#(Though. Tank will feel somewhat flat until the next arc)

[ragnar0c]

I can’t actually get over how Hana and Alope become friends bc they don’t really know they’re friends until one of them is sad and the other says something stupid like this.

Or someone asks and they just go “I’m not real sure….”

but they do become friends. They’re shaky at first, but arguably even after chapter 3 you could call them that. They’re just not very good friends until after chapter 15. And even after chapter 15 they have attachment issues so they’d rather just do nice things for each other to prove they are friends rather than claim it.

[sparkledeerfr]

Sam and Alice

Warnings: Lotta talk about eyes if that’s not your thing. And mentions of previous injuries but it’s fine they’ll be fine. Probably.

Little bit long.

Kylie was walking with Ioseka when she felt the other woman wrap her fingers around her shoulder and grip. “What?” Kylie asked, attempting to listen around to what could have alerted Sefka. Nothing seemed off and Vil’ J was just making low trilling noises, reacting to the sudden mood change of his owner but not knowing the source from which it came. “What? Seer thing?”

“Kylie,” Sefka said in the way of someone trying to remain calm. “I may do a freak out in a moment.”

“Don't say that!” Kylie said, raising her voice and her hands, not knowing exactly what to do. Why did March still have to be with Adeline on whatever stupid trip they were taking? “You’re like always calm! You freak I freak!”

Iosefka didn't quite hear her- most of her attention was being taken up by the sudden presence hovering in her sight. It was large, whatever it was, rolling on the edge of her vision like the forefront of a sandstorm, dark purple black as rain cloud. Iosefka was still not one to be easily shaken, and so she examined this new thing, trying to determine where it was coming from. She could just barely sense Peoria, and the storm cloud was heading straight for them.

Something or someone very interesting was on Jack’s wagon.

“Sefkaaaaaaa,” she snapped back into the present, and Kylie was whapping her on the shoulder with her fingers. “Sefka do I need to get someone?”

“No,” Sekfa said, suddenly standing still and planting her feet with her cane just in the center to straighten herself. “I expect we’ll be moving to the source shortly.”

“What do you-” Kylie started when she felt the ground disappear from beneath her. There was a sudden feeling of weightlessness, as though she were moving through nothing, and then she felt gravity take over once again. Instinct made her reach out to Iosekfa, grabbing around her waist as they landed to steady and protect her. Sefka couldn’t take much of a fall.

Kylie landed on her feet and she recognised the smell of patchouli and sage next to them, and another hand was around Iosefka. “The hell is that?” Cassandra asked.

“Why don’t you tell us, you’re the one with eyeballs,” Kylie grumbled, trying to get her bearings on where they were now. “And what just happened?”

“Little portal trick, don’t worry about it,” Cassandra said quickly.  “Sefka?”

Iosefka was looking at what they could not see- closed eyes in the storm cloud fast approaching. Cassandra could see visions and snippets through her pearl, but not as closely and deeply as she could. Sefka steadied herself and stared with her own milky eyes, just the barest hint of Fire orange beneath. “Hello,” she said, wondering if the presence could sense her as well.

Three of the eyes opened, and in her vision they were massive things, staring and assessing and pink just barely ringed in flame, backed by that purple/black cloud. “Hello,” the presence said back in a calm, slightly masculine voice only she could hear. “A seer. My apologies if I’ve scared you. I do seem to have that effect on your type.”

“And you are?” Iosefka said. From the other’s perspective Iosefka and them were at the open front gate, Sefka standing rod straight with her cane held planted between her feet, staring at the sky and talking to no one.

“Samuel. We will be arriving shortly. If you could please help my friend I would appreciate it. She may be hesitant and defensive but she is very tired.”

Iosefka’s mood shifted somewhat. Though the voice had not changed in inflection from rationally calm, the request seemed genuine, and anyone that asked something for a friend first had to at least be considered. “We’ll do what we can.”

“That’s all I ask.”

