courtesy of fex industries

So the interview hadn’t gone well.

Granted, Lucia’s specialty wasn’t hospitality, it was engineering, it was science, it was --

It was obviously anything but customer service.

Being honest was a staple of her personality, and apparently Pat’s Pancake Emporium didn’t do honesty. She fumed a few feet away from the entrance of the restaurant, certain that the outside diners and passer-bys had heard her argument, but she was too incensed to care. 

That was a lie.

As part of a rescue team, very few of her “rescues” involved returning small objects. A lighter would have been out of the question, all things considered, but the amount of Burnish attacks she’d seen thus far had been zero. Still, far be it for Lucia to deny anyone their junk -- even though a shake of the lighter told her it was empty.The trolley had been relatively empty, and the few strangers she’d nudged had given her a firm no.

So obviously the lighter belonged to the guy with multiple burn scars. Cool.

“Call this a shot in the dark --” and the result of time spent investigating, “-- but this thing wouldn’t happen to be yours, would it? It was on the stairs when I hopped on.”

Inspiration was few and far in-between -- it was a combination of recently not knowing where her favorite rookie was, and also being dropped unceremoniously into some random remote city. So, Lucia was certain the devil-may-care youth could humor her for a few seconds.

“Hey, kid, do me a favor. That weird flippy move you did, could you clamber back up that wall and do it again? It’s for the betterment of technology. Also I can’t legally require you to answer this, but do you have hyper-mobile joints?”

“With all due respect, sir -- can I call you sir? -- while I greatly appreciate your concern about health and fitness, I want you to take a few minutes to imagine what me, a literal half-pint, would look like buff, or muscular. Really, take a few good seconds to chew on that mental image. Me staying this scrawny is a sacrifice I have to make for everyone. You’re welcome. I take PayFriend and Xelle.”

Lothric hears the sound of someone coming inside the house and, well, doesn’t like that.  Sounds of unfamiliar people moving around outside of a safe space don’t sit right, not at all.  There was a time when there was no sound more dangerous.  Lorian is in the shower after getting home from the pool; he turns off the water, throws some clothes on quickly, and heads down the hallway.  It’s probably another roommate, they agree within their shared headspace, trying to reason with that old memory of danger.  Eclipses bring new faces.  The person certainly didn’t break in.

When Lorian finds Lucia in the living room, he finds exactly the reassuring situation they were counting on.  A brief once-over tells him he has no reason not to believe Lucia’s story.  It’s entirely plausible, and she’s acting very genuine.  He goes from stern and guarded to… less stern and guarded.  He’s not a warm type.  But he’s not here to object to Lucia’s presence.  He leans one of his crutches against the wall, lifts his chin, and points out the number of scars across his throat, smiling with satisfaction at what he survived.  He won’t be offering a greeting verbally. He looks around the apartment and gestures politely, an invitation for Lucia to make herself at home, then waves an awkward hello.  A deep sense of manners says it’s his duty to welcome a guest.  He goes to the kitchen, takes a whiteboard off the fridge, and sits at the table with it, quickly writing:

My name is Lorian, you will meet my brother Lothric later.  Good to meet you.

neatly and briskly, writing the lowercase letters as smaller capital letters.  He sets it in front of him on the table. 

Well he’s just getting water everywhere, huh.  Ugh.

Lucia’s concerns eased slightly as the stranger (roommate, probably?) stepped further into the light. He still seemed tense -- not that she could blame him -- but less on edge. There were a few things she noted about his appearance.

1) He was tall. Significantly tall. This was not unusual, but it would have been nice if Lucia wasn’t the shortest sailor on ship for once.

2) He was.. damp? The tiny, ever shrinking portion of Lucia’s brain that processed things like regret flared up. Fun! She showed up at random while the dude was showering, or something.

3) He had several scars across his throat, which he readily pointed out, and he apparently couldn’t talk. Which -- ouch. She winced briefly, remembering the burn scars on Galo’s arm. Neither Galo’s nor this stranger’s -- Lorian, he wrote? -- scars seemed particularly pleasant.

“Well,” Lucia started, exuding as much confidence as she could muster. “Good to meet you, Lorian! Nice to see we have a two-for-one combo, here, unless there are any other sardines in this can I should know about? Oh, before I forget...” Lucia switched the hand she held the plastic bag in, and outstretched her palm. Vinny, having been acquainted with this song and dance, gleefully clambered down from her shoulder and into her hand.

“My name is Lucia Fex, of Fex Industries, and this is Vinny Fex, also of Fex Industries. I’m the primary mechanic and engineer of Promepolis’s Burning Rescue 3, and this handsome devil is our mascot and official button pusher.”

“ -- so the problem with the autonomous vehicles is that if you aren’t exceedingly careful with the type of programming you implement, you can end up with a chatbot style AI that just mashes up and spews out whatever nonsense you’ve given it, which is one, a security problem and two, probably not that safe.” Even if it would turn out to be hilarious. Lucia was almost tempted, but that wasn’t within her realm of expertise, even if it was a point of interest. 

“I mean, sure, there was the occasional murder car, but as far as I know those never made it past the factories.” She loudly sipped through a straw on a nearly empty soda. “Additionally, even if the AI is pleasant and wonderful, the equipment required to repair them is still ridiculously expensive, so as fancy as it would have been to install that technology in one of our trucks, it just wasn’t feasible.” Was Lucia bullshitting him? Maybe. But really, AI? In a car? No.

Vinny was a treasured member of the Fex family -- her mother occasionally doting more on the rat than on Lucia herself. (Not that Lucia could blame her. Vinny was, for all intents and purposes, the cutest in the whole wide world, yes he is, who is mommy’s favorite, etc etc.)

So while others might find that having an oversized rodent on one’s shoulder was unusual, for Lucia, it was Thursday. Routine to the point where she was certain her gait would be uncomfortable without the extra weight on her shoulder.

They were waiting for the trolley, but Vinny was much more interested in the eyepatch person next to them on the bench, as Lucia absent-mindedly fiddled with her phone. He carefully scurried from one shoulder to the next, blinking with wide eyes at the stranger.

Lucia would be lying if she said she was unhappy about getting a real place to stay. It certainly wasn’t home, and the place was... lacking in personality. But if she was going to be a hostage, she might as well get an actual bed and bathroom.

She would, going by the pamphlet, eventually have to work out a job situation. (Hopefully, Ignis wouldn’t have replaced her by time she got back to Promepolis.) Lucia’s savings were wiped clean, replaced with some kind of currency called Dust. She’d managed to grab a few things at a nearby shop, namely something named ‘Wheat Thicks’ (that was going to be awful) and a bag or two of... N’m’Ns. The package said chocolate, and that was good enough for her.

Intentionally, Lucia hadn’t spent much time in the condo. Granted, walking around was just the equivalent of giving a tiger a meat-filled pumpkin for enrichment, but it was better than staying cooped up. It had nonetheless clocked to her that there were other rooms.

It had not, as she saw a tall figure in the corner of her eye, clocked to her that there were other people.

“I’ve got a couple of real scientific questions for you,” Lucia started, which usually meant that they weren’t scientific at all. Vinny sat next to her on the stairwell, munching on crackers loudly.

This place -- Archimedes Ward, Lucia was told? -- was kind of neat, but it was still no Promepolis. Narrow streets, able to walk almost anywhere... The rough areas didn’t have any fault auto-hydrants... and no Freeze Force.

Had she been here willingly this would have been a stark improvement. A vacation, even! But as it was, Lucia was now contending with some guy trying to rent out... shoes.