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sanddusted-wisteria · 27 days

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Earth and Sky, Ch. 1

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At the sound of the door, he glanced over his shoulder, expression deadpan and unamused. He pushed up his round-frame glasses as he plainly asked in a sharp-sounding accent, “Can I help you?” Now that he was facing her, he looked even messier at the front than the back. Hair a scraggly nest, a loose, half-knotted tie, shirt half-untucked and a tear ripped at the seams. Wis blinked as she realized that she was just staring. “O-oh, uh… I’m Wisteria. The…new builder in town. Or Wis, if you want.” The man frowned. “Another builder? I was never informed of this.” “Well, um…now you know, I guess…” The man was silent, no reaction of any sorts in words or on his face. Wis glanced around uneasily, wondering if he was waiting on her to say something else.

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Foreclosure.

Wisteria stared at the word on the well-read letter. It was the only one she could see. All the others had blurred into meaningless noise.

She sighed and folded the paper back up. Today was her last day as the property owner. Everything had already been cleared out. All that was left was sawdust and the clean outlines of where her old machines used to be (all sold, of course). She didn’t even know why she was here. Just trying to stretch out all the time she had where this place was truly hers, maybe.

She slowly peeled herself off the wall she was leaning against and went outside for the final time.

Only one thing left to do.

She took out her hammer and approached the sign still hanging proudly next to the door:

FRESH PINES

She leaned in and sniffed. The wood still had a little bit of that piney smell.

She flipped her hammer around and brought it to the sign, yanking out 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 nails. The sign fell into her hand.

She hefted it under her arm, took one last look at the empty husk of a workshop, then slowly walked away. Never to return.

Wis should’ve walked back towards Main Street. Back up the route to her little apartment that she could no longer afford. But instead she found herself wandering down the side street, past all the closed shops, past the sleepy homes, all the way to the trailhead into the woods.

Thick conifers lined either side of the trail, sentinels that blotted out the moonlight above. Wis paid them no mind as she slowly trekked over their knobbley roots and ducked under low-hanging branches.

A moonlit clearing lay ahead. Wis knew it well, with its simple little wooden bench off to the side. She’d come here for many a lunch break before. Quiet and undisturbed.

But this time, she didn’t even bother sitting down. She simply walked to the center of the clearing, arm starting to ache from lugging her sign, and turned her tired eyes up to the darkened sky.

Her arm finally gave out, and the sign fell to the ground with a muffled thump, kicking up the scattered pine needles.

Wis only sighed, eyes not focused on the moon or any of the stars. Only the darkness in between.

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Three years later

Wis stepped out the front door of her parent’s house into a breezy, partly-cloudy day. So in Highwind, just another day. She started down the street with a hurried stride, weaving around slow walkers as politely as she could. She was already running a couple minutes late, though her boss probably wouldn’t mind.

Past all the little cafes and restaurants on her parents’ street was a simple little newsstand. Wis always passed there every morning to glance at the headlines as she went along. Rarely would there be anything worth picking up the paper for. Just more local political bickering where no one would come out satisfied, or rumors of Duvos making a move to swallow some more territory, or maybe an announcement about a local festival or a new place that opened in town.

But today, right on the front page of The Windy Times, two simple words caught Wis’s eye.

BUILDERS WANTED!

She’d just passed the newsstand when she saw it, screeching to a halt and backing up to take another look at the rather loud advertisement. Builders wanted where…?

She picked up the paper and unfolded it to read the whole thing.

The city of Sandrock is seeking two new builders, as our last remaining builder is retiring soon! We have two open workshops ripe and ready for the taking! We’re always in need of a couple helping hands around here, and we’ll all be happy to call you our new neighbor!

*Only providing property. Transit and living costs not covered. Must carry a valid Builder’s License at time of inquiry. Make inquiries out to: Sandrock City Hall, Sandrock, Alliance of Free Cities.

Wis stared at the paper, reading it over and over again. Sure, it was Sandrock, the Free Cities’ little desert hobble town, but…open workshops…

Suddenly, there came the clearing of a throat. Wis looked up. The old man who owned the newsstand was looking at her with a polite, but nudging smile.

Wis let out an apologetic laugh. “How much?” she asked, holding the paper up.

“Two gols,” replied the old man, his smile warming a little bit.

Wis flipped open the coin pouch on her toolbelt and pulled out two small coins. After handing the old man the money and thanking him, she took off down the road in the direction she came, darting between the slow walkers with plenty of “excuse me”s and “sorry”s, all the way back home.

