She nods.  "I shall have to look into the local ordinances, then.  Better that we can defend ourselves from the lawgivers' searching gaze than to hope we will remain forever beneath notice."

"By the way, does that 'lucky few' comment happen to be meant more ironically, or sincerely?  I - would expect the former, but my instincts may be miscalibrated, being as I have not yet been inside Cinci to compare.", she murmurs, before she lowers the 'one moment' finger she had raised.

"...Ironically, yeah. But not - seriously lamenting? Look, Kyra right? You seem to have a lot more faith in Ohio than I do, and I fuckin' live here. The law's more like a suggestion. Going legit might be possible and might even work better but let's run it by Dr. Anno before doing anything, yeah?"

"I do not propose that I take any unilateral action, Heron.  Merely - research.  To prepare what defenses we can against the sort of people who would utilize the law as their preferred weapon, because the law must at least bind itself to have any force - and you have implied it does have at least that much.

"That, and I was previously a judge.  I'd be doing this research anyway."

"Everyone needs a hobby, I guess. Here, Anno said to give you this."

She hands over a battered black and white e-reader.

"Just let me know when you plan on taking off and when you'll be back to help? We'll work it out either way, but yeah."

"I'll aim to be back in time for the rushes, and I will likely transact some business in the afternoon lull if it proves that there is no need for further triage assistance."

...What is this?  She's going to - fumble with it a bit, who made this a puzzle-box - oh, there we go, it is now Doing Something.  ...She has no idea what it needs to keep operating, but she somehow doubts it is a perpetual machine.  "Did he say he was going to want it back, incidentally?  And--" She catches herself, before she continues--  "--no, I'll ask him myself when next I see him, if he didn't give particular instructions regarding that.  Your time is better spent than passing notes."

"He didn't say, so you can probably keep it." She turns to leave.

It's now showing a list of titles in black and white! The list says 'Favorites' and the visible titles are 'The Great Hypocrisy: Climate Change and the Resource Wars', 'Secret Sauce: How Chemistry Underpins Everything', 'Biology: Concepts and Connections', 'American History, 20th Century to Today', 'The Only Mathematics Text You Will Ever Need', 'Business Ethics: A Practical Approach', 'The Practical Mechanic', 'Geissler & Hessen's Essential Anatomy and Physiology', 'Analog, Digital, and Quantum Computing for Dummies', and 'Electrical Engineering Concepts'.

There's also a thin rectangle at the top with a little magnifying glass on the right. And it has a clock at the top, currently reading 6:17, and a small black rectangle with '99%' next to it.

Heron turns back and pulls a tangled black charging cable from a pocket. "Almost forgot this. Here. The charger might be finicky though. Have a good one, if you can."

The thin rectangle with the symbol in it probably has something to do with why there are a bunch of letter buttons -- oh, interesting, it seems to be a way to find things within the stuff accessible with this device.  And that number...is the current time?  It just changed.  Anyway, this can wait a bit.  She's going to - first, tuck the device into the same pocket of her robe that holds her note-taking diptych, then secondly tuck the 'charger' into a different pocket.

Presumably that's something to do with the percentage.  It's a shame she didn't have the time to learn more from Lantry; she could likely fix the 'charger' without needing to figure out appropriate 'psychedelics' for the purpose of spell design, if she had had it.  At least she knows the Sigil of Preservation is there; that's - better than nothing.

Anyway...A parting comment, that would be appropriate.

"I'll do my best.  Fate be with you."

And then she heads out.  She's got knives to refurbish.

The Bordertown Market remains much as it did yesterday. A bit slower, this early. There are rusty tools, miscellaneous junk, and old clothes in various configurations for sale, but no knives, specifically, at the moment. She can recognize the packet of white stuff she was thrown the other day as crystal meth, by comparing it to the stuff a punter offers passersby. There's a Puma looking over a big black bike with a weathered, indistinct figure in front of the garage.

