Chapter 5
Early the next morning, Fidget and Jinx went to talk to the harbormaster, but of course, he knew nothing of the security breach. He was more than willing to write it off as a mistake by his apprentice, Nimrod. Jinx accepted this explanation, but Fidget still believed there was foul play at work.
Regardless, the two friends gave up their investigation and headed west to see what Pudding was working on. Just outside the workshop, Jinx motioned for Fidget to wait before going in. He wanted to try one last time to convince his friend to ask Pudding out.
“I’m telling you, she likes you.”
“Enough, Jinx. I’ve thought about it, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me. You’re crazy. Now, I’m going in. If you want to stand around out here, go for it.”
Fidget reached for the door handle.
Jinx quickly whispered, “I bet you get hugged.”
“I already told you she hugs … yyyyaaaaaa.…”
Fidget had begun to turn the handle, but stopped suddenly when a small, round metal ball smashed through the workshop’s wall, landing in the street just a few feet from where he and Jinx now stood.
A set of goggles appeared behind the hole in the wall and a pair of violet eyes surveyed the damage, eventually taking notice of the two dumfounded pixies standing outside.
“Hey, guys!” said Pudding, in her typical super cheerful voice, opening the door to let them both in. “How are ya?”
Fidget and Jinx looked at the hole in the wall, then at Pudding. She looked like she had been climbing in a chimney. Only small slips of her blonde hair could be seen peeking through a thick layer of dark soot. The goggles had protected her eyes, but the rest of her face and a long leather apron she wore were equally covered.
Pudding slipped the apron off gently, trying to avoid knocking the soot onto her yellow blouse top and blue jeans. As Jinx had predicted, she closed the distance between herself and Fidget, immediately hugging him when he walked into the workshop. Even in his now nervous state, Fidget was able to catch a sly grin from Jinx. He rolled his eyes in response.
“Hiya, Puddin’,” said Jinx. “To answer your question, I’m great. Fidget is almost as great, but slightly less. You know how it is. He does try so hard to keep up with me, but it’s tough, I am pretty awesome.” Pudding went up to Jinx and hugged him too, which now drew the sly grin from Fidget. Jinx shrugged his shoulders and then burst out laughing.
“What are you guys laughing about? You’re not laughing at me, are you?”
“I would never laugh at you, Pudding,” said Fidget in a voice that couldn’t have been more sappy … or sincere.
Jinx chuckled, then shook his head in a slightly disappointed way. “No, certainly not.”
Pudding eyed them both for a second before reassuming her bright smile.
“Sooo, what’s the deal with this?” asked Jinx, pointing at the wall.
“That,” said Pudding, with a grin, “that was a slight miscalculation.”
Pudding stepped outside to retrieve the metal ball, leaving Jinx and Fidget admiring her other handiwork. No matter how many times they enter the workshop, they are always left in awe by their friend’s creative mind.
Pudding’s workshop is a cross between an ordinary warehouse and the most fantastical place you can imagine. It’s here that all of her great inventions are dreamed up and eventually come to life. All along the walls of this vast space are a collection of things that whirl and things that gurgle. Most have odd glows. Others are even hard for Pudding to explain. One thing is for certain, all of the objects are quite out of place with everything else of a pixie nature.
For pixies, scientific research is mostly frowned upon. Until Pudding came along, no pixie would have ever dreamed of inventing a vehicle that would let you dive beneath the ocean’s waves simply to see what’s there. In their minds, there’s no reason for such a thing to exist because it serves no meaningful purpose. On top of that, pixies that can use magic are expected, sometimes even required, to spend their time researching magic, not science.
To Pudding’s credit, she has never listened to the naysayers, and that is why her workshop is filled with dozens, perhaps even hundreds of small inventions that are scattered here and there. Most of them serve no practical purpose, but to Pudding, they are priceless. That goes double so for her best inventions. These are the ones that, at this point anyway, have stumped even her intelligence. They include the still untested submarine and her various attempts at producing a rocket. In a small, leather bound notebook that she keeps with her at all times, many more devices of a similar nature exist solely as drawings, though in Pudding’s mind, no matter what it takes, these dreams will become a reality … someday.
