Perry pulled out his phone and scrubbed through some of the surveillance footage as lunch wound down. Brendon was, as always, just being Brendon. He scrolled through the video on fast-forward, watching Brendon move about the city at high speeds a normal person wouldn’t even be able to process.

Nothing new.

It seems like I’m gonna have to settle in for the long haul on that quest, Perry thought. Or pay someone to tell me what the heck makes him so valuable?

Thankfully there hadn’t been any attempts to kidnap him again while Perry was gone, so hopefully the heat had died down.

So, what should I do between now and tomorrow morning, when the spell is ready to go again?

Perry could think of four avenues he could pursue to increase the odds of success with Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.

1: Divide the project into smaller pieces: Imagine the frame of the building first, then the walls connected to them, then the plumbing and electrical, etc, etc.

This would allow him to focus on a narrower selection of things and build on several easy successes, instead of building the entire thing in his imagination all at once as a pass/fail state. If the frame was a success but not the wiring, he could simply rip out the wiring and try again.

This was a simple and appealing application of real-world technique. One does not do everything all at once.

2: find a way to divert some of the effort of concentrating on the building he wanted through the magical computer magically connected to his brain. This would probably take the form of a filter that eliminated choices vastly different from the blueprint he’d fed the machine in advance.

It might not be able to tell small differences between materials and structural weaknesses, but if the building had a massive tumor growing off the side, it could quickly and easily filter that option out, lessening the load on Perry’s mental faculties.

Perry remembered how quickly thousands of options had flashed by his mind and been instantly dismissed as he waded through an ocean of possibility. A filter would definitely help.

3: Experiment with using Blueprints made by his perk as a visual aid. If there was a way to apply the Blueprint benefit to Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation, that would be a huge win. Even if he couldn’t it might help to keep his mind focused on exactly what he wanted to make.

4: Git gud.

Number four was self-explanatory. Practice, practice, practice. If stuffy old wizards could do this without a System boosting their mental faculties, then Perry could too.

Sure, Perry was trying to produce things that were significantly more complex, with moving parts and electrical work taking advantage of highly specific chemical properties rather than a beach or lake, or castle made out of stone, but still…

It should be doable.

Perry decided to pursue option one and four, because his one allowed blueprint was currently in use mass-producing his concrete acid, and reprogramming his magical computer to interface with Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation was something he should do at home, not at Grampa’s farm. Not to mention it would take days and lots of experimentation.

Another option: Use Sliding Stats to siphon Attunement into Nerve.

With higher Nerve, he could process the limitless input of the spell faster, and with lower Attunement, the spell would be less powerful, I.E. slower and providing less raw input per second. That might close out a few of the most outlandish options, but it would definitely a good way to put the brakes on the spell and allow Perry to get some practice at a more tolerable speed.

As he got better at it, he could ramp it back up.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Nothing to do until tomorrow though, Perry thought.

“So what are your plans for the evening?” Perry asked, directing his attention towards Heather and Nat.

“Probably take a shower for the next week,” Heather muttered, covered in grass stains. “I’ve got sap in my hair, and it’s not gonna come out anytime soon.”

“I could help?” Nat offered.

“Would you?” Heather asked. “It usually comes out best in the shower with a little bit my favorite shampoo, but I could use an extra pair of hands to work the comb.”

“Sure!” Nat agreed, prompting Heather to shoot Perry a victorious grin.

Ah, so that’s why she got messy. Needs an excuse to lure Nat into the bathtub.

“I’m sure I could get that pesky sap out, no problem,” Perry said, standing and grabbing the comb Heather had been struggling to pass through her hair the entire meal.

“Wai-“

The sap, dirt and stick fell out of her mane like rain as Perry brushed her brilliant red-gold hair out. He could feel her neck tense under the tips of his fingers, before finally relaxing as the brush seamlessly pulled out the knots of sap and debris, rendered non-stick by his powers.

“Thanks,” Heather said grudgingly.

“You’re welcome,” Perry said with a half facetious smile.

“Thanks Perry, I think you saved Heather a lot of pain and suffering,” Nat said.

“No prob.”

“Hey, Nat, you wanna wash my back?” Heather asked.

“Sure!”

“Ah well,” Perry muttered, shaking a bit of sap off the brush. “Worth a shot.”

