Community Service [Char/Moshi:Closed]

[EriChar]

Ugh… More bureaucracy; more discussion and no action. Having drawn her dignified digging device to a diminished, resting state, the Shipwright girl Tsun Dehre pawed at the dials in front of herself like a small child who sought to distraction from the chiding they were deceiving. If she was perfectly honest, given the power of the machine at her control, it was tempting for the girl to just take off and continue her activity; after all, there was little the interfering male could do to stop a machine like this once it was steaming along. With such a powerful intimidation factor, the Steam Digger 2000 would certainly have the potential to permit Tsun to get her days work done without any great deal of interference, but there was a fatal flaw in that plan; it’s longevity. While she could bully her opposition into allowing her to continue her work astride the massive, roaring beast between her thighs, that would no doubt serve to seal the end of her work here; she would certainly not be trusted with any sort of basic task, let alone any of interest, if she acted on impulse now.

“Yes, steam engines are no problem for me; I have built and operated all sizes and specifications…” Perking up to the barest minimum of degrees, the disappointment of Tsun Dehre was plainly evident in the robotic manner in which she answered; the melancholy of her situation making even the monotonous way that she spoke normally take on an even more morse-like tone. Frustrated, bored and disinterested, the subtle complimentary confidence that her young companion was largely lost on Tsun, who instead leaned forward on the display in front of herself, supporting her head with a cheek-bearing palm, which sat next to the drooping lip of disappointment. Showing little interest in the scenario proceeding next to herself, the shipwright girl instead drifted in and out of the conversation between the boy and the man as the former shuffled packages and paperwork from a briefcase, her knowledge of what precisely was occurring in the snow becoming a hazy mix of uninteresting actions and observations of falling snow.

It was only in this state of detachment, this lacking focus on a task at hand, or future endeavour, that for the first time Miss Dehre actually paid anything close to attention to the falling flakes of snow that were cast around her position.
It floats down like a slow, dancing spot of rain, each morsel erratically changing its mind about the path that it will travel down to the ground, to mix and mingle with a million other identical pieces… Completely unoccupied, Tsun pondered the inconsistent nature of the falling snow, which seemed to deft any sort of mathematic process to predict the path with which it would fall, and all this consideration lead her to consider one important thing about her current circumstance; she was really, really bored.

Luckily for Miss Dehre, thanks to the largely unobserved savvy of her young male ‘friend’, she was not overburdened with any substantial stretch of lacking occupation, as the male youth at her side, through either cunning or convincing, managed to persuade the adult impediment to operations to cease his sanction, giving Tsun the chance to reinvigorate and return to a task which might serve to subdue her boredom.

“Now, seriously, you do know what you’re doing, right? If this thing ends up in a ditch somewhere, we’re never going to hear the end of it.” With the end of the negotiation, the boy seemed a little hesitant to live up to the large words that he had laid down earlier to the now departing human obstruction. Perhaps, given their earlier disagreement, and the friction that had resulted from it, the young male had trouble placing faith in the machine-riding shipwright girl, but for Tsun, she felt there was no reason to doubt her ability; while it had taken her a short period earlier on to become acclimatised to the use of this machine, she was now confident that her experience and initiative could see her through any foreseeable problems with the operation and employment of this digging device.

“Of course; I’m a professional.” At the end of that declaration, which was responded to more out a sense of personal pride than reassurance, Tsun’s activity resumed, with explosive style. Like a spring that had been coiled and awaiting it’s release, or a predator that had finally identified the time to strike, the shipwright girl seized upon her chance to reactivate the machine that had been quietly purring, her snapping motions on the dials and levers that dictated the operation of the steam powered device permitting the ‘beast’ to roar once more.

“Hold on tight…!” Exploding into action, Miss Dehre’s manipulation of the machine made the wheels underneath her churn their way through the snow beneath it, and bite hard into the frozen terrain underneath, making it lurch forward with quite a degree of violent force. The bucket of the machine still pressing down into the earth, as the machine plunged forward at a brisk pace, the sheer power and driving force of the mechanical beast pushed a mound of mixed soil, snow and other debris out of the way in front of it, leaving a path behind itself of scraped earth in the white blanket of the dock.

“We’ll need to make up for the time we’ve lost today!” Her voice raised high enough to be considered a shout in order to help it carry over the sound of her vehicle’s engine; the craftswoman did what she could to keep the boy at her side informed, as once again she slammed the brakes onto her machine. Skidding to a stop at where she reckoned that the scaffolding would need to be placed, and this time flicked the levers on a section so far untouched by her operation of the great digging monster. Angrily spitting out steam from valves attached to her engine, the Steam Digger two-thousand gave a wailing screech as the smaller, armed bucket at her reach dove through the air, and into the dirt below.
“I’ll show you how to work the small scoop, it should speed us up a bit…” Turning to the boy sat next to herself, Tsun pointed and poked at certain dials and controls for the boy to see, attempting to infer what she would expect to be their key features…

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

“I’ll show you how to work the small scoop, it should speed us up a bit…” Weiss made an attempt to hide the child-like enthusiasm that spread across his face at the girl's offer, but it was entirely in vain. There was something… fascinating about buttons. This one makes it do this, this does that, and on such. It was strangely similar to ordering someone around. And he very, very much liked bossing people around. Sitting up straight, he watched as the older girl indicated different buttons, levers, and dials; describing their general purpose, how they work in conjunction with one another, and how to manipulate them to make certain actions occur. In the instances where she was unclear on the exact purpose of a switch, Tsun simply flipped it. The results were generally… informative, though there was a time or two when the lumbering machine lurched forward unbidden, and he felt his heart lock up in his chest, but those were thankfully few and far in-between. As a whole, the teaching process went remarkably well, though admittedly he had not set the bar for his instructor’s performance very high. Her lessons were terse at best, but very straight to the point. Mistakes were not met with scolding or pleasantries, simply corrected. It was an efficient style of schooling. They only broke down into shouting twice. Twice!

By the end of the day, he thought himself a veteran operator of the small scoop, though he did still make a few blunders here and there, whereas Tool-Girl (They had finally exchanged names, an event which was long overdue, but he mostly stuck to calling her by her moniker rather than her actual name) because took to the job as if she had done it her entire life (If you listened to her talk, you might think she had been! Luckily, he was too wise to fall for such exaggerations). Even with their efforts combined, the pair only managed to dig out what seemed like a small section of the wall before the sun began to set, but Gibb acted surprised when he saw their work, so perhaps their pace was better than he thought.

Without daylight waning what small comfort Weiss could take in the frigid landscape was stolen from him, replaced with nothing but an increasingly intolerable cold. In the face of this dropping temperature, the decision to halt work until the following morn was not one met with particular contention. The digger was stowed back into the warehouse without incident, and the trio trudged back to the lopsided building that served as the company’s headquarters. On the way through town, they took a short detour to take a look at the hospital, which seemed to have made significant progress since they had seen it last. The rotten sections of the structure had been torn out, cleared away along with the worn brickwork and plaster. A series of tall ladders had been propped up against the side (Admittedly, a safer way to ascend that the method he had employed), which the workers had used to set up a wooden framework across the top of the building. A tarp had been laid across the beams, presumably to finally secure it against the elements, which concealed it from closer inspection. However judging by the stacks of wooden sheathing and tiles set around the base of the building it seemed like they were anticipating a finishing much earlier they had originally planned. He couldn’t help but feel like his interference was partially responsible for the accelerated timetable. Without him, they would have stood there for hours trying to scrape together a dry area in which to open the crates, AND wasted precious resources replacing salvageable wood. And, to a lesser degree, he supposed Tsun probably helped too. As they strode away, Weiss could have sworn he heard a hammer banging in the distance behind him, but he chalked it up as being inconsequential.

It was his good fortune that his marine escort was absent on their return to the “command center”, which had been up until that point a particular worry of his. What little liberties Weiss had managed to wrestle for himself were likely to be forfeit if anyway found out exactly why he had been sent to assist this project in the first place. It’s not like he had done anything particularly malicious or anything, stowing away on a Navy ship. The white-shirts had spent the majority of the trip drunk off their asses anyway, who cares if they messed with them a little? They had it coming. Most of the stuff he repossessed had been items which were far beyond your standard marine’s paycheck. He even overheard a few of them mentioning pressuring remote islands into paying them a “tax” whenever they made port, in addition to the tax they had to pay to the World Government for their continued protection. It was the same kind of strong arm tactics he had repeatedly seen the so-called peacekeepers engage in across the Blues. And he hated, hated to see such blatant abuse of power, especially when it was at the expense of a weaker party. These people deserved more than just petty theft and pranking, but as much as he despised to admit it, he was just one kid. He could only do so much against such a large and militant organization. To make matters worse, experience told him that other people were rarely swayed when he argued the relative morality of his actions, despite being presented with solid logic and ample anecdotal evidence. Suffice to say, this had presented him with a number of difficulties in his travels; and as much as he might like to share what he had done against these cowards and bullies, to share all the daring exploits and harrowing escapes he had performed since he first ran away from home, he had learned it was best to keep this information to himself. The hard way. Trust was no longer something he gave away quite so freely.

Arriving back at the base of operations, where this whole venture began for the young runaway, they were unsurprised to see that what had been a bustling hive of activity had been reduced to a skeleton crew, who all seemed to be on their way out. The stuttering foreman, Bappou, was not present, and instead they had the… pleasure of speaking to Sherriff Warren’s again. Their supervisor gave a brief report about what had been accomplished, pointing out the admirable work that he and Tsun had performed, though luckily enough he neglected to mention that they had done it without supervision. The news did little to modify the gnarled old man’s sour disposition, and they were ordered to return to the warehouse in the morning at an hour past sunrise for another day’s labor. The vast majority of inns had given their rooms to displaced citizens, which meant there wasn’t much left in the way of somewhere for him to crash. But apparently their absent leader had left an offer with the Sheriff, that his place had a spare bedroom or two, and that either of the kids could crash with him for the duration of his stay if need be. It was a rather kind gesture on his part. However, Tool-Girl indicated that she had already made other arrangements. Weiss himself, lacking the options available to his older counterpart, could do little but accept.

Warren gave him brief instructions on how to get to “Runt’s” place (A nickname he still found ill-fitting given the person in question’s above average height), the location of a hidden key to gain entry should the house be empty, and sent the both of them on their separate ways. Weiss bid both Gibb and Tsun a brief farewell, a quick an easy courtesy, and headed off. His target was not that far off and, like most large cities, the named streets and numbered buildings made travel a fairly simple procedure. The house itself was larger than he imagined. It was only three stories tall (Small, being compared his own childhood home, which perhaps was not the best baseline), but branching off it was what appeared to be expansive workshop, complete with a great number of machines whose purpose, he surmised, was processing different types of lumber and metals, and the only reason he could even infer that much was the presence of both materials on site. Some of them bore great metal gears, others had bladed saws. The only device he recognized was the massive furnace in the center of the shop floor, which was connected to a set of oversized bellows, one on each side. Though he may not have known what task each thing performed, what he could certainly tell was that they had not seen use in a while.

