[OP-F1] Smithy Shenanigans (Complete)

[Tyger 0]

Tyger held the blindfolded Baldur as they walked up to her shop. She didn't want him to see her fantastic sign she'd made just yet, nor the forge she'd been telling him about for the past few days. He didn't seem mad that she'd outleveled him when she was going around being Tyger, and was actually willing to help her gain the materials needed for the shop. But now... now it was time to show him!

 

"I hope you're ready!"

 

She practically purred as she untied the blindfold as the 'Catfish Forge' stood in front of them. Everytime she thought of the name, it made her giggle.

 

"So, yeah. You know how I always go with the Tiger motif? Well, every time I asked you in real life what you were, you always said Magikarp. So, i'm a cat, you're a fish... Catfish forge!"

 

Her grin was wide. 

 

"I wanted to incorporate you in this, too. We can make weapons and armor for players here in the first floor, and help them get stronger instead of being afraid and stuff."

 

All she wanted to do was help people, and not be useless. With Baldur at her side, they'd be able to travel the different areas, make friends (like Lessa) along the way, and even get a cool few things too. As long as they played smart, and stuck together, it would all work out in the end, right?

 

"Well? What do you think?"

[Baldur 0]

Baldur's eyes opened wide in surprise at her reveal of the forge she had been working so hard for. It was amazing to him that she had been able to do so much in such a short time to put this together.

 

"Wow! That's amazing!"

 

He looked around the shop, and the sign caught his eye, as well as her explanation of the name.

 

"I... I love it! That's... that's really the most perfect name I think you could have come up with."

 

He reached over and put his arms around her, pulling her close to him. "I'm so proud of you." After he held her for a long moment, he let her go so that they could take a better look around.

 

"A blacksmith, eh? Does that mean you can make me some armor so I can get out of these rags?" He grinned broadly at her.

 

"And I can even go farm materials for you while you're smithing!" He had a big grin on his face, the pride beaming from his eyes and radiating from him.

[Tyger 0]

Tyger was thankful Baldur was excited about this. He was supportive in the real world, but translating over to the forge was just fantastic. The way his eyes had beamed when he first saw it almost made her heart melt.

"I'm so glad you like it! I thought it was perfect too."

To be fair, it would always be perfect to her. It was hers, afterall. She opened the door so they could get a better look inside, but was interrupted with a hug. Not that she minded. Her head fit perfectly against his chest and shoulder, which made it that much better. When he let go, Baldur asked about armor. Tyger opened the door and smirked.

"I dunno... that'd be a lot of work for free..."

She teased, pushing in the chair she'd been using the night before to come up with her order form. If Baldur was willing to go out for mats, who was she to stop him? She was in compete support with this plan.

"That'd be awesome! We will have a ridiculous amount of weapons and armor leaving here soon. The quicker I level up, the better items I'll make."

She knew Baldur would want armor, and she'd definitely protect her own as well.

"You're gonna be bad for business, I can tell."

She gave Baldur a wink. One of her favorite quotes from one of her favorite real world movies.

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled when he recognized her quote. He bumped her with his shoulders and countered with another.

 

"We could be heroes!"

 

He put his arm back around her as she led him into the shop.

 

"I can tell this is something that's going to be great! You're one of those people that finds something they want to excel at, and then do it!" His grin split his face from ear to ear.

 

"Whatever I can do to help you, just let me know!"

 

He let her lead him through her shop, his eyes absorbing everything with pride.

[Tyger 0]

"Easy now!"

 

Tyger warned, winking.

 

"We could quote the whole movie at this rate."

 

She did miss movies, and snuggling on the couch watching them. She missed holding her sugar glider while he slept, too. She did her best to toss those memories from her mind, since they were stuck here. Instead, she pushed her thoughts towards Baldur's statement. 

 

"Mat's would be good. Maybe let me try armor on you, just to make sure it fights right when I make it. That is, after I make you some."

 

Her cheeks gained a little color when he complimented her, and she returned by kissing his cheek. 

 

"I try. We can help a lot of people with this forge."

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled broadly at her and then gave her a playful hipcheck.

 

"Well! Show me around! Tell me your plans! I want to witness your vision."

 

He put his arm around her but let her steer him through her shop.

 

"Is your trademark gonna be that all your armor is tiger print? Cause I love you, but I don't do tiger stripes." He smiled at her playfully.

[Tyger 0]

Tyger caught herself from the hipcheck, and smirked at her companion. The shop was finally open, so there was no reason not to show him around! 

