Work Text:
Among newly graduated repair trucks, there’s somewhat of a rite of passage. After graduating from mechanic school, one should take time off and make a project. Most mechanics build rolling stock of some sort. The talented ones build engines. The very talented ones build electric engines. Hertz is building not only an electric, but a companion repair truck for it as well.
Positive goes to negative. Solder those two ends together. Replace the plating. Screw it back in. Buff out the last cosmetic damage.
With a start, she realizes that this is the last thing on her checklist. As of now, the middle of the night on a random Tuesday, her greatest work to this point is finished. The lack of fanfare feels incorrect. She’ll miss coming home to work on the project every day. Holed up in her workshop every free hour, ensuring every detail was just right. Perfect.
Because these two are perfect. Two infants lay inanimate and serene on the workbench before her, tucked securely into their incubators. They are a perfect pair. One a repair truck, and one an electric engine. They are built for racing. No electricity courses through their bodies now, though. One jolt to the brain at just the right voltage, and the two will finally be born. Regretfully, Hertz almost wishes they’d stay like this forever. This is the most perfect they’ll ever be. Scrapes and injuries accumulate over a lifetime, marring her work. But that’s a selfish way to think. She can bring these infants into the world and raise them well, but after that, it is their job to do the rest.
She hasn’t named them yet. One day, she hopes the two of them will do great things together. She thinks, although these children are not biologically hers, that this must be what it feels like to be a mother.
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Hertz gently connects the electrodes to the sleeping children. It’s time for them to share a frequency. They are ten years old. While this is a standard procedure for their age, Hertz can't help but think that they’re not ready.
Connection can be a wonderful thing, but it can also go wrong. While these two were built to be compatible, there’s always a chance they could reject the connection. That can be… Painful. In that case, they will need to be disconnected, and the adverse experience could affect their ability to share frequency with anyone else in the future.
Wrench is very sharp for her age. She’s catching on to every mechanical principle that Hertz shows her, and she loves watching her work. Electra is a prodigious racer-in-training, and he’s already starting to display the showmanship that he’ll need when he’s older. They’re both proud of who they are and they get along wonderfully.
But, of course, they have their moments. Electra is often emotionally volatile, throwing tantrums over miniscule upsets. That sets Wrench off, and she defaults to anger, which makes Electra more upset, and so on and so forth.
She’s prepared them for this moment, and talked them through what to expect. They’ve both been working hard to make sure they’re ready for this. They’ll need it, if they want to compete in the big leagues.
She runs the command to wake Electra.
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Wake request received. Display status.
Status: Operational. No errors detected.
Frequency change detected. Confirm.
Confirmed. Proceed.
Rise, Electra.
“Electra?” Hertz’s voice comes to him out of his unconsciousness. The two of them are in Hertz’s workshop. Wrench is still asleep. Hertz is running the wake-up command on her system right now.
“Wrench?” She asks. He opens his eyes and blinks twice. Did it work then? Are the two of them finally connected?
Hertz! Electra! What’s going on? Wrench’s not-quite-voice rings out in his head. It’s so loud, and it’s like nothing he’s ever experienced before. The words appear in his head without any sound, but he can still distinguish it from his own internal monologue, as if it was a real voice with its own sound characteristics. It’s so Wrench. He can’t stop himself from responding in kind.
Stop, stop, please! Quiet! It’s overwhelming to have someone else in your head. He almost sobs. Something is buzzing and he can't tell if it’s his ears or Wrench’s.
Wrench must think the same, because Electra hears her, really hears her, with his ears, whine in panic. Electra is not far behind himself. They’re like two mirrors bouncing each other’s emotions around, intensifying them.
“Shh, calm. It’s okay, I'll turn it down. Remember what we practiced? Try to think outside the shared wavelength band. It’s alright”. Hertz consoles them. Electra feels her turn a dial on his exposed wrist panel and the noise gets a little more tolerable. He assumes she does the same for Wrench.
She must be quicker on the uptake then him because she quiets down considerably. All he’s getting from her on the frequency is the occasional spike of anxiety. He can’t seem to stop himself from transmitting everything to her.
“Electra, honey, slow down. Try to calm yourself and try not to give Wrench so much.” He knows he’s overwhelming her so he tries to isolate his own thoughts. To think on a wavelength outside of the range he now shares with Wrench.
