fandomtownies | Fixer-Uppers, Sunday!!!

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Fixer-Uppers, Sunday!!!

Another semester, woo! Rikku was taking a break from teaching -- hopefully a short one!!! She really liked telling kids about science, but ~~her mun~~ she needed a wee bit of time off from it. So she was back doing what she did best: fixing stuff and being hyper.

The sign out front was as ~~eyeblindingly horrifying~~ pretty as always, and there were engines to be cleaned! How could today be anything other than awesome, when she had engines to clean?

(OPEN and OCD-free and expecting at least one to inquire about a job! There are an additional two spots open -- priority given to seniors who need to stay on-island, but after that, fair game!)

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Jim had taken it upon himself to...

Well, to avoid his roommate, mostly, which had him out and about around the island on his solar surfer, trying to get a handle on the layout of the town. It seemed simple enough, but, really, it was still way more complicated than the corner of Montressor that he'd grown up on. Jim was from the middle of the middle of nowhere.

Of course, he probably could have done without the ~~lens flare~~ eye-bleeding sign that nearly made him spin out of control and barrel into a rickshaw driver. It had taken a bit of quick scrambling, but he'd managed to steer himself into the side of a garbage can down a nearby alley, instead. Minor bumps and bruises to him, and a cracked solar-powered rocket booster to the surfer.

About three minutes after he'd rid himself of the banana peels and other assorted trash that was clinging to his clothing, he made his way into the shop, slightly busted board tucked away under one armpit.

"You know, that sign is really effective for getting customers," he announced. And then flicked a bit of... he didn't want to know what... from his shoulder.

Rikku was delightfully oblivious to what Jim meant. Because Rikku happened to think the sign was awesome.

"Thank you!" she beamed. "It's bright and colorful and it certainly gets attention, you know?"

She took in his appearance. "Ooooh, did you wreck?" she asked. "Are you okay?"

The clue-meter's current reading was zero.

Jim was not going to give the chirpy lady a glower. He was going to behave. See? This was Jim behaving.

"Yeah," he sighed, after his internal grump moment had passed. "I'm fine. The surfer took the brunt of the impact."

As did the garbage can. Ugh.

"It's going to need some welding, though. I can't fly it the way it is."

"Ooooooh, I can do that!" Rikku bopped around the counter so she could take a good look at his ... whatever-it-was. "Oh, there's just a crack. That's easy. Give it here, I can have that done while you wait."

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "I mean, like, in five minutes or so? That expression is kind of weird. Anything can be done while you wait if you're willing to wait long enough, you know?"

"Well, I really don't have anywhere else to be, anyhow," Jim sighed, his grip tightening on the board for a moment as the girl approached, all the same.

He'd built this thing himself. It was his baby.

"Normally I'd do the welding myself, but I just got here yesterday. I don't have the equipment to do it." A pause. "And I don't think there's anywhere for students to do this kind of thing anyhow, is there?"

Rikku straightened up, offering him a wry sort of grin. She knew that look. That was the "mine mine mine no touchy" look.

"That depends," she said. "You could ask the nice lady who runs the repair shop if she'd let you step around back and weld it yourself. I've heard she's really good with stuff like that, so long as you say 'please' and 'thank you.'"

... Wow, was this lady for real?

Jim's mildly grumpy look turned into something a little more wary as he glanced past her, and then looked back her way.

"You run this place?"

He had to be sure, here. Though she did sort of match the sign that had nearly killed him, so maybe it wasn't such a stretch, either.

"Of course I do," she said confidently. "My name's Rikku. I'm an Al Bhed, and we are all kinds of good at fixing things. Have you ever tried to get sand out of a clogged engine? Because that's really frustrating. What's your name?"

"Um... Jim." It was bad that he had to take a moment to think about that one, wasn't it? He couldn't help it. Rikku was chirpy in a way that made his brain backfire a little until he mostly forgot what he had been cranky about in the first place. "And... yeah, sand is way worse than the dust that the mines near where I live kick up. A bit less clingy, but a lot rougher on all the little moving parts."

