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She would get something pretty fast. Rizzo was bus taking the transmission apart one gear at a time. He interupted his work for a second to give her the brown package Joey had dropped off a few moments back.

"Put it in the bin labeled Joey's parts," he said, "The back room needs cleaned and organized pretty badly, but first this garage floor could use a good cleaning and scrubbing. You'll have to work around us because we're always busy in here. So take that in the back room, you'll find the scrub bucket and the vacuum parts there too"

He glanced over the floor, the pavement so thick with grease and black oily grime that it was almost a slipperry death trap. Dust, used cigarettes, hair, rags, lint, dirty coins of exceedingly low value, and metal scraps laying everywhere. The vacuum was internal, meaning a hose was hooked to wall mounts in the garage. It was a heavy duty cleaner that would pull up anything that wasn't mired in grime.

Opening the box and the parcels inside, the first thing she would find was a disasembled hydraulics system, each part neatly wrapped in protective plastic. The blue prints were sealed in plastic, but it would be easy enough to see without opening that the hydraulic system was designed to power and fit inside a prosthetic leg without being intrusive. It was a high quality, high budget system. One of the systems forbidden by Aekea law.

The power plant was minature cold-fusion reactor, an extremely efficient power source actually forbidden for prosthetic parts in Aekea.

The cooling rods were also thermal diffusion devices that would keep a prosthetic limb at constant body temperature.

The nueral connectors were partly biological material, so the strands of wire that would connect a prosthetic part to the human nervous system where kept in pouches of special preservation fluid that would keep the nueral connectors from roting before they were installed.

There was also a panel in the center of the floor that was actually a led to a basement. It was easy to tell even though it had no handle, as you could here there was nothing under it when walking.

"Hey," Rizzo called, "How long does it take you to put a few parts in a box!?"

The vacuum cleaner was built into the garage as an internal system, there would be no way she could bring it out of the back room, now the hoses for the vacuum cleaner, which hooked into the wall itself, were hanging in the back room. Surely she came out with them.

Rizzo, who was using diagnostics robot to figure out what was wrong with the transmission's programing, looked at her and smiled politely. He didn't envy her. Considering it was ussually his job to clean up around the garage, actually it was Gils job, but Gil almost always managed to get out of it and eventually he'd be stuck with the work.

((A minor oversight, happens to me all the time.)) xp

Rizzo stared at her with a quizzical expression. Was this broad actually enjoying herself, he thought as he removed the electrodes of diagnostic robot from the transmission computer, strange.

"Go figure," Rizzo whispered, as he went to the back room to get the damaged componants that would need replacing.

While Rizzo was out, Gil returned. Now Ichiro was busy with tax documents and record keeping, and Stephanie was working around the Kia out of his line of sight anyway. Gil smirked as he threw his cigarette butt on the floor for her to clean up, walking by casually. As he passed her he swung up his right leg with the intent of giving her a good hard kick in the shin without any warning as she worked, and then casually returning to his own work as if nothing had happened.

Gil lost his balance and fell to the floor, but he slowly pulled himsef and returned to the Kia, checking the radiator fluid listlessly as he glared at her with a mentally unstable look that said, 'I'll make you pay for that'.

Later that night, around closing time, Stephanie would be close to finishing the garage. Everyone would notice quite an improvement, she would even receive a nice compliment from Rizzo, who had taken apart a transmision, put it back together, replaced it in working condition, and had worked in the backroom alone for quite some time. Gil, who had barely finished fixing the Kia in time for closing. Slammed the hood of the small vehicle and pulled on the oily shirt he had left on the tool box, glaring at the new girl threateningly whenever no one else was looking. He obviously wanted another helping of what she was serving at a later date, maybe he had more to offer, maybe he didn't.

Ichiro took the money to the backroom, there wasn't much, and put it in the safe. He was in there a few minutes rumbling around until he came out, locking and deadbolting the backdoor.

"Closing time," Ichiro said stoicly, "If you don't have any place to go you can stay at my place. I'm not a dirty old man if that's what your thinking, besides, with what you were up to that shouldn't worry anyway. But I'm not, I might be ugly on the surface but I'm legit as they come."

Gil didn't try anything cute with the boss around, but he snickered on the way out, slamming the door behind him. Rizzo followed him, but was more pleasant.

"Night," he said, "I need some shut eye, get a good sleep now."

"Follow me," Ichiro said, "I have an apartment on Mechanic's street. You can stay with me until you find a place of your own."

It was fifteen minute walk that traversed main streetsand back alleys alike. The air was filled with dust, a blanket of smog obscured the starlight of an otherwise clear sky. Ichiro walked without a word, allowing her to follow until they came to an abandoned factory that had been converted into an apartment complex a long time ago. He unlocked a set of thick steel double doors surfaced with a mix of flaking green lead paint and rust, and they went inside. The place was divided into apartments by thin partitions of crumbling drywall and plaster, so it was quite easy to hear any sort of activity from the other apartments. There were dogs barking, radio's playing, telivisions, arguments, and so on, you could here most anything depending on where you stood. Ichiro took the stairs to the second floor and tiredly unlocked the thick wooden door into his palace. The sitting room had a small sofa and a 70's era television sitting a big wooden crate. To the back was a breakfast nook with a stained white fridge, an old gas stove, a sink, and an eating counter with a single stool. A small trash can next to the televison was piled over with and surrounded by empty glass bottles of Jack Daniels and Miller Genuine Draft. They lined the window sill of his breakfast nook, were piled on both sides of the sofa, and overflowed from another big trash can. A pile of pizza boxes and old take-out containers almost reached the ceiling. The sink was filled with dishes that had been neglected so long they were developing their own eco-system.

He would lead her past a cramped bathroom that contained a toilet, a stall shower caked with black soap scum, and an equally dirty sink. But there was a half used container of hand soap, and the mirror wasn't to grimy. Amazingly, the toilet didn't look too bad compared to the rest of the bathroom.

The first thing Ichiro did was go to the cupboard to pull out a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and poured some into a shot glass. He had a full stock of Jack Daniels, all neatly lined in marching formation. Then he checked his fridge, it was imaculate inside there, a minature Holy-of-Holies, the temple of beer, also neatly arranged. He pulled out a cold one, popped open the lid, and drank a sip straight from the bottle. Then he downed the shot.

"I hate tax season, I can repair things drunk, but I can't do bookwork. You can have the bedroom," he said, "I haven't bothered to clean for awhile, too busy. you might have to shift things around a little. I'll crash on the sofa anyway, haven't been anywhere near that bed for quite awhile."

"Fine with me," he said, taking another shot of Jack Daniel's "Then I can get earlier all the drunker. Ha!"

Ichiro seemed to think the line was funny, poor Ichiro.

Her bed would be piled with newspapers, magazines, a few engine parts, seven black trash bags filled with old clothes and dirty laundry, and a mix of odd items that wouldn't be respectable even for a garage sale. He did say she would have to shift some stuff around. Everything was rather dusty, he did say he hadn't been near that room in some time. On the hutch was a broken alarm clock and picture frame that was turned on it's face. The wall above was actually sturdy, as the ceiling contained a stell support beam that bisected it. A grapling hole was cut through the edge of the beam webbing

Every ten minutes either the cupboard door or the fridge would open. By ten thirty, Ichiro was drunk, by eleven O'clock, he was soused stupid but still drinking as mumbled to himself. At midnight the drinking would stop as he stumbled to the bathroom and hurled for half-an-hour. The toilet would flush, then he take what was left of the Jack Daniels he was working on before he started puking and collapse on the sofa before taking another sip. It would be there for him bright and early, he could never sleep late with the hangovers he had.