"So... Protection. Is that one of your aptitudes?" I asked.

"Mmm... No, not really," Akane said, shaking her head. "It's useful, and I understand it, but it doesn't get me going like scanners or vehicles do."

Akane's second aptitude had, as I'd suspected, proven to be vehicles. She'd required a lot more active help from me to construct a ground vehicle you could only call a "motorcycle" if you used quotes, or perhaps an asterisk to indicate a footnote, but that was simply down to the sheer size of the damn thing.

The sheer size that she had failed to adequately consider when it came time to ask and answer the question of "how the fuck are we getting this out of the apartment?" It was big and a bit awkwardly shaped; no way in hell were we getting it out the door. And so, with a heavy heart, we'd taken it apart, hauled it to a rented storage unit- I'd been careful to find one that was ground level- and reassembled it there.

"Thanks for the help, by the way," Akane said, wiping degreasing soap off of her hands. My dad had always kept a bottle in his toolbox; it was gritty as hell, because they put pumice in it, but when you didn't have a sink handy and still needed to clean the oil off your hands, it worked pretty damn well.

"I probably shouldn't have, but..." I shrugged. "If I'd let you do it all on your own like I'm supposed to, it would've taken you seven workdays to finish the damn thing. And considering you've got other shit that needs doing..." I shrugged again. "You would've either taken every weekend for a month to get the damn thing built, or you would've skipped a week of classes."

"You know me too well," Akane said.

"You're not that complicated," I said. "Anyhow, one last thing before we go. Help me with this tarp."

"How so?" Akane asked.

"There's a trick for improvising short-term gadgets," I said, grabbing the blue plastic tarp we'd gotten from a hardware store- a real hardware store, not Home Depot- and spreading it out. "There's a lot of different names for it, like kitbashing or prototyping or bodging or jury rigging... there are so many names. But yeah, something that would take me all day to build properly can be hacked together in a few minutes if we work together and don't care about longevity. It should, therefore, last about a day or so. Long enough for me to come back tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, and rebuilding it properly."

"Ohhh, okay," Akane said. "What kind of gadget are we making?"

"An anti-scanning shroud to hide the mad science motorcycle we're securing with very thin sheet metal and a padlock," I said.

"It's a disk-detainer core, though," Akane pointed out.

"Akane, it's a padlock. Bolt cutters and angle grinders are cheap and readily available. Just because only the LockPickingLawyer stands a chance of picking it in the street doesn't mean nobody can bypass it." I blinked. "Also, anyone capable of detecting superscience, which is what we are currently doing, will undoubtedly have other extraordinary talents they can use for larceny. But, nobody's going to try to steal something they don't know exists."

"Well, by your paranoid logic, anyone who's been scanning for superscience would've found this storage unit during the hour we spent reassembling this motorcycle," Akane said.

"Wide-area scanning is-" I pinched the bridge of my nose, and sighed. "Look, just humor me for two fucking minutes, okay?"

"Only if you finish explaining wide-area scanning and its limitations."

"I'll text you the plans. Draw them on the tarp with this marker," I said, mentally pinging her phone as I handed her a specially-prepared marker. It was a mad science marker, whose ink was loaded up with... fuck, Iunno. Nanomachines? Orgone? Reified volition? It didn't actually do anything on its own, but it was an excellent prop slash tool for improvising technology. "Right, so, wide-area scanning is hard. It's not unheard of, but really only specialists like myself can manage it. Local-area scanning, meanwhile, is more than just beginner level, but just about any Curious fresh off their Breakthrough can manage it if they're focused enough, as you've demonstrated."

"So, I'm normal for a mad scientist?" Akane asked.

"Think of it like entering grad school: you're still as smart as you always were, but now you're surrounded by people who are also as smart as you always were, because that level of intellectual horsepower is kind of a baseline requirement for getting there. So, yes, you're unexceptional for a mad scientist, but mad scientists are still definitionally exceptional."

"What does exceptional for a mad scientist look like?" Akane looked like.

"Neophytes like yourself are never exceptional," I said. "You're either slow learners or quick learners, but hardly anyone actually gives a shit about that. What people do give a shit about are those who reach the highest echelons of a given field. Those who can perform feats like time travel, or thinking machines that can become mad scientists in their own right, or truly resurrecting the dead. And people give a shit about this because it's rare. There's maybe a dozen or so mad scientists alive at one point who have truly mastered any given field- well, except for medicine and vehicles, because time travel and immortality, but still."

"Are you one of them?" Akane asked.

"Hell no," I said. "I'm definitely above average for a mad scientist, especially considering my age, but no, I'm not even in the upper echelons of normal. Which can be partially blamed on spreading out my efforts so much, and becoming marginally competent in all fields of mad science, but I'm pretty confident I get more use out of that broad base than I would in being a little bit better at my specialties."

"Hrm..." Akane put down the last of her sigils just as I finished mine, and the whole tarp started to faintly glow. "Whoa..."

"Yeah, thing I should've mentioned," I said. "Very nearly every gadget shaped by a Mad Scientist's hands has some sort of special flaw, fault, or limitation. In this case, this anti-scanning shield's fault is that it glows in the dark."

