Hullabaloo

[LYourLocalAutist]

CLANK

Whzz. Fshh. CLANK. Whzz. Fshh. CLANK. Tong. TSHH. Tong. Whzz. Fshh. CLANK. CLANK. CLANK.

New angle grinder was in.

The metalworking club had a minimal but comfortable spot situated off to the side in what was meant to be the pottery room. Right next to the kilns. Not much else you could offer a party of three in such a school. Even so, it was equipped with a good amount of the things an aspiring mechanic would need to remain inspired, all carefully maintained by the most dedicated metalworkers the school had to offer... only one of whom was present right now, grinning with wide green eyes as she admired her newly-cut work which would go great on some exhaust system. Yeah, it was that loud with just her.

[Raya Loux continued from Love is All I Bring]

Raya hummed to herself cheerily as she set the part aside for now. Still had to cool, technically. Even more technically, she probably ought to be waiting for her two comrades. Comrades in fire and steel. She needed them to have the minimum number of people to start the club. Bit rude to do things without them, she thought. But, they were late, and she could swear that the new angle grinder was looking at her with bedroom discs. She needed to make something it was almost instinct. And the great Mr. Butler, in his visionary kindness (you'd be surprised how into observing metalworking an art teacher can be) had sanctioned her. Now she had a new thing. Made by her. Out of metal. Hell yeah.

But she couldn't just keep the club a solo act. There were other parts! They needed to be played! So, she sat herself down on a nearby stool (AFTER making sure the grinder was off and safety was on and it was positioned away from her alongside the rest of the tools she'd used (of course)) and began to down her first drink of water of the day. With how hot things got, she'd be needing more later. Those damn kilns. Even in the middle of winter she was just in her tank top because of them. Room didn't even need a radiator when they were baking... as the next person to enter the room would find out. She couldn't wait to see which one it was, and kept humming to herself, the tune this time of a more excited nature.

[Cicada]

Clarissa tried not to think about how dopey she looked carrying a Costco™ 40 pack of water across half of campus because there was no student parking near Art+Design, just staff. She usually succeeded in not thinking about it!

[[Clarissa Shoemaker continued from The Collector]]

Clarissa ambled in through the main door to the pottery room, neutral face. Eyes acknowledging there was a Raya in the room with a glance, but delayed in actually reacting. First, she put the many many water bottles on the closest free table. After that she pulled out her red hair clip and casually stabbed it into the plastic to open it. After the after that she hesitated for a moment... Dot dot dot... Ellipses... Then she robotically pulled off the denim button up she had on, plain black tee underneath. Spare shirt, she'd already been through one for that day. The importance of taking dance seriously now that she was on the competition team. Praaaaactice was what the doctor perscribed for her.

Clarissa's two hands folded the long sleeve she'd shucked, sleeve to sleeve, press flat, sleeve to the side, press flat, collar rolled in like a coccoon, press flat, fold in half, press flat, fold in half again. A neat gently long rectangle of shirt, which she left next to the water bottles.

Then she immediately lit up like a firecracker, eyes bright, body language bouncy precisely one instant faster than an eye blinking after she'd been inert and placid like stagnant water.

"Raya!"

She bounded over to BFF5ever with a prairie gallop. Clarissa wanted to hug! But she wouldn't throw herself into Raya's arms unless her friend was ready for the full speed tackle.

"Jeez, it's warm in here already." She skid, skrrrrrrt, to a halt by friend shape, hair animated a second longer as it rearranged itself into a total mess half in her face that she started yanking away in fistfulls. "I got the scrap for welding Claude's exhaust pipes." Make the Magnum Opus sound like a prowling beast, yessir that was the plan, after a bunch of detours inevitable when dealing with maintaining a compact made in the 70s.

"I'll drop it off at your shop or you can take it when we leave... Where's Meela?"

[Lamps]

"Right here."

[Meela Paireerak continued from The Crate Escape]

Peaking awkwardly into the room from the left side of the door frame and holding a lazy peace sign up with her hand, Meela enters the scene. She could already feel the heat of the kiln on her face without having to step one foot in. If it weren't for that, she'd have been wearing her favorite hoodie like she actually wanted to today -- instead, she's settled for a black t-shirt bearing the cover art for Wasteland 3 and a pair of grey cargo shorts. She felt exposed, somehow, without it on.

