“Rayne! Can you hand me the plasma sensor?” yelled a big, red headed man with an elegant, curled moustache towards a young woman, long, black hair flowed over her shoulders. Rayne was part of an Artificers Guild and worked at Gerard’s Workshop. Gerard, the best artificer in town, even though his shop was far from the biggest in town, had personally seen to Rayne’s tutoring in the art of artificing since the day she snuck inside his shop as a little girl, hiding from a couple of bullies.

You see, Rayne is not a typical woman. In this day and age, humans cultivate their offspring in tubes with genetic manipulation and advanced bioengineering. Apart from the the dna of a man and woman, nothing else was used from a human to create new humans. And though every part of the creation of humans wat tightly controlled, people say Rayne’s cultivation went wrong somewhere. For instance, from the moment she got out of her cultivation tube, she had a very unique “drawing” on her iris in her eyes. There were 2 tiny white circles with white lines flowing down and inwards, ending in her pupils.

Apart from that, Rayne had a very peculiar mark on the inside of her right foot when she was cultivated. It was a small, oval mark with something like a wavy tail, with the bulb pointing upwards. The peculiar part of the birthmark was that as Rayne grew up, the birthmark “moved”. When she was a toddler, it already past her ankle. When she left kindergarten it almost reached her knee. When she reached puberty, it was well past her knee and sat on her inner thigh. Even inside she was different than her kin she had parts growing in her body that were developing in different ways than with all the other girls.

For instance, after cultivation normal girls developed a small tube called a penai, akin their male counterparts who also only had a tubelike appendix (albeit a bit longer) called a penis, for their body to be able to urinate. And they grew flat chests. Therefore, the difference between male and female was mostly visible in their size and dna. Creation of humans for some reason still used male and female building parts, though probably just out of some ancient tradition. Rayne’s chest though started to grow these strange soft bulbs when she grew into a young woman.

And when cultivated, she already had a little slid where her urinating tube should have been. Medics were perplexed by this aberration and kept her under survey while she matured and lived her life, but as her life didn’t seem in danger because of it or her growing chest when she got older, they didn’t interfere. Instead, they were intrigued by Raynes changes. Still, these oddities didn’t make her life any easier and let to a lot of bullying and name calling, to which fate led her into the artificing shop of Gerard. Hiding out in the shop, Rayne’s eyes grew to saucers when she saw all the artificing equipment and all the bright and flashing lights.

Gerard had found her snooping around some dangerous equipment and, after scolded her for being where she shouldn’t be, noticed her intense curiosity for everything in the shop. She told him what she was doing in his shop after he asked her and he showed pity for her. Partly because of this and partly because he liked the amount of interest she showed for his shop, he gave Rayne a tour through the shop. After she went home, Gerard thought he had seen the last of her, but nothing was further from the truth.

The next day, Rayne stepped into the shop the moment Gerard opened it and asked for a more indepth tour and a more hands on experience as she could hardly sleep after thinking about the tour yesterday. Gerard had said to her the shop wasn’t a playground for kids and had put her outside, Rayne looking heavily disappointed and sad while he did so. As he closed the door behind her, he couldn’t erase her sad face the rest of the day and when the next day, Rayne stood in front of the shop’s window again with a big book in her arms, Gerard couldn’t help himself. He opened the door and looked at a shy looking Rayne.

“So, you are back again, kid?” he said looking down at Rayne with his arm crossed. Rayne looked at her toes over the big book she held tightly to her chest. “Uhmmm...uhu.” she said softly, shoving her feet around a bit. Then she suddenly looked up determined at Gerard and held up the book in her hand, saying “Look what I bought, mister!”. She held up a book about artificing 101 and Gerard was a bit taken aback. Not only because of her cute seriousness and energy, but also because books about artificing were quite expensive, even the cheaper ones. “You bought this yourself, kid?” he asked to which she nodded heavily.

“Yes, mister. With all my savings. I even read in it all day yesterday. About gyrowings. And plasma sensors. And...and transfu..transfutio…” Rayne stammered. “Transfusional energisers.” Gerard helped her out, making her nod heavily. Gerard picked the book out of her grasping hands, making her feel suddenly empty. He opened it and looked through it a bit while Rayne looked up, not daring to demand the book back. Then to her fear, he turned around and walked inside with Rayne’s book in hand, making her take a step forward while yelling a soundless plea to give her her book back.

Then to her surprise he turned around and said to her “Well, what are you waiting for? Don’t stand around outside all idiotic and get in. It’s not all that warm out there and you won’t learn any artificing if you stay out there.”. Rayne’s eyes lit up and her smile grew wide and she sprinted inside. Gerard couldn’t do anything but grin widely because of the girl’s spirit and from that day onward he was both mentor and a third parent to her. She learned everything there was to learn about artificing from him and could never do anything wrong by him.

“Here you go, old man.” Rayne smiled while she gave the plasma sensor Gerard ask her for to him. “Old man. Psssshh.” Gerard mumbled. “I may be way older than you, kid, but you still have ways to go before you are ever as good an artificer as this “old man”.” he bellowed. As Rayne walked back to her own place in the shop, she threw a hand up and said “Ha! I am already a much better artificer than you, oldtimer!”. Then she looked around and grinned. Gerard looked at her and thundered “You wish, little girl!”. Then he sighed and leaned on his leg and said in a more serious tone “But you will be, kid. You will be. You got way more talent now than I had when MY 18 year old self, though you still got some rough edges.”.

“Psshh, I only learned from the best artificer in the world. I don’t know if I’ll every be as good as you.” Rayne said as she blushed and looked to her toes, shoveling around on her feet. Gerard smiled warmly. “Please never change, my dear Rayne.” he said to himself. Then he roared “You will never be if you keep slacking off like this, kid!” making Rayne jump up surprised. “Yeah, whatever, old man! Way to ruin a moment. Besides, I am already better than you. I just wanted to let you believe otherwise.” Rayne yelled back, turned around and scooted off to her own workbench. Suddenly, the doorbells ring as someone enters the shop.