Community Service [Char/Moshi:Closed]

“I shouldn’t be lingering in the cold. Goodbye.” It was perhaps something of an abrupt end to the short conversation that Tsun Dehre had with her aged acquaintance, her trademark lack of conversational skill meaning that her departure was announced in a manner almost as cold as the weather that drove her away. And so, with her rather sudden withdrawal, the small girl who liked to build boats and tinker with machinery made further footsteps in the snow as her furry boots moved back in the direction of the inn.

This is entirely too much idle time… Tsun was the kind of girl who would relish more having too much to do, rather than too little, and being stranded on an island with little in the way of interesting machinery, or even uninteresting machinery, she was at something of a loss as to a task with which she could ‘amuse’ herself currently. The girl mind constantly looking for a new puzzle to occupy itself with, and despite having taken some time to fit the odd enhancements to her ‘little puppy’, she now wished that she had also brought along something else to occupy her idle hands and cerebral attention. Anything would have done really; maybe some kind of device that could use a smaller version of the steam engines used to the propulsion of Marine ships and the ‘Puffing Tom’ sea train, to propel a smaller sort of craft which could be used by in individuals or small groups. With the right modifications, one could probably design something of the sort which could be adapted to run both the surface of the water and upon land, meaning that it’s owner could traverse terrain as they saw fit, and it would be small enough to slip through ice floes, meaning the occupant would be able to endure through almost any sort of conditions.
Especially cold weather… It would certainly be ideal to have this versatile piece of kit be something of a contained environment, perhaps with the option to vent the excess steam from its engine around small, heat generating pipes to achieve an optimum internal environment.

Mentally designing this personal travelling craft, or ‘Pertracraft’ as Tsun had decided to name it for the time being, the young girl continued to hear her footsteps making the somewhat satisfying ‘crunch’ when she stepped on the snow that covered the landscape. Despite taking a path virtually identical to the one she had followed to come to the dock, the perpetual snowfall of Ice Nine had quickly covered the small steps which the currently absent minded girl had made a trail of on her way to the harbour, and given the slow speed with which Tsun was moving due to her attention being focused internally, only a few steps over a dozen behind her remained clearly defined. Of course, with her head in the cloud, or more accurately in the steam design, this girl was oblivious to the fact that the printed path she had left was quickly being swallowed up by fall of frozen flakes.

On her ‘autopilot’, Tsun barely registered the scenery around her, ignoring the sight of burned and broken building work, around which was gathered a group of large and imposing men, all scratching their head and holding beams and boards of wood. Perhaps her absentmindedness had continually blinded her to a rather obvious output for her attention; the damaged town in which she was currently residing, the victim of cruel pirate attacks a little too close in succession. This ordinarily was no big thing for the island, as usually there was at least one good carpenter on the island who could have directed the efforts of the townspeople in rebuilding, but this time that presence was to most people, noticeable by its absence. Tragically, the town’s usual carpenter and his family had been struck by tragedy during the attack; the head of the household losing his life in a sorrowful attempt to protect his family, and his heir being a mere apprentice who was crippled both by grief and lacking experience. The town of Ice Nine sorely needed someone who could, at the very least, show their willing body of volunteers how to return the town to some semblance of normality, but with one young carpenter lost in woe and doubt, and the only other person capable currently too busy daydreaming to help, her restoration would for the time being have to wait.

Largely oblivious to the level of ruin in the town, Tsun Dehre returned to the inn which had housed her with her head still very much full of ideas for machines to solve her current ill-fortune, as well as regret and irritation that she lacked the means to produce any of these currently. Stepping her way through the entrance to the Inn in almost a dazed state, Tsun blankly moved along her way, ignoring almost all of the efforts of her innkeeper to grasp the girl’s attention. It was only after the greying fellow had practically dove from his counter like a skyward goalkeeper and passed in front of Miss Dehre, did she finally pay him heed.

“M-Miss, I’m afraid that there is a little bad news regarding your stay with us…” Having pulled himself back up to his feet, the keeper of her hotel had the unfortunate duty of relaying sour information to Tsun, who hadn’t been the most receptive of customers. The inn, like the town, was itself in something of a bad state, with Tsun as its only current guest. This wasn’t to say that the inn was empty, in fact every bed in it was full, and the news that the innkeeper had to give was that hers was now ‘double-booked’.
“Unfortunately, one of our town’s builders has come down with a bad case of frostbite, and we have had to offer your room to him…”

Irritating. I already had to sleep on a strangers bed for a night when I arrived because all the island’s inn’s were full of ill and invalided… This was not good news for Tsun, who quickly reflected on her stay on Ice Nine, and found herself to be further irritated by this current act of imposition upon her.
“Shouldn’t a large island like this have a hospital for people like that?!” Tsun Dehre’s voice was usually quite quiet and calm, but with the recent turn of events, there was a slight exasperation in what she squeaked out. With good reason as well, at least for Tsun, since it was completely absurd to have sick people staying in something that wasn’t a medical establishment.

