Old Practice [Research/Crafting, Open]

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

"Ha!" Isabelle cried as she stretched, her arms high over her head, a smile widening the sides of her mouth as she grinned cheekily, sticking her tongue out because she could. She had managed to get lucky enough to find some scrap of something or other to tie her hair back, so now it wasn't quite so obnoxious, which meant that she could finally go find that small forge that she had located on day one of being trapped here in the Unfounded Kingdom. Grinning to herself, she wriggled her behind as she walked, not even caring if she got her fair share of strange looks as she started humming some pop song to herself. She did what she wanted, and she didn't care for what other people said. Still singing away, she skipped into the small building, finishing with a nice little back-and-forth sashay of her hips and a little croon of a note from the back of her throat, even if it wasn't a word that anyone could hear, and then she grinned, her head turned coyly to the side. "Thank you, thank you, you've been a wonderful audience!" she cooed, blowing kisses to the empty forge. Ah, sometimes it was so fun to be her. She padded over to the nearest furnace, humming a soft little ditty under her breath, and she pumped at the air with her fist when she saw that whoever had used the furnaces last must have left the fire going since there was still a bit of flames hiding in the depths of the metal. Humming to herself, she trotted around to pump up the fire, grinning happily to herself. While that was heating, she decided to toss a couple of pieces of iron in to warm, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to get the furnace heating them up while she was still working on flaring up the flames. It would give her more of a chance to shape them into some weapons, and she was rather excited with the prospect of crafting for herself some new rapiers. Not that the two strapped to her hip hadn’t served her well over the time that she’d been in London, they had, but she wanted something that would be a little stronger. Though of more immediate concern was the thought of a hair clip. She wanted to be able to tug her hair up away from the flames without worrying about it straying and without the hassle of the one stupid hair tie that she’d found, though it would do for now. It would be better than if she just left her hair loose at any rate, and she let out a soft sigh of happiness when she could see that the fires were hot enough for her purposes. She still remembered what little her brother had taught her before the Catastrophe, and she puffed out her cheeks, making use of the tongs to pull one of the pieces of iron out of the fire and hammering it into a proper shape slowly, tapping it into something that would suit her purposes. She had an idea that would be a good start to what she wanted, she would just need to figure out how it worked first, but if she was remembering right, she wouldn’t be too far off.

100% 100% Words;; 555 Tags;; Open (Research/Crafting) Notes;; Ignore her dancing, she's just an idiot. Also, I shall take requests, especially requests for new weapons :3 They're also free since I'd recoup the money for supplies while making them Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

She'd managed to stretch the first little bit of the iron out into what she needed, a nice little chain that looked good so far. She grinned to herself as she reached with the tongs, grabbing the second bit of iron and adding it on as well, her tongs working to try to close each link properly around the other before she moved on to the next. Sometimes she'd have to pause to push the metal into the flames again to heat it up once more, get it warm enough for the links to remain malleable. That had been one of the important points that her brother had stressed, to keep the metal hot, since it was easier to work with iron that had remained hot than it was to pour heat back into it over and over and over again. She'd always thought that that had seemed so pointless, but now that she was actually working at it, she could see how right her brother was. It was hard to work with metal, and it was enough to give her, Cocktail, a hyper girl who almost never seemed to run out of energy, a general feeling of exhaustion. She could feel herself working, and that was something she wasn't quite used to yet, though she supposed it was a good thing since it meant she was getting stronger. Satisfied with how the chain was coming along, she nudged the metal back into the furnace, letting the heat wash over it one more time before she decided to call it done. She wanted to make sure that her first solo attempt at blacksmithing would go okay. And while a part of her wished that her brother would have been there to see this, or that it wasn't happening in some video game, she decided that it was good enough for her tastes.

100% 100% Words;; 312 Tags;; Open (Crafting/Research) Notes;; Post towards Iron Chain 2/3 Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

The furnace was plenty hot, and she didn’t have to wait for very long before she intruded with her tongs and snatched out the chains as if it was some rare jewel that she was purloining from a trapped pedestal in a tomb. She then hurriedly took it to the bucket of lukewarm water from where it had been left by a previous occupant, dunking the links and hearing the loud hiss of the cooling iron. She waited a few minutes for the hissing to stop and the metal to take on the color of its usual gray before she pulled out the length of metal, placing it on an anvil and testing the heat of it by holding a single delicate hand over the iron. It wasn’t radiating something that was too hot for her to be able to reach out and touch, so she grinned impishly and put a finger to it, picking it up and inspecting it critically. It seemed solid enough, she decided as she pulled on the links and they didn’t break, something that she could easily make use of on her own weapons. She glanced down at the twin rapiers at her side before scowling and shoving the thought aside. She’d attach the chains later, when she had better weapons. Those were just too flimsy, and she didn’t want to risk having them break and then have to expend the time and effort to make new chains. That just wouldn’t be worth it, and it was like her brother had always said: don’t expend extra work if you didn’t have to.

