Chapter IV
"Okay, so here's the car."
Fara stepped into the garage with Zach in tow, now directing him towards the trashed LeDorean that had been waiting patiently on a pair of car lifts. Its front end had been completely smashed inward, its windshield covered in fractures that vaguely resembled a spiderweb, and its chassis underneath likely completely ruined.
"You can use any tool you want in the shop, as long as you don't burn the place down," the fennec explained, motioning toward the other end of the large room.
Along the back of the room was a computer workstation with multiple monitors connected, a couple of whiteboards, and a fire extinguisher shining a bright fire engine red. Just in front of it, various machining equipment, tool racks, work benches, and other toys sat peacefully, waiting for the next oil fire or OSHA violation to occur within the cinder block walls.
"Slippy's number is on that whiteboard over there. Give him a ring if you need anything, I'll be back later."
Fara walked past the car sporting its shimmering stainless steel bodywork and red accents, marred by the horrors that plagued the vehicle before it was dropped off at a holding lot, and then her shop. She ran a finger across the hood, feeling the various creases, folds, chips and scratches as she headed for the door.
As soon as the heavy metal door closed behind her, Zach immediately went to the whiteboard across the room. If he expected to finish this in a timely manner, he'd need an extra set of hands anyway. He found it odd that Fara went from having him playing detective to playing collision mechanic, but he didn't mind. If he was getting a paycheck to restore a car instead of sifting through what he'd normally be dealing with, he wasn't going to complain.
One call and one explanation as to why Fara hadn't told him sooner, that being that he'd been 'too busy' by Fara's standards, Slippy Toad was down in the shop that was technically shared between him and the fennec, though he tended to use more than 95% of the time.
"So why'd she pass up the case again?"
Zach sighed as they continued reading maintenance guides and gathering tools together onto a wheeled cart.
"Something about it going way high up the chain of command, stuff that she'd probably kill me for mentioning outside her office."
Slippy gave him a look.
"What?"
"C'mon, I'm the second highest-paid employee in the company next to her, it's not like I don't know about that kind of stuff anyway."
"Fine. Star Wolf's still alive."
Slippy dropped a set of sockets out of sheer terror.
"What?!"
"Ran into 'em last night at a bank. Point is, it's no longer up to Fara and the precinct working together, and I'm technically no longer on the case."
The toad got down and picked up the sockets off the floor, before setting them back into their organizer on the cart.
"Then why's she got you here working on the car?"
The shepherd just shrugged.
"I dunno. I guess she pitied me after telling me she wasn't gonna fire me... and then proceeded to fire me but with different words."
Slippy continued pulling tools from racks and drawers before moving them to the cart, checking them off a list as he set them down.
"She hasn't been known to hand out pity points like that. I wonder if she's planning on doing something with Fox's car after we're done."
"Sorry, who's car is this?"
"Are you telling me you haven't looked at celebrity news in the past half a decade?"
Zach rolled his eyes.
"No, I never thought invading a dude's privacy was worth the views."
"Better sentiment than most of Corniera, I guess. Let's do this!"
The toad was more than happy to grab a socket wrench and begin removing the decimated body panels.
'Fixing a celebrity war-hero's car. Fun.'
-[TW]-
"Alright Miyu, have we heard back from Bill yet?"
The lynx leaned back in her chair, gently spinning it around in the process.
"No, not yet. Has he even opened the report you sent him?"
Fara glanced down at her laptop screen. The two were in the special ops lab's office, while the rest of the lab team continued to tweak and discuss plans for what they assumed was to come.
As a small, melodic chime of a marimbist playing a repetitive tune rang from her phone, Fara pulled the black rectangle out of her pocket and answered it.
"It's Bill."
"Impeccable timing as always," Miyu replied.
"Grey," the fennec greeted as the General appeared on the screen.
"Hey, Fara," he returned. "The board received your report from earlier."
Miyu flipped a switch near her computer on the desk, causing the electrochromic glass surrounding the office to turn opaque in a split second. Fara silently nodded her thanks.
"I'm assuming you know what this means, yes?"
Bill sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"Well, given that Wolf and his friends are still alive after confirmed deaths, I'd say we've got a bit of a problem on our hands," he chuckled in an attempt to lighten the mood a little. The bulldog continued after a brief sigh.
"Anyway, we did a bit of a lengthy debrief on our own, and the three other guys on the job with the kid from the precinct described Star Wolf using what they could only explain as nothing short of teleportation, much less time travel to escape. Well, three of them, at least. Andrew and Pigma might still be the easiest to apprehend, but they sure do a good job of keeping their mouths shut when you least need 'em to."
"And I'm assuming you know about the details I sent," Fara inquired.
Bill was silent for a few seconds.
"...You finally got your shredded cheese wish?"
"Har har. I was talking about the other details."
"Well, given that you've practically made history and no-one seems to know it yet, I'd say our only options here are to fight fire with fire."
Fara took notice as Miyu's ears pricked further toward the bulldog.
"I like the sound of that, only one slight problem."
Bill sat there awkwardly, awaiting her response.
"...And that is?"
