AN: Why am I updating again so soon? Fucked if I know...:D I'm home sick, no one's paying me any mind and I'm bored with Diablo II already :( I'm horrible at this being sick thing. Tummy says 'be lazy' and brain says 'you like this song, go dance like a nut case'. I'm really not crazy. All the voices in my head agree I'm not! So anyway, here's another chapter. I did warn ya'll that the action was going to get extreme and likely jump a smidge out of real into fantasy, so you can't say you didn't go into the story with your eyes open. And I have no idea what the secret message would have been Sir Knight, ;) Perhaps I'm not the one who needs to worry about their mental health :D. Anyway, read on, enjoy, review if you want. But just remember, look where all the reviews for last chapter got you! Another chapter only a day later. ;D

The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Fifty One – Of Underdogs and the War at Home

Much to their surprise, no one ever came looking for them. They wandered up on their own around eleven, figuring it would soon be time to head for the warehouse.

"You feeling better?" Jesse asked Tempest as Vince pulled her down onto his lap in the living room.

Vince waited for her to answer as he wrapped an arm possessively around her waist. Being surrounded by the team had reminded him that he still had some unanswered questions about what was up with the scared look Leon had gotten on his face when Dom had said he'd better butt out unless he too was having sex with the girl in question. He was staking an ownership claim. He hated the fact he felt like he had to and he had a funny feeling if she figured out what he was doing she'd kick his ass solid.

Tempest couldn't win against the grin that wanted to spread over her face. "Much better, thank you." She wanted to ask Dom if his balls had recovered, or if they would remain too swollen to allow him to race tonight, but she decided that discretion was the better part of valour this time. She just glanced at him impertinently from under her lashes, letting him know she was no more scared of him now than she had been then.

Jesse groaned at the look on her face. "Don't say anything else. Please."

"Don't worry. I won't." She continued to grin evilly as she leaned back into Vince and rested her head on his shoulder. Ok, so she was in love with him and he didn't love her back. In four days she might not ever see him again. She had a lot of things to cram into four days. And she had to do it all without him knowing about it. To say she was shocked when he kissed her forehead was an understatement for sure. A gesture more loving than sexual right in front of all his friends? Wasn't very Vince-like. A fact Dominic certainly noticed, a silent growl turning the corners of his mouth down as he looked between his best friend and the girl in his lap. It was a fact Leon clearly noticed as well, looking away with a minute shake of his head, she noted.

"Let's get the fuck on the road," Dom finally said. Anything else he said was libel to see him and Vince finishing the conversation with their fists, again. And he had no desire to be pulling Letty off anyone. Not tonight. If anyone so much as grazed his crotch he'd be right back on the ground. The little bitch had gotten him dead on target.

Everyone headed for the door. "You taking your own car?" Vince asked Tempest as they waited for Leon, Jesse and Letty to put their shoes on and get out of the way so they could get out the door.

"Of course."

"You hopin' to get a race in?"

"Not so much. Just gonna sit there in my totally awesome Skyline and be totally awesome." She grinned up at him.

"You're totally evil, you get that right?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm evil and you love it."

"I love it when I'm pissed at Dom and you make him so angry I expect to see his head spinning right around any second."

"I seem to have that effect on him even when I don't nail him in the junk hard enough to bring him down."

Vince smirked. "Long as it's him and not me."

"Well, you have an added advantage over him."

"What's that?"

"I actually care about the functionality of your junk, every once in awhile."

"If you rendered Dom unable to," Vince cleared his throat, "function, Letty would definitely have something to say to you about it."

Tempest shrugged. "Well, I already told her what I thought about her threatening me, didn't I?"

"Evil." He pulled her against himself and kissed her. It didn't take her long to lean into his arms and kiss him back. He released her lips and grinned at her.

Before she could have an answer to his comments, Leon's head poked back into the house. "You two coming or staying here to suck face some more?" He smirked to take the sting out of his words. "Dom wants to know, though he didn't phrase it quite like that."

