Chapter 24: Build Day (Part 2)

“Hmm-hm-hm…!” Mary hummed as she packed her bag. She was all smiles today, and she had been for the last week.

“Hey, Mary-“

“Yes, Sam?!” Mary whirled around. There were stars sparkling in her eyes, and she glowed with the aura of a girl with a boyfriend. Her first date with Daniel, according to her, had been “disastrous” but in spite of that, they’d agreed to keep seeing each other. Now it was a week later, the date of Carly’s proposed build day, and she was still sunny.

“…Do you really need to pack that much? We’re not sleeping over or anything.”

Mary sighed. “Oh, Sam, you just don’t understand. A girl’s gotta look her best when she has a boyfriend, you know? What if I spill mustard on my blouse? I need a change of clothes. Just in case.”

She walked over and smiled patronizingly at her roommate. “You’ll get it someday, when you have a boyfriend of your own.”

Sam’s eye twitched. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

“But Sam! There are a lot of great guys in the club, right? I mean, probably anyway. We could go on double dates!”

“Yeah, soooo not interested.”

“Really? But Cain seems to like you, though?”

Sam’s whole body flinched. “…What?”

Mary gulped, wondering if she’d said the wrong thing. “W-Well, he’s always teasing you, right? What’s that old saying? Um… guys always tease the girls they like?”

“…”

Without saying a word, Sam slowly approached Mary, looming over her. She stared intensely down at the shivering girl and let her eyes do the talking. Mary was shaking like a leaf, her throat closing up on her.

“…Or, um… maybe not?” She squeaked out.

“…There’s a good girl.” Sam smiled, patting her on the head. She left the room, and Mary finally regained the ability to breathe.

I-I almost died… She clutched her chest, feeling her heart beating like a drum. Then she gasped.

“H-Hey! Sam! Wait for me!”

…

Carly stayed in off-campus housing, so her apartment was less than a block away from the university. The girls could even use their ID cards to get into the building! The door to her room was already open when they got there.

“Whoa. This is a single?” This was bigger than Sam’s whole apartment back home. There were two large living rooms connected by an arch, a door to what looked like a bedroom, and even a kitchen attachment.

“Welcome friends! Come on in!” Carly paraded her guests around the place, and Sam realized she was probably underestimating the spaciousness of the apartment. The place was a complete mess, after all, which made it feel more cramped than it really was. Carly had books and clothes strewn all over the place, shopping bags that she hadn’t gotten around to throwing out along with empty boxes from online stores. Sam noted her scythe leaning against a wall, surrounded by a bunch of other stuff that looked, if she had to guess, like props for a theater.

“Ah, don’t mind the mess, it always gets like this when opening night’s coming up!” Carly was trying to play it off, but Mary and Sam both suspected this was the normal state of her living situation.

They weren’t the first ones here. Josh, Andy, and Jamie were all gathered on Carly’s couch, which to Sam just looked uncomfortable. Shannon was sitting in an armchair, on her phone.

“When’s Daniel gonna get here?” Mary asked hopefully. Carly gave her a strange look.

“Daniel? He’s not coming, I thought? He didn’t ever give a deposit, so I guess he decided to stick with a club sword? No, we’re just waiting on Nick, Cain, and Willis to pick up all the stuff from Nick’s place.”

Mary’s jaw dropped. Sam resisted the urge to laugh.

A few minutes later, voices in the hallway heralded the arrival of the rest of the crew, and the three boys entered. They were carrying boxes filled with sheets of green foam, duct tape, and what Sam had to guess were… pool noodles? They were round and made of dark foam.

Then there was Nick, who was carrying in a veritable mountain of PVC piping and wood dowels tucked under his arm. He was carrying a box of his own.

Mary and Shannon quickly gathered closer to Nick as he set down all the materials. Sam watched out of the corner of her eye.

“Okay, so who’s going to be building a weapon for their first time today?” Nick asked. Mary and Shannon raised their hands, and so did Willis after setting his box down. Sam did as well, and so did Jamie.

“Okay, so Mary and Jamie are making spears, and then Sam, Willis, and Shannon are all making swords, right? Can you five come over here, please? I’m going to make one of each to walk you through the process.”

Sam joined the others. As she did, she noticed that Nick was still handing stuff out as he separated the wood from the PVC. Andy, who didn’t need any lessons, presumably, got a few pieces, while Carly grabbed a whole mess of lengths and angle pieces.

“Nick, I’m heading out to the balcony to cut all this down to size, you good in here?” She asked, digging into his box. To Sam’s shock, she withdrew a hand saw and a miter box. Nick gave her a thumbs’ up. Then her turned back to the five of them.

“Okay, let’s start with a sword, since that one’s a little easier.” There were two lengths of PVC in front of him, one longer than the other. He grabbed the shorter one first.