----

Jack of course noticed them as he rode up in his cart, pulled by a team of iron golems. Having the scryers of the clan waiting out for you was rarely a good sign. “What?” Jack asked, tugging on the reins to indicate a stop and the golems froze, lining up as though they were statues. “What’d I do?” Peoria crawled out from her modified tent on the roof of the wagon and sat cross-legged, waiting to hear what this was about before moving further.

“Pick up a stray?” Cassandra asked, crossing her arms as she still held the crystal that acted as her pearl in one hand.

“Yeah…” Jack said, looking to the back of the cart as someone got out. He liked to think he was decent at reading people (he’d spent most of his life wandering or out on the road, after all, you couldn’t be naive and live doing that), and the girl hadn’t pinged any alarms.

But still, he could always be wrong.

Alice carried a heavy bundle wrapped in a sheet, tied with rope and bits of leather string. She was so focused on making sure that she didn’t drop it that for a moment she didn’t realize what was happening. Then she looked to the side and noticed five people staring straight at her. “Um,” she started. “H-h-hello?” she nervously adjusted the large package. She’d been with Jack and Pea a few days and they’d been nothing but kind (even if Pea had been quiet) so she wasn’t quite sure what to expect upon arrival, but this certainly wasn’t it.

“Please excuse us,” Iosefka said, still standing firmly planted. “Is there no one else with you?”

“N-n..” Alice looked down and scooted away.

“Oh, she’s cute,” Kylie said, already getting tired of this waffling. She walked straight up to Alice and put her hands out. She was just barely able to brush the top of whatever Alice was carrying before she pulled it away, but Kylie felt metal and ridges. “Look we’re cool, we’re just nosy and roll deep. What’s goin’ on? You got a person in a box?”

“What?” Alice asked.

“Is your friend trapped in a box?” Kylie said, clearly enunciating every word. “Do you need help getting them out of the box? I’m good with opening stuff.”

“L-l-look I-” Alice started, then realized she was exhausted and nearing her limits. “I could use some help if...I mean you don’t have to…”

“No, no,” Kylie said, putting a hand on her hip. “Now I absolutely have to. What’s up? Lay it out for us.”

“It’s a bit....” Alice trailed off, adjusting the thing she was carrying again and looking around. “S-strange. D-do you have any doctors here? Or p-people good with electrical equipment? Maybe a….” she trailed nervously off and looked at her feet.

“Mayyybbeeee…?” Kylie cocked her head, prompting the other woman to continue. “Look c’mon, we’re not good at judging around here. Whatcha need?”

“A necromancer?” Alice squeaked, unsure of how this request would be taken.

“That bad, huh?” Kylie said, smiling. “Yeah I think we can wrangle that up.”

----

“Do…” Alice said as she put the heavy package on a table in The Workshop, looking around at those assembled in the space. “D-does there need to be this many people here?” she asked.

“Opeeenn iiittt!” Jack cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled.

Alice looked cautiously to the sheet, her hands shaking as she reached out and began to untie the wrappings she’d put on. Lady immediately noticed her nervousness and got up, helping her. Alice caught her eye and Lady smiled reassuringly.

The sheet fell away to reveal what looked like a squat glass tube with a thick metal rim at either end. Inside the tube was the dessicated remains of a skydancer, floating in a green liquid.

There was a sudden silence until Jack started laughing. Peoria smacked him on the shoulder. “What?” he said, looking over to her. “Am I not supposed to laugh at the corpse fish tank? C’mon that’s like- c’mon. That’s so bad it wraps around to bein’ funny.”

“Either your friend is very dead,” West said, his voice perfectly level as he sat in a chair, his elbows on a table as he clasped his hands together near his chin. He put both pointer fingers out and indicated the tank. “Or you have just shown me a new medical definition of ‘worst case scenario other than death’.” Lady of course was undeterred and was inspecting the tank, her eyes narrowed as she looked over the various things surrounding it. There were two obvious spots where something had once been attached, and something new had been added to the top. She wasn’t much of a mage but she could feel energy being pulled by it- an ad hoc magic converter and distributor.

