Welcome to Gaia! ::

Atiqua was still a grub by adult standards in a lot of ways. She was hardly fit, and as a teal, she wasn’t exactly expected to do a lot hemospectrum wise, aside from uphold it, fill her quadrants, and eventually find work to keep Alternia n the right path. Just the way the empress liked. At least that was what Antiqua figured. She had her little shop here and there, selling her wares to unsuspecting trolls while keeping the fakes from the view of the higherbloods. At home, she took broken this of that and tried to best to get it working again.

Working being a rather objective term. Hey one day was better than no days at all right. Besides if it broke against she’d just have to fix it some more. Workspace set out halfway on her lawn that day, Atiqua was attempting to fix various toy rockets so they would launch and not explode. Apparently, trolls didn’t like it when their toys turned into actual rockets. Why, she didn’t fathom. So they took out a few lowbloods who couldn’t run fast enough. Sounded like something perfectly reasonable to her. But hey, they would be her customers. Gotta cater to what the populace wanted. And they wanted rockets that didn’t explode. So be it.

Tinkering away, she looked up at the sound of angry foot beats and the familiar chime of a power plug hitting pavement. Some green was storm off somewhere, with something in their arms. Something that looked broken.
“Hey.” Atiqua walked behind them. “Hey hey that broken?” She sounded a bit too eager. Whoops. “Er, I mean, what cha doing with that thing?”

“Hey hey, my face. Look at me. I know my hive is awesome and all but unlike me it’s doesn’t talk. Trust me, if it did, I’d have called it Harcis and it would be controlled to do whatever I told it to do. But it doesn’t and okay yeah hi.” Atiqua was eyeballing the teakettle and the green in alternation. Broken thing, Troll. Troll, broken thing. Thing troll broken. Broken troll thing. Wait no the troll wasn’t broken… at least as far as she knew anyway. Some of them were out there, even for her.

“You busted up your tea maker huh? Bummer. I like a good cup of bean and steam myself, but the good old leaf juice is nice when you need something a bit softer on the taste buds.” She waved it off, grinning, teeth glinting as she was asked if she knew machines. “And darn right I do. I have…” She looked at it again, “No idea what broke it. But I bet you a beetle I can figure out how to fix it. I like tinkering and fixing stuff up. Every troll’s got to make a living until they find their place when they’re all grown up. Until then I like to spend my time making stuff work.”

Motioning for the other troll to follow her, Atiqua motioned to a semi clean workspace. “I’m Atiqua by the way. Atiqua Cifica. An-“ Nearby, seadad floated harmlessly, fin wings keeping him aloft as he gently bumped against a tree. Atiqua just stared at him a second. “Er, don’t mind that thing. It just kind of hangs around here. So yeah you said the heating plate and steeper both stuck and suck now? You tried hitting it yet?” The most obvious solution of course.

As she bent down to rummage in a chest of ‘tools’ Atiqua made a small sound of understanding. “Yeah, coffee’s not for every troll. It takes a while to get use to it. Not to mention you burn the bean then the whole thing is just nasty. They have decaf though! You should try it with some lusus milk and melted sugar syrup. Best stuff ever if you have a long night ahead of you. Helps perk you up, a bit sweet, and no daylight hours in the after burn.” Rustling past a few slightly broken wrenches, (she was going to get those unbent. Sometime. Someday), Atiqua got out the goggles and electric gloves. Thank goodness she never threw extra pairs away.

Returning to Rasali, Atiqua held out the gloves and goggles. “It’s nice to meat a fellow fixer of things. And hey nothing wrong with fixing things with a good old helping of slime and staples you know. The basics can and often are the easiest.” As well as cheapest. Which suited Atiqua just fine when she had to get ready to sell some knock offs.

Eyeing the tea-maker, orange eyes narrowed as she gave it a tap with a screwdriver. “Well Rasali.” Hands on her hips the teal blood nodded. “You ready to fix this thing? I- I-“ The flying fish that was seadad began to hover by the pair, clearly curious. Atiqua made several shooing motion at him, to which the lusus proceeded to simply float a bit higher up, yet still he watched the pair. “Uh, maybe. And he’d not cute. He’s all.. ferocious and stuff.” Cheeks puffed out. “But only when he gets mad. Yeah. Nothing wrong with a slow lusus. Mine is just…” Seadad drifted too far, bumping lightly into the hive. “Yeahhhhhhh. Anyway. So you said the steepy thingy made a grinding sound? And the heater just went splort dead?”

She was trying very hard to ignore her lusus lingering around them.

