Pepper cracked the door open to the workshop and walked in while rubbing his face. The sleep was still heavily seeped in his eyes. He finished with a loud yawning sigh that slightly echoed within the large metal structure.

  “Okay… let’s get to it.” He muttered while his feet scuffed across the concrete floor.

  He turned on some music which played in the background, but his focus soon tunnel visioned towards the craft. He started in with the metal guide rods and worked for hours to try and perfect the knee joint. Pepper did not have the foresight to know that the scaling in size would come with so much more difficulty.

  The balancing and weight distribution was becoming harder with every once of weight and every inch in height he added. Pepper was on the verge of quitting for the day when the right knee joint finally set. His ears heard the audible click and Pepper slowly faded away from the skeletal frame with hesitation. Fear had taken hold of him as he worried he would watch his hours worth of work fail right in front of him.

  He finally breathed a sigh of relief when the shape held. The shop door was ripped open and the metal structure soon shuttered when the door loudly closed. His heart raced for a split second and Pepper snapped his head between the golem’s metal skeleton and the door.

  “What’s up man?” Marcus asked.

  His heart didn’t begin to settle until his eyes confirmed that the small reverberation had not disturbed the metal framing. “Dude, you can’t be charging in when I’m working on the skeletal frame like that.”

  Marcus seemed to ignore his statement and homed in on his progress. “Yo! This is cool man.” Marcus leaned in and caused Pepper’s nervous to heighten all over. His roommates face now inches away from all his work. “The bones of success my dude. Ha, this is so cool.”

  Marcus stood back up and then noticed the shaped leg. “Wait. Are you…” He pointed between the two different Mala’s. “Are you making your golem black?”

  “Well, I don’t know about making him black, it’s just the way that the clay is naturally. Mala’s character is originally white, so I paint him once he’s done to look that way. That is just the final stage of construction though. I’ll get there eventually.”

  Marcus had a confused look on his face. Pepper read each small detail and he could tell there were quiet a few different thoughts running around in his roommates mind. Marcus scrunched his mouth over to the side while he scratched his head. “Nah man… you need to make him black.”

  He was now curious about Marcus’s reasoning. “What makes you say that?”

  “People love alternate variations of things. You gotta think of it from a branding perspective man.” Marcus then reached behind him and produced a can of Big D Energy. He popped the top and took a long sip. “It’s just like this. Flavors, color patterns, different variations of songs. Marketing and branding is all about shaking this up, keeping things new and fresh. Entertaining… heck, sexy even!” Marcus finished with a playful and flirtatious demeanor.

  Pepper chuckled and widened his eyes. “I can guarantee that the last thing I think about when designing Mala is, dang… how can I make this golem more sexy?”

  The two laughed and Marcus waved him off. “Not like that man. Think about sports cars, their curves, design, color pattern, heck even the interior design can be sexy.”

  Pepper shook his head in disbelief. “We’re seriously talking about sexual appeal and golems in the same conversation.”

  Marcus sighed and took another sip of the drink. His eyes shifted around the room and Pepper read it as he was trying to think of a new way to convey his thoughts. Marcus then snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Bikini!”

  Pepper dry coughed. “Excuse me?”

  “Bikini… do you know where it comes from?”

  Pepper chuckled and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He had no problem in openly admitting he did not have any idea. “No, I actually have no idea who started making bikini’s.”

  Marcus rolled his eyes and leaned against the workshop bench. “No… not the swimsuit but the name. The name for the modern swimsuit came from the nuclear arms race. At the heart of the cold war was the pursuit of not just building the worlds deadliest weapon, but making it even more destructive. The US was using the Bikini Atoll islands of Guam as the test sight.”

  Pepper couldn’t help but arch his eyebrow as he continued to intently listen to everything Marcus shared. “Okay… I’m listening.”

  “Death, destruction, war, the coming apocalypse… things you should be afraid of, right? Wrong… this is sexy, this is the ultimate power, this is the thing we should not want, yet we can’t take our eyes off the mushroom cloud each explosion creates. What else can you not take your eyes off of?”

  Pepper smiled and rolled his eyes. “Bikini”

  Marcus stuck his tongue out and pointed once again at him. “Bikini. Ha!”

  “Okay, well pretty sure Mala is not going to have a bikini, but thanks for the…”

  Marcus cut Pepper off before he had a chance to finish. “No. no. no… listen.” He paused and took another sip of the drink before he set it down on the work bench. “This isn’t the Mala you’ve come to know… this isn’t the small Mala you watched in the club matches… this is a whole new Mala! This is the Mala that makes demons cower in fear! The Mala that makes hell shutter in fear at the power and terror he has contained inside him!”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Marcus had extended his arms out and looked like a businessman giving a pitch for a new product. He was successful though as Pepper was now sitting on the edge of his seat and awaited for the final hook intended to wrangle him in.

  “This is the Nightmare variant of Mala….” Marcus paused as they both smiled at one another. “The version of Mala which will keep you awake past midnight. Your opponent’s afraid… no terrified of having to face you in the arena!”

  Pepper tilted his head from side to side. The longer he thought about it, the more he started to like the idea. “Okay, you kinda have a point.”

  Marcus leaned back and smiled. “Oh I know I do. I may not be the expert crafter, build-guy that you are…” He paused and pointed at both of Pepper’s golems. “But, I do know a thing or two about getting ideas, or products to trend.” Marcus then looked back at Mala’s original form used at the KBVS club. “Hey, what color is your power supply?”

