Sera’s fingers deftly flicked over a neatly organized row of flat mana batteries, tilting each forward as if she were browsing old discs. Each tipped over with a quiet click, one after another, in an almost perfect rhythm interrupted only briefly from time to time as she paused to check the model numbers that were close to the one she was looking for.
Come on, come on. She knew there was one in here somewhere. She didn’t even get it that long ago! Pulled it from a scrapped phone herself! She knew she hadn’t sold it or used it in any repairs, so where is— Ah!
Here it is, the one she’d been looking for: the LG-38. On the older side, but still serviceable. And since most people in Springwater tended to not be able to afford regular upgrades on their devices, she had a habit of keeping such things in stock when she could. It wasn’t her first choice of battery to use in her personal projects, but when you’re just looking for something that’ll fit in your old phone, you couldn’t exactly be picky.
Delicately retrieving the battery between two fingers, she stood. And now for her least favorite part: dealing with the customer. She took a deep breath — one partially restricted by the respirator she was too lazy to remove — and let it all out at once before turning around to face her counter. And her customer.
“Found it,” she announced, her voice muffled by the respirator, holding the battery up in plain sight. “LG-38, right? Have a look.” And then, with one final ‘click,’ she set the battery down on the counter. Conduit side up to avoid any kinks.
In front of her now stood a Faun. That is, a goat-person. He had the head and upper torso of a human, but the waist and legs of a goat, with curled horns and floppy ears atop his head. His hair was dark, short, and curly, with fur to match, though the latter was mostly hidden by his jeans. He looked to be a bit younger than Sera — perhaps in his early twenties or maybe even late teens. Honestly, it was hard to tell with some of these humanoid races. They tended to age pretty slowly compared to Humans.
“Oh, great, excellent,” the goat-man took the battery with relative clumsiness, turning it over a few times in his hands to examine it, a grin creeping across his face. “Yes, yes, this is it! Yer a lifesaver, miss Sera. I really didn’t wanna make a trip into the city.”
There was a pause. The Faun’s grin gradually faded into a more timid smile. And he sprang the hard question. “So, um. How much is it?”
Sera didn’t begrudge him for asking The Question, but it was by far her least favorite question to answer. Of course he needs to know how much it costs, but people are never happy to hear the price of these kinds of things. Do they know how hard it is to find these? To pull them out of their devices without causing a horrible mana leak? She can’t order it in bulk, you know!
Truthfully, she knew how much it would cost off the top of her head. But after a few bad encounters with customers accusing her of trying to rip them off, she’d made a habit of keeping a pricing sheet so they knew she wasn’t just making the price up on the spot. And when she called it a ‘pricing sheet,’ she meant a ‘pricing binder’ that was full of sheets.
Wordlessly, Sera opened said binder, which was chained to the counter, opening it to a tab labeled ‘BATTERIES’ in rough handwriting, revealing a printed table with scribbled notes all down its rows and columns. One finger guided her gaze down the rows, while the other hand was occupied blocking out light that filtered in through smoothed chunks of colored glass she had arranged in the windowsill in a meager attempt at decoration.
“The model LG-38 battery, good condition,” she mumbled just loud enough for the Faun to hear. She reached the bottom, flipped the page, and then again. Until she finally ‘found’ the proper entry on her list. The original price was scratched out, having been adjusted at least once in the past.
“Five thousand credits,” she stated as she turned the binder around for the customer to see, finger resting on the line above it to draw his attention towards the number that had clearly been written in long before he came around asking about it. “It’s been getting hard to find stock lately.
“F-five thousand!?” The Faun stepped back, hoof beating down against the floor. Sera hardly reacted. That was about the response she expected. The customer took a moment to let the information soak in, and then noticeably drooped forward. “Aw, man. Maybe it’s just time to get a new phone.”
She felt bad for him. Really, she did. But the prices were as they were for a reason. If she sold it much cheaper than that, she’d be losing money. She leaned forward, resting her arms on the counter, her expression being more or less hidden by the respirator.
“Look at it this way,” she offered. “A new phone is going to cost you at least two or three hundred thousand. Plus, you’d have to head into the city. Or pay for a courier. This battery should last you a good few years. Use that time to save up for a new phone.”
Whether he took the offer or not was no major concern of hers. This was her honest, genuine advice; she wasn’t in the habit of trying to weasel money out of people. Honestly, she barely made any money off the sale of parts. She’d rather use them for repairs! But she sold them because enough people knew how to run basic maintenance on their devices. Like swapping out a phone battery.
The Faun stared longingly at the battery in his hands, working through his options. Buy the battery and have his phone working later today? Or order a new phone for several times the cost and wind up having to wait possibly up to a week for a courier to make their way here from the city.
Finally, he let out a sigh.
“Yeeaaah, you’re right. I guess I waited too long to come asking about it, huh?” The goat-man laughed with a somewhat pained expression on his face, then reached into his jeans pocket to produce his wallet. And dug into that for his credit card.
“Happens to the best of us,” Sera replied, offering an apologetic smile from behind her respirator. “If you want me to, I can keep an eye out for a used phone you could look at? I usually shred them for parts, but if you’re in the market for one…” As she spoke, she a hand into her own jeans pocket to find her phone. Equipped with a short range, wireless reader so she could accept payments.
“Oh, that’d be great!” The Faun beamed as he offered his card forward, held firmly between his fingertips. “Just, uh, it might be a while before I can afford it.”
“No worries.” Sera tapped away at her phone to enter the price and other basic details, then held it out to his card. After a beep confirmed the transaction, she withdrew her phone and tucked it away into her pocket once more. They exchanged thank-yous and you’re-welcomes, Sera collected the man’s name and number to contact him later if a potential phone ever came through her store, and he left. Satisfied, but certainly with an aching wallet.