Moving to the front, he retrieved the hidden key from under the mat and let himself in, more than pleased with the prospect of refuge from the elements. Inside was pitch black, a fact which might have caused him trepidation were the air inside not so warm and inviting. After spending a few moments groping around in darkness, he managed to find a light switch. The interior was, in short, rather homey. Hanging his coat and kicking off his boots, as was proper, Weiss continued inside, with every intention of making his way up to whatever bedroom was free. The day’s events had taken a larger toll on him than he had initially thought, and he wanted nothing more than to sit down, maybe do a bit of reading, and then nod off. However, he found himself drawn to a particularly plush-looking couch in the living room.

"Maybe I'll just... sit down for a minute." Weiss muttered, collapsing on top of the soft cushions. But he was not able to follow through with his plan. A few minutes later, the young boy was out cold.

[EriChar]

Stupid cold; there’s a lot more work to do… While such a day filled with effort might have been exhausting to most builders, for Tsun Dehre, she instead returned to the doorway of the inn in which she had been boarded, feeling both irritated and energised. Having spent the days previous to her work largely in a state of unoccupied rest, one day’s hard work had hardly been enough to ravage the large reserve of stamina the girl possessed, having developed the ability to work through day and night with little requirement for respite for sizeable periods at a time, before engaging in an odd, hibernating rest afterward. Her environment, however, had decided otherwise; not only was it more than irritating how cold this land was during the hours that varying degrees of sun shone through the thick snow-filled clouds above it, but the decrease in any ‘warmth’ by even the loosest of terms when that celestial body disappeared made it seem positively arid by comparison. Where in the day arctic winds would whip around your body, their cold seeping into the very bones of the bodies that were touched, at night, the frosty conditions of the land regarded by most to be the coldest in the world did not chill your bones, it rather replaced them with ice; one’s body becoming so overtaken by its freezing surroundings that it seemed to become part of it. Even if Tsun might have had the reckless spirit to keep working even if she froze to death, she couldn’t entirely disagree with a decision to stop work for the day when the bitter conditions threatened to freeze even the hot steam within the machine that she used; even ‘Stiggy’, which Miss Dehre had come to call the Steam Digger, had demanded she call it a night.

Lost in thoughts of irritation at being denied more work by the fickle mind of the weather and speculations as to the continuation tomorrow, what was absent from the mind of this young ship builder was the whole reason that she had begun aiding in the renovation efforts; having been turfed out of her room earlier in the day, to make space for other fools who tried to challenge the cold and lost. This was a fact which currently escaped the young woman as she pushed her way inside the door, passing by the desk of the inn in an irritated daze, once again walking in ‘auto-pilot mode’ towards the room which she had forgotten was no longer hers. Having been so busy during the day, to the largest of extents, the young woman had pushed the initial impetus behind her decision to keep occupied to the deep recesses of her mind; the concentrated thoughts on future design and drama of the day bearing for more heavily upon her than the decisions that had led her to them. In the end, having built up something of a working relationship with the principle cause of her biggest troubles of the day, not counting her current homelessness, Tsun had found somewhat to her surprise that the boy, who had eventually informed her was called ‘Laskaris E. Weiss’, had managed to surpass her expectations of him. In retrospect, he had in fact done quite a good job of sorting out the bookkeeping for the job, something which Tsun loathed to undertake, and been largely instrumental in getting them to work around the reservations of their ‘adult supervision’ wth diplomacy skills that were admittedly in excess of her own.

I suppose he has a little potential, as long as he is kept in line… While the child had caused something of a disaster at the clinic reconstruction, to a certain extent, his dishonour had been redeemed in the eyes of Tsun Dehre, who after seeing some of the results of his effort, now held him with a slither of regarded respect. Not only had the mentioned paperwork been completed with speed and efficiency, he had also demonstrated a mildly impressive capability to absorb information, having quickly mastered the controls of ‘Stiggy’ which he was shown, and had the young woman not been wary of the potential chaos he might still cause, have recommended him to operate one of the machines on his own the next day. Ultimately, once the pair had moved past their own preconceptions and senses of pride, both Tsun and Weiss had shown they had a good potential for teamwork, and an underlying, if begrudged, ability to bond with one another. Truth be told, despite her remaining reservations about the boy’s ability to work alone without causing disasters, he had not only become perhaps the only person on the island who Tsun viewed with any large degree of appreciation for their work, but also the only person on the island she’d spent any real time with at all; having been hidden away like a hermit in the ‘cave’ of a room which she now headed towards, a room that was no longer hers. Of course, she had earlier also been rather impressed with the moment of skill that the nervous foreman at the clinic had demonstrated, and not entirely disappointed by the amount of work they had gotten done, she had yet to spend enough time working with the anxious male to decide whether he was truly skilled or just very lucky.

“Ah, Miss, no, did you forget?” Stopped in both her thoughts and her tracks by the presence of a hand clamping her shoulder with a gentle firmness, Tsun glanced around to see that the owner of the inn had dashed for his desk and grabbed her, before she could make it up to her room.
“We had to take your room earlier, for the frostbitten man?” Her eyes widening, the clued words of the older male who had stopped her ran through the girls senses, and eventually brought up a recollection of the earliest events of the day, thoughts which also decided to bring with them a redness to Miss Dehre’s cheeks, one which wasn’t born from the sudden change from cold to hot she had experienced.

Damnit… Her expression vacant as she wished her hotel room was, Tsun Dehre had no clever response which she could give to the owner of the inn to defend her own absent mindedness, and instead was found snapping her mouth open and closed like a fish as words failed to fall from her mouth.
“I-I see, yes, sorry, I’ll be going then…” Embarrassed, irritated and also somewhat panicked by her lack of shelter, Tsun Dehre spat words out and turned upon her heel to skirt back out of the door as quickly as she could, frantic to find some place in which she could stay in the horrendous conditions that made up night-time on Ice Nine.
Maybe the warehouse? Contemplating making herself a sort of ‘nest’ next to the warmly stoked engine of ‘Stiggy’, Tsun once again found that her ability to travel was impeded by the presence of a binding hand, who now also seemed to be not only preventing her from going deeper into the Inn, but at the same time, not permitting her to leave it either.
Whoa, do I have glue on my shoulder or something? Wriggling and flailing her legs forward, despite getting nowhere, in a somewhat comedic fashion, Miss Dehre stopped after a few moments to ask why he wasn’t allowing her to depart, but as she did so, instead found her body being plucked away and dragged into the door behind the inn’s desk for purposes known only to the owner.
“What? Unhand me!” Demanding her release loudly, Tsun’s body once again to thrash and writhe, trying to release herself from the grip of the inn’s owner, to no real success; apparently this fellow, while usually polite, was no stranger to handling uncooperative individuals, presumably ones who had outstayed their welcome in his Inn, but that didn’t seem to give a great deal of reason to his handling of someone who was trying to leave.

“Now calm down, Miss… Sheriff Warren stopped by earlier in the day to check on the man we gave your room to…” Finding her still flailing form being bustled through a hallway and then another door, Miss Dehre was now brought into a room which seemed to almost shine with orange light, emanating from a large, glowing fire towards its centre.
“When he heard we’d had to throw someone out, and who it was, he told us the whole story.” Being returned to a position where she could support her own weight, the seemingly unbreakable grasp that the old inn owner had placed her in was released, and the shipwright girl blinked and gave the room a more detailed inspection, surveying the surroundings which she had just been dragged into. What she saw was a very old-fashioned arrangement, beams and brick mingling in the room in a sort of rustic manner, and in the corner, or more accurately in more than one corner, sat a giant of a woman in an equally giant chair. Compared to the man who had brought her here, the woman looked to be like an elephant sitting next to a kitten, almost taking over the room, but strangely, lacking in intimidation; instead just quite waggling a pair of knitting needles in a mass of wool large enough to swamp Tsun several times over, but rather more like a handkerchief for the woman weaving the creation.

“This town doesn’t have much, but we take care of our own...” Guiding Tsun forwards, the small woman took a few tentative steps forward and was ushered deeper into the room, and in front of the fire, where the remainder of her luggage was leaning next to a large, long couch, over which blankets and pillows had been placed.
“So, it’s not much, but me and the missus made up our couch as a bed, and made you a little supper.” Leaving the girl for a moment, before returning with a tray laden with a large steaming bowl of soup, and several huge chunks of bread roll, the owner of the inn set the meal down on a table close to the made up couch-bed with a smile.

“If you’re doing a decent thing like helping us out, it would’ve been indecent of us to just throw you out on the street, wouldn’t it dearie?” Raising up slightly with a smile, Tsun saw the giant woman in the corner put away her knitting in a small bag next to her own seat, and waved a huge ham of a hand toward the meal welcomingly.

“Ah, um, well… Um…” Tsun Dehre was not a girl who was terribly accustomed to kindness, having grown up in an environment where playful banter and near-bullying were the ‘norm’, so when confronted by the generous and unprovoked charity of the couple, she was a little taken aback; unable to readily express any sort of words of appreciation for the gesture.
“Thank You…” With a soft and uncharacteristic smile, the little shipwright finally managed to convey some small token of gratitude to the pair, as she slumped onto the couch, surprised by her own sense of hunger after seeing the meal they had prepared…

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

This morning, much like every other morning these past two weeks, began just before dawn. First came the pots and pans, a loud cast-iron affair whose cacophonous banging was an equal to the crow of any barnyard rooster. Next was the whistle of a boiling coffee pot, a piercing noise that usually motivated Weiss to slip wearily out from under the thick covers. Outside, the dark sky was just beginning to break, with slim shafts of light leaking out from below the horizon. Rubbing his eyes, his feet would find their way into the waiting slippers, and he would shuffle over to the writing desk on the opposite side of the room, where his work from the night before still sat. There he would mull over notes and schematics for a time, until he heard the voice below shout “Food’s ready!” A growling stomach would guide him down the heavy wooden stairs to the dining table, where a large and well-prepared meal waited for him. Bappou, as it turned out, had been delegated much of the household duties when his late master was alive, and as such had developed a fair amount of skill in the culinary arts. The fluffy omelets he crafted, crowned with bits of mushroom, bacon, and peppers, were quite literally wake made him slink out of bed each morn. Sometimes Tsun would join them, sometimes she would not. It seemed like she operated on a schedule all her own. Then, after their bellies were full and the plates were cleaned, they would strap on their copious layers of warmth and set off into the ever-increasing snow.

But today was not quite so identical to those previous. Sipping his coffee quietly (A beverage that he had held no love for in the past, but for which he was slowly gaining an appreciation), he was well aware that today was the date they had planned to test out the city’s new defensive mechanism. With the repairs on the hospital completed, and the housing well underway, they finally had enough workers to rebuild a section of wall, and now they were ready to add the finishing touches. Initially he had been rather dubious towards the notion. Not that installing weaponry on the walls was a poor idea, in fact it seemed a prudent decision given the city’s troubled past. But no, his doubts came about when Tool-er… Tsun declared her intent to outfit Ice Nine with turrets powered by steam. Now the boy had learned a great deal in these past weeks, about industry, about construction, and a topic of particular note, mechanics. But for all his new knowledge, he was still unclear as to how such a device would function efficiently in such frigid temperatures. However, the girl seemed particularly adamant about her designs, and given the other feats of technological wizardry he had seen her perform, he was inclined to believe her. It had been slow going at first, setting up all the piping. Only one section of the wall had been finished (The one they had initially worked on), and they had only been allowed to construct a single emplacement on its parapets. If the test went well, then the devices they would be placed at even distances across the wall to form a secure perimeter.

