Locust kicked up her heels and gave herself a mental pat on the back.

There were two keys to running a successful business: Hard work, and seizing opportunities when they presented themselves.

The cheapest power armor on the market was currently about 3.5 million. Paradox had opened negotiations with a price that was well below Locust’s minimum offer, which put her off for a moment, but if the rookie noticed her hesitation, he didn’t capitalize on it. The price tag did make her a little concerned about the quality, but at 50k per suit, it wasn’t a huge risk.

Fifty million dollars isn’t a huge risk? I’ve gotten so old.

The sheer pennies on the dollar nature of the deal made Locust tempted to resell them for a massive profit, but that was a disservice to Paraadox and not in the spirit of the deal.

And reputation was a hard thing to regain, once it was lost.

No, Locust was just looking forward to the extra muscle the suits would afford her, paying for themselves in security and control over her territory over time.

And Makazard’s clientele. And his inventory.

It didn’t hurt that the auctioneer had some things she wanted but didn’t want to pay for.

Two birds, one stone.

*RINNNG!*

Locust’s phone went off and she

“How’d it go?”

“We ported in during the the fight, but it was gone.” Blink’s voice came over the speaker.

“What was gone?”

“…everything, Ma’am. The crystal and everything else we wanted in the stock room was just gone. Someone got to it first.”

Locust adjusted her expectations, rubbing her temples. Getting angry solved nothing.

“Fine. Just make sure Makazard can’t push into my territory again.”

“There’s another thing. Mechanaut left a note. It says ‘be careful that your cat’s paw doesn’t scratch you.’”

Locust let out an unprofessional groan and threw her head back in her chair. “He stole my crystal, didn’t he?”

“I assume so, ma’am.”

***The Zauberer house***

Dad stood in front of the T.V., his Paladin armor opened up to reveal a massive blue and black crystal in its chest-piece. The Death-Crystal. The armor removed the crystal and held it out to Dad.

“Hey, I bid on that,” Perry said, scowling.

“Well, I stole it fair and square,” Dad said, frowning and putting his fingers to his lips as he adjusted the crystal on top of the TV, rendering the priceless material no more than a conversation piece for the living room.

Perry and Dad sat in the recliners facing the T.V., just staring at the massive art-piece on top of it for a few minutes.

Finally Perry spoke up.

“Doesn’t that thing give off death-energy? Like…magical radiation?”

“Just let me have this, boy.” Dad said.

****Later***

“Whoah, what happened to you?” Brendon asked, glancing at Perry’s arm in a sling as he entered the motel’s lobby.

“Fell off my bike,” Perry said with a shrug. “I’m actually more concerned about you. How are you feeling after last night?”

“Whaddya mean?” Brendon asked, frowning.

“After…you got kidnapped and nearly auctioned off last night?”

Brendon raised a brow. “I thought I dreamt that.”

“How could you-“

“Co-Roofies-ugh!” Heather coughed into her fist.

Ah, he was drugged.

“How did you guys know about that?” Brendon asked.

“You told us about it while you were still coming down off the drugs. It’s normal you don’t remember.”

“Yeah, last night is pretty hazy.” Brendon said, scratching the back of his head. “So you guys got a job managing a hotel? That’s cool!”

“I wouldn’t call it managing,” Perry said. “I just greet people, take their money, hand them keys, sweep the floor, plunge the toilets and replace the lightbulbs.”

Untrue. The lightbulbs I made will last longer than I do.

“So…you manage a hotel.”

“It’s actually a motel,” Heather said. “let’s not assign Perry any undue class.”

The two of them were taking it slow. Perry had a broken arm and Heather wasn’t feeling so great after the shockwave that Mass Driver had put through her.

“So umm…any idea why people might wanna kidnap you and sell you to the highest bidder?” Perry asked, cutting to the heart of the matter with all the delicacy of a charging boar.

Brendon shrugged.

“I don’t know man, my mom tells me I’m a catch, but I don’t think that’s what she meant. Could be my winning personality?”

“I guess.” Perry said with a shrug. “It’s just…if we knew why people were after you, we could do something about it.”

Brendon gave an exaggerated shrug, and that was the extent of it.

Their cover stories as menial laborers for the motel explained why Perry had keys to every room in the building, and they spent most of the day hanging out with Brendon, making sure the dimwit was okay.

Perry didn’t swim or play foosball on account of his busted arm, but he kicked Brendon’s ass at air hocky. They ate chips, got crumbs everywere, watched movies and generally wasted the day in the most non-productive way they could muster.

Heather and Perry waved Brendon off as he left for the night, watching him all the way to the bus. High tide Curfew was eight P.M. after all. Weird, dangerous stuff happened after sundown.

But tonight was a night in.

Once they’d closed up all the facilities for the night, Perry and Heather went underground.

