CHAPTER 9

It's What You Need

John hated weekends, especially Saturdays. There were always too many people out and about for their own good. Everyone pushing, shoving, yelling, and slowly walking to their destinations, is all to obnoxious for John to handle. It seemed to be worst at the market place than in his own office with Charleson and Jordan duking it out. This Saturday was specially crowded as if the entire city got out of their houses just to annoy him. John would usually send Benjamin out on these little market trips, but he needed to run a few errands which would give him the perfect excuse to go to the Library for archives. Unfortunately, errands come before paperwork, so John had to make a few stops before his visit to the Library. He needed to go to the tailor's and get a new uniform fitted, and he also needed to go pay the bill for his car which he recently got out of the garage. Along with his own errands, the Victorian sisters decided to add a couple places to the list. One of these stops was a black smith.

The mechanic was located at the far end of the square, a little out of the ways of the fancy china shops. It was a dark broken down shack. John saw the irony and didn't like it. As they approached the shack, they noticed that several people stood outside of it waiting in a line. They held many different obscure objects that had nuts and bolts hanging out of the sides. Everyone had to break everything today. John took the girls and stood in the back of the line. The line shrank really fast. A lot of the people who walked into the store were immediately kicked right back out on the curb. Only a selected few got into the shop and got what they needed. This made John a little nervous. If the shop owner was that picky of who he serves, the Victorians might not even make it to the door. Before long they were next in line. The man before them with a broken axil sat on the ground in front of the door rubbing his sore butt. Landings were never generous.

The three of them stepped into the dimly lit shop. It was cluttered with dangerously low hanging ceilings which made Fernandina have to crouch to fit in the room. Several fires blazed in the back of the store with a different amount of metal ore in them. A tall thick figure stood behind the flames hammering away at the reddened metal, trying to morph it into a stake. John approached the figure, cautiously and cleared his throat with a strong hum. The Black smith spun around whipping the hammer at her customer. It hit the wall not five centimeters from his head. John's eyes narrowed.

"I am Colonel John Low," he introduced them, not ripping his eyes off of the mechanic. "These are the Victorians; Riven and her younger sister Fernandina. They need a couple of things." There was a long pause as the four of them stood glaring at each other, as if dominance would declare itself. The Black Smith gave a harsh chuckle as it's figure moved out of the shadows towards its customers. The figure's once thick looking shadow turned out to be a strongly built woman. Her long black hair was tied up underneath a blue bandana and her hands were covered in large fireproof gloves.

"Let me guess," she said a little too harsh for their taste. "Miss Tin Can over here wants a magical shield to match her golden attire. Or maybe she wants some extra trims for her thick helmet." The Smith chuckled sarcastically at them. "I don't do that around here so you might as well leave. I don't give anything that people don't need." As she turned around to go back to her metal work Fernandina held her hands up to flag her down.

"Oh, No!" Fernandina panicked as she tried to lure the black smith back to them. "I'm not the one who needs the repairs!" The mechanic stopped in her tracks and turned around, her eyebrow raised at an angle. John did the same. He was positive that Fernandina was the one who needed the repairs because she always wore all of that metal. Fernandina pointed down to her older sister to answer their unasked questions. "Riven is the one who needs them, not me," her sheepish voice answered.

"And what do you need little girl?" she asked Riven sharply. Her tone only slightly improved.

"a can of oil," Riven retorted checking the smith up and down.

"For what?"

"If we can talk in private, I will show you," she said not without her sly smile creeping onto her face. The smith looked almost taken aback by this but after seeing that the little white haired girl was serious she gave a little snort.

"Come with me." The black Smith led Riven back behind a tattered curtain to the back room, leaving her sister and the Colonel in the shop. It was a dark room, just like the first, but smaller. It had a small round table and a couple stools around it. The smith motioned for Riven to sit, and she obeyed. The stool creaked as she sat down, but so did the rest of the house. The Smith sat down across from her and pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The tip of it casted a small light across her face through the dusty room. After a few puffs and a stream of eerie silence, the smith looked up.

"So, show me," she ordered. Riven immediately kicked her left leg up on an adjacent stool, ignoring the loud screams it made which obviously startled the smith, and pulled up her bulky pant leg. The auto mail caught every beam of light in the room and absorbed its gleams making the cool silver metal shimmer even in the dusty room. The mechanic picked her foot up so suddenly Riven was almost tipped off of her stool. She studied the leg in utter amazement, not tearing her eyes off of the intricate design for once second. Nearly twenty minutes passed while the girl was examining her automail leg until she finally spoke.

"You don't want oil," the smith stated plainly. "You absolutely need it. How did you let your own limbs get into such bad condition, I don't know, and I frankly don't care, but you absolutely must get something to lube them up." She put Riven's leg down and rummaged through a few cabinets behind her. Several bottles of fresh automail oil were pulled out and set on the table. The Black smith, to Riven's surprise, started to oil her leg with the lubricant. After a couple of seconds went by, Riven pulled her sleeve up and started to apply oil to that herself. This only caught the slightest attention of the black smith, but she paid no heed to it as she finished up with her leg. When the fresh smell of oil hung in their lungs, Riven tested out her freshly lubed limbs. They didn't scream, or even whisper a word to her as she swung them around.

"Wow. I should get these things oiled more frequently," Riven said amazed at the ease she moved with. "Do you think I could buy some oil to go so I could do this at home?"

"You better," she replied tartly. "I sure as hell am not going to be doing this every Saturday." The smith rummaged through the cabinets again and pulled out several more bottles of oil and handed them to Riven. "Here you go. That's enough to last until Christmas. Apply it once a week, unless the weather is wet then make it twice or three times a week. I will only charge you for the stuff you are taking home. The lube is on the house."

"Thank you!" Riven said, but the black smith just glared at her.

"Don't you dare expect this act of kindness. It is just business. I supply people what they need, not what they want," she threatened and pushed Riven towards the door. Just as they were about to pass through to the other room, she pulled the white haired girl back in for a second. "Don't mind me asking, but how did someone like you end up with a pair of those?" Riven was taken aback by this and started to fumble with words.

"It…it was …." she started but then stopped to think. The black smith caught something flicker through the girl's eyes. Immense sorrow. She knew the feeling too well. The black smith just gave a reassuring pat on the back.

"It's okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but if you ever want to talk just tell me." Just then the she lifted up her own pant leg to reveal a small shimmer of metal. Before Riven could say anything, she used the delay of shock to push the girl through the doorway into the main room where her friends were waiting.

"Did everything turn out okay?" the Colonel asked the two of them suspiciously. Riven just held up the cans of oil and nodded, still a little shocked about what happened. After they paid for everything, the three customers headed for the door of the shop. Riven lagged behind and paused at the door to look back at the smith who was starting up her wielding.

"What's your name?" she asked quietly, but she didn't look up from her work. With only the sound of clashing metal to follow her out the door, Riven made her exit.

Sorry it took a while to get this thing up. This is only a section out of their market day. I might edit a little bit just to make this chapter run a little smoother, but this is the basics of the plot. Nothing will change that. The reason why I couldn't post this sooner was because I was running. Literally. For ten miles. So y'all can guess that I am absolutely exhausted. I will try to get a few more chapters up by the end of the week.

stay fresh y'all