“Ah, I’m afraid that our island’s clinic was regrettably ruined in a recent raid by ruffians…”

“Hmmmm…” Tsun Dehre had elected to again brave the bitter climate of Ice Nine and now, having followed a simple map that her innkeeper had given her, found that she was standing in front of the town’s clinic, or what was left of it.
That’s a bit of a mess… Looking up at the charred remains of the building’s roof, Tsun found it a bit more understandable now why she had been turfed out of her room at the inn; nobody was going to get any better in a clinic where you had blizzards falling on your head night and day. The little shipwright’s intention in coming to this place was to see the damage with her own eyes, to see which parts were broken and which weren’t, so she knew what she would need to repair it. Her reason for doing this, well, it would have been nice to say that Tsun Dehre was doing this out of the kindness in her heart, but that wasn’t the truth; she had two reasons she wanted to get the clinic running again, and neither of them particularly noble. Firstly, if the clinic was fixed, then she’d have a nice, comfortable inn to contain her, without masses of people to bother her while she waited to escape the island. In addition to this, it was also something relatively mind-consuming to undertake, and a part of the girl was happy to take on the task because it would give her something to do other than walking backwards and forwards between the hotel and the harbour.

With a sigh, the girl stepped forwards, towards the door of the burnt out building, and placed her hand on the grip to open it. The handle turned stiffly, obviously something that was in need of more ‘love’ than it ordinarily received, but with a little bit of effort it finally seemed to rotate all the way to open the door. It was after the door’s lock was released, that another element of the damage revealed itself, and rather than swinging out to open, the door fell downwards. With a slight squeak of surprise, Tsun Dehre dodged backwards, and got a face full of snow as the door planted itself flat on the thick fall in front of it.

“Hey, what’re yeh doin’ over there?”
Wiping the snow from her face with the back of one of the long sleeves from the borrowed coat, it appeared to Tsun that her action had caused a slight commotion further down the street. Stamping towards her was a displeased man, dressed in thick clothes but with a bright, almost glowing, silver star on his left breast; a lawman.
“I said, girly, what business d’yer have messin’ with burned out buildin’s?”
As he drew closer, Tsun’s attention shifted from the shining metal on his chest, and she now surveyed the status of the man questioning her so firmly, and found what she saw slightly reminiscent. This fellow was an older man, on a good day wearing a white moustache, but on a day like today, it was accompanied by the scattered snowfall of a lacking shave. He had a large nose, long and slightly curved down, like a beak that divided the man’s lip-hamster. This man, around his eyes he had more than one crow’s set of feet, and a dark bagginess that suggested that his night’s sleep had been shortened for several days before.
The reminiscence that Tsun drew from the image before her did not really lay with the man himself, since he was someone who this her first meeting with, but rather the inspiration of the recollection came from someone whom the girl had lost the company of more than two years previously. Stomping and stamping his way up to her, bellowing questions and demands, the man’s countenance pushed the girl to remember her grandfather, who would similarly take this action when he saw his shipwrights slacking in their duty. There was just that certain something about this man that made Tsun see her departed grandfather, and because of this, a rare smile gave a slight curl to lips of Tsun Dehre, who usually remained so stoic.

“What are yeh, hard of hearin’?”
The man had stomped sufficiently far enough to come to a halt in front of Tsun, jamming his hands on top of his hips and leaning forward slightly to look at her largely obscured face.

“I’m a engineer, and I came to fix this broken clinic…” The small smile which the sight of the stomping old man had bestowed upon Tsun Dehre vanished as she spoke, and after informing him of her task, she turned from him in order to better concentrate on the job at hand.

