---Richard---
Richard stood by the edge of a factory.
It wasn’t a particularly special one – to be honest, the main reason he was here was only that it was the closest one he could find. He didn’t have a plan or a personal motive or anything. Richard was just here to break some shit.
If he spent a single moment thinking about it, he probably wouldn’t be here. He’d have talked himself out of the impulse, continued his search for a delvers association to try breaking his skill…
But he had already made up his mind.
No second guessing yourself Richard. No waffling. See something you want to do and do it.
The ‘factory’ as he was calling it – it looked like one from the outside – was an epicentre of minecarts. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of tracks leading out at ground level in all directions. Tracks coming out of second and third story openings – some a few meters up into the air, several higher still coming out near the building's roof to rush away into the distance.
Picking the nearest cart entrance and waiting a bit Richard watched a cart head in and then fly out a minute later.
“Business is open now bois,” Richard spoke under his breath as he walked through the door.
Sometimes the best way of sneaking into a place was just acting like you belonged.
Strolling confidently down an incredibly short tunnel, Richard found himself in a giant staging area full of conveyor belts and robotic arms.
Grey bags of what looked like cocaine – or in a more boring but plausible description flour – were stacked in transport carts or ‘loaded’ into empty ones depending on the docking station.
Large signs in a foreign language labelled and noted things – different walls and columns had chalk scribbles noting down different things.
Richard didn’t want to stop and gawk suspiciously mid infiltration, so he moved with purpose picking the pulpit overseeing the room and walking straight over.
Ripping the door open and stepping inside Richard was met by the eyes of two tired-looking workers – both glancing up at him a question on their lips.
“Sorry friends, I’m late for my shift and I need a new outfit.” Pointing over to the wall Richard spotted several lockers full of the same blue coveralls the men were wearing.
As soon as Richard began getting dressed the two turned back to the glass – they hadn’t spoken once since he entered the room they simply stared dejectedly down at the output of several monitors.
…his holster and pack did not seem kosher? Richard left most of his things in the locker – his sledgehammer, his leftover money – committing to the costume.
‘Monitors’. They were incredibly old and analogue looking. The wall was covered in what looked like the output of several oscilloscopes. Jagged sine waves moving up and down between two red bars…some sort of measure of a factory process with limits?
Richard finished getting dressed and left them to it.
Stepping out of the pulpit he picked a direction and began to explore.
It took him all of a minute to decide the factory was making some sort of fuel for the minecarts. Slow carts would roll in on a slope, get coked up, and then disciplined by mommy machine and head about their day.
Somewhat literally – after being loaded with white dust, carts were wacked by a massive bendy metal paddle. A robotic arm extended out and smacked carts into action like an old-fashioned use of corporal punishment.
“I think I want some of that dust, see if it's explosive or something?”
Making his way over to a conveyor belt, Richard reached out with one arm before suddenly, out of nowhere, a hand gripped his arm.
A man in a bright turquoise outfit stood beside him – yelling directly into his face.
The man was dressed differently from the few workers Richard had seen so far – his outfit screamed supervisor or officer or something.
Richard was 90% sure he had seen someone wearing this getup whipping someone in his drive by of the city – not this guy exactly but someone in his position probably.
Spinning him sideways the man raised one hand into a cup and smashed it into Richard’s ear.
…I think that was supposed to hurt? Richard wondered as they continued yelling and started pulling him over to a machine.
Pointing and jabbing the empty spot in front of him the NPC yelled spittle flying out and covering Richard’s face.
…yeah, enough of this shit.
Looking around to see no one else was around to witness him, Richard positioned himself and lunged. He grabbed the arms of the man and shoved his whole body against the side of the machine – smashing him off dozens of protruding pipes and valves.
Surprisingly after an initial surprised shout, that hadn’t done much to the supervisor. Grabbing his arm Richard attempted to suppress him in strength for a second before realizing they were stronger than him.
With a solid right hook the supervisor smashed his fist directly into Richard’s gut.
…once again, I think that was supposed to hurt?
Doubling over as if he was in pain, Richard glanced around wildly looking for something anything.
Why the fuck did I leave my sledgehammer in the locker.
Because you wanted to blend in jackass, you know that.
Spotting a toolbox below the station in front of him Richard dove and knocked the lid open.
Hammer, duct tape, screwdriver, another screwdriver, little knobby thing that looks like an Alen key made by someone high out of their mind…
Grabbing a screwdriver Richard whirled and stabbed into the supervisor’s leg. A kick forward had the same foot planted on his face knocking him back again.