“For this, you’re going to need to start with a piece of PVC, or wood, approximately 37’’ (inches) long. I cut these all back home, but if you’re doing it yourself, you’ll need to shave a few inches off. That’s going to be your core. Then the next important part is to get your foam.”

He reached into one of the boxes and took out one of the really long foam tubes.

“You want to measure out to approximately 30’’ of foam,” he explained, taking some measuring tape. “Then you make a mark.” While holding the tape in place, he drew a line with a sharpie. Then, using a box cutter, he cut off the end.

He handed the tube to Sam to see. She noticed it was split down the middle on one part, letting her unfold it. She handed it back to him. He then cut about two inches off the end, leaving him with 28’’ and 2’’ pieces.

“This is soft core foam pipe insulation. You can get it at the hardware store. We use it for the main base. And also for the edge.” He took out a longer piece. “For the edge, it works best if it’s a single unbroken strip. So we want to measure out to 65’’, and cut it.” After shaving off the end, he looked up at them and grinned.

“Next we have the fun part.”

He took the box cutter and slipped it through the gap in the tube. Then he dug it into the foam and began to cut down. Using the sides of the tube to hold the knife in place, he managed to cut the insulation in half, forming two 65’’ lengths that were a half-circle.

“We’ll use each of these to make a blade for a sword,” he explained, handing one to Sam and the other to Shannon. He repeated the process once more, giving one to Willis and keeping one for himself. About a minute later Sam was also handed a 28’’ tube as well, and then a dinky little 2’’ piece. Her hands were quickly becoming full.

Now that Nick had all the pieces for the sword, he showed how to assemble it.

“First step, you’re going to take your core, and measure out 12’’ from one end.” He held his measuring tape against the edge of the PVC, measuring about a foot away and marking that space with a line of sharpie. “Then you make another mark about an inch away from the end, here.” He made a second mark. “This leaves approximately 11’’ for the handle, see? And then we’ll start wrapping it with tape.”

He took out a big, fat roll of gray duct tape, and began to roll the tape over the PVC so that it lined up with the mark he made. Once he fully wrapped it around the PVC, he flipped the tape with his wrist and began to wrap it backwards, until he had a loop of tape around the PVC with the sticky side facing out. He did this process again, on the end of the PVC pipe, and for a third time on the other mark.

“You should have about three taped parts like this, see?” He presented the sword for everyone to take a closer look. “This is how we’re going to attach the foam to the core.”

With that done, he took the 28’’ piece and spread it open, nestling the longer length of PVC inside it. He pressed down on the sides of the tube so that the tape within stuck to each part.

“…And that’s the main body.” He pulled on it to show the tape was holding fast.

“There’s some foam coming off the end,” Sam noted.

“Yeah, we want there to be a little give at the end, just for some extra cushioning,” he explained. “Now that he have that done, we need to make sure it sticks. So what we do is we take our tape again, and we wrap it along the long end, so it covers that open gap, see?” Cutting off a strip of tape, he laid it against the deep groove in the foam, smoothing out the rough parts so that it was perfectly connected, and curled it over the end of the foam as well, making it impossible to see any PVC inside.

He did the same thing on the other end with the small 2’’ piece, making a pommel. It was a much quicker process.

“Now as you’ll notice, this sword still isn’t safe to use,” Nick said. He whacked it lightly on his arm. “We need to add the cutting edge.”

“That’s the long piece, right?” Mary asked.

“Exactly! So what we do is we take one end, and we put it on the bottom like this and tape it down,” he said, taking the long half-moon strip and resting it flat against the round core, just above the handle. He used two pieces of tape to tape the foam pieces together, one on each side of the “blade”. Then he folded it over the top, so it rested perfectly in place on the other side. It was looking a lot more like a boffer weapon now.

“Once you’ve taped all those pieces in place, you’ve got the bare-bones of a sword,” Nick said, waving it a little. “You want to make sure you leave a decent amount of space between the two layers of foam, otherwise you might hurt someone.”

“What’s that big gap for, though?” Sam asked. The process had left a big loop of space between the two foam pieces at the top.

“That’s where we switch to our other foam. You want to use green camping foam for this, since it’s a lot softer.” Nick grabbed one of the large chunks of green foam, and used his box cutter to cut a chunk of it out. “You want it to be just big enough to fit inside the gap,” he said, nestling it in there. “Now it’s safe to stab someone with it.”

After he finished explaining how to build the sword, he moved onto the decorations. There were a lot of colors of tape to choose from, and he walked them through how to lay the tape on the sword to get it just right.

“You want to make sure the strips are going parallel to the blade. Horizontal strips will compress the air and make the weapon less safe. Then once you have your base color in place, you can add the color for your blade. And then use some electrical tape for the handle, and it’s done!”

The whole process had taken about twenty minutes, and he had a new boffer sword. Sam was amazed.

