Chapter 7: Chap. 6 : Fitting Session

Zoemie looked at the clothing sprawled on the workbench with a complicated expression on her face. Currently, Zoemie was trying out clothes and masks ensembles, but wasn't very satisfied. The only thing Zoemie was certain about where the shoes – which were just going to be steel-toed sport shoes.

"The problem is that... I wanna leave as little as I can exposed, and if the sleeves are too long it gets in the way... Wait. Huh. Let's try long gloves, maybe ?" Zoemie asked herself, before conjuring a pair of long, opera-styled villainess gloves. "Hmm." Zoemie grumbled. "Too long, not comfy. Better than before, though." I can work from that.

"Means I can use mid-length or long sleeves and still have good protection overall due to the overlap." Zoemie concluded. "Hmm... What next ? Let's see..." Zoemie asked herself. "I need... something for the neck. Actually, hmm, hold on... Wait, no."

Zoemie grumbled. She had looked at and tried various designs for high-necked sweaters and gambesons and similar, but she couldn't find anything that was just how she liked. The closest she could find involved a wide neck brace, but that would require adding jaw protection to her mask.

She had a basic idea for a few parts – the gloves, shoes, and also had worked on a design for her mask, but she still seemed to her that she was missing a lot of information, and couldn't figure it out. As she wracked her mind, Xajymzia's poked out the door again.

"You should take a break.", said Xajymzia with concern in her voice. "You've been at it for a while now." Zoemie acknowledged with a grunt, rubbing her eyes. I'm a bit tired, she noticed, stretching out her arms and yawning. She was starting to frankly get a bit annoyed at this whole eqiupment-crafting thing, but it needed to get done.

Zoemie considered what to do for a short while, before she decided to teleport to her bedroom and oen her computer. She looked at the screen for a while before opening a new set of .odt files. She had two messages to write. "One for Dad and one for Neth." She sighed. On its face, the content of the messages was simple.

"Tell 'em I'm alive and safe, I've got food, water, and a place to stay, no, a place to call home, should probably mention that I got warped into another world – fuck the gods, seriously, what else..." Zoemie mumbled to herself. "Mention I don't know about the other kids, maybe ? Doesn't feel very important, though..."

Zoemie ultimately decided against it. She reread the message, and decided she'd check it again later rather than sending it right now. Maybe something would come up inbetween. Instead, Zoemie returned to trying out a bunch of different clothing, this time focusing on skirts, trying to find one that was neither too short nor too long, and another piece of armor to cover the exposed parts of her legs.

It was frankly rather boring. Conjure something, try it out, check how it feels, note it down, rinse and repeat. It was just the specific type of soul-draining boring that Zoemie was bad at handling. She sighed, looking at the mess of clothing sprawled on the floor. "What time is it ?" she grumbled. "Almost 9 PM. Guess I should go grab dinner..." Maybe it'll clear my mind.

Zoemie moved to the kitchen, where she looked at what Xajymzia had prepared. It was a pie, seemingly, cut into quarters, although Zoemie couldn't quite guess the ingredients. She picked up one of the quarters. "MMM ! Still hot. Be more careful." Zoemie only then noticed the wooden spatula, and served herself properly.

"Now to eat this without burning myself", Zoemie continued, before cutting pieces and starting to eat the pie, carefully. It seemed to be a goat cheese pie, with salmon and something else as well. It was very, very sludgey, something Zoemie actually enjoyed in her food. She overall found the pie great, and thoroughly enjoyed, cleaning the pan thoroughly.

Once done, Zoemie looked at the empty pan, the goat cheese-salmon-eggplant pie completely gone.

"Do I have to clean this up ?" she asked herself, as Xajymzia appeared in the room and started cleaning up instead. Zoemie thanked her with an appreciative grunt and a nod.

Zoemie hated housework and chores. It was long, slow, boring, nausea-inducing, and utterly pointless due to its neverending nature. Having Xajymzia handling it for her was something that she was truly grateful for. Once she had done her post-food routine, Zoemie returned to her room, unsure of what to do.

