Night City
New Westbrook
August 19th, 2045
1422 hrs


Marked Motors doesn't open until somewhere around 3pm.  That doesn't bother the folks that work there, they're usually out til the California sun comes peeking up over the mountains to the east anyways.  Not having any keys or access to the reinforced warehouse where the auto shop is headquartered, Alexander Cruz is left hanging out across the street from the two story building every afternoon until someone either comes down from inside or strolls up the sidewalk and raises the two giant corrugated metal doors that serve as the only access and exit points of the building.

On this particular Wednesday, it's the latter.  After a solid twenty minutes of giving death glares to scavs and shooing off the resident homeless, Cruz hears the telltale whine of Angelica's electric Harley accelerating up the street, weaving through the mass of decaying metal that makes up most of what passes for cars in Night City these days.  The bike stops at the rollup doors, and Angelica hops off, her caramel skin peeking out from the open heavy leather coat she wears as road armor. The skin and her black hair the legacy of a mixed Italian and Moroccan heritage.

A few of the eyes on her optic mount find Cruz on the other side of the street and she gives him a wave and a smile.  The first time Cruz had her in bed the five eye mount thing was a little odd.  It passed quickly. She has legs for days and the edge is the edge.  Plus she can turn a fucking wrench.

Cruz has been working at her side for the last two weeks, brought in by Black Jasper, the shops owner to temp and help mod out a true relic that is serving as some anonymous Corpo's vanity ride: A 1967 Shelby Mustang.  The car is worth the price of entire city blocks and the suit wants it ready for road combat.  New engine, carbon/titanium ballistic weave plating under the original steel.  Weapon mounts.  The car was a killer before.  Now it's Black Sunshine.*

"Yo Cruz," Angelica calls, "you coming in or what?"



*:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqPClltS5k8

"Chica you know..." Alex said with a sly grin, "..wherever you're going, I'm coming..."

Alex kissed his hand as if to blow a kiss, but instead of lifting his hand to the air, he turned it downward and patted the hood of the '67 Chevy as he walked toward Angelica.  It was a beautiful car, a real classic, now updated for the urban jungle.

Cruz was no stranger to a bike.  He could ride.  His leather boots and jacket were a testament to growing up around motors, gears, and grease.  For Alex though, the open road never offered as much excitement as the garage.  Tweaking fuel ratios and watching the dynamo's power charts were more of a thrill, mostly because other's couldn't do what he could.  They didn't have the talent, the knack, for figuring things out, making things work, and optimizing the end state.  Cruz had a gift, he knew it, and he cultivated it...
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 08:51, Mon 21 Dec 2020.

Angelica sticks the point of her tongue out between a set of perfectly white teeth, the childish gesture inconsistent with the mass of cyberware sitting on her face.  "Aren't you the cute one," she quips, slapping him on the ass as she slides past to get to the open hood of the Shelby.  She casually hangs her coat off the corner of the raised hood and looks down into the restructured engine space.  Each millimeter of the engine compartment has been accounted for and still tech needs to be shoved into the space.

"Luce called me last night," Angelica goes on, referring to the shop's body man.  She leaves out the "after you left," part. "Seems he needs another centimeter around from the front grill to inject some new ballistic nanoweave.  Our customer just streamed some new BD and just has to have the new new thing.  So we get to move the turbo.  Again." 

If Luce wasn't 6'5" maybe there would be an argument.  But there isn't.  And with the EBs coming down from above, you find the space.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:13, Tue 22 Dec 2020.

"It's looking like we might have our very own reina del garaje... if they keep making changes, she'll never be finished," Alex said as he stopped to study the current engine layout.  He gave a slight shrug then continued.

"Not a complaint.  Just, you know, everyone has a telos.  Especially a car like this," Cruz said as he sunk his hands deep under the hood.  "She won't find it in this building."

As Cruz worked, he wondered when and where all the gear they were installing would be used.

"It's a goddamn Ship of Theseus."  Deep in the weeds of drive train realignment, Cruz didn't hear the approach of the shop's owner.  A turn of the head reveals Black Jasper peeking into the work space of Angelica and Alex.  The fixer looks at the pair of them, registers the blank looks and quirks his mouth.  "Ship of Theseus?  You take a ship, replace all the planks one by one.  At what point is it no longer the... You know what?  Fuck it.  Nobody reads anymore."  He shakes his head.

"Like a battleship?" Angelica asks.  Cruz just manages to catch the twitch of a smile as she baits her boss.

"No, like an ancient Greek..." Jasper sighs theatrically, picking up on the joke.  "Savages."

