“So what’s the plan? I’ve been looking over the notes you’ve made, and while it mostly reads like nonsense to me, energy is energy. It looks to me like you need to build some sort of reactor inside yourself and then use that initial source to build something that regulates it. Am I understanding this right?” Her grandfather had been trying to follow everything she was writing down. He wasn’t doing a bad job so far.
“Yeah, generally, the Agency forces their ogres to use that power to bind their collars to them. I’ve read some notes suggesting I could also create some kind of entity to guide me, but that doesn’t seem as useful as a magical tool. Plus, if I’m stuck in this loop, I can always try to find more sources if I really want some sort of helper.” She responded.
“Why a tool though? What will the bonding process do there?” She knew he still didn’t fully grasp the concept of the bond, and she wasn’t sure she did either. It was something she assumed would become clear once it was complete.
“So theoretically, I could take an arduously long time to determine a process to charge mana batteries, or I could create a tool that works as a conduit for me to dump mana directly into storage devices.”
“To what end?”
“Weapons, mechs, battleships, whatever I can get to process the batteries. I’ve seen what’s coming, and we are going to need everything I can build.”
“Please make sure my mech suit compensates for my motion sickness.”
“Of course, what kind of granddaughter would I be otherwise? But the plan for now is I’m going to go seal myself inside the chamber we built for Adam and hope it holds. If you detect any hull damage, I want you to eject it. I’ll be fine. You may not be.” She stared her grandfather in the eyes, trying to determine if he would actually listen or not.
“Okay, I’ll do it.” She didn’t believe him. She doubted she could do it either if the positions were reversed.
“Give me at least three months before you check on me, please.”
“Can do. We have supplies to easily last a year; we can probably stretch it to two if we really want, but I’d strongly advise against anything longer.”
“Don’t worry on that end. I plan to surface as soon I’m reasonably confident I can hide from their tracking systems. See you in a few months. Roger, you’re in charge; don’t let him do anything dumb while I’m gone.” She pat the cat on her way out of the room.
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She checked various readouts to ensure everything was good before she sealed herself away. The room had a bed and a door to a separate room that contained two other rooms, a small bathroom, and a kitchen. She had built this apartment as a place to hold Henry for any deprogramming he may need. Its new purpose was to stand up to any explosive backlash from her learning to channel mana.
“I promise I’ll build you a new, much better room, Henry. Just you wait.”
She sat her pack down in front of her. She joined it on the ground and pulled a set of wrenches from it. She had twenty chances before she ran out of wrenches. She figured that was plenty. She could blow nineteen of them up as long as she got it right the one time, child’s play.
She reached into herself to the spot she felt her magic spring from and grabbed it in her mind. It struggled against her mental grip, but she held tight. She pushed as much of that raw mana out of her as she could directly through her hands into the first wrench.
She collapsed forward, losing consciousness.
When she woke up, the wrench had been reduced to a lump of metal in front of her. Alright, so attempt one was a massive failure. She wasn’t expecting otherwise. In preparation for another go at it, she made herself something to eat and tried to get some rest. She wasn’t successful. Melissa was unable to make her brain focus on something other than the mana she felt inside herself. It was just like every additional time she had ever gotten invested in a project. Rest would come once she made progress. Until then, her body would just need to deal with the stress.
It was time for test two.
The wrench exploded. She ran to dunk her head in the sink. She was too slow to save her eyebrows, but she managed to keep the rest of her hair. Okay, the answer was not faster. While she had stayed conscious this time, she didn’t consider catching on fire to be a better result.
Test three.
She went much gentler this time, but by the time she was able to get anything to touch the wrench, it was too fine-pointed, and the mana pierced it like a laser cutter. She felt she was getting closer, but she wasn't there yet.
Test four.
She firmly held the mana flows and pushed them along her body, swimming them through her arms and into her right hand. She reached down and picked up the wrench. She felt the mana flow from her into it, heating the object in her hand. She slowed the flow, cooling the wrench. She spent the next several hours carefully regulating every second of mana as she allowed it to leave her hand. She was exhausted, but she was too close to quit now. She squeezed down inside herself, pulling any drops of mana left from her core. She would make this wrench as strong as she could.
She felt something resonate in the wrench. There was a force there now. She could feel it. The connection came just in time. She had nothing left to give and fell over. She slept where she lay. For once, the nightmares didn’t come.