Whoops (pt 2)
@landfill-levi
from here
Wyrran shrugged nonchalantly as he walked away, not really caring one way or another if the pest followed him. He continued walking without missing a beat, raising a hand.
"Whatever! Suit yourself! Just dont bother me again, if you will!" He called behind him. "And if I get any angry people at my door, I'll send them your way!"
If Levi had heard Wyrran, he gave no body language to signify so. He began sauntering off in his own direction, picking his way through the muck, puddles, and slush of garbage-packed ground.
Now far from the upper class districts, the buildings around him were nothing more than hashed-together hulls of salvaged garbage. Some walls might have come from dinged up cars, resulting in a house that looked just as dinged up and insecure; other buildings were trash-compacted bricks stacked up as neatly as could be. Either way, it was all garbage, the remains of a civilization past that had turned their consumer products into a planet-wide dump.
It was all Levi had ever known, and he... liked it.
He belonged in it.
He whistled as he wandered off, feeling pleased with how heavy his bag felt on his shoulders. He looked forward to dumping the contents out at his ramshackle home to see how good his stolen goods were. Repairing his instrument would be less fun, but at the same time, it gave him pleasure to be a repairman, too.
He weaved between streets, not at all taking a direct route to return home.
And then for the third time that day, he almost crashed into someone.
Ugh. It was the guy he had just walked away from!
Wyrran blinked in surprise at having run into this same guy again. He stared for a minute, startled, then switched slowly to mild annoyance.
He'd decided to go back to the shop anyway and had bought what he'd planned to in the first place. And then, he'd headed home, only to again run straight into Levi.
"I thought you said you wouldn't follow me. Or did I mishear you?" It was half sarcasm, half a genuine question.
Levi threw his hands open in a defensive-innocent gesture. “Whoa whoa, I ain’t trying to follow you, buddy, I swear. I don’t got no reason to stick to you now. My chasers’re all gone.”
"Oh, I see. Well I still wish you hadn't gotten me into that mess in the first place, it was incredibly rude." Wyrran scolded him. "I've been getting odd looks, and you made me have to fight with a lot of people watching. And I'm tired from running and fighting."
He stomped a foot. "I very much don't appreciate any of that, and I feel I'm owed an apology at one point or another for the trouble." Wyrran crossed his arms. He hadn't expected to continue to rant about this, but he was now, so why stop? His day had been ruined.
“Well, hope you like being disappointed, bucko.” Levi grinned, clearly not planning on giving an apology. As far as he was concerned, he’d done everything he needed to and there was no need to be penitent about that. If some stick in the mud were grumpy about that, he needed to learn how to deal with that grumpiness.
"Well of course, I can't really expect basic manners from a trash rat, now can I?" The Alarian knew he was dipping into just being nasty with that remark, but he didn't really care. He could have gotten arrested.
"Politeness, much like cleanliness, is a very odd concept here." He sniffed and absentmindedly brushed a little bit of dust off of his shirt, pondering if he should just leave at this point.
“Well, you’re sure doing a great job of being polite, ain’tcha?” Levi laughed.
Then, a new thought coming to mind, Levi began fishing through his backpack. He pulled out the first thing his hands touched, then offered it before the Alarian. His tone had already been bright talking to the Alarian; now it was outright glittering.
“How about I make a deal with you? Make your day great? Since it’s your lucky shopping day! I can get you the ultimate deal on anything and everything you need! And since today’s been so rough on you, I’ll give you an EXTRA discount! The BEST discount anyone could offer! THE BEST! You’ll be paying for nothing but materials, no extra cost, no nothing, you won’t be able to find no deal the likes of this anywhere! I care about how you feel, damn right I do, and I’d love to make it up for you here and now.”
Wyrran had been about to remark how the place was rubbing off on him when Levi just pulled this new weirdness from nowhere, and he had no clue how to react. He stared for a minute, then glanced down at the random gear in Levi's hand.
"You know I witnessed you steal that, right?" He asked, deadpan, one eyebrow raised. He wasn't even upset. Just amazed. "I was right next to you."
Levi continued barreling forward, not even blinking at Wyrran’s remark. “Ab-so-freaktastic-lutely, my good, keen-eyed fellow!” he exclaimed. “Then you know better than everyone else how much this is worth. And know what a great deal you’ll be getting from me, who went through the hard, honest work of taking off all those dollars that store would’ve swindled from you. Here, I’ve got nothing but good, honest, minimal price for your great needs! For this... for this...”
For the first time, Levi looked at what it was he was trying to sell.
“For this... only-partially-used, mostly-unchewed, rare and genuine” - (he pronounced it ‘gen-you-wine’) - “antique, fully functioning and working wooden pencil!”
The poor stub was barely the length of his thumb. Splinters from bug-ridden plywood had seen better days than this.
"I don't need it, thank you." Wyrran said, bemused and just kind of thrown off. He was almost smiling. "I bought all the wares I needed for today. At the shop. However, I'll... keep you in mind."
He shook his head slowly, still just rather amazed. "You are a weird fellow."
Noticing that the Alarian wasn’t quite as frustrated as before, Levi kept pushing. He pulled out another object, which at one point might have been circular in shape, but now looked like five bites had been taken out of it. It was a clock. Its gears were so loose the entire object rattled, and Levi noticed that one of the hands was permanently drooped.
“I’m sure you grabbed everything you remembered to grab,” Levi said. “But if you have the time -” he leaned into the pun “-then it might not be so bad to see what’s in stock? You never know if you’ll spy something you want.”
If the Alarian refused this, Levi would stop, but he had long since learned being persistent closed more sales than made enemies.
Well.
Probably.
He thought back on the exploded foyer.
That had been pushing the sale maybe a little too far. Maybe.
Wyrran's eyebrows stayed up for a bit, and he seemed unamused at the very obvious pun. He looked down at the clock and grabbed it, looking over the very obviously broken object. "Well, I do have an older clock that needs replacement parts. And this will come in handy."
Whether that pun was intentional or not was left completely unanswered as he delivered it with no difference in tone from the rest of the sentence. He pulled a few coins from a pouch on his belt. "How much for this, then? Looks like you saved face after all."
Levi glanced down briefly at the coins Wyrran had pulled out. He tried not to grin broadly. “What you’re offering there would be a wonderful deal, and I’d be willing to accept it.” He reached out his hand for Wyrran to shake. “We got a deal?”
