Loren woke up to the sound of phone ringing from under this pillow. He groaned, keeping his eyes closed as he groped for the treacherous piece of electronics. He fumbled as his phone continued to play the theme of an anime he’d liked seven years ago, until he finally found the little aluminum tablet. Fingers flailed, trying to get it to stop as he tried to get lucky—
Wait… that wasn’t his alarm song.
With a groan, Loren opened his eyes—ugh—and actually flipped up his pillow, revealing his phone. As he had dreaded, the screen showed he was getting a call from Harmony.
For a moment, he just stared at his phone, wondering why she was calling him at this ungoddessly hour. Sighing, he forced himself to find the hand-eye coordination and accepted the call, putting it on speaker since the sound quality always seemed crap. “He—”
“Oh good, you’re up!” Harmony said cheerfully. “I’m downstairs with breakfast, come down and let me come up! I brought some of last night’s Sinigang with cooking vene mixed in for Sara too. Hi, Sara!”
A cold breeze that wafted around him confirmed that Sara was, in fact, listening in.
“Sara says hi, I think,” Loren said resignedly. “Fine, fine, I’m coming down.”
“Hurry!” The call cut off.
Glancing at the time, Loren sighed, mourning the loss of his ten minutes of napping time. Putting on his rubber sandals—the shorts and shirt he was sleeping in was presentable enough—he slipped his keys and resident’s ID into his pocket. “Morning, Sara. I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?”
Another cold breeze wafted his shoulder, which he took for a yes. They’d worked out a ‘one touch yes, two touches in different spot no’ system, and were in the middle of working out more. While Sara could talk, best to not have to force her to expend imbuement on it unless she had to say something specific.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for an elevator to come up, although he was surprised to find that someone was already inside it. He gave a polite nod up to the payatin in office wear, who at least returned the gesture, and they both waited awkwardly for the elevator to reach the ground as Loren tried not to feel underdressed.
Thankfully, Harmony was near the elevators, talking animated with the night security guard. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they were old friends. It reminded him that he’d been living here for two weeks and he still didn’t know the man’s name. He didn’t even know if it was the same guy as yesterday…
Fortunately, Harmony spotted him and broke off their conversation before he had to awkwardly interrupt or try to join in, waving at him. He met the guard’s eyes and showed his Resident’s ID, and Harmony was allowed through. She had a paper bag from a fastfood place, so presumably she had the Sinigang in her backpack.
“Hey, Lor,” she greeted, hand upraised. Tiredly, he did the same, and accepted her greeting high five. Given the elevation, it was probably more accurately a slightly-higher-than-mid five. “Got you your favorite! My treat, since it’s your first day of work.”
He gave a grateful smile, even as he tallied that it was about time to pay Harmony back with a pizza. “Thanks,” he said as he pressed the elevator button. Fortunately, there one of the elevators opened immediately, and they were able to get in.
“While I’m grateful for the food—” he’d been eating hot rolls of salt-bread from a bakery on the way to the vigilant chapter house for breakfast, which hadn’t actually been that bad, but had become tiring by the end, “—did you have to come here so early? I could have napped for ten more minutes.”
“I wanted to talk to you before you got to the office,” Harmony said. “We’re not meeting there, so I told Steve I’d take you to the work site, since you don’t know where it is. And to make sure you took a real bath instead of just setting yourself on fire.”
“A burn bath is a real bath!”
“And you’ll smell like burnt stuff. No, take a real bath and use soap, you want to make a good impression on your co-workers.”
“Harmony, you’re my bestie and I love you, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?”
“Your mom asked me to make sure you made a good first impression. So get wet, young man. I speak the words of a higher power.”
Loren sighed. “I’m eating first,” he said defiantly.
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“Of course,” Harmony said, actually patting him on the head. Then she leaned over and said, “If you want, I can distract Sara so that you can have a little privacy in the bathroom.”
“Yeah… a bit late for that,” Loren said dryly, “and please never make that offer again. Our friendship depends on it.”
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“Everyone, this is Loren Abo,” Steve announced as Loren stood awkwardly before the other regular workers of Happy Homes. He’d seen them in passing of course, since in the afternoons after his self-defense courses he came here and worked for Norm, Steve’s fellow founder, but he hadn’t really met them before. The only ones he recognized and could name were Steve, Harmony and Malory. “He’ll be working with us for at least the next year as our regular Flame mage, and will be helping assist Harmony in research.”
Loren saw Harmony pump her fist triumphantly, which everyone else noticed and smiled about.
