Beta Testing

It seemed that when Tsubasa wasn't in the kitchen located within the Silver Wolf residence, he was busy in the laboratories deep within the depths below. There, he was working on a new project, the idea of which had come from a game he had once advertised for on his LacTube video. However, the technology and lacrimal magic were still in their infancy and therefore were working on them individually was as difficult as trying to merge them together. There was no power source as strong as one's own internal pool of magical energy, at least in terms of sustained magic as he had intended to use this. Therefore, every bit of technology that he worked on was theoretic until he actually empowered it with his own magic stores. He had been underground for who knew how long, scribbling ideas and theories for how things would work when put to the test but occasionally he would stop and erase everything he had been working on or refer to a book which always took quite a while since his difficulty in reading hindered that process. With some help from Miss Mercury, that small problem had been helped but not solved, however. He now had a special colored piece of plastic that he could hold over pages which made them quite a bit easier to read. Honestly without that little miracle he wouldn't have gotten through all of the tomes that he had been reading in order to improve his own mixture of technology and magic.

Ahab had taken to watching him from atop one of the whiteboards that he would spend his time oscillating between. Although his most comfortable position was in Tsubasa's hoodie's hood, the young man had been moving between ideas so quickly and so often that he had started to become a little motion sick. It was really the first time that Ahab had seen Tsubasa so devoted to anything that wasn't a new recipe. However, he had been with Tsubasa long enough to know that once the young man got something in his head, there was very little that could distract him until he finished the task. A doctor once told him that it was a condition recognized in some people that could be managed but Tsubasa had never really gotten the proper management for it. Still, Tsubasa was never too focused to answer Ahab's questions or complaints and thus the two of them carried on a more or less continued conversation throughout the days and weeks that passed.

"Okay, so you've got the jacket technology that you've worked on that transforms into the battle suit," Ahab said after Tsubasa seemed to erase an entire whiteboard's worth of work. "And you can pull things from it now, like the guns and the sword and all that other stuff you're working on. Why isn't that enough?"

"It's more than enough. I have Hodgepodge and even that would be enough. But coming up with this is much more fun. This one's a little different from those others anyway," Tsubasa responded, speaking much faster than normal, as though his brain was pushed into overdrive. "The guns that I can manifest now are based on a full formed creation of my own magic. The internal stuff that I used when I fixed up my jacket allowed me to do that too. Anything that I can create remains in a close proximity to me and is inanimate."

"And you're changing that with all these drawings?" Ahab asked. He looked over at some humanoid drawings that Tsubasa had scribbled on a piece of paper that sat on the desk among the stacks of books he had been reading through.

"Something like that. Think of this as a kind of evolution of that magic for me. You know how Miss Leona summoned those cool creatures and stuff? We've also seen Miss Mercury create guns out of nothing that weren't connected to her. She controlled them like my guns, but I want to take those two ideas and combine them. Separately."

"Combine them… separately." Ahab repeated.

"I wanna be able to control the battlefield whenever I have to fight, to a new degree. New and experimental. " He added the last part with some hesitation, "But because it's so new and also experimental and you remember what happened all those times I tinkered with my jacket and how many explosions there were, I wanna make sure that I take this one a lot slower. You feel me?"

Ahab rubbed a part of his side where he could swear the fur wasn't growing back properly and nodded. He had also been an unfortunate victim to one of the lacrimal magic mishaps. "Oh yeah, I feel you there." He yawned and nuzzled atop the whiteboard, managing to spread his form over the thin wooden part at the top, arms and legs dangling from each side like a draped washcloth set to dry. Within a few moments his soft breathing had grown rhythmic, indicating that he had once more fallen into a merry little slumber.

Tsubasa paused to take a glance at him. He couldn't have been comfortable like that. Swinging his hoodie off, he curled it into a little nest-like ball on the desk and then carefully, gingerly picked up the green flying squirrel and placed him in the hoodie. Ahab didn't awaken in the move, but when he was placed in the new spot, he seemed to snuggle in a little deeper.

Tsubasa watched him for a moment and then went back to work. It had occurred to him more than once that he could speak to his father about an ancient bonging ritual that would supposedly empower both him and Ahab as well as permanently link their spirits together, but whenever he considered this, the same thought snapped into him - 'what if something happens to him?' Although of the two of them Tsubasa had always been the more outwardly caring, he would never forget that once he had returned from the freezing cold area where he had picked up the space gem, Ahab had been the one to try to move mountains in order to ensure that he didn't die of blood loss. That moment he decided that although the two of them would always be partners, Tsubasa could never force Ahab to be a battle partner or worse, something that could be considered a pet.

