I think I blank out all other thoughts as soon as I see the armour I’m supposed to fix.

What were we doing again? Before this? I’m serious I forgot!

Let’s see. I got a message, got the transfer straight into my inventory. Popped it out onto the ground.

And blam! Blammy! Kzzzzam!

Wait no, I think I should have gone further back.

I was doing something. I got the message. Got the armour in the BAG. And…GLAMAZAM! Sorry. That one was a bit of a joke.

Please, forgive me for losing my train of thought the work of art in front of me is just too dazzling.

Let’s see. How can I describe this properly. I almost don’t want to try? It feels like nothing I can say will do this justice – I’m nearly positive whoever made this amour had some sort of skill centered around something like gorgeous mana whose sole purpose was to make this look as hecking pretty as possible.

So…just airbrush the description as much as you can and you might be close okay?

To start, it’s a…almost full body suit. Whatever armored mitts are called, whatever armored boots are called, whatever armored helmets are called. The works! I’m really sorry I’m not an armor buff I’d check Wikipedia to help name all these parts but I don’t have signal – nor phone.

It’s an almost because there are holes in it. Tons of holes – some I think are purposeful (although why you’d stick a hole in a protection I don’t know) and some…well the ripped and bent parts make them clash a bit with the vibe so I’m going say those are damaged.

There are also massive gaps. The mitts cover…maybe a distance up to my forearm? And then the shoulder pads and start of the arm armor goes down just a bit past the triceps. The whole elbow and middle part of the arm is uncovered! That’s what I’m trying to say.

The suit is shiny enough it can only be made out of metal and shifts between a deep sky blue and a soft yellowy gold. I’ve never seen any blue metal before, yet alone one with such vibrant depths and the gold is definitely not regular gold – I saw some gold earings once and they looked a bit gaudy. If gold is like orange with attitude this is like yellow with a degree in super attitude.

The entire structure has very soft and simple patterns accentuating them.

Theres’s bits of red and purple on it but those are decidedly not part of the original aesthetics, so I’ll return to them in a bit.

The armour is split into 16 distinct parts – 8 “Big parts” and 8 “Small fiddly parts”. The important big parts are pretty standard. Helmet, left and right glove, left and right boot, frontplate, backplate…and well it’s kind of like a diaper but that would look dumb and this looks cool. Let’s call the last big part protective shorts. The little parts are all like nicely shaped rings that wrap around your waist, legs, arms, neck. Each has decorations and looks difficult to get on without clasps or anything.

Its not hard to see where everything goes as all the separate parts are connected by mostly invisible threads that keep them all well…mostly in place.

I think these connections are one of the things I need to fix – all the proper ones are invisible but some of them seem frayed or snapped and where they are broken transparent wiggly threads float around in the air. Blue sparks occasionally pop out of the broken threads or flicker across the metal.

Hey.

Did I mention this whole chunk of armour is on fire?

It’s totally on fire and I’m about 90% sure it’s not supposed to be. Maybe maybe maybe it’s “divine holy fire” or something but you’d think they would color coordinate the armour to be a nice red if that were the case.

No the armour is coated in wisps of different intensity flames that curl and dance without dying down.

Final bit of information that’s probably important is there’s some splatters of red blood and a large dump of purple blood all along the arms and front. Some of its dripping into the flames and burning – a bitter acrid smell is filling the surroundings as bits of the purple splatters turn to ashy smoke.

I stare down at this job without fully knowing where to start.

Should I try and move it?

I reach out slowly, carefully. Ouch.

No the fire isn’t for show – it’s hot. The metal itself is hot as well even if it doesn’t look like its too damaged.

Hey…Len? Lennn. There we go.

I need some water. Do you think you could dump some on the flaming hunk of metal in front of me?

You’re the best!

I watch Len begin to fly over to the lake and turn to stare down at the hunk of metal in front of me.

The fires not disappearing. Kind of reminds me of those endless torches I wanted. What do you think? Is there a way to harvest it?

Scoup it off?

I’m going to get a shovel.

…

Okay! Let’s try and scrape these pesky flames off.

I reach out and carefully attack the edges of the armour trying to find where the flames are coming from.

You’d expect there would be some sort of goup on it right? Flaming goup like some sort of oil or Greek fire jell or something? Maybe the purple paint is causing it and just pushing the flames to other parts?