It was fine, though, because she was here to hang with two people she tolerated more than most. Clarissa Shoemaker, the sporty girl she talks Minecraft with sometimes, and-

'Holy shit Raya put a shirt on.' she blurts out mentally, thanking the gods they didn't give humanity the gift of telepathy. Meela had only a basic knowledge of metalworking, as well as limited skill with the tools of the trade, but still turned up every week despite all that. Not that she ever got anything done, what with the

distractions.

"... uhh, metal stuff. Yeah." she says whilst heading to a nearby workbench. Her eyes look straight ahead as she pretends not to look at anything in particular. It's just about the only straight thing going on in her mind right now.

[LYourLocalAutist]

The click and swing of an opening door was a resoundingly striking sound among the sea of mechanical whirring and kindling, prompting Raya to turn and turn quick to face one of two people, unless someone entirely new had joined the club and no one had informed her. The alternative hypothesis proved incorrect as in walked the bestie. Raya's already present grin doubled in size as she took in the familiar sight of the Clarissa! Now in attendance! Hell yeah!

Raya got herself set up to greet her. Mask off, gloves off, all in tandem, fixated on her literal best friend in all existence. Clarissa was getting her own set up over with. It was a bit like watching a particularly big and intricate wind-up toy. It was easy to tell after you'd spent as much time watching as Raya had; it was coming up, coming up, coming up, annnnnd-

Ding!

Bestie off to the races coming in hot. 0-100 better than any old shop could manage. Arms open, grin somehow even wider, annnnnd- aww, hit the brakes. Ah well. Arms open can still function as welcoming. This is how you be a mechanic. You adapt.

"Clarissa!"

Loud and proud and happy voice as her hands returned to her hips. She set herself to lean against a nearby workbench and nodded along as Clarissa talked about the latest acquisitions, only getting more and more excited as more was revealed. Any work on the perfection that was the car in the big man's possession was welcome as work in the club, and they had some perfect tools to facilitate it. A bit like a kid excited to show off a new toy, she pulled the new angle grinder (power OFF safety ON) into view.

"Gonna be some damn clean pipes— check out what just came in."

She chuckles as the two pored over intricacies for a moment, before being faced with the inevitable question.

"Wait, yeah, where is-"

Question that answered itself. Speak of the nerd, and she shall et cetera. Angle grinder down, arms open in greeting, and that voice ringing out again.

"Meela!"

She chuckled watching the last girl you'd expect to see in any metalworking shop make her way down to a bench. Raya didn't care much about appearances in the end— Meela was the whole reason the club was able to form, having brought it up to just the required member limit. Sometimes, she wondered what in particular drew her to this club. And sometimes she got a few clues. Most commonly when she was in her tank tops, most curiously. She called out again, smile seared to her face. Now things were up and running.

"Welding time today. Got your gloves?"

[Cicada]

Intricacies!

The Makita 5" was a staple for both the industry and prosumer level. For good reason. Corded, 11K RPM, absurdly precise and clean cuts. All that power and it was very lightweight, about six pounds, which probably even Meela could operate for an extended period of time with minimal fatigue. The construction also minimized potential contamination of the angle grinder, a common feature of that generation but usually not at a relatively accessible price. Easy to clean and a biiiit easier to trust with not exploding and throwing a spinning serrated disc into an exposed arm or something.

Clarissa could envision it, phone out notes app open but forgotten, her minds eye expanding the cleanest of exhaust system bends in between her briefly outstretched fingertips. They could get microscopically smooooooth bends between the both of them, making a far more cleanly desiged pipe than industry standard. The sort of precision only a Loux or a Shoemaker could be relied on to be able to both draft and execute. Okay, like, there were a dozen shops in the Las Vegas Metropolitan region that could do what they did, but only like, one other one on their side of the I-15 corridor. The Magnum Opus manifolds were generally short and segmented due to the design of the car chassis, which created more potential air leaks, so if they could create a cleanly bent singular pipe that could withstand industry stress testing-



Clarissa turned around from where she'd been briefly, very happily, lost in space and time and vroom vroom bitches know they can't catch me vroom vroom cute sexy and my ride's sporty

Cute little pointy nose, chubby cheeks, annoyed looking with a heavy weight to the corner of her lips.

