Barkeep Ji laughed. "Compatibility of a Frame is decided right from the start. Finding a Frame that can combine magnets, metal, and wind would be extremely difficult."
"Magnets and metal are basically the same thing already." Grey waved a hand. "You’ve just gotta fit wind in there somehow. Where’s Google when you need it? Someone tell me whether a planet’s magnetic field has any impact on its wind currents."
Ji seemed intrigued when he heard this. Grey didn’t seem to be speaking to him at all, but was rather thinking aloud.
"No, that doesn’t make sense. At least not in the normal sense. Magnets need charge and the atmosphere of Earth is pretty inert — otherwise it wouldn’t be atmosphere, it would have fucked off somewhere else."
Grey looked up at the barkeep. "How far can you bend an element?"
Ji grinned.
"Do you have to do that creepy grin every time?"
"It’s either that or I take another shot at putting a hole in your head. Which one do you want?"
"Creepy grin it is."
Ji nodded happily. "The dividing line between elements can blur. But it depends. You will not turn Wind to Earth, and that’s not far from what you’re trying to do right now."
"This is why I said your thinking is too limited." Grey grinned, then he pointed at something on the list. "Gimme that. That. And that one."
Grey pointed to two Cyber Warps and one Skill.
"Silksteel? This is a woman’s Frame. It’s meant to give some strong constitution while maintaining flexibility—."
"I’ve already worn panties in broad daylight. I’m very secure in my masculinity, please and thank you."
"This one has little to do with any of what you’ve asked for. Solargreen... this will clash with everything you have here."
"Why are you still yapping—."
"And this one. This is a lightness Skill. Maybe the simplest of them, as its name is literally Lightness. It doesn’t do anything but decrease your body weight. It’s not a Wind skill, it’s a Matter Skill. It seems simple, but it’s incredibly difficult to master."
"Alright, barkeep man. I already understood all of that 30 seconds ago. I’m on a time crunch. Chop chop."
"They’re also expensive. The two Frames alone are almost three million credits each. The Lightness Skill is seven million."
"I can read, contrary to your opinion."
Ji had said that it would only take about a hundred million to buy everything of the Proving Class, so this was quite a surprising total.
Though, Frames would always be the most expensive thing here. The Lightness Skill was only so expensive because it technically wasn’t of the Proving Class. If a 100% sync rate was reached, it would be at least of the Established Class.
Ji finally relented. Grey didn’t seem like the listening type. When he decided on something, he immediately became dead set on it.
"Now, I need herbs that fall in these specific categories..."
Grey began to list off things and Ji was left with his lip twitching. He was supposed to be helping Grey out, but the way this boy’s mind worked was beyond his expectations.
He watched as Grey crossed his legs on a bar stool, buying up a bunch of Cyber Cores and then downloading them one after another.
Then he just... sat there.
Ji almost slapped his forehead as he recalled something. He had been so distracted by Grey saying he had more than one Frame that he forgot to tell Grey the importance of keeping to which Frame Type he was going for.
The weakest Frames didn’t have a specialized Type, which Ji assumed Magnetic Hero to be. That sounded like a Frame best suited to someone of the Resonant Frame, but it could work for any so long as one was intentional about the direction they took the Abilities.
But before he could, a ripple was already coming out of Grey.
Ji relaxed a bit. For him to feel that, it seemed Grey was taking the Resonant Type Path.
’Maybe it will work out...’
Resonant Types were the most flexible since they could extend their Neural Frames. But the two Frames Grey had chosen, the Solargreen Frame and the Silksteel Frame...
Well, the former was a Branching Type and the latter was a Linear Type. They were both shy of perfect as well.
He had no idea what Grey was doing.
’Forget it. If the boy dies, it has nothing to do with me anyway. Less of a risk to take.’
Ji closed his eyes and drifted off, falling asleep on his feet. He only had to pay attention if someone was conscious within his premises. Otherwise, even if someone was unconscious and dying, it wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
In fact, that had happened many times in the past. It wasn’t his job to—.
A strong ripple of energy and wafting motes of smoke startled Ji.
His eyes opened to find Grey huffing on a crack pipe, the ripples around him growing stronger and stronger. The grin on his face was somehow even wider than that.
...
’Fuck yeah, I am Einstein.’ Grey grinned ear to ear.
What was wind? It was just a bunch of particles with mass moving under some sort of influence, usually heat, the sun, blah, blah — the details didn’t matter to Grey.
All he had known was that he had heard of Solar Wind before. And he had also heard of NASA using solar sails to send missions into space.
Atmospheric wind might not be charged.
But Solar Wind was nothing but charges.
All he needed was a way to control solar radiation. So long as he had a Frame with the Abilities to do that, he should be able to "bend" his wind element enough that it would start working not just with normal wind, but solar wind as well.
The idea itself was something anyone could have come up with in Grey’s opinion, but when he touched the Cyber Warps, he could feel that it was possible.
Then everything clicked into place one after another.
—
[Name: Grey Temolt]
[Name Affiliation: Disciple of Sir Trolley]
—
[Frame: Prometheus]
[Frame: Vampire Lord (Proving Class)]
[Frame: Paladin (Proving Class)]
[Frame: Helion (Proving Class)]
[Pending Quests: 1]