Operation: Kids Next Door

Operation: ENCOUNTER

E nigmatic

N ew

C adet

O ffered

Unreal

N ew

T echnical

E ngineering

R ole

By: Syncronis

Prologue

… You know, I lived a good life before all of this insanity happened…

My name is Syncro… Syncro Armani. You're never going to hear my real name, so don't even bother asking. Not even my teachers call me by that name anymore… Only my dad, and only when he's REALLY angry… But I digress…

I'm a kid, of course… Ten years old, though sometimes people think I'm older because of how I act… I don't know why, just because I act differently from most kids? Bah! While most kids like to play outside in playgrounds, I liked to stay indoors and play with old, broken pieces machines. I suppose it was because of this the Kids Next Door started watching me, but who knows and who cares, right?

My dad noticed that I had a real love for machines… Guess it runs in the family, since he made a living working on computers. He told me to do what I loved, and if I put enough of my focus and heart into it, I'd be able to change the world… He was usually never wrong, but I didn't really think that he'd be right in this case. I decided to use what I learned playing with my broken toys and Dad's old parts and make some money out of it. So I made my own business; using the old abandoned warehouse in our suburban area in Empire City as a second home and scrounging the neighborhood for anything that I could use to work on.

I eventually made myself a '2x4 autoshop', some kids told me; I used the parts I dug up in order to make all sorts of vehicles for kids to get around in… Motorcycles and cars, of course… I was still pretty new to the whole thing, and if I could get back to the shop, I'd expand to even larger aspirations…

The shop was called 'The Synchronizer', my slogan being that I'd 'put you in harmony with your vehicle.' It was never really much of course, but I took a lot of pride in my work after all, fixing things had always been a passion of mine. I've seen just about every type of vehicle come into the shop, from the age-old Powah Wheel Suhpreme to the nacho-cheese Cadillac and onto the rare popcorn fusion cylinder engines. The work is hard and messy most of the time, but the rewards are more than worth it. Most kids pay me in Yipper cards, the standard currency in the area, but every now-and-again I'll get a rarity like a Microsoft ® Points card or even the occasional RAB (Rare and Broken) toy that I can put back together with the leftover parts in the junk corner.

Yeah, this job was hard in ways that would make even the most patient and humble of kids want to curse and scream; like when a liquid nacho-cheese tube springs loose and sends globs of cold, smelly ooze everywhere; or when the other kids get impatient or cheap, trying to haggle some of the prices on parts down, which is almost all the time. They just don't seem to have any idea how hard it is to get some of those parts; ordering them online or having to steal pieces from junkyards and trash cans. Most of the time those parts may as well STAY in the trash, and it takes almost forever to make it even remotely usable, ne'er the less safe to use in a vehicle.

But even then, after all the sweat and grease and smells, the rewards made everything better again. More than often I got to learn a little something new about my work, and word-of-mouth made so many more people come in and ask for repairs. The girls love a good mechanic, you know… Fix up a busted tire, give them some Chewy Pellets and a few choice words of encouragement, and before you know it you've got yourself a fine bit of company at the movies on Saturday night. Either way you look at it, things were going fine as a well-tuned engine.

… That is, until she walked through my doors…

… Made me see things in a whole new perspective…

But you know, if you asked me if I could change anything on that fateful day…

I wouldn't change a damn thing at all.