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What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

M180 New
To his mild bemusement, Bolt was actually caught up, relatively. He still had that work with that master in the near future, but he had no real large projects now. It was probably time to start planning his next mech.

Before then he checked up on Sami. The girl had not designed any original mechs yet. This wasn't a ding on her. Bolt had been rather bizarre in his designing development. The first real project most young designers did on their own was altering another person's design. That was what Sami had done and was doing. She'd taken the Zombie and made a few variations. None were released yet. The changes were mostly just altering the head and appearance, and in one case giving it a witch hat that also detached and exploded. She was exploring her boundaries and creativity. It was a good first step.

It would still probably be appropriate to speak with her before he got caught up in work though, so he took a small walk to her workstation. There the girl was going through a lot of the backlogged tickets for the Third Rate models. She was actually doing a very good job based on the rate she was flipping through them.

"Hello, ma-er sir." The woman nervously greeted as he entered.

Bolt didn't roll his eyes, but it came close. She'd relax over time. "Having trouble with the work at all?"

"No, I did this when I was at the facility and working for the senior. There's always some sort of question or problem. Third Rate isn't much different." Sami said with a small shrug. "Implant does a lot of the work truthfully."

"Good to know. I let it get too backed up far too often." The senior admitted with a small chuckle. "But I thought I'd talk with you about your personal work. Having fun with it?"

Sami frowned and closed out of a few things on the station. "I've been trying? I don't think I get it truthfully."

"Take your enthusiasm with mechs and go with that. You don't have ta go with my old models." Bolt advised. "Make something wacky."

"I suppose. I was hoping to get an idea of what... Umm. Is it appropriate to even ask? I wanted to know how you do the glow thing." Sami asked while lowering her head and looking away with a wince.

"While I don't mind giving you hints, I think we should talk a bit about how teaching should work for you." Bolt turned around and got a chair to sit down. "Right now you're actually at a really delicate time. Higher level designers are meant ta teach, but we're also supposed to help you develop your own style. I can give you parts of my style to develop, you can use my style to influence yours, you can go on your own path, or you can even attempt to mimic me. How you want to develop will tell me how we should move forward with Glows."

It was an actually extremely complicated and delicate topic actually. Bolt had been given a lot of literature to review for this with his ascension to Senior. The most key thing was to develop the student, not forcefully put your own specialty on them. Trying to suppress a nauseant style was the equivalent of shouting until the student went silent. Deliberately overriding someone's emerging specialty was the equivalent of taking a young mind and brainwashing them to your point of view. None of it was illegal, but it was actually fairly offensive to most masters and Star Designers. Bolt had no intention of doing that, but he didn't want to unintentionally do it either.

"I'm guessing you don't want the latter?" Sami asked with a hint of curiosity. "It's not restricted either?"

"What I do is something that I will have ta teach at some point. If you can learn it and do it better that's good. But the last option is typically when you have someone who's dying and wants to pass on their style. Ya want that anyway?" Bolt asked back.

That got the woman to laugh softly. "No thanks. I don't want to be the heir to the archdemon. By the way, the collars on the maids are not helping the sex-slave rumors."

Bolt sighed with sudden weariness. "That's on them. But onto what ya want. Based on your thoughts, you want to specialize in Glows?"

"Yes!" Sami nodded with a hint of eagerness. "The stuff you do is like magic! Ves is all channeling the Mother, and that's nice and all, but really not my thing."

"Heard that before. You want magic?" Bolt smiled slightly at the hidden enthusiasm. "Ain't easy to do. Really don't got a best way to teach you either." He was still working on that book after all.

Actually now that he was a Senior he could technically publish it now according to Bubbles, but that felt like a bad idea. Instead his current plans were to have it accompany the Heart System when it was released. This would really make things better. He could use Sami to really get the kinks worked out.

"You can't teach it?" The woman looked very disappointed.

"I can, it's just that it requires trying several different methods and some strange steps." Bolt gave the girl a pat on the shoulder. "Get up and we'll try the first one."

Bolt had probably underestimated the enthusiasm his student had here. She really wanted to learn this, and it didn't seem like the sort of 'enemy action' thing. It was more she was genuinely enthusiastic about it. Which actually boded well.

Though now that he was thinking about it, he needed to change the lesson plan. His first thought was to get her used to sensing spiritual power, but was that really the best path? Did she needed to sense spiritual power to do something with it? More importantly, did he want to risk her enthusiasm by rolling the dice on sensing? Everyone had different degrees of natural sense and it was very possible that she wouldn't feel it.

Letting none of it show on his face, Bolt shifted his plans immediately. They made their way to Bolt's sort of personal work-room. It had a small fabricator, a few Heart Crystals and was frankly a mess of wires and metal parts. It wasn't a place he'd normally take a student. Sami immediately wrinkled her nose at it before she smoothed her expression out. (No one's personal work-room was tidy, just various degrees of messy that made sense to them.)

"Have a seat." Bolt gestured to a chair and grabbed a Heart Crystal before setting it down in front of her. "You probably recognize this."

"Yeah." Sami nodded. "You put it in all your mechs."

"So, what I'm going to do is this." Bolt set the crystal into a holder and started up the connected computer. "Now I have the data to show something the unseen energy that sort of powers Glows. I call it spiritual power, but the MTA would probably call it psionic power. You could even call it magical power if you want. The name doesn't matter so much as what it does and there's no real official name for this stuff yet."

Bolt added two small metal rods to it and shifted the spiritual power from one side to another. On screen the numbers shifted. It was a relatively easy mental exercise, but it still caused a bit of strain.

"All you have ta do is focus and move it. Very specifically mentally." Bolt ordered.

Sami grabbed at a rod and narrowed her eyes. The computer showed no movement. The pout was rather expected.

"It'll take a bit. It requires mental focus and either emotion or will. Once ya get it down it will be easier, but there's going to be a strain." The senior explained. "If ya get a headache stop immediately. That means your exerting yourself, and pushing through it will result in nosebleeds, bleeding from the eyes, and probably worse." He'd never pushed that hard so he didn't know what the next step was.

"Visualization, visualization." Sami murmured, and there was a slight twitch on the computer. "Yes!" She shouted and then winced. "Ow!"

"Give it ten before you try again." Bolt advised. "It's like a muscle."

"So what's next after this?!" The woman asked with wide eyes.

"You do that fer the next month until you can do it without wincing. Gotta build it up." Bolt advised and almost laughed at her expression.

That'd keep her very busy for awhile by his estimate.
 

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