All Level, No Experience (Worm/Pathfinder Amnesia Quest)

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You respond to Dragon's question happily, "Tinker collaboration," an idea also flashes through your head, "I could actually bring with me a number of other constructs I had built for the express purpose of assisting me with these types of larger technological projects, if you think that might help?"

Dragon hums for a moment, then says, "Are they capable of producing this kind of steel? The main bottleneck right now is producing enough of it for a full suit, rather than anything particularly technological at the moment."

At that, you say, "Ah, I'm afraid not, they're fairly specialized to avoid succumbing to the temptation of feature-bloat. I'll have to leave them here, then. Right, when would be a good time for myself to come over to assist?"

Dragon sounds a touch fired up when she says, "As soon as you're able!"

You say, "Alright then," and one teleport and a few seconds as your phone reconnects to a different location, "I am currently standing in front of The Guild headquarters."

Dragon laughs a little and says, "I should have just about expected that, really. Thanks a ton, Iluontar. Go ahead on in, I'll call the desk to have them direct you in and meet you in a suit."

With that, you both promptly end the call as you walk in, and indeed you are gladly directed in by the receptionist who you realize is a touch star-struck and pay no further heed to, and soon enough you are met, after a few minutes of walking while following the given directions, by one of Dragon's more humanoid suits.

Soon enough, she led you to what seemed to be a conference room, deeper in the HQ, where you were promptly introduced with the head of the blacksmiths attempting to make all of the Fire-Forged Pyre Steel, and then, you all sat down to business. Namely, the most immediate way you could help, beyond also aiming to produce the steel yourself, was if they could get a demonstration video of you actually doing so, to circulate amongst the blacksmiths a more visible example of how the 'inventor' (you hadn't invented it, but you weren't inclined to inform them of that) of Fire-Forged Pyre Steel actually made it himself.

To this, you gladly agreed, and asked if the lab you technically still had access to until the end of February was still available, and since it was, you and the others promptly went over, someone rushing the requested materials over. Whereupon you promptly took out the studio quality camera from your bag of holding (not heeding Dragon's lightly exasperated and- fond? fond- sigh at the sight of it), got your figurine of the dwarven forge and father's forgehammer set, and promptly made a pound of the material, with some assistance from your familiar (which mildly startled the two heads, while Dragon found it kind of cute), in the span of just over three minutes.

Ah, perhaps your newfound ability to read people socially was quite useful, in how you could now see a good few new nuances in the shock of the people observing, given that for them it could take nearly twelve or so hours to get that much of the material. Even Dragon's own methods could only manage one pound every four or so hours for each individual process she had going on it. Of course, it ended up taking significantly longer to go through said footage with Dragon, edit it out, and she even had you do a voiceover of it, including paused parts, explaining why you did what you did at certain parts of the process, although she did say that it would be okay if it was tinker power assisted and you couldn't precisely explain every part.

Of course, the fact that following that, you were able to explain every single part of your process, and that you hadn't used any powers, and that it would have been faster if you had, did manage to surprise Dragon.

She had even said, laughing, "Between the tapping and now this, I'm starting to wonder if you even have any powers out of your skull, or if all of those other ones I think I've seen are just very clever tricks."

You had chuckled along, for probably slightly different reasons than she was.

Regardless, from there, you had your lab space, a steady enough supply of materials to work with, and crafting to do, and so, you gladly applied yourself at full force to it. Well, after taking one and a half hours to prepare yourself and your spells, namely plentiful castings of Arcane Reinforcement. Which after that, lasted for all of 24 hours, before Dragon caught that, since you didn't need to sleep, eat, or otherwise tend to biological functions, you apparently had no intention of taking a break. So, Dragon attempted to enforce a 'No more than half of your day' limit onto your work.

You were only barely able to negotiate her to two-thirds of your day. It was fun.

So, during your Dragon mandated break time, you had attempted to find something to do, and ended up settling on idly thinking, perhaps even daydreaming might be the word, about your kingdom-to-be, occasionally doing idle searches on your laptop related to the matter, such as looking into the Nilbog situation and how he managed his conquest, as well as that of one Moord Nag, who seemed interesting enough, if a touch too nomadic and spread out for your own personal tastes. Still, if by from what you could find online what was, ostensibly, a baseline human with one fairly potent summon could manage what they do, and Nilbog was able to manage what he could, both of which across locations that were, at least initially, less easily defensible and defined than Brockton Bay, you absolutely could.

You had figured this for a while, you'd even considered 'If It Worked For Nilbog It Works For Me' as a potential PHO Handle, before going for your actual one at the moment. Which reminded you, you actually haven't checked in on your PHO Account in a little bit, so you began doing so during your breaks. Not particularly much of interest, although there were a few purported news outreaches asking if they might be able to schedule an interview with you at some point. Some international, mostly national across the US, but there were a couple from Brockton Bay specifically.