“A little girl like you says she’s a mechanic?”
Tsun Dehre was not unaccustomed to this attitude, which was usually given to her by anyone unfamiliar with her skills; people figured mechanics and shipwrights to be big, burly men who could lug around beams and girders, not underdeveloped teenage girls who squeaked and hopped away from falling doors. However, this impression of her being lacking in ability would prove to be false in a short period of time, and having been raised as an engineer since she was six, she had the skill to make that a very short time indeed.
“A first class one…” Miss Dehre continued to largely ignore the old man who questioned her, instead narrowing her eyes and lifting out a pencil and pad from her pocket…

“Hold this for me.” Flurries of scribbles and scratches with a pencil later, Miss Tsun Dehre offered up the small pad to the old man who reminded her of Pappy. Skeptical, the man seemed hesitant to take the item from her, like it was an exploding toy mouse which she just wound up, or the hot end of a soldering iron she was trying to place in his palm. After a beat or two, the man in the silver star relented a little, and took the pad from Tsun, who tucked the pencil which accompanied the pad behind her ear, and then dropped the large pack she brought with her and begun rooting around inside it. Plucking a screwdriver from within the bag, she gave it a quick glance before stuffing in within the deep pocket from which a few minutes ago the girl had produced the notepad which was now being scrutinized the diagram that she had sketched out on the uppermost sheet.

“So, yeh can draw, but that don’t really mean much…” Despite having seen a rather well designed plan of a building, which featured labels perfectly matching the dimensions available for the building, the older timer didn’t seem to be convinced that the little girl in front him was what she claimed, but Tsun paid him little attention. Thrusting her hand deep into the rucksack that she had brought with her, she pushed past spare clothes mixed with the hard, digging sensation of metallic objects; tools and parts of machinery which she had decided to bring with her. Not the most organised of girls, Tsun didn’t pack with any sort of system or neatness, and the jumbled mess that made up the contents of her travel bag was an illustration of the life she now led. Finally grasping what she had wanted to reach, Tsun wrapped her hand around the feeling of tough fabric, and tugged her arm out of the bag, holding onto what looked like the end of a grubby kind of belt. Her backpack buldging from the strain, as the sum total of her nomadic life threatened to spill forth onto the cold snow around her, the belt finally gave burst free of the bag which held it.

The force with which the item was removed from her bag made Tsun stumble back a step, and once she regained her balance, she now stood with an arm outstretched, holding onto a stained and scuffed toolkit, all contained within the handy confines of a belt.
The man, who had been warily looking to see what she had been trying to conjure from the bag of tricks, eyed the hanging item, and his eyes quickly recognised the mixtures of metal and wood that made up the objects attached to the messy sash.
“Yeh’ve got tools an’all, but that doesn’t mean that yeh can just start bashing away at a broken roof, missy…” His attention seemed largely focused on the metal mallet that sat roughly in the middle of the buckled rope, and again Tsun gave him the barest of regards, instead putting her hands at either end of her tool belt and wrapping it around herself.

Once bound, the belt of implements made for a rather odd look, when combined with the old and oversized coat that Tsun wore to ward off the cold; wound around her tight to keep it on, the sash of stashed tools emphasized the narrow frame of the girl that wore it, forming an hourglass shape with the bulging and baggy sections either side of its wrap. Tsun cared little for the oddness of how she looked; usually she pulled off a similar ‘style’ when in warmer climes than this, just with her trademark jumpsuit taking the place of the currently worn cold weather coat. Stuffing her hand into her pocket once again, she retrieved the screwdriver which had earlier been stored, and poked its flat end through a small loop on her belt, restoring the array of apparatus to its full assembly. With herself now fully ‘tooled up’, Tsun closed up her bag and lifted it with a little displayed effort onto her shoulder again, before stepping forward and over to the wall of the scorched structure. With a slumping sound, the sack was laid on the ground, leaning up against the wall nearest the hanging hinge of the door, the would-be carpenter inspected the damage which had earlier occurred in her attempt to open the room. She could still hear the sound of the old man in her ear, and he seemed to still be harping on about how he couldn’t let her mess around with the broken building, but for Tsun this was largely like unnoticed background music than a person trying to intrude onto her.

