Corvayne, Wick, and her large friend carrying two muggers stopped a couple of blocks down the street at a building where two large men in coveralls were playing cards under an awning. The huge fellow with the thugs over his shoulders just sort of grunted and dropped them onto the pavement before the two card players. Wick pointed at the two prone forms.
“We found the guys who were robbing people. Corvayne here, new to town, took both of them out barehanded. Not even a SCRATCH on him!”
The two card players looked at each other and one smiled at Corvayne. “Good job. We upstanding folk gotta look out for each other.”
“All in a day's work my good man.” He added the theatrical voicing that a proper bandit prince might take.
The talkative one turned to Wick. “We'll let the boss know it's taken care of.” Then he turned and nodded to the big guy. “Good to see you Grunt.”
The large man pretended to tip his hat twice.
“Oh yeah Corvayne, this is Grunt. Notice how happy he looks?”
Now that she mentioned it, the glare he had was sort of... happy? Friendly?
“A pleasure Sir Grunt.”
Grunt offered his hand, palm open, and Corvayne had pause and stare at the hand for two seconds to process that someone wanted to shake his hand. He almost leapt forward to put both hands around Grunt's sausage fingers and shake hands with someone for the first time.
“Now that your all introduced... Grunt this guy says he needs a job..."
Grunt nodded, then pointed at Corvayne and put his hand on his chin for maybe a second, then gave Wick a nod.
“Wow... just like that?” Wick took a step back to look at Grunt.
Grunt pointed at his eyes, his head, then his chest. Corvayne was interested in how dedicated he was to either grunting or saying nothing at all. If that was the case he might have to get good at charades very quickly.
Wick turned to Corvayne. “He thinks you'd be perfect.”
“Oh, is it a problem I don't have any of the things you need to get a job? Like an ID?”
Grunt just motioned for him to follow, and so Wick came with them as they started making their way down the dimly lit street. What Corvayne noticed during the walk was that the pair he was with were well known. A few people walking into a rare neon lit building on the street waved and said hi to them. A lot of people knew her name, and a few also knew Grunt's name.
The three of them walked six blocks to stand in front of a a white corrugated steel building labelled 'BRINES' in red paint. It was surrounded by a barb wire topping a short stone wall and sharing it's block with what looked like another factory or warehouse. If he had to guess, the building was about six stories tall. Outside of the wall was flat cracked concrete all around and a dingy bus stop with spray paint caking it... well graffiti caked everything around here. Besides the two large buildings on this block, he could see further brick buildings with faded paint stretching back in the direction of the city. The warehouse was across the street from either a river or a bay with an empty lot buffering the dark water. There was a huge factory a mile distant on the water with furious orange lights and smoke steaming from it. Even with the open water to the side he still felt boxed in by thick girders holding up the train tracks. Those tracks were a hundred feet up with elevators on some of the buildings for pushing stuff up to load into cars and stairs to get up to the tracks. The extra layers of road and rails above him combined with the brick buildings butting up against the road made it feel like he was in a concrete and steel tunnel even though the warehouse was framed by a square of open night sky. It just struck him how different the environment was.
Grunt waved a square of plastic and the chain link fence slid open to admit them to the grounds, then he pulled out a key and lead Corvayne in to the building itself. The smell of combustion and rain faded as he stepped into the warehouse. The place was dusty, full of tarp covered crates and rows of metal boxes. The overhead lighting was bright enough not to bump into anything but not much more.
Wick pointed at the 10 foot tall containers stacked 3 to 4 high and taking up the majority of space in the building and spoke as they walked. “Brines Brothers is one of the major trading groups. They own mines all across the planet. This place is where they store the slabs of Cascadian Jasper. Whenever demand goes up, this place empties out and they make a LOT of money. Usually comes around every 5 years that some planet decides Jasper is what they want their counter-tops made out of for the next 2 years. On and off they ship the smaller stuff to rock shops across The Collective at the rate of about 4 crates a month.” She went over to a small wooden crate and lifted the top with a little grunt, then showed off a small piece of polished stone that was an orange-red splattered with electric blue freckles and swirls of deep green. She tossed it back in.
Corvayne's only comment to that entire demonstration was “Nice rock.” as there was some sort of disruption in his confidence and vocabulary that had to do with both being a fish out of water and a weird need to impress her. It was also influencing his eyes as he kept looking at her during the walk around the warehouse. He pushed himself to be more alert. Grunt nodded his agreement at the rock being nice, then went over to the side of the warehouse, past a pair of extremely bulky looking machines painted yellow that were probably used to stack and unstack containers. He entered a door and flicked a light on, spilling bright green florescence out in the other wise dimly lit interior. He came back with a clipboard and pen.
