Learning Control

Chapter 11: Father Thomas

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to hang out with you, lately," Thomas apologized.

"It's fine, you have a job, a hobby, and I know you've been busy with work the hero committee has been sending you," Virgil said. "But if you need to, I will tell them to back off because you retired."

Thomas laughed lightly. "Yeah, but this... assignment I've been working on is pretty important. I couldn't in good conscience turn this one down. Put the goggles on, I just need to blow torch this and then I'm done."

Virgil groaned but did as Thomas asked. Thomas put his own welding mask on and welded two pieces of metal together. He cleaned it up before spraying the hot metal with some water and wiping it down.

"And done, what do you think?" Thomas held the prosthetic hand up. The wrist was hollowed out and the steel swirled around like ribbons, holding the hand.

Virgil took off the goggles and set them aside. "I think it would have been simpler if you just 3-D printed the design, but it's impressive. Maggie's gonna love it."

"If I 3-D printed it, it would have been too delicate. Besides, her birthday is coming up and I wanted her to have a fancy hand for her to switch out when she wants."

"Her birthday is in a month."

"I just finished it a lot earlier than I thought I would. I just need to put some flowers on the hand and fingers and it's done!"

"I should start making her something. She does love superheroes, maybe I'll make her a costume."

"Aw, that sounds nice! Anyway, when are you going to let me make you some decorative prosthetics? I already have some designs."

"It'd be pointless if you do, I hide my legs! People always stare at me with pity and it gets me into a lot of awkward conversations."

"I thought you were Mr. 'I don't care about what other people think about me.'"

"You know for a fact that's not true."

"Fine, I won't make you any decorative prosthetics, even though they're fun to make and I have some awesome ideas for you. Though, I was thinking, you want to be a hero, right?"

"Yeah, I like to protect people. And maybe it'd get people to shut up about, well, me being the bad guy."

"Well, in the hero business you get hurt. Most of the time, villains go for the legs. If you can't walk, it's harder to move. You're going to get into fights where your prosthetics will get destroyed."

"We already know that, that's why you've built these legs to be strong."

"They're strong, not indestructible. Plus, you're hopefully going to grow more so you're going to end up needing new ones."

"Oh shut up, Sanders."

"It's true! You're short now, but hopefully you'll grow taller! But that's not the point. The point is, I was thinking of making prosthetics that are designed to break in a way that you can use your shadows to hold it together. I won't make them easy to break, but I'll just make indents here and there so if they do break you don't need to use up all the shadows around you to make legs to walk."

"That... actually kinda sounds smart. But couldn't I just use anything around me to help with that?"

"Yeah, I guess, but these ones will look cooler plus there won't always be a lot of debris in the fight and this will avoid any awkward bents." Thomas pulled out a journal from a stack of books and showed some drawings to Virgil. Though, Virgil will admit, Thomas isn't the best... artist, he got the main idea.