[h2][center][b][color=magenta]Alese Piety[/color][/b][/center][/h2]

Rain beat steadily on the roof, occasionally rising to a heavy roar or slowing long enough to hear the flow of water through the gutters and the sound of traffic outside. The stereo volume stayed constant, though there was no modern synth or pop-punk coming from the speakers this time, just tired [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCUPwUkyfU8]bluesy rock[/url] that Norris favored as he worked. Alese didn’t care for it at all, but knew the words from having grown up on several of his favorites. It didn’t help the melancholy that followed Friday, but neither had the weather and neither had staying home again. She seemed to feel herself falling into a very uncharacteristic funk and it had felt like going to Vivian’s would have fixed that, but instead had wound up making it worse, [i]by a lot[/i]. She didn’t talk about any of it, nor did she care that much about what happened to the rest of the city. Luckily, Chandi had somehow managed to recover her bag, jacket and hand terminal, probably through Milo, and it buzzed again with another message that she ignored. 

Fan blades turned slowly overhead as her hands worked. She was on her last caliper and her eyes looked lazily through the wrench and bleeder screw in her fingers, having done this enough times she was sure she could do it blindfolded. When the oily drip of brake fluid was steady she glanced up at a mirror on a tripod angled to view a small vacuum tool mounted atop the master-cylinder for the rear brakes tucked into the nose of the chassis. Another one-off design made for nothing other than the car in front of her. There wasn’t much on wheels in MegaCity that still used hydraulic brakes, but it was a simple system that didn’t rely on any other tech to work correctly. Sitting cross legged on a mechanic’s creeper she shifted her position once more, getting tired of sitting on the well worn cushion. She glanced up, ready to be done. The spare wing was already mounted and one had to be cognizant of its near razor sharp edge. She tightened the screw down and the steady drip from the line stopped. It wouldn’t be much longer before everything was ready.    

“[color=magenta]Push.[/color]” She commanded, though nothing happened. 

“[color=magenta]Push![/color]” She said again with an edge of frustration, craning her neck and trying to figure out what her drone was doing idle in the cockpit. Giving it a name would really help its command recognition. Plenty of people had told her as much, but she couldn’t settle on anything. What was apparent though, was she had [i]definitely[/i] fed way too many old world service manuals into its algorithmic memory bank to help it understand work on the car. Many of which were written in ancient Germanic. Her lips twisted and she drew an irritated breath, “[color=magenta][i]Drücken![/i][/color]” She said finally and obediently the brake pedal was depressed. Quickly, she worked the wrench as the pungent liquid fell into the pan in front of her, grumbling and wiping a bead of sweat away as she heard her father chuckle.

“Your accent is getting better.” He said with some amusement, his hands busy with snaking a tube of composite ducting towards the right front hub. He seemed in well enough spirits and it was the most time they’d spent together in several days, though she never could tell if he really blamed her for what happened before and it dragged on her further to think that he might have been disappointed in her for something that was a freak accident. She wasn’t sure, he didn’t mention it and she was too afraid to ask. After it happened he’d just been hard to read. He did one more short run and then decided it was time for an overhaul even though she knew it was far ahead of schedule. Maybe he didn’t want her to feel the urge to get back in or he just didn’t want her driving for a while- maybe both, but at any rate, the events of Friday night had changed things and now they were diligently getting set up for heavy work.         


She eased up off the creeper, not acknowledging his little quip and ran her fingernail along the sideboard of the kitchen-table sized wing. It was her own little quip back, but he seemed unphased, not even looking up. Her drone casually floated aside as she slid into the cockpit to test the pedal for herself. Sitting up on its airjacks she had to step up over the wide body panels that encased ground-effect ducting and slide in under the steering wheel. Save for the on and off ramps, the car wouldn’t be taking a lot of sharp corners at speed, so the bias didn’t need to be very aggressive, but the pedal had to be right. Alese had the gentle touch of a dancer under the pad of her toes and preferred the resistance to be pretty stiff while her father’s stronger leg wanted a bit less tension to avoid a lockup that would scald the tires. She pushed hard and relaxed a couple times, not really thinking about the motion, just looking ahead, knowing exactly where it needed to be adjusted for him to drive. She avoided putting her hands on the wheel, but looked at him through the teardrop shaped windscreen and hoped he might notice her staring for his attention, but he continued undisturbed. 

The rain pelted again harder. She sighed and climbed out.