tank_rockarms (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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smashacademy2012-07-31 11:01 pm
tank_rockarms) wrote in smashacademy2012-07-31 11:01 pm
Entry tags:
Max, Stop Time Traveling So Much
Max had spent 13 weekends spending time in another world and time, with an average of three months at a pop. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but suffice to say, Max had been learning to be a blacksmith for over three years. It was very strange, living in two places at once. Apprentices were taken in for four years. In another couple of weeks... well, weeks in this place anyway... he would be given his papers and let go, if he wanted.
It had been a strange three years. Had he learned anything about himself? He liked to think that he had. He liked to think that, while maybe he wasn't the smartest or most thoughtful guy, that he'd learned something of patience and something of gentleness. Blacksmithing required a lot of strength, but it also demanded a high level of finesse at times, and this was something Max had to learn from the beginning. And, because this was some sort of bizzare fantasy-Yellow Comet-land, a lot of the fancier, nicer things that he had been working on now, as a senior apprentice, included expensive detailing - which meant he'd been forced to learn a little gold-and-silver-smithing in the last year.
He'd learned to take the anger and pride inside of him and do something constructive with it. He'd always just weight lifted before, and while that was still his first love (its hard to give up one's old self), that mostly just benefited himself and his own pride. This, at least, was useful for someone other than himself.
He'd had to be the lowest of the low for two years, before becoming a senior apprentice. And Max, being a general in the army, had needed that sort of humiliation. It had helped to tamp down (somewhat) his cocksure, I-am-never-wrong attitude.
He still had his final test to pass. He had to create his best possible implements and put them up for judgement - he had spent the last few weeks in figuring out what, exactly, he was going to make. He knew that he would make nails (basic skills are still important), a ring, a chain, a hammer, a pair of shears, a shield, and a sword. But he was still planning the designs out in his head. This was another skill he'd had to learn - planning. He'd always won his battles simply by throwing everything he had at the enemy and overwhelming them with crushing, superior force. Well, almost every time. Those other times he'd been extremely uncomfortable.
He realized he was going to have to set up a forge somewhere around the school, so as to not lose it and to get better, and to continue to have that connection back to using that burning anger inside of him to create something instead of just destroying things.
He felt naked without an apron on with a hammer and pair of tongs attached to it. He ended up just stashing a small hammer and a pair of tongs into his cargo pants pockets next to the protein bars, as little agents of comfort.
The gifts he'd been leaving for Char had gotten, by this point, less crappy. In weeks past there had been 30 feet of chain, a small, plain dagger, an iron ring (one of his first ring attempts), a file (with a note attached saying that he could use it to sharpen claws maybe), but then the gifts stopped happening for a couple of weeks as Max learned the ins and outs of armorsmithing. Maybe Char was relieved. But now he brought in something actually special. It was a breastplate that did two things - 1. It made the wearer look to have really great pecs and 2. Had little brass dragons done in relief on the right and left side of the lower half, where, had the muscle-theme continued down, the obliques would have been. Max hoped sincerely that it fit. He'd wished that he could have brought Char in for a formal fitting, but there was no chance for that. He'd just taken another apprentice who was approximately the same size and used him as a model. And then used another apprentice to write a note again, which read: "Char - This will probably fit you. If it doesn't maybe we can get it altered for you later, if you want." Well that's certainly clear and straightforward.
He'd spent a week in a love hotel and then three months in the far past, and then came back when the school was ready to go again. But things were a bit different. For some reason it made him think of Black Hole. He wasn't too thrilled with the new aesthetics. The metal felt cold and dead to him, lifeless. He would have done it differently.
And that's when he realized he was thinking, himself, about how to rebuild something. And he thought that maybe all of this blacksmithing was actually doing him some good. Maybe.
tl;dr: Max is back and gearing up for his journeyman exam. Char got a fancypants breastplate.
[Public Post, dude on a video with blue hair and muscles and looking tired]: Classes'll be startin' in a month or so. Don't forget to sign up for Smash Fundamentals. Teach you the basics of punches and kicks and jumps and blocks and all the good stuff.
And, uh, what's with the new stuff everywhere? Not sure that I like it all. Feels a little... uh... factory? Factory to me. Yeah. That.
[video]
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Sorta reminds me of Black Hole's factories a little bit. Never liked those places for lots of reasons.
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[Video]
[Lash you are looking pretty fat by now...]
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[nuts to video, this is action]
Nnnnnope. Not the case.
This was just starting to get puzzling as hell. Where was this guy even getting all this stuff? Was that the end of it, or was he gonna keep getting more and more elaborate mystery gifts? Something was gonna have to be done about this before it got batshit.]