Chapter 13 - An eye for an eye lets the whole world see

Posted on https://books.clockworkcaracal.com/dragons-heart/old-beginnings/ch13 - if you aren't there, this is a pirated copy!

Cyan gazed gloomily across his shop, not bothering to hide his mood - the only other person there with him was Minmax, and they would notice and pry it out of him anyway if he'd tried. They'd been sitting in silence ever since the last customer had stepped out, Cyan trying not to brood and Minmax seeming perfectly content to just read.

"Hey, M." Cyan finally broke the silence.

"What's up, boss?"

"Have you ever dated?"

"Nahh." Minmax shrugged, not fazed in the slightest by the out-of-the-blue question. "Not really my thing. I got plenty of friends, a couple real close ones, and that's good."

"Damn." Cyan sighed and put his head down on the counter, resting his forehead on his forearms. "I kind of envy that, right now."

"I keep telling you, you gotta get out more. Make some real friends."

"Not that part," he muttered into his arms.

"Okay, date some good people?" Cyan couldn't see them, but he could hear the shrug in Minmax's voice. "I dunno, why'd you ask about me?"

"I'm not sure," Cyan admitted. "I guess I was hoping you might have some... I don't know, insights."

"Hey, I don't live under a rock. C'mon, tell me about it. Can't be worse than sitting here moping while you wait."

"That's fair." Cyan grimaced. "All right. There was this guy, we were...." He paused, considering his choice of words. "Not casually dating, but not a committed kind of serious relationship either, for a couple years. A few? A while," he settled on with a sigh. "Things were good, is the point, until the shit hit the fan - globally, not just the two of us. The whole bring magic back movement that wound up killing millions."

Cyan paused, glancing over at Minmax - they were still listening, although with a patient expression that was politely saying get to the point already, and raised an eyebrow at Cyan's look.

"Yeah, I know my history."

"Right. So this guy, he was - as far as I knew," he muttered, "a normal human, so when the war hit our city and he disappeared, I thought... well, I freaked out, thinking he'd get himself killed, and then I thought he had gotten himself killed, you know? I thought he was dead." Cyan paused, swallowing a note of bitterness that had slipped into his voice. "Ran away and died alone. Even though it didn't make any sense - he was always the type to run towards trouble, not away from it, and drag me into it with him if he could--- sorry." Cyan put his face in his hands again. "That's beside the point."

"It's cool." Minmax gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

"Thanks," Cyan muttered half-heartedly. "... So. He died. I mourned. Moved on eventually. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and this same guy just walks into my damn shop - not dead, not even old, because it turns out, hey, he's an elf too! Doesn't seem to remember me, which sucks, until it turns out he does, sort of, and it all gets even more complicated from there. The short version --- shorter version," he amended, "is that he won't tell me what the hell happened, where he's been, what he's been up to, anything about the last fifty years, and I got angry and now I doubt he'll even speak to me again, which shouldn't bother me, but now I'm angry and I feel like it's my fault, which, argh." Cyan banged his head against the counter, holding back the urge to start swearing again.

And stayed there, the seconds ticking past in silence.

"Damn," Minmax finally replied. "Can't say I ever heard that one before."

"Thanks, M," Cyan muttered, trying not to sound too sarcastic. "You're a big help."

"Look, the details are all new, and I'm not gonna lie, weird," Minmax didn't even pause at Cyan's amused snort, "but you know---"

The chime of the door opening cut through their conversation, prompting Cyan to sit back upright.

"Whoops, break's over," Minmax said cheerfully, then called out to the newcomer. "Hey, friend, what can I help you with?"

The customer - stocky, wearing a casual jacket and more significantly a large eye patch - walked over to the counter, glancing between Cyan and Minmax. "I have an appointment?"

"That'll be with him, then." Minmax jabbed a thumb towards Cyan.

"Cyan." Cyan held out a hand with a friendly smile - as best as he could put together at the moment, at least. "You're Raven?"

"Yeah." Raven shook his hand. "I heard you could help fix up my eye."

