𝕍𝕠𝕝𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕚𝕤 | Lyney x Reader

1

You sat, hunched over the desk in front of you with a movable magnifying glass occupying most of your vision. In your hands was a tiny piece of metal with a few even smaller wires inside, as well as a screwdriver and a pair of forceps to help you get everything just right.

At the moment, the little wires inside were completely tangled and you were doing your best to free them while not breaking anything, either. Part of your tongue stuck out of your mouth as you concentrated; a habit you'd picked up over years of inventing various things. You'd once had a mentor who warned you that if you continued to do so, you might just accidentally bite it off one of these days. Though, that didn't stop you from unconsciously performing the habit at times anyway, and so far, you'd been lucky enough to avoid the loss of your tongue.

Finally, you untangled all the wires and sorted them into the right places, once again wishing you weren't working with such a small device right now. Though, for the goal you had in mind, it was necessary.

You didn't always have time to work on projects of your own, with all the orders you were constantly being commissioned for by other people, so the progress of this device had been slow so far. Between all the special kameras, clocks, and appliances people ordered from you, it left little time for you to design things freely these days.

Still, you always found a way to work on your own goals one way or another; usually thanks to the help of a cup of coffee and the loss of some sleep at night.

You reached for the mug sitting on the desk in front of you now, taking a big sip before setting it back down to continue working.

The device you were currently crafting was an auditory recorder. It worked similarly to a video kamera, but would be exclusively for picking up sounds. You'd made plenty of them before for various purposes, but there were a few reasons you were currently struggling to perfect this one.

Mainly though, it boiled down to the size. It wasn't much bigger than a button, that way it could be placed on one's clothing to inconspicuously pick up on things around them. You figured it could come in handy for investigators or even just evidence collection, though your focus wasn't always on the practical aspects of what you created. Your inventions were your art form, and you treasured them just as any painter or other artist would their own creations.

The issue with this recorder was that it was hard to keep the small size while also ensuring it could pick up sounds within a long enough range. The first few times you'd made it, it could barely even pick up your own voice when you clipped it onto your collar and talked. Now, it could at least record a full conversation if the person was standing near you, but that wasn't enough.

True greatness came from doing what seemed to be impossible; that was always what you strived for. You wanted it to be able to hear almost as well as you could, and if you were going to do that, you knew it would take many more hours of tinkering and late nights to amplify the size of the range it could record.

You closed the little device now and glanced down at it. Sitting on your desk like this, it would have just looked like a small piece of scrap if you hadn't had the magnifying glass there. A tiny button was placed at the back of it and you pressed it now, turning the device on as you brought it up to your ear.

You knew there was something wrong that was preventing it from detecting at a higher range, and this was the best way you knew how to find out what it was.

It seemed like all other sounds seemed to disappear now as you listened to the quiet humming of the little button-like object. The chatter of people on the street and the whirring of the mecha observing them didn't even reach your ears anymore.

Inside the small device, you could make out what seemed like a faint disturbance in the humming. What should have been the constant sound of the tiny microphone preparing to record audio was instead choppy and inconsistent. Frowning, you listened further to confirm that there were, indeed, little pauses in between the hums of the mic.