A supposedly quiet time at the library [private]

It was a bit after lunchtime, around two o'clock, when Darwin arrived at the library armed with three notebooks full of scrawled writing that looked suspiciously close to hieroglyphics and a few pencils with no erasers on the ends. He was still stuck on that damned robot -- or automaton? Either way, he couldn't get it to move properly, dammit.

As a son of the great Hephaestus, Darwin had a bit of a large legacy to live up to: becoming some great engineer or inventor or blacksmith or whatever it was his siblings tended to be, in order to make their godly father proud up in his forge. Of course, engineering and inventing could also be considered an Athena demigod's thing along with a Hephaestus kid's, but the fact was that he and his siblings tended to be the builders, not those owl-lovers. He'd worked with some Athena kids before to plan a few new inventions, but that was months ago; they had long since parted ways when they all realized that they couldn't work well together at all, but Darwin didn't mind none. He preferred to work alone.

Of course, working alone also meant a hell of a lot of issues and chewed-up pencils. The son of Hephaestus had spent hours alone, straight into the middle of the night, poring over his notes on his spider robot and its body, all those diagrams that would rapidly look like a bunch of mishmash and nonsense if he spent too long staring at them. (His dyslexia wasn't as bad as most other demigods', but he could still see its effects.) It was probably a problem with the wiring that caused so many issues, but Darwin couldn't be too sure. It might be that the whole thing is too heavy or he'd cut the wires wrong or --

The boy let out a harsh exhale as he sat down at a table, spreading out the notebooks before him and flipping open to diagrams and lists of issues he could consider. He couldn't possibly work in his cabin, with some of his siblings lurking around, and he couldn't work in the forge with its high temperatures and the spider's "head" leering at him from its shelf, silently taunting him about his inability to make it work properly. It tore his heart to think about it; most of his siblings could build something like that easily. Was it because Darwin had always concentrated on clocks instead of actual robots back home? Or was he just terrible at high-tech things like this?

Probably. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had brought the pencil to his lips and was chewing on the little metal part distractedly as he stared down uncomprehendingly at a diagram of the robot's insides. The sketch was clean, but the little writing scrawled next to its various parts looked more like children's scribbles than any sort of English word; even Darwin could barely read it.

No matter, though. He had hours to stare at this and look up more information on robots.

Emmet lounged in one of the soft and comfy sofas of the library. His feet were propped up on the ottoman, legs crossed. He was not there to read. Emmet found reading difficult at times, his dyslexia often got in the way when he was tired. The letters would fly across the page making it hard to discern what was written. Far more so than usual. Having just finished a sparing match and several solo practice sessions, Emmet was ready to rest. Droplets of sweat still clung to his skin.

He pulled out the band holding his hair into a ponytail, and shook it out. Someone, probably a girl, let out a muffled squeal. A gaggle of the obnoxious Aphrodite girls, Emmet assumed, were watching him. He did not pay them any attention. Instead, he pulled out an old CD player. The technology was not advanced enough to cause the issues most demigods had to deal with. Emmet always silently thanked his father for giving it to him. It made ignoring googly eyed girls much easier. And modernized Mozart also helped him relax.

Emmet placed his headphones over his ears and started the machine. He was only through the first few lines of Piano Concerto No. 21 when someone loudly exhaled. Emmet kept the music playing lightly, but he turned to see who made the noise. It was some kid laying out notebooks and deformed pencils on a table. Emmet had no clue who he was. He turned away from the annoyance and closed his eyes. Then the chewing sound started.

Emmet fiercly opened his eyes and looked back towards the boy; that explained the deformed pencils. He glared at the kid for a moment before faking his best smile. "Would you mind devouring your pencils somewhere else?" Emmet could not tell if the kid had heard him. Annoyed, he took off his headphones and left them around his neck. He the stood up and briskly walked towards the boy's table. He stopped right in front of him. "I'm sorry, but can you please cease your chewing. Some of the other library goers, including myself, are distracted by it."