"That's what we're here to find out. Go ahead and take a seat, I'll be right over." Cyan gestured to the client seating by the wall.

"Thanks." Raven wandered over where indicated, settling themself into a chair.

Cyan gathered up the tools he'd already brought out, since he'd been expecting this particular client - not much, since it was just an assessment. A scanner, a couple different kinds of connectors, and a readout display were all he expected to use.

As Cyan made his way around the counter and over to his seated client, Raven started to unfasten their eyepatch, with a quick, almost nervous glance around the shop.

"If you'd be more comfortable, we can move to the back room instead." Cyan gestured towards his work room. "Not as many places to sit down, but more privacy."

"That's okay, here's fine." Raven grimaced. "Didn't want to put off your customers."

"It's part of the local charm." Cyan smiled mischievously. "Come shop at CMY, you might catch someone getting a new arm stuck on. Or a new eye," he added.

Raven laughed, the sort of strangled cough-laughter when someone is very sure they shouldn't have found your joke funny at all, then finished removing their eyepatch.

Beneath it was, as Cyan had expected, missing an eye. Long-healed scarring on the forehead and eyebrow ridge indicated the original incident had been quite a while ago, but on the bridge of their nose and almost down to their cheekbone were signs of much more recent burns.

The previous implant - and most of the framing hardware from the installation - wasn't just damaged. It'd been completely battered and slagged into a mass of fused metals and plastics.

Cyan whistled. "Well, that is an impressive amount of damage. Is it still feeding any data?"

"Nothing. Just ghost images."

"Good. That's a good sign." Cyan pocketed all of the connectors he'd brought out - they wouldn't be any use, since there was nothing useful to connect to.

"Yeah?" Raven sounded relieved. "I thought it meant everything was busted."

"It absolutely means everything is busted," Cyan agreed, allowing himself to sound a little amused. "But that means it'll be easier to remove all the broken hardware. Here, I'm going to try inspecting it with this." Cyan held up his scanner, making sure Raven got to see exactly what it was. "I'll be using it to get a look at the damage, since there's nothing functional for me to hook into. You shouldn't feel anything from it, but try to hold still."

Raven started to nod, then stopped themself with a small laugh. "Holding still, right."

Cyan gave them a reassuring smile, then plugged the scanner into the display and considered the situation. The scanner was essentially useless here; despite his implications, it couldn't actually "see" visible hardware in any sense, being designed for diagnosing electronics issues.

It would make a decent enough cover story for using magic, though. (Even though using magic the way he was about to wasn't actually illegal, he liked to keep his tech work and his magic, officially speaking, completely separate.

Holding the scanner-plus-display in his right hand, he reached out with his left and started "inspecting" the damage, feeling out the fine threads that made up the nature of the post-molten hardware and the damaged human around it. The hardware itself was, as he expected, mostly a fuzzy mess. Much of the previously complex and intricate threads corresponding to the electronics torn and fused back into the simpler structure of basic materials, but small patches here and there had managed to maintain integrity.

Cyan wove a small bit of his own magic into those spots, teasing out where they were and what, if anything, they were connected to, while pretending to read something on his scanner's display. Three of them were too fragmented and isolated to be identifiable, but one - all the way in the back, very close where it connected into the ocular nervous system - had broken away from the rest instead of warping. It was either incredibly lucky, Cyan decided, or whoever had designed the previous piece had anticipated the chance of their hardware being violently destroyed.

Considering the sort of work his prosthetics clients usually did, it probably had been designed that way.

Raven cleared their throat, shooting another glance around the still-empty shop (while still, to their credit, holding still). "So," they said, somewhere between nervous and awkward, "I heard about your work here from the Twist."

"Ah." Cyan nodded. The Twist, short for Twisted Shoots & Leaves, was one of the oldest lancer teams in the city and the only one known for having multiple generations of its members. Raven bringing them up meant two things: one, they were almost definitely a lancer themself, and two, they wanted something magic-related done as well. "You know them?"