To be honest, he could hardly wait to fire off a few shots himself. Now he had always had an interest in technology, mostly little gadgets and the like, but it had never really lead him anywhere. But the enthusiasm Tsun held for machines big and small, it was absolutely infectious, and soon he found himself looking over (Or under) her should while she worked, questioning her about the different tools and components. It was a truly enlightening experience. In exchange, he did what he could to teach her what he knew as well. Admittedly a trader’s knowledge has very limited application outside the field itself, but diplomacy; that was a skill that was useful wherever you went. Her outlandish ideas, rooted in science as they may be, sound ridiculous to the common man, and it took a lion’s share of his careful discourse just to convince people like the Sheriff to listen to the concept, much less approve their production. However, as he could not answer the complex technical questions that arose in these negotiations, he coached his counterpart on presenting her thoughts in an organized and agreeable fashion. As much as he might hate to admit it, the two made a rather solid team. And it was nice to get to talk to someone who was, well, “on his level” so to speak.

The work was grueling at times, a fact no doubt exacerbated by the island’s inhospitable conditions, but he found that he was enjoying himself. More than he had in… a long time, really. There was something about working together with good company towards a positive goal that held a certain appeal. Sometimes he would notice his face had curled into a smile without any reason in particular. He was just happy. It was odd to say, but getting arrested might have been the best thing to happen to him in a while. Which brought Weiss again to the same mental crossroads that had been plaguing him these past few nights. When all this mess started, he had intended to bail on this community service nonsense the moment he found himself able. And, given the almost total lack of oversight on his punishment, it seemed that doing so would be an easy task. He had even gone as far as to make friends with the ship captains connected to the construction company, had gone on the ships, made notes of how he could sneak on after the ice broke up. But now, he wasn’t so sure about skipping town. How would it look to the friends he had made, just disappearing like that? And he did think he was doing some good for the people here, helping rebuild. Sticking around for a bit longer wouldn’t be too agonizing, would it?

His train of thought was broken by Bappou as he walked by the table, holding a piece of toast between his teeth while he pulled on a heavy coat. It seemed he was in something of a hurry, which was odd, given that they had a solid half-hour or so before they really needed to leave. "Going somewhere?" Weiss inquired.

“Sorry, but I’ve gotta leave a bit early today. They found some cannon damage in the commercial district. No one noticed it until water stains started showing up on the ceiling, and now they’re worried some of the structures might not be safe. Gonna check it out.” The foreman told him. The nervous stutter that had plagued his speech ever since he had first met the foreman was nowhere to be found. A byproduct of the confidence he had been slowly building as of late. He had always been good at what he did; it was only his doubts that had ever held him back. Apparently, all he needed was a push in the right direction. It seemed like he was a lot happier nowadays too. “You mind cleaning up?”

Weiss nodded, without taking his eyes off the paper he was studying. Generally they tackled the chore of cleaning the dishes together, but in cases where the older man was needed, he was more than happy to take on the job. After all, Bappou had already cooked the meal, in addition to letting him stay at his house. It was the least he could do. “Sure thing. Don't forget about the test though.”

“Thanks! And I’ll meet you guys at the wall after I'm finished. See ya'.” Behind him, Weiss heard the respective creaks of the front door opening and closing, and then he was alone. He finished his meal in a contemplative silence, savoring his warm brew. Collecting all the plates and utensils, the transferred the lot into the sink, and scrubbed them thoroughly. A month ago, he might have haughtily refused such a task, but now he held no such foolish qualms. Water cleaned off whatever the cloth missed, and he stacked them neatly to the side. The tablecloth was taken up, folded, and returned to a closet. Foodstuffs found their way back into their proper places. By the time he was finished, the area had been returned to pristine condition. Outside, the sun had risen well above the horizon, signaling that it was time for his departure. Gathering up his papers, and filling his coffee-stained mug one more time, he donned the appropriate winter clothing and set off to meet the rest of the crew, taking care that the door was locked behind him.

No matter how the test went, this was bound to be an interesting day.

[EriChar]

I seem to have finally gained some measure of adaptation to this cold… Along the coast, away from the site where Tsun Dehre had been working for the past two weeks or so, the young woman turned around the admittedly grubby looking sleeve of a coat, and dragged it across her forehead, where small beads of perspiration had formed underneath the brimless woolly hat that she wore.
Or the temperature is getting warmer… A wrench gripped in the girl’s hand as she did so, the area above Tsun’s eyes was left with a slight discolouration, created by the sweat on her brow having been wiped away and replaced by a slight film of dirt and grease.
More than likely a combination of the two… Snow still fell on the island of Ice Nine, of course, but the snow that fell today was lighter and less aggressive than the heavy and thick ice flakes that had caked the land over the course of the early days during the stay of the small shipwright. Miss Dehre was left untouched by even this soft and gentle draping of snow, her body and the piece of machinery in front of her that she worked on being hidden under the cover of a small piece of propped tarp, preventing the naughtiness of melted snow messing up the condition of the project she worked on.

I wonder if the ships are running again…? Glancing around herself to the sight of the sea that sat a few hundred feet away, Tsun searched for a sight of a sail or mast making its way along the iceberg plagued waters of this frozen land, but failed to see a sign of any craft that was actually in motion. All that poked upward from the landscape were the side of stationary stalks poking into the sky from the sea that sat within the harbour, and a rather more sizeable projection that sat on land. Visible now in the bay was the progress that had been made thanks to the efforts of this small, ship-building girl; a lip sticking out of the land that constituted the distant wall that had been built, and rising from it, the very first and currently only completed watch tower. Reaching his into the sky, this mass of timber and metal looked down upon the seas around Ice Nine’s principle bay, and the town that surrounded it, like the first of many tall guardians whom would protect this land for years to come.

I’d better get these adjustments finished… Conscious that such grand pylons would be more impressive and whole lot less impotent once they were armed, Tsun stooped down back over the mass of metal with her tools in hand, tightening bolts on a rather long tube that seemed to poke out of what was an engine, and then move over to the more complex parts of the strange device in front of her. Moving handles and adjusting valves, the lump of steel that sat in front of the shipwright lurched around violently for a few seconds, before a roar of power was heard, and it’s movements became much more subtle and regular; purring as the young woman prodded it’s various dials and compared them to scribbles in that same old notebook that she had been carrying throughout her whole endeavour here.

That looks about right… Nodding and straightening up, the shipwright girl trotted over to a stack of steel plating, and one by one, carried them over to the humming machine. Within a few movements, and the application of key nuts and bolts, many of the dials and devices which Tsun had been playing with were hidden away, until only a few remained visible once all the pieces of plate metal had been placed onto the purring beast. For all intents and purposes ‘finished’, the mass of iron alloy now resembled a ship’s cannon, but only very loosely; A long, almost tunnel-like barrel protruded from one end, and the other was much bulkier than you would expect, and lacking any sort of fuse or implement for lighting it. In its place, there seemed to be a horizontal pair of handles, like one might find on a bicycle, seemingly complete with the levers required to ‘brake’, though without any recognisable wheels for them to enact upon, and given the size and presumable weight of the lump of steel, it would be difficult to move around even with the aid of the steam digger which Tsun had so enjoyed riding.

There, that should be ready for the arrival of the ‘committee’… Taking a couple of steps back to admire her work for a few seconds, the briefest and most content of smiles seemed to wash across the face of Miss Dehre as she eyed the lines and shape of the machine she had built, in a manner similar to how one might look on with amusement and happiness as a child or pet were left to their own devices. The ‘committee’ to which Tsun referred was by no means an official one, more what she had come to see as the regular players in this restoration, and improvement effort for the town; The foreman and the sheriff were obvious members of it, as was several of the townsfolk who seemed to frequently participate in the efforts, and by now one would assume that the boy known as Laskaris E. Weiss and Tsun Dehre herself could also be considered prime candidates.

“Pocchan’s son… Pocchama.” Patting the barrel of the cannon-looking device in front of her, the young woman flicked one of the dials that remained visible, and the purring life of the machine drained away; her creation falling silent once more. The reasoning behind her naming of the creation was simple; though much, much larger than the sidearm that she carried and caused chaos with on her first day of work at the island, the fundamental principle behind this large weapon was identical to the one which she had applied to her little gun; using steam power to compress air and fire it a high velocity, Pocchan could be a very naughty little puppy, but when up scaled and used in a weapon the size of ‘Pocchama’, indeed a fierce beast could be born. Sourced from technology that had been created an refined in her small, air-producing firearm, Tsun considered the cannon in front of her to be every bit the descendant of it’s much tinier forbearer, and also an evolution of it. Thanks to the increase in size and therefore space that the shipwright had to work with, Miss Dehre had been able to implement systems into Pocchama which she had previously designed by not yet applied for Pocchan, principally the capability to fire things more than simple ‘compressed air’. It was an innovation that was of particular use in a land of this nature, since the modification was now hoped by Tsun to support the seemingly most abundant form of ammunition available in an environment such as this; the snow. If one thought that a small ball of compressed air had high projectile capability, they would be astounded what could be done with well compacted Ice.

GUURRRROOOOAAAWOOAWOW~~~~!!!!!!

The rumbling roar that filled the air suddenly, was this time not born from any sort of mechanical device made from metal, but rather emanated from the least likely of sources; the small girl underneath the tarp. Her stomach crying out in need of filling, Tsun rubbed her midriff a few times as she now trotted back over to a workbench, and picked up a small, wrapped box that had been sat on its side. Unfolding a handkerchief that had been wrapped around it, and then a blanket to keep in the warmth, Tsun found within the mass of material was a lunchbox, which she then opened up, the contents of which causing steam to explode into the area around her. The contents of this meal chest were wrapped in a thick layer of silver foil, which the shipwright girl tore away, to find a mass of thick bread, containing what Miss Dehre could only describe as a large man’s breakfast. Thrown between two doorstop pieces of cooked dough, there was meat in strips and sausages, a friend egg and even what looked to be some baked beans. Having intended to sneak out from her temporary ‘home’ early this morning, to carry out her final adjustments and ensure that her weapon was ready for demonstration, the shipwright girl had been surprised when her shoulder was grabbed by the goliath woman who owned the inn, but was now appreciative of it. Apparently, either sensing Tsun’s intent or being woken by her, that large lady had not only gotten up to see her off, but also ensured that the girl had a hearty breakfast ready for when the girl wanted it. In many ways, though largely unnoticed by Miss Dehre herself, that large and strong woman had become something of the mother that Tsun never knew; and on some level, she was grateful for that.

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

The sun greeted him him like an old friend, casting its warm light across the virgin snow. It was a pleasantry Weiss was quick to return. If nothing else, the strict schedule he had been forced to keep these past few weeks had instilled in him an appreciation for the great star's faithful ascent each morning. Certainly made his daily totter across the knee-deep snow (Ankle deep to most everyone else, he admitted with no small amount of contempt) much more agreeable. Though, the hurdles his transit typically consisted of seemed significantly diminished in this particular instance. The snow had been gradually dissipating as the week moved forward, something the Sheriff had contributed to the island warming up again. He had yet to actually perceive a difference, as his teeth still chattered whenever the capricious sea-winds decided to subject him to their fury, but the proof was on the ground so to speak.

