It was only a few minutes into sketching when Tanya realised she wasn't actually that sure what sort of audio equipment there was. She stopped and started, the pencil not flowing as smoothly as usual. A microphone thumbnail sketch was easy, and for an amplifier, she just thought of her brother's little guitar amp. But none of that felt special enough.

There's like mixin' consoles right?

Again, the pencil started and stopped. She drew the vague shape and started adding detail, but it was basically just adding buttons and screens and faders wherever they looked right. Marcy staring at her with the excitement of a kid getting their caricature drawn at the beach wasn't helping matters.

Tanya furrowed her brow. How could she design a specialist tattoo when she wasn't really sure what she was trying to do with it?

"So what sort of thing are you thinking?" Marcy asked, clearly desperate to see the sketches.

Tanya scrunched up the piece of paper and chucked it onto the table. Marcy's jaw dropped.

"What—what did—" she stammered.

"Not feelin' those. I think I need to know more about what ya do."

"Right," Marcy said, seeming unsure.

Tanya sighed and picked up the paper, unscrunching it. "Go on then, but be nice."

Marcy took one look at the paper and laughed. She tried to suppress it, which only made it come out like some foghorn elephant hybrid. "Sorry… It's not that bad…" She cleared her throat. "So, um, what are those buttons supposed to do?" Her voice wavered again as she pointed at the mixing console, biting the inside of her cheek.

Tanya felt her face growing warm. "No clue, that's what I realised." She grabbed a new piece of paper and drew the basic shape again. "Tell me what they're supposed to do."

"I quite like the idea of a mixing console, actually," Marcy said. She grinned. "Okay, let's go. Do you know what a mixing console is?"

Tanya racked her brain for any memory of hearing about one. "Uhhhh. It controls sounds an', uhhh, lets you make changes better?"

Marcy tilted her head. "Kinda? When I was training, my mentor was this guy with a huge 1980s handlebar moustache called Kevin. Anyway, he always said it was the audio's central nervous system. I had to stop myself from laughing because those words are so many mouth movements that his moustache would quiver." She snorted. "Anyway, each one is made of multiple channels."

Tanya started sketching. "Vertical, and more of them. I think the one I was using a few days ago was 48."

Tanya tried again. At this point, she wasn't trying to make a good design, just get some mapping of what should go where.

"Now we have a gain knob at the top. That controls the input level of your signal."

Tanya's face must have shown how confused she was.

"So if I was whispering, I'd need the gain to be high so it could hear me, but if it was too high, then I'd get static or have problems when I spoke normally again."

"Right, gotcha," Tanya said, adding the button.

"Now we need a High, Mid, Low knob there for the different frequencies," Marcy continued, sitting down beside her. "If it was more modern, it would have a screen, but—"

"Simplicity for drain, yeah?" Tanya said, absent-mindedly. She was already sketching a new version from another angle.

"Yep."

They continued like that for a while, going through the FX and pan knobs, mute and solo buttons, faders, and finally the master section. Every time Tanya felt like she understood something, Marcy would bring up a new button or fader that did something similar, and Tanya would have to ask questions all over again.

A few more sheets of filled paper later, Tanya spread the designs across the desk. They were more technical than tattoo as she attempted to understand the concept with no reference images. In an ideal world, Tanya would have read a whole book on them at this point to work out the insides too, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that the magic would have some differences to that anyway, and she wouldn't want to get too bogged down in how things had worked with electricity now that they didn't have to.

"Not too bad," Tanya said. She stretched, looking around. Dante and Pete had found an old deck of cards and were playing some sort of gambling game, using Tanya's stubby pencils as chips. "Olena's gone?" Tanya asked.

Dante scratched his neck, staring at his cards. "Hit me." He turned to Tanya. "Walked out the back when you were in the depths of the pros and cons of motorised faders."

Pete pulled the next card. "5."

Dante slammed his palm into the table. "Bust."

Pete snatched a couple of pencil stubs from Dante's side, looking smug.