"We work in the same field," Raven elaborated, confirming what Cyan had already doubly suspected. "And, uh. My vision is pretty important for my job, and my last piece of hardware didn't really do the job...."

Cyan made some mental notes as the pieces clicked into place. They were definitely a lancer. Work-related vision that his previous eye couldn't manage meant they had mage-sight - and bringing all of this up here meant they wanted to know if Cyan could make an eye that had mage-sight, as well.

He frowned in thought, looking over the threads of the broken eyepiece for anything he might have missed while he considered the possibility.

"Well." Cyan stood up and shifted his weight back onto his heels, absently disconnecting the display from his scanner. "I would say that I have... mixed news, for you. Some good, some bad, some neutral," he clarified.

"You're done already?" Raven asked, surprised.

"I'm done with everything I can be," Cyan allowed. "Which part do you want first?"

"Whatever you want. I'm ready for it." Raven pulled their eyepatch back on, casting another quick look at the customers who'd wandered in during Cyan's inspecting.

"Good news first, then. I can clear that mess out and fix you up with a new eye, without too much difficulty. The cost would just be in making the new piece, no extra charge for prepping or installing."

"That is good news." Raven started to relax, pleased, before they remembered how Cyan had started off. "...All right, what's the bad news?"

"The bad news is that I've never made anything that works with your particular line of work. The neutral news, then, is that I should be able to do something similar to what you want. In theory," he added, just for precision. "I expect it would be a lot of work, require a significant number of visits for tuning over several months, and cost much more."

"I... see." Raven chewed on that, visibly conflicted.

After a minute or two of that, Cyan decided it was time to interrupt the silence. "You don't need to decide everything up front," he reassured them. "If you want the basic replacement, I can move ahead without a decision on the extras."

"Really? Okay." Raven stood up decisively. "We'll do that. What's next?"

"Next, I'll send you an estimate and start building your new eye. Since the current state of things isn't causing you any pain, we'll schedule an appointment to get the old one out and the new one in once I'm done."

"Deal." Raven held out a hand. "You have my contact info, send the estimate and invoice to the same place."

"Sounds good." Cyan smiled and shook their hand. "I'll be in touch."

Mimicking mage-sight was theoretically possible, Cyan reassured himself for the third time as he put his tools away. There were plenty of magic-detection spells, and just as many magic-detection devices, most of which specialized in exactly the sort of elemental magics that mages worked with.

The trouble was, human vision was already the most complicated of the senses to artificially replicate. Adding some sort of magic detection to the mix - and managing to make that information visible in a way that was consistent with the person's pre-existing mage-sight? That would be a monumental task.

On the other hand, it would be a new technical challenge, which Cyan hadn't had in over a decade. He'd had plenty of difficult, time-consuming commissions, of course, but not anything new.

"They might not even go for it," Cyan pointed out, whether it was to himself or to the empty workroom. "Stop getting ahead of yourself."

Which still left him at his present position: having agreed to make a visual implant for his new client. With or without magical extras.

Cyan pulled out an empty box, holding back a sigh as he started sifting through his parts cabinet. He'd gotten plenty of spare optics in his recent pickup from Mr. Smith - and although most of them were too low-grade for a full eye replacement, he'd gotten a couple which he could repurpose without too much trouble. Finding them, he put them in the box, along with a few partial or rescued boards and chips that were most likely compatible and the materials he'd need for the frame and casing. Actually constructing the latter would wait until he could get some measurements, which would mean a visit to the back back room where Cyan kept his actual medical equipment.

It wouldn't stand up to scrutiny if the corps ever came knocking, but the last time he'd been caught doing unlicensed surgery, it'd meant a hefty - but affordable - fine, and gaining his completely non-binding assurance he wouldn't do it again. And having your business caught out as a front for one mildly illegal practice was an excellent cover for running a related, much less acceptable illegal practice. Like binding magic into technology.

Which, contrary to the usual, he was probably not doing on this one, making it a nice, safe, only slightly illegal sort of job.

