Chapter 117: Portable Dent

No, it’s not like that. There’s no exact plan in play here. You’re looking for an exact blueprint on how we plan to win, and it’s not like that. I never said it was.

Think about it. One day I woke up to find me and my buddy had got blasted out of time. I’m stronger than him, I’m tougher than him, and I can do more things than he can do. I’m even smarter in some ways. You’d think I’d be the hero, right? Beer belly and all, I’m more qualified.

Instead, I find out I’m in orbit around the kid, tied to everything he does, seeing all his most important moments as he grows. I can’t help him directly, but eventually I find out almost every place I land has something to do with him. Some future moment of danger, or need, or involving someone who might eventually be his enemy or ally.

You don’t have to be religious to think there’s something going on when the whole universe shouts “Look! This kid is very important! Help him!” at you out of a megaphone.

And then I find out he’s going up against some of the strongest forces in the universe to try to accomplish something that nearly everyone agrees isn’t even possible, armed with all the wisdom of a dumbass and the strength of a indoors, typist sort of guy. At least he was brave, but brave isn’t enough.

Even I’m not confident enough to think I can actually plan for that sort of thing. Everything might have just been a big series of coincidences, sure. Probably was. But right now, the only road I can see that leads anywhere good is assuming it’s not.

The plan is “bet on the kid”. And it may not be good odds, but that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong bet.

• The Glorious Jeff Greco

Time-juiced Plugmash

Where previous efforts to improve Plug Mud as a crafting material have failed in total or in part, you’ve managed to brute force the issue by feeding the glue, trying to pressure it into growing up big and strong like some sort of demented, milk-slinging lunch lady.

Plugmash is not useful in combat and isn’t especially receptive to the commands of your Adhesives Mastery. Instead, it’s very receptive to the glue-enhancement part of that skill. In normal hands, it’s decent enough. In yours, it’s a next-level material that only you can make.

And he had made plenty of it. Slathering it on the rebar, he made a rigid handle of sorts. Leaving it to dry, he slathered a bunch of it on one side of the rat and god leather strips, imbuing it with time energy as he did to try and create something new.

Rat Tape (Time-Juiced)

Really good tape. Very durable. Very, very sticky.

Zeus Tape (Time-Juiced)

Really, really good tape. Very, very durable. Just as sticky, but also supple. Imbued with the fake power of fake gods.

Sean carefully laid down a base layer of rat tape around the rebar big enough for both his hands, then put another layer of the thinner, finer Zeus Tape over it any place his hands would contact. He wanted the option to use this as a one or two-handed weapon, and the bigger handle would give him the option to do both.

As it stood, Sean had built a pretty good thwacking stick, basically a police baton made out of salvaged materials. He would have been thrilled to have it months ago, but now he needed something better. With the old weight and glue removed, the Trash Compactor was reduced to what amounted to an irregular metal sock, one that needed contents to be anything more useful than extremely uncomfortable footwear.

Sean reached not into his pack but inside his pack to remove a heavy, heavy softball-sized weight he had stowed in there. It was too heavy to fit in his bag of holding with other stuff in there. It was the very heaviest individual weight that he had been able to get from Itto’s set. Dumping a liberal amount of plug mash into the sock, he dropped in the weight before filling the rest of the space with more glue before plunging his hand through it all the way to the lump of mass at the end.

The plug mash might not have been combat glue as such, but it didn’t take incredibly long to cure.

The Portable Dent

It’s the same old story. You found some stuff, slathered it with glue, and now you come to ‘ol papa system, asking him to allow it to do a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even make sense.

But this time, you have a bit of justification for it. This is pretty good garbage, as garbage goes. A lot of it is stuff you made. You thought about the design, and you aren’t counting on many happy accidents for it to do what it’s supposed to.

Remember how the Trash Compactor didn’t have stat increases because it didn’t need them? This one should. That said, it’s close to breaking some obscure maximum weapon weight rules that keep people from cheesing physics too hard, and I think you know the math of the whole thing holding together when you bash it on enemies doesn’t quite work out in a conventional sense.

What you end up with is a system-juiced weapon that works just fine for what you want it to do, doesn’t give you stats, and that I’ll be very generous and say you can stow in your EZ-carry pouch as if it weighed as much as a sane weapon.

Because almost every part of it is juiced with time, it transfers force over a slightly smaller time frame than it should in some situations. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s a big deal or not.