Standing there in front of them all, he felt a bit overdressed and too clean, since everyone else was wearing worn jeans, ragged shoes and dark red shirts with the Happy Homes logo—what Loren recognized as a simplified line art version of Steve’s house next to the company name—that had all clearly seen a lot of work. Harmony had picked it out the oldest, most worn shirt he had in his closet, and it still looked a bit too new. Even Malory, who he remembered eating her donut so primly, was wearing a shirt covered in paint stains that looked like they were never going to come off.
“On site, he’ll be helping as an assistant welder until Ambong thinks he can work on his own, or he’ll be helping with cement work. Ricky, you have him today, he’ll be making the cement quick-cure.”
A blue-skinned oni with a bald head and tightly-braided beard that fell down to his chest, and a tanned workman with a bowl cut both nodded, looking at him critically. Loren was strangely aware of their hands, which were broad, rough, and looked tough enough to be gloves, and very conscious that his own hands were none of those things.
“Hari, he’s your friend, so stick with him until he learns how we do things,” Steve continued. Harmony nodded. “The rest of you, remember to introduce yourselves. We’ll be working on pouring out the new floor today, so you’ll all get to see Loren at work. Any questions?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“All right. Everyone, let’s get to work. I want us to finish the pour for the new driveway today. Loren, I want you to get the quick-dry cement ready.”
Loren stood there awkwardly for a moment until Harmony patted him on the shoulder. “Come on, bestie,” she said. “You can get started preparing the alchemy stuff ready.”
The work site they were at was a house that was in the middle being renovated. It was a fairly unremarkable property of modern construction, with hollow-block and walls, cement columns, steel-barred windows—many of the glass panes were age-stained from rain, and a few were cracked, with one sporting a conspicuous hole like someone had thrown a rock at it—and a small yard that was alternately overgrown and dying where it didn’t have piles of wooden debris.
The debris, on closer inspection, seemed to be parts of internal wooden walls and the support beams that had once made up the roof trusses of the currently-roofless house. Old sheets of roofing that looked more rust than anything else were piled up against the wall that the property shared with the house next door. Not far away was a pile of gravel and another pile of sand, with sacks of cement piled next to them.
The alchemical recipe for quick-curing cement required sand and aggregate that was impregnated with Flame-heat—to act as both a medium for him to alchemically act through as well as a source of imbuement for the alchemy—as well as an oil to act as further fuel for the alchemy. And while the alchemy had worked in the small sample Steve had asked him to prepare, it would need to be scaled up if there was supposed to make enough for a driveway.
Loren took all this in, frowning at having so little to work with. He’d need some kind of vessel if he wanted to heat the gravel, since it wouldn’t be efficient to try and heat the sand. Torching them directly with Flame, no matter how well he could get it to emit only heat, would likely cover them in soot and ash, which he was pretty sure would be bad for the resulting cement. He’d need a way to expose them to indirect heat, some kind of vessel…
“Hey, Hari, what’s going to happen to the old roofing sheets?” Loren said, pointing.
“Eh, we’ll either throw those away or sell them off for scrap metal. Why?”
“Do you think Steve will mind if I used them to make alchemy vessels?“
Harmony grinned. “Ah, you’re thinking like a construction worker already!”
Steve didn’t mind, as it turned out, but they were cautioned to use gloves when handling them because of rusty nails and tetanus. Loren, who was immune to both, just sighed but went along with it. It was probably a liability thing. Besides, just because he was immune to illness—bacteria, viruses and fungus just died when they tried to infect the body of a Flame mage—didn’t mean getting cut and nicked was pleasant.
“So, what exactly are these for?” Harmony asked as they two of them carefully picked through the roofing sheets to find one they could use. “I’m assuming you need it for alchemy, but why do you need it?”
Loren explained his reasoning as they extracted the largest intact piece of roofing sheet, and he got start shaping the metal into something he could use to heat the gravel. He had to hurry, since the other workers were already laying out rebar. Working together, the two of them curled up the roofing sheet into a long half-tube. Using his Flame, Loren heated one end of the tube with Change to allow him to more precisely deform the metal, then carefully crimped the end of the half-tube shut by folding the metal over. Thankfully he was able have his Flame shape the metal while wearing the cotton work gloves that Harmony had given him—“You’ll need to buy a set you like better, I’ll show you a good place”—so he didn’t get his hands cut.
Now that they had rudimentary vessel built, he went to ask Rick how much gravel they were planning to use for the pour with Harmony’s amused help.
“Hey, Rick,” Harmony greeted. “This is Loren. Lor, this is Rick. He’s got something he needs to ask you.”
“Uh, hi,” he said. “Mang Rick, how much gravel will we be using later? I need to know so I can get it ready for the alchemy Steve wants me to do for the cement.”