The mechanic shop appeared rather suddenly, though Ginny paid no notice until she had need of it, an attitude she extended to most things. She probably wouldn't have even known it was there at all if one of the patisserie's neighbors hadn't come over to bellyache.

"I can't believe the landlords allowed it," the neighbor sniffed. He was a large, greasy seller of formerly-upscale retail. He crossed his arms and leaned over the glass counter. "Such a bad image for the market, don't you think?"

"What is?" Ginny's twin brother, Hazel, asked from the register.

The salesman raised his balding head. "Well," he said, "you know."

"I…don't." Hazel blinked. He turned slightly towards Ginny. "Do you know?"

"I don't care," Ginny retorted, examining her nails. One had gotten caught in the oven door, and she needed to assess the damage. "So what if they allowed…whatever? The landlords allowed this diabetes trap, after all."

At that, she motioned around the Lieblingessen. Hazel sighed and shrugged at their neighbor. He returned the gesture and straightened up.

"I'll have three of the peach marzipan and a slice of the prinzregententorte."

Hazel said "Coming right up" at the same time Ginny said "You're going to die of a heart attack," and the matter of the mechanic shop was dropped and forgotten.

The Lieblingessen's full name translated to The Favorite Food Patisserie, which amused Ginny because she could not fathom it being anyone's favorite. It was not a delicatessen, and so there was no real food, just a lot of freshly-baked health complications. There was a ridiculous number of other cakes, doughnuts, strudels, stollen, turnovers, and drinks like cider and soda and nectarous wines. The whole stall was decorated with fairy lights and airy, pastel curtains, the dirndl and lederhosen uniforms brightly colored and itchy. The Lieblingessen stuck out like a sore thumb in the gritty mess of New Beijing Market.

Still, it got a fair amount of business. The Schwarzwald twins hand-made everything in the stall, as according to their employer's demands. It opened and closed with the market on weekends, and it was just the two of them working the market most of the time while their boss—sarcastically referred to as "the witch"—stayed back at the shop.

Ginny hated it. Hazel hated it slightly less. The more convivial of the two, he usually enjoyed dealing with customers, while she was in the back baking up a storm.

"Apparently there's been an outbreak of letumosis not far from here," Hazel reported one slow market morning. He leaned against the wall next to the register, portscreen in hand, lazily flicking through various news sites and social media.

Ginny draped herself dramatically over the baking counter. "Good! Let it kill me, and take me away from this pastry hell."

Her brother barely glanced up. "You're going to get dough on your dress, and then Frau Zuckerhaus really will kill you."

"Meh. End result's the same, one's just less painful to deal with."

"We still need to restock on the Berliners."

She grabbed the edge of the counter, hauled herself up, and began to brush the powder off her dirndl's pale fuchsia skirt. The witch would be arriving to help pack up in the evening, and regardless of how much she wanted to throw her apron and go home, where would she and Hazel get another job? Frau Zuckerhaus was a terror, and Ginny was honestly a bit frightened of her, but the old crone had been the only person to give the twins a chance after they had emigrated from Germany.

She exhaled loudly, her good mood gone. "I guess I'll do the Berliners, then."

Hazel gave her a thumbs-up and turned away to deal with arriving customers.

Berliner doughnuts were a somewhat tricky process; they involved a lot of mixing until just the right consistency, letting the dough sit for just the right amount of time, rinse and repeat. Ginny had over an hour to leave it to its own processes, and she used the time to set the oven, clean up her mess, and prepare for the next stage. Nobody liked a disorderly stall, particularly not one involving food.

In the front, Hazel was trying to upsell nussecken cookies that were about to go stale. She watched him work for a bit. Her brother really was a good salesman, cheerful and winsome. Hazel loved desserts and he had been the one to suggest trying for a job at the Lieblingessen, just because he liked it so much. It made her sad to think about now, when the work hours were long and hard and their boss nearly a picturesque fairy tale villain.

The image of the witch was still clear in her mind when she opened the oven door. The tray of doughnuts was halfway in when her thoughts were interrupted by the small, niggling feeling that something was wrong, and she stopped and frowned. There didn't appear to be anything wrong with the Berliners, and Hazel was slumped over his portscreen again, so what?

The oven. Ginny had set the temperature half an hour ago. The light glowed and the numbers shown, yet the inside wasn't warm at all, while the back covering was scalding to the touch. It was a portable oven, one they moved from the flagship shop to the marketplace every weekend. It was not big or complicated, but it had still cost Frau over eight hundred univs.

"Hazel," she said.

"Hm?"

"What's wrong with the oven?"

"Nothing's wrong with it," he replied, joining her behind the baking counter. "It was working fine last week. We haven't used it since then."

"We moved it though," Ginny huffed.

She kicked at it and a plume of smoke erupted from the back grate, along with a long, groaning wheeze. Within seconds the entire stall was filled with the stench of burning hair.

Ginny screeched. Hazel's hands flew up to grip his hair and he demanded, "Why would you do that?!"