She slammed open the door to find her parents right there, each with one shoe on and halfway through slipping on the other, mouths agape and brows raised.

Panting a bit from the sprint, Wis answered their silent question by holding up the paper, crinkled a bit by her tense grip. She jabbed a finger at the ad on the front page, feeling the thud of her pulse in her ears.

“I’m moving to Sandrock.”

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Canyons and mountains. Mesas and buttes and pillars reaching for the bright blue sky. A sleepy town atop a bed of light tan sand.

Wis blinked the sleep out of her eyes as the train rushed out of the tunnel, into the blinding light of the morning sun. She gaped at the sight outside, eyes trailing from the depths of the valleys to the spine of the distant mountains. So it wasn’t just all sand out here.

The train slowed to a halt with a slight lurch. Around the half-full train car, Wis only saw one or two people leave their seats, carrying their meager belongings with them.

“Sandrock! Welcome to Sandrock, folks!” The voice of the conductor boomed into the train car.

Wis had already shouldered her backpack on and grabbed her suitcase, leaving only her conspicuously large sign to tow. Carefully gathering it up under her arm, she made her way to the exit.

The heat was what hit her first. Dry and almost sizzling. She had to squint as she stepped out from the shaded train car into the morning light. Blinking a few times to adjust, she looked around the platform. On one end, the station’s conductor was busy overseeing some freight being loaded off the cars behind the passenger car. On the other end was a young woman in green, with a cap and googles sitting smartly atop her head. In her hands was a small wooden sign, the name “Wisteria” in neat, white-painted writing the only thing on it.

Wis raised an eyebrow and approached her. “Hi. Looking for me?”

The woman brightened, reaching out a hand for Wis to shake. “Wisteria? I’m Mi-an. I’m the other new builder here! I just moved in last week.”

“Oh! Well, nice to meet you. ‘Wis’ is also fine. Hope we’ll do good work out here,” Wis said as she set her suitcase down on the platform to shake Mi-an’s hand.

“Me too! But uh, speaking of work, our boss already needs to see us, so follow me.” She led Wis down the platform and towards the town proper. No buffer time to properly settle. Interesting.

Wis looked up at the coarse, wooden buildings and steel-plate roofs, all in washed-out colors and shimmering in the heat. The local temple stood at the top of the hill, shining proud with its pale, hewn stone. A rough looking place, though not as ramshackle as some people in Highwind seemed to think.

“You’re from Highwind, right? Or did you just pass through?” Mi-an asked, and Wis turned her head back to the other builder.

“From Highwind, yeah. Lived there my whole life.”

“Oh, nice! I’ve never been. I’m from Tallsky, and…that’s a bit far. Even for our vacations.” Mi-an chuckled.

Wis only hummed. Tallsky…a city well known for its builders. Wis hadn’t gotten into their Builder Academy, supposedly the most prestigious one. Highwind’s wasn’t anything to sneeze at, though. If Mi-an was from Tallsky, she was probably very good at what she did.

“Ah, there you are. Finally!” A high, nasally voice suddenly caught their attention. Standing a few paces away were two men. One with ginger hair and beard, in dusty overalls, slouched and lips drawn in a thin line, and the other a gangly man in a snappy suit and overalls, brown mustache quirked up at one end in what seemed to be an attempt at a polite smile. It looked more like a sneer.

“Well now, howdy and nice to make your acquaintance and blahdy blahdy blah!” he said. “I’m sure you’re just as eager to get to work as I am to give you something to do, so all we gotta know is that I’m President Yan, and I’m you and Mi-an’s supervisor!”

He offered no hand to shake, but even if he did, Wis wasn’t keen on shaking it. “President” was not any kind of official title in the Commerce Guild hierarchy, even the larger ones that needed more delegation. “Yeah. Well, I’m Wisteria, as you know…”

“Right! Wisteria…Wis…Wist…Wisty! Hope we’ll all get along and you’ll get some good work done! I might be your boss, but nah…think of us more as buddies! …Just that I’m your buddy that’s supervising ya.”

Wis bristled. Three strikes already. Lofty, unofficial title, trying to make them out to be friends instead of boss and employee, and the nerve to call her Wisty. That right was reserved for actual friends. She grit her teeth and simply nodded with a strained “Mhm.” Now wasn’t the time to deal with this.

Yan gestured to the dismal man beside him. “This here’s Mason. You two’ll be replacing him soon, since he’s retiring ‘n all. But you already knew that! It was in the papers!” He chuckled to himself. Wis and Mason were silent. Mi-an let out a hesitant pity laugh.

