Valentin's Voyage - A Shitbox Rally Story

[Elizipeazie]

October 17th, 2022, Some Hotel, Louisville, Colorado

---

The next morning, Valentin woke up in a hotel bed, even though he distinctly remembers having fallen asleep in the car.
First, he took is phone to check the time: 07:08
“Huh… Are we in Louisville already?”, he thought, before enabling GPS and opening his navigation app to see where he actually was.
Soon after, a blue dot marked his location at the western outskirts of Louisville, though it apparently thought that Valentin was across the road in a best-buy.
The phone is pocketed again and Valentin goes about his morning routine, eventually ending up in the hotel’s lobby where he took a seat to have breakfast.

Rukari got off of the couch with a groan and stretched, having at least gotten a bit of rest after their arrival in the hotel. He looked over and saw Jayde and Kaylie also waking up, then decided to give them some privacy by heading out to the lobby to have breakfast.

Once he got there, he saw Valentin had already found the place, gave a light smile and poured himself some coffee, then said to Valentin, “Good morning. Jayde and Kaylie will be here soon. Hope you had good sleep?”

“Cannot say i slept poorly. Though i also don’t remember the last time i slept poorly enough to complain about it,” Valentin replies as Rukari entered the lobby.
“Though i did spend a good thirty minutes un-FUBAR-ing my hair after i was hauled inside by one or some of you.”, he added, instinctively tucking some of his hairdo behind his ears.

Soon after, he returns to breakfast, waiting for Kaylie and Jayde to arrive so they could discuss when they were heading where.

Rukari and Valentin were only waiting at the table for about 10 minutes when Kaylie arrived, with Jayde only about a minute behind.

“Sorry for being the last one to the table,” Jayde admitted. “Had a bit of fun getting ready.”

“Partly my fault. I told him when we got to the hotel to just take his leg off and get the pressure off of it, but then we just went to sleep and he didn’t do any of his usual “after hours” maintenance,” Kaylie admitted.

“End result, two jammed buckles and an ankle in desperate need of some oil,” Jayde said. “And the better part of 5 minutes trying to sort out the situation in the morning so I could walk to the toilet.”

“No problem. We didn’t agree on a time to meet anyways. Nor did we have the opportunity to…”, Valentin remarked calmly while also being basically done with his breakfast, courtesy of having been there first by quite a margin.

“Anyway. I don’t know when or where that car can be collected, but Zinn Cycles doesn’t open shop until 11AM, so it might make sense to head to your place first.”, Valentin suggested.

Kaylie checked her smart watch, then shrugged. “I’ll let the guy know we’re coming, then,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t take us too long to figure out if the engine turns over, and if that is working fine, to pull the car up onto the trailer.”

Jayde chuckled, though was studying the breakfast options and seeming more than just a little confused. “Why would someone make cakes in a pan, and why would anyone eat “pan cakes” for breakfast?” he inquired.

“They close at 5, so we have time.”, Valentin countered, smiling a little.
He then mostly sat there, dabbling on his phone a bit while waiting for the others to catch up on eating.

“Oh, I don’t expect we’ll spend more than two hours out there, and that’s providing the engine starts. If it won’t start, we’ll haul it up on the trailer and be moving in an hour or less,” Kaylie admitted.

After the team finished their breakfast, Kaylie led the crew outside to the truck, climbing up into the cab and getting it started. As the others joined her, she gave a light smile, then said, “Sorry, but it’s going to be a while before we have heat in here.”

On the way out, the harsh reality of how big the US was hit him. It turns out, an October in Colorado was substantially colder than an October in Nevada, despite both being part of the same country.
The frigid morning air immediately drained Valentin of any sensation that was warmth.

“Cold… Cold… Coold…” he repeatedly mutters as he practically power-walks to the truck, his mesh-like shirt providing zero thermal insulation whatsoever.

Kaylie’s apology about heater effectiveness was only met with a blank stare and mild nod by Valentin, who was mentally occupied with trying to not freeze.

Jayde reached under the seat and grabbed a folded bundle of cloth. “It’s not much for insulation, but it is wind resistant and a second layer,” he mentioned, handing his jacket to Valentin. “It’ll be a bit big for you, but at least it will trap some warmth.”

Rukari settled himself into the front passenger seat next to Kaylie, getting his seatbelt on as Kaylie slowly backed out of the parking spot.

It only took a few minutes for the crew to arrive at the location of the car, where it could be seen in all of its rusted, dented, malaise-era glory.

“Oh, good, I was worried it’d be further from the road than that,” Kaylie said. “It’ll be less of a rescue and more just getting some old junk out of the woods.” She parked the truck, leaving the engine running, and got out to meet the guy who was selling the car. The two of them talked for a bit, and 5 minutes and $600 later, Kaylie had the keys and the title in her hands.

“Willing to bet she won’t start, even if we do give it some help,” she said.

“$30 says that thing runs once you jump-start it,” Jayde replied.

“Deal,” Kaylie responded. She wandered over to the car and opened it up. “Good news, the interior doesn’t stink!” she called out. She pulled the hood release, lifted the hood, and carefully started removing all of the spark plugs, checking each one as she did so. Then, with all of the cylinders open to the air, she tried turning the key.

“Yep, that was predictable,” she said, walking back to the truck and opening the hood. “Sorry, Val, but I need the box of jumper cables that is currently stored under your side of the rear bench. If you can pull that out and pass them up to me, I won’t have to open your door.”

After Val handed Kaylie the box of cables, then pulled the jacket on, still shivering, Kaylie quickly left the truck, clamping the cables onto the AMCW Ranger’s dead battery and the other end onto the truck’s second battery. Even though she knew there was a chance it’d turn over just fine like this, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t burdening the Bricksley’s charging system unfairly and returned to the truck.

“Right, parking brake is on, we’re *definitely in neutral,” she muttered to herself, looking at the dashboard until she spotted the switch. She flipped it from “Run” to “Jump Start” and was immediately rewarded with the Bricksley’s huge V8 surging up to 2000 RPM and holding there. “There we go,” she said, closing the cab door and returning to the AMCW.

There, she checked to make sure there was oil in the engine, and after confirming there was enough to risk cranking it, she settled into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition, a little amused to find it in the center console instead of on the column. The engine spun over with no issues thanks to the lack of compression caused by the missing plugs, and Kaylie saw the oil pressure gauge almost immediately jump upward. “Good. We have oil pressure. Now, to put the plugs back in, the wires back on, and see if I’m earning $30 from Jayde today,” she said to herself.

It didn’t take much time to put the spark plugs back, or to get the plug wires back on the plugs. Kaylie again settled into the seat, turning the key to the on position and looking at the gauges. “It says we have fuel. Can’t guarantee the quality, but we’re not driving it home, and we can clean the system once we’re actually there,” she muttered, before putting her foot on the brake pedal and turning the key.

The AMCW cranked for a surprisingly long time before there was a muffled pop in the exhaust, a couple of coughing sputters from the engine, and finally a shudder to life. Unfortunately, it sounded a lot like it was running on about 5 of the 8 cylinders, and Kaylie immediately smelled the stench of unburned fuel coming from the engine. “Really? I get a turbo car with a fuel problem?” she grumbled. As if in response, there was a muffled bang, followed by the turbo spooling for a good second or two, and the engine, despite being down three cylinders, sounded like it had almost cleared up. “Wow. Filthy rich, because when you came up on boost, you ran better,” she said. “Lets see if you can drive out of your own grave.”

Kaylie pulled the gear selector down into drive, and the tired automatic gave a valiant effort to drag the car out as Kaylie put her foot on the throttle. At first, she nearly killed the engine thanks to the extra fuel, but it soon got enough air to make an attempt at driving out of it. The car lurched forward a few inches before proceeding to toss dirt all over the side of the car.

She shut the engine down and chuckled, returning to the truck. “Fair play, Jayde,” she said, handing him his well-earned $30. “We’re going to have to haul it out of there. Front-wheel-drive, open differential, and two flat rear tires. Not to mention running on five-of-eight and stinking rich.” She flipped the switch back to “Run” and the truck’s engine settled back down as Kaylie went out to collect up the jumper cables, closed the AMCW’s and Bricksley’s hood, and made sure the AMCW was in neutral. She tossed the box of jumper cables into the back seat of the AMCW, then returned to the Bricksley and began the process of turning it around.

“Oh, good, we’re finally starting to get a bit of heat,” Kaylie mentioned, before looking out of the rear window and reversing the trailer toward the car. She stopped, again set the parking brake, then added, “Time to see if the trailer’s winch works, or if I’m going to regret not having Malavera here to pull on shit.”

Again, Kaylie hopped out of the cab, this time to unspool the winch cable, hook it up to the AMCW’s tow hook, put the trailer ramps in place, and then hit the button to retract the winch. It was immediately obvious that the trailer’s battery was not in great shape, but it was still powerful enough to drag the rusty pile of Malaise-Era “luxury” up onto the trailer. She took a bit of extra time in strapping it down to be certain it wouldn’t go anywhere, put the ramps away, and returned to the truck.

“Okay, we have ourselves a car. That’ll be a fun project to figure out later on, but my guess, it needs new fuel injectors. I’m sure one of them is leaking. As for three dead cylinders, well… That’ll take more troubleshooting,” Kaylie said, sitting down behind the wheel and closing the cab door.

“Would’ve liked to help where i can, but i don’t fancy turning into a glorified popsicle stick…” Valentin commented once the AMCW was on the trailer, having watched it all unfold from within the Bricksley.
The heat was definitely felt, but not substantial enough to change Valentin’s behavior all that much yet.
“Who would’ve thought that the same country turns from Sahara to Siberia in a day?”, he inquired, though not expecting any meaningful answer.

“Anyway… Food, Bike and return trip or Bike, Food and return trip?”, he added, this time actually directed at the others in the truck.

“You think this is wild,” Kaylie said with a smile, “try northern Nebraska or Maine. And that’s without leaving the Continental 48. If it helps, think of the United States this way: It’s 50 different countries who all agreed to let one government rule over all of them.”

When Valentin asked about which order they were getting the bike and food in, Kaylie shrugged. “What do you three think?” she asked. “Food first, or bike first?”

Jayde thought for a second, then admitted, “Food sounds good. Plus, right now, the bed’s pretty empty. Nothing there to steal.”

“Jayde make good point,” Rukari followed up. “People here are assholes. Not here, but in country. Not need Val angry because thief steal from him. Also not need confrontation with thief. Last time not end well.”

Kaylie grimaced. “Yeah, I don’t think Val needs to deal with that,” she said in response to Rukari. She then turned to Val and brought him up to speed. “Last time a thief broke into Twin Hearts Racing, Rukari caught him. It’s not well-known that Rukari’s “apartment” is just upstairs from the work floor, so, the jerk assumed he could break the lock and walk in, steal a couple of laptops and some tools, and leave. He wasn’t expecting to be confronted by Rukari, who was… Let’s just say, less-than-enthusiastic, to having “midnight visitors.” I’ve seen the security footage, and even I’m surprised at how fast Rukari can move. Also surprised at how damn tough he is.”

Jayde smirked. “Rukari’s first kick missed and broke his oak desk in the process. His second one didn’t miss and the little creep ended up in the hospital.”

“He is lucky. Would be dead if I had seen knife he had first,” Rukari replied.

“You make a very solid point. Food first.”, Valentin confirmed.
“So it’s like the EU but nobody wants to admit it because patriotism. Should’ve brought some layers along…” he added after a brief moment of thought.

As such the crew headed off to whichever fast-food joint was deemed most practical to visit.
The 100 feet or so from the car to the restaurant door had Valentin lose most of the collected heat from the trip there, only marginally saved by the lack of windchill courtesy of Jayde’s jacket.

Once in there, Valentin ordered a (by his standards) substantial meal together with several hot beverages in hopes that the Nanites would be of help in the current situation.

Kaylie smirked as she realized Valentin and Jayde had nearly matched each other in meals. “That’s certainly unexpected,” Kaylie admitted.

Jayde took a sip of his decaf coffee with several packets of coffee creamer in it, then admitted, “I’m not built for this climate.” He unwrapped one of his burgers and took a huge bite, clearly showing he was also hungry.

Rukari, on the other hand, wandered over with a tray full of food that made Kaylie sigh. “Really, Rukari?” she asked.

“What I do?” Rukari inquired.

“Four boxes of onion rings, four burgers, a box of chicken nuggets, and two strawberry milkshakes?”

“Big boys need big meals, i guess…”, Valentin quipped before digging in himself, not really talking at all for the entirety of his meal.
Though once he was done, he patiently waited for the others to finish, followed by him collecting everything on Rukari’s tray for disposal or return.
The restaurant did have AC, after all.
Still, the crew eventually returned to the truck, heading off to the shop where Valentin is to pick up his bike.

As they pulled up near the shop, Kaylie looked behind her and groaned. “That’s one hell of a reverse with that mess hanging out back there,” she said.

“Nekasi. Will not be problem. Should not be harder than reverse with little trailer,” Rukari said.

As Kaylie and Rukari swapped seats, then prepared to back the trailer through the gap, Rukari slid his hand down from the top of the steering wheel to the bottom and grabbed it down low. After double-checking that the truck was, in fact, in reverse, he eased it backward, steering the truck and trailer like an expert through the gap and neatly into the parking lot, even cheekily lining the trailer up between the lines of their chosen parking space.

Kaylie stared at him, then asked, “Okay, how in the name of the Twin Suns did you do that?”

“Before I was Vyrzadoburi, or special-forces in English, I drive truck for Grundzahiri, for Army. This… Like reverse with great-thunder-cannon and big truck.”

Jayde chuckled. “I think they call that “Towed Artillery” around here, Rukari.”

“Good job! I’ll be right back.”, Valentin complimented once Rukari was finished expertly positioning both truck and trailer within the lines.
Valentin got out of the truck and disappeared into the small store catering to tall human cyclists and Kaylie.
About 10 minutes later, he came back out, finaggling his way through the glass doorway with a box the size of a large TV in his arms. An actual TV was printed on said box, with CLYDESDALE written across the screen. With it, he walks past the driver side of the Bricksley and on towards the bed, where he carefully - as carefully as a partially haircut-blinded, freezing giant can lift a big box, anyway… - loads it into the bed, next to the bed cover that was already in there.
On the way back to the shop, he stopped by the driver door:
“There’s gonna be a few more trips… settlement sum was generous, so i… invested.”, Valentin said, heading back into the shop.

“Will not be problem,” Rukari replied.

Kaylie grinned as she saw the box, then said, “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, after all, but that is good to see.”

“What do you mean?” Jayde asked.

“They’re one of the few brands that make bicycles for big people,” Kaylie replied. “Admittedly, at my size, there’s a few more options, but not a huge selection. That amount drops sharply at Valentin’s height.”

It took less than two minutes for Valentin to reappear with another box, which, while still large, was a fair bit smaller than the first one, which also found it’s way into the bed.
Rukari’s offer to help was accepted and they settled on Valentin doing the runs from the counter to the door, where the package was handed to Rukari for him to load into the truck.
This dramatically sped up the process and after about 10 more minutes, all the boxes were in the truck for Rukari to secure. After all, it was his truck and he had responsibility of what was on it, in it or attached to it.
Valentin meanwhile fled back into the truck to gather some warmth.

“Rukari is gonna secure the load and then we can head off.” Valentin said to the others once in the car, the satisfaction of soon being able to be sat atop a titanium steed very much visible.

Rukari worked quickly to secure the cargo with ratchet straps first, and then followed it up with the heavy canvas bed cover, pulling it tight across the top of the cargo so that nothing could move. With the cargo secured and the bed now covered, Rukari climbed back into the driver’s seat and started the long drive home.

[Elizipeazie]

October 18th, 2022, Nevada, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 5:00 AM.

Jayde had to admit, he was exhausted, but at least they were home. Or at least, close enough to home. The truck had made it without any issues, the crew had survived, and their cargo hadn’t seemed to have moved at all since Rukari had secured it.

He pulled into the space in front of Twin Hearts Racing and shut the truck off, putting the parking brake on and taking a look around. Kaylie and Rukari had both joined Val in having a nap on the drive home, with Rukari having at least had the common sense to take his shirt off and use it to protect the window from his horns, and Kaylie’s face mashed up against the rear driver’s side window glass, almost mimicking Val on the opposite side. He groaned as he stretched as much as he could while still in the cab, feeling mighty damn sore after taking a double-shift of driving to just get home.

Kaylie woke up as she heard the truck door open, seeing Jayde climbing out of the cab. “I guess,” she said, taking a moment to yawn, “it’s my turn to drive now?”

“No, I made it home,” Jayde replied.

“Jayde, you know better. You know you’re going to spend the rest of today limping like hell.”

“You fell asleep 30 minutes before it was my turn to switch. I don’t know how to wake up Rukari, and if you were falling asleep, it’s not safe for you to drive,” Jayde said.

Rukari slowly woke up and got out of the truck, heading over to Twin Hearts Racing to use the bathroom and get at least somewhat freshened up from the long trip.

---

It was a little less than an hour later when most of the crew began to arrive, starting with Malavera, who noticed the car on the trailer and the canvas-covered cargo, but was focused on parking his truck in the parking lot first and on his curiosities second. Kivenaal was the second one to arrive, his “battleship gray” pickup truck quietly rumbling around the side of the building. Kayden made a close third, complete with a screech of tires as he narrowly avoided driving into Malavera, who had wandered across the parking lot without bothering to look.

“Hey! With twice as many heads as the rest of us, would it kill you to spare 10 seconds to look before you cross the road!?” Kayden yelled.

Malavera shook his head, then said, “Don’t do 30 in the fucking parking lot, you idiot. Also, if you like that truck, stay out of the last eight spots over there.” Malavera pointed to the far corner of the parking lot.

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“I will do nothing. I did a favor for someone and, well, they’re going to need that space.”

Kivenaal walked over to Kayden and Malavera, then asked, “Hey, where’s Takaraya? It’s not like him to be late.”

“Like I said, I did a favor for someone. He should be here in,” Malavera checked his watch, “about 45 minutes. Maybe 30.”

Valentin was still very much asleep when the truck rolled onto the northern lot with the Twin Hearts Racing building on top.
Completely oblivious to their arrival, he remained asleep for another hour or so, only being awoken by Kayden and his rather aggressive parking job.

A little stretch was done within the truck before exiting into (for Valentin) somewhat chilly, but not freezing conditions where he finished up his stretches.

After that, he took a look around, realizing that the trip was over with.
He turned to Kaylie, who was still in the truck:
“Mind if i head home to get neatened up a bit? I’d be back in… uhm… about two hours.” he inquired while vaguely motioning towards his rental across the road.

“Yeah, that’s not a problem,” Kaylie said, before moving to check and make sure everything in the truck was turned off. As she got to the radio stack, she turned all of them first on, then back off to make sure they weren’t on but sitting at zero volume.

Before Valentin could make his way across the road, however, Takaraya made a bit of an entrance, a sleek, highly-aerodynamic fighter-jet-styled aircraft flying low over the shops before transitioning smoothly into vertical landing configuration and touching down in the employee parking lot, shutting the craft down before sliding his canopy back and climbing out.

Kaylie sighed. “Well, at least I know how Malavera spent his two days. He spent them preparing that so that Takaraya could at least fly again. I’m just not looking forward to sonic booms at all hours of the day just because someone has a personal fighter jet. Well… I mean technically it’s more of a combat-ready spaceplane, but, let’s face it, it looks like a jet.”

While walking toward his rental, Takaraya announced himself with a thundering roar as he approached with what to Val was a very styled-up fighter jet.
In the process of landing, the turbojet engines sent a barrage of strong winds, dust particles and small pebbles everywhere, absolutely ruining Valentin’s hairdo.

The following attempt at clearing his line of sight turned out unsuccessful, as the strong winds had Valentin’s hair very much tangled within itself and his glasses and such.

In defeat, he was just stood there, vaguely “looking” at where Takaraya had landed and not exactly seeing a lot due to obvious reasons.

As the jet-blast kicked up a whirlwind around Valentin, making an angry tangle out of his hair and glasses, Kaylie groaned and got out of the truck, making her way across the road.

“Hey, Val,” Kaylie called out once she was nearby, “if you hand me your keys and let me know where you’re staying, I’ll drive you there. I’m so sorry that this happened, and I know that once Takaraya finds out, he’s going to be very upset with himself that he caused this.”

“Uhm… i cannot see a whole lot…”, Valentin replied, getting his keys out very graciously, as he had a habit of clipping them to a belt loop on his pants, which made it very easy for him to retrieve them via muscle memory alone.

He vaguely held them up towards Kaylie, who took them out of his hands. Then they went towards the car, which proved circuitous due to the inherent limitations Valentin faced while looking through a semi-transparent curtain made of human hair.

Once in the car, he reached for the car’s infotaiment system and set it to navigate him and Kaylie back to his rented house, using one hand for the touchscreen and the other to pull “the curtain™” aside.
“That should do it.”, Valentin said while fastening his seatbelt. “Why the fuck do you have a goddamn fighter jet?”

“My guess would be, Malavera remembered he had that and decided to brighten Takaraya’s day with it,” Kaylie replied. “As for where he got it, I’m sure he found it in some abandoned hangar in his damn space station,” she added.

As she drove back toward Val’s place, she continued with, “I mean, I get it that Takaraya’s a pilot, and that giving him the chance to fly again is nice, but, seriously, for someone with two heads, Malavera can be damned scatterbrained at times. He knows you’re here, and knows that Takaraya gets upset with himself if he ruins someone’s day. He knew we’d be back here sometime today, and yet decided “Hey, let’s give the big guy a fucking jet and tell him to land at the shop.” And I’m going to have to be the one to break the bad news to Takaraya, too, because I’m fairly sure no one else saw that.”

“Hope you have some patience. This will take a while to unfurl…”, Valentin said in annoyance, otherwise just waiting for arrival.
Once there, Valentin sat there for a while, initially not even realizing that they have arrived already.
“Uh… right. You can come in if you want, but i will be busy for a while and there’s not a whole lot to do. Might be worthwhile to call for a ride or something as well.”, he spoke while reclaiming the car keys from Kaylie and heading for the door to his place.

“Ah, not a problem. I already had plans to make a call and get a ride back,” Kaylie said. “I’ll see you around!”

Kaylie called up the Twin Suns Towing office and gave her current location to Malavera, mentioning that she just needed someone to bring her back to the building.

Roughly 20 minutes later, Kivenaal showed up in one of the tow trucks. Kaylie thanked him and climbed up into the cab for her ride back to the shop. “Was already being sent out this way,” Kivenaal explained, “to tow in a cranks-but-won’t-start from Pahrump. I’ll just go hook that up and we’ll both get back to the garage soon.”

Within the house, Valentin spent a good 30 minutes unfurling the mess made earlier, doing the rough work by hand and intensively brushing the remainder straight. With restored eyesight and a semi-presentable haircut, he hopped straight into the shower.

By that time, Kivenaal and Kaylie were already on the way back and approaching the shop, the stricken customer car in tow.

Eventually, the shower was followed up with another extensive brushing session with help from a powerful hairdryer, eventually resulting in a majestic mane full of bright blonde waves that wasn’t a series of involuntary knots for once.
Having slipped into a new set of clothes, largely similar to the previous one barring a rather race-y and colorful “livery” on his shirt instead of a uniform navy blue, he headed back for the car, effortlessly reversing it out of the driveway.

A little less than half an hour later, for a total trip time of more than two hours, Valentin pulled back into the parking lot of Twin Suns Towing, making sure to look for any pedestrians roaming around.

Kaylie grimaced as she watched the chaos unfolding in the work bay. She’d mentioned to Takaraya when she’d gotten back that he’d made a royal mess of Val’s hair, and Takaraya had gotten upset with himself. Then Kivenaal had informed him that he really shouldn’t be flying around in unregistered foreign military equipment, especially this close to military bases, and definitely not without a proper pilot’s license for the United States.

She’d never seen Takaraya get angry before, but now, she was a witness to nearly a third-of-a-ton of fury unleashed and aimed in someone’s direction.

Malavera, as the target of Takaraya’s admittedly-justified rage, was completely unprepared for it and kept trying to apologize by claiming that “he didn’t know it wasn’t legal.”

Takaraya bared his teeth, shoving Malavera hard enough to knock him off of his feet and send him down to the floor with a crash. “I have been shot down once already and barely survived it. How dare you set me up to get shot down again,” Takaraya said in a cold, calm, but angry tone of voice.

Malavera grimaced and stood up slowly, quite aware that he’d earned this, technically earned far worse than what he’d already gotten, and looking defeated already.

Takaraya reached out and ripped the left sleeve off of Malavera’s shirt, exposing the Exile’s Brand on his left shoulder. “Now I know why you were exiled,” Takaraya snapped, tossing the scrap of fabric to the floor. “It’s because you don’t follow rules. You make up whatever rules you want to believe.”

Malavera winced. “I know I screwed up, but there’s no need to go for the throat, Takaraya,” Malavera said.

“If you can’t see how wrong that statement is, then there really is no help for you,” Takaraya replied, storming out of the work floor and leaving Mal there, looking concerned.

Kaylie sighed, then went out to greet Val. “Sorry that you had to witness that. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Takaraya genuinely angry. I mean, he’s upset with himself because he’s sure you won’t forgive him, but… When Kivenaal mentioned that he could have gotten shot down for flying in like that… He was furious. Apparently, Mal told him that Takaraya’s pilot’s license was valid here, and that people around here are allowed to own ex-military aircraft. That second part is true, but they have to be registered first. Twin Suns, this has just been such a mess.”

“I may not have seen it unfold, but i think the guy is running head-first into bigger problems than having ruined someone’s hair. Had no way of knowing, or seeing… that i was there, after all. This wasn’t even the first time, actually. Apparently, the med-evac helicopter did exactly the same and the paramedics were this close to just balding me.” Valentin said, though he was visibly concerned and felt that his hairdo accident was part of the cause for the commotion in the work area.

“Also, you probably will have a field day trying to get that jet back off the lot once the time comes. I mean… it landed here, presumably illegally, and it has to go somewhere at some point…”, he added in an attempt to be helpful while trying to avoid fueling the fire that was raging between some of the colleagues at Twin Suns Towing.

“Knowing Takaraya,” Kaylie said, “he’s going to make Malavera get that jet off of the lot.”

Takaraya, as if summoned by Kaylie mentioning his name, opened up the door to the passenger entrance and stepped outside, sitting down on the curb with a groan. “Of all the stupid, idiotic things he could have done,” Takaraya grumbled. “He knows my history, and still took that risk.” He looked up and saw Val there, then sighed. “I know, probably matters little at this point, but I really am sorry for making a mess of your hair. I apologize both for that and my current mood. Some two-headed moron decided to lie and told me flying in was legal, and now I’m stuck with a jet I can’t fly out of here. And I don’t have any contact information for the right people to retrieve the damn thing.”

Kaylie grimaced, then said, “We might have an option, but… It’s not legal.”

“There’s nothing legal about that plane, apparently, either, so what else is new?” Takaraya said. “Owning it isn’t the problem. That much is legal. But it’s not proven airworthy, has no tail number, I’m not a registered pilot here, and-”

“Takaraya,” Kaylie interrupted, “I was thinking of having Nova fly it out for you. That thing has an autopilot, right?”

“It does.”

“And it’s space capable, so it has AI assisted docking, right?”

“Yes. But I’m not seeing the connection.”

“Because you’re blinded by emotion,” Kaylie replied. “Sorry, but… If you flip the switches and get it ready for take-off, Nova can command it from way up there,” she said, pointing to the sky, “and if it gets shot down, no one dies.”

Takaraya shook his head. “If it gets shot down, the avionics are powered by an RTG. They’ll cover a quarter mile in radioactive shit.”

Kivenaal gave Valentin a two handed wave as he stepped outside, then said, “I might have an idea for how to get that jet off the lot. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing unlawful about dismantling an aircraft and storing it somewhere. Malavera can pay to store that somewhere, we just need to take it apart first.”

“I’m fairly certain that UAV’s also need some form of registration or other approval. Barring hobby-grade drones and such, maybe…”, Valentin commented, his gaze going back and forth between a distraught Takaraya and Kaylie.

“On the other hand, the landing itself might have been illegal, but it being here isn’t, unless you don’t actually own the plot this thing is now sat on.”, he added.

At this point, Valentin pulled out his phone in an attempt to research local legislation regarding storage of property on privately owned land.

“We do own the place,” Kaylie admitted, “so as you said, technically it’s legal to leave it here. I mean, if we really wanted to get creative, we could drain the fuel, remove the engines, and prop the damn thing up on the roof to attract attention, it’d still be legal. We just can’t fly it out of here.”

Takaraya sighed. “Leave it to Malavera to ruin a good thing. I was so excited to fly again, and now… Now I want nothing to do with that damn plane.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out what looked like it could pass as being a smartphone, if one ignored the generalized size increase to where it looked normal in Takaraya’s hands. “I’ve been so tempted to call back home and tell them that I’ve given up on the dream, that I no longer wish to fly. That I no longer wish to be military. But my heart is still set on being in the military,” he added. He reached up to his black flight suit and removed his pilot’s wings, holding them in his other hand and looking to the horizon.

Kaylie had seen this kind of look on her brother’s face before and reacted almost on instinct, grabbing the small golden medal from Takaraya’s hand. “No, you’re not going to do that. You’ll regret it for weeks if you throw those and can’t find them again.”

Takaraya gave a grim chuckle, then said, “I’m a pilot who had his wings clipped, Kaylie. I already know I won’t fly again.”

Valentin did not comment on the distraught ranting form Takaraya, not only because he was already busy researching, but also due to a distinct lack of an idea on what he would have said.
Eventually, the phone is pocketed again, having yielded very little in terms of information.

“Either i am too dumb to google stuff or the local documentation is that poor. I cannot find anything useful…”, Valentin admitted, looking at Takaraya and trying hard to come up with a way of helping.

“It’s okay, Valentin,” Takaraya said. “You tried. In the end, that is the only thing that really matters.”

Kaylie gave a light smile, then handed back Takaraya’s pilot’s wings. “Don’t throw them away. Even if you choose to change branches in the service, those have sentimental value to you. We’ll figure out something to do with that war-bird of yours, just might take some time to come up with an option.”

Takaraya nodded and pinned his wings back onto his flight suit, then said, “I do appreciate the help, even if that help was just listening or being there for me. I’d give you a hug, Val, but… I’ve been told you were as huggable as a cactus before your accident, and, well, I know what an accident can do to the body,” he added, before offering a hand for a handshake instead.

Kayden’s curiosity got the better of him, leading to him wandering out of the building and over to the Bricksley 6x6, still sitting just across the street taking up half of the Twin Hearts Racing parking spots. He fumbled his way through undoing Rukari’s knots, grumbling about the old sailor’s handiwork the whole time, then lifted the canvas cover. Confused, he turned towards Val and asked, “Hey, Valentin? Why did you order a giant TV?”

“Haven’t gotten the chance to work myself into a ‘huggable’ physique, yet,” Valentin chuckled, accepting the offered handshake and being mildly surprised as a result of it, though he was not sure if it was him not being used to a firm handshake or the relative softness of it considering Takaraya’s nature.

As Kayden made himself heard across both parking lots in addition to the road itself, Valentin turned around and headed across the road.
“A TV? I never brought a TV. Why asking?”, Valentin inquired as he approached the truck, taking a look in thereafter next to Kayden.
“Oh that ‘TV’! That’s my frameset for the bike. Some companies ship them in TV-looking boxes to coax the shipping companies into actually handling it carefully,” Valentin then explained with a smile on his face. After having spent half a year away from cycling and without a bike, today was the day that this would change. He finally had clearance to ride out on the open roads, finally had a new bike, even if it was still in pieces, finally, the stars had aligned in a way that allowed him to get back to his passion.

Takaraya and Kaylie followed Val over to the truck, where Takaraya got a decent chuckle out of seeing the box that had caused Kayden so much confusion. When Valentin explained why the box was labeled in that way, Takaraya nodded. “There is a certain logic to that. Shouldn’t need to happen, but because there are careless package carriers out there, this helps,” he said.

“Well, if you need any help, Val, you’ve got the three of us. Even if that help is limited to gathering up the right tools. Hopefully you don’t mind if we take the work bay next to you and work on the Ranger,” Kaylie added.

Takaraya studied the car on the trailer, then mentioned, “I’ll help where I can, but… I won’t fit inside that.”

“I did order the specialty tools needed to get it up and running since i have no idea on what you have and such. Also i can simply donate to the bike-coop once back home, so they’ll be of use there. Though i will need a way of mounting the frame to one of your lifts since i don’t have four arms.”, Valentin said, looking back across the road and into the work area through the open entry gates. Not long after, a solution came to mind:

“Uhm… do you have those wood-clamp things you use when gluing two bits of wood together? Would use one or two of those to clamp the frame to the lift arms with some padding to protect the finish. Also, we are here… and the work area is over there…”, he said while pointing to the ground in front of him and work area respectively, thereby hinting at the fact that all the boxes need hauling across the road in some way.

“Yeah, we have clamps. As for padding… We have a spare roll of rubberized toolbox liners,” Kaylie said. “I don’t know if your specialty tools include one, but I’ll get out my good metric torque wrench for you as well,” she added.

Kayden smirked as Valentin mentioned he didn’t have four arms. “Kivenaal does have four arms, and even he used the car lift to assemble his bike.”

When Val added the fact that the boxes needed to be moved, Takaraya shrugged. “Knowing it’s a bicycle, I can’t imagine the components would weigh that much. The box sizes make carrying all of it at once an awkward task, but, I’ll take what I can.”

Kaylie smiled. “Considering we have a car on the back of the trailer, it’d probably be a smarter idea for me to just reverse this across the street. It’d make unloading both sets of cargo easier. I’ve just got to get the key from Rukari, and-”

“Good luck with that,” Kayden said. “He’s sleeping right now.”

Kaylie groaned. “Okay, plan B. Val, point out the most fragile cargo and we’ll have Kayden carry that. I’ll carry the big box. Takaraya, can you handle what’s left if Val helps you stack the boxes for carrying?”

“I should be able to,” Takaraya said.

Valentin started digging about in the heap of boxes, eventually procuring one with prominent branding of a reputable bicycle wheelset manufacturer.
“Those are the carbon wheels i ordered separately. I am light enough to not void the warranty on those immediately and the settlement was generous as i told you already.”, Valentin said, handing the box to Kayden.
“The frame one has the carbon forks in it, though they are made with weight in mind, so they should be fine.”

Valentin then went about loading up Takaraya with a few additional boxes, taking a couple for himself to carry as well.
With loads of boxes in hand, the group made their way over to the other side, where the stack of boxes was placed down on top of and surrounding the work bench.