Speaking of. As he drew closer to the tower, which had served as their impromptu meeting ground ever since they had finally managed to heat the blasted place, he could make out the ornery old timer in the distance. He was generally the first to be anywhere. Sometimes Weiss wondered if it was just because he liked being able to complain about it if anyone was late. Warren was funny like that. He and the statesman had reached an agreement of sorts: The runaway was allowed the freedom to do things his way without a crippling amount of oversight, and in exchange he agreed to stay on task and generally not cause any major complications for the project. They still butted heads from time to time, but there had not been any incident that warranted the man's particular... brand of discipline. And for that he was rather thankful. He waved as the distance between them shortened, and was met by a casual nod of acknowledgement.

“You ready for the big day, boy?” The Sheriff asked, sucking delicately on the end of one of his wooden pipes. To be frank, Weiss hated it when the older fellow smoked. The smokes’ acrid smell reminded him much too strongly of his father’s study. And the stuff gave him a headache besides. He had always tried to stay upwind, but it seemed like tar smog always managed to drift in his direction regardless of his positioning. The fates were cruel indeed. “Going to have a bit of an audience, it seems. They Mayor’s decided to come take a look. Few boys from the other companies too. Might even have some Navymen popping in.”

Those words elicited a quick and marked response from him, for obvious reasons. Though he attempted to tone his inquiry down a moment later. “Eh? The Navy? Why?”

“You an’ that girlie built a giant cannon! You really expect the Marines not to want to take a look?” Warren said with a yellow-toothed chuckle. As much as he hated to admit it, the man had a point. It was mildly dangerous to let civilian groups suddenly engage in building military fortifications without even advising the resident armed forces. Still, he felt mildly peeved to have some white-coats poking around in his business. Just had to hope none of them could pick him out.

“Nngh.” Weiss made a noncommittal noise as a response; caught something between thought, understanding, and displeasure. Surely they couldn’t just walk in and veto the whole program, could they? No, hopefully the Mayor would be playing a bigger part in allowing them to continue than the Navy would. Which meant they just needed to impress him well enough for him to give the green light. Weiss had never met this politician, so he could not vouch for his personality, but this whole contraption was damn impressive to him, and it rightly should be to anyone else with eyes in their head.

“Don’t go actin’ all snippy now.” The old man had that lecturing tone in his voice again. This guy had to have had kids in the past, given the way he drones on and on about things. “If you start being stubborn now, the only one you’ll be hurting is yourself.”

The boy didn’t let the admonishments get to him, and instead moved to change the subject. Maintenance was always a good excuse. Oh, right, and he should probably mention Bappou as well. “I’m gonna go check the compressors. The big guy said he’s running an errand and will be a bit late.”

“That’s fine. Long as he shows his face. People ought to meet the man that’ll be runnin’ this place one day.” He blew a bit of smoke, which was more than enough incentive for Weiss to run on inside. The interior of the tower wasn’t that big, but as it sat largely unfurnished it gave the impression of a much roomier space. Moving up the spiral stairs to the second level, he navigated a small maze of pipes and gadgets to locate a series of heavy cylindrical devices, which were wired into a massive tank. The compressors, as he recalled, pulled in the cold air from outside and as the name suggests, compress it into these pressurized tanks. Once the mechanism loads a snowball, all it takes is the push of a button and FWOOOOOOM, all the air (And ice) shoots out at once. Of course in application the whole process is much more complicated than that, as proven by the rather elaborate set up around him, but that was about the simplest way to think about it.

Taking up a clipboard, he checked all the various pressure gauges as Tsun had taught him to do, recording each of their individual values into a well-organized set of tables. Cold air was denser than warm air, so there had been a bit of concern about the change in atmosphere affecting the pumps operation. They were pretty sure the pipes they had found would handle anything that came their way, but for the sake of thoroughness, he had kept a clear record just to be safe. After going through a mental checklist of the various minor equipment tests and finding the machinery to be in satisfactory condition, he was finally convinced that nothing had managed to break or slip out of place in the night. However, the process apparently had not taken quite as long as he had thought. A quick look out the window did not reveal any additional arrivals. Warren seemed to treat his morning smoke the same way he himself felt about his morning coffee, so he did not think the man would be coming in any time soon. Which left the boy with some time on his hands. With nothing better to do at the moment than twiddle his thumbs, he decided it might be a good time to work on his side-project.

Retreating to a small closet where he had set up a few days before, Weiss pulled back the tarp from over his workspace. Two small foam earplugs waited for him, a useful tool for those attempting to work in such a raucous environment. He slipped them in place, and then moved to take stock of his progress. There were a variety of small tools and components set out in an orderly fashion, surrounding the open shell of his faithful sidearm. The little hand-crank taser used a bit of basic mechanical action to generate a charge, something he had learned how to cobble together while studying magnetic induction. It had proven reliable in his recent escapades, but to be honest he had relatively no idea what he had been doing when he had made it, and just sort of glued things together until it worked. His time spent beside a true mechanist had taught him a great number of things these past few weeks: Namely, the precise amount of suck his initial design possessed (P.S. The number was pretty high). So in the brief moments he had to himself, he had been picking up bits of wire, transistors, and the like and attempting to correct his initial mistakes. Speed up the abysmally slow charging process, allow it to hold a charge for much than an hour without fizzling out, and get rid of the cumbersome crank that was such a pain to turn. Process had been… slow. Painfully slow, really. But he had been enjoying the process. At some point he hoped to show his new device to Tsun, but they had been so busy as of late he had yet to find a good opportunity. Ah well. Hopefully such a time would present itself in the coming days.

Fiddling with a stubborn screw, Weiss waited for the rest of the crew to show up so their big day could finally begin.

[EriChar]

Ecstasy; that was the only way to describe that sweet, first bite of the mountainous mix of bread and breakfast that Tsun Dehre had stuffed into her mouth. While the loud howl of the girl’s stomach had alerted her to the fact that she was hungry, it was only now that she actually forced food into her mouth that the shipwright realized the depth with which her appetite had crept down, which no doubt helped the mingling flavours of the mouthful that barely managed to be contained within her lips to taste all the sweeter. Taking some effort to bite down on that first array of morsels, forcing her jaw together like it was a straining exercise in a workout routine, after a dozen or so repetitions of this endeavour, the young girl finally managed to drag the contents of her mouth into her gullet, and swallow that first bite, finding that she immediately longed for its presence on her tongue once more.
I could eat that again… Moved by impulse and resource, Miss Dehre once again ploughed her face into the bread-wrapped breakfast that barely managed to stay within her grasp, tearing off another chunk of her meal and gnawing it happily, taking an oddly guilty pleasure in the meal she was consuming. It was nice for her to have some proper home cooked food again, reminiscent of times past, when her old grandfather had cobbled together meals largely composed of grease and overdone meat, but made the ever more delicious by the warmth of character that the cooking possessed. Tsun was by no standards a bad cook; she could prepare meals that were palatable enough for her own tastes, but she was lacking that certain something, that spark that took an edible meal and turned it into a delicious one. The life she had in travelling alone took tolls that even the leader hadn’t expected nor realize, and it was in this moments of occasional ‘creature comfort’ that the girl found herself wondering just how much longer this solitary journey could persist; in her heart, far from a place that she would be prepared to admit, Tsun missed the company of others, even if they were annoying the vastest of majorities of the time.

And so, with perhaps an amount of egg yolk and bean juice sneaking onto the chin of a woman which might not have perfectly accentuated her beauty its fullest, Tsun Dehre continued to tear chunks from her breakfast butty until finally none remained, and once again her hands grew idle.
There’s still a while before they are due to arrive… Checking a small time piece that she plucked from her pocket, the young craftswoman saw that her preparedness has perhaps been a little excessive, or her skill and speed had been more than a match for the task at hand. Her tasking completed quickly, despite the coolness of her surrounding climate, Tsun saw that she could have spent a little more time in her bed than she had allowed, but didn’t doubt it would be any more full of rest. Having barely slept the night before, because of the excitement that this day would offer, Miss Dehre found that it would have been somewhat wasteful to spend the time within the confines of a made up camp bed, staring idly at the ceiling above her. Like a child before their birthday or another significantly exciting day, this young woman’s anxiety was born not from nervousness but expectation, but there was no big prize or gift that was to be bestowed upon her, no; today she would have the gift of expression, even if it was a day of through mechanical means. Whilst the inhabitants of this isle had been suitably impressed with the girls designs for the defence of their town, what had most excited this young shipwright was the opposite; the prospective offensive means she could create.

Any fool with the right supplies of tools, materials and time could knock a wall together, but this hulking mass of metal and dials was, at least to Tsun Dehre, far in excess of such crudeness; it was, for an engineer, a work of art. Taking the concept behind her own little ‘Pocchan’ and up scaling it, this cannon could damage and destroy without any sort of ammunition required, other than the air that surrounded it, and if they needed a little more punch with the shots she fired, it could still be loaded with all sorts of ammunition if it needed to be. The first in the line of turret guns for the siege wall that they had built for the bay was certainly an impressive beast, or it would be, once it had a chance to demonstrate itself.
“Hmmmm…” It was during this consideration about ‘her baby’ that a thought occurred in the mind of the young engineer, one that probably wouldn’t have occurred had Miss Dehre not been gifted with this available free time and idle hands that the devil could make work for, but one that seized her none the less.
It would be disappointing for everyone if there was a problem with the demonstration. Trotting over to the device and starting the steam engine within back up, Tsun once again began to check dials and poke gauges whilst needles all moved into the ‘green zone’ detailed upon them.
I’d better test her out, to make sure that everything will go smoothly later on… Sure that the machine was running within peak operating conditions, the small woman grasped the pair of handles on the large weapon’s rear and lined the iron sights that were built into the barrel so they pointed directly at a sizeable iceberg that sat glistening in the dawn sun. Uncharacteristically, this young woman now wore a smirk as she gently squeezed the button on the right handle within her grip to fire the weapon, as it gave birth to a swelling cry that even the mightiest of roosters would have envied…

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

If Weiss had inherited anything from the time spent in his father’s study, suffering that man’s boorish stare, it would have to be his studiousness. It wasn’t the sort of skill you could exactly show off: Books could not deflect bullets, and cramming rarely won wars, but all the same he found himself thankful to have been lent the set of musty circuits and electronics tomes. With the engine room’s song of grinding gears and shifting air slowly fading away into white noise, he was able to sharpen his focus into a fine edge and comb through the material at hand.

One of the most interesting components his impromptu mechanical tutor had educated him about was the capacitor. Two small metal foils, separated by a thin layer of insulating film, can serve to store energy in the form of an electric field. Alone, a single capacitor’s charge is largely insignificant. But if you place rows and rows of them side by side to form a reservoir, it allows one to store larger amounts of energy than the basic wet cell battery he had originally created (Though, in his defense, he thought using hydrogen peroxide to store a charge was pretty clever). On top of that, his own experimentation proved that by spacing the different stages of capacitors just apart from one another, he could create what was called a spark gap. When they had achieved a charge sufficient above the gap’s breakdown voltage, the electrodes would ionize the air between them and force it to carry the current. This way, his device would charge faster when cranked and discharge faster when triggered. At least, that was how it all should work in theory. The actual process of crafting such a repetitive series of tiny constructs and securing them in their proper place was a much more arduous task that he had originally anticipated. It was a delicate, time-intensive process, requiring both a steady hand and the keenest of eyes. But he was certainly making progress. Just one last piece and he would be finished with another row…

Without warning, the budding scholar’s world was consumed with such a cacophonous bellow that he felt his bone quiver, as if trying to leap out of his flesh. And leap he did. It was fortunate that he kept the presence of mind to avoid the small workshop he had erected for his personal ventures, the surprise induced impulse instead carrying him headlong into a low-hung pipe. The news was that the pipe was fine, though the use of ‘good’ under these circumstances was somewhat subjective. Weiss on the other hand found himself bearing bruises two-fold, one on his forehead from the initial impact, and one on the back of his head from when he hit the floor. Combined with the dizzying noise which was still blaring in his ears despite the fact the machines had quieted, it took him several minutes to find his feet again.

