Building Zoids in a World of Titans

The next few days passed in a rhythm Alex found comfortable. Welding. Calibrating. Testing. The Arosaurer's chest plating was re-forged, the left arm re-cased, and the knee joint rebuilt with a heavier-grade alloy that Borin had sourced from somewhere he refused to name. The Zoid was coming back together, piece by piece.

Ziya worked at the bench across from him, cataloguing the Liger's harvested components with the kind of focused efficiency that made Alex feel sloppy by comparison. She hadn't mentioned the dinner again, and he'd started to think she'd forgotten about it.

She hadn't.

"On Thursday," Ziya said, not looking up from her data slate, "I'm closing the shop early. Father's meeting with a supplier in the lower district."

Alex looked up from the hydraulic line he was routing. "Okay?"

"That means I'm free. Tomorrow evening." She set the stylus down and fixed him with a look. "You did promise me dinner, Alex. In exchange for helping you build a beam projector that could punch through a Titan's skull."

He had, in fact, forgotten about that entirely.

"I remember," he said, which was technically not a lie. The memory surfaced now, prompted by her tone. "Tomorrow works."

Ziya's expression softened. "Good. I'll meet you at the shop after closing."

She returned to her cataloguing, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Alex went back to the hydraulic line, telling himself that dinner was just dinner. A transaction. Fair payment for services rendered.

He almost believed it.

Ziya left an hour later, and the workshop felt quieter without her precise, methodical presence. Alex was recalibrating the Arosaurer's targeting array when Rhian's voice came from the doorway.

"She's got it bad for you, you know."

Alex didn't turn around. "Who?"

"Ziya. Obviously." Rhian hopped up onto a workbench, her legs swinging. "Did you seriously just agree to dinner with her and not think about where you're taking her?"

"It's dinner. You sit down, you eat food, you leave. How complicated does it need to be?"

Rhian stared at him. "You're unbelievable."

"What?"

"It's not just dinner, Alex. She likes you. She's liked you for a while. And you're going to take her somewhere, what, the stew counter at The Stone Hearth?"

"That's where we went before."

"That was different. That was—" Rhian stopped herself, pressing her lips together. Then she sighed, long and slow, the kind of sigh that carried the weight of someone who had given up on explaining obvious things. "Okay. New plan. We're going shopping."

"Shopping?"

"For clothes. You can't take a girl to dinner wearing a work tunic that smells like hydraulic fluid."

Alex looked down at himself. The tunic in question had a fresh scorch mark on the left sleeve from that morning's welding. "It's not that bad."

"Alex."

"Fine."

Rhian hopped off the bench and grabbed his arm with both hands, already pulling him toward the door. "Come on. Borin can watch the shop. We're fixing this disaster before tomorrow."

Alex let himself be dragged, already regretting every decision that had led to this moment. Shopping was a variable he hadn't accounted for. Shopping was inefficient.

But Rhian's grip was surprisingly strong for a nine-year-old, and arguing with her had never once worked in his favor.

He went.

* * *

Veridia's market district was a maze of canvas awnings, hanging lanterns, and the overlapping voices of merchants who had perfected the art of making every transaction feel like a personal negotiation. Rhian moved through it like she'd been born to it, weaving between stalls with the confidence of someone who knew exactly which vendor short-changed customers and which one slipped extra figs into the bag.

Alex followed, carrying the first two bags she'd already accumulated.

"This way," Rhian said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him toward a row of clothing shops that Alex had walked past approximately four hundred times without ever once considering entering.

"You know," Alex said, "I technically have enough work tunics to last me until I'm forty."

"You also have enough work tunics to make Ziya think you crawled out of a salvage heap on your way to dinner." Rhian released his wrist and stopped in front of a shop with a display of fitted jackets arranged by color. "That's not the impression we're going for."

"What impression are we going for?"

Rhian gave him a look that suggested the answer was obvious and he was choosing to be difficult. She pulled him inside.

The shopkeeper, a woman with silver-streaked hair and measuring tape draped around her neck like a scarf, looked up from her ledger. Her eyes moved from Rhian to Alex and back again, and something in her expression shifted from professional neutrality to barely concealed alarm.

"He needs a complete outfit," Rhian announced. "Something nice. Dinner nice."

The shopkeeper's measuring tape was in her hands before Rhian finished the sentence. She circled Alex once, twice, her eyes narrowing with the kind of analytical precision he recognized from his own work.

"Shoulders are broad," she muttered. "Narrow waist. He's built like he actually does physical labor instead of just talking about it." She glanced at Rhian. "Navy. Navy would work."

"See?" Rhian said to Alex. "Even she knows."

Twenty minutes later, Alex stood in front of a mirror wearing a fitted navy blue shirt that the shopkeeper had insisted on tucking in, tailored khaki pants that fit properly for the first time in his life, a jacket with clean lines that didn't have a single scorch mark on it, and a pair of low-profile sneakers that Rhian had selected with the seriousness of someone choosing components for a Zoid.

He looked like a different person. Not a bad different. Just... different.

"Well?" Rhian stood behind him, her chin barely clearing his elbow, grinning up at his reflection.

"The shirt's tight."

"It's supposed to be fitted. There's a difference." She adjusted the collar with a quick, practiced motion. "You look good, Alex. Like someone Ziya would actually want to have dinner with."