“Anyway…” he continued once his laughter died down. “Mi-an got here first, so she nabbed the workshop plot in town already. As for you, Wisty, you get Mason’s ol’ workshop all the way out there.” He pointed in the opposite direction, out beyond the train tracks where a simple house sat behind a simple wooden fence. “Mason’s Workshop,” wearily declared the old, worn sign atop the roof.

“Speakin’ of Mason… Got any words of wisdom for our fledgling builders before you’re gone forever, Mason?” Yan gestured to Mason with a gusto that Mason absolutely did not meet.

“Eh… Well, let’s not get too comfortable here…” Mason grumbled. “I guess…the workshop. It may be cramped…and run-down…and dilapidated…and…many other things… But when you get used to it, you’ll see that it also has plenty of…heart. Yeah. Let’s go with that.”

Everyone was silent.

“That’s all I’ve got,” Mason continued, almost with a hint of relief at no response. “May you bring telesis to this town and all. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” Without waiting for the others to respond, he turned around and headed for the building across the street, the Blue Moon Saloon. He certainly looked like he was waiting for a drink.

“Heh heh… He was always an awkward one…” Yan said sheepishly, not even bothering to wait until Mason was inside and out of earshot. “But never mind that! You two gotta get relicensed, so let’s get crackin’!”

Yan gave them instructions on how to make a pickhammer (not a pickaxe… An interesting multitool that seemed to combine wrench, pick, and sledgehammer), and a diagram for a recycler, to be used to break down scrap. Then he shooed the builders off and headed back up the road.

“Let me show you to your new place!” Mi-an said, waving a hand in the direction of the tracks. “It’s not all that far.”

“I-it’s fine,” said Wis. “I won’t get lost when it’s right there. You should go start on your pick and stuff.”

Mi-an beamed. “No, no, really! I insist. I can help you at least put your stuff down and settle in a bit.”

Insistent. Not necessarily a bad thing. It was just that Wis really wasn’t used to a colleague being so eager, especially so soon after getting introduced. Normally they’d be more on the end of Mason.

She nodded. “If you insist, then. Thanks.”

They turned around and headed back out towards the station, towards the little shack in the distance.

Wis could feel the other builder’s gaze flicker towards her occasionally as they quietly padded along. It looked like she was trying to get a peep of Wis’s sign. Wis hoisted up a little more snuggly into her arm, inviting Mi-an to ask about it.

“What even is that? I-if you don’t mind me asking…!” Mi-an said, leaning over to get a better look.

“This? My old workshop sign. Don’t think I’ll be changing the name.”

“Oh!” Mi-an’s eyes widened. “You had a workshop back in Highwind? I’ve only worked for my family’s workshops before now.”

“Yeah, emphasis on had,” Wis said with a sad smile. Even now, it still stung to think of it. At Mi-an’s sympathetic frown, she waved a hand. “L-long story. All in the past now, don’t worry.”

Mi-an’s face softened into something more solemn. “I guess we both have that in common. Came out here for a fresh start.”

Wis only hummed, not feeling right to pry.

They were at the workshop now, looking at its dusty and barren yard. No machines at all. The broken stone furnace in the back corner didn’t count. Aside from the worktable, Mason probably sold anything of value already…had there been anything of value here.

“Hmm…” Mi-an hummed beside Wis, trying to find something polite to say about the place. “Pretty slim pickings…not that my plot was that much more welcoming.”

“It’s…a workshop. At least there’s that.”

Mi-an chuckled, unaware of the unironic meaning behind what Wis said. It was indeed…a workshop. Not a very good one, but not everyone could say they truly had their own workshop. It was more of a fleeting privilege than one would expect, as Wis had unfortunately learned.

She set her sign down, leaning it against the fence. “Well, I guess I should put my stuff away and get to work.”

Mi-an looked like she was about to nod, but she paused, a more thoughtful look passing over her face. “Actually, real quick, while it’s just us…”

Wis raised an eyebrow.

“Sandrock…” Mi-an’s voice had lowered. “Everyone knows it as the Alliance’s scrapyard, but…this place used to be booming and beautiful.”

“Right… This used to be a pretty big city way back when.” That was just about the extent of what Wis knew about Sandrock’s history. She tried to research the place at least a little bit before she came here, but all anyone she asked seemed to care about were the rumors of terrible desert creepies and crawlies, and the news of the apparent bandit problem that had sprung up in the last year or so.

