“Fine, fine,” Jötz muttered. “Hy go clean up da deck, ja? De best bits I stack in the da middle of da boat so chou can take a looks later.” With that, he head back towards the stern and up the ladder that would bring him near the remains of the pilot house. 

Her words left a buzzing in his furry, tufted ears for some reason. Motorhum had been a pretty backwater place, even for a village in the middle of the Wastes. How had she heard about the pirate captain there? It wasn’t like the Jaegers. [i]Everyone[/i] knew about Jaegers, he thought with a certain amount of pride. Then again… was Motorhum really that far from whatever ruin they had fallen into? The trip had taken a bit, but then again he and Ivy had to circumnavigate trees, bogs, ponds, boulders, and mutated blue toads along the way. Maybe there was a connection between the two that he was missing?

Jötz put it out of his mind for now. Instead, he tossed what was obviously debris overboard while scourging about for anything that might look remotely useful. He had a pretty good idea for what a Spark might want. Not to mention that he could use some of the panelling from below to cover the more treacherous holes in the deck’s surface. There seemed to be enough material to ensure a bit of safety while leaving her with some to work with. Jötz grinned. “Vell, so long as she don’t blow a hole in da-“

This time it was his own words he froze at. Not so much from the power of them but for how they linked up to words that the Mad Girl had just recently spoken.

[i] "I bet I can get it open… I think you get in the way of my exploding things a lot.”[/i]

“Oh she vouldn’t,” he breathed. The monster looked down at the deck beneath his boots and realized that he was standing more or less right above her. If Ivy blew the door open…

Closing his eyes, Jötz realized that yes, yes should would use explosives to open the door… and possibly the whole of the bow in the process and thereby sinking the ship. Did she know enough to curtail the explosion? Did she have the experience to know exactly how far to go and no further? He feared that she didn’t and that soon they would be swimming. So far, Ivy had made some great demonstrations that she knew how to make things go boom. Then again, she hadn’t blown up the engine… yet.

With a heavy sigh he turned and trudged back towards the stairs. Jötz was starting to feel a bit conflicted about all of this. Ivy needed a keeper and he had volunteered for whatever reason. He wanted to trust her, which was an incredibly foolish thing to do with a young Spark regardless of gender! He still wasn’t sure if any of what he had said about not experimenting on him had sunken into her brain, and even as one of the Jaegerkin he was finding her propensity to make things explode just a tad alarming. Yet if he stopped her… it was like scolding a child for wanting a sweet… or a pet seeking attention… or the victim of grisly human experimentation begging for mercy… or a lover expecting a-

He clamped down on that last thought as he reached the bottom of the stairs. Looking down the long hallway to the bow where she working upon the heavy door, he called out to her. “Oy, Ivy! Is you alright? Too big a bang und ve’ll be swimming mit da fishes, chou know!”