Penny was having a bad day. First she was woken up way too early, after researching late into the night. Then there were the results of the material research. More than half of them were on this side of useless, not actually being able to conduct magic energy, being too brittle or too soft. As it turned out even fantasy metals were not so fantastic when exposed to real world physics. There were exceptions of course, like Tolkien mithril, alchemical silver and cold iron. Metals like adamantiun in most fictional works turned out to be rare earth metals like tungsten and rhenium or an alloy of some kind combining the two. Orichalcum turned out to be an alloy of copper with some other elements. It had a good magic conductivity in some works and magic defences in other, but nothing compared to Tolkien mithril, alchemical silver and for anti-magic properties cold iron. Next on her bad day counter, she stumped her toe while getting out of bed. And by the looks of her schedule for today it wouldn’t seem to be getting better. Penny did her morning routines and then put on her best business suit and Valentina disguise and then went to meet the army liaison together with Aica.

Valentina arrived at the meeting place ten minutes earlier that the agreed time and entered the luxurious restaurant. When she asked about her reservation, she was shown to a private booth, where Rob was already waiting for her and Aica.

-You are early Mr. Burns.-she said and then took her seat. Aica stood behind her and to her right side, spine straight, arms held in front and with a neutral expression studying the room.

-I was excited and arrived a little early, but looking at my clock, so did you Ms. Santiago. The work you presented to the army was tested extensively and all the testers and the brass were impressed. I am not saying there weren’t a few problems and the army wishing for a few extended capabilities, but that is the reason I am here to discuss with you about.-

The following conversation consisted mainly of praises and grievances with intermittent proposals of what could make the TBRES more perfect for the military. They had found the patent for the suit and others in the name of Penny and wished the capabilities of the glasses and a military tactical AI connected to the suit. Then they ordered food, ate it over small talk and then again discussed business. Valentina promised a revised prototype at the end of the month, which was two weeks from now and agreed to meet again here to discuss price and production numbers. Meanwhile she had to buy a factory or a plot of land to construct one, so she could make a production facility for the army to inspect. When their discussion ended, Valentina excused herself and left the restaurant, followed closely by Aica.

For the rest of the day, Penny diligently remodeled the TBRES schemes with all the bells and whistles that the army wanted. She removed the glasses and the face cover and started on the design of a helmet. She included several types of sensors from her patents as well as heat, sound and night vision modes. There was a full face transparent cover made from layers of graphene with AR capabilities. She made the helmet so it wouldn’t obstruct peripheral vision, had a blackout effect and was completely bullet resistant. Now there was even space to include a breathing apparatus that could be connected to external air supply. Next, she imbedded a myriad of sensors all over the suit itself that would register the wearer’s vital signs, temperature, pulse, hydration levels breathing and more. She even designed a bulkier helmet for medical personnel that had the full capabilities of the other helmet with Baymax’s medical scanner as a bonus. Next she started coding on a new AI with the purpose of analyzing the battle field and displaying the information on the helmet’s display in real time. To be fair if she was working alone or even with a team of humans beside her, she would have needed the full two weeks to finish the project and debug every component of the system. But with the help of the AI’s it took her only a few hours of battlefield simulations and tweaking of the design to finish the work. Now, she had time to work on her two secret projects and continuing to analyze all the fantasy metals in her possession.

Penny sat in the comfortable chair in front of her computer in the lab and sighed deeply, letting the tiredness she felt into the air. She was fascinated by the metals and alloys she had got her hands on. In fact she was planning to acquire a lot more of the stuff for future projects. For that though she had to travel to middle-earth, and not the movie versions of it, but the books. Penny cast an illusion spell on herself to look like the people of the realm and then downloaded a few copies of the books. She quickly skimmed them and when she had the particular page she needed, she used one of her dimensional teleports to transport 200 kilograms of gold, which she then put in her pocket dimension. She then dimension traveled to Moria.