"What about my armor?" Akane said.

"Probably that it takes a long time to put on or take off," I said. "If you're smart about it, you can decide what the flaw is, by building it into the predictive model or the concomittant design. For instance, my healing implant's ability to heal living tissue is carried solely through my bodily fluids; where a normal healing device would be able to heal just by touch, I'd need to kiss whoever I'm healing. I designed it this way because I don't need to heal other people very often, if ever."

"So if I'm dying in your arms, the strictly optimal thing for you to do would be to kiss me?" Akane asked.

"I- well, I mean, yes, but-"

"We need to test this motorcycle right now."

"You know you can just ask for a kiss, right?" I said. "The answer is no, because you are my student and I am your mentor, but you can just ask."

"Look," Akane said. "I understand that being straightforward is the most reasonable and healthy option. But, at the same time, fanfiction-esque 'it's nobody's fault that we're kissing' is what really gets my motor running."

"Hopefully you and your girlfriend negotiate the shit out of that beforehand."

"Probably, yeah."

"Anyway. Let's go home."

"So... Veronica. You play any D&D?" I asked.

"No," Veronica said, pausing in her burrito consumption. She'd been invited over for dinner by Akane, and had brought Taco Bell. "Although I do read forum arguments about it for fun. Third Edition produces so many of these arguments."

"Ooooh, I do that too!" Akane said. "What's up, Roxy?"

"Dragonwrought Kobolds," I said, sparking a delighted noise and a weary groan. "So, to refresh the jury's memory, a Kobold who takes the feat Dragonwrought loses the Humanoid (Dragonblood) type-subtype and gains the Dragon type instead. In the same book as this feat is a revised set of age categories for Kobolds, which now has twelve age categories and is a direct mirror of the True Dragons' age categories."

"And so you are arguing in favor of the notion that Dragonwrought Kobolds are, in fact, True Dragons," Veronica said. "In favor of the 'Dragon type and 12 age categories' definition, and against the 'All True Dragons are listed here, and everything else doesn't count' definition."

"I like to use systematic, rules-based definitions rather than whitelists," I said. "The former is inherently more expandable and can accommodate new content more easily."

"Don't Dragonwrought Kobolds have to declare a draconic ancestry?" Akane asked. "Like, sure, 'Dragonwrought Kobold' isn't a type of True Dragon, but Gold Dragons sure are, and some Dragonwrought Kobolds are, in a meaningful sense, Gold Dragons."

"Good eye," I said. "I was going to get to that bit, yes- so a Dragonwrought Kobold with Gold Ancestry is a particularly small Gold Dragon. Right?"

"If I agree, what sort of disgusting cheese will you inflict upon my ears?" Veronica asked.

"Oh, I'm not about to outline a disgustingly cheesy character optimization," I said. "I'm about to outline some objectively stupid speculative biology-focused worldbuilding."

"Heaven preserve me."

"What if Dragons were descended from Kobolds?"

Veronica blinked, long and slow, and Akane's face threatened to split in half as her grin widened.

"I mean, think about it," I continued. "A Dragonwrought Kobold is a True Dragon of some given draconic type. If two Gold Dragonwrought Kobolds fuck, that's two Gold Dragons fucking. And two Gold Dragons will produce a clutch of Gold Dragon eggs."

"This is obscene," Veronica moaned.

"Aren't Gold Dragon Wyrmlings- and therefore eggs- size Medium?" Akane asked. "How does a size Small kobold lay one egg that big?"

"Hoard Gullet is a first-level spell," I said. "If, between two Gold Dragons, there isn't enough arcane prowess to cast a spell that lets Mama gestate and lay an egg bigger than she is, then they're just not trying hard enough."

"...Hoard Gullet?" Veronica asked.

"A spell that creates an extradimensional pocket dimension inside of your throat," I explained. "Dragons use it to transport their hoards, and mortal sorcerers use it to deepthroat dragons."

"Oh good lord."

"Hang on, how big is a dragon's dick, anyhow?" Akane asked.

"That would depend on how large the dragon itself is," I said. "Assuming we're only considering dragons of Young Adult age for the moment, most Dragons are only Large, while Red and Gold Dragons are both Huge. And then, most Dragons get up to Giant... or was it Gargantuan? Whatever. And then Silvers, Reds, and Golds become Colossal. And... I think each size category up is a doubling in height, and therefore octupling in mass, since square-cube law."

"I vote we table this discussion and resume it when I do not have to listen to it," Veronica said. "I also vote to throw a chair at anyone who votes against this motion."

"Pussy," I said.

"Perhaps."

"Well, I for one am looking forward to next weekend, when we finally test my new motorcycle," Akane said. "You wanna be there, Nicky?"

"Of course, so long as you do not mind a guardian angel flying above you in the event of a crash," Veronica said.

"I'll prepare a first aid kit for you to carry," I said dryly.

"A wise precaution."

"Relax," Akane said. "I'll be fine!"

Veronica and I eyed each other, both nodding slightly. We would prepare for the test very, very thoroughly.

There was nothing else to do when someone taunted Murphy.