Glancing down into the box, Cyan ran down a quick mental checklist of what he would need, nodding to himself before heading back out to the shop front. A small pack of teenagers were loudly browsing the shop inventory, so Cyan made an effort to not frown at the computer as he quickly put together a loosely itemized estimate sheet, then sent it off with a decisive tap.

That done, he tucked the box under his arm and turned to go back upstairs - only to be stopped by a light tap on his shoulder.

Cyan glanced back at Minmax in surprise. "What is it?"

"Stick around a bit." Minmax jabbed a thumb towards the extra stool behind the counter. "We got a conversation to finish."

Cyan blinked. "We do?"

"C'mon, man." They smiled broadly. "Your weird relationship advice, remember? Now either sit down and wait or we can find out how much those kids are into eavesdropping."

"...I can't believe you remembered that." Cyan ruefully sat down, putting his box of parts down on the nearby counter. "It's been at least half an hour."

"Yeah well, I'm the one who got interrupted. Now I get to make you wait."

"Thanks a lot," Cyan mock-grumbled.

"You're welcome." Minmax leaned back against the wall, looking smug. "So what's in the box?"

"Parts," Cyan answered, dry. When that only got an expectant look, he rolled his eyes. "You know you don't really care that much."

"Nahh, but it'll pass the time. Plus, you gotta get in a turn getting interrupted by customers."

Cyan chuckled. "All right, all right."

As the group of teenagers stepped out of the shop (without having bought anything), Cyan let his sentence trail off with a sigh of relief. He'd been describing the function of the optical parts he'd picked out with increasing detail in the most boringly technical way he could manage - ostensibly to make Minmax regret having asked him about it, but in retrospect he was pretty sure he regretted it more between the two of them.

"We should set up a vending machine in here," Minmax mused aloud. "Maybe we'd get some money out of those window-shopping highschoolers that way."

"And crumbs in the electronics," Cyan grumbled. "What did you want to tell me?"

"About what?"

Cyan paused for a fraction of a moment, then sat back and gave Minmax his absolute best we are not amused regal glare.

As he expected, Minmax broke into laughter. "Damn, if you grew your hair out you'd look just like all those other fantasy elves."

"I am a fantasy elf," Cyan remarked primly, playing into the part.

"Yeah, yeah, you're some kinda lost elf prince, right," Minmax said, still laughing. "Hey, you even got the soap-opera relationship drama going on."

"Ugh." Cyan dropped the facade with a grimace. "I wish I didn't."

"Who does?" They leaned an elbow on the counter, looking thoughtful. "Right, so, you got your not-dead ex-boyfriend ditching you in a totally out of character way, then showing up way too late like nothing's happened and you had a fight about how he won't talk about it. That about the shape of it?"

Cyan paused, considered the summary, considered it again, and then made another face. "I guess it is."

"Yeah, glad I'm not in that mess."

"Oh come on, M," Cyan protested, starting to feel exasperated. "If you made me sit down here with you just so you could tell me that my life sucks, I'm going to be pretty pissed off."

"Nah, you do enough of that to yourself. What I'm thinking is, your situation is pretty, uh..." Minmax paused, taking an uncharacteristic moment to choose their words. "Unique. Yeah, I like that."

"Thanks. And?"

"So the details are unique, I give you that." They frowned a little in thought. "But if you dig right in there, you're mad you don't understand, because what he did doesn't make sense, and I've seen that situation plenty."

Cyan nodded slowly. "That is... not wrong, at least."

"Yeah. And all the other situations like that, it always turns out somebody assumed something. I'm gonna be honest, it's usually both somebodies," they added. "Which means you're probably wrong about something, and he's probably wrong about something else, and you're talking like you're on completely different networks."

"How can I be wrong about something when I don't know anything?" Cyan snapped, then put his hands over his face. "...Sorry."

"No prob." Minmax was, as always, unflapped and unflappable. "That part, I dunno. Got nothing on how to solve it, either. Just something new to think about while you mope up in your room."

"Yeah. Thanks." Cyan picked up the box of parts, standing, then hesitated. "...Really, thanks. For letting me vent, at least."

"Any time."