Meela, third club member out of... three. Clarissa was pretty sure the club would not be allowed to exist if it wasn't fully supplied by Clarissa and Raya's own paychecks and lifetime's worth of tool accumulation.

"Hey Meela!" Cheerful wave. There was no eye contact, which Clarissa did not consciously register.

"Face shield, apron, gauntlets." That was club provided. Clarissa and Meela were roughly the same amount of smol minus some measurement differences here and there, but all welding gear tended to be slightly oversized anyways. "What's the project for today again?" Metalworking Club was Raya's brainchild more than Clarissa's own. As was the case on any project where they worked together, Clarissa was the right hand, not the brain. Some amount of the brawn. If Clarissa made decisions, she ran them by Raya.

For example, Meela's application that had birthed the club from a meme Raya and Clarissa had been texting back and forth all last summer. Clarissa would not have approved it as was. Like, Tungsten was not a weldable metal with the equipment they, or anything short of a fully operational industrial shop, could afford. It was used in the torches they had specifically because it did not melt at tempertatures they worked at.

She would have asked for like, another filling out of the form or something. But Raya had given it the stamp and Clarissa gave giving the stamp the stamp.

Clarissa turned back around and began checking the clamps built into the table. Firm yanking back and forth to test the give. Potential disc to the arm if anything was even a little loose.

[Lamps]

If Raya was the brain of this operation and Clarissa the right hand, Meela may well be the nervous system. She didn't come up with the ideas or perform much of the heavy-lifting, but there was one thing she provided to this club besides its very existence:

Efficiency.

Any and all procedures and guidelines required for any particular task were hard-coded into Meela's subconscious at this point, mostly from observing her more qualified associates. Any role which wasn't filled by either Loux or Shoemaker was done by her, to an astonishing level of competency considering her inexperience. To add, Meela always had a knack for reducing wasted time and resources no matter what situation she was faced with -- given the highly expensive tools and materials this club used on the regular, her behind-the-scenes calculations probably saved them from immediate bankruptcy a number of times.

Meela donned a pair of welding gloves, red and loose-fitting, while her protective goggles lay on the bench beside her. She always took her time getting ready for welding duty. Almost too long. Despite her attempts to immerse herself in this weird new hobby of hers, she never did feel at one with this particular environment. It's like she was a stranger in a distant land -- the land of metalworking -- its customs and rituals learnable but remaining just a little unfamiliar to this mere tourist.

She puts on the gloves with care, for they're not hers.

"Almost good to go. Oh, hi Clarissa." she replies, finally. "... did I say hi already? I dunno."

[LYourLocalAutist]

It was suiting-up hour. Rather, suiting-up minute. Brown leather safety gloves (oil stain) brown leather apron (large) (oil stain) thick glass safety goggles (brown leather straps (large (soon to be oil stained))). They were hers, of course, brought from home, from the shop. Which was basically the same thing as home. Not even home away from home, just an extra base home in and of itself. Metalworking club was the home away from home, the thing she was always excited to run. Always excited to get the trifecta to come together again and apply some acetylene to some pipes (ALWAYS KEEPING THE 1/7TH RULE IN MIND).

Once everyone was finished with that section was the time to turn around on herself and answer questions. The basic one came first, of course; needed a plan of attack. Confident grin still plastered on that face of hers, she lifted the new angle grinder right back into her arms (where it belonged, of course), and made the announcement herself.

"Today," boldly and joyfully, with an unabashed confidence. "We're gonna get some scarfing done."

She'd need the practice for chopping those new pipes for the Opus into shape later, and the new tool she cradled was practically begging to be put to work. Besides that, they had some spare in-house scrap they had to get rid of (extra pipes would always be welcome back at the shop) and scarfing was just one of her favourite welding techniques in general (get fucking owned steel imperfections). She began to explain in further detail, mostly for the Meela in the room. This was also a place to learn, after all. They were still in school, weren't they?!

"We're gonna take turns using our new toy here to scrape off the edges of our scrap into tapered-off upsets, and then it's gonna be that much easier to fuse 'em together."

