Driving Me Insane

Chapter 7: Changing Gears

Lisa's not sure what it is but there's just something about the smell of paint thinner, grease, oil and gasoline mixed together that makes her feel at home. It's kind of strange, this she knows, and probably not at all safe for her body to be inhaling, but whenever she walks into her shop she takes a moment to stop and breath in that intoxicatingly wonderful smell.

Today is no exception, because today Lisa gets to work with all of those items at once. And to top it all off, the Maserati will have a shinny new coat of glossy pearled paint when she's done. There ain't nothing better.

She's hard pressed to admit, but regretful to deny, that Jennie's whole proxy chip idea actually worked and Jacob was able to overhaul all the cars information replacing it with all the info that they specifically handcrafted precisely for it. Now the car has only one registered owner, and it's Günther Warbler the alias that Hunter most often relies on when dawdling in illegal activities. It was actually Lisa who came up with the name, kind of a stick it to her half brother for being such an ass. Hunter hates it for the most part, and that makes Lisa smile.

"Yo Manoban!" Jackson calls from under the chassis of the Maserati that he's currently working on. In fact, they haven't really been working on much in the past day and a half since Lisa and Jennie boosted the car. There are apparently a lot of things in the works though.

Lisa turns her attention from the shop stool she's perched on, pulling her hand away from the detail she's painting on the personalized die she purchased the other day. They're not your typical fuzzy dice and Lisa has a particular idea in mind for what she wants to design on them, and where exactly she wants to hang them. She's glancing in the direction of where Jackson's voice came from but he doesn't make another peep so Lisa assumes he's waiting for her to come over to him. She hopes down from her stool and strides over to the edge of the creeper that's sticking out from under the car with half of Jackson's lower body lying flat on it.

She kicks the edge of the creeper, "What Wang?" And hears a muffled 'ow' before Jackson maneuvers himself out from under the car and gives Lisa a pointed glare. She can see a new smudge line of grease painted on the side of his temple, and assumes that's probably where he bumped his head. She feels mildly bad about that, but that's the extent of it. They've had enough back and forth and go around injuries that it's hard to feel too torn up over something so trivial. After her friend and fellow mechanic/booster rubs away the displacement of his fragile pride, Jackson stands up and tosses his grease rag over his shoulder before strolling over to his workbench area, signaling for Lisa to follow behind.

"Check it out." He says as he holds out his mechanic exclusive iPad to her after tapping a few buttons on the surface. When Lisa grips the device and takes a look at the screen she becomes immediately awed. Laid out before Lisa's eyes, on the six-inch monitor screen, is a 3-D model of the Maserati they are currently working on. It shows, in detail, every little speck and function the car has undergone as well as the key areas that still need to be touched on.

"Wow, this is all from..."

"Jennie's chip yeah and the added modifications you made. Jennie said that the modifications were brilliant and she'd never seen anything like them. I'm telling you Manoban, the two of you together are absolutely unstoppable geniuses when it comes to cars." Jackson interrupts, the excitement in his voice causing a small thrill to surge through Lisa's own body. She's been told a time or two by her crew how brilliant she is, even when she does such mundane and simply things as reformatting a car's computer chip, but to hear Jackson say that Jennie, someone wholly out of her crew, said something along the same lines about her, well, that makes her happier than she ever could have imagined.

"That's awesome Jackson. You and Jacob have done great work, can't wait to see what Bambam does with the paint job. I'm not going to lie, it's kinda gonna suck to hand this car over to Hunter." Lisa muses as she gives her friend a pat on the back. He nods in agreement, but they both know that even if Hunter gets this car there's always a nicer, better, faster, sexier one out there for Lisa to get a hold of. Always.