fandomtownies | The Perk; Tuesday Morning [12/12].

The Perk; Tuesday Morning [12/12].

There had been latkes in Amaya's coffee maker this morning.

She didn't know how they got there; she didn't think she cared to know. All she knew was that potato pancakes and coffee machines didn't get along very well, and now she had a broken coffee maker.

Now, fixing a coffee maker was usually not a problem. It was pretty simple stuff. But fixing anything without coffee first...now, there was the rub. So she grumbled her way over to the Perk, where she was a little thrown off by all the fancy drinks available.

"I just need coffee," she stammered when she got to the counter. "Big as you've got, black as midnight, plain old coffee."

Which thankfully they had, and she eagerly took to a table to start working on a blueprint for a new coffee maker, one getting increasingly excessive the more caffeine she had.

[[open perk is open! I might be slow due to work, but work is really...really...really slow ~~famous last words~~]]

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Magnus, on the other hand, had an order of two sickeningly sweet lattes. One for him and one for Taako as a bribe to clean his shoes.

And because he was a good party remember. "Hail and well met, new person!"

"Hail and well met," Amaya echoed back when she looked up from her sketching, because, hey! He talked like a normal person. She was a little distracted by the drinks, though, and she had to ask, "Is there even any coffee in those?"

"There's a little coffee," he said, squinting at the coffee abominations. "Maybe at the bottom."

"Are you planning on drinking both of those?"

Now that her own coffee was hitting her, Amaya was feeling, um...friendlier? He got more than a grunt, so that was an improvement.

Also, he had rustic hospitality that made people like him.

"Oh, no. No, no, no. One is for my buddy Taako."

"Oh," said Amaya. "That's good. I'd be...concerned if anyone tried to drink two of those."

Considering she knew a man who frequently ate frogs...still alive...frequently, that said a lot.

"I'm Amaya, by the way. I don't usually come out here, but my coffee maker had a potato-related incident this morning."

"Magnus! Magnus Burnsides," he replied brightly. He was kinda bad at remembering to be gruff sometimes. "Nice to meet you."

Yeah, that was...chipper, alright. Amaya passed a small glance to her coffee, a silent thanks, because she would not have been able to handle that without it. As it were, she was caffeinated enough to smirk, just slightly.

"And what is it you do here on the island, Magnus, Magnus Burnsides? Besides get your friends..." She was going to call it coffee, but found it difficult to actually do so when it was so wholly untrue, "...err, coffee inspired drinks?"

"I'm a teacher, actually." Because he couldn't escape and it passed the time. "I teach fighting. Along with Cara. I think we're really helping with the class."

Warning about the dangers of Santa too.

"Fighting?" Now, there was a word to catch Amaya's attention and make her forget about whether or not a coffee maker needed hydraulics for a moment. "What kind of fighting? What styles? You're using weapons? What kind of weapons? Do you need help with any--"

And then she caught herself, cutting the string of question off with a hiss. "Er, never mind. I'm a blacksmith by trade. Usually. No forge here. Yet, but I'm working on it! I've even scoped out a few locations for a forge, but...well..."

And that's when an idea struck her like a hammer on hot steel.

"Say, a teaching gig. That probably pays money, right?"

"It certainly does," he replied. "And to answer your question, I fight a lot of styles and real good. But new weapons would be pretty sweet."

Amaya's eyes got very, very large.

Who needed caffeine when new weapons had entered the conversation?

She flipped her sketchbook to a new page, her pencil poised and ready, though her eyes didn't seem to leave Magnus. "What do you like most? I'm going to guess you're a sword guy; you don't look like you're the type to skip arm day."

"I mean, I like the sword I have. And my ax. And my spear. Oh! I could use a new rapier! In case I gotta do some rogue shit, you know?" This would be a friendship based on sharp, pointy things.

As were all of Amaya's best friendships.

Okay. Her only friendships.

"Ooooh, a rapier!" Those large eyes sparkled a little. "Don't get many requests for those back home. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you'd like something a little flashier."

The pencil was already moving. Without a forge, it wasn't likely to be anything more than a drawing for the time being, but let a girl dream a little over here.

Magnus could dream with her!

"Hell yeah," Magnus said, doing a little fist pump. "Maybe something that electrocutes people?"

The pencil stopped. Amaya's mouth opened as if to say something, then it closed, her head tilted, and she gave what initially a ridiculous statement some serious thought and realized it was actually a really, really fascinating concept.

"You know," she said, carefully, starting to erase a little of what she'd drawn to put something else in instead, "I'm only just now starting to get a hang of the technology here, but that could be really, really interesting. And I think, with the right allocation of bits and pieces and wires and little buttons and such, we could have a truly shocking weapon out of this. The blade, of course, would have to be lightning bolt shaped in nature...or do you think that's a little too on the nose?"

She gave it one second after she asked it before she shook her head, "Naaaahhh..."

Magnus totally did a way too loud, but obviously real laugh at the 'truly shocking weapon' comment. Because of course he did.

"I have a spear shaped like the hand of a clock because it reverses time to come back to my hand after I've thrown it. I am super into on the nose shit."

Knowing she wasn't usually the punniest person in a world that seemed to depend on them entirely too much, Amaya really, really appreciated that laugh.

"I hate to be presumptuous," she said, still sketching away with her eyebrows lifted as she spoke, "but I would really like to see your weapons collection. It sounds...inspiring. And I have no had nearly enough sharp pointy things around me lately."

She brushed a little eraser dust from the sketch before holding it up. "Voila!" she announced. "What do you think?"

And she presented to him, sure enough, a rapier with a long, thin, jagged blade, shading on some of the edges with a little note that read particularly sharp, and the hilt, she made it to look almost like a stormy raincloud, so that the shining, gleaming (perhaps gold-plating? a note read) looked as though it was bursting forth from it. She had drawn a little box beneath the hilt where a complex little sketch showed the working of how there was a thin wire running along the inside of the blade, connected to a little button right where his thumb would rest that would toggle flintlock-like device to create a spark to ignite a reaction through the wire that would, in theory, create a charge ideally strong enough to electrocute someone...or at least give them a little shock and make them yelp in a funny and disarming fashion.

"Just a prototype, of course," she said. Not only because the logistics seemed...hopeful at best, but because, you know...she didn't exactly have the means to make anything much in the way of new weapons right now anyway.

"I love it," Magnus said, completely enthralled by the design. "I mean. I can do woodwork, but metal is just not my thing, you know?"

If he understood phones as something more than 'super fragile stones of far-speech' he would totally be taking a picture of this.

Amaya beamed, her pride tarnished only by that wholly depressing fact that the only metal in that particular weapon was the lead from her pencil.

"It's definitely mine," she said, setting the sketchbook back down with a bit of a longing sigh. "And this might just have to be my first attempt when I do get my shop here. Which I will. Eventually. Soon. I wonder if I could pick up a teaching job to help move things along faster. I mean, how hard could it be?"

Magnus nodded along like teaching was an a-okay thing that didn't also suck your will to live. "You should! You could teach metalworking. I taught how to carve a wooden duck."

Because wooden ducks were amazing.

"Is that the, uh, culmination of your woodworking...prowess?" Amaya ventured.

Not to suggest that a wooden duck wasn't impressive, of course, buuuuut....

"Well, no. But it's my favorite. I can also make a mean chair!" But that stuff also brought back all kinds of tragic backstory stuff.

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The Perk; Tuesday Morning [12/12].

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