Chapter Eight:
Tinker
Sonic yawned widely despite himself, stuffing his wrist into his mouth to block it from any stray bugs or from loosing his half chewed treat. His ears flicked back a moment before picking up as he looked around the semi open market. It was something like a cross of a farmer's market and a store, some old and giant barn that had been converted. Sliding doors opened to a pumpkin patch and Christmas tree lot in the back. The former still being picked through and the latter having reluctant admires in adults, and dawning hope from children.
Even with the pouring rain just ten feet and a wall away from the anthro, he was surprised how many people were still braving the weather to be in this market, getting last season treats before the shift from fall to winter products. At the same time there wasn't too many people, letting Sonic adapt to being in normal human culture again (wait…normal?) and people watch the inhabitants as much as they were subtly and not so subtly watching him back.
In all honestly Sonic couldn't blame them, for one he was a five foot tall hedgehog built like a runner, but now he also understood dark indigo fur and quills weren't that normal naturally. For him yes, but not really in feral fur coats.
Sonic popped another handful of his munchies in his mouth and eyed the refrigerated display of meats, fish and dairy in front of him critically.
A thump of a bag in the basket he was leaning on made Sonic jump, then he picked up Jessy's sent (lavender, metal and tang of paint), relaxing the hedgehog turned to investigate the two new bags. "That's a lot of onions."
"Oh yeah, enough I can grab a few." Jessy chuckled and leaned over the basket, eyeing the bandages over fur. Checking to be sure all the movement Sonic was doing in the last few hours wasn't moving them out of place, "How are you holding up?" She asked, rubbing her left shoulder.
"About as well as you," The hedgehog said, tilting his head at the bags inside the large basket, "I thought you shouldn't be lifting things…"
Jessy shrugged, looking over the meats as well now, "yeah… mostly just using my right arm."
"Mostly." Sonic pointed out, one ear curving the right as he picked up a soft sound of small feet on the sawdust covered floor. The anthro looked over, then down with Jessy, who had learned just how sensitive those big ears where and now paid attention when Sonic did to something.
Jessy wasn't the only one to hear the gasp as a woman down the aisle realized her toddler son had wondered away to investigate the strange new person. No older than two or three at most, the boy reached out to touch the blue and brown anthro's leg. It shifted, and the boy giggled while Sonic stared down in surprise. His ears pricked all the way forward as he looked down, twitching his tail out of easy reach.
Emerald eyes softened as the slight tension in slender shoulder relaxed. Sonic crouched down on heels and offered his hand to the human child, watching with the same amount of fascination for the tiny human as the boy had for him. The hedgehog seemed transfixed at the small hand in his, gripping one finger while the other hand curiously touched the claws that hand been filed flat.
And eerie but peaceful calm seemed to grip all those in the Barn-Market, watching the innocence of youth meeting his first non-human being.
"Fuzzy!" The boy announced.
Sonic smiled, not showing teeth, "Yeah, I'm fuzzy."
"Fuzzy!" The child said again, and then hugged the blue arm, trying to snuggle against the hedgehog.
There was a small popping sound, as Jessy opened the cookie container and passed a brightly colored chocolate-rainbow cookie to Sonic. He took it and offered the two inch cookie to the toddler, and once distracted by needing both hands to hold the cookie, Sonic turn the boy around and gently pushed him back to his mother. The toddler burbled around his treat and his mother sighed, looking at the two her son had wondered too with relief and a friendly smile. Her fears had been the natural kind of a mother, nothing more.
"That was adorable," Jessy said, smiling and internally betting that interaction might be online on not just the local community social sites but a few bigger ones too. If not the Barn-Market's own website and on the wall of pictures on the east wall.
Oh well, there had been no harm.
"He was smaller than the girls at Red's…" Sonic marveled, using the basket that Jessy braced to help him back up right.
"We all start small." Jessy pointed out, getting another two cookies for them, aware of the boy still watching them, or rather Sonic as shopping continued.
"Yeah, I know, but not a lot of kids have been aloud around me other than just the two." Sonic shrugged, nibbling on his own cookie. "Anyways..."
Jessy looked back at him, then her eyes flicked over to the hedgehog, then pointed to the back near the sliding doors, "Can you pick out a few pumpkins?"
"How?" Sonic blinked, looking like a dear in the high beams, even as he was laughed at.
"Just pic out two or three that look pretty. I'll swing by back there in a few minutes." Jessy laughed leaving the basket with Sonic since he seemed to take an odd pleasure with the simple act of pushing it around. The mechanic was surprised that she had picked up on that so well from the anthro, but then he wasn't all that hard to read she found.
Shrugging, Jessy aimed for the yams while her current roommate migrated to the back, pausing every few steps to investigate each new fruit or vegetable he came across with curiosity that seemed to charm the Barn-Market owners. The woman picked through to find what seemed like a good three bags, getting a forth for her and Sonic and was eying the squash when a familiar set of voices, one in particular penetrated Jessy's concentration and meal plans. She paused with a potato in hand, looking at the palm sized root with a hope that she could hear was vain.
Go to the sandwich shop you idiot. Jessy thought to the joint parking lot, wondering what on earth Jason was doing on this side of the flood waters. She could hear her ex and his buddies as they piled out of whatever car or truck they had wedged themselves into. She knew they were here for the sandwich shop, it was that good and Jessy had been debating on treating Sonic to sharing one of the bigger ones.
