Regardless of the tangents his mind went on, Junichiro diligently carved the runes around the outside of the compass. Unlike his little shiv and its three runes, this schematic used ten different runes and took him over an hour to carve. Once he put the final touch on the last rune, he dismissed the engraving tool and checked his mana reserves. He had just over half, he hoped it was enough to fully charge the compass.
Taking a deep breath, he placed his finger tip on the first rune he had carved, it was essentially the 'battery' rune that would hold the charge for the rest to do their work. He carefully pushed what remained of his mana into it causing the rune to give off a light glow for a bit before fading.
Junichiro held his breath and watched the compass with rapt attention, all of his focus now on the red half of the needle. It took nearly a minute but the needle began to twitch, slowly pulling away from the 'north' indicator. After nearly a minute it seemed to lock onto a new 'north.' Seeing that it stopped moving and held steady caused Junichiro to let out a whoop of joy!
Junichiro quickly hopped to his feet and strode out of the alley. He split his attention between watching the compass needle and where he was walking. It was awkward since the needle just pointed to the destination and he couldn't just walk in a straight line. Ya know, 'cause there were buildings in the way. His walk was pretty short, less than two blocks. When he got close to his target he actually walked past it causing the needle to spin a one-eighty and point the way he just came from. He quickly stopped and turned around. A little back and forth to narrow the results and he found himself digging through a clump of dirty wet leaves.
"YES!"
After digging for a bit, Junichiro dropped the trash and held his hands up with a dirty, wet, slightly moldy two thousand yen bill stretched between them. He stuffed the dirty money into his pocket and kissed his new compass, which was already pointing to a new direction, which he happily bagan walking in.
What he'd made was known as a 'Loot Compass,' at least that's what he was calling it. The runes were weak, very weak, runes of divination meant to guide him towards items of value with no owners or that were lost. Sadly it had a limit of about ten thousand yen. Anything worth more than that was beyond the scope of the compass. At least at his current level. Still, hunting down lost items, dropped cash and coins, and so on was a lot safer than trying to pick pocket someone. Less illegal too!
His next hit turned out to be a one hundred yen coin, it was something but... eh. With his new magic item to help, Junichiro spent the next three hours walking around and collecting things. Lots of small change dropped coins, a few one and two thousand yen bills, and a couple of rings, costume jewelry most likely since they couldn't be worth more than ten thousand yen. What was really amazing was that, all told, he'd found ninety-two hundred yen!
The last time he'd had this much was when he pick pocketed a guy with a ten thousand yen bill in his wallet. That was a nice day. Well... it was nice once he managed to lose the police officer the guy sent after him. That had been a hell of a workout.
Well, regardless of past exploits, his compass was currently out of juice and the day was wasting away. He made his way toward a camping supply store he remembered passing. He wanted to check out some portable grills. With some modifications and a bit of rune work, he could turn one into a decent, not excellent mind you, gas forge. He was definitely too young to buy propane legally, so he'd just steal some... somehow. Which looked like it might be impossible without his notice-me-not charmed jewelry. They kept the large tanks of propane chained up and the small camping ones in locked cases. No way they wouldn't notice him trying to steal either of those.
Since that seemed to be out, it was back to a coal forge... or... He looked at the large selection of charcoal. Granted it was nowhere near as good as actual coal but... with enough airflow and some runes it should work... maybe. Well it would have to work since he grabbed a twenty pound bag, the largest he could easily carry with his small frame, and bought it and some duct tape. He got some curious looks, but got away with a simple explanation of, "Dad is grilling tonight!"
He got some compliments about being a good dutiful son but brushed them off. He'd never once met his father and he had no decent memories of his mother. He was pretty sure he was better off without either of them. So, with a twenty pound bag of charcoal resting on his shoulder, he calmly walked back to the junkyard. All comments were ignored or, if he was bothered, he gave the same excuse about his dad grilling. No one questions little children who seem to be helpful!
Once back in the junkyard, Junichiro took the charcoal over to the car he slept in last night and set it down.
"Now I just need to find a base of some sort and something that can blow air..."
Grumbling and muttering to himself he began his scavenger hunt. Over the next two hours he hunted down things that could be useful. Once he had it all piled up he started going through it to make a plan, "Cast iron pan, check. Broken satellite dish, check. Folding chair missing its seat, check. Broken hair dryer, check. Tubing, check."