  Pepper practically laughed out loud when Marcus used the wrong term. He was able to bite his tongue and reminded himself that his roommate was doing his best to come up with fresh ideas. “Well, my power core is a light blue.”

  Marcus scrunched his face as if he was disappointed. “Dang… it would be cool if it was purple. Really play on that whole midnight, nightmare theme, you know?”

  “You could simply install a fae crystal on your power core’s fusion wall and easily change that.” Wilson’s voice informed them. The surprise entrance made both Pepper and Marcus visibly jump and cry out. *Ahh!

  “Holy crap man! You gave me a heart attack…” Marcus called out. He then turned and realized he had spilled his big d energy drink and quickly worked to clean up the mess.

  “How the heck did you even get in here without us noticing?” Pepper alarming asked as he realized the workshop door still appeared to be closed.

  Wilson was simply standing off to the side of the room but still looked at a slightly downwards angle. He maintained his demeanor of not making eye contact but answered in his monotone voice. “When you’re expected to not be seen or hear, you get really good at coming and going without being noticed.”

  Pepper looked over to see Marcus’s jaw had dropped in shock. Marcus looked over to him and pointed towards Wilson, the appearance of still not believing the words he had just shared. Pepper merely nodded and sighed, letting his roommate know he was aware and shared the same thought process as Marcus.

  “I bet you have heard some interesting conversations then. You ever test out just how far you could sneak in somewhere?” Pepper stated.

  Wilson shrugged, “Everything that I have overheard being said about me simply proved what I had already surmised. It has gotten me in trouble once or twice.”

  Marcus smirked and appeared more curious now. “Ha… how bad could it have been?”

  Wilson didn’t miss a beat. “I caught my school principal cheating on his wife with the English teacher.” Marcus and Pepper in unison called out, oh-my-god. But that didn’t stop Wilson as he continued. “That didn’t really go over well for anybody. I submitted a rebuttal to my parents regarding my grounding, but it did nothing for me. Mr. McFadden was let go.”

  There was a long pause and neither Marcus or Pepper seemed to know what to say. Pepper finally tried to appeal to an empathetic approach. “Hopefully it wasn’t too traumatic for you.” Pepper was relieved when he actually saw a slight amount of emotion come across his roommate.

  Wilson scrunched his face and shrugged again while he titled his head off to the side. “Nothing that I haven’t seen in my health sciences book. The only thing that was really surprising was seeing Miss Carmack like that. I would have never guessed she was limber in that way.”

  Marcus immediately spat out his drink and started laughing. Pepper buried his face in his hands and tried to keep his laugher down to a rumbling chuckle. He then heard Marcus’s voice compose himself long enough to bestow a new nickname to Wilson.

  “Dang squints! I had no idea you could be that funny!”

  Pepper lowered his hand enough to look at them both. Wilson picked up his hand and acted as if he slapped the top of his leg. “I’m a damn comedian I tell you.”

  The two laughed while Wilson continued to stand there like a statue, but Pepper looked over to Marcus. “Why would you call him squints?”

  Marcus motioned with his head towards the fmini looking roommate. “Well, whenever he prepares to share something, he always squints his eyes. It’s not a personal attack, just an observation.” Marcus then turned and looked at Wilson. “You got any good one liners to throw at us?”

  Pepper turned and looked at Wilson who did just as Marcus had pointed out and squinted for a second. To both of their surprise, Wilson gave a one-word answer. “Nope.”

  Marcus formed a surprised look and nodded while rotating his gaze back to Pepper. “Okay then.”

  Pepper worked to get the conversation back to where it had originally started. “I thought fae crystals were worthless though?”

  To their surprised Wilson stepped forward and sat on one of the wooden crates that had been used deliver the golems. “They have not been found to add any value towards the generation of power, or effect the flow, absorption, or even manipulation of ethereal essence. However, it was discovered that fae crystals react when there is ambient essence and you modify your power core with a cross-relay which passes through the adaptor port along the fusion wall.”

  Wilson had certainly grabbed Pepper’s attention. He shifted on the crate and then adjusted his glasses before he continued. “That is why most power cores are designed with an empty slot directly next to a power core’s fusion wall. It is a cost efficiency measure for manufacturers. It only costs them an extra 30 Flex to install the fae crystal and create the custom color scheme, but they charge customers an extra 1,300-1,700 Flex and call it special.”

  “Holy crap! That’s… that’s… that is just ridiculous man.” Marcus said in a shocked and alarmed tone. “Those things seriously cost that much?”

  Pepper could feel the confusion form on his face. “Marcus… you said you spent like over 120,000 Flex on services for your golem.”

  Marcus’s demeanor changed as if a light bulb had come on and he needed to clarify for them both. “Okay, so to be fair, I never actually paid for that. That was all from my sponsors, more importantly, the Mr. Johnson who does business with my dad and owns Total Insure.”

  Marcus ended in a confident tone and looked at both he and Wilson as if they should have clearly heard of Total Insure before. The blank faces that both Pepper and Wilson gave him though were enough to get him to add on. “Seriously? You guys have never heard of Total Insure? They’re like, the leading insurance company for the entire western half of the US.”

  The continued blank stares seemed to dig under his skin and Marcus started to snap his finger while he sang the company’s jingle. “If you wanna be covered, like no other, look no further than, Total Insure!”

  There was a silence which filled the room until Wilson calmly muttered. “I can see why they use you as a model rather than a singer.”