When he did however, his first thought was towards a most visceral revenge. The logical section of his mind managed to dissuade him of this, at least while in broad daylight. So instead he would have to settle with a verbal confrontation. Hobbling down the stairs with what coordination he had managed to muster, the boy made a show of kicking open the door as rudely as possibly. And while he could not quite hear the sound of snow crunching under his steel-toed boots, he assumed that his stomping sounding appropriately noisy.

“I thought we agreed no testing while anyone was inside!” Weiss declared, his own voice sounding distant to him. Reaching up, he pulled the pair of foam bits that had been stuffed in his ears. “I’d be deaf if I wasn’t wearing my plugs.” The anger was, for the most part, just for show. He had considered doing the exact same thing when he had shown up first, with the Sheriff being the sole reason that had restrained him from doing so. He was sure the old coot would have found a reason to chide him for his impatience. But what interested him more than what had been a potential threat to his well-being were the results of the test. The steam had definitely been pushed through the pipes, of that he was acutely aware, but had it been launched correctly? He had always worried that the hot air would react unpredictably when it hit the cold and windy climate Ice Nine was so well known for.

The pair of precocious adolescents had spent their free moments over the past few days building large dummy snowmen at varying ranges and angles out in the white plain. Some of them were the size of a person, those were the ones they did by hand, but others were towering giants of ice and slush that had been rolled together with a snow-treaded bulldozer. Of course they convinced everyone that it was purely for the purposes of today’s testing, so that they could demonstrate both the power and accuracy of their mighty weapon. But for the most part, Weiss had just been having fun. At one point he had even instigated a brief snowball fight, one which had met an abrupt end. It seemed that despite all their similarities, Tsun did not share his competitive nature. When provoked by his fluffy projectiles, she responded with a humbling show of force from that beast of a sidearm she carried around, 'Pocchan'. Needless to say that their blizzard-based combat had been decidedly one sided after that point, and had been forced to make a tactical retreat rather than protract the engagement. Wait, technically, didn’t that mean the war was still on? No, wait, that thought should be saved for later. Right now there were other things to worry about. “So how’d it do? Did you hit the target?"

A hopeful look spread across Weiss' face, topped with a wicked grin. "Are we in business?”

[EriChar]

Chiiiiiriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin~

What the? Time to wake up? As a long, almost unending drone of what sounded like an alarm clock rang throughout the ears of Miss Tsun Dehre, the young woman was left for a few dazed seconds after the test operation of her cannon wondering whether or not the world she stood in right now was one of a dream, and the sound that reverberated throughout her ears in a constant, dull hum was that of an alarm clock trying to rouse the girl back to life.
But, I don’t use an alarm clock… It was the realization of the girl’s lifestyle that helped to awaken her mind to the situation around her; the combination of brilliance and laziness she was, Tsun saw no need for any method of alarm to awaken her, something which had led the young woman to her current isolated circumstance on this island. Miss Dehre knew that when she had things to do, her mind would innately set aside the minimum required resting time before awakening her to get busy, having adapted to a lifestyle where any deficiency in rest could be recovered through the moments of ‘down time’, embodying every bit the lazy teen that her age might imply as she slept through the day and night when unoccupied. It was during these days of laziness that the young woman had been stranded on this island, and while it may have seemed to be misfortune to have befallen the girl, the proud state that the once dishevelled torn in the distance stood spoke of a silver lining found even in this cloud. Even if her primary tasking had been delayed, there was some pride to be taken in what this young girl had helped to achieve here, and also in the now crumbling iceberg that the girl could see in the distance; the testing of her weapon had been a success.

Eyes resting for a second or two over the sights on the barrel of her gigantic, floor-mounted gun, a small, soft smile of satisfaction spread across the face of the young woman as she bore witness to the result of her efforts in the past days and weeks; a cannon capable of breaking icebergs with only the force of the air around it was by no means a small measure of accomplishment. The attempt to build a larger, younger sibling for her own Pocchan had absolutely born the fruits of success, and after allowing herself a moment of triumph, the girl’s attention moved back to that sound, that constant drone that hadn’t ceased since the mortar at her front had been given it’s christening of assault.
I didn’t design it with any kind of alarm of this nature… Poking around the weapon in front of her, the girl tried to hear or see the source of the ringing, not realizing that it was born not from her environment but rather inside herself, the product of such a loud noise being produced in her vicinity, and a lesson for the hindsight that such large forms of firearms would likely require the employment of ear plugs prior to operation. Poking around the weaponized machine in front of her, the young inventor could find no source of the sound and instead moved away from it, slightly confused as to why the noise remained largely constant rather than getting louder or quieter dependant on her position. Even rifling through the collection of tools or odds and ends that had been left for her under the tarp, the girl could not find the item from which this alarm seemed to emanate, and was left rather confused by it.
Is the boy pulling a prank? Glancing around her environment, Miss Dehre was left wondering if it was an act of mischief on the part of the child that had assisted her, as she had in the past experienced that certain youngsters were prone to such acts, particularly ones who even Tsun had observed to perform acts of sketchy behaviour as this ‘Laskaris E. Weiss’; the devil made work for idle hands, after all.

Speaking of the devil, as the young machinist peered around her surroundings for the indication of a prank, the person she most suspected as a culprit popped up on the tundra, scurrying his way over to her. Still surveying her surroundings for a sign of the siren that sang in her ears, as the small boy got closer to her, Miss Dehre instead chose to scrutinize his reaction, looking for a sign that this sound was some sort of prank born from his mind; a grin, a giggle, anything that a youngster would be unable to conceal due to their satisfaction, having not yet mastered the delicate art of the ‘poker face’. Blankly, as if all sort of emotion had taken a wrong turn and ended up at Albuquerque, Tsun stared at the boy as if trying to absorb everything that he put out, but one thing that she couldn’t draw in at this very moment was the sound he made; mouth moving, no sort of utterances could be heard emanating from the boys mouth, or sounds other than that constant droning that still filled the woman’s ears.
Is this some sort of game? The grin that the lad gave her only further fuelled the suspicions of this young woman that this young man was trying to play some manner of prank on her; setting off an alarm and then pretending to speak, mouthing words that could never be heard. Of course, it hadn’t dawned on the girl just yet that the reason her ears continued to ring, and the means through which Mr Weiss’ voice escaped her wasn’t external, and rather that it was, in fact, internal; so massive a crack had the cannon made during its firing that it had rendered the young woman temporarily deaf.

“OK, THAT’S ENOUGH OF THIS JO-“ Seeking to put an end to the silly charade, at least initially, Tsun’s words were brought to a sudden halt when the girl finally attempted to use her own voice for the first time following the cannon-fire, and discovered the peculiarity of its sound. The sound of one’s own voice becomes something of a certainty when one is fully audibly capable, but when such capacity is taken away, the difference can be quite startling. Quickly picking up on the largely muffled noise she seemed to be producing, the engineer quickly had to rethink her incrimination.
“DAMNIT… LA-LO-LU-LA-LEE-LO-LA!” Pressing her hands against the round flaps on the side of her skull that received sound, Tsun began to make a rather bizarre series of vocal sounds, testing out her own capacity to hear as she waggled her ears around in a strange kind of jerky massage, making noises that one would not expect from so quiet and introverted a girl.

“I THINK THE OUTPUT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A LITTLE HIGH!” Unable to properly perceive the exact vocal level of her own words, Miss Dehre was now far noisier and more vocal than she had been for much of her stay on this island, and much of her life.
“IT WOULD SEEM THAT IT IS EFFECTIVE, NONETHELESS!” Picking up a pair of binoculars, the young woman pointed in the direction of the new ice cube-turned berg as she offered the ocular device to him, satisfied with the result despite the unintended consequence of her hearing loss…

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

It quickly became evident through his attempts to converse with his similarly-sized companion that she had not taken the same precautions against hearing loss that he had employed. A mistake he was about to criticize her for, until he came to the rather plain realization that Tsun had been outside the mechanism, rather than being stationed in its bowels as he was. The noise (and subsequent injury) he had suffered through was nigh incomparable in his admittedly limited breadth of experience, save for perhaps the boom of thunder pressed tight against his ears. But for the person operating it from the panel safely outside to be subjected to a sound of similar volume was something of a problem, in his mind. It’d be bloody hard for the team operating this beast to communicate in an actual engagement if they had to suffer through such exposure.

Weiss likely should have been more surprised when the mechanic began spontaneously cycling through a list of incoherent babbling, but he had long since become acclimated to her distaste for social convention. If anything, he found the blunt efficiency with which she interacted with people to be wholly refreshing. Should he have a momentary lapse in judgment or memory (a rarity in his mind, but he can admit to a few failings. FEW), most folks would step softly around the issue, potentially letting the boy do something that could hurt him/them in the long run. Tsun on the other hand, was more than willing to give him a sharp reprimand, which was a good thing in their current line of work. And while he might bray and bark in response to her curt censure, he still appreciated having someone to watch his back. After being on one’s own for a while, you sort of forget what that’s like.

“D’you think you could make the thrice-damned thing any louder?” The sheriff barked from behind them, suddenly reminding them of his rather cantankerous presence. Removing his wrinkled fingers from their position, which had been lodged firmly in his ears as a defense against the sudden uproar, he spat out into the snow at his feet. Whether the gesture was meant to convey disapproval or simply a nasty habit was unknown. “My hearing is already going as it is! Don’t need you youngsters helping it along.”

After being subject to another booming shout from Tsun, which he could swear was nearly a match for the air cannon, he took up the binoculars she offered him as to take a look at their (Well, mostly hers, but he liked to think he earned some of the credit for securing the materials) handiwork. Indeed, it seemed that the mirror lenses revealed a block of ice devastated by a gruesome impact, with shards of the once-solid formation still falling in clumps. In that instant the runaway decided that there was something decided satisfying about destruction. Perhaps it was something embedded in his gender, or just inherent in all mankind, but the sight appealed to him on a primal level. Even moreso, knowing that it had been done by his machine. Er, their machine. Whatever.

“Sorry old man! But it’s a small price to pay, don’t you think?” He offered the public servant in question the small vision-extending instrument, which Warren promptly snatched up with an odd enthusiasm. Holding it up to his eyes, something surprising happened: A small, toothy grin spread across the gnarled lawmaker’s face. And maybe, just for an instant, a flash of pride? The reaction made stirred some thought in the bright-eyed lad. Perhaps this oldtimer wasn’t quite as callous as he pretended to be.

Without the field glasses to occupy his attention, he swiftly grew tired of watching someone else watch something, and leaned over to Tsun. Caught up in the excitement, he forgot to so much as check if she was yet capable of perceiving sounds again. “Man. I wasn’t a hundred percent about how much punch this thing would have at range, but I was ten kinds of wrong! Imagine what it could do to a ship!” Suffice to say, Weiss like big boom. Weiss like it a lot.

