Chapter One: A Little History Lesson
A black and orange 1996 Mitsubishi Eclipse pulled up. A woman in her twenties stepped out of the
car. She had deep auburn, almost
brunette, hair held back in a red bandana.
She wore very low cut black pants and a tight black leather tank top.
"Yo, Nikki!" someone yelled. The woman turned toward the direction that the voice had come
from.
She smiled and yelled back. "Hector!" She ran over to
him. He was standing by a green
Mitsubishi Eclipse a year older than her own.
"What's up, man?"
"Nothin' much," he replied. "Just getting to know this other snowman over here. Maybe you two should get together sometime."
Nikki noticed the other man standing next to Hector. "You jackass, he's my BROTHER!!!" she
yelled as soon as she realized who it was.
"I ain't from no Hicksville, Kentucky." Her brother looked every bit as surprised as Nikki did. All the guys were laughing. Nikki pulled her brother off to the side.
"Brian! What the fuck
do you think you're doing?" she cried.
He tried to quiet her. Nikki
lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper.
"You can't be here! One, this is
my turf. Two, you're a cop!" Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth
with her hand. Nikki took a couple
steps away from her older brother. "Oh
my God," she breathed out. "Brian,
please tell me that's not why you're here."
"Nikki, Nikki," Brian said. He grabbed her arm. "I'm
not gonna call the cops in on your ass.
Remember? I promised you I'd
never let you get in trouble like that."
She looked at him warily.
"So what are you doing here, huh?"
"I'm trying to find out who's been hijacking all those
trucks—"
"What trucks?" she cut him off. "I dunno what you're talking about."
"Well, somebody does, and I need to find out." He stalked off before she could.
Nikki came up right as her brother was, in her eyes,
giving away his car. Hardly anybody
ever beat Dominic Toretto. She had come
close a couple times herself, but he was just too damn good.
The crowd broke.
Everyone was going to their cars.
It was time to race. Nikki
hopped in her car and fell in line with all the others.
***
They arrived at a long stretch of empty road. Nikki got out of her car, like everyone
else. She watched as her older brother
got his car lined up at the starting line.
Nikki didn't know what to do. Should she try to stop her brother? Or let him learn on his own?
Shit, she thought, that's probably not even his own damn
car. Let him learn the hard way. She smirked.
Nikki stood by the rest of her 'team.' A team in street racing was pretty much just
a group of racers. They owned cars and
repaired them. It was kind of like a
family. Nikki's team consisted of Gia,
her best female friend, Chad, Braden, Cameron, and Rhett.
Nikki watched from the sidelines as Dominic's car sped
ahead of all the others. "Damn! He is so damn good! How the hell does he do it?" Chad
ranted. Nikki merely shrugged. "Well, I should hope that you know!" He shoved her playfully. "You're prob'ly our best racer." Nikki considered Chad as her best male friend.
"Yeah, and if you ever plan on beating him, you better
learn," Rhett commented. Rhett was the
bitch in the team. Every team had at
least one, and that was getting lucky.
"Why don't you try?" Gia asked, "Oh, wait. I forgot.
You're the mechanic." Rhett and
Gia didn't get along too well. But the
team still held together.
"Shut up! I know
how to race!" Rhett yelled.
"Guys, guys," Cameron said as he separated the two. Cameron was the peacemaker of the
group. "We'll never win anything if we
can't get along."
Gia and Rhett shook hands. Braden jumped between them.
"Okay. Now kiss and make
up!" Braden. Mr. Funnyman. Gia and
Rhett both looked disgusted.
"No way!" Gia cried and pushed Braden away.
"While you guys were having a good time the race ended,"
Nikki informed them.
"Who won?" Gia asked.
"Dom. Who else?"
said Chad.
"Oh! How sad! Brian didn't win." Gia looked genuinely devastated.
"I'll have you know that Brian is my brother," Nikki said
as she led the way to the finish line.
"You're brother, huh?
So that means you could introduce me, right?" Gia questioned. Nikki rolled her eyes and laughed. Gia equaled guy-crazy. She always had her eyes out for any
guy. And she had the courage to go
right up to any guy and tell them what she thought about him.
Nikki made her way to her brother's, or rather, Dominic's
new car. Jesse had the hood open. He and Dom were discussing what needed to be
replaced. Nikki snickered. She waited until the crowd left. "Hey, Jesse," she said as he passed. He nodded to her in acknowledgement. Dom glared.
There's a little bit of history behind Dominic Toretto and
Nicole O'Connor. Nikki came onto the
scene a couple years ago, after she dropped out of school. Gia and Nikki had known each other since as
far back as they could remember. They
had grown up together as neighbors.
While Nikki dropped out of school and Gia didn't, their friendship still
remained as strong as ever.
Gia had an older brother, Leon, who was involved in street
racing. He introduced Nikki and Gia to
that world. But because Nikki wasn't in
school, she had more time to devote to racing.
Cars became her life. She loved
the adrenaline rush from racing. And
the fact that she was one of the few female racers. Other people noticed that, too.
Dom was more or less the leader of the team that Leon was
on. Nikki wasn't officially in a team
yet. She got to know a lot of people,
though. She and Jesse could relate:
they had both dropped out of school and were drawn to cars. So that's how Nikki stood with Jesse.
Dominic saw a little more in Nikki. One night, he decided to challenge her. "I win, you get to be my new girl. You win, you get this." He pulled out a wad of cash.
Nikki's eyes widened.
"How much is that?" she asked.
"Two large." Dom
grinned. "You up for it?"
Nikki looked Dominic up and down quickly. "You're on," she answered. Nikki had high hopes. Two thousand dollars would be nice. And what did she have to lose? It wasn't like she didn't like Dom. But she wasn't going to lose on
purpose. Nikki was really going to try
to beat Dominic. She knew he was good,
but she also knew that she was, too.