There was a very real possibility that this person could still be alive in a way. Oh dear.

Of course everyone else realized that when a foot tall pink eye opened over the tank. “Hello,” said a voice from nowhere.

“AAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Sparks screamed and immediately began climbing Gren, who helped her to his shoulders with a smile like she was a bright shrieking parrot. He was used to her eccentricities. “What the hell what the hell?!”

“Apologies,” the voice said, and the eye closed part way as though already bored. “My name is Samuel. I just wanted to make it known that I can in fact hear you.”

Lady of course wasn’t moved in the slightest, nor was Ink, who walked over to get a closer look. “This is a clever retrofit,” Lady said, still inspecting the tank itself. “Did you make the converter?” She looked up to Alice, who smiled nervously and with a little pride.

“Y-yeah.”

“Excellent work,” Lady said, and meant it. “But how has it been powered?” Alice lifted her hands with another sheepish grin, showing that they were fully blackened and wrapped in bandages beneath half finger gloves. Lady also noticed that there were telltale marks of Arcane energy damages in the little bit of skin around her wrists and at her neck that were showing- bruise pink arcs and scars laid flat against her skin. There was likely more that couldn’t be seen that was covered by her clothing, in that case.

Lady looked back down to the mostly corpse in the tank. The Arcane pink eyes still stood out. She glanced up to West, her mouth tight in the way of a concerned and motherly doctor unsure if she should ask some serious questions.

West of course immediately caught on to the look and analyzed the situation. Was there really no one…? He looked at the room around him and realized that either they would be needed to assess the situation, were far too shy to ask the right questions, or they would be far too direct and scare the apparently nervous Alice. West gave an irritated sigh and stood up. Of course Lady knew exactly who to look to.

He walked up to Alice and carefully stood out of her personal space. “Excuse me,” he asked, and she looked to him, assessing him in turn. “Would you like to get something to eat?”

“I should p-probably stay-”

“We’ll likely be at this a while,” he said, cutting her off but trying to put some warmth into his tone. He wasn’t very good at that. “There’s a place that’s quiet, and you look like you could use some rest.”

“I…” Alice looked to the tank, and the ghostly eye still hovering above it glanced to her and blinked. “All right.”

---

“What’s this p-place?” Alice asked as they crossed the whale bone bridge across The Strix. She was staring up at the statues.

“The Bone Garden,” West answered evenly. “We’re not very good with names.”

“Why do you have a b-bunch of bones in a garden?” she asked, putting her hands out to the sides of the bridge to feel the runes carved into it as they walked.

West shrugged. “Bask had some extra time I suppose. If you’ll like this you’ll really be impressed by the unicorns.”

“You have uni-uni-corns?” she said, lighting up a bit, and West noticed that her stutter was not exactly a speech impediment or nervousness. She seemed to freeze for a moment each time it happened, as though she was literally stuttering through time. Interesting.

“Not real ones,” he replied. “They’re made of bone.”

“O-oh,” Alice said, trailing after him. “That’s still pretty n-neat.”

---

She was more hungry than she’d let on, and as they sat at the counter of Morley’s food cart, West found that he was not the only one assessing the newcomer. Morley put a bowl in front of her. “Pork belly ramen,” he said, those dual Water and Arcane eyes looking her over, though his tone was warmer than West could ever hope to be. “Tell me how you like it.”

By the way she dug in she liked it plenty, or she was near starving. The scientist in West knew that excessively depleting one’s magical energy could lead to hunger, and she seemed to have been at that a long while. Of course Alice caught herself and looked up to Morley, pastel and pretty though still quietly cold in the lights of his cart as the day approached night. “S’good,” she said, trying to compliment him though she just wanted to eat. He nodded, satisfied but reluctant. West noted that.

“So,” West said, unsure of how exactly how to come at this particular conversation. “You must have been through a lot with your friend.”

“Suppose,” Alice said, looking at the bowl of ramen and shovelling it into her mouth with chopsticks.

