Devin gave her a soft smile. “I appreciate that.”
Her face reddened; she snatched her hand off his wrist, holding it behind her back. “No problem.” She murmured. “Lead the way, will ya.”
Devin complied, navigating through the destroyed streets to get to his little slice of home. Jenkins sucked in a breath as she saw the changes in the house, but more noticeably, the suddenly organized and cleared yard. The piles of junk and trash surrounded by a graveyard of cars, replaced by neat stacks of metal, rubber, bricks, and several other materials.
The dichotomy was striking. It was like night and day.
“Did you do all this?” Jenkins asked as they walked down his driveway.
“Yeah. One of the reasons why you guys haven’t seen much of me.”
She nodded. “Pretty good reason.”
Devin opened the door, disarming the trap he set earlier, and stepped aside to let her in. “Mi casa es su casa.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Un poquito” Devin said, holding his finger and thumb a small distance apart from each other. “Just something that stuck with me from high school, I guess. Forget it.” Devin waved it off. “The more important question is how many shards do you need to hit your limit?”
“Not much, I just need thirty? But the focus I got—” Jenkins started, but Devin cut her off.
“Don’t worry about that, I’ll help you through that part. I just need you to focus on what we’re about to do.”
She nodded, trusting him. He didn’t have any funny business in mind, although he surely didn’t mind having such a beautiful woman in close proximity to his house. They had talked over her goals on the way back to his house, and he had a firm image of the woman who wanted to make her community better. He knew that helping her would be akin to helping the town itself.
It also helped that he’s been waiting to try this idea for a while.
“Okay for you to help me, and get the maximum benefit, you need to get a feel for your resource, specifically your arcanium.”
“How do I know that?” She asked pensively.
“Just try to push back.” Devin said, directing [subjugate] to raise up and envelope her.
Jenkins immediately noticed the difference, closing her eyes as she sat on the floor to focus. The field she naturally produced welled up to meet his skill, inefficiently jabbing it back wherever it could. She started to sweat and even began to look queasy under the relentless onslaught. “It feels like an elite or a boss is right on top of me.”
“Just keep pushing back. You’re doing great.” Devin said. He moved his skill with greater finesse, using it to meet Jenkins’s jabs with an equal amount of force, allowing his arcanium to drift over her field.
After half an hour, she managed to actively control her field, methodically stretching the boundaries of her field to repel [subjugate]. Yet that was just the first step. Devin urged her to look deeper within herself—to imagine a self-contained universe inside her while peering deeper through the astral clouds blocking her vision.
His metaphors didn’t make much sense to her, but maybe she was more talented than him, because she quickly understood the gist of what he meant in spite of his poor instruction, and manifested her soul card to access her deckspace in another way. Staring at a screen only she could see, Jenkins focused on the source of all the data on the hologram, looking through the picture slapped onto the top to peer into the inner workings of her meta-body.
From there, it was simple to perceive the arcanium in herself. All she had to do was trace the resource back from the indicator on her soul card to the cloud of energy in her deckspace. She opened her big brown eyes staring out into the world with wonder-filled eyes. She tracked tendrils of colorless arcanium from the edge of her field, back to his body.
Devin dismissed them, suddenly embarrassed for some reason. “Sorry about that.” He coughed out. “Now that we got that out of the way, you’re ready.” Devin said, pulling out a glowing card pack and a red stone that pulsed with light from his vault.
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“That wasn’t what we were aiming for?” Jenkins lifted an eyebrow. “I got several achievements for that.”
“That’s just the start. Right now, you’re going to help me turn my house into a card. Should get you a better achievement to use as your magic circle’s focus”
Her mouth popped open. “You’re not serious, are you? I didn’t even know you could do that.’
Devin smiled, giving her a hand to help her to her feet. “You would be surprised how much there is to all this magic, superpower stuff.” He lugged her up, maybe with a little too much excitement, as he yanked her up right into his arms too strongly.
They fell back onto the couch in a tangle of limbs, Jenkins draped over Devin. He was about to apologize as she pushed him off, but got stuck as her soft brown eyes looked straight into his. His mouth went dry while his heart drummed against his chest.
“Umm.” She bit her lip pensively. “What were you saying?”
“Oh. Oh yeah.” Devin said, pushing her off with a little disappointment. He guided her around the house, “If you look real closely, you can sense the threads of aether and essence through a lot of the materials, right?”
“Aether? Essence?” Jenkins furrowed her eyebrows.
“Uh, think of it like the smallest form of resources and shards, respectively. It’s the energy that lets you build permanent fixtures in your deckspace.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” She shrugged. “So am I supposed to take the essence of this house for myself, or something?” Jenkins asked skeptically.