Alex turned slightly, examining the profile. The jacket did something favorable for his shoulders. He hadn't noticed his shoulders needed doing something favorable for, but apparently they did.

"How much?" he asked the shopkeeper.

She named a figure that was higher than anything Alex had ever spent on clothing, but the bounty from the Liger kill and the guild reward had padded his accounts more than he'd expected. He paid without haggling, which Rhian noted with visible approval.

They stepped back into the afternoon sun, bags in hand, and Rhian steered him toward the upper district.

"We need to make the reservation," she said. "Can't show up to a restaurant without one. That's how you end up eating against a wall."

"I've eaten against a wall before. The food tastes the same."

"You're hopeless."

The restaurant was called The Copper Vine, and it occupied the second floor of a stone building near the guild hall's eastern wing. A small brass placard by the door listed the evening's menu in handwriting so elegant it looked like it had been threatened into submission. Alex had walked past it dozens of times. He'd never once considered eating there.

Rhian marched up to the reservation desk with the authority of someone who had made many reservations in her life, which Alex suspected was not accurate.

"We'd like to reserve a table for tomorrow evening," Rhian said. "Two people."

The clerk, a young man with a thin mustache and an expression that suggested he'd rather be anywhere else, consulted his ledger. He flipped a page. Then another.

"I'm afraid we're fully booked for tomorrow evening," he said. "The earliest availability is—"

"Wait." A door behind the desk opened, and a heavyset man with a polished vest and the kind of smile that meant business emerged. His eyes found Alex and stopped.

"You're the pilot," the man said. "The one who brought down the Stormclaw Liger."

Alex shifted his weight. "I—yes."

The manager rounded the desk in three quick strides and took Alex's hand, shaking it with both of his own. "My name is Orlen. I own this establishment. That Liger came within two streets of us. Two streets. If you hadn't stopped it when you did—" He gestured broadly at the restaurant behind him, at the building, at the street beyond. "All of this. Gone."

"I just did what needed doing."

"You did more than that." Orlen released his hand and turned to the clerk with a look that could have curdled milk. "Clear a table for tomorrow evening. The window alcove. And put it on the house."

"Sir, the window alcove is reserved for—"

"I said clear it."

The clerk cleared it.

Orlen turned back to Alex, his smile warm and genuine. "It's the least we can do. Tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. You and your guest will be taken care of."

Rhian beamed. "Thank you, sir."

They left The Copper Vine with a confirmed reservation and new bags swinging from Alex's hands. The sun was lower now, casting long shadows through the market stalls as vendors began their evening setup.

"You did that on purpose," Alex said.

"Did what?"

"Marched us in there like you knew exactly what you were doing."

Rhian shrugged, but the grin gave her away. "I had a theory. Heroes get better tables."

"You're nine. How do you know about things like this?"

"I listen. People talk." She skipped ahead a few steps, then turned to face him, walking backward with the confidence of someone who had never tripped in her life. "Now. You need to promise me something."

"What?"

"Tomorrow. Dinner with Ziya. Be good. Don't talk about hydraulics. Don't talk about Zoids. Don't calculate the structural integrity of the restaurant while she's trying to have a conversation with you."

"I've never done that."

"You absolutely did that at The Stone Hearth. I watched you eye the support beams during dessert."

Alex opened his mouth. Closed it. She wasn't wrong.

"I'll be good," he said.

"You'll be good," Rhian repeated, as if cementing it into reality. Then her expression shifted, the serious advisor replaced by something younger and more transparent. "Also, I'm hungry."

They found a sweets vendor near the fountain square, a cart stacked with jars of candied fruits, honeyed nuts, and something called Xylosian fire drops that were reportedly spicy enough to make adults cry. Rhian pointed at a jar of pale blue sugar drops dusted with crystallized citrus.

"Those," she said. "Please."

Alex bought two bags. One of the fire drops for himself, one of the blue sugar drops for Rhian, and a handful of honeyed almonds that the vendor threw in for free when he recognized Alex's name.

They sat on the fountain's edge as the street lanterns flickered on one by one. Rhian tore open her bag and popped a sugar drop into her mouth, her eyes closing with satisfaction.

"These are the best thing in the entire city," she said. "And I've tried everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything that matters." She opened one eye and looked at him. "You're going to do great tomorrow. Ziya's going to love the outfit. She's going to love the restaurant. And she's going to love that you actually showed up looking like a person who owns a mirror."

"I own a mirror."

"You own a piece of reflective metal that you use to check weld seams. That's not the same thing."

Alex ate a fire drop. It was, in fact, spicy enough to make his eyes water, which he would never admit.

Rhian swung her legs and hummed something tuneless and happy, the bag of sugar drops cradled in her lap like treasure. The fountain burbled. The city settled into its evening rhythm around them.

"Thank you," Alex said.

Rhian looked up. "For what?"

"For today. For the clothes. For the reservation. For..." He gestured vaguely at everything. "All of it."

She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that reminded him why he kept coming back to this fountain, this city, this life he'd somehow built from nothing.

"That's what friends do," she said. "Now eat your fire drops before they get stale."

He ate them. All of them. And he didn't cry.

Much.