Sitting down at your workbench was a relaxing experience. Nothing but you, arcane knoweldges trying to murder you, and the ever-present smell of cheap liquor that served as the eau d' vie of your projects, as sourced by Goodyear. God bless that man, wherever the hell he was. Either way, it was time to build a wand.
Technically speaking, a wand had four parts. The core, rod, focus, and binder. Alcohol, while physically solvent, was an excellent simulation of duct tape in more esoteric rituals like this. Pouring a fifth of Captain Morgan into a mixing bowl with some salt and flour quickly got you a heavy paste, which you shelved for now as you worked on the core and rod.
Physically, the rod was the 'meat' of a wand, and magically had to make a decent backbone as well. For this work, you had a fourteen-inch chunk of number 3 rebar, which you laid out on a clean sheet of butcher paper while you got to work doing the symbolism and arithmancy in the margins around it. The core of a wand needed to be something magically conductive, serving as- in a rough analogy- an antenna to a radio. For this wand, you were using cat5e cable as the core since as a signal medium, it had thaumaturgic transmission quality that might work well enough. After running through some arithmetic equations and determining a one-in-eight wrap would be sufficient, you grabbed a handful of the binder and got to work. Twist and pull, that was the name of it, twist and pull and soak. A slosh more of whiskey, that was the gimmick there, to keep it wet as you pulled and heaved.
Arcane mysticism wouldn't hide the effort you were putting into this, the energies pulled through your body into the working making the pliable cable fight like hell to stay to the rod. The more sophisticated your tools, the less difficult the work would be- but with only your bare hands and some long division, this would be a Syphisian task to render perfect. Perfect wasn't your goal, though, as the wires came together at the top and you slammed more binder onto them as you went for your gribblies bin. Fate guided your hands to the focus for this wand- a broken cross, ill-treated by time and tread into four pieces. Symbolism was a powerful tool, still, and as you took the rendition of Jesus aside, the rest of the pieces fell together in the orientation of their once-whole symbol. Nodding solemnly, you placed them at the tip of the rod, gently pressed into the binder as you tied the cables over them, and then placed the last part on top. More binder followed, and your next step was simple- the baking.
Fire could be used to create or destroy; and in your work it needed to be shielded. A burn barrel took up a non-zero part of your workshop, with a fuel pile next to it. Putting in a shield for the burn chamber, you set in the wand, and shoveled some pieces of broken furniture into the bottom portion. Moments later, a some paper and a match ignited it, and you flicked on the old vacuum motor that provided a draft to get real heat out of it.
Eight hours of tending the fire- and simultaneously monitoring the pull of power being imbued into your trash-can wand- later, you felt the flow abate and silenced the motor. With long tongs, you pulled the wand forth, and smiled.
The rebar had lost three inches of length, but the cables had burned away to a clear, glassy wrap in a winding helix to the top. What had begun life as a crucifix had been pulled into the Aether from whence God stored all gifts to life, but a memory remained in each cross of the rebar and glass being stained with a golden outline. Picking it up, a smile crossed your face. Truly, this was a wonderful item. Resting it on your bench, you smiled happily, walked out of your workshop's door, and promptly realized you'd just pulled ten straight hours of work and fell right the fuck over. Clunk.
"Medicine Boy?"
"What." You growled, grabbing the rotting wallpaper and trying to heave yourself up."
"You're nuked. Look at me, buddy."
Squinting, you looked up. It was… Calypso? Yeah, that was Calypso.
"I'm fine." You grumbled. "Help me up."
She chuckled, smiling. "Ok."
You weren't quite sure how she helped you to your room, but she did, and it wasn't long before you were asleep.
-/-/-/-/-/
The next day was Wednesday, alias Shower Day. While worse for wear from her constant harassment of the alchemists in the rail depot, Eowyn was still in good enough shape to help get Trompdoy out to the showers, and Calypso had crashed in your lobby on the grounds of you being physically unable to say no. While you didn't quite approve of putting the still-bandaged Trompdoy through the wash on a cheap metal folding chair, she was starting to smell a little. Not in the 'oh god, infections' sense, but rather the build-up of BO and dirt that happened when you were stuck in a single room with barely-adequate sanitation and a stack of newspapers to wipe with.