Sadly that’s not really whats happening. The flames are just sort of appearing off random bits of metal. It really does look like the armour is a chunk of wood or something that’s being burned…but theres very few signs the armour is even being damaged by it. Like, the strongest chunks of fire are all grouped over a splots that’s pitch black with soot…but I’m pretty sure that soot is just burnt purple and red paint not the metal itself burning.

Len arrives with a splash a portion of the armour suddenly violently sizziling as water is dumped on hot metal.

The flames in that portion all dim quite a bit but are strangely resistant to the water. That should have snuffed em right out and yet while I can confirm the flames seem smaller…they also regrew to at least 90% of their previous size a few seconds later.

Round two of the poke test I think?

I reach out and try to touch a portion of metal. Ssss. That’s the smell and sound of burning Sam. Science comes at a cost. Don’t try this at home…

Okay. So I can now touch this portion – it’s uncomfortably hot but not scalding anymore so that’s fun. The majority of the heat is from the flames nearby, not the metal I brushed against.

Len. We are going to need a second batch of water but this time I want to try something before you dump it everywhere. Yes yes I know, you do a lot. Thanks for being my friend.

While he’s off getting our water let me just pop a bucket out of my inventory real quick…

…

As soon as Len returns his shiny frame flapping up to the smouldering pile, I dunk my hands in his back.

Swirling my hands in the water I feel the way my glue skill slightly sucks on the water. The motion is starting to activate some part of it as liquid slides past back and forth.

Hey if you think this is weird you can dump your cargo in this bucket and I’ll get a new one…no? Suit yourself.

Pulling my dripping hands out I feel the way they are coated in a film of almost sticky. Not quite gloves but close.

I then reach out and slowly begin closing my hands around one of the flames – the weakest and hopefully easiest.

These are magic right? Magic is stuff done with mana? So…theres mana here I can pull off? Aha!

I clench my fist around the flame expecting it to pop off like a vegetable but all I feel is a sharp heat.

Yanking my hand back before it can start burning, I stare at the flames in annoyance. The goddess said I could fix this…and mentioned both Triboadhesion and mana crystal creation. If I couldn’t deal with the fire she would have told me…so okay. Let’s try this again.

Dunking my hands in Len’s water once again I swirl for a bit longer trying to insulate my hands and prime them for sticky grabbing action then pull them out and take a deep breath.

Huff, Huff. No puff I don’t want to activate phantom breath. Okay! I can do this!

I reach out once again. This time I’ll try from a different direction…

Slowly I wave my arms back and forth as if I’m trying to grab a great big beach ball or something. My hands get closer…give them some space. Phef, time to breath – Oh but now I’m closer! Mwahaha! Closer we go! Breath…don’t worry I’m going away. Nothing to worry about I’m retreating – Aha! Gotcha!

Each squeeze inwards pushed the flame downwards slightly. Each compression made the surroundings change slightly.

Remember how I spoke of the flames not having goop? I was mistaken. Theres definitely goop! The mana that fuels these flames is invisible until I start entering the state MCC brings me. MCC slowly reveals the invisible goop. It compresses out of invisibility into transparent ghostly goodness.

With a swipe I pull both hands together cupping them underneath the flame and yanking like I’m trying to uproot a carrot.

Most of the goop sticks to my hands – the goop partly falling through my hands partly sticking to the sticky gloves I made and I swing my hands as fast as I can dumping the flame into my free bucket.

Not Len! The one I grabbed from our inventory.

My hand tingles and is uncomfortably dry and hot where the flame goop passed through it. I maybe should have compressed a bit more…but the fire kept shrinking when I was compressing and I was worried it would be snuffed out if I kept going.

Alright! In the bucket the mana I can see starts fading slightly – the goop disappearing so the flames appear to be burning off nothing.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

When I glue environmental mana to my body it usually stays visible…but I don’t want to burn myself. Maybe if I glue some to the side of the bucket with specific temporary glue?

Dunking and swirling my hands and reapplying all the moisture I can, I reach out a third time this time aiming for a small but hot looking flame hiding on the tip of the left boot.

Compress. Compress. Compress. Compress. I keep pushing till the candle flame is nothing more than a cm high flicker of almost light. Grab! I jerk forward to try and grab this version, but my motion compresses it a final time – either that or the wind of my hands moving might have killed it.