“Eventually it all kinda…faded. Resources started drying up, quite literally…and here it is today.” Mi-an’s expression was solemn for a moment, before she perked right up with a glimmer in her eye. “But I think we can take Sandrock back to its glory days. Build it back up! Really make this place deserving of that old name, y’know?”

“You think…?” Wis raised an eyebrow. She honestly wasn’t expecting this much…eagerness in a place like this. The Alliance’s smallest city, only a couple sandstorms away from falling off the map entirely. You’d think people would’ve been a bit more cynical. “We’re just…two builders.”

“And two builders is better than one!” Mi-an chimed, her face brightening. “Or…none, I guess, since Mason’s moving out. Unless Commi–er, President Yan builds, too…”

Wis hummed, still not quite sure how to respond. I just want a stable workshop, to be honest… she thought. You really think we can make promises about this entire place?

She said none of this out loud, of course. If there was any spark of hope in this kind of place, the last thing she wanted was to snuff it out before it had a chance to ignite.

“But… Well, I suppose…” Mi-an continued. “If nothing else…I just wanna make a difference.” Her shoulders sagged, and her gaze fell. “Even if it’s just to make someone’s life a little easier.”

A light smile tugged at Wis’s lips. “Now that I can definitely get behind.” Safely get behind, at least.

Mi-an’s face brightened again, happy to find some common ground. “Then…it’s a promise? Builder to builder?” She held out a hand.

Wis stared at it for only a brief moment before clasping it with her own. “A promise.”

A solid shake.

“Let’s give our all,” Mi-an said with a nod, determination renewed. Wis nodded back, feeling a bit of her energy leak into her.

“Well then, we shouldn’t wait any longer!” Mi-an said after she dropped her arm. “My workshop’s just through that tunnel there. Stop by if you ever need any help!”

With a nod and a wave, the two parted, and Wis immediately got to work. Making a pickhammer was a bit strange, with how used she was to making pickaxes, but with a couple tries at the binding and a few practice swings, it was quickly added to her arsenal. The recycler was an interesting device. She wondered why Highwind didn’t really have anything similar. Maybe just not enough miscellaneous scrap piles to need it.

Yan gave her a hand-wavey approval after that, and sent her on her next assignment of “fetching your certificate and stuff” from the City Hall. It was prominently situated in the town square, nudged flush against a stone cliff face.

Wis’s eyes wandered around the square as she approached, at the general store and the hair parlor and the stray cat wandering about. So when a shout came from up above and a large man suddenly SLAMMED down in front of her path, she was taken by complete surprise. She yelped and froze in her tracks, hands thrown up to block an incoming attack.

But none came. Only a boisterous laugh. “Hahaha, you need to be more alert, citizen! You never know when a bandit might strike…or if you are a bandit or general evildoer, when the Protector of Sandrock might strike!”

Wis’s heart was still pounding from the sudden scare. She peeked out from behind her hands to see who the man was. Tall and broad, with slicked-back hair and a sharp jawline, complete with a toothy and smarmy grin. “Um…” she managed to spurt out. “Who, uh… who are you?”

The man’s grin only widened, a glint in his eyes. “Aha…! You must be that new builder! Heh, could’ve mistaken you for one of Logan’s gang! Well. The name is Pen, and I am the Protector of Sandrock!”

Wis looked this “Pen” character once over, noting the lack of anything that looked like a Civil Corps uniform. How many unofficial titles did people hold out here? “Uh huh…?”

Pen huffed, seeming to not particularly care how she reacted. “Your arms… How can they be that skinny?! Don’t tell me you moved out to the harsh, wild desert not knowing how to defend yourself?!”

“Um…no, I know how to—”

“Very well, then!” Pen held a finger with a triumphant expression. “As the one and only Protector of Sandrock, I hereby uphold my duty by offering you, helpless civilian, a combat lesson!”

“A c—?” Wis finally shook herself out of her stupor. “N-no thanks, Mr…Pen, right? I already know how to handle a weapon. I’m good.”

Pen’s face screwed up into a half-decent imitation of concern. “Whaaat? No, surely with arms as skinny as those, you clearly need a helping bicep or two!”

A huff escaped Wis’s lips. Her arms were perfectly normal-sized, thank you very much. “I’ve been a builder for 3 years and I’ve handled daggers in hazardous ruins before. Thank you, but I’ll be fine.”

