The next day, Tanya made a cannon.

It started sometime around late morning after her third cup of tea had gone cold and Boris and Olena's argument had shifted from philosophy to logistics. She'd told herself she wouldn't work on any designs until evening—she needed the daylight for the shop, and her head wasn't in the right space for anything more complex than sweeping.

But then Boris said, "I'm telling you, if we angle it outwards, the weight pushes against the frame when something climbs. That's what we want."

"And I tell you," Olena snapped back, "if we angle inward, we hang weight off it—barbed chain, jagged scrap, whatever. Anything better than trying to weld that mess into curve."

Tanya didn't even try to weigh in this time. The urge that had been drawing her eyes to her stash in the cupboard won. She dragged her paper out of the cupboard, cleared a patch of counter that hadn't been claimed by nails or tea mugs, and sat.

Jesus. They may be gettin' to good ideas, but this is almost as bad as my mum and her ex arguin'.

Just design yeah? I'll keep the tattooing for later still.

She laid the page flat and tapped her pen against the edge, staring at the blank space like it owed her something. Her body still ached a little from that final fight, but it was better than the day before, or the day before that. It was strange thinking of the day the ache became a distant memory.

This design needs to be fast. Simple. Ugly, maybe, but functional.

She started with the structure—a solid arm of metal up her side. It'd be heavy, but she couldn't see her own back, she didn't want to tattoo with her non-dominant arm, there wasn't much space with her sleeve, and her leg felt too far down for something aiming. Fixing the 'rock and a hard place' that all that bullshit was would be a job for later. She marked it out loosely and each round of refinement made it look more and more like something that came out of Pixar's WALL-E. She dug into the new design overlay and realised this was a good location for reasons she hadn't even thought through fully.

Pretty convenient that my torso can take force without breakin' fingers.

Behind her, the conversation hadn't stopped.

"You know we don't have the chain to do that," Boris said, exasperated. "Unless you want to start pulling it out of the bikes. Which, by the way, we're supposed to be fixing for scouting runs—"

Tanya looked up. "What bikes?"

"I know what we're fixing," Olena said. "But we have that busted railing from the stairwell. And if you'd actually check the pile instead of arguing about it—"

Tanya looked between them, more frustrated. "Guys? Bikes?"

Olena wafted her hand towards the door. "Mrs Eceer plan for scavenge. Boris I think this plan stupid—"

Real fuckin' useful explanation. Thanks guys.

Tanya rolled her eyes and tuned them out.

From what Olena had described, the cannon she wanted would be like an extra limb coming from her back. The problem with that was joining—how do you summon something that isn't fully leaving the body? If it stayed attached, she had to guarantee it wouldn't turn out like Phantom Brand. Having complete control of Attributes in any form without the strength to keep them under control was not on her plan for today.

So she tried something different. She added an extra section. It looked like a long plate that would curve to fit the side of her body so that the tattoo had a section to go inside and a section to go outside. From the risks changing, she was right. "Autonomous Flow Risk" was gone.

Hell yes!

Tanya did a little fist pump of celebration in the air.

"Is good news?" Olena asked. Sometime between their argument earlier and Tanya's fugue state of working, Boris and Olena seemed to have agreed on a plan.

"Ah, crap, sorry guys," Tanya said, jumping up and trying to slot herself back into the work.

"You've helped plenty this morning," Boris continued. "Continue. It isn't like this isn't for our benefit too is it?" He laughed like that was a funny joke.

"What he say?" Olena said.

Tanya grinned and looked at the risks again. They were better but still not ideal.

• • •

Risks:

Wielder and Summon caught in fire

Loss of ammunition control

Low Resilience

• • •

It wouldn't be subtle, reliable, or pretty. But it definitely would fire. It was the kind of thing you used to end a fight fast or blast open a stuck hatch. She could try to fix more of those errors in future versions.

She made a few more smaller tweaks and by the time she looked up again, Boris and Olena were working in companionable silence–or maybe just a grumpy truce. Either way, she was alone at the counter with a finished design and too much momentum not to ignore her own rules.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Guys," she called, holding up the sheet. "If you've got this without me, maybe it's time for another tattoo."

Olena squealed. "My one! My one!" She dashed over to sit before Tanya again like the night before.

Boris stopped her with a light tap on the shoulder. "Better to have something to show her at the same time hm?"

Olena grumbled her way back again, then pointed at Tanya. "Don't test without me. You got that?"

"Heh. Loud and clear." Tanya saluted.

They both disappeared back to their metal contraptions outside. From her glimpse, Tanya assumed they were linked to the barricades.

The drawing was easy now, just repetition and line placement. But when Tanya reached for the ink, she paused.

She hadn't tattooed with Assistant in days. Not since the fight. Tanya wasn't sure if Assistant was shaken from the ordeal, or had just wanted to help keep her safe because of how Tanya was feeling. From their limited conversations before sleep or between tasks, Assistant was shadowing Mrs Eceer, ferrying notes between her and Ishita and pointing dramatically at ward runes like a professor in a silent film. That's how it had mimed things back anyway. Tanya had let it go—the area needed wards, and Assistant had proven by now that it always had some bigger picture in mind.

I think it would wanna join, but how do I find it?

Tanya got a flash of pride through their link. She rarely had enough concentration on her surroundings to notice them, so they mostly came when she was thinking about Assistant or not thinking about much.

She tapped her pen against the counter, thinking. "Okay," she said aloud, aiming her voice at the ceiling, just in case. "If you're still on lunch break, you're getting called in."

Nothing.