"I just bet he didn't. Not with his swollen nuts being a constant reminder of how much he doesn't like me."

Leon's smirk turned into a grin. "He had it comin' for what he said about you while you were right there. But don't tell him I said so."

"I won't. Let's go already." Tempest shoved Leon out the door and followed him before waiting on the step for Vince to follow. He waited until she was seated in her car before getting in his own. They backed down the driveway one after the other, before following the rest of the team off down the road. When they arrived, as per usual, they got parking spots and proceeded to be the center of attention for all the other attendees.

As Mia and Letty were currently ignoring her still, Tempest found herself glad for the presence of Vince, Leon and Jesse. Though they stayed with her, the situation was still tense. Dom was still not anywhere near over what had happened over the last two days and he was making his displeasure known with his attitude. And when the king frowned on a subject, that subject quickly became a persona non gratis in most social situations around the racing scene.

When Dom was finally challenged to a race, Leon sighed in relief. Even ten minutes free of Dom's oppressive presence was a blessing. Then Tempest and Vince decided they should go help line the route. Leon followed them, stifling a groan. The last thing he wanted was to find himself closer to Dominic again. He watched Tempest and Vince parked side by side a few meters back from the start line. Dom and his three competitors lined up, and everyone started to play the ever present game—hurry up and wait.

Many got out of their cars to mingle. The three of them stayed put. Leon didn't know why, but he wasn't going to question it too hard. Sitting in his car behind his tinted glass removed him somehow from all the drama that was his life of late, and he really needed the time to regroup. He realized as he glanced out his window, that due to how Tempest and Vince had parked, they could converse without leaving their cars as her right hand drive position put her right next to Vince's left hand door. So that was why they hadn't bothered to get out of their cars. She had her chin rested on top of her arms, which were folded along the top of her doorsill, and was looking at Vince as he talked to her. Occasionally Tempest interjected something, as he occasionally saw her mouth move but Vince was doing most of the talking. He couldn't hear what they were saying and he was glad. The two of them pretending to be ok with each other and how they were wasn't ok with him because it wasn't going to be ok for them. Not in the end. He had no idea what was going to happen with them in the end, but he did have a sense of unease which was more than vague that it couldn't and wouldn't be good.

A tiny Asian female walked out onto the street and stood between the middle two cars, out in front of them a few paces. She lifted her arms into the air as if paying homage to the stars. The way her eyes stayed firmly focused on the four idling cars on the line showed that—to her at least—the cars were the stars of the evening. Heavenly beings brought to earth by steel and rubber.

"Finally," Leon muttered to himself out loud. The sooner Dom raced the sooner the night would be over and he could stop pretending not to watch someone he had come to care for very much set herself up to take the ultimate fall one more time. One time she fell, she was going to fly apart into more pieces than anyone could put back together, and he didn't want to see it. Much as he'd love to have her around on a permanent basis, he was still glad she was going home. Better for her to be far far away from Vince. Better for Vince to have her stick around, but he'd never see it.

Before he could spend any more time being morose and analyzing something he had no say over anyway, the girl dropped her arms and four earthbound shooting stars rushed past her, leaving tails of dust and debris in their wake.

And before he could wrap his brain around what he was seeing, the lightning painted Skyline was streaking after them. He looked over at Vince, and found a look of shock to mirror his own on V's face. So Tempest's move wasn't one they had planned between the two of them. Leon lowered his window. "What the fuck is she up to?"

"Fucked if I know. One second she was just sittin' there takin' to me. The next she just up and took off after them."

"She gets in front of him there's gonna be a war."

"Tell me somethin' I don't know." Vince sighed and looked after the five cars now racing down the street. "Think we should haul ass down to the end in case they go at each other?"

"I think we should pray she comes in after Dom."