“Is that so?” Pen’s face dropped to a deadpan, bordering on a glower. “You know of the dangers in this place, surely…? Giant creatures? Mutated spawn? Vile villains that have turned upon their own villagers…?!”

“I’ve heard stuff, yeah…” Plenty of rumors on Sandrock could be picked up from just about everywhere. Usually all coming from people that have never been anywhere near Sandrock.

“Then you would be foolish to not take this opportunity!” Pen exclaimed, the grin shooting back up his face. “A free lesson from unquestionably the strongest man in all of Sandrock, from the goodness of his heart!”

Being polite wasn’t really working, it seemed. “Listen…” Wis groaned, injecting a bit more insistence this time. “I’m busy. I just moved here and I just need to get my workshop registered. You’re really generous and all, but…” She started to scoot around him, eager for an out. The door to City Hall was just a staircase away…

Pen frowned again. “If you insist… If you’re intimidated, I shan’t pressure you, Skinny Arms… But don’t pin the blame on me if you get strung up by a bandit…or devoured alive by something or other.” He walked away in the opposite direction, throwing his hands up in a shrug. “The Protector can only be so concerned…”

As he rounded the corner down the road towards the station, Wis let out the sigh she was holding. For a “protector,” he sure seemed a bit eager to beat up one of the alleged “protected.” She shook off the crawl in her stomach with a shake of her head, and opened the heavy doors to City Hall.

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The minister Matilda was a kind woman. Apparently she was filling in for the mayor out on an expedition. She was waiting patiently across the desk from Wis, doing some paperwork of her own while Wis filled out the registration form.

Simple stuff. Personal info, work contract terms (nothing overtly strange in there…), and last but not least before the signature line, the blank for the workshop name.

Wis didn’t hesitate for a second. Confident strokes wrote out the name for the first time in years: “Fresh Pines.”

“My, that was quick!” Matilda said with a raised brow. “Some builders hem and haw over that line for ages.”

“It’s the name of my old workshop,” Wis said with a wan smile. “Closed down a while ago. Always wanted to see it up and running again.”

Matilda’s face softened into a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure you’ll make it better than ever, dearie.” She signed off on her certificate with a few flicks of her wrist, and held the precious document out to Wis. “You’re all set, sweetie. May you bring telesis to Sandrock!”

Wis felt a spot of warmth bloom deep inside her chest as she nodded. That recently revitalized streak of hope. Her very own workshop. Fresh Pines. A fresh start.

She was back.

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The air of quiet celebration abruptly disappeared when Wis reentered the Commerce Guild.

“H-h-hey, Rocky, buddy! Wait a minute!”

“First you tell me that you threw your back. Then you tell me your turtle threw his back! And you don’t even got a turtle! And turtles don’t even got a back!!”

Wis and Mi-an stared at the two men in front of them, looking like a fight was about to start in plain view of the Commerce Guild door.

The larger, bulkier man—Rocky, from the sound of things—was looming over the knobbly Yan, ass on the floor and scrambling straight into the wall of the staircase behind him.

The builders exchanged a look. They just wanted to grab their first commissions, and yet they walked in to this.

“U-um!” Mi-an blurted before a punch could be thrown. “Is—is everything okay?!”

Yan and Rocky froze. “Errr…yeah!” Yan eeked out. “R-Rocky, like I said…”

“You didn’t say nothin’.”

“Uhh—what I was about to say was that I was about to get someone to work on that lift for you! Those two! Haha, n-no hard feelings, just a little delegation work, y’know!”

The gears turned in Wis’s head, and she scowled. Now she knew exactly what he was.

Mi-an stammered, “Uh… We just came here for—”

“The crane lift!” screeched Yan. “Right, right! Good! About time, newbies!”

“Newbies?” Rocky raised an eyebrow, turning towards Wis and Mi-an. “Ah, new builders. Finally someone who can actually help. Unlike this mopstick here…”

“M-mopstick…? A-anyway!” Seeing as Rocky was no longer immediately planning to throttle him, Yan shot up to his feet again, brushing the dust off his suit. “Lookie here, newbies! You got your first commission! And it’s a big one too! Our ol’ pal Rocky here needs two crane lifts for his scrap yard!”

“We ain’t pals,” Rocky snarled. He turned his attention to the ladies, his demeanor shifting to be significantly more welcoming. “Now, you two. You already look more capable than mopstick…and it ain’t like I got any choices left. Name’s Rocky, head of the salvage yard. And here’s what I need.”