Grabbing the duct tape and tiny hammer Richard scrambled to his feet and dove forward smashing the hammer down onto the man’s head.
They dropped – not dead or even knocked out just stunned by his last attack and Richard took the moment to duct tape the man’s hands and feet together…and then his arms and legs with more tape just to be sure.
“There we go…” Richard panted slightly then walked over to a conveyor belt and grabbed a bag of dust.
“Stick this in my to-go container” He muttered moving the bag over and dropping it into the toolbox. The bag moved weirdly but he didn’t have time to process that right now. He just attacked someone in charge and wanted to find a better place to play with his loot.
Taping the toolbox shut and to the now struggling supervisor's front – taping the chest to his chest – Richard grabbed the man’s feet and began to drag.
“Mate you need to lose weight, anyone tell you that? You’re fucking heavy.” Richard spoke down to the man who was screaming up at him again.
“Ah, forgot the first rule of kidnapping” Ripping off a new chunk of duct tape, Richard bent down and wrestled it onto the mans face – he kept trying to bite him and kept gnashing his mouth open and closed but Richard managed to gag him successfully in the end.
Returning to the mans legs Richard dragged him into a hallway then found a door and entered a room.
The room was empty – lucky – and surprisingly big. There were several old looking out of use machines everywhere and a dim light. Dropping his cargo down Richard took a quick moment to walk around the room.
Looking back, he saw the supervisor inching his way towards the door like a worm and he strolled back kicking the man in his side. “None of that,” Richard spoke while opening the chest and staring at his loot.
“What does this do?”
…
Richard was doing science.
He felt like a kid – he fucking loved science. Back when he didn’t know how things worked and he learned things through testing.
The white dust was magical in its properties and finding out what it did was a blast.
K-Dust – or kinetic dust – as he was able to pull off one of the machines, was not a fuel per say.
As a sort of hypothesis on its use, Richard would say the powder somehow increased the inertia of an object? Or, alternatively it decreased any friction acting on an object it was attached to? Bit of both?
Taping it to his toolbox made the box slide across the ground like it was on ice before suddenly slowing down and stopping as the dust was used up.
Adding it to the roll of duct tape and then rolling it caused the roll to ‘roll’ all the way across the room, bounce off the wall, roll back past him, bounce again, and then peeter out on its third pass.
Stuffing some down the supervisor’s clothes and bowling him across the room did something similar to the toolbox.
Essentially it wasn’t necessarily fuel – instead, the dust seemed to keep things going? Anything that moved would continue moving with any action that would slow it down being removed.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Carrying it in its bag felt strange – it was light but moved as if it was heavier than it was. The whole section pushed and pulled his arms at the slightest movement. Its true use was when pulling it out and sticking it on things, so Richard continued to play with that.
He could rub it on random junk and toss that about, but science was always more fun to do with a test subject.
Partway through Richard stripped the supervisor – taking his turquoise outfit for himself – and re taped his body more effectively.
What he found while introducing the game of human bowling was that the powders effect wasn’t permanent – the powder was used up depending on how hard it was to keep things moving. Spent dust would turn to smoke – depending on how much friction it was deleting or inertia it was fucking with. Stuff that could already move well was more effective – turning the test subject in a rolling direction got him further than sliding. You could get an effect just by rubbing powder on stuff, but you were better off taping handfuls of it to the side of things – and it was better to stick it perpendicular to the direction you wanted to push something.
Sticking it on the man’s head and pushing it forward was more effective then taping it to his chest and pushing him forwards – Richard was reminded of the little compartments on the minecarts and how the dust was placed at the front of each cart.
Always nice when your theories were proven by a second source. It's how you know you’re doing science properly.
Drunk science is even better than regular science…
Rubbing dust all over the small items in the toolbox made them steadily more and more slippery – once nearly fully covered they felt like they were oiled up.
Spitting on some dust made it turn grey and…broke it slightly.
The water made it a slippery oil – it wasn’t nearly as magical in effect; it was kind of just a ‘slippery oil’ that didn’t make things it touched slippery…but might work as a good lubricant?
Except it also grew darker as time went on quickly becoming a blackish liquid that was completely ‘spent’ – on anything that might need to be lubricated for longer than a few minutes it was worse than actual oil.
Richard licked his index finger then dipped it in some fresh dust and stuck it in his mouth.
It tasted like ash and sugar…a sweet taste with an underlying burnt flavor and…yep, subtle notes of paint thinner.
☠️ Achievement get: How else was I to know it was poisonous? (uncommon)
Description: Ingest an unknown toxic substance purely due to curiosity.
