Beep beep bee-
I grumble as I flop my head back down on my pillow. Kill me now please. I know that I have to wake up, but it doesn't mean I can't hate myself for choosing a god-awful hour to wake at!
It takes a few minutes before I get enough motivation to slide open my bed's shutter and step out with a yawn, looking over to my parents bed, I sigh when I see they're gone already for the day.
Shaking my head, I ignore the small pang in my heart at not seeing them for a week before I go on and get ready with some breakfast and head down to Marv's place. It takes a couple of knocks before I hear a thump from the other side of the door and chuckle at the faint curse I hear.
"I hate you," Marv grumbles as he turns right back around after opening the door and flops back onto his bed.
"Yeah I hate me too. Oi! Don't go back to sleep!" I say with a light kick to his shin, when that doesn't get him to move, I let out a barrage of kicks until he gets annoyed enough to send one back and get up with a glare my way.
It takes another ten minutes before we're on the street, thankfully early enough to miss rush hour and late enough to miss all the buses heading out to the oil fields.
"So, you talk to Pietro about what we're offering?" I question in between sips of some canned coffee we got from a vending machine outside our building.
"Yeah he responded an hour ago, says he's interested and will probably offer us a couple hundred depending on its condition."
"Perfect. You think he's going to try and scam us?"
"Pietro is a… alright guy. Pretty sure I've grown on him enough to not lowball us too badly
"Well fingers crossed cause we're here," I say as I turn into the parking lot of 'PP Auto', nice name. The lot is essentially empty bar a few beater cars near the shop but looking through the open garage doors, I can see three cars being worked on by a couple of mechanics.
Pulling up between the ones parked outside I let Marv head on in by himself to talk our man up while I wait by the car. I get a few minutes alone which I spend absently taking in the environment, a pretty shitty looking one but that's par for the course in Dallas. By the time I get bored enough to try and eavesdrop on the mechanics conversation which I can pick up snippets of I get a message from Marv to bring in the converter.
Heaving it from the trunk into my arms, I walk around to the open garage doors of the shop where I can see Marv talking to a man in a red mechanics jumpsuit with his back to me at the other end of the shop.
I let my eyes hover over the cars raised in the air being worked on by mechanics as I walk past. A Galena looking in good condition, a piece of shit MaiMai being ripped apart barehanded, good riddance, and wait what? I stop walking and boggle at the pristine car in front of me.
A pristine BMW, a brand I didn't even think had cars on the road anymore with them being long devoured by their competition. It definitely looks like something out of time but could definitely make donuts around most modern cars in a race.
"Like it?" A digital voice speaks out. Turning to the side I see Marv and Pietro approaching, the latter exhaling smoke from a DigiCig.
"I didn't even know BMW's were on the road anymore, thought they would be scrap or in a collection by now!"
He huffs a laugh as he comes to a stop beside me and gazes at the car, "You are right about that, and it was the same for this one but let's just say it's in better hands now… my hands," he says with a wink.
I chuckle at that as I pass the converter over and step to the car for a closer look.
"It's a 9018s, a sedan if you can believe it that tops at 210 miles," Pietro says from behind as he inspects the converter and mumbles a question to Marv.
I whistle as I peer inside, the tint not letting me see much but I can tell it's quite spacious inside.
"Alright, Alvarado's are still big on the market and this one I can clean up and put in another like new. I can offer 400 for it."
"400!? Converters go for at least 800! And like you said, this is essentially brand new, and you can get it off your hands easy with Alvarado's being big," Marv counters with a frown.
"Now you go too far choom, converters haven't been close to 800 in years! And even if I can get this off my hands, I still need to find a customer I can weasel it by and that could take months, months that I'll be sitting on it, 500," he says confidently, and I groan silently when I realize this is going to go on for a minute.
I ignore the two and keep inspecting the car as they go on for ten minutes! Ten! Before finally coming to 575 for it and given how happy Pietro is after shaking Marv's hand I know that he got the better end of the deal but looking at how exhausted Marv looks I ignore it and we accept the eddies.
"Good doing business with you chooms! Know that I'll always be open for business with you two! Now, anything else your dear friend Pietro can do for you?"
I hum before answering, "Saw you had a bay free, how much to rent it and some tools for a couple hours."
He raises an eyebrow at my request, "Oh you want to work on your car do you? Why not, for a small fee, hand it to us professionals? We've had years of experience and can save you hours of work and headaches in just a few hours," he says with a customer service smile that I have seen far too much of.
"Is that 'small' fee actually small?" I question, though by how his smile widens a bit further while staying silent is and answer in itself.
"Anyone ever tell you got a million eddie smile Pietro?" I say blandly, making him laugh out loud and smack my back.
"Oh that's funny! Marvin, you should bring him around more and make this place livelier, god knows my brothers aren't joyful enough," he says the last bit a bit louder, enough to reach the mechanics, who I guess are his brothers, working on either side of us who respond with a middle finger and an empty NiCola can that gets thrown and hits him dead on.
"Ow! That's my nose you asshole!" He says with a raised fist which the offending brother ignores with a snort and goes back to work.
He glares at the man's back for a moment before turning it to us at our chuckles, "The disrespect I get around here I swear," he grumbles as he rubs his nose.
"So about renting it out...?" I question with some hope.
"Fine, I'll even give you a discount 'cause I've known Marvin for a while. 150 for the day and tools, though you break anything and I'm taking it out of your ass tenfold," he amplifies by pointing real close at my face.
I agree with a relieved sigh as I softly push his finger away, Marv handing him some of the eddies we just made over to him. Although still pretty expensive, it's a much better deal than what we could have gotten elsewhere.
