Jessica13 shrugged and took her tools out the mech. "Do we have a deal…"
"Caysom," the man said and pushed the pump she had noticed forward on his table. "And we do have a deal."
It was simple enough. The catalyzers were inverted, which meant the cells at the top collected solar power but there was nowhere for it to go. She quickly opened the device and inverted the wiring. Without asking, she leaned over and picked up one of the batteries that lacked charge, connected the two, and put the converter into the sun.
A few seconds ticked past before the battery indicated that it had some charge.
"Well, I'll be fucked." Caysom uttered a somewhat forced chuckle. "I think I could have done it myself."
"Why didn't you?" she asked, placed both battery and the converter on the man's table, and took her fuel pump.
"Oh…well, I didn't think to, is all," he replied, but he sounded a little distracted as if his mind wasn’t completely on the conversation. "You have a keen mind for this. Can I spread the word about your skills to see if you can't fix something for folks? Those who can pay, of course."
"Feel free. I'm around for as long as I'm welcome," Jessica13 said with a small smile, connected the pump to the back of her Minato, and clamped it magnetically. The Beast always needed new fuel pumps, at least until Tinker could find a way to connect the dozens of reactors he had on hand to help it move. Something that large almost always needed combustion engines unless it was an Excalibur.
Tinker would appreciate the part, anyway.
She drifted through the town as casually as possible and a couple more men and women at their stalls called out to her. The first three didn't know who she was and demanded similar performances on smaller devices that needed attention, for which she demanded equally small payment. After that, her reputation spread and those who needed something repaired began to seek her out with parcels of food or parts they were willing to trade in exchange for her services.
Jessica13 would have preferred to simply sneak through the town and learn what she could. She’d never really needed to resort to subterfuge—her escape from Sanctuary was really the first time she’d stooped to it—and she constantly felt that unseen eyes watched her or that others would discover her real purpose. Common sense reminded her that being seen as merely another peddler looking to unload her wares and pick up a few more before moving to the next town made her as invisible as she could hope for. She even had to admit that sneaking would probably be more stressful, although it would have the advantage that there’d be no delays.
Her fears remained but were offset a little by the realization that she was helping these people in the only real way she knew how. It made her feel better, given that her real reason was to gather information, which felt a little dishonest. Besides, as she’d mentioned to her teammates, while she helped to repair their items, they talked to her. She was a little challenged by the fact that folks expected peddlers to peddle not only wares, tools, and services, but also information from the Outside. There weren't too many who wanted to wander, and those who did were usually in possession of a variety of choice news that could be shared with the others.
Thankfully, she had a good memory and was able to share snippets she’d heard from the other Knights and substitute real news with a story or two. Mostly, she tried to think ahead and ask a question or two that might start them talking rather than looking to her to do so.
She settled in to help to fix one of the desalination stations that had been set up around the town and one of the young women who did some of the fetch and carry tasks began to talk.
"It’s been a while since we had rain," she said. "Which is a pity. It makes us more and more reliant on the water coming from the tower."
Jessica13 glanced instinctively at the trail of smoke that still rose from the burning building at the top of the hill, but the woman gestured quickly at the concrete tower they had noted when they first approached Auburn. She seemed as little inclined to look at the hill as everyone else, and her expression seemed a little tenser than before.
"What makes you reliant on it?" Jessica13 asked casually and resumed work on the desalinator. Heat was collected to boil the water to separate it from the elements that it might have been mixed with.
"Well, the admins there make the water run around these parts," the woman said and seemed a little more relaxed. She leaned in to watch as the copper piping was positioned where the slow flames would boil and clean the water they either brought up from the ground or collected from the rain. It was a crude, inefficient system, but it was all they had to work with.
Jessica13 looked up from her work and narrowed her eyes at the younger woman. "I don't know much about that. How do they make the water run?"
"Well, they call it the Hoot Bunker," the girl said and frowned slightly. "You know, after Lady Hoot? The lass with the big fuckin' mech and the owl on her helm."
"Oh, right." She grunted. "Lady Hoot. So she controls how the water comes around here?"
The girl nodded. "She controls the rain in these parts and says that if we don't give her the best of our crops, she won't send the prayers to the sky with her name and the Prophet won't make it rain for us.” Her tone had a slightly resentful edge that belied the