Turning away from such thoughts as well as the little flying squirrel himself, Tsubasa got back to work. With Ahab asleep, he had no way of telling how long he had been working, but at some point he had gotten enough theoretical information to attempt to create a very early prototype of a physical model that he could actually infuse his magic into. Sitting on the table next to him was a long device that looked like a projector attached to a keyboard, except the keyboard had no keys. Just five buttons evenly spread out along the longer part of the device. It was still pretty bare, limited covering and lots of exposed wires and chips within. Technical parts that Ahab had learned the hard way not to mess with, when he'd accidentally caused one of the Mach XVI prototypes to fly around the room and almost start a fire. Not that he would take the blame for that one. The wire had looked loose anyway. But this time, he did get up and peek around at the device, looking it over with intense curiosity. Tsubasa returned from wherever he had been with two drinks. One was a normal sized bottle of tea while the other was a travel sized of the same, more appropriate for Ahab's size.

"Oh you're awake," He said, "Good. I wanted you to see the first test." He set the tea down and twisted open the cap of Ahab's drink. Not that Ahab couldn't do it himself, he was perfectly capable. Of course he was.

Tsubasa took the device and looked it over one last time, "Okay, so far I've only got two features programmed into it. One is land based and the other is a creature. We'll test the creature first and see how it works." He held his hand out towards the table, a silent invitation for Ahab to climb aboard. The flying squirrel took the invitation and scampered up to stand on Tsu's shoulder. Tsubasa made his way to the testing site, finding it relatively empty and perfect for both tests. He wasn't sure how this would go.

"So," He said, "If this works right, the hard light reactor should project the figures at which point I can sustain and command them with my own magic. The land on the other hand is projected and controlled entirely by the reactor."

He activated the device, a small buzzing filling the room which quickly dissipated. "That's normal," Tsu said. "Looking good so far." He set the first button and flipped a switch along the side of the long device.

Projected from the device was a small fuzzy ball of a creature, with no real defining features except for small roundish feet and claws. It purred into life and seemed to sustain there for a moment. Tsubasa reached a hand out as the reactor's light dimmed, and although the creature seemed to sputter for a moment, it remained. Tsubasa smirked. "Okay, good. Yes, that's good! Alright, let's push it a little."

He flipped the switch again and pressed the furthest button on the device, the one closest to him. The light spread out around him, seeming to terraform the battlefield into a greenish landscape. Tsubasa tentatively lifted his foot and placed it on the new landscape. The generator let out a noise not unlike the wheezing of an elderly person with asthma, and then started to release an inordinate amount of smoke. Tsubasa reacted quickly by pulling a small red wire off of the main part of the device and throwing the device onto the nearby table. Meanwhile the creature he had conjured remained stationary and Ahab watched with some concern. "It's probably not supposed to do that."

"But it's a start," Tsubasa said with a smirk. He held up his drink to Ahab, who happily toasted the success before taking a drink. He was generally one to hide his emotion, particularly happiness. But he couldn't help but show joy in light of Tsubasa's success but more importantly, he couldn't resist smiling when Tsubasa had such a genuine smile on himself. The flying squirrel allowed the two of them a rare moment of unabashed joy together, before he knew Tsubasa would want to get back to work.

"Okay," Tsu said after the two enjoyed a few drinks. "We need to stabilize the energy source and I think I want to try to miniaturize it. That might mean that it would internally need some of my energy to feed off of but it should be a negligible amount. And that leaves storage of the different summons themselves. I think I can create some different lenses that will project them into form and then I just need to take control of that." Tsubasa said, "With the right tinkering they might even develop personalities and such that are stored in the lenses themselves. Sort of a save function of their control."

"You're gonna make friends with them aren't you?" Ahab said, giving Tsubasa a stare that said that he already knew the answer.

"Well, yeah, if I can. You work better with friends than strangers. And I don't wanna do what they did at that arena, that's just cruel."

Normally technological miniaturisation like this would take years or even decades, but Tsubasa had two great things going for him: first that he was incredibly determined and stubborn, and would forgo sleep until absolutely necessary before continuing to work in favor of manifesting his ideas and goals into reality; the second was a lot of things can be created and fixed using magic.

With what seemed like forever to him, but would be an astoundingly short period of time for others, he had created a small black device through which the projections would be released, including the land altering projections, and different storage chips which all glowed with their own internal energy, solving problems of permanent storage and taking strain off of the reactor in the device itself.

"Well," Tsubasa said, after more than a few successful tests, "I guess all we need is a name."