The declaration of pulling an "all-nighter" sounded heroic.
Thirty minutes later, Marco was realizing that legends usually had biceps.
"Come on, you rusted piece of junk," Marco grunted, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
He was currently losing a wrestling match with a single, corroded 12mm bolt holding the fuel tank to the frame of the Honda NSR250. In his previous life, Marco Rossi could have twisted this bolt off with his fingers. He was used to wrestling 160-kilogram beasts at 300 kilometers per hour. He had forearms like steel cables.
Kai Tanaka, however, had forearms that resembled boiled spaghetti.
"Nngghhh!" Marco pushed the ratchet with everything he had. He braced his foot against the front tire, channeled his inner chi, and summoned the spirit of every mechanic he had ever known.
The socket slipped off the rounded head of the bolt. Marco's hand flew forward, smashing his knuckles directly into the triple clamp.
"SON OF A—!"
He swallowed the curse word just in time, replacing it with a high-pitched yelp that echoed embarrassingly through the quiet shop. He dropped the wrench and clutched his hand, dancing a little jig of pain.
From the corner of the shop, Uncle Jiro didn't even look up from his newspaper. "That's the 'Tanaka Knuckle greeting.' The bike is saying hello. Be polite."
Rin, sitting on a stool nearby with a heavy textbook on her lap, looked over with wide, worried eyes. "Kai! Are you okay? Do you want a bandage? Or maybe... maybe we should just stop?"
Marco blew on his throbbing knuckles, his pride hurting more than his skin. He looked at the bike. The NSR sat there, dusty and defiant.
"I'm fine," Marco said, his voice tight. He picked up the wrench with his left hand, his right hand shaking slightly. "It's just... stiff. It hasn't been opened in years."
"Kai," Rin said softly. "You've been at that one bolt for twenty minutes."
"It's a strategic bolt!" Marco lied. "It requires... finesse."
He glared at the machine. The problem wasn't the bolt. The problem was the disconnect. His brain knew exactly what to do. He looked at the engine and saw a schematic blueprint in his mind. He knew the torque specs, the firing order, the exact way the power valve system worked. But when he sent the signal to his arm to apply force, the signal got lost in a sea of atrophy.
"Okay," Marco whispered to himself. "Focus. Use leverage, not strength. Physics is your friend."
He found a hollow metal pipe in the scrap pile and slid it over the handle of the ratchet to extend the lever arm. Archimedes would be proud, he thought. He lined it up again.
"Gently..." he murmured.
He applied pressure. The pipe magnified his weak force. With a screeching CRACK that sounded like a gunshot, the rust bond broke. The bolt turned.
"Ha!" Marco shouted, throwing his hands up in victory. "I am the king of mechanics! I am the—"
A wave of dizziness washed over him. His vision swam. He grabbed the workbench to steady himself, panting as if he had just run a marathon.
Jiro finally looked up, raising an eyebrow. "You loosened one bolt, kid. There are about three hundred left. And then you have to actually fix what's inside. At this pace, you'll have the tank off by Christmas. Next year."
Marco glared at his uncle, but he knew the old man was right. He looked down at Kai's body. It was pathetic. His chest was heaving, his palms were sweating, and his legs felt like jelly just from standing in a crouch for half an hour.
"I need water," Marco rasped.
Rin was already there, handing him a plastic bottle. "You look pale, Kai. Maybe you should eat something?"
Marco chugged the water, wiping his mouth with the back of his greasy hand. He looked at the bike, then at his trembling arms. This wasn't going to work. Not like this.
He had a week. Seven days. If he spent twelve hours a day wrenching, this weak body would collapse by day three. He wouldn't even be able to hold the handlebars, let alone race, by Sunday.
"Luigi..." Marco muttered.
"Who?" Rin asked, tilting her head.
"My old... uh, a mechanic I saw on TV once," Marco covered quickly. He was thinking of Luigi, his chief mechanic from the factory team. Luigi was a genius, a man who could diagnose an engine problem just by listening to the exhaust note.
He remembered Luigi's voice, thick with an Italian accent, yelling at him during his rookie year: "Marco! You cannot force the machine! The machine is a dance partner! If you are clumsy, she steps on your toes! If you are weak, she drops you! You must be strong enough to lead, but gentle enough to listen!"
Marco looked at his reflection in the dark window of the shop. He was definitely not strong enough to lead anything right now. He was barely strong enough to follow.
"Okay," Marco said, slamming the water bottle down on the bench. The noise made Rin jump. "Change of plans."
Jiro snorted. "Giving up already? The scrap dealer opens at 9 AM tomorrow."
"No," Marco turned to face them, his eyes burning with a scary intensity that didn't match his soft features. "I'm not giving up. I'm optimizing."
He held up one finger. "Plan A was to fix the bike non-stop. Plan A is stupid because I have the physical strength of a wet paper towel."
"He admits it," Jiro muttered.
"Plan B," Marco continued, ignoring the heckling. "I need to build this body while I build the bike. If I can't control the wrench, I can't control the throttle. The NSR is a two-stroke. It's snappy. It's violent. If I ride it like this, it will throw me into the gravel trap at turn one."
He began to pace around the small shop, his mind racing.