It was a neat little trick of physics— as opposed to a butt weld, the resulting diagonal shape of scarfing your material results in fluxing and jointing that goes on and facilitates itself. A clean little positive feedback loop which would help them out very neatly. She set the Makita back down to go haul the small amounts of scrap iron they'd be using to their workbenches with marked ease, setting them down in neat little proportioned piles for each of them to work on. Only thing left to do now was to decide who was allowed a go with the new tech first. Or a joke. Yeah, that was probably better.

"I trust you all remember how to use an angle grinder."

[Cicada]

“Maybe you said hi.” A hmmm. Clarissa thought about it, but the head did not contain the requisite memories. She concluded her ponderance with a one two shrug smile, sort of in that order.

Blade

blade? Clarissa spent a long moment in time zoning out, contemplating the pro con list of blunt versus sharp for clean welds in an exhaust piping

scarfing sounded fun. Precise and intense in the craftsmans high sort of way. Also, loud in a good way. A solid part of their club itinerary. Club agenda, as some would say. Clarissa put her backpack— one of many veterans of the high school wars because war, war did not change (where did she get that from??) and neither did her backpack— on a safe table and retrieved her own gear. Zip zip, no scrounging because the inside of her backpack was as organized as a filing cabinet and she knew where everything was without looking.

Leather apron, oppressively heavy, black, bought in 2020, splattered like a modern art in a sticky brackish midnight by brake fluid spills from a ‘12 Toyota Venza. Closest Clarissa had ever come in the biz to getting chemical burns if she’d been squatted a bit more at the time.

Welding hood, Outlaw Leather in a classic brown, kind of made her look like a cowboy, bought specifically for this club.

Both were neatly stacked and then offered to Meela.

“You first, Rayaaa? Then Meela, then me. You can show her what we’re going for, I stay sharp.”

It was like how back spotting worked in cheer. The position didn’t seem as physically intensive as the other roles specifically, they usually just grabbed the flyer’s ankle or calf or something. That was because they had the best view of the flyer’s apparent balance, and had the best position to respond quickly if balance was lost. They were the brains of a stunt, the Raya, if one was so inclined. Clarissa trusted herself to move faster than Meela could hurt herself, as long as she was paying attention. And Clarissa was always paying attention because a) friend must not be hurt and b) cool grindy metal noises. ASMR but not annoying and terrible (she guessed some people liked that kind of thing but Clarissa hated the noises other peoples mouths made).

[Lamps]

Meela watches as commander-in-chief Raya explains scarfing to her, arms folded as she absorbs the information via the art of conversational osmosis, something she has perfected. It should be noted that conversational osmosis is more than merely 'paying attention' -- it is the act of taking on-board everything told to you with utmost accuracy, forgoing any unnecessary mental activity which does not accumulate in the legible transcription of spoken word to brain tissue. Past conversations in the day discarded, broken down and smelted to be repurposed for the desired neuron pathways to be built in their stead. Meela won't just be scarfing metal today -- she will BE metal scarfing.

"Scrape off the edges, fuse what's left. Got it."

At last, she is ready to metalwork. Apron on, goggles strapped to her rounded face, each of them just a little too big for her. It's not so much that they'd order the incorrect size for the budding craftswoman, as much as she hasn't spiritually grown into this attire yet. Needless to say, Meela did not carry herself like a metalworker, but that didn't matter once she started eyeing the angle grinder with purpose.

That thing was very big. Maybe. Honestly, she wasn't sure if it was much bigger than other angle grinders out there, she'd seen like two. She wasn't even sure she could lift it with her wasting noodle arms, supported only by chips and leftover pad khi mao. In any case, she felt ready. Mostly from the pressure of failing in front of two people who don't hate you yet, but that wasn't something she needed to think about right now.

She eyed Rissa as she suggested she go before her.

"Okay, yeah. Probably better that way."