Sean had hoped for some stats, but overall this would work just fine. He needed a thwaking stick, and the system seemed to be allowing him to have a pretty good one. Even better, he wouldn’t have to walk all lopsided because of the weight.

Win win win. I’ll take it.

Sean took a few minutes to load back up the Ba-glue-ka and make a potion to replace the one he had used in his last combat, then left the Shanktuary. There would be time to rest later. For now, he didn’t want to miss Itto and end up lost in a weird, hostile pirate city.

For all that Sean had imagined the city to be a den of crime and violence, it seemed pretty conventional, all things considered. The people were weird, sure, but pretty much every non-human species was weird to him and every place was packed with those. As he walked around, various vendors tried to catch his eye with bizarre foods, weaponry he couldn’t use, and clothes he didn’t want, all at what were apparently low, low prices he couldn’t afford to pay.

He moved on from each with little more than a glance, trying hard not to get drawn into anything weird. By some miracle, he managed to find Itto before anything went wrong.

“So how do you like it, kid?”

“It’s surprisingly… normal. I think I expected more cutlasses.”

“It’s like I said. It’s not worth it to be a pirate if there’s no place to spend your loot. It’s the job that’s weird, not the people.” He glanced around the area, apparently considering what he had just said. “Well, not as weird. The city has slightly lax legal restrictions, but that’s about where it stops.”

“So now… off to your mom’s house?”

“Yes. Her name is Lina, by the way. In case it comes up. I don’t want her finding out I didn’t even try to tell you.”

Lina’s house ended up being massive. Mostly that was because it wasn’t so much a house as a mini-shipyard of her own, one she had already moved Itto’s ship into. A group of workers directed them through a gate to the rear of the building, where Lina stood regarding the ship.

“Any damage?” Itto said, sidling up to his mother.

“None to speak of. Normal wear and tear, but overall it’s in fine condition. Besides some mysterious stress to the engine I can’t quite identify. Did anything odd happen on this last trip? It looks a bit like you tried to tow a planet with it.”

Sean thought he knew the source of the stress and tried his best not to draw attention to himself.

“No idea. But we’ve been through some stuff, as you know.”

Lina shrugged, moving on.

“No matter. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed.” She said. “I already have some people on it. But there’s a larger problem.”

“What’s that?”

Lina glanced at Sean.

“I’m sure your friend doesn’t want to hear about all this here, out in the open. Come. I’ll make tea.”

The interior of LIna’s house was surprisingly minimalistic. The furniture was sturdy-looking, but simple, and there was only enough of to host a small amount of people. She was not, apparently, much of a party host, unless she was hiding more furniture elsewhere.

Tea ended up being closer to a full meal consisting of something close to a meat pasta, an unfamiliar tangy bread, and tea that Lina made herself with water heated over a small table-side heat source that appeared to exist for that exact purpose.

Both Sean and Itto tried to launch back into conversation during the meal, something Lina wouldn’t tolerate. She filled their plates as they ate until all the food was gone. Sean had no idea how much he needed it until he sat back heavily in his chair, his stomach straining against his ribs, and relaxed in a way he hadn’t been in a long, long time.

Home cooking. Who knew?

“Now, to business.” One of Lina’s employees swept away the dishes as she sat up straighter in her chair. “Your ship has problems that go beyond the damage. If that was all, I could put some spit-shine on it, and send you on your way. But you know that, already.”

Itto nodded. “It’s that the ship’s been seen. I expected that.”

“It’s not just that. I’ve been checking with a few sources. They got a complete scan. How long were you talking to them?”

“A few seconds. Maybe a minute. Just long enough to see what they wanted and warp away.”

“I thought so. You aren’t a complete idiot, despite looking that way. Unfortunately, they apparently had a specialist on board. A rare genius, it seems. This ship has been scanned down to the bones. Every detail. To hide it now will take months of work. The frame itself would need to be restructured.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

They didn’t. As much as the pirate planet had proved safe so far, a ship was a hard thing to hide. Sooner or later, they’d be tracked here. And then there would be trouble.

“I know you don’t, Itto. That’s why I’m proposing a different solution. Something a bit quicker. Your ship can be sold, hidden until you cause trouble somewhere else and they realize the ship itself isn’t that important anymore.”

“I like that ship.”

“I know you do, boy. Come with me. I’ll show you why you don’t care that much about it after all.”