Sanctuary

Chapter One - Senna

Well the alternator was shot, that much she knew. The rough hole in the rusted casing kind of gave it away. It looked like part of the hole had collapsed inwards and damaged some of the copper wire, but she wouldn't know the extent of the damage until she got the part out and cracked it open. Senna dug a tool from her belt and set to work. She had the part removed and in her hands by the time her mentor, Wrench, came out to check on her.

"How's she looking?" Wrench asked. Senna quite literally jumped to answer her, banging the back of her head off the hood of the truck. She winced, cradling the alternator in one hand so she could rub the now sore back of her head.

"Alternator is shot," Senna replied, extending the part out towards Wrench. She took the part with a 'hmm', looking over the damaged outer casing.

Wrench was a relatively small woman, shorter than Senna by at least a couple of inches despite being nearly twice the girl's age. At a glance she looked rather disheveled. Her frazzled brown hair was haphazardly knotted into a frayed braid, her coveralls were stained and ripped in more places than any one person could count, and grimy oil was so ever present on her hands that it had taken up permanent residence under her nails. Her brown eyes were sharp, though. There was an intelligence behind them that few people had.

It had been the talk of the town when Wrench had moved out to the Rim ten years ago. After all, not many people left Central. There were all sorts of rumors as to why Wrench, whose real name was Ko Geary, had left the fancy city to live in a shack attached to a junkyard. Senna had been six at the time and not terribly interested in adult gossip, but her father had talked about the new mechanic in town. She hadn't looked half as disheveled back then. No, she had been a fancy city girl still. Senna had only seen her like that a couple of times, with her father. Wrench's hair had been a shockingly vibrant shade of green back then, but that color had faded away almost as quickly as the gossip. It only took a few months for the friendly residents of the Rim to accept her as one of their own. Within a few years everyone had forgotten if the wrench-shaped sign that hung above the junkyard door had come before or after Ko's nickname.

Senna had been her apprentice for six years now. She had started at the age of ten, not too long after her father had died. Her mother never liked the idea of her working in a junkyard, but Senna took after her dad. They had repaired all sorts of things around the house together. Continuing to fix things in his absence had always felt like the right thing to do. Not even her mother could argue with that - and her mother could argue about almost anything.

Senna hovered over Wrench's shoulder as she cracked open the casing back inside the shop. She squinted at the copper wire wrapped on the inside. Sure enough, there was a cut. Actually, it was more of a gash.

"It's worse than I thought," Senna mumbled and Wrench nodded grimly.

"I'm going to need to rewind the whole thing." She sighed, chucking the part rather unceremoniously down onto the rough work table. "There should be a spool of wire in that cabinet." She gestured rather vaguely with her left hand. Senna leapt into action.

The cabinet was an ancient thing made of blue grey metal. She had to give the door a hefty tug to get it open, since the thing no longer sat straight on its hinges and had to be jammed shut in order to stay closed. It was one of those things that never really made it onto the repair list. Wrench never seemed too concerned about it.

Senna dug through the miscellaneous items on the shelf. All of them were coated in a thin layer of dust, which puffed up into the air when jostled. Senna sneezed, but kept looking. She found the wire on one of the lower shelves, behind a white cardboard box. It was tucked so far back that she had to be on her knees with her head craned at an angle to even see it. She moved the white box out and onto the floor so it wouldn't be in the way, reached back to retrieve the spool, and set that aside so she could return the box to its rightful place.