Wick looked it over. “Can you read?”
Corvayne looked it over, the letters totally alien squiggles like everything else but still making perfect sense as he signed a few places. “Seems I can.” His brow furrowed as he saw he had signed in the same squiggles, and he further furrowed it as he read more of the boxes.
“Will it be OK? I don't have any of the things it wants. Honestly, I don't have a place to stay.”
Grunt smiled, and flicked a thumb over his back to a room up above the warehouse floor. Corvayne looked up at the two story tall loft attached to the ceiling as Grunt gently took the form back and started filling things out. He saw Wick nudging Grunt and whispering something. Grunt pointed at Wick, then back at Corvayne. She looked at him, then whispered something that made Grunt actually look at her shocked. She then turned to face Corvayne and smiled.
“Oh I guess you'll be neighbors then! Grunt lives in a loft there. It was built for Brines Brothers managers to stay in if they were coming from off world.”
Corvayne guessed what was next. “They never come from off world.”
She laughed. “Damn STRAIGHT they don't! This is the ass end of the galaxy my friend. The main branch has a few family here to run the mining stuff and act as slumlords if they aren't cut out for dealing with rocks. You'll probably run into the fail son who we just call Brines anyway. James Brines.” She had to think about it for a second.
Grunt lead them up the stairs that buffered the inner and outer wall of the warehouse onto a catwalk that ran along the outside of the factory and under part of the loft. He went to the door to the loft then handed Corvayne a key. The drab gray steel door opened into a room with a table, a few plastic chairs, a microwave, sink, and a fridge. Everything was white, gray or black. A screen was positioned above the table with a few wires leading down to square boxes. Corvayne knew that gaming systems existed from reading and deduced that the colorful boxes were games. Grunt gave him the left suite: really a room with a dresser, a single wide bed and a bathroom with a shower. He felt pretty lucky, it beat sleeping outside where it stank of garbage. The only thing he did was take his spare clothes out and put them in the drawer. His pack was pretty hefty but he didn't like leaving it behind.
Wick lead them back down the stairs. “Grunt will show you the ropes, but it's really just walking the grounds every so often and making sure people don't break in. If someone does, call the cops.”
“Can we stop them? I mean, without killing them of course.”
Grunt nodded and smiled.
Wick said “You were right Grunt, this guy is perfect for this job. Yeah. If you can disable robbers do it. Just be careful, there's some crazy gang that moved into town recently. ”
“We will see who has trained harder.” Crovayne mused. They'd have to be pretty impressive for him not to bet on whatever side had Grunt.
Wick was looking at him then looked at her phone. “I gotta run soon... Can you help Corvayne get settled in? Maybe get him started tonight? Oh... here!”
To Corvayne's delight, she took his hands then pushed a piece of paper into them: A flier for the Oldtown Cascadia Neighborhood meeting next weekend.
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Wick smiled up at him. “Real interesting meeting you! I'll see you there right? Right?”
Corvayne's emotions, long since pushed into a sort of bland paste by years of conscious self suppression, were rebelling, boiling, filling him with long forgotten yearnings related to women in general because of the woman in front of him. They manifested in visions of eating ice cream together. Going to a park. Holding hands. Maybe attending a fireworks festival. Or a public execution: the books had a lot of ways for the deal to go down and he was finding himself game for anything. She blinked at him and he forced himself to stammer out a too enthusastic “Yes!”
“Great! Haha, Nice to meet you Corvayne!”
He watched her stroll out of the factory and close the door after herself from the window, then turned to his new roommate.
“Well Mister Grunt.”
A single Grunt and an over acted offended look and stance. What was wrong? Hmm.
“Umm. Just Grunt?”
Better. Nodding and a smile.
“Grunt. Can you show me what I need to do?”
He was handed a thick binder called 'Security Protocol', and Grunt flipped to the last two pages. The instructions could be summarized as follows: If someone snuck in, he kicked their ass then called the cops.