He pulled two diagrams out of his back pocket, unrolling them and handing one each to the builders. “Two big cargo lifts. We’re haulin’ bigger ‘n bigger scrap up nowadays and we’d like not having to lug it all the way up a hill! We’ll have ‘em installed over the cliff leadin’ down to the ruins. Probably’ll have to come to our salvage yard to pick out some of the parts you need.” He glared once again at Yan. “You payin’ for their passes?”

Yan gaped, making a show of patting down his pockets. “N—ah—whaaa? Eheh, well. Was going to, but I guess I got the paperwork for that mixed up, heh heh…”

Wis would roll her eyes, but it wasn’t like the Highwind Commerce Guild was ever so generous with compensation either.

Rocky huffed. “Oh, for the love of— How’s this? Normally it’s 200 gols for a weekly pass, but since this mopstick is a bit of a cheapskate, your first week? On us.”

Wis’s brow raised. “That’s…generous of you. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Rocky, waving a hand. “Those lifts’ll be huge for us. I figure them alone make up for just 400 gols…gotta check with Krystal on the numbers, though. But we’re counting on you.”

“Yeah, you heard him!” Yan just had to steal his thunder. “Do it and do it right!”

“Alright, alright,” Rocky said loudly with a roll of his eyes. “Let’s let ‘em get to work without any bother, okay?!”

“Yeah, come on,” Wis said to Mi-an, trying to keep her voice even against the grating of her patience. “Let’s go.”

“Oh!” Mi-an exclaimed, caught off guard. “Uh, y-yeah! Let’s go! Building time…!”

When everyone but Yan finally stepped back outside, Wis breathed a sigh of relief. She looked up at Rocky as the three started for Eufaula Salvage up the hill. “Is he always like that?”

Rocky grumbled, scratching the back of his neck. “Yeah…either he passes stuff off to builders that can barely handle what they already got on their plates, or he promises to do things himself… And never delivers.”

Wis sighed. “Oh boy.”

“I mean…he could be busy too…?” Mi-an piped up uneasily.

“Nope,” said Rocky. “Nobody ever sees ‘im actually do anythin’. He just stands at those machines of his and pretends to do all sorts o’ work.”

“Oh…” Mi-an looked down in thought.

Wis eyed her uncertain expression. If she only worked with her family before, she probably wasn’t very keen on doubting or even fixing a stinkeye towards her boss. “Listen… I dunno what kinds of bosses your family were… But sometimes bosses can be really…” She searched for a polite enough word. “…really big pieces of work. Trust me. That’s why I moved.”

Mi-an hummed. “It’s… Well…I dunno if we should be badmouthing the guy that’s paying us, you know? He could maybe…”

He could leave us penniless.

Wis bristled at the silence. What on earth did she go through in her family’s workshop…?

“Ahhh, don’t worry about that,” said Rocky. “We’re the ones that’ll be payin’ you the most. If Yan tries to pull anythin’ and cut your wage, well. I can at least say me an’ Krystal’ll hand you extra commission fee. Other folks will too, I imagine.”

“Oh, y-you don’t need to—!” Mi-an waggled her hands frantically.

“But we should,” Rocky said emphatically.

“N-no, really, I should be—” Mi-an froze, spotting the gates to the salvage yard. “Oh! Look at that, we’re here! W…well, we should get to work, I guess…!” she stammered hastily. They had already reached the salvage yard. Without waiting for another word, she slipped through the gates.

Wis shot a worried look up at Rocky, who only shrugged. Mi-an seemed so open from what little Wis knew…but not entirely, it seemed. Once again, it didn’t seem anywhere near right to pry.

So she simply wished Rocky a good day, entered the yard, and found a promising-looking scrap pile to try digging for something, a short distance away from Mi-an. She rummaged around with her pickhammer, sometimes slamming the hammer head into it to break things apart and to make headway.

About halfway into separating the pile, a shiny bit of something suddenly caught Wis’s eye, a glint buried deep inside. Letting out a curious hum, she focused her pickhammer strikes on clearing the junk surrounding it. After enough hits, she reached in and pulled it out. A round, light blue disk, still a bit dusty with sand.

She looked over at Mi-an, holding it up. “I found a data disk in here.” Finding one on the surface was unusual. She never really saw them anywhere besides deep in the mines.

“Oh!” The other builder paused her hammer swinging and looked up. “Yeah, Eufaula Salvage usually brings in stuff from the ruins around here. Plus, with just how many ruins there are here, sometimes disks and things just kinda get swept up on the wind and into random junk piles around.”