Once the first stage of the shower was done (and Eowyn slipped you a fifty to get real TP since newspaper wasn't getting the job done with Trompdoy's weakened hands) you yourself got rinsed off and ready to make lunch when you found your resident invalid sprawled on a coffee table in your lobby with her shirt off.
"What." You asked, in the sort of dead tone that indicated that there was shenanigans afoot, but you were too hung-over from the arcane work yesterday that you really couldn't tell which shenanigans were happening.
"Gotta change the dressing." Trompdoy said, prompting you to groan. Moving over and throwing a pillow on the ground, you sat in seiza next to her, pulling out your jackknife.
"Can you at least throw a towel on the top half?" you asked mildly. "Not like I don't appreciate the clear working area, but I figure you're cold.
"Not really." Trompdoy replied as you cut off the duct-tape with practiced hands. Aside from the usual tape rash, the area around each of the punctures was fairly smooth and clean, with none of the signs of redness that would normally be present.
"Calypso, can I trust you in my kitchen?" you asked carefully. "I need a pot of boiling water to sterilize my knife in."
"What are you doing?" Calypso replied, staring.
"I need to cut out the plugs and re-bind her stomach. The wounds can't heal right with a giant mass of superglue in there."
Once sanitation was provided, you put words to deeds. Clean bandages were provided courtesy of a run to Wal-Mart the day after the incident, and it wasn't long before your blood-soaked work was thrown out and clean, easier to handle bandages were in. That done, you went to get lunch- because after lunch would be the bidding war.
"Ten thousand dollars." Trompdoy said flatly, staring at the wand with unabashed lust. You couldn't blame her, it was excellent work.
Calypso just grumbled, leaving the room.
Eowyn's bid started off with a star sapphire the size of both your fists, and she anted up with a set of bottles marked with some very fancy labeling, and two bars of luminescent silver. Finally, her last item on the table was a vial that thrummed with power in the back of your mind. "One artificial star sapphire, perfect for focus use, six thousand carats. Uncut, obviously. Two bottles of Dom Perignon, circa 1936. Probably not fakes, like… eighty percent chance they're real. If the bottles have serials on 'em, don't be surprised if they're duplicates, alchemists do that all the time. One bottle of Papal Holy Water, circa Pius XII."
"Wait for me!" Calypso yelled, coming back while dragging a literal duffel bag full of stuff. "My bid! Ninety-five neurodes, sixty-three completed neuroptics, forty mutagenic masses, five shelf-stable detonite injectors, six jars of the black bile, five of yellow bile, nine jars of distilled red humor of blood, and twelve jars of phlegm. Good phlegm too!"
Holding up your hands, you waved them off. Opening the bidding war right now had been a huge mistake, obviously. "I'll get back to you soon, calm down! I still need to… temper it! For another day or three!"
The three magical girls didn't stop glaring at each other for the rest of the day.
-/-/-/-/
Next morning, amidst your dreams of comfy beds and potpourri air fresheners, a rap-tap-tapping came from your chamber door.
"A FOOL IS THIS AND NOTHING MORE!" you yelled as you came up, one hand fluidly throwing a boot at the sound of the noise.
"Shut the hell up and open the door Medicine Boy, it's four in the morning and I don't have time for this shit." Goodyear said, somewhere between hungover and desperate. "You've got a spare room, right?"
Pulling on a pair of pants and your robe, you opened the door to see Goodyear in a singed coat and a pair of oversized aviators. "Yeah. You find a girl or something?"
"No." he groused, and I saw a second pair of legs behind him. "I found a boy."
"Ah, fuck." You griped, moving out past him to the commissary. "I owe you food for this."
"You don't owe me food for this, you owe me a place for this kid." Goodyear said, pulling him by the arm. "His name is Homer."
"My name is not homer you half-bread ingrate-" the kid said, before Goodyear kicked him in the ass.
