Several weeks had passed since the invitation had been sent out, it was a short call but that was common in this business, the sponsors had filled the weekends with races and arranged living quarters in Japan for the crew and drivers.
Project S was finally ready to start, it was a brutal start, the team had a race scheduled the upcoming weekend and today it was Friday.
Thing was they had to compete on the same style Project D had been doing it, 1 day of practicing on the course prior to the race.
It was going to be tough but the drivers didn't compete in the World Cup for nothing, after all the demands of a World Cup driver were pretty high.

As they arrived in Japan, a Japanese girl gathered them from all their flights in the arrivals hall at the airport.
They were all waiting for the leader of this project.
It didn't take long before a guy wearing a rather expensive suit showed up he looked over the team he was leading.
Sweeper and Carlos were sitting next to each other surrounded by mechanics and other drivers.

"I am Keiichi Tejima, the leader of Project S and the one that has been studying the mountain pass racing world. Please welcome my assistant when it comes to mechanics, Jane Cooper."

Sweeper's face expression changed, he was surprised to see her.

"Jane, are you in on this project?" Sweeper bursted out.

"We can discuss it after Keiichi here is done talking Sweeper."

"Like I was saying earlier, Jane here is the main person on this project when it comes for engine parts and tuning, she is knowledgeable around all types of engines, but her main speciality is rotary engines. I I will deal with the opponent analysis, the mechanics will naturally be responsible for vehicle setup and servicing while the drivers will obviously do the driving."

"If you don't mind me asking Mr Tejima, but where have you arranged our living quarters for the duration of this project?" Carlos asked.

"That has been taken care of like I said earlier, we have arranged some mobile homes for you, but that is a temporary solution at the moment, we are currently in negotiations when it comes for getting apartments for you all, but until then the mobile homes is all we have to offer."

"You also arranged transportation for our cars earlier on, I am wondering where they are at the moment, I haven't seen my car since I handed it over to the guy at the airport in Turkey."

"That has been taken care of, they have been loaded up on a truck and have been taken to your mobile homes, however you will not get much time to get familiar as our first expedition takes place tonight, you will get about 1 and a half hour to sort out your gear before we have to leave. Before you ask the first opponent is the Todou School. Now if you will follow me to the bus waiting outside."

Keiichi lead the way while the drivers and mechanics picked up their bags.
Sweeper grabbed his two bags and turned towards Carlos as he walked.

"Not exactly what you expected eh Carlos?"

"Nah, but still this will be a piece of cake; you did notice the little payment part in the contract as well right?" Carlos answered quickly.

"Oh yeah I did notice that, hard to miss, I guess we will get time to meet the rest of the crew once we get to our new homes."

"Good thing that we know the rest of the guys, now let's get moving we are lagging behind the rest of the crew."

They got onto the bus after stowing the bags in the baggage compartment below.
The bus drove off from the airport and went outside the city to some open space where the mobile homes were parked, it wasn't exactly luxurious but that wasn't a problem.

They got off the bus and got the keys handed out by Keiichi, the mechanics shared homes which were slightly larger, but the drivers were given individual homes of smaller sizes.
Sweeper quickly slammed the bags down and started unpacking; he was going to be staying here for a few weeks, so he might as well unpack what he was carrying.
It took him 15 minutes to get everything where it was supposed to be before he threw the empty bags into the closet.
Sweeper then went outside and noticed the 3 other drivers had already gotten together and the cars was being unloaded from the truck.

"Hey, you are late Sweeper, we are about to go over the cars for a pre race inspection." Carlos shouted out.

"A pre race inspection?" Sweeper asked looking a bit puzzled.

"We need to look over your engines and car setup to determine our tactics, even though you are in a higher skill level we still don't want to take any chances. We are leaving nothing to coincidence." Jane said while walking over to Sweeper.

"I guess it can't be helped." Sweeper walked over to his RX-7 and used his key to unlock the door before diving in to open the hood.

The light clunk sound was heard and as he opened the hood, Jane and Keiichi came over with a laptop.

"4 rotor NA, I am guessing you are still using that custom made 4WD system I got you? Peripheral ported, and if I remember correctly you are running fairly high compression and at a high RPM right?" Jane turned away from the engine and towards Sweeper who had moved from the door and towards the front of the car.

"Well I the dyno sheet read around 600 HP with a 12000 RPM fuel cut-off, Took some time running the ECU tuning, but it is running in its prime condition."

"If it wasn't, the parts I supplied you would be nothing, ok you noted all of that?" Jane asked Keiichi.

"Every word of it, we will need some time to set up the simulation though."

