Okay, there were way too many machina packed into the spare bedroom. Rikku's brilliant idea of setting up a workshop in Reno-and-now-Rikku's apartment was kiiiiiiind of off to a really bad start, considering there was barely enough room to walk around all the crates.
Also, Petey and Mako were super-curious about the engines, and engine grease was hard to clean off fur. (And fur tended to clog engines, anyway.)
So they'd decided to find a place in town. There were all sorts of abandoned warehouses. Surely one of them was up for grabs, right??? So they picked a nice big nondescript one and moved their shit in. Carefully.
Of course, putting big crates of stuff into an abandoned warehouse was just kind of asking for it to be stolen by people who stumbled in there, who might spot the shinies and not realize that most of the stuff was broken. (Or who just found the bits and pieces interesting.) And that's why they were wiring some super-awesome locks and alarms into the place.
Mission: accomplished. The Rikku-and-Reno machina-materia-and-goodies warehouse was ... okay, not open for business. Not open at all. Just for the two of them to putter around with cool shit.
(ESTABLISHY, NFI, NFB.
raspberryturk modded with permission.)