The situation develops
I realize very quickly that I'm going to run out of food pretty fast the way Cap eats, so I move my monthly trip to town up and tell my neighbors when I'll be gone so they don't come looking for me only to be disappointed. Word will get around, but I also tell Cap to be careful while I'm gone because sometimes people come to snoop.
Once I got the core of the salad bowl formed, predictably the work slowed way down. The other alloys go down in coats that are molecules thick, and sometimes coatings are needed to make the layers adhere together. It's going to be a rather fragile affair until the end, when I'll stick it in the forge for hours to get everything to bond together. Just in case somebody sees the construct by accident, I whittle some fairly elaborate wooden handles, just as if it actually were going to be used as a salad bowl, so the cover story stays intact.
Early in the morning, I fire up my motorcycle and drive into town. I do a lot of grocery shopping and stow the food in the sidecar. One storekeeper asks why I'm buying so much, and I shrug. I say that the rainy season's coming up and I want to be sure I can go a couple of months if the roads get bad. He nods, knowing that most of the road I drive is a dirt track and I pick up the string bags of all my goods. It takes a couple of trips to get everything out. Then it's to the post office, where I have a satisfying number of boxes that will be containing all sorts of fun and interesting things I can use in my metalsmithing. I can't wait for playtime after I finish the salad bowl. For once, the tiny library doesn't have anything for me. I frown and go to a restaurant that has free WiFi. It's nice to eat something I don't have to cook. Then I head home after downloading new purchases to my Kindle and listening to the gossip in the restaurant.
It's troubling. Cap was spotted near the coast; he must have followed the river down, and the locals are nervous. It's not like we have a lot of supervillains here (or any, come to think about it), but there's a bounty on his head--half a million US dollars for information that leads to his capture. That's a lot of money for anybody but the 1%, and around here it's unfathomable riches. There was a lot of talk about forming search parties.
I need to get that salad bowl done, but there's a limit to how far I can push my process.
When I get back, Cap tells me that a couple of men I've had some trouble with came up and poked around while I was gone. They found the salad bowl and he saw them mess around with it and the wood handles. He'd climbed one of the trees with the most leaves and observed from above. I nod and tell him what I heard in town. I think we have equal frowns on our faces.
"I don't want to cause you any trouble," he says, and I believe him.
"It would be best for your continued freedom if you could relocate soon," I say and he nods. I ask him if he'll put away the groceries and I fire up the forge. I have three more coatings and it's going to require all my skill and concentration to get them done in a timely manner. I don't want to be responsible for getting Captain America locked up, and I worry that any trouble with my neighbors will mean I'll have to relocate myself. I unpack my mail and find some metal powders and minerals that I can use in the final coating.
I start to think about my exit strategy. If it becomes known I've been harboring a fugitive, I'll probably be deported myself, and that's after my neighbors get done with me. It might be for the best if I wrap things up and leave after Cap does. There are other countries in the world I can work in. I measure metals and additives precisely and put them in the forge to melt. The forge is actually a building made of mud brick; it looks like a commercial production kiln from the exterior and it can function like that too if I need it, but It allows me a place I can heat up to very high temperatures to work with large pieces. The actual forge, the part where I heat and work the metal, is pretty small. It has to be since it works off solar power. Obviously, they're not normal solar panels; they're based on designs I made back in the States, and I could do better now. When I leave, I have a self-destruct sequence that will powder the panels and any other sensitive materials I might have to leave behind. Soon the metal is ready and I get the salad bowl coated. I set it on the attachments where the straps for the shield will be and start to do my work.
About halfway through, Cap comes over and starts to speak, but I hold up my hand and he shuts up and sits down. It's another hour before everything is right and I look up tiredly.
"So what is it that you do?" he asks me. My lips twist, but it isn't really much of a smile.
"It's my superpower," I say. "I can manipulate matter." I take a deep breath. "On the atomic level. It's why the layers are so thin. It's because they're perfect."
His eyes open wide. "No shit?"