The hiss of steam and the hum of machines surrounded me, and I felt more at home at my table than anywhere I'd lived in the last ten odd years. Numerous gubbinz covered my table, with long coils of silver wire on either side of me. I held a spool of silver wire, which I carefully wrapped around the long titanium barrel of my future gauss rifle. Every few inches, a tiny gap was left to separate distinct coil sections, my rubber-replacement material put between each coil. It was slow but vital work, as any small mistakes could reduce the effectiveness of the weapon, and the human bits were firmly in charge, thanks in part to the sheer boredom of the activity, as well as having made very Orky plans in the near future, involving Squigs, useless Orks, and plenty of screaming. Good stuff.

The barrel was longer than my arm, and was one of eight that I’d made for my inventions. I was so excited to have solved the energy problem, I was practically humming with delight. The answer had been a simple one, and was completely Orky in nature. My problem had been a fluctuation of energy from the power generator, which would overload the electronics. If there's too much power for the gun, why not make more guns? Ingenious. Electricity flows through the least amount of resistance, and with a bit of transistor work, I had found a neat method to redirect energy once the maximum energy for the first was reached. In addition, each barrel would not fire until enough energy had been stored in the ancillary batteries next to each coil section, which meant that the secondary barrels wouldn’t just toss slugs out the end with a small amount of force, wasting precious power. Of course, this would mean varying rates of fire, but that wasn’t a real issue for me. More Dakka was more Dakka, after all.

Once the entire barrel had been properly coiled, I went about tying the wire ends to my new type of battery, whose capacity and discharge rate I’d managed to improve by a fair margin while I waited for enough silver to be found, purified and turned into wires. The metal separator was proving to be a godsend, as it had allowed me to make something akin to titanium after a bit of tweaking. Don't ask how, because human me has no idea. All I know is it looks like titanium, and is just as strong as steel, but lighter. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck… you get the idea.

The batteries were quickly wired up, and the transistors were next, each placed based on a prototype on my desk. It took nearly half an hour to get the transistors just right, as my prototype wasn't as three-dimensional as the actual product. Once those were in place, I added some fans and heatsinks to keep things cool, though how effective they would be was still to be seen. Finally, all the wires were hooked up to the disabled power generator. And by disabled, I mean I'd snipped some wires. I didn't trust the ‘off’ switch any more than I trusted Grikkle with a grenade.

I was sorely tempted to immediately test the weapon, but I definitely needed to add two extra barrels to avoid risking more electric failures. The process was a bit easier, now that I had a ( probably ) working copy, and in only twenty minutes, the two barrels were wired up. Finally, it was time for the finishing touches. A temporary trigger was wired up, and more titanium plating was riveted on the exoskeleton of the gun, covering the entire weapon in a protective casing. Lastly, I called forward the paint team. Three Snotlings, the tiniest of goblins, came forward with their Squig charges, a toothpaste container looking critter filled with paints of varied colors. Normally, I would skip any artistic work, but I felt inspired to make something that stood out. To start with, I started with dark blue. Lots of dark, near black blues. The whole thing was covered in a thin layer of the paint, a deep, shiny layer that resembled obsidian with a blue tint. Next, thin gold and silver trimming was added along most of the edges. And finally, the symbol.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about what emblem I wanted to represent myself. It had to be ‘Ard, as the Orks are want to say, but I also wanted to try something out. I’d been thinking if I was the only one who’d become an Ork, and if I wasn’t, having a sign that screamed ‘Fellow Isekai Protag’ would surely catch the eye of another human. And so the question became, what symbol was familiar with large swathes of humanity, while also being a symbol of strength. The answer was pretty simple. A dragon. The dragon is a classic symbol, but not only that, it combines all of human’s primal fears and envied enemies. The snake, whose scales and head were a part of the dragon, was something all humans instinctively fear. The winged predator was also something to be feared, as well as envied, being able to swoop down on prey, while easily escaping from the many dangers that would eat us for breakfast. Third, the clawed beast, one of the biggest rivals to early man, taking the shape of cats, wolves, and even some other clawed herbivores and omnivores . And to top it all off, dragons breath fire, the most powerful and symbolic concepts to early humans. What symbol could possibly better suit my needs than the dragon? The answer, of course, was two dragons. One can never have enough dragons.

Having chosen my symbol, I had made dozens of sketches, and finally settled on a pair of dragons that circled each other, wings extended sideways, tails twined about each other, the head rearing at the other. The duality had not been lost on me, and soon I had begun envisioning the two as the twin parts of my strange new psyche. The first dragon was silver with a ruby eye, while the other was gold with an emerald eye. The eyes were actually painted glass beads, but if I got my hands on a proper gem, I’d replace them. Once the sketch was done, I cut a titanium plate in the same shape, then sketched the lines back on the plate, and painted between the lines. Indents were made for the eyes, and the glass eyes were sealed in. All in all, it wasn’t amazing, but compared to what I’d made in the past, as well as the general level of Ork artistry, it was truly an amazing creation. A copy was made soon after, and now that the gun was finished, I was ready to weld them to the side of the gun. The welding was quick and easy, with no damage, and with a bit of rewiring of the power generator, things were set.

I slapped the thick, hundred round magazine of my special ammo into the large weapon, then lugged the weapon over to the testing range. Five sets of figures, carved from tough fungus, were set at varying distances along a long, narrow strip surrounded by white and yellow paint, a symbol to warn off the smarter grots. I set the weapon on a makeshift tripod, anchored it with several latches, and aimed down the range. To say I was unprepared for the recoil is putting it mildly. The shitty tripod tipped over backwards, and the handle was smashed out of my tentative grip. Explosive sonic booms echoed through the cavern, and the weapon crashed to the ground. With a horrified cry, I swooped down on the gun, and cradled it like a babe, checking for damage. I quickly popped off both external sides of the gun, and inspected the innards for damage or misalignment. There was nothing to be seen, the titanium plating and inner skeleton had absorbed all the impact, and not a single wire was out of place. This didn’t stop me from doing a full inspection, removing pretty much every titanium plate to check the innards. Once my human anxiety was satisfied, I concluded that I had made the weapon properly, and just underestimated the recoil.

The recoil was quite the puzzler. I had no idea why there would be any kickback, as the ammunition was launched via magnetics, and from my limited knowledge, there was no force pushing backward on the gun like there is in an explosion. This showed my level of incompetence regarding the complex invention I had somehow managed to create. Newton's third law and all that physics stuff wouldn't really come to mind until a while later, and so for now it remained a mystery.

In order to counter the impressive recoil, I found some leather straps, and attached them to the frame of the gun, swinging them over my shoulder. Making sure it was firmly secured, I trudged back over to the range, and braced myself. Once again, I was underestimating the recoil. Though I didn’t get blown backward, it was all I could do to keep from losing my stance, let alone aim the thing. Despite this failure, the clump of figures I’d aimed for exploded in a hail of splinters. There was hardly a piece of mushroom wood larger than my arm anywhere near the site. At least the gun was killy enough. But how to handle the recoil…. I looked about the work station as I tried to think of a solution, when my eyes settled on my ragged, ugly suit of Mega Armor. A quick check of the Orky influence showed that it was somewhat present, thanks to the firing test, but was satisfied to mull over the future culling of the Ork Mob, allowing me unfettered control over the work I was planning. And speaking of which, it had probably more than exceeded my allotted hour before the accuracy test. Ah, screw it. I wanted to work more. Surely, the Orks could handle being unsupervised for a few extra hours. What could go wrong?

The answer? Everything.