[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]"You can never have too many knives in my line of work," the underboss had said during their first meeting, and he certainly was living up to that statement. She couldn't help looking back on that first meeting with amusement now, remembering how dejected she'd been about the shop's finances. If only past-Aurelie had known that a Rocket underboss would stroll through the door and respond to her sales pitch like a kid in a candy shop!

His notes were enough to make Aurelie wonder more about the Rocket leadership structure, though. She'd always thought the underbosses served in more of an administrative governance role. But with how quickly the underboss was putting her many different knives to use, including the tactical folding knife... How dirty did the underbosses get their hands? How much of the organization's wetwork did they really do?

Probably better not to know for sure, she thought, unthinkingly brushing away a minuscule fleck of rusty red off the letter of praise for the tactical folding knife and dive knife.

Next up came the most exciting project of this entire order, one that she'd never constructed or even conceived of before: the pen knife.

The most difficult part of this particular piece for Aurelie would be the pen fabrication, so she started on that part first. Recalling the techniques she'd been taught over a decade ago for sand-casting, Aurelie carefully sculpted a sand mold based on the most elegant pen she owned and poured molten-hot brass into the mold to create both halves of the pen's housing. It took about a week's worth of refining and polishing afterward, but the red-haired smith was ultimately pleased with the bright golden, delicately fluted shape with a handy clip on one side.



Ultimately, the pen consisted of just two caps that fit together against a central internal barrel. For the pen's writing half, she basely stole an ink cartridge, spring, and ballpoint tip from another pen, cut the ink cartridge in half, and inserted it into the brass housing she'd made. Then for the top half, Aurelie added a small, flanged catch to secure the upper half of the pen, so that it could be twisted off easily but not slide off otherwise when the blade wasn't needed.

The blade itself was almost an anticlimax: a simple high-carbon blade measuring about 2.5 inches in length, with a needle-fine point and razor-sharp edge. It was surely one of the smallest blades she'd ever made, but possibly one of the deadliest because of its surprise factor. After tempering and quenching the small blade, Aurelie firmly welded it atop the central barrel inside the pen.



The upper cap slipped neatly into place over the blade, keeping it concealed. The lower cap also slid easily over the ballpoint tip, which wrote fluidly enough, like an utterly ordinary pen. After some light testing, Aurelie verified that the construction was solid; nothing was going to rattle or come loose unless the underboss did some forceful writing or stabbing with it.

Aurelie sagged against the wall with relief and tiredness as she regarded the small, yet eye-catching pen. It was done, and from what she could tell, it looked pretty good. And now, perhaps, the underboss wouldn't have to decide whether a pen would be mightier than a sword—not when he could write, stab, or slash with this.

She gladly sent it off with him about three-and-a-half weeks after the last delivery, with the following note:

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT