Low-Budget Kintsugi
Made on: 21 Mar, 2023
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: 1,497
Relationship(s): Yuniesky & Abu-Zaid (Can be interpreted as pre-relationship if you try really really hard)
Characters of Focus: Yuniesky, Abu-Zaid, Chester
Setting: Coronation Era
Prompt: Cut
Warnings: A sentient mech is damaged off-screen.
Beginning Authors Note:This is going with the interpretation that both Conditional Yuniesky and Chester Abu-Zaid are two entities registered under the same name. (A mysterious monolith (Conditional) and the person in charge of looking into it (Yuniesky) and a mech (Chester) and the person ve befriended (Abu-Zaid).)
That said, this fic features everyone above with the exception of Conditional.
"You know I do mostly programming, right? I'm not really the person to go to for mechanics."
Abu-Zaid glances back at Yuniesky, eyebrows raised, "Can you name any other agent that would be more suitable for this?"
Yuniesky opens their mouth to name Nanci, of course, because anyone who builds that many death rays would have to be good at that sort of thing, but, well, death rays.
"Plus," Abu-Zaid adds on before they could think of someone else, "you did the machinery for your own prosthetics, right? Double plus, you've been able to help every time I've asked you to check up on Chester."
They’re right, so Yuniesky just grumbles and follows them to the field where Chester is sunbathing in front of 3rd. The mech lifts ver head in greeting, voicebox crackling to life to say hello to the two of them as Abu-Zaid pats the plastic on ver forearm.
“Heya Chester! Yunie here will get you back up to snuff in no time! Don’t you worry!” Abu-Zaid rambles as the two amble around the mech to ver hind leg.
Just like Abu-Zaid described earlier, there's a rather large cut in the plastic revealing a mess of wires, a few of which are split and fraying, along with some scuffed metal parts.
“What was this one from?” Yuniesky cuts off Abu-Zaid to ask, “Robo-werewolves? Magical girls? …The space pirates, again?”
“Oh no! We’ve befriended the space pirates a couple of weeks ago!” Abu-Zaid waves off casually, “This was from that evil organization that wants to study Chester, you know the one.”
Yuniesky unfortunately does, because that was the reason behind the last five times they were dragged away from their actual job. Which, look, Yuniesky might act like this is the height of annoyance, to go outside for a bit and look at the insides of a very neat (and polite) mech, but a person can only get pulled away from their job for a long, complicated task so many times in a week before they start forming a very real grudge against an evil organization.
"I see." Yuniesky says, because anything more than that would devolve into an angry rant.
The two of them peer into the tear, it’s big enough that if one of them really wanted to get a face full of frayed live wires they could fit their head and maybe most of their shoulders in.
Yuniesky looks up to Chester, who has ver neck twisted back to gaze down at them, “Can you tell what exactly isn’t functioning because of this?”
“My leg’s fine. It’s my foot that’s weird.“ Chester says, cocking ver head to the side. A mannerism obviously picked up from Abu-Zaid at some point, as the human does the exact same motion right after.
“Ah, right, we had some trouble getting back here because of that. It's almost like a limp.”
“There’s no ‘almost’ about–” trying to argue about what does or does not constitute for a limp is an incredibly idiotic argument to get into this early on in the day, Yuniesky realizes, “you know what, I’ll go get the spare parts.”
The trip to the dugout is quick, the box being where they left it last time, and soon enough Yuniesky's back with all the necessary items for mech repair with the longest-extension-cord-known-to-man (Core patented and approved) trailing behind them. In the meantime it seems like Abu-zaid decided to scale Chester, as they're now perched on top of ver's shoulder, kicking their legs arrhythmically against the plastic.
The two of them look down at Yuniesky as they connect up the soldering iron to the extension cord and take out pliers from the spare parts box. The wires pressed flush against the machinery are the one to get fixed first. A quick striping, twist, solder and, for lack of the nice heat shrink tubing, finished off with electrical tape.
Yuniesky does have to fit most of their head into the cut to reach said wires, so they don’t notice that Abu-zaid moved to get a better look at what they were doing until they take their head out to grab more electrical tape and, consequently, slam their heads together.