If someone had asked her in the moment she'd tossed her car in gear and squealed off down the street what she was thinking, she wouldn't have had an answer for them. She hadn't really thought. She'd just looked at Dominic, sitting on the line in his car looking so smug, so confident there wasn't a person in the city who could take him, and something inside her had snapped. She was fairly sure she could take him. Not that she would ever have been given a chance to find that out. Not legitimately. But she could make her own chance; if she didn't mind running a second behind the time everyone else had started.

He was such an arrogant asshole! Thought he had the right to talk down to her any time he wanted. She slammed the car from second to third with an economy of angry movement. Force feed her orders and expected her to take it with a smile. Relegate her to the status of some skank one of his boys was doing just because she was there simply because he didn't like her and didn't like the way she stood up to his shit. Didn't like the fact he was worried that she'd decide to stick around to be with Vince. Well, since he was basing his right to do all those things on the fact that he was the fastest at getting his car from start to finish, she'd take away his position and see where it ended him up. If she was faster, the basis of his authority over her was gone. Even if it was only in his own head in the first place.

She turned on her nitrous system on the fly and turned the controller system off at the same time. She was doing this one fully manual. She didn't want some computer chip deciding when and how much. She knew she'd have to do it herself if she wanted to catch up.

Her car was set up for speed, and it was showing that heritage now as it flew down some unknown Los Angeles street. By the time she hit wide open throttle in third, she was about to pass the trailer of the field. That was when she shoved the gearshift down into fourth, pedal still to the floor. And then, she pressed her finger down onto her left horn button and felt her car respond as a flow of nitrous good for an extra four hundred horsepower, give or take, was injected into her intake.

She was in second to Dominic's first by the time she shoved the car up into fifth. She didn't let up off the nitrous even for the half second it took her to shift gears. She knew that her ten pound bottle was good for about twenty seconds, so she knew she should have more than enough spray to finish the race. Her only question was if she'd finish it in first or second.

Vince tried to let things play out how they would. But he just couldn't. In the end he started his car and took off after the pack of racers. He couldn't leave her to face Dom's wrath on her own. But as he followed them down the road, he started to get mad. With her.

She hadn't been part of the race. She hadn't been invited or bought in. She'd just taken it upon herself to jump in after the fact. She was essentially cheating, even if she was doing it with a disadvantage. It wasn't the way they rolled, and she had to know it. But she'd still jumped in without looking and opened a Pandora's box that no one might be able to close. If she won, it was going to get messy. Thankfully, he didn't think she could. But still, it was the principle of the thing. She was going to catch hell. At least if Dom saw him 'handling her' he might not jump into the fray himself.

With the finish line looming, Tempest realized she was never going to overcome Dominic's head start if she raced the formulaic way she currently was. With a quick wish for luck, and for nothing bad to happen to her car, she thrust her thumb down onto her right horn button, activating her second bottle of nitrous, and boosting her shot to an unprecedented, honestly stupid amount. She bit her lip and started a fervent chant that her exhaust profile was open enough, that her fuel pump was strong enough, and that her fuel injectors were big enough to overcome the detonation that was very likely, and could easily fry her very expensive, very hard to replace engine with so much nitrous delaying the burn in her cylinders. She doubted very much even her chipped ECU could retard her timing enough to overcome the lean condition she was sure she was creating.

Her car surged ahead with so much force, it literally tossed her back into her seat. The back end started to step out but the traction governing system in her all wheel drive took over and kept her going straight. Before she knew it she was flashing past Dominic and over the finish line, her bumper just edging his out. Having started just over a whole car length behind him, she figured she had done really well. Really well at a very bad thing, that was. But that seemed to be her forte. Being very good at being very bad.

Before she could think about getting stopped and turned around, something jolted her forward in her seat. A quick glance in the rear view showed Dominic had ridden up on her tail before allowing his front facia to clip her rear bumper. She put on a little burst of speed to get clearance before she spun her car around one eighty and slammed it into reverse. She flew down the road backwards, nose to nose with Dominic's car.