Once I got home, I headed for bed. It was really about time I got to something I’d been pushing off for a couple days: my Perk Points. I didn’t want to spend both all at once though, so I’d do one now and one later. I figured it might help with my mental state to not be trapped in the learning space for so long.

As I was pulled from my soft, comfy bed into the ancient-looking pavilion of the interface, I couldn’t help but appreciate just how soothing the place was. When I first entered the place, it had been a little eerie. With the addition of more shelves and my growing comfort with the whole interface, it was quite a peaceful place. It almost felt like a private library secluded up in the mountains, all just for me. It was pretty nova.

I headed off to find my first shelf: First Aid. It was the exact same as every shelf in this place, though the glowing ball of fire granted me vision of the lower parts of the shelf. I looked through the list, noting down the ones that seemed interesting. There were a ton of Perks I just outright eliminated, as per usual. I slowly worked down to a list.

「Second Wind」

「Soothe」

「Jury Rigged Equipment」

「Medic!」

「Eidetic Transcripts」

「Doctor’s Tools」

「Universal Donor」

「Rooky Diagnosis」

「Calming」

「Silence」

Of those, I managed to narrow it down to just four of them. Most of them were fairly easy to knock off once I thought about what setting I’d be doing First Aid in. For instance, Rooky Diagnosis would allow me to figure out what was wrong with a patient, but I'd probably be able to see a stab or bullet wound.

The four I narrowed it down to were Silence, Universal Donor, Calming, and Second Wind. Silence was quite interesting. Basically, it would allow me to silence any patient so they wouldn’t be able to distract me or others while I worked on them.

At first glance, it was a nice quality of life Perk for a Surgeon, but it said ‘any patient’. That got me wondering, if I threw a knife at someone for ‘surgery’, would they instantly stop making noises? Not that I was an assassin nor would I get much use out of it, but it was an interesting question.

Second Wind had a lot more practical applications. Basically, when I run entirely out of stamina, I’d be able to regenerate my body back to peak conditions. It was incredibly attractive, but its conditions made me pause. It could only be used when I was actively patching someone up or heading to someone to patch them up, and it had a week-long cooldown.

Calming would allow me to, well, calm anyone under my care. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it meant since the description was pretty useless, but it seemed very helpful with potential applications outside of First Aid too. Or at least more obvious applications outside of medical situations than Silence.

And finally, Universal Donor. It changed my blood, making it ideal as a donor's blood. I first picked it out of the mass of scrolls thanks to the recent experience with Feras bleeding out. I was curious about what the eidolons' meant by ideal, but it was definitely a spur-of-the-moment pick rather than anything else.

After a moment’s hesitation, I picked up the scroll I wanted and headed for the easel.

「Calming - Calm those in your care, allowing for easier treatment.」

I hung it on the easel, watching as it magically unfurled to reveal a masterwork painting. The painting was of a person, their face an indescribable blur, calming another with an outstretched palm. It faintly reminded me of those old pictures of cowboys calming their horses.

How exactly do these paintings come to be? Is there an eidolon somewhere carefully making every stroke of a brush to give these things so much detail? Or were they fake and generated just like the rest of the pavilion? Or was the pavilion even a mental construct in the first place? Hmm…

I blinked, suddenly in a black space. A gurney sat in the distance of the darkness, a white light beaming down from the heavens onto it. A pale man with a knife stuck in his stomach lay draped across the gurney, his chest rapidly rising and falling.

「Calm your patient down.」

I let out a long breath and headed for the gurney. Maybe I should’ve gotten Universal Donor instead. It would’ve probably just been one of those body ones that hurt for a bit but otherwise were fine. It would've been quicker at least.

— — —

My time in the learning space wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I woke up a day later, far shorter than any other time I’d taken a ‘learning’ based Perk. It was quite a confusing observation when I woke up.

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Maybe I learned all I needed to faster than any other time taking a Perk? It made sense at least. It also wasn’t entirely without merit. Calming had indeed been quite a bit easier than the other times. It felt like a breeze compared to some of the other ones.

The entire process was equal parts recognizing what my patients were going through and knowing what to say to get them to calm down. The latter side of that was more difficult. The whole empathy thing was damn easy.

Cues allowed me to practically read their emotions at will, though it became a bit more difficult the more injured the patients became. Surprisingly, agony was a bit harder to read through once it caused someone’s entire body to crumple up.

It wasn’t just the one patient I had to go through. As soon as I finished with one, another would pop up. Everything from children to the elderly, from emotionless 'borgs to fully flesh humans were tossed onto the gurney. It was a lot different trying to calm down a murderous ‘borg with enough chrome to make robots blush than it was to calm down a child with a- erm- ‘misplaced’ limb.

The same tactics and words didn’t work every time either. I had to hand-craft my manipulations based on my observations and what I learned from previous attempts. It was honestly a bit fun, like trying to put together a puzzle.