Cruz looks at Jasper, taking in the man.  Late twenties, thin build, long black hair. Total Panic band t-shirt and arms crossed with scars. And a certain distracted air that leads Cruz to the conclusion that the fixer is tuned into more than just his immediate surroundings.  The tech knows cybernetic ears when he sees them.  Even camouflaged ones.

Taking a seat on a stool, Jasper rubs his hands on his jeans.  "So here's where we're at.  Luce is going to come in here in about five minutes and tell you there is another change.  You're going to tell him it's impossible, because, shit, money doesn't trump physics.  Then he's going to flip his shit and threaten to use your bones as levers to force the frame out another six centimeters out the back. I recommend you develop a plan to-"  The Fixer immediately cuts himself off in the universal sign for an internal call.

He's still for about thirty seconds, then hops up.  "Gotta go."

As Jasper moves away, Angelica rubs her face, leaving a trail of grease across one cheek.  "Is there any possible way you can get six more centimeters?  Cuz, uh, I don't really want to tell the big man no."

"Hey, a good tech never says no," Alex said to Angelica with a shrug. "It's just a mater of time, parts, and labor.  But not everyone has a bottomless pit of money," he added with a grin.

As Luce entered, Cruz started speaking loudly enough for anyone in the garage to hear.

"Yeah, yeah, we could strip ol' girl down then cut and extend the frame," he said, making a few knifehand chopping motions in places.

"Just rebuild it from there, you know?  Some body work magic just behind the front quarter panels and hood and she'll look mostly the same.  We did something like that with a low rider back before I join the Navy.  Took a few months and we had to dive a few junkyards to get what we needed, but where there's a will and the cred chips, there is a way."

Cruz turned as Luce approached.

"Oh hey Luce, what's the word big man?  Come to see your girl?  She's a sweet lookin' ride.  You know, we got the turbo moved this morning and word's out you need a bit more space.  How'd you feel about leaving her with us over the winter, so we can do some major surgery.  Could stretch her out like a limo if like," Alex outstretched his hands at the last part, like an angler lying about the size of a fish.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:03, Sun 27 Dec 2020.

Luce pauses, the big blond man clearly caught off-footed at Cruz's rapid fire verbal onslaught.  Whatever big speech the big man had prepared disappears in a flash of deflating muscle and released tension.  Whether it is true or just convincing bullshit, the body man has to pause to recollect his thoughts.  His jaw works, hard, for a second, grinding teeth together, a motion mirrored by the hands of his cyberarms rubbing together in a series of clicks and scratches.

"I'm guessing," Luce finally says slowly, "that you are exaggerating for my benefit.  But I see your point."  The mechanic hunches down at the rear of the Shelby, pops his head under the frame, eyeballing some measurements on his own.  "We cut this again we're going to lose the shape. And this beast is nothing without the shape.  I think we can get maybe 60% of the desired reinforcement with a nano-foam injection.  Can you adjust the mixture?" he asks Angelica.  "Maybe a 60/40/20, Carbon, Titanium, Strontium blend?"  The mechanic may move slow, but he knows his shit.

Angelica chews her lip for a second.  "Yeah, just gonna take a loooooong time to cure.  Like don't shimmy the frame for four, maybe five days?"

Before Luce can answer, a new client enters the scene.  A suit, Cruz realizes.  He's hustling through the garage, a man on a panicked mission.  More intriguing, his face is fully obscured, covered with a privacy hood, a flickering mass of geometric forms projected on electrically charged fabric blocking all forms of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Total privacy for the discriminating Corpo or crime lord.

The man appears again, about thirty minutes later, hustling out in the other direction.  About five minutes after that, Black Jasper shows up, hovering over the nano-foam injector apparatus Cruz and Angelica have been tuning to perfection.

"Hey Cruz," Jasper says, tapping his fingers on the nitrogen bottle used to inject the mixture.  "That Aldecaldo tattoo on your arm there, those dolphins on the other.  You back those up?  I've got a job I need done on the short-short, and it looks like you're about to have a few days off."

”Yeah, everything’s been earned.. usually the hard way,” Cruz said, a bit of sarcasm buried in the last part.  Going from being a nomad to the Navy was a dramatic change in some ways – Alex traded the outdoors for a steel tube – and not so dramatic in others – his shipmates became his new pack and they looked out for one another, which was how Cruz had been raised.  In the end though, his Nomad value of independence kept him from re-upping for another tour.  That and fucked up male to female ratio on ‘the boats’.

”If you’ve got work, I’m ready homes,” Alex added.  Cruz also held the Nomad value of ‘getting paid’ in high regard as well and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that hooded corp just flicked the first domino in a trickledown economic-chain that would hopefully put duckets in pockets, his own included.