Jon scampered back to his workshop and locked the door on his way in. Finally, some peace and quiet. He’d sufficiently delegated to keep the two mischievous monsters, also known as his responsibility, busy for at least a few hours.

At least if they fucked up, he was too far away to be initially held accountable. He was under no delusions; he eventually would be blamed. Just delaying the inevitable was required. That was the advantage of being mortal: You can die before consequences catch up to you. And his partners would outlive him by a wide margin, suckers.

Unfortunately, there was no escape in the medium term, but he had the afternoon to himself. Blissful solitude, how long has it been, old friend? He sighed in relief, rubbing his hands together; materials, machines, and designs would be his only companions in the interim.

Returning to the workbench, he appraised the piece-of-shit helmet on the scarred and pockmarked tabletop; they shared a harmonious kinship in that regard. He started where all good projects began: with an angle grinder. The piece unceremoniously clamped in a dusty and soot-stained vice; he cut along the coronal plane until the faceplate clattered to the floor. The posterior portion went in the scrap bin, while the anterior faceplate was lightly sandblasted to get rid of excess rust, and other… stuff he wasn’t sure how to classify. This left him with what amounted to an extremely crude metal mask. Taking sharp edges to an electric grindstone and sandbelt, he rounded and polished them. A pass or two with aerosol laminate sealed the surface from further corrosive degradation. Ugly needed to be preserved, after all; otherwise, it became broken too. A last light pass with the sandblaster matted the transparent lustre, making it dull and disfigured. Jon admired a long vertical gouge in the left eye socket where a spearhead or sword had pierced it. The mask certainly made a statement. If pictures said a thousand words, then objects made conversation. This one was unquestionably talking to him.

It said, ‘I’m not fucking finished yet, get off your lazy ass and complete me.’ Tossing the thing on the table, he sauntered back to his scrap metal bin and fished for more sheet metal. No way was he gonna use new material on this project; the whole point was polishing a turd. Once he found the most mismatched and tarnished off-cuts he could, the next hour was spent laser-cutting plate steel into long slim elliptical segments and bending them on the press into semi-circular shells.

Each segment could nest in the next one like scales of an armadillo, except they were all fastened together through two coaxial bolt hinges, the hinge axis perpendicular to the sagittal plane—the ears. When the nested assembly was placed on the back of the skull—those bolted holes, just above the ears behind the temples—it allowed the round plates to telescope out and covered the head from posterior to anterior. The Corinthian faceplate was mounted to the same hinges and would swing down last, similar to a welding mask, to cover the face. It was a poor man’s Ironman helmet, very poor and probably homeless too. Ironically, with the money, time, and effort already spent, it was notably quite expensive.

The final significant component was some flexible steel conduit pipe, identical to that used with articulating showerheads. Jon cut two forearm-length pieces and attached them on the outside of the two helmet hinges. The pipes trailed back from the face to rest on the shoulders and upper back where they would be fastened to some kind of suit or backpack. He hadn’t decided on that yet.

Finishing touches involved affixing polycarbonate eye protection, welding steel mesh over the mouth, nose, and ear slits, and interior padding for comfort.

Jon stood back to admire his abominable creation. “It’s alive!” he muttered waving his hands dramatically. Poetic license gave him leeway to interpret the arc-welding as lightning, and the design was assuredly horrendous enough to count as monstrous.

A rust-brown and stained grey Corinthian-mech-suit helmet with mismatched and tarnished posterior telescoping and nestling segments stared back at him. Adding insult to injury, two juxtaposed, flexible, gleaming steel pipes flowed back from the ear hinges; the other ends yet to be attached.

“Gonna have to spraypaint those pipes; far too flashy.” He had some rust-red oxide paint just perfect for the job. After that, the piece of kak would be ready for fitting.