AN: Hey. I know it's not my turn to do this but since it's been so long since it was updated I figured I'd give it a go. I'm not going to accomplish much, I'm just gonna bring the story back around and hope the other ladies still wanna give it a go. So I'm gonna do somethin sorta weird, hang wit me and I'll explain more at the end. So till then, peace out, Tempest, AKA Storm Girl.
Puzzling Pieces Chapter 24 – It Never Rains But It Pours
The first car load of team mates to make it back happened to be Vince and Stacey due totally to the fact that Vince could not wait to escape Stacey's choice of music. They pulled up to the driveway to find a strange car with a strange girl sitting on the hood parked at the curb in front of the house.
Stacey was out of the car and running up to the girl the minute Vince had his car slow enough for her to hop out without ending up with road rash. The girl slid of the hood of her car and planted her feet while opening her arms.
"Hey Kid!"
"Storm!"
"The one and only. So, how's life in SoCal?" The girl known as Storm gave Stacey a hug and then set her down again on her feet.
"It's been, well, hectic." Stacey admitted, thinking of all the time since she'd last seen her friend in Miami.
"Well, you wanna go grab a bite? You can tell me all about it." The girl known as Storm asked Stacey as she gestured to the passenger side door of her car.
"I better wait to ask Brian." Stacey said, slightly less bitter about the need to ask then she would have been before.
"What? All of a sudden you need permission to go eat with me?" Storm laughed. She'd been trusted by Stacey's mom so much that she didn't understand why Stacey would need permission to go off with her. She was a good 6 years older then Stacey and Mrs. O'Connor had often had Stacey stay over with Storm when she needed someone to look out for her daughter.
"Well, things haven't been so smooth and it's not like I need permission really, I just need to tell him where I'm going first."
"Leave a message with the Neanderthal scratching his face hair over by his car. I'll even leave my cell number." Storm started looking for a piece of paper in her glove box.
"Storm, you got too use to playin by your own rules in NYC." Stacey giggled.
"Well yeah. What's the fun of having a dad in organized crime if you don't take advantage of it?" Storm chuckled and winked, making Stacey think she was joking.
"Stacey, who is this?" Vince sauntered up to the little group of girls with a smirk, giving Storm a look from head to toe.
Storm leaned back against her car and watched the man approach. She gave him a head to toe glance of her own and then looked away, clearing telling Vince he'd been dissed and dismissed. His smirk turned into a scowl.
"This is Tammy, my best friend from Miami's older sister, Storm." Stacey bubbled, happy to be reunited, even if it was temporary, with a girl who'd been just like an older sister to her while she had been hanging out with Tammy.
"Why do I get the impression Brian will not be happy to have her here?" Vince asked, envisioning the controversy it would cause lifting his mood.
"Brian don't know me. How could he have anything to say?" Storm sighed and gave Vince a bored look.
"He's protective of his little sister."
"Oh but Storm?" Stacey remembered something and it made her look worried.
"What Kid?" Storm asked and ruffled Stacey's hair, earning a swat from her younger friend.
"Uncle Ro came up for a visit because we had a sort of well...incident when we went camping."
"Ro? As in Roman Pearce? Rome is here?" Storm asked. Stacey nodded. "Ah hell no." Storm turned to get into her car. Stacey stopped her so she turned around and looked angry.
"What do you have against Brian's friend?" Vince asked, sensing the controversy growing.
"Nothing." Storm made a face like she'd just sucked on a lemon. "Can we leave my cell phone number and a brief message with your friend here and leave before Ro arrives?"
"I really should tell Brian to his face. I don't want to ruin the small amount of trust I finally have with him."
"He give you a hard time?" Storm came up out of her leaning posture to her full 5'7" and cracked her knuckles.
"Yeah, but we're all good now." Stacey was quick to try and calm Storm down. The girl had a lethal temper.
"You sure?" Storm cocked an eyebrow and gave Stacey a searching look, a look it was very hard to lie to.
"What would you do if it she was still having problems? Punk'd still be her bro." Vince asked, something about the girls attitude rubbing him the wrong way.
"I'd take care of my homegirl, that's what I'd do." Storm took one step Vince's way. "You got a problem with that?"
"Yeah, that's a member of my team you're takin about." Vince growled, low and grumbly.
"Since when did you care about Brian?" Stacey asked, giggling about Vince standing up for Brian. Her giggling stopped when she saw Storm going toe to toe with Vince. God help coyote if Storm ever found out what had happened at the camp site.
