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While it is still technically morning, it is late enough in the day that Lower Moyamensing is bustling along, it's streets full and moving, and it's businesses bubbling. One of those is a garage tucked into the backstreets behind Schuylkill which sits in front of a large junked auto yard. The sounds of hydraulic tools and iron tink tink tinking are not pleasant to most, but in the tiny office in front of the garage, where Bianca is just hanging a "HELP WANTED" sign in the window, she is bobbing her head in time to the sounds, humming a made up little song along with them.
While it would be a little silly to call the weather outside warm, for Sturm, it's warm enough to warrant downgrading her outerwear to something a little lighter. So today, in lieu of an overcoat, the giant is wearing a leather jacket over a white tank, and black cargo pants tucked into her heavy boots. She takes note of the sign on the window, pausing to look at it for a few moments before entering.
The bell rings as she pushes open the door to the front office, and she ducks her head while crossing the threshold just in case she can't clear it without hitting her head. It's a habit you form when you're seven feet tall.
Luckily, in this particular case, since sometimes very large objects needs to be dragged through the front door, it gives decent clearance. There was no obvious sign outside the garage, and with its proximity to the Schuylkill it probably should have one. But once inside, the back wall of the office is painted with bold, black words--MARCONI AUTO YARD AND REPAIR--which is easy enough to read, because unlike Sturm, Bianca is quite small.
She is currently wearing yellow coveralls--at least they used to be yellow--her thighs chest and butt are so worn in with dirt that they're a dark brown and there are many grease stains on her clothes--and one on her right cheek. Something that stands out is that her left hand--the only part of her arm visible outside her clothes--is a prosthetic made of rose-gold fibreglass, but even that has a grease stain on it.
She looks up at the bell--halting in her little song--and then up...and up. "Holy shit, you're huge. Uh, I mean, hello. What's wrong with your car? We don't do oil changes."
"Shit, am I?" The snarky "joke" comes with almost no change in tone, inflection, or expression - and Sturm moves on from it so fast that one might almost miss it. "... but no. No car trouble. Just lookin' for a friend of mine who was having some, though. Might've passed this way?" It's a half-hearted story at best.
Her bootfalls are slow and deliberate as she crosses the room, and she rests an elbow on the counter - leaning down so as not to entirely tower over the other changeling. Up close, it's easy to see her tired features - sullen eyes, and a heavy scowl - roughly carved into her icy skin like the natural erosion of a cliff facing... and it's much easier to see the leather wallet in her right hand now that it's plainly in view atop the counter.
"Think you might remember my buddy's plates if I showed 'em to you?"
Bianca glances at Sturm's hand--or rather her wallet--just briefly, before looking back up at her. She shrugs her shoulders, picking at the fingers of her fibreglass hand with her other one and considers the other woman's face.
Her own Mein is not subtle--there are no whites in her eyes. Instead, they appear to be small brass balls with heavy patina. There are small vents in the side of her neck, with flexing doors that open and close--almost reminiscent of gills, if they weren't made of metal and rusted over, coated in soot. She smells a little like an exhaust pipe. That could be the garage, but this close, it's obvious that it is not.
"Remember? Probably not. But I keep a database of all the work we do. What was the damage?" Bianca asks, sitting down at the desk and clicking over the keys with one hand.
She reaches into the front breast pocket of her jacket, producing a little scrap of paper with a license plate number written in a barely-readable scrawl. She slides it across the counter - along with a carefully hidden fifty dollar bill underneath it.
"Yellow Challenger - gaudy fuckin' thing - with a big-ass dent in the right side of the car. Maybe a couple holes. A broken side-mirror, too. Y'know, the kind of shit someone lookin' for it would notice in a heartbeat if it stayed on the street."
Bianca reaches up and snatches the scrap paper and cash with her fibreglass hand--not a lot of people are familiar with prosthetics unless they have to use them, and some might be surprised at how agile the fingers are. She has no problem holding the thin paper. She looks it over and begins typing into the computer again, sniffing lightly at the air.
