Snippet #2770394

"Of course I have a soldering iron and tin solder," Julius said, beaming at Drax and laughter on the brink, elated at the prospect of learning something new. There had been no expectation beyond him maybe taking the work. "Are you sure? Never mind, pretend I didn't ask. You can't take it back now, we've got a verbal agreement with witnesses."

Drax suggested a dry run on the fringe of the Veins. If Julius wasn't an adult with responsibilities, it would have been a great opportunity to lurk and watch them in action. All the appeal of a spectator sport, with no ticket charge. Unfortunately, REPAIR was a 24/7 operation, just like the laundromat and diner it crouched between. Had been since the beginning, and Julius hadn't changed that when the old man died. Sure, the doors were locked at night, but Julius slept in a closet off the workroom, and there was a buzzer. The intention was to offer a discreet clinic for cyborg clients. It turned out plenty of humans saw that sign as a challenge to bring in their crap too broken for a pawn shop at 3 AM. It was harder, with the old man gone, to catch up on sleep after a busy night. Harder too to close the shop on short notice.

Before Julius had quite made the escape from the rest of the party, Fade delivered his philosophical expose. It was stunning. Literally. Julius felt paralyzed by the notion he'd said all that in a bar sober, and that he'd said what sounded frighteningly like insurrectionist rhetoric in an obscenely educated voice. There was really no making sense of it. Or him.

Unless he was a plant. Julius wouldn't put it past the wizards to make a golem to discover the identities of their enemies without risking their own skins. Shoddy job making their spy blend in. Which was good enough reason to dismiss the budding suspicion. With their own lives at stake, their magic construct would be flawless, not sheepishly getting heckled for sounding like a knob.

Even so, his words were confusing on another front. What was he getting at? His answer had been so far removed from the question in the conversation, Julius wasn't connecting the two.

Drax grabbed his drink, and Julius used his momentum to escape.

On the street, Julius turned to Drax, touching his arm to get his attention before they headed to REPAIR. Julius heard a light clink, and found Stanley was touching Drax's prosthetic arm. Yeah, chances were good he couldn't feel that. Embarrassed to have forgotten, Julius buried traitor hands back into the depths of the coat pockets, and said, "On second thought, my soldering iron is lower wattage, so I don't crisp an electronic panel, and I use a lead-based solder with rosin core. Between lead poisoning and the low melting point? My client would be worse off than where we started. Even if my toolkit looks like yours, it was never designed for this."