"Since some punk girl came up in our neighborhood taking down about him, that's when." Vince answered Stacey all the while holding eye contact with Storm, who refused to back down and look away.
"I only asked my girl if he gave her trouble." What I talk about with my girl has nothing to do with choo!" Storm retorted in a growl of her own.
"It's none of your business!" Vince growled. Storm began to wonder if this guy ever talked in anything but that growling voice he was using on her now.
Before she could reply a red RX-7 and a yellow Skyline raced to a stop in the driveway, the 7 making it in just a tad faster then the Skyline. Dom, Letty, and Leon piled out of the cars.
"Who's that?" Letty asked Dom, looking at the tall blonde staring down Vince, dispite being half a foot shorter. Leon followed just behind Dom, to his left and Letty was right beside Dom on his right.
"Dunno." Dom answered her. "But I damn well will find out." He headed over to the assembly on his lawn. Brian along with Rome and Tej arrived in the driveway just as Dom reached his best friend and the unknown girl. "What's goin on here?" Dom asked, deceptively calm voice in place.
"I just came to check on my girl and I'm getting a hard time from this cave man." Storm snarled, not breaking eye contact with Vince.
"Well, who the hell are you to be checking up on anyone in my house?"
"I'm a friend of the Kid's from Miami. Just cause some idiot judge gave her to a brother she didn't know instead of my mother doesn't mean me and my family don't care about what happens to her."
Brian walked over to the group on the lawn. A group who was giving off more and more feelings of anger barely under control the longer they stood around. Since team Toretto had made a circle around the group Rome and Tej couldn't see what was in the center.
"What's goin on guys?" Brian asked the group.
"This girl came to check up on Stacey." Letty answered Brian's question.
"I'm Brian." Brian held out his hand to Storm. "I'm Stacey's brother."
"I'm Storm. I'm Tammy's big sister." Storm looked at Brian's hand and made no effort to shake it. "Sorry, but the reception I got since I been here ain't put me in the mood to make friends."
"Vince is just having a bad weekend. Why don't you come on in and catch up with Stacey? Then we can all get to know each other." Brian smiled his 1000 watt smile at the angry blonde.
"Vince can kiss my rear bumper and I'd rather catch up with my girl alone at this great little seafood place I found on the way in if it's all the same to you."
Brian's smile dimmed. "Why?"
"Because my mom and sister are worried about her and how do I know you don't want me to meet her in your house so you can intimidate her into not telling me how things really roll around here?" Storm looked at Brian, her years of seeing the worst of the world had made her cynical and a bit on the untrusting side. She wanted to hear from Stacey, without any outside influence that things were ok. If things weren't fine then heads would roll. "Look, I came all the way down from New York for this so please don't bust my balls over this."
"Stacey, do you want to go to supper with her?" Brian asked his sister.
"The only reason we're still here is because I wanted to tell you where I was going first." Stacey admitted, trying to tell her friend without words that things would be ok.
"Ok then. Have fun. But remember, it's a school night so be home at a reasonable hour." Brian said with a smile. The group started to break up when it became obvious there was not going to be a fight on the lawn. This, unfortunately, left a gap in the crowd that let Rome see who was in the middle.
"Storm?" Rom yelled.
"Here we go." Storm said in a bored voice.
"What the hell are you doin here?"
"Takin my homegirl out to a meal. What the fuck are you doin here?"
"Checkin up on her after some idiot tried to..." Dom cut Rome off midsentence.
"It's settled. Let it go." Dom told Rome in his don't mess with me voice. Rome looked like he'd like to argue the point but he caved, mostly due to who's house he knew he was staying in for the next few days.
"Tried to what?" Storm asked in her own deadly calm voice.
"I said let it go!" Dom raised his voice in annoyance.
"Yeah, well your orders don't mean dick to me Baldy so who tried to do what?"
Stacey did not have pleasant visions of the near future what with them getting Storm pissed off. The girl didn't handle not getting her way very well. Dom looked like he was gonna blow a gasket too.
"It's cool Storm, we should go." Stacey told Storm and moved the girl off to her car. She opened the 'wrong' door and started to push Storm in. Storm stopped between the car and the open door and looked at the group.
"I'm gonna get my answers and if I don't like what I hear god help you all." With that she got into her car on the right hand side and started it up. It was then that everyone noticed her car was not, as they had all assumed, just a normal import car. It was a Skyline, a very old one, but a Skyline none the less.