Nikki got in her car.
It was a '93 Toyota Supra Turbo.
Her first and only car. It was
already a couple years old, but it was beautiful. It was Nikki's pride and joy.
It would be awful if anything were ever to happen to it. Well, we'll get to that later.
Leon came up to Nikki's car to give her some last words of
advice. "Visualize your win, Nikki," he
told her. She gave him a thumbs up and
he patted her on the shoulder. As soon
as he left, Nikki looked out her driver's side window at Dom. He was looking at her, too. She put on her fiercest face. Dominic glared back at her.
They turned their attention to Hector. He was the one who usually gave the cue to
race, the 'go-man.' Nikki took one last
look at Dominic as she rolled up her tinted window. She got comfortable in her leather chair and eyed Hector. As soon as he got the signal from Leon he
put his hands in the air. That was one
of Leon's jobs: he would give the go if there weren't any cops and alarm anyone
if the cops were coming. Nikki pressed
her anxious foot on the brake and gently tapped the gas to rev up her engine.
Dom paid no attention to Nikki's attempts to intimidate
him. Instead he turned on his stereo,
which played some sort of techno music.
Hector waved his hands and Dom threw his clutch in gear, but remained on
the brake. Dominic knew, even with out
really seeing it, that Nikki was doing every action he was. Hector threw his hands down and Dominic
released his foot from the brake, skidding off into speed.
Nikki knew she was going to win. She slammed her foot on the brake, changed gears and lifted her
foot again. She sped forward only
inches in front of Dominic's bumper.
Dominic watched her and smiled at her will to win. He shifted and caught up to her. Nikki smiled and pressed the NOS button on
her steering wheel. "Let's see what you
can do," she said. Her car skidded
forward, the force slamming her head against the seat. "Jesus," she whispered.
Dominic shook his head as he laughed at her and pressed his
NOS button. It sent him speeding up
next to Nikki and then passing her.
"Fuck that!" Nikki yelled to herself as she saw the blur
of color that was Dom's car glide by.
She pressed the other NOS button and sped up. The finish line was nearing and Nikki knew she had him. She could taste the victory. She could smell the two grand in her hands.
Dominic turned a dial where his radio should have been and
pressed a third, secret button, switching on his extra ten cans of NOS he had
under his passenger seat. He was
knocked back as his car jolted forward, sending him across the finish line just
inches before Nikki.
"Son of a bitch!" she screamed. She pumped her gas to slow herself down. When she came to a complete stop she slammed
her fists on the steering wheel. Nikki
got out of the car quickly. Dom was
waiting for her. She smiled as she
shook her head. "So I'm your new girl,
huh?" she asked. She crossed her arms
and leaned against her car.
"Well, you lost.
And that's what we agreed on isn't it?" Dominic said.
"Oh, if that's the case, then I don't know if it was a total
loss." Nikki smiled.
Even though their relationship was on a bet, Dom and Nikki
seemed perfectly happy together. Not to
mention perfect for each other. They
were so alike. And that's where the
problem was. Both of them had nitrous
oxide in their blood and gas tanks for brains.
They both had bad tempers and when they got into a fight, you had better
run to take cover. Dom and Nikki didn't
have fights often, but when they did…
It happened at a party.
Everyone had had a little too much to drink. Everyone was there. Dom
and Nikki, Gia, Leon, Hector, everyone.
Including Vince. Vince was
Dominic's best friend since the third grade.
He was on Dom's team, so Nikki had met him before. It's not like they meant to do anything;
shit happens. Like afore said, no one
there was sober, and Vince and Nikki were no exceptions.
So it was upstairs with the both of them. To the bathroom, where in their drunken
stupor, they thought they could get some privacy. Wrong. Letty, a friend of
Dom and the rest of his team, walked in.
Now, nothing really happened. It was no more than a make-out session. Maybe a little shirtlessness, too, which could be explained by
the large amount of liquor that they had consumed. But because Letty walked in, things got complicated. See, Letty had taken a liking to Dom; she'd
known him probably as long as Nikki had know Gia. So Letty saw Nikki as an intruder and didn't like her all that
much. The dislike was obvious, but what
were you going to do?
Anyway, Letty opens the door, sees the two of them, and
closes it immediately. At first, she
didn't know what to think. Then, an
idea hit her. If she wanted Dominic to
herself, she had to get rid of Nikki and what better way than this. But what about Vince? Simple, just make it look like he was
innocent. Letty came down the stairs
and scanned the room for Dominic. She
found him.
"Dom," she whispered to him, "You should really keep an
eye on Nikki." Dominic looked down at
Letty, a little confused. "Just ask
what she was doing with V when you see her.
Well, speak of the devil." Vince
and Nikki came down the stairs and toward Dominic.
One look at Dom's solid face, and Nikki knew something bad
was up. Dominic looked like he was
about to explode. She nervously
adjusted her tank top strap and raked her fingers through her mussed up
hair. "Dominic…I—"
"Shut up!" he yelled.
"Get the fuck outta my house."
He pointed to the door.
"Dom," Vince protested.
"You ain't no better than her." Dominic eventually forgave Vince. After a conversation with Letty.
"Nothin' happened, Dom," Nikki pleaded. "I mean, we been drinkin' and—"
"I said get outta my fuckin' house," Dom growled. "Do you need my help?"
Nikki grabbed a bottle of beer and stormed out the
door. It slammed shut behind her. "Guess this means I'm not your girl anymore,
huh?" she yelled at the door. "Dumb
bastard," she muttered as she walked away.
And that's where Dominic and Nikki stand today.