"We're screwed," she whispered, horrified, pulling her collar over her mouth and nose. "We are so screwed. Frau's going to come later and we won't have any doughnuts and we've freaking ruined her oven. She's going to eat our still-beating hearts."

"Okay," Hazel said. He began to pace. "Okay. Maybe we can fix it! We'll just grab some tools, and—oh, stars, we're a patisserie stall, we don't have tools. Maybe at the shop? But then the witch would find out… The only people who could fix it is—"

"A mechanic!" Ginny burst out. Her memory jogged to the previous week. "There's a new mechanic stall here!"

"B-but, we don't have any money for a—"

"And if we don't get the oven fixed, we won't have any again for a long time! Because we'll be fired, and probably dead."

If her memory served her correctly, the mechanic shop was just a few stalls away from their neighbor, the used clothes dealer. It wouldn't be too far to walk, but to go there, explain the situation, and bring the mechanic back…

Ginny circled around to the back of the oven and shoved it away from the wall. "Carry this with me," she ordered.

"What."

"Come ooooon!"

After a moment's deliberation, Hazel apparently decided it wasn't worth it to argue. He hurried to the other side and helped his sister ease it around the counter and into the main bustle of the marketplace. There were stares and glares and lots of huffing from pedestrians when the twins got in their way, but with slow, agonizing steps, they were able to shuffle down the aisle towards where their neighbor had dismissively gestured before.

It was easy to guess which stall was the mechanic's as soon as they saw it, and Ginny wondered how she'd never taken notice of it before. There were several tables piled with junk; eerie, rusty disembodied limbs, smashed port and net screens, toolboxes, storage bins overflowing with countless metal bits and pieces. The twins wove in between the walls and set the oven down on the clearest table they could find. Looking down, Ginny noticed they'd only just avoided slamming down on a bulbous, in-progress android, inches away from the oven with wires askew.

A girl popped out of nowhere from behind one of the junk piles, wide-eyed and a screwdriver in one hand.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

Ginny didn't waste a beat. "Hey!" she said with as much cheerfulness as she could muster. "We heard you're good. We need you to fix this." She gestured at the oven. "I'm Ginny—Ginger Schwartzwald. This is my brother, Hazel."

"We're really sorry for the short notice," Hazel added, with a glare at his sister.

The girl looked from them to the oven, and then to the unfinished android. She let out a hefty sigh.

"…Well, you're already here."

Her name was Linh Cinder, and she was not what Ginny had been expecting. She was small and wiry, and couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old. This was the person everyone in the market was complaining about? Still, with the way she pulled the back off the oven and inspected it, the twins weren't about to doubt Cinder's experience, and especially not in an emergency like this.

"The good news is that it can be fixed pretty easily," Cinder announced. Her head was still stuck halfway in the oven's belly. "Bad news is that you'll have to leave it with me till tomorrow morning. I have other commissions that are due today."

Ginny swore loudly. Cinder pulled her head out and raised her eyebrows. "What's the issue? You want it fixed, right?"

"Of course we do," Hazel answered hurriedly. "It's just…our boss isn't going to be happy about it, that's all."

"She's evil!" Ginny burst out. "I am literally stressed, constantly. Anything goes wrong in that fricking store, and suddenly we get pay cuts, we don't get tips for that day, she revokes our break privileges. If she finds out we screwed up her precious little oven, that could be it! We're done, we're fired, and then we're broke and have to haul back to Germany—"

"Nothing's going to happen," Cinder cut in smoothly.

Ginny broke off. "Excuse me?"

Cinder shrugged, and turned back to the oven. Her deft hands unscrewed a pipe, and it let out a long, low hiss. She let it pass before speaking again.

"Trust me, I have a pretty bad boss myself. She keeps making all these threats, like, 'I'm going to throw you out, Cinder!' or 'You'll be sleeping in the garage from now on, Cinder!' but she never follows through. I'm certain yours is all mouth."

Ginny and Hazel exchanged a questioning look.

"Honestly… I wish I could have your confidence," Hazel said.

"How long have you been working for this lady?"

"Four months now, I think."

"Well, there you go." Cinder turned and flashed them a grin. "By evil boss standards, that's a decent amount of time. If you haven't been fired by now, it's probably not going to happen."

The twins glanced at each other again.

"…I…guess," Ginny began, struggling to say it aloud, "if we got the oven fixed immediately, and we're paying for it ourselves…"

"…The witch can't really complain," Hazel finished.

Cinder stood and wiped her gloved hands on her pants. "Great! Maybe go back to work before you change your minds. Just come get it from me tomorrow morning and we can work out payment from there."

Ginny and Hazel walked back to the Lieblingessen in silence, until Ginny broke it, as she often did.

"…What even was that?"

"She's so confident," Hazel said in wonderment.

"She's a fricking motivational speaker. If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse her of having magic powers."

"I can't believe people are complaining about Cinder. Maybe they're just jealous?"

"Who knows?" Ginny kicked a rock. "It's probably not anything important."

A/N: Unedited from when I submitted it to the contest. 2000 words is not a lot to work with. Didn't win, but was still fun to write.