"We will do that on the way towards the Todou School." Jane said with a bit of confidence.

"Ok, that's the FD, now the blue R34 GT-R Vspec."

As the 2 moved towards the R34 who already had popped the hood and was awaiting the inspection, Sweeper was closing the hood on his FD and moving towards the guy in the red NSX Type S-Zero.
The guy smiled when he saw Sweeper.

"What do you think Sweeper? This is going to be great fun eh?"

"You bet Chang, but what are you doing here? Didn't you retire from mountain pass racing a while back?"

"Well… You do remember that story now do you? I guess the best reason I have is that the fear and guilt I got from the Touge the last time has been outweighed by the will and the fun I felt when doing it." Chang said looking down at his shoes.

"That accident wasn't your fault; it wasn't your fault that the guy in the R33 GT-R went through the guardrail. It was your team-mate's fault; after all he was the guy who did the sabotage on that guy's brakes. And the fact that the GT-R guy liked braking late didn't do him much good either. You could have done nothing about it; it was doomed to turn out that way."

"That's what everyone has been telling me afterwards. I did kick him off the team after that incident; the sad part is that Sinjo wasn't charged with murder for that, both me and him got off the hook as the entire thing was blamed on reckless driving. That was the day I removed the supercharger and went turbo on my NSX, as I couldn't quit street racing, I just went active in highway racing."

"Well it is good to have you back Chang; after all they don't call you "The Chinese Dragon" for nothing, I have seen you drive, in the rain you have a godlike car control."

"Well, that's what everyone says."

"They are right you know, maybe we should get somebody to record your driving once, you would be surprised." Just as Sweeper was done, Chang spotted Keiichi and Jane come towards his NSX, he quickly went to open the hood.

Jane went to have a look and was impressed.

"The block is not stock, you have reinforced it haven't you? And a supercharger, a bit different than what they say about your car, they said you ran a high power turbo on it. Obviously you have made a little mountain pass weapon here. Roll cage to improve body stiffness and a well done suspension job. And some artwork as well, a dragon is painted on the side of the car. Have you disabled the VTEC with low compression?"

"No, the block can take the pressure of the charger and the normal compression so I still retain the VTEC on it."

"According to your resume you are a good driver in the rain as well?"

"Well… that…" Chang was interrupted by Sweeper as he was hesitating a bit

"Chang is a damn good driver in the rain, I have seen him drive in the rain and his control is godlike, he and the NSX are working together like a team."

"Ok, then the final car, a R34 GT-R, man why do people love all these GT-R's? A black Vspec 2 as well according to the list." Jane and Keiichi walked towards the Brazilian guy leaning on the side of his R34 with the hood open.

Sweeper followed the 2 over and had a peak under the hood with Jane.

"Very interesting tuning here, you are using Twin Turbos, but the tuner parts you have used looks stock. According to what you submitted to us when joining up, this car should output around 600 HP in this state of tuning; now I only know of one setup that looks stock but outputs around that when it comes to RB26 engines. That's the Mine's RB26 ultimate response unit… Don't tell me you have…"

Carlos smiled before he spoke: "Ok, so I won't tell you that."

"Normally gaining sufficient power for professional mountain pass runs is a balance thingy and most GT-R's don't pass 400 HP, but you surely found a way to add 200 extra to that. Not bad doing that with a 2.6 litre and using a turbo. Suspension is not in a perfect state of tuning for this, if I were to guess you have only swapped the engine tuning for this? Because from what I see here this suspension is set up for an engine that outputs way more than 600 HP."

"Yes, I just got a new RB26 recently and the parts from Mine's so I have been busy setting it up, didn't have time to do the suspension, but I did a few test runs before I got the car shipped here and it should work reasonably well."

"Should do for your first battle, but we may have to do some setup to it, shouldn't be too much work." Jane stated while looking over the springs and attempting to push down the rear of the black R34 with her body's weight.

"Ok that was all the racers accounted for, let's just get these cars loaded up on the truck and get ready to head out, seems like everyone is ready." Keiichi said.

The cars were pushed by hand towards the truck and were winched onto it; it was a 2 level car transporter that was usually used to transfer new cars to shops as well as cars for large racing teams.
The mechanics secured the cars to the rear of the truck and got ready to head out; the team used a bus to transport the people that were not driving a truck to the location.

"Every one aboard, we are moving out" Keiichi shouted out and some of the Japanese mechanics served as truck drivers, since they had Japanese licenses for trucks as well as 18 wheelers.
The crew quickly got into the bus and Jane sat down with the laptop getting the simulation of the cars ready.Sweeper and Carlos went to sleep once the bus got moving.