Chapter Forty-Nine

We were greeted at a heavy ‘vault like’ door by an elvish man and a catwoman both wearing lab coats, and glasses. The elf’s ears twitched when we approached and the catwoman’s ears went down. “About time you got here.” They snapped at once.

“It hasn’t been that long.” Loysa snapped right back, “The quest was picked up the same day and it said you need special materials and tinker talents. How long were you expecting it to take?! If you want it faster, hire someone permanently.” Her scathing retort startled the two enough that they stepped back until the door itself stopped them.

“Ah, right. Well, I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long, but I’m Aiko Tsuniki, I would have come sooner, but I was in another world.” I flicked my ears a little and gave them a friendly, open smile as I held out my hand.

The contrast between Loysa’s sharp retort and my friendly approach definitely threw the pair off, but they managed to recover enough to each give my hand a tentative shake. Their hands were soft, delicate things, like they’d never really had to do any hard work.

Loysa’s dislike was now understandable. I felt an inkling of it grow as I thought about that. ‘We traveled for day after day, fought two giant golems, got in with a probably murderous industrialist, and arrested, sort of, by an entire city of undead dwarves, and they have the unmitigated gall to be upset that it took a while?!’

“Dr. Kasini Yori, my colleague, Dr. Hajime Kyoshitsu.” The elf twitched his ears as the catwoman offered introductions. “You’re a summon?” Her tail, long, thin, and dark as the ink colored hair on her head, twitched about as if tantalized by a mystery, “What were you chosen to accomplish?”

I almost laughed at that idea, so I went with the first ‘joke’ I could think of. “To be a janitor.” I said, and while the two scientists or whatever this world’s equivalent of those happened to be, traded confused looks, Dwarguy filled in the joke.

“Me lass here has things to do, so if’n ye could let us go in an clean up yer mess?”

A tic took effect on the elf’s face. “Of course.” He ground out through his teeth while his colleague hid her own displeasure better, by holding her palm against the panel and opening the fault door. This one opened like the door in the building where we were briefly ‘confined’ in Undercity.

“So, before we begin, why weren’t you able to repair this on your own?” Tes’alay asked. “I find it hard to believe that it was something as simple as a bad magitite shard. And I know you have your own people, by the nine thousand hells, you are here, are you incompetent, lazy, or is there a real reason?” Tes’alay did not mince words and the two openly glared.

“Who’re you to speak to us like that you…upstart?!” Dr. Kyoshitsu snarled through gritted teeth.

“Tes’alay Nika, the one who built that gate that you inept fools have somehow managed to either fail to maintain, or somehow broke, or allowed to be broken!” Her eyebrows twitched, and I think the only reason the pair didn’t fall over was that they were frozen in place by shock.

Dr. Yori recovered her voice the fastest, “We don’t understand it.” She admitted and waved an angry hand toward the interior of the room. There was a doorway there that seemed to be made of pure light, but cast no shadow.

“It’s easy you thundering incompetents!” Tes’alay snapped. “There’s a sympathetic equidistant spacial link facilitated by subreality layer connections between magitite fragments and the energy conduction of transferring parties maintains integrity across third and fourth dimensional space! As long as you have synchronic magitite ore… which there should have been plenty of, you should have had no problem keeping this running! So what did you do to my invention?!”

“As far as the ore… we… used it.” Dr. Yori answered. “We needed ore for some ah… projects, and that was the best available. It was ninety-seven point six percent pure and its harmonic nature was unprecedented…”

“Idiots!” Tes’alay shouted and stormed into the room, her shoulder brushed Dr. Kyoshitsu and all but knocked him aside, I followed after her. “Just get out! I have no time for incompetents!”

I suddenly understood more of why Tess tended to work alone. “Give me a moment.” I said to her and called out to Dwarguy, “Bring the ore in!”

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I used my Insightful Inventor skill and began to study the ‘device’ if I can call it that. Tes’alay’s words had meant mostly nothing to me, a few fragments kind of sort of made sense.

I think if I didn’t have a unique tinkering skill that helped me to understand things, and if she hadn’t seen it first hand actually fix one of her inventions, she might not have wanted even me in the room.

