Most of the week went by in a bit of a blur for Adam. While Jay’s impending departure cast a pall over everything, they still had time, and that was what mattered. It was surprising to them all how close they had become in the little time they had been together, but facing death has a way of forging bonds.
There was another recent addition to their little makeshift family as well. Ruth spent more and more time with all of them. What originally began as her campaign to reduce Martin’s unknown number of lovers to one, became something more. She quickly realized the boys were starving for attention of the feminine sort. Certainly not in the same way that Martin was, but in a more motherly manner.
Adam knew she had caught the odd behavior he exhibited at the times when System Assistance took over his words or actions, but she didn’t say anything. Originally he believed that Martin had warned her to leave it be, but over a few days he realized that he had done no such thing. Instead, he came to the realization that that was just how Ruth was.
She was patient, kind, understanding, and smart. She had noticed an oddity, but chose to wait for him to explain it rather than dig into his secrets. If he didn’t want to talk about it, she wouldn’t push. That didn’t mean that she was unaware, or not forming opinions on it. Ruth just kept all of that to herself unless she was asked or it became necessary.
It was a new approach for Adam. He’d not seen anything like it before. The people working at the orphanage were by turns completely apathetic, or a divine inquisition when it came to things they didn’t know about. Once they were on the streets, he had become the authority, a position he was not ready for, and he had no one to emulate behaviorally. He realized that it was a good approach for children as he himself was appreciative of her actions. Jay’s interactions with her were equally educational.
The most telling of her interactions, however, were with Martin. Adam would normally have avoided all possibility of watching the mating dance of the elderly, but Ruth had made it a far more interesting show than he had been expecting. She had originally approached him as a huntress, but once she realized his dedication to the boys her approach changed. She went from trying to cut out the other contenders for her prey to becoming a passive attractor. Adam had smiled as he noticed how it all affected Martin.
The man had no clue how to react to any of it, and less chance to resist. With her behavior at the beginning he knew what was happening, and how to respond to make it all a game. It was a practiced response for him, a normal interaction. When she pulled back the aggression, he stumbled. Each little hint, each enticement pulled him further and further over until he fell face first into her trap.
Adam watched every interaction Ruth had with any of them, cataloguing and learning. Mother Knows Best may have pointed it all out to him in the beginning, but it was Organization that did the majority of the hard work. He was quickly beginning to realize the correct way to utilize the skill. He had bought it for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t a planning skill, it was an information gathering one. With enough input, granted by pushing as much of Multi task at it as it could handle, Organization could process a massive influx of information. Using that intelligence though required a different skill. One he had already had, and was underutilizing. Mother Knows Best.
The name of the skill said it all. If he wanted to figure out the best plan forward, he just had to push the skill that knew everything at the skill that used it best. Mother Knows Best took everything Organization and Multi task could gather on how Ruth behaved and found interesting correlations. She was using nearly the same tactics on both him and Martin. Push to get attention, then retreat to pull the target into a trap. The only difference was that she hadn’t pushed him. He was uncertain of the status of any traps.
His conclusion was that he needed to learn more. Much, much more. Once Jay left, he would have to see if his schedule would allow him time to learn more from Ruth. It helped that he knew he could use the need to continue working on his crafting skills with her as his teacher as an excuse to spend more time with her. Adam was also aware that there would be a price he had to pay. He would have to explain his behavior. While he knew that he should be concerned about exposing his secrets to someone else, he was getting the impression that she would be trustworthy.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
There was another reason that Ruth had joined them during their training time, the official reason. She was bringing them the tools of the trade. From his experience with the wooden spoon it was obvious that he could both use an item and not recognize it was a weapon for him. He needed to go through every tool he had, or could, use in an attempt to fill up the list of things he could use.
There were as many surprises as duds, but they eventually started to get a sense of what would and would not work. The defining reasoning seemed to be that he could utilize tools that were used by the crafting skills that he had as weapons, but things from other crafting or working skills he could not. He also had to have actually used said tool for its intended purpose at least once, as well as looked upon it as a possible weapon before he could identify it as a weapon usable by his class.
The two tools that finally brought it all home to them were a needle and a pitchfork. Adam had made extensive use of a needle while unlocking Sewing, it was the primary tool of the craft after all. After they had gone through a few of the variety of tools they thought he might be able to use, Ruth pulled a bit of a trick on him. She “accidentally” snagged his pants with a rake that he was passing off, and then handed him a needle and thread to fix it. Part way through the repair, she pointed out that a needle with a drop of poison was surprisingly effective at discouraging prospective suitors that didn’t understand the word no. As he heard that, Adam’s mind lit up once again, and the needle suddenly felt different in his hand. More. He knew how and where to utilize it to greatest effectiveness, but for poisoning and in other debilitating ways.
The pitchfork was the other end of the spectrum. They had all thought that it was a bit of a stretch to attempt to use a pitchfork, something that was arguably already a weapon. Adam’s failure to use a hatchet seemed to hold true with the pitchfork as well, until Martin pointed out that neither of them had flown from his hand. The pitchfork would have suffered the same fate and been relegated to a simple tool had Adam not questioned its purpose. The stable boy who had brought it over had reminded him of the section of his skill list that spoke of Staves (Cleaning).
Every drudge, maid, janitor, cleaner, caretaker, stable boy, and gardener has dreamt of being a mage.
With the reminder that the stable boy presented him, he was certain that he could use the pitchfork, but he had no idea what the tool was used for. A question sent them all to the stable where he had the glamorous task of pitching shit with a giant fork. It only took him a little while for him to feel that same connection, although it started with it being a tool for cleaning before it was a weapon. A quick poke around the stable added a couple other items to the list, the main one in his eyes being a selection of shovels.
All in all if they hadn’t gotten everything, they had come very close. He hadn’t looked into his mindscape over the week, but a few quick movements with each of his new useful toys was enough to help him place them in certain categories. Most of them were similar enough to the two basic styles of weapon that he already had. Magic or melee. He had been hoping to get something that was more useful as a ranged weapon than kitchen knives, as most of them were essentially crap when thrown, but no such luck. He still had no idea how he’d killed a goblin with a thrown bread knife.
The most annoying part of not finding any ranged weapons was knowing that there were some out there for him to use, but he couldn’t figure them out. How did he know? Well, a little old lady in his head got all smug whenever he thought about it. He knew there was no use in trying to coax it out of her, she liked her secrets too much. Not to mention knowing everything.
A sharp bang in his mind had him looking at the hag in surprise. She was trying to communicate some point to him, but he couldn’t quite make the connection. There was something wrong in how he was thinking of her, but he couldn’t make sense of it, even after a long series of pantomiming. In the end they both threw their hands in the air and stalked off. Metaphorically, or course. One was an imaginary old crone in his head, and the other was himself.