“He must be quite a person, to go through all this trouble,” he tried.

“He’s my friend,” Alice said, still edgy around all these new people, though she didn’t think they had ill intent. Morley noted that she’d shoved it down and without a word slid another bowl to her, this time udon and fried meats. He’d also noticed that Alice had a knife strapped to her side, and was well coordinated despite the burns on her hands. Even if she was more than she seemed, Morley wouldn’t deny a hungry person food.

“If you feel unsafe in any way,” West said, tapping his fingers on the counter. This was definitely not his strong suit. “We can help. If you’d like.”

“Appreciate it,” Alice said, more relaxed and focused now. She was stuttering less and grateful for it.

But a pink ghostly eye opened above her and looked to her. “He’s gently asking if I’m abusing or coercing you in some way, Alice,” the voice West now recognised as Samuel asked. The eye slid to West, who stared straight back. “A reasonable enough assumption. Any good doctor would at least ask, and from what I’ve seen Lady seems to be that.”

“And anyone with nothing to hide would not feel the need to butt in on said conversation,” West replied, crossing his arms. He also did not like that Sam implied that Lady was an average doctor. No one implied that Lady was just an okay doctor, not around him or quite a few others. “Can you do that anywhere?”

“Manifest?” the eye half closed. “No, though I do see your point. Please carry on.”

The eye closed and disappeared.

Morley and West looked to Alice, who slurped a noodle into her mouth. “Look- he’s…..he’s fine. He’s just a bit gifted,” she said, raising those blackened hands with the chopsticks still in them. “C-caused a bit of a problem for him and me, as you can tell. I-I, really, we’d just appreciate some help.”

“That we can do,” Morley said before West had a chance to.

“Though if you do need it,” West said, and the way he said it made Alice look to him. His tone was perfectly cold. “I will knock that jar off the table and pretend it was an accident.”

“Um,” Alice replied. She’d never heard someone’s voice be like a freezer.  Generally there was some growl or anger to a threat, but he made it seem like absolute certainty. “No thank y-you?”

[itsworn]

A ’69 Charger You’ll Either Love…or Love to Hate

The story of the 1969 Charger that (almost) every Mopar fan loves to hate.

Sacred ground. The automotive world is covered in it. And if you go by naked passion alone, there’s probably no real estate more precious than in Mopar land. There’s a two-by-three-foot patch on the ’68-to-’70 Charger that’s especially cherished, and Troy Gudgel at BBT Fabrications hates it. “I never understood why those lines crisscrossed,” he admits.

If you’re a Mopar freak you know what he’s talking about, and you’re probably tying a noose as we speak. If not, here’s why the lynching.

Each maker had a way to affect the Coke-bottle profile. Dodge’s designers extended the quarter-panel flare forward into a pair of false vents in each door, then it let the arc of the front fenders end just before crossing that flare. Ask people about it—more accurately, simply tell them that it even exists—and you’re likely to find more tolerance in a health-care reform bill, and that’s just a start.

Actually the start of the project is Vic Buraglio. “I had a ’69 Charger when it was new,” Vic begins. White, with green interior. Just like this one. “But it was just a 318 auto,” he’s quick to point out. And the car was special for other reasons. Among them, he and his wife got engaged and married when he had that car. “She gave me her ’64 Tempest and said, ‘I’m driving the Charger!’” he says, laughing.

“I said we could do it but there were some things that I wanted to change that are pretty iconic,” Troy continues. “So I told him, ‘Before I agree to do it 100 percent, I want to make sure you’re good with my ideas.’” Vic remembers hearing them. “I wasn’t too sold on it at first but then we got talking about body lines and everything.” Troy calculated his pitch. “We were working with [designer] Victor Fulton so I was able to show him what I was talking about,” he says. So Vic went for it.

Vic’s plans from the outset called for a perimeter frame, which Troy happily obliged. The Roadster Shop delivered a Fast Track chassis three inches longer in the wheelbase. The length solved another pet peeve. “I wanted to get rid of that big overhang up front,” Troy says. “And moving the front wheels forward did that.”

