Luna looked up at Kain. [What?]

He blinked, trying to comprehend what she had just said. [You… know what that means?]

She scoffed. [Of course I do! What, did you think I was that immature? I may be a bit immature, but I can understand those things.]

Kain just looked at her for a bit, letting the knowledge that she was not as innocent as he thought, at least by human standards, sink in. He thought that he should have expected it. After all, she did know what a litter was and knew how to get one, so it was little surprise. Thinking about it that way, he calmed himself. [Oh. Your general… attitude made me think you didn’t know about that sort of stuff. Sorry about that.]

Luna gave a sidelong glance. [I don’t know how humans think about that stuff, but for me, this is knowledge you pick up after being alive for a day. You never find a clothed rabbit, after all.] She said.

[Except for you.]

[Except for me.]

[Anyway, I’m going to start it up. After that, we still have some work to do.] He funneled energy into the pattern he had made that would allow for him to quickly and easily start the energy collection and storage process. The rod near the bottom of the sphere began to give off a faint blue glow, signaling that it was collecting energy. After a few minutes, Kain examined the whole structure, confirming that there was nothing wrong with it. Once the checks were completed, he looked at the amount of energy in the rose-red ball and found that it was not even filled a percent of a percent of a percent. Thinking about it, it should have been filled a bit more than the infinitesimal amount it had been filled, but he chalked it up to a unique property of the metal when stuck together like he had done. He wiped a bit of sweat from his brow that had accumulated in the face of the stressful scenario that they had failed. [Okay, we finished the storage project, so I think we should now try to make the shielded cloak.] He said, pulling out a rock and sitting down on the ground near the campfire and away from the collection machine.

Luna gave a sigh. [So we’re playing with rocks again?]

[Yep. The sooner we finish this, the sooner we can start making your weapon, so let’s get this over with.] He offhandedly remarked. He had already had an idea about what kind of weapon he would make Luna, but he wanted some more protection against attacks before he could start doing that. Luna had heard that Kane was going to make her a new weapon before, but was beginning to get excited at the prospect of a new weapon, so she calmed herself down and began to funnel energy into the rock as Kain instructed. Due to their previous achievements in making the energy collection device the shield construct was easy, and the projection aspect of it was finished after a few hours of creative thinking.

Once the rock had been given all of the energy constructs, they left the cave to test it. Kain included a method for activating it remotely, so they placed it in their usual testing clearing and turned it on. The rock suddenly shot up in the air, flying higher than the trees around them and landing almost exactly where it had shot up from. Before they could examine it, shards of rock began to break off from the outer layer, which shot out from the shielded area. Once the outer layer had been shed, the inner layers followed the same fate, with the shield deactivating soon after. Sighing, Kain walked up to the rock and examined it; the shield had actually stopped due to missing pieces of the construct. It seemed that some of the inner layers of the rock that had been shed possessed some of the parts of the total construct system, which deactivated after losing enough parts. [Hmm… the shield must have pushed the layers of rock out of the shielded area. What caused it?] Kain muttered.

Luna flew over on her shield and looked at the rock that had been stripped of its layers. [Maybe you made it so that it would push anything from the center outward, but that area also included the rock itself. If that were the case, wouldn’t the solution be to make it push out everything from beyond a certain area past the center? And if while talking about mistakes, we should make it directional too so we can actually stand on the ground while using it.]

Kain agreed with all of her points, as he had planned to make the shield directional and knew that her solution for the shattering problem was the correct one. [Yeah, that makes sense. So the final goal of this is to be able to have a summonable shield that blocks a certain area in front of us. That sound good?] Luna gave a determined nod, so he went back into the cave and began to work on another rock. After another few hours, he had created the next prototype and left with Luna to give it a test. The second rock was a total success. By using various energy construct systems, he was able to use his energy limbs to move the shield around once activated. Once he had completed the item, though, a problem surfaced in his mind: ‘She can’t use energy limbs in such a precise way… can she? If I make the controls much bigger, then she could probably use them, but it would cost some strength to do that… I can’t think of another solution, so let’s just go with that.’ He tested an upscaled version of the shield controls by putting them on a wall in the cave. [Luna, can you see if you can use these constructs on the wall?] He asked. They were small, only about a few inches across and an inch tall, but they were very large compared to the controls he had put in the rock, which were tenths of an inch long and tall. The amount of space such a control system would have taken up was detrimental to the shielding construct, as Kain learned that every inch could be used to slightly strengthen the overarching goal the construct system was trying to achieve, but he was fine with it as long as Luna could use it.

