Scrap Metal Philosophy 2 (Patreon)

A/N: triple chapter update today brought to you by jet lag.

-VB-

Scrap Metal Philosophy

Chapter 2

-VB-

3 months ago…
February 15, 2011

“AAHHH-!”

Crash.

Taylor stopped jogging and looked towards where she heard the scream and the crash. It was close by… and also near the Trainyards.

Trainyards was abandoned, though, and only very few people went there.

She looked around and saw no one, which made sense. The part of the Docks she was running in the morning barely had any business to speak of nor residents. Cheap rent can only do so much when there was no job in the city for newcomers and locals alike.

She continued her jog but headed towards the Trainyard.

What would she find there?

---

She found a man cussing up a storm as he openly used his powers without a mask.

He was doing something with all of the scrap he was gathering. She watched from behind a mound of such trash, holding her nose, as he put together a … something. Even if it resembled something, she couldn’t tell because the thing he put together was made out of so much scrap - scrap metal, scrap parts, scrap wire, scrap everything - that it looked more like a oddly shaped and fit right over his wrist and forearm -.

Oh. That’s a screen. It’s lighting up.

He made a working computer from scraps.

He was a Tinker.

Why was he Tinker out here by himself?

He quickly went back to work, and began putting something else together.

Taylor jolted when she realized how long she was there when he was half-way through his second project, and quickly left the Trainyard to get back home and be ready in time for school.

Also, she needed to wash and get rid of the smell of trash. She didn’t need to give the Trio an actual reason to belittle her with.

-VB-

School was terrible as usual. She grimaced as she tried not to make the bruise on her back hurt more, but it left her slouching even more than she usually did.

Sophia was an asshole.

She got off of her bus… and noticed the same maskless Tinker from before. He had a mask this time, and looked as tired as she did.

He was also sitting at the bus stop but not moving to get on the bus.

He looked up when the bus creaked along and their eyes met.

“Oh. You’re the girl from the Trainyard.”

She froze.

He noticed?!

“I’m… Techscav. Because I scavenge tech.”

She looked at him blandly at the utterly unimaginative name. She looked over him, and could agree that he at least looked the part of the “scavenger.” His wristband-forearm computer had more nails and bolts than actual screen and plate holding it together. A part of it as held together by a literal paperclip looped through a pair of roughy made holes. His mask was closer to a helmet. It looked more like a skull with barred mouthguard and narrow eyeholes as well as the rugged and rusted shape of a human head.

But he wore a regular t-shirt and a pair of scrubs to complete it. He looked like a wannabe than an actual Tinker.

But she knew better.

She saw him using his power to make a computer out of scraps.

“Why are you just out here? Alone?”

He shrugged. “It happened to me.”

“What happened?”

“Stuff.”

She frowned and walked away. He obviously didn’t care enough to talk to her, so she wouldn’t. There was no point.

-VB-

She met him again, but this time, she walked onto a scene of crime where … the victim was putting down the perpetrator.

Yes.

She winced as a Merchant crawled backwards amidst trash bags, begging for his life through drunken slurs. “Techscav,” on the other hand, stomped his way over to the Merchant with a nasty-looking mechanized armored claw gauntlet on the same arm as his forearm computer.

“The Trainyard no longer welcomes your kind,” he grunted dispassionately as if this was routine spring clean-up and stomped on the guy’s already broken hand. When he screamed bloody murder along with cracking and squleching of flesh and bone grinding down under a boot, Taylor squeaked.

And that was enough for Techscav to look up at her.

He had red glare on his eyeholes now, and they locked onto her.

She nearly ran, but didn’t because he didn’t chase or shoot her with the gun in his left hand that he nearly pulled up.

She also almost called on all of the bugs to give her a distraction.

Instead, he looked back down at the Merchant and kicked him. The guy screamed but stumbled up and ran away with a limp.

“... Hey, can you call the police and the paramedics?”

She looked at him from where she had been half-hiding behind a wall.

“Me…?” she asked out loud, not bothering to keep up the fantasy that he didn’t notice her.

“Yes. Got a kid here that the bastard tried to hook on his drug. He’s not in good shape.”

She tittered. “I-I don’t have a phone.”

He sighed as he turned around, muttering something, as he knelt next to … oh.

That wasn’t a trash bag. That was a body. A still breathing and trembling body.

She grimaced as he searched through his clothes and found a phone. Instead of calling himself, he tossed the cell phone - a smartphone - to her. “Call.”

She barely caught it in her surprise. “W-Why not you?” He wasn’t a villain if he was willing to help people. And not kill someone as heinous as a Merchant, right?

And then that’s roughly when the bugs in the area noticed that around the wall she couldn’t see, there were freshly bleeding bodies no longer breathing.

Oh.

“My claws make it hard to type on a tiny screen like that,” he grunted as he showed her his gauntlet.

Right.

Thankfully, the phone wasn’t locked and she made the call, even as she felt her fingers shake at holding a cell phone (smartphone).

“Yes, hello…?” she said when the 911 call went through. She looked up and …

… Where was Techscav?

Wait, did he just leave?

She narrowed her eyes.

She was going to get back at him for this.