Maybe not today…
Then she heard an exclamation as the man she really didn't want to meet as he spotted her distinctive tank of a pickup. Jessy turned, gave a small sigh that a display of corn stocks were blocking her from easy view, but the woman could look between the leaves. And she did, Jess keeping an eye on the three men as Jason waved his hands and pointed at the Monster, even trying to look under the hard cover over the bed, but that was locked.
"Oh that's it." Jessy growled as she spotted the small spray pain can being tossed to her ex. Movement had her looking to the side at the older, short red head woman that owned the market. "Sorry Marybeth, I'll pay for damages. But call the sheriff" Jessy said to the concerned woman before grabbing up another potato before stepping around the corn display and pitched the first potato just as James started to vandalize her truck.
Unaware of having the instant attention of the lone Anthro in the background, it was still a strange pleasure to see her ex getting beamed in the shoulder. "James Allen Wonderbuer!" Jessy yelled stalking over, "Get the hell away from Monster, or by Chaos I'll kick that bony butt of yours all the way back to Seattle from here."
"You bloody Tinker!" James yelled back, his 'i' in the word he started writing on the truck being all flubbed up now. Then he realized who was baring down on them. "You better watch yourself Tinker, I'll charge you with assault!"
"Oh no, you see, there's two cameras here," Jessy pointed back at the market, then sandwich shop, "I'm defending my property that you're vandalizing idiot."
James snorted, "Like you would, you ran from every fight with your tail between your legs when I graced you with a pity relationship! You're nothing but a mutt and sinking nomad!" He yelled, worked up like he had been riled before.
"Chaos James," Jessy realized as she came over, ignoring Dingo and the other man she didn't know. "You're drunk before noon now?" She rolled her eyes, "Go sleep it off in a ditch and wake up to a vandalizing charge."
"See! See! See!?" The man yelled, too caught up in his haze and whatever imagined rightechusness to fully realize what was happening around him. He threw the mini spray can at the woman, and it wasn't the best of throws, so it was easily dodge-able, but Jessy stay standing.
The mechanic closed her eyes as the can hit her, holding her breath to avoided most of the paint fumes. As the can clattered to the ground several things happened at once, Jessy looked down. Her favorite jacket now had a line of red on the front on the right side. The woman looked up and threw a punch at the same time a blue blurr of fur and furry impacted against the unknown man and sent him to the ground.
Sonic bristled, his quills flaring out to make the anthro look bigger, "That's enough!"
"What-" Dingo started, starting to move but unsure, he looked at the scuffle of James and Jessy not knowing what to do. He liked Jessy, she had always been a friend that was actually kind to him, even when the big man was working at a slower mental pace. He winced as the woman kneed James, then with the admittedly burned emotions of an insulted female, wedged the potato into James' mouth to keep him from talking.
"Jessy?" Sonic asked, standing on the third man to keep him down, eyeing Dingo and ready to leap into action again.
"He's down," The mechanic debated kicking but took the higher road and let James just whimper around his new gag and curl up on the ground. She moved over and caught the taller blond by the ear, using her nails.
"Ow! Owowowow!" Dingo complained but he still wasn't acting hostile at all.
"Darian Dingo." The woman scowled as she led the man by the ear to the bench as a police car came into the parking lot. "You're Nana will be so ashamed of you! I heard you promise you wouldn't be hanging around that jerk. Drunk before noon, Chaos! Have you been drinking in the morning? You know I have to tell your Nana about this? And your sister!"
Sonic arched and eye ridge and flicked his ears at that, watching where he had shifted to sitting on the truck hood instead of standing on the human when he first caught a glimpse of that blue and white car. He watched in some bemusement as Dingo wilted and tried to be small, and Sonic felt sorry for the guy. Identifying someone who had been taken advantage, and wondering why Jessy was scolding him so much.
It wasn't until things were sorted that he got it. James [potato and all] and the other man were arrested. Jessy and Sonic had witnesses on their side, the whole thing on video. Dingo was scolded by the Sharif, who knew him and then again by the young woman, ending up being Dingo's younger sister. She herded him into own car, after Making Dingo apologize to everyone effected
"Dingo's a good kid," Jessy explained checking the cosmetic damage on her truck, "Just…slow in the head…"
"I picked that up," Sonic said settling down after rearranging his nest of pillows on his side of the cab. "He was being taken advantage of, the human, man, wasn't just lost when I was nose to chest with him."
The hedgehog paused waiting until Jessy was in and leaving the market, having to that little boy.
"Jessy?" Sonic asked one he sensed she was calmed down again.
"Hmm?" Jessy glanced over, blue eyes meeting green.
"What is a Tinker?" the hedgehog asked hesitantly.
Jessy closed her eyes for a moment, only because they were at a stop sign. Listening to the rain on the roof, and the grumble of the engine were familiar and relaxing. "Its... in the context used today, it's a rather nasty insult to those of the Nomadic Nations."
"Oh..." Sonic thought about it, watching as they passed a block. Then the hedgehog moved over to press his left shoulder to Jessy's right. "Well, whatever the history, I think you're way past cool Jessy."
The mechanic grinned and bumped Sonic back, "So are you Sonic."
"Of course I am! But I'm willing to share my awesomeness with you."
"So subtle that."
"Subtle?" Sonic snorted, "Wasn't aiming for it in the least."
Jessy gave the anthro that was now lounging on her side a look and rolled her eyes.