Tanya narrowed her eyes and set both hands down flat. She focused on how it felt to be in that flow state, just her and the tattoo gun and the design. She held the thought steady with difficulty, like tugging open a door with her teeth.

Then she waited

Eventually, there was a scrabble. A thump.

Assistant burst through the empty space where the front door had been earlier that day. It leapt forward with wild energy, flinging itself onto the counter beside her in a series of high-speed hops, then flopped onto the table like it had run a marathon.

Tanya raised her eyebrows. "That dramatic, huh?"

Assistant stuck one hand in the air and traced a slow spiral in ink. The spiral ended with a small dot and a jagged line through it.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that's meant to be a ward." Tanya frowned. "She's got you drawing wards? That's a step up."

Assistant gave her a proud little wiggle, then slapped down a scrap of folded paper and pushed it toward her.

Tanya opened it.

Mrs E said its allmost done.

As usual, Tanya wrote the line underneath. "That one's a contraction because it stands for it is, an' almost has one l. No idea why."

Assistant wrote the line again underneath, correctly.

Tanya grinned. "That's pretty cool. Maybe I'll actually catch her one of these days to ask her questions. I swear it's like she doesn't exist at the moment."

"Well," Tanya said, tugging the page back toward her. "You've been getting better at spellin' for sure. Now it's time for tattoos. Have I mentioned the Olena cannon one?"

Assistant waved side to side for sort of.

So Tanya started at the top.

After the full run down, Tanya set out the ink, tools, and a fresh pot of boiled water.

Assistant hovered, twitching fingers like a pianist too excited to play. Tanya caught its wrist gently and guided it down to the pen.

"We've gotta be calm for clean lines, yeah?" she said. "No life or death anymore so we can take it slow. Trace over the lines in the air first until you're confident, then do it for real."

Tanya's heart fluttered in her chest. She hadn't been this nervous about a tattoo since she and the apprentices practised on each other for the first time.

Assistant stilled. Tanya felt the small twitch of concentration in its fingertips like it was holding its breath. She waited, then slowly showed it the arc of the first line—one side of the metal arm that would hold it up, straight down across the ribs. Assistant traced it beside her, a little too fast, a little too shallow.

"Better," Tanya murmured. "Don't worry about speed, remember. We ain't in a fight. You've got time to get this right."

Line by line, they moved together. Tanya led most of it, pointing at each line of the design one by one. Whenever she paused, Assistant watched her hands with full focus, then mimicked the movement with surprising precision. The first loops were scratchy — no weight behind them, and they needed going over— but as they worked, the motions evened out. The lines tightened. Assistant adjusted itself without needing a prompt, repositioning like it understood how to hold the pen more and more, even without instruction.

By the time the main arm and base section were done, Tanya caught herself smiling.

"Alright," she said, voice quiet. "Maybe you are ready for version twos."

Assistant struck a tiny victory pose, nearly smudging the ink in the process.

She shoved it gently back with her knuckle. "No celebrating 'til it's done, eh?"

The little hand froze mid-salute. Then it scribbled a sheepish apology and backed away.

A few lines later, Tanya looked down at the finished base tattoo. It wasn't perfect but for a first-time assistant, it was better than most of her own solo work when she'd started.

"Okay," she said. "Let's see if it fires."

Tanya was too excited to stop to rest. She stepped outside, yelled for the others, rolled her shoulders, and braced her stance in the street.

Assistant wiggled its fingers the whole way out, growing more antsy by the second.

"Tell me if it hits," Tanya told Assistant and it readied itself by the brick ruin next to the Kebab shop across the street.

"SHE READY!" Olena called.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," came the lower voice behind her.

As soon as they were in position, Tanya fed a pulse of vitality into the design—and the cannon came alive.

It jerked out of her side like a coiled muscle, locking in with the sound of metal shifting under flesh. It felt wrong and right at the same time—something she controlled, but only barely. The balance point was off. The angle jittered as it tried to align with her aim.

She focused. Then fired.

The pressure snapped forward in a shimmering bolt of force. It slammed into a sheet of drywall leaned against a broken dumpster, hitting hard enough to launch it ten feet and snap it clean in two.

Tanya grinned. Then the recoil hit.

It didn't just push—it ripped. Her whole body jolted sideways. Her ribs burned. Her shoulder crunched against itself and she lost her footing entirely, crashing backwards into a pile of old shelving.

Dust puffed around her like a slow, shaming applause.

"Well," Olena said, appearing in her eyeline. "That one way to test it."

Tanya just groaned, a pained laugh as she rolled around on her back on the floor.

Boris and Assistant appeared too, crowding around her.

"It was certainly better than Olena's first cannon shot," Boris said.

Olena gasped. "Watch your mouth before I get this one and test it on YOU!"

Tanya spent the next few hours sitting on an upturned bucket with a bag of melting ice on her shoulder and a half-eaten jam sandwich in her other hand, scrawling quick notes about what could have gone wrong with the design.

If it was the placement, then perhaps being more central would help it be better balanced. Would there be any way of adding stabilisers to a tattoo itself? Was the level of detail in the design improving things like the kickback or making it worse? So many questions and she'd have to wait for answers.

The only surefire way Tanya could think of to improve her chances was using more Vitality to create a better balance between power and precision. Everything else would need testing because the cost was baked in.

Well, it's a lesson learnt anyways. Blunt force and lack of precision don't play well together.

The only test with these designs now was how would they level. Could hard work make up for the lack of initial Vitality?

Oh well, this is only the beginnin' and me shoulder'll forgive me… eventually.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.