Whatever the case the flame disappears as I pluck the warm but surprisingly unhot chunk of burning out of the pit and towards my bucket.

I drop the goop in and wait.

Any moment now.

…

I think I broke it.

The mana fades slowly – much slower than the last time and yet the flames do not return.

I grab my shovel and just barely fit the flat end in.

Stir? Stir stir?

I try and scrape around my makeshift utensil causing the existing flame to flicker and shift slightly.

Nope. Booo!

I definitely broke the second flame. So! As far as I’m concerned that means…well it means the flames aren’t mana. I can’t just turn flames into a pearl and then break it open, the flames re-appearing on demand…

Magic things aren’t mana! Skills aren’t mana! Might be a bit of a leap but the flames being made by a skill makes sense to me.

They might be made with mana or fueled by mana or…I don’t fully know yet but they aren’t the same thing!

Hands reapplied I compress and snatch another flame slapping it to the inner side of the bucket with some temporary glue.

Dunk dunk. And another!

Its slow work that would probably have sped up if I were willing to just compress it all into a pearl. Its also a bit more dangerous than I’m letting on. I think each of these flames could seriously burn me if I treated them lightly. Safety first folks! Lots of sticky gloves and moisture!

The bits of fire goop I glued to the bucket stay visible for quite a bit longer than the chunks dumped in the bottom of the bucket, but they too fade as I work. I didn’t realize gluing mana to my body was this different from gluing it to a bucket. I wonder if I glue them to Len if they will last longer?

…no need to drift away from me sheesh. I’m not going to burn you.

The more I harvest and throw in the bucket the hotter it gets – I realize it’s burning the grass below it and the bottom has started getting red partway through.

Eish. Whoops? Well then.

The quick solution is to buy more buckets and put less in each. Beneath the flames in the first bucket the metal looks like a grill – like a stoves burner. How much hotter would it need to get to start melting the metal itself? I…don’t know even know what type of metal the buckets are made out of let alone what their melting point. I do however know stove elements get anywhere between 200-300c and I think I remember some metals are close to 300. Lead maybe? Alluminum? Can’t remember the exact metals and I’m probably exaggerating the danger. Stuff used for soldering I know that. Metals usually melt at pretty high temperatures. Most are like a 1000 or something.

…

Okay!

With a final snatch I’m done.

That took ages. I’m not even exaggerating it took over an hour just to clean the flames off.

Plus side.

Free flames!

Dance!

A quick test for viability – I put a bucket with flames in it into my inventory and removed it with the flames still burning. Alright! In you go!

Running around I pick up each bucket and shove it in my inventory wincing at how hot the handles are even past my makeshift gloves. I need proper oven mitts. Someone remind me later – I remember looking for the the other day when we had our barbeque but all the gloves I saw were magical and expensive.

Seemed like overkill but now it might be the correct amount of caution.

Let’s see…

I do a final round of cleanup – now that I’m not worried about keeping the flames safe, I have Len drench them and compress snatch the remnant gunk off the frame.

Slowly the metal cools and I can touch it safely. I dunk even more water on it and use a scrap of cloth from my old bed to help wash the dirt and gunk off.

And hoo boi. I feel like this is expensive. If I hadn’t just seen it covered in fire I’d be worried about breaking it whenever I touch it.

It’s dumb. It’s armour I probably can’t break it by accident. Brains are dumb. I’m dumb. Let’s move on.

When I was compressing and collecting the fire, I found some of those invisible threads started becoming visible so that’s probably the best place to start.

I can work much easier now that I’m not dealing with the danger so I take my time activating MCC and trying to see what we have to work with.

Ohhmmm, gather gather gather. Squeeze squeeze squeeze. I don’t even want to compress anything I just want the skill assist or whatever you want to call it to let me see the mana. Reveal to me your secrets! Gather gather gather…

From what I can gather (heh) the entirety of this armor is covered in two types of wires. Theres the broken ones – the blue spark bits that attach each component together and they are structured almost like solid cables. These are dark Blue when I push them into being visible and there are more of them than I first thought. Each part is almost sewed to another with 10+ invisible blue mana cables and its only where they are broken that things spark and look weird.

The second type of wire are gossamer thin yellow ones. The small yellow ones are hard to spot – I have to compress the area quite a bit before they become visible and they actively slip away and fade seconds later. Like they are actively fighting against being brought visible instead of passively appearing and disappearing.