“Well thanks for the haulage job. Time to have premature christmas… or a very late birthday… and get everything ready by opening all of those.”, Valentin said in a surprisingly calm voice, though it was still rather obvious that he could not wait to get going.

Takaraya gave a polite nod after having set the packages where Valentin had requested, then mentioned, “It’s what friends do, they help each other.”

“Not a problem,” Kaylie said with a smile. She wandered over to the toolboxes against the back wall, gathering up a handful of clamps, a roll of rubberized toolbox liner, one of her good metric torque wrenches, and almost as an afterthought, a utility knife with a decently-sharp blade in it. She grabbed one of the small tool-tray carts and set all of the supplies down on it, then wheeled it over to Val. “A selection of bar clamps, our spare roll of toolbox liner which you can cut to size as desired, the smaller of my metric torque wrenches, and a box-cutter with a new, or at least, almost-new blade in it.”

Meanwhile, Kayden was mentioning to Kivenaal that they needed a bit of help getting the car off of the trailer and into the shop. Kivenaal, in response, got in the roll-back flatbed and drove across the street, carefully transferring the car from the trailer onto the flatbed, then reversing across the road and depositing it into the second work bay. He then parked the truck and grabbed a few large, obnoxiously-orange traffic cones, and placed them in the entranceway to Val’s stall, making it far less likely that anyone would try to put a car there.

Valentin got to work unboxing almost everything that was hauled over there, wventually ending with a slew of bicycle components scattered across the bay.
Not even 15 seconds after having started the actual build process, Murphy’s Law came to kick some ass.

“Uhm… How do i adjust the height of these lifts?” Valentin inquired while staring at the control panel, having a vague idea based on intuition. Though he absolutely did kot want to touch anything without permission or instruction in fear of breaking something via improper use.

Takaraya smiled, then mentioned, “Going up will be easy. This button here,” Takaraya said, pointing to a button that had an upward-facing arrow on it, “will send the lift upward. The other one sends it down. The big one that looks like a mushroom is the emergency stop,” he continued, pointing to the big red button that clearly said “STOP” on it. “Otherwise, just turn the operating key and then push the up button. If you go a bit too high, let me know and I’ll help you get the lift back down. They can be a little slow letting gravity do it alone, especially with no car up there.”

Kaylie, meanwhile, had the hood open on the AMCW and was already pulling parts out to get access to one of the known problems, the bad fuel injectors in the throttle body.

“Alright thanks,” Valentin replied once the explaining was done.
Soon after, the lift whirred it’s way up so that it’s arm were about to Valentin’s chin.

Work on the bike began, though not yet on the lift as Valentin wanted to prepare other things first.
As such, he spent the better part of half an hour or so building up his aero-optimized, deep-section wheelset by mounting the brake rotors and tires to both wheels and the cassette to the rear one.
Most of that time therefore has been spent at the workbench, leaving the frame itself on the lift for any curious onlookers to see.

[Elizipeazie]

In the same span of time, Kaylie had managed to dismantle most of the after-the-intercooler intake plumbing, pulled the snout off the top of the throttle body, and removed the two fuel injectors from it. Then she started pulling spark plug wires, followed by spark plugs, and tested the engine for compression.

“Well, good news and bad news,” she said to everyone around her. “The good news: Our new project car has six cylinders with good compression. The bad news: Two cylinders basically have no compression at all. Now, they share the same bank, so it could just be a head gasket, or could go away with a simple machining job, but it is a turbo car, someone could have absolutely fried the piston rings.”

Takaraya looked at the spark plug wires, then pointed out, “Several of these have very fine cracks in their insulation. This one’s missing a chunk.”

Kaylie looked at it, then spotted the third “dead cylinder” on the block, courtesy of a small burn spot on the valve cover where their high-voltage spark plug wire had clearly been arcing to it. “Yeah, that’d do it. Explains how that piston had the highest fucking compression of the bunch and yet wasn’t contributing at all.”

“Sounds like hell if it is the rings,” Valentin commented before returning to his work.

Next up was more preparation away from the bike, with brakes being the upcoming item on his mental list of things to do. Contrary to the wheel setup, assembling hydraulic brakes was a substantially more involved process, especially with the tightly-packed STI levers used on almost every road bike.
As such, it took almost an hour to have the brake lines cut to proper length, the levers and calipers hooked up to either end and mineral oil brake fluid added. Afterwards, the brakes needed bleeding, which required additional manpower:
“Anyone free to help for a bit?” Valentin asked as he took a look through the work area, “Need to bleed a pair of brakes and would like to have someone pump the brakes.”

“If it’s the rings, that’s an entire engine dismantled to fix it,” Kaylie admitted. “I’m going to try a dirty backyard hack and see if the compression comes up, but honestly, I’m hoping it’s a gasket or a head job,” she added, before grabbing a bottle of automatic transmission fluid and putting a little bit in the two low cylinders. “There’s detergents in this stuff, so, if it’s just carbon build-up, this should fix it.”

When Val asked if anyone was free to help bleed brakes, Takaraya admitted, “I can try.”

Jayde also looked up and said, “I can do that.”

“Whoever of you has smaller hands, i’d guess… makes it easier to not palm the lever as a whole,” Valentin replied, thus passively choosing Jayde over Takaraya.
As Jayde came over, Valentin explained that the procedure was literally the same as with any car, complete with repeatedly opening and closing the bleed screw while pumping the lever.

Despite none of Shift Happens having seen or even used a brake lever of this construction before, Jayde stayed remarkably calm, instead being curious about why Valentin chose drop handlebars to begin with.

“For the most part, speed. The wide stance of Mountainbike bars ruins aerodynamics. Also, if done right and if you are flexible enough, there is very little penalty to comfort with drop handlebars. Some people prefer the hand positioning, though i cannot testify on that since i never rode flat bars to begin with,” Valentin explained.
With Valentin at the caliper and Jayde above at the lever, the bleeding process began, which took an unusual amount of pumping and two funnel top-ups to accomplish. While odd to Valentin, both levers eventually returned the nice and direct action that is to be expected from a properly bled and air-free hydraulic brake system.

“Thank you for helping,” Valentin confirmed while testing both levers once again for feel and actuation.

“Thank you for explaining the choice,” Jayde said in response, giving a light smile.

Kaylie, on the other hand, was busy making an absolute mess by turning the AMCW’s engine over by hand to squeeze out all of the automatic transmission fluid she’d dumped into the cylinders. “Normally,” she admitted, repositioning her socket and breaker bar, “I’d just crank the bastard, but,” she repositioned the bar again, pausing in the moment, “I really don’t want to clean up the resulting triple-homicide halfway up the shop wall.”

Jayde laughed. “Yeah, you found that one out the last time you did that trick on all 8 cylinders on a car in the garage.”

“I didn’t think it could make such a huge mess!” Kaylie responded.

Takaraya shook his head and chuckled, going back to watching what Valentin was doing. “It’s interesting to see how thin or small some of the pieces are on your bike, Val. I’ve got a frame currently being worked on, but… They’ve mentioned it’ll be done sometime in May. Early April if I’m exceptionally lucky.”

Kaylie looked over, then admitted, “It’s because half of your bike, Takaraya, has to be made with heavier steel components to handle the weight. Seriously, you’re just over 645 pounds, and according to Kayden-”

Kayden spoke up from across the shop, “You’re significantly underweight for your size. Seriously, Malavera’s damn near a foot shorter than you and is only 145 pounds lighter than you.”

Takaraya sighed. “I’m too heavy as it is,” he said.

“Only if your goal is to fly fighters. And you shouldn’t be keeping such an unhealthy low weight just to go back to that. Seriously, there’s health risks that will get the better of you for starving yourself,” Kayden responded.

“Can confirm the weight things. By every normal metric i am somehow overweight. But those metrics fall apart very quickly once you pass 195cm or so in height, so there’s that. I’ve been clinically underweight according to my doctor in Sweden even before the accident, which has effects both good and bad. Now, the weight discrepancy is more extreme, but these Nanites seem to be keeping everything in line, mostly,” Valentin said as he left the brakes to sit for a while and turned to the frame to install the fork and stem on.

“But damn… six-forty-something? Doesn’t that convert to like 300 Kilos? I’m a third of your weight, give or take!”, he added, somewhat amazed. Yes, Takaraya was a foot and a half taller than him, but that would not cover a threefold increase in weight in his mind.

Takaraya chuckled. “292 and a half kilograms, yes. Maximum pilot weight is 275 kilograms,” he mentioned.

Kaylie smirked. “Between differences in local gravity and the bitch that is the square-cube law, yeah, he’s heavy. If you just scaled yourself up to his size, you wouldn’t increase that much in mass. But… You’d also lose a significant amount of strength proportionally. Takaraya and Malavera are just built differently inside to support that.”

Kayden added in, “He’s a heavy-worlder in space-faring lingo. Any race that comes from a world with a gravity more than 1.5 times Earth Gravity ends up termed that way. Takaraya and Malavera are built to survive and thrive at 3.5 times Earth gravity. So… They have a few issues while here.”

Jayde piped up with, “For example, Malavera can’t ride roller coasters. Not because of his height, but because he has no negative G-force tolerance. A few G’s the wrong way for a second and he’s going to hurl. Takaraya’s had training, but even he can get bit by that.”

Takaraya gave a light shrug. “We manage. If humans can spend months at a time in zero-gravity up in your International Space Station, I can deal with reduced gravity.”

“Last time i was weighed i came in a 100.8… in full clothing plus shoes…”, Valentin conceded, exemplifying how little meat was on his bones relative to his height.

The explanation behind why they were as heavy as they are was not totally new to him. After all, the invitational E-Mail regarding the Shitbox Rally 2022 event did state that it would be going through their home world or at the very least home star system. And it not being the solar system was also patently obvious, courtesy of the Rift traveling to and from Crugandr as well as the twin-moons shining down upon them from the sky.

As such, Valentin simply nodded while returning to work on his bike, now grabbing the handlebars and brakes from it’s clamp on the bench vise and installing them to the stem on the bike.
Soon after, the calipers were installed as well and the brake lines secured to the frame with a few specially made plastic clips, which took about 15 minutes or so to do.

Kaylie, after having drained all of the transmission fluid out of the cylinders, did another quick compression test. She scribbled down the numbers, then compared them to the previous set.

“Huh. Well, seems like that didn’t free up the piston rings. Exactly the same results as the last set of numbers. Good news, then, because that means the problem’s either the head gasket or a mildly-warped head. One’s a $30 pair of parts, the other’s a bit of semi-expensive machining, but both are easy fixes,” Kaylie admitted.

Kivenaal wandered in from the truck to take a break and saw Val putting the handlebars, brakes, and lines in their place. “That was not fun to do on mine,” Kivenaal admitted. “In fact, it was the very polar opposite of fun.”

“Brakes are bad, but my field day times will come soon…” Valentin replied as he went back to the workbench, digging around in one of the boxes and pulling out one blue and/or grey Shimano-OEM package after another. A small mountain of boxes piled up on the bench.

“…with getting the electronic drivetrain hooked up and working…”, he mumbled as he started to extract the components. Once all the remaining components related to shifting were unboxed and neatly arranged on the table, Valentin made a discovery:
“Dagnabbit. Left my PC at home. Hopes that i can do the setup via the App once it’s together.”, he grumbled, not really wanting to waste another hour going back and forth.

“Oh, yeah, that looks like it’ll be a mess. Mechanical was already not-fun to get going. Bad enough I had to make my choice on which bar-set to put my shifters on. At least I didn’t have that issue with my brakes,” Kivenaal admitted. “Granted, getting the brakes bled… That was hell.”

When Valentin mentioned he’d left his PC at home, Takaraya got up and walked to the back wall, unplugging an older Panasonic Toughbook and bringing it over. “We use these for diagnostics, but… Maybe it can help here.”

Kaylie chuckled. “Setup, diagnostics, reprogramming, it’s all realistically the same. Anyway, you have USB and you have Serial on that thing, so it should be able to interface with anything that way. BlueTooth for wireless. Should also be connected to the shop wi-fi, but if it’s not already, let me know and I’ll put the password in.”

“Needs USB, but also a specific program to run the connection with. I’ll try with my phone and see if that works. If not, hope you are okay with me getting that program on your laptop. Also, i cannot really dial it in without having it on the bike and the chain installed.”, Valentin replied.

He then went about getting all the components installed, the semi-internal routing for the signal cables proving a challenge. The battery was hidden within the seatpost, which also found it’s way onto the proper place. “Soon” enough, most of the shifting bits were on, with only the bottom bracket, crankset and chain missing.

“Wouldn’t be the first time the diagnostic laptops got a bit of single-purpose software,” Kaylie admitted. “I mean, Rukari’s network folder of tuning applications is incredible, we’ve got three different types of automotive diagnostic software because each of them deals with certain eras of cars better, one of the four laptops around here has some software to decode check-engine-light flashes for cars that are pre-OBD-II compliant, and one has a very specific bit of software for tuning old Sinistra electric-power-steering systems.”

Kivenaal studied the assembly of Val’s bike, then commented, “I’m so glad that all of my brake lines and shift cables are external. Fishing wires through the frame just… That just looks like several hours of pain for me.”

“Yep. Can confirm. The brakes are external on this one as well, but the shifting has to enter the frame somewhere to get to the battery. At least it won’t piss mineral oil into frame.”, Valentin chuckled as he cranked down hard on the right side bottom bracket shell.

“Some manufacturers go the extra mile and implement small routing tubes into the frame, through which you just shove the brake line and be done with it. But that still requires you to split the line somewhere in case you need to take it off. Here, i can remove the entire assembly while only needing to unplug the shifters.”, he added while installing the other bottom bracket shell.
“Regarding the software, that may be true, but this still is a commercially used device. And this also isn’t a bike shop.”

Kaylie chuckled. “There’s six bikes that will need service eventually, and a seventh on a bit of a delay. In the rare event that we find ourselves getting a similar drivetrain for someone’s bike, well, having the software already installed won’t upset anyone. And in the event that we never end up getting a similar drivetrain, well, it’s not the first piece of single-purpose software that’s on these things,” Kaylie said. She picked up a spark plug and took it over to a parts box, then came back with two boxes of plugs and the original one, setting the old one down, and then installing the new plugs into the AMCW.

Kivenaal shrugged. “I mean, I understand that running things internally makes the design more aerodynamic, and as you said, battery has to go somewhere, cables have to run to the battery. But I also understand that this is a better setup overall than the mess that is my bike.”

Jayde laughed. “The real mess is my new bike. Sure, most of the components are from the same manufacturer, but… I’ve had to learn pretty much everything all over again. No more lever on the frame to shift, now it’s small levers on the bars. My rear brake is a lever instead of kicking back on the pedals. And the front brake…” Jayde shook his head.

“He nearly went over the handlebars,” Kaylie admitted. “Thankfully, he figured out real fast how to use less than every fucking millimeter of lever throw.”

“To be fair, my old bike pretty much needed that just to stop,” Jayde said.

“The groupsets start at like 1600 bucks new, or in the realm of 900 used, so they are NOT cheap to get and maintain.”, Valentin commented, test-spinning the freshly installed crankset, which unsurprisingly only spun for a turn and a half due to the bottom bracket bearings not being broken in yet.

As Jayde remembered his experiences with upgrading his bike, Valentin could not stop himself from smiling a little.
“Yep. You want the brakes to be able to overpower your tires. Have a guy that somewhat frequently rode in our group with a 1970s retro-racer. He did have aluminum rims, which helped, but the slot ahead of him still was to be kept empty for safety reasons.
Made for some funny arrangements at times,” Valentin recalled from past times.

He pulled the mildly oily chain out of it’s plastic packaging and carefully routed it through the various cogs and gears, making sure to use the biggest sprocket on both ends as he figured out how many links he needed to remove for a proper length of chain.

“Yeah, that’s a bit expensive,” Kaylie admitted. “Granted, not much of our bikes can be said to be cheap. Most of us have custom frames, and even though most of our choices for the rest of the components ended up falling closer to the “good budget” options, some of us put a bit of money into parts as needed. I know Kivenaal’s got some serious money tied up in his braking system, Kayden’s running more gears than he knows what to do with, Malavera had to pretty much get everything cargo-rated, and so did Kivenaal, Jayde pretty much went with “middle of the road” options for everything. Then there’s Takaraya, who pretty much didn’t bother sparing any expenses other than preferring non-electronic everything where possible. But then again, they’re having to retrofit some… Unusual parts onto his bike.”

Kivenaal chuckled. “I think the guys there flat up said he would basically be pedaling a motorcycle. None of us are exactly sure what he’ll have as a result, other than that there was a serious discussion about how to fit a bicycle with motorcycle brakes.”

“True. The frames probably were costly, though very few people need top-tier components. Of course i am not stopping anyone from getting them if that makes them happy. I mean… Look at this. I could’ve specced it way more economically if i really wanted,” Valentin remarked as he locked the chain’s quick link into place with a good whack against the crank arm by hand.

“Ow… Should’ve used a rubber mallet…”, he then mumbled, somewhat regretting the hand-operation.
Then it was discovered that there was no way of charging the bike due to Valentin having ordered an EU style plug. In hopes of it being pre-charged, Valentin decides to power up the system regardless, checking the available charge on each of the three sub-systems thereafter.
The rechargable battery reported a level somewhere between 25 and 50% through the charge level indicator LED, with both shifters effectively saying “we’re not empty yet”.

Then, Valentin pulled out his phone, which promptly was made busy as he needed to install the set-up app first.

Takaraya grimaced as Valentin locked the chain together by hand.

Kaylie, on the other hand, spoke up with, “You know, you could have asked for a rubber mallet instead of hurting yourself. Or had the big guy put that link in place.”

Jayde shook his head. “I can understand why he didn’t ask Takaraya. I mean, Takaraya’s not exactly… Small.”

Takaraya stuck his tongue out at Jayde, then looked over at Kaylie, who now had all the spark plugs in and was fighting with a new pack of generic plug wires.

As the phone was busy downloading the app at an almost agonizingly slow pace, Valentin kept going by installing the pedals to his bike, followed shortly after by the saddle.
He returns to the phone and went about the process of adjusting the shifting to be as accurate as possible, which thanks to the intuitive layout within the app proved easier than anticipated, considering it being Valentin’s first ever foray into electronic shifting.

“That was smoother than i thought it would be. Sweet.” he mumbled as he set his tools aside to take a lunch break.
“How does lunch work over here. Do you all head out to eat or is the meal brought here?”

“Some people head out to eat, some order food to be delivered here, some pack their own lunches,” Kaylie said. “There’s really no wrong options.”

Takaraya chuckled. “I was just going to order a pizza, but if anyone’s got better ideas in mind, I’m open to hear them.”

Kivenaal laughed. “Leave it to Takaraya to prove Kaylie’s point. But, seriously, lunch around here is somewhat, shall we say, “organized chaos.” Everyone’s either going out or ordering food, or grabbing things from the fridge.”

[Elizipeazie]

“Mind if i jump onto the Pizza bandwagon? I’ll just default to a tried-and-true ham-topped pizza, if they have one. Not sure what the menu is like at whichever place you order from.”, Valentin inquired, returning to the bike to continue working on it while food was on it’s way. As such, he went about figuring out where he wanted the extra shifter buttons to be and how he wanted to use those buttons.
A slew of different configurations were tried, though Valentin absolutely was not convinced of locking any one of them in with the handlebar tape, especially considering that any one of those buttons could be configured to do any of the four available shifting operations and other, somewhat related functions.

Eventually, he gave up on button placements for the time being and installed the front wheel followed by the intent of adjusting the position as agreed on with his bike-fitter about a week or so prior.

“Where do i find measuring tape and a spirit level? Ideally eve something to measure angle,” Valentin inquired into the open work area again in hopes of someone showing him where to locate the required items.

“Not a problem,” Takaraya replied. “I’m assuming a medium pizza, about 30 centimeters in diameter, though I do have to ask if you prefer thick or thin crust,” he added, pulling his phone out of his pocket and making a note to add a ham-topped pizza to the order.

Kivenaal smiled. “Should be in this toolbox,” he said, pointing to the small green one sitting on the work table. “We’ve been using a lot of tools like that in some RV renovations.”

Kaylie chuckled. “If you’re ordering pizza, Takaraya, mind adding a medium sausage with extra cheese?”

“I can do that,” Takaraya said, adding Kaylie’s pizza as well.

“Thanks, thin crust, and i’ll go up a notch in size. Skipped breakfast due to… time constraints,” Valentin corrected as he wandered over to the specified toolbox, digging around in it for a while before pulling out a spirit level and a a measuring tape.
“Imperial-only? Time to convert it all to inches, then…” Valentin commented.
He went back to inches and spent a good ten minutes on his phone, converting every variable measurement from millimeters to inches.
After that, he went back to his bike and started adjusting it to the match his fit, using the borrowed measuring tape for distances and the gyroscope on his phone for angles.
A lot of minimal adjustments were made one at a time to make sure it was as good as possible from the start, followed by him taking the bike off the lift for the first time in a good while as he tested the positioning while stationary in the work bay.

Takaraya nodded, then stepped outside to place the order, more to get away from the noise so that he didn’t have to repeat himself two or three times. Afterward, he walked back in, putting his phone away.

Kaylie held one of the two AMCW fuel injectors in her hand and looked through the shelf of parts, muttering to herself, “If I were a fuel injector, where would I be?”

Kivenaal, on the other hand, looked to Takaraya and asked, “Hey, mind if I use your RV to make up a burger or two?”

“Go ahead, as long as you clean up after yourself,” Takaraya replied.

Having test-sat the bike, bracing himself against the lift tower with the unused arms, he got back off the bike looking rather content.
“Feels about as expected,” he mumbled, folding the other half of the lift back up.
The remaining time until the pizza arrived was largely spent installing peripherals such as the cycling computer, speed sensor, lights and other legally required bits and pieces.
Basic setup for all of that was done, but the headlight adjustment had to wait until it was dark, else risk glaring oncoming traffic.

Kaylie grinned as she saw the pizza delivery car pulling into the lot, with someone stepping out a few moments later to walk the pizzas up to their customer service door. Kaylie made her way over there to pick them up and pay the bill, then walked over to where Val and Takaraya were currently at with three boxes of pizza.

“Right, so, I know this one’s mine,” Kaylie said, setting the smaller box off to the side. “So, pepperoni, sausage and ham?” she asked. As Takaraya claimed that box, then found a large enough patch of empty floor to sit on, Kaylie then handed Val his box. “Large, thin crust, ham pizza,” she mentioned. “Either pull up a seat to a workbench, park on the floor, or, you could sit in the car. It’s not going anywhere.”

Valentin was similarly eager to recieve his pizza, handing Kaylie a $20 bill in exchange.
“I’m no employee here. I’m paying for my food. Still, thank you.”, Valentin said with some authority.

With the box in hand, he parked himself atop the large workbench next to the stack of bicycle components and their respective boxes, which to him was fairly common practice in the bicycle workshop he frequented.
He dug into his pizza, immediately making it apparent that the pizza place was indeed a good pizza place.

The pizza was done with surprisingly quickly and Valentin neatly folded up the box to take up as little space as possible in the dumpster, followed by him discarding said box in the nearest available bin and “cleaning off” his hands with some paper towels. Only then he realized that he failed to do so before eating, which ended up being less annoying than one might think as the parts Valentin was working with were brand-new and thus not covered in grease, grime and road grit.

Likewise, it took very little time for Takaraya and Kaylie to finish their pizzas, where it was immediately obvious that they had three different ways to deal with the cardboard box. Takaraya, similar to Valentin, folded his box up, though the difference there was the sheer amount of force Takaraya could apply to compress the cardboard into a much smaller space. Kaylie, on the other hand, carefully tore her box into strips that neatly fit into the can.

Kivenaal, having finished making and eating his burgers, took a look at the can and brought it out to empty it into the dumpster, returning it with a new bag inside. “Hey, Valentin,” he asked, “when you unpack these boxes, mind stacking the cardboard up against the wall for recycling, please? We can’t do that with food boxes, but, we at least try to recycle packaging when possible.”

“Sure, i can do that,” Valentin replied, spending the next 15 minutes executing the request by neatly unfurling the cardboard packaging into the pre-folded sheets, even going as far as stripping the ceran-wrap component wrappings from the box, only leaving a little residue and and some staples in there.
What was a mountain of boxes thus turned into a rather loosely stacked tower of individual cardboard sheets as Valentin returned to the bike.

There, he connected the electronic groupset to the head unit to allow for things such as displaying the chosen gear or the mode of assisted shifting currently enabled.
This allowed Valentin to tinker with control layouts a bit more, eventually settling on using the left hand for anything related to the head unit and the right hand for shifting.
As such, two additional buttons went onto the left side to be accessed from the hoods with his thumb, with the third button mirroring the arrangement on the right side.

With the controls locked in, Valentin went about wrapping the bars in handlebar tape, which was rather finnicky work. This was made apparent by Valentin being veery focused for the 20-or-so minutes it took to wrap them, pausing every time something major happened elsewhere to avoid having to re-do the job.

While Val figured out his controls and started wrapping the bars in handlebar tape, Kaylie went back to trying to find fuel injectors for a mid 70’s AMCW throttle body. She sighed. “Hey, Takaraya, mind giving me a lift up to those boxes up there? I know I should just go get a ladder, but-”

“It’s not a problem,” Takaraya said. He crouched down, then carefully lifted Kaylie up to the top rack of small part boxes.

Kaylie gasped as Takaraya lifted her effortlessly, then admitted, “Yeah, I keep forgetting just how strong you are.”

“Kayden was in the same situation when he needed to change some of the light bulbs above the work floor. Apparently, no one’s ever lifted him off the ground before, because it took him a solid ten minutes to relax his death-grip on my ears, even though I told him four times I wouldn’t drop him and that he was safe,” Takaraya said.

Jayde looked out over the work floor and chuckled as he saw Kaylie sitting just behind Takaraya’s neck, his hands holding her legs so she wouldn’t fall. “Having fun all the way up there?” he asked, lightly teasing Kaylie.

“Looking for parts. Just he’s more convenient than a ladder,” Kaylie replied. After a couple more seconds of looking, she saw the box and grinned. “Found you! Okay, Takaraya, got the parts, just need to get back down to earth.”

Takaraya carefully set Kaylie back down, watching as she quickly started fitting the new parts to the car. “If there’s a problem with the cylinder head, why are you fixing the fuel system first?” he asked.

“So it doesn’t get forgotten about,” Kaylie admitted. “I don’t like feeling stupid because I forgot a part here or there and that’s why the car won’t start.”

As Valentin pressed the bar-end plugs into place, the excitement was starting to mount up again, courtesy of the bike nearing completion. Still, near-completion does not equal done and Valentin tried his best to stay focused in order to work efficiently and reliably.

Up next, he went back to the peripherals, connecting the heart rate chest strap to the head-unit as well as customizing it, adjusting a slew of data-fields, what they display and how the navigation map looks and behaves like.
With the process nearing completion, Valentin made a realization:
“Awww noooo… I’m gonna have to jump straight into interval training, am i…”, he moaned, pacing about the work area in annoyance and trying to figure out a way of doing it.

Kaylie looked over from under the hood, then asked, “What do you need done? We might be able to help… Or figure out a cheeky alternate solution.”

Jayde, Kivenaal, and Takaraya looked at each other, trying to figure out what Val was concerned about. Kayden, on the other hand, was blissfully unaware thanks to his earbuds playing music and the rather simple task of replacing a car’s air filter.

“I need to bed in the brakes. Basically, accelerate to 30-ish kilometers an hour and brake back to an almost-stop. And do that ten to fifteen times. Per brake.”, Valentin explained as he leant against the edge.
He took a few more of the smaller boxes he unpacked since the first set was folded up and broke them down as well in an attempt to vent some of the stress he was facing.
After all, the thought of jumping in the deep end regarding the return to cycling was not exactly what he had in mind.

“Oh,” Jayde said. “Um… We can just go to the other building and do that. Rukari can spin the dyno up to about 20 miles per hour, then cut the power and you stop the roller with the brakes. It’s what I did. All you have to do is keep things steady and, well, don’t step on the roller.”

“Yeah, Jayde mentioned it to me and, well… It was a bit warm for my tastes when I had to do my brakes, so I used Jayde’s trick,” Kivenaal admitted.

Kaylie sighed. “Am I seriously the only one who did mine the old-fashioned way?” she asked. “I mean, I understand why Jayde did that, but, come on, Kivenaal. You have two good legs.”

“And fur that’ll keep me warm at 40 below zero, naked, curled up in the snow. And that’s before considering my winter pelt,” Kivenaal replied.

“I’m both impressed and also shocked shocked that you pulled that off. Twice, even.”, Valentin commented with a tone of voice that very much was not fond of the idea.
“Looks like i’ll be doing it the traditional way, then… At least i can test all the other bits and bobs on the descent to town.”

He then went into the boxes once again, procuring a new helmet from it, which he adjusted to be as safe as possible.

“I’ll just head to the bathroom really quick to get this on and i’m on my way.”, he said as he held up the chest strap, heading off to the bathroom and appearing a minute or two later looking exactly the same, but now wearing a helmet and the measuring device of the strap producing a visible bump on his shirt.

“To be fair, we both had Takaraya help keep us upright,” Jayde admitted. “Granted, I can understand that it’s a bit risky.”

When Val got ready for riding, Jayde also prepared himself for the journey. By the time Val came out of the bathroom, Jayde had his custom riding helmet on, lightly-tinted safety glasses to keep the wind, bugs, and dust out of his eyes, and had retrieved his new bicycle. The vivid, bright orange frame and black fenders were not-so-subtly accented here and there with brass-plated components, mostly to hold up his cargo rack and secure the fenders in place, as well as his handlebars. One clearly not-from-the-factory addition was a padded U-shaped hoop on the back of the cargo rack, the purpose of which became immediately obvious as Jayde put up the kickstand and mounted up, his tail resting in the hoop, clearly out of the way of any moving components.

As Jayde joined Valentin just outside the work bay door, Valentin looked over at the bicycle he was sat on, inspecting it rather closely for a while.
“So you’re joining me, huh? Sure. I’ll need to stomp the brakes from time to time. To avoid you running into the back of me like i did into the van, i’ll count down from three and throw out the anchor at zero. Or you can just go ahead, but i’ll still count, since i am assuming that you want to stay at least vaguely close.”, Valentin commented in a muted, neutral voice as the bike-build wasn’t formally finished yet.

“No problem. I’ll keep my ears open for your countdown, probably start slowing down in advance as well. My brakes are bedded in, but I am stopping a bit more weight than you are. Steel frame, after all, plus I’m a bit heavier than you are,” Jayde said. He made sure everything was ready, first by making a last minute adjustment to his bright-orange helmet, nearly matching his frame in color, then reaching down to the box installed over the top tube of his frame and flipping the switch to turn on his lights, and without even stopping to consider it, pushed the “record” button on the frame-mounted camera sitting in front of the head tube.

“Sorry, Kaylie’s request has been that I need to be recording in case accidents happen,” Jayde admitted.

Valentin elected to have his lights remain off, as visibility was unobstructed and they were still hours away from dusk.
Another curious look across to Jayde and his hike followed, but soon after, Valentin set off and turned left out of the driveway onto the open road.
As expected, the road led slightly downhill for a good while, which Valentin made use of in slowly gaining speed.
Once the speed field on his head-unit indicated about 30 kph, Valentin started counting:
“THREE! TWO! ONE! ANCHORS OUT!”, he blared, applying just the front brake as much as he felt was safe.
The first time produced a relaxed stop in terms of distance, with the next few subsequent ones getting shorter and shorter.
Then, braking distances leveled off for the remaining sets for the front brake due to the tire only having so much grip on top of Valentin still being relatively unfamiliar with the new bicycle.
This process was then repeated for the rear brake, though stopping distances were considerably and consistently longer.

After that, Valentin signaled to stop by raising one hand upwards, the back of which facing rearwards.
Having pulled over to the very edge of the shoulder, he informed Jayde of the progress:
“Both brakes are done now. Time to head back, but i’ll say that i’ll be taking it cautiously since i have very little idea on how much of the past cardio is still there.”

“Understandable,” Jayde said, giving a light smile. “Would you like me to lead, or to follow?” he asked, looking over to Valentin. “I know we won’t be going fast, admittedly, so using me to punch a hole in the wall of wind isn’t as critical, which is why I’m asking.”

“I’m fine with either. Me leading allows me to set a pace that i am definitely comfortable with, but you leading makes my life easier due drafting. As soon as you are faster than a man would jog, aero matters.”, Valentin said, starting to make his way back slowly to allow Jayde to find whichever position he was most comfortable in.

Not pong after, the pair settled into the rhythm of the ride, with Jayde following Valentin at a fairly cautiously chosen distance.

About forty minutes of largely uneventful riding later, the two pulled back onto the parking lot of Twin Suns Towing.
Valentin gracefully rolled into the bay he had been working in for the past few hours, were he dismounted his bike with a pair of resounding metallic clicks as the mechanical interlock between shoe and pedal was disconnected.

“I’m back, now with usable brakes,” Valentin announced, practically grinning fro. ear to ear as that meant that his bike was actually fully functional and finished.

Jayde rode around the back and parked up in the shop’s bike-rack, reattaching his heavy bike lock and then heading inside.

Kaylie, on the other hand, looked over as Val dismounted with a couple of loud clicks, then smiled as he announced his brakes were usable now. “Good to hear!” she said, gathering up the last of her tools from the workbench and putting them away, having already labeled the section of workbench in front of the AMCW as being “Reserved for Engine Service.”

Kivenaal, by this time, had already gathered up the empty cardboard boxes and put them in the shop’s recycling area, having only grabbed from where Val had been placing them and not touching any other boxes out of respect for Valentin.

Takaraya, on the other hand, was sitting on one of the heavily-reinforced shop stools, looking like he was hoping the day would be over soon. Kayden was nearby him, having just finished making sure Takaraya hadn’t actually hurt himself. “Yeah,” Kayden said, “you’re okay. Take things a little easy for the next couple of days though.” Kayden looked over to Val and smiled. “Good to hear that you’re back to riding, Val.”

“Formally, i am still in the process of building it, but it feels soooo good to be in the saddle again.” he cheerfully replied.

Valentin went over to the workbench and ended the ride on his head-unit, which immediately sent it’s data over to his phone with a noticeable “bleep”.

He leant the hike against the workbench edge and cleaned up after himself, sorting what remained of the boxes into those that he wanted to keep for storing whatever small replacement pieces were left of the respective component and those that can be discarded. He also went ahead and broke down the large boxes that were used to contain the slew of smaller ones for the return trip, walking all of that out back to where Kivenaal had been taking the others.

