A Mockery of the System

Callie slept fairly peacefully. She had no past to haunt her, and no fears which leered from the shadows. No, she was still a fairly blank slate, and so time passed fairly quickly for her. Every now and then she'd wake up to find her bandages being changed, but apart from that it was a rather peaceful passing of time.

The young fighter awoke who knew when, her body still sore and bruised, still aching every small movement... But it wasn't as bad now at least. With a small grunt of pain she sat herself up, listening out for any distant noises. She was fairly certain she could hear talking though from who she didn't know or care too much. Until she was done healing she wasn't going to be moving too much. But, she didn't feel like sleeping anymore, she'd done enough of that. Now was the time to be productive. So, she crawled her way over to the desk and grabbed her stuff, dragging it over to her makeshift bed with one arm wrapped around it like some sort of primitive creature. Once it was there she laid back down and on her front, leaning her head on her pillow as she worked on some of her stuff.

The bird she'd previously had working was cracked, and when she tested the mechanisms they simply whirred without function. She sighed lightly to herself, prying off the plastic shell with little concern for the state it was in, revealing a small collection of cogs and connectors. It was a rather simple design, but there was something satisfying about returning to the simple stuff. Using a screw driver she began to separate each cog until she came across what the issue was: One of them had been bent out of place and was disrupting the system. It wouldn't budge through traditional means and so she decided to work on plying it away with the screwdriver, putting more and more pressure on it until eventually it popped out.

Replacing the cog and putting the mechanisms back together was rather simple. In fact if she'd have had a small audio device she'd have liked to implement one of those, but for now the little songbird would remain silent. Pulling at a small piece of chord to test it, she watched as the gears began to turn and one segment began to move back and forth. A smile formed on her face, halting it again and placing the plastic casing back on. It was heavily cracked and the wings had crumbled meaning it didn't quite look like it used to, but a little bit of dark tape worked wonders in some way. She designed mechanisms, she didn't usually work with plastics. Placing the bird to one side, she allowed it to continuously peck at the floor, deciding now she should probably look over her legplates which had taken a bit of a beating in the last fight.

Mock turned his head slightly and looked at Morgana for a moment. The look of amusment on her face relaxed the highley skeptical man. 'Well at least she doesn't seem mad or frightened at the moment. That's nice...' Mock looked away and continued to work on the limbs of Humpty Dumpty. "I suppose I don't seem like the toymaker type.", Mock said after a few moments of silence. "Truth be told, I'm not sure how I learned this skill myself. I just remember having the tools when I woke up..." Mock trailed off as he talked; as if he were lost in thought. Morgana looked at Mock with a puzzled look on her face when she heard the bell over the door ring. "Oh a customer, I'll be back later ok?" Morgana turned to walk away and accidently knocked Mock's bag off of the table. The bag slammed onto the floor loudly and Mock's belongings spilled out onto the floor. Mock let out a sigh of relief that his gun didn't go off on impact. Morgana bent down and started to put things back into the bag. O-oh gosh I'm so so sorry, I-I didn't mean to knock over your bag. I hope I didn't break anything."

Morgana stopped as she picked up the strange doll (The doll of Sylvia) that was in his bag. He could never seem to find it in him to get rid of the doll. Every time he looked at it he was filled with warm feelings that he had never felt before. Morgana smiled as she looked at the doll. "Did you make this? I must say this is a very cute doll, and the craftsmanship is absolutely exquisite! If you did make this I must admit that you may even have me beat." Mock's lips tightened as he watched her handle that doll. Even he didn't know why seeing other people touch it made him so nervous, but he quickly relaxed his face and let out a week smile. He gently took it from her hands and put it back into his bag. "Even I have know idea who made that doll or where it came from." Mock could see the look of slight concern mixed with confusion as he took away the doll and spoke. Mock quickly continued on. "A story for another time perhaps. Don't worry, maybe someday the three of us can all just sit around and talk. Maybe." Mock whispered the last maybe to himself under his breath.

Morgana looked at him oddly for a moment before remembering that a customer had walked into the shop and rushing out into the store area. Mock sighed and took the doll out for a moment. He looked it over, and give it a hug before putting it back into the saftey of his bag. He put the rest of his belonging back into his bag before returning to work on the Humpty Dumpty doll. He worked on it until the wood was carved to seeming perfection. He carefully put the pieces together and began to cut out some cloth to put together the outfit. He made a small suit for him to wear, and some small black leather shoes. Mock looked the doll over satsisfied. Mock then made a small wooden wall that looked like stone, and stained it grey. He secured Humpty Dumpty to the top and made sure everything was looking as good as possible.