“What are you gonna work on?” Perry asked.

“I’m gonna practice my shapeshifting. It stands to reason I should be able to increase my strength. If I can change my hardness, maybe I can mess with my mass and density too,” Heather said, going over to the battered steel training dummies in the corner of the lair.

“How about you?” Heather over her shoulder.

“I’m gonna order some equipment, do some CAD, then do something about this.” Perry pointed at his busted arm.

“Gotcha.”

They broke off and got to work.

Perry checked his bank account and spotted the five million deposit from Locust, and nearly had a panic attack. He didn’t think the march of zeroes would freak him out as much as it did, but Perry was eighteen, and that was a lot of money.

It turned out to be less than he thought, though. There were some snags to ordering enough infrastructure to produce the suits. It was a simple oversight.

Materials for consumers were kept on hand in amounts great enough that Joe Average could walk into a department store and buy some panelling for his bathroom renovation.

Materials for producers weren’t kept on hand, collecting dust in massive warehouses in the quantities that Perry needed. They were constantly trading hands rapid-fire. They had to be rounded up, which came with a long and annoying process of making phone calls ordering parts, confirming payment, location, time, etc.

All of this was made even more difficult because it was High Tide, and the prices of material goods and especially shipping had risen dramatically.

In the end, the five million only covered enough to make 300 suits.

That’s fine, I’ll work something out with Locust. Most of the money up front had been the cost of automating the process with robotic arms and assembly lines. The cost of the three hundred suits in consumable materials was only about seven hundred thousand dollars.

Now Perry had a massive amount of industrial chemistry equipment and assembly-line robotics on order, arriving within the next week.

That’ll be fun.

After Locust’s order was done, he’d still have an assembly line. The supervillain’s order paid for itself in desperately needed improvements to the lair.

I wonder which of us is getting the better deal? Perry wondered. By his math, all 1000 suits would cost 2.3 million in consumed materials, 4.3 in infrastructure. (robotics, tools, etc.)

Leaving him approximately 43.4 million in cash and 4.3 in tools at the end of a month of work. He would be keeping 95.4% of the money that was paid for his work.

Locust was probably congratulating herself on the back for getting such a good deal, Perry was patting himself on the back for making such a wide profit margin.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Perry thought, shaking his head as he moved on to the next Issue of the day: new spell-frames.

With his good hand, Perry flipped through his mom’s spellbook until he came across the one he’d earmarked. The materials had been beyond his ability to afford until his last trip to Dave’s, but now he could finally make his healing spell.

There were several different kinds of healing spell.

There were clerics who begged the intercession of a benevolent deity and got healing that way. There were ones that used the life force of other creatures, like the bone alter.

There were ones that consumed expensive ingredients to cure very specific conditions, with a separate recipe for each kind of disease.

There was actually a bone mending spell that wasn’t too hard to make, but Perry figured if he was going to go through the effort of making a spell frame, he should go for broke and make some of the primo stuff.

Astra’s Mending. (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients: Hair of Saint Natanya, Forming Slime. Lunt bone.

1 handspan of hair from Saint Natanya, a cup of Forming Slime. Lunt bone, no bigger than a finger-length.

Submerge the bone and hair in the slime. Heat the slime until the bone is cherry red. Once the bone begins to produce its own heat, cool the mixture to prevent the bone from self-combusting, yet always be careful to maintain the same heat. If the mixture becomes too hot or two cold, the effect will fail.

While maintaining the temperature, sing the entire hymn to Anestia, which will activate the essence contained inside the hair.

If successful, the hair will provide direction, the bone will provide energy, and the slime will provide the body.

Once the Essences begin to react with each other, quickly remove the spell from heat and add to a clear crystal bowl and ‘show’ it the wound.

Any wound within the bowl’s sight will be healed.

Note, applying the mixture directly to the wound will result in burns and possibly losing the slime and bone, which are not consumed by the spell.

Perry was planning on Paradox-ing it up to eleven.

The most expensive parts was the chunk of Natanya’s scalp. Sadly the woman was killed several hundred years ago and her scalp stolen by an evil mage who treated it like an absolute gold-mine. Over the centuries bits and pieces of the scalp began to surface in this dingy store or that. Most of them were fakes, but Dave always verified his goods.

The reason Perry had bought scalp and not individual hairs, was because he was fairly confident he could get the scalp to grow more hair nonmagically, making the spell component a renewable resource.

Average hair grows .3 to.4 millimeters per day.

Average hair density is 800-1290 per inch.

A quarter (the size of the scalp) is .7 square inches.

.7 X 800-1290 = 560-903

Multiply those ranges by the .3-.4 mm per day average.

So, my working range is somewhere between 168 mm and 361mm per day.

16 cm per day, at the absolutely lowest threshold, should definitely cover a hand-span.