All things considered, this was a mostly unremarkable encounter in her store. The townsfolk of Springwater came by whenever they needed something magitech-oriented. She was, after all, the only magitechnician in town. Later that day, an adventurer marched into the store with purpose, eager to sell his haul from the nearby ruins. A hobbyist she had seen often meandered in, looking for parts to use for their latest experiment. Mister Odell, the general store owner from down the street, dropped off one of his refrigerator units for repair. Interspersed between these, she’d spend time at her work bench either repairing something for one client or another or trying to fashion something useful out of the bits of scrap she didn’t imagine anyone else wanting.
The traffic was beginning to slow down for the day. She’d managed to get a good deal of time at her bench — enough time that she’d nearly lost track of time. A half-eaten sandwich and a glass of water sat neglected off to the side of the work surface, a meal she’d forgotten to finish.
She only noticed it again when she heard the bell over the shop door jingle. Oh well, she’ll just have to finish it after handling this customer. Probably the last one for the day, anyway. She stood from her bench, patted her hands off against her pants, and then turned to step through the door into the shop’s main room.
“Welcome,” she started. “Can I help with anything in parti…cu…lar… o-or, um, oh…”
Her well-practiced greeting fell short as she saw who— or possibly what— was entering her store. The door still open, a billowing mass of gray-ish, black-ish appendages writhing their way into the building. A being so large that it seemed like there was no possible way it could fit through the door— and yet, it did. With ease.
The central body was globular, or perhaps slug-like, dotted with tiny black orbs that she could only assume were eyes. Or some manner of equivalent. Some of which were darting about the surface of the entity, others were fixated strongly on her. The body itself was much larger than herself, and seemed to be squishing itself downward to avoid the ceiling.
The many ‘arms’ of the creature, held as close to its bulk as it could evidently manage, were smooth in appearance and glistening. Their outer sides shimmered and danced with the light of deep water, rippling and shimmering with a soft but deep blue glow. The appendages themselves varied in size and shape, even among the same ones over time. It made counting the number of limbs quite difficult.
Eventually, the entirety of the creature fit its way into the store, the door swinging closed. And not a single shelf, display, or item disturbed by its presence. Without needing to turn in any particular direction, all of the sensory nodes on the creature’s surface swiveled around to face Sera, watching her expectantly.
She felt uneasy. Not entirely sure what she was looking at. But that wouldn’t stop her from maintaining her professional demeanor.
“Oh, um, w-welcome. How can I help you?” she managed, finding her eyes exploring the entity’s form. She’d never seen anything like it before. The skin dark, but iridescent. The lights reminding her of the sea, even though she’d never been there. She noticed the creature shrink back, the edges of those patches of bioluminescence shifting from deep blue to an almost purple color.
She patiently gave her new customer a moment, unsure what to expect. Evidently, they couldn’t speak, as their next action involved presenting her with a hefty device, retrieved from somewhere within that shifting mass. A magitech engine, by the looks of it. From a bike, maybe? Regardless, It was placed on her counter top as gently as the creature could manage, barely making a noise as it did.
The creature then swayed and gestured, its colored lights returning to that pleasant blue, the ends of its tendrils flaring expressively. Sera wasn’t sure what to make of this attempt at communication. Well, there were really only two options here, weren’t there?
“You, um, want me to repair this?” she ventured a guess. The lights flickered briefly with a yellow-amber color, and the creature swayed in an up-and-down movement. A strangely pleasant hissing noise could be heard coming from the main body somewhere, but she couldn’t spot a mouth of any sort. “Sure, I can do that. I’ll need some time to diagnose, then I can get back to you.”
She paused. Wait, if they couldn’t talk… “Can you text? Using a phone?”
More golden lights, another dramatic nod. A clearly deliberate movement.
“Good. That’ll make this easier,” Sera spoke as she opened an old filing cabinet, leafing through the papers inside with barely trembling hands. Why is she reacting this way? They’re clearly not a threat. Finding the form she wanted, she set it on the counter along with a pencil from a nearby cup. “Here. Fill this out. If you need me to explain any of it, just point, okay?”
With another golden acknowledgment, the creature got to work. One tendril reached up to take hold of the pencil, another gently pinning down the paper, both tapering off quite thin to make handling such small things much easier. Sera watched its ‘eyes’ scanning the sheet with curiosity, and then its tendrils writing out things like contact information and what was wrong with the engine.
She found herself calming down as she did. Just another person. Right? She couldn’t begin to say how many people she’d seen hunched over that very counter filling out that very form in basically the same way.
The lights most of all caught her attention. They’d returned to that deep blue, becoming almost more solid as the creature became more focused on its form-filling. Sera tilted her head this way and that in almost amusement. That is, until she spotted one of those sensory nodes turned in her direction. She caught herself, trying to look more professional once more.
The lights flashed purple again, then green, there was another hiss. And then the pencil was placed down, the paper pushed gently towards her. She picked it up, and read it over to make sure everything was there.
Not only was it there, it was in neat, well-practiced handwriting. Much nicer than hers, anyway. Her eyebrows raised as she read over the form. Bike engine, used by one of the city’s Peacekeepers. It seemed this new customer of hers had been contracted to help the settlement’s Peacekeepers with things, which included lugging big items like this around.
Afterward were the creature’s phone number, place of residence (which, she noticed, was just listed as ‘Warehouse B’), and finally a name.
‘Voss.’
A strangely human name, she thought, but maybe that was just for practicality. She doubted whatever their birth name was would be pronounceable by anyone outside of their species, anyway.