For several moments, Darwin hadn't noticed the boy even when he had approached the table; he was too absorbed in his notes and diagrams spread out around the table, trying to discover the secret of why his robot wouldn't move well or fast or far. When the son of Hephaestus did look up just to keep his vision from blurring from glaring at his notebook too intensely, he started suddenly and could only stare at the long-haired boy before him while still idly chewing on the pencil in his hand, not quite sure what to do now. Surely the other boy had said something -- that would explain the voice, the mumbling, he'd heard but not really registered moments ago -- but what was it? Something about... pencils. Yes. Pencils. Had he asked to borrow one?

Studying the boy's face, Darwin could tell he was slightly annoyed and, suddenly, he could guess why: the son of Hephaestus remembered that he usually made an inordinate amount of noise chewing up pencil ends, like a beaver chewing on wood. (Darwin the beaver -- ha. Mom would have gotten a kick out of that.) And judging by the surrounding silence of the library aside from a bit of shuffling every now and then, his chewing must have been magnified quite a bit.

He cleared his throat slightly and wiped the pencil end off on his pant leg. "Yeah, uh. Sorry man. Didn't know it was so... loud. Sorry. Bit busy here." Darwin eyed the headphones around the boy's neck, wondering briefly if he'd been listening to music with those when Darwin had started chewing -- in which case it would be infinitely more embarrassing if he had.

[ooc: Sorry for the long wait and the short post -- I've been busy with school.]

Emmet shuttered when the boy wiped off the pencil, that had been in his mouth, on his pant leg. Repulsive. Where did this kid grow up. "You really should be more considerate of others." Emmet stated flatly. This boy's mannerisms and habits bothered him, greatly. Emmet diverted his gaze; he began skimming the paperwork that the pencil gobbling boy was looking at. The writing looked like a foreign language. It was hard for Emmet to decipher, especially when the letters started to change locations.

Emmet focused in on the pictures and diagrams that this kid must of drew. Pictures were a lot easier to understand then words, usually. "What is this?" Emmet asked rhetorically. He could tell from the pictures that it was some kind of automaton, a spider-like automaton. Was the kid building this... No, the designs looked complete to Emmet. Was he making of tweaks to the design, probably not. "Are you trying to fix this spider automaton?"

He was intrigued by this boy's design and work. Emmet did not know much about building, defiantly was not a child of Hephaestus, but the construction intrigued Emmet for some reason. "If I may be blunt, I assume that the work is not going well. I am not builder, but a fresh pair of eyes might help you find a problem."

[ooc: Oi, I'm so sorry for taking so long to respond to this. I'd entirely forgotten about this RP after a week.]

"S'not finished," Darwin mumbled, half to himself and half to the boy. He leaned back in the chair and folded his arms across his chest, pushing the closest of the notebooks towards the other demigod with the side of his hand. Maybe he wouldn't be able to read the notes on the sides of the paper, but the diagrams were certainly very telling by themselves. "But yeah. It's got lots of issues -- won't even walk properly even after weeks of work, maybe a wiring problem. You wanna have a look?"

Of course, Darwin didn't expect much help from him: he didn't know if the boy had any expertise in wiring or building automatons at all. He wasn't a Hephaestus kid, or else Darwin would know him from being in the cabin and all -- and he didn't look like one of the Athena kids, so that was probably out. Yawning, the boy pulled one of the other notebooks towards himself and flipped the page to one of the first pages, where the design for the head of the spider automaton was drawn meticulously well with the dimensions' measurements scribbled on each side. He hadn't necessarily made the head perfect, but he had placed cameras in the eyes that worked perfectly well -- if only the legs would move.

((Sorry for not replying quickly. I did not get a notice that you had posted.))

"S'not finished..."

Emmet rolled his eyes; this kid sure had a talent for saying the obvious. Trying not to sound too annoyed, Emmet stated, "Obviously. If it was finished, I doubt you would be in here examining the blueprints." Though, Emmet did not understand why he was not tinkering with the automaton itself. Surely the problem was in the machine and not on the blueprints. Gazing at the drawings, Emmet did not see anything blatantly wrong, not that his eyes were trained into looking for this mechanical stuff.

"...You wanna have a look?"