Eventually, the workbench was as spotless as a car-repair-shop workbench could be, with all the borrowed tools and things returned to wherever Valentin had gotten them from.
The tools he brought were contained in one of the component boxes for safe keeping, as Valentin planned to take those tools home with him as part of his personal workshop toolbox.

Valentin then dabbled on his phone for a bit, eventually looking up in search for Kayden.

“I bwt you’re interested in some info from my brake-bedding ride. I just sent you a link to the actual online spreadsheet with read-only permissions. Every future ride will pop up there. Today’s one should be added in…” Valentin said, pausing for a hit to mentally account for the shift in time, “about 4 hours.”

“Thank you,” Kayden said. “Sometimes, just seeing someone else improving over time can be important. I’m already tracking Jayde’s and Takaraya’s progress because, well, both of them are trying to make improvements to their lives in their own way.”

He pulled out Nova’s handheld unit and saved the spreadsheet link, then looked back to Val. “So, now that you’re here, I believe one of our conversations involved setting up a bit more control over the nanites. I’m not entirely sure what method you’d be most comfortable with, but we can fit the required essentials into something the size of a smart-watch if needed.”

“We did talk about that. Though i would like to figure that out tomorrow, if that’s okay with you. I have some plans regarding mane containment for which i would like to drop by the local hairdresser.”, Valentin replied as he started to collect the few remaining boxes, with which he went over to his Dione.
A moment later, he returned to get his bike, having left the trunk open to make loading a little easier.

“Yeah, not a problem,” Kayden replied. “Was more to let you know that, whenever you want to start on that, I’m ready to work on it.”

“That will almost certainly be tomorrow. Anyway, see you all then!”; he said as he went back outside to his car with the freshly-built bicycle in tow.
Loading it into the back proved easier than expected and soon after it drove off the lot and down the hill towards town.

[Elizipeazie]

October 19th, 2022, Nevada, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 8:30 AM.

The next morning came around and Valentin once again made his way to Twin Suns towing, the only notable change being the distinct lack of hair brushing as his ‘hair containment plan’ did not require this anymore. He rolled up to the parking lot and reversed into his usual spot, getting out thereafter and heading to the trunk.

From within, he procured the very same boxes that he packed into the car yesterday, bicycle included.
With everything in tow, two trips were made into the work area, one for the bike and the other for the boxes.

“Morning.” Valentin said to whoever happened to be in the vicinity.

“Morning!” Kaylie called out. There, scattered across the top of her section of the workbench, were the two AMCW cylinder heads, the intake manifold, the valve covers, the timing cover, and both timing chains. On the floor in front of the workbench, there were the two exhaust manifolds, the crossover pipe, and the turbocharger. “Sorry, stayed a little late yesterday and came in a bit early today to get this going. Bad driver’s side head-gasket, as expected. Looks like the heads are fine, but I’ll have to get them checked regardless.”

“Hello, Valentin,” Jayde said, looking over from under the hood of an early-2000’s Anhultz Dione, holding the top cover of the air filter box as he finished the air filter change. “Give me a couple of minutes to get these clips in and I’ll be right over to help if you need it.”

Kaylie gave a light chuckle. “Jayde found out how annoying those spring clips could be earlier.”

“One of them almost went up my nose,” Jayde grumbled.

A few minutes after Val arrived, Kayden pulled into the parking lot, followed by Takaraya in what could best be described as a cab-over semi-truck converted into an overgrown pickup. Then Malavera turned up in his truck.

Ten minutes after that, Kivenaal arrived on a sleek, black-powder-coated bicycle, swooping past the shop and parking his bike next to Jayde’s in the rack.

Valentin chuckled a little at the minor retaining clip accident and then got to work in building up the other wheelset in very much the same manner as the first one. Contrary to the aero-wheelset, which featured relatively narrow slick tires, this one had substantially wider tires with some degree of a tread pattern. He didn’t pay much attention to any of the others arriving soon after, leading to him missing both the modified cabover truck of Takaraya as well as Kivenaal’s bicycle rolling onto the lot.

With the second wheelset built, he spent another 5 minutes swapping the second, stock wheels with the aerodynamic ones of yesterday.
“Time to bed the other rotors, i guess…”, he mumbled as he prepared his devices for the second ride since the accident way back in April.

Kayden, Malavera, and Takaraya walked inside, all three of them giving Val a polite “hello” before heading off to where they were needed. Which mostly meant that Takaraya grabbed the keys to one of the tow trucks, Kayden walked outside to bring in a customer car that needed brakes done, and Malavera disappeared into the office to handle the towing business side of things.

Kivenaal walked in, still wearing his riding helmet when he noticed something was different about Valentin. “The braid’s a good look for you, Val,” Kivenaal said, though watched as Val prepared to gear up for another ride.

Jayde finished getting the clips in place and shut the hood carefully on the bright orange car. Kaylie looked over, then quipped, “I wonder, does Anhultz make cars in any color except tangerine? I swear, every one I’ve seen is that color.”

Kayden quipped, “Only the ones that last a million miles.”

Jayde, on the other hand, noticed Val was gearing back up as well, then asked Val, “Anyone you want with you on this ride, or, going solo?”

Having greeted the others as they came and went, Kivenaal complimented Valentin on his new haircut, which instead of flowing waves of near-white blonde hair was now a condensed, single braided ponytail about equal in length.

“Thank you. I’m not getting it cut, so i figured i’d explore other possibilities.”, Valentin replied as he put his helmet on, which required threading the braids through the space between the adjustment dial and the actual helmet shell.

“If anyone wants to join, i won’t stop you, but i’m once again bedding brakes, so i’ll be throwing out anchors, so to speak.”, Valentin said as he focused on his head unit again to set up the data-logging.

Kaylie chuckled. “Give me a couple of minutes to get cleaned up, and I’ll go along with you.”

Likewise, Kivenaal just tapped on his helmet and mentioned, “I’m already prepared. Just need to unlock my bike and I’ll join you.”

Jayde grinned, “Well, at least I’ll have my usual drafting partner for the ride back,” he admitted.

Kayden groaned, then said, “Now I know why Kaylie prompted me with “Forgetting something” this morning. Wasn’t my keys, though those were a pain to find. Brought my bike… Forgot my helmet.”

“In the break room, cabinets above the fridge, your spare is behind the coffee, Kayden,” Kaylie replied, walking back in and drying her hands on a shop towel before heading out to the van. She returned leading a surprisingly-familiar-looking bike into the shop while wearing a bright pink cycling helmet.

“You four go on ahead, I’ll ride with you guys some other time,” Kayden said, watching as Jayde pulled on his helmet and followed Kivenaal outside.

With Kivenaal and Jayde side-by-side, it was obvious how similar, and yet how different the two bikes were. Kivenaal had a stacked set of handlebars, each with a brake lever on it. The top bar had his shifting controls, his lower bar had switches and buttons attached to easily control his lights and electric horn, and attached over the top frame tube was a large, aerodynamically-shaped pod containing batteries to power everything. While Jayde had brass accents, Kivenaal’s bike was black wherever possible. Both bikes had the same fenders and cargo rack, but Kivenaal had two tail holders compared to Jayde’s singular one.

Kaylie, by comparison, was running nearly-stock with the exception of her own custom-altered headlight assembly, taken straight off of a junked motorcycle and adapted to work on the bicycle, complete with lithium battery pack, and a camera mounted above the bars, courtesy of the low-mount for her light.

Valentin took a good look at the other bicycles, wondering, but not daring to ask, about what drove them to some of the choices that have been made. Instead, Valentin wondered about other things:
“Uhm… how does communication work for you over here? Like this is the US and i’ve never ridden with you. And, not to be rude or anything, but i doubt that you have out-of-state or even international guests joining your rides.” Valentin said as he kept eying the bicycles of the others, with Kivenaal’s bike being of particular interest with the lighting arrangement and the shroud covering some of it.

Kaylie smiled, then explained for Valentin, “Well, we’re usually a close-knit group, and we had to learn our own means of communication, so it’s bound to be different from what you use. We use the US standard of hand signaling, which means,” Kaylie moved to make sure she had plenty of clearance around her left arm for demonstration purposes, “that a left turn is the left arm straight out from the shoulder, a right turn is straight out from the shoulder, hand up, and to slow down or stop, it’s left arm straight out, hand down toward the ground. It’s a little informal, but if I’m slowing down, I try to keep my fingers together, if I’m stopping, I have them spread more.”

Kivenaal then added, “For those of us trailing the group, you basically need to know three additional commands. If you need to request that we slow down, call out “Slow up!” and we’ll pass that forward. If you need to stop, call out “Stop stop stop!” and we’ll pass that forward as well. If you’re not the tail of the group, and you’ve heard someone call out a command from behind you, raise your right hand after you pass the command forward to acknowledge that you’ve heard and passed it on.”

Kaylie then smiled and said, “We’ll mostly follow you at a safe distance while you bed in the brakes. On the ride back, either you lead or I lead. Only thing that I ask is that if you’re someone who drafts, please, don’t overlap wheels. I know you can get a huge aerodynamic benefit, but… None of us really feel comfortable doing that. Malavera learned that the hard way once. Drafting close is fine, just be careful.”

“I think i can work with that,” Valentin noted once the explanation was done with,
“Is there any established means of pointing out road hazards? Back home, you aren’t wrong if you simply point at whatever you think the trailing end needs to be aware of, but we do have some variants to detail the nature of the hazard. Granted, the road is dead-straight for 15 kilometers and we’re in the middle of nowhere, but still…”

“Pointing generally works,” Kaylie said. “It’s not perfect, but… Generally the only things we’re worrying about are potholes or unfortunate animals that found out what a car was the hard way. Normally, Malavera rides as our tail, so to speak, and he’ll call out the rolling road-hazards for us, but we don’t rely on him checking for cars. Mostly because there’s days like today where he’s not coming with us.”

“I’d rather follow, to be honest. Not being familiar with group ride customs can spread nervousness and disorder amongst the riders. Having the unfamiliar person head the train is asking for more trouble. That way, i can also do the braking cycles without killing your inertia ad well, hoping that you won’t bomb it down the hill at full tilt. And even if, a single command is easy to keep track of. The others are simply copy-paste from whoever is in front.”, Valentin argued as he retrieved his prescription cycling glasses from their spot in the helmet vents and putting them on. Compared to his everyday glasses, those had much larger lenses to block wind and debris more effectively as well as a mirror-finish tint with red-to-purple shading to it.

“No problem. I can understand the reasons, I just had to give the option,” Kaylie admitted.

It didn’t take long for Kaylie, Jayde, or Kivenaal to also get their eyewear on, and the group left the building in a neat single-file line with Kaylie leading, Kivenaal following her, Jayde following Kivenaal, and then Val trailing Jayde.

As the others started rolling onto the road, Valentin clipped his feet into the pedals and joined them, gaining speed down the hill. Valentin had no issues keeping pace initially, though was not sure if there was a deliberate effort being made to accommodate him. Due to the descent on the way to Pahrump, gaining speed was not hard and Valentin initially just waited to see where Kaylie would level off in terms of speed. Coincidentally, she chose to stay at vaguely 20MPH, despite gravity and road conditions allowing for plenty more.
This was good news for Valentin, as he could go about the bedding process by just stomping the brakes without forcing anyone up front to slow down.

The brake-bedding process went about with little issue, save for the occasional small skid of the rear wheel.
Once he caught back up, the group was about halfway down the hill.

“STOP STOP STOP”, Valentin shouted, thereby requesting the group to pull over when safe.

Sure enough, Jayde (and to an extent, Kivenaal and Kaylie as well) heard Valentin’s request, each raising their right hand in acknowledgement while coming to a safe stop at the roadside edge.

“You okay, Valentin?” Kaylie asked. While waiting for an answer, she grabbed her water bottle and took a drink before clipping it back into the holder on the frame. Jayde, likewise, unscrewed the cap on his old canteen and took a very long drink of water, capped it back up, and let it hang at his side again.

Kivenaal grimaced. “Damn it. Forgot to fill mine,” he grumbled, putting the empty bottle back on the frame.

“Hope i didn’t trigger false alarms now…” Valentin sheepishly said as he wasn’t aware of any more casual way of bringing the group to a stop, “i was gonna tell you that the brakes are done now. And, while i do have some water, some of us very much don’t and i did not bring any solids to fuel with. After all, this is just a quick-ish run to bed the brakes.”

He then also took a good swig of his bottle, which was returned to it’s cage almost halfway drained.

“Mind if we head back up then?”, he inquired, already instinctively looking for any traffic that might be approaching, of which there was none.

“No, wasn’t a false alarm. Had to ask because even I heard that one,” Kaylie said with a smile, “and the last time that happened was when Malavera snapped his chain, and he called out mayday instead.” She chuckled, then mentioned, “Yeah, we can go back. As you said, mostly meant to bed in your brakes. I’ll have to take the return a lot slower though, Jayde struggles on long hills like this. Granted, Malavera is worse , but we’ll be lucky to maintain 10 MPH on the return trip. About 16 kilometers per hour.”

“Was i THAT loud?” Valentin asked, somewhat in shock, “back home, back-to-front communication is a problem that is still being worked on…”

A small pause followed as Valentin’s head unit emitted a noticeable “bleep” sound, notifying him that the current ride is paused and won’t gather any additional data.
“Slowest rider is either me or Jayde. I’d say that either one of us goes behind whoever is up front for the return trip. Good draft on the leader and quick response times to slow down if needed. Alternatively, everyone just goes back up at whatever speed they are comfortable with and we meet again at the top. Also i need to set my Head Unit to keep rolling when stationary… it fucks with the dataset…”, he explained, once again looking for traffic.

“Small group, and most of us have good ears,” Kaylie said with a smile. “So, probably less that you were that loud, and more that we’re not used to someone trying to make themselves heard more than a space or two away.”

As Val outlined his plan for the return trip, Kaylie nodded. “Makes sense. You follow me, Kivenaal follows you, Jayde tails the group. I’d put Jayde ahead normally, but… I know he does better when drafting Kivenaal.”

Kivenaal chuckled. “That’s because I’m the equivalent of shoving a barn sideways through the air,” he quipped, “so Jayde tucks in behind me and, well, might as well be attached to my bike for the amount of effort he has to put in.”

“Well, it’s either that or we crawl the hill at 5 miles per hour for the last hour,” Jayde admitted. “Most of us are built for short sprints, not endurance. Kivenaal and his brother, Rukari, are the physical exceptions to that rule, even with their feline looks, because they’re just completely different.”

“Sounds like a plan, then…” Valentin noted, before briskly heading across the road to the other side and waiting for the others to reform.

The way back up took much longer, due to the descent now being a climb and also because the pace being set ended up a little too brisk for Valentin as he didn’t want to overdo it on the first miles of riding.
Still, the group eventually reached the top, which for their purposes was the driveway into the Twin Suns Towing parking lot, where they came back to a stop.

“Now the bike is done building. Finally.” Valentin commented with a sigh of relief, immediately following it up with emptying the other half of his bottle.

“Glad to have been able to help,” Kaylie said, grinning.

“Was a good ride,” Kivenaal admitted. “I really need to get back into doing more of them,” he added, before going over to a water fountain and refilling his cycling bottle before also getting a good drink of water himself.

Jayde smiled. “You ever want to ride with others, just find one of the group and ask. Rukari and Takaraya don’t ride, and Malavera’s not probably the best option, but the rest of us do ride.”

Kaylie looked over to Kayden, then asked, “Where’s Takaraya?”

“In the office having a discussion with Malavera,” Kayden replied.

“Twin Suns,” Kaylie said, making a surprisingly fast sprint across the workshop and to the office door, only to discover that, as Kayden had actually said, Takaraya and Malavera were just having a discussion.

“See, sis, not a big deal. They started about 5 minutes after you left, and I’ve heard loud voices only once between them,” Kayden replied.

“Bike is actually done now,” Valentin repeated as Kayden joined after their arrival, “is there a place other than the bike rack behind the shop where i could store it? I don’t have a lock for it here and i don’t fancy taking chances on a bicycle worth more than most cars on this lot. Also…”
Another pause followed as Valentin made the change to his head-unit for data-logging purposes while also saving the data associated with the ride he just did.
“now we can work on… uhm… exploring the Nanite things?”

“Couple places it could be stored, actually. If you don’t mind stairs, you could store it across the street in Rukari’s place. Probably also the safest place to put it, ironically enough. I know I wouldn’t want to be the one foolish enough to break in over there. If you don’t want to deal with stairs, well… There is some room in the Twin Hearts Racing main floor area where it would be out of the way. Alternatively, I know Jayde has a spare bike lock you could borrow, if you’d prefer that,” Kayden admitted. “Or you could keep it here in the shop bay and we’ll keep an eye on it until you’re ready to leave.”

Valentin gave the available options a good thought, eventually coming up with a suitable idea of his own. He wheeled the bike over to his car, where he opened the trunk. The bicycle was then stored within, both wheels removed and placed on top.

“If anyone smashes the car’s window out here, at least some of us will notice. Also, the contents of it are insured, even if i’d lose the man-hours in building it.” Valentin said as he returned to Kayden.

“Where were we? …Right, Nanites… Right?”

[abg7]

It’s fiction all right, albeit of the kind that’s not tied into a forum or Discord challenge, but still entertaining fiction nonetheless.

[Knugcab]

I would say that it is pretty tied in to the SR2022 and possibly upcoming SR2023 challenges, though? And partly ties in to the 2022 24h of clunkers.

[Elizipeazie]

Author’s Note

This story covers the time BETWEEN SR2022 (late-April 2022) and the definitely upcoming SR2023 (scheduled for mid-March 2023 IRL and early April within the story)

there literally is a post in between some parts plugging the 24h clunkers scenes for continuity

[Knugcab]

Well, last time I checked SR2023 was “possibly” upcoming, feels great that it is nailed then so I can start working on some…necessary parts. Totally not a certain 1962 Dodge Dart, for example.

[Elizipeazie]

October 19th, 2022, Nevada, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 11:00 AM.

“Yeah, you brought that up, and, well, we’ve been working on a few ideas in our spare time,” Kayden admitted. “Realistically, the hardest part of coming up with a nanite control device is just figuring out something you’ll use every time you want to make adjustments. Kaylie has the smartwatch because it’s simple, doesn’t look out of place, and in her case, she’s limited mostly to monitoring only. Downside, in her case, of getting my nanites in a blood transfusion after her accident. Mine are military grade, yours are civilian. Kaylie, as a result, had to have her modes restricted because she’s not authorized to have combat mode, and there’s some minor differences between military and civilian versions of Enhanced and Adaptive modes. Not really enough to require a lock-out, but none of us are good enough programmers to just lock out Combat mode.”

He opened the door to the office, motioning for Val to follow. As they headed to the break room door, they heard a bit of the conversation between Takaraya and Malavera, which was still surprisingly civilized, though clearly had some serious moments running through it. Downstairs, Kayden walked over to the gym side of the room, motioning to a small table that was normally used to put electronics or other things that might get broken in the process of working out.

“None of these are functional yet, they’re 3D printed mock-ups in the right scale to guarantee support for the AI you’ll need to control them. Basic class-1 AI, so, no personality programming. I’m not sure whether you’d prefer physical buttons or voice commands, so we can make it work with both. I suppose the biggest thing to ask is, “What would you like it to do?” Because, let’s be honest, knowing what your intentions are will help with choosing an effective chassis, interface, even controls for it.”

As Kayden started rambling about civilian VS military Nanites, mode restrictions and minimal differences in how they worked, Valentin sunk deep into confusion.

“Uhm… Suuure”, he said as he followed Kayden past the office and downstairs.
He the took a look at the mockup devices laid out on the small table, which to him looked like a rather ordinary electronics-store shelf with Phones, Watches and similar devices.

“I can say that i am more of a button person. But what i want them to do? I don’t know… I feel like a 16th century peasant sat in front of a PC. I have no idea what they are capable of doing. Yes, some of that was explained already, but that is a few months old already. At best.”, Valentin responded, clearly overwhelmed by the approach Kayden was taking.

“Ah, my bad. I’m… often surrounded by those who are at or slightly-above the same tech level as I am. I can try to break things down with simpler questions, but if you’re not sure what I’m asking, let me know and I’ll try to clarify it,” Kayden admitted.

“We’ve already established that you’d prefer physical buttons to control things. I suppose, then, the first question is, would you prefer a watch or a phone as your basic display?”

“I’m gonna say watch, but only because lugging a second phone around sounds like a major pain in the butt.”, Valentin replied, though not with a lot of confidence, as he wasn’t really a watch-person either.

Kayden smiled, then continued with, “We can make the AI connect to just about any wireless device. Are there any devices you need it to communicate with?”

“Need? Nothing that immediately comes to mind. Depending on potential use-cases that crop up, the only things i can think of are my phone and the head-unit on my bike… And that basically covers half the communications-devices i own, hehe.”, Valentin said, still cautious about it all, but chuckling at how little he owned in that regard.

Finally, Kayden asked, “Are there any particular colors you’d prefer the main chassis to be in?”

“Cannot go wrong with greyscale, can we? I’e seen people match watch and glasses if they have any, so we could maybe do that? Then again it also somewhat depends on the final visual design of it, i think…”, Valentin commented, this time with more determination in his voice.

Kayden nodded. “So, the design is a smartwatch with physical control buttons on the sides, designed to communicate with your phone and cycling gear, with the chassis in a gray or black color scheme,” he said, before pulling out Nova’s handheld. “Hey, Nova, think you can render an image of what that might look like?” Kayden asked.

“One moment,” Nova replied, before the screen lit up as a wireframe first appeared, slowly filling in with visual information as Nova created a digital, full-color rendering of what ended up looking like a mid-to-high-end smartwatch. “Complete. Changing the colors will only take a couple of seconds now,” she added, “because the hard work is done.”

Valentin carefully watched as Nova slowly processed the rendering of the watch design.
Once it was complete, he raised an eyebrow:
“It’s a watch. Looks fancy, but also Chinese if you know what i mean. Then again, at least this way it isn’t a knock-off off of a ‘Western’ manufacturer.
As per color, my mind was more towards a silver-y direction.”

He then reached into one of the pockets that were sewn onto the bach of his shirt, retrieving his everyday glasses from within.
He handed them to Kayden:
“Was thinking more of a brushed-steel look like this. For the strap, i’m not sure. Depends on how tight it needs to be in order to work well, i think.”

“Hmm…” Nova said, as Val mentioned it looked vaguely Chinese. “I was using a lot of current-market smartwatches as inspiration. That could have skewed the design.”

When Val mentioned a more silver, or brushed-steel look, however, Nova started making some edits to the texture and color of the main chassis, leaving the screen black for the moment, but transitioning from the black glass to a brushed-stainless-steel look.

Kayden, on the other hand, mentioned, “As long as it’s in contact with your body, it will work. Realistically speaking, that means you just need a watch strap that you find comfortable.”

“That’s more like it.” Valentin said after Nova had adjusted the rendering to accommodate Valentin’s request in terms of color.

“As for body contact… i’m not sure. The practical way would be some fabric or rubberized stuff for a strap to maintain constant contact, but with the casing finish being the way it is, i imagine it to be less-than-elegant looking…” he added, mentally debating which way to go.

Nova paused for a moment, then started another wireframe, this time taking into account the idea of the whole unit being one cohesive part. “Give me a few moments, this… Actually doesn’t take that much processing power for me, but it isn’t exactly easy,” Nova mentioned, as she worked on a few ideas at the same time.

After a long couple of minutes, Nova had three different watches displayed. The first two were the original unit, one with a fabric strap, and one with a rubberized one, but the third had gone a completely different direction, using a segmented-metal-link style band, similar to some bracelets, but widened to more accurately match a watch design. As a temporary thing, her first iteration had the original unit there, but she was also working on a fourth design as quickly as she could manage, blending the segmented band into the watch chassis, with four stylized “links” fused together and housing the stainless-steel buttons, slowly blending the main display in there. “I’m not sure, but we might be able to curve that screen,” she mentioned. “Either way, the idea is that the back of each link is padded to minimize discomfort, and the links are attached to an elastic strap internally.”

“That could work… It would probably be hell to manufacture, though… Like, Robert is due for arrival either tomorrow or in two days and then we - well… more I - have other things to do for most of the day.”, Valentin replied, very much liking the thought of a double-disguise for the watch.

“Manufacturing would be a little difficult, yes. We’ll mostly be doing the equivalent of 3D printing in metal, then polishing it down. But it can be done,” Nova replied.

“If it were more than a typical one-off item, we’d get a proper manufacturing setup going, but… I don’t know that we’ll have too many humans with nanites who will want to control them,” Kayden added.

“Oh, so it’s additive manufacturing, then. I’m not in charge of making it work, so if you can pull that off, then by all means, go for it.” Valentin confirmed again, increasingly more content with the idea of the proposed sleek design.

“I’ll try to keep it under the radar for the others as much as i can. Regarding functionality of it, i think that will boil down to field-testing and looking for practical use-cases of the controls without leaning into it too hard. In any case, i remember that we had some talks about gathering medical data and such?”, he then inquired, referencing a conversation almost half a year ago when Valentin was in hospital.

“Additive manufacturing, yes,” Nova said. “Shouldn’t be too difficult, we’ve made a lot of things in that fashion.”

“I remember a little about that, but mind refreshing my memory?” Kayden asked.

“Uhm… i remember you staring at the monitoring the hospital staff set up. Something about me being a medical curiosity and such… Eeehhhhh… yeah.”, Valentin muttered, thinking hard about his hospital stay in an attempt to recall some more specific information. Even after a good minute and a half, nothing else came of it.

“Oh, the non-invasive testing. Sorry, it’s been a while, and between Takaraya and Jayde, well… The two of them keep me constantly on my toes,” Kayden mentioned. “The good news is we don’t have to do much in order to monitor your vitals, you already have most of the interface. I just need your consent to actually log your data,” he added.

Nova admitted, “I can access your nanites to get most of the information that Kayden would want. However, it is unethical to share that information or store it without the patient’s consent. When you had your accident, I knew that you would be okay, but was not able to provide any information confirming that to those we contacted.”

Kayden then said, “Some tests would be done the older way, and you’re more familiar with those methods. And while I might let you know where you fall on the scale compared to the rest of us, I won’t mention numbers outright. What I can say is that I doubt you’ll end up at either extreme on any test I do.”

Valentin was a bit weirded out by Nova’s ability to read something off of the nanites and it showed. Flustered by the realization, silence ensued for a long moment.

“Uhm… i’d rather not,” Valentin eventually blurted out, “Maybe once we have the control stuff figured out so i can see the collected data as well, but not yet.”

Silence then followed as Valentin was very much uncertain as to what Kayden wanted to do. He may have claimed that Valentin is more familiar with the testing methods, but ‘more familiar’ is still less-than-exact wording to Valentin.

“Not a problem,” Nova replied.

Kayden chuckled, then grabbed his medical bag from his side and set it down, removing a couple of somewhat-familiar instruments, albeit clearly designed for Kayden’s use when compared to a typical doctor. The first was a stethoscope, though designed for Kayden’s feline ears. He followed it up with a small white box that had a finger clamp on it, designed to read O2 saturation, and lastly with a standard blood-pressure cuff. “As stated, similar instruments to what you’re already used to. I could go more high-tech in some cases, but… It’s not really needed. These will let me get a resting heart rate and blood pressure, and make sure you’re geting sufficient oxygen,” Kayden explained. “And, yes, I’m quite aware I could just look this up and get close enough.”

As Kayden procured some arguably very familiar instruments, Valentin breathed a mental sigh of relief, visibly relaxing, albeit not all the way given that it still was a less-than ordinary situation Valentin found himself in.

“Gotta keep my word…” Valentin mumbled as he listened to Kayden explain what he was putting on the table, also very much regretting having mentioned this in the first place.

“No one says we have to do this right now,” Kayden admitted. “Let’s face it, I’m well aware of “Doctor’s Stress,” and that skews test results all over the place. Only one who I deal with who doesn’t get that is Takaraya, and getting half of his information isn’t easy. The only place I can get his blood pressure from is his upper thighs. Getting O2 sats from him is practically impossible.”

Kayden smiled, then said, “Here’s what I’ll do. You pick a time and a place for testing, can be at any time, whether in 30 minutes at your place, or 3 years from now in Sweden, and we’ll do this then.”

Valentin pulled out his phone almost immediately to see if any information on the delivery of Robert II was available.

“Looks like Robert ain’t making it here tomorrow, so we could do it then after you close shop for the day. Don’t want to trample your business’ efficiency here,” Valentin replied while pocketing the phone again, “Though would you mind telling me what else you plan on doing beyond what seem like basic vitals?”

“Basic vitals was pretty much the plan,” Kayden admitted. “Having a solid base-line with the tools I’m most likely to have in the field in the event of an injury means I’m able to quickly determine what’s wrong besides the obvious injury.” He put his supplies back in his medical bag, then said, “I know, it seems a bit redundant, but knowing what is your normal is important. Plus, I can get a certain amount of useful information with a basic medical scanner,” he said, taking out a small handheld device with a screen on it, " that compliments the manual results." He put the scanner away, then admitted, “All told, it should take less than 30 minutes.”

“In which case we might as well have it done now and avoid an hour of driving back and forth,” Valentin then corrected himself, which Kayden promptly took note of as he collected his equipment and went over to the adjacent video room for just that little bit more privacy.

Once there, testing began quickly, with Valentin taking the opportunity to rid himself of the chest strap that he had been wearing since he woke up, knowing that he would be cycling sometime during the day. Other than the two distinct imprints from the probe just below Valentin’s sternum, Kayden’s small number of tests went without a hitch.

The only thing that Valentin was puzzled by was Kayden apparently pointing what looked like a radar gun at him for a few moments. He knew that it was a medical scanner of some kind, but other than it being pointed at him, Valentin could not tell that it was doing something.

Eventually, Kayden stuffed his equipment back into his bag, having finished his testing.

“Looks like everything is normal here,” Kayden admitted. “Sorry for the inconvenience, I know it’s just vitals and a base-line with the medical scanner, but, it does help. One, now I know that my tools measure the same as your previous records showed, and two, I have a base-line scan that lets me know a few minor details such as bone density and also where all of that titanium is.” He finished packing his tools into his bag, then said, “Now I get to go find Jayde and give him his new glasses.” He handed Val his glasses and then said, “So, thank you for the reminder. If you hadn’t handed me these, I likely wouldn’t have remembered that Jayde needs his, mostly because Jayde won’t come to me and ask about them.”

“Well we have that sorted, then…” Valentin replied as he got his long-sleeve mesh-fabric shirt back on and deposited his loose belongings in the back pockets on said shirt.

He then followed Kayden back upstairs and towards the work area.
Soon after, it was agreed that the day was basically done for Val at Twin Suns Towing, given that nothing major was planned and the steamer was still in transit.

As such, Valentin went back to the car, where he stored the few items that weren’t already in there before heading home.

[Elizipeazie]

October 21, 2022, Nevada, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 8:45 AM

---

The sound of a large truck arriving outside the lot gathered the attention of everyone present at Twin Suns Towing. In this case, that was Kaylie, Kayden, and Jayde in the main building, Kivenaal in the gym, and Malavera in the office. Rukari was not impressed across the street as the driver’s idling truck woke him up. Takaraya hadn’t shown up to work yet, claiming he had “a little bit of family business to attend to,” before he could come in.

The driver stepped out of his cab, walking up to Kayden. “I have a package here for a “Valentin Schrant.” Is that you?” he asked.

“No, but I can get him on the phone and let him know he’s got a delivery,” Kayden replied.

Nova, on the other hand, took the initiative to immediately dial Valentin’s number as Kayden pulled her handheld chassis out of his pocket. “Hello, Valentin,” Kayden said as the phone connected. “Sorry to be a pain in your ass, but we’ve got a truck driver out here with a bloody-big truck saying he has a delivery for you.”

Over in front of Valentin’s house, he was getting ready to depart on his first actual training ride specifically meant for his recovery when his phone went off in his cycling jersey pocket. He fumbled for a bit back there before picking up.

“A delivery? Did we forget something at the Zinn Cycles shop?”, Valentin inquired, not at all thinking about his steam car already being there.
“It’s…” Kayden took a moment to take a better look, “A dark-blue 20-foot cargo container.”

It took a while of thinking before Valentin realized what was being delivered, leaving Kayden hanging on the phone in the process.
“Oh yeah right that’s my steam car! I can be there in about half an hour or so. Does the guy need any paperwork or something?” he asked rather hurriedly, knowing that the trucking industry is riddled with time constraints and deadlines.

Kayden asked the driver, then informed Valentin, “He needs your signature and to see ID for verification. And he’s just informed me that the other one on there is for “Kaylie Malradi.” So, looks like they shipped our cars together.”

The driver, upon hearing “cars” were in the containers, nodded. “I’ll unhook the trailer and get my rig out of the way,” he said.

“Sure. As said, half an hour or so and i’ll be there. Bye!” Valentin answered before hastily ending the call. What followed amounted to a field sprint back into his house to make sure he had everything needed, but still made sure to not mishandle his new bicycle. On the way back out, he loaded himself and his bike into the Dione and started the drive to Twin Suns Towing.

Kayden smiled, then told the driver, “Valentin will be here in about half an hour.” He turned to Kaylie, then called out, “Our car is here, too.”

Kaylie jogged over, showed her ID and signed the paperwork, then yelled down to Kivenaal, “Hey, Kiva! We need your expertise with trailer ramps and the flatbed!”

While Kiva made his way out back to retrieve the flatbed tow truck and the ramps from the trailer they used to bring the AMCW home, the truck driver disconnected his truck from the trailer and got out of the way. When Kivenaal came around the front, lined up as if he was going to back the old roll-back flatbed under the trailer, he stopped and got out, judging his distance as Kayden swung the trailer doors open.

“Right, these ramps go there and there,” Kivenaal said, and after seeing them both clearing the cargo doors and touching down on the flatbed, Kivenaal nodded. “Right, time to turn the auto-leveling system off and pump the rear suspension up all the way.”

Sure enough, the flatbed managed to raise the rear of the deck another two inches, making the angles more reasonable between the container, the ramps, and the truck they intended to catch a car with. Kaylie hooked up the towing winch to the rear tow hook, then motioned to Kivenaal to start pulling. One heavy hand came down on a control lever, and the truck’s winch started winding back up, dragging the crippled cruiser out over the lip of the container. It rolled sluggishly-yet-smoothly down the ramps, and settled onto the bed of the flatbed. The ramps were retrieved, Kivenaal drove the truck around the rear of the building, then unloaded the car into the back parking lot to deal with it later.

“Never seen unloading a car done like that before,” the truck driver commented.

“Oh, if we had everyone here, we could have done that without involving trucks, if the two heavyweights decided to play around with carrying a wrecked car. But we had to get this right in order to help out Valentin,” Kaylie said.