----------------------------------------
Stat: +3 chemical defense
Despite it saying the dust was toxic Richard couldn’t tell what it had done. Science demanded answers so he took the screwdriver and poked a hole in his test subject’s gag.
“I wish we had a funnel, don’t you?” Richard confided in the NPC as he scraped dust into the hole.
The dust didn’t seem to be going in, so Richard poked a finger through aggressively and began shoving the dust past his subject’s lips and into their mouth.
“Don’t make this weird bro,” Richard winced as his mind made parallels between him finger fucking a mostly naked mans feeding tube and well…that.
After a handful of dust, he started to notice the results – everywhere Richard was manhandling the subject their skin was turning dark.
Where before Richard had punched and stabbed and flopped the NPC around just fine, now minor touches left bruises and gentle presses of a screwdriver pierced skin.
After a bit more testing Richard was reasonably confident in saying the dust…poisoned people into being more susceptible to damage. It reduced both potential stats and a bodies natural kinetic defense…making them easier to hurt with physical trauma. It took a while to take effect, so he wasn’t sure how useful it was as a weapon, but it was a side effect.
If Richard had had this dust described to him in a few words he would have thought, it was a lubricant – reducing friction? Stick it in moving machinery and move on.
The main use – placed in minecarts to keep them coasting for miles in every direction – was much more imaginative than he would have come up with and it made him want to be imaginative as well.
What can I do with a load of this? If I dump it in the streets, will it make people slip and slide about like an oil spill? Might be funny but it seems…unimaginative. Maybe describing it as friction deleting is a red herring?
I don’t want to just think of it as slippy powder – but that’s also the simplest use of it.
…but not really because its not necessarily placed between the ground and the thing slipping?
Maybe some self testing will make an idea appear?
Richard filled his shoes with powder and tried to skate about.
Tried being the key word – his feet did not suddenly start slipping about as soon as he stuck them in – there was traction below his feet.
He then tried to step forward and found his caked feet really didn’t want to take that step.
Not in a glued to the ground unable to move sort of way – it wasn’t nearly that strong – more in a stuck in jello every small shift was resisting motion manner
And then like his foot was ripping through the jello preventing it from moving it was free and sliding forward. There was an incredibly weird vibration and the dust in his shoe shifted – aligning into a single polarity?
After that kick it was pulled forward dragging his leg and rest of his body with it…and up. His leg flung high into the air unnaturally fast.
Richard fell on his ass.
“Fuck. Okay, that was different,” he said slowly writing himself and standing up once again. There seemed to be some weird interaction that only started showing up once he was using it on himself. It was like how you couldn’t fly by picking yourself up by your bootstraps. Equal and opposite reaction and all that.
…except this wasn’t how any of that worked. Magic dust was already breaking rules somewhere – it acting weird now was…him not understanding it fully. That’s fine. Richard had only been doing science for less than an hour.
Richard bent down and tried to pull himself forward by his hands.
There was a strange sort of tingle on his hands – a very faint copy of the feeling from his shoes – but for the most part he had better luck with this method. His feet slid along the ground relatively smoothly – there was a faint shift of the dust in his shoes and a fizzing feeling as it was burnt to slide him about.
Sliding over to an old machine and grabbing it to pull him forward, Richard found there was still a different sort of effect. The dust really didn’t like that he was trying to pull himself – the physics said there shouldn’t be a difference between him pushing someone lubed up with k-powder and him pushing something while lubed up with k-powder.
But there was and Richard pushed past it. Its fine, magic fuckery in the dust. Why was he trying to make sense of it? His skill was even less scientific than this anyways – Richard was getting too invested in explaining magic.
Trying one more self test for use case’s sake, Richard taped some to his chest and tried to figure out if that changed how he moved – it did but to a lesser extent then putting it by his shoes. His feet felt ever so slightly slipperier than they had, and his chest felt like it was pulled forward an ever so slight amount…if Richard had to explain the feeling, he would say it was like air resistance was removed times two or three. A negligible thing that could be ignored was suddenly ignored more than it should be.
Richard had been ignoring his test subject for far too long. Sprinkling the rest of the powder on the man he dragged them out of the room once more – much easier coming out than it was coming in.
Making his way over to one of the paddling machines Richard tied them to the paddle end. He wrapped them in the worker's outfit – plus the rest of his duct tape – and then grabbed a bag of dust and lubed them up for good measure.
Turning a massive dial that seemed to control speed – the supervisor was durable but probably couldn’t handle the max setting – Richard stood watch as a cart came in was loaded and then love tapped away by a supervisor on a stick.