"Right now it'll only shoot things from the beam cannon at specific focal lengths, which can cause duration of time dilation to vary wildly, not to mention how unstable it can be."
The bulldog just blinked.
"In grunt-speak, please?"
Fara rolled her eyes. "Gun shooty, might kablooie."
Bill gained a look of understanding as he leaned back in his chair.
"Well, what's to say we can't fit it onto some sort of vessel?"
As the two continued their back-and-forth discussion, the gears in Miyu's head began turning. Any vessel that they could use would need to be air-tight, preferably aerodynamic, have to comfortably fit at least one or two passengers, need to be manually pilotable on nearly any terrain, and have a way to communicate back to a home base. Second, it would need to be constructed out of a material resilient to deformation (and preferably blemish), potentially be resistant to laser fire, and have to maneuver out of almost any situation.
The feline began trying to convey her thoughts into hand signals to show Fara, but the most that succeeded in doing was what could be best described as a semi-vertically-oriented rendition of a cabbage patch move.
Eventually, the lynx got her message through to the fennec, but not before delivering a single-fingered salute with one hand gripped on an imaginary steering wheel.
"Well, what if we just modified a car?"
"What car would you use?"
Fara paused to think for a moment. The block that they had found worked the best during their testing was little more than the humble hunk of plain stainless steel.
If she were a power outlet, she'd either have generated enough power to illuminate enough floating light bulbs to burn down her lab, or fix Corneria City's underprepared and failing privatized power grid. One rather large heap of mechanical marvel covered in the same material just so happened to have rolled right into her shop, and she was going to take full advantage of it.
"Well, I might have an idea in mind..."
-[TW]-
Thump thump… thump thump… thump thump… thump thump…
Aside from his breathing, the constant beating of his own heart was all Fox could hear as he tried his best to keep his thoughts clear from anything car-related. The last thing he needed right now was for his lifelong partner to know that he wrecked one of his prized possessions… even if he pulled his last favor to have it rebuilt in a weapons R&D facility. Fara might be able to pull some strings to get it done fast, but how fast was the real question when it came to getting the car to look like it hadn't been thrown off a cliff in a show about car challenges.
That, and if it would even still resemble a car when she was done with it.
The vulpine was sitting on a long couch in the shape of an L, perpendicular to a roaring fireplace in the cozy living room of his home. His fingers gently caressed the edges of a novel and thumbed over the pages as his eyes jumped from word to word down the page. Line after line, row after row until he turned it over to reveal a new set of characters for his brain to take in and make sense of.
The continuous sound of running water from the upstairs bedroom had been drowning out any noise, creating a silence of its own until the inhabitant of the shower turned the water off, allowing the natural ambience of the night to come rushing back and take its place. After a few minutes among the silence, the sound of footfalls descending the stairs to the foyer revealed none other than Krystal, who walked over and plopped down onto the couch next to her husband.
"You smell good," Fox sighed as the vixen rolled up next to him.
"I could say the same about you, if you got all that smoke out of your fur."
As Krystal's statement (and his olfactory nerves) had blatantly reminded him, he and his clothes still carried the telltale scent of a campfire, and his mate had finally relinquished control of the master shower and its accoutrements. The tod pulled the fabric bookmark back in between the pages of his novel before leaning over and giving his wife a quick peck, and got up to use the shower.
The azure vixen continued sitting there admiring the dancing pillars of orange, red and yellow lapping at the edges of the faux log in the fireplace, feeling its warmth radiate from across the room and help dry her still damp fur.
Unsurprisingly, her empty stomach began to grumble, prompting her to investigate the kitchen for a night-time snack. It wasn't really one of those sit-down-fancy-dinner type of nights, more so just one of those eat-something-and-snuggle-up-on-the-couch type of nights. Or, at least, she wanted the latter description to be true. After rummaging through the kitchen and expecting more food to magically appear at random intervals, Krystal had deemed that a grocery run was in order. And, now that her husband was preoccupied, she had a perfect window of time while he was showering to take the car they shared on a quick run up to the local supermarket. Once he'd taught her the fine art of the manual transmission, Fox had to practically rip her out of the driver's seat in order to get her out of the car.
The vixen looked up toward the flight of stairs in the foyer for a few moments, hearing the sound of running water through the showerhead begin. She only had about fifteen minutes before he'd be back out of the shower, especially if this was one of his slow nights.
Krystal moved toward the door to the garage and slipped her shoes on, before grabbing her coat out of the nearby closet. She quickly lifted the keys off of their metal hanger next to the door, before flinging the tall wooden panel open to reveal…
A garage, completely empty.
'No matter,' Krystal thought. He'd probably just parked in the driveway. She reached up to around her shoulder height up on the wall, before clicking a small button mounted near the door frame.
The segmented metal door lifted, revealing a driveway just as empty.
"Right," Krystal stated, before she clicked the button again and turned around to head towards the front door.
She swung the door open and looked around. As the moonlight shined onto the pavement, the complete lack of car became even more apparent.
Now in suspicion, she took her shoes off by the door, and quietly walked back up the stairs to the room she and Fox shared. She knocked on the bathroom door a couple times before poking her head in.
"Fox?"