As if on cue, a familiar shade of orange turned onto the parking lot, immediately getting stuck in front of the semi-trailer blocking a substantial part of it. After some maneuvering to avoid bumping into it, Valentin got out of the car, wearing full lycra as if he just arrived by bike. His braids were present again, but this time a little less neatly done compared to yesterday, the last 8 inches of which stuffed into the middle pocket on his back. Immediately after, he reached back into the car and swapped his cycling glasses for his ordinary ones.

He looked around for the truck driver, spotting him near Kaylie. Valentin then approached said driver, already drawing a wallet from his back to fish the IDs out of.

“Are you Valentin Schrant?”, he inquired, having to look way up in order to make eye-contact.
“Yes i am,” Valentin replied as he handed him his Swedish National ID card.
“Uhm… i just need you to sign here to confirm delivery. Also, aren’t you a little too tall to be cycling instead of playing basketball?”, he said, looking as if he just encountered the first 7-footer ever, which probably was true.
“Yes. Yes i am.” Valentin mumbled as he crouched down to sign the document before handing the pen back to the driver.

The driver just kept staring at Valentin for a while, in awe at the absolute size of this lad before returning to the truck to wait out the unloading process.
Valentin in turn headed for Kaylie:
“So… how are we getting Robert out of it?”, he asked, not having seen the process being done for the Bricksley that came out of the other container.

“Well… We had a bit of practice earlier,” Kaylie said, “in somewhat abusing our flatbed, some trailer ramps, and the winch on the truck. We can get Robert out of there safely, but it’s going to look kinda janky in how we do this. Also, fairly sure we’re violating some sort of workplace safety thing by climbing all over the equipment to do this, but… We don’t really have the provisions to just remove the container.”

“Uhm… did you account for Robert weighing about 2.5 metric tons? I still have no idea how you emptied the other container, but seeing as it’s empty and the doors are still open, you got whatever was in there out of it,” Valentin replied, hoping that whatever contraption they devised was able to hold up to the weight of his steamer.

Kivenaal looked to Val, then said, “Well, I’ve driven my truck up over those trailer ramps before, and that’s 6,000 pounds or so.”

Kaylie did the on-the-fly conversion and admitted, “2,700 kilograms, plus or minus a bit.”

“Plus, this flatbed’s rated for a hell of a lot of weight, and to keep things steady, I’ve got the rear air suspension cranked up to maximum-safe working pressure so it shouldn’t move too much. The winch routinely drags broken down SUVs up the rollback,” Kivenaal added. “I mean, the only way it could be safer is if we got Takaraya out here to hold up the ramps. I wouldn’t doubt if he could lift Robert, provided he could get a safe grip on it without doing harm.”

Kaylie smacked one of Kivenaal’s arms, then said, “Yeah, he could do that, and he’d spend the week regretting that he overdid it again.”

As they opened the container doors, Kaylie climbed up and put the ramps in place, while Kivenaal parked the flatbed so that the ramps were just touching the deck, then filled the rear air suspension again, lifting the back of the truck two inches up.

“Hey, good news!” Kaylie called out. “There’s a tow hitch here we can use.”

“Nice!” Kivenaal replied. He grabbed the winch line, then clipped a custom-made adapter onto the hook, spooled out the line, and then handed the adapter to Kaylie. “Should be plug-and-play at this point.”

Kaylie fitted the trailer-hitch adapter into the Dione’s factory towing coupler, then casually jumped off of the trailer and landed lightly on her feet. “Right, Kivenaal, I think it’s showtime,” she said.

With a bit more of a delicate hand on the controls, Kivenaal leaned on the winch retract lever and the cable pulled out most of the slack.

“Wait!” Kaylie yelled, and Kivenaal released the handle. “Shit, almost forgot this car’s got that weird powered steering that needs to be on. If we just pull on it, she’ll go sideways and bang up the inside of the trailer.”

“The 12 Volt master switch should be next to the hood release latch. What once was the trunk release now is that switch. Figured i’d hide it in a neat spot to avoid accidentally knocking it. There’s no traditional ignition barrel anymore, after all…” Valentin commented as he approached the car that was already poking it’s rear-end out of the container. He did not even try to climb into the container as he did not change clothes before arrival, leading to him wearing less-than-ideal shoes that provided comparatively little traction even on dry and flat asphalt.

“Be aware that it still has fuel as far as i am aware, so it will light the boiler once it is flipped.”, he added.

Kaylie climbed back up to the shipping container, then grimaced as she realized this was not going to be an easy squeeze. “Right. I’m buying myself a bit of room and some damage prevention,” she said, climbing back out of the container, down the ramp, and walking over to Kivenaal by walking down the flatbed. She sighed, lifted the top cover panel off of her left arm, pulled the release pin, then carefully removed her mechanical arm, handing it to Kivenaal for safekeeping. Now with just the interface plate and socket to worry about, she walked back over to Robert and carefully worked her way up to the driver’s door. She was glad to see the window was down, carefully leaning in and finding the master switch. She took a deep breath, flipped the switch, then quickly got out of the container, making her way down the ramps and over to Kivenaal. Exhaling, she held out her right hand, and Kivenaal gave a smirk. “Don’t,” Kaylie said.

“No problem, Kaylie, I’ll give you a hand,” Kivenaal said, grinning as Kaylie sighed, reattached her left arm, and put the panel back in place to cover everything back up.

“You are the worst at times, Kivenaal,” Kaylie grumbled.

“Hey, it’s not every day that I get to make that joke,” Kivenaal said. “You handed me a golden opportunity.”

Kaylie looked to Val, then said, “I’m so sorry you have to see this.”

Valentin could not help but chuckle at the low-quality wordplays Kivenaal was making.

“What is there to be sorry about? You singlehandedly managed to get Robert out,” he said, blissfully oblivious to how we was fueling the fire with his own puns while watching the steam car be winched out of the container and onto the flatbed.

Kaylie groaned. “Great, I’m going to hear hand and arm puns for the next week,” she said, shaking her head.

Kivenaal chuckled, though spared Kaylie from any further puns for the moment as Robert touched down on the flatbed. A few seconds later, and the front wheels also landed, which prompted Kaylie to quickly remove the trailer ramps from the container edge and climb back down. “Right, Kivenaal, you can go find a place to carefully park Robert for now,” Kaylie said, after securing the wheel straps to hold the heavy steam car in place.

Kivenaal nodded, then carefully drove around the building, back out through the front parking lot, crossed the road, and prepared to unload over in the Twin Hearts Racing parking lot.

Valentin, meanwhile went over to the truck driver to notify him that both containers were now empty, after which he got to work closing them up. Soon after, the trailer was coupled back up and he drove off the lot, thus freeing up most of the parking lot in front of the process.

Valentin then headed over to make sure that Kivenaal wasn’t dinging up his project in the process of getting it off the flatbed and also to safely turn it back off once it was off.

Kivenaal looked up as Valentin approached, having just unstrapped the wheels, made sure the winch line was taut, and making all the necessary preparations to tilt and slide the truck’s rollback flatbed and lower the car to the ground. He counted something off on his fingers, quickly checked the load rating, then nodded. “Good, we can do this extra gentle for the car,” he said, before first letting a whole heap of air out of the rear suspension to lower the fulcrum point. “I’m going to extend the bed rearward before tilting it to the ground. The math says things will be fine, but I don’t want the truck’s ass up in the air giving this car any chance to pull the front wheels up off the ground. Kaylie would have my head if I bend another frame,” Kivenaal explained.

He slid the flatbed backward, watching the truck’s suspension loading at the front and checking on the car equally as much. Then, he slowly tilted the bed until the edge touched down on the pavement with a light crunch. “Well, guess I get to repaint that one,” Kivenaal said with a grimace. As he slowly unwound the winch, Robert touched down on US pavement for the first time, first with the front wheels, then the rear ones. “Now, I get to detach the car, pull up the flatbed, and find out how much blue paint I need to repair,” Kivenaal quipped, before retracting, then tilting the flatbed back into place.

“Thank you” Valentin said once the car was on 'Murican soil.

He got in the steam car and moved it to the far corner of the lot, which was a substantially more difficult process than what one might expect due to the extreme input lag the car was still suffering from.
Eventually, it was safely stored underneath a basic carport roof.

Valentin then shut the car down again after having drawn it’s telemetry onto a thumb drive for investigation.
“Time to see what this is all about…” he mumbled as he unfurled himself from the heavily reclined and tilted driver’s seat, holding the thumb drive in one hand.
“I’m gonna head back home and fiddle around and see if i can get the input lag fixed… I’ll notify some of you when i’m coming back around for Dyno time and such,” Valentin then explained to Kivenaal before heading across the road towards his Dione.

Kivenaal nodded. “Can’t blame you. Hey, if you need help on the code side of things, seriously, talk to Takaraya. Between him and Malavera, well, they know more about code than just about anyone here. Rukari’s got some understanding of it, but he’s more a “trial-and-error” sort of person. Usually with a lot of errors. I’m not sure whether it’s Takaraya or Malavera who is better with code, but… Really can’t go wrong with either of them. Either way, we’llsee you around!” Kivenaal replied.

As Val headed back toward his Dione, Kivenaal drove across the street as well to park the flatbed, only to swear as Malavera immediately sent him back out to go collect a crashed car.

[Elizipeazie]

October 23rd, 2022, Nevada, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 12:40PM

Once again, Valentin arrived at Twin Suns Towing and Garage, but contrary to the previous times, he turned left onto the Twin Hearts Racing half of the property this time around. Having spent the past day and a half on figuring out potential solutions for the throttle lag together with the coding guy of his team back in Sweden, a theoretically viable change was made to how the ECU interprets throttle signals. In order to test this, arrangements have been made with Rukari in order to be able to use the roller dynamometer, ordinarily meant to tune internal combustion-based vehicles for different fuels and/ or performance.

The modern, petrol-driven Dione was parked out front, but fairly out-of-the-way so as to not block normal business from happening.
Valentin then headed inside through the gate in search for Rukari, but not really daring to go much beyond the hallway since the building was unfamiliar to him.

Rukari looked over as Val walked into the small customer waiting area, then smiled. “Good to see you,” he said, before walking over to the “Employees Only” door. “Come, this way,” he added.

Beyond the heavy steel door, the rest of Twin Hearts Racing opened up as a mostly-open-plan work area, with toolboxes at one end, laptops on wheeled carts with various forms of tuning software open, the dynamometer room clearly labeled at the far wall with a surprising amount of space for it, and close to the front wall, where the door was, a set of industrial stairs leading to a walled off area above the main work floor. Both sides of the building had large garage doors, big enough to drive a semi through if needed, though some American ones might still hit their stacks if they tried.

“I would give tour, but, not much to see. Important thing for you is here,” Rukari said, leading Valentin to the thick polycarbonate window between the main shop and the dyno room. Inside, the roller dyno was clearly seen, having lots of space around it for all manner of vehicles, with one main garage door to get cars in from outside onto the rollers, and a second one to get cars from the dyno room into the work area, or wheel toolboxes into the dyno room to fix cars there.

“Greetings.” Valentin replied before he, without a word, followed Rukari past the employee-only door into the repair area of Twin Hearts Racing.

“Not a problem. The shop across the road has more to show, anyway,” Valentin commented as he took a look around the work area and through the window to the Dyno room, “I don’t want to block the Dyno for longer than necessary. Mind if i get Robert out here so we can get him set up?”

Rukari gave a light nod, then flipped the switches to open the garage doors so Val could walk through the dyno room and out to the parking lot. “No problem. And no worries. Repair shop always look more exciting than tuning shop.”

Valentin gave back a light smile and went out to the parking lot, briskly moving towards his steam-powered project. He took seat within shortly after and started the process of raising steam, which only took a minute to be moveable.

Carefully, he maneuvered out of the parking spot, eventually lining up in front of the gate towards the Dyno room, ready to go straight in once the Dyno itself was ready for it.

Rukari worked quickly to make the room ready for the steam car, starting first by commanding the Dyno to hold the rollers still so they wouldn’t move, then turning the room’s main ventilation system on to pull fresh air into the room.

Rukari then looked to Valentin and asked, “Where big fans are at back of car is exhaust, yes?”

“Trunklid fans are exhaust,” Valentin quipped back from within the car, knowing full well that there was no functional trunk lid anymore.

Rukari nodded, then grabbed his little one-day project and walked back into the room, carrying a large bin in his hands with a thick seal made of rubber weather stripping material around the top of it, and a hole with a coupler in it designed to meet up with the exhaust extraction hose. Showing Valentin, he explained, “Had to make custom exhaust collector. Not expensive, but should work. Holds on with magnets.”

Rukari then motioned for Val to pull the car into the shop, mentioning, “Is ready. Will get exhaust collector in place once car is on rollers.”

Valentin did as instructed and drove the car into the dyno room and onto the rollers, though getting it settle on them proved difficult, courtesy of the inaccurate throttle control.
Multiple attempts were thus made to get the car settled properly and only then was Rukari able to get his DIY exhaust gas collector system in place.

“Hope it doesn’t skew steaming capabilities…” Valentin mumbled as he watched Rukari behind the car, plonking the magnetic bins onto the draft fan casings.

“Will tune main exhaust fan to match exhaust flow. Had problem with Kivenaal’s truck when trying same thing, ran fan at normal speed, had to replace boiler. Know now to start fan at much lower speed on steam cars,” Rukari replied to Valentin’s mumbled comment.

Rukari then went to the other side of the polycarbonate window and carefully tuned the main extraction fan so that it was extracting exhaust at a very similar rate to Valentin’s boiler system exhaust fans. Afterward, he returned to the room and began the process of strapping the car down, being extra cautious with the straps and erring on the side of a few too many, before explaining, “Learned with steam truck that lot of power can break straps if tires have grip.”

With the car secured down, Rukari returned to the other side of the window and commanded the roller brake to release, seeing the Dione settle a centimeter into the rollers. He returned to the room, secured the straps again, and gave Valentin a thumbs up on his return to the controls. Over the intercom, he mentioned to Valentin, “When ready to start, you give signal.”

With the car in place and secured, testing could begin, but was hindered by the suboptimal seating position of Valentin within the steamer, leading to him being unable to comfortably reach the intercom button in order to talk to Rukari behind the window.
Instead, Valentin elected to give him a thumbs up instead.

Soon after, testing began, which consisted of little more than a few acceleration pulls for the moment.
Due to the nature of that test and the known baseline being established, it did not take long for the first set of runs to be finished, after which Valentin proceeded to shut the car down again.
A signal to Rukari conveyed that the first tests are completed.

Valentin then got to work on tranferring the altered ECU program onto the dash-mounted laptop in charge of controlling it all, which required unplugging the ECU from the car, else risk turning it on again.

Rukari smiled, then saved the graph data to show Valentin, transferring it to a laptop and wheeling it into the room on one of the many carts. “Figured you would like to see what it can do,” Rukari said. As he saw Valentin using his laptop as well, Rukari laughed, then said, “You are true tuner. Brought own laptop to dyno to tune car. Wish more would do like that.”

Valentin had since moved the laptop-turned ECU from it’s base on the dash to his lap when Rukari wheeled his device over with the result graphs.
He could not stop himself from taking a look at the power and torque figures, despite having more pressing issues to look at.

“At least the ‘transmission’ is holding up…” Valentin mentioned with finger quotes in the air, just before Rukari could comment on him having brought his own Laptop.
“There’s very little to tune on, the fly. This is actually the ECU for it all. Was far easier to write a windows-based program than to make something work on some obscure IC. I’m just parsing pre-written variants over to see if i can fix the input delay,” he then explained.

Shortly after, the first correction was installed as planned, after which Valentin hooked everything back up.

“Let’s see if my buddy did good on smashing bugs in the code…” he muttered, as he reached under the dash to re-enable the 12V master switch, thus formally booting the car back up.

“That is ECU? But what if computer crashes?” Rukari inquired. “Know that laptops are usually more stable, but,” Rukari said, and almost as if to prove his point, Rukari’s laptop immediately spat out a blue-screen-of-death and restarted, “not always most reliable. This one,” he continued, pointing to the now-currently-booting laptop as it chugged its way through loading Windows 7, “is least reliable I have. Only use now to show information, because crash not cause pictures to be lost.”

“Nothing controlled by it is safety critical. The engine just loses power. I still have power steering, power brakes, lights, all that jazz. Even boiler pressure, as it is self-contained in terms of controls,” Valentin explained, before politely motioning for Rukari to return to the panel in the other room.
“Next set of runs inbound.”

Soon after, another set of runs was conducted, but aborted early as it was almost painfully obvious that this solution was not the right one.

Once again, an extensive process of shutdown, unplugging and more thumb-drive work followed as Valentin loaded another tune with a different approach to the problem.

Rukari looked at the test results, seeming a bit confused, then walked into the room carrying a laptop this time. “Not sure what you change, but power is same as before,” Rukari said, seeming more confused as Val had called it off early. “Did you overdo it and almost hurt car, or just not feel right?”

“I’m not tuning for power. Throttle response is the thing i am trying to fix. Waiting a good three seconds for something to happen after you floored it is neither pleasant nor safe,” Valentin replied, this time not even bothering to look at Rukari’s dyno graphs.

Once the second potential fix was installed, Valentin reinstalled the ECU and plugged everything back up.

“Really need to split the 12V master into boiler and vehicle master… Re-steaming every time isn’t exactly fuel efficient…” Valentin mumbled just before the third set of tests began.

Rukari nodded, then said, “Did not know was throttle problem. Three seconds…” He seemed puzzled for a moment, then said, “No, was not fun.” After a few more moments, he explained, “Once put military-surplus gas-turbine for generator in car. Had similar throttle response. Not fun to drive.”

This time, as Val did his tests, Rukari kept a count on how long it took between him pushing the button for the “Ready” light, and then a response from the car.

The next set of tests was done in full, mostly for the sake of having a complete set of data to work with. Still, there was very little, if any, improvement in how Robert responded to throttle commands.
Even Rukari probably could tell, as Valentin was shaking his head as soon as the first run was started.
After the tests, the tune was changed again through the entire arduous process.

“Hope this one works… Otherwise it’s back to the drawing board,” Valentin muttered as he copied the ECU code of the third attempt over to the laptop.

Rukari smiled, then called out to Valentin over the intercom, “As your people say, “third time is the charm.” I think it should work.”

Like before, he prepared the dyno for this round of tests, then counted down on his own “3, 2, 1, Now!” before jabbing the ready-light button.

The third tests were underway and immediately seemed more promising, as evident by a less negative reaction from Valentin within the car.
Run after run followed, with Valentin initially skeptical on the repeatability of the solution, but soon turning almost euphoric as he realized that his friend in Sweden did good work on fixing the problem in a pinch.

Eventually, the test procedure was done with as the dyno rollers slowly lost speed, the whine steadily declining in pitch until Valentin engaged the intarder embedded into the differential, at which point the rollers slowed drastically.

The last bit to a complete stop was done with friction brakes, followed by Valentin enthusiastically holding a fist up through the driver window to the best of his abilities.

Rukari seemed equally enthusiastic, glad to see that Val had worked out the throttle problem. He walked into the room and said, “That seemed more good than last time for sure.”

“It’s not great, but at least good enough to go forward with. Which is to say, safely drivable,” Valentin said, “It sill needs some changes before we can do further testing, but at least i can putter around the lot without it being as much of a sleepyhead as i am if awoken at 3AM.”

Valentin then unbuckled and reached forward to eject the thumb-drive, which in turn was pocketed.
“Time to free up the rig. I’m done here for now, though i do need a trip to harbor freight or home depot or whatever equivalent store you have here,” he added, waiting for Rukari to undo the exhaust collector and straps before parking the car up in the spot it came out of earlier.

Rukari nodded, then carefully unstrapped the car and removed the exhaust collector from the back. “Will be one moment. Need to lock rollers or not able to drive car,” Rukari said, before walking over to the control console, flipping the switch, and then giving Valentin the thumbs up before walking back out to the car.

“Good luck with shopping trip,” he said with a light smile.

Once Robert was back in his semi-protected hide-y hole, Valentin immediately went back to his rented Dione, shortcutting through the dyno room.
With it, he drove back off the lot and down the hill towards the nearest Home Depot store.

He returned about an hour or so later, with a small bag of supplies in hand, approaching Rukari.
“Mind if i borrow one of your bays? Need to split the master switches into two separate ones…”, Valentin asked once Rukari was found.

“Nekasi. My shop is your shop,” Rukari said, giving a light smile as Valentin returned with a bag of supplies and a plan.

The door opened from the customer area, and even before Takaraya could see who was there, he called out, “Rukari, got a moment? I’ve got something on my mind and I’m having a difficult time figuring out how to deal with it.” Once he saw Valentin still there, Takaraya groaned. “Oh, now this is going to be awkward,” he said, though walked into the room regardless.

“I can talk, but Val need some space to work on sparky-bits of car,” Rukari replied.

“Good afternoon.” Valentin greeted Takaraya as he disappeared around a corner to pull Robert into the bay.

About five minutes later, the bright orange steam-electric automobile slowly rolled into one of the bays near the row of tool carts.
Afterwards, Valentin immediately got to work, digging around underneath the driver-side dashboard, carefully taking apart the current arrangement for the 12V master switch.

While Valentin worked on the car, Rukari asked Takaraya, “What is on your mind?”

Takaraya sighed. “My son wants to come on the next Shitbox Rally. He’s a writer and a historian, so I see why it appeals to him, but…” Takaraya blew out a heavy breath. “A few people here might have some issues with that.”

“Why so?” Rukari inquired.

“Kasiya, my son, is… Bigger than me. I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but within the equivalent of three years, he went from “Might be normal height” to the midnight skyscraper that he is now,” Takaraya explained.

Rukari chuckled. “To tell truth, all here handle you with no issue.”

Takaraya knocked on his left arm with his right hand, creating three loud clinks of metal on metal. “Because of these. I don’t know whether it’s sympathy or just lack of fear. My son, on the other hand, is a three-meter tower of wolf with no injuries, at least none this bad. If he shows up unannounced, I’m half expecting half the crew to go into hiding. I told him he had to wait until I got permission, but I have no idea how to ask the others, let alone get him to meet the crew.”

Rukari lightly patted Takaraya’s shoulder, then gave a mild grimace as he realized the problem, then patted a little closer to Takaraya’s neck where he would feel it. “Why not just call big meeting in video room? Have us meet him there on big screen?” Rukari asked.

Valentin, meanwhile, had gotten the previous 12V master switch out, which was set aside for the moment. Before he could start installing the new pair of switches, which were little more than a pair of breakers, he was startled by a metallic clunking noise generated elsewhere in the room.

“Did i miss something?”, he inquired as he heard Rukari and Takaraya talking to each other about some overly tall soon-to-be team member.
Since he was out of the car anyway, Valentin also used to opportunity to fetch some tools that soon were needed for the installation of the new master switches.

Takaraya gave a light smile, then looked like he was having a hard time gathering the courage to say anything about it. Thankfully (or unfortunately), Rukari had no such issues.

“We were talking plans for next Shitbox Rally,” Rukari said. “Takaraya says his son is rather tall, and he worries that people might not react well to him.”

Takaraya sighed. “Might have tried to word that a little more delicately, but, that’s pretty much the case. Kivenaal and Rukari scouted a location, and Kivenaal says the route is “safer than last year,” but… I’ve heard the descriptions of what stirred up trouble on that rally and… Well, Kasiya’s not a perfect match, but he’s close enough in looks to inspire fear. I’ve been worrying for three days about how to introduce him to the group because he really wants to go so he can write about the history of the place, but…” Takaraya grimaced and paused for several very long seconds.

“I’m going to be bluntly honest, Val. I’m worried about my son meeting you,” he said. “I don’t want to scare you, and,” Takaraya gave a deep grimace before saying, “I’ve been worrying about how you and Kaylie would react to him.”

Valentin had absolutely no response ready for what Takaraya had to say.
His mind immediately went haywire, trying to picture what Takaraya’s son might look like, soon followed by fairly intense flashbacks to the Dyre conflict back in early 2022 before his mind effectively blue-screened, leading to Valentin freezing in a blank, mildly worried stare directed to the other two people present.

“Uhm… who?”, he eventually blurts out, his brain still chugging hard in an attempt to process the information.

As Valentin froze with a worried look, Takaraya grimaced slightly, then grabbed a slightly bulky looking phone from his pocket, looking vaguely like someone had stuck a 1980’s computer mouse to the back of a smartphone. He called up his contacts list, but at that point, Val finally blurted out a question.

“My son, Kasiya,” Takaraya replied. “I’ve been telling him about some of the plans for the next Shitbox Rally. Also, I did tell him what I knew about the last one. He’s the one who insisted, thanks to his research into Crugandr, that I ask you and Kaylie about meeting him in a video chat before that point.”

Another long bit of silence followed as Valentin had to think hard about the possible introduction of Kasiya.

“Maybe later. I still need to finish the new master switches,” Valentin eventually said, which to some extent was an excuse to not have to worry about it for at least a little whole.
He returned to Robert, where half of his torso disappeared into the cavern that was the driver’s footwell.
Though it was obvious that Valentin was not making much, if any, progress underneath there as his thoughts were still fogged up by the sight of a three meter wolf being his new friend soon.

Takaraya gave a lightly surprised nod, then watched as Valentin returned to “working” on Robert, where Takaraya was oblivious to the lack of meaningful work being done.

Rukari, on the other hand, had sent a text to Kaylie, who showed up a few minutes later with a smirk. “Rukari says you’ve got something to mention, Takaraya,” Kaylie said.

Takaraya groaned, then said, “I just watched Val freeze up after mentioning meeting my son. He’s… About 3 meters tall, black fur.”

Kaylie, at first, didn’t seem too bothered. “Okay a wolf like you with black fur… Wait… Three meters tall? That’s not a scaling error somewhere? An AI didn’t spit out the wrong number or round up?” Kaylie inquired.

“Ten feet to the top of his head,” Takaraya replied.

Kaylie blew out a long breath and sat down on a counter. “Twin Suns, I didn’t think that was possible. You mentioned you were particularly tall and had problems as a result, and you’re saying your son has a full foot on you?”

“He inherited the better part of my genetics, and his mother’s black fur,” Takaraya admitted. “In the span of three Earth years, he went from being on track for normal height to the skyscraper he became.”

“And you invited him here?”

“No, he wants to join the next Shitbox Rally, and specifically requested, given you and Val both had a similar bad experience on the last one, that I ask both of you if this was okay,” Takaraya replied. “I told him I’d talk to you and get back to him to set up a video meeting.”

Kaylie didn’t look as worried at first, but the fact that the counter she’d sat on crunched under her left hand spoke volumes. Kaylie grimaced, then let go of the counter edge, a bunch of particle-board spilling onto the floor from under the stainless steel top. “I mean… I’m not saying no, Takaraya, but… I need time to think about this.”

She got up and wandered over to where Val was, then asked, “Some last minute tinkering? Hope you don’t mind a bit of conversation, but, damn it, I’ve got to clear my mind.”

“Not really last-minute. Just optimizing things… well… attempting to, anyways,” Valentin sighed as he stared at the pair of breaker switches underneath the dash, loosely dangling by the one half of wiring that was already done up.

“Let me guess, Rukari sprang the “Takaraya Surprise” on you, too?” Kaylie asked, looking at the pair of switches Val was attempting to fit under the dash. “I know Takaraya, he’s probably spent the last week trying to figure out a good way to bring up this subject. Rukari… I don’t think he gets that. I think Rukari’s the kind of guy who just thinks it’s best to rip the band-aid off and get the pain over with, rather than taking the time to soak it with skin-safe mineral oils to loosen the adhesive first.”

“Possible… Not sure… Encountering and dealing with a group of bipedal predators in your size-league is already a challenge. Enter Takaraya, who has a full 40 centimeters on you, while being a Wolf of all things. Now add his son to the mix, with another 40 centimeters on top and actual claws and shit… When you spend your life being the biggest motherfucker in every possible situation, suddenly being the second shortest is… less than familiar…” Valentin ranted, opening his mental floodgates, thus heavily skewing his formal behavior into a less filtered demeanor.

Kaylie chuckled, then immediately apologized. “Sorry about that. Just… Not used to hearing you swear.” She looked around for a moment, then grabbed a nearby laptop cart, folded the laptop closed and set it on the table, wheeled it over, and sat on top.

“It may not seem like I understand, Valentin, but believe me, I do. If it helps any, I can somewhat skew some of those thoughts. First, Takaraya also has claws, they’re just made of metal and deliberately dulled because his people can’t retract them. Chances are, his son does the same thing to his natural claws, because giving yourself scars while scratching an itch would not be fun. Second… Well, all of us have claws. Just we have no reason to use them because hurting other sentient beings is not something on anyone’s to-do list unless they’re a complete and total psychopath. Now, the height thing, yeah, I get that. Tallest female in the Mechanic’s Academy, right here,” Kaylie said, raising her right hand. “I get signed onboard my twin brother’s ship, and I already knew he was tall. I went from being the tallest to being the smallest overnight.”

Kaylie then circled around to the other major point that Valentin had hit. “Would I be a bad person if I said that the only reason I’m even contemplating meeting with his son was to face my fears? I stared down two Dyre and watched the life fade out of their eyes, dead by my own hand. I’m terrified, Val, that I’m going to hurt Takaraya’s son, but Twin Suns damn it, I’m going to at least look him in the eyes before I say I can’t do it. At least then I’ll have a little closure for that night.”

“All of you have claws and stuff, sure. But none of you are three meter behemoths looking like a wolf. I wouldn’t have a slither of a chance fighting a regular dog if it ever came down to it… Also, i am in even less of a position to deny the guy’s chance to partake, since i am not even part of your team. I have no other choice but to wait and pray for it to not be as bad as i think it’s gonna be…”
Valentin replied, still stretched across the car’s floor pan and door sill, which became increasingly uncomfortable to lay on.

Kaylie sighed, then said, “I’m in the same boat, really.” She shifted her weight on the computer cart, then continued with, “I’m hoping he takes after his father, for the most part. The friendly factor, not the height. Obviously he got the height.”

She sat there for a minute before saying, “I suppose it says a lot about the two of them, really. Takaraya was worrying about asking the two of us if we were okay with his son joining in. His son apparently requested that Takaraya was to ask us about this before he even comes here. Even with all of that, the furthest Takaraya’s pushing it is a video meeting with the guy.”

As she realized how Val was laying half in the car and half out of it, she decided to ask, “Would you like to switch spots and you rest on the cart while I fight with the… Actually, bad idea. Chrome hand. Already found out what 12 volts can do to the chrome, I’m still missing patches of it.”

“For you, the problem mostly is height, though. Imagine you seeing a sentient, bipedal version of what to you is otherwise known as a four-legged predatory animal, especially if what happened last year is your first and to this day only ever contact with said animal,” Valentin countered, now having had enough of talking to the underside of the dashboard as he unfurled himself from the interior of the vehicle.

“Should probably talk to the guy and see what comes of it…” he sighed, now sat next to the car leaning against the B-pillar with the driver door still open.

Kaylie sighed. “Not just height. Granted, that doesn’t help, but… I’m okay around Takaraya because he’s clearly been injured, so the irrational part of my brain says I could outrun the dangerous beast,” Kaylie admitted. She dropped to the floor and sat down so she wasn’t staring down at Valentin, then continued with, “I still see them, you know. The Dyre. One was gray, the other was black, the two I faced on that night.” Her right hand shook slightly as she remembered it, her left resting on the concrete floor, with Kaylie trying her best to keep her emotions together and under her usual complete control.

“I hit the first one with my wrench. I grabbed the second one around the throat with my left hand. I know it was kill-or-be-killed, but… You’d think that… The memory would fade over time, that it would just be… Something you remember, but you can’t see. But despite the wildness and the fury in their eyes, I saw it, you know. That dawning realization that death had found them. That fear,” Kaylie said, in a quiet, haunted tone of voice. “And I can’t look at Takaraya without feeling like… It’s going to sound stupid, but I look at him and I feel like I killed his brother. And I know it wasn’t, that they’re worlds and ages apart.” Kaylie sniffed slightly, trying to hide the tears in her eyes.

“You see them as predators, and I understand that,” Kaylie said, trying to pull herself together again. “I can see them in that way for the same reason, because I faced two fucking werewolves at arm’s length.” She absent-mindedly ran her fingers over the deep, golden scratch carved into the titanium plating on her left arm, trying not to think too hard on how it had happened.

“But you’re right. We ought to talk with him. Worst case scenario, we tell him no. Because if I have to choose between you or him, Val, I’m siding with you,” Kaylie said.

“That didn’t help at all…” Valentin muttered once Kaylie was done with her side of the rant. Yes, he was aware that he had Kaylie in support, but this mostly ended in him feeling even more pressured regarding Kasiya and his participation.

Kaylie nodded. “I’m sorry. I know, I shouldn’t be putting my burdens on your shoulders,” she admitted.

She looked over to Valentin, then said, “I suppose the big thing is, we won’t know what he’s like if we don’t talk to him. Right now, we’re both worrying ourselves sick, and… I hate sounding like Takaraya here, but, we might be doing that for no reason. I mean, We’ve met Takaraya. Even if his son is half as nice as he is, that’s still a lot better than most other people we’ve met. Human and non-human alike.”

“True, i guess…” Valentin said, making a haphazard attempt at being productive again, which went as expected and ended in nothing meaningful being done. In defeat, Valentin left whatever tools and parts he had accumulated in the footwell and closed the drover door once he was out of it.
He got up from the floor and looked around in search for Rukari, the process delayed by the sudden change in orientation causing a mild spell of dizziness.

“Are you okay with me leaving Robert here for today? I really need to get my mind clear of things. I’m not getting anything done at the moment, really…”, he inquired once Rukari was located.

“Of course. Not very big car, also not really in way,” Rukari said. “Need that space,” he added, pointing to the other corner of the garage, diagonally across from Robert, “to tune cars for E85. Not really need dyno room access.”

“Thank you… i’ll head home to think for a while…” Valentin replied before slowly heading out the door, to disappear soon after as the car went down the road and back home.

[Elizipeazie]

October 24, 2022, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, Nevada, 12:15 PM

Kaylie had to admit, for a Monday, it was damned slow. Since they’d opened the doors at 8 AM, they’d had one car to work on, and that had been an easy brake job. With it now just around lunchtime, she had to admit, if today didn’t pick up, she was tempted to just close up early today. Of course, she knew she wouldn’t, too many people relied on the little shop for her to justify closing it, even if business was slow.

She’d even jokingly told Malavera that, “If you could conjure up an accident or two, it’d make our day a bit more productive.”

Malavera’s response had simply been, “I don’t mess with the street lights. That’s just asking for trouble.”