And that was really just the start. “I also didn’t like how high the ends of the car were,” he continues. “They just hang up there all high with all this space beneath them. So up front he brought the valance forward and down, making it more of a feature of the nose of the car. Pete Fortney did the same in the rear by dropping the quarters behind the wells by a couple inches. “That brings the ends of the car down and it also covers up the spare-tire well and gas tank,” Troy points out.

Troy and Pete also built aluminum bumpers for their respective ends and worked their way towards the center of the car. Now this is the point that may make some of you squeamish: They replaced the door skins with ones fabricated without the lines crossing. “They also don’t have those fake vents anymore,” Troy notes. He notes it somewhat gleefully, to be honest.

“We had to shape the top of the skins to go with the shape of the quarter panels and fenders,” he continues, explaining that they didn’t want to eliminate the car’s waisted, bottle-like profile (now that actually would be tragic). Turns out, reshaping those lines didn’t have profound effect elsewhere in the car. The lower crease in the rear quarter panel remains stock, but they did have to tweak the lower line behind the front well, and that was partly to patch the gap left by moving the wheel opening forward.

But this is more than a pretty face. “One of the other things we agreed upon is a Hemi,” Troy recalls. But the version in the car wasn’t his idea. “We put a Coyote in my last car,” Vic reveals, describing how modern power spoiled him. “It just goes. It doesn’t hesitate. Nobody’s gonna hit you in the ass at the stoplight. It just goes.”

Indy Cylinder Heads gave them a third-gen Hemi mill with a little more go than normal. It started with a 6.1 bottom end which Indy bored and stroked to 426 with a Compstar rotating assembly and Diamond pistons (it’s a 4.09-inch bore and 4.05-inch stroke in case you’re wondering). With otherwise stock 5.7 heads, the compression works out to a very pump-friendly 10.3:1. Dodge did a hell of a job with the SRT8 profile, so Indy kept it.

The result? The hybridized 426 made 499 lb-ft of torque and 451 hp. Now before you write off those numbers, it did peak torque at 4,200 rpm and made more than 400 until 5,700 rpm. And it made at least 400 hp from 4,200 rpm to almost 7,000 rpm (it was near 450 at 6,100 rpm). That’s a ton of power under the curve, which is really the measure of usefulness.

The real reason for Vic’s push for modern was the electronic engine management. Indy dispensed with the factory parts for an induction system made from Hilborn throttle bodies and an ECU from FAST. Paul Schaunmbacher modified a pair of Stainless Works headers made for a Ram pickup. He also made the 2 ½-inch exhaust out of stainless bends. It sports a set of Borla mufflers.

And it was that induction that developed the next part: the hood. Troy built it entirely from scratch and entirely from aluminum. And as you’d imagine, he dispensed with the false vents in it, too.

The reason actually ties in with the scoop. Yes, the Max Wedge thing predates the car, but it has a reason: it accommodates the injector stacks. So at the very least it’s functional, which is more than you can say about the vents that it replaced. Troy made it from scratch, too. Of course in aluminum—he just did it at a slightly smaller scale.

The hood mounts to a custom-fabricated hinge assembly which partly mounts to steel inner fender panels that Troy made. He also did the aluminum control-arm covers, the core-support cover, and the coolant and power-steering-fluid reservoirs embedded in it. Derek Bear painted the engine a dark bronze and everything around it the light gold. BBT shipped the project up to Dutch Boys Hot Rods in Kalamazoo, where it got a PPG DBU finish. “It’s some Audi color,” Troy says.

Clay Mitchem built the floor pans, wheel tubs, and driveshaft tunnel. The crew fabricated the remainder of interior panels from aluminum before delivering everything to Phil Cato at Cato’s Custom Upholstery. Though not obvious, the modifications are quite extensive. They replaced the blown-out stuffed-vinyl sections with heat-formed ABS. They made a panel specifically to fit a set of Dakota Digital VHX gauges.

