The Zeltivan Monument Series Part 2: The Recruitment (Solo)

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on July 21st, 2012, 4:52 pm

Unable to narrow down WHY that one gear came loose, she ran the same test again and again over the course of several days. In between, she took her sketches to school, and spent some time in the library, comparing them to diagrams in books on gadgeteering. She took notes about possible problems, and each night went back to test the clock again.

After several tests, she started noticing a pattern. At first the slippage seemed random, taking anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to happen each time. But she found it never took more than exactly one hour, often less. When she realized this, it was easy to narrow down the pattern: the gear was slipping every time the minute hand came around to the seven.

From there, tracing the problem backwards was a simple task. The main gear that spun the minute hand, when she remeasured it with a pair of callipers down to the millimeter, wasn't perfectly symmetrical. Each time it came around to that point, a minute excess in its width pushed the other gear just a bit too far, and it slipped. Likely the minor flaw had been irrelevant for years, as the gear got slowly pushed out of alignment each hour, bit by bit, until the shift was enough to cause a slip. It was such a minor difference that the gradual pushing had been like water wearing down stone, taking years before the difference was noticeable.

The edges of the minute gear had to be filed down until they were perfectly symmetrical, a task performed under close scrutiny with a gadgeteering magnifying lens not unlike a jeweler's eye piece. The gear that had been slipping needed similar adjustments to ensure it would fit into the minute gear without further problems. Then every other piece needed to be adjusted here and there to account for a millimeter's difference, otherwise a few years down the line the same problem would spring up again.

All told, since she couldn't devote her full time to it, the adjustments and testing took several weeks before she was satisfied. But eventually it was done, and the heirloom returned to Wil, who was quite grateful and invited her to dinner at his mom's house for thanks.

"No dinner, mate," she told him as he looked over the clock, no doubt unable to tell what she had even done to make it work again. "Jus' dun ferget, ya owes me a stone 'aulin'."

by **Minerva Agatha Zipporah** on July 21st, 2012, 5:17 pm

From there, she did several more favors that were simpler, albeit annoying. One man requested several sessions of babysitting, which ended up being spread out throughout the season whenever he and his wife wanted a night off. Thankfully neither of his two kids were still in diapers, though they were still messy enough to strongly reaffirm Tock's vow never to have children of the flesh and blood variety. They were also little brats, and Tock ended up having to teach Handy how to give a spanking. After having been abused by her own Da, she would never strike a child, but an occasional swat across the bottom seemed both necessary and justified.

Another man, an older one with a teenager daughter, recruited her to tutor his kid in philosophy. Not exactly one of Tock's strong suites, but the subject had come up often enough in her Animation studies that she was able to give the girl some guidance... though in typical teenage fashion she turned out to be more focused on boys, a subject Tock did NOT have much experience in.

It turned out to be therapeutic, however, to be able to talk to the girl about Satevis, and how he left. She still didn't understand why it had ended, but talking about it helped her feel better. In the end she ended up suggesting that the girl aggressively shag any boy she wanted to keep around, since Tock was convinced that if she'd done a better job luring Satevis into her bed, he'd still be around.

Maybe she needed to just build a boyfriend.

Along with several more open-ended promises for favors (some of which she was sure to regret not requiring specifics for in advance), she ended up with a decent number of 'volunteers' to help her with her project. Now it was just a matter of locating the stone.

by **Echelon** on July 25th, 2012, 6:19 pm

Adventurer's Loot

A Gift
Experience is its own reward.

Minni's Loot :

(This will do quite nicely. I enjoyed the creativity you put into this leg of the adventure, I must admit I was impressed. The project is putting along quite gracefully. Keep 'er up!) - if you have ANY questions or concerns about this grading, please PM me.