As a result of the lack of business, when Val turned up in his bright orange Dione, the crew were now in the middle of a quick little game of cards with Kaylie, Jayde, Kayden, and Kivenaal all bunched around a small table and Takaraya perched up on one of the arms of a car lift, sitting there as if it were an obnoxious safety-yellow tree branch, waiting for his turn at the table. Malavera, likewise, was even out on the floor, having perched a hammock between the arms of a second car lift and managed to doze off in it.

The game continued for a few minutes more before Jayde managed to empty his hands of cards, ending the short-yet-simple game of Go Fish, though when everyone had counted up their cards, it was Kayden who had the most matches.

“Okay, how did you do that?” Kaylie asked her brother.

“Kiva’s got a bit of a tell when someone calls a card in his hand. I figured it out, and if I was worried I was getting too many cards, I’d just ask Kiva for one of his,” Kayden replied.

“Yeah, remind me never to play poker with you,” Kivenaal quipped. “It’s bad enough losing three games in a row. It’d be worse losing money over it.”

Valentin had parked up across the road at Twin Hearts Racing and went back across for two reasons.
For one, Rukari seemed to not be present at the moment or at least was not to be found by the quick look Valentin took around the place. More importantly, Valentin knew that he was very likely meeting a new ‘friend’ today and he wanted that done sooner rather than later.

As he entered the work area of Twin Suns Towing, he patiently waited for the others to finish their game.
“Hello there.” he said once they packed up the deck, obviously not in the best of moods and most of Shift Happens should be aware as to why.

“Hello!” Jayde responded, giving a light smile.

Kayden asked, “I’m guessing Rukari’s still asleep over there?”

Kaylie nodded. “Hasn’t clocked in yet. Not surprising, either, considering his role as our Agent of Chaos lately.”

Takaraya grimaced. “I was trying to think of a better way to bring up meeting and introducing him, you know.”

“Oh, I’m not blaming you. Rukari’s the one who decided that this needed to be super-high-priority and ruined any chance you might have had to lead us in gently to this,” Kaylie replied.

“I don’t know. Didn’t see him in the work area or near the Dyno room…” Valentin noted regarding Rukari, “Speaking of meeting. When exactly did you plan to have that? Truth be told, it’s been keeping me busy since it was brought up and i’d rather get it done sooner rather than later.”

“Rukari lives there. If you didn’t see him in the work area or near the dyno room, he was probably upstairs in the loft,” Kaylie said.

Takaraya nodded as Val mentioned the meeting, then said, “In theory, we could do that now. I don’t know if he’s immediately available, but if he’s at home, there’s a good chance we’d catch him while he’s awake. Otherwise, we’ll get his AI assistant.”

“Mind if we try to get that going, then?”, he insisted, but faced Kaylie immediately after, “only if you are okay as well, that is…”

Kaylie shrugged, then said, “Meeting this guy across a video screen doesn’t bother me as much. I was worried that we’d be meeting face-to-face instead.”

As the group got up from their places around the card table and headed downstairs to the video room with Val following, Takaraya started making preparations for their meeting with his son, connecting an adapter to his communicator so that he could get screen output to the projector and camera input from the room’s camera.

As the crew settled into various chairs and couches, Takaraya placed the call, the only unusualities being a fast-paced sequence of high-and-low tones announced over the speaker that announced, at least to Takaraya, that the connection was established, encryption was active, and that video and audio services were starting.

On the projection screen, an image of a fairly rustic bedroom/office combination came into view, with light wood paneling, a small window overlooking a lake, three moons clearly visible in the darkening sky. Near the window was a heavy wooden bed, semi-neatly made with the covers not wrinkle-free, but also not just a ball shoved to one side.

A few seconds after the video connection had established, a hologram appeared in the room. “Apologies, Mr. Wintermoon, but your son is currently making dinner. Would you like to leave a message?” the hologram asked, though no one else present in the room could fully understand.

Jayde seemed the most confused, as the language was vaguely familiar to him, in the way that old-English was familiar to modern English speakers.

Takaraya replied, likewise in his native language, “That won’t be necessary, we can wait. Also, if it’s in your database, please select Earth English, Mid-20th Century as your communication language and inform Kasiya that our guests only share that as a common tongue.”

This time, when the hologram spoke, she did so in English. “Very well. Greetings to all of you. I am Layara, Kasiya’s personal AI assistant. Kasiya is currently in the process of making dinner. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Valentin did not do all that much beyond following them downstairs and claiming the first seat that was vaguely to his scale. Once sat there, he anxiously awaited what would happen. The room he saw was oddly familiar and reminded him of his own father’s furnishing tastes.
Soon after, Kasiya’s AI came into view, which did not bother Valentin as much as expected, though the unfamiliar language was a little off-putting.
Her inquiry about if anything needed helping with was met with nervous twiddling of thumbs as Valentin had very little idea of what he was about to face apart from a three meter wolf.

As no one asked any questions, Layara just waited patiently until Kasiya arrived, carrying a bowl of some sort of noodle-and-meat soup in his hands. Dressed in a clearly-homemade light brown shirt, and an equally-homemade set of pants, Kasiya walked over to his desk, set down his soup, then settled himself into the chair, still somewhat oblivious to his guests.

Layara then spoke up, “Kasiya, you have guests, and they have requested the use of mid-20th-century Earth English as a language.”

Kasiya, having just pulled his bowl closer to take a spoonful of the still-hot soup, set his utensils down and casually moved the bowl aside, briefly studying the group. His father was there, alongside three Panthirians, two Tigrilans and one Leoni, one unusual being that, if his history told him the truth, was a Valraadi, but who had twice the number of arms they should have, and a human male.

“Hello there. My name is Kasiya, and, well, I’m the one who insisted on introducing myself to you instead of just showing up. I’ve heard the story of what happened on the last “Shitbox Rally,” and knowing what I do about Crugandr’s history, and what I look like, well… I wasn’t willing to just show up without warning,” Kasiya said, introducing himself in a warm, calm tone of voice, while simultaneously informing them that it was his decision to meet them rather than just showing up.

“While I hope that I would be welcome in the next rally, I fully understand and accept that I may be too similar in appearance to a certain group of creatures that attacked the group, and as such, I can stay home if that is what you would prefer.”

Since nothing of note happened initially, Valentin kept twiddling thumbs for a while until Kasiya showed up on the screen projection on the wall across the room.
Valentin then intensely studied him, though did not dare to say a word and it was blatantly obvious that he was a few lightyears away from his comfort zone.

“Uhmmm… Hii”, Valentin eventually blurts out once Kasiya was done with his introduction and reasoning. In doing so, he awkwardly waved at him, mentally fighting the urge to just book it right there and then.

Kasiya looked toward Valentin on his screen, then gave a light wave in response. His sleeve, being very loose, slid down and proceeded to end up in his soup with a quiet plop.

Kaylie, almost in an instinctive response, gave a quiet chuckle as Kasiya groaned, gave a quiet sigh, then asked, “Do the six of you mind if I change into a shirt with shorter sleeves?”

“Go ahead,” Takaraya said.

Kasiya got up quickly, though immediately regretted that and made two quick, half-staggered steps to his bed to sit back down. “Right, have to remember, no sudden changes in position or I have a bad time,” Kasiya said to himself, though it was loud enough that the others could hear it as well.

Takaraya explained, though he knew at least Valentin had a likely understanding of this, “He’s tall enough that his heart is under a certain amount of strain. If he stands too quickly, the sudden change in blood pressure can make him dizzy. I know he’s wearing his socks, or he wouldn’t have made it to the bed to sit back down for a moment.”

“Much as I hate wearing them, Dad, I hate collapsing more. At least this way, I get to choose what I hit on the way down,” Kasiya replied. “I know, a lower-gravity environment would take a lot of load off of my system, and I really should ask a doctor or three about either surgeries or enhancements to help with this, but… It’s really annoying to go into a hospital where even the beds in the Orthrian ward are 30 centimeters too short.”

Not much changed for Valentin and/ or his demeanor, as he still was very much mentally occupied with preventing his instincts from taking over. On top of this, he now somewhat felt guilty for his stained clothing.
The familiar topic of height-related issues did not break this pattern and Valentin remained very tense and uncomfortable for the time being.

Kasiya got up from his bed and walked just out of sight, taking off his stained shirt and placing it in the hamper to be washed later. He rummaged around in his supply of clothes, then pulled on a fairly plain white shirt with much shorter sleeves. As he returned to his desk, he noticed Val’s odd look, but without any real knowledge on humans, he couldn’t tell what it was about.

He looked over the rest of the group, grabbed a pen and a notebook, then quickly wrote down a few basic notes for himself, before saying, “If any of you have questions, please, feel free to ask them. As it sits right now,” he paused for a moment, setting his pen down on the notebook, “I’d hazard a guess that I probably shouldn’t go on this trip. In the end, I am okay with that possibility. I can probably look up the information online and get reasonable results.”

For Valentin, there still was relatively little devlopment.
Now that he had gotten a very good look at Kasiya, he went to nervously twiddling thumbs while inspecting whatever else was visible in frame, still very much not daring to say anything to him in fear of angering ‘the big beast’.

Kaylie, after a moment of silence, asked in return, “What is your homeworld like?”

Kasiya gave a quiet chuckle, then replied, “Being the fifth planet from our star, it’s not quite as warm as some of the other planets in our system, but it’s comfortable enough. There’s three moons, and though it’s almost impossible to see unless there’s a solar eclipse, we’re in a binary star system, so we have two suns. They’re a very close match in color temperature and overall intensity, but… One still does orbit the other. World-wise, it’s much like any planet that supports life. Cold at the poles, hot at the equator, mix of land and water. Transportation on-world relies heavily on electric trains, but there are roads and people do still drive. With our population, we were somewhat forced to build upward, which, in our local gravity, is not exactly easy.”

After a moment, he wrote something in his notebook, then asked in return, “May I know your names? I’m sure I’ve heard them before from what I’ve been told, but… It would be nice to put faces to names, and voices as well, in case I’m writing something down and don’t exactly see who said something.”

Takaraya explained, “He writes a lot of things down.”

“Historical preservation,” Kasiya quipped. “It’s a bit like I learned the hard way with computers, if it’s not written down and copied somewhere else, it never happened.”

After a few moments of quiet, Kayden mentioned, “Well, you wanted names and voices to go with the faces. I’m Kayden Grayson.”

“Jayde Malradi, formerly of Crugandr.”

Kaylie gave a nervous smile, then mentioned, “Kaylie Malradi. Formerly Grayson.”

Kivenaal gave a half-hearted shrug. “Kivenaal Khakrin-Marinseien,” he said.

Now, Valentin was forced to talk, else risk coming across as rude:
“Valentin Schrant,” he sheepishly answered, somehow expecting the worst in return.
A moment of relative silence and the distinct lack of an apocalypse later, Valentin’s behavior could be best described as ‘having been flipped upside down’ as he was noticeably less tense as before and seemed to not constantly combat his urge to flee.

Kasiya took a moment to write the various names into his notebook, knowing fully that he may have misspelled some names in the process, but for the time being, they were good enough. He then looked a bit puzzled, counted the names and then the people in the room, then commented, “I thought there were two more.”

“Rukari is still asleep,” Kaylie said, checking her phone to confirm that, no, Rukari still hadn’t clocked in.

Kivenaal smirked, then said, “Malavera’s sleeping in a hammock he strung up across a car lift. I’m predicting he’ll be out for half the day.”

Kasiya nodded, taking the time to write down the fact that there were, indeed, two other people in the group, both currently asleep. After he stopped writing, he looked back to the group, then asked again, “Anyone have any questions for me to answer, or any concerns?”

Kayden couldn’t help it, then asked, “What’s it like all the way up there?”

Kasiya sighed. “Can’t say that wasn’t exactly expected,” he admitted, writing Kayden’s question down, then replying, “It’s not particularly easy being three meters tall. You’ve met my father, Takaraya, who stands about as tall as most normal Orthrian Khalans. For anyone who doesn’t know, they’re the ones that look a bit like me or Takaraya, but they have two heads. If “Malavera” is the one I’m thinking of, he’s an Orthrian, just… Much closer to the height of a normal Khalan. My father is almost always dressed in one form or another of military attire because it’s less expensive to order a dozen new combat uniforms than it is for him to order half a dozen outfits in civilian clothing. I’m outside the normal range by enough to require either exceptionally expensive everything, or I make my own.”

“To be honest,” Kayden replied, “I did mean it as a bit of a joke.”

“My “altitude problem” isn’t a joking matter,” Kasiya replied, though his tone was friendly and he clearly had a smirk on his face after saying it.

Jayde, on the other hand, was honestly curious about something. “Were you always going to be this tall, or did it just happen?”

Kasiya, again, wrote down the question, then replied, “If I calculate the difference in solar years correctly, I went from “On track for about 2.5 meters” to a three meter tower in… Three years over there, I believe. Went from “almost graceful” to “nearly clumsy” for quite a while as I adjusted.”

After a moment of waiting for another question, only for it to remain quiet, Kasiya smiled. “Well, I’m sure you’re quite busy over there on Earth. I’ll let you get back to it while I finish my soup. Feel free to contact me any time, my AI will let you know if I can’t be reached. I’ll see you some other time. Watch out for giant spiders, I’ve heard there’s those over there, so please, be careful,” he said, giving a polite wave, letting the others say their goodbyes, and then politely ending the call.

It took a while before Valentin was able to think reasonably straight again once the call was ended.
“I think it will take some more getting used to…” Valentin noted, “Guy ostensibly is a massive Wolf, after all… Like… let’s be real for a minute and i know i am repeating myself. You spend all of adulthood constantly looking down at everyone and suddenly meet a slew of people covered in fur everywhere, most of which taller than you. Now we’re adding another 30 centimeters of height on top, plus the fact that he very much looks like a wolf.”

At this point, Valentin would have hidden his face behind his hairdo, but due to it now being braided, this wasn’t possible.

Kaylie smiled, then admitted, “Oh, he’ll definitely take some getting used to. For me, I think I could manage, because I don’t see any wildness in his eyes. Don’t get me wrong, they’re very much lupine eyes, but…”

Jayde finished her thought with, “You can see there’s someone rational behind them.”

Kayden then mentioned, “Honestly, Val, I kinda understand your point of view. I mean, yeah, I’m a bit taller than you, but… Malavera, Jayde, and Kivenaal were already tall by my standards. Takaraya’s taller than that. Camera’s hiding the scale a bit, but knowing that guy’s taller than his father…” Kayden shook his head lightly. “It’s a little hard to imagine.”

Kivenaal then admitted, “I’m just glad he’s on our side.”

Takaraya laughed. "Technically, he’s on everyone’s side. He hates war and fighting. Common saying of his is, “We should make timelines using the periods of peace, not the times of war.”

“Being average height and meeting a tall guy is in a whole different league compared to you already being a one in 18 Million case i height and THEN meeting half a dozen people taller than you,” Valentin protested, “I get that he’s friendly and likely won’t shred me to bits or anything. Still… i cannot say that i am totally comfortable yet…”

Having said that made Valentin feel like a massive weight has come off of his shoulders. He still was not sure about how well the others would take it, but it still was a massive relief to him.

“Oh, I do understand that,” Kayden said. “Not obviously from personal experience, but during basic training, we had a guy who stood taller than Jayde. Mixed race, Leoni and Tigrilan cross. Do it the right way and you get one tall fucker. He did fine until we had our first meeting with other space-faring races, and we were “lucky” enough to be assigned a ship full of Orthrians for our “first contact” training. He looked shocked to be dealing with beings he had to look up to, and was terrified when he was informed that they cut their local gravity to a third to avoid injuring us on their ship. I think we were also shocked to learn that they,” Kayden said, motioning toward Takaraya as the only Khalan currently present, “are not the tallest fuckers in the galaxy. Granted, tallest bipedal race, unless something else gets discovered.”

Kivenaal smiled, then said, “Completely fine to be uncomfortable. You’re so far outside of your comfort zone by comparison to anyone else.”

Takaraya gave a light nod, then also admitted, “In all fairness, if someone had told me while I was still in Hope Valley that I’d spend most of my recovery on a Death World to get better, I’d find it hard to believe, but so far, I’ve managed.”

“Fair, i guess…” Valentin said in response to about two minutes of rambling about some space-faring races of whatever, most of which went waaay over his head.

“Anyway, i’ll head back over and get the master switches done. Hope i am actually productive this time,” he added, after which he politely nodded to the others and went back up and across the road to work on his project.

By that time, Rukari had finally woken up and clocked in, though it was obvious why he hadn’t bothered doing so earlier, as when Val arrived, he was seen perched in a chair, browsing the web on a laptop with no other cars in the room other than Robert. “Hello, Valentin,” Rukari said, before putting his earbuds back in and returning to watching other mechanics working on their own custom builds, more or less just trying to get some inspiration for a project of his own.

“Good Morning,” Valentin responded, diving beneath the dashboard soon after and resuming his work where it was halted yesterday.
About 45 minutes later, the wiring itself was completed and only needed neatening up.
Before that was done, however, he tested the pair of switches for functionality, checking if they were done up correctly and only operated the boiler and remaining car separate of each other.

In order to not flood the room with unfiltered exhaust gases, he only had the boiler running until is audibly fired it’s burner, at which point it was known that both switches were working as intended.

“Neat. That works,” he mumbled as he dove back underneath to properly mount the switches below the dashboard.
Soon after, the switches were in proper and only needed labeling.
Not wanting to bother anyone, he simply opted to use two strips of painter’s tape and a permanent marker to label the switches “boiler” and “vehicle” respectively.
At last, he cleaned up after himself, storing everything he used where it belonged, ending the process with a resounding thud of the driver door.

As Valentin slammed the driver’s door of the steam car, Rukari paused the video he was watching, removed one of his earbuds, then turned to Val. “You need something?” he asked.

“No, thanks. I’m done with the new switches. We can do further testing now, but one of the things i want to know very much requires a full tank of gas and distilled water…” Valentin replied, “Not sure where one could source about 60 Liters of distilled water for a complete refill of it. For fuel, anything liquid and flammable works, pretty much.”

Rukari thought for a bit, then asked, “Would water from reverse osmosis filter work good enough? If it do, I call Takaraya and we use RV filter to get water.”

Valentin in turn pulled out his phone, semi-frantically googling something on there.
“Uhm. Traditionally distilled water is the better bet, it seems. I really don’t want to have to sent in that boiler for scale removal…” he noted, pocketing the phone again.

“Ah, no problem. Just give moment, please,” Rukari said, opening another tab, selecting a website out of his bookmarks, searching the site for distilled water, and then calling up a calculator. “You say you need 60 liters, yes? Then I order 16 gallons, as you need 15.9 gallons of water.”

“The feedwater tank holds about 54 liters, if i recall correctly. Robert currently has a little more than half a tank in there. Better have a little more than run out quickly, especially when i’d like to see how well the condensers are holding up,” Valentin explained before he went over to the workbench and picked up a few personal items he stored there prior to having started work today.

“In any case, we’ll have to wait until that is here and also probably fetch some pump gas as well. Thank you for doing the order. Unless i’m needed, i’ll probably head home again.” he added.

“Not a problem. I’ll place order, let Kaylie know that I did so. We can pay for it, or we can make bill for you, your choice,” Rukari said. “As for fuel, also not problem. Not easy to order, but can put car on flatbed and bring to gas station. Will see you next time,” he added.

“I’ll pay for that. See you whenever it’s here, then,” Valentin said as he walked out and across the road to see if someone over there needed his immediate attention.
As this was not the case, he headed home for the day, rolling off the lot in his rental car.

[Elizipeazie]

October 25, 2022, Vegas Outskirts, Nevada, 2:14:27 AM

---

Nova watched as her automated machinery finished putting the last few pieces together on Valentin’s new watch. While far slower than the fabrication lab up on her ship, the auto-crafter was still, as far as the Humans were concerned, “highly advanced tech.” She made a note for Kayden to bring the finished watch with him to work that morning, then set a timer to notify her at a more appropriate time to call Valentin.

---

7:30:01 AM

---

Nova rapidly dialed Valentin’s number, a stream of tones flying so fast the antiquated phone network could barely keep up. She’d had to learn that the network ran at a more… human pace, something further proven by the long pauses in the “ringing” tone. Finally, someone answered at the other end, and Nova decided to just cut to the chase.

“Hello, Valentin. This is Nova, I’m letting you know that your watch is ready and that Kayden has been instructed to bring it up to Twin Suns Towing for your final approval.”

It was expected to be a quiet morning for Valentin as he got out of bed and did remarkably little on top of his usual morning routine. Not having planned to visit TST that day due to his order of distilled water still being in transit. As such, he went to business, like checking E-Mails, chipping away at his university project, among other things.
When his phone went off, he picked up quickly:

“Schrant?”, he inquired before Nova fired away with her info about the watch.

“Huh… didn’t expect to be driving out today, but i can drop by,” he replied afterwards, as he already went about closing windows and programs before shutting down his laptop.

“I will let the others know, then, that you are on the way,” Nova replied.

“Alright, goodbye.” Valentin said before hanging up himself.

With her duties complete, Nova returned to her other tasks, leaving the others to follow her notes for the day.

---

Twin Suns Towing and Garage, Nevada, around 9 AM

---

Kayden carried the small box with him into their video-conferencing room, waiting for Valentin’s arrival. Kaylie was watching for the arrival of Valentin, more specifically, the tell-tale bright orange of his rented Anhultz, while the others worked on a couple of cars. Takaraya had been given the challenge of dealing with brakes on a minivan, complete with rotors rusted onto the hubs, a challenge which he was managing well at handling with carefully applied pressure and patience, compared to the usual methods of heating the rotor with a torch and beating on it with various hammers.

Sure enough, Kaylie saw the bright orange car arriving, and when Val stepped out, Kaylie mentioned, “Kayden’s in the video room with your watch. He wanted a place away from the noise. Guess he figured that rusted-up brakes were going to be loud, but, Takaraya’s got it covered.”

“Right… Video room, thanks.” Valentin said as he passed Kaylie, resorting to a nod for a greeting as Kaylie spoke before Valentin had the chance to greet her verbally.
He briskly made his way out back and down the stairs, entering the video room shortly after.

“Hello there. Got a call about the watch and now i’m here.” Valentin said as he walked in, with everything seemingly normal for the time being.

Kayden smiled, then pulled out the small box. “Nova somewhat stalled her own progress by running two tasks at once,” Kayden admitted. “While she was assembling the watch, she also manufactured the custom wooden box it comes in,” he added.

“Hey, it’s a nice watch, it deserved better than some flimsy plastic case or a paper bag,” Nova quipped. “It’s not every day you get to make something like this.”

Kayden handed it to Val, then said, “Should be exactly what you ordered. Stainless steel, brushed finish, segmented links.”

“I made a small change during manufacturing. You won’t see it from the outside, but… It’s IP68 compliant. Also, the box itself contains the inductive charger, so when you’re done wearing it for the day, just put it back in the case and it’ll recharge. Our battery technology is a little better than yours, so I was able to give you 8 hours “full active” screen on time, 16 hours “Displaying time and communicating” time, and almost 24 hours “off-wrist” time. It’s only considered “full active” if you’re actually making changes to your nanites or using the watch as a smart-watch. If it’s listening to wireless devices, well, that’s in the 16 hour category. Real-world-simulation says you should get about 12.7 hours out of the watch battery before recharging is required,” Nova mentioned.

Kayden smiled, then pulled out the small box. “Nova somewhat stalled her own progress by running two tasks at once,” Kayden admitted. “While she was assembling the watch, she also manufactured the custom wooden box it comes in,” he added.

“Hey, it’s a nice watch, it deserved better than some flimsy plastic case or a paper bag,” Nova quipped. “It’s not every day you get to make something like this.”

Kayden handed it to Val, then said, “Should be exactly what you ordered. Stainless steel, brushed finish, segmented links.”
Valentin took a good look at the finished product, but did not reach for the box or it’s contents yet.
With the runtime explanation ongoing, Valentin’s face screamed skeptisicm.

“Truth be told, that doesn’t sound like ‘better battery technology’… I don’t know how much power is needed to interface with the nanites and such, but i can buy a smartwatch that has three weeks of life before needing charging for at most two hours. It’s expensive, but readily available. 13 hours doesn’t cover a full day of me being awake.” Valentin mentioned, in reference to his sleep cycle having him awake for pretty much exactly 16 hours.

Nova materialized in her holographic form, looked between Val and the watch, then face-palmed. “I see that I have made an error, then. I traded runtime for fast charging. The ultracapacitor in that watch charges to full in 30 seconds, but… I will start work on a Mark 2 immediately using Lithium Battery technology. My apologies,” Nova admitted.

“Sounds like a waste of materials to me, but i won’t stop you,” Valentin commented before grabbing the box and looking inside.
As expected, it looked more like a bracelet than a watch, with segmented stainless steel pieces, four of which were fused together and contained the screen. On the inside, each segment was padded with silicone strips. Also within the box was what looked like a charge pad of sorts and a slip of paper.
What followed was normal practice for any new device, which to Val was the following:

• Find a place where one could set up the device. This ended up being a random chair within the room.
• Unbox the entire thing.
• Skim through whatever paperwork was provided. In this case, it only was a quick-start guide.
• Set up the device as instructed in the guide and go from there.

The process went on substantially smoother than Valentin expected and he soon found himself looking at a minimalist, vertically aligned digital watch interface with the hour and minute “hands” to tell time, an icon splitting AM from PM time and a colon between the two numbers for the second “hand”.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had to redo a project,” Nova admitted. “First time I’ve been commissioned and screwed up, but far from a first time making something incorrectly.”

Kayden chuckled. “She had to redo Kaylie’s watch band twice. First band was too small. Second was the right size, but she hated the color. Third one, she got it right.”

“I’ve been tempted to help Jayde out with a basic time-piece, but I’d have to get some specialized materials in for that. From my research, if it’s not a smart-watch, most watches are either stainless steel, silver, or gold. Kaylie mentioned that he’s not one for gold, it’s just a bit too bold for his tastes, but I don’t see him as someone who would go for stainless steel,” Nova admitted.

Kayden sighed. “Don’t make anything silver for Jayde. He’s got a mild allergy to it, it irritates his skin. Kaylie found that out while looking for rings. You want to make something fancy for Jayde, make the chassis out of titanium.”

“Never heard of a silver allergy before…” Valentin mumbled as he fiddles his way through the setup guide, which eventually called for him to put the watch on.
What was immediately obvious to both Valentin and Kayden is that the strap ended up a wee bit tighter than what was ideal.

“Did you work off of me right after hospital release by any chance?” Valentin jokingly remarked as he worked the watch on his wrist in an attempt to get it to sit comfortably.
“I expected it to be tight, but not tight.”

“My apologies,” Nova said. “I will adjust the sizing for the second revision. I failed to account for the lack of fur in the dimensions.”

Kayden chuckled. “Jayde’s a little unusual, but according to him, well… He’s always had that allergy. Silver is uncommon enough that he’s able to avoid it, but his personal aversion to gold means you’ll pretty much never see him wearing any form of jewelry. Kaylie had a hard time convincing him on a wedding ring, and only got him to agree if they had matching titanium rings.”

"The discomfort makes the lack of battery life bearable

The interface of the watch changed a little, with it now displaying heart rate and oxygen saturation as well, thus compressing the time to the top to make room on the display at the bottom. A color coded bar appeared on the right edge of the screen, starting at the top corner in red and transitioning through yellow and green to blue at the bottom.

By that point, the initial setup was done and Valentin near-immediately went into the settings menu to dig around in there. Most of them were harmless, related to how the touchscreen behaved, visual customization, display settings and such, but soon things got weird as he approached the bottom end of the list where it specifically targeted the nanites and how the watch interfaces with them.

For a moment, he just blankly stares at the screen in the “general settings” of the “nanites” sub-menu.
“It feels weird…” he mumbles.
“I feel like i am digging around in my own BIOS at the moment…”

Nova laughed. “I’ve heard that one a lot from soldiers who just got paired up with nanites and a shiny new AI. You’ll be glad to know there’s no settings in there that can hurt you. Make you uncomfortable, sure, but you’re not going to end up stuck in a boot loop.”

Kayden smirked, then said, “Take my advice on this one: Don’t engage a high-level enhanced or kick in Adaptive mode on a full stomach until you’ve gotten damn comfortable with how they make you feel. I learned that the hard way, lost a perfectly good lunch because going from Normal to Adaptive on my first day was a bit more than I bargained for. It won’t hurt you, but… I’d recommend starting slow with small changes.”

Nova added in, “To use your computer analogy, think of it like overclocking. You don’t fire up a brand new computer and immediately gun it for 5 GHz. You take it up a little at a time, find out if it’s stable, and go from there. A small boost with Enhanced can make you feel better after a workout, from what I’ve heard, for example. Wouldn’t be able to tell you personally, I’m paired to this guy,” Nova added, motioning to Kayden, “who does his workouts in full Adaptive mode.”

“Might sound stupid, since you are not me, but… how do i find out if i am ‘stable’ at whatever changes this allows me to make?” Valentin said, as of yet completely oblivious that the watch grants him intricate control on which bodily functions to alter to what extent. He only made it as far as the interface settings, which allow him to customize if and how the nanite functionality is displayed on the watch.

Kayden pulled out Nova’s handheld, then opened up a similar settings panel and sat next to Valentin in one of the other chairs. “Nova, please translate to English for the duration,” Kayden instructed. Once things were readable on his display, he opened up his Enhanced mode and said, “Mine may say things a little differently, and if you used my settings as they are, you’d probably throw up, so just use this as a visual aid. However, in your menu for each supported mode, there’s a gear for settings. Tap on that, it’ll bring up the main slider which lets you turn everything up or down at once. If you want a little more control,” Kayden tapped on the drop-down arrow next to the slider, opening up a range of setting sliders under group headings, with further drop-downs under those groups with individual sliders, “you can fine-tune a mode to your preferences.”

He leaned back in his seat, then said, “To find out if you’re stable, you work from the small end of the slider and go about your day. If there’s no discomfort, you can handle that setting. Your body will tell you if you’re pushing too hard. Still, it’s best to start at the bottom and work upward. You’ll acclimate to the settings, by the way, so your current highest “stable” won’t be your highest in another month. Think of it… Like training for a long ride.” Kayden took a deep breath, then continued, “At first, you can’t get a fourth of the distance and you feel like hell when you get back home. A few months of riding later, you’re able to get further and feel better, and then when the day comes for that ride, you can do it. I know you understand this, but, the nanites and your body are the same way inside. When you turn the settings up, you’re making your body work harder just like it would on a long bike ride, or hitting the weights in the gym. So, to know if you’re set “stable” at any particular setting, keep an eye out for signs of discomfort. If you feel hot or sweaty, or you’re breathing overly heavy for just resting, you’re probably turned up too high.”

Nova then added in, “If you want the equivalent of automatic overclocking within safe margins, use Adaptive mode, set the sensitivity low, and give it about 5%. That’s, by the way, 5% above Normal mode’s default. Alternatively, just remember that there’s always the option to tap three times on the screen quickly to reset to Normal mode with default settings, in case you ever feel like you over-did something. You do that, it’ll mark the bars in red at the point you were at for future reference.”

Valentin followed along with Kayden, but immediately lost track of him once he saw an absolute mass of sliders and text boxes unfold.
He slowly scrolls through the list, reading every single entry along with the labels for each slider extreme.
Once at the bottom, he made sure to reset the sliders to their default values - twice, for good measure - before backing out of the advanced screen.

“So i’m training my body, my mind and these nanites now. That will probably be HELL to coordinate and keep track of.” Valentin muttered, thinking intensely about how he could make use of both aspects without compromising each other.

Kayden chuckled. “Yes, it is hell. Mind, body, nanites, and spirit, the four things a warrior must be trained on before they’re ready for battle. Takes us about two years to train a warrior. About 3 of your years. If you have to let something slide, the nanites are the safe bet. Even in their normal mode, they will help with recovery to a degree,” Kayden mentioned.

Nova spoke up with a calm voice, “Think of it this way: Many people leave their nanites alone where we’re from. A handful have controls for theirs. I’ve got my smarter half working on a little decryption project for a friend, because he’d really like to turn down the settings on his.”

“How many AI units are working on that?” Kayden inquired, “And what are their designations?”

“Nova Prime, Class 7 ship AI for Polar Star. Hunter, Class 10 ship AI for Forsaken Sky. Layara, Class 6 AI Assistant for Kasiya Wintermoon, specially trained in code-breaking. Nova, Class 3M AI Assistant for Kayden Grayson. Currently four active AI units,” Nova replied.

“Wow, wasted no time getting the new guy’s AI involved. Hasn’t even arrived here and you’ve got her helping,” Kayden said.

“I mentioned we had a problem, she volunteered 85% of her spare CPU cycles, and her code-breaking software suite,” Nova answered.

“One could possibly get some added power out of them… or myself… The first few percent of overclocking are fairly safe, right? At least they are in computing.” Valentin mumbled while fiddling around with the visual aspect of the Nanite controls.

He settles on having the watch face occupy the top two thirds of the screen, followed by the nanite mode indicator bar below it. At the bottom edge, it displays just heart rate, as oxygen saturation didn’t seem all that useful to him.
With that done, he tentatively tries the two buttons assigned to switch modes, being wise enough to switch between ‘Passive’ and ‘Normal’ in fear of ‘Advanced’ making him feel like dogshit immediately.

“I think that’s the setup done… obviously need to figure out how far i can and am willing to push myself. But it seems to be working?” Valentin then said as he carefully sorted the ancillaries back into the box again.

“Well,” Nova said, “the biggest thing with overclocking is heat. That goes for both computers and bodies. I know Kayden pretty much runs at 30% continuous, and I can tell you honestly, his cooling system is nowhere near as good as yours. I know Kivenaal is dramatically different, but he’s in Adaptive mode and has to put up with potentially going straight to 100% at any given moment. And keep in mind, that guy has fur rated for -50 C. His winter pelt is worse for cooling.”

Kayden chuckled. “Enhanced is usually a safe bet. Adaptive, on default settings, can be okay, but I don’t recommend it for beginners. That variable consumption and assistance is a bitch to work around.”

Nova then spoke up with, “Kaylie traditionally runs at 20%, which she’s limited to. We’re working on that problem as well, trying to lock out Combat mode while giving her the ability to use Enhanced and Adaptive.”

Takaraya wandered downstairs and lightly knocked on the closed video room door. “Just letting you know, my son just got back to me and let me know he’s on his way,” Takaraya said, honoring their privacy by not opening the door. “Says that he should arrive at 1 in the morning, he’s bringing a friend long enough to get two vehicles here, and that friend is making his way home afterward, not staying.”

Kayden looked to Valentin, before turning to the door and asking, “Did he consider where he planned to rest until sunrise?”

