It's Just Clockwork

K

KamiJo

Guest
Original poster
Papers and charts lined the walls, cluttered the desks and drawers that covered every inch of Quil's workspace as some of her man-made mechanics occupied the floors along with gears, screws, and bolts, often making walking difficult. Quil didn't bother with cleanliness as it seemed that everything gets scattered all over again. In her mind, cleanliness wasn't much of a priority as long as things are in order... mentally. Quil's whole life revolved around her store and all of the mechanics that came with it. Her favorite was her cat. It wasn't your normal everyday, lie around the house, and scratch the couch type of cat. She built it when she was 17 years old with the spare parts lying out in the streets, regardless if her father thought that a woman shouldn't be an engineer or tinker. It was her passion.​

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Today had been particularly busy, as customers kept flying in with new orders of everything from necklaces and bracelets to clocks and kerosene lamps that people refuse to get rid of, or just impatient people checking for progress. On any other day, she wouldn't have mind because it only put more money into her pocket, but today she was feeling tired and overwhelmed and wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed. She was almost ready to lock up shop and do just that when she received a strange order. An older man had simply walked into the door and without a word said, set an almost ancient-like, golden stopwatch onto her desk. He gave no mention of what was wrong with it or any instructions as to when he would be picking it up, he simply walked out just the same. She wanted to leave it sitting there until morning when she felt better, but there was something in her gut that just begged her to check it out. There was something odd about it, and it wasn't just the old man.​

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At first when she tried the stopwatch, it was a little jammed so it took a moment before she was able to open it up. When she finally did, she right away noticed the problem. The hands had stopped moving. She thought to herself that it was probably a simple task, an obvious one, so the man thought she was smart enough to figure it out on her own. However, that same feeling inside just kept her thinking and thinking about what was really wrong with the watch. After readying her magnifying glasses, she pried off the face of the watch to get a better look inside. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, other than the watch not working. But with a few simple tweaks and turns she could easily have the gears turning, so she pulled out her tools and began working.​

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((I hope this is okay. I'm not the best at starting off a roleplay))​
 
Warren sat down, an aging chess set before him. Across the table sat Delmar, his newest automaton. Delmar hadn't yet gotten legs, but he had a face and arms that worked. "Okay, Delmar," Warren said, looking into the bot's glassy blue eyes, "shall we go from where we left off yesterday?" Looking down at the set, you could see that the white pieces, Warren's, were winning. If he had been playing against a human, that would have been great, but Warren wanted Delmar to beat him in chess one day. The day before, the two had spent most of the day playing, games punctuated by Warren tightening a few screws, fixing a broken part, or fetching more water for Delmar's steam engine.

In response to his question, Delmar raised and lowered his copper wire eyebrows in a way that meant, "Yes." Warren hadn't yet given him a voice, and though he knew it would be needed eventually, if he was ever going to sell the automaton, but for now he was just using his eyebrows to talk.

"It was your turn, I believe," said Warren. Delmar leaned forward, his eyes darting over the board while his logic analyzers determined what the best move would be. After a few minutes, he moved a rook to take one of Warren's knights, leaving Delmar's king open for checkmate.

Taking the opportunity, Warren announced, "Checkmate." This caused Delmar's exposed wiring in the side of his head to short out, and Warren stood up, immediately grabbing his emergency kit in case the short caused a fire. "It's okay, Delmar, we'll try again tomorrow. Right now, I have to go and test out the Anderson Flyer."

After making sure that Delmar wasn't going to cause a fire or do anything brash, he moved through his cluttered home to the second floor, where a metal ladder hung from a hatch in the ceiling in the back of the hallway. Trying to avoid tripping and killing himself over a stray box or a piece of unfinished bot, he made his way to the ladder before climbing up and opening the hatch.

Climbing onto the roof, he smiled once he saw the Anderson Flyer. It was a flying machine his friend Anderson had sold him. Anderson had this idea of flying down to the surface world, for free rather than paying obscene amounts of money to get a ferry. He claimed that the Flyer would work, and had wanted Warren to test it on Titan before he actually tried going to the surface.

Pulling his aviator goggles up and over his eyes, he got onto the basket, lying flat as he strapped himself in. Picking up the pitcher of water he had left on the roof earlier, he poured that into the small pipe that led to the engine before pulling the cord that would start it. As the wheels slowly began moving down the slant of the roof, Warren pulled the correct levers that adjusted the flaps and wings of the Flyer.