"Yes?" She heard over the shower running.
"Where's the car gone?"
An audible *thunk* was heard from something hitting the shower floor. Krystal had to stop herself from laughing as a fuzzy, wet orange and white head peeked from around the shower curtain.
"At Fara's, why?"
The vixen raised an eyebrow.
"Why is it at Fara's?"
She could easily tell he was getting nervous, telepathy or not.
"...Slippy's working on it."
He wasn't even sure who was working on it at this point.
"Well, you see, what had happened was-"
"You know I can just read your mind, right," she said as she leaned on the door.
Fox sighed before responding. No point arguing with a telepath.
"Remember all that snow we had a little while ago?"
Krystal's arms unfolded as her eyes widened. That snow had taken what had felt like ages to melt since the snowplows continually missed their neighborhood, not to mention most of it had refrozen a few days prior.
"You didn't."
Fox grimaced.
"I did."
The vulpine quickly returned to the inside of the shower, rinsing all of the shampoo out of his head fur. After pulling a towel around him, he stepped out from behind the translucent glass panel.
"Are you… okay?"
Fox picked up the hair dryer on the bathroom counter as he responded.
"I'm fine… The car wasn't."
This disappointment in his voice was laced with self-loathing, and no amount of kicking himself was going to change the fact that he pretty much kept the whole thing a secret up until now. One long-winded and sheepish explanation as to how he managed to slip on a thin yet dangerous sheet of black ice later, and Krystal was less concerned with the car and more so just the fact that he hadn't told her sooner; a question that even Fox couldn't answer.
They'd ultimately decided on doing Krystal's impromptu grocery run, only on foot, Fox now showing her the spot where he'd lost control. A series of trees stood alongside the road leading into their neighborhood, one out of many having some of its bark knocked off at around knee height. Yet, it still remained standing, backed up by the many of its brethren that stood by.
The two continued walking along with their groceries in tow, enjoying the peaceful silence that the late fall evenings offered.
'Fara... please don't ruin my car.' ¹
-[TW]-
"So, what have you got for me?"
Miyu stood proudly at the door to the experiment chamber, eagerly waiting for her boss to step into the white room with her.
"One finished car with the necessary mods, that's what," she happily replied. "Oh, and Fox is on the way too."
"What, are you gonna make him drive it?"
"More or less, yeah," the lynx replied. "Well, driving's only part of it."
As Fara Phoenix neared the door, Miyu opened it and ushered her in, motioning towards a semi-car-shaped figure under a white fabric cover.
"Ready?"
Now getting eager herself, Fara ignored the question and yanked the cover off, revealing the machine that Zach and Slippy had spent almost the past week restoring. That is, before the R&D team promptly stole it out of the shop and into the lab, much to the protests of the Shepherd who wasn't aware of the car's "re-engineered" fate.
The ride under the covering was a stark contrast to the original, with new body panels dropped on a reinforced chassis from a similar make, and a complete restoration of both the interior and exterior. The lab team were basically granted full freedom to add new modifications which made the car far from what it had first been when it rolled off the factory line.
The front bumper had been covered up by a grille running across the full width, connected to a couple of electrical boxes on the sides, which led to a litany of cables, hoses, and chambers along the aft side. Two large, square diffusers loaded with fins were planted firmly on the rear edge of the coupe, as well as a large chamber taking up the center majority of the top rear panel.
Fara silently circled the heavily retrofitted vehicle, tracing her finger across the shiny metallic hood before reaching the driver's door. The car sensed her presence and beeped twice, before raising the gull-wing with a soft whir. A small whiff of vapor from a smoke machine sitting on the seat misted its way out onto the white tiled floor.
The fennec took a quick peek inside, before turning back to Miyu.
"Was the smoke machine really necessary?"
"Definitely. Now, watch this."
Miyu pulled a small black key fob from her pocket, before pointing it at the vehicle and pressing one of the buttons. The car gained a light blue glow from underneath it as a small whine could be heard, rising in pitch.
Fara just looked at the lynx.
"Underglow? Really?"
The cat in the lab coat shook her head, before motioning back to the car. Fara turned and yelped, being startled by the presence of a 2-ton mechanical beast now within inches of her.
The car was now floating about a foot off the ground. Its wheels had rotated ninety degrees against its typical axis, as if the camber had been sent entirely in the positive direction. Gently and silently, it had floated over toward the fennec, presenting its open door and empty driver's seat as if it were waiting in anticipation for a new driver to climb in.
Just then, Fara's phone rang. She grabbed the device and put it up to one of her large ears.
"Ms. Phoenix, you've got a visitor. One Fox McCloud?"
'Oh, good.'
"Yes, have Jake bring him down here."
The receptionist sounded like she was talking to someone away from the microphone for a moment, before she responded.
"Yes, ma'am."
- h̶e̶y̶ ̶g̶u̶y̶s̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶-̶ just kidding. Life happens, y'know? Thankfully I've started to come back into writing as of late, so hopefully I'll be able to upload without 8 month gaps.
- The LeDorean returns! Some fun bits to come.
¹: Thanks Elarix. Now I know why I forgot to upload this for 3 months!