“Kivenaal volunteered to meet him here. Don’t really know the plan after that,” Takaraya asked.

“Well i’m certainly asleep at 1AM, so there’s that.” Valentin replied as he picked up the box and it’s contents. Immediately afterwards, he set the box back down, placing the freshly set-up watch within it as well. Despite inly having worn it for half an hour or so, his wrist certainly took note of it’s presence when looking at it.

“Yeah that was on there good,” he comments as the lid goes back on.

Nova studied the impressions on Val’s wrist, then mentioned, “It’ll take me two days, but I can fabricate a new watch band and convert the watch from an ultracapacitor to a lithium battery, if you’d prefer that instead of a whole new model. I’ll make a backup of your settings just in case and reapply it when I’m finished, so it’ll be just as you have it now.”

“Beats wasting time, money and resources on a full unit if i am not going to wear the original.” Valentin remarked as he handed the box over to Kayden.

“I’ll take it that i’ll drop by tomorrow again for the range test or is there something else that needs sorting out now that i am here?” he added as he already made his way toward the door somewhat.

Kayden nodded. “Tomorrow for the range test. Rukari cleared his schedule. As for matters here, well… We’d mentioned the idea of the camp lights at the 24 hours of Clunkers, but… I think it’s a reasonable time to at least figure out what we need for supporting hardware. Somewhat to set the design in stone, if you know what I mean. As it stands, I only know you have a 400 volt three-phase output in the car, I don’t know the frequency or what standard we’d be expected to use. You get us a set of standards to work from, we’ll carry our end of the lighting logistics.”

“Right. For easy availability of components back home in Sweden… well… the EU, my team and I have settled on using the German standards of electricity transmission. As such, you have three phase power at 400 Volts or single phase at 230 Volts, both alternating current and at 50hz. The exact specifics on how many teams we will support with how much power each is not yet set. We have a suitable inverter already, but circuit breakers are a challenge.” Valentin explained before pausing as he pulled out his phone, dabbling on it for a bit before returning it to the pocket.

“Hopes are that the fuel economy is at least half-decent. Otherwise we’re refueling in the middle of the night or bringing a tanker trailer along with Regina,” he added.

“Okay, so we’re dealing with EU specifications and wiring. I think we can work with that. I feel sorry for the company we’re going to have to deal with to order a whole mess of 230 volt lighting kit from and have then ship it over to the US. That, and I’m sure we’ll have to figure something out for the RV,” Kayden admitted. “Granted, not a problem, we were at least loosely expecting EU specs.”

When Valentin mentioned Regina, Kayden looked a bit confused. “Regina?” he asked.

Nova, likewise, spoke up with, “I’ve searched all records of conversations we’ve had, and there are no matches for the search term “Regina.” Context of a “tanker trailer” suggests a form of high-rail converted truck?”

“Robert is made to fit me as a driver, with the bucket seat, extended steering column and all that. Regina is a sister vehicle currently under construction meant for the average person to drive, featuring a stock interior, barring the ECU arrangement and the laptop mounted to the dash,” Valentin then explained, “Work has just started, and some features on Robert will not be present with Regina due to concerns with NVH, but the general idea is the same.”

Kayden nodded. “Twin vehicles, to certain extents of twins. Robert and Regina. Wasn’t expecting twins, but fair enough.”

Nova studied the information she already had, plus the new information, then added in, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but Kivenaal has been in negotiations with the local railroad where we’re going to be, and he’s trying to get an operations manual, like you had the last time. If you couple those two vehicles together at either end of the train, and figured out how to control one from the other, you’d have one hell of an interesting layout.”

“Truth be told, i’ve been preparing for the eventuality already. I don’t know how bad the roads will be this time around, but Robert the first was vastly more comfortable even on the branch lines there compared to any road they had. I haven’t gotten the ball rolling yet because there’s no point in wasting money on a system you will not use, but the conversion should be more proper this time around,” Valentin replied, his mind already out there thinking about how exactly the train would be formed and how the conversion process would work.

“From Kivenaal’s initial reports,” Nova said, “most of the roads appear to be on par with 1930’s America. Paved, if a bit primitively. Not exactly well maintained, though.”

Kayden, on the other hand, added in, “Why not do as we did with the Bricksley in the last one? Swap out the wheels. Cordless electric impact tools can remove lug-nuts these days, and while it’s a hell of a job swapping wheels around, well… We saw the effort used to crank up and down the high-rail system on the previous version of Robert.”

“Sometimes the “stupid simple” solution isn’t stupid,” Nova remarked.

“Possible. With two cars and two trailers we are looking at 32 wheel changes per day, though. And that is not including unplanned transfers to and from rails,” Valentin countered, already flinching at the thought of having to lift the 32 tires up and away to wherever they would be stored.

“Still, changing wheels the good old way is the best bet i have without going overly complicated with more motors and the separately mounted rail wheels and such…”

Kayden nodded. “I’m sure with that in mind, someone will find a solution,” Kayden said. “There’s probably an answer staring us right in the face and we just don’t know it yet.”

Nova shrugged. “I don’t know the solution, personally. Maybe history has some answers?”

“Well i’d need to know what exactly i am building for. In any case, i can kick the can regarding the camp power plant so Robert can provide power. I’ll figure something out for the wheels eventually. If not, regular old wheel changes it is…” Valentin said, clearly intent on at least streamlining the process so as to not spend hours going to and from rails.

Nova looked to Valentin, then said, “If you make a list of railroading requirements, I’ll see to it that Kivenaal gets the information. That way, he can get you the required information.”

Kayden gave a light nod, then said, “We’ll get to work ordering some lights. Any particular preferred European plug style for the 230 volt lighting?”

“Hold on a minute…” Valentin said as he one again went on his phone in search of information on plug used.

“Uhm… We can do 400 Volt CEE plugs with the red cap, or type C and F european plugs for 230 Volts,” he said, holding up his phone displaying the three mentioned plugs.

“That works. We’ll probably need a 230 volt hook-up for the lighting, and it’d probably be wise to have a second cable, just the 400 volt hook-up for our own equipment. That way, if someone accidentally trips the breaker, we don’t knock out the camp lights,” Kayden said.

“We can figure that out once the power plant actually works and we approach the paperwork surrounding it. In any case, i’ll be back tomorrow for the range test, then.” Valentin said, smiling, as he went out the door and back up towards his car.

Kayden wandered back upstairs as well, watching as Valentin left in his rental car and headed back toward home for the time being. He looked to Kaylie, then said, “Nova’s got to make a few changes, so I’m going to head home, give her a head-start on that.”

“Go ahead. It’s so busy here right now,” Kaylie quipped, motioning to several empty repair bays and an idling tow-truck in the lot.

[Elizipeazie]

October 26, 2022, the Shitbox Rally Starting Area, Nevada, 1:40 AM

---

Takaraya and Kivenaal stood just outside the old wooden shed, doors thrown wide open, accepting the arrival of two large trucks. Takaraya recognized the design immediately, a Khalan-designed Heavy-Duty Ground-Vehicle, or HD-GV for short. These particular trucks were 10 wheeled, all wheel drive, had two front steering axles, and by the sound of the engine note, had the 16-cylinder engines onboard.

Kivenaal stared at the black, orange, and pale-blue truck as it rolled into the old camp. Behind it was a second vehicle, similar in chassis configuration, but instead of a tarp covering, it more closely resembled a bus or RV.

The two trucks stopped, the engines went quiet, and from the cab of the RV, a brown-furred Khalan stepped out. Without a word, he went to the back of the truck, retrieved a motorcycle, and immediately headed back into the glowing blue portal, the doors closing behind him as the glow faded out.

Kasiya sat behind the wheel of his Carry All, the tarp-covered truck, feeling quite nervous now that he was here on Earth. Of course, he’d known it was a Death World before he agreed to this little historical mission, but he hadn’t realized it was the highest category. His father and, presumably, a four-armed friend of his, were waiting to lead him to their base of operations. Before he could really react, his father started the RV, and the four-armed being climbed up into Kasiya’s cab.

“Hello! I’m Kivenaal,” the being said, holding out a hand to shake. Kasiya did so, a little hesitantly at first.

“Kasiya. But I believe you probably already knew that.”

“Well, we’re going to shelter you tonight in the video room of the garage. We’ll figure out better living quarters for you later,” Kivenaal admitted.

The two vehicles rumbled their way down the dirt path and all the way back to the garage, where they were parked up in the front lot for the time being.

---

Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 7 AM

---

Kaylie sighed as she saw two huge trucks parked just outside in the customer parking lot. “I hope like hell they aren’t thinking we can work on those, they’ll break the lifts,” Kaylie muttered, moments before another truck arrived.

“I have a delivery for a Kaylie Malradi,” the driver called out.

“You’re speaking with her,” Kaylie replied.

“Just sign here, we’ll unload the pallet.”

Kaylie signed the paperwork, watching as they unloaded a pallet of distilled water from the truck and stacked it up just in front of one of the work-bay doors. After they put their forklift back on the truck, the truck driver left, and Kaylie pulled out her phone, sending Valentin a quick text message.

“Hey, Val, your shipment of water just arrived. Come in when you’re ready. Oh, and the front parking lot is a little cramped. Someone put two giant trucks in it.”

She opened the door and walked inside, heading for her office. As she opened the office door and headed toward her desk with her phone in hand, she walked into what certainly felt like a solid wall, stumbling back with a grunt.

“Hello, Kasiya,” Kaylie said. “Was wondering when I’d bump into you.”

Kasiya chuckled, then admitted, “Somehow, I don’t believe you meant it literally.”

“True. I’m Kaylie. My husband, Jayde, should be here shortly, followed by Kayden, my brother. They’re car-pooling together today. Rukari just clocked in across the street, Kivenaal just clocked in at the back door, Malavera will be here around 9, if his pattern holds, and your father should be here in about 30 minutes.”

Kasiya gave a light nod, then mentioned, “Sorry about the couch.”

“Broke the legs off of the old gray one?” Kaylie asked.

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“Because I sawed through them halfway. It was supposed to be a prank on my brother, but I forgot about it when it didn’t work. Sorry,” Kaylie said.

“It’s not a problem. I just assumed it was because I’m heavy, and exceeded the weight limits of the couch,” Kasiya admitted.

“Well, in a little while, Valentin is going to be coming here. He’s human, so, try to be nice.”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem. I’m not messing with anyone who has the ability to turn me into a pile of radioactive ash,” Kasiya said.

Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 8:44 AM

Once again the familiar, bright orange car approached the parking lot. Due to two unfamiliar, massive trucks being parked in the main parking lot, Valentin elected to instead park the rental car on the Twin Hearts Racing parking lot.
He exited the vehicle and went across the road, carefully eyeing the two massive buses? trucks? vehicles? parked in the middle of the lot with zero regard for efficient space usage.

“And i thought Robert was gonna be an oddball in the event…” Valentin mumbled as he headed back again and into the work area in search for Rukari to start the range-testing.

Rukari looked over as he heard the door open, then said, “Morning to you, Valentin.”

A few minutes later, Takaraya arrived with the water pallet on a standard pallet jack, dragging it behind him as if it weighed nothing thanks to the wheels and relatively-smooth road, parking lots, and floors.

“Sorry, it was in the shade, but they’ve spent the last 45 minutes getting hit by the sun,” Takaraya admitted.

“Good Morning. It’s getting boiled soon anyways, so we’re good. Just need 20 gallons or so of fuel now.” Valentin replied,
“Not sure if you store anything liquid and flammable here. I don’t fancy flaming off loads of Mobil 1 full synthetic because of it’s sheer price…”

Rukari smiled. “Have small tank of fuel. Would surprise you how many bring car to tune with no gas in tank.” He got up, then walked just outside the back door of the shop and wheeled a trailer in. “Car will run on biodiesel, or need gasoline?” Rukari inquired. “Don’t much need diesel, most cars I tune use gasoline.”

“Thickest the fuel pump and boiler sprayers will handle is fuel oil used for home heating. Thinner works better, but i was telling the truth about ‘anything flammable’. Still, gasoline it is.” Valentin said.

“Mind getting both out to the back? Might as well refuel it while he’s cold,” he suggested, motioning to whichever direction ‘out’ back was.

Rukari nodded, motioning to Takaraya to wheel the pallet of water out through the rear garage door while he moved the trailer of not-quite-suitable fuel and put it back where he’d gotten it from.

Takaraya walked back in and looked to Valentin before saying, “Water’s out by the car. I unwrapped the pallet for you, but everything’s still sealed. Rukari’s getting a different tank of fuel for you, as you mentioned a preference toward gasoline.”

“Thank you,” Valentin replied as he got to work brimming the water tanks of Robert.
The pallet was wheeled as close as Valentin could get it to the front left fender, after which Valentin went about trying to get the water from within the container into the car.

It took quite a bit of puzzling with the drain tap on the container and whatever Valentin had on hand for water transfer, though eventually the feedwater tank was brimmed to the best of his ability. At the very least, the fuel gauge read “full” and he knew that the boiler only drains below the maximum permissible water level once the feedwater tank is empty.

Rukari eventually came back, pulling another small trailer over, this time labeled with “Regular Unleaded Gasoline - NO SMOKING” clearly written on both sides of the tank.

“Brought fuel. Contains 10 percent ethanol, but can’t easily get no ethanol in gas. Not many tuned cars run regular gas, use all you want,” Rukari said.

“If i recall correctly, what currently is in there is 95 RON E10 unleaded, but octane rating does not matter and energy density is about the same, so i can run the cheap stuff with zero penalty to performance.” Valentin commented, grinning almost ear-to-ear as he went about refueling the gas tank of Robert.

The process was far less involved than the water refill, courtesy of the fuel trailer featuring it’s own, albeit slow, pump to fill the car with.

Afterwards, both tanks were moved a safe distance away from the car.

“So my plan was this. I steam the car and we get it set up on the Dyno. I’d like to do three runs. One at whatever lowest temperature your room can be cooled to, the second at 18 degrees Celsius and the third at whatever highest temperature you can get. We’d run the car at full tilt until either the boiler shuts itself off via not having sufficient water, it’s burner goes dry or something on the Dyno overheats, i guess. For the former case, the boiler has an automatic shutoff to prevent damage to the water tubes,” Valentin explained, opening the driver door of the car and letting himself fall into the deep bucket seat.

Rukari nodded, though did say, “Will be good test of climate control system. Never had permission for “cold as possible” before.”

Takaraya looked at Valentin’s current clothing, then told Rukari, “Make sure to get him a coat.”

Rukari gave a light nod, then wandered into the shop and upstairs to his loft apartment, returning later with a heavy, purple-dyed fur cloak. “To keep warm in cold, if needed,” Rukari said, opening the passenger-side door and setting the cloak on the front seat. “I will go turn temperature all the way down.”

With a smile, Rukari configured the air conditioning in the dyno room for maximum performance cooling, the fans on the roof suddenly picking up to a full roar as two of the three units, each capable of controlling the whole building’s climate needs, were suddenly put into service to cool one room as low as it would go.

Valentin meanwhile reached under the dash to light the boiler, which in just over a minute had enough pressure available for Valentin to move the car out of it’s spot.
Soon after, he was led into the Dyno room by Rukari, dumping most of the work the rooftop units did into the air surrounding the building.
Still, Robert was set up on the rollers and strapped down just like a week prior when they fixed the annoying input lag issue.

“I’ll kill the boiler for the time being to stay closer to full load. Tell me when you get to 4 degree Celsius so that we’re not freezing up the pipework,” Valentin ordered as he reached faar forward towards the comms button to the operator panel.

Rukari nodded, then grabbed a couple of radios and walked into the dyno room. “So you can keep window up in cold,” he said, handing Valentin one of the radios, “and air conditioning in during heat.” He then fitted the custom exhaust boxes onto the Dione just so they were ready, then headed back out of the room to keep an eye on the temperature as it steadily counted down.

After what felt like an eternity, but was certainly not that long, Rukari clicked on his radio. “Just hit 5 degree Celsius. Start it now,” Rukari called out, watching as the decimal point slowly counted down. After about a minute and a half, he keyed the radio again. “Four degree,” Rukari called out. He’d already set the dyno up to approximate the needed road conditions, just flipping the switch to “active” so it was ready to go.

“Four degrees centigrade. Boiler live.” Valentin replied as he reached below the dashboard to re-enable the boiler. He also se his climate control solution to provide full heating, which on top of keeping him comfy also added some load to the engine, which helped in keeping the water cycle moving.

The waiting continued as the room kept getting colder and colder, to the point of frost and ice being visible on various parts of the vehicle.
For the time being, all seemed well as the interior remained reasonably comfortable until the room went past -25°C as called out by Rukari.

The inside of the car went cold. Really cold. And quickly so, as evident by Valentin practically scrambling to get the coat on.
“I think my heater went bust. Car’s getting really cold all of a sudden.” Valentin spoke into the handle while also turning the AC fans off in an attempt to stall the cooling of the vehicle interior for a bit.

“Abort test? Or raise temperature?” Rukari called out over the radio. Even as it was, he looked to the thermostat on the wall and walked over to it, figuring Val would ask for a higher temperature to maintain the integrity of his sub-zero test.

“Yeah . Go back on the temperature, please. Negative 18 degrees Celsius has to do. Don’t want to run on the bleeding edge of what my AC can deal with…” Valentin replied. It was obvious that he didn’t like the cold at all, but he still had hope that the heater would resume working if the temperature went back a bit closer to zero again.

Rukari did as instructed and the room quickly went to the desired temperature.

An attempt at restarting proved successful and the interior returned to at least bearable levels reasonably quickly, soon after being considered comfortable as well.

“Heater won’t go below negative 20-odd degrees. I’ll start the test then,” Valentin said over the radio, stomping the throttle soon after while running a stopwatch on his phone next to it to see how long the tank goes.

“Good to know it was not heater failure,” Rukari said. As soon as the whine of the dyno picked up in pitch, Rukari started a timer and calmly paced behind the console, ready at any time to either adjust the temperature or go throw the outer door open.

Nothing of note happened for a little more than an hour later until the fuel tank was empty.

“One hour, sixteen minutes.”
Valentin proclaimed from within as he copied the result into a note on his phone.

“I knew he was gonna chug hard on fuel, but i kind of expected a little more runtime…”
he mumbled, not to be heard by Rukari as he wasn’t transmitting this.
“Room to positive 18 degrees centigrade, please. Now we wait until he’s hold, get him off somehow and refuel. No need for water, the condensers did well in keeping it in,” he added, returning to typing on his phone to document the results.

Rukari nodded, then set the temperature to 18 degrees for Valentin, before hitting the button to open the garage door. The motor, a little reluctant to kick in with such cold temperatures around it, gave a mighty clunk, pulled the door up about a foot, and promptly stalled. Rukari’s response was a mild look of exasperation, followed by walking into the still-cold room, grabbing the chain by the door, and hauling it up the hard way. Not long after, he returned to his position at the control console, casually warming his hands on the back of the monitor.

“Room will warm quicker with door open. Also need door open to get car outside for fueling,” Rukari replied over the radio.

Valentin remained in the car and sat the proocess out, using his own AC to ensure that he wouldn’t freeze while doing so.
Rukari opening the door manually did not phase him as much as one might expect, seeing that all of them had more physical might than Val could ever dream to have and a thick coat of fur helped with keeping warm.

Eventually, Valentin stepped out of the vehicle:
“I am not authorized to touch anything on the dyno, so i’ll just go fetch the fuel cart. That way, we do not have to roll it all the way across the lot,” Valentin said as he went outside to wheel the fuel cart over to the garage door.

Rukari nodded, then got to work unstrapping the car from the dyno so he could figure out a way to get it off of there. After a few minutes of puzzling it out, he called over Takaraya and asked, “Mind helping move car?”

“I can give it a push once Val’s back in it,” Takaraya said. “Let me find a set of gloves, pad out my hands a bit. I’d hate to scratch the paint.” He wandered around long enough to find a pair of very large welding gloves, then pulled them on and waited for Valentin to return to the car.

Valentin returned to the car within a minute or two of him leaving and took a seat again.

“Alright, i’m ready,” Valentin said.
It was agreed that Takaraya is to push from the passenger side B-pillar to avoid breaking things and the car was given a good shove thereafter. Following the initial push off the rollers, the remainder required practically no effort at all as the car rolled down the dyno ramp and out the garage door.

Once outside, the refueling was an easy task and the car was moved back into the Dyno room under it’s own power, straining the fuel pump and boiler spark as Valentin had ran the tank totally flat.

Eventually, Robert was ready for the second test:
“Range test at 18 degrees centigrade starting in three, two, one…”

Much like before, Rukari kept an eye on the temperature, seeing it holding steady at 18 degrees, and started his own timer as Val gave a countdown. With the whine steadily picking up, he glanced at a handful of the numbers, mostly just getting an idea of how quickly Robert was capable of going in a perfectly straight line, assuming aerodynamics weren’t a concern.

Takaraya, this time, stood with Rukari, trying to make sense of the flood of gray lines on the graph and pretty much understanding none of it.

“One hour, twenty-one minutes,” Valentin said eventually, now that the second fuel tank was completely dried up.

Afterwards, the refueling process was repeated, though apparently some water made it’s way out of the water loop as the associated tanks were not brimmed anymore, which somewhat extended the time needed.
With the second refuel done, the car was moved back in.
“Last run. Time for some mild sauna-ing in here,” Valentin said as he settled in for the wait.

Once the room went past 42°C as called out by Rukari, the custom AC solution once again did not want to cooperate anymore. Though instead of altering the test to accommodate it, Valentin elected to simply keep going as planned, keeping in mind that he had a far easier time dealing with heat and also some layers to shed if absolutely necessary.

As the temperature passed 40C, Rukari became increasingly more concerned for Valentin’s safety. While he could have gone in during the cold cycle to retrieve Valentin safely, should everything have gone wrong, he knew he couldn’t go in there now. Sure, he’d be okay for a little while, but any physical activity would certainly put him in danger. Thankfully, it didn’t get much hotter, settling in at an unpleasantly-hot 46C.

Rukari figured it was wise to give Valentin the heads up. “If something go wrong in there at this heat, I can’t go in there,” Rukari called out over the radio.

Takaraya looked at the temperature gauge and made a quick calculation in his head. “Just under 320. Rukari, hand me the radio, please,” Takaraya said.

After Rukari had handed over the radio, Takaraya said, “I can go in there, but I’m limited to about 15 minutes in that heat. About 20 if I don’t mind seeing Kayden afterward.”

Valentin quickly did resort to shedding layers, followed by rolling the driver window down to exploit the rush of air coming off of the fans ahead of the vehicle.
Still, the test started as planned as Valentin once again welded the gas pedal to the floor.
The heat also was evidently getting to Robert as well, as sizeable plumes of steam came out of a little vent line sticking out of the bonnet.

“Yeah the condensers are de-facto useless now… this ain’t gonna last for long…” Valentin called out, being proven right less than 20 minutes after by a relay clicking in the back, killing the fuel supply and thus steam generation.

“We’re done here… Sixteen minutes and twenty-two seconds…” Valentin said, thereby ending the range testing for the day.

As the last range test concluded, Rukari hit the button to open the door and simultaneously set the temperature back to match the rest of the work area, which was to say “set to off” as the outside temperatures were comfortable to Rukari, to a limited degree.

Unlike in the “arctic simulation,” the door did pull up on its own, getting a look of relief from Rukari as he wouldn’t have to either run in there and risk overheating, or send in Takaraya and hope he’d be okay, just to haul the door open again.

A few minutes later, Rukari looked over as he heard the front door open, followed by a clunk and a pained groan.

Kasiya shook his head and grimaced. “Sorry. Hit my head on the light,” he said.

Takaraya looked over to his son with a light smile. “Good to see you out and about. We’ve just been doing a bit of automotive stress-testing on Valentin’s project car.”

Kasiya almost immediately looked nervous as Valentin was mentioned. “He’s here?” Kasiya asked.

“Just over there, waiting for the room, and the car, to cool down,” Takaraya admitted. “I wouldn’t advise going in there, it’s still quite hot.”

Rukari, on the other hand, got on the radio and informed Valentin, “Look like Kasiya is as nervous about you as you are of him.”

Takaraya, in response, glared at Rukari and shook his head. “He’s never met a human before.”

“Not met anyone who lives on a death-world before, to be honest,” Kasiya grumbled. “Seriously, I came over here to use Rukari’s bathroom because there’s some horrible creature in the bathroom over there.”

Kaylie’s shriek could be heard from across the street. A few moments later, Kivenaal barged in through the open garage door in the dyno room and he tried to flatten himself up against the wall. “Oh, Kaylie’s not happy about that one,” Kivenaal said, only realizing Val was still in the car after he said it. “Hello, Valentin. Sorry, just hiding out in here because Kaylie’s not particularly happy that I left my lunch in the bathroom.”

Not much happened in the Dyno room immediately afterwards as everything, including Valentin, cooled off in there.
He also didn’t notice much of the commotion in the control room due to the coolant fans in front of Robert still spinning at full speed, thus drowing out the noise coming from elsewhere.

That was, until Rukari announced Kasiya’s presence over the radio, prompting Valentin to look around in search for him.
“So this is what everyone feels like looking up at me…” Valentin muttered once he got a semi-clean view of Kasiya, just to be interrupted by Kivenaal in front of him, hiding from Kaylie.

“Uhm… hi?”, he said, not sure about what Kivenaal actually said, since the fans were still running.

Kivenaal looked to make sure the coast was clear, then approached Valentin and said, “Sorry, kinda hiding from Kaylie. Left my lunch on the bathroom sink and apparently scared the hell out of her.”

Kasiya, on the other hand, got a glimpse through the window of Val’s scarred-up right arm, courtesy of his road-rash, and decided that going in the room to meet Valentin could almost certainly wait. “Rukari, where is the restroom in here?” he asked.

“Next door over,” Rukari said. He watched as Kasiya ducked through the doorway and headed for the toilet, then returned to watching the temperatures fall.

Once Kasiya had gone to the bathroom and washed his hands, he walked back out of the small room and wandered back into the control room, watching as Kivenaal saw something and walked back outside the dyno room, clearly hiding from someone.

Just about the time Kasiya was starting to get his nerves under control, Kaylie arrived, holding the plate with Kivenaal’s lunch on it and walking into the control room. “Any of you seen Kivenaal?” Kaylie asked. She then looked over as Kasiya tried to get away from the rather-large scorpion on the plate, tripped over a chair, and gone backwards into the wall in a less-than-graceful tumble. “Sorry, Kasiya. They freak me out, too,” Kaylie said.

“Kivenaal thinks he’s clever,” Takaraya said, “but he’s hiding in and around the dyno room.”

Kaylie sighed, opened the inner garage door, and grimaced at the heat still in the room. “Kivenaal!” she yelled, “Come out now. This isn’t funny.”

Kivenaal looked around from just outside the outer garage door and chuckled. “Scare you a bit with that?” he asked.

“How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t care if you eat scorpions or snakes, I don’t want to see it!? Worse, what do you think would have happened if Kasiya saw this? He’s a nervous wreck as it is. I walked into the control room looking for you and he nearly took out half the room trying to get away from this.”

“Uhm… okay?” Valentin mumbled, still uncertain as to what Kivenaal was doing here.

Just like before, anything happening in the control room went unnoticed due to acoustics, until Kaylie stood in front of him in the Dyno room, clearly angry about the plate she was holding.

“Hello there. Mind discussing that without shouting my eardrums to pieces?” Valentin inquired from between Kivenaal and Kaylie, who had been arguing about dietary habits and how to deal with them.

Kaylie gave Valentin a chrome thumbs-up, then stalked outside to continue giving Kivenaal an earful about putting his scorpion for lunch in the middle of the bathroom sink.

Kasiya walked out of the control room after a last glance toward Val, then headed out of Twin Hearts Racing and over to one of his two trucks parked in the Twin Suns Towing parking lot. He chose the Carry All, climbed into the seat long enough to turn the key on and hit the engine start button, then got back out, opened the rear cab door, and settled into the rear bench to use the onboard computer to take notes. So far, he didn’t know much about the crew he’d be working with, but he knew at least enough to make some initial notes about each of them.

Kivenaal Khakrin-Marinseien: Seemingly eats anything, including creatures straight out of a nightmare. Might be a better death-worlder than the natives here.

Kaylie Malradi: Tries to be helpful, generally kind. Possibly absent-minded, as she brought the monster from the bathroom into another small room with me. Apologized afterward.

He then made a third note in his file, for those not-necessarily part of the crew, but that he might be working around.

Valentin Schrant: One of the “human” natives of this planet. Seemed to have no issues sitting in a room that was exceptionally hot mere minutes ago. Has some scarring on his right arm, possibly from a fight with something. Didn’t seem to flinch when Kaylie brought the monster into the same room as him.

Kasiya saved his notes, sat back in the truck, and sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. He knew he needed to meet with Valentin, but trying to make himself sit in the same room as a native death-worlder who clearly fought off some great beast with little more than a bit of scarring, that had him concerned.

Back at the dyno room, Valentin got out of the car and went over to the control room, almost soaking wet due to the recent sauna session. At least he had the decency to get a layer of clothing back on before doing so.
“Yeah that’s gonna be it for today. I know that my AC unit is less than ideal and that i should probably see if i can get a unit with a wider temperature range. Fuel economy is dogshit by distance and worse by runtime… We’ll need a lot of fuel if the generator is to be kept running through the night…” Valentin said, whipping out his phone to do some quick calculations.

“We’re looking at… Uhm… about 142 gallons of fuel for one night of 10 hours,” Valentin specified.

Rukari gave a light nod. “Expected that efficiency might be low. Likely still better than everyone bringing noisy generator, though.”

Takaraya did a bit of quick figuring and replied, “So, a little less than 540 liters. That’s a lot of fuel, but… From what I know about power stations, the effective efficiency goes up the more people use it. As Rukari said, one central power-generation-unit is probably better than ten or twenty portable gasoline generators. Yours burns fuel more completely and much more cleanly, after all. And, if we consider acoustic performance, Robert is way less obnoxious than a scattering of generators in various different states of maintenance. If all of them are brand-new, off-the-shelf fuel-injected 5-kilowatt units, it wouldn’t be so bad, but we know there’d be some teams who’d drag out whatever old unit they find in their garage, complete with carburetor, two-stroke engine, and no muffler, pull-start that in the night, and keep everyone awake.”

“Efficiency comes with scale, that is true. And listening to this…” Valentin said, pausing to push the door open, already having forgotten that Robert was silent due to being ran out of fuel.
“Yeah nevermind… Listening to a bunch of explosions for 10 hours is almost certainly going to be worse than Robert. Especially if every team has their own internal combustion going. Anyway, mind helping me get the car back out and into storage?”

Takaraya gave a nod, then pulled the heavy welding gloves back on, again braced against the passenger-side B-pillar to help push the car back outside, this time providing the needed effort to also get it parked up for refueling.

“As you said, no matter what the case is, we’ve heard this thing run. It’s a lot better than every random team running generators, or worse, full engines just to keep some stuff charged up,” Takaraya said. “I mean, the HD-GVs are quiet, but I hear one of them idling over there,” he added, motioning in the direction of the Twin Suns Towing parking lot.

“You and your cat ears, dog ears and what have you…” he mumbled as he went outside and collected what he left in the car during testing.

“I will probably head home for the time being, since i am done for the day. Don’t wanna be in your way any more than necessary.” Valentin said once he returned, slowly and awkwardly making his way out towards his rental. It was fairly obvious that he had a reason for his departure, which coincidentally was on the other side of the road at the moment.

Kasiya looked out of the bullet resistant windshield as Val got into his rental car, watching as he packed everything in, got behind the wheel, and headed on out. Once he was certain that Val wouldn’t be returning soon, Kasiya popped the door open, changed from the rear of the cab to the front long enough to shut the engine down and retrieve his key, then bailed out and closed the door.

Takaraya sighed as he saw Kasiya’s deliberate delay. Tomorrow, he’d have to get involved, because whether it was Valentin’s fear of Kasiya, or Kasiya’s fear of Valentin, it was clear the two wouldn’t normally meet and settle this once and for all.

[Elizipeazie]

October 27th, 2022, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 9:04 AM

For another day, Valentin and his familiar vehicle rolled onto the parking lot, which now was missing the two massive trucks parked there yesterday. His arrival was technically unannounced, but he knew that the second iteration of his watch was due for delivery today.
“Looks like parking them in the middle of the driveway was not so smart after all…” Valentin mumbled as he himself pulled into one of the parking spots in front of the building.

He got out of the car, locked it and went inside, approaching whoever was not looking to be immediately busy.
That someone ended up being Kayden:
“Good morning. Hope i am not disturbing you all at work. Nova said something about needing two days to alter the watch two days ago. Now i am here.” Valentin said, getting to the point quickly to avoid extended small-talk about less-than-relevant things.

“Good morning to you as well. No, you’re not disturbing us, I’m just watching Jayde fight with a brake drum anyway,” Kayden admitted, motioning to the rusty gray-and-white shitbox perched up on a lift, where Jayde was currently applying plenty of heat with a blow-torch to the sticky brake drum in between rounds with the hammer. Sure enough, this time, the drum came free after what had amounted to 30 minutes of “persuasion.”

Nova spoke up, “Well, it is finished, the backup was loaded, so it should still be set up how you configured it the last time.”

Kayden wiped his hands clean on a shop towel, then removed the box from a pocket in his work overalls, handing it to Valentin. “By the way, I’ve heard Takaraya would like to speak with you downstairs. Don’t know what about, just passing that on.”

Valentin took the box and went over to the nearest convenient surface to place it on.
“Thank you. Let’s see if it fits this time around,” he said, retrieving the watch from within the box and putting it on.
It ended up to still be a little tight, but not to the point of being uncomfortable to wear.
After that, he went through it’s menus and settings to verify the backup, which at least did not have anything out of place far enough to e immediately noticed.
“Seems alright from what i can tell. Time to head downstairs, then…” Valentin remarked, already having a bad feeling about what Takaraya had to discuss.

Nevertheless, he went downstairs as instructed.

“Good morning, Valentin,” Takaraya said, meeting Valentin outside the video-room door. “Sorry to bring you all the way down here, but…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then continued with, “A while ago, someone wise once told me that “a fear not faced will remain a fear.” I’ve seen both you and Kasiya avoiding each other. I can’t tell whether it’s fear at your end, but I can tell with my son that it is fear from him. Normally, I’d just let this be, let things go as they would normally happen, but he’s here to learn from the humans here on Earth, and he can’t do that if he’s scared of all of them. I don’t know what he’s heard, and he’s not telling me any of it. Closest I got to an answer yesterday was, “You’re a soldier, you wouldn’t understand,” and that was it.”