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And then when she saw the view in front of her, Penny slapped her forehead with her hand. She had forgotten to think about transport. How was a single human supposed to transport 200 kilograms of gold? Eh, she was going to wing it. She found an empty card being drawn by someone, who presumably had just emptied it from a delivery, and proposed a transaction. She rummaged through her pocket dimension in search of something shiny and of value to the people here. She found a silver ingot she had tossed in after comparing regular and alchemical silver. As it turned out, the latter was far better than the former. Penny exchanged the silver for the cart and when the previous owner was out of sight, she transferred the gold and covered it with a large blanket that conceivably was previously used to cover fruits or maybe hay.

Penny dragged the cart in front of the guard and announced she was here to buy mithril. What followed was an inspection of her cart, followed by lengthy bargaining inside Moria, followed by agreement to sell at a rate of 10 to 1 gold to mithril and finally by Penny exiting and after walking out of sight, dimension traveling home with 20 kilograms of mithril.

-You know A.I.C.A. one of these days, when I find myself with a little free time, I would like to dimension travel to the best blacksmiths if fiction and steal their techniques. Then I would travel to Play World and learn other school of magic, and not just trickster magic and enchantments. I am even working on the perfect tool for the job.-

-Penny, you also mentioned learning the ancient magic’s of your realm before. We have prepared terabytes of data on old rituals, Celtic runes, Wiccan practices and magic spells from the internet.-

-Yes, I did mention that, but with how busy I have been, I haven’t found the time to study and experiment with them. One day, maybe soon I will find the time. For now though, let us proceed with the plans. A.I.C.A. how small can the fabricator make the micro-bots and do I need the neural transmitter to control them?-

-The explanation of the fabricator says that it rearranges materials on the atomic level, so I would say it can create any machine with the minimal atoms it need to work. I would suggest not fabricating anything with less than 100 trillion atoms, as that is the average size of a human cell. And no, Penny, you do not need a neural transmitter to control them, you could just program them with presets.-

-That reminds me, how extensive is the database of the neural transmitter? I presume it has all the data to interpret forms from human thoughts, but what about other stimuli from the brain?-

-It only has limited database from what I could see, Penny. For more complex tasks you will have to map the brain’s responses to stimuli and different thought.-

-Or, I have to steal a more complete database about the human brain. Maybe from some fiction about a full dive VRMMORPG or maybe Battle Angel Alita. Remind me when I have time or a project demands reading of brainwave patterns.-

What Penny designed next, or more like finished designing was a number of different microscopic modular robots. There were some with square form that had strength and were made of mithril and superconductors. There were some made from cold iron, some made from alchemical silver and others made from normal metals like titanium, pure iron, silver and even carbon and graphene. Most were in the form of a cube or a sphere, with connecting point for them to swarm, but there were also some that looked like bladed machines. Their blades started at one atom thickness and grew to around five hundred. Next Penny pullet the design for the handle, it would contain the microscopic robots and contained signal emitters that the robots could receive and obey the commands. There was also a sensitive microphone with voice recognition program that Penny would embed into the handle. She just needed to command it and the micro-bots would obey.

After hours of waiting for the fabrication, Penny held the two, twenty centimeter long, handles and took a deep breath. She centered her thoughts and with clear intonation commanded.

-Titanium coating Philips head screwdriver.-and just like that, the command was obeyed and the micro-bots quickly rearranged themselves into the desired form. Penny commanded them to take a couple of different forms, and one by one the forms were taken, from a wrench, to a vibration blade, and from titanium to alchemical silver. For some transformations there was an indicator on the handle that Penny needed heavier or more micro-bots, like if she wanted to form a hammer or a mace or maybe even a bastard sword, but when she combined the micro-bots from the two handles, most forms were achievable. That didn’t mean she didn’t fabricate extras in case some broke during work and store them in her pocket dimension for future work. All said and done, Penny now had the perfect multi-tool. Now she just needed to find an enchantment that could make the tool stronger or more durable or have stronger atomic bonds or something. For now though, she had the perfect multi-tool.

For the rest of the day Penny playe… tested her newest creation, while the AI’s ran prediction models and digital tests. She measured the heat of the blade during vibration, cutting power of the different blades, different forms from katana, to rapier and bowie knife, to the material strength in the form of wrenches and other instrument that were put under stress. When she was satisfied with their capabilities, she put them with her suit and then went to bed with a huge grin on her face.