Marv goes around to bring the car into our bay while I try for a trade with the man. After looking through the forum, I know for sure now that it'll be best to completely get rid of the catalytic converter and just go for a straight-piped exhaust, a true straight-piped exhaust at that. Getting rid of the muffler is just a touch of illegality, but Rangers don't give a shit about it until you do something big enough to get off their asses and add it to your sentence.
It takes another ten minutes for us to come to terms, a good quality, if used, straight-piped exhaust with its converter removed. I do however end up forking another hundred for a new O2 sensor for it and a complete reprogramming of the ECU. Unsurprisingly corps would rather not have proprietary programs being easily available for anyone, so if you want to tune anything? You either somehow get past the sheer amount of black ICE they loaded it up with, or just wipe it and start from scratch.
Now I don't have any programming skills, at all. My public-school education left much to be desired and after graduating middle school, I didn't have much time to dedicate studying the finer arts, hence needing to rely on Pietro's work.
Thankfully the actual replacement takes less than an hour with the reprogramming done while we were working, so when I start the engine up, I grin at the immensely improved roar from it.
"Oh ho~ driving this is going to be fun."
Now with the difficult part over, it's time to work on the body of the car. First off, we start working on cutting off the extended cabin, thankfully there's not much keeping it in place, so we get it off in a few minutes. The exposed top of the trunk gets covered with some scrap that Pietro had lying around.
The armored sheet though is hard to work on with our hand-held oxy torch, thankfully Pietro has a proper, larger one meant for cutting cars up. Thankfully it's just enough to get through the hood and with some time and effort we're able to cut out a piece to size and weld with the extra armor being welded onto the trunk to completely cover our backs from anyone trying to shoot at us.
The cameras also don't take much effort to screw onto the stands we welded on, both being wireless and being directly stream to a screen I replaced the rearview mirror with.
The final thing to add was something I thought of to try and fix how exposed the wheels are, the race showing me that bar the glass, it's likely the weakest link. By welding the extended wheel covers I took from the Hella, which are decently sturdy, should theoretically keep most things from smashing my wheels off.
"Not going to lie, this looked better in my head," Marv idly comments as I finish the welding on the last one.
Taking off my face shield I wipe the sweat on my forehead as I take in the car. He is right, it does look pretty ugly with the body looking off, the rough welds we did sticking out like a sore thumb and the mismatched wheels doesn't make it any better.
"Yeah it doesn't look pretty, but it doesn't matter, all that does is that it performs better than it did before for tomorrow," I say as I throw the mask on the table we took over.
Marv takes a gulp of some off-brand soda as he takes a seat on one of the stools, "If you say so, you know more about this stuff than me. We gotta do anything else?" He questions.
"Hmm… that's the main stuff. You can relax for a bit if you want, I'm going to do a once over and some maintenance, may as well do an oil change as well since we're here already, god knows when it had its last," I say as I take out the oil pan.
Marv gives me a thumbs up in response and brings out his agent while I go to the car and start the finishing touches. It takes me near closing time, well closing time for their legal side of the business, before I finish up and we pull out the garage.
"Come by again you two! I'm always here to take your eddies!" He says cheerfully behind us before the garage door shuts close.
Marv lets out a yawn beside me as I slowly take us across the parking lot, "I don't know about you choom but I'm beat, want to head back?"
The yawn I let out is its own response, but my hands itch in excitement to test the improved car out. It takes barely a second to debate with myself before I feel a grin stretching across my face, one which Marv notices and doesn't like the look of as his previously languid eyes snap open in fear.
"Drake, don't you dare-"
VROOM
He gets cut off as I push the pedal to the metal, and we get pushed back in our seats as we launch. I laugh hysterically at Marv's scream; both being muffled by the roar of the engine and the popping from the exhaust as I spin the wheel and drift into the street at speed.
I drift across two lanes just to merge in, laughing as my tires screech and those I cut off honking at us but I don't stop, not for anything.
Ting
I flinch from the sound of lead striking metal right beside my ear, but thankfully the years spent in the dump hasn't decreased the durability of the armor. Grin sharp, I burn through gas as I watch the needle inching higher and higher on the speed dial as I weave between traffic, just barely scraping between sometimes.
Up ahead I see an intersection with a red light but none following it, everyone just slowing down and trusting themselves to cross it. I don't let up.
Marv's scream reaches a higher pitch as my eyes flit back and forth, taking in all the cars and all the available space, anticipating where people are going to be and I plot out my path. I squeeze between two cars like butter, passing them in such speed that they don't even have time to react before I'm long gone. A car ahead of us crawls into our path, painstakingly trying to get to the other side of the street perpendicular to us.
I can feel each individual millisecond as we approach, enough that I can make out the driver of the car just barely catching us out of the corner of her eye. I give a slight tilt to the left and I see a small spark go off from the brief contact as I veer away from a certain death, barely denting either car before we're gone.
"-atch out!" I tune in to Marv's warning as I take some focus off the road.
"Don't worry!" I yell over the sound of the engine, "Put some trust in me choom, we're gonna be fine!" I end with a laugh.
All he responds with is buckling his seatbelt which really? I'm not that bad, I got us all the way here without dying, haven't I?
I don't speak up though and let my actions do the talking as we tear through the streets. By the time I drift down into the garage straight into our spot, I know for a fact I cut what was a twenty-minute drive down to just five minutes.
"See? I told you we'd be fine, put some faith in your old pal," I say with a full blown smile on my face as the adrenaline slowly starts to fade.
"Ow!" I yelp, rubbing my stinging arm where he punched me.
"Asshole," he says as he shakily steps out the car and directly to the elevator, ignoring my calls to him.
"C'mon Marv, it wasn't even that bad!" I say as I scramble out the car and after him.