Chapter 366: (F/M)aking a Child Prodigy
“Y’all are clear on the plan?,” Jasper asked their compatriots.
“Yes.”
“Yeah…”
“Sure thing. Frog…bro?”
“You do realize this plan of yours is painfully convoluted?,” Razor Maiden pointed out.
“Don’t care, this is fun and I need to go introduce this world to the concept of self-heating drum baths.”
With the plan now fully laid out, the kaijin quickly disbanded into two groups.
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When pretending to be more important than you actually are/pretendingn to be upper class, remember H.D.D.
Hygeine.
Dress.
Demeanor.
Keep these three things in mind as the kaijin cause unintentional consequences.
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=Jaspercroak.=
=Essentially, yes.=
=I was about to say “Prince and the Pauper”, but we are short a prince.=
=Classic though.=
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‘I think Cinderella might be more accurate, granted we don’t have any fairy godmothers this time around…fairy themed kaijin…hmmm…’
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“Man, why the fuck does that old bat insist we keep the shop open pass sunset?”
“To attract the late night artisan crowd or something like that.”
“That is horse shit.”
Due to Pearl Tusk Harbor being a port town, all sorts of goods and materials flowed in and out of it’s docks and warehouses, from the mundane to the mystical.
As a result of this flow though, many different types of artisans ranging from tailors to candy makers plied their trade in the city because it was cheaper to buy materials for their goods directly from the supplier, and it was easier to sell their goods to merchants who came to the city to load up on goods to sell anyways.
In essence, being a reliable supplier in a town full of artisans and merchants was a surefire way to have stable income for literal lifetimes. As was the case for a humble textile shop at the corner of edge of the city’s fabric district known as “Cait’s Corner”, a staple of the community for ten winters and counting.
Manning the shop currently was a pair of young teenagers by the name of Sarah and Tik.
The two of them happened to be childhood friends and cousins, sharing the same grandmother, the aforementioned Cait of “Cait’s Corner”.
At the behest of their grandmother, the two of them were given the task of night shift, which lasted from sunset till about midnight. It wasn’t too bad of a gig, what with most of the shift being nothing but standing around and helping the occasional drunken tailor trying their damnedest to meet a deadline, but overall…it was boring as sin.
At this point in the evening, Tik had already taken inventory of everything in the store at least twice, while Sarah, who was in charge of the counter had already finished counting the earnings for the day at least three times.
For all intents and purposes, they were done with this shit and just wanted to go home and fall asleep.
“Okay, that’s it,” Tik declared as he made his way over to the shop’s front door with a key in hand, “I’m just going to close up shop and tell Granny we were all-”
*Ding-a-ling.*
However, just before he could lock the door shut, a pair of customers, one man and one woman, entered the building. Correction, a pair of very attractive customers entered the building.
“Ah, apologies,” the woman began to say with a rich, unusual accent, “were you about to close up shop?”
“Uhhh, no,” Tik managed to answer while getting distracted by the features of the unusual woman. There was a distinctive edge to her that he couldn’t quite put a finger on, and her eyes had this weird contradictory mix of being innocent yet predatory.
He wasn’t sure why, but he found it exciting.
“F-feel free to browse at your leisure.”
“Ah…thank you very much, good sir.”
“Y…yer welcome.”
“Spring, could you grab those three bolts of silk?,”the sharp woman asked the man she came into the building with, pointing a delicate looking hand at a shelf full of silk fabric bolts.
“Sure thing. Big Sis.”
‘Oh that’s her brother…interesting…,’ Sarah thought to herself as she watched “Spring” walk over to the silk rack and grabbed the aforementioned bolts from them.
It didn’t really occur to Sarah that these bolts of silk were massive and that Simon just easily picked them up like they were light twigs, she was too busy being somewhat enamored with the aura of innocence that seemed to radiate off of Simon’s otherwise contradictory body.
The man had a noticable sixpack on an otherwise lanky body, and a face that made Sarah think of doing very unwise things.
It wasn’t until both Simon and his older sister walked up to the counter with the silk that Sarah remembered she was in charge of sales today.
“Pardon me darling, but we would like to purchase these three bolts. How much are they?”
“Huh? Oh right, uh it should be…two pieces of silver per bolt.”
“Excellent,” the woman smiled when she heard the price.
From her pockets, the woman produced a singular gold coin that she casually flipped into the air, having it land precisely into Sarah’s front dress pocket.
“Keep the change. Spring?”
“Yeah.”
Having completed their purchase, the strange pair of siblings proceeded to leave the store with the ease of an ocean breeze.
Tik and Sarah watched them leave with dropped jaws and stunned look on their faces, unsure on how to handle that much…swagger.
“So that just…happened.”
“Yup…”
“Tik…the way you were staring at that sharp looking woman…didn’t you say you were only into men?”
“That’s what I thought too.”
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“Razor. Why were they? Staring at us? Like that?”
“No idea Spring Bralwer, no idea.”
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*WHAM!*
“Who’s fucking with my stuff?!,” Obediah shouted as he kicked down the door to his backyard, “I swear if it’s those fucking teenagers again…”
Obediah Hymstone was a cooper, aka, a barrel maker. However, that wasn’t always the case.
Once upon a time, Obediah was an upcoming Aether Acolyte who was on the cusp of becoming an Aether Master. Unfortunately, a very untimely injury ruined his prospects.
With no other choice, Obediah retired from the life of cultivation and began to make barrels for a living.
It wasn’t much, but it was honest work.
“Alright you fucking kids, where-huh?”
For the past few weeks, Obediah had been dealing with teenagers messing around in his backyard, using it as a “cuddle spot” and at this point he was sick of it.
He was honestly expecting to find some almost naked teenagers running out of his backyard by the time he got there, he did not expect to find nothing except for a rather weird looking barrel full of warm water.
“What’s with the aether flux?,” Obediah asked himself. He was mildly pissed that someone appeared to have vandalize his barrels, but was more intrigued on how someone got a working array set-up on a barrel of all things. He had heard of some powerhouse sects using special barrels with cooling arrays, but this was an ordinary one radiating heat!
Peeking into the water from the top of the barrel, Obediah could make out an array he had never seen before.
He was about to just dump the barrel to get a better look at what had been carved at the bottom of his barrel, but then he noticed that a note had been attached to it on the side.
Obediah briefly thought it might have been a trap or a prank…but then he remembered that any enemies he may have had once upon a time were now dead or didn’t care about his humble status…probably.
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Dear Mister Cooper,
Apologies for modifying one of your barrels, but we desperately needed a bath to wash off a year’s worth of stank.
As compensation, here is the array we used to turn your barrel into a barrel bath, it’s called the [Snow Monkey Bathwater Array], as well as a straightforward recipe on how to make soap.
I hope this is enough to make up for us using your barrel.
Xoxo.
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‘Snow monkey-wait, there was an array dedicated to just heating bath water? Seems kind of luxurious…,’Obediah thought to himself as he looked over the array in question.
However, as he studied the array a couple times over, he realized that this was array was…simple.
Incredibly simple to the point that even he, with his busted up aether channels, could replicate it very easily.
Obediah quietly looked at the barrel of hot water for a moment before rolling up his sleeves.
“Well…ain’t no better way to test this thing out than on a firsthand basis…I should probably dump the water first though…”
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“Dios mios, that was refreshing! Now, let’s make me look rich, yeah?”