The car, which was painted like a lightning storm took off from the Toretto curb with an earsplitting squeal and big clouds of white smoke pouring off the rear wheels. Leon stared after the car for a few moments with a blank look on his face. "Who was that?" He asked the group in general.
"That was bad news." Rome answered.
"What's her problem?" Dom asked.
"Storm is Tammy's older half sister. She was raised by her father in New York for most of her life. She found out she had a little sister and a mother when Tammy was 12 and she was in the girls lives from then on. She's also a street racer extraordinaire and has to be up to more then that too. But she loves her sister and Stacey a lot. I had a run in with her one night in Miami on the streets." Rome looked around like he didn't want to give up any more then that.
"Well, I don't like her." Letty said and headed to the house. "She better not get any ideas about staying around here."
"That's for sure." Vince added his two cents and headed after Letty.
"You have the most to lose homeboy." Rome growled after Vince.
"Come again?" The shaggy haired man spun around.
"If home girl goes nuts on anyone it's gonna be you. You're the one who almost did what you almost did."
"I said it was over and done with." Dom interjected.
"That it might be but it still happened and if Stacey tells Storm, she's gonna come back here looking for your blood." Rome didn't look as happy at the thought as he should have, considering how upset he was to hear what Vince had done.
"That girl was good lookin." Leon looked up from where he'd still been gazing down the road. "And she has a Skyline too." Leon looked like his world had been shaken at the core.
"She brought it in through Canada and falsified the legalization papers." Rome sighed. It was a big source of rumors in Miami.
"Why'd she get a R32 if she has that kind of pull then?" Letty asked.
"She says they're the purest form of the car and she doesn't need a brand new one just because someone made them crazy popular with some dumb movie." Rome was done answering questions and looked at Brian. "Let's go in and wait on them to come back incase we need to save Vince from Storm huh?"
Vince huffed and the whole team went into their house.
"So, how are things really Stace?" Storm asked as they grabbed a table at Neptune's Net, a trendy beach seafood spot.
"Good. They got bad there for a while but you've arrived after the storm." Stacey giggled at her own joke.
"What was it that almost happened up camping?" Storm asked in a very good impersonation of being calm. She managed to fool Stacey into thinking that she wouldn't flip out.
"Well, Vince got drunk and thought he could get back at Brian for stealing Mia away by sleeping with me. Let's just say he wasn't taking no for an answer." Stacey sighed and looked at her plate. Even if it was water under the bridge she still didn't want to think about it.
"He what!" Storm somehow managed to roar without raising her voice.
"Well, it's ok now. He was really really drunk and he's said he was sorry. We even drove home together like you saw and he let me play with the radio. He doesn't let anyone play with the radio but me." Stacey was quick to try and calm her friend.
"He's gotta be 7 years older then you! He had no business. I don't care how drunk he was. He's about to get a chance to try that shit with a woman his own age."
"He's even older then you and please don't start shit with them. It'll only backlash on me when you leave."
"I don't have to leave anytime soon girl. My dad gave me the keys to his L.A. house and told me to take my time. I don't know what your brother was thinking taking you to live with a bunch of oversexed single men."
"He's in love with Mia. The team's not so bad. But they won't let me learn to race yet. But Brian has given in and let me start to learn to drive at least."
"Well, I can stick around and teach you to drive a real car if you want." Storm grinned.
"Well, Brian has a Skyline too. Something about a 34 maybe?" Stacey wasn't clear on all the details, she just knew she liked Brian's. "And Leon has one too. Something like a 33."
"Oh kid." Storm chuckled. "You should just stand on the sides and cheer the chicks who do race on. You don't have much clue about cars."
"Nope." They were done eating by this time. "I guess we should go back." Stacey stood up. "Are you gonna kill Vince?" She looked like she half thought it was possible.
"Not if he didn't manage to actually do anything." Storm conceded.
"He didn't." Stacey breathed a sigh of relieve. Storm decided to let it go, even if she wasn't sure if she was going to make Vince pay in some way or not.
They arrived back at the Toretto house.
AN: Now someone has to take it from here. We should get this going again and give it an ending. If ya'll didn't guess Storm is (loosely) based on me. Whoever goes next can feel free to write her out, send her home or whatnot. You can leave her in too, I don't care. She just helped me serve a purpose. Since it wasn't technically my turn I don't think I changed things too much that if whoever was supposed to update wants to go ahead they should be able to without changing their ideas too much. So who's up, let's go! Peace out, Tempest.