Ash reached for the next tool.
The private's breath receded into the corridor like a tide that had decided to live. The watcher shifted a shoulder outside; the door remembered who it belonged to. Admin wrote logged again, smaller this time, as if words could run out and he was saving them.
The bench didn't care about any of that. It held its square light and put truth on steel.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Oversight protocol: active. Watcher: posted.[SYSTEM PROMPT]Mechanic (lv6) — Core skill slot available.(confirm to learn?)
"Later," Ash said, mostly to his own hands.
Admin came in three steps, a crate crooked against his hip. He set it on the mat and peeled the lid with a knuckle. "Patrol dump," he said. "Two dozen carbines with the same failure: mag latches out of spec. Pins are wrong. Springs are tired. Parts cabinet is dry."
He wasn't wrong. The latch pin on the first carbine wobbled in its bore; the spring had taken a set and started to believe in naps.
Ash checked his bins. Wrong diameters, wrong shoulders, wrong step. He eyed the small pyramid of bent pins in the reject cup—men had tried to make wrong right with hammers and prayer. The hammers had won. The prayers hadn't.
Throughput dies where a pin should be.
The blue at the edge of his sight waited with a patience that made sense.
He tapped the panel with a thought he could count.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Core skill learned: Adaptive Fabrication.Convert salvage and stock into spec parts within tolerance. Yields profession XP scaled by difficulty/novelty/batch size.Assist: suggest jigs, tolerances, process order. Safety: non-weaponized fabrication only.
Ash breathed out. Okay. He looked at the parts map in his head and the pieces on his bench, then lifted his chin at Nono. "Bring the rod stock—drawer three—the spring wire, the angle offcut, and the short U-clamps. We're going to lie to metal until it tells the truth."
Nono beeped, busy. Hale rolled his shoulders once and gave the door his back like a wall with intent.
Inspector Small leaned into the seam again with his pad as if ink could stop a choice. "What does the panel say now?"
"Work," Ash said, and set the first latch under his caliper. He read the bore—3.97 where 4.00 would have been polite, step shoulder depth under spec by a hair, and a tolerance stack that would eat seconds if he argued with it individually. Batch solution, not romance.
He scribed a simple micro-jig onto the angle offcut: two holes, one step down to shoulder a pin at exact length, a set screw to pin the blank, and a hard stop for the shoulder under a file. He clamped the angle in the vise, took the hand drill, ran the bit, then tapped threads the way you talk a stubborn animal into a halter.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Jig design recognized (micro-jig: stepped pin). +8 Mechanic XP.
He set the first 5mm rod in, locked it with the set screw, kissed the face to length with the file until the jig told him to stop. He turned the pin, cut the step with the edge of a triangle file, and spun it in the jig once to break the burr.
He slid it into the latch bore. Clean. No wobble. The step arrested flush. Retaining clip on. No yaw. The latch found the line like a coin finding a slot.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Fabrication: stepped latch pin (spec match). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
"Batch," he told Nono. "Cut me ten blanks." The bot grabbed the rod with its square hands and sledded the saw along a measured block, turning out a parade of little silver answers. Ash filed shoulders, checked length against the jig, slipped each into its latch, and felt a problem shrink from doctrine to part.
He needed springs, too—short, lively, not so strong they ate fingers. He fed spring wire through a scrap mandrel he bolted into the drill chuck, set the drill to the speed that made coils clean, and guided with a gloved hand so the pitch stayed honest. He cut the coil, ground its feet flat against the stone, and let one dance under his thumb. Lively. Not rude.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Fabrication: mini-coil springs (spec match). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He slotted spring and pin into the next latch. The catch learned to catch. He ran the mag in and out—solid, repeatable, the sound of a door latch having a good day.
The inspector craned to see without seeing. "Unregistered parts," he said, like the word alone could make gravity obey.
"Registered with function," Ash said. "Under oversight."
"Parts inventory is Nightshade—" the watcher began.
"—not attached," Admin said, already stamping his pad: FABRICATION UNDER OVERSIGHT—SAFE. "He logs tolerances, batch count, and destination. That's the book."
The watcher settled his shoulder against the jamb and tried on a smile with teeth. He watched the batch grow.
Ash ran the micro-jig faster now: tighten, file, turn, shoulder, deburr—clink—done. Ten pins became twenty; twelve springs learned to sing under thumb. He didn't rush, but speed came free when you put every motion in a line where nothing argued.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Batch fabrication (pins x20 / springs x12). Novelty: medium. +120 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He applied assemblies to the backlog. Magazines stopped drooling out of rifles like bad jokes. The queue flowed, the bench hummed, and throughput became a thing that had a smell—solvent and clean oil and metal that admitted it had been wrong.
Inspector Small took out his clamp probe again by reflex. The jaws bit the bench rail and discovered isolation a second time; his mouth did the thing vinegar does. Hale's face remained the natural enemy of enthusiasm.