I know the interface probably didn’t mean it this way, but it was also practically a masterclass on manipulating emotions. Hell, I even tossed in Cold-Blooded - which surprisingly worked in the learning space - a couple times and used intimidation to calm people down. My failures were also points of learning how to escalate the situation, which might be useful.

I shifted on my bed, summoning Crow’s Canteen of Chaos and taking a deep drink. I briefly thought about running through Firearms while I was here, but managed to talk myself out of it for now. Instead, I hopped up, stretched, and headed for my printer.

Instead of doing any of the important things I had to do at some point, I wasted a couple hours printing Doctor Absolom action figures and workshopping my newest additions to the action figure series. For now, I’m calling the idea the Wretched. Basically, they were a couple different kinds of insectoid monstrosities for Doctor Absolom to ‘fight’ against. I could think up a backstory or something later, but for now, that’s all they were.

I got bored and turned my attention to the armor. I didn’t start doing anything too crazy, just slowly disassembling and reverse-engineering the helmet. With every part I took off, I carefully drew it out on a blueprint so I could remember exactly how and where everything went together.

It was surprisingly simplistic. Outside of the thick plates of metal to block bullets, there wasn’t all that much going on inside of the thing. There were plenty of spots where stuff could attach, but the helmet was bare bones. Just a battery behind the skull, the LEDs, a nonfunctional breathing apparatus, and the screens and cameras that acted as the thing’s eyes.

I was already thinking of improvements for it. For one, take out the LEDs or at least add a toggle for them. Nothing like glowing eyes to give away my position, though they could be pretty nice for intimidation tactics. Then I could drop my old mask, take the breathing apparatus out of it, and put it into this one. Add in a voice modulator to boot just in case.

Then, if I was feeling good about it, I could swap out the cameras. They were rather low-end ones, and I had a bank of knowledge in my head I could rely on to get something better. Maybe some kind of thermal or infrared on top of normal. Oh, and add Blackout from my old eye. Maybe sized up a bit though to reduce some of the heat build-up and connect it to the battery.

I’d have to repaint it, but not with just any paint. I doubt I’d be able to find what I was thinking of in the wild, so probably a Night Market or something. Even if it was out on a store’s shelf, there were other things I wanted at a Night Market anyway. Especially if I wanted to add Blackout.

I’d also need some other panels of armor plating. I could probably disassemble some from body armor or subdermal armor if I needed to. I had a faint idea to attach the Drop Chute to the armor while I was at it.

If I was thinking along those lines, I could grab some cheap chrome and see if I can’t make some other improvements to the armor based around them. I didn’t want to chop off my arm for a super strong chrome one, but maybe I could incorporate some parts of the chrome into my armor to boost my strength? Hmm… sounded complicated. Maybe start off with something simpler for now.

It would be a good alternative to chrome though; just get a super-powered set of armor. Maybe add an exoskeleton to it while I was at it? Some kind of power armor would be badass and effective... now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen power armor yet? It's always cybernetics these days.

I was a bit over halfway done with my disassembly when I got a call. I set down the tools and leaned back in my chair. My cheerful mikata’s voice called through the line as soon as I hit accept. “Shiro! How you doing?”

”Alright, I guess. Just got done with a gig. How about you, Mira?” I asked.

The cheer in her voice died down noticeably. ”Hey, listen, we got some bad news the other day. They’re shipping Pa' and I out tomorrow.”

”Really?”

”Chek. Something about mass disappearances- er, even more mass disappearances across the FSA. Pa thinks it's a Fedra plot, as per usual, but we don’t actually know. We’re being moved to the East Coast.” Mira sighed.

“Oh.” Damn, that's across the entire continent.

“Yeah… so we want to take you to dinner tonight since we’ll be missing your birthday. Are you good to come?” She asked hopefully.

I looked around my room. Not like I had much going on tonight anyway. ”’Course. Just tell me when and where.”

Mira chuckled lightly. “Silly, you’re supposed to tell me when and where. It’s your birthday.”

”I’m not good with restaurants. You pick for me. Consider it a present to me.” I joined her in laughter. It wasn't the first time I'd had such an argument with her.

This time, Mira gave in rather quickly. “Fine. Let’s go to the Red Rabbit.” My PA pulled a message up to my HUD from Mira. It had the location and time on it. “Pa said don’t be late!”

”Chek chek, I’ll be there.” I set a reminder for myself. We talked a bit longer before she hung up to go do something else.

I had some time till the meetup, so I spent half of the time finishing my disassembly of the helmet. It really wasn’t that complicated outside of the metals used in its production and the bulletproof lenses covering the cameras.

The rest of the time I used tracking down the card for the Constellation Night Market. It ended up under my bed, somehow. I scanned the card, receiving a one-time invite to their next market in a couple days. It was in some warehouse close to the ocean. I marked it down and scanned the surrounding areas in the city archives, memorizing the layouts of buildings and making several escape paths as I did with Maroo’s.

Then it was time to go meet Mira and Uncle Ezra.