25) Built to scale

I joined another team over the weekend.

Waiting for packages for the mice, or to hand over pickups, at what was supposed an old abandoned gas station on a country road, even with my truck parked in the back, was going to attract too much attention at some point.

So that weekend me and Bill Roth, Muffin's former owner, drove out to start cleaning the place up and figuring out what had to be torn out and replaced. As well as what would be involved in remodeling to turn the place into a model builder’s store that was specialized in mail order custom made pieces.

Bill was happy to quit his job delivering take out Korean food since it required working at night and putting wear and tear on his car, an old 2009 Bronco. Instead, he was going to be able to finish his last summer before his senior year working with his hands during the day for better pay and got to see his dog several times over the week.

The paint in the back of my truck would need some touch up work since Muffin would get over excited once she saw Bill waving at her as I pulled up to the place.

Fafnir was staying back at the ranch to help keep a certain Tiger away from my chickens.

A little after we arrived, Manifest, dressed in regular clothes for once, came up from the base with a gentleman that looked to be about my age, if I in fact did look my age.

He introduced himself as Jeff, Manny’s Dad, and a model building enthusiast.

After about a half hour we came up with the name Model Major General, and he got his son to take him home to change into some work clothes and bring over some of his tools.

Part of the whole reason I suggested the idea of a store was so we could have someone at the place with a reason to be receiving and sending out packages of stuff for and from the Mice, instead of Manifest having to run errands for them to avoid people coming and going from the store above the base.

I had picked up that our Transporter sometimes felt like all he had to contribute to the team was being the transportation, and I wanted to avoid treating him like an errand boy.

And then my plan got spoiled by his Dad sending him out to pick up building material and more of his tools all weekend.

I at least got his Dad to figure out everything we needed to let Manifest get it all in one trip by the end of Sunday afternoon so Manifest was free for the rest of the day.

Me, Bill, and Jeff finished working the place over and jokingly called ourselves the Model Citizens.

Jeff didn’t have any powers, but he did have a degree in Architecture and had worked with Core in designing Concentric City, but he missed getting to see his designs being built since Core would put up most of the superstructure of an entire building in just a few hours.

Getting a business going while working on custom made models in the backroom of a shop in the middle of nowhere, with only true model building enthusiasts bothering to drive out there, sounded like a nice way to spend at least a few months before he looked to start a new project.

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Plus he would have Bill working the front counter and dealing with the online orders as his after school job.

Which left me with one other thing to deal with.

Tom Lanceing was sixty years old when the grandson he had gotten custody of got frustrated digging up a garden plot for his grandma and starting to find the stones in the dirt by sheer will and forcing them up out of the ground.

The first Tom knew of it was when he found young Corwin sitting out in the dirt shaping rocks into statues of Anime figures.

Core wasn’t the first person to Trigger, so his grandfather knew what was happening, and by the time Core was an adult he had helped his grandson to form Helping Hands, a group of Superhumans who used their powers to help people. Healers, Geniuses, and a Rank 5 Former who went around fixing some of the nation’s failing infrastructure as a hobby.

Core had never needed more money. A family trip to a river that people could free pan gold for a small fee made him his first fortune. After that, his focus was being the guy who helped people.

At least until he found out what his nation was doing to some of the people with powers and helped form the Circle.

Even with the best health care Core had available to keep his grandparents in good health, there were limits, even for healers.

Limits the Geniuses had several workarounds for, but Tom Lancing wanted to die human.

But he didn't care all that much what happened to his remains. "Give it to that new guy, Orphanous. I'd rather someone put this old wreck to some use rather than have it be food for the worms, or barbecued into a morbid keepsake.”

His granddaughter passed that on to me while she was sitting with a VR visor over her eyes to see through a tiny camera carried around by a mouse while she shaped their new home in the wrecked part of the base.

Two weeks later a refrigerated panel truck delivered Mr. Lancing's remains to the Adams funeral home.

Adams used a more expensive embalming antifreeze on Mr Lancing, rather than looking blue, his remains ended up looking Native American.

I had no intention of wasting his gift to me just throwing him into a fight to get used up, instead, I had another use for him.

Driving up to the southeast corner of the Olmec Arcology with a dealer plate on my truck I had Mr Lancing's remains take a swig from a cheap flask filled with water to wet his vocal cords, then grabbed the cardboard box with Raven written on the side as I headed toward unit SW3-15.

Only to hear the warning cries of the dozen or so crows sitting up in the tree and on the balcony railing of what I guess was the apartment I was heading for.

“Well, so this is where some of you go during the day.”

Wetting the corpse’s lips, I let out the whistle my grandfather had taught the very first crow of their line to signal a visitor was a friend.

One of the younger birds flapped his wings wildly as he nearly fell out of a tree in surprise. Most of the other birds went silent as they stared at me, confused by who was doing the whistle, and the maybe the fact I had Adams dress Mr Lancing in my grandfather’s old clothes I had borrowed.

Which I was guessing Grandpa wasn’t going to want back.

“I'm just here to see the girl boys, you'll get some hot dogs as a treat tonight."

That got a few approving chirps and a scream of approval. Which got a twitch from the apartment's window.

My Hero card would have let me bypass the punch code latch on the door to the Arcology, but someone had left a pebble to keep it from catching so anyone could come and go freely.

No one answered the door to the apartment when I pressed the buzzer, or when I knocked, but I saw the peephole go dark.

“Miss Raven. You might have heard of me. I’m going by the name Orpheus. I’m not here to harass you or anything. I just wanted to return some of your property.”

After a moment, the door opened to the limits of a sturdy looking metal bar that kept the gap from being pushed further open.

In a dim light or a fairly bright light in the Arcology hallway with the eyes of a corpse, the young woman named Raven might have been mistaken for a Goth girl. The black feathers covering her head could be mistaken for a deep black short haircut, and the black talons on her fingertips might have been dramatic fakes.

She was also very pale skinned and frowning.

“Are you… dead right now? I mean is that a dead body?”

I nodded the body's head. “A donation actually, by the original owner. This is yours by the way.” I held up the box.

She frowned. “What is it?”

I tipped my head over to one side for a second. "Your childhood belonging from the secret base you lived in for a while."

She stared at me for a moment, then slowly closed the door.

A moment later I heard the lock bar being unlatched and she opened the door again. “I let a friend know to expect a call in ten minutes, you have that long to come in and explain.”