Hinges look OK… The engineering girl quickly surveyed the state of the pivoting pieces of metal which clung to the wall, and then turned her attention to the lump of boarded together wood that lay in the snow a few inches away.
As I suspected, the wetness of the snow has rusted the screws and rotted the wood… The door was in less acceptable status compared to the moving metal brackets which had formerly held it, red rings lined the screw holes of wood that was crumbled away to the touch.
Outstretching her hand, she tugged her notepad back from the wittering old man and turned it’s page, jotting a note about the door and it’s hinges, before finally paying some attention to the man again.
“Fetch what supplies you have and able bodies, this is going to be a big job…” Tsun co-opted the silver starred man, who she had never thought was the Town’s Sheriff, into her service like he was a teenager with too much time on his hands.
“I’d like to at least get some cover up before nightfall…” Stepping away from the Sheriff, she expected him to do as she asked, but made no real motion to force him to. The girl had her craftswoman’s mind ‘on’, and instead decided to assess the rest of the building whilst the old coot did her bidding, and so she stepped inside the building with the blackened top, to fully get to grips with it’s condition…

“Mmmm…” Alone once more, Tsun Dehre made her way around the open topped structure, making inconsequential expressions of ‘um’, ‘mm’ and ‘ohh’ as she surveyed the state of what remained of the burned building. Inside she would find a variety of things, snow covered instruments and bookshelves filled with what were now charcoal briquettes, but the girl as she was, made no real reflection on the sad state of this previously proud practice. Whatever memories of joy or perhaps sadness that were held in the bounds of the ruined clinic remained invisible to Tsun, and if the walls were talking, Tsun certainly was too deaf to hear them.
It’s in better condition than I anticipated… Whilst there were obvious signs of a fire, the brick construction had spared much of the structure a large amount of damage, and whilst building a new roof wasn’t close to an easy job, it was certainly more approachable than erecting a whole edifice from scratch.

Stepping her way back out of the burned building with care not to disturb any of the dangers present within the derelict dwelling, Tsun Dehre exited back into the snowy street outside.
I’ll need more help than myself and this old geezer… In the open again, Tsun stepped through the spoiled surgery’s broken doorway to see that the elderly man was still dallying around outside. To some degree, it irritated the young woman that the old man seemed to have favoured hanging around outside the broken clinic, rather than doing as she had requested.
We won’t be able to build much without supplies either… The girl voiced little of her concerns, and instead set about attending to what she could deal with at the moment. Flipping her notebook back to the sketch she made earlier, Tsun jotted down a few more notes, revisions that the previous inspection had necessitated.

By the time that she had finished her design alteration, Miss Dehre attention to the outside world returned to discover that the solo accompaniment had blossomed into a rather odd trio. Now with the Silver Star chested old man, there was a younger male and another that was even junior to the first.
Bring your child to work day? I suppose it would be useful to have a gopher… The work force hadn’t really expanded in any sort of spectacular fashion, but the mid-aged one looked like he might prove useful in the restoration effort. Tsun was and endowed with brains and experience in tasks of this manner, in fact her early work on Moimoro Island had involved restoration work on some of the local’s abodes, but what she lacked was the brawn needed to actually do the task. Precision work with machines or small carpentry projects she could handle, tossing around beams and tree trunks was not her area of expertise, and the younger man appeared as if he might make up for that weakness. Of course, they could have used a dozen or so more men of that size in order to even contemplate raising a roof on a building of this size, but at least if they had a decent spare pair of hands, they could begin their work.

“It’s not a full team, but I suppose we can get started…” The feisty female foreman wasted no time in taking names, instead jabbing out her orders to the characters present.
“Ojii, we will really need to get some more hands on the job, so can you please go and find us some strong arms to help us with the lifting. They don’t need to be overly skilled, I can direct them as required, but able bodies are essential on a task this large.” Basically the same order that she had given the old man before, Tsun has emphasized and expanded her intents in the hopes that her orders might better reach his mind. Of course, Tsun was hardly in a position to comment on other’s perceptiveness, as even now the old man seemed to be kicking up an ignored fuss about having a town sheriff being bossed about by a little girl. This fell on deaf ears, as on-task Tsun rapidly let her focus on him slip as she now moved onto her next ‘assistant’, the little boy.

“Ah, you, the shrimp.” It might have been a better idea for Tsun to have taken their names, rather than risk a sort of insult to the names she chose on the spot. In truth, Tsun’s work environment had always been a bit rough and ready, so people tended to be better known by the nicknames given rather than their actual appellation, and whilst she had no real malicious intent behind her comment, the fact that the boy was a young boy meant that he was largely born for the moniker. Tsun herself had spent a great deal of time operating under what might be considered endearing epithets, with ‘Girlie’, ‘Princess’ or ‘Little Miss’ being the most frequently used handles.
“We’ll need a large amount of materials to complete this job, can you run along to the suppliers and have this sent over?” Offering a scribbled list of what Tsun expected would be needed to repair the roof, the girl waited for the ‘Shrimp’ to take it and attend to her request. It may have been odd for the islander's to see Tsun so talkative, since she usually simply squeaked and remained quiet and alone. But the girl was a changed woman when she was 'on the job', assertive and more outgoing, and if it called for it, even rather bossy.