The yellow threads are almost set up like chainmail. They form continuous lines of loops – Every spot I mentioned was “open” like the elbows and every “hole” I mentioned being a potential weak spot? Well those are completely covered in the yellow chainmail woven thin enough it’s like holy cloth. Unlike the sparking blue cables, the yellow cloth seems perfectly fine. Either its stronger and less likely to break or it can heal…or maybe it just wasn’t damaged in the first place. I’m not sure to be honest? What do you guys think? Does it matter?

Well anyways. The weirdest part with both yellow and blue mana cables…are the way they aren’t actually physical.

Like listen. Invisible armour. Seems neat. Aesthetic. Lets you show off some skin instead of sitting in a tin can. On the other hand…

Invisible armour I can stick my hands through? That doesn’t make sense to me. Even if I can compress and make the chainmail visible and grabbable…if in its default state I can run my hands through the area it doesn’t seem like useful armour does it?

I can only guess that it actually blocks damage when worn – or maybe maybe interacts with a skill or something to become a strong defense. Literally doesn’t make sense otherwise.

Idk.

Okay then. Well lets see about reconnecting some of these broken cables.

I use MCC on one of the snapped cables and slowly compress each end as hard as I can. I keep expecting it to be too much but all that happens is the cables get easier to work with and they stop sparking after I push them hard enough.

I then slowly and carefully rub each end with separate hands, switching entirely to Triboadhesion.

My goal is permenance so I make sure to rub em good and hard only linking them together at the top end of my ability.

The wires feel strange – like solid ropes but also like nothing…like my skill is passing on the feeling of touch through my hands but my hands aren’t passing on any input themselves.

I think I’ve done enough however – I sit back and stare down at the wire yanking it a few time while I can still hold them.

…

Five minutes later and the cable is still stuck together. I’m…almost shocked. Guys I think the goddess really did give me a job completely within my abilities. I don’t know why I’m this shocked but I actually feel useful and its giving me a warm fuzzy. Quick! Grab onto the warm fuzzy and don’t let go. Those are precious.

I wonder if I can glue the warm fuzzy to myself and keep it forever?

…

I’m helping someone somewhere. I hope they see their armour fixed and gain a small bit of joy. If that was their blood on the armour I hope they managed to get themselves healed. I hope I’m helping a real hero. Someone like a firefighter, not like a cop. I hope!

Let’s keep going.

Bit by bit I work – time passing slowly as I focus. It sounds simple but I want to do my very best. It’s not something I want to rush through with phantom breath. Its…important.

Unlike grinding MCC, its important so I don’t get bored. I glue my hair into a ponytail and sit with chunks of armour in my lap carefully working through each broken cable smoothing them over and gluing them to themselves one by one.

I’m not doing a seamless job – you can tell every cable I glued when you compress them into being visible. It’s like someone cut a rope in half and I tied a knot in it to get the two pieces together once again. The rope is complete once again but there’s a pretty visible bump in the middle and I don’t think it’s quite as strong. My work leaves bunched up chunks and I’m pretty sure a lot of my fixed cables are a bit shorter than the others.

Still, it’s the best I can do, and I keep at it. One of the glued bits starts sparking again after a while so I compress the area and glue it to itself several times. I think there was a hole in my glue job – it’s the only bit that started sparking and it doesn’t spark again.

Partway through the day I pull out a fire bucket and some bread and cheese. Three minute grilled cheese and back to work!

Night hits and I’m maybe 80% of the way done. Part of me wants to continue – I’m so close and I’m sure I can finish in an hour or two…but it’s gotten dark and I don’t want to make a mistake because I’m working off of a flashlight.

Pulling one of my buckets out – the one with the smallest flame – I use it like a lantern lighting my way back to our house.

Still haven’t made a path. Its just such a big commitment as nice as it would be. Feels like it would take as long as my house to build properly and I still don’t have a shower or bath.

Anyways.

I place the bucket in the sand outside my house and enter reaching around for my night stone.

Shake shake. Bit of light to see by. I’m going to check the fire bucket tomorrow and see if its still going. Figure out how useful the fire is that way.

My stomach grumbles a bit – I guess I didn’t eat enough – but I don’t care. Its fine. I’ll eat a big breakfast tomorrow.