“It was gonna be a pain in the ass for us,” Heather said, her voice subdued, glancing up at him as he moved to another quadrant of her hair. “So thanks.”

Badump

Perry got a quick burst of fight-or-flight, but wrestled it back down.

“It’s fine,” Perry muttered, shaking more sap off the comb.

A soft squeal from across the table drew their attention to where Nat was clasping her hands together as she watched them, seemingly about to explode with joy.

Are we the ones who got manipulated? Perry thought, exchanging a glance with Heather. She shrugged, and Perry mirrored it.

“So, what are your plans while we’re here?” Perry asked Nat as he continued to comb out the nasty sap snarls.

“I’m going camping!”

Perry paused, frowning. He glanced around the old farmhouse with the creaky ceiling, the smell of lead-based paint and wood sealant from the seventies.

“Is this not camping?” Perry asked.

“No, camping out in nature.” Natalie said.

“Like, in a tent?” Perry asked. Having grown up with a fair amount of contact with nature on the farm, Perry thought it was overrated, and he didn’t understand the people who wanted to add themselves to the food chain for fun.

“Yep! I found a great spot on a satellite image!”

Natalie pulled out a phone and showed them an image of a gently winding stream with a wide, flat, rocky bank, surrounded by dense woods.

“It’s uninhabited land surrounded on three sides by farms with autoturrets, and the fourth side faces Franklin City,” Nat said. “So it should be relatively safe.”

“Ah, that’s Bernie’s old place.” Grampa said, taking Nat’s phone and zooming out. “He got eaten by a giant spider. They found him mummified, webbed to the ceiling of his cabin. Never found the spider. It’s a good camping spot. Not much lives there anymore that’s bigger than the rabbits Nathans Pettigrew let breed wild out there as a side hustle.”

He handed Nat’s phone back.

“So what do you think? Can we go camping? I’ve never been camping before, and it sounds amazing…” Natalie asked, on the edge of her seat, looking up at Heather and Perry with pleading eyes.

“Can we rewind back to the giant spider?” Heather asked, making a ‘rewind’ motion with her finger.

“Yeah, I’d like to discuss that, too,” Perry said, gradually working Heather’s hair into pigtails, gently as he could, so she didn’t notice.

“It was twenty-five years ago. We torched that area pretty good, and haven’t seen any sign of it coming back, so your chances are good,” Grampa said with a shrug. “If you do get attacked by a giant spider, try cooking it up with some butter. I hear they taste amazing.”

Well, I guess the only people in danger of getting eaten are Nat. Just assign my Mk. V to provide overwatch for her, include me and Heather, and it’s safe enough.

“I’m okay with it if Heather is,” Perry said, teasing the ends of Heather’s pigtails into frizzy spheres.

“What are you doing?” Heather demanded, prompting Perry to quickly saunter away, trying to get some distance between himself and Heather’s wrath.

“It’s cute,” Nat said, desperately trying not to laugh.

Heather stood and stared at herself in the living room mirror, her jaw hanging loose.

Perry’s saunter became a full-tilt sprint for the safety of the kitchen, which had been a no-roughhousing zone for nearly a decade.

Heather caught up to him an elongated form like a snake, wrapping Perry up from head to toe, causing him to topple to the ground, the crown of his head just inside the safe zone.

“No superpowers inside the house, kids,” Grampa grumbled, wiping up the last of the mashed potatoes and gravy in his bowl with a piece of bread that he’d saved for that exact reason.

“You hear that? No powers in the house,” Perry said. Heather reformed on top of him, her index finger elongated into a straight razor.

“I’ll follow the rules after I shave off your eyebrows.”

“I hardly think that’s an equivalent response,” Perry said. “Besides, my eyebrows are in the save zone.”

Perry raised his brows, crossing the quarter inch divide between the wood of the dining room and the tile of the kitchen.

“Now they’re not. Now they are. Now they’re not.” Perry said, wiggling his eyebrows back and forth. “You can’t even keep up, can you?”

Heather rolled off of him, chuckling as she took the ponytails out, restoring her mane of red-gold.

“I’m sparing you because I don’t want Nat to witness a massacre.” Heather said, helping Perry to his feet before motioning to Nat. “Say thank you.”

“You are most merciful, miss,” Perry said, kneeling in front of Natalie and kissing her hand. “I owe you my life.”