When he pulled the one that took off the brakes, the Flyer sped up until it reached the end of his roof. There was a moment of freefall, where the Flyer began heading for the ground, but as an updraft caught, he was soon flying above the buildings. Breathing a sigh of relief, he kept an eye on the water gauge as he watched the sky and the ground of Titan.

He flew around for about half an hour, before he turned around. As it turned out, he didn't have enough water to get all the way back to his home, so he descended until he was just above the houses.

Catching sight of Quil's house, he lowered even more, aiming to buzz her house and see if he could scare or annoy her. However, he had lowered too much, and his foot caught the edge of her roof, and he kissed her roof with all of his face.

The impact pulled him out of the straps, and the Flyer kept flying until it crashed into a tree. Grunting in pain, Warren cursed before pushing himself off of her roof and climbing to the second-story windows, perching on the ledge for a moment before climbing the rest of the way to the ground.

((It's fine! Sorry my post is so long, I went a little overboard ^^'))
 
Quil was still working on the stopwatch when she was interrupted by a large thump coming from the roof. She didn't bother to curse the disruption, knowing that it was more than likely Warren doing something stupid. He had a habit of walking in on her shop and irritating her to her dismay. Unfortunately, her cat, Dixie, was spooked and jumped onto the desk thinking that Quil was somehow supposed to saver her, knocking the stopwatch out of Quil's hands. It was times like these when she hated that she gave Dixie the emotions and reflexes of a real cat. "Dammit, Dixie! I was almost done!" She rushed over to the other side almost tripping over some paper that gave way underneath the force of her run and ripped instead. She found the stopwatch lying underneath a few papers and was happy to see that the work she had put into it was still in tact. Quil took pride in her work no matter what it was, so she was overly ecstatic that nothing was out of place.
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She thought about whether or not she wanted to check on Warren, just to see if he was okay, but she turn against the idea and just continued on working. "He'll probably be here in a second anyway." She was speaking to Dixie, but just like the real cat reflexes and emotions, Dixie she was also unable to understand her, unlike most of her creations. She walked away for a moment and returned with a little water to keep Dixie moving and up to normal speed. If Dixie ran out of water, her movements would gradually slow down until she completely stops in whatever position she's in at that moment. Quil could remember a time when that happened when Dixie was only supporting herself up with one foot. She wasn't sure what would really cause her to want to stand one hind leg, but Quil was glad she caught it before she fell over and broke.
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((Sorry this one is kind of short. I wanted to wait until your character got into the shop before I start really doing anything.))
 
Once he was on the ground, Warren checked quickly for the Anderson Flyer, wanting to make sure it wasn't irreparable. Once he was certain of that, he walked into the shop, a cocky grin on his face.

"Quil, where are you?" he called. "There's a handsome imprint on your roof now, and I require payment for use of my face as advertisement." He continued walking into the shop, making soft tittering sounds for her cat, Dixie.

When he finally found her, his grin grew bigger. "What are you working on?" he asked, looking at the watch.
 
Quil could hear Warren calling her name and shouting his usual nonsense from the front of the shop. She gave a small smile of amusement, which she would never do to his face to give him the satisfaction of making her happy. From the corner of her eye she could see Dixie running off to the small tittering sounds Warren used to call her. Only a moment later, Warren walked through the door himself with a wide grin on his face. "What are you working on?" He asked. She barely looked up at him before staring back down at the watch. "Thanks for that glorious interruption. I'm sure you left a nice indentation for me to take the heat for later." She didn't technically own the shop. She did live in it, she did work in it, but the building actually belonged to an old friend of her father's that only lent her the place as a favor. "And I'm working on a stopwatch. Some old man brought it in right when I wanted to go to sleep. And then you show up not too long after." Her mouth was moving, but her mind was still focused on the watch. She was switching out the gears, basically giving it an upgrade to keep it working properly and giving it a few more years of life before it would need brand new parts again.

