Mantid #1: Origins

Finishing Touches

Later in the week, Blaze finished the prototype mantis claws. She found some salvaged servos in a used parts store, and bought them with her Etsy money. All she needed to do now was add weight to the claws and wire the servos into the pincers, to give them more crushing and lifting power (they bent both ways). She decided that she would ask Jack for some help with wiring everything together, as he worked with his dad and brother in a family-run engine repair shop.

She also just purchased some two-tone, black and grey compression sportswear for "track." She was actually on the track team - and she was the third fastest - but that's not what it was going to be used for... Blaze had already made some armor and a mask for herself the last spring, when she took the 3D printing class in school. She made the pieces into an abstract sculpture, so nobody would suspect anything of her. All she had to do when she got it back was take apart the puzzle - It was a "Transformer" of sorts. She would simply strap them to herself with some scrap elastic from her sewing class overtop of the clothing.

Blaze decided to take some components out of her old gaming headset, and wire them up to a shortwave radio so she could communicate with "mission control," and so that she would have a record of everything that happened while she was out - So that she could play it back in case there was some sound or bit of information that she might have missed otherwise. She would attach the contraption to her mask after she sanded and lined the inside of it; she didn't want any mysterious red lines appearing on her face, since that would arouse suspicion.

To make sure nobody recognized her (and so that she could see), she popped the lenses out of some of her old Transitions glasses that were a little too scratched up to use for everyday life, and put them in the mask. She gently sanded them with a 4,000 grit sandpaper sheet and polished them, to get rid of most of the scratches. Then she painted over them with some white, one-way glass paint, so she could see out, but nobody could see in.

On top of all that, she gathered some gadgets that she would carry with her while fighting crime. They were a universal lock pick, a jogger's pocket belt (which she modified to have multiple pockets with their own flaps for organization), a multitool survival card for camping, kevlar-infused sleeves for gardening and working with metal, rock climbing gloves with hardened knuckles, a flashlight, superglue, a handmade retractable rope device with a grappling hook at the end, and a miniature first aid kit. Along with these, she also made ten throwing stars out of the recycled materials she used for her jewelry.

But, her project would have to wait for now, since her grandfather had gotten news a week ago that her uncle was getting married to his fiancee of three years. Her name was Aki Shimada; Blaze had met her a few times before, she was very kind and demure. She worked for a company named Innovariance Technological Corporations, which was a company that invented, created, and tested experimental technology, who was the leading producer of artificial intelligence in the US, Japan, China, and the UK. She was one of the scientists who was working on a gadget that would allow two people to communicate mind-to-mind, as a sort of artificial telepathy. And as for her uncle, Dale, he was an extremely likable man, who had a passion for baking. He was always very helpful to her and her grandfather; he rescued her a few times in the past, when she was little. So, she was happy for the two of them.

So, for the wedding, her grandpa needed a suit, and she had to shop for a dress...

Blaze despised dresses. Wearing something without real pants under it always irked her... Especially after... The incident...

But, she wouldn't think of that right now. Besides, she didn't want to be disrespectful, so she would simply wear a pair of old, elastic running shorts over her stockings.

"Blaze, you ready to go?" Her grandfather asked her.

She quickly closed the tabs on her phone, and got up off the couch, "Yep."