It had been some time since Artman had truly been frustrated by a problem. Oh sure, the problems with overlapping meridians and resistances had been bad, he'd be forced to start over and carve a new chest piece entirely. Fortunately he'd found a carpenter that dealt in bulk mannequins for semesters and store fronts which made things easier, if a bit awkward. The frames had to be remade and the internal weights and balances redone, the joints needed to be remade, busy work really. Nothing compared to the source of his frustrations now looming in front of him.

  For some reason, the arms were not as strong as the ought to be, nowhere near it actually. In prior models he'd managed some strength, but it was jerky and crude. Liable to crush or hurl whatever was placed in the hand rather than smoothly lift it. Now he found he was having trouble getting the thing to lift even its own weight and little more. By his calculations its total capacity was just a little under fifteen pounds or so, when prior models had reached upwards of fifty or more. All without any real indication as to way.

  This was all frustrating because, while he'd been looking over his plans he decided that once his commission with San German, he came to realize the great potential towards repairing the limbs of soldiers using his methods. Tying the movements directly to the raw nerves awaiting connection within the stumps. However in order to be useful as prosthesis, they had to be able to lift and move much the same as a real limb, or at least with enough similarity as to be unnoticed by others. And thus arose the issue. He'd never truly designed these constructs for their strength, and at this point, perhaps it showed more than anything.

  So there he was, sitting on his bench stool, glaring at the construct as he commanded it to curl and relax it's arm, trying to make sense of what was holding back it's presumably awesome powers. It was in this fuming state of smoldering dispassion that Maven found him, softly gliding to his side and placing a slender hand on his shoulder.

  "Something troubling you, O wise and Clever one?" she cooed, slight tones of mischief ringing through his dark clouds like a distant bell. Artman's mind stirred from within the mire of his own thoughts as he sighed in heated frustration of his dilemma.

  "I swear to you Maven, it's like this thing Doesn't want me to finish." He said, his voice like knapped flint as he barred the serrated edge of his frustrations towards the object of frustrations. He stood suddenly, kicking the stool out from under himself as he did, a movement the made Maven flinch but not stir as Artman raised his voice.

  "This, bloody Contraption of scrap wood and cheap printers ink, has somehow found a way to rebel against me and my entire being. Look at this, the meridians are fine, the junction nodes, perfectly aligned and the conduits for the artificial musculature is exactly all where they ought to be, but, when I tell it to lift anything heavier than a slice of burnt Toast! This happens!" He snatches the current weight from the construct hands and replaces it with a hammer. The frame creaks and groans, the hammer is lifted a few inches, and then collapses as smoke curls from various openings and extremities. Artman kicks the stand its resting on with a grunt of frustration at this repeated failure.

  Maven, watching stoically, gives a quite sigh or mixed emotions watching Artman venting his technical frustrations. However as he rages on, it becomes clear that he is in danger of losing himself almost entirely and descending into frothing rabid anger over this perceived attack by the telluric forces of the universe manifesting through this simple block of carved wood and paint.

  The grip Maven places on his shoulder is less than gentle, but has the effect of holding back Artman's boiling wrath before he can start randomly blasting things with his magic, or worse, start throwing his tools around the shop.

  "Alright now, I think he's thoroughly intimidated, you can put your evil magician act back in the closet for later." Her fingers tightening as she speaks, as Artman's wrath drains from him. He places his hand over hers, clasping her fingers with his own, and sighing with a defeated grumble. "I suppose now you'll tell me I've been working to hard now, huh?" Maven rolls her eyes an pulls herself closer to him "I'm no house wife, but yes, you have." she mutters softly to him. The quiet warmth of emotion reflecting darkly in her hidden melancholy as they stand their for a moment, simply embracing one another for a time, before their individual senses interrupt and Artman begins to examine his misbehaving machine with a grim and critical eye. Leaving Maven to repair her own conflicted composure from the close embrace.

  "Well, best I can figure, the lines aren't balancing the flow of energy properly, maybe I need to rework the wider system again." Artman sighs disappointedly, taking a step towards the bench where his tools lay. Maven opens her mouth to say something, what she doesn't exactly know, when a knock at the door silences her attempts. Both parties look towards the workshop door in mild confusion before both made some awkward attempt to answer it. Maven stepped to the side as Artman paced by her, reaching the door and opening it to a polite crack.

  "Yes?" He greeted the young man standing at the door. The sandy haired youth stepped back in surprise for a moment before opening his mouth in a wide, chipped tooth grin towards the magician. "Brother Artman Wolfram?" he asked, polite yet brimming with a restless eagerness that seemed so na?ve for his age. Artman took a moment to recognize his title within the Order, but answered in measured tone. "I am he, what business do you have with me?" he asked of the youth, dreading that he was a delivery boy of some kind with some new and useless trinket sent to him by a stranger in the magicians circle. "Samson Greens, at your service, May I speak with you a moment?" the youth replied, a hopeful pleading in his voice. Artman opened the door a bit wider to let him in, quietly examining the youth, trying to divine his purpose by reasonable deduction or some other method.

  The young Samson's face filled with awe as he moved about the workshop, examining the strange and arcane mechanisms and tools littering the space. either blind or ignorant of their slight disuse. Artman followed his gaze and silently chided the boy and himself, most of the things scattered about his workshop were either novelties or useless to his current aims and goals. He was slightly embarrassed he let so many of them go to waste collecting dust. It's when the young man came to Maven that a slight bit of hilarity ensued.

