Flora sat in the waiting area of the Magetech Institute, skimming through a book about runes. Only her tapping foot revealed her impatience.

The little violet octopus next to her put one glowing tentacle next to its head as if it was covering its ear. A white ball moved across the video-skin on its head. When it reached the bright tip, it reversed directions. Leaning on the violet squid, a second, blue-colored octopus had its glowing tentacle on the other side of its head.

The display of the ball transferred from head to head with the tentacles used as reflectors.

Yes, Aitoshuri and Aidan were playing Pong.

"Enough is enough!" Resolutely, Flora closed the book. "This waiting time is only acceptable for a top-notch hair salon or a kidney transplant! Am I in desperate need of a new hair-style?"

"No, Milady! You look wonderful, like always! Your kidneys are great, too!"

Flora marched to the player information and informed the receptionist that her contact could fetch her from Doc Brownski's office if they ever cared to show up at all.

After knocking, Flora experienced a Deja Vu.

"No! No!" came from the other side, followed by the sound of something crashing down. "Okay, now you can come in."

"Huhu, Doc."

The bronze-skinned man with silver hair jumped up from the mess of gadgets on his floor and shook Flora's hand with enthusiasm.

"Are you the new test object-I mean-test SUBJECT? You are an earthling! Great! That means you are immortal!"

"No, I'm an old test subject. Your nocks and jacks work wonderfully. I have no problems at all."

"Splendid! Splendid! Splendid!" The doc craned his neck to look behind her shoulder, and Flora dutifully turned around to give him better access, right after she had checked out his badge.

Name: Emerald Brownski

Title: Doctor

Class: Mad Scientist

Level: 1 (250)

Rating: S

Fortunately, the doc couldn't see her face. Torn between fear because a freaking S rated Boss stood behind her unprotected back and envy of his class, she couldn't calm her emotions.

"Aito, find out how to get this class. I want it! I need it! I already have it, only System doesn't know about it!"

"Beep."

"I want to buy some of your excellent jacks. Do you have more of them?"

"Most interesting!" He exclaimed while poking her nocks.

"The jacks, Doc?"

"What jacks?"

"The Brownski Jacks, can you sell them to me?"

"Do I look like a vendor?"

Flora sighed and turned around, eyeballing him. He wore a white lab coat over a blue aloha shirt.

"No. But last time we were able to make a deal. Do you need anything I have to offer?"

The doctor looked her up and down, pausing on her bust.

"Not that kind of offer!" Flora protested.

"Nope."

"Alright. You don't happen to know where I can get the Technomancer class, do you?" Flora thought a shot in the dark couldn't hurt.

"Technomancers! You seemed to be so nice, at least until you refused to offer your body for further experimentation. What do you want with that nasty bunch?"

"What's wrong with them?"

"They DON'T use nocks. Can you believe it?"

"No, nocks are so handy. How do they connect with their gadgets?"

"With magic, of course. But that isn't the problem. They can interrupt or even highjack your connection with your nocks. The MI has a few experts who research measures against them. But if you ask me, they are like those demonologists, who claim they only learn to summon for banishing demons. Half a year later, they get busted with a succubus in their bedroom."

Flora shrugged, she had no experience with demonologists.

"I fortified my nocks against technomancers, but I haven't tested the feature. Because there are no technomancers, I trust. But if you get me some data, I think about selling some Brownski Jacks to you."

"Deal!"

Quest: Data for Doc Brownski (unique)

Description: Provide data from experiments of technomancer attack skills against users with Brownski Nocks.

Rewards: Opportunity to buy Brownski Jacks.

Penalty: None

Difficulty: A

Finally, Flora's contact appeared. It was a pale green guy, easily two heads taller than Flora if you counted his spiked up orange hair.

While he was barely polite in the doc's office, he dropped all pretenses when they were alone.

"I hope you have washed your hands. Opposite to the more lax regulations in the garage, here we care about hygiene."

Almost all his sentences started similarly.

"Opposite to the rough work in the garage, here we do the finest creations."

"Opposite to the uncouth behavior in the garage, here we care about manners."

First, Flora was amused, but this sentence was the last toast that broke the toaster's circuits.

"Opposite to the polite conversations I had in the garage, here I have to suffer condescension." she joined in.

"Hmpf." He turned up his nose and sped up, forcing Flora to jog after him.

They arrived at a depot. Rows upon rows of shelves filled it. But her guide didn't stop until they reached the end. Here a mountain of mech-suit parts piled up to the ceiling.

"Your job is to sort them. Throw away the unsalvageable pieces and repair the rest. Then reassemble the functioning parts. You have four hours." He pointed at a camera on the ceiling. "No theft tolerated. Make sure the broken bits end up in the waste container."

"Do you have blueprints for the mech-suits?"

He sneered at her but transferred three schematics before he left: A light mech-suit, much less elaborate than the Sleek Assassin, a medium mech-suit with a pronounced upper body and a heavy mech-suit just one step away from being a batticle.

Quest: Conquer the Mountain (Magetech Institute)

Description: Assemble eight functioning mech-suits within the time limit.

Possible rewards:

Reputation gain with the MI Follow up quest

Possible penalties: Reputation loss with the MI

Time-Limit: 4 hours

Difficulty: B

Reading, she only had to finish eight suits, relieved her. From the info of the flower-guy, she had thought she had to work through the whole mountain. Four hours would be tight for that. She grinned. "Tight but not impossible."