“That is precisely what we are here to find out.” Came a firm voice from behind them. One he was not at all familiar with. Whirling around, he caught sight of a small group of serious looking adults crunching through the snow towards him. He wasn’t sure if he should attribute their sudden appearance to some amount of stealth on their part, or to his own preoccupation with the current project. Not that this knowledge would affect things at this point.

Casting the binoculars aside flippantly, the sheriff rushed to greet the visitors, the woman at their head in particular. “Oh, Mayor Tihk! Good to see you.” The gruff fellow said, shaking her hand with a fierce grip only matched by the one with which she reciprocated.

“You as well, Warren.” The official was tall for a girl, head and shoulders above the rest of her party. Long blonde hair spilled out over her shoulders, straight and well kept. Her face was well-rounded, with a short nose and bright peach-colored lips, that were split into a comforting smile. But what really drew him was her eyes. Sharp, almost predatory things, with a gaze that seemed to inspire feelings that stood in stark contrast to what the rest of her demeanor suggested. Stranger still, she did not seem at all to be dressed for the frigid weather native to Ice Nine. Wearing a tight business suit, and long black skirt, and a pair of tall heels, she seemed decidedly out of place in comparison to the thick coats, hats, and boots everyone else wore. And yet she showed none of the usual signs of cold-based discomfort. If anything, she seemed to be the most relaxed person there.

Realizing he was staring at this point, Weiss shook the needless thoughts from his head and moved on to the issue at hand. Did he say Mayor? “Huh? I thought people weren’t coming until… Right, nevermind. Hello! How’re you doing today?” A quick glance to the beat up old watch around his wrist confirmed that they had arrived on the dot, so to speak. Which meant it was them who were unprepared. Not exactly a good start to things.

Waving off the extended pleasantries, Tikh moved straight into business. “Fine, fine. Actually, I’d like to introduce a few people. This is Boors, the Head of the Mechanist’s Guild.” She indicated a broad-shouldered fellow, with short brown hair that seemed to be slightly singed. “Thom, from the Merchant’s Union.” This time, it was a heavy set fellow, whose stomach extended further out that the rest of him. “Hayling, a representative from Lockheed Arms.” An odd individual, with a long neck that melted seamlessly into his jaw without any sort of chin. “And Captain Gaurney, from the local marine base.” This one was the name that gave Weiss the most fright. A man who looked to be cut from stone, Gaurney wore the traditional captain’s coat over his actual snow jacket, and had a fine-looking rapier hanging menacingly at his side. Did he know about the uh, ‘circumstances’, which had led to the small troublemaker joining this project? The boy truly hoped that was not the case. As much as he hated to admit it, he actually liked the friends that his forced servitude had given him. And he was not sure how they would react to him being in Navy-brand trouble.

“Oh, and Bappou, the Foreman of the City Restoration Project. But I believe you are already acquainted?” The lady mayor told them, less of a question than her tone made it sound to be. His builder-buddy Bappou poked his head out from behind the others sheepishly, giving the kids a small wave. “Everyone here is quite interested in this little project. And I suppose you two are the precocious engineers behind it all?”

As her eyes fell on him, Weiss found himself fighting a mounting sense of discomfort. He could almost feel the scrutiny. It was sort of like being an ant under a magnifying glass. “Haha, I suppose we are!” The laugh was not particularly convincing.

“I do believe it is safe to assume that the device does indeed fire, as I’m sure the whole island heard that just now. Unless that was the sound of something going wrong?” The tinge of implication in his voice was more than enough to make him squirm.

“No! No, it works like a charm! Right, guys?” Weiss declared, probably a bit more loudly than was necessary. Looking to the side, he shot the shipwright an imploring look, hoping she would back him up. Warren, at the very least, gave an approving node as to the machine’s functionality, which was better than nothing.

Her sharp-toothed smile spread even wider, or was he just imaging those pointed tips? “Excellent. That being the case, would you mind explaining some of the precise details to my esteemed colleagues here? I’m sure they’re brimming with questions as to how this technological marvel works, and how we can implement it as a functional defense.” Stepping aside, Tikh allowed her tagalongs a chance to ask their own questions. Boors, in particular, seemed to have the most pressing curiosity out of all three, and largely monopolized the conversation. At first verbally, and then physically, as he pressed in even closer to ensure his voice was heard.

“Quite! How is the device powered? What is its effective range? It uses compressed air, from the looks of things. What sort of PSI does it require to fire? Turning radius? What sort of alloy did you use for the firing chamber? Oh, and…” As he spoke, the mechanist delved deeper and deeper into the engineering behind the defensive weapon’s construction, while the tradesman’s son only became more and more confused.

Eventually, he reached a sort of ‘critical mass’, and simply retreated from the older man’s inquiries, taking refuge behind his older (But not significantly taller) partner. Without so much as a warning, Weiss attempted to push Tsun back into the spotlight. “Um. I’m more on the logistics side of things. Please direct all technical questions to my associate here.”

[EriChar]

“…Following this, all that is required to fire is the simple case of squeezing this trigger button, and the payload, be it compressed air or a prepared projectile that has been loaded into the barrel, will be dispelled at high force toward the target in the sights.
With a skilled marksman, the weapon should be effective over distances up to and even over one kilometre, depending on the size of the target.” With sufficient time for the monotonous and matter-of-fact manner with which Tsun had detailed not only the entire operation of the cannon she had built, but also the excruciating detail behind each and every mechanism, to have left much of her observers wishing that that they had arrived at a much more alert hour of the day. The ringing in her ears having died down to nothing many minutes previously, the small inventor no longer felt the need to project her voice so unnecessarily, and had instead returned to a state of blank-faced squeaking, which made the unchanging tone of her voice, set in a high, girlish key, rather awkward to listen to. It was for this reason, this distinctly lacking sense of charisma that the girl preferred to work on her own, and certainly never become an orator. Truth be told, speaking in front of so large a gathered crowd, about the mechanics of her designs, made Miss Dehre feel rather uncomfortable; for the most part, she preferred to build and limit her instruction largely to operation, rather than understanding, since the various forms of items that she tinkered with had no real set design. They were built more through a process of trial and error, with mental mapping, and quirks added on the fly, rather than with plans and forethought. Sure, there were rough diagrams of the things she designed, starting points, but they were rarely very accurate when compared to a finished article, and it was only in the form of large and complex designs where this young woman ever felt the need to detail even the simplest of schematics. In the case of the weapon before her, the ‘diagram’ for its design was Pocchan; the small sidearm that she kept, and she certainly wasn’t intending on leaving that behind for people to study and understand. Tsun Dehre did not make things for ‘the good of the people’; she made them for the good of herself.

“And also, you might need to give the operators some form of audible protection; the sound the cannon is capable of producing can easily exceed the recommended level of decibels.” Recalling her own experience of hearing disruption following the firing of the cannon, the shipwright offered a small piece of advice to the advocates who intended to adopt it as their own. The small woman knew that in a high pressure battle environment, making one’s gunnery crew deaf was perhaps not the secret of success, and precautions were needed; the item she had built was fit for purpose, but far from perfect. No doubt, if she ever felt like up scaling Pocchan again, she would take the time to account for this problem, and attempt to rectify it. However, while it was an advantage for the islanders of Ice Nine, and Tsun did to some extent sympathize with their plight, she wasn’t about to pledge more time on something was for her, essentially, a killer of time. From her earlier observations, Miss Dehre had known the seas were probably ready for transport, and the young woman was eager to resume her original intent for visiting the chilly northern sea.

But there was the matter of the cannon, of course, to deal with fully, before she left. Turning to the weapon, for a moment the strings of even this girl’s heart felt a stinging pull, as they were plucked with the sadness of departure. Ironically, as much as she liked the small family that had taken her in, it was the cannon which the last few weeks of work she had spent her time building which had acquired the most fondness in the young woman’s heart.
“So, I will leave this one in your care…” Stooping forward at the middle into a sweeping bow in the snow, the manner with which Tsun Dehre regarded her creation, and passed it on to the townsfolk, was perhaps more reminiscent of a parent, or pet-owner, than a simple machinist. For this young woman, who had few if any friends, and no living family she knew of, there was a kinship that she felt with her creations; for Tsun, in the absence of people, machinery and inventions had taken their place in her heart. Intelligent and creative, she was, ultimately, still a teenage girl at heart, with all the vulnerability that such a state of being might infer. Of course, perhaps her life had geared her passions in different directions than those who gossip about boys, while they obsess over clothing, but if one were careful enough to notice. This young woman had a lot of care and compassion within her heart, even if it was a little misdirected.

“His name is Pocchama, I hope that you treat each other well.” There was a hint of sentimental sadness in the passing of ‘Pocchama’ on, one that hinted that if she could, Miss Dehre would have taken the cannon along with her on the journey she already was undertaking, despite the intended purpose for the item. Like all the pieces of gadgetry that she designed, this overblown airgun had grown on her, and parting from it was sorrow with just a hint of sweetness. Tsun knew that Pocchama, and his brothers, would perform admirably in defence of the island, but that did not lighten the degree with which she wished she could keep him. There was, however, no way for her to pack such a cumbersome ‘son’ into her luggage, regardless of how much she wanted to, and so with a little bit of a heavy heart, the young girl stepped away from her creation, and began to bundle up the tools she had brought, preparing her packing in order to depart from the island…

[Mr. Moshypocrite McSlowbro]

As the sun made its slow journey across the clouded sky, their demonstration finally began winding down to its inevitable conclusion. The mechanist Boors, for all his exuberant enthusiasm, eventually ran himself dry of inquiries as to the machine’s finer workings. Weiss had been able to intervene on more fiscal matters, for which he was glad. He disliked the way that Captain Gaurney stared down at him, his eyes obscured by an inscrutable shadow. Making shrewd economic negotiations was something that required your full attention, and he more than welcomed the distraction. Eventually, the representatives felt satisfied with the presentation, and bid them farewell, each heading back to report to their respective superiors. The Mayor stayed a good bit longer, asking impressively insightful questions for a politician with little to no actual knowledge on the subject. But she too was a busy individual, and eventually excused herself to attend to matters related to the island’s everyday operations. With their dwindled numbers, the boy was finding it harder and harder to seem busy.

Waving after Tsun as she said her goodbyes, he caught the marine moving towards him out of the corner of his eye. Each crunching step he took was solid, heavy with purpose. And as a rebellious youth who had gotten well acquainted with being in trouble as of late, he did not need to read minds to know what was about to happen. That man intended to take him back. For how long, Weiss had no idea, but the concept frightened him beyond reason. He disliked being cooped up, unable to leave. His ‘little trick’ have him some latitude as far as escaping confinement, but all the same he thought it best to avoid being in such a position in the first place. This project was great fun, and he would not trade the experience for much of anything, but all Weiss doubted he could possibly be lucky enough to be given such an assignment twice in a row. So, rather than allow a confronting to occur, he quickly excused himself from the conversation, quoting a need to relieve himself. It took a great exertion of will to keep the run away from bolting the moment he got out of sight, but he did not wish to attract unnecessary attention. Rather, he coached himself into maintaining a smooth and casual pace as he made his way back to his lodgings. Fortunately enough, he reached the house without incident, breathing the heaviest of sighs the moment he closed the door behind him.