Luna looked at the wall, staring at it for a moment before flying over to it on her shield. [I’ll see.] She said with uncertainty. Extending an energy limb out to the control scheme, she jumped in surprise when even she could feel its energy radiating onto her. He watched as she manipulated it, twisting it one way or another, and becoming enthralled with the process. She soon snapped out of it, flying over to him. [That was really fun!] She remarked cheerfully. [Will that do anything later?] She asked expectantly.

Kain gave a chuckle and patted her head. [Yes it’ll do something when I put it on your cloak and connect it to your shield. Either way, we should get started. Let’s start with yours first, alright?]

She beamed a smile, [Yeah!] They immediately got to work on Luna’s cloak, with Kain sculpting the energy constructs and Luna providing energy.The minutes turned to hours which stretched on until there was no concept of time for them. They continued working, filling with energy, sculpting constructs, calculating energy ratios, exchanging energy, and more until they had finally completed the cloak. They once again ran outside, placed the cloak down, and hid behind Luna’s metal shield and activated the cloak. A thick, misty cloud of energy manifested above the cloak, being half a foot thick. It was of medium size for a human, only being a square with sides that extended two feet, but it was massive for a rabbit. Kain touched another part of the control scheme, letting the shield shrink to half of its original size but taking in less energy from the air. He turned the shield to face him and took out Grand letting a round loose at the mist. The bullet collided with the shield, falling to the ground upon contact with the front layer.

Kain and Luna laughed and cheered. [Damn, that was the weakest layer! Looks like it was a success, huh?] He gloated, receiving a heavy nod from Luna. [Anyway, let me just give you a bit of a crash course on the features of the shield. First: the shield is not the only function; I put in a few constructs that affect the actual fabric. Second: the cloak draws in as much energy from the air around us as possible and makes a shield based on the amount of energy it takes in. I made it as efficient as possible so that less energy makes a stronger shield, but even then you can simply dump more energy into the control scheme to strengthen the shield. Third and finally: the shield is directional, but also able to change size, though I couldn’t make it change shape. You can make it thicker, thinner, taller, shorter, longer, and narrower at will with the control scheme. You’ll find three energy sliders that correspond to each metric and the maximums and minimums on each are what I thought was sensible, not what was possible, so I can modify it if you want later.] Kain boasted, making her eyes shine brighter. She immediately ran up and grabbed the cloak with her movement energy.

She donned the cloak, feeling the soft fabric fall over her back. It was softer than it had been when she first made the cloak, so she assumed that it was due to Kain. She found the controls, which were near her heart, and began to use them with energy limbs. She needed four limbs to control each factor: position, width, height, and thickness. They were small for her, as she had never been able to use energy limbs as finely as Kain was, but she was able to use them because they were massive for him. She brought out the shield, letting it manifest its misty cloud, and began to manipulate it. She was slow at first but quickly gained speed, soon becoming able to make a shield to her back, rapidly move it to above her head, then swing it to her front and around her. Once done admiring her cloak, she flew over to Kain. [It’s amazing! This is so easy to use, and it’s fun! Look what I can do!] She flew off to a tree and manifested her shield, strengthening it, and swinging it at the tree. The strengthened shield, which at that point looked like a solid block of blue cotton, smashed through the tree, sending it careening into the forest a few feet away from its stump. She flew back over, re-established her energy connection, and began to jump up and down in excitement. [Did you see? Wasn’t it cool?] She chittered.

Kain looked over to the fallen tree, stunned a small amount. [That was impressive, but I never thought that it could be used like that… I thought that anything would just go through. Either way, we are kind of done for today, so can you go get some food while I prep?] He asked. She gave an excited nod and rushed off to find some game. She came back a while later with another glass deer in her shield, but this time she added its decapitated head. They ate their boiled meat and, before they were ready to go to bed, Luna had a request.

[Um… If you make something for me, can you make it out of this?] She pushed the deer's head toward Kain, flying next to it with her shield. [I think it would look cool.] She said, glancing at his poncho’s shoulder pad made out of a green ape’s skull.

He gave a laugh at her response, looking at the head in front of him. [We’ll see. If we do, then it’ll be out of the skull, not the whole head. But for now…] He sucked the head into his amulet, making sure that it did not come close to anything within it, and picked up Luna. [I’m going to bed.] He summoned his own cloak and laid it on top of them. Luna didn’t protest, and the two soon fell asleep.