“Uh oh!” Chester remarks as Yuniesky clutches the back of their head and tries very hard to not say some choice words.
After they blink away the sudden tears, Yuniesky spots Abu-zaid’s offending head, which is attached to their body which is dangling off the top of Chester’s hind leg. Luckily, the sudden act of accidental violence didn’t unbalance their precarious position. Then all of them would have an even bigger problem to fix.
“Ow! What on earth was that for?” Abu-zaid pushes themselves upwards with the one hand not clutching at their forehead, so as to be able to better glare at Yuniesky who splutters in response.
“What–? You think I would slam our heads together on purpose?!”
“I don’t know, maybe!” Abu-zaid sticks their tongue out at Yuniesky– who instinctively mirrors the action back– before leaning down again to gaze into the cut. “Anyways, what are you doing in there?”
Yuniesky walks over to where their next to Abu-Zaid’s upside down head and gestures to the wires with electrical tape, “I’m just putting the lightly damaged ones together first.”
“You're not doing anything for the scratches?”
“I think I’d scratch the parts up more if I tried.”
Abu-zaid knocks their head against Yuniesky gently before groaning and scrambling to situate themselves upright on top of Chester's leg, “Bleh, I got all lightheaded…”
“What a surprise.”
Ignoring Yuniesky, Abu-Zaid clambers down to look through the cut again in the gravitationally correct orientation. Yuniesky, now content that their head is no longer at risk, resumes their task.
Well.
They try to, at least.
As it turns out, having two people smush together to try and look into the same tear is not, in fact, a great way to work on something. Especially if only one person is doing the work.
After the fifth time Yuniesky turns to pick up something and has to immediately backpedal to avoid another head on collision with the other, they speak up on the matter. And by that, they mean mildly complain. “Are you trying to get in my way on purpose?”
“Not really, but I can be!” Abu-Zaid grins while they inch closer to said complainer. Yuniesky puts a hand on their forehead and shoves them back.
“No thanks. Isn’t there something else you should be doing?”
And that is how they end up in their current position, with Abu-Zaid handing over tools from the scrap box over to Yuniesky. Like some sort of surgeon and aid situation, if both the doctor and assistant had totally different degrees than what the task required and were making every other decision up on the spot.
Eventually, most of the wires are fixed leaving only the terribly damaged ones remaining. Yuniesky trims off the absolutely destroyed bits. Then they have to resume the terribly cramped position so Abu-Zaid can hold the replacement wire from the scrap pile as Yuniesky soldiers it on.
There’s not that many left, so soon enough they finish up the, albeit a bit shoddily done, but completed, job.
Chester tests out their foot movement for them, before declaring it a success.
“So what are we going to do about the hole in the plastic?” Abu-zaid asks, gesturing over to said hole, seemingly just in case the other has miraculously forgotten where they spent the last hour and a half.
“Eh,” Yuniesky shrugs, “Not much I can do about that. I don’t think there’s anything here to custom make that piece for replacement or anything. Next time you visit your actual mechanic at the Core, you’ll have to have ‘em do that. As well as having ‘em look at the job we just did. I’m not sure how well it’ll stay together.”
Chester pauses testing out ver newly restored mobility to turn to Yuniesky, “In any case, thanks a lot for doing this Yunie!”
“Yeah! Thanks a ton Yunie!” Abu-Zaid’s smile then turns sheepish, "And, uh, sorry for dragging you out here so often lately."
It’s a bit usual to have them look anything other than completely sure of themselves, so Yuniesky sets aside the dramatics for a moment, "it's fine. I'd rather you'd get someone to fix Cheater than for ver to stay permanently damaged, even if ve can't really feel it or whatever. Just try to be more careful in the future, alright?"
They heft up the scrap box as Abu-zaid gathers up the long extension cord into their hands.
"We'll try, but I'd like to see you face off against 30 people with harpoons and see if you get out of it unscathed!"
"Harpoons? Are you kidding me? How on earth do you even get into that type of situation!"
“Quite easily, you see…!”
The two of them continue on back to the dugout to put everything away.
Ending Author Note: This was originally made for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fan_flashworks over on Dreamwidth!
Thanks for reading! ^__^