This could work.

Since the other two materials weren’t consumed in the spell…that’s where things got interesting.

“My apologies, Saint Natanya.” Perry muttered before he got to work.

“It’s fine. I don’t have any particular attachment to my earthly remains, as long as you’re not weird with it.”

Perry ignored the faint voice and cut the hair on the quarter-sized chunk of flesh short and bristly and seeded a heatproof glass cylinder with the shavings, then he designed a semi-permeable, insulative membrane that would be water-proof but allow hairs to push their way through.

He laid this delicate substance over the bristly hairs over and over again, growing more and more frustrated with his lack of two arms until he finally managed to poke all the hair bristles through without breaking the membrane.

Once that was done, Perry laid the entire thing in a climate-controlled nutrient bath. His experience growing brain cells on a microchip really came in handy here, and his experience with this spell would help when he decided to make himself some skin templates in the future.

The nutrient bath was carefully sealed and turned into the screw-on cap for the heat-proof glass.

He turned the whole thing up with the scalp-cap on the bottom, then carefully poured the slime and bone mixture into the cannister before sealing the whole thing closed.

Perry had a healing spell-frame.

Now he just needed to train the spell-disc and he could get his arm out of the damn sling by tomorrow.

Perry set up a training program and loaded one of his blanks then moved onto his next spell-frame.

Watching Mr. Myst nearly summon a massive demon into a crowded dome had been something.

Perry wanted it for himself.

The key difference between a summoning and his Floating Armaments was that despite their usefulness and flexibility, they were still controlled by one man. He couldn’t use them on things he wasn’t aware of. He didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.

If he had a summon, it might’ve tried to protect him from Mass Driver long enough for him to become aware of the danger he was in.

Although I don’t think a typical summon would’ve DONE anything to Mass Driver, just made some noise allowing me to possibly escape. Who knows?

Perry opened up Mom’s spellbook and began fluttering through the demons, devils, elysians and empyreans.

Perry couldn’t help but linger a moment on the succubus.

The entire passage was blotted out with thick ink.

Don’t even think about it, Perry, Mom’s note read at the bottom of the page. I’m not letting my son get himself killed messing with these monsters!

Perry rolled his eyes and continued on, secretly a little disappointed.

I guess it’s PROBABLY a good thing I don’t have the option. Perry thought with a sigh. The danger of Succubi was consistently downplayed in media, because they were hot.

It’s very hard to be appropriately cautious of someone you’re attracted to.

Which was part of why they were so dangerous.

Oh, there’s good succubi. Neat.

Summon Attendant of Elysium. (Advanced)

Ingredients: token of selfless sacrifice or heroic deed of the caster. Candles of highest purity placed in a hexagon, Realm-piercing crystal dagger. Corrupted Mordite chain (optional)

Note: If the caster uses the Mordite chain to trap the Elysian, the realm of the blessed dead will never welcome them. The attendant will not respond violently as it is not in their nature, but the realm itself is always watching. Understand this.

Place the five candles down in a hexagon with two paces between each of the candles. While reciting the hymn to Naomi, place the token and the Realm-piercing crystal in the center. To trap the Elysian, string mordite chain around the candles, which will sever their connection to Elysium and prevent them from escaping for a time.

If the ritual has gained the attention of an attendant, you will see a misty form pushing against the boundaries between realities. You may then use the dagger to (carefully) cut the boundary between our world and theirs, allowing the Elysian through.

The attendant is a creature of pure giving. They wish for nothing more than the joy and contentment of everyone around them, and derive pleasure from serving.

Which apparently includes nagging me to ‘stay in school’, ‘make friends’ and ‘find my passion’. Ugh. If I wanted listen to a lame fuddy-duddy preaching at me, I would have summoned my grandma from beyond the grave. If it wasn’t for the amazing sex, this spell would’ve been a complete waste of time.

Perry raised a brow and compared that note to mom’s note.

The handwriting was largely the same.

How old was she when- you know what? Not important.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Heather asked from over his shoulder.

Perry yelped and slammed the book closed.

Heather cocked a suspicious brow.

“How to summon Sex Angels.” Perry admitted with a shrug. It would net him less flak than burying himself in a mountain of bullshit to avoid embarrassment. The damage was already done, no sense making it worse.

“Really? Cool! Are there dude sex angels?” Heather asked.

Perry frowned, opening up the book and tracing the paragraphs with his finger, Heather reading over his shoulder.

“They’re whatever you need them to be, soo…yes, I guess there are.” Perry said.

“Awesome…” Heather’s gaze drifted down to the note. “I can kinda see how your mom wound up with a supervillain. She really got around back in the day.”

“You know what!?” Perry said, slamming the spellbook shut in faux anger. Heather danced away, cackling as Perry tried and failed to bonk her with the priceless tome.