“That plentiful?” Wis turned the disk over in her hands, inspecting it for scratches. It didn’t look too damaged. “I used to have to do a lot of digging in the abandoned ruins to find enough of these for a diagram.”

“Me too…not out here, though! No shortage of materials.” Mi-an jabbed a thumb in the direction of town. “You know where our Research Center is? It’s actually right to my place. The researcher, he’s…” She squinted. “…well, he’s a little…interesting. You’ll see. Just…whatever he says, d-don’t take it too personally.”

Wis pursed her lips. “That bad?”

Mi-an furiously shook her head. “N-no, not bad! M-maybe ‘he takes getting used to’ is better…?”

Wis let out a half-hearted chuckle. “Well, we gotta work with him either way. Can’t avoid him forever.”

“Mhm… I don’t think you’ll get anything with just one disk, but if you want to donate it to him, knock yourself out. And introduce yourself, too! As…as best you can…” Her voice trailed off towards the end.

“Yeah…probably good to take a break…” Wis straightened herself and flexed her wrists in a satisfying stretch. “We’ll see what this guy’s all about.”

Mi-an promised to keep chipping away at the piles of junk while Wis stepped out. It was a welcome break after the constant swinging of the pickhammer, the feel of which was still a bit strange and unfamiliar.

She followed Mi-an’s directions through the pipe tunnel, looking past her house and instead at the imposing all-metal building behind it, standing out against the wooden buildings of the rest of town. Machinery could be heard from both outside and in, even from where she was standing. Did Mi-an really have to put up with this noise all day?

She made her way to the large double doors in front, carefully pushing one open.

It was much cooler inside, the noise surprisingly reduced. The air smelled of metal and a mix of other strange things that Wis couldn’t pick out. The space was a laboratory, it looked like, and at the workbench in the back, surrounded by papers and books arranged without any semblance of order on the desk, was a dark-haired man in a dress shirt, wrinkled and lightly-stained.

At the sound of the door, he glanced over his shoulder, expression deadpan and unamused. He pushed up his round-frame glasses as he plainly asked in a sharp-sounding accent, “Can I help you?”

Now that he was facing her, he looked even messier at the front than the back. Hair a scraggly nest, a loose, half-knotted tie, shirt half-untucked and a tear ripped at the seams.

Wis blinked as she realized that she was just staring. “O-oh, uh… I’m Wisteria. The…new builder in town. Or Wis, if you want.”

The man frowned. “Another builder? I was never informed of this.”

“Well, um…now you know, I guess…”

The man was silent, no reaction of any sorts in words or on his face. Wis glanced around uneasily, wondering if he was waiting on her to say something else.

“Are you going to state your business with me?” the man said after a moment, brow furrowing slightly. “Neither of us benefit from wasted time.”

Wis jolted. He didn’t ask before. “E-er… I just wanted to introduce myself. Since we’ll be working together and all that.”

“Only pleasantries? Well builder, I’ll have you know that I don’t exactly—”

“But also!” Wis jumped in, pulling the data disk out of her bag. “I wanted to…hand this over to you. It’s the first one I found, and I don’t see me getting too many more until I can get to the Abandoned Ruins, so I might as well give it to you.”

The frown on the researcher’s face disappeared, back to its flat neutrality. “Ah.” He took the disk and turned it over, letting the fluorescent lights from above glare on its surface to expose any scratches. “Viable disk, for certain. I assume you’re familiar with them?”

Wis nodded. It was a simple principle with Research Centers. Bring disks, get diagrams.

The man stared at the disk for a second before handing it back to her. “On second thought, perhaps it would be more efficient for you to keep this. Come back when you obtain more and are in need of diagrams.”

Wis hummed as she slipped it back into her pocket. “Makes sense. Thanks, Mr…?”

“Director.”

“H-huh? Your name’s—?”

“No. My title is ‘Director.’”

Wis blinked. “Oh, uh…and…your name?”

“Qi,” the director said, not once showing any flicker of emotion aside from vague boredom. “Now. Is that all?”

“I…I guess so…”

“Very well,” Qi said, abruptly turning back to whatever he was working on before. “Good day, then.”

Wis snapped her mouth shut, whatever response she was formulating in her head shut down just as quickly as the conversation. The director paid no attention to the slightly confused frown on her face, just jotting away at one of the many papers on the table. Seeing there’d be nothing more from him, Wis left the Research Center. As soon as the doors were shut behind her, she sighed.

