//------------------------------//
// 39 - How It Works 
// Story: Bind on Pickup 
// by David Silver 
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They were all holding kebabs, but also walking through the streets. "So, you see," continued Spike even as he chewed. "It's all magic, but how you… approach it matters." He angled his skewer towards Smolder. "Your magic came from the guildchain, right?"

"And taught," she defended. "Good teacher, served us lunch." She raised her skewer as if in triumph of the culinary arts. "But, yeah. And?"

"So it's a shortcut." He brought his hands together, skewer caught between them and getting grease on several fingers at the same time. "A good one, useful too. Don't get me wrong! But it's still a shortcut, not 'all their is'."

Sandra chewed moodilly on a bit of pineapple before swallowing and nodding. "So where's your proof of this?"

"It's all around us." Spike waved a hand expansively. "We've been fighting it. Monsters don't have guildchains, do they? Your golem doesn't have a guildchain, but both can do magic and skills and things, right?"

“Well, yeah. They don’t do magic like we do, no, but it clearly is still magic. And magic forms all sorts of monsters and items, and everything has some of it.”

“Right right,” Spike started pacing. “So they use magic without guildchains. What about before guildchains, then? What did people do for magic before them?”

"Crudely," suddenly noted Sandra. "I'd have to go get a history book to say more than that. People huddled around little campfires wearing leather scraps, hoping the monsters wouldn't eat them that day. You want to go back to that?" Visions of cavepeople with simple magic danced in her mind.

Garble suddenly grinned as if he were let in on a joke. "But they did it. You taught yourselves how not to do it. You humans are stupid sometimes."

Smolder lifted her shoulders. "Before you go getting that down on them, I bet the average pony doesn't even know how to build a fire, because they don't have to anymore. Why learn how to do all those old-timey things?" She fashioned finger guns at Sandra. "But forgetting they exist--"

Garble huffed, a bit of flame escaping. "Why would anyone need to 'know' how to make fire?"

Sandra smiled a little awkwardly. "Because they are not dragons and can't breathe it up when they want some?"

"Sucks to be them." He shrugged softly, but looked satisfied in his draconic status. "So, Spike, you're saying 'go primitive' and figure it out?"

"Well, I wouldn't use that phrasing, but basically?" He inclined his head. "It'd take work and practice, but when you get it down, it's just another spell. If we knew how these guildchains worked, we could even record it for someone else to use." He raised his chain into view. "Think they have a recording button hidden somewhere on here?"

“I haven’t heard of anything like that,” Sandra said. “You’d think that I would have heard.”

Smolder laughed. “Are you saying that you already understand everything about guildchains and can’t possibly have heard of someone using it unconventionally?”

“I guess not…” Sandra said, looking down in thought.

“That’s right!” Spike hopped in the air a little. “I’m sure there’s all sorts of magical stuff not explored.”

"Or." Garble thrust a finger across the walking line of party members. "Someone's getting all power out of it. If most people don't know how, or even that you can make new stuff, the few people who do get all the gold and fame, right?"

Spike blinked dumbly before a big smile spread on his face. "That was surprisingly--"

"--Smart?" cut in Garble with a little huff of flame. "Stop assuming I can't think, twerp. I can."

"He's real clever," defended Smolder, putting an arm around her brother. "Just, you know, dragons don't usually value that quite as high as they should. Humans have stupid habits, so do we. How about we all work on it?"

“Tch,” Garble made a noise. “I am already clever. I’m good at whatever the dumb habits dragons have.”

Smolder flapped up and pat Garble on his head. “Sure you are, bro.”

Sandra smiled a little, watching the siblings start to bicker, though her attention slid back towards Spike. "So, let me make sure I have your idea right." He nodded up at her and she continued, "The skills we get, from our classes--" She held up her guildchain. "--are basically pre-written magic. We follow them by... rote? Is rote the word? Rote." She nodded, getting more confident in the word. "But you're saying it doesn't--"

"--have to be that way, all the time," finished Spike, bobbing his head. He tossed his kebab into a trashbin they were passing. "Don't get me wrong. Most of the time? There's really no reason not to go with the nice, neat, ready to go version. I'm just saying we can tweak it, so why limit ourselves? Passive martyr is way more interesting than active martyr, and we're a better team for it."

"You were pretty passive already," noted Garble, hearing the conversation. "You managed to get more passive?"

Smolder lifted her shoulders. "He was pretty active last fight. You want to throw that away?"

"No no no!" cried Spike, waving his hands frantically. "I meant the skill. I'm using it passively, so I can do other things. I don't stop all the damage, but I can throw heals, hit things, and contribute more." He directed his staff at Smolder. "Keep working on yours. I bet you could come up with ways to blend your cooking with your fighting more. I know you want to be hurting them."

"I do hurt them," noted Smolder with a wry smile. "But I'm not against more ways to do it. If I could get that tweak right..." She gestured through the air and the great cauldron appeared, slamming into the ground from the foot up it had appeared. "That's not it..." It faded away, nothing cooked.

Garble suddenly wickedly smiled. "Wait wait wait. Yeah... You may be onto something." He hiked a thumb. "I vote we focus on that. Let's make this ours."

Smolder thrust a fist forward and it was soon met by Garble's and Spike's. Sandra squeaked, realizing she was missing out and got her hand in there, completing the gesture. It was time to train in a new way.





"Shield... Tempest!" Garble was propelled despite only holding his great sword in a defensive manner, bringing it down as he flew and cutting an innocent goopy slime in half.