[LYourLocalAutist]

Ohhhh, Raya couldn't lie to herself, this was a bit of a rush. One would assume she'd get over the "eeee gonna work metal with the buds" feel after the eleven millionth club meeting, but nope! Every week, she stood up before them and lifted something in front of her two best friends and announced what they were going to grind or chop or smash or set fire to and reshape, and every week she got hit with that same little giddiness. Maybe it was the consistency or that it was her literal passion or that it was her friends! More than likely, it was all of them in some hodgepodge of factors. What was for sure, was she loved when things got in motion, like at this particular point wherein everyone was hashing things out with each other.

"Sounds perfect,"

Grinning reply to Clarissa's suggestion as the metal was laid, the safeties were removed and the saw began its descent upon the edges. Raya looked down at the metal she was treating with a gaze that, through the thick fog and ink of the goggles, could be seen as reverent. There was a method to this and to her. She knew exactly what to cut, how to cut it, for how long... things like this needed to be treated with a certain respect. Metal in general did.

"Let's get started."

TZZZZZZZZZ.

Small sparks flew as tiny indents were made. Removal of the imperfections to open. Fingers far away from even the splash zone, tongue lolling very slightly out the mouth. A sign of focus. She didn't bother with any explanations this time. Clarissa was already practically a savant and Meela... Meela had this knack. She could pick something like this up just looking at it. Raya had all the specifications and the machinations to herself. All the way through, diagonally. Had to tilt the saw just an extra so to get the desired result, accounting for the actual pressure of pushing the thing down.

TZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Everything was as it was.

And so it remained when the grinder was switched off, leaving a perfectly diagonal scarfing upset on the edge of the sheet, ready to be welded to an equal. Raya pulled whatever was blocking her eyes right up to her forehead (where it belonged the other 50% of the time) and gazed upon her work, the grin was back.

Then, it was directed at Meela.

"Your turn, yeah?"

[Lamps]

Meela saunters over to Raya and the grinder with an amount of confidence that could only be described as 'practical'. Both her hands are upon the equipment in the blink of an eye, though a brief moment of hesitation passes over Meela for a second as she now holds the tool. No, it was more akin to factory reset of her entire body -- a deep breath in, then out, before she was to attempt any sort of labor-intensive activity. It helped with the nerves especially.

"My turn." she said, motioning to the other two to make some space.

The machine whirred into life once more, the wheel spinning like a deadly carousel. Mustering all the strength she could, Meela guided it over to the scrap pile and got to work as best she could. It's slow at first, somewhat wonky and slippy in practice, but by the halfway point it was like she'd done this a thousand times. Her section was impressive, by this room's standards anyway, with barely any signs of the first few fuckups she made. Yes, this was satisfactory.

"'Rissa." she states like a command which means 'take this big thing from me'.

[Cicada]

zzzzZzzzrrRRrrrzzZZzzzzZZZskkrRRRRrrRRrrrzzz

Happy place for Clarissa!

But of course, she was very attentive to Meela, Clarissa on full alert despite otherwise being quite mellow in that moment in space-time. The moment of hesitation in Meela's hands and breath. Oxygen in, diaphragm expanded, oxygen out. Slight tension in the arms as the toughness of the metal— ductile and tensile stregnth, multiplicative, ability for matter to absorb forces without fracture, much as Clarissa did not have the math ability to actually calculate any of said numbers— fought back. Meela won. And then, looked happy. She deserved it. That was an excellent cut.

Clarissa's attentiveness, crisp Thanos snap, gone. She lived in her internal world in the next minute, in the securing the machine from Meela's hands, in the unconsciously taking her safety gear from Meela and donning it, in the sizing up of the section of pipe she was going to work on.

Her mouth moved, barely, lips shaping around words she didn't say. Not really visible under the protective leather of her mask. In her minds eye she swore she could see the individual atoms of the bit of scrap she was willing to bend to her will.

She was still for a long moment, then casually disengaged the guard and cut through the pipe in one press. A second of confident and firm contact. Cheerleader brand triceps and shoulders briefly defined through the contour of her tee. It was anime, and her's was the seven times folded blade. Diagonal cut, a perfect match to Raya's, a degree off being perfect for Meela's. Guard back, cutter on the table at an angle with the blade faced away from the fleshy things in the room, clamps holding the pipes rattled firmly to make sure there was no noise but the grumble of the table.

Mask up. She turned around at looked at her girls.

