Preparations

The next morning comes with a torrential, windy downpour. Despite my desire to stay inside, Leia decides we’re going out, we have errands to run. We decide to go for a stroll, first to the tailor, then the realtor, and finally hitch a ride to the College. As we step through the door, she casts a 360 degree bubble around us to defeat the rain. I love little luxuries like this, very cool. There’s not many people out and about.

We plod our way up the street before arriving at a rustic looking tailor’s shop, not far from the hotel. Inside, surrounded by tanned leather drying on racks, with two demihuman assistants (a rabbit girl, and a young man with dog ears?), we are met with a rather grizzled-looking old human man. He’s not very friendly. I explain what we need in terms of uniforms. At the bare minimum, 100 heavy-duty cloth shirts, pants, and belts with loop attachments for holsters, batons, and cuff pockets. He seems aghast at the workload I’ve just dropped on him.

Almost as recompense for the indiscretion of my large order, he asks to see my clothes. I begrudgingly let him check them out, left standing in my underwear in the sole, ratty changing room within the shop. Leia peers over the wooden, swinging divider door at me, then laughs, before chatting with the tailor again. A few minutes later, he tosses my clothes over the divider and tells me to come out.

This old man has a complete change of character. He’s nerding out, big time, over my plaid checkered dress shirt. “The sew quality is incredible!” “How did they get the patterns so even?” “What master of the craft could pull this off?”

It was probably thrown together by some underpaid guy in Vietnam cranking hundreds of them out a day. I don’t have the heart to tell him this. He also obsesses over my badge, taking a molded impression of it to bring to his local jewelryman. I also take this opportunity to inquire about shoes; he happens to know a cobbler, and I give him the specifications we need. Solid work boots with a steel toe reinforcement, black in color with shiny leather. Also, a lighter, quieter shoe for the surveillance dark elves. All the recruits will have to visit him to get their measurements done, though there are typical size ranges for Orcs, Dwarves and Humans.

Leia hands him a special writ from the College as payment, imbued with the Royal Seal with fancy golden imbuement across the whole body of the letter. It is, in effect, a blank check. The old man audibly gasps when he sees it. He vigorously shakes our hands and out the door we go. Still raining, even harder than before.

Through the blowing wind, Leia shouts at me that the College has arranged more permanent housing for me, I’m to take a look at a couple potential homes. Fine with me, but could we have picked a better day?

After what feels like miles of walking, we’ve ended up somewhat close to the station. The first home comes into view. It’s a townhouse style, run down, brick construction with a tiled roof. It’s just one of many rows of these multi-story city homes. We poke our head in to take a look.

It’s awful. Complete tear down. There’s metal bars on the windows, it has a massive water leak, and the interior is trashed. Water is pouring down the staircase. Given that it’s not my money paying for this, my gut tells me to move on.

We trod our way through the rain to find a set of concrete walls, this time on the side closer to the city center. It has an entrance gate. As it swings open, I’m shocked by the sight of an old school Japanese manor home, a farm house. Rather old, with that elegant tile roofing, a 360 degree covered deck surrounds it with a covered walkway leading to a gazebo. It’s like a samurai’s castle. My excitement picks up tremendously.

We spend the next hour poring over all the details. Long, skinny hallways surrounding the house, with rice-paper doors and tatami mats for flooring. It’s run down, but not at all like the dump from earlier. This is the one. I’m sold. Some minor renovations and it’ll be perfect. The hand-hewn wood framing is so cool. Some real craftsmanship went into this place; but who built it? How did it end up here?

I give Leia the O.K. She calls a carriage for us, it’s time to head back to the College. A short, bumpy ride and we’re faced with that god-awful concrete flying elevator again. I’m going to complain about this formally at some point.

As we step off the elevator, with 40 mile-per-hour winds buffetting us, the rain intercepted by her umbrella barrier, we’re met with a team of three elven scientists. They hurriedly cordon us off in a room and start interrogating me about weapons.

I realize I’ve had my Glock 17 on my hip this entire time; they’ve never seen one before. The only firearms they’re familiar with are revolvers, and I’ve been strolling around the College of Magic with this thing on my hip, despite my antique Chief’s Special getting eaten by the barrier. I took this opportunity to try and track down my lost antique.

The elves are shocked that I’d be interested in it. With a flash of light, the old Chief’s Special appears on the table before me. As they explain, the crudeness of this weapon baffles them, and because they have no bullets, they can’t understand how to get it to work. They synthesize a few bullets for me to test it.

Their bullets are all wrong. It’s a solid object. There’s no separate case or powder. They seem to think the gun propels the entire bullet, case and all. For eggheads, this is pretty sad.

I decide to unholster my Glock and show them how it’s supposed to be. Immediately, they realize I’ve been carrying a firearm around – it freaks them out, big time. They couldn’t tell this ugly, square-shaped thing hanging off my hip was a weapon. How sheltered are these people?

I rack the slide and catch the round in the chamber as it falls out.

“THIS is a bullet. Analyze it carefully. It’s a separate projectile, cased within a jacket, with blasting powder behind it.”

They pull out some kind of strange wand with a loop on the end and pore over this bullet, murmuring to themselves. Leia is nonplussed. These guys must be real geeks. I watch as the bullet is carefully separated into its component parts, the projectile, the powder, and the case floating midair, surrounded by magical analysis screens.

They beg me to hand them my Glock. Nope! Not happening. You people already took one pistol from me, no way. They’re visibly disappointed.

Still, they put their heads together and manage to synthesize a proper bullet, at least it looks like the real thing. We’re brought to a test chamber to try it out. I decide to ask them how many grains of gunpowder they put into the bullet.

They stare back at me with a totally blank expression. “Grains” means nothing to them. Wonderful.

I decide to load the Chief’s Special up with their cursed hand-load anyway. With an artificial target set up, I take aim and pull the trigger.

The revolver explodes in my hand. A massive, sparking, rending metal flash burns my eyes. I’m immediately overwhelmed with searing pain. My hand is torn to shreds. It wasn’t a bullet, it was a BOMB.

Crying out in agony, and cursing these god damned elves for their stupidity, I’m stuck on the floor as Leia hurriedly heals my hand while glaring daggers at these eggheaded morons. The next half hour is a very angry lesson for them on gunpowder, grains, metal ductile strength and muzzle velocity. On a positive note, the Chief’s Special I fired was a faithful recreation of the original, and they can make as many of them as needed, since it was scanned by the entry barrier. No history was harmed here.

For hours, we butted heads over what was needed to get the results I was looking for. I need a bullet that travels at least 1,000 feet per second, with complete reliability and with acceptable accuracy. 15 revisions go by with 15 completely different results. I’m not sure what’s wrong with these morons, but Chinese villagers could figure out gunpowder a thousand years ago, why is this so difficult for them?

Finally, one of them has a bright idea. “What if we just propel the bullet with magic?” No, idiot, it won’t work because the people we’re trying to shoot can defeat magic. Try again.

A thoroughly frustrating day ends with a written list of things for these scientists to ponder over. Leia and I look like salarymen. Empty, worn out shells. A short nap in the carriage, a dinner in bed, and lots of alcohol punctuate my night. My hand still itches from earlier.