Corvayne's first night on the job was mostly following Grunt and reading through the rest of the binder as he walked the Factory grounds. There were catwalks on both the inside and outside that let him get a sense of the neighborhood. During the shift he asked Grunt how to go about getting food as it had been a couple of days since he ate anything. The large man had stocked the break room with microwavable food and even had a hotplate and tabletop grill for cooking other things. The larger man made a gesture for Corvayne to patrol while he cooked, and so Corvayne dutifully did the beat, walking around looking down outside, then coming inside and walking the rows and rows of containers full of rocks. Two patrols later he heard a spoon on a pot coming from the loft doorway. The large man had made 12 sausages and toasted buns, and happily served Corvayne three sausages heaped with something like spicy barbeque slices of soft meat and gray slightly sweet leaves that reminded him of cabbage. The combination tasted better then he thought it would and he had downed his six before he went from feeling a little weak from hunger to being completely full. Grunt took a few with him and ate and patrolled at the same time.
In the morning two replacements arrived and Grunt talked to them down on the factory floor while Corvayne made himself a microwavable egg and noodle dish with ground sausage that was a major disappointment after the previous meal. He was more then happy to shower and sleep afterwards. In the afternoon Grunt showed him to a boiler room and garage attached to the back corner of the factory where the large man had hooked up a washer and dryer next to a workbench full of tools and racks that had a trio of what looked like hover-bikes. They had wheels rather then impulse coils which struck Corvayne as very backwards. There was also what must be a canoe, fishing gear, and other stuff that looked like sports gear: Lots and lots of baseball bats. Most importantly: A shelf full of random paperbacks. Corvayne had three sets of clothes that were all in dire need of cleaning so he took a book that Grunt suggested after which the big man started tuning up a large bike. Because he had to wash everything but a pair of shorts and his cloak which didn't get dirty, Corvayne had to get a little creative with clothing choices. He took his cloak and wrapped it around his waist unrolled.
The morning guards came in and seemed to report to Grunt, as did the afternoon replacement who asked him a few questions before starting, as did a woman dropping off two crates of what must be stones. All three congratulated Corvayne on coming aboard without any comment on him sitting on a fold out chair reading while shirtless in a weird make-shift skirt. The woman did stare at him for a while but looked away when he turned to look at her directly. Weird.
Anyway, it seemed like Grunt, despite his name, ran the entire place. Given the state of the boiler room, he probably has done so for years. It reassured Corvayne that he wouldn't be put on the spot any time soon and be forced to lie for his silent employer.
The next night started smoothly. Corvayne had a sandwich before work started and Grunt was going to take him to a food store in the morning. He found a good mix of working and training: First jogged quietly around the inner ground floor, then would do a normal walk on the exterior cat-walk, then jog the inner cat-walk. The misty rain outside felt good so he left his cloak tied around his waist as he looked down on the streets. The first unusual thing he spotted: someone who had left a large flatbed truck on the street across from the warehouse’s entrance gate. He also saw someone step away from the wall and look both ways down the street. He stopped and with a flick of his hand undid his cloak and wrapped himself in it, twisting the collar to make it blur his outline. Crouching, he watched from above as someone threw a large thick carpet with weights on it across the barbed wire top of the wall. There was a thunk as it hit the wall and he watched as four black clad figures clumsily pulled themselves over the wall. They were creeping to a side door, so Corvayne went inside as well and carefully stepped off the catwalk onto a 20 foot tall set of boxes, then down onto one that would let him drop right behind someone coming through the door. He decided he would avoid using his spear unless it got down to life or death and left it on his back.
The door was breached a few seconds after he had positioned himself flat on the container. The thieves entered and split up, two creeping to the left and two creeping to the right, taking time at the corners before creeping off to the next set. Corvayne rolled off the container with an acceptably quiet landing, checked to make sure both pairs were not looking back, then decided he'd handle right side first. It was as simple as walking up and taking the back one in an choke hold as the front one was peering around a box, then pulling him around a corner. Corvayne waited until the man passed out then let him flop to the ground. His partner was creeping back towards him, quietly calling out the man's name. Corvayne padded around the other side of the crate then did a quiet jog to get behind the woman, who was crouched near her partner. He pinched her neck while focusing on his fingers. He found it helped him perform the nerve pinch correctly if he thought of gingerly pulling a pickle out of a jar. There was an odd sensation this time. Like having an extra arm that had been asleep that started waking up. That was new, but the technique worked and the woman joined her friend on the floor, both passed out and breathing. With those two down Corvayne strolled down the wall they had entered from until he found the other two, sitting in a dark spot and watching Grunt on the catwalk by the loft crunching on chips.