“What? No.” Devin shook his head, “You only need a couple dozen shards to fulfill that requirement. You can get that out of a card pack; the real problem is the focus. Like I said, you’re going to help me make this house into a card, and that’ll earn you a really good achievement to base your circle around, or at least that’s the hope.”
“Ok, Mr. Magic Man,” Jenkins smirked. “Tell me who I’m going to help you. Do you want me to poke you till you sweat too?”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Plus you said it yourself, you got a bunch of achievements for it.”
“Yeah, but you underestimate how uncomfortable that was. I think I’m going to need some payback.” She squinted her eyes and drummed her fingers conspiratorially.
Devin rolled his eyes. “If we both survive the night, then you can have as much payback as you want.”
“Deal! Hurry up and tell him how I’m supposed to help you.” She said, using this opportunity to get started on her poking revenge.
Devin smiled as he ignored the soft pokes into his bicep. “I need your help connecting the energy together. We need to make sure the whole house is imbued.” Devin said, quoting the text he read to research the subject.
“Okay, show me how to do that, nerd.” Jenkins said, jabbing a finger into his arm.
Devin took her around the house, inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs, showing her every disconnected part he reasonably could, demonstrating how to braid the essence and arcanium together into a weave that stretched to the next swathe of control.
Even without Devin’s skills, Jenkins was keeping up with his instructions, moving to do her own weaves of energy after a few demonstrations, proving to Devin just how talented she was.
When she becomes an arcanist, she’s sure to be a valuable asset. Devin noted as he watched her work. Man, does she look good out of uniform. He couldn’t help but admire her looks as well before shaking his head, working on his portions—the parts too far apart or too inconvenient to reach.
Although he didn’t breeze through his weaving like Jenkins did, his skills accomplished a lot of work with comparatively little effort. Flexing all his skills one at a time allowed him to effectively mark unclaimed material with his control, spreading his attuned arcanium and essence without the need for mental gymnastics.
With those two working together, they made plenty of progress in no time.
“Hey,” Jenkins called out to him when her work area intersected with his. “I just want to apologize for what you had to go through at the lake because of us.”
“Don’t think anything of it.” Devin waved off her concerns. “It’s not like you were the ones to drag us out there. If anything, I should be the one apologizing to you. I almost got y’all killed.”
“We signed up for this, and Walters should’ve been able to sense those monsters with his skill. It was basically our fault you had to fight the snake monster just for us to be surrounded.”
“Well, it's over and done. How about we resolve to do better in the future.” Devin gave her a slight smile, which she returned. “Now, are you ready to see this house get turned into a card?”
“Hell yeah, then you’ll help me become a Super, right.”
“Right.” Devin agreed, dropping the red hearthstone into the center of the house, and taking Jenkins outside where it was safe. “Feed a small stream of arcanium into the house so you can get the achievement too.” He said, finding a relatively cleared space on the ground to sit as he [focus]’d on his energy.
The field around the house boiled with the hearthstone burning at the center. A light brighter than the setting sun poured out from the boarded windows and cracks throughout the house. Devin felt another, smaller stream of arcanium join his as he dipped into all three of his resources and poured their contents into his creation, all for a greater chance of success.
The domain of the house fluctuated, breezing over their heads before condensing into a tight ball inside the house; the cycle repeating over and over again. The claim of control melted into the house on a metaphysical level, melding into a single entity, all of which was influenced and empowered by the hearthstone burning at the center of the creation.
The world around the house blurred as it shifted between a physical and metaphysical object. Devin pushed his skills to go even further, tilting the house to lean towards metaphysical reality. The house’s field boomed over their heads covering the nearly five acres of the property, drowning every piece of junk in its aura, before the field rebounded back, slamming into the tight form of a gleaming, white card.
“Oh my god.” Jenkins’ jaw dropped as the achievements poured in.
Achievement—Reconstructor
Rebuild a home from near disaster
to an even better state
Reward: Creation Upgraded to Lair
Hunk of Junk (Precious)
Home/Atomic
Reconstructed with love and talent
2nd Circle—POW, ???
+Gains owner’s aetheric properties
+Forms a Bonded Pact with owner
+Access to Lair subsystems
+Junk Trunk
+{Material Sorter}
Achievement—The Architect and The Builder
Use a personally handcrafted
building to forge a card
Reward: Two Hearthstones
Achievement—Docile Domicile
Bestow a home designation
to a building card
Reward: New Homeowner’s Card Pack
Achievement—Beloved Teacher
Successfully teach a skill to a student
Reward: Empty Skill Core
Devin smiled at her reaction. “Good. I’m glad we did it. Now, let’s hurry up and make you a Super before nightfall.”