Valentin’s feeling turned out to be true. He was in fact called down there to meet Kasiya, which obviously was not to his liking, given his height and eerie similarity to a bipedal Dyre. Though he also felt outplayed by having his own quote used against him.
“Any lawyer tells you keep quiet because the opposing party will leverage this against you. This is why,” Valentin countered in a second bout of infinite wisdom before returning to reality.

“Shall we get started, then?” he asked, not granting Takaraya the time to answer properly as he knocked against the video room door, entering as soon as permission was given from either Takaraya or Kasiya.

Once inside, Valentin could not stop himself from scanning the giant Wolf-lookalike from top to bottom while retaining an amount of distance which felt ‘safe’ and staying close to the door in case he ‘really needed to pee’.

Takaraya chuckled. “Amusingly enough, I’ve heard something like that before,” he said, as Valentin provided a bit more wisdom.

Kasiya responded almost instantly as Valentin opened the door, his gaze passing rapidly around the room as if to find an exit.

Takaraya looked to Valentin, then to Kasiya, and sighed. “It’s hard to know which one of you is more worried,” Takaraya said. As Kasiya got up and tried to open the small window letting a little light in, Takaraya rolled his eyes, then said to Valentin, “Let’s see how long it takes before he realizes he won’t fit through that.”

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Kasiya had the window open, and had promptly figured out it wouldn’t be large enough to squeeze out through. He’d figured this out almost the hard way, having shoved his head through and then jammed both shoulders into the small window frame. Takaraya helped extract his son from the window, leading him back to a couch and saying, “Kasiya, I’ve talked to Valentin up close without any signs of aggression. He will not hurt you.”

Kasiya sighed, then said something in his native language, and Takaraya nodded. Takaraya looked to Valentin, then said, “Kasiya’s asked if you could please move away from the door? Pick a chair or a couch, you can stay close to it, but he’s requesting that you not block the only exit path he has.”

Without a word, Valentin simply watched Kasiya make an almost humorous attempt at fleeing through the basement window, which had him mentally confused, even if the vast majority of his feelings still consisted of latent worry about being torn to bits.

Eventually, Kasiya seemed to concede that his frame would not fit, which led to a request to not block the only way out.

“Should have chosen a different locale…” Valentin mumbled quietly as he slowly shuffled over to q semi-random seat, only taking his eyes off Kasiya for a short moment to avoid plonking himself down next to the armchair he chose.

“Wasn’t my choice to make,” Kasiya replied to Val’s quiet mumble. He settled onto the couch as best as he could, though he was still quite tense.

Takaraya gave a light sigh, then said, “I know this much about both of you. I know Valentin is generally peaceful, and when he must fight battles, it’s with words and not fists. I know Kasiya hates fighting in general, and as I’ve said before, tends to be on everyone’s side because he despises war. I think the two of you can find some common ground, but I know you can’t do that if you won’t even entertain the thought of talking with each other.”

For a long moment, there was a period of silence, broken when Kasiya asked, “If Valentin doesn’t fight, how did he get the scars on his arm?”

“Slid a good 45 meters across a rural asphalt road,” Valentin quickly replied, leaving Kasiya in the dark as to what exactly happened. He also didn’t dare mention that this was by no means the only area affected by it.

Kasiya looked over at Val, his amber eyes glancing over the sleeve covering the marks he knew were there. “45 meters… That’s not a small distance. For that kind of damage, you had to be traveling at quite the rate of speed. I thought it was the aftermath of an animal attack,” Kasiya admitted.

Valentin wondered why Kasiya’s thoughs went “animal attack” despite the (known) scarring not having any signs of animal involvement.
“If you consider a large van an animal, then i guess it counts? At least the driver is judging by how absolutely retarded that guy was…” Valentin commented semi-jokingly, which didn’t help his mood as it added the accident to the mental strain already present.

Kasiya looked over at Valentin, trying to make sense of the expression he had on his face, though his lack of knowledge on human body language meant that he wasn’t quite able to do that.

Takaraya, however, gave a light grimace and realized things were getting into potentially dangerous territory with bad memories on either side. Before he could come up with a safer topic to steer the conversation away from road accidents, however, Kasiya managed on his own.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “You know… Being of average size? My information on Earth says that the males are typically 208 centimeters tall. Well… They gave the measurements in the local “feet and inches,” but a conversion to normal units was also available.”

Kasiya’s info about average height and the inquiry that came with it really threw Valentin off. It took a while before Valentin could conjure an answer that he felt didn’t come across as rude:
“Somebody needs to correct your source material, it seems. In my home country, i am mathematically the tallest person out of 18 million people. Sweden has 10 million inhabitants. The average Swede is closer to 18-something. Not sure about the data elsewhere, but i can say that the world was not built for people my height…”

Kasiya seemed a bit surprised by this, then grabbed a notebook out of a pouch at his side, unclipped the attached pen, and scribbled down a few notes. “Sorry, just… As you said, someone will have to correct that source material,” he admitted. Once he’d made the notes, he then added, “I can sympathize with you on the height, though. Ducking through doorways, avoiding low-hanging lights, expensive clothing. It’s not an enjoyable experience, being the tallest, mathematically or otherwise.”

The room went back to an awkward silence as Valentin failed to keep the conversation going. To him, it was a task of impossibility to have small-talk with what ostensibly was a horse-sized wolf.
“At least now i have a vague idea about what it must be like to look up to someone. Every single person i have ever met is substantially shorter than i am. Now… you…” Valentin eventually blurts out in an attempt to at least have something to contribute.

Kasiya nodded. “I can imagine that would be a deeply unsettling experience,” he admitted. “I know it would unsettle me if I had to deal with someone who had nearly a meter of height over me.” He waited a bit, trying to think of any possible and reasonable questions to ask, things where he might be able to learn something about Valentin without digging too personally.

After a while, he settled on, “If I may ask, what hobbies do you have? I’d imagine your height causes some difficulties in what you can do. I know it did for me.”

“Cycling, for the most part. Time is somewhat limited since i have to fit that in between part-time work at my fathers company and the university stuff with my research project car. Also i am just getting back to it since nobody will win against the impatient motorist… Apart from that, i have dabbled in loads of other topics over the years from all kinds of different areas.” Valentin explained, relaxing somewhat with the current topic being less immediately threatening.
“How… about you?”

Kasiya gave a polite nod, having anticipated the question. “Currently, my hobby and my job align. I’m a bit of an amateur archaeologist, and I have an interest in preserving history, and keeping facts accurate. I also learned to do a little fencing on the side, despite my dislike of combat. Before that, however… I’ve tried a lot of things. Most of which I had to give up once I became this size. I used to like climbing. Had a climbing wall in the local gym I used to frequent, had gotten all the way up to the expert level. Then I put on a meter over the course of three of your years, backed off to the intermediate wall to try again. Got a bad grip, figured I could just crawl through it, and learned the physics of my new frame the hard way. Used to be, if I had an imperfect grip, I could usually trust I could hold long enough to get a higher grip with my other hand. I let go with my right and my left couldn’t hold my higher weight. Went down hard, broke both shins on impact and my left arm from trying to catch my backwards fall after that. Spent a while in a couple of casts dealing with a bed 30 centimeters too short in the Orthrian ward. Tried cycling. Knew how to do it from my younger days, figured it was just a matter of getting a big enough frame.”

Takaraya chuckled. “I relented, got him a bike ordered to his measurements. Cost the equivalent of $11,000 over here.”

Kasiya sighed. “I rode the hell out of it for two days, spent the next week pushing myself around the house in the office chair. Somehow, I get the feeling they just grabbed the largest Orthrian frame and hoped for the best. Spent that week making models, but while I enjoyed the assembly and details, these hands are just too damn big for small, plastic models. Bigger ones aren’t much better, you still deal with tiny details. End result, I spent the better part of 3 of your years in a… Not very pleasant state of mind. That’s when he,” Kasiya said, pointing over his shoulder to Takaraya, “decided I should try fencing. I thought it was a bad idea because I don’t like combat until I realized there’s no real risk of injury. You duel to a touch. The “weapons” are little more than a metal whip antenna with a ball on the end. You’re so padded up that half the time, you never feel it, you’re just alerted by the buzzer. He found something that I could do, where my size helped as much as it hindered me. I’m a big target, but I have a fairly long reach.”

“I figured at the time, it was probably the least offensive of the fighting arts he could learn. I was running out of options, so, I gambled on pushing him outside of his comfort zone,” Takaraya admitted. “Getting him into any new hobby is expensive, as everyone in this room knows all-too-well. And, no, he doesn’t get rid of things from failed hobbies.”

“It’s part of my history,” Kasiya admitted. “The climbing gloves and bicycle just remind me that I have tried those and had to set them aside.”

“For the record, as I know Valentin knows bicycles well, I was able to ride the one made for Kasiya once I lowered the seat. I think he’s right, they sent him one with the largest frame they made instead of actually considering his size,” Takaraya added. “I was glad when he decided that archaeology and computers were two things he wanted to get into. Both of those seem to care very little about his size.”

Valentin tried to listen and soak up whatever information stuck to him, but given the tsunami of words that engulfed him, not much of it did.

“At least you found something that works for you. Interestingly, my bicycle only is about 5000 dollars stock. Granted, it’s not ‘custom’-fabricated, but actually a low-volume series production frame. Admittedly, i went on a parts buying spree, which is why my specific one is more like 14 grand, but i ‘definitely’ needed the fancy wheels and such.” Valentin remarked, unintentionally going on a tangent about parts and pricing.

“I don’t know how fancy the bike was components-wise, but an 11 grand bicycle that is supposed to be custom made and then doesn’t even remotely fit…” Valentin said, realigning the conversation somewhat while mentally comparing Takaraya to Kasiya in height, “… sounds like a massive dealer cock-up and a return policy case for me…”

Kasiya gave a light nod. “It wouldn’t exactly surprise me. I’ve taken to making most things myself, just because it’s less of a hassle than trying to get refunds out of people because they messed up,” he said. “I hate that so many places hide behind “You’re outside of our usual standards” as an excuse for poor quality. I get it, I’m bigger than I should be, but why is it so hard to make an effort at providing the same quality those of normal height demand on a daily basis? I’m not asking for the moons and stars, I’d just like to be able to place orders for things and not have to deal with a confrontation afterward because my shirts don’t fit, my pants are several centimeters too short, my shoes are half a size too small, or someone built something for me to the wrong size standard.”

“He’s about as non-confrontational as you can get without being a total pacifist,” Takaraya mentioned. “Only reason I can say he’s not a pacifist is because if he absolutely has no other choice, he will fight. But he’ll do everything he can to avoid that, even if I’ve told him that in some cases, fighting is the right option.”

“There is rarely ever a right situation to hurt someone else. Even in the one fight I’ve been in, I didn’t throw the first punch. I may have thrown the last, but… I still don’t feel it was the right choice,” Kasiya said. “Because of me, Radeki has two missing teeth, and that is my fault.”

“Also because of you, Radeki stopped picking on the others at school, too, while you were still there,” Takaraya countered.

“If i go into a restaurant and order something, but get something else, the restaurant and it’s staff failed to provide the service i paid for. Granted, for goods it’s a bit harder, since they are obviously not consumables, but if i need new gloves, i will make sure that the shop staff has all the info they could ever need. If they still fail to provide a suitable product, i will dispute it until it is rectified or take my business somewhere else. Businesses that don’t do diddly-squat for customer retention deserve to fail, simple as that.” Valentin grumbled, crossing his arms at the thought of being betrayed out of five-figure sums due to false advertising.

“Regarding fighting, self-defense is one thing, casually smacking a chair over someone’s head is another… The former is justified, the latter just stupid.” Valentin added.

Takaraya smiled. “I’ve been trying to get Kasiya to see both of those points. Not all confrontation is bad. Sending something back to have it fixed, or to get a refund, is a good confrontation. Fighting back is not the same as starting the fight. Perhaps realizing that even non-soldiers say these same things will help him see that.”

Kasiya sighed. “I still felt awful for doing that,” he admitted.

“Because you’re a good person. You don’t want to hurt people. However, by not confronting people when they do things like this to you, when they give you the wrong products or make something that doesn’t work for you, you’re letting those people know it’s okay to scam people. Your refusal to hurt one person’s feelings means they hurt dozens of people,” Takaraya said. “The only reason we never sent the bike back is because I get some use out of it. Well, I did, at least. Probably still will.”

Kasiya gave a light shrug. “I suppose. I just don’t like dealing with people who are like that.”

“No one does,” Takaraya said.

“Is it wrong to just prefer getting supplies and making things myself?” Kasiya asked. “At least then, if the shirt is too small, I only have myself to blame. Or if the shoes wear out too fast, I know I didn’t make the sole thick enough.”

“You can’t make everything, Kasiya. Clothing, sure, but some things take time and training, and those are the things you should demand to be made right,” Takaraya said.

“He’s right. I would like to try and make some gloves for myself that are not paper-thin or have too-short fingers, but i do not know how any of that works. Nor do i have the time to learn it between existing hobbies, work and university, which is why i pay others to do it. Obviously, a tenner will not do the trick, but suitable investment should yield a satisfactory product.” Valentin added in support of Takaraya’s point, returning his hands to the respective thigh.

Kasiya nodded, then said, “I know how to make gloves, but I wouldn’t consider myself exactly skilled enough to be offering to make a set for someone else.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Takaraya said.

“I’m not. I can manage and I put up with wearing my own mistakes at times, but making some for another person is a bit beyond what I’m comfortable with at this time,” Kasiya countered. “And I don’t follow that old philosophy of “Those that can’t do, teach. Those that can’t teach, administrate.” That’s just how you get a pool of incompetence at the top.”

After a moment, Kasiya then asked, “So, what’s the story behind the vivid orange car you were testing yesterday? I hear you had the room incredibly hot for that test.”

“He talked with Rukari after you left and heard about the temperature ranges,” Takaraya mentioned.

“I mean, a range from 255 degrees to 319 degrees is… Quite the range,” Kasiya said.

Takaraya sighed. “I’m not sure Valentin measures in Kelvin, even though we do, Kasiya,” he said.

“Sorry. That’s, what, about -18 Celsius to 46 Celsius?” Kasiya inquired.

“Ah, Robert the second. That is my ongoing university project to see how well external combustion works in an automotive setting. As it stands, we are at ‘technically viable, but not commercially practical’ and i doubt it will change much from there… Yesterday i was testing fuel consumption and weather resistance. Unsurprisingly, neither are anything to write home about…” Valentin explained, casually sinking into the armchair a bit as he got accustomed to Kasiya and his appearance.
“A sister vehicle is currently under construction since i am the only person to reasonably fit into the car i have here.”

“External combustion? So it’s powered by steam, then?” Kasiya inquired, realizing Valentin’s project crossed into his interests by way of historical methods of propulsion. “I’d assume, given the basic shape of the vehicle and the explicit mention of combustion, that it’s using a conventional boiler system. Knowing a little on the subject, it’s probably a water-tube system, they’re generally safer and more efficient. How did you solve the torque problem? After all, I’m fairly sure most automotive equipment would not like to deal with the instant torque a steam engine can provide.”

“Electric transmission, if you will. Spin a generator to make electricity, in turn driving a pair of motors. Should figure something else out, though, in case a third generation eventually sees the light of day… The system works, but uses more space than i realistically have and also is ridiculously heavy. Other than that, you are right,” Valentin conformed.
“Sometimes, the solution to the future is in the past. Looking at you, city planners…”

Kasiya gave a thoughtful look, then grabbed his notebook and wrote a few things down before he mentioned, “The electric drive, I think, is a good idea.” He thought for a bit, contemplating an idea before continuing, “If space was the critical problem, perhaps the third generation needs a larger vehicle to account for the required hardware? I’m unfamiliar with your kind of ground vehicles, but, I’d think there’s something larger that wouldn’t be unreasonable. As for efficiency… Are you running a reciprocating engine or a turbine?”

“I can only go so far without running into other issues. Granted, i went with that car because it is what i am familiar with. Those cars are everywhere and very well-documented. Reciprocating, currently. A turbine has the exact opposite problem, namely a lack of torque to spin things with if you do not want a massive reduction box between the two,” Valentin countered.
In his mind, a turboshaft engine definitely was the better engine, being more efficient, lighter, easier to maintain and had far fewer moving parts. Though it’s price made it little more than a pipe-dream within the already very expensive project.

Kasiya nodded. “Such is always the case when engineering. You have to work within realistic goals. If that means that there’s an upper limit on car size, boiler designs, or power-transmission methods, then that’s the case. And with steam, there’s always trade-offs. Reciprocating systems have instant torque, but don’t use the steam as efficiently. Turbine systems are very efficient, but don’t have much torque. Trying to combine the two is an exercise in mechanical frustration,” Kasiya said.

After a moment, Kasiya then asked, “Is the goal to prove that steam is viable in cars, or are you trying to make a car that runs on any available fuel?”

“Both. Steam may become viable because it runs on anything liquid. Though with no trunk, the complexity of steam power and a current price tag of about 120 thousand Euros for what ostensibly is an 80s brick with a boiler in the back, this will probably not be a thing…” Valentin countered, still eager to finish the current project, but having little hopes in starting a third one.

Kasiya smiled. “Remember, you are working with what most consider to be ancient technology. I’m assuming the lack of cargo space is because you’re using all of that space to generate steam, yes? I’m assuming you’re trying to match the maximum consumption rate of your engine with it. How much power does it take to maintain highway speed against a reasonable headwind, while going up-hill? Maybe 40 kilowatts? I’d think a smaller boiler and a steam reservoir might be a potentially-viable solution to the space problem, but then again, I haven’t built one of these to prove either way.”

“This was the exact reason why early steam cars eventually lost to internal combustion. The engines had more power than what the boiler could deal with, so they frequently needed to stop to build pressure. In any case, i appreciate the help, but i think we are getting a bit sidetracked. Robert presumably is not the reason why we are down here…” Valentin said, glancing over to Takaraya for confirmation.

Takaraya chuckled. “Getting you two to face your fear of each oher was the main goal. If talking about projects gets the two of you to see eye-to-eye, figuratively speaking, that’s more than fair in my opinion. That you’ve both accepted that the other one means you no harm, and you have some things in common, even from completely different worlds apart, and things to learn from each other, is good enough.”

Kasiya, on the other hand, was writing down a bit of information, actually making a note that, yes, Earth at one point did have steam cars, but internal combustion took over due to being easier to drive. “I think I can see the point on that, then. You’re proving it could be viable, but it has certain caveats. A lack of cargo space, insufficient power when compared to an equivalent internal-combustion engine, more difficulty in driving through having to manage steam consumption. The drawbacks outweigh the benefits, but it’s more of a theoretical point of view. You can drive a car with steam, but you won’t want to.”

He thought for a little bit, then asked, “Are there internal-combustion engines that will run on almost any fuel?”

“Gas turbines,” Valentin quipped back in response.

Kasiya nodded lightly. “Those, quite honestly, are a difficult bitch to work with,” he said. “Slow throttle response, they spin too fast to be reasonable most times, run way too hot to be sensible. Great in a situation where they can run at 80% power and be efficient all day long, not so great for automotive use where they change speed frequently. However… You have a unique idea with the steam-generator driving electric propulsion.”

Kasiya paused for a moment, then asked, “What if your next variation used a small gas-turbine to drive the generator? I’m not sure how much one would cost, admittedly, but… I know some things can be driven that way,” he said, glancing toward his father.

Takaraya chuckled. “Our tanks use a gas-turbine with electric generator and electric drive. It’s not, perhaps, the most efficient, but it works.”

“Your tanks do, ours don’t,” Valentin corrected, glancing at Takaraya before returning to Kasiya.

“Swedish tanks, well… the current German-imported ones use reciprocating diesel engines. The M1 Abrams is known for it’s gas turbine, but with it being the US, they have all the money to splurge on military shenanigans… In an automotive context, it was actually tried and proven reliable about 50 years ago. It still failed due to poor fuel consmption, lengthy starting procedures and price. And that thing was directly driving the wheels, using itself as a clutch. Turbine-Electric power would add even more costs and ruin the weight and space advantage of it.”

Takaraya smirked as Valentin corrected him, then playfully quipped, “Last I checked, my homeworld is still Khalara Five, no matter how long I spend on Sol Three.”

Kasiya, on the other hand, lightly shook his head at his father’s response. Looking back to Val, he then asked, “So, turbine cars have been tried and proven reliable once before, they’re just not efficient enough. It’s sounding a lot like the basic reciprocating internal-combustion-engine is the best option overall. Whether that’s simply because it’s currently the most advanced power-plant you have, or whether it is actually just that good, I’m not entirely sure. I know we still use them. The big trucks you might have seen the other day, they use internal-combustion. They’re… A bit unusual in design, I suppose. Twin-spark, 16 cylinder, very high-displacement. They’re known for running on anything they can spark-ignite, including some fuel oils.”

Takaraya admitted, “They’ll spark-ignite Earth-grade diesel fuel, just not exactly well. Enough to run, but you’re going nowhere fast.”

“Was referring to you as an earthen American, since you have set up a living here…” Valentin grumbled.

“Have fun parking those at the grocery store then. Especially with no title, plate, insurance and such…” Valentin commented regarding the Carry-All trucks Kasiya brought.

They kept on talking for a while about a multitude of things before they exchanged basic contact data.
Afterwards, Valentin made his way home again for the time being.

Takaraya chuckled. “Fair enough, Val. Fair enough.”

Kasiya laughed. “Kaylie mentioned she’s working on it. I’ll have to pass a driving exam and get something called a “CDL,” but she’s confident it’ll all work out.”

---

As Valentin left to go home after a long talk and a brief exchange of contact information, Kasiya admitted, “I could really use a bit of food.”

Takaraya gave a light nod. "Food is probably a good idea. Couple good size steaks on the grill should do nicely, I think.

The two of them headed upstairs, where Kayden asked, “How’d the chat go?”

Takaraya smiled. “I don’t think they’ll exactly be avoiding each other. Keeping out of each other’s way, sure, but not flat-out avoidance like before.”

“Well, that’s a good sign,” Kayden said. “Jayde just finished up the rust-bucket, we’re about to go out back and do a bit of grilling. The two of you up for some food?”

“I could eat, and I know Kasiya’s hungry,” Takaraya admitted.

“Good, because I brought a cooler full of steaks and I was getting worried I’d brought too many,” Kayden said, leading the group outside. As the last one through the door, Kasiya turned off the lights in the shop, meeting the rest of the crew out back for lunch.

[Elizipeazie]

October 30th, 2022, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, 8:56 AM

Today was going to be the day in which Robert would be driven for real the second time. Thanks to ties to a local race track operator and racecraft school, access to the local paved circuit was easy to get a hold of.
As always, the familiar rental rolled up to the lot and soon after they got to work getting themselves Robert for a day (or two) at the track.
Valentin met the locals, namely Kayden, Kaylie and Kivenaal behind the Twin Hearts Racing building, the latter already having brought his truck and trailer for Robert to travel on.

The loading process was nothing to write home about, seeing as a freakishly heavy car was moved onto a rollback tray under it’s own power without much of an issue. Some tools and other equipment were dumped into the bed of his truck and they headed off towards the track with all of three cars and one being trailered.

About half an hour later, they entered the track premises and were assigned a singular stall of pit road to work in. This meant that unloading had to take place elsewhere due to lack of space, which ended up being the remaining paddock parking lot.

Unloading Robert was the same as loading. Luftnevenu Uneventful, but in reverse and they soon found themselves in a pit garage with Robert in the middle.

“Anyone still need to set something up?” Valentin inquired from within the steam car, which was still idling about, “otherwise i’d head out and see what we have. The poodling about at Höljes was not exactly telling with all the unpaved segments.”

“Should be fine,” Kayden said. “We’re just unloading the stuff from Kiva’s truck, we’ll leave space for you.”

Kivenaal chuckled, then said, “Something tells me the unpaved segments weren’t the real issue, it was the turbine-level throttle lag.”

Kaylie smiled. “Nah, I can wait until you’re back here to go have a bit of fun. Couldn’t convince Kayden to ride with me, but I brought my fun car with me.”

“Yeah, no, I know that thing’s a nearly-900 horsepower, twin-turbo, V10 powered monster. I wasn’t getting in there so you could scare me half to death like you did to Rukari,” Kayden quipped.

Rukari laughed. “Is not so bad… When car in straight line. Less fun when Kaylie decide sideways around curve is good idea.”

“Alright then…” Valentin mumbled as he rolled halfway out of the garage, instinctively looking both ways to check for traffic. In doing so, he spots the walkie talkie he used during the range-test a few days earlier.
Grabbing it from the center console, he rolled down his window, asking Rukari if he had the other unit here. To his amazement, it was actually there, which allowed them to directly talk to each other without the need to resort to signals by hand or light.

The Tangerine Tank Engine Gen II rolled out of the pits and onto the track, which featured everything one could want to test vehicle dynamics. From long straights, sweepers and tight hairpins, everything was present. To begin with, Valentin took it very easy, immediately noticing that the suspension was not initially meant to support a 2.4 ton vehicle. A such, the ride was very soft with loads of body roll, which prompted Valentin to return to the garage after only having done a few laps.

“Ever went to Mrs Puff’s boating school? This feels like that. Soft, loads of body roll and zero dampening.” Valentin remarked, only now remembering that he had the radio with him.

Rukari laughed. “Learned to pilot fishing boat long before learn to drive,” he said with a smirk. “You have sport suspension in there?” he asked. “If so, I have adjustment tool.”

Kivenaal looked over at the car, then sighed. “If I’d known we were going to have the car off of the ground, I’d have brought the flatbed. Hydraulically-powered jack. Instead, looks like we get to do this the old way.”

“Robert has fully adjustable suspension, complete with roll bars and geometry things. I only know half of it, but if the current spring load is boaty, i do not want to know what the stock springs would have been like…” Valentin replied, chucking the radio over to the passenger seat and unbuckling his harness.

“We are at a track. It seems somewhat obvious that Robert will be up on stands at some point, but we have to make do with what is present,” Valentin commented, reaching under the dash to kill both master switches. He got out afterwards, thus making way for anyone willing and able to start work.

“You would’ve been on the bump-stops,” Kivenaal responded to Valentin’s mention about what Robert would have been like on stock suspension.

Kayden and Kaylie, meanwhile, worked quickly to get the car up on a handful of jack-stands using the jack they brought as well as a handful of solid stands borrowed from Rukari’s shop. “Normally,” Kayden said, “we’d let you work on it with us, but considering what you’ve been through and the damage done to your body, we’re playing it safe.”

Once the car was up, Kivenaal took over with the impact wrench, both holding the now-airborne tire still and operating the tool to remove lug nuts so they could access the suspension. It was obvious that one quirk he had was in how he stored the lug nuts with the tire removed, as once the tire was laying under the vehicle such that, should the stands fail, the tire would end up taking the car’s weight and keeping it from crashing into the ground, Kivenaal threaded the lug nuts back on the wheel studs, albeit loosely, to keep them where they belonged.

Rukari then grabbed his tool kit and took over, working on one side while Kivenaal removed the other wheels. Knowing the car was handling like a boat, he made a few small adjustments, repeated them on the other side once it was available, and stepped back to let Kivenaal put the wheels on.

Once the wheels were on, and once Robert was back on the ground, Kaylie grabbed the torque wrench and made sure all the lug nuts were properly torqued down.

Rukari mentioned, “Should be little stiffer now. Be careful, could over-steer, so take slow laps until comfortable. If oversteers, can make more adjustments.”

“Noted. Thank you all!” Valentin said as he climbed back into the car, buckled up and headed out.
It quickly became apparent that the sports suspension was paying off, as the car, while still soft due to all the weight, was at least not impersonating a cruise ship crashing through stormy waves anymore.
This time, he kept to the track a bit longer, doing about 15 to 20 minutes of driving before diving back into pit road.

“Certainly no land barge anymore. This still hardly is easy to drive, though… For one, the steering is absolutely devoid of any feedback, but that is my fault for using electrohydraulic assist. But two, he also really want’s to shake his booty side to side. That is, when he isn’t twerking for once…” Valentin explained, his rather cryptic wording probably not helping matters.

Rukari puzzled over Valentin’s phrasing, then said, “I not quite understand what you say, but I did see car try to slide tail wide in corner. I know that is oversteer. Can try tune that out, but could take a few tries to get right.”

Like before, Kayden and Kaylie got Robert up off of the ground, and Kivenaal removed the wheels again, before letting Rukari return to the car to adjust things.

This time, the process was a little more involved as Rukari went around each of the four corners, adjusting spring rates (again), dampening coefficients and roll bar leverage in an attempt to reduce the oversteer tendency.
After about an hour of work, the car was back on it’s wheels again and Valentin went for another stint out on the track.
Carefully, Valentin navigated the track, slowly mustering up the bravery to pick up the pace.
On a sweeping combination transitioning from right to left, the rear end loses grip again.
Faint tire squealing can be heard in the garage, followed shortly after by a radio call:
“Yep. Rear went around. Did not hit anything, but the tires are having a field day now.” Valentin said before inching his way back into the pit lane, luckily not having left the track to begin with.

Rukari grabbed the radio and replied, “Should have made car easier to drive, not harder. Is car not front engine like I thought?”

When Robert returned to the garage, the process started again with the team lifting the car off of the ground and Rukari pacing around the car, trying to think of how to deal with a car that, for whatever reason, seemed to handle like a truck with half-bald tires and a bed full of rocks.

After a while, Rukari experimentally tuned the suspension differently than he usually would, making a guess based on what hadn’t worked that the car might have an unconventional weight distribution. “It want to drive like mid-engine car, I tune like it is mid-engine car,” Rukari grumbled.

This time, as the wheels went back on, Rukari sighed, then said, “If it still oversteer after this, not sure how to fix. Can keep trying, but not sure I make good change to car.”

“I am no expert, but Robert does have a trunk full of boiler and the spare tire well full of traction motors, so there is that.” Valentin commented as Rukari wondered about why the car didn’t behave as expected.
Apart from that, Valentin just waited it out and took another spin once ready.

This time, it felt much more manageable to Valentin, which allowed him to approach normal driving speeds and even make an attempt at ‘spirited driving’ within reason.
Still, the overweight brick was by no means a corner-carving track machine. Regardless, Valentin ran through a good half a tank getting to know how the car felt, now that it wasn’t an immediate risk to him and the equipment to drive it.

Eventually, Valentin returned to the garage.
“It is overweight and has very little roadholding when turning, but at least it does not shove one end into the gravel if you look at it the wrong way. Probably not perfect, especially with the tires he has, but livable,” Valentin commented once inside, disabling the boiler and other electrics once again.

Rukari gave a polite nod. “If tires are not made for sport purpose, then would expect that car not have best grip in corner,” Rukari said.

Kivenaal smiled. “I’m just glad we don’t have to pull the tires off again,” he said, holding a nearly-empty gallon jug of water in one of his hands. “I wasn’t looking forward to another round of the wheels being off.”

Kayden watched as Kivenaal finished off the gallon of water and tossed the bottle back into his truck’s cab, then motioned to him to hold out a hand. Kivenaal reluctantly did so and Kayden seemed alarmed as he pushed the tips of his fingers down to Kivenaal’s skin. “How are you this warm in this weather?” Kayden asked.

“Half a year ago, I’d have said that I’ve always been this way. Now, I know it’s that I’ve got nanites and some ass turned them up all the way,” Kivenaal replied.

Kayden sighed. “We are going to have to find a solution for that. This is dangerous. One warm snap with your winter pelt out and it could put your life in danger.”

“You think I don’t already know that? Why do you think I keep several gallons of water in my truck? It’s not just for drinking,” Kivenaal replied.

“Well i am not to be in your way anymore with helping him and his issues. I am done here for what it is worth,” Valentin replied, now somewhat worried about both Kivenaal and also himself, since unauthorized parties apparently had gotten access to his nanites.

“Time to pack up, then…” he added as he started to collect miscellaneous loose items for sorting into their respective containers.

Kaylie smiled, then looked to Valentin. “Before you finish packing up, Valentin, I have a question to ask. Seeing as you’ve gotten Robert fully tuned in over here, would you like to be in an episode of Kaylie’s Garage? Sometimes, we do special episodes based around a cool vehicle that comes through our shop, or on an unusual car that one of the crew found. Robert’s a mix of both.”

Kayden, on the other hand, noticed the slight look of worry on Val’s face and put all the pieces of the puzzle together. “Val, Kivenaal’s an unusual case. In 600 years of people having nanites, there have only ever been 23 cases where unauthorized access was actually a factor. Every one of those involved a Class 10 AI with decryption algorithms to bypass it. Malavera has a Class 10 AI, and Kasiya has a Class 6 AI with decryption algorithms, and we’re trying to break into Kivenaal’s nanites so he can control them. From what Nova mentioned, Kivenaal’s aren’t the result of someone else’s malicious intent, just that whatever “control device” he was supposed to have was never found when his ship plowed into Alaska. Chances are, he was dosed with them before cryogenic sleep, then woke up with them in a configuration ideal for warming the body rapidly. He’s just never had the chance to turn them down.”

Nova, on the other hand, spoke up with, “Well, Kivenaal will get the chance now. Kayden, please hand him my handheld so we can test this?”

As Kayden handed over Nova to Kivenaal, Nova’s display shifted from displaying Kayden’s heart-rate and O2 saturation to displaying Kivenaal’s heart rate as two separate graphs, plus O2 saturation. “Any choice you want to make, do it now and we’ll get a control AI for you soon enough,” Nova said.

Kivenaal opened the settings panel and, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, was able to select his Enhanced mode, pulling him back down to 35% instead of running right up against the rev-limiter. Nova warned him, “You may feel a bit of fatigue like this, but you’ll adapt.”

“I don’t care, as long as I can get some actual sleep,” Kivenaal replied.

“Of course, we’ll have to work out a control device for you,” Kayden said.

Kivenaal sighed. “I like Val’s watch, it’s stylish, but it’s also very much not my type. That much metal around my fur? No thanks, I’d spend ages dealing with yanked fur around my wrist. Plus, while I’m sure with his hands, that screen is fine, it won’t work for me.”

Nova did the same thing she did for Valentin, creating a wireframe on her screen first, then filling it in with color. She started with one of the alternates Val had as options, stretching it so that the screen resembled a small smartphone from the past, then trialed it with brushed, purple-anodized aluminum as a color, with a simple, if wide, leather watch-band.

“Lose the purple and that might work,” Kivenaal said. Nova tried again, this time with a dark red, almost crimson finish, matching Kivenaal’s stripes, and Kivenaal nodded. “Either that, or black. Kinda hard to go wrong with black. Red might be a little loud,” he admitted.