Marcy rolled her eyes. "You could be training your Class or something, you know."

Dante sniffed. Pete shrugged.

Marcy gave up and turned back to Tanya. "So, now what?"

Tanya rubbed her chin. "How much of this do you need, d'ya think?"

"Huh?" Marcy said, the design she was reaching for forgotten.

"Well, none of these look much like designs, yeah? So we need to find ways of simplifying an' making it feel more like you." Tanya rubbed her chin. "You got any tattoos?" Tanya asked, already spotting a couple sticking out from beneath Marcy's sleeves.

"Well, this one was in memory of my step-brother," Marcy started, showing a large floppy dog teddy she had on her left forearm. It was only lineart, with dappling for shadows to show the long fur.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Tanya opened her mouth to say something apologetic, but Marcy had already moved on.

"I just thought this one was cool," Marcy continued, showing an American traditional tattoo of a woman with moth wings. Next to it was a frog with a top hat and psychedelic eyes. "Oh yeah, and that one was a friend of mine's painting."

With each flash of ink, Tanya realised how eclectic Marcy's collection was. She commonly saw people with a set style, either for their entire body or at least for different limbs. The fact Marcy didn't, said a lot about her.

Tanya nodded, already smiling.

"What?" Marcy asked.

"Ima have fun with this one," Tanya replied.

Despite her excitement, Marcy was very patient over the next hour or so. She'd taken to practising her sound control abilities, getting Dante to talk so she could try and replicate his voice. It reminded Tanya of her own process, albeit less structured, as Marcy was clearly trying to work out how to maximise learning new voices rather than just wanting Dante's.

Pete had spent a while doing shuffling card tricks before slipping outside to practise. Tanya had heard him more than seen him, muffled bangs going off from some kind of gun.

Pete poked his head around the door. "Any monster's round here?"

"Nope, that's what the wards are for."

"Wards, eh?" Pete replied, already walking back out again.

Tanya turned back to her sketches. She'd made them in a fugue state, scribbling broad shapes that sometimes turned into designs, and sometimes she'd turn away in the middle of, captured by a new idea. Over time, it had naturally culled down to two as she zipped back and forth until eventually the natural selection of her favourites took over. She finished only two.

The first was Pop Art-inspired—a simplistic mixing console with only a few channels. Tanya had really gone nuts with it, adding in comic book style POP and GROWL along the edge in spiked bubbles and bright colours. She'd ended up cutting some of the buttons too, using her intuition from Marcy describing her process earlier. Marcy had done it in Dante's slightly garbled voice as she learned—to kill two birds with one stone.

That led to this design only having three knobs for EQ and a fader for overall volume. It made something that she imagined would be limited in specificity, but would help her greatly with avoiding strain.

The second was all-out cyberpunk. Initially, Tanya had set off for something more realistic with this design, but when she added some buttons in the wrong place, she turned them into a futuristic chip, and her creativity exploded. It ended up as some strange combination of mixing console and Ghostbusters backpack. In her head, the sound could be stored inside it over longer periods than Marcy grasping it in her hands, and although likely not as intuitive, she'd tried to fit in most of the aspects Marcy had discussed, giving it a busy and slightly chaotic feel.

Tanya laid down the pencil, and Marcy's head snapped towards her, stopping mid-sentence. "Is it done?"

"You think I'd only do one?" Tanya replied.

"I have options?" Marcy exclaimed. She raced over, nearly knocking over the coffee table in her wake.

Tanya triggered her Overlay as Marcy sat down. "Let's see what these babies can do."

"So, here's the first." Tanya passed her the Pop Art design.

"Woah! It reminds me so much of Andy Warhol!" She exclaimed. "I love the multicoloured buttons."

Tany focused her attention on the design, dismissing and expanding different elements of the overlay until she could see all of its theories.

