Chapter 27 – Life 6 – The Armor

The time I had spent bemoaning my lack of power was quickly forgotten now that I learned its true nature. I quickly began experimenting to learn how it worked. I soon learned the weapons and shields that the vast majority of Metal Casters make were not going to be my focus. My daggers, even when imbued with as much energy as I could stand, would barely twitch with a hint of green before laying back down. Shields were similar.

Figurines, on the other hand, worked excellently, especially those of the Swordsman. I had no idea why until, one night, I made a figurine of *myself* instead. It moved faster and more elegantly than any two figures of the Swordsman put together. When I had ‘her’ fight one of the Swordman figures, ‘she’ even brought out a selection of miniature daggers and fought just like I would have!

That was what made me figure it out. These constructs were using my memories to learn how to move. I had no idea how to be a dagger or a shield… but I had a lifetime’s worth of memories of being myself, and a significant set of memories of being the Swordsman.

I was roughly able to make 1 figurine a day, maybe 2 if I could push it. After a couple of weeks, I learned that, while I was no Folder, the figures themselves could cut off pieces of each other to Fold into new weapons. Though, it always seemed to be weapons I was familiar with: daggers, swords, and in a couple of notable instances, metal rings like the one I threw around the Redsteel Mantis’s neck.

I invited the members of my Arena run team over, figuring they should be the first to know. The fire twins were quietly supportive, though I knew they didn’t see the point of anything besides overwhelming firepower. Silvie was a bit more intrigued by how the figures could Fold their own material, even in a limited manner. Lambert, though, was beyond ecstatic.

“Those toy soldiers… c-can you make them hollow? Would they still work like that?” I blinked. “Yes, I did do that a couple of times. It saves material, sure, but they don’t fight as well as the others…” Lambert grinned. “The fact that they can fight at all is amazing! Don’t you see? You can make a suit of armor for yourself! A living suit of armor that copies and amplifies all your moves… the Ministry of History folks were talking about legends of those sorts of things! Th-there was even one story about metal men dozens of feet tall, who could beat back the strongest monsters! And they were controlled by 2 people who lived in their heads! We could… we could…”

I laughed a bit. “Slow down there, armor man. You’re right, it will take a while, but I *should* make some armor for myself, to test. I wouldn’t put too much stock into what the Ministry says, though. They’ve unearthed all kinds of crazy legends, and a bunch of them contradict each other. Like, what kinds of monsters were these metal men fighting, if the Pre-Apocalypse had no monsters?”

Lambert laughed a bit. “Y-yeah, those were probably just stories… b-but we can make them come true, now! Y-you can! I know you can! Just like you… well… I believe in you, is all.” Silvie rolled her eyes a bit at this.

Uh oh. I started to form a picture of what was going on. I helped Lambert figure out a way past his mental block against mid-combat casting. I was also a big part of why he got his arm fixed so quickly. And now, I had a power that no-one else in the Five States possessed…

He had a crush on me, didn’t he?

I looked him over. Out of his armor he wasn’t… *un*-attractive… and if he was right, his knowledge of armor-making could be vital to pushing my power to its full potential. Also, and this was a big plus, he was probably one of the few people who didn’t even care about my mother being a High Caster.

I smiled. “Well, let’s see what we can do, shall we?” Silvie raised an eyebrow, likely suspecting something was up. Well, it’s not like I hadn’t seen her with one of the twins a couple of times… wait, it was just *one* of the twins, right?

Over the coming months, Lambert and I experimented with my orange metal. I learned from one of the less-insufferable History folks that the metal resembled an ancient one known as bronze. I decided to henceforth call my element ‘Living Bronze’. It was two words, unlike most of the agreed upon names for the elements, but it wasn’t unprecedented. Redsteel was basically two words smooshed together, anyway, and no-one could agree what to call the Metal-Earth combination that the Swordsman used. He called it a word meaning ‘Titanium’; here, people called it Mithril, Bluesteel, even stupid things like ‘Super Metal’. If someone wanted to rename Living Bronze, I figured they would have to learn to use it, first.

It took a long time just to make a simple gauntlet. The first one was too small for my hand, and the second one was so thin that it dented when I dropped it. Lambert was kind enough to say that these kinds of things happened to him when he was first learning armor-crafting. What he didn’t say, of course, was that he could Cast much faster as a beginner than I could Cast as a High Caster.

Eventually, though, we did get a good proof-of-concept. A gauntlet that I could wear just like a normal one, but one that could keep my grip on a weapon even when I wasn’t focusing on it. There was one interesting ‘incident’ that occurred, though. Lambert took one look at me using the gauntlet and pointed out that it was ‘a good start’ but that we needed to make more armor pieces as soon as possible. Without my prompting, the gauntlet raised its middle finger, forcing me to do the same in the process. I had known that the Bronze had something of its own personality from the figurines, but a glove with an attitude wasn’t something I had anticipated.