Kaylie shrugged as the group discussed the breakthrough on Kivenaal’s nanites, then said, “So, any thoughts? Perfectly fine if you don’t want to be on an episode, perfectly fine if you do. We’d use the track here just because, well, it’s safe and legal to drive here.”

“23 out of how many?” Valentin inquired, still uncertain about potential safety issues with how they are controlled.
The answer from Nova about how far more than 250 000 people have nanites made Valentin confident enough to not worry about it further.
He turned to Kaylie:
“Uhm… testing is done and i still have a week until Robert is to be collected for transit back to Sweden. So there is nothing stopping us,” Valentin said rather cautiously.
He wasn’t exactly camera-shy, but he also had very little experience in front of it. As such, filming a video for a moderately successful YouTube channel was uncharted territory for him.

“Well, good news is that I pretty much use the same formula for every project review I do. Introduce myself, then the project car in question. Walk around the outside while discussing what makes it unique, sit on the inside to discuss any unusual features about the inside, step out, meet the owner and get their reasons for why they did this, and then usually I do a lap in the car. But, something tells me that seat doesn’t adjust, so you would do a lap while I talk to you, instead of me doing a lap and talking to you,” Kaylie admitted. “Most of it will be filmed with GoPro style cameras. If Robert was bigger, I’d get Takaraya out here for some perspective shots down at the roofline, but a Dione isn’t exactly big, so while I might still have him involved because he has steady hands, I could use just about anyone as a secondary camera operator.”

Kivenaal yawned quietly, shaking his head as he leaned up against the front bumper of his truck. “She wasn’t fucking kidding about the fatigue,” Kivenaal said, failing to stifle a second yawn.

“Yeah, you’re going to feel like you’re coming down from a 4 year long caffeine-and-sugar high,” Kayden said. “Next few days could be a little rough. You sure you want to keep things at 35% for now?”

“I’m sure. I’ll adjust, I’m just…”

“I know. You’ve been running flat out for so long that it became normal.”

“We shall figure something out for the video. In that case, we can leave everything here and return tomorrow. Now hold on for a minute-please…” Valentin said as he also went to access his nanite-watch to change some settings there. Those with astute eyes might be able to spot Valentin moving his current normal mode to enhanced, displacing it’s settings to adaptive mode. He then resets normal mode to default, after which he switched to enhanced as the currently active mode.

“This will do, i think… do not fancy being physically dependent on them for energy,” Valentin commented, now that he was done with the watch.

Kivenaal chuckled. “No, relying on the nanites for energy really sucks. I know. For the first time in a long while, I can admit, this feels nice out here. I know when I get home, I’m turning off the air conditioner, because I’ll no longer need to keep my room at 16 degrees to feel “comfortable,” I can actually stand a bit of warmth now,” he said, looking to Val.

Kaylie smiled. “Let’s just put everything into this garage, then. We pretty much get this particular bay to ourselves. Only thing we get asked is to have our shit out of here before any races or driving practice is scheduled, and we’re clear for a couple of days.”

“Sure,” Valentin replied as he help clean up the place where he could, being the weakest person present by a wide margin. Still, with two other people helping and a third providing moral support, cleanup was brisk, with most of the loose items being neatly stacked against one wall of the garage.
A fairly run-down Jerry can peaked Valentin’s interest, prompting him to check the fuel level of Robert.
Upon enabling the 12V master and waiting about 35 seconds for it to boot to the dashboard, Valentin discovered that there was more than enough fuel left for any potential distance ran during the video filming of tomorrow.

“Huh okay…” he mumbled as he turned the master switch off again.
“Anyway, meet here tomorrow sometime, then?”

“Sure thing. I’d like to start somewhat early. Mistakes happen while filming, after all, and I’d rather not have to call over to the shop and borrow Kasiya to hold some studio lights up way out of shot so it looks like we still have sunlight,” Kaylie said with a smirk. “And don’t worry, it’s usually me who makes mistakes.”

“Like the time she singed the back of both legs courtesy of that old Model T hot-rod and the side-pipes,” Kayden mentioned.

Kaylie groaned. “That was not the worst one, but it was embarrassing. I’d taken it around the track for nearly an hour before doing the outro, turned to face the camera, and stepped back into the exhaust header. Figured I’d be less likely to do that if I set up on the other side of the car, turned to face the camera, and burned the other leg for my troubles. Did my outro sitting in the driver’s seat and then had Kayden treat the burns.”

“Robert does not have sidepipes to burn yourself on. Even if, anything hot is insulated to the best of my ability for efficiency,” Valentin chuckled, “I guess we are meeting at usual arrival times, then, but directly at the track instead.”

With the formalities of the video-shoot sorted, Valentin prepared himself for the short drive home, courtesy of him and the track being in the same town.

[Elizipeazie]

November 1, 2022, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, the Video Room, 8:30 AM

---

Kaylie smiled as Val settled into an unused chair positioned between her seat on the couch next to Jayde, and her brother, Kayden, in the other chair. They had the full crew down here, with Malavera sitting behind his computer to run the first-viewing of the new Kaylie’s Garage episode, Kivenaal looking tired, but in good spirits, while lounging on a couch next to his brother, Rukari, and then Takaraya and Kasiya sitting on the last couch, pulled further back so no one had to look over their shoulders to see anything.

Malavera waited until everyone had gotten comfortable and the various snacks had been passed around, even though the episode wasn’t going to be that long. He couldn’t help but smirk as Kasiya picked up solitary pieces of popcorn and tried them, seeming a little disappointed as the big wolf could hardly taste it, then looked toward the screen and hit the play button.

OOC Note: Due to limitations in human(-oid) props within the game, any pictures will not feature people in them

“Hello, I’m Kaylie, and welcome back to Kaylie’s Garage!” Kaylie said, standing in the garage from the race track they were at the day before, a hint of bright orange 80’s brick appearing behind her, but not enough to really get a clue as to what it was.

“I know what some of you are thinking. “Kaylie, what’s so exciting about a 1983 Anhultz Dione? We know they’re unkillable already.” Well, this Dione is called Robert. Specifically, Robert the Second. And he’s a little bit different.”

Kaylie moved toward the rear of the vehicle, motioning to where the cargo bay was. “Robert is an experimental steam-powered car. All of this, back here, where you put your groceries normally, is one massive kettle. Now, your countertop kettle, or coffee pot, probably has a 1200 watt element. That’s 1.2 kilowatts. This,” Kaylie said, lightly patting the rear exhaust fan array with her natural hand, “is a 74-and-a-half kilowatt boiler. That’s 62 countertop kettles, all turned up to full power, boiling water to run an engine.”

She walked around the car to the front and motioned to the hood. “That steam is fed to a highly modified Anhultz V6. That V6, instead of tearing gearboxes to pieces considering the potential torque, spins a generator, which drives electric motors to push the car along. Yes, this is the coolest damn hybrid you’ll ever see, and it’s housed in an 80’s bright-orange brick.”

She moved to the driver’s seat, taking a bit of extra time to settle herself into the seat with the door open, then said, “Now, some of you are probably thinking this seating position is a little unusual. Perhaps a bit awkward. Hell, I can’t reach the pedals, and this seat’s as far forward as it goes. There’s a reason for that.” She climbed out, standing next to the car, though the camera stayed focused with just Kaylie in frame. “It’s modified like that, because of this guy. Meet Valentin, the owner and builder of Robert, the steam-powered Dione.”

Valentin walked in from the right side of the screen and stood next to Kaylie. “This guy is over 7 feet tall, and this car was built so he could drive it. But enough from me. Valentin, what made you do all of this? Surely there was a reason.”

Kaylie smirked, then said, “See, told you it wouldn’t be obvious how many times I fell while getting out of that car.”

“There’s still dirt on your pants,” Jayde quipped.

“I’m a mechanic, if I’m not dirty, I’m not working.”

“In short, Robert is a university research project. A team of friends and I are trying to figure out if external combustion - in this case steam power - is a viable alternative to internal combustion,” Valentin explained quickly and with near-immaculate posture, having folded his hands in front of him while doing so.

“What exactly did you do to it? I know it runs on steam and has a V6, but I’d love to hear what went on behind the scenes.”
The Video cuts to a shot to the respective components as Valentin explains:

“Seven feet, three inches,” Valentin corrects, “Without going too deep, I removed most of the stock valvetrain and replaced it with a primitive solenoid system to admit and exhaust steam into and out of the cylinders. They are controlled by a Macrosoft Doorways-based program on a Laptop mounted to the dashboard…”

“…which also acts as the gauge cluster. Obviously, i do not fit into the stock interior, so some changes had to be made there as well.”
Valentin left it at that for the time being, thinking that Kaylie was referring to the engine only.

Kaylie nodded. "So, the electric drive part of it, was that just because of the torque output? And I’ve heard from Kiva, the only one in our crew who understands steam, that this engine is a “double-expansion” system, but whenever I asked about how it worked, he always told me, “Go ask Valentin.”

Kaylie looked over at Kivenaal, who stuck his tongue out at her and quipped, “I knew it was double-expansion, I didn’t know how it was configured. I ran the numbers and they just didn’t add up, so I knew it wasn’t running a simple single-expansion mode.”

Stationary, cabin noise was dominated by a faint but menacing blowtorch sound coming from the back, joined by the engine solenoids clicking away and some generator coil whine up front. In that instant, the black screen displayed a very intricate-looking dashboard with loads of information on it.
“Long story short, it was a familiar vehicle. As told already, this is Robert the second, which makes him the second steam converted Dione in my fleet…”
At this point, a picture of the first iteration is shown:

“… Also, Anhultz released most of the documentation on it once patents ran out since they are still so readily available. There is very little to hide in half-a-century old technology, they presumably thought.”

“So there we have it: The Dione was chosen not because it was the best platform, or had the best technology, but because it was familiar,” Kaylie said.

“Now, normally I would be the one making a lap or two around here, but, well, we saw already, I can’t reach the pedals. So, rather than making some nightmarish nine-inch-tall platform boots just to push the pedals, Valentin gets to drive the car,” Kaylie explained.

As they left the garage, Kaylie pointed out, “Despite being electric, one of the problems, in fact the main reason Robert was brought here, was, and still is, throttle lag. Before, it took three seconds to respond to throttle commands, which is about on par with Rukari’s absolutely ridiculous jet-powered boat. Now, it’s much better, but,” as they rolled down the pit lane and entered the track, Val put his foot down, and Robert took a few moments to gather momentum before taking off like a fairly-modern V6 sedan, “as you can see, there’s still some delay. Clearly, this does not take off like a typical electric car. Also, for the track-time purists out there, no, we’re not even running the timer on this one. After all, while I don’t doubt that it could set a great time, it’s not going to do it on these pizza-cutters masquerading as tires.”

Sure enough, as Robert went into a turn, the tires squealed, and Kaylie pointed out, “It sounds faster than it is. All of that squeal is understeer. Had we shot this early morning yesterday, however, there would have been some very dramatic, and dangerous, oversteer. Not the fun kind of oversteer where you did it, but the kind induced by suspension not being tuned correctly for the car’s weight.”

Valentin did not talk much while driving as the car was still relatively unfamiliar to him even with the tuning done yesterday. On the straights, he does manage to get some words out: “Adjustable suspension helps a lot here… Feels like a 70s land yacht birthed… a mid-size wagon… Upgraded brakes are still not great… have put a retarder gearbox to assist them… which is hooked up to what was the clutch…”

The video did a fake pause, complete with VHS static distortion as Kaylie pointed out in a voice-over, “As you can see, Val’s focus is on driving the car. That’s because, without that focus, the back end can still get away from him. This is also why we didn’t time the laps.”

As the video resumed, they got a good view of Valentin’s look of concentration before entering the final corner, then “quickly” speeding down the main straight to the finish line. As Valentin took a slow lap, Kaylie pointed out, “Before any of you leave it in the comments that we need to look at this car because it has a lifter tick, Val did state that the valvetrain is solenoid driven. What you’re hearing is normal for this car.”

The video concluded with Kaylie and Val back in the pit lane, standing on either side of the still-running steam-powered Dione, all of the sounds heard in their full glory with the deep blowtorch roar of the boiler cycling on and off as needed, the engine resolutely clicking away, the condenser fans running as they tried desperately to turn searing hot steam back into water, and if one listened hard enough, the very quiet sound of water returning from the condenser back to the water tanks. “Thank you for coming here, Valentin,” Kaylie said. “It’s fun to get to see how some other parts of the world go about modifying cars.”

Kaylie then did the usual signing-off-for-the-episode ritual, mentioning, “If you liked this episode, please, click that like button, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe. I’d love to make 200k before the end of the year. I’ll see you on the next episode of Kaylie’s Garage, where we’re continuing the restoration of our rusty old AMCW.”

Soon after the video cut from the two standing at the track, it showed a generic clip of Kaylie doing some smoky donuts in her twin-turbo Grand Warden for 5 seconds before the video ended.

Kaylie smirked, then explained, “That video clip is at the end so that our “Next and previous video” links don’t cover up the car or anyone who was here. And, yes, I did that at the track.”

“Well that is a video.” Valentin blankly claimed, neither particularly impressed nor appalled by what was shown.
“I mean i do not do such things, so i have no say.”

With the video over, it became quite clear that some of the members of Shift Happens had other things on their to-do list, as Kasiya very quickly reached into a pouch and retrieved all of his various reading materials, studying for his driver’s license and CDL applications with the full intensity of someone who did not want to fail. Kivenaal, likewise, reached under the couch he was on and pulled out a thick three-ring binder of stuff, complete with a small section of metal that had been tied to the binder and made a quiet clinking noise.

Kivenaal got up and walked over to Valentin, then said, “Sorry it’s taken so long, but… I’ve managed to get Nehmenweld’s handbook for rail usage, measurements of their track, a section of used rail so you can match the rail profile, the guidebook for their signalling standards, and the handbook for freight hauling, which details track specifics like the loading gauge, maximum permissable weights, common couplers, and lighting configurations. Then I’ve spent the last week translating all of it. This binder contains both my translations and the originals.”

Jayde spoke up with, “I’ve cross-checked his translation, it’s accurate. Whenever he doubted it, he asked me to translate for him. Oh, and a word of advice: When we go there, bring some cold weather gear and warm weather gear alongside your usual clothes.”

Rukari spoke up with, “Bring clothes for Russian winter. Can get cold enough in south of Nehmenweld that I freeze. Will only be in coldest part for two, maybe three day, but still, need heavy clothes.”

Valentin took the binder and somewhat randomly shuffles through it for a moment.
“Are the roads there that bad again? Last year was worse than our sea of rural, unpaved roads by a wide margin. Surely it cannot be as bad again, right?” Valentin inquired, already paining mental images about how getting Robert to and from the camp will be very annoying.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s on par with 1930’s US for roads. Some form of primitive asphalt, some gravel roads. Maintenance can be a bit shit at times, though, if it’s not a major highway. Also, unlike last year, this year we’ll have to put up with traffic,” Kivenaal admitted. “So, figured you might still want that rail-roading information just in case you have some ideas in your mind. Worst case scenario, I’ve done a bit of negotiating for that information and a few days of translation for something that won’t see any use. Best case scenario, it helps you out in some way on the next trip. You won’t have to lean on any fame to get it.” Kivenaal then quietly grumbled to himself, “I used mine instead.”

Kasiya, by this time, had passed a handbook to Takaraya and had his father quiz him on any random combination of questions from the Nevada rules of the road, and seemed to be on a bit of a roll for getting questions right.

Malavera mentioned, “Right, video’s uploading now. Anyone need anything?”

Jayde gave a somewhat sheepish smile, then asked, “Mind spotting me while I use the weights?”

“Yeah, not a problem. You still doing 30 on the bar?” Malavera asked.

“Still trying to get the form right before I move up to anything heavier,” Jayde admitted. On his way to the weight room, he pulled off his shirt, revealing some scars on his back that did show up despite his fur, courtesy of getting in a fight with a Dyre a long time ago, as well as a rough bite scar on his left shoulder.

Malavera sighed. “Still have no idea how you’re this mobile after being torn up like that,” he said.

“Grim determination and a good healer,” Jayde replied, before walking through the doorway into the gym, followed by Malavera.

Kaylie and Kayden headed back upstairs, intending on getting a bit of work done, and Rukari likewise left the video room to return to Twin Hearts Racing, leaving just Valentin, Kivenaal, Takaraya, and Kasiya in the video room, with the two big wolves pretty much occupied with the pile of handbooks Kasiya had to learn for his tests.

“Just because of traffic, i am somewhat inclined to railroad this year again. Though, how do i register Robert as a train once i am there?” Valentin said, trying to answer his own question by consulting the massive binder he just got.
As a result, he largely missed everything and everyone leaving the room.
Surprisingly, he did manage to locate the respective section within a minute or so, which was promptly skimmed through.
“They’re asking for technical documents and spec-sheets and some other things… How am i supposed to get them there ahead of time?” Valentin said, worrying about the time-crunch that ensues because of it.

Kivenaal handed Val a business card. “Any information you need sent to them, send it to me, I’ll print it out and turn it in for you. Just past our entrance into the world, it’s about half a kilometer to the local train station, so, it’s not like I have to go far. It’s where I got all of this information from,” Kivenaal said. “And, if you think you need any help with any part of this project, just ask, we’ll try our best to help.”

“Well then… now i know how to kill the remaining week of time i have here. Apart from training flexibility and overclocking the shits out of myself…” Valentin remarked, taking another stroll through the pages of the binder, completely ignoring the original version since he has zero understanding of the language it is written in.
Eventually, the binder is closed and tucked underneath his right arm.
“Thanks for helping with testing, for one. Also thanks for procuring whatever is contained in here…” he said, lightly patting the binder, “I’ll see myself out for the time being and figure out how to put it all on rails and be legal and such…”

He then got up, gave a polite nod to whoever was still present at the time and left the lot, driving home shortly therafter.

[Elizipeazie]

November 10th, 2022, Twin Suns Towing and Garage, Parking Lot, 9:48AM

The past week or so has been relatively quiet if one is looking at the things Valentin did together with the Twin Suns crew. Since the important testing was finished and Robert needed additional engineering done to make him rail-worthy, Valentin spent most of the time in and around his home, only leaving for necessary errands and bike rides around town. Today, they were meeting up again to wait for a truck that was due to arrive in order to collect Robert again.

Compared to previous meetups, Valentin was arriving rather late as the familiar vehicle rolled onto the parking lot once more. He quickly made his way in, announcing his presence to whoever else was there.
“Good morning,” he said as he went deeper into the work area, lucky that no customer was present as the confusion would presumably have been hard to get around.

“Good morning!” Kaylie replied, watching as Valentin wandered into the work area. “What can we help you with today?” she asked.

The two huge vehicles had since been parked in the shop, now wearing Nevada plates after being registered as a refrigerated truck and an RV respectively. Takaraya and Kasiya were hard at work changing out the air pumps for the suspension after realizing that there wasn’t quite a low-enough suspension pressure setting to make them comfortable in Earth gravity.

Kaylie motioned toward the two vehicles, then said, “Trucks are registered. Kasiya’s had his first lesson behind the wheel of a common box truck, apparently did decently, though he did scare the daylights out of his driving instructor. Well on track for being licensed before the time our bundle of chaos starts.”

“Well that sure is good news. Especially considering that they somehow ended up legal here…” Valentin commented, somewhat amazed that whatever world they came from ended up having a road code similar enough for them to be interchangeable.

“Anyway, i am heading home tomorrow and Robert shall be heading home today. Granted, i am a bit… well… a lot… late, but so is the truck that is meant to collect him. At least shipping will not take three weeks again. Managed to re-book it to air-freight, even if that meant paying about half of it out-of-pocket…” he added as he studied the massive bus-chassis-looking trucks before turning around for a peek out to the parking lot, still empty except for his rental parked there.

Kaylie looked outside, watching as Kivenaal drove out from behind Twin Hearts Racing with Robert loaded, boiler-end-forward, on one of their big flatbeds.

“Ah, that explains why Kivenaal’s been “busy” all morning,” Kaylie said. “It must have slipped my mind, probably when the truck didn’t show up earlier.”

There was a clatter and crash from over by the two large vehicles, followed by Kasiya swearing (rather poorly) in English as he reached for the tool he dropped.

“Why is it that this assing wrench always rolls to the pissed middle of the vehicle!?” Kasiya grumbled.

Kaylie snickered. “He’ll eventually learn how to swear properly. Normally, I’d be a bit upset by the fact that someone has been foul-mouthed around him, but… Well, his father’s a soldier, he’s heard worse, I’m sure.”

“Probably Vegas traffic. Cannot do much beyond waiting at this time,” Valentin replied, followed by Kasiya cursing all across the work area.

“People do that with new languages. Profanities and insults are the ones that stick to people first, generally… Hope the week and a bit has been pleasant. Did i miss anything that has not been mentioned yet?” he inquired, instinctively checking his phone for the time of day despite now having a fashionable watch to use instead.

Kaylie grimaced. “Other than me forgetting to call you for a movie night on Sunday, not really. To be fair, we were a little worried when Rukari had a minor accident in his shop, but Kayden says he’s not even scratched. Apparently, he left a… We call it a “garage creeper,” it’s a wheeled platform you lay on for working under cars, well, he left one of those on the floor and stepped on it, it shot sideways, and he landed on his right knee. Kayden says other than the bruising, he’s fine.”

“Glad he is alright… with my luck odds at the moment, i probably would have shattered my kneecap in the process of trying to not faceplant into the concrete… Either that or both clavicles.” Valentin replied, flinching a little as he pictured himself the events happening.

“Come to think of it, somehow both of them made the van collision intact…” he mumbled afterwards, once again checking his phone in hopes of having some update on the truck, which wasn’t there.

“Rukari’s tough. We’re not sure exactly how tough, but we really don’t want to find out,” Kaylie said, watching her brother wandering out onto the work-floor, having overheard the last couple of statements.

“Actually, Val,” Kayden said, walking over to them, “I do have some mild questions regarding the nanites. Mostly, I’m just making sure you’re okay, and somewhat checking in on your settings. I’ve got a… A case where I’m dealing with someone equivalent to you with similar blood-pressure issues courtesy of their height.” He gave a knowing glance to Val and a light nod in Kasiya’s direction. “Mostly, I’m worried that if he spends much time here, he’ll die when he returns home, and while I’m about to put him on a cardio and strength training regimen, I’d like to know if you’ve discovered anything that could help, in case giving him nanites on their own would be enough to avoid 4 to 6 months of hard work.”

Kaylie snickered. “Kayden, when have you ever shied away from hard work in the gym?” she asked. “Seriously, the only one here who looks bigger than you is Kivenaal, and that’s because he hits the weights for 4 hours every day.”

“Uhm…” Valentin moaned as he went to check what settings he was running under at the moment. He did play around with them over the course of the past week, partially due to wanting some good settings to work with, but also a case of sheer curiosity.
“I have no idea, honestly… I know that most of them are at or very near the defaults and that i traded some things around in the cardio section. That said, it was not with the intent of solving height-related issues. The compressions socks did that already for the most part.” he then explained as he dug around the interface in search for answers.
“I am also not whatever your kind is called and the only human… well, known human to carry them nanites, so there is that as well…”

Kayden chuckled. “It’s okay. I had to ask,” he said. “If you’re near your defaults, you’re doing what most of us did after we gained control over the nanites. Tinkering here and there to see what works best for you. As for the height-related issues, well, I wasn’t sure if you’d made changes for that or not. Knowing that you haven’t tells me that I’ve got a lot of work to do with regards to a certain three-meter wolf.”

Kaylie grinned. “Twenty dollars says he can load all the 50’s on the bar and lift it,” Kaylie said.

“I’m not taking that bet. Malavera bench-presses 3 times his own weight. I have no doubts that he could heave 300 pounds skyward without additional training, no matter how skinny he appears to be,” Kayden replied.

Kayden then looked back to Val. “As far as I’m aware, you’re the only one. Nova’s been searching and even checked the archives from other nearby AIs and has seen no evidence that other humans have nanites.”

“How do i know if i am near default without knowing where that is?” Valentin inquired. He knew that some things were changed and those changes could definitely be felt in some capacity, but without indication as to what “normal” is, he could not tell how abnormal he was being.

Kayden pulled Nova’s handheld unit out of his pocket, then looked at the screen as Nova said, “I’ve established communications with Valentin’s AI, and can access his sliders in read-only mode.”

Kayden browsed through the changes, then gave a light shrug. “I’m not seeing anything alarming in here. An adjustment where you traded some heart rate for a bit more cardiac power, that’s a little unusual. Then again, you’re more athletic than most of us,” Kayden admitted.

About at that time, Kivenaal pulled into the work area with his flatbed, with Robert still on the back, shut the truck off, and hopped out of the cab. “Grabbing some food,” Kivenaal said, before walking around the front of the truck. “Hello, Valentin!” he said, seeming a bit more cheerful than usual, and looking like he’d actually gotten some decent sleep over the last handful of days. “I’m about to commit a workplace war-crime.”

Kaylie groaned. “Really, Kivenaal? You’re going to microwave a fish sandwich? The whole office is going to smell.”

“I know where i am not getting lunch today… Let me see if i can get a hold of the driver and procure some information.” Valentin commented, heading outside to make the phone call.

He returns a few minutes later:
“Could have saved myself the effort. Driver has no idea either and is stuck in traffic somewhere north of Las Vegas. Apparently is bumper-to-bumper traffic as well, so we might be in for some waiting time.”

Kivenaal sighed. “You’d think the drivers would understand what Vegas traffic is like and plan accordingly,” he grumbled. “I mean, not that I care too much, I get paid to sit around until the car leaves my truck’s flatbed, but at this rate, if I knew where it was going, I could probably drive it there before that truck arrives.”

Jayde walked in from the office door, then said, “Thought I heard your voice, Valentin. Morning to you. I was just about to head downstairs and use the gym, but figured I’d at least greet you first.”

Kayden grabbed Nova’s handheld again and made a few more notes while checking his research into what the average Khalan should be eating on a daily basis. He looked over to Val, then said, “Sorry, working on Kasiya’s meal plan. After all, a balanced diet and proper exercise will get him in better shape so he’s not risking any serious health problems courtesy of his height. I’d work one out for you if you wanted me to, but you seem to have both diet and exercise under control.”

“He probably considers that to be smooth traffic if we are going off of the monstrosity that is Katy Freeway… That said, i just booked for shipping from here to the university grounds in Gothenburg, so i have no immediate idea on how they Robert get there.” Valentin admitted, annoyed at the lack of foresight regarding traffic. Jayde walking in broke the annoyance.

“Good morning. Mind if i join? Probably will avoid the weights, but at least it will be a fitting locale for some training.” Valentin asked before returning to Kayden for a moment, “I am no good at cooking, but i won’t burn a pot of pasta or a bowl of rice… So i do have myself covered. For exercise, i would rather work with the guy that helped my get out of the hospital bed to begin with.”

Kayden gave a light, respectful nod. “Not a problem, Val. As it stands, I’ve got my schedule filled up with trying to get the midnight skyscraper over there to be strong enough not to die if he ever goes home.”

Jayde, on the other hand, smiled. “Sure, long as you don’t mind if I lose the shirt while using the weights. I’ll warn you, though, I’ve got some wicked scars that can rival some of yours.”

“I was made aware of that a month ago already, but yeah, no problem.” Valentin remarked before both headed downstairs.

While Valentin followed his usual regimen with bodyweight-focused sets and lots of flexibility work, Jayde got to work skipping leg day with dumbbells for his arms. While the two were busy in the gym, exchanging casual ‘banter’ (more like generic small-talk) in the process, things were more exciting in the work area above, where a metallic noise was followed up by an almost ear-shattering hiss from the HD-GV made for cargo transport.

It turns out, that something or someone caused the pressure air suspension to loose it’s pressure. That is until it was discovered that Kivenaal pulled a good one on Kasiya by blasting him with compressed air after having dropped a spanner through the entire engine bay and onto the floor.

Most of the afternoon was rather uneventful, barring lunch (ordered elsewhere in case of Valentin), increasing impatience regarding the truck and more twiddling thumbs to kill time as well as they could.

At roughly 6PM, a pair of headlights turned onto the lot in the otherwise very dim parking lot.
Valentin, not even having turned his head all the way to see who it was, already had the solution to the problem and promptly made his way out to the truck.

“Mind enlightening me as to wh…” Val started, being interrupted by a very incoherent ramble about how traffic was bad, he had to refuel four times for some reason along with about fifteen other excuses for being late.

“Do you still have duty hours?” Valentin inquired sternly.
“An hour and twelve minutes driving, about three hours duty for today.” The driver handed back, obviously intimidated by Valentin and ashamed at his lack of planning ahead.

“Well there is the cargo in question. Let me get paperwork and someone to at least get it off of that flatbed,” Valentin commented before turning around and heading towards his car were the associated paperwork was stored. With it in hand, he lightly knocks onto the driver door of Kivenaal’s truck in an attempt to get his attention.

“Robert is finally getting picked up. Sent another rollback flatbed, so you just put Robert to the ground, please. Thank you.” Valentin spoke, before returning to the other driver to hand him some paperwork.

Kivenaal woke up as Valentin knocked on his truck window, sitting up and putting his hands on the wheel to pull himself into position. He rolled the window down as Valentin mentioned he just needed to unload the car. “Yeah, just give me a moment, I’ll get Robert off of my truck so you can get it on the other one,” Kivenaal said. He turned over the engine, 485 cubic inches of Bricksley’s pride-and-joy industrial V8 waking up with a growl. Kivenaal selected first gear, and slowly made his way outside, pulling up alongside the other truck and setting his parking brake before letting the air out of the rear suspension to lower the back of the truck. He hopped out of the cab and, like he had the last time, stuck the bed all the way out before tipping it. He removed the tie-down straps, then let the winch out slowly, causing Robert to roll neatly down into the parking lot. After Kivenaal was certain that everything was where it needed to be, he disconnected his winch line from the trailer hitch, wound the winch cable back up, put his adapter away in the toolbox, and returned the bed to normal. With the car safely off of the truck, Kivenaal aired up his rear suspension and called over the radio to Malavera, “Right, my rig’s freed up, we got anything?”

“Rolled SUV on the highway,” Malavera said. “Should have a route… Now.”

“Got it. I’ll be back soon,” Kivenaal said, before looking to Valentin. “Got a rolled over SUV to pick up. See you around, Valentin!” Kivenaal called out.

“Goodbye” Valentin replied as Kivenaal rolled of the lot with his now-empty flatbed.
Valentin returned to watching the truck driver load Robert up on his truck. It was not hard for anyone to see that the driver was eager to get out of here again.

“I would not rush things if i were you. Would be hard to explain how you busted 140 thousand Dollars worth of 80s family wagon, right?” Valentin commented half-aloud, not exactly pleased with the delay being followed up by obviously rushed work. However, that statement backfired into the driver now also being scared out of his employment if he did mess up things.

Kaylie smirked as the driver looked a bit more panicked than he did before, occasionally looking over toward the two heavy trucks in her shop as Takaraya finished up his suspension alterations, then moved to help Kasiya finish up his.

Jayde racked up his weights and cleared down the bench he’d been using, heading upstairs to grab a quick snack from the break room. After finishing his oatmeal cookie, he looked out to the work floor and said, “Hey, Kay, I’m heading for home. My shift’s over.” Both Kaylie and Kayden gave him a thumbs up, and Jayde headed out of the rear door to his van.

Meanwhile, the driver continued his work quickly, but still made sure everything was rock-solid in the process, eventually ending with a 2.4 metric ton steam wagon (pun not intended) on the back of his truck.

“Alright done. I’ll get going. Probably will barely make it to Vegas with the time i still have, but still…” the driver admits, being in such a rush that he even forgot common politeness.
“Goodbye to you too…” Valentin grumbled, crossing his arms and watching the driver make a hasty beeline into his truck and subsequently out of the Twin Suns Towing parking lot.

As it disappeared into the darkness, Valentin turned to face Kaylie:
“9 hours… is being late an olympic sport here?” he inquired sarcastically, more annoyed at the lack of communication than the delay itself.

“Pretty much the first time that’s ever happened here,” Kaylie replied. “I know one thing: I’m writing down that trucking company, because I won’t deal with them in the future. If I get asked why, I’ll mention that they kept a client of ours waiting for 9 hours and cost the business $8,000 because they failed to communicate that there was a delay. If we’d known it’d be this late, I’d have told Kivenaal to put Robert over in a parking space and go on duty.”

“Should be good now. Fire it up, we’ll see if she levels out,” Takaraya said from over by the trucks. A quiet clunk was heard as Kasiya shut the engine hatch, followed by the sound of a big, heavy door opening, and then the whirring of the starter motor. Then the big V16 growled to life and settled into a low idle, the suspension giving a slow, quiet hiss as it settled to the new lower setting.

Once the hissing stopped, the vehicle hadn’t really sank that much, but when Takaraya experimentally jumped onto the rear trailer hitch and then back off, the vehicle did budge, if only just a little.

“Suspension’s fixed,” Takaraya said.

“Good, because I was worried the pair of you were going to be piloting a pair of 25 ton go-karts out there,” Kaylie quipped.

“Running basically untested trainsets at 150+ kilometers an hour will be fun. Hopes are that i can gather some bearings and exercise the hell out of Malavera’s server for some simulation works. Hoping that a suitable program exists, that is… At least you will be doing what… 100? At most?” Valentin said, taking a look at the massive trucks in the work area.

“In any case. It has been very pleasant to work with you and i am very thankful to even be granted access for testing. Nobody in Sweden wanted to deal with a massive tea kettle… I will be heading home to hand over the keys and sleep in a motel tonight. Tomorrow starts the trip to the airport. Meet you again in preparation for the event!” he added as he made his way over to the rental Dione, leaving the lot soon after for the last time in the next few months.

“These are speed limited to 144 kilometers per hour,” Takaraya said. “About 90 miles per hour. Of course, if you pull the rear-most speed sensor plug, well… You get about a half-dozen warning lights on the dash, but the speed limiter doesn’t work. Speedometer still does. Not that anyone has actually done the sensor pull and then looked at the speedometer while driving like that. It’s bad for plausible deniability.”

As Valentin mentioned that he was grateful to have had access for testing, Kaylie smiled. “We work on so much weird shit here,” she said, motioning to the two huge trucks as a current example, “that it didn’t bother us to have a steam car here. All we cared about was that you had the boiler inspected recently, and as it was just built, that was the case. We’ll see you online, and we’ll see you once you return here!”

Kayden gave a polite nod, then said, “I’ll save you a couple of good burgers.”

Takaraya and Kasiya, now standing side-by-side, lightly waved as Valentin got in his car and backed out of his parking spot.

[Elizipeazie]

Author’s note:

This marks the end of Valentin’s Voyage.
Events happening after this point in time can be read about in the current (as of March 13th 2023) Shitbox Rally thread