 

"My vision? Hmmm. I didn't really have much of a vision when I thought this up. Just that I wanted to help some of the players here on the first floor, and get some experience in the meantime. Maybe then we can join the front lines!"

 

Helping get them out of this game would be the best thing, honestly. Her thoughts were interrupted with the idea of tiger striped armor. She giggled, and narrowed her eyes playfully.

 

"Easy now, or i'm going to melt down the breastplate i'm making you to make something with tiger stripes in the metal, that way you'd never get them out, even if you tried to wash it."

 

Her teasing was light as she grabbed his hand and led him to the front desk. 

 

"Front desk, yada yada."

 

She hopped over the desk to get to the forge door. 

 

"Wanna see the forge?"

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smirked at her joke about the tiger stripes in his armor, but he wouldn't put it past her.

 

"Maybe you could etch a magikarp somewhere on all of your armor as your mark?" He rubbed his chin in thought, imagining some burly two-handed axe wielding machismo wearing armor with a little Magikarp on the back of a shoulder plate.

 

"That, or one of those cute little tiger faces you used to always draw on restaurant receipts." He smiled at the memory.

 

His blue eyes took in everything about the shop, committing it memory. Many of the shops started out cookie cutter, and so it was up to the player to make it stand out on their own. The Town of Beginnings was huge, and if you didn't make yours unique, it was just one of any other hundreds of shops.

 

"The forge? Heck yea!"

[Tyger 0]

"No Magikarps, either, sir, this is a professional establishment."

 

She smirked, imagining something similar to Baldur's scenario in his head. The little tiger faces she drew too, those were an idea. 

 

"Maybe i'll put it on my sign, but put a little fish in the tiger's mouth. That'd be cute." 

 

She mused, as she opened the door to the forge. Baldur seemed excited about it, and it was where all the magic happened, afterall. The forge sat in the middle, and her materials she'd gathered so far sat in a pile to the right. 

 

"Welcome to the forge!"

 

A few miscellaneous pieces sat in the corner. 

 

"I'm waiting to make sure the metal is solid. I had an issue with brittle gauntlets the other day. Glad I wasn't wearing them in battle!"

[Baldur 0]

Baldur walks over to the pile of materials and taps his menu a few times pulling up his inventory. Selecting his materials, he pulled them out and put them down on in the corner with the others she had arranged there.

 

"Here you go! My contribution to your success." He smiled at her, proud of her and himself as 7 new materials lay in a pile.

 

"Hopefully they're all something you can use."

 

He turned back to her and the forge and walked closer to inspect it. He tried tapping the forge, but apparently since he wasn't the owner, he couldn't pull up the menu for it.

 

"What is crafting like in this game? Is it pretty easy?"

[Tyger 0]

(Tyger received 7 mats!)

 

Baldur's added mats brought her total up to a comfortable amount. 

 

"Thanks, Jason! Uh, I mean, Baldur."

 

She hugged him tight, and nodded against his chest. 

 

"Yeah, I should be able to put these to good use. The first thing i'll make is a breastplate for you, I promise!"

 

Her fingers made a 'cross my heart' sign over her chest as Baldur walked to the forge. Tyger chuckled and lit it up for him, so he could see just how hot it got in here.

 

"Kinda, but not really. Since i'm a beginner, I can only try 2 times a day until I level up. The higher your level, the more you can craft a day. And, the higher your level, the better chance you get at making perfect items. We need to get as many of those as possible."

[Baldur 0]

Baldur watched her start the forge up and nodded his head in thought.

 

"Are perfect items that much better than what we have?"

 

He pulled up the menu again and examined the drops they had received so far. The status for the items he currently had equipped was "uncommon." He supposed in typical MMO speak this would be a green quality item, these 'rares' he had heard about were probably blue, and then 'perfect' quality would be a purple. If she could craft purples for them, that would be huge!

 

"What can I do to help, other than gather you more mats?"

 

He held his hands out to the forge, impressed that there was a sensation of heat coming off of the forge. This game never seemed to stop impressing him.

[Tyger 0]

"Perfect items have +3 modifications. So, like, a perfect sword could do 3 damage, or 2 damage and 1 bleed, or whatever else. They're super useful."

 

Baldur seemed to understand, so she didn't keep going into the skills and enhancements. He already had a cape for accuracy, so he knew how that worked too. 

 

"I can't really think of anything right now, aside from just letting me craft daily. The more I craft, even if each attempt fails, I still get XP from it. So, It's just a daily grind for now. Sometime's i'll get lucky. I'm hoping that I can make a few items and sell them to the players that are new, or too scared to go out without good weapons. But, other than mats, I can't think of anything." 