"There's something odd about this thing. It's really beautiful and has some of the oldest parts I've ever seen, but there is something just really strange about it. I get this really weird feeling." She finally looked up at Warren and saw him looking around as if he had never stepped foot in her shop before. The only thing different about the place was her newly designed charts for an automaton that she was going to start on the next week. "It's just something to work on. I thought it would be interesting." She wanted to 'build' a human. Not like the regular automaton's that you see every once in a while, or like Delmar. She wanted to 'give' him a brain full of real emotion and knowledge like any other human you'd ever see, maybe even better. She wanted him to be one of the most intelligent amongst both the humans and the automatons. "So anyway, as I was saying, before you totally blanked out into your own little world. I've been working on this watch. Some older man that looked to be in his sixties or seventies walks in and just drops this on the desk before walking away. Didn't even say a word. It was just a tad bit creepy. I've had a lot of weirdos come into the shop, but he just gave off the craziest vibe." She kind of laughed, knowing how strange she must of sounded. When you think about it, he didn't seem all that weird. He could have been one of those people she gets every once in a while saying the wildest things or he could have been mute and was unable to make any form of communication. However, she couldn't ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach as she held the watch in her hands.

((I hope my responses don't bother you. If at anytime you don't want to roleplay anymore just say so... sorry I'm a little insecure sometimes, I just wanted to let you know))
 
"It's a handsome indentation," Warren corrected Quil with a grin and a chuckle. "That must count for something." Silent as she spoke to him, his mind started to wander, and he was soon finding that his gaze had shifted to the things on Quil's walls. Spacing out, he acted almost like a child in a candy store, wandering around like he hadn't a care in the world.

Snapping back to attention when she spoke again, repeating what she had said not a minute earlier while he had spaced out, he nodded, his eyebrows furrowing for a moment as he thought. Looking at the watch over her shoulder, he moved his aviator goggles so that they settled on the front of his black shirt.

"Antique clockwork," he mumbled, looking at the gears and odds and ends in the watch. "D'you have anything with a thin pointy end?" he asked her, thinking he saw what the problem was. "Like a pin or something. See, 'cause you gotta unjam that gear," he pointed, his hand reaching over her shoulder, "and then you just gotta wind it up, I'm pretty sure."

((It's okay! Sorry for the short post a 2 posts ago, it looked longer when I wrote it ^^'))
 
"That should work, however I need to replace all these old gears too. They're way too old for this watch to keep going and they are bound to mess up again. It'll save the old man a few trips." It was half right. She still wanted to know what was so special about the damn watch that had her on edge. She was still looking around, even though a watch normally would take only an hour to fully repair and shine to make it look like it just went out on the market. Then she noticed the initials that was hidden underneath the face of the watch. EWC. He must have been the maker of the watch. She thought to herself. However, she knew a lot of people in the industry, yet she has never seen these initials before, or the unique work put into the watch itself. The intricate designs carves into the gold and small amounts of silver did wonders for its beauty. She would have loved to have worked under someone like this. "There should be a pin in that drawer over there. You might have to shove some stuff out of the way to get to it, but it's there. Also, have you any clue who EWC might be." She could see Warren moving around in her desk drawers searching for the pin, pushing large amounts of paper and boxes out of the way and once in the drawer, he had to push out of the way some of the junk she usually kept in there. ((I hope this is okay. I'm not using him for major things, it's just to help move things along a bit)) He finally found a silver pin that apparently stabbed at his finger as he reached in the back. He handed it to her and she did as he suggested. Warren was a pretty smart guy, so she knew she could trust any advice he gave her - even if this wasn't a major issue. She found and fixed the jam in the gear. She replaced all the parts and put the face back on. As soon as it clicked! the hands immediately started turning. Unfortunately, it wasn't moving at normal speed considering the fact that the hands on a watch don't move unless the time changes. The hands turned and turned, speeding up even further after it made a couple full turns around the watch. "Oh! Look now! You broke it!" She blamed Warren although it wasn't really his fault. When she unjammed the gear, no watch would have spun this fast. She's never seen any make or model act so strange.
 
((It's fine ^^))

Warren searched through the drawers, pushing aside papers, boxes, odds, and ends that was not uncommon in the house of Quil. As he was elbow-deep in a drawer, he felt a sharp prick on his index finger. Cursing, he knew he had found what he was looking for, and reached carefully for the pin.

"Found it," he announced pridefully as he pulled out the pointy object, careful not to drop it. In the mess that was Quil's house, they would never find it again. "But no, I don't know who EWC might be. But the W obviously stands for Warren. Only someone with such an awesome name as Warren could make something that pretty." Grinning slyly to himself, knowing he was just trying to rile up Quil, he handed her the pin.

Watching curiously as she replaced the gears of the watch, he pushed himself up to the counter, after moving some of her stuff. His eyebrows rising as it started ticking, he got off the counter, looking over her shoulder. "Woah," he breathed, wondering what would cause a watch to do that.
 
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