It's late, Zoemie remarked. This is why she decided to do something easy like reading the encyclopedias further, trying to maybe generate new ideas, or at least do something productive. Once she was tired of reading, she returned to her gaming for the night, before going to sleep at her usual time.

---

When Zoemie woke up the next day, and her breakfast routine was over with, she went into her workshop again, trying to think about what to do this time around. She conjured a few more bits and bobs of clothing, first, trying out shirt and sweaters in particular, checking out various collar sizes and heights.

Zoemie's current plan for her mask involved a large visor, integrated earmuffs, and removable jaw coverage. "All I need now is some way to not get stabbed in the neck.", and Zoemie found it indeed a pain in the neck. Although to be fair to her, joints have been weak spots in armor for a long time. She wasn't the first to deal with that and wouldn't be the last.

She wanted something that wasn't too tight or high because it got in the way, but if it was too loose it made it easy to bypass. Zoemie was mostly unconcerned about the material right now because she figured she could just abuse her curses to make her combat clothing tougher than just about any metal.

Zoemie decided against trying more clothing for a short while, instead reviewing the abilities she wanted to give every piece of equipment. Maybe she could find new ideas this way, or notice something she missed before.

Zoemie had leaned hard into the 'overwhelming power' aspect of things, to compliment her choice of weapon and magic, going for boosts to strength, stamina and magic, very high resistance to temperature, status effects, and both physical and magical damage, plus an effect to regenerate the equipment over time if damaged as boilerplate for each part of her outfit.

She was planning on one last effect on each piece : a curse that would heal the wearer for the torso, an agility boost for the leggings, a punch and dexterity booster on the gloves, mana regeneration on the skirt, a speed booster for the shoes, and of course the anti-jerkface curse on the mask.

Zoemie had discovered during her experiments that she couldn't reinforce items, only part of the dungeon. In hindsight, this might be a smarter move than to curse the dungeon walls to make them tougher. Or, well, have been, but they're already reinforced, actually, Zoemie noticed. Unless these stack ? Or maybe I'm missing something.

"Maybe add an effect to control inner temperature, too ?" Zoemie thought about it further, and decided she'd have to check for that. "Got a fuckload of things to experiment about. Fuuck." she swore, sighing. "This is never gonna fucking end." She shook her head, grumbling in frustration, and returned to it. Grumbling about it won't make it go faster... dammit. This is not fun at all.

"I think I'm good on what I want the equips to do. Problem is how I'm gonna do that... Hmmph... Let's try leggings next, I guess." Zoemie grumbled, before being interrupted by Xajymzia. "Oh, hey." Zoemie said. "Need something ?"

"Working on your equipment ?" asked Xajymzia, to which Zoemie nodded. "I thought of something you might be interested in for handling the abilities of the equipment." she continued, Zoemie answering with an curious grunt. "Rather than simply making one equipment piece with all the abilities you desire for that piece, what you should do is make one piece for each ability, then fuse them all together into a single one." explained Xajymzia.

"So handling abilities on a "one weapon, one gimmick" basis ? That's... probably the simplest way to go about it, actually. Definitely easier to organize..." Zoemie thought out loud. "Wait ! Let's go all-in. Each piece is centered exclusively on one... Side ? Aspect ? of the final equip, then we fuse everything.", she borderline shouted. "Yeah ! That makes sense." Zoemie decided, as she started walking around the workshop.

"I was thinking you might be interested in a distraction, so I thought you might be interested in a demonstration of my own combat abilities." the maid said, interrupting Zoemie's train of thought. Zoemie thought about it for a short while. Sure, why not ? Better be aware of them early, before she nodded with a grunt and teleported both herself and Xajymzia to the experimentation room.

Xajymzia started by withdrawing her legs into her thighs and showing off her levitation ability. "Huh. So you can fly, then, pretty much, no ?" asked Zoemie with a raised eyebrow.