"Your name is fucking Homer now unless you want every single god-damn witch who's plans you spoiled by tagging up that ritual circle to come barreling down on your head." Goodyear snapped. "Names, true names, have
power. If you think losing your eyes was bad, those bitches will tear you down until you're nothing more than a brain in a jar that spends it's time screaming to lull the familiars to sleep."
"He's blind?" you asked, frowning. There wasn't light to see by, but once you got to the commissary you could fire up one of the electric lamps that served as illuminators. It wasn't long before you got there, and in the harsh light of the LED that you saw the truth of Goodyear's words. Acid burns coated the kid's forehead and cheeks, both eye sockets hidden by naught but a thin strip of cloth. You didn't need to guess what was behind it, but the black, green, and red strips of raw skin stained by some hellspawn acid that tracked the story for him.
"I did what I could." Goodyear muttered. "There's no good countermeasure to a Witch who's had enough time to set up vitriolic defenses. Even a water and earth team couldn't dig them out in time."
"You saved me." Homer said, trying to smile. "Even if you're an ass."
"Boy, you managed to disrupt every single keynote character and runic anchor that circle had established." Goodyear said, a hint of admiration in his voice. "That ritual site won't be back until Midwinter, at the very least, and it'll be Beltane before they can even think of using it again."
"So what is he, anyway?" You asked, going in the back to heat up the pot of beans and assorted vegetables that had been dinner.
"He's got a gut instinct for understanding rituals and magical methodology; possibly an instinctive grasp of arcane principles or general thaumaturgy." Goodyear said, stroking his chin. "Loosing his eyes might not even slow him down depending on how he expresses his craft."
"I still struggle to call you a credible source, but whatever." Homer grumbled. "You obviously have a good enough grasp of divinatory studies to have clairvoyance, if not proper precognition or postcognition. It would probably help if you didn't smoke a mountain of ganja to use it, though."
I stared at Goodyear. Goodyear stared at me.
"Anyway, so." He said, coughing. "Bad news time."
"God damnit." You grumbled. "Let me guess, new magical girl in the wings, horrible sob story, you have a spare room right?"
Now it was time for Goodyear to grumble at me. "Take the words out of my fucking mouth again I swear."
"I already have one clownshow in my commissary that won't shut up, don't want to make it two."
"Thanks." Both Homer and Goodyear said. The later continued his speech. "Anyway, new girl. Tentatively calling her Baldr's Bane, after how she came over to our dark side of life."
"Still think 'Mistletoe' is a perfectly fine epithet" Homer griped.
Another kick in the shins from Goodyear, and Homer shut up. Continuing, the magic hobo explained events a tad bit better. "Complete and total neophyte of a magical girl. We generally get about two a month, and I will bust my ass every time to get them here. No gear, no training, no hope- a poison to survival."
"Does Homer have anywhere safe to stay?" you asked, oblivious.
"Nope. He walks into a public building, and it'll get nuked within the hour." Goodyear said, sighing. "Mistletoe will probably be safe for a week, maybe two; or I can get Homer on a train to St. Louis. Covens don't talk to each other much, so he'll be safe enough there."
"And if I pick up Homer, he'll be a target." You muttered, sketching on the table.
"Yes, but I've got a good feeling about him." Goodyear said. "Even if he did out one of my better hat tricks for no reason."
"I'll take it under advisement." You said, sighing. "Can you hide him under a rock for a day or two?"
"I can do you three and then my guy to St. Louis is gone."
"I'll have Eowyn take you an answer by then."
Goodyear laughed. "Nah. I'll find you."
/-/-/-/-
VOTES
Wand Sale!
[] Trompdoy (20 Mundane)
[] Eowyn (6 Gubbins, 2 Demon Stuff, 6 Holy Stuff)
[] Calypso (18 Witchy Stuff)
Take on a new boarder
[] Take in Homer (Male, magical talents strong but unknown, blind)
[] Take in Mistletoe (Female, magical girl with no equipment, experience, or training, but full of hope and power)
Build a Tool
[] Trinket
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 3.
[] Wand
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] Bomb
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] No, you want to work on your building instead
[] No, you want to improve your workshop instead.