There was a psssshhhhhh sound from behind Atiqua’s teeth as Rasali described her lusus. “He’s fat and slow and okay maybe he’s kinda nice as he could win the biggest rock like lusus contest but shhhhhhh” Hands waved a bit at her. “Don’t like lay on the compliments okay he’ll start thinking he’d cool or something and that he can be like… seen with me and stuff. A saggy lusus…” Looking back at the sky fish the tealblood sighed. “I’d take it. And I know right. Gloves and goggles make this all.. official like.” A snap, she pulled one glove back to make the sound again. So official. “But nah, can’t stare at the sun. I bet a rust blood five beetles once that the goggles did nothing for the sun and he said they did and I got like twenty beetles that day ‘cus he couldn’t see me counting them out. Like what’s a blind troll gonna do with beetle anyhow he’s good as grubsauce.” It had been one of her better bets in her mind. Still, she gave the other troll a look. A look of ‘wtf r u doin’. The moons were out but not the sun.. thank goodness for that. Hey though, if a green wanted to go see the sun… far be it in Atiqua’s nature to stop her. Alternian Darwinism at it’s finest…. Okay she might be a bit sad she liked talking tinkering.

Hands clapped together, rubber making a small almost fart like noise, Atiqua gave the tea maker another jab, this time with a pair of pliers. “It’s maybe a worn wire? Sometimes the wires just like to go and stop doing stuff and you just need to replace em. Sort of like how in lights the wire just kinda… burns itself out and then just have a glass bubble thing.” Grabbing a nearby broken grill-o-matic the teal began to try and pry it open. “So we gotta get some new wires. Maybe. If it doesn’t work maybe we can try magnets.”

Because Atiqua just like to put them on things. She was pretty sure they didn’t help, but boy, they were fun.

Seadad blew a few air bubbles towards the two trolls. He was so happy. Atiqua hadn’t thrown anything at him yet.

“A whole sweep? Man, I can hardly keep stuff half a sweep. But then I tend to mess around with their parts or my lusus bumps into them. I had to nail stuff down after a while. But yeah, its electronics old. Better than an alarm clock though.” She gave a hand wave to the air. “So many trolls just throw ‘em into walls or smash ‘em. I don’t think I’ve known any troll that’s had one last even a month.” Yanking out the electric guts from the grilling machine, she began to sort through the wires, gloves covered with sticky black slime from the machine’s innards.

“I got some wires, but we’ll need to see what matches. You wanna take the hot plate off and see what wires are all up in there? It’ll be like a matching game only it might go bzzt bzzt and set something on fire but I haven’t had that happen in a while.”

Just a week ago.

“But don’t feel dumb if you can’t fix a thing. If you can’t, it just means that it’s dead and clearly unfixable and belongs in some scrap heap. Besides, takes time and experimentation to learn how to fix stuff and not set fire to your clothes or make part of your hive explode.” She paused. “Not that I’ve done those things.” Her hive very clearly showed yes, at some point she had.

Atiqua nodded. When you only had one of something, risking it all was well.. risky. “Mhm, see what I do is I go by the backlots and buy what’s broken, fix it, then sell it. The older trolls aren’t always that smart, throwing out stuff you can just as easily fix. Like sometimes, it’s just a bit dirty! Give it a nice wash and it looks and works good as new! Other times I have got to get a bit grubby. Up to my arms knees in grease and goop. ‘S not so bad through. When I resell it, I make a nice beetle of two.” She hummed, giving herself all the mental pats on the back. All of them.

“But don’t worry ‘kay? We’ll get this sucker up and brewing again or… or we won’t and I’ll feel kinda bad ‘cuz this shouldn’t be that hard.” Wires in hand she watched waiting to see what they had work with.

Then Rasali got the plate off. And thus the two trolls were making faces at it.

Atiqua grabbed a nearby set of pliers, giving the wires a gentle tug. Still solid, but that dried crust rust had to go. So nasty. “Super gross.” The teal had to agree. It was just gross. Nasty would have been if they found rotten slime. Dried slime was more… gross. Slime should never be dry, it just shouldn’t.
“So the wires look okay, but I’m guessing that the slime that was pumping in this puppy went and dried up from the heat. Soooooo~”

Wires and pliers set down she went over to a box. Pulling out some bottles of what looked to be saved slime. “Gotta clean it then give it some fresh juice. Should work. Maybe. What you think?”

As the dried chips of slime fell, Atiqua’s face stayed the same. Grossed out. She was glad they were doing this where dried slime on the ground wouldn’t matter. If it was in her hive proper… she might have thrown a fit. A small one, but still, a fit. “I like things clean. Or at least organized. Not going to be able to fix anything if I don’t know where it is. Plus seadad always breaks stuff. He’d a mess of a lusus.” She spoke offhandedly, not thinking how said lusus was floating around, keeping an eye on the pair still.

“But really? You don’t live far at all. Not for me anyway. Hot springs… would be nice. But I got a lake and a hot water heater that still works. So I’m good.” Picking up the tea maker, she frowned. “And okay. It’s got a leak. Sooooo-“ She put it down, and running to grab something, she returned with the cure all.

Duct tape.

“Just wrap the tubes and then flush it out before we refill them with fresh slime. So-” the tape went vvvrrrppp as she pulled off a length, “wanna wrap?”