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"Not really", Xajymzia softpedaled before elaborating. "This takes more energy the higher above the ground I want to go. When I call it "levitation" it truly is levitation rather flight.", to which Zoemie nodded silently. Xajymzia then turned her arms into cannons. She then teleported a pair of noise-suppressing headphones, which startled Zoemie a little, and waited for Zoemie to put them on before she started shooting the metal slab.

"These guns ain't just strong,", Zoemie noticed after the shooting session was done and she had removed the headphones. "These are versatile. You've got several calibers, element enchanting for different effects, multiple firerates and range. That's crazy useful.".

To which Xajymzia answered "I'm not done yet." She then approached the metal slab, and started slashing at it with the articulated blades coming from her back, Zoemie even more startled at the display. "Jeez, talk about a sucker punch." she said afterwards. "You just can't see that coming at all.", to which Xajymzia nodded before adding "And that is disregarding my resilience." which also got nods from Zoemie.

"Since you're made of what I guess is metal it makes sense that you're tough.", reasoned Zoemie, although she was unaware that some metals were soft enough to be sliced with a knife. "There might be way to increase my resilience further, actually." said Xajymzia, "mostly involving your curses. But that will be for later."

"Huh." answered Zoemie in turn. "Fair enough, I guess.", while Xajymzia seemed to go into thought for a while. "Anything else you wanted to show me ?" asked the black-haired girl, to which the maid simply shook her head. "I'll... go back to trying out clothes, then." said Zoemie, the maid nodding before teleporting somewhere else to attend to her own business.

Zoemie instead teleported back into the workshop, thinking about what to do next. She was in a pretty energetic mood. What I'm gonna do, she thought as she... jumped ? Walked ? Around the room, is that I'm gonna deal with the curses now for Dad and Neth now. Zoemie hoped it would help.

Ultimately, a part of Zoemie felt that her absence was probabl good enough reason to cheer for most people, but since she cared about them... it felt like the least she could do. Zoemie focused. Dad first. Zoemie's father looked like a pretty boring fellow, most would say, a slightly tanned, middle-aged man with black eyes, glasses and short, buzzcutted black hair.

It took a bit of time for Zoemie to recall his face – it was something she was pretty bad at, then focused on the curse itself. Good luck, safety, and health. Pretty basic, yet thorough. Zoemie didn't know if it would have any effect, but she did feel the mana drain from her body as the curse anchored itself in reality. A lot of mana, in fact. Zoemie sat down, exhausted, as she considered whether to do the second curse now or later.

---

Xajymzia stared at the mana currents, the way it warped out of existence into another world. How fascinating. She considered. A method to access Zoemie's homeworld was going to be crucial for the future... but for that she needed a lot of time, experimentation and data.

And to acquire that data, she needed for starters to wait for Zoemie to cast the second curse, which she seemed to have decided to do later. Reasonable, considering the ridiculous quantity of mana she had to expend to guide the curse into another world, even though as a Warden, she had a greatly increased mana pool.

Casting such complicated curses only increased the cost further. Still, Xajymzia decided to focus on something else. Such as what was she going to cook for tonight. Zoemie isn't that bad with food, Xajymzia mused. She's had to deal with allergies, gut disorders, intolerances, eating disorders of various kinds...

Zoemie did legitimately seem to have some form of hypersensibility to certain tastes and textures, but compared to most of that... One reason that Xajymzia took over the cooking even before, in fact, despite easily housing more than a hundred people. She didn't know what it was about people that compelled them to mess with others' food.

More than once she had to remonstrate people – grown adults – who were being annoyances about it. No, she can't eat that ! She's allergic ! Xajymzia remembered a particularly heated altercation. Xajymzia wasn't sure of why people tended to mess with other's foods, but she suspected that had something to do with self-justifications, much in the same fashion people tended to try to force interactions with people who didn't want it.

Xajymzia considered a few things, keeping Zoemie's lifestyle in mind. Maybe that idea of grinding Vitamin D supplements in Zoemie's food ? She'd ask her first, however. Hypocrisy wouldn't do.