"Count," Admin told the inspector. "Write that."
"Fine," the inspector said, and did some arithmetic like it owed him rent.
Two rifles in, the watcher tried a new angle. "Unregistered jig," he said. "Tooling must be cleared under—"
"Under attachment," Admin said. "Which does not live here." His stamp sounded like a small hammer; paper agreed to be stronger for a minute.
The sergeant's shadow shifted in the hall. "We can cite and seize non-compliant tools," he said through his teeth.
"You can file a citation," Hale said. "The door will keep standing while it dries."
Ash didn't spend words he needed for parts. He made two more jigs—a coil-winder with a fixed mandrel and a removable pin, and a pin length stop that let Nono feed blanks without inventing errors.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Jig design recognized (coil-winder / length stop). +8 Mechanic XP.
He cranked. The bench flow turned into a conveyor you couldn't see, just believe in.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete (batch install): latch assemblies. Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
He swung back through the first rifles, checked the checks, and pressed each mag as if he could hear where failure would try to live. The latches clicked like a metronome.
The blue wrote a little promise under his eye:
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Transfer conditions progress (Mechanic main + Gunsmith synergy). Note: Tier-1 path battlefield feasibility increasing. (No action at this time.)
"Not now," Ash said out loud to a panel that didn't mind being told what day it wasn't.
He reached for a sidearm that had lied about its rails; he cleaned the graphite off; it learned to cooperate. He swapped an extractor whose angle had lived a hard life; the new one kissed brass the way angles should.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Component replacement: extractor. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
At the seam, the smaller inspector tried something subtler. He let a cable from his scanner cart dangle near the ground strap, not touching, just tasting air for a leak. The bench's knife switch sat in the isolation position; the strap ran to pipe, not to anything the cart could steal. The cart's mast LED considered a blink and thought better of it.
"Your cart looks tired," Hale said, friendly as a wet cliff.
The inspector wrote "Observe" again, harder.
Admin's radio murmured: East Gate quiet. West Gallery stable. For once, the words stayed that way.
The watcher's patience learned a new verb. He stepped into the seam and tapped the micro-jig with a fingernail, as if tapping would invent ownership. Hale's finger tapped the jig first, not hard. Territory answered for both of them.
"That jig is facility property," the watcher tried.
"That jig is out of angle iron and insolence," Ash said without looking. "Write insolence in your ledger. Spell it right."
Nono beeped a single, shocked syllable; then, deciding it liked the joke, beeped again and set another blank into the length stop.
Ash worked the coil-winder with his left hand and the file with his right, the bad arm doing half a job and the other half being done by a man who had planned for that fact. Coils came off the mandrel with a curl like hair learning discipline. He ground their feet, counted eight turns, pressed with thumb—lively, not rude—and slotted spring to latch.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Batch fabrication (springs x20). Novelty: medium. +120 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The bench clocked lv6: 705/1000 and didn't brag about it. Numbers whispered; parts spoke.
"Inspection pending," the inspector reminded the room, showing the paper tag on the bench leg like it was king.
"Throughput present," Admin said, and pointed to the rack. "Count hands, not tags."
Hale tilted his head just enough to hear a hallway decision. "They're forming a we again," he said. "Heavier boots."
"Then we finish this batch," Ash said. He rode the last pin in the jig, cut the shoulder, spun the deburr, and set it.
Mag in. Click. Clean.
He moved to the next; Nono set the blank as if it could count with him; Hale's back became door in case the world forgot what one is; Admin's stamp made little laws that would hold for a day if men let them.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete (batch install): latch assemblies. Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
The watcher couldn't help himself. "Unregistered parts are subject to seizure," he announced to the air again, and this time the sergeant's shadow moved like a word taking a step.
Admin didn't move from his square. "Per oversight, fabricated parts are logged, tested, and installed. Seizure requires tribunal." He let the last word sit where the earlier world had left it, like a chair for a man who had not yet arrived.
The liaison's voice came before his boots, oiled and ready. "Tribunal is in progress," he said from the hall, and then the boots materialized—two, four, eight—doorway filling with coats and plates and the smell of paper that thinks it's a blade.
The liaison held up a new seal with a wire twist and a stamp that was not Admin's. "Provision Twelve—Seizure of Non-Compliant Tooling and Outputs," he read as if it were a prayer meant to melt locks. "Stand aside."
Hale didn't. His shoulders settled, the way a crane does when it decides to be a tree.
Ash didn't look up. He set the last pin, felt it seat, and heard the bench light flicker as the generator somewhere below turned over a breath and thought about loyalty.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Shop status: stable → monitoring. External variable: seizure team at door. Risk: high.
"Stand aside," the liaison said again, with more teeth.
Ash lifted the receiver off the mat and let the silence sit in the inch before anyone decided to move.