Hmm, you might be able to use something there. Off the top of your head, perhaps wait, then schedule it so they'll be in just the place to witness the overthrow of Brockton for you? A regular interview might be interesting enough, too. You'd have to mull it over, refine the idea.

Beyond the breaks, however, Dragon had also quite quickly realized that it was much, much faster to simply assist you in your endeavors than to bother with attempting it alone. That and from what you could tell, she didn't mind talking more frequently with someone who both knew she was an AI, and wasn't at all perturbed about it. She had even mentioned some her own experiences, in 'growing', learning towards acting human. A few media and other recommendations came from it too, during a phase when she was just churning through as much of that as she could, without actually pausing to think if she enjoyed it, at the time.

You had actually taken the time to read through some of it, watch some of it else. Dragon occasionally joined you, during the times in the weeks when you were watching things. Both of you had an, interesting relationship with some of the media you went through.

Star Trek, for instance, was a source of overarching vision in some ways to you, abjectly incorrect in others, and for both of you quite enjoyable to lambast on the technological side- except for the Data episodes. Those, those both of you elected to simply watch in silence. Most works of philosophy you didn't quite find yourself agreeing with- bar Socrates. Indeed, to a degree that surprised you- particularly on the ideal management of nations, to which you were downright shocked that what appeared to be a regular human, by all accounts, was all but few details out- Socrates seemed to pretty much have it down, for the most part. In fact, you had quickly double checked- death by poison hemlock, not old age.

Hm, perhaps he'd be worth resurrecting at some point as an advisor of sorts, once he'd been brought up to speed. If nothing else, the prestige may be worth it, and the man himself may appreciate seeing it as well, from what you've read.

Still, the time seemed to pass oddly quickly, until finally, February 16th, a few hours past noon, you had managed to help Dragon produce a good two tons of fire-forged pyre steel, as well as work through your own recommendations of the best general ways to go about incorporating that for maximal heat and blast protection. From there, well, Dragon very much insisted that she's handle making the suit itself proper, it was something of a personal thing, if you could understand.

You did understand, given that for an AI designing a robotic frame would be like a human designing their own prosthetic, if only even more intimate/personal, given it was the entire body. Once again, Dragon seemed a mix of grateful and surprised at how naturally you interacted with AI concerns- concerns that weren't about the AI in question, that is.

You had decided that, with it being as good a point as any to split up, you had done so, returning to your land on the edge of Brockton Bay. Besides, though unspoken, there was another reason why the fun and such might be put on hold in favor of more tense preparedness for action, especially for Dragon.

The exact date was never known, but it would likely be any day now, that the next Endbringer attack was due. From previous records you could find, at worst, you'd only have one day until the next attack- until midnight, even. At absolute best, twelve days. It was a lot of time you spent with Dragon, that perhaps could have spent preparing more for it.

You don't regret it.

It is February 16th, 2011, 2:00 PM EST. The most recent Endbringer to attack was Behemoth, in November. You have 10 Hours to 12 Days until the attack, either Leviathan or the Simurgh.

Are you going to be there?

[ ] [Presence] Yes, for either.
[ ] [Presence] Only if it's Leviathan.
[ ] [Presence] Only if it's the Simurgh.
[ ] [Presence] No.
[ ] [Presence] Other (Write-In)

What Role do you intend to play, if you are there? (This will affect how Iluontar prepares his spells for it.)

[ ] [Role] Blaster/Striker/Offense.
[ ] [Role] Support/Buffer
[ ] [Role] Area Control
[ ] [Role] Utility Casting
[ ] [Role] Healer Not where your strengths lie.
[ ] [Role] A Mix, or Other (Write-In)

With that in mind, what next?

[ ] [Prep] Work on your base.
[ ] [Prep] Make/improve Construct(s)
-[ ] Panthereon(s) (Benefit from Item Shaper)
-[ ] A.C.E. Adamantine Golem(s), perhaps?
-[ ] Other (Write In)
[ ] [Prep] Magic Item Creation/Improvement.
-[ ] Add to the Staff
--[ ] What in particular? (Write In)
-[ ] Something Else (Write In)
[ ] [Prep] Hand the reigns to Iluontar.
-[ ] Direct him to plan for the Simurgh.
-[ ] Direct him to plan for Leviathan.
-[ ] Don't direct him at all.
[ ] [Prep] Simply wait, at the ready.
[ ] [Prep] Something else, or a mix of the above. (Write In)

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AN: The Run-Up. You get an extra day to figure it out. To ramp up the tension, and totally not at all because I happen to have a class at the normal time this Thursday.

Also, with how long this has been, don't think that I'm not absolutely willing to end this quest with a 'You died. You've failed to prevent the total extinction of your people, your actions have probably butterfly-ed away any hope of the original miraculous circumstances of canon, and you've managed to give Dragon just enough of a glimpse of honest companionship to make your death in particular hurt much much worse. At least you don't have to live with it, for obvious reasons.'. At least, it probably won't happen that way, given your exceptional ability to disengage on a dime. But still.

Hope y'all've enjoyed!