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Tales from Anthracite City: Power Tool

By Psion

All Rights Reserved

It was another snowy day in the small human hamlet tucked away in the mountains. People worked at little tasks to keep the village afloat; chopping wood, maintaining a cobbled-together greenhouse, and a hundred other tiny things. Yet an air of uncertainty hung over the people as they went through their daily chores, the community bore the recent scars of a battle with bandits. Several homes had been reduced to rubble and the walls were hastily patched up in places, the brigands had been particularly destructive this time. With the survivors crowding in the remaining buildings for warmth, a messenger with a hastily written plea for help was sent to the neighboring community of Black Lung. A day later, the messenger returned from the settlement at the bottom of the abandoned coal mine. Help was coming.

Back in the present, the villagers continued their tasks as the lookout saw a small procession finish making their way up the winding path up into the mountain valley sheltering their community. Among the specialists sent to help the town rebuild was a stout, short beaver anthro...

Jana "Power Tool" Broadhammer felt like the entire town had their eyes on her as she ambled through the gate with the rest of the expedition team. Her cheeks turned a slight red inside the sealed helmet covering her face. The fat heroine gadgeteer had dealt with people who didn't take her seriously because of her ample size before but she never got quite used to the stares of people not accustomed to her appearance. Then again the black-haired beaver builder was hardly the classic supermodel superheroine either, what with her broad hips and big bottom. And that was just with people who weren't understandably worried that she might secretly be a baby-eating sociopath, unlike this group who only really dealt with anthro supervillains before. At least she was warm inside her armored work suit though which was more then she could say for a lot of the people looking at her.

Looking for something to take her mind off the people looking at the group, the round-bodied heroine looked at the "job site," the collapsed ruins of a pair of stone houses. A studious pair of blue eyes quickly scanned the work ahead of her as she recalled how it happened. A local bandit clan, in a fit of desperate ingenuity, managed to assemble a working catapult out of the body of a pick-up truck and junkyard scraps from half-a-dozen different vehicles to lob engine blocks over the hamlet's walls. Fortunately no one was hurt but the buildings were unlivable. Still, a collapsed roof or a destroyed wall wouldn't be hard for someone like her.

The village leader had come out of his home as the team arrived in the town square. After a brief exchange with their guide and the other members of the aid group, the tall human looked down at the squat beaver woman. "So you're the engineer, what's your name?"

"Power Tool sir." She replied politely.

The short female was unsurprised by his chuckle, trusting the papers back home to come up with a name for her was never a good idea. "I take it you were late to the party when they were handing out all the dramatic super names?"

Jana had handled questions like this before and already had the perfect reply. "Yes, but at least I can promise you that I am a better heroine then the squirrel girl who used to be able to phase through solid objects."

"What happened to her?" The town chieftan asked.

"She phased through the ground and fell into the planet's core." The wide-bottomed Broadhammer answered with a smile behind her helmet. A little white lie to be sure, she did know a phase-heroine that was a total screw-up but she never phased into the core of a planet. She did however phase a few objects into her that proved to be... interesting interpretations of the phrase "ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag."

Her remark had the desired effect on the village leader, catching him briefly off-guard for a moment. "Well... I suppose it would be impossible to be worse then that. Welcome to our village, how soon can you get started and do you need any tools?"

The suited heroine smiled inside her helmet. "I already have everything I need with me and I can get started right now." She replied, patting her tool belt on reflex.

The mayor motioned for her to have at it and promptly turned to see to other business with the rest of the visitors. Seeing her cue, Power Tool sauntered off to see what needed to be done in more detail and get started while it was still light. As her broad hips swayed in time with her weighty steps and her leathery tail whacked against her well-padded rump, the overstuffed beaver was silently grateful she didn't feel the crowd's eyes on her as she made her exit. She never really encountered people who thought she was pretty or desirable until Mentalrix tracked her down and asked her to visit the world of humans. Sure she had heard of males of that persuasion existing back home but she never expected to meet any by chance. Yet there was no mistaking some of the glances she received, in a way she would have preferred the smoldering scorn of disapproval her old coworker Prospector had gotten her used to...

No matter, that was either all in the past or something she'd just have to get used to. Shaking her head as she looked at the first house, she focused back on the task at hand. The roof had caved in, the engine block partially embedded into the snow-covered wooden floor made it obvious what caused the structural failure, and the far wall had become partially collapsed. It wouldn't be particularly pretty when she was done but it was certainly doable.

Pulling out a shovel from her backpack and quickly clearing out the snow, she got to work picking up pieces of rubble off the floor and pulling out her Multipurpose Power Tool. The customized multipurpose power tool assembled itself into a handheld motorized screwdriver and allowed the beaver to quickly set up scaffolding in the one-room house and began to disassemble the damaged rafting. The rest of the damaged portion of the room was torn down, adding to the pile of scrap material she had to try and reuse to rebuild the wrecked building. First came the partially collapsed wall. The bandit clan's attack on the village had torn a large hole in the upper half of the wall. Ideal cover for the taller members of Jana's party in a firefight but horrible for protecting against the wind that was howling through the job site. The cold temperature also made stonework a nightmare as well, there was no way to apply a proper mortar to the wall and have it dry without cracking and freezing. She could tell the locals had improvised some sort of solution but just by looking at the remains caked on the side of bits of stone she could easily guess how well it worked.