“Of course,” Natalie said, adopting a haughty air and crossing her legs in a power-move. It didn’t work quite as well on someone as tiny as her, but Perry rolled with it.

“You three are weird.” Grampa said around a mouthful of bread as he cleaned out Perry’s bowl with the rest of the crust.

Lunch concluded without further incident. Perry did some minor tasks on the farm and fixed some of Grampa’s machinery up to repay him for hosting them for the weekend.

The guy who’d tried to rob Grampa a few days before spent most of his time cleaning things. Perry walked past him every now and then, sweeping out the cargo truck or some such odd job. Chase always seemed to be keeping a fearful eye on Grampa.

Seems like Grampa already has someone to take over the family farm, Perry thought as he watched Grampa teach the man how to drive a tractor. Grampa wasn’t doing anything to scare him, so the guy must be nervous about whatever punishment might eventually come down the pipe for catching Marigold doing the horizontal tango.

When the sun began going down, Natalie threw her massive camping bag over her shoulder and marched out into the wilderness, forcing Perry and Heather to follow after.

Ever since he’d been a kid, Perry had always been leery of walking out through a farm’s kill-zone having witnessed what it was capable of. The massive gun emplacements shot a thousand rounds a minute. Big ones. They turned livings things into guacamole.

Sure, the AI was trained to recognize human features and hold its fire, but they weren’t the smartest, especially if someone had unusual dimensions…like being five foot nothing and wearing an oversized bag over one shoulder.

Perry walked between Nat and the nearest tower, while Heather did the same on the other side.

Perry glanced behind them and saw Grampa standing beside the turrets, leaning up beside the big red ‘off’ switch.

“I’ll be back in the morning!” Perry said, waving.

Grampa gave them a thumbs up until they disappeared into the woods beyond the killzone, then switched the turrets back on.

“You know, generally, it’s a bad idea to set out for camping in the evening,” Perry said, glancing at the dying light of the sun filtering through the woods.

“Seems fine to me,” Heather said, glancing over at him.

Her eyes were the size of tennis balls, causing Perry to yelp and flinch.

“Freakin’ anime eyes?” Perry demanded.

“Great for low-light vision.” Heather said, fluttering her eyelashes at him deliberately.

“I’m good, too.” Natalie said, pulling out a tiny pair of high-tech night-vision goggles and bringing them down over her eyes.

“Just me then?” Perry asked.

“We know you’ve got some kind of trick.” Heather said.

“Who, me?” Perry asked, dumping Attunement to pump Nerve and Body, clearing up his vision a bit. Not as much as he’d like, but far better than a civilian.

When Nat began to struggle with her pack, Perry took it away from her, much to her chagrin. The thing must’ve weighed nearly as much as she did, so Perry wasn’t sure how she managed to carry it as far as she had.

Halfway to Nat’s campsite, they stumbled across a bit of cracked pavement forming a rough trail off to the left.

In the spirit of adventure, the three of them followed the ancient road to an empty lot. A slab of concrete and a bit of ancient charcoal that used to be load bearing wooden beams was all that was left of Bernie’s farmstead.

“I’m almost disappointed there weren’t any giant spiders.” Heather muttered.

“Hard pass,” Perry said with a shudder. You take the lightning-fast movement of a typical spider and apply it to one that’s used its superpowers to break the square-cube law, and you’ve got nightmare fuel.

“You guys would keep me safe, right?” Natalie asked, grabbing Perry’s free hand with her left, and Heather’s with her right.

“Absolutely.” Perry murmured.

The three of them turned away from Bernie’s and headed over to the stream, where they found a nice spot to set up a tent, just like Natalie had expected. Despite being rated for eight people, it was cramped, seemingly the size of a pillow fort, and the time was nearly midnight before they managed to get the thing set up to their satisfaction.

They didn’t have time to make a fire or cook marshmallows, they were so tired. By the time they were done with the laborious process, they were cold and miserable, shivering under the oversized blanket Natalie had brought, desperate to regain any ounce of their body heat that they could.

Peery laid on the bumpy ground, staring up at the plastic sheet shivering in the cold night wind, wondering why he was doing this. Camping was bullshit.

“Why am I doing this again?” Perry wondered aloud.

“Because I wanted the two of you all to myself,” Natalie whispered into his ear, the heat of her body radiating through his clothes.

Camping is awesome.