The Tattoo Summoner [System Apocalypse]

Chapter 3: Show What You're Made Of


Something about the new tattoo parlour in the post-apocalypse was special.

Tanya was flopped into a high-backed armchair right beside the aga, and she didn't know if it was the aga itself or the glass of wine that was creating that warm flushing in her chest.

Mrs Eceer was to her left, with the seat beside her on the sofa being used for all of the extra dishes and sauces that wouldn't fit on the coffee table. They'd have to fix that at some point, but back when Olena had designed this place, none of them had any idea how much of a community they'd become.

Boris was on a stool, and Olena was perched on the arm of the sofa. She always began in the seat itself, but it was only a matter of time before her excited ramblings posited her further and further forward until she was only there between bouts of pacing.

Tanya suspected she'd start to flop again soon. Her eyes wandered to the seats beside her. There was enough for Ishita and Fahad too, and Tanya hoped that maybe she'd come back some time soon.

Ishita would love the aga. Maybe I should insist again that I can be out when she uses it? Is that too much?

Olena was mid-ramble as Tanya tuned back in, a mouthful of something delicious pressed between her teeth and fork prongs.

"So then I go see Oleg—"

"Who?" Mrs Eceer asked.

"He was mannequin when I get speedy level—" Olena replied.

"Yes, keep up," Boris said jovially.

"Which level was this?" Mrs Eceer was blinking rapidly with her cutlery poised in the air. Every time she leant in to take a bite, Olena would say something else out of context, and she would need to ask yet another question.

"Oh No But Sexy," Olena stated.

"Good gracious," Mrs Eceer said, leaning backwards.

Boris laughed.

"Just wait 'til you read it," Tanya added.

Olena was already shovelling food into her mouth. She rushed a few half-hearted chomps then continued speaking. "Here it is!"

She dropped her cannon arm onto the table, arm still inside and her fist knocked a spoon off a serving plate whilst the other dishes clinked and clattered into each other and the table. "Oops."

That plus the Ability itself seemed to be too much for Mrs Eceer, who paled more and more the further down she got. "And the Achievement is called Disaster Magnet," Mrs Eceer said, with the fake politeness of a suburban housewife finding out their daughter is dating a stoner.

Boris cackled, and it caught Tanya so off guard that she almost spat out her food.

Mrs Eceer cleaned her pristine hands on her napkin—only she had one—and held both hands up. "I am surrounded by anarchy," she declared.

Tanya had just about composed herself. "So your whole build is about Module switches, yeah?" Tanya asked.

And so began the most confusing conversation Tanya had ever had with Olena.

It had been at least half an hour of questioning before they all finally understood Olena's Class. Even Mrs Eceer had stayed to finish it rather than finishing odd jobs whilst it was in the aga. She grew more and more frazzled with each side step Olena made to talk about someone or something that was only loosely linked to the original topic. That was something Tanya was beginning to learn about Olena: she was very organised when it came to planning anything mechanical or technical, and in absolutely no other way.

By the end, she saw it kind of like her own Class, except replacing the tattoos menu with modules. However, instead of unlocking the actual module, she unlocked the blueprints to make it—what made it so confusing was the way she unlocked them in sections. Tanya eventually realised it was like a Lego kit, which began a different side step where Tanya had to explain to Olena what Lego was. Tanya had no clue how a mechanic, or any thirty-something-year-old in fact, could not know what Lego was.

Explaining what the different modules did had taken the longest, because they were stackable. That meant that each different module could combine with every other module, and their effects would be combined in unique ways. Her favourite had been bullet, then oil, then fire, then slow motion, then water, then electricity, which she'd only been able to do since her Module Switch Ability allowed her to click them in and out mid-battle—which she likened to Lego repeatedly now she knew what it was. The water sounded like it would put out the fire, but in reality, it turned to steam, spreading the oil into an inferno, and the electricity then created an electric field within the flames. Apparently, a monster that could handle the constant fire from the oil long enough to make it to her electricity finale was rare, and she recounted each time she'd done it with gusto.

After they understood all that, Olena explained she had recently unlocked module connectors and delayers too, which allowed her to impact the way they combined, either by deciding exactly how much of each would combine in uneven percentages or by delaying their impact to allow for effects after an initial firing. She'd explained that like mixing ice and slow motion. Whereas before her only impact was the order she had them, now she could pick every element, with plenty of work at least.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

That all reminded Tanya of her recent tattoo donation mechanic. It seemed like at this level, The System was throwing something new at them, and the idea that the world could continue growing beyond their awareness like this was boggling.

"I am done with questions!" Olena cried, snapping Tanya out of her pondering. "Time to see the toolkit!"

Ah shit, I wanted to ask Boris about his too. Oh well, another time.

It was hard to be reluctant for long.

Mrs Eceer was plating up the table from the stack beside her. "You finally finished it?" She smiled.

"Toolkit?" Boris asked.

Every other head snapped towards him.

Olena slammed her hands against the table, which wouldn't have been a problem if one of them hadn't had a cannon equipped. "You not know about toolkit Boris? Have you been living under ROCK?!"

The others rushed to steady it.

"Olena. Cannon," Mrs Eceer warned.

That rule had been one of the first additions to the 'not whilst at the table rules' that Mrs Eceer had insisted on for her sanity. It also included Fifi not being at the table, no tattooing at the table, and no demonstrations of any kind at the table. There was a large crack down the table, and this was actually their second coffee table, so those rules existed for good reason.