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  The youth's face seemed to light up for a moment, pointing to the woman and asking asking Artman in a gleeful tone "Is that the one you presented to the Council at the Gauntlet hearing?" Artman could see Maven blanch in shock and distain before Artman corrected the young fool. "No, that is my assistant Maven," Artman point instead to a different wooden figure slumped in the corner. "That over there is the Wooden Man I present to the Council." While Maven didn't seem to catch the humor of it, Artman found some small humor in her indignation, passed over for a block of wood. The absolute travesty, he was almost sure she'd make some crass joke about this insult, when she instead opened her mouth and vented her icy displeasure to the young man.

  "And who might you be? young man..."

  The chill in her voice made the young man jump, before composing himself enough to make a proper introduction. "Samson Green, second grade acolyte to Master Varick of the Order, I- I'm uh, not supposed to be here actually." he admitted sheepishly. Maven raised an eye to this and Artman stood up a little straighter. "Then why are you hear?" He could hear Maven press, just slightly before he could ask the question.

  The young man fidgeted before answering "Well, uh, I'm here because your work is brilliant and I can't wait to-" he stumbled over his words for a second before regaining himself. Taking a breath, straighten up, and forcing himself to act composed before speaking.

  "I, Samson Green, am hoping to compare our works in a collaboration regarding the true nature of the Human internal arrangement and structure. For the benefit of knowledge and our combined arts as we strive to think God's thoughts after him." the effort seemed to strain him slightly, mostly because he didn't breath for almost the entire sentence. Artman regarded him quizzically, tryin to puzzle out this boys nature.

  "And, what is the nature of you study, exactly?" Artman asked, to which young Samson's eyes lit up as he answered. "Anatomy, specifically the Circulatory system and arteries. I figured your work on the connecting nerves and tissues would give me somewhere to start, seeing as you've turned it around into building these amazing simulacra, I'd bet you've got a ton of fascinating studies to refernce. OH, for example." rushing over to the model that had just been frustrating Artman not a few moments before, the Magician reached to stop him by Samson seemed a step ahead.

  "If I didn't know any better I'd say this was a prefect recreation of an upper torso and shoulder joint, the way you've rendered the nerves along the rotor cuff is almost pure art, If it's functional it ought to be able to-oh that's odd, this structure seems almost..." Artman standing directly over his shoulder, gritting his teeth, "Almost what?" he dared the young man to finish his remark.

  "Well, this looks like a ladies shoulder, see? the way the meridians recreate the musculature and these lines here, I'd almost swear it, but it looks like the arrangement one would find in a womans body, and almost all of them appeared somewhat like this."

  "Yes, what of it?" Artman barked, Maven looked like she wanted to say something, she had the catty smug look on her face. "You're very familiar with the bodies of women?" she asked "Do tell more." Samson blushed for a moment before sheepishly admitting "Well, only the dead ones, cadavers are easy, they don't scare me as much as the live ones do."

  The answered seemed to both mildly disgust Maven and amuse her at the same time, while Artman was growing more heated with this impertinence. "What about my model? what difference does it make if it looks like a ladies shoulder or a mans?"

  Samson shook his head tutting slightly "Oh it very much does sir, beg your pardon, but if it weren't for God and animal kinship, Man and Woman would be to completely different species of animal!" He declared, which caught everyone off guard, Samson then began to point at the wooden figure. "The feminine figure concentrates vast majority of its muscles power towards the hips and core for purposes of child bearing and delivery, taking away from the upper body but leaving the legs untouched, Masculine frames instead are built to reinforce the limbs; Forearms, shoulders, Spine and major clusters along the arms and legs. They're built for power and strength in battle, adapted from years of harsh environments and ancient cultures of warfare favoring strong sons. And that's only scratching the surface, If we want to get into more specific terms-"

  "Thank you, that will be Quite enough!" Artman's anger flashed, sending the youth scrambling. "Young Mister Green, I'm flattered you think so highly of my work, but as you arrived Unannounced," he let the harshness of his words settle in to the youths skull, "I am unprepared at this time to be taking on, collaborators, in my tedious endeavors." Artman then raised an arm and pointed finger towards the door. "I suggest you excuse yourself of this, and instead, come to approach me in the proper manner, as a member of the Order, and not barging into my workshop on a whim."

  The young man was crestfallen, deflated of all his eager and hopeful vigor, shuffled pathetically towards the door. When he'd said his goodbyes and closed the heavy door behind him did Artman sigh in exhaustion. "The nerve..." he muttered, before glancing at his prototype and groaned. It had taken him a few second but the young mans remarks about anatomical differences hit him like a bucking mule. Maven interrupted his pity with her own words on the matter.

  "He seemed, decent, knowledgeable, I can't imagine why you'd drive him away so quickly. Aside from that remark about bodies," she twittered to herself. "I'd show him what a real woman is like if he'd ask."

  "Quit your flirting Maven." Artman barked, before finally letting himself sag completely under the weight of his error. "I've got an awful lot of work to do now." Mavens eye raised "Oh?" Artman nodded "How could I've been so blind, of course they'd be different. Infernal creatures, always slipping some mischief in when you're not looking." he grumbled. All she could do was laugh "Surely your not going to blame me for all women having slender shoulders, are you? because I know some girls you'd swear were hill trolls instead of anything fair and gentle."Artman looked to her with a moment of befuddlement before turning back to his model and grunting the word "women" to himself quietly. Maven simply rolled her eye's and looked for something to busy herself with while he sulked.