Mock was satisfied with the toy and brought it out into the storefront. As he walked through the door he saw a mother and son in the process of buying a toy knight. The mother let out a surprised yelp when she saw the bandaged up, beaten, bruised Mock that was currently only wearing his blue boxers with the yellow fish on them. "P-pervert!" Morgana whipped around confused before covering her eyes with her hands at the sight of Mock. "W-what are you doing?! You're clothes are next to your bed, why have you still not put them one?!" Mock looked down finally remembering that he had never bothered putting any clothes on. Mock shrugged and put the doll on the counter. "I just wanted to give you this now that I've finished it. I'll go get dressed now." Mock walked back into the workshop unfazed and began to put his clothes on. They were his normal clothes this time. They were clean and devoid of blood. They were a bit beat up perhaps, but not too bad considering the intesity of the fight. 'I guess the really only used blunt attacks so other than the blood it would make sense for my clothes to be relatively fine.'  Mock could here the sound of Morgana being scolded in the next room, and her frantically apologizing. 'Well I feel bad after that, I didn't mean to get her in trouble or anything.'

Mock waited for the screaming to stop, and then waited another minute or so before walking out of the room. Morgana avoided looking at hims so Mock went over to the room that he assumed Callie was in and knocked.

Callie continued to tinker with her stuff, this time looking over her legplates. There were a few scratches and light dents which she could deal with, but now she had another idea in mind. Firstly, she had to tighten up a few screws and connectors which had been weakened, and fix up a few which had cleanly snapped. She could do a makeshift job without a forge, but she'd ideally need some way to heat up and mould the metal later on down the line. She wasn't a smith, but she got the general gist of how to patch up armour, albeit not perform a full fix. So, she played around with the metal for a bit, poking at places with a screwdriver, replacing any nuts and bolts which were out of shape, and giving the legplates a general dose of TLC.

After a little while of fixing things up, a new idea came to mind. She'd been fighting with these, and had been experimenting a lot with gunpowder for some time. She'd been struggling to control those blasts, having mostly been creating small containers which could release controlled blasts. The reason for her previous failures was that she'd failed to control them, and again when she'd not been able to figure out how to incorporate explosives into her typical fighting style. However now she had another idea. Certain liquids with just a spark could go up in flames and cause small explosions of sorts. If she decided to perhaps fill her legplates with such a liquid in a safe container, and then allowed a small amount to be released with kinetic energy, could she not create essentially explosive blasts using her legs?! The idea was a little bit out there, but it seemed possible to her... So she was currently working on the system for such an application, creating a safe storage area and a way to release only a small amount with contact with a surface or perhaps via a certain motion. The idea of button controlled crossed her mind but it seemed too unreliable and impractical. Of course the whole idea was completely unsafe to begin with, but she'd live with the consequences like she always did.

Her tinkering was interrupted by a sudden knock at the door. Her head didn't even budge as she shouted out that whoever it was could enter, in an incredibly vague fashion thanks to her intent focus on her work. She lacked the nitroglycerine to make her invention work, and so she couldn't give it a proper test, however as the door presumably opened she worked to shunt one leg forwards, causing a clicking sound as something within the legplate opened up. She grinned to herself, happy with the progress, although aware it was only a prototype addon and wouldn't function just yet... It needed a whole lot more work. Eventually, still laid on her front in her bed on the floor, she spoke:

"What's up?"

Callie seemed to be doing some tinkering of her own as she sat in the room. Mock looked at her leg plate that she was working on and was confused by all of the various bits and pieces inside of the leg plate and laying around on the floor.  Mock took a few steps into the room and closed the door softly. "So, it appears that we both spend our free time making things.", Mock remarked as he approached Callie. He grunted as he began to sit down on the floor in front of her. A dull pain throbbed through his entire body as he did so.

"Callie, Morgana has been very kind to let us stay here while we recuperate, but we can't stay here for ever. Well, at the very least I know I can't. I don't want to cause anymore unnecesary trouble." Mock reached into his bag and pulled out his pen and a sheet of paper. "As I'm sure you've gathered at this point Amos Leroux isn't my true name. You can just call me Mock if you desire, technically that's not my 'true name' either, but that's a story for another time. I would like to continue to travel with you Callie, you're strong and intelligent and I feel like I need your help if I'm going to bother survive and make a difference here."

Mock put the tip of his pen down on the paper, but didn't write anything. "If you decide to travel with me we'll need a plan in order to be effective and to survive." Mock looked into Callie's eyes with a determined and expectant look in his eye, and was ready to formulate whatever plan they need for what they decided to do next...

[EXIT]

"Mock works for me"

Callie replied nonchalantly, her gaze still not faltering from her tinkering. A sheet of metal slipped into place as she worked, allowing her to begin work with the screwdriver again. It was laborious work but she enjoyed it, it kept her mind and hands busy and it ended up providing some rather nice results. These containers would be rather discrete, the vents she'd need to work on to be subtle but not a weakness in her armour though. And of course if the containers broke she'd need a fail safe. She was willing to accept the risks, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to take some precautions.

"Adventuring alongside you could be fun, assuming we get to see a few fun fights"

Finally her gaze rose to the man in front of her. A smile spread across her face at the thought of a good fight, as well as finally seeing more of the world. She'd done plenty of healing, and whilst she imagined her bones hadn't fused properly, it'd probably be fine as long as she didn't use them too much. She rose up from the bed, wandering over to the table and dumping her legplates next to her various other equipment and scraps.

"This isn't really my type of planning, but I'm sure I can help somehow. Let's get to work"