fandomtownies | Fixer Uppers, Sunday

For the most part, Ariel didn't at all mind the rain; she kind of liked it, as a matter of fact, but she was rather used to being all washed up.

She wasn't as used to what all that water would do to some of her things, and so it was a slightly distressed mermaid princess that was coming into Fixer Uppers that Sunday, holding a small black box and looking on it as if it held the body of a recently deceased and very dear pet.

"Oh. Hi, Jim, right?" she asked, coming in, and not even getting distracted by all the pretty shinies in the shop like any other time she'd come in.

"Jim," he agreed, smiling a little. See? This was way less boring than watching the rain fall already. "And you're... Ariel, yeah?"

He gave the black box that she was carrying a bit of a curious glance. Couldn't help it. There was a thingie, and he could only assume that she wanted it repaired.

"Yeah," Ariel smiled as she nodded in acknowledgement. "Good memory. You work here, huh?"

She was, in a way, making small talk. She almost didn't want to get around to admitting the tragedy that laid waiting in that box...

"Yeah, getting the job here was one of the first things I did after arriving on the island. The sign kind of made me fly into a garbage can, and I couldn't afford equipment rental here to fix my surfer, so Rikku let me work it off, instead."

He so wasn't complaining. He got free run of the workshop, this way.

Ariel had to chuckle a little at the image of Jim colliding into a garbage can...or several, in her mind's reconstruction of it, which made it even better. "I guess that's definitely one way to get a job," she noted. "Did you get your...surfer fixed?"

The pause there was the sort of pause that held the word that followed it in a clear curiosity and desire for an explanation on exactly what a surfer was. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine it being quite like a surf board, at least not in the context of hitting garbage cans and needing a lot of equipment to fix it.

"Yeah, it was an easy enough job," Jim replied with a shrug. "There was a crack in the propulsion system, so I had to weld that back together. It only really took me a few minutes, once I learned my way around the equipment here."

... He was taking the chuckling in stride. Even he had to admit that it had been kind of funny.

Propulsion system. Weld that back together.

Yeah, this couldn't possibly be a surf board.

"So," Ariel could put off an old, familiar shiny for the prospect of a new, different one for a while, "what is a surfer?"

"Oh, sorry," Jim looked maybe a bit sheepish. "A solar surfer. Everyone back home knows what they are, but... Here is really, really not much like home at all."

At. All.

"It's kind of like a surfboard, but it flies," he explained, after a moment. "Using solar energy. So... not much flying this week."

Curse you, Japan. You and your cyborgs, too.

Ariel took a moment to look ruefully toward the door, because, as much as she loved the rain herself, she could see why it would be a total bummer for someone with a solar flying surfboard.

"That," she said with conclusive confidence, turning her head back with an expression quickly removed from anything rueful at all, "is awesome. It really flies? On solar power?"

"Really," Jim agreed with a grin and an enthusiastic nod. "It has a sail on it, to catch the sunlight, and it converts it and uses it to propel the board forward. I used to fly around on it all the time, back home. Here... Well, that Egypt place was pretty good for it, here."

Maybe they could go back there?

"That sounds amazing!" Ariel gushed. "You don't have it here right now, do you? I mean, you probably don't, since you can't really ride it, but I'd love to see it! Especially in action. You have to show me on the first sunny day we get again."

Have to, Jim.

Haaaaave. Toooooo.

"Aaactually, I brought it in hoping to figure out some sort of alternative power source, to see if I can get it up and flying after dark, too. I mean, I'm not going to get it out in the rain, obviously, but it couldn't hurt to have something that I can fly more often, right?"

He paused for a moment, rubbing at his jaw as if putting a lot of reeeeally careful thought into this, and then he grinned and nodded toward the back.

"Wanna see?"

"Yesplease!" The smushed-together word came out before Jim even managed to finish asking.

The broken MP3 player would totally have to work, ohmygosh.

"Can I, really? You have it here?"

"I have it here," Jim laughed, unable to bite back a grin at her enthusiasm. It was infectious. "It won't even turn on, because it hasn't seen the sun in a week, but you can look, if you like."

He gestured toward the back, turning and heading that way, himself.

"It's way more exciting when it isn't propped up on cinder blocks. Honest."

Ariel was already bouncing after him, waving a hand with a small snort. "Please! I bet it's interesting even when it is. I've never seen a solar powered flying surfboard before; that's pretty interesting regardless of whether it works or not, by default, Jim."

This was a girl with an airplane steering column just hanging out in her room, after all. As a centerpiece, no less.

Oh, if only Jim knew, he would be all over that. He didn't even know what an airplane was before he wound up in an airport on his first day.

"Well, I guess, for anyone who hasn't been to Montressor. I mean, I built it myself, out of scrap. It's not that big a deal."

Yeah. He was so bragging.

And he was so modest about it, too. Grinning, Ariel felt her eyes roll. "Oh, sure," she said. "Here, let me show you this flying thing I made with my own two hands and tell you about how it's no big deal, none at all."

"Well, if it helps make it any less impressive, I made my first one when I was eight," Jim offered.

Still bragging.

He nodded toward the surfer in question, propped up on said cinder blocks. With the sail down it looked mostly like a regular surfboard, but with a small, aerodynamic jet propulsion system built into the back. And a welding seam along that, yes.

"There it is, either way."

As much as Ariel would have liked to have thrown in another stab about his proficiency, she was now being presented with neat shinies and was thoroughly distracted.

"Ohmygosh!" she gushed, hopping over and kneeling down for a better look. She tilted her head, peeking underneath the board as well, before leaning over to get a closer look at the propulsion system. "You built this? And it actually works? I mean, when there's sun to power it, anyway. Man, this makes a regular surfboard look like a piece of driftwood!"

There was a faint pause.

"Assuming it works, of course. Can I touch it?"

Her hand may have already hoovering over it, ready to poke.

"Go for it," Jim chuckled, more than willing to take the thing outside the second the sun came out to prove that it wasn't just a piece of scrap.

It was lots of pieces of scrap, put together artfully, dammit.

"It takes enough punishment when I get out there flying with it. I'm pretty sure that you poking at it won't do it any more harm than some of the things I've put it through, trust me."

Ariel laughed, running a hand along the board and then just about nearly poking at the jets as she checked out the finer details of these artfully constructed scraps. "That almost sounds like a challenge," she warned playfully. She shook her head and returned to her gleeful inspection. "This is so cool, Jim! Now it has to clear up, weather wise, so that you can show me!"

And maybe for her to try to convince him to let her give it a try.

"Here I thought surfing on water was neat, but surfing on air? That's got to be incredible!"

Jim nodded, leaning over to get a look at the board, himself. He was always just that tiny bit more critical of his own work when he was showing it to other people, and now that it was in need of a good demonstration, he was making a mental checklist of all of the little things that he could do to pretty it up before the island decided to up and move again.

"To say the least, yeah. It's a huge rush. Maybe, if you'd like a few lessons first, I'll let you give it a try. Uh... Over the beach or something, so that if you go down, at least you don't end up flying into a tree."

That would be... not good.

"Hey, look at it this way," Ariel said, grinning up at Jim, "with one of these babies, it should be a pretty short trip to the clinic!"

"I think that's the weirdest bright side I've ever heard," Jim noted, smirking as he picked his surfer up and turned it over so that Ariel could get a look at the bottom of it, too.

He certainly hadn't been kidding when he said he put the thing through hell. It had more than a few telltale gouges in it, from various stunts over the years.

And, of course, Ariel had to find a particularly good gash, point to it and ask, "So, how'd you get that one?"

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