 

She turned the forge off, although she liked the idea of dousing it with water just to see all the steam from the heat. Maybe it'd be something she'd do after she got back to the real world. Pay someone to let her douse their forge with water when they were finished. Would that break a forge? Video games and real life usually only held bits and pieces of truth. 

 

"I have the ability to do perfect items, it's just a one out of like, 12 chance. So, we'll see. As I level, the odds grow in our favor. So, we just need to level ourselves and me level my blacksmithing."

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled proudly at Tyger, his blue eyes dancing in the fire's light until she shut down the forge. She seemed to be finding her stride. She stood straighter, she walked with more purpose Now he needed to find his.

 

"Well then, I'll see about farming some mats. I think I could do wolves pretty safely now."

 

He smiled at her and took one more look around the forge.

 

"This is really impressive. I can't wait to see what you can make."

[Tyger 0]

Tyger nodded. 

 

"Yeah, mats, for one. And levels on us, but that'll come with the mat hunting too. The only other thing is time."

 

Baldur's smile was contagious, it was instantly mirrored on her face. 

 

"I've already made a few items, like I said, and I can only get better with time."

 

She cut the light off in the forge as she ushered Baldur out, back into the store.

 

"There's an upstairs!"

 

Leading Baldur to the edge of the desk, Tyger jumped over it and waited by the stairs to show Baldur the upstairs room.

[Baldur 0]

Baldur watched Tyger hop the desk with a rueful smile as he merely took the long way around it. He hadn't noticed the stair case before.

 

"It has an upstairs before?" It made sense from a design point of view. Most medieval shops were both the shop and the home for the people within. He supposed he also didn't realize it was a two story building when he came in. Perhaps he wasn't quite as observant as he had thought.

 

"This is so cool."

 

He met Tyger at the stairs and gestured at her to walk up in front of him with a playful smile on his face.

[Tyger 0]

"Yeah, I figured we could turn upstairs into somewhere we could sleep, that way we're not burning Col on Inns, ya know?"

 

She grinned, hopping onto the staircase with an excited bounce. Baldur gestured for her to go first (oink oink) but she did either way, holding the hand rail to make sure she didn't fall. The room upstairs wasn't fancy, and wouldn't be until she could expand her profession and make a bit more Col out of it. 

 

"We can decorate it however you want. I wasn't sure, so there's just sleeping stuff." 

 

Tyger warned him when they got to the top of the stairs. She missed their home, but they could make this their home for now. It just needed a little... personalization. A bit more of a home touch, instead of an empty room.Her foot pushed the door open and she walked in. As mentioned, it wasn't very big, but was large enough for them to lay their equipment out, and there was a bed and a chair. The walls were bare, and that was about it. 

 

"I wanna make it a home. It's too impersonal."

[Baldur 0]

Baldur smiled at the simple room above when she mentioned she wanted to make it a home. With just the bed and chair, it looked a bit barren, but they were just starting out. It was already nicer than most of the places he had lived. He took her hand and squeezed it firmly.

 

"It'll be our home. I love it, babe."

 

His grin broadened out as he turned his eyes towards her.

 

"I know the situation is trough, but together we can get through this. This... this is our home now."

 

He swallowed hard. He must have swallowed a bug or something. Could you do that in a game?

[Tyger 0]

It'll be our home. I love it, babe.

 

Baldur sure knew what to say to make someone feel better. 

 

"I figured if we found something cool while we were out exploring we could put it on the self up here or something, or next to the bed, or in the chair."

 

She had a lot of ideas, but no idea how to really execute them. How could you plan for something you have no idea is coming?

 

Yeah. It'll be our home."

 

Tyger squeezed his hand back, and then cocked an eyebrow. 

 

"Assuming I don't accidentally burn it down, and the neighboring stores in a forge accident."

 

They'd make the best of what they had. Together. 

 

"Damn. All this sweet talk, i'm getting cavities."

 

She liked it though, she couldn't lie about that.

[Baldur 0]

Baldur gave her a playful look, "I know if this were the real world we might have to worry about that, but since this is a game and we're in the Town of Beginnings, I don't think anything like that could happen since all kinds of PvP interactions are prohibited."

 

He cocked his head and made that little confused face he did, "Although, you probably still want to wear some protective clothing, just in case..."

 

Baldur's smile returned in a flash and he pulled her close, just taking a moment to hold her in their new home as he took it all in.

 

"You know... I'm kinda tired... maybe we could try out our new bed?"

 

There was a twinkle in his eye when he looked down at her.