"Raya, Meela was insane. Functionally perfect? Her poise was immaculate? Like, helloooo?" Clarissa shot a smile and two hands frantically waving the way of the club's third but certainly not last member. "Are you sure you haven't been doing this all your life?"

[LYourLocalAutist]

Raya's arms were crossed as she bore witness to her fellow girls and their particular methods of repeating the action she'd just completed. There was a lot she could tell from the specifics of their actions, their movements, down to even the sounds produced by their particular techniques. A lot like how you could tell how soft or dense a sheet of metal was if you paid close attention to sheen and indentation. This evaluatory state of mind did not take precedence in Raya while watching, however; it played second fiddle to the more general facets of interest over sheer focus on said techniques. That being said, the sheer focus remained all the same. Her eyes squinted lightly watching.

The Meela.

If you asked someone who didn't work with metal, they'd tell you it was impossible to tell that Meela was a relative beginner at the trade. If you asked Raya, she'd tell you it was only really really hard. She moved like an expert, of course. The little bit of trouble making the initial indents through imperfect metal quickly gave way to an impossibly smooth and precise cut. The exact amount of pressure at the exact correct angle. Letting the knife do most of the talking. Experience be damned; Meela does it by the book and repeats what's shown on the paper, 1:1. She treats it like a skill and seeks its mastery, focused and academic in her method. Whistling appreciatively at the finished product as Meela returned to Raya's side and Clarissa took her turn, it was clear that Raya had quite the appreciation for that kind of attitude, enough to give her an ear-to-ear smile as she watched in excitement and latent analysis;

The Clarissa.

Clarissa had a method and it was a process. This process started by switching herself on, which entailed switching everything else off. All systems rerouted, maximum capacity towards the work. And it was work, despite the apparent academic hyperfocus visible on the girl's face. To Clarissa, this was an operation and she was the professional. Analysing and measuring in her brain like she was right at home in a chop shop. When the time came, the machine that was Clarissa put the work in and made no hesitations. Job underway. Checklist going tick, tick, tick with the masterful execution of a plan. Raya could tell that with Clarissa, everything, at the moment, was exactly where it needed to be. She leaned in slightly to take a closer look at her bestie's finished product and found something that didn't belong in a book, but on the shelf in a garage in the shop of a mechanic.

Then, Clarissa turned around and flipped the switches once more. Raya was used to seeing it by now.

She clapped for both of them, gloves still on and muffling the applause into a rhythmic plomf, plomf, plomf with the impact of leather on leather. Amazing jobs all around. It never, ever got old, and she hoped with all her heart that it would never even begin to do so. Then, the exchange of compliments began, and it seemed to be time to gang up on the "less experienced" member of the club. In concordance with Clarissa, Raya turned around to face Meela and grinned, hands satisfied on her hips.

"Couldn't agree more. Not a lot of people out there can make a cut that thorough with your amount of experience. You got talent and skill."

[Lamps]

Quite honestly, she wasn't expecting much praise. This was the expected outcome, after all, all she did was follow the procedures and carry out the work. So to be blindsided not once, but twice with sincere compliments kind of caused a crash in her brain's internal operating system. She liked hearing it, though.

"Uhhhh yeah I just, locked in I guess." she muttered, twiddling with a lock of her own hair. "I mean I coulda been less shaky at the start but, yeah I'm happy with it."

[Cicada]

Raya reminded Clarissa. Gloves off. Probably apron off too. It did explain why Clarissa had been struggling to make the rah-rah cheerleader motions to root for Meela's peak right at her face. Metalworker protection was heavy! It prevented acid burns, clothes on fire, et cetera and so on and other things like that.

"You locked in so hard!" Half-muffled because Clarissa and all her mess of hair were busily trying to evacuate her apron. Clarissa came out on the other side looking like she'd been hit by a lightning bolt, a spontaneous updo of the least aesthetic kind. Which she did not notice. Since her face was clear of hair, she didn't especially care what the rest of it did. At least, in the moment. Safe space!

"In another year I bet you'll be better than Raya or I."

Nod nod.

"Anyways I'm going to use the bathroom. Kinda forgot to do that after practice." All this hydration and nowhere for it to go. "Be back!" She scampered off, still looking a mess, smiling all the while.