Goodnight friend. See you again tomorrow.

…

And I’m up! Coococoo!

I’m glad I don’t have a rooster equivalent waking me up at the crack of dawn but its definitely a vibe.

My stomach is grumbling as I fish around for my daily treat and begin snacking on raw cheese.

I’m going get fat from eating nothing but cheese I swear. Does this count as a keto diet? I haven’t been eating much sugar…I think it does. Wow. That’s fun. I think those are healthy…

Where are all my helpers?

Oh hey fishyminer! Doing good? Don’t worry we can start building a spa soon and you can help. I’m not meaning to ignore you. Morning Dairy. Doing good! Big stretch! We love big stretches here – what a cutie. Len! My best bucket boi. How you doooin this morning. Yep, I’m feeling good today as well. Sure we can look into that later.

Alright!

Done my daily rounds, I head up to the armour half expecting it to have fallen apart in my absence.

It’s looking good – fire removal and a wash did wonders for it.

A few sparks are still happening but all the cables I glued are still going strong. Glad to see they haven’t fallen apart. I am actually fixing it!

I lay down and start up the job once again.

Its weird…this morning returning to the task feels strange. Surreal. This…is a job. A task. And yet its otherworldly. I’m literally grabbing ethereal lines of mana and glueing them to each other. And this is just a day job! A commission! I hope I never lose the wonder for this – it would be sad for this to start feeling mundane and boring.

Slowly the surreal feeling fades but I maintain a bit of wonder. Each cord is more than just a blue rope. they are lines of moving sparks compressed into a physical shape. Power moves along them – every time I connect a line, the two armor pieces I just connected dimly glow for a moment.

Finally I’m done. Before noon even! I stare down at the armour in vague pride. The fire is gone. The big sparking damage Is fixed!

Theres a few ripped and dented pieces of metal…but I don’t really know how to smith them. I’d glue sand in the place but that feels like it might weaken them? Like trying to ductape a car together?

I focus on the biggest spot. The top corner of the front breastplate has a single massive grouve cut into it. the bottom end is nothing more than a scratch but near the top it digs deep and splits the metal in two.

It’s cutting through a design. It’s like a work of arts been damaged – feels kind of sad to look at.

I start using MCC on the area hoping theres something I can do.

I can’t really heat up or bend the metal…but maybe?

It takes a while of grabbing and compressing in the corner – the environmental mana is gathering in my hands before the yellow cloth becomes visible in the area.

It’s – once again – strangely fine. Yellow cloth is stronk – maybe because you can pass right through it so it never gets damaged, but you know?

All along the edge of the metal its fused as if the metal was created on top of the cloth. Like…like the cloth was there and then two halves of the breastplate were melted together over top of it. That’s what it looks like. Theres a gap in the cloth where the gash breaks that corner and the yellow cloth curls up and out into the air. I compress a bit more then reach out running my hand along the yellow nothing prepping it to be glued.

It starts to fade out of sight annoyingly quickly, but I compress the area every few seconds. Triboadhesion priming it also seems to help its stability the cloth taking longer and longer to fade the more I prime it.

Using my other hand to glue all around the gap I prime the other side then glue the yellow sheet in place over the slash. It’s a much rougher job than my cable repair but it feels better than doing nothing.

Checking the whole armour meticulously I notice another small gap – this one only 2-3 fingers wide – and spent the time and effort to glue it back on as well.

There we go!

I don’t think I missed anything? I did just do a pretty throughout check…

I stand up, my knees wobbling for a second, then walk around the armour trying to spot something from far away.

Nope? I think they are good.

Reaching down I carefully pick up each piece stacking them into a pile and lifting them to shove in the sign.

As soon as the armour is in my inventory, I move it to the quest area and watch it immediately get whisked off to the goddess. Milliseconds later the wisp makes a return swirling into view a happy “Thanks, this is acceptable, one favor has been credited to your divine shop” coming out of her chibi little mouth.

Woot!

Cash money!

Woot!

I pump my fist in the air in celebration. Then look down a big smile on my face.

I hope this helps the goddess. Maybe she’ll be less stressed with the first proof I can help complete and on her doorstep.

Well then. I think I promised some of you we could do some experiments. We can brainstorm how we want to spend this favour while we do them.

Ishner, You’re up. Let’s go find you a temporary body!