly and the ratchet bar, though the grip is more pronounced than the normal design. It doesn’t take much to realize it’s the same sort of elongated grip as Remmi’s pistol. Bow limbs not withstanding, the weapons are roughly the same size, so I suppose it makes sense she’d design it to be held the same way.

Along the side of the frame, written in Imperial Common, are just two words. Noodle Spitter.

I look back to her and sigh at the pleading puppy face she probably has no idea she’s making.

”You’re going to have to go over the basic operations with me.”