Metalized Dusk

Before she could yell an answer back to Savan, a sudden clash of sharp noises drew Melina's and Savan’s attention to a nearby construction site. Neither said anything, just stared angrily at each other, before gunning for the commotion. Melina left the clopy to sprint ahead before she even lifted herself off the ground; even though she was handcuffed, the girl caught up in seconds and kept a few meters ahead of Savan’s running speed;

-” Everyone is such a slowpoke in this place”, she thought before romping up the momentum and increasing the distance between the two even more.

First to arrive at the source, she found a pair of men with shovels covered in mud. One had both of his hands replaced with rusted prosthetics, while the other had a thin metallic stick for a left arm, each shouting louder than the other.

The first man was prancing back and forth, using his hands to motion to a ditch, crying about measurements and heights, but mostly complaining about his colleague not following his modifications.

-” Listen here, you dolt, we have to dig it 2 meters wide!”

-” And I tell ya that the plans only ask for 1.5. We don’t need some extra measure because you think the pipe won’t bend properly or whatever.”, he replied smugly holding his hands crossed around his chest.

-” I! Know! It won’t! Bend! Because unlike you ground leveler, I have experience in this shit. I was a fucking engineer back in the Commune, I know my stuff!” He gesticulated his rusted palms around so much that he formed a red strike whenever he moved them too fast.

-” Oh yee, mister engineer lived a story higher than me and thinks he knows more about digging a ditch than I do. Guess what, I have experience digging stuff from shoveling all that shit coming out yours, and every single other upper-leveler mouth.”

The two men started all of a sudden flailing around, balancing an act of fending strikes and hitting each other. The next part was a mismatch of small jabs and parries with their shovels. One of them angrily tried to gain an advantage by kicking some dirt but it flew much faster than he wanted, accidentally covering his colleague with freshly dug-out soil. Before apologies could be extended, the two were in a stalemate, trying to push one another with their shovels. Melina chimed at the last second, with her instinct taking over and her screaming the first thing she was taught for such occasions:

-” On the ground in two seconds, YOU HEAR ME?! This is your first and last warning!”, yelled out the cuffed girl with her imagined authority from her previous job. The two men forgot their fury for a moment, as the sight of a prisoner ordering them around confused the two. The man with the thin prosthetic then used that opportunity to sucker punch his colleague in the stomach, and the other retaliated with a kick more deemed to send a ball flying than to fight a man.

The scuffle awakened Melina’s old instincts even more, and she did as instructed long ago: -if verbal threats don’t work, you can use force as deemed necessary. The cuffs would impede if this were a real fight, but for her, the two men were just buffons having a scuffle fit for children, nothing to be scared of. She door-kicked the digger from the upper layer, which flew him backward a meter or so, then blocked a shovel strike with her left knee and used a right kick to counterattack.

Both workers were more pissed now than before, agreeing to sort out their differences another time and for now join forces in taking down the threat ahead. Melina smirked at this, as she finally found something worthwhile to spend her time on. “This is how it’s done, this is why since birth I was taught and trained to keep gutter slime like you in check!”, she thought nostalgically.

Missed blows after missed blows made the men rethink their actions and even consider this one of the worst mistakes of their lives.

-” Who..who are you? And why are you interfering?” asked one of the workers, huffing like a tired dog.

-” Me? I’m what's missing from this shithole, ok? Back in the County, you’d never have two idiots arguing and fighting like this in the open! And you know the reason, right? Because you knew we were there!” Her boisterous remarks achieved their target, sending shivers down their spine. Both were old enough to have seen or heard stories about the peace force from the pyramidal settlement. Mostly about how they kept the “peace”.

-” Stop it right now!”, came a bellow cry, a bit out of breath. While neither knew, their order was addressing everyone there. The clopy ran as fast as they could and felt a bit conflicted about arriving so late to the conflict.

-” You’re that clon..”, stopped the digger, trying to remember what the clopies used to identify themselves with- “ehhh, whatever- on the council. Is this crazy girl with ya?”

Savan took a second to catch their breath and come up with a way to de-escalate the obvious tense situation.

-” Yes, she is a member of our rehabilitation program, and…part of her program involves this kind of action as well. I asked her to run ahead and stop a fight breaking out”, Savan lied expertly, which took Melina by surprise. Even so, the clopy was winging it by the seat of their pants, not sure of where the lie would take them.

-” You asshole, your attack mutt kicked us around and threaten us! Guess you can’t scrape the rust off of this tool.”, said the thinner digger, throwing a spit next to Melina. “ What’s that all about? We thought we ran from the County so we don’t have to deal with stuff again and you bring it here?”

Savan felt that the improvisation backfired, but for now, they decided to somewhat work around it. “I get what you mean. But let’s be real, we have an issue with people acting out of order here as well. I apologize for how the patient reacted, we’re just trying to implement some methods to keep a set of orders around. But you are correct, this wasn’t the best approach.”

The workers seemed to have calmed down a bit, not pleased by Savan’s explanations but still affable that someone with authority explained some of their actions. “Ok, ok, I kinda get what you mean. I’m still on nightly lookouts for thieves even now”, replied one of the diggers, which sparked some surprised sympathy from the other. “ Just keep a tighter leash on her, ok?”, to which Melina scowled and almost started another argument before Savan intervened.

-” So what were you two arguing about?”

Melina took a few steps backward after all of her aggression was deflated by the sudden lack of animosity in the air. Still, something else kept her remaining on the scene, a sudden interest in the clopy. She didn’t comprehend how, but they managed to turn the heated struggle between the two into a shouting argument, which a few moments later devolved into a contest of who could stop mid-sentence to try and remember which words sounded nicer; until the two men arrived a point were their annoyances brought them on their knees in front of a schematic and their arguments were less spiteful than before.

At some point, after arguing about how to proceed further the two decided to follow the worker with the thin prosthetic.

-” See, what did I tell you, your modifications work for softer soil, this stuff is too hard to toil so much on it!”

-” Ah, you said shit about the hardness of the ground. Whatever now, at least we solved this grand mystery and we can get back to work. Oh, and thanks for ya help, councilor.”, he said, shaking Savan’s scratched, but polished metallic arm with force. “ And you, hope ya’ll be doing a better job with your rehabilitation or whatever”, he cried out to Melina, who replied flipping him the bird.

Savan, afterward, approached the prisoner, a bit surprised to see her still there. The girl looked up at them, a bit annoyed.

-” What?”, she asked.

-” So unlike your brother; very surprising…Hey, so what did you think about what I said back there?”, said the clopy in a calm, monotone voice.

-” Which part? That your terrorist settlement is filled with criminals and it will probably descend into a state where people will start killing and pillaging each other? No, it doesn't ring a bell.” she scoffed back, relaying it all with a prideful smirk.

-”...Right…So, Angie told me that you don’t do anything most of your days, just vagabonding around?”, Savan said, trying to jab the girl's pride.

-” Vagabonding?! Now listen here…”, but before she could continue, the girl realized that she didn’t have a counterargument.

-” I have a proposal then. Part of my daily tasks include vagabonding as well, which unwillingly also includes trying to stop conflicts like today; but it usually takes a lot longer. Maybe you could help me out with that?”

-'' You? Want me? To follow you around…patrolling?”, she said, before realizing the opportunity in front of her.

-” Sure, call it whatever makes you happy. I would have to bring it to the others first, but think about this offer, ok?