"One day for the body. One day for the machine," Marco declared. "I train one day until I can't move. The next day, I let the muscles recover while I do the technical work on the bike. Rinse and repeat."
Rin looked skeptical. "But Kai... the race is in six days. That only gives you... three days of fixing?"
"Three days is enough," Marco said, though he wasn't entirely sure. "If I know what I'm doing. And I do."
He walked back to the bike. The tank was loose now. He needed to lift it off to get to the airbox and the carburetors.
"Alright, let's see what we're dealing with," Marco said. He grabbed the fuel tank with both hands. It still had some old, stale gas sloshing around inside. It probably weighed about ten kilograms.
"Hup!" He lifted.
His lower back complained instantly. His biceps burned. He wobbled, the tank swaying dangerously in his grip.
"Watch the paint!" Jiro barked, actually looking concerned for a second.
Marco gritted his teeth, his face turning red. He shuffled three steps and set the tank down on the workbench with a heavy thud.
"Safe," Marco wheezed, leaning hands-on-knees. "Okay. Tank off. Step one complete."
He looked into the belly of the beast.
The sight that greeted him was heartbreaking.
The NSR250 was a V-twin engine. There were two carburetors buried in there. They were covered in a layer of grime that looked like fossilized mud. The fuel lines were brittle and cracked. The throttle cables looked frayed.
"It's a disaster," Marco whispered.
"It's a corpse," Jiro corrected. "The pistons are probably seized in the cylinders. If that's the case, you need a new engine. And we don't have money for a new engine."
"They aren't seized," Marco said, mostly to convince himself. "The storage oil usually protects them. But the carbs... the carbs are going to be a nightmare."
He reached in and touched the throttle linkage. He tried to twist it. It didn't budge. The slides were stuck fast, glued by dried gasoline that had turned into varnish over the years.
"I need carburetor cleaner. Lots of it," Marco said. "And new gaskets. And spark plugs. And two-stroke oil. The good stuff, Castrol or Motul. Not the lawnmower junk."
Rin pulled a small notebook from her apron pocket. "We have some cleaner in the back. And maybe some plugs that fit. But the oil... we only have the cheap stuff."
"We make do," Marco said. "Uncle Jiro, do we have a compression tester?"
Jiro pointed to a dusty toolbox on the bottom shelf. "Somewhere in there. Good luck finding an adapter that fits."
Marco took a deep breath. The adrenaline of the "new life" was fading, replaced by the heavy, crushing reality of the task. He was standing in a freezing garage, in a weak body, staring at a mechanical tragedy, with a grumpy uncle and a worried sister as his pit crew.
He looked at his hands again. They were trembling, not from cold, but from the exertion of just lifting the tank.
How am I supposed to race? he thought. Racing is brutal. You have to wrestle the bike into the corner. You have to hang off the side, holding on with just your legs. My legs right now couldn't crack a walnut.
"Kai?" Rin asked, stepping closer. "You're zoning out again."
Marco shook his head, slapping his cheeks with both hands. Smack. Smack.
"Right. Okay. Tonight, we assess the damage," Marco commanded, his voice finding a rhythm. "I'm going to strip the carbs. Just get them out. That's the goal. If I can get them soaking in cleaner tonight, that's a win."
He picked up a screwdriver. It felt heavy.
"Rin, hold the flashlight," he said. "Point it right there, under the frame rail."
"Roger!" Rin chirped, happy to be included. She clicked on a small LED light and aimed it.
Marco leaned in. The screw head was stripped. Of course it was. Why would anything be easy?
"Okay, you little devil," Marco muttered to the screw. "You want to play hard to get? I played hard to get with Ducati for three years. You're nothing."
He spent the next hour fighting three screws. He used pliers. He used a hammer. He used language that made Rin blush and Jiro chuckle.
Finally, with a wet squelch sound, the carburetor bank came loose.
Marco held the dirty metal piece up like it was the Holy Grail. Grease was smeared across his forehead. He had a cut on his thumb. His back felt like it was made of broken glass.
"Gotcha," he grinned.
He set the carbs down in a plastic tray and doused them with the last of the spray cleaner.
"That's it for today," Marco announced, his legs finally giving out. He sat down hard on the cold concrete floor. "I can't feel my arms."
"You did good, kid," Jiro said. It was the first compliment he had given. "You didn't break anything expensive."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Marco drawled.
He looked up at the ceiling. One day down. Six to go.
"Tomorrow," Marco said, pointing a shaking finger at the ceiling. "Tomorrow is physical training. I'm going to run until I throw up. Then I'm going to do pushups until my arms fall off. Then I'm going to eat every protein you have in this house."
Rin giggled. "We have tofu and eggs."
He looked back at the bike. It looked slightly less impossible now. Just slightly. But the mountain was still high, and he was still at the bottom, wearing flip-flops.
"Hey, Rin?"
"Yeah, Kai?"
"Do we have any duct tape?"
"Why?"
"Because," Marco smiled, a genuine, tired, reckless smile. "I have a feeling I'm going to need to tape this body together before the week is over."
He tried to stand up and failed.
"Actually," he sighed, lying back on the greasy floor. "Just drag me to bed. I live here now."