“They didn't say this was where that fucker worked!” one hissed.
“We should abort...”
Corvayne was sadly about five feet behind the back one as the front one had turned around to hiss, thus was spotted. He reached out and there was something that helped him pinch the right spot and apply the right energy. Something odd happened as he touched the man's neck: A thought calling out he was doing a [Nerve Pinch] and the feeling of something in him stirring awake was stronger, but perhaps it was because of Grunt's book where the hero would think of moves in brackets in his head. Maybe his father was correct and he did read too much.
He banished those thoughts as the remaining burglar pulled a gun. This close to the man Corvayne just slammed his forehead into the man and knocked him over on his side, then kicked the gun away before he could react. The guy pulled a knife and Corvayne groaned and kicked it away too. The guy then pulled his wallet out and Corvayne kicked it away. Oh that was just a wallet. By this point the guys hands were pretty much broken and he gave up. Glancing up, he saw that Grunt was watching and the big man looked... proud of him?
The Police came and the crew admitted quickly they were after the one thing worth stealing in the warehouse: the two machines that lifted and stacked the heavy containers. High fives were shared, and Grunt took him to the store once their shift was done, helping Corvayne get his own supply of food as well as buying him a six pack of beers.
Grunt didn't talk, as it turns out, ever. After a few days Corvayne had spent enough time with him that he was almost certain he knew what the friendly man with head-sized hands was thinking anyway. Corvayne would have picked up on it faster, but there were barriers to his social understanding: well developed layers of self control, restraint, and sometimes wishful thinking that had kept him sane through years of relentless verbal abuse and the harsh environment of the Watchers Village.
It was a thunderbolt moment that came after Grunt bought both of them coffee and donuts to share. He was about to take a bite of the glazed chocolate cake donuts when Corvayne came to realize that somehow he had made a friend. A brother in arms, fighting to keep riff-raff out of the warehouse, and trying to find new places for takeout. Grunt had an on again off again girlfriend, so it was a platonic brother at arms rather unlike in some gladiator books... most... all of the gladiator books he had found in the library. He recalled having to skip around to read about the fights as those authors did NOT tastefully fade to black when one warrior had to help his friend with a back muscle that was bothering him. How the best gladiators in their empire got so clumsy whenever there was an amphora of olive oil around also strained Corvayne's suspension of disbelief.
Corvayne saw Grunt was eating one of his donuts and trying to finish the cup of coffee (Which tasted terrible but seemed to be part of some sort of shared pain experience that every adult he had seen in Cascadia was participating in. Sort of like when the boys in the village would run around the outside of the wall barefoot, burning their feet horribly but oddly enough excluding him from this shared challenge and even odder pushing him to WANT to hurt his feet with them.) and reading a paper, a redundancy given the news was on.
Anyone who had not, for example, seen Grunt secretly feeding a kitten that lived under the dumpster behind the warehouse might think he was angry or unhappy most of the time. Corvayne had picked up that Grunt's appearance fit with what TV defined as the standard appearance of a thug: muscles, prominent brow with slightly beady eyes, nose that looked like it had been broken a few times, scars, tendency to be armed with improvised melee weapons... and so on and all this did not help him convey how he just wanted a relaxed life nor that he had boundless goodwill to most people he knew and many he never met.
"Hey Grunt?"
The muscled man raised an eyebrow. Not a challenge, it was 'Go ahead' as he nodded a little.
“Are we friends?”
Grunt laughed a little, smiled and nodded. Then gave Corvayne a little styrofoam toast, and sipped some coffee and pretended he didn't burn his tongue.
“Thanks...”
“Hey Grunt.”
Non commital grunt, eyes narrow, chin shoots forward a little: Hmm? Sup? What is it friend?
“Uh, hmm... with Wick...” Corvayne had been trying to figure out how to diplomatically edge around to the question he wanted to ask about her since she had taken over his thoughts over the past week. He went with a very neutral question “Is she friendly to everyone?”
It elicited a sort of half laugh. Grunt then stopped and both his eyebrows shot up. He smiled and shook his head. His hand half waved as if something was 50/50, then pointed to his ring finger and made an X with his fingers: She's not nice to everyone. Maybe you have a shot. She's not seeing anyone.
“Thanks.” Corvayne put his hand over his heart and thumped it twice then pointed: Grunt. You are the best Bro.
Grunt gave him a thumbs up then two thump to his own chest: You too. Anytime, bro.