Bappou was already in the kitchen, having left for lunch at the same time as the other craftsman, and called out asking if he wished to partake. As much as his stomach objected to the notion, he had no choice but to decline the friendly offer. An uncomfortable feeling settled over him as the words left his mouth, feet still occupied in carrying his small body up the stairs. After a few moment’s reflection, he recognized the sensation as regret; regret that he would had likely turned down the last chance to share a meal with his newfound friend he would get for a long, long time. Perhaps ever. That thought weighed heavily on him, but he had to suppress such things for the moment. Too much to do, not enough time to do it in.

Tearing through the contents of his room, he suddenly found himself wishing that he had kept his living area in better shape. Dirty towels, discarded sheets of paper, odds and ends he had kept as souvenirs, and bits of rubbish he had been too lazy to dispose of properly. They all served to hide the objects he really needed to find. His clothes. His watch. His coin. Runt! A frantic look confirmed that his reptilian sidekick was still basking in the heat leaking from the ventilation shaft, his position unchanged from when Weiss had last seen him this morning. Relieved, he retrieved the lizard and slipped him into his shirt, the lackadaisical creature quickly adjusting itself into a more comfortable position and resuming its nap. With all his precious belongings crammed into an overstuffed backpack, as well as anything else his grubby little hands had acquired over the weeks, he slipped it on over his shoulders. Hopefully he could run down and hop onto some of the ships coming in through the newly-melted ice, and be gone before the locals know he’s left. This in mind he pulled the straps tight, and moved back towards the hallway. That was, until a sound stopped him dead in his tracks. It wasn’t some booming vocalization, or some dreadful cacophony. Just one gentle, simple noise.

Knock knock.

Immediately pressing himself to the wall, as if he might somehow meld in with the worn orange-ish wallpaper, Weiss found himself having difficulty drawing breath. It was all he could do to listen, as footfalls made their way across the domicile to answer the door. He recognized the voice immediately. “Ah yes, Mr. Dibebbo. I was informed that you currently have a certain young ward staying with you at your estate?” Captain Gaurney said, he asked, though the tone of his voice made it clear he already knew the answer to that.

Seemingly oblivious to the authoritarian undertone, Bappou responded as most anyone would under the circumstances. “Huh? Oh, you mean Weiss. Yes, he’s been staying here. Why? What’s up?”

“Well, while it seems that he has done a satisfactory job while under your employ, the project he was assigned to has come to an end. It is time for him to be taken back to the courthouse while a judge sorts out how he will spend the rest of his sentence.” The man stated, perhaps a bit smugly. For some reason, it seemed that he was pleased with the idea of tearing the young runaway out from this cozy abode and plopping him in a cold, concrete cell. Though the reason for this almost personal vendetta was unknown. Weiss was fairly sure he had done anything to this particular marine.

Unable to contain the sense of morbid curiosity that so tightly gripped him, Weiss steeled his nerves and braved a peek around the corner. Just in time to see a look of shock flashed across the face of the long-limbed construction worker, sharpening the lines across his brow and below his lips. “Wait, sentence? What are you talking about?”

Taking no small amount of pleasure from the reaction, the marine smothered a quick smile. Leaning in closer, he put on a look of false concern. “Were you not informed? The boy was convicted as a stowaway, as well as several other petty offenses. The ruling was that he was to carry out work in the service of the state. That was why he was assigned to the reconstruction project.” As to better verify his claims, the soldier had brought with him proper documentation of the ruling. Signed and dated by one of the island’s most reputable judges.

The distress that sat plain on Bappou’s face only seemed to worsen with each following word. His wide shoulders sank low, eyes now gazing at the floor. Crestfallen. “I-I had no idea. I thought… Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter now.” For a moment, Weiss thought his host was going to choke up. Though he could not see the fellow’s eyes, he thought he might be crying. The thought made his insides writhe. It felt like he had swallowed a knife whole. He couldn’t make himself watch anymore, and the young boy pulled back. A sudden weakness seemed to take hold of his legs, and he found himself curled up with his back against the wall, hugging his knees. Tired, he told himself. He was just tired, was all. It had been a long day.

“I’m sorry officer, but I can’t really help you. I-I never saw him come back after the presentation. Perhaps he’s downtown getting something to eat? He the restaurant down there.”

His eyes shot open. Wait, what? But… what?

Patting the innocent citizen on the shoulder with some pretense of sympathy, Gaurney shook his head. “No no, you’ve been very helpful. Suppose it would have been too easy to catch him here anyway. I’ll leave you to your day, citizen.” With that, he stepped back outside and hurried off down the street. Calling orders out to the men that had been stationed outside all the while.

“Y-you too!” Came Bappou’s dispirited reply, closing the door behind the marine slowly. After a long pregnant pause, he straightened himself, shaking off the despondent expression from his face like a duck shaking off water. With a jaunty tune on his lips, he turned around and continued going about his business just as he had been moments before. As if nothing had happened at all. The overly nice and guileless worker had just totally played a ranking officer. Damn.

Slipping out of his hiding spot at the top of the stairs, Weiss fidgeted for a few moments nervously, before finding the nerve to speak again. “…Bappou?” He called out, the usual certainty behind his words gone.

Poking his head out from the room below, the taller man seemed entirely at peace. “Hm?”

“You just lied to an officer of the World Government. That’s a crime.” It was strange, he thought to himself. Him lecturing someone else about breaking a law when it comes to dealing with the World Government.

An impish gleam sparkled in Bappou’s eye, which seemed entirely out of place. “Did I? I was in the kitchen when you came back. Technically, I never saw you coming in. And you and Tsun do spend a lot of your lunches down there.”

Poking his head between the banister, Weiss had to object. “But-“

But as it seemed, the outburst was not going to be tolerated. Stepping out into the open, Bappou did something that Weiss had never, ever seen him do. Rearing up to his full, impressive height, he stared him dead in the eyes, unflinching and unrepentant. His voice took on a deep, commanding baritone, nothing at all like the sheepish fellow he had encountered on his first day of work. “You said it yourself. I’m the Foreman around here. Which means I have to be the one that makes all the tough decisions. And I’ve already decided.” After a moment of intensity, his face softened again. “Are you finished packing yet? I made some food for your trip. There’s a tunnel in the lower workshop we use for bringing in materials. It lets out a street over. From there, you can just follow Busker’s Street and it’s a straight shot to the harbor.”

For a long time, Weiss felt too stunned to move. He just could not understand it. Why would this person, who had a good job and was a well-respected member of the community, stick his neck of for him? Sure, they had hung out a lot over the past few weeks, enough to be called ‘friends’ perhaps, but still. For someone who had been living and struggling on his own for so long, even before he left home, the kindness seemed almost alien to him. It was something his family had never given him, that much was certain. And yet, at the same time, the act sparked something in him. It was a bubbling, giggly feeling, which started in the tips of his toes and worked its way all the way up to the tips of his hair. He did not even realize he was smiling until his cheeks began to hurt. “Yeah! I’ll be down in a sec.” His feet carried him halfway back to his door before something stopped him in his tracks.

“Hey B?” The boy said, a bit softer than he meant to.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For everything.”

Though Weiss didn't hear it, the young foreman laughed. If anyone around here should be thankful, it was him. Those kids had done more for this town, and for him, than either of them realized.

---------

“THERE HE IS!” Came an echoing bellow. Looking over his shoulder, he caught sight of several men wearing thick coats that proudly displayed the blue gull crest. Their heavy boots tore through the virgin white snowfall at a frenzied pace. It was his only real advantage here, short of the head start he had gotten on them. The fact each of them looked like they had two hundred pounds on him meant they sunk much deeper when they took a step, making the process of extricated said foot that much more difficult. His comparatively light frame meant he did not have quite as much trouble crossing the tall white banks. Though, he was not sure how much this truly put him ahead. The difference in their respective stride was large as well, and definitely not in the way that benefited him.

That split-second distraction was all it took to derail what had thus far been an otherwise impeccable escape attempt. With his eyes darting off elsewhere, he hadn’t noticed the tip of an crate that had been all but submerged in powder. The moment his shoe made contact, he was sent tumbling head over heels, landing on his back with a ‘thump’ on the other side. Dizzy and disoriented, he found himself momentarily grateful for this island’s frigid and largely intolerable climate. It made landings much, much more comfortable. But it was a comfort he had not the time to enjoy. The braying of the pursuing marines drew ever closer. “Crapcrapcrapcrap!” Weiss cursed, scrambling to his feet. Rather than continue in the direction he had been fleeing in, the boy scuttled down a nearby alley, hoping perhaps to lose them that way. As he weaved his way through the shadowed passage, a strong arm reached down and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, plucking him off the ground as easily as one might a small pup. He immediately set about struggling against his captor, flailing his legs and attempting to pry himself free, but the grip remained firm.

“Hohooo! What have we got here? A little brat on the run, is it?” Spat a coarse, crotchety voice, the likes of which Weiss had only ever encountered once. And the person it belong to was none-too-pleasant to be around. “Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused me, boy?”

His wild attempts at freedom settled, the boy instead letting himself go limp. The sharp stinging in his stomach had returned again. “…Sorry Sherrif.”

When he twisted his prisoner around so as to enable face to face conversation, Weiss was given a chance to survey his surroundings. Besides the man holding him, there were a handful of other people he recognized from the reconstruction project. Had they all come to help catch him? “Don’t be givin’ me none of that ‘sorry’ nonsense. You and I both know you aint more sorry about making my old bones trudge through this snow, else you wouldn’t have made it so hard for me to catch yeh.” Warren had always been a pretty stubborn old goat. Which was part of the reason they always butted heads. And typically, this is the point at which he would respond with some biting comment or clever retort, verifying his amusement at the aged peacekeeper’s discomfort. But he was not feeling it right now. “Took your sweet time getting here, eh? Been sitting out here freezing my bee-hind off waiting for your raggedy head to pop up. Now yer gonna have to hoof it so yeh don’t miss yer boat.”

He didn’t have time to be surprised. Instead, he was abruptly dropped back to earth, and scooted off in the right direction. Part of him wanted to object to being toted around so casually, like he was nothing more than a troublesome child (After all, he was a troublesome preteen, thank you very much). But the more rational side of him squelched that line of thought before he could voice a complaint. Instead, Weiss turned back to look at the group. The workers had arranged themselves as to cross the width of the alley, forming something of a human barrier. They looked back at him warmly, without judgment or scorn. A few offered comforting words, or ruffled his hair. Warren gave no such gestures, standing with his back towards the boy. From the outside, it looked a tad callous of him to do. “Go on now. Skiddaddle. Let the adults take care of something for once.”

Stubborn bastard. He could hear the Marines shouting just a shorts ways away. If he was gonna get through this, he needed to move. Shaking as many hands as he thought time allowed, he started off again. He could see sails thrust into the sky, just a row of buildings away from him. “I’ll pay you back one day, Old Man! I’ll pay back everybody!” Weiss called out as he broke into a dead sprint.

“Pfft. Fool boy. Don’t be makin’ promises you can’t keep.” The old sheriff muttered under his breath, trying to sound as contemptuous as possible. But his face told a different story entirely. His expression was one of pride, crusted lips curled into a smile, and his eyes just the slightest bit misty. Not that he’d miss the little hellraiser none. Not the other one neither. Maybe he was just getting old, or a bit sentimental. Maybe… maybe after this, he could send a letter to his son. It’d been awhile since Warren had seen his grandkids, after all.