"Sorry?" Emmet said looking up at the kids face. He must have tuned him out, only hearing the last part of his sentence. "Have you ever thought that the issue with your automaton might not be in the mechanics?" Emmet asked. Ever since the seven demigods returned from saving the world and recounted their tale, there was one particular trick he wanted to test his abilities on. And, this just might be that opportunity. "Do you remember how... what's her name... Piper.... Do you remember how Piper used her charmspeak to wake that metal dragon? Maybe I can do the same." The edges of Emmet's lips curved into a smile.

"I'm no child of Aphrodite, thankfully, but my silver tongue might be of some assistance to you. And, all I would want is a favor at some point in the future." Emmet folded his arms around his chest. "If it does not work, you have nothing to loose. So, what do you think? Have we got a deal?" Emmet uncrossed his arms and extended his right hand forward.

[ooc: It's fine. I was busy and couldn't post in the past few weeks, so it's sort of fair. (I haven't really read most of the Heroes of Olympus series so I don't entirely know what you're talking about. But I'll roll with it.)]

"Yeah, I heard that." It had been wondrous news to hear of the Hephaestus cabin's bronze dragon (now named Festus, apparently) being repaired by that Valdez kid; Darwin himself had felt overjoyed when he'd heard the story, which was a bit of an embarrassing splash of emotion for him. The dragon had been a source of pride for the Hephaestus children and, after Beckendorf died and the dragon was lost, they had felt so despondent at the loss of such a precious creation, blessed by their father and crafted carefully by some of the demigods.

Darwin drummed his fingers on the desk, not sure what to make of the boy's offer. His spider automaton was nothing compared to Festus, and he knew that if Piper -- whoever she was, he couldn't recall at the moment -- could awaken him then she must be somebody very special and powerful. This boy, however, did not look to be of the same caliber, as with most people in camp; the spider was much smaller than Festus, sure, but he was almost sure that the problem was not the same as the dragon's. He could be wrong, of course, but as a child of Hephaestus Darwin was much more suited to judging these things than this boy.

He didn't know him well at all, and it almost seemed like he didn't like Darwin very much anyway. The son of Hephaestus didn't care much for other people's opinions of him, but still. Opinions were more important than he liked to give them credit for. Who knew what he'd ask of Darwin in the future? Even if the Hephaestus demigod wanted his spider automaton to work very badly, he couldn't just go and promise to do "a favor" for any random person in the future, because he didn't know what they would really ask of him.

"That depends on what you'd want me to do," Darwin started slowly, trying to phrase this as best he could. "Not trying to be mean here or anything, but I don't need your help that badly, and I can't really trust just anybody, you know? I can't just promise to do some unspecified favor in the future for somebody I barely know."

((I'm sorry. I was being stupid. I assumed you had read the series.))

Emmet could tell that his proposition was going in the wrong direction; the kid was drumming his fingers and his face gave away his mistrust. This kid did not seem to believe that he could have the ability to help his automaton. Which, Emmet could not really blame him. Convincing a child of Hephaestus that he could magically talk with his automaton to fix him must of seemed ridiculous. And the fact that this guy was taking his time with making a decision. Well, most kids with ADHD were not so keen on controlling impulsivity.

"...I can't really trust just anybody, you know? I can't just promise to do some unspecified favor in the future for somebody I barely know."

A genuine smile crept on his lips. He would have to give this kid more credit, he was defiantly thinking before taking any action. This guy actually thought about it carefully. "That is a fair statement. " Emmet retracted his arm and put in on the desk. "You are right. We don't know each other."

Emmet changed tactics, deciding honesty would sway him better. "My name is Emmet. Can I ask for your name?"

"The real reason I wanted to see your machine was so that I could try my ability. I really have no clue if I can persuade a machine to function correctly; I just know that it has been done." Emmet just became aware that the music in his headphones was playing softly. He turned it off, and laid it down, with the headphones around his neck, on an empty corner of the table. "And as for the unspecified favor, the thing I had in mind was you taking a look at my watch. I'm not wearing it now because it is broken. I am looking for someone who could fix it."

[ooc: It's fine. I could probably piece together some of the events from all the excited chatter around the site about the series.]