Pudding stepped back inside, set the ball on a workbench, and then grabbed a rag to wipe off her face. When all of this was done, she said, “Well, you guys showed up just in time. Check it out!” She led Jinx and Fidget past a long line of metal fragments and workbenches, to a large bay door on the west side of the workshop. With a wave from her hand the door slid back, revealing both the second submarine, and the large cliff that it was currently dangling over, suspended by a pulley system that she had invented.
To the astonishment of both Jinx and Fidget, Pudding had radically altered the look of this submarine. The new design was sleek, stylish, and much, much bigger than the prototype.
“The Titan was my prototype submarine; I call this one the Poseidon. I’m just putting the finishing touches on it.”
“This one looked just like the other one … you changed all of this in one night?” asked Fidget.
“Hmm … oh no, I changed all of this in the past two hours,” said Pudding.
“You’re amazing.”
“Thanks, Fiddgy.” Fidget was instantly in the one armed hug that so terrified him. He quickly shook loose from it.
“Fumble,” said Jinx, while pretending to clear his throat.
“What did you say, Jinx?” asked Pudding curiously.
“What did I pay for what?” asked Jinx, clearly confused.
“What did you say?” repeated Pudding, stressing every word clearly.
“Oh, haha, I didn’t say anything. Did you hear me say something, Fidget?”
Fidget glared at Jinx before responding, “Nope, not a word.”
“You see,” said Jinx, stepping to the very edge of the workshop so that he could give the submarine a better look while gently patting it, “I didn’t say anything.”
“The cliff looks like it has eroded even more than the last time I was here,” said Fidget edging up to the submarine so that he too could feel it.
“Mmm hmm, it sure has. This whole edge of Lumina will fall into the ocean in a couple of years.”
“We’re safe here though, right?” asked Fidget apprehensively. He couldn’t help but notice that the submarine was dangling over a roughly 100 foot straight drop to a crystal blue ocean that was much deeper.
“For now, but I think I’ll have to abandon the workshop inside of a month.”
Fidget leapt back from the edge, staying close to Pudding, who had walked back over to the metal fragments near the center of the workshop. Jinx eventually joined his friends but continued to stare at the submarine. With one quick movement, he jumped back over to the edge of the workshop, leaned toward the submarine and started sniffing the exterior.
Pudding and Fidget exchanged glances while doing their best to stifle their laughter. Jinx spoke up at last, saying, “Very smooth exterior. This plating looks like a new alloy, it feels like a new alloy, it smells like a new alloy … and now for a taste test….”
“Oh, please don’t bite the submarine, Jinx. You’ll hurt yourself, and you might fall if you keep leaning over the edge like that.”
“It is a new metal alloy though, right?”
“Yep,” replied Pudding, happy that Jinx had noticed the difference. “It’s more heavily enchanted too. These exterior plates should be much
stronger than the Titan’s. The fragments over here are some of the extras.”
“Ah, you see. I have an eye for things like this. I tell Fidget all the time that I have an eye for things that others might not notice. But he doesn’t believe me, do you Fidget?”
Fidget took a step back so that Pudding wouldn’t notice him making mean gestures. “Where is the window?” he asked quickly, trying to change the subject.
“I removed it. It was the weakest point on the prototype. Instead, I cast a transparency spell on the front interior plate. It will let us see right through the hull, just like there was a window there.”
“Awesome,” said Jinx, “but if you can see outside with a spell, why did you put these other holes all along the bottom?” He then pointed toward two holes at the front of the submarine, two more on the side they could all see, and two at the rear.
“Ah … those are torpedo tubes.” Pudding said this with a slight grin. She knew her friends would be greatly interested in this aspect of the Poseidon’s design.