After fetching the two forklift-robots from her inventory, she surveyed the hall. There was a well-equipped workshop at the left wall and enough open space to build her own piles.

Drawing on her HUD, she defined 12 areas on the floor. One for broken things with salvageable spare parts and three patches for each blueprint: One for finished pieces, one for repairs under 10 ten minutes, and one for repairs under 20 minutes, and the biggest and last area for the rest.

"Lifty One and Two, your job is to put the parts from the mountain into my patches. Only if you are over 95% sure, what you find is broken beyond repair, throw it into the container." Flora had inserted Aidan's jacks into them.

"Aito, you repair the under 5 minutes pieces of the light mech suit. Concentrate on one blueprint first and prioritize parts we need for a full set. Aidan-Pussy - let's go with Octo-Aidan instead - you focus on the medium mech-suits. Everyone, I want the parts looking brand new!" Flora clapped. "This is the best quest ever!"

She put her mech-suit away because the depot had a metal handicap of 20, and approached the mountain. Right away, she saw a torso with shattered legs belonging to the heavy mech-suit. Grabbing it, she skipped to a free workbench and started tinkering.

Her assumption the parts on the mountain stayed there too long for the skill Repair to fix proved to be right. However, she had other skills in her repertoire, like Transform Inorganics. Metal was notoriously challenging to transform with magic. For the rough work, she would use a hammer.

Flora dismantled the broken legs and threw them into the trash; at least she tried but missed. Then she finished repairing the torso and put it into the finished-pieces-patch of the heavy armor.

Meanwhile, the forklifts had put a few more parts of the heavy armor in her patches, supplying Flora.

The four robots and one human worked in harmony. Flora felt like whistling and tried a few notes, but stopped when Aidan and Aito joined in. They were even more tone-deaf than her.

Fifteen minutes later, Flora finished her first mech-suit. Shortly aftward, Aito beeped; she had enough parts for another.

Flora assembled it as well and fixed with magic what a hammer couldn't do while Aito switched positions, repairing the heavy modules.

She had to reevaluate the light mech-suit. The more she learned about it, the more impressed she was.

The Sleek Assassin was more advanced, but it had more weaknesses, and Flora couldn't exploit its strength, high agility in dagger fights, because her sword-fighting sucked.

On the other hand, the light mech-suit SMS4903, which she dubbed "Messenger", supported the muscles in the legs, specifically the muscles you needed for jumping and sprinting. The model would make an excellent base for her next suit.

"Milady, I have enough repaired elements for one medium mech-suit and at least two others for which only the small parts are missing."

"I noticed the problem, too. The small missing pieces might be on the bottom of the mountain. We have to dismantle the mountain horizontally. Lifty One, focus on the little parts."

Flora's piles had grown and were about to spill into the neighboring areas, so it was okay for one of the lifters to spend more time searching the mountain.

Every ten minutes, another finished mech-suit joint his brothers, then every eight minutes, every five minutes, at last, every 3,5 minutes.

Even with extensive use of telekinesis Flora couldn't speed it up anymore. She already drank mana-potions like an addict and held Recharge and Pray For Mana on cooldown.

Because her diagnosis tool needed too long, she pumped her mana into the suits and listened to the resonance.

You gained a skill: Diagnose (electromechanical).

You learned the skill without guidance: + 1 OV to the skill.

Additionally, all the tossing trash into the container netted her the ability "Throwing."

Two hours later, the mountain had shrunken into a hill while the piles had grown into hills. Flora exchanged the forklift-robots with octopussies and ordered Octo Two to man the third station and Octo Three to assist it and fetch more materials when needed.

Another hour later, they ran out of parts to finish the rest of the mech-suits according to the blueprints.

"Let's have fun with it!" The smile had stayed on Flora's face during the whole quest and now grew even more significant.

With only twenty minutes left on the timer, Flora crafted one hybrid suit, one mech-arm, and a pair of rocket-boots out of the remaining pieces.

While Flora inspected the 35 mech-suits and octopussies polished them, the flower-guy and a man from the metal race arrived.

"Where is the mountain?" The black haired, silver-skinned man exclaimed.

"The anti-theft devices were active, I made sure of it, sir!"

"Good afternoon," Flora smirked and pointed on the rows of shining armor. "We transformed the mountain into mech-suits."

The two men gaped at them as if they had never seen a mech-suit before.

"This, this ... she must have cheated." Flower-guy stuttered. "Brutes from the Garage can't work that well."

Quest completed: Conquer the Mountain (Magetech Institute)

Reward: Reputation gain with the MI and Follow Up Quest.

Completion: S

Quest completed: The Quality of Education (The Garage)

Rewards: Reputation gains with the MI and the Garage

Completion: S

"Silence! Don't insult our new technician!" His badge identified him as Ferdinand Verden, assistant research director in the mech department of the MI.

He explained they needed the help of a technician to repair the old mech-suits they destroyed while testing the newest line and asked if she could come by now and then.

Quest: Technician for Mech Suit Grind (Magetech Institute) - Repeatable

Description: Repair mech-suits at least twice a week.

Possible rewards:

Reputation gain with the MI Materials Blueprints

Possible penalties: Reputation loss with the MI

Difficulty: C

Though it wasn't the outcome she had hoped for, Flora agreed.

"I want to obtain the Technomancer class. Can you help me in this regard?"

The flower-guy bristled, but before he could say anything, Verden answered: "Well, I can at least introduce you to one. The rest is up to you."