It ground things down. Always a pain when you needed replacement parts and your surfer was pretty piecemeal to begin with.

"You'd let me back there to take care of this myself? Really?"

"Why not?" Rikku asked, hopping up to sit on the edge of the counter. "I mean, I'd watch you, to make sure you weren't gonna break things or try to steal my bandsaw. But bandsaws are way too huge to just sneak out under your coat or whatever, and you seem like the honest type."

Jim's nose wrinkled a little at Rikku's evaluation of his personality.

"You'd think so, huh?" There was more than a bit of irony in that, yes. "You'd be a first."

This was not stopping him from looking around her again, this time to try to get a feel for the sort of equipment that she had tucked away back there. Not to steal, no. But definitely to use.

"I'm not in the market for a bandsaw anyhow, though. No worries there."

Edited 2011-05-08 23:31 (UTC)

"I'm totally going to check your pockets, when you leave," she admonished, with some measure of amusement. "I mean, I'm not an idiot."

She possibly had a different definition of 'honest' than other people. She was, after all, herself a thief.

"Besides, this just means I can charge you for the use of the studio and not even have to fix anything."

Right. Like she minded fixing things.

... Charge him.

Of course she'd be charging him. She was running a ~~racket~~ business, here, with the blinding people and making them smash their stuff so that she could attract customers with the only facility on the island that had the equipment to fix it.

And here was Jim, biting his lip and grimacing a bit. He was fifteen and his mother was a waitress. Money was not really something that he saw a great deal of.

"And how much will that cost?"

"Iiiiiiiiiii don't know," Rikku said. Interesting. He was low on cash. She could work with that. "Well. I don't charge much for people wandering in and using my workshop, you know. In fact, employees can even come in on their days off, and tinker for free."

Juuuuuuuuust wondering what he'd do with that.

"Free, huh?"

Oh yeah, Rikku. Get that idea percolating in Jim's head. Get it percolating good.

"You're not going to go and tell me that you don't have any job openings or anything like that, now, are you?"

... It kind of just struck him as a very grown-up sort of thing to do. That's all. Get him to step onto the red carpet so that she could yank it out from under his feet.

Jim was now getting A Look.

"That would just be mean," she said. "I totally have a few openings. And now you are supposed to convince me to hire you for one of them. Let's hear your pitch!"

Jim tilted his head a little, mulling that one over. Okay. A Job. He could handle a job. He'd been a busboy for his mother for pretty much as far back as she'd trust him with carrying the dishes across the inn, after all. This was... maybe a little different, sure, but it was right up his alley, too.

"Well, I built my first one of these things when I was eight," he offered. "From spare parts that I collected myself on the outskirts of one of the mining camps near where I live. It's solar-powered."

A pause, and then, because most people around here didn't seem to have any idea what the heck a solar surfer was, he added, "and it flies. When I'm not running it into garbage cans."

"Okay, how's this," Rikku said, grinning. "I'll hang out. You fix that thing, and then you show me how it works. And if I'm impressed enough? Then you can have a job here, and that means, no charge."

Spoiler alert: Rikku would not be very hard to impress.

Okay, Jim. Stay cool. Stay calm. You could do that, right? Calm? You were cranky when you walked through the door, and you probably still had orange peels in your hair. So stop grinning.

"Yeah? I think I can handle that." He was a cocky one, Rikku. Watch out. "You point me in the right direction, and I'll take care of the rest."

Edited 2011-05-09 00:55 (UTC)

Rikku swept one arm in direction of the workshop.

"Be my guest," she said. "But if you break anything, that's so coming out of your pay."

"You say that like I have the job already," Jim noted, still grinning as he walked around the counter and peered into the workshop.

Okay, it didn't look quite like any sort of workshop he'd ever seen, but if he poked at what was in there enough, he'd figure it out sooner or later. The welding equipment would probably be over... There.

Wow. They were still using compressed gas on this planet. Jim's eyebrow twitched up a bit as he made his way over, and then cast around for the safety equipment.