The ‘doctors’ retreated, but didn’t leave, and I studied the object of my quest.

To say it was bizarre was to say that the sea was slightly wet and the sun was slightly bright. There was a blue metal frame that was obviously shaped magitite, but more importantly there were no breaks. It was also ‘coiled’ rather than straight like a door frame, rooted to a single black square on the floor. The ‘coils’ for lack of a better word, rose up in an arch and came to a single bright central point that connected them both.

Tes’alay opened the black square on the floor and revealed a second fragment of magitite, this one however, was not blue. It was white.

“Are the twin idiots still back there?” She asked.

“We’re not twins.” Dr. Kyoshitsu snapped.

“I can’t tell stupidity apart.” Tes’alay snapped, “When this was tried, what happened?”

“The person just…vanished. They never got to the other side, nobody knows where they ended up.” Dr. Kyoshitsu answered, his face was flushed as red as that of his comrade, being spoken to like this was clearly out of the ordinary.

The more I studied this device, the more I understood… and Tes’alay was watching my expression out of the corner of her eye.

She gave a tiny nod when she saw I understood.

“It’s an easy fix… if you’re not inept.” She said, and I broke out my tools, as she pulled out the old piece and laid it aside as if it were about to explode, I began to cut and shape the magitite fragment at hand to fit the gate. She held her hand out, making small shapes in her palm with the fingers of her other hand so it wouldn’t be obvious to those at our backs what she was asking for.

The interior was lined with pipes that were exceedingly hot, and gears that connected to gears that in turn helped push small paddles in a pattern that was almost like a computer program. Like it was built to identify very specific actions to interact with the magitite ‘battery’. Or so I thought of it as.

To explain what was wrong, the simplest way is to say that it was out of harmony, and between the battery replacement and my ability to ‘stitch’ mana patterns back together… well, it wasn’t a hard fix. At least not if you understood it.

Tess waxed between overjoyed to see her invention slowly restored, and outraged that it was ever damaged. ‘Mad genius indeed.’ I thought.

Hours of sweat and labor and working with such tiny, intricate components that almost made the little magical mechanical tree I was blessed at, appear clunky, were enough to make me sweat. Nor was I alone.

But all those years tinkering with tiny components on my models in the old world were paying off. We made progress, inserting tiny magitite fragments where they were needed and bringing everything slowly back into harmony again.

Until it was over.

I gave Tes’alay Nika the largest fragment, which I’d shaped to our intent, and she put it as delicately into place as if she were laying her own baby into a crib to sleep.

With equal tenderness she closed the black metal surface, and the gate flared to life.

“It’s done.” She said, and for good measure, I studied it again with my Insightful Inventor skill. “You can use it.”

I stood and stretched out to find that Loysa and Dwarguy had spent the last few hours standing at our backs and more or less barring entry to the door by the pair Tess had designated as incompetents.

She met my eyes again and gave a subtle nod. It wasn’t about a job well done.

“We’ll take our leave now.” I said, and Loysa opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when I bent to pick up the white ore as if I was picking up a live, angry serpent.

“Yes. Have it tested and then send confirmation to the guild. We’ll get going now. Just initialize the pretest validation of work performed.” She said and held out her hand for my slate.

I held it out, and the two red faced scientists marked off that we’d come, worked, and certified it ready for testing.

“The Guild will want confirmation that it’s satisfactory.” Tes’alay said, but then pointed to the black box. “I’ve put my seal on that however. Nobody is going to be able to open it without my doing the removal of that seal. And I refuse to do that until the work is certified satisfactory and ‘Wandering Time’ has been paid.”

They marked the contract, albeit reluctantly, and said nothing ‘verbal’ as we left, but we felt their glares at our backs.

“What was that?!” Loysa hissed when we left the building.

“It was sabotaged.” Tess and I whispered when we were well away from the building.

“When we get to the guild… we have to report it. And I have the proof.” I added and tapped the white ore.

“Why not tell them?” Dwarguy asked.

“Who else could have done it?” Tess asked… and that kept us quiet and sober, and heading straight for another airship without even stopping for something to eat.