And Xajymzia couldn't exactly let Zoemie to her own devices, either. Guess that's a benefit of sticking around. Zoemie would probably end up eating nothing but ready-cooked dishes, pastries, and more chocolate spread than Charlie the Catastrophic Chocoholic at an all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet.

Which wasn't exactly conductive to things like "nutritional balance". And even if Zoemie couldn't die from vitamin or nutrients deficits due her status as a Warden, didn't mean she was immune to other negative effects of them. Which could include things like tiredness and depression, and with Zoemie's already unstable mental health that was a no-no.

Xajymzia thought about clothing, as well. Zoemie had been quick at making herself serviceable, if somewhat unflattering set of clothes. Although Zoemie in general couldn't dress her way out a wet paper bag, it seemed. It was going to ensure she had something to wear, at least, even if it might not be as useful in summer. Xajymzia was rather confident Zoemie was the kind to not bother with clothing beyond underwear when it's very hot out.

"Fucking bullshit... fucking bullshit... goddamn bullshit..." Zoemie sang badly, meanwhile, as she frustratedly looked at the utter mess of discarded clothing. Heh. It was Neth who told her about this one. Dunno how she found it. "God fucking dammit.", Zoemie swore, before trying to think of something else that wouldn't sadden her further.

She decided to focus on something else, instead. And that something was "fucking around with more curses.", starting by hanging out one of the shirts on a coat hanger, cursing it with temperature tolerance, and throwing fire at it. "Mostly unharmed. Now I need to try this why wearing it... Wait, hold on."

Zoemie grumbled and facepalmed as she conjured a large amount of dry ice to snuff out the fire which had started to spread to the other clothes, before teleporting to the training room. "Let's do that here, using... do I have... flamethrower trap." Zoemie conjured a dummy, dressed it up, and jury-rigged a testing set-up,.

She then fired the flamethrower at the dummy. Once the torching was thoroughly over, Zoemie looked at the sweater. Still wearable. She then reworked the dungeon a bit, adding a freezing cold room and teleporting in it for a while, before leaving it, not shivering very much and overall finding it good at keeping out both temperature extremes. "This does work. Still need some finetuning, though... The dummy got damaged in the uncovered spots..."

I'd need a... wait. I know. Zoemie teleported into the workshop, pulled out another sweater, and put another curse on it. "A deflector shield projector ! That's perfect !" Now to figure out how to do that... Still, Zoemie returned to her task with a bit more energy, but not before adding it to the boilerplate list of enchantments for her equipment.

Zoemie found it convenient also because it reduced the need for certain armor and simply put opened up more choices for the rest of her clothing. I should've really thought of that earlier. She then returned to her experimentation with the flamethrower trap, trying to create a shield projector curse.

The now much laxer requirements for equipment were also taken into account by Zoemie, who retried her clothes in turn, and managing to actually find a good combination. "We have... Below-the-knee skirt, plus leggings and shoes. Mask should be okay, with removable jaw guard. Medium-sleeved, thick shirt, with high collar and coupled with elbow gloves."

Zoemie sighed. That could work. That would work. Only thing left to do was figure out how to make the deflector shields exactly, alongside the remainder of the enchantments. And after that I can finally game all day long. Zoemie stretched her arms out, and got to work. Do I want the deflector shields more formfitting, or more like a general cover ?

A while after starting, she was interrupted by Xajymzia. "It will be dinnertime soon.", the maid said. Zoemie checked the time. Almost 8 PM. Yep, that qualifies. Zoemie looked at the maid, then dumped her current project for a while and decided to go grab food and call it a day.

The meal for dinner was honeyed meatballs served with cold creamed cucumbers. Zoemie once again quite enjoyed it, thoroughly cleaning her plate. She then returned to her room, realizing she hadn't opened her computer for the whole day. It felt odd to Zoemie – she didn't like it very much. She was tired and only wanted a break.

Zoemie wanted to keep trying things out. She really did. But she found herself gravitating towards her computer games instead, playing until deep into the night instead of doing anything more productive, berating herself all the while before going to sleep. When Zoemie went to bed that night, she was tired. Exhausted. She just wished this whole thing would be over with.

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