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March 30th, 2020
4:00 A.M.
[hr]

In the lab ‘upstairs’ from his training facility several floors below, Marvin had the news circulating from the past 48 hours,

[i]”Explosion rocks Chinatown!”[/i] a soundbite from Channel 9 news read,
“No survivors.” NYN news blurrbed as the large monitor on the east side of the lab continued to shuffled through its automated program schedule. Marvin had designed it to collect pieces from various news media so he could save the soundbites and replay them to be used as part of investigation.
[i]“Is this a message?”[/i] an NYBC pundit remarked,
[i]“Beginnings of gang war?”[/i] a sensationalist network commentator pondered
[i]“Bunch of drugged hippies and now this? I mean--I just don’t know what’s happening to this city!”[/i] a woman with silver hair and the genesis of wrinkles lining her face lamented, her name was Carolyn, she was a 53 year old woman with three grandkids and was recently denied workers compensation for faking a back injury on May 12th of last year.

On the wall to the far west of the [url=https://images.nigeriapropertycentre.com/properties/images/31200/63016_31200-massive-cheap-warehouse-a-banking-hall-in-apapa-for-lease-warehouses-for-rent--apapa-lagos-nigeria.jpg]massive warehouse interior[/url] hung a line of his vigilante masks. The original cloth mask Marvin stitched together from a few lines of polyester was first in the row of seven: the next was sewn from wool and integrated with a metal alloy Marvin had been experimenting with, his earliest attempt at converting the magic energies from the soil into one of his designs; from the ballistics tests he had run on the second mask, it did well to deflect direct impact from small arms fire, but stood no chance against anything standard grade or above.

The third mask, weaved from the exact same thread but laced with a bronze-iron alloy and kevlar weave stood up to standard arms fire but had a weakness directly in its center. A perfectly placed shot between the eyes spelled certain death.

 The fourth was his ballroom mask, the one he would wear if he was ever invited to a formal event. It had no special protection, he could only hope no one had an urge to shoot him in the face after a slowdance. It was a royal red tinged with a soft silver.

The fifth mask was made of nanomex, and threaded with polyester; it was fire-resistant. The mask was special use for when he needed to enter a burning building, and insulated with independent oxygen circulation for such a case. The sixth mask was similar but catered to deep sea diving and coated in water-resistant fibers to prevent water from penetrating it.

The sixth and seventh masks were the ones he spent the last two days trying to perfect. Both were endowed with the harnessed magical energy he extracted from the soil; and both were implemented with the combined test attempts of masks one through five; each an attempt at forging a mask and-- from the blueprints he had been drawing up--a suit with the same component parts present in the previous renditions. He had been drawing close; the welding mask covering his face was lit by the blue flame emitting from the torch, he was melding the metal foam composites to the middle layer of the chestpiece’s M5 fiber aramid armorplating.

Of the seven masks on the far west wall, numbers six and seven had a small glow radiating from them, the magic energies of the soil had not yet set in. Spread across the [url=https://ogtstore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/industrial-steel-top-table-farm-tables-K191350-09.jpg]industrial table[/url] were the other cooling alloy pieces laced with metal foam composites. He was soon ready to test them in the ballistics lab prior to submerging them in the makeshift tub of liquid he had synthesized with the magical energies found from his recent trip to a magical dimension.

[color=LightSteelBlue]“Process should work. Energy--always constant, shouldn’t matter the dimensional change.”[/color] he put down the torch and let the chestpiece cool and walked toward the opposite end of the warehouse, a task which took him several minutes. There, a homebrew vat of liquidated magic stirred, popped and bubbled inside of a large see through tube. A small monitor beside the tube displayed a chart similar to a polygraph with readings which detailed:

pH: 7.0, 7.5, 7.3, 7.1.

[color=LightSteelBlue]“Have a working batch with similar balances. Even at final testing, 7.4. First batch had to be thrown out, 5.4, acid.”[/color] Marvin delivered,

Soil Decomposition: 67%

[color=LightSteelBlue]“First batch decomposed slower. Improvement, still too long; I need to find a way to speed up the process.”[/color]

Substance X conversion: 67 %.