"In that case," Rikku laughed, "if you break anything, and you don't get the job, theeeeeeen you'll have to figure out how you're paying me back. Which means you should totally be careful, doesn't it?"

She watched him and decided to offer some small assistance.

"Do you need help?" she said. "Figuring out the settings? I wouldn't count it against you."

"Nah, I've got it," Jim replied without missing a beat, crouching down to look at the gauges once he'd set his surfer up on a pair of cinder blocks.

...

"Okay. Maybe I don't have it." He grimaced a little at the admission. "Compressed gas is a little new to me."

Come on, people of Earth! Why didn't you use more solar power, and micro nuclear reactors, and other assorted totally mysterious cyberpunk/steampunky looking things that science didn't really approve of? Huh?

She hopped off the counter easily. "I know, it was new to me, too," she said. "But it's easy to get the hang of. And see, it's good that you asked! That means you're careful with my equipment. Full points for that."

Maybe she was having fun with him. So?

"Well, yeah. And I don't want to blow myself up."

Did he get bonus points for that one? He'd already been in a solar-powered vehicle accident today. He was trying to minimize other potentially life-ending situations.

"So... What do I need to know?"

Rikku took several minutes walking him through the details of the welding equipment. And she may have stressed the safety measures a few times more than necessary.

Okay, so, she wasn't all that concerned with her equipment: she could get new equipment. But she'd feel terrible if he lost a finger or something.

"There," she said, finally. "I think that's everything. Wait, did you need the safety info again?"

So maybe she was overly cautious. So?

"Nah, I think I got it the first few times," Jim replied, just a little wryly. He was a pretty smart kid, really. He'd gathered most of it on his own once she'd gotten started with the explanations, but listened through just to be absolutely sure that he was right. "But thanks."

He made a reach for the heavy gloves and the welding mask, made certain that all the safety equipment was set up properly (and in fact made a bit of a show of it, just so that Rikku didn't have any cause to worry), and then got to work.

The equipment was new to him, but the method was all old hat, and he had the crack in his surfer repaired in no time. It wasn't until he'd made certain to shut the gas off properly and secure everything that he pulled the mask off and grinned Rikku's way.

"Should be good as new. No problem."

"Looks good to me!" she agreed, easily. "If you're sure, then fire her up and let's see how she rides."

There was a happy little wriggle to go with that. So maybe she was curious. So? She'd never seen one of those things before!

"Right." Jim nodded toward the door. "If you have a moment to go outside, anyhow. I don't want to ride into any walls or anything."

The last way he'd like to spend the rest of his day was having every busted bone in his body set, really. He'd completely lucked out once already.

"Or destroy any of my awesome equipment," Rikku teased. "Lead the way."

Jim shot Rikku a bit of a grin at that, before turning and heading back toward the front door. There was a bit of a look given to the alley across the way, which was still somewhat strewn with trash, but other than that, Jim managed to refrain from commenting.

"So, have you ever seen one of these things before?"

Nothing like a touch of casual conversation while he checked over his board to be absolutely certain everything was in working order again.

She was eying it and thinking it over.

"Is it kind of like a hoverboard?" she said. "My ex was a skateboarder, and I've seen surfboards, and I kind of think if you stuck the three together with, like, some tape around the edges, it'd be kind of the same result, yeah?"

If he hadn't been so possessive over it, she'd be begging for a few hours to take it apart and see how it ticked. She was going to keep her salivating to herself, out of respect. For now.

Edited 2011-05-09 23:52 (UTC)

"It's kind of..." Jim squinted, trying to come up with a good way to explain it. "It doesn't hover, no. Not usually, anyhow. But here," he pointed at the folded in sail, "when this comes out, it powers that," and now his fingers pointed at the propulsion system at the rear, where the repairs had been done, "which gives you momentum, and helps create lift."

So, if the damage back there hadn't been fixed right, they would know pretty much immediately, once the engines cut out and Jim went plummeting to his doom, or something.

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Fixer-Uppers, Sunday!!!

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