“These beams will need taking out so that we can replace them with fresh ones…” Well in the swing of things now, Miss Tsun Dehre was in her element; leading around a gang of burly men and jabbing her hand at things that she wanted to get done. At first they seemed to have been a bit reluctant to acquiesce to her orders, reluctantly going along with her suggestions with confused looks, after the first few burnt boards of wood and charred bricks had been removed, her accompaniment seemed much more willing to go along with the demands which were placed upon them. The Dehre daughter was not the kind of girl to simply expect her ‘workforce’ to get all of their jobs done as she stood around and watched, no, she was too industrious for that. Bouncing between them with her tools in hand, Tsun stopped them at points and showed the workforce the most effective way to accomplish their aim, demonstrating the joys of concepts such of leverage and unbolting screws to make the work proceed much more smoothly.

I didn’t expect skilled hands, but they’re receptive enough to advice… Whilst she had chosen her ‘crew’ largely on the moment, and more at random choice than demonstrated ability, the young shipwright was pleasantly surprised with the progress that they made in their dismantling attempts. Of course, these men were by no means professional; there had been dismantling gangs in the great shipyards which Tsun had grown up with the skill to seemingly disassemble even a large galleon in a matter of a few minutes, picking the pieces of crafts apart with the speed of a greyhound but the efficiency of a hungry vulture. Miss Dehre herself was quite the accomplished wielder of the wrench and screwdriver, gaining a little renown in those same shipyards for the proficiency with which she could disassemble machinery, an innate talent in stripping away all the bearings and bolts to make it seem like a steam engine was exploding into an array of composite parts.

As a young woman who wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty, by the time than Tsun had progressed sufficiently to need to wipe her brow even in the freezing temperature of Ice Nine, the black soot from burnt beams of wood left a long smear on her face, giving the white skin that the girl possessed a dark mark of the work that she had been doing. Tsun Dehre wasn’t someone who worried about looking her best, so the grubbiness of her face and gloved mitts went unnoticed as she looked away from the dismantling work, to see how the other team was progressing in their attempt to make a tarp to cover the area.

At least they’re not standing around, looking blankly at one another… Peeking outside the doorframe of the clinic, Tsun scanned the scenario which was stirring outside of her own work environment, hoping to see that the idle hands that she had left were at least slightly busier. Tsun noted that at the very least, they were no longer gawking at one another with their hands in the pockets; several had disappeared, and what remained seemed to only be the supposed ‘foreman’ who looked to be gazing up into the sky.
He’s daydreaming? I might have to leave a few orders and take over… Scanning the sky, Tsun found herself trying to spy something that might have caught the attention of the man whom she didn’t actually know was called Bappou, but her attention was dragged away by a question from one of her crew before she could spot anything of particular note.

It was a continuous source of concern that the person who was supposed to be in charge of the site seemed to spend more time gaping his mouth like a gold fish than actually getting involved in the operation. It was no surprise to the little shipwright that the damage in the town had remained for some time, with such a lackadaisical man leading them, it seemed to the girl that if she hadn’t shown up the town might well have fallen down entirely before the mind-wandering mess of a manager got around to fixing anything within it. She had hoped that either the old man or the brat might have been able to do something to keep the foreman at least vaguely interested, but noted that neither seemed to be on the scene once she had just scanned it.

Have they been sent to gather materials? Once Tsun had shown another handy little technique to her ‘boys’, her eye line whipped back around to check the building site around her again, but this time caught sight of what Bappou had, unknown to her, been looking at earlier.
What does he think he is, a spider? Stomping out of the remains of the clinic, Tsun Dehre marched across the snow in the direction of one of the nearby intact structures, having spied a small shape scaling it’s side.
If he falls off, our work will be halted again… A young woman of great compassion and empathy, Miss Dehre’s concern about having a body fall off a building did not for a second have anything to do with the figure’s safety, more the impact it would have on her schedule.
“HEY YOU! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING? GET DOWN FROM THERE, IDIOT!” The tiny squeaks of vocalization that the girl usually produced were a far cry from the angry bellow that boomed from her mouth, threatening to shake the person of the side of the structure with it’s banshee force alone…