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Still, Lambert was correct. We kept going on the armor project, regardless of the gauntlet’s hurt feelings. We eventually managed to make the whole upper half (minus the helmet, which Lambert made for me) and that was when the armor really started to show its utility. After punching targets enough times, the armor was able to adapt to punch by itself. Its technique was just as good as my own, but it didn’t get tired like I would if I was throwing the punches myself.

It was at this point that some of the Ministry people started to catch wind that my ‘failed’ power wasn’t so much of a failure. I wanted to play it down, but Lambert loved the attention. I eventually started taking interviews just so the journalists would stop trying to give him all the credit.

“This… living armor, that you are making. Could it be given to others?”, one asked. I thought for a bit. “In theory, yes. One problem with that, though, is that it needs to be thick enough to move by itself, yet thin enough to not impede the movement of the person inside. It would probably need to be a custom work each time.” The journalist grinned and gestured for her Metal Folder assistant to write that down. “Well, I’m sure people will be lining up to get theirs done, then!”

After nearly a year, my armor was done. With the press I had generated, it was simple enough to get someone to give me permission to do a shortened Arena run. It was, in a word, *glorious*. I would walk up to a Mantis and the armor would know just what I wanted to do. It was like an extension of myself, and it was *strong*, too. I was able to kill mantis after mantis in no time. When my daggers started to dull, I eventually switched to just going unarmed, crushing legs and eyes and heads with my armored hands alone. When the rush of mantises started to increase (did they open the pit wider, or something?), I adapted with ease.

I had become something more than the sum of my parts. A person? A suit of armor? I was both and neither. I started to suspect that the armor was getting something out of the monster-killing just as I would, just as a Caster would. It was getting even stronger, even faster. I was the brains, and it was the brawn, and we were *perfect*.

But alas, all good things come to an end. Unlike the armor, I was still human. I still needed to eat, to drink, to sleep. As it stood, I had fought for what was probably several hours straight, and I needed some rest. I fell back. Eventually, after a time longer than I expected, the Earth Folders closed the gateway that led to the mantis pit. But when I went up the tower that controlled access to the Arena…

“Byron? Lambert? Silvie? …Mom? Wh-*cough*-what are you doing here?” I was confused. I was hungry. My throat was strangely sore. What-

“Sweetie… why did you push yourself so hard? *How* did you even manage that? We were worried… we were worried that armor had done something to you…”

I blinked. “How are you even here, mom? I thought you were at least a few days away… were you just stopping in town?”

My mother frowned. “Sweetie… you’ve been fighting non-stop for 11 days. We didn’t know how to stop you, you pulled away or attacked every time we tried! We’ve never even heard of someone fighting that long!”

I laughed a little bit, thinking this was a joke. A pretty good one, too. But then I realized no-one else was laughing. “…Seriously? Ele- *cough* eleven *days*?”, I eventually sputtered out. I realized I was actually very, very thirsty. Why hadn’t it registered until now?

Byron, the Storm Caster in charge of the Arena, nodded. “We needed to cancel all the Arena fights for over a week, lass. Even when our Air Folders tried to pull ya’ away, ya’ either escaped or hurt ‘em pretty badly. Hell, girl, we thought you were becoming a monster yerself!”

Lambert, bless him, brought me a jug of water that I chugged down like it was nothing. As I did so, he explained his thoughts to the group. “I think… the armor can heal its wearer. It’s Metal and Life, right? That’s why she didn’t get thirsty or exhausted for so long… if it were made better, she probably could have gone for even longer…”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “’Better’? I’m not sure fighting for weeks or months on end is considered ‘better’. Don’t the Summoning Crystals get more powerful if you kill too many of their monsters at once?”

Silvie spoke up. “That’s right. They call it ‘Hardcore Mode’, after some ancient Pre-Apocalypse term. The monsters stop being summoned every few minutes and start appearing every few seconds. You killed so many, that happened only a day into your fight.”

I blinked, then started to laugh. “I guess I *was* a pretty unstoppable killing machine back there, huh? Probably set another Arena record, didn’t I? I’m surprised the Crystal didn’t just give up!” I thought that would get a laugh, but instead I was met with silence. “What… is there something wrong?”

My mother was the first to speak. “Sweetie… something unexpected happened, we think as a result of your fighting. Something that could change everything. You see, we had brought in all sorts of people to try and get you to stop fighting, or at least cut off the flow of monsters, even though there were just too many… but that’s the only reason we noticed it.”

I tilted my head. “Noticed… what?”

Byron picked up where my mother left off. “Couple-o Air Folders noticed somethin around the crystal. No-one, no element or combo o’ elements has ever affected a Summoning Crystal before… but they can tell when somethin’s amiss. The longer you fought on ‘Har’core Mode’, o’er the course of days and days… the crystal fuckin *shrank*.”

I was stunned. “It… shrank?”

My mother continued, “All crystals are the same exact size, we’ve measured them. This one was no exception. But now… it lost about a third of its height. It might have even dimmed a bit, too, but we’re not sure on that.”

My mind was racing with the implications. I had just been joking about the crystal giving up, but if this was true, if these crystals actually had a limited amount of energy…

Was this armor the key? Could we do what that story of Lambert’s said, and…

Cancel the Apocalypse?