Bending over to scoop up the scattered pieces, she began the laborious task of slowly filling the hole back up. There had to be a way to use mortar in this cold weather... a problem for her to work on later. Right now she needed to focus on the task at hand and plug the wall. Using a simple glue she had on hand, she reassembled the wall. It wouldn't hold up much better then the binding agent the original builders used against a dedicated assault but it kept the cold and the wind out. Now to focus on the roof...

Transforming her MPT into a powered circular saw and using the furniture to double as a crude pair of saw horses, Broadhammer exhaled and suppressed the urge to shiver. Normally possessing much more stamina for this kind of work then some may think, the persistent cold managed to work its way through her reinforced worksuit and the thick blubber keeping her warm. Rubbing her gloved hands together for warmth, she picked up her tool and started sawing the broken ends off of the damaged beams. Splinted wood fell to the floor as she cut through and began reassembling the wood. Improvising the needed lengths to replace what she cut off with some nearby firewood, the short beaver worked to reattach the repaired beams to the roof before she lost the last of the light. Tomorrow she'd see about getting some help to reapply the roofing and finish sealing up the house. But for now it would be better to try and rest up instead of fighting with the freezing cold. Once the sun finished setting the temperature would drop drastically and no amount of "pastry pudge" would keep her from freezing. Better to get some sleep in a warm bed then start fresh tomorrow.

Rising up again the next morning, Jana resumed her task in earnest. The gaping hole in the roof of the house was patched over and soon the only evidence that it had ever been unlivable was the indent in the floor where the flung engine block made impact with the ground, the beaver was amazed no one had gotten hurt by the catapult barrage. The second house was harder, requiring a lot more stonework then the first to make it livable again. Bandit artillerists managed to get particularly lucky with this one, smashing half the building with a pair of their solid metal projectiles. Removing the snow and clearing away the scrap metal, the builder repeated the process. The wall was rebuilt and the holes in the roof sealed up before the sun finished setting on the second day. Meanwhile her friends had finished fixing the perimeter wall keeping the village safe. Broadhammer tried to smile behind her mask as the group packed up and left. A lot of good was done over the last two days but as they exited the village, Power Tool couldn't help but look at the townspeople watching her leave. There were a few that genuinely smiled at her, families happy to have their homes again and a few men regarding her with varying kinds of adoration, but then there were others that looked on with a guarded smile and an emotionally dead thousand-yard stare. Those people still appreciated what she did, there was no doubt, but they also were thinking about the next attack, the next disaster. A depressing insight, one that definitely lowered her spirits as she walked along with the rest of the group. Yet with the trails leading back to the base camp fraught with danger, no one was willing to risk the distraction of talking about the job they finished until they were safely home.

Base Camp was an abandoned medium security prison downstream from the abandoned riverside hamlet of Port Clearfield. Remote and already fairly well fortified, it was the perfect place for Mentalrix and her group to quietly turn into a base of operations as they explored deeper into the frigid Pennsylvania forests around Anthracite City. Here they maintained lodgings, workshop, and a small cafeteria, the latter was where Jana headed after they arrived and finished settling down. The beaver heroine could hear Prospector's nagging voice in her head as she ambled in front of the Food Reprocessor and ordered up an extra large serving to get her mind off the gloomy thoughts she had been dwelling on for the trip back, to hell with her pretentious coworker back in the RCMRS, the twit was probably happily posing in a Canadian flag bikini for the cameras. Meanwhile Jana was here making a difference for people who needed someone like her; in more ways then one, she contemplated while taking the large metal tankard full of surprisingly appetizing protein slurry...

The Food Reprocessor was a gadget Power Tool had built from pre-existing plans and brought with her from home, a device with a dubious origin if she ever heard of one. Herbivore anthros from Silicon Earth could not eat meat or at least not digest it and gain any real sustenance, at least not without experimenting in the bevy of personal augmentations that were available thanks to the Metabeing Boom. That did not stop the Lucky Foot Cartel, a criminal cabal of particularly tech-savvy rabbits faced with the problem of safely disposing of all the bodies they had been making through their activities. Their solution was as elegant and simple as it was horrifying, build a machine that broke the corpses down into a protein paste that even herbivores could digest. To Jana's knowledge, the Lucky Foots were wiped out to the last member once the Reprocessor's existence became common knowledge. A horrifying origin but the FR reprocessed the mutant "Frankenstocks" that the Rik-Tah created to harass human survivors and spoiled food into a nourishing mush just as easily as it reprocessed inconvenient bodies.

Squeezing her large rump into a plastic cafeteria chair, Jana took her helmet off and rested a hand on her ample paunch as she leaned back into her seat. Bringing the metal cup to her lips, the beaver tilted her head back and gulped the slurry down in one long chug. Belching and wiping her face with a gloved hand, she licked the last dribble of slurry off of her glove and closed her eyes in contemplation. Helping these people endure an alien invasion and the breakdown of their own society was definitely an uphill battle. Good thing she came with an appetite for a challenge as well as food....