“That’s so cool!” Mary gushed. “Now spears, do spears next!”

As Nick showed Jamie and Mary how to make spears, Sam took her things and got started on making her own sword. She’d splurged and asked for a wood core instead of PVC, and she was surprised by how light it was. Taking her time to carefully assemble her sword, she had the chance to watch what the others were doing.

Josh was… well, he wasn’t building anything, she didn’t even know why he was here. He just listened as Andy explained what she was making. And from what Sam could see, it was a scythe.

“So, like, you know how Carly’s scythe last week was horribly weighted? I thought it would be interesting to make one a little smaller, and more like a spear, see?” She said, indicating to the curved segment of PVC. “That way, you can still get people from behind.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” Josh nodded in agreement.

“It’s creepy, you mean,” Jamie huffed, walking over to the couch with her stuff. She then put on a big puppy dog expression. “Josh? Could you please help me with my spear? You’re really good at making them, after all!”

Andy looked like she was going to throw up. Sam just rolled her eyes.

“Cain, what are you making?” Shannon asked. In spite of herself, Sam couldn’t help but glance his way when she said that, and then she did a double-take. Cain was…

He was playing with balloons. What the hell?

Cain smiled, and then he met Sam’s eye. Then his smile turned into a smirk. She scowled back at him.

“I’m making more knives,” he explained. “You can never have enough, after all!”

He was taking the foam ends that Nick had cut away for his measurements, and tearing them up into even smaller chunks. Then he shoved those bits and pieces into the end of a balloon, stuffing it full with foam. He twisted it around and rearranged the insides until it was long and flat, and then began to wrap it with tape. Soon he had a bizarre throwing knife.

“It’s important to get the weight right,” he explained to Shannon. “Otherwise it doesn’t throw very well. But if you get it balanced properly…”

His eyes met Sam’s, and she realized a second too late what was about to happen. The knife hit her in the chest.

“Hey!”

“Sorry!” He laughed. “Couldn’t resist.”

“Cain, cut it out,” Carly chided him. She’d come back inside and was working on… something.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Nick asked. He’d finished with his directions and was working on making more swords, but now he was curious. “Are those, like… boffer pogo sticks?”

Carly rolled her eyes. “No, dummy. They’re… a surprise. You’ll see next week.”

Sam grimaced. Her last “surprise” had been that scythe, and well… it had certainly been surprising, all right.

A few minutes later, Sam finished her sword. She just needed to add the tape. She went over to the assortment of tape to choose from, grabbing the same shade of red as her last sword, something that didn’t go unnoticed by Carly.

“Oooh, what’s this? You’re making Golden Rose again?” She giggled.

Sam blushed. “N-No, it’s nothing,” she grumbled.

“I know, call it Golden Rose 2, 2 Golden 2 Rose!”

She rolled her eyes and kept looking. But she realized that something was wrong.

“Hey, wait, there’s no gold tape here!” She scowled.

“Oh, yeah, we ran out of that color a while ago,” Nick said. He gave her an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. I asked everyone what colors they wanted last night, I wish you’d said something. I can still run out if you need-“

“No, it’s fine, don’t worry about it,” she muttered, shaking her head. So much for that plan… But then, did she really just want to make Golden Rose again? She felt… well, it felt wrong. Like she really was replacing her old sword. Maybe she should change up the color scheme a little.

“Here, have these back,” Andy said, walking over the tape box now that she was done making her scythe. She dropped down two rolls. The first one was black, which they had a lot of, but the second color…

Sam glanced at Andy’s scythe. Like the goth she was, she’d made the main body pitch black, and was currently wrapping the handle with black electrical tape. But the cutting edge was a beautiful red, a darker shade than the one Sam had, almost the color of blood.

A wicked smile crossed Sam’s lips, and she quickly replaced her red tape for the new hotness.

…

Everyone had just about finished up with what they were building. Shannon was showing off the little strip of beaded leather she’d made for the pommel of her purple and bronze sword, while Willis showed her the lightning bolts he’d made of tape strips for his red and blue sword.

“Sam! Sam, what do you think of- whoa.”

Mary had been excited to show Sam what she’d done. She’d created a spear that was almost perfectly white, with a deep blue for the cutting edge. It was exactly like Daniel’s sword, down to the “X” design on the blades. She’d even gotten a wood core so it was easier to carry. But as impressive as hers was, Sam’s…

It was just a normal sword, really. She hadn’t done anything to embellish it. But the maroon color of the base blended perfectly with the black of the cutting edge and the handle, making something sleek and classy. Andy nodded in approval when she saw it.

“What’s THAT? It’s like… dark cherry soda or something!” Carly said, her eyes wide with awe.

“My new sword,” Sam said, standing up. She flicked her wrist. It was as light and well-balanced as Golden Rose, but it fit just a little bit better in her palm.

“I think I’m going to call it… Black Rose.”