• • •

Design Title: [Pop Art Mixing Console] Creator: Tanya Angelo

Intentions:

Conduit for sound magic

Lessen Attribute load for wielder

Synergy with Prop Master

Control panel for sound magic

Design Analysis…

Abilities themed around Earth concept 'Pop Art', e.g. increased ability with sound effects

Likely to be easy handling with impact

Warning: May lack versatility.

Most likely to be Tool Type. May have Weapon type secondary.

• • •

Tanya grinned, reading the interface. Working out all the little Overlay settings had delayed her iteration a lot over the weeks of building the shop, but sitting here with her first customer looking at a clean and simple interface format, she was certain it had been worth it.

"Let me have a quick gander at the other and then we can compare."

Tanya passed over the second.

• • •

Design Title: [Cyberpunk Mixing Console] Creator: Tanya Angelo

Intentions:

Control panel for sound magic

Synergy with Prop Master

Conduit for sound magic

Lessen Attribute load for wielder

Design Analysis…

Abilities themed around Earth concept 'Cyberpunk', e.g. increased ability with technological noises

Likely to be high in versatility and growth scope

Warning: Difficult handling.

Most likely to be Tool Type.

• • •

"Huh, they have different Intentions—wait a sec," Tanya thought aloud. "Woah, that's really cool." Tanya hadn't needed to iterate multiple vastly different versions of the same design during her experiments. Where she'd initially thought the Intentions had been completely different despite her having a similar core idea in mind, she realised that it was only the order that was different. Both designs had valued it being a control panel, conduit, lessening Attribute load and synergy with Prop Master, but whereas the Pop Art one had focused on simplifying the strain and process, the cyberpunk one had given a more detailed control over it.

The more Tanya analysed, the more she saw how that ordering had completely changed the output of the summon; everything from the ease of handling to the complexity of the design. Tanya supposed it was twofold—the complexity difference between the designs would have impacted the intentions, but the intentions would have impacted the complexity of the design also.

"What can you see?" Marcy breathed.

Dante perched on a closer stool to listen too.

Tanya realised Marcy's only knowledge of the tattoos was the array of emotions Tanya had visibly gone through in the last couple of minutes.

"So the Pop Art one," Tanya started, "focuses on the ease of use stuff. It'll be simple and strong for when ya mimic basic noises or possibly even give you a sound attack."

"Woahhh, a sound attack sounds awesome."

"No promises, mind." Tanya flicked between the two overlays again. "Then the cyberpunk one seems like it'll give you more control of your powers, but it might have some adjustment time 'cause there'll be a lot going on. Attribute control is a factor of that one too, but not as much, so I'm guessing more drain too. Then there's how they'll level."

"Holy shit, you're saying these level like us?"

Tanya baulked. "Have I really not said that?" Tanya raked a hand through her hair. "Oh, man. Yeah, these guys level and grow with you. It seems pretty custom to how you use them an' stuff too."

Marcy's mouth was completely open, and even Dante's lips were parted.

"I saw level on the Interface you showed u,s but…I assumed that was linked to your level making them or something, not theirs," Dante stammered

"Seems like I was really holding in their selling point," Tanya laughed, but deep down she was kicking herself.

Of course no one knows they can level unless I tell them. I'm lucky I got a customer at all.

"So, yeah. These guys level similarly to us, I think. You could decide you want to work on the Pop Art one's options over time, or get more control over the Cyberpunk one. What they do and train in an' stuff impacts their options when they level."

"Options?" Dante asked, incredulous.

"You get to pick from options too?!" Marcy exclaimed.

For fucks sake Tanya. You'd better make a better intro speech for next time.

Tanya gave another awkward laugh. "Ah yeah, probably should have mentioned that too."

Pete popped his head round the door again. "You could catch flies with your gobs that wide. What you both gawping at?"

Marcy turned to Pete, still looking stunned. "Tanya just told us these summons level—and not only that—they get options like us."

Pete's mouth dropped open too. "Why the fuck didn't you lead with that?"

Tanya opened her mouth, then closed it again. "I have no idea."

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