"Boil and die, in that order," commanded Smolder as she clapped her hands, a cauldron springing up from the ground beneath another slime, cooking it alive even as she cut another in half in a smooth transition of her blade.

"Your health is ours!" Spike inhaled as if breathing fire backwards, drawing essence from the spiny creature before him. It gathered in his staff and radiated outwards to his teammates, not that he was staying still, already circling for a better angle to strike the creature.

"Fire creates, fire destroys," called out Sandra, flames trailing just behind her arms as they fanned the air. "I am the fire and the fire is me!" Aiden wasn't there, instead working through her, as she worked through the bird, the two unified as she hurled great balls of fire, each directed by the bird's innate sense of how to control its own magic.

Each pushed themselves to learn skills not in their chains, but evolutions of those skills.

"Is this normal?" Sandra was looking at her guildchain. It listed what skills she had, but the text seemed to jump and twitch spastically. "I don't think it likes what we've been doing?"

Everyone else looked to theirs to see them twitching in much the same way. The new skills they had learned were beyond the guildchain's ability to easily identify. Spike hiked a thumb towards the guild. "Maybe we should head back and make sure we're not breaking anything."

"I'll be breaking a lot of things," taunted Garble with a smirk. "Let's rub it in their stupid faces that we're doing it better than them."

Spike nudged Sandra on the way. "Good job, by the way. You don't look nearly as worn out after doing that trick."

Smolder fired a mighty thumbs up. "You look pretty cool too. I think we can smash that stupid dog."

Sandra smiled a little smile. "It feels... amazing. I can... Aiden's fire runs through me, like I'm on fire, minus the burning part. The rock gol--"

Garble interrupted, "--What, he doesn't get a name?" He shrugged softly. "Your fire owl got one, why not the golem? Thought that was just a 'thing'."

Sandra frowned a little, thinking on that. "I never really asked their name... which was rude of me." They were still marching to the guild through the busy city streets, but she turned her thoughts inwards, walking on auto pilot.

Spike reached out, helping direct her to keep her from bumping into things. "So, silly idea I just had, but what if what we're doing is not allowed?"

Smolder squinted. "Why would they make rules about that?"

"Because they're stupid?" Garble lifted his shoulders. "Whatever. Like we care about their rules."

Inside Sandra's mind, she called to the golem, sitting down in a cave where the golem rose from the rocks and crystals there. "Hello. I'm sorry, we never really got a chance to introduce ourselves since we met, and that's mostly my fault. I'm Sandra." She put a hand on her chest. "Nice to meet you."

The golem seemed to consider her with the patience only stone could have.

"I didn't mean to take you for granted, or granite, heh..." She smiled awkwardly at her little pun. "You really came through for me a few times. I am very grateful. Have you... gotten a chance to see more?"

The golem raised a hand towards her before it fell to various bits of stone.

"Did I sayEek!" Stone ran up along her form, creating a shell around her, firm, cold, yet gentle. "Oh... Is... this your way of saying you're happy?" The stone offered no words, simple solid companionship. "I get it... But I wanted to know, do you have a name? Do you want me to call you something besides 'the rock golem'? I mean, you're not even just rocks. Your crystals are a big part of you."

The crystals grew more prominent in the shell of stone around her and Sandra suddenly smiled behind her stoney mask. "Oh! Crystal! That's your name."

She suddenly woke, thrown clear of her mental space. They were just in front of the guild. "Wow, good timing. Guys, his name is Crystal, okay?"

Spike bobbed his head. "Sure, that's a nice name." Also delicious, but he didn't mention that.

"What a tasty name," said Garble, taking on that responsibility for Spike. "Fits. Alright, let's show these jerks what we've been up to." He strode at the front, marching through the doorway. He marched right up to the frontdesk secretary. "Hey, what's up with this?" He thrust his guildchain out at the man.

"Hm?" His eyes went up and down over the guildchain before it flickered. "Ah. Your chain is out of sync. Were you hurt recently?"

"I hurt a lot of things." He crossed his arms, chest puffed out proudly. "But I'm fine."

"Let me see that." When the guild chain came closer, the human took a hold of it and began feeling over it, muttering as he touched unseen buttons, changing the display. "You've been using invalid equipment combinations, I see. That's very dangerous. You could damage your guildchain."

Smolder added her chain, holding it out just next to Garble's. "I've only been using my usual equipment, what's mine upset about?"

"Hm." He released Garble's to take Smolder's. "Hm. Invalid targets. You could hurt someone."

Smolder hiked a brow at that. "Hurting someones is kind of the point."

"That restriction is there for your protection. You could use it on a non-combatant without the target restrictions," warned the secretary. "If you keep using it on invalid targets, the guild chain may lock you out of your abilities."

"What about mine?" Spike held up his for review. "I didn't target anything odd, or use new equipment."

"Me too." Sandra held hers out just beside Spike. "We didn't do either of those things."

"The entire party?" sighed out the secretary, but he moved to the next. "Your rapid ascent will end poorly if you keep this up. Hm…" He leaned in to squint at little words. "Oh…" He released Spike's chain and moved to Sandra's, inspecting hers. "Well… I take it back. It seems you two didn't do anything wrong." The two beamed proudly. "You unlocked a new skill, one the chain hasn't encountered before. For you--" He looked to Sandra. "--this isn't that odd. Your class is very new."

Spike suddenly thrust up a finger. "Does that mean we get to name them?!"