TSFS: The Masquerade Striders

Where Do We Start?

Eli

Two of the radios sat in front of us.

Mine, the older one that was covered with spider webs, the half broken buttons, and the faded colors, numbers, and words displayed on the radio.

Then there was Luna's. The more cooperative one. It was mostly working. All of the buttons worked, the audio wasn't as staticky, though we couldn't connect to some of the stations. At least the station that Hazel and the rest of them were connected to.

"Where do we start?" I ask, eyeing Luna, who was focused on the radios.

"Well, let's start off by taking apart yours, find the main power source, the audio, from yours, and put the rest of it in mine, and go from there." She states, flipping the old radio over.

I stare at it, still confused, but determined to figure it out.

"Do we have tools?" I ask her.

She nods, before pointing behind her in the box that she brought with her. The same one that had the radio in it.

I stand up, walking towards the box, opening in up and taking a look at all of the different tools that were filled in the box.

I took each of them out. A screwdriver, and some extra nails and other metal things.

Where did she find all of these things?

"Pass me the screwdriver, would ya?" She says, not breaking her eye contact with the radio. She looked focused, which was a plus.

I bring the entire box over, handing her the screwdriver that she asked for.

She gladly took it, and began to screw some nails that were wedged into the bottom of the radio.

I watched closely, unable to decide what to do to myself.

Luna suddenly spoke up, "right now I'm unscrewing these nails to get access to the audio cord." She says as she unscrews the last nail in the section.

She then quickly takes the lid off, our eyes now revealed to a series of different colored cords. Each color was attached to a power feature, inside the radio.

They all were needed for something, but I didn't quite know what they were needed for.

"You see these cords?" She asks me, pointing to them. I nod my head slowly. "The audio cord is attached this green one, if we take out this extension, from the base, and put it into the extra hole in my radio, and fix up some other cords around the radio, we should be able to strike enough power, and then from there we can connect to Hazel's station, and talk to her." Luna explains to me.

It was starting to make sense to me, the more she explained to me.

I was never much of a tech guy, so how was I supposed to know how to take apart a radio, and put it back together, adding extensions here and there, and so on, so forth.

"Seems simple enough," I reply.

She slowly nods, clearly focused on the radio in front of her.

"How long do you think that'll take?" I ask her, trying my best to not bother her, but still get some feedback on what her plan is.

Luna shrugs, her sight on the radio.

"Depends, if it the cords are changeable, then it can take the rest if the day, but you know." I hum in response.

I continue to stare at Luna for a while, unsure what to do. I don't want to annoy her, but part of me talks whenever I'm nervous.

What if this doesn't work, and I'm just getting my hopes up? Or Luna is just tricking me, and is waiting til I'm vulnerable and trust her enough, then she just dips on me. Leaves me here in the void, forever, and I have no choice but to sit here longer than I'd like.