Tossing a metal toy from one hand to another, Gi paced around his workshop. It was a mini-welding-torch-sized soldier who’d turn into a robot from the push of a button on its back, made from leftover parts no stealmeat could use.

Gi’s thoughts rushed at the speed of his pacing. Remembering the strangeness of yesterday was like a little light that died once the heavy worry of when they would come returned. They should’ve barged in at night or in the morning. But in the afternoon, there still was no sign of them.

Having prepared more than he had ever before, he wasn’t sure if he could kill them or even hold his workshop for a minute. The last time they’d come, he almost beat them to shreds. Though then they were on time.

A wind from Gi’s swift steps and heavy weight of massive muscles followed him. In the lobby, it blew his hat off its rack.

Gi locked up in the middle of the room.

As the hat landed on the ground, he jumped, spinning. His eyes searched for the intruder. Then he chuckled, shaking his head.

“If I have the luck not to get crushed by a guy falling from the sky.” Gi picked the hat up. “I’ve got the luck to avoid those lunarists. They’re gonna fuck me up bad, but I’m as ready as a lunarist in a villain meeting.”

He chuckled then a burst of laughter rolled out of him.

The absurdity of this all couldn’t be real.

“A-sixteen-year-old makes it out of the desolation on his own, climbs the fucking Realm, gets thrown off and almost falls on me. Not to mention, after all that, he dusts himself off and puts up a brutal fight.”

If Tenshot weren’t a bounty hunter, Gi and the rookie would make the best smith team in the damn world.

For a moment, he wondered what Tenshot could’ve gotten himself into in a day. It was either the naivete or the overflowing confidence that made him believe he could get everything he wanted on his own. So far he’d been right. But what he wanted brought a big ass ruckus.

Gi assured himself the rookie would be alright and marked down to put him to good use whenever they met again.

A banging reverberated from the workshop entrance.

Gi sprung to his feet and clung to the ceiling. The vault opened, unleashing levitating toolboxes. He pushed them out of the way until, in his view, appeared a black box the size of a swollen foot. An incognito scanner atop it scanned his CHEK. The box opened.

Gi’s hand barged in and grabbed his custom made laserpistol. He’d taken a typical model and put a square battery atop its barrel, replaced the handle with a sturdier one and lobbed a laserbayonet under the muzzle to create a brutal, close range gun.

It did 45 damage from a basic legshot. He needed such power ‘cause they may have come. Or maybe just a client. He tried telling from the banging, but it stopped before he could make anything out.

“Only if I could craft a stealmeat to know who’s at my door,” he whispered. The lights would flicker when they came, but they could have found out about that already.

Gi put his ear against the metal door and aimed his laserpistol at it. No sounds passed through. He closed his eyes, opened up a centimeter then peeped.

Gi lowered his gun then opened the door.

Outside stood a hunched grandma with puffed up purple hair and a wrinkly hand waving.

“Hi, deary,” she said. “Rebecca said you create machines that connect to this thing.” She pointed at a CHEK on her cheek. “Said I could walk normal again.”

Rebecca. A regular, yet mysterious customer. She’d first come with a request for an odd concoction of a rifle and dafa-taming speaker. Since then, her requests had only gotten weirder.

“Oh, not machines,” Gi replied, grinning, as he waved for her to come inside. “But you’ll surely be able to walk. For a fair price. I might throw in a discount, just for--”

Like an Electro-hammer V1, worries shattered Gi. With trembling hands, he drew the pistol once more, aiming it at the old lady’s forehead. The other hand signaled for her to back off.

“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he said as he forced the grin off his face. “Or I’ll… blast your head off.”

The old lady stepped back.

An iffy feeling flowed from Gi’s mouth to his body. It made him want to curl up in a corner and endlessly repeat apologies.

“Who sent you?!” he barked, fighting through it. “Where are they?! Where are your hidden weapons?!”

“I told you… Rebecca sent me,” panting, the old lady muttered.

Gi stepped out of the entrance, looked around and pointed the gun in all directions. Yet The Sparks were as calm as ever -- she really was a grandma and not a decoy.

Their schemes can’t be underestimated.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Okay, come inside.” Gi let out a breath. “Sorry. Gotta be careful.”

“Countless days ago, things were different. You could just mind your own business and live out a life.” She entered the workshop and untightened her coat. “Now it’s anger and oddities. You know, talk’s going around the Realm that the walls are gonna collapse on us.”

Gi led the old lady to the main workshop and sat her down by the blackened table then searched inside a toolbox floating above. “Don’t worry, it’s just talk, madam.” He took out a magnifying glass.

“Ah, don’t call me madam! Only my husband does that and he hasn’t done it since the day we met forty years ago.”

“Okay, Mrs. Rebecca’s Grandma.” Gi pointed at a stool. “So you want an Extension which will help you walk?”

“Walk, move. It’s all awfully difficult these days.”

“I’m gonna be honest -- I’m a good craftsman. One of the best in the Realm. Though the standards are low here. I meld parts then connect them to CHEKs to create Extensions, I know what they do and I can take them apart, but I just can’t get one important detail: I don’t know exactly how they work. For someone like you, there could be some side effects I have no clue about. If I could take these parts apart and nudge the littlest of wires, I could fix them all, but… it’s complex...”