“…funnier in my head but that’ll do. Good luck getting down from there,” Richard grabbed another bag of dust – this place needed better security there hadn’t been a second person to stop him the entire time he had been here – before wandering towards an open hallway.
Turns out there was someone in the room. A single worker who seemed frightened of him…or maybe just his new supervisor suit – but seemed to recognize the old supervisor. He kept his head down and nodded to Richard as he passed but Richard could see the mans closed fist. The way he stared towards the bat bitch. The way he clenched his fist and grinned slightly when he thought Richard wasn’t looking anymore.
Yeah, I’m a good person.
This is going great.
…
Richard passed through an open door into a decidedly nicer section of factory. There were nice marble floors and nice-looking conference rooms, and everything was just so ‘nice’.
…Richard amused himself by taping kinetic dust to every doorknob he found. If he wrapped it thoroughly enough the whole doorknob became slippery enough, he couldn’t open it – and presumably, the faceless bastards that worked here wouldn’t be able to either.
There were people here – suited people in old-fashioned businessmen outfits. Most of them were in rooms but Richard passed one or two in the hallway. All of them ignored him – their eyes shifting over him as soon as they saw his uniform.
They treated him like he was furniture, but Richard turned it around on them. It felt like he was the only one in this building – he was walking through an empty hallway. They were the NPCs, the furniture.
Richard found probably the fanciest room in the building. It was a massive, massive office but looked more like a 5-star hotel room.
Stepping in, Richard went to a desk and decided to coat everything he saw.
“Some dust on the paper, some dust on the pen. Dump a bit in the drawer, dump a bit on the floor over here.”
Richard hummed to himself as he trapped everything he could see. Finally – once he had coated the last item a ‘large glass mug’ – he got a pleasant surprise.
🏢 Achievement get: Vandalize the CEO’s office. (Rare)
Description: You messed with a CEO – which one? You know, the one! The head of a corporation! An important one! (If you were messing with a more important one, they would have been mentioned by name)
----------------------------------------
Stat: +1 Body power
Stat: +2 Body defense.
“Should probably leave now, right? Quit while I’m ahead?” Turning and exiting the office, Richard began making his way out of the building as fast as he could. When he had entered the factory, he had some vague plans of burning the place down or something – instead he had spent a long-time doing science and then…well had played some minor pranks and been more pleased by them than he should have been if he was being honest.
Burning it down now would ruin all that work – he hadn’t been coating the inside of rooms with it and locking suits in…
Hey that’s an idea. I could oil up all the doors leading out of here and then set fire to the place!
…I should have figured out how to set a fire off as soon as the CEO does something in his office.
…why am I fixated on the fire. It's not even that funny – not like burning down a fire station would be. Really if I want to destroy a place, I should use its local specialties. K-dust to break the factory. Karma…karma's always funny.
Once again Richard was distracted and didn’t notice two arms slapping down on his shoulders. Second time it had happened – this time when he turned, he was met with a blue box.
Who are you? Why are you carrying a bag of dust? I know every driver in this plant, and you are not one of them. Answer quickly.
Richard turned to face two men. One fingered an arm band – translator – the other a baton.
“Me no speakth the language?” Richard spoke miming the translator action.
You’re going to have to come with us.
“Fair, fair,” Richard began answering and then turned suddenly and began running.
Dumping dust as he ran Richard heard a crash behind him.
A faint slowing jolt hit his back, but he continued running.
Doesn’t look like I can get my shit back from that locker. Pity.
Reaching a door to the industrial section Richard kept running.
He half expected a blaring alarm to start playing but all there was was the sound of feet pounding behind him.
It's surprisingly easy to escape isn’t it?
Richard exited a railroad entrance once more and prepared to disappear into the surroundings.
As soon as he reached the outside his luck seemed to be over.
In front of him was…something he hadn’t realized fit the setting.
It was what Richard could happily call a mech. A large circular cockpit. Four mechanical legs. Two grabby arms. A tinted panel of glassy material across the front like a pair of glasses.
Turning to run sideways Richard heard a faint clang and suddenly he was attached to the wall.
One of its two arms had crossed the distance and grabbed him. Four pincers closed in on the end of a long razor-thin wire.
In the middle of the ‘grabby’ – along all four fingers – small syringe-like spikes stabbed in and injected Richard with paralytic substances. Richard was pulled towards the mech his eyes growing dark. He felt incredibly helpless – all his stats seemed almost worthless against the machine in front of him.
Remembering his only skill – his ‘chaos points’ were long full and unused – Richard activated his aura even as his eyes faded shut.
The last thing he saw was a bag of sorts coming out of the “sleeve” of the mech’s arm wrapping him up as everything went dark.