"Cold morning," Bianca comments, still focused on the computer screen. "Yeah, I got you. Sounds like a mess. You on official business in here, because--well." Bianca pauses, looking back up at Sturm. She offers the other woman a weak smile--a little forced--"If I can help out the Silent then I'm gonna help out. What's up?" She continues poking slowly at the keys.
"Nope. Just a concerned neutral party." Sturm's voice is gruff, and she doesn't really look at Bianca when she speaks - mostly, she just looks past her. "A concerned neutral party who doesn't want anybody bumbling through their business while lookin' for it."
This time, she does look Bianca in the eyes, clearly unamused by the forced smile - or at the very least least not playing that game herself. "... but if it's easier to pretend I'm here in an official capacity, I won't stop you."
"Nah. I was just gonna do it for free otherwise." Bianca pockets the bill and taps once more on the keyboard. "We still have it. It's in pretty bad shape, you're right. It's out in the yard. We haven't heard back from the owner in awhile, so we parked it out there. You want to take a look?" Bianca looks back up at her, no smile this time, just considering. "Let's go take a look. Come around the side of garage, I'll go open the gate."
Sturm gives an affirmative grunt, and her joints crack as she pushs herself back up from the counter. She pushes the door open - ducking on her way out again - before coming around the building towards the door to the garage, pausing to wait for Bianca to let her in.
The gate around the yard is a fifteen foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. There are multiple places in the fence where it has clearly been cut through and then mended. The gate is electronic, and rolls along the asphault obnoxiously slow while Bianca stands on the other side, adjusting her collar. Her name-patch reads "Katrina" and maybe she even looks like a Katrina.
Just inside the yard, the asphault gives way to gravel and eventually just dirt--or rather mud right now. There are many puddles and some of them are quite deep. The rush of the Express behind the yard sounds like constant howling wind, and the further into the yard they get, the worse the puddles are. "It's flooding season," Bianca explains, jumping one. "This your day job, then, uh, what was your name?"
"That depends on the day," Sturm grumbles, stepping over a nasty-looking puddle that's just a little bit too big to walk through and comfortably ignore - even with her mid-calf boots on. "It is today, though. Might be tomorrow, too."
For a moment, it seems like she's going to ignore the name question... but she does eventually answer. "... I didn't give one, Katrina, but... you can call me Sturm. That what just about everyone calls me nowadays."
"Well, today works for me. You never know if you get a tomorrow, you know?" Bianca says. The flooding starts to get worse, but thankfully Bianca leads them around a corner where the Challenger sits, a tarp half over the front of it, but easily recognized--still with the damage. Bianca shrugs, "Wasn't gonna fix it if I wasn't gonna get paid. And, uh, oh shit--this is a hand-me-down. I'm Bianca, Sturm. Nice to meet you. I kept my name. They can't have it."
Sturm offers a grunt and a thumbs up in response to the name comment, and mutters something that probably sounds like nice to meet you too but she's too busy checking the plates under the tarp to really give the proper amount of energy to it. When she's satisfied that this is the car she's looking for, she lets the tarp fall back into place.
"... you said the guy hasn't paid yet? Did he leave a number?"
"Sure. He gave me a number--but I don't think it was a good one. I didn't type it in wrong. We tried to call him with the estimate--fast service here, we did it later that day--and nothing. So eventually I had Benito drive it back here and it's just been waiting, hoping he shows back up."
Bianca takes a seat on the hood of the car, pulling one knee up to her chin. She tilts to the side to watch Sturm go to work investigating the car. "I have to say, I'm glad to see someone on my side coming around here looking into abandoned vehicles--dealing with the po leece is the worst, but it comes with the job description, I guess."
