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Luke, on finding himself the target of glares and glowers alike, was glad he had made his trip to the mall earlier in the week. The long sheath pinned to the back of his waist proved deterrent enough to the various surly inhabitants of the filthy little neighborhood he had the misfortune to encounter - for now, at least. Nonetheless, the redheaded boy moved forward at a pace that suggested he knew exactly where he was going, even if the opposite was true. He knew neither how he had come upon the area nor how to leave it, but he kept this small worry from his gait, at least until the hum of music in his ears suddenly stopped.

"The hell?" He adjusted the headphones in the jack in an annoyance that began mild and slowly increased as the problem continued to refuse to resolve itself. He took the small black rectangle into his palm and stared at the screen, brow furrowed. It was dark and lifeless, despite having charged it... when? The previous evening? The night before that? He had charged it, right? Of course he had. The stupid thing was obviously broken. Great. Quietly bemoaning his wretched luck, he proceeded forward with an expression of sheer irritation. It really had been an awful week.

An open garage, marked by a promising sign, however, afforded a small hope. 'Machine Shop.' Luke glanced at the broken thing in his hand. That was a machine, right? Of course it was. Pace quickened by the prospect of salvation, he glanced around a corner and into the noisy, smelly, grimy pit of a building. Ew. He didn't care to venture in far enough to determine if there was a service bell or something like there tended to be in television shows, and so he instead opted for a more direct approach, "Hey, is there anyone in here?"

Luke recoiled slightly from the... thing. Whatever it was. Some kind of pokemon? It didn't seem to be hostile, and that was good enough for him. It wandered off somewhere, leaving the boy staring after it in confusion. The sudden decrease in the volume of the music, however, was taken as a good sign, and he chose to wait and see if someone didn't show up before too much longer.

Sure enough, a vaguely human form appeared from... under a car. Again, ew. She seemed friendly enough, though, and so Luke regarded her with only a slight disdain. "Uh, this thing..." He raised his hand slightly, offering the music player for her inspection should she choose to do as much. "You can fix this?" It was more of an expectation than a question, but it stood either way.

He followed her as she moved, picking his way around any outstanding stains or obstacles to stand near the desk at which she placed herself. "Dunno," he replied with a shrug, his demeanor forcedly indicating that he didn't know because he wasn't interested, not because it was too complex for him to figure out. "It just stopped working. Here, you can see for yourself." As he spoke, he drew the headphones from his pocket and tossed them to the desk, beside the... white thing. With the claws. And the glowy eye. "Is that some kind of pokemon?" It was really starting to weird him out not knowing.

Luke was momentarily distracted from the Beldum by the assortment of tools through which the girl was sifting. It seemed like an odd process, and while he had broken electronics before, he had never seen them dealt with beyond thrusting into someone else's arms for them to take care of. The glowing glare of the pokemon recaptured Luke's attention, and he returned it with his own stare, as if in challenge.

"I haven't," he said bluntly, if not somewhat defensively. "What, is it common or something?" Excuse me for not knowing. He held his tongue, though. No need to piss off the girl cracking the case on his hundreds-dollar mp3 player, though. Especially when he had no idea where he could buy a replacement.

"Don't think so," he said with a shrug, thinking back on the several days. Thus far, staying dry had been one of the only positives he had accomplished. "I guess it could have, though. I don't stare at it at all hours of the day or anything." As if he'd just dropped a subtly clever hint, he broke contact with the staring Beldum. It was creepy just to look at, let alone make eye contact with.

Quickly spiraling into boredom, Luke turned from the desk and performed a brief survey of the garage. It continued to be smelly and grimy, even if not so noisy as it was before. Furthermore, it was absolutely brimming with... stuff. Some of it he didn't even know what it was. "You sure have a lot of junk," he commented offhandedly, not really caring whether or not his words were heard or acknowledged.

Luke completely missed the offended tone and kept right on offending, "Anything that doesn't work is junk, right? And because it's junk, you take it to get fixed, or you throw it out and buy a new one." Had he stumbled upon an electronics shop before a repair shop, the latter would have been the fate of the hapless mp3 player. In Luke's case, there was an additional definition for 'junk': something he didn't understand. The half-repaired car, the piles of parts with no discernible form or function, and the... whatever-it-was robot thing with the wires were all alien items to the sheltered boy, and so he couldn't comprehend them as any more than junk. The Beldum very nearly fit into that category as well, exempt in that Luke had at least a basic enough understanding of pokemon to know that it was supposed to look weird.

"I mean, I'm not saying it all stays junk forever or something," he added with a shrug, an eyebrow raised. What was she getting all mad about? "It's just junk until it's useful. That's junk too," he gestured to the mp3 player, "unless you can fix it." It seemed like a reasonable enough conclusion to him. In fact, now that the mp3 player had broken once, it was in danger of keeping its new title under the presumption that it would invariably break again in the future.

Luke certainly had a fair bit of curiosity and a great will to explore, but these things were hindered by an unwillingness to admit that he didn't know something. This guardedness was proving more and more fickle since his arrival in Kodo, however, especially in the presence of people he perceived as non-threatening. Thus, when the little box was revealed and connected to his mp3 player, Luke approached a few steps and leaned slightly forward to achieve a better view of it and its process, "What are you doing?"