100% 100% Words;; 267 Tags;; Open (Crafting/Research) Notes;; Post towards Iron Chain 3/3 Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

Emboldened by her success, Cocktail decided that she would make a second one, a second chain that she could use to improve her weapon style. She could see it now, and the thought made her grin widely. She would be delighted to be able to toss her weapons around like it was nothing, but first, she’d need to make sure that everything would work okay. She took out another couple of hunks of iron and put them into the furnace to heat even as she gave the bellows a couple of pushes to flare the flames up from where they might have died down again from lack of attention. Once she’d deemed that they were heating the metal at a rate that would work for what she had in mind, she pulled up her inventory and nestled the iron chain she’d made inside of it for now, instead bending over to pick up the bucket that rested on the ground. She would need a bit more water inside it before she continued, she decided, and it would need to be colder water if she was going to get any better quality. Humming to herself, she tightened her grip on the handle and heaved the bucket up, walking with it outside so that she could dump the contents somewhere out of the way, where other people – in other words, Cocktail herself – wouldn’t step on the wet patch that resulted. From there, she found a water pump and plopped the bucket onto the ground, huffing and puffing herself up a little as she reached and started working it, causing water to spurt out and into the bucket. It took her a little while to do, what with the fact that she wasn’t as strong as her father or her brother might have been, but she accomplished her task of refilling the bucket with cool, clean water, and satisfied with herself, she bent over to pick it up again. She sauntered back to the area with all the furnaces, plopping the bucket down on the ground again and letting out a dismayed cry and it sloshed water all over the floor, taking a quick backwards step to try to avoid the growing puddle. Ugh, great, just what she’d needed, water everywhere. Scowling, she decided that it wasn’t something worth worrying about, and she huffed, a flick of her hand pushing some stray strands of long cyan hair behind one shoulder as she trotted back to the furnace with a cute little sway to her step. The iron was still coming along quite nicely, even if it wasn’t quite hot enough yet for her to begin working with it, so instead she rolled her eyes, sent up a puff of air to push her bangs away from her forehead and out of her eyes, and then got to work again with the bellows, fanning the flames up a tad higher before she sighed and let it go to instead keep an eye on her growing creation. It was like her brother had always said, there was no use trying to shove too much air into a fire, that was how you’d blow it out, and somehow, she was pretty sure that the prospect of having to re-ignite the fire was one that she would find more than a little distasteful.

100% 100% Words;; 556 Tags;; Open (Crafting/Research) Notes;; Post towards second Iron Chain 1/3 Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

Isabelle had never done well with waiting. She had been the sort of girl who would run downstairs early on Christmas morning to try to unwrap presents while her parents and brother were still sleeping, and once, when she was five, she’d insisted upon the fact that because it was the next day in Australia that she should get her presents a full day earlier than her birthday. She may not have won the argument, but her brother had said, with a smirk on his lips, that she’d thrown quite the tantrum that day. She remembered stomping her foot when he’d told her that too, and she’d gotten mad and chased him all around the house for insinuating that she was some bratty kid. She was grown up and an adult and her logic had made perfect sense! It was just his fault for being stupid and mean that he couldn’t see how what she was saying was so smart! Or at least, that was her story, and she was sticking to it with all the tenacity of a leech on someone’s veins. Of course, as Cocktail, she hardly had any choice in whether or not she wanted her iron to be ready yet or not. Her brother had warned her back in the real world the dangers of working with iron that wasn’t hot enough, how it would be too tough and she could break her tools, and while she may have wanted to just dismiss the words and work anyway, the tools weren’t really hers to break, so instead, she propped herself up against a wall, glaring at the roaring fires with a pout on her lips and her arms crossed as she tried to will her two bits of iron into being hot enough. The instant that they were, however, she darted over with all the speed that she could muster, immediately removing the first bit of metal from the furnace using her tongs and setting to work banging the metal back into the proper shape, the same one that she’d done just a moment ago. With all the monotony that went into being a blacksmith, she almost wondered why her brother had first gotten into it, and why her father had decided to teach her brother. Her sibling was like her, a go-getter, someone who knew that they could charm the world out of just about anything and who had the courage and audacity to do it, so why would he take such an interest in smithing? It was enough to keep her mind occupied as she worked, her brain turning the thoughts over and over in her head while her hammer came down and she occasionally shifted the metal back into the furnace so that it could heat once more. If this was what being a blacksmith meant at its very finest, why, then, had the two male figures in her life adored it quite so much?

100% 100% Words;; 492 Tags;; Open (Crafting/Research) Notes;; Post towards second Iron Chain 2/3 Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!

[Cocktail]

do it like a brother, do it like a dude,

Isabelle took out the second piece of metal carefully with her tongs once she’d managed to use up all of the first bit, turning it into small links that were all connected in an elegant way. She was careful, gingerly picking up the metal before she set about hammering it into shape. She could see that this chain was a little better than her first one, to be expected given that she had caught a little bit of the hang of it by this point, but it wasn’t by a whole lot given that the materials were about the same level anyway. They were low-quality bits of ore that she’d gotten, so she didn’t expect to have overly amazing chains as a result. Not that she had a problem with that, there was only so much she could do, but she still sort of wished that her brother was here, if only because she would’ve been able to show him what she had made, and with any luck, that would’ve earned her a scrap of praise. She wanted to show him that she was just as good at this blacksmithing as he was, and that was that! Before she even knew it, she had ran out of the second set of metal, and it was time for her to lower the chain back into the bucket of water that she’d fetched earlier, the protesting hiss of the water from the addition of the heated metal and the steam that the action elicited making her resist the urge to giggle from being some sort of science fiction creator. She had always loved that part of when her father used to let her watch him smith things, and it was never something that she would really lose her attraction for. Instead, she wriggled the chain inside of the water, watching the metal slowly cool from a white-blue-yellowish color to the reddish color that she knew meant it was warm and then back down to the dull gray that she knew meant that it was cool. She held it submerged for a few more moments before she extracted it, a wide grin on her face. “I did it!” she crowed to herself. “I made myself another chain!” Just wait until her brother heard about this one!

100% 100% Words;; 383 Tags;; Open (Crafting/Research) Notes;; Post towards second Iron Chain 3/3 Please excuse me now as I quietly die in a corner from writing so much @.@ Still taking requests though if anyone is interested Lyrics;; "Do it Like a Dude" by Jesse J Template by Kuroya

grab my crotch, wear my hat low like you!