“What’s a torpedo?” asked Jinx.
Pudding walked to a work bench that was covered with a long white sheet. She grabbed the sheet and pulled it off, revealing a long, cylindrical, brass colored object with a clear, cone-like container at the front and a propeller at the back. “This is a torpedo.”
“It’s a weapon,” said Fidget, thinking out loud.
“In a sense. I made it defensive in nature though. After the test of the prototype, I figured it would be a good idea to have some way to defend ourselves. You see that cone at the top. That can be filled with a small amount of magic. The same crystals that power its turbine engine allow it to hold the magic charge for an extended period of time. So, it is a hybrid of machine and magic.”
“Very cool,” said Jinx. “What does it do though?”
“Well, let’s say I cast an ice spell on the conical container. Like so.…” Pudding placed her hand over the torpedo’s frontal charge and said “Freeze.” The cone instantly began to glow with a soft blue light. “It will hold that spell in the crystal and release it on impact with, say, a giant sea creature. The ice spell will encase the creature in a big magical iceberg for a minute or so, allowing us to escape. The spell will wear off quick enough that the creature won’t be hurt by it.”
“How many of these do you have, Pudding?” asked Jinx with a twinkle in his eye.
“I have nine of the ice torpedoes built and eight typhoon torpedoes almost ready to go. The typhoon torpedo should produce an underwater cyclone that will disorient any monsters that get caught up in it.”
“Have you tested these yet?” asked Jinx.
“No. The metal ball that just smashed a hole in the wall was a small test of a different type of projectile based torpedo. It didn’t exactly go according to plan. I just want to scare the monsters away, not hurt them.”
Jinx and Fidget both looked at each other with wide eyes. “Can we give one of them a test fire?” asked Jinx, while Fidget turned to Pudding and grinned mischievously.
“They do need to be tested … but not in here, I don’t want to blow another hole in my walls,” Pudding admitted.
“They certainly do need testing,” said Jinx.
“Absolutely,” added Fidget.
“Nemesis always wants to see your workshop….” said Jinx as he lost himself in the thought of encasing Nemesis in a block of ice for a few seconds.
Since the workshop is a safe haven for Pudding, she only allows people that she trusts implicitly inside of it. Needless to say Nemesis has never been on the approved list; a point which greatly agitates the stuck up pixie. Nemesis has made attempts to find out what Pudding is up to, but has been thwarted by the workshop’s defenses on all occasions.
Shortly after setting up shop in this building, Pudding lined the roof with a slick metal layer and then greased it with a lubricant she developed. This defense was implemented to prevent anyone from teleporting onto the roof and peeking through the skylights that run along it in order to catch a glimpse of Pudding’s inventions. If they do so, they will slide right off the building. Nemesis broke her leg the day after this defense was implemented, though she always stuck with the story that she had fallen off of a horse.
Pudding also put an anti-teleport spell in place to redirect those who don’t belong in the workshop. If a pixie did attempt to teleport in without the proper approval, they would end up in a lovely little pig pen in the agricultural district. Nemesis’s favorite dress was ruined by this defense, though she made up an excuse for this incident as well.
“I second this idea of firing it at Nemesis,” said Fidget.
“We can’t test it on Nemesis!”
“Why not?” asked Jinx and Fidget together.
“She is a little different, attitude wise….”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Jinx.
“…but, she would never harm us.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Fidget, under his breath. The glint returned to his eyes as he poked at the torpedo, “We still need to test this somewhere.”
“We’ll be back just before sundown, Pudding,” said Jinx. “I think I have the perfect spot in mind. In the meantime, Fidget is going to show me how to use telekinetic magic so that I don’t fail the test tomorrow.”
“All right! See you guys tonight!”
Pudding followed them to the door of the workshop and said goodbye. As the door closed, her eyes caught a small phrase that was painted in pink paint on the paneling of the door, where it could be seen every time she leaves the building. It read: Never Let Anyone Tell You That You Are Going To Fail!