[color=LightSteelBlue] “Finally aligning soil decomposition with the magic’s conversion rate is a success. Should be able to replicate energy after extraction and create independent test batch with magic as base.”[/color]

Substance X extraction rate: 1.62Wh per second. Sparks flew from the thick brown-red liquid as it churned and steamed behind the tube.

[color=LightSteelBlue] “Need more effective stabilization methods. Could potentially blow up entire lab if extraction rates increase further. May need to make voltage stabilizer.”[/color]

He moved back to the other side of the warehouse where the suit’s pieces lay completely cooled. He collected the arms, leg, and chest armor plate molds and loaded them onto the dolly. He carted the materials to toward the western wall where the seven masks rested. He used a pair of tongs to remove masks #6 and 7 from their hooks. Marvin pushed the large dolley to the center of the room where the elevator was. He pushed the cart and its materials on the elevator before he entered as well. When the doors closed, the elevator descended to the lowest floor of the warehouse, the sixth; his ballistics lab. On the wall immediately to the right as one exited the elevator was a wall lined with various kinds of guns ranging from storebought hunting rifles to manually constructed .50 caliber guns.

Marvin removed a several kinds of guns from the wall: a standard 9mm pistol, a Remmington shotgun, an AK-47, an AR-15, and a mounted .50 caliber sniper rifle. After he had set up the weapons, he attached each piece of the suit to a separate line; he slid on a pair of earmuffs. First, the standard 9mm:

First shot, mask #6 - no penetration (NP).
Second shot, mask #6 - no penetration (NP).

[color=LightSteelBlue] “On the initial test, impact absorption was 90%, pre-submerge. Complete kinetic dispersion achieved post-submerge, not even a dent.”[/color]

Marvin ran mask #6 through the gamut of caliber tests he had set up. Each bullet up to the .50 caliber failed to penetrate the mask. Mask number seven was ran through the same tests and recieved all NPs. He didn’t bother to change the conditions of the testing--he needed the most accurate constants. After all, getting shot was an inductive occurrence that rarely changed. He began again--first with the 9mm and up through the .50 caliber.

First shot, chestpiece, pre-submerge, 9mm - NP.
Second shot, chestpiece, pre-submerge, 9mm - NP.

Up through the .50 caliber there was complete impact absorption, but no kinetic dispersion. When the .50 caliber round struck the chestpiece, there was the smallest of dents. A problem mitigated, he surmised, post-submersion in the magic brew. These findings let Marvin know his designs were improving sans-magic. He had nearly constructed complete bulletproof, fire, water, and self-oxygenating armor plating. He would have to record his findings for later. He ran the other pieces of armor through the same sets of ballistic testing as both masks and the chestpiece; the same results as before--all NPs. Marvin quickly scribbled what he found in the resident notebook he kept in the ballistics lab, a notebook also filled with early prototype suit designs and engineering blueprints for the warehouse.

With the flip of a lever, the suit pieces were escorted to Marvin on moving chassis rails where he took them down and placed them on the dolly; he used the same tongs as before to remove the still glowing face masks from their mechanic line. After placing all the tested materials on the dolley, he activated the lockdown procedures for the ballistics lab and headed to the elevator where he would stop on the floor above to submerge the remaining pieces of the suit into the magic liquid he had concocted. The fifth floor’s layout was the simplest of them all, a large white room with several tubes similar to the one in his main laboratory. Quarantined at the back of the room was the working batch he had submerged both masks in; it was a tube much larger than the one upstairs; the tube’s face opened up and plumes of chilled vapor rose from the ajar space. A set of several hooks ejected from the top of the chamber-system and Marvin placed the chestplate, arms, and legs onto the hooks. The set of hooks retreated back into the tube and began the submersion process. In three days, the submersion would be complete and after the magic had settled in, it would be ready for use.

War was coming to his streets--he could feel the tension massing, and he would be ready when the dogs were released.