Chapter 23

The next afternoon, Laura was sitting at her desk, focused deeply on the monitor before her. On it she was busy designing the weapon she would wield against any other spirits bent on invading the human world.

The basic shape of the blade was modeled after the longsword the German had used for training back home, while she set up a small selection of cross section designs to accommodate for various steels she might have access to. The crossguard and grip though were based more on a Messer than a longsword, due to being easier to construct with the tools she had available. She even included a small cut out where she could weld in a Nagel after the rest of the sword was finished.

While she hadn't seen any wood or plastic, at least none that would take sanding well, Laura assumed that worst case she could get some in town.

In the end she was quite satisfied with the overall design of the sword, as well as the options she had left herself for when she could take a closer look at the available materials. For most of this, Takeko had been sitting on her desk and been watching curiously, but now that she was moving on to adding a bit of a margin for cutting out the base shape on the plasma cutter, he jumped down from it, and rolled up on a cushion Laura had placed on the floor for him the day before.

Now that she was satisfied with her new weapon's design, Laura had to move on to creating the plans for the project she was officially working on. While the rotor blades were easy enough to translate to how they needed to be made from a flat piece of steel, the outside plating might be a bit harder to get done, unless she managed to find a tool she could bend a plate of metal with in the workshop she was allowed to access. Pushing that back as a problem for later, after all worst case she would ask about ordering some blocks of material to mill into shape, the Kitsune began to tackle the more important issue of assembling the rotor blades as well as her sword on a single sheet to hide the latter's existence in the leftovers.

All in all it ended up feeling like advanced tetris, and half an hour later she had finally settled on a layout where the leftover material would not betray her true intentions to easily.

Saving all of it on a SD card as prof. Yakamura had suggested, Laura picked up everything she thought she might need, and left her dorm room. As she stepped out of the building, Gabe walked past her, seemingly returning form practice. Hoping he might help her lug around the plate of metal she would cut everything out of with the plasma cutter, the Kitsune began to walk up to her fellow student with a friendly wave.

"Hi Gabe, how was practice?" She inquired as she came to a stop in his path.

"Oh hello Laura." the American greeted her. "Practice was quite interesting, although I really need to get used to how different Rugby is from Football. What are you up to?"

"Well I was just going down to the workshop I get to use and start working on a Jet engine." Laura explained with a friendly smile. "Want to come and watch? Or maybe even help out? I could really use someone to help carrying the uncut metal sheets around."

"Hmm." Came the unsure reaction from the dark skinned student, as he mulled it over. "If you don't mind waiting here until I get changed into something better suited to a workshop and grab another show sure, I don't mind helping a friend."

"That would be alright." Laura replied cheerfully before waving to a nearby cherry tree. "I'll just sit down in the shade over there till you are ready." The Kitsune finished before stepping out of his way and over to the tree she had indicated. Sitting down she carefully moved her tails out of the way before leaning back against the tree.

About half an hour later, Gabe came back out of the men's dormitory, heading straight to the spirit waiting for him. Rising up from her sitting position, Laura gave him a friendly smile as he greeted her.

"Hey Laura, hope you didn't have to wait too long."

"No it was quite comfortable out here." She replied. "Now let's get going shall we?"

"Sure, where is that workshop you get to use?" Gabe inquired curiously as they made their way towards the Universities main building.

"Down in the basement, it's easy enough to find." Laura said as she opened the door for the both of them. Leading her fellow student down the next closest flight of stairs, they quickly arrived in front of room B.012, but just as the Kitsune had unlocked the door, a horned figure came charging out of it.