Tanya could still remember back when the rules were just for safety. Back then, meals were a calmer affair, with them all stuck into various stacks of paper or reading their interfaces alongside each other. Since then, they'd added to their rules: no notebooks, no project planning, and no theorising what Fifi would become. The latter was a weirder one, but they realised they were unable to discuss it without falling down a giant pit of research until their food went cold. They all still complained about the rules sometimes, but they stuck because they had all realised how much they enjoyed some time away from their normal lives to eat together.

"Are you even listening, Tanya?" Olena said.

Tanya froze. "Oops."

"TANYA!" Olena cried, pacing. "You make me wait until food and then until plating, and now you in funny world in head, not listening to meeee."

"Heh, sorry. Okay, okay. I'll get Assistant out first. It helped with loads of these, so feels like it should be here to share the glory."

Tanya focused on her wrist, and the wriggling shape of Assistant crawled out. It waved at the room. "It's show time," Tanya said, and that was enough to send Assistant into an excited frenzy of bobbing up and down and floating around Tanya's body to point out tattoos, most of which were covered by her jacket.

Tanya laughed and rubbed her hands together. "Where do we start?"

"What's the toolkit?" Boris asked again, blinking behind his spectacles.

"Oh yeah. So basically, I had this idea—what if I make a set of tattoos that could go to most people—versatile, ya know? Then 'cause of me new transfer Ability, I can give them to people in need. Otherwise, even with me Blink of An Eye Ability for in tense situations, I have quite limited impact."

Boris nodded. "That makes sense, I too have been considering how to increase my impact outside of my niche." He cocked his thumb over his shoulder towards the wall between them and Fifi. For now, she'd been staying in the empty Vietnamese bakery when they were busy, but they planned to make her somewhere better soon.

"Tanya, if you keep suspense, then I will DIE!" Olena yelled, flopping backwards with her hand on her forehead.

Tanya laughed and pushed her armchair back just enough to wriggle out.

Assistant fished out a couple of already chipped items for demonstrating whilst Tanya stood in the open space by the doorway. "So the first is something we all know and love."

Tanya slipped her leather jacket off her shoulders, and the cannon in her side popped out, scanning side to side. The design had morphed to being quite old CCTV camera inspired, from the moment Tanya realised that to fix the recoil, she just needed to change the ammo, or in this case, get rid of it entirely.

"Ooooo," Olena said.

Tanya fired it, and the red laser shot out the end.

"Lasers," Mrs Eceer declared at the same time as Olena yelled it.

It smashed an old vase behind Boris, but she kept tilting it as it followed her gaze.

Boris and Olena tensed.

Assistant flew along with the laser, hovering further up and down to loop around it.

"Are you sure this is safe—" Boris started, right as the laser harmlessly passed through him and the others. It smashed a chipped mug on the arm of the sofa in front of Mrs Eceer.

The light faded.

Olena looked down at her chest, patting for injuries in disbelief. "HuH?"

Boris visibly relaxed.

"Fascinating concept," Mrs Eceer said. She hadn't flinched. "What inspired the change?"

"Fahad, actually," Tanya said. "I was thinkin' about kids surviving this thing and how they might need a backup in case somethin' goes wrong in combat."

Boris clapped his hands together "Delightful—hence it not harming allies too, yes?"

"Yeah, exactly. I initially had it linked to how folks feel about people but Assistant here realised that could go real tits up if the kid gets angry, so now they'll need to be preprogrammed. Still not perfect, so this design would only work for older kids. I'm thinkin' of givin' a guardian option to the next one so it lets an adult decide who to harm, but I've not had the time to test that one yet."

"Have you given it to Fahad yet?" Boris asked.

His tone was casual and lighthearted, but the room went silent. He looked around, seeming confused.

Seeing Fahad earlier rushed through Tanya's head. She could still hear his little voice saying he knew she'd come back.

"Not yet," Mrs Eceer eventually replied.

Tanya gave her a thankful look.

"Next!" Olena demanded.

"Second, we have a couple of weapon options," Tanya said, twisting her leg from side to side to show them off. They were a realistic sword, spear, and rifle started by her ankle and went up to her knee, each side by side. "These are pretty obvious ones. I found that for low Vitality, just focusing on them being basic weapons was best, although I'll see if I can add on more theming to them later."

Boris adjusted his glasses to look closer. "You mean making a tattoo summon and then modifying it?" he asked, incredulous.

"Pretty much," Tanya said. Assistant tilted sideways in a shrug. "We have no idea how it'll work yet."

"They're very realistic," Mrs Eceer added.

"Oi, better be careful or you'll actually sound interested in a tattoo, Mrs E."

"Har har," Mrs Eceer said, raising her eyebrows.

"So you make them more simple by making them more complicated?" Olena asked.

"Yeah, pretty much, actually. I found if I left it too vague, it was really hard not to find some kinda magic in it somewhere. Like this one," Tanya pointed to a tattoo on her back that Assistant had helped her with. "It's called a Void Sword, 'cause it thought the amount of absence of shadin' and whatever was part of the design."

"There are rejects!" Olena exclaimed. "Show me, show me!"

"Huh, I guess I hadn't really been thinkin' about the rejects much, just focusing on fixin' them up."

"They could be very useful to sell in your shop," Mrs Eceer commented.

Tanya opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Holy shit, how didn't I think of that?"

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