Mrs. Rebecca’s Grandma nodded. “How much will it cost?” She put a hand in the inner pocket of her purse.

With the magnifying glass, Gi overlooked the distance from the old lady’s face to her arms and legs. A holographic screen above the glass drew a translucent line and calculated the distance.

“1,700C$,” Gi said, sighing. “I know that’s a lot--”

The old lady started emptying her pockets: piles upon piles of creditcoins formed on Gi’s table.

Those are quite the riches, Gi thought as he looked into the lady’s eyes. A humble, grandmother's grin, which appeared once an old woman snuck some ice cream to her beloved descendant, formed on her face. Yet a sharp expression could be read from her eyes: don’t dare ask.

Gi’s mind may have been blunt around the edges, but he understood the cue and swiped the money into his grip. After a quick count, he grabbed an empty toolbox and put it all inside.

“Very good.” Mrs. Rebecca’s Grandma stood up and walked towards the exit. “When should I come back? Is in two days okay, deary?”

“Yeah, I’m sure to get it done by tomorrow, but two days is just right for the finishing touches...” Gi said.

“Even better. Good luck.”

As the door closed, dread slammed on Gi’s shoulders. He started swaying in his seat. What if the Extensions would be too heavy for the old lady? What if her frail body couldn’t handle all the extra stats? How do CHEKs even work with old people?!

Worst of all -- what if something went wrong?!?!

“I have to figure all of that out. Otherwise, I might kill her!”

***

Lights flickered across the workshop walls and pillars of smoke rose from Gi’s table.

He coughed on the fumes as he put his newest stealmeat down -- a CHEK Extension that boosted its user’s overall speed and improved their leg strength.

The chair squeaked as Gi leaned back, wiping some sweat away. The easiest part was finished. Now the real struggle began. He’d have to test his device and adjust it so it wouldn’t kill the old lady, all before she came back... in a day or so.

The Extension, an exoskeleton laden with wires, wrapped around his legs and stabbed into his skin. Waves of pain flashed through his veins, making him tremble. A moment later, all those sensations vanished, leaving him with a simple message.

[Warning! CHEK body Extension added]

[LegBoost operational! Removed natural debuff from all physical stats, +4 Dexterity (+2 to legs | +2 to overall); +2 Strength; +3 Reaction]

Gi hadn’t often paid attention to this screen. All he needed before was for the Extension to work and give a sizable boost to the person wearing it. Now the person wearing it would be a very old lady. And he may have overdone it.

“If you want to move like you were young, then you only need to remove the debuffs,” Gi said.

The Extension not only removed the debuffs -- it gave a whopping boost to the stats.

“There’s still a chance it came out right. Just gotta do a trial run.” He scanned for a test area and jumped towards the open door out of the workroom.Soaring, he rose about a meter and a half. In the middle of the flight, his body, on its own, started moving to evade an oncoming crash with a wall.His hands grabbed onto the door and swung him to the left. His feet landed on the wall and started running, got caught on one another and hurdled him at the floor below.

As his head crashed into the ground, a loud groan echoed throughout the workshop.

“If I was fifty years older,” he said, scraping his face off the floor, “weighed fifty kilos and didn’t have damage negating perks, I’d be dead.”

Gi put his head into his hands and thought: what could he do now? If he got other parts and remade the Extensions, he’d go broke.

Losing even a credit, if they came in the next twenty four hours, would surely be his end.

Gi had to try to get into the Extension and alter the parts from inside.

“Can’t avoid doing that any longer.” He took the Extension off. Pain hammered his body, the feeling that of his bones bending in odd directions. He stood, stone-faced, fighting until a screen popped up.

[Warning! CHEK body Extension removed]

Gi plopped the Extension on the table and tried figuring it out.

An hour later, he let go of it, dropped his hands beside it and whined. The dirty top of the table stained his hands.

“Shit.” Shaking his head, Gi stood up. “What sort of lunarist had to shove this up his ass to make it so confusing?! It looks like someone let a street Dinoafiu design it!” He fell onto a couch in his waiting room.

The collateral from a previous client attracted his attention.

Gi took the book and held it for a moment. Maybe it would have the answers he needed? Not gonna happen, he told himself. Still, it was the prized possession of a pilot -- it was bound to be interesting.

Gi opened the first page.

A hundred and twenty seconds of utter confusion later, he shut it, trying to stop a migraine from coming on.

“It’s even more convoluted than the insides of an Extension.”

The book returned to its righteous place on the shelf, never to be opened again.

After a sip of Sugary Death, Gi’s knuckles cracked as he warmed up, ready for another stint in the workroom. He’d brute force it. Like always before. Yet in front of the table, every drop of motivation left him. Time to fix the Extension was running out, but he could still do it later -- his nose hurt. He had to rest on the couch and try reading that book some more.

In the end, he didn’t want to screw his stealmeat up just because of an aching nose.

When he opened the book, its words seemed to glow, their confusion ready to be untangled.

“If you gotta do something hard,” Gi murmured, flipping through the pages, “just put off something worse.”