Phil then dispensed with the seat springs and built up the profile from foam. “[Troy] picked out a few interior colors,” Vic remembered. “He was a little surprised when I told him it had to be green. ‘Green?’ he says. ‘I dunno about green.’” But some persuasion of his own convinced Troy. He laments the inability to find the stock color in leather but the straight green actually makes sense: America’s designers were paying attention to sports-car makers who were using greens like that at the time, just as they were doing the Coke-bottle profile more than a decade earlier.

“When we started talking wheels, I wanted to do something that was kind of period correct for a sixties muscle car,” Troy observes. “But I didn’t feel that there was anything out there that I wanted.”

Except one: “The wheel that kept popping into my head was the Sunburst wheel from the early AC Cobras,” Troy says. The only problem: Sunburst wheels only came in a 15 inch size, and nobody reproduces them. “So I talked [Jesse Greening] into making a set of one-offs,” Troy says.

Jesse made them in three pieces in 19×10 and 19×12. They mount to a set of pin-drive knock-off snouts bolted to the hubs. Diamondback Classics modified a set of 275/35ZR19 and 345/45ZR19 Bridgestone Potenzas to take a gold line.

Advanced Plating applied the nickel to those wheels’ rims, to the roll hoop, to the aluminum bumpers, and to the aluminum splitter bolted to the tail. “The car just needed something back there to balance the car,” Vic observes. Steve Hood created the profile from some inch-thick 3003-series stock, the same material as the bumpers, only thicker.

We’d like to think that some of this car’s biggest critics think a little better of it now, but that’s just fine if you don’t. Nothing good ever came from trying to please everyone. Make a statement and you’re bound to step on some toes.

But the response this car gets says something. People claim that BBT eliminated the thing that defines a ’68-to-’70 Charger: the door detail. Yet you’ll never hear anyone ask what kind of car it is—people still recognize it as a Charger.

So if a car is still recognizable after having its most definitive feature eliminated, is any of the ground around us so sacred after all? We sure hope not—you’d be out of a hobby and we’d be out of a job!

Builder Troy Gudgel found inspiration in Shelby Sunburst wheels. He had Victor Fulton scale them, then Greening Auto Company machine them. They’re pin-driven knock-offs and wear Bridgestone Pontenzas with yellow-wall inserts by Diamondback Classics.

Builder Troy Gudgel found inspiration in Shelby Sunburst wheels. He had Victor Fulton scale them, then Greening Auto Company machine them. They’re pin-driven knock-offs and wear Bridgestone Pontenzas with yellow-wall inserts by Diamondback Classics.

Historically speaking, a Max Wedge scoop is a little out of place. But on a design mash-up, they’re great. And as a means to give the Hilborn stacks clearance, they’re perfect. Troy built the hood without the false vents, another element he dislikes.

Indy Cylinder Heads stepped up with a 6.1L bottom-end that it bored and stroked to 426 cubes, then topped with 5.7 heads. Its 499 lb-ft and 450 hp output seems a touch shy, until you see its Kansas-flat power curve.

Here’s what all the fuss is about: door skins. Oddly enough, Troy and Pete didn’t need to touch the quarters, and the only reason they modified the fenders was to fill the gap opened up by moving the wheels forward.

BBT made the dash almost entirely from ABS and aluminum to mount Dakota Digital VHX gauges. Troy also built the steering-wheel center entirely before sending it to Phil Cato for trimming.

The seats merely look vintage; Phil Cato replaced the springs with several densities of foam chosen and shaped for each part of the seat. Relicate supplied the leather.

Though originally a unit-construction car, the Charger now has its own tubular chassis. Roadster Shop made it three inches longer to move the front wheels forward, which reduced the front overhang—something that many cars can benefit from.

Steve Hood machined the splitter from inch-thick aluminum bar stock. Troy and Pete made the bumpers for their respective ends from the same material, only 1/8-inch thick. They also made the roll pans, albeit from steel and a couple inches deeper than stock.

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