Clay - Solo RP & Special Missions

This must be the place. Clay raises a hand and bangs on the door, hoping it's loud enough to be heard over the racket from the forge. He doesn't really want to upset the person he's hoping to get a weapon from by walking in completely uninvited.

Clay's eyes widen as he looks around the smithy. The size of the weapons is almost as impressive as the size of the smith. The Fighting Branch keeps weapons around, of course - not all martial artists fight bare-handed, after all, as Clay and his staff attest - but the last time he saw a hammer that big it aimed at him in the hands of a certain crazy bird girl. And he's pretty sure those swords would give even Honedge pause.

He wonders whether he might be in the wrong place. Between the fact that most of the weapons seem to be sized more for the smith than for him, and the conspicuous absence of his specialty... well, he's sure they can work something out. He just hopes this isn't the start of a game of running around the city finding someone who can make him a good staff.

"R-right, hi. Nice to meet you. My name's Clay." Shoot, how do you interact with somebody who's probably going to wind up custom-making something for you? He had Tiki with him at Jojo's, to make introductions and also just pretty much drag him along regardless of confusion or reluctance. But hey, he's faced Mankeys, ghost girls, thieves, and Ashley, so he isn't going to let himself be intimidated by commerce. "I'm in the Adventurer's Guild, and when I asked around there about getting a new weapon made, they pointed me at you."

That last phrase doesn't sound quite right to him. Maybe he's using it wrong.

Clay can't help smiling, either way. Whether the attitude is calculated or not, it's hard to be too frightened of such friendliness - at least for Clay. Someone more timid might find Smith's joviality as intimidating as his anger.

"Well, like I said, I'm looking for a new weapon and the people I talked to sent me your way." Yes, that phrase works much better. "My style's changed and advanced and I'm looking for a new weapon to match it. I've mostly learned staff-fighting up to now. Are, uh, are metal staves a thing?"

"I'm not a monk, I'm a monkey." This is mostly a joke. "I did learn to fight from both of them, though."

Clay swings the hammer experimentally, first one-handed (not a good option), then two, but he looks a little skeptical. It fits Brenda's all-out fighting style well, but Clay doesn't go for full-power berserker assaults quite so much. "It's a really nice hammer. Last one I saw wasn't nearly this nice. But..."

He shakes his head. "I don't think fits with my style quite right. It's not being blunt, so much - I use a staff to move around in a fight as much as I use it to hit things with. I mean, look at me, and imagine I'm up against a guy your size, or... I dunno, an Ursaring. I'm getting better at taking hits, but you could probably knock me flat with one swing, or just grab me and squeeze. I gotta keep moving - in and out of reach, get behind the other guy, jump up into the air, spin around back..." He doesn't quite demonstrate, but he does hop around a little bit, back and forth, like shadow-boxing without the actual boxing.

"The staff is a... what was the word Master Nob used... it's a lever. Does that make sense?" Clay is shaky on how you use the word "momentum" and has never even heard of "torque", but he understands the basic idea of levers. Infernape are tool-users, too, after all. "The staff makes up for all the guys with longer arms and legs."

"Huh..." Clay takes the pollaxe curiously, feeling the balance. It's still quite different from a staff, what with the ends not being equal, obviously, but it's about the right length, a little taller than him - most full-grown stick-fighters use six-foot staves, but of course Clay's a bit on the short side.

He steps away slightly to a more open spot where he's not going to hit anything accidentally and starts moving this way and that with the pollaxe, in odd little circular steps. He turns it end-over-end between his hands, and there's one slightly awkward moment where it looks like he might lose his grip before he grasps it firmly again - he's not used to the unequal weight between the axe head and the spike on the other end. But he regains his equilibrium quickly enough and completes the turn, moving the pollaxe in his hands speculatively.

"I just don't know..." He's a little cautious here - he doesn't want to offend Smith, who's been nothing but helpful and patient. On the other hand, he can hardly be the only customer Smith's had to be picky about his weapon. "It's kind of a style thing. Like, I have these two friends - one of them has this big two-edged sword -" which is alive, as much as ghosts can be said to be, and perfectly capable of using itself "- and the other one uses a much lighter one with more thrusting strikes. You wouldn't expect them to switch swords and be able to use them as well as their usual one, right? It's the same way with this."

"Oh, uh..." Perhaps appropriately, Clay looks a bit, well, poleaxed. "Um, yes, that's what I'm looking for. Please."

He pauses for a moment to collect himself. Honestly, though, he was more than half expecting for one to need to be forged anyway. Presumably this will involve some waiting, though to be perfectly honest he's not actually sure how forging works beyond "take some metal and a big fire and a weapon comes out". But if it takes time for Jojo's to make clothes surely weapons will take time too. "That would be great, if you could! How much would it cost?"

"I'm definitely looking for the higher-quality one here." After all, if he just needed a basic one he'd keep using the one Master Nob gave him even if it has been through a lot already. If allowed, Clay will go into plenty of detail about specifics - the language is imprecise but he has a good idea of what he's looking for in general terms. The sturdy staff he's been using up to now is good for staggering a target, but he's looking more to be able to wear down a foe's defenses - and then to send in a flurry of strikes from unpredictable directions that make it hard to dodge.

4000 crowns is nearly half of the money Clay's got on hand, but this is definitely a worthwhile investment, even if it was only his rematches with Ashley, Brenda, and Tiki he was looking forward to and not the potential danger they're all in. He'll pay up gladly. "Great! So I can just come back and pick it up in a couple of days, then?"

Mason nods. "Yeah. Seems like it's a Guild-wide event with everyone going to different places to train or study in the field. People should really get out of their comfort zones a bit more often."