That was a Vega 5 researcher, all right. They were by far the oddest ones to work with. Not all of them were as…blunt as this one, they almost always felt as much in their own bubble as the city of Vega 5 was to the rest of the known world.

But regardless, Qi was the only researcher, from the sound of things. She and Mi-an had to deal with him one way or another. No avoiding it.

When she returned to the scrap yard, Mi-an had already dismantled the entirety of her junk pile, and was sorting through it to find useful parts. Her head shot up once she heard the opening of the salvage yard gate, flashing Wis a smile as she entered. “How was it?”

Wis let out a chuckle. “I can see what you mean.”

Mi-an also let out a chuckle, though more sheepish. “It’s not like he’s a bad guy or anything… He gets you the diagrams you need and everything…but I think that’s all that I’ll get from him. I dunno what he’s even working on half the time.”

“Well, hopefully we won’t need to deal with him too much, then.” Wis picked up her pickhammer again from where it was leaning against the chain-link fence. “But anyway…what do you have so far…?”

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Wis got up right on time the next day, shooting out of bed and quickly getting ready to work. She was fairly confident that she could start and finish the lift today. She and Mi-an got all the parts they needed, and the furnace could churn out just enough bricks with how much fuel she had on hand.

The whole morning, she was in motion. Pour the clay into the brick molds, toss the remaining tangled scrap into the recycler, lay out the platform, screw everything together nice and tight, lug all the big finished components over to the salvage yard to prep for the final build. Just as she dropped off the last parts, she turned around and saw Mi-an hustling up the hill with her final parts.

“Alright, alright!” Rocky said with a solid clap of his hands once Mi-an entered the yard. “Finally, the lifts! Let’s see what you got!”

The builders threw him a confident nod, and set to work right away. With the diagram clipped up on the fence nearby, and with the helping hands of the salvage crew to hold things in place, Wis and Mi-an built the elevators up, side by side.

Once the last rivet was driven in, Wis stood up to admire her handiwork. A fully finished cargo lift, three times her height and capable of lifting a hundred times her weight. The last thing she built in Highwind was a simple wooden chair.

Mi-an wasn’t far behind, and her lift was done soon after. The salvage team tested them out (thankfully the ropes didn’t fail over a cliff several hundred feet tall…), and after the okay was given, thank you’s and applause rang up from the entire team.

“Would ya look at that,” said Rocky. “Works like a dream! What excuse does that mopstick have now, huh?!” He held his hand out for a shake, and clapped Wis’s hand with enough oomph to feel stinging pain against her palm. “I owe both of you a big one. You don’t know how much this is gonna speed things up for me and the crew.”

“Not a problem,” Wis replied with the first genuinely confident smile she’d had in a long while. “That’s what we’re here for and all.”

“What she said!” Mi-an exclaimed, before a yelp when Rocky gave her that rock-solid handshake. “I know we’re still new, but I hope you know that you can count on us!”

“No doubt about it. I reckon we’ll all be seeing an awful lot of you two once you get your feet on the ground.”

Wis felt a hum of anticipation in her veins at that. Exactly what she wanted. Exactly what she needed. Real, meaningful work, for people that needed it. People that cared. And ideally, people that could light a fire under the ass of her inevitably terrible boss to do better…

The builders said goodbye to the satisfied salvage team, then to each other as they parted to take a well-deserved break for the rest of the day. But just as Wis was about to head inside, her eye caught on something.

Her workshop sign. Still leaning up against the wall where she’d propped it last night, too tired to put it up.

Wis hummed. Now was no less than a perfect time, wasn’t it?

She grabbed her hammer out of its pouch on her toolbelt, and a couple nails from a pouch in the back. She paused for a moment, staring at the sign. Where…was she going to put it? Mason had already taken down his old sign from the roof, but he took the sign’s supports with it, too. Apathy, or carelessness? Hard to say. But Wis didn’t quite feel bothered enough to scramble up there and make new ones. Her front wall didn’t have enough space, with the lantern next to the door. So that only left the side wall.

She hoisted the sign up into her hands, carefully aligning it parallel to the wooden planks of the wall and holding it in place with one arm as she hammered the first nail in.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 nails.

Wis stepped back, hands on her hips. Fresh Pines was back, so declared the worn, but proud sign. Now with…significantly fewer pine trees.

She snorted. Of all things to stay the same…

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A/N: The first part of this fic is largely centered on Wis, but have no fear, Qi is in there plenty, and we'll gradually shift more towards him in the later parts!

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#my time at sandrock #mtas #mtas fanfic #shady's fics #e&s

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