---------

The last hundred meters of Weiss’ mad dash were by far, the most stressful. With the ice that had thus far impeded transport by ship now melted, trade was back into full swing, and then some. Everyone was playing catch up, and the docks were busier than he had ever seen them. He was forced to needle his way through the dense crowds, and avoid being crushed underfoot by the swells of traffic. Worse still, he had quickly found that there were already Marines posted here. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that they had quickly found him. Swift action and even swifter feet had driven him to hide amongst the crowd, which had thus far kept him safe. Overall he was just lucky that the majority of Captain Gurney’s forces were being held up elsewhere. He wasn’t sure he could have dodged much more than what he already had on his plate. Just something else to thank the workers for.

Finally, after hectic search, he spotted the boat he was supposed to be boarding. Apparently the man who owned it was an old acquaintance of Bappous’ master, who was more than willing to turn a blind eye to a single stowaway, provided he stayed out of trouble. Better yet, he spotted a familiar violet-haired girl leaning over the ship’s railing. All the better. Making a bee-line for the boarding plank, he climbed the steep steps like a man possessed, literally throwing himself onto the ship like the day’s catch. But Weiss could not rest quite yet. Glancing back down behind him, he spotted trouble heading this way, and scrambled in behind a series of barrels. It was not until he was thoroughly wedged in between than he saw Tsun staring at him silently.

This was quite possibly the confrontation he had worried about the most. He thought that the two precocious youngsters had struck up more than just a working relationship over their time together, and he truly did not wish for her to find out the sort of ‘hobbies’ that had gotten him assigned to the project in the first place. The thought of earning her ire terrified him worse than being caught. Gasping for air to fill his starved lungs, the runaway had to fight just to get words out. “Um. Tsun? I’m sorry to do this to you, but I have a… small favor, to ask. Please. Whatever you do, do not-“

“Hey!” Came a much louder, and much angrier voice, which struck Weiss almost as strongly as a physical blow, and caused him to retreat further back into his hole. Heavy steps ascended the plank, as one of his pursuers boarded the ship, seeming nearly as out of breath as the quarry he had been hounding. “Did you see a little boy run on just now?” The Navyman asked, staring intently at the young mechanist. From the looks of things, he expected a curt response.

[EriChar]

And so, stood at the dock that so many times in the weeks past she had looked to for a sign of escape, Tsun Dehre now found herself before the object that would facilitate her departure from the island; the large ferry that had brought her to the land on that snow-filled day which seemed like so long ago. It was strange though; now with her way off the island, there was something holding the girl back. While there was a great want within the mind of the little engineer to set off and continue her adventure, for some odd reason, her heart felt a little bit heavy with a kind of regret. It was most unusual for such a thing to happen; typically, when her business in a land was done, Tsun could cleanly and quickly set off at a moment’s notice, so why was she feeling so tied to the hatefully cold and uninteresting land of Ice Nine? No business was left unfinished; the work on the wall was going well, and the townsfolk seemed enthusiastic that the design for Pocchama could quickly be copied to create ‘brothers’ for the weapon. Maybe that was it? The girl had become rather fond of Pocchama in the hours she had spent building him, and regretted the fact that he was too big to be taken with her. Or it could be that in some small way, to some tiny degree, that she had become attached to this place? In their own humble way, the people of this land had welcomed the small shipwright in a manner that she had not felt for rather a long time, not since the days when she had travelled around with her grandfather, and been welcomed into engineering teams with good humour and cheer. I might have been nice, for a few days, to have the chance to return from work, and find someone waiting for you. Could that be it?

Nah, it’s not as if I like it here, I just wanted to bring Pocchama along. Mentally crossing out the possibility of her actually having grown attached to the island from which she now expected to depart, the young woman pushed that first footstep forward, and quickly followed it with another. Before long, she was heaving the weighty pack in which she stored her life onto the floor of her cabin, having climbed the gangplank and moved into the passenger section of the ship.
Entirely too much time has been wasted, but at last, we’re back on track for Nuovo Romano… Settling her sizeable pouch down, Tsun slipped up onto the bed and began to unfurl the straps that kept the bag bound, digging around within it for a few pieces of gadgetry to tinker with on her journey. Those funny seashell things that had been collected from the merchant on Momoiro Island had certainly helped Pocchan’s design; the troublesome kick that it used to give off had completely been subdued, with no loss of power, and with the gain she had developed from those gas-shell things, there was great potential there to increase its output.
Maybe one day you’ll have the same power as your new brother, Pocchan… Fleeting into a slight sense of fantasy, the corners of this little inventor’s mouth curled into a curve of mischief as she pictured the damage that had earlier been done by Pocchama, created by the rounded sleekness of the small sidearm that she now lay on her bed. However, before the young woman could pluck the tools from her bag, she found her eyes now settling on the window her cabin was gifted with, or rather; the scene that lay beyond it.
"Hmmmmm…" Grumbling as she scoured the shape of Ice Nine sitting outside the porthole, Miss Dehre scrutinized the white shape of the lands behind the glass, before standing up.

I suppose it wouldn’t be too much wasting a bit more time, in order to see my new little ones disappear into the distance… Rationalizing that the weight in her heart was caused by the loss of the weapon and the wall that she had designed, the creator decided that, though there might have been tasks she could have kept herself busy with, a short break might have spurred her into greater action later on.

Scooping up the weapon she had placed on her bed, Tsun ducked out of her cabin and onto the deck once more, standing among the others who had reason to hang around in the Ice Nine air before they set off. Around the young woman, there seemed a swath of tearful goodbyes; wives and girlfriends stood on the dockside, while their cherished partners waved to them, either as passengers or workmen on the ship, sternly trying to keep the tears from flowing out of their equally saddened eyes.
Sentimental nonsense… Feeling like the only person in the dockyard that was either in the middle, or begging of, a flood of tears, Miss Dehre felt her skin crawl a little at how out of place she seemed to be. While the young lady of our focus was perhaps a little heavy hearted in the matter of her departure, for reasons which she preferred to choose than face, the girl was glad that she wasn’t one of those blubbering fools that stood all around.

It was as the machinist girl tried to shrink away and distance herself from the weeping mass, that for an instant, Tsun caught the sight of something that looked a little familiar; mixed in the mass of fur and wool-wrapped bodies waiting on the quay, darting through them she could have sworn that she saw the sight of the snowy locks of her younger companion.
Is he late for his departure? Raising her neck, and twisting to try and reacquire the lock of her eyes upon that target, the engineer sought to spy the sight of Laskaris E. Weiss, her partner in crime as it were, when building Pocchama. An erratic young man, his knowledge of machinery paled when compared to that of Miss Dehre, but she had developed something of a begrudging respect for his inventiveness, and desire to improve. In a few years, Tsun was sure that the boy might make a passable engineer if he studied hard and kept his nose clean, but was not so sure that was something he could achieve.

“Ah!” Squeaking like a mouse, in front of her, suddenly and momentarily, the child seemed to pop his head in her direction, and mutter something before disappearing once more into the hole he had emerged from. Left blinking in confusion, the turmoil that the child had apparently been attempting to evade him followed soon after, and only moments later, Tsun was face to face with a rather displeased looking gentlemen sporting a white outfit and a rifle across his chest, who happened to be demanding the location of a ‘little boy’.

“I did see a boy…” Answering honestly, after mentioning that she had indeed caught sight of Weiss, the young woman paused, analysing her situation. As an innocent civilian, it would probably have been considered her civic duty to guide the officer of the law toward her target, and yet… There was a reluctance to do so. When she thought about it, the young Miss Dehre realized that had she directed the soldier to this ship, and the boy remained stubborn, then a great deal of time would have been lost as the troop she presumed that this lone legionnaire belonged to searched the craft for him. That would certainly be a sour way to set off, and no doubt cause further delays, and a general discontent for the journey that lay ahead of her. Plus, for all of his mischief, in her observations of the child, he didn’t seem entirely bad, and more a victim of his circumstance than anything. Was it really the ‘right’ thing to not only condemn someone who was not fully guilty, and create a whole lot of trouble for herself and the people of the ship?
“He hopped off the craft as you were coming up the rampart, and sped over to the next ship… If you hurry, you might be able to capture him.” The answer of Tsun Dehre, to the previously posed query, was no. It was not the ‘right thing’, as she felt it, to cause such trouble. Although, this was one of her first experiences of the action that was broadly termed ‘lying’, and it was with a pleasant surprise that she met a message of thanks from the MP, as he dashed back down the gangplank, and onto the dock once more.

“It’s probably safe to come out now…” Talking quietly as she eyed the Marine go sprinting over to the next ship, which she knew was headed to an entirely different part of this great blue sea, the small, purple-haired little woman let her new friend know it was OK to come free of his hole.
“But don’t misunderstand, I didn’t do that for your sake; I just didn’t want this ship being delayed by a search…” Adding a little bit of extra information to explain herself, the little girl chattered words out in an almost annoyed way, in order to clear up any sort of misunderstanding about the reason behind her recent action. Still dealing with the complexity of teenage life, and her maturing mind set as a young woman, it had to be said that oftentimes, Tsun Dehre was not the most honest of people when it came to her own feelings. She could not freely admit that she had taken something of a shine to her younger companion, and rather than the reason she had stated, she had in fact made her mind up more because she wished to protect him than anything else. Laskaris E. Weiss would never know that in the past handful of weeks, he had become someone who was one of the closest things to a friend that the often cantankerous young woman had, as the girl was completely unequipped socially or emotionally to ever confess to such a thing. No, instead, the grumpy wittering she just gave him was the only information he would gain verbally, and the volume of her concern for him would be spoken in the action that Miss Dehre had just taken.

“Anyway, I’d guess from your entrance that you don’t have a ticket?” Peering down at the smaller boy, Tsun scrutinized his state, and couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction that she was a little bit taller than someone in the world. While she considered herself to stand above a great many people in terms of intellect, it was often the case that she stood far beneath them in terms of vertical achievement in the field of growth; it was nice to be tall, if only in comparison to someone several years her junior.
“I suppose you can sleep on the floor in my cabin…” It was perhaps a feeling of superiority, or something similar to that, which prompted also a sense of charity within the spirit of this usually hermit-like and isolated young woman, and maybe combined with some sort of moral lesson she might have learned from her grandfather many moons ago.
“But that’s only because I had an idea, and would like to borrow your electric gun thing to test it…” Of course, while she had discovered an ability to be compassionate, what still evaded her was the capacity for real honesty, although, there perhaps was a hint of the truth behind the reason she gave for her benevolence. The electrical gadget that this child had demonstrated had piqued Tsun’s curiosity when demonstrated on the island, and now that she had a little free time between ports, it seemed the perfect chance to become better acquainted with how it worked. If her thinking was correct, there might be a way to do a little bit of rewiring, and amp up the output that the small weapon could bestow. Or it would cause an arc and electrocute anyone who touched it, but there was always danger in any kind of innovation.
“Come along!” Driving her heel into the deck, and turning on the spot, with a sudden sense of command conjured from enthusiasm, Tsun struck off into a stride, as she headed toward her room, and the craft they stood on, into the sea…