The son of Hephaestus listened to the other boy carefully, stopping his finger-drumming on the table to keep his attention focused. With the demigod ADHD and all it was a bit difficult to keep still and pay attention, but he had trained himself to keep from getting too distracted while working -- much more manageable now than, say, five years ago.

"Oh, I can look at watches anytime," Darwin told him, feeling a bit less uneasy about this whole situation now. Watches -- well, he'd done quite a lot of clock-fixing back home with Mom and Dad, and watches weren't too much of a stretch from those. (Digital watches were a bit more complicated, but he was certain that with a few days and a bit of help from one of his siblings or a technologically-inclined child of Athena he could repair that too.) It certainly was much easier than making an automaton form scratch anyway; he felt like he needed a bit of a break from all that fretting over the blueprints and the skeleton lying around the armory. Times had been so much simpler when he'd been limited to fixing clocks and watches and maybe trying to build a computer -- but being thrown into a world of monsters and mayhem sort of threw that all away and replaced it with magic automatons and Celestial bronze weaponry. "If it's magical it might take a bit longer than two or three days, I guess, but most of the time it's doable. My name's Darwin."

Pausing for a second to collect his thoughts again about the automaton, he shrugged slightly at Emmet and moved his notebook back towards himself, shutting it. It was no use letting the other boy continue to look at it: all the diagrams probably made little sense to him. "If you still wanna try your ability on my spider, then we can go do that too. It wouldn't hurt it either way. But all you'd need to do is drop off your watch at my cabin or the armory and I'd fix it for you -- for free, unless it needs a part replaced that I can't just make here. Sound fair?"

((School is kicking my butt, I apologize for not being on consistently.))

"Well I'm glad that you can look at watches, especially magical ones. However, mine isn't. Its just an old pocket watch to be exact; a family heirloom." Emmet smiled, remembering the history behind the pocket watch. He was pretty upset when it had stopped working, but he did not trust anyone enough to let them handle it. Darwin seemed genuine. At the very least, he was not as gullible as a lot of the other campers. That was a plus in Emmet's book.

"I wouldn't think it would take too long to fix it. It defiantly is not magical, just old and sentimental." Emmet brushed a strand of hair that fell in his light of vision. "And, it is a pleasure to officially make your acquaintance Darwin."

"...Sound fair?"

Emmet half smiled. "Yeah, that sounds like a fair deal." Emmet stretched out his hand to shake Darwin's. "I can meet with you tomorrow. What time works best for you?"

"And, I am sorry if we started out on the wrong foot. I did not mean to be prick. I will not hold you to fixing my pocket watch if I can't help fix your automaton." The day had not been going well. Really, the whole month had not been going in Emmet's favor. He just did not seem to have the same flair as before, but he knew that fixing this machine of Darwin's would do the trick. Emmet needed to do this. "I am confident that I can help you, even if you do not quite believe me." Emmet facaded a confident attitude.

[ooc: It's perfectly fine and understandable.]

Darwin took Emmet's hand and shook it, hoping to himself that this kid wouldn't try to badger him too often for favors. He didn't seem like the type to, but the son of Hephaestus could never be sure; he and his siblings often met with people who wanted so many things fixed, and some apparently didn't know how to handle a "no" response. It was awkward trying to get them out of the forge without banging anyone's head against a shelf or running into a table laden with broken mechanical parts from automatons or the like.

Thinking a moment as he lowered his hand, the demigod went through his daily schedule: wake up, breakfast with the cabin at around 8 or 9, and then they would break off into their own little activities for the day. Nobody followed the official camp schedules anymore. "I think around 12 would be fine, most of my siblings will be gone from the forge by then. I'll be towards the back, near a shelf with all these broken helmets on it." Which reminded him: he should start reorganizing the forge a bit. Maybe one of his sisters would help? They needed to before somebody hit his or her head too hard on a shelf and got impaled by ten broken daggers; Darwin could feel it in his bones that it would happen within the next two years.

Scratching his head, Darwin turned away for a moment to gather up all his notebooks, stacking them into a neat pile next to his chewed-up pencil; he wouldn't really need to review them much longer at this point in time. "Everything's fine, man. Even if you can't help me much I can still fix the watch; it's sort of a breeze compared to automatons, y'know? A break from it all."