1.1 Awake Part 5

Legacy walks through the ruins of what she assumes was once a busy street. Over half the buildings have been reduced to rubble and there are several flooded craters scattered about.

Legacy has quite a good haul so far. She puts it down to the fact that stuff that is normally useless to people can be turned into usable items if Legacy uses her power on it to retrieve the remaining working parts. At the moment, Legacy has disassembled a few computers, a couple of TVs and a microwave.

Technical knowledge seems to be the one area that Legacy isn’t lacking knowledge in. Legacy already has a few ideas on what she’s going to make with all of the part she has collected.

Legacy has also found several more pipes for her to modify. They’re all in good conditions and easy to wield.

With the bag Scott gave her almost full, Legacy decides it is time to head back to the basement. It has only been a couple of hours, but Legacy has been working quickly.

Duck.

That was the voice speaking and not her, but Legacy ducks none the less. Lucky for her too as a small metal projectile flies over her head.

That was from a gun. Guns are bad. Really bad.

Legacy dashes behind a half fallen wall. Someone is shooting at her and Legacy is has no way of returning fire.

Not yet at least.

Legacy grabs on the longer pipes in her bag to form the frame of her makeshift weapon. Using a variety of parts from her bag and her power as Scott calls it, she forms the inner mechanisms needed to launch projectiles at high speeds from the pipe.

With her pipe-gun ready, Legacy only needs some ammo for it. She grabs some small pieces of rubble off the ground, none of it larger than one of her fingernails, and loads them into the pipe-gun. With that Legacy is ready to fight back as she hears her attacker approaching.

But something feels off about killing to Legacy. After a moment’s decision, Legacy gets one of the two batteries she found and attaches it to her pipe-gun to give it stunning capabilities.

Legacy’s attacker is now only a few steps away. Legacy rolls out of cover and fires her stun pipe-gun at her attacker.

The projectile hits the man dead in the chest and he twitches as the electricity courses through him. Enough time for Legacy to swing her original pipe weapon at his head and knock him out.

Legacy inspects the man who decided to attacker. Despite the state of the area, he seems well off. At the very least, he is healthy and his clothing is in good condition and of high quality. But there is no indication of why he decided to attack her.

Perhaps he wanted my stuff? But I better see what he has got.

Legacy searches the man, taking a phone, a pistol, a handful of coins and a lot of dollars. She also finds and takes a couple of magazines for the pistol. Other than that, Legacy leaves the man be, puts away both of her modded pipes and leaves with her bag.

After making sure she wasn’t followed, Legacy enters the basement. Scott isn’t back yet, but Legacy decides to wait for him rather than go out looking for more parts.

That is what Scott told me after all and I trust Scott.

None the less, Legacy is soon bored and decides to get working on her first project. A sustainable power source is her first priority. All of Legacy’s constructions will need power, but she only has available two batteries at the moment for a power source and doubts she’ll find many more any time soon.

Phones seem to be the best source of working batteries and I need to take them from people to get my hands on them.

Using a fifth of her collected parts, Legacy creates an electromagnetism extractor about the size of a microwave and places it on the table.

It works by extracting electromagnetic energy from the air to be stored as power, hence the name Legacy gave it. As her third piece of work, she is rather proud of it.

How long has it been since sunrise? Just over three hours by my count. I can’t believe it took an hour to create a single device. I didn’t feel like an hour had passed. Perhaps I was too focused on my project.

At least the voice keeps track of time. I don’t need to use a clock as long as I have it keeping the time for me.

Now what should I do? Perhaps I’ll refine my weapons. While they are good, they were both made on the fly and I’m sure with time to spare, I can improve them greatly. After all, I wouldn’t have made the electromagnetism extractor as effective and efficient as it is without all that time working on it.

That’s a good thing to remember about my ‘power’. I can make good devices on the fly, but to do my best work, I need time and focus to get it right.

And I need a better name for the electromagnetism extractor. ElecMag as shorten version of electromagnetism will suffice. ElecMag Extractor. Yes, I like the sound of that.

 Legacy is working on upgrading her stun pipe-gun when Scott arrives back at noon.

“We need to talk about your morning Legacy,” says Scott after he takes one look at the gun and money on the table.