Hmm.  Well, she'll see if anything else could use some de-rusting, and browse the clothing in the meanwhile.  She should really have an outfit that is not her formal robes, even if she needs to piece it together from rags.

Tough, sturdy-looking boots for $30-50 depending on raggedness. Cheap trainers for $12. A baseball cap for $9. T-shirts for $15. Random bits of rags for less than a buck each. An old sack for $3. Bright purple skate shorts for $18. Old baggy cargo pants for $22. A see-thru mesh top for $9. Filter masks for $15 each. A hi-vis vest on sale for $30. Some sort of sleeveless jacket in synthetic material for $25.

(Raggedy, torn versions of most of the above available for about half as much.)

...She has $66, at the moment, after accounting for what she's spent.

...She'll buy a filter mask, leaving her at $51.  She might want to come back for the cargo pants - the fittings (so many buttons...) could well be useful, but she's going to try and get two knives to refurbish today, fate permitting.

The filter mask is a durable stiff thing, covering mouth and nose with printed instructions saying to wash with soap and water once every 3 days or after heavy use.

There are socket wrenches and ratchets and screwdrivers and butterfly knives and the like, rusted shut and going for almost nothing. The gossip swirling around her is much the same as it was yesterday. Someone mentions picking over the trash travellers leave, another talks about an explosion- One of Tower's mines got a dog during the night.

And if she can ascertain whether refurbished versions of those items will both work - which she can do on her own recognizance - and sell well - she might buy some of them, with intent to sell them back.  ...And the sack to carry them in, depending on just how cheaply they're selling for.

It's kind of hard to tell. A lot of the metal is eaten away underneath. Sellers will haggle with her though, if she looks like she's moving on.

It's hard to tell if you don't know, for example, Forge-Bound analysis spells.  She knows enough of how they work to gather useful data, like "how badly infiltrated by rust is this wrench?".

(Well.  Not even spells, half the time.  You can get a lot of information out of how a piece of metal reacts to stimulus.)

"What did the last owner do, drop it in saltwater and forget about it for months on end?  It's more rust than metal and I couldn't possibly imagine how it got that way!  We're not on the ocean!"

"River counts as saltwater, honestly. But I got it cheap, so what can you do? It's still metal after all."

"...I'm not sure how much I want to know about that, let me tell you.  And, well, rust isn't the same thing as metal, chemically speaking.  Alright, I'll take - these, this, and those -" about $30 of miscellaneous rust-patina'd tools to refurbish and resell - and make her way back to where she left the tree, yesterday, so she can go about (harvesting the nuts it's grown, and) refurbishing them.

Someone has cut down the tree.

...Well, it'll be back when she finishes this ritual.  ...When she checks for cameras and finishes this ritual.  She wishes she had a camera set up; who even took it?

There's tire tracks near the stump and loose leaves and twigs on the ground, so probably someone with a truck? It's not like the Badlands are completely empty. She seems to be alone for now, though, if she looks around for a while. No obvious drones, no obvious cameras.

Who even needs a tree that badly!

Well, she'll go...somewhere else, for this one.  Hopefully she won't have to wait out a sandstorm this time around.

She can find a place that ought to be hard to stumble upon, a depression between a Y-shaped hill decently far from any easy paths but not so hidden to be the most obvious hiding place. No sandstorms are in evidence.

Then she'll put a tree in there, and proceed to clean up some rusty metal.

Nothing interrupts her!

On her way back towards the Bordertown, she happens to see the glint of metal in the corner of her eye. On closer inspection, it looks like someone accidentally left a small metal case, lunchbox-sized by a temporary campsite- There's a burnt out campfire a day or two old and everything. Inside is a collection of small widgets in a series of tiny plastic drawers, labelled with arcane combinations of letters and numbers. They're electronic components like some Bordertown merchants were selling for a premium. There's also two carefully plastic-sealed black computer chips labelled 'FPGA'.