Chapter 5: Working at the Workshop

After convincing Livre to let him help around the shop in exchange for a toy in stock, Carman walked back to his hideout. Looking up at the sky he was surprised by how much time had passed as it felt like it was the afternoon just a few moments ago. Carman was exhausted from acting like a child, but it was better in his opinion to dumb down his intelligence and maturity unless someone finds it suspicious.

Getting back to his little hole in the wall, Carman sat down on the bundle of cussions he called his bed and went to sleep for the night.

Waking up the next morning, Carman gathered his daily necessities and left the hideout. Walking towards the workshop, he passed a few men as he turned to the side street and continued walking to his destination. Arriving at Livre's workshop he entered and rang the bell again and waited for Livre to come out.

"Please wait a moment dear customer, I'll be out in a moment, do not rush me lest I be crushed by... Hysterical Hilichurls!"

Hearing a bunch of thuds followed by an odd utterance regarding hilichurls, Carman carefully walked around the desk and through a doorway into the backroom of the workshop. Following the sounds of shifting metal and cursing Carman located Livre in what looked to be a storage room. Livre seemed to have knocked over a few boxes of various supplies and was digging himself out of a pile of gears.

Quickly moving to his side, Carman helped Livre lift some of the bigger gears off and pulled him out.

"Ah so it was you, sorry you had to come and rescue me, I was just visited by some fellows and had to get parts I need for a few orders ready since the deadline is coming up. I swear I told my brother to help organize back here, but as you can see, notuch has been done."

Carman nodded while looking around the disheveled storeroom, he felt his eye twitch as he looked at the haphazardly placed boxes and schematics laying on the ground.

"I've been meaning to get everything sorted but since I need funds to return the loan I took to open up shop, I haven't had time to optimize the placement for everything yet."

Livre noticed Carman's eye twitching and said "to think even a child would be annoyed by the state of this room. Come to think of it, I agreed to let you work here temporarily yesterday didn't I? Would you mind helping sort all the small stuff, don't bother trying to lift the heavy boxes and gears, I don't want you to hurt yourself."

Carman nodded and started making a beeline towards a broom and started sweeping up all the small gears off of the ground. After he got all of them into a pile, he took a few boxes and started sorting them by type some gears were the size of a tick, some were bigger close to an adult's fingernail in diameter. There were gears with rectangular teeth, some whose teeth were rounded, and others had slanted teeth.

Initially, Livre watched Carman work, interested in seeing how well he could tidy up and was surprised to see that Carman noticed the difference between the gears and cared enough to keep them separate. In his opinion most kids wouldn't have noticed a difference and even if they did they would likely just toss them into the same box. Figuring that Carman had everything settled, he left the room with the parts he needed and walked to the workroom to do some assembly on his commissions.

After spending an hour sorting all of the gears into sepperate boxes, Carman walked over to the schematics that had fallen on the floor, he noticed that several of them had notes scrawled on the side denoting who had commissioned each machine detailed on the schematics.

Uncrumpling one of the schematics which seemed to be the one that caused Livre to slip and fall he came face to face with what seemed to be an older version of the dog modeled gardemeks.

After sorting through the schematics, placing the ones with future completion dates on a stack of crates close to the door, Carman looked over the schematics, hoping to learn more about the intricacies of clockwork machines.

Most of the designs flew over his head apart from basic mechanisms such as the use of Ousia and Pneuma infused parts or canisters to generate rotational force similar to how electricity could be used in electrical motors. Pneuma and Ousia, when smashed together at certain ratios caused varing amounts of energy to be released, there were cores that used this energy to turn water into steam which was used to power the various Meka.

Knowing that Indemnitium would eventually be replaced he skipped over the parts of the schematics that included power cores running off of it. Delivering into the details of the schematics and trying to understand their principles, Carman lost track of time and his surroundings and was surprised when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"If I didn't already know I don't pose a threat to any big wigs of my line of business I would have thought you were a spy looking at those schematics with that intensity." Livre said with a kind smile.

"If you are that into clockwork mechanics I could talk to you about the principles behind these creations, but I'll want you to work for me when you grow up since this information wasn't cheap for me to learn either. Normally you'd have to attend a medium to high class school and then get into the Fontaine Research Institute to learn about some of these components."

Livre was shocked by the conviction Carman had on his face as he nodded his head in understanding. "When can I start?" Asked Carman in a serious tone.

Livre, surprised yet again by Carman's certainty said,"well, I guess since you've cleaned up most of this room already, I could take you back to the main work area. So long as you don't touch anything I can explain anything you might have questions about."

Carman followed Livre to the back of the store where a cramped workroom was located again there was tools strewn all over the place, tables, shelves, the floor, and even on top of some mekas in various state of construction.

Seeing a humanoid gardemek laying on the main work table, Carman walked over to it and inspected the components he could see from the places where its armor plating had been removed.

"Ah figures you'd be drawn to one of those, seeing as they are almost everywhere in this city. Not so scary now that is laying down right?" Livre asked.

"While I understand the idea on making it so intimidating for catching criminals, their appearance does tend to scare kids, and yet they also use these mekas to search and catch lost or runaway children." Livre continued.

"I was actually wondering where it does it's thinking, and how it can see."

"Ah, well to start these machines don't think the same way you or I normally do, they have an area here," Livre pointed at the gardemek's chest,"that basicly has a series of dos and don'ts that the meka has to follow, this includes the laws of Fontaine and what the Meka is allowed to do when it sees someone break the law. As for the second part of your question, I am not really sure myself, all I know is that the component was developed by a person from the Institute when they took part in an exchange program at the Akademiya in Sumaru."

Continuing to talk with Livre for a while, asking a few questions. Which elicited answers longer than Carman could have expected, Livre eventually informed Carman of his need to return to work in order to meet his deadlines. He stated that Carman could stay and watch if he wanted, but that Livre didn't have much for him to do at the moment.

Not having anything better to do with his time, Carman sat on a crate and watched Livre work. When it was heading towards evening, Livre was pulled away from his work from his work hearing a stomach growling behind him.

Turning around he saw a slightly embarrassed Carman, "you've been here this long, don't you have...." Realizing what he was about to say, Livre stoped in the middle of his sentence. "I don't think I've seen or heard you eat anything all day, come on, let's go out, as your boss, I'll treat you for your first day of work."

Carman was hesitant to follow Livre at first, but the offer for freshly cooked food that he didn't have to hunt or scavange for and Livre's nagging eventually broke down his resistance.

-Semi Livre's Pov-

Carman followed Livre to an outdoor cafe where Livre ordered a few light dishes for both of them, a bottle of sunsettia juice for Carman and and a coffee for himself. He watched amusidly as Carman did his best to maintain his manners while devouring the food in front of him.

Vaguely Livre pondered if this was what a father would be like, he had never been in a serious relationship before having mostly devoted himself to his dream of opening a clockwork toy store. He thought that seeing the smiles on kids faces, but having hung out with Carman all day and interacted him similar to how Livre did when he visited his father's work when he was little, Livre didn't think that being a father himself was a bad idea.

-Carman's POV-

Having finished his meal, Carman helped tidy up, and said his goodbyes to Livre as they went their sepperate ways. Carman had been out in the open longer than he had liked, however it didn't seem like anyone had been paying him or Livre any attention. Still being careful to avoid being followed to his home, Carman made it back safe and sound.

Wriggling through the crack and I to the room, Carman used a burnt pice of wood to write a few notes on a misprinted steambird paper being sure to write down the key mechanics he had learned from Livre durring the time they spent together.

Finishing that task, Carman finally went to sleep for the night.

-to be continued.