"Makes sense. The asshole probably just wanted to get it off the street for a couple weeks, because he knew the owner would have people looking for it. It's not exactly a subtle car." She crosses her arms over her chest, looking thoroughly grumpy about the probabilty of a dead-end. "What's your no-show policy like? How long will y'all hold onto this midlife crisis before it gets towed?"
"Partially my discretion--under normal circumstances I'll give it a week before I look up the title and report it. We're at six or so days now. But, we can work something out if it would help out an Arrow." She lays back slowly, stretching across the hood of the car and reaching out behind her with both hands. Her spine pops audibly, but so does the hood--she says nothing about it.
"How may I assist, Sturm? Oh, did I tell you that name is fucking great. I'm sure it has some special meaning, but I'm picturing you as blackening clouds, looming and brooding and drawing nearer, with flashes of light hidden within, threatening to rush in. I like it."
"Yeah, that's me alright - and would you believe if I told you I used this name way back Before it was this... appropriate?" The giant snorts. It doesn't sound like so much a laugh, as it does the noise a bull makes just befor stamping it's hooves and signalling a charge. "I tell you what. My client put up five hundred dollars to cover any job expenses I encountered. You let me choose the tow company that comes to pick this thing up, and then lose whatever paperwork they give you. I'll split that with you 60/40 - and recommend your shop to my employer when when they need to fix this ugly fuckin' thing for real. Sound fair?"
"More than fair. Well--let me add one clause to that--you said that you don't do this every day. You got time to help me out back here in the next couple of days? The flooding is only going to get worse and I need to move some stuff around. I can ask the boys in the shop--but they whine a lot and I don't feel like dealing with their precious feelings. I can tell you're not like that, Sturm," Bianca says. She rolls over on the hood, looking back toward Sturm. She offers her a wry grin--more real than the last one by far--and then she reaches out and offers her right hand.
She pauses for a moment, looking at the extended hand while silently weighing her options. She looks up at Bianca's grin, and then back again before reaching out and taking it. Her grip is strong and steady, but not crushing. She knows her strength. "Yeah, I can do that - seeing as you helped me wrap this up nice and quick, and now I'm out of a job. What kinda work is it? Just heavy lifting, or is there something else?"
Bianca remains sprawled across the hood on her stomach after shaking Sturm's hand. She rests her arms on her elbows and cups her chin in her hands, nodding toward the back of the yard, which is indeed, full of water. "Heavy lifting, driving--if you can handle a forklift I'll up the pay and you can help me with the engins that are just laying around too."
"Not so great when it comes to regular vehicles, but I can manage a forklift just fine. Got a Very Official license for it and everything." She rolls her shoulders, firing off another deadpan joke at the end before looking for something sturdy enough to hold her weight when she leans against it. "When do you want me? Tomorrow morning?"
"You got time tomorrow morning? Then I want you tomorrow morning--don't let it interfere with this work, though," she says. Then, suddenly, she seems to realize that hanging out on the hood of the car might interfere with 'this work', so she pulls her legs beneath her and slides off, landing a puddle she didn't check to see was there, and splashing the bottom of her coveralls. "Fuck," she mutters. "See what I mean? I don't need everything rusting prematurely."
She snorts again at Bianca's misfortune. "Yeah, I see it - and I'll see what I can do. Gonna call my employer as soon as we wrap this up - then I'll get you the name of the tow company, get you your cut, and then we'll get this thing out of your hair." She pauses. "I'll probably stick around until the truck comes, too. Not that I don't trust you, but I don't wanna risk missing this asshole if he comes back for it."
Bianca shrugs again, stepping out of the puddle and shaking off her wet boots. "Feel free. I'm here until six anyway and half the time I sleep here anway. You want a cheesesteak? I've got one in the fridge. Microwave too--can't live in this God forsaken nightmare world without a microwave, right?"
"Hell yeah," she grunts - pulling herself up from her leaning position. "I could fuckin' eat - just lemme make that call, first..."
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