“Good job. Just like that. You’re both doing so good”. Hertz runs a hand over each of their heads.
“So… That’s what it’s like? Now we’ll be like this forever?” Wrench asks and rubs her eyes. Electra is still getting worry-unfamiliar-adrenaline from her, but the initial shock has passed.
“Unless we disconnect you, yeah. But hopefully, you’ll come to love it. You’ll learn so much more about each other and work closer together than ever before”. She responds. She keeps gently stroking each of their hair and lets the two of them explore the new connection. Electra gives Wrench a little tiny Zap! and she gives him one back. Electra does another, and it goes back and forth, changing a little each time.
Zap!
Zip!
Zop!
Zorp!
Eventually, the two of them are giggling with each one. It’s pointless, but the novelty of sending each other psychic static shocks has them laughing.
“What’s so funny, guys?” Hertz asks.
Electra knows what Wrench will say before she says it.
“Inside joke”.
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Electra’s not above some dirty play. He’s only in the junior race league, but he knows he needs to let people know he’s not to be messed with. The rough-and-tumble attitude is common in the races. Every racer wants to be known as the top dog, leader of the rolling stock.
So when he slams into another racer, trying to knock him off the track, it’s not surprising that as soon as the boy catches his footing again, he rushes to catch up to Electra and grabs him by the back of the collar. This particular race is a solo race, without a coach. The boy, a little orange diesel, yanks him to a stop and Electra turns on his heel to face him.
“Hey! What was that?!” The boy yells at him.
Electra smiles smugly. “Guess you slipped. Are we gonna talk or are we gonna race?”
The boy is fuming. Electra had seen him in the warm-up. He’d had a feisty attitude then, and he clearly still does now. “Bullshit! You pushed me!” He snarls in Electra’s face. It’s clearly a challenge. And even though he’s losing time on the race, Electra’s not one to back down.
Electra takes off his helmet. There’s no more clear challenge than that. “What are you gonna do about it?”
The boy throws down his helmet, where it clunks in the gravel. “Oh, bring it on, mohawk boy.”
The two of them square up in the awkward way preteens that don’t know how to fight do. The boy throws the first punch. Electra takes the hit to the jaw. It’s not the hardest Electra’s been punched, but it’s definitely not the weakest weather. They trade a few hits, mostly trying to look tough, rather than really hurt each other. Quickly, Electra manages to tackle the boy to the ground.
By now, people have noticed the fight. The marshals intervene, pulling the two of them apart.
“Break it up! No fighting! You’re both disqualified!” One of the marshals barks at them. Electra scrambles back to his feet, still flushed in anger. He sees Wrench push through the crowd, hop the barricade, and skate towards him, barking mad.
“ELECTRA! What are you doing?!” She reaches him and he sees her immediately look him over for damage. “Where’s your helmet?” She asks. He points it out, several meters away.
As she goes to get it, a marshal stops her. “Miss, you can’t be here.”
Electra and Wrench reply simultaneously.
“She’s my repair truck,” he says.
“I’m his repair truck,” she says.
The marshal sighs the weary sigh of someone whose job is corralling unruly preteen racers. “All of you get out of here. You’re both disqualified.”
Electra offers her his couplers. He starts to tow her back to the start line in silence. He can feel the annoyance radiating off of her through the frequency. He can almost hear her fuming behind him.
“You can’t be starting fights all the time,” she tells him.
“I technically didn’t start the fight.” He argues.
He knows it’s a weak argument. And Wrench isn’t going to let him get away on a technicality. “I saw you push him.”
“I can’t let people like him walk all over me.”
“ You pushed him ! You’re going to get disqualified from every race you run if you keep pulling stunts like that.”
Electra turns around to face her, so fast she has no choice but to let go of his couplers.
“Let me race how I want!” He yells at her.
“Have you ever thought about how no coach wants to race with you more than once? It’s because you don’t finish, like, half your races. And none of them care about the stupid fights you keep starting. You need to cool off a little, or you'll never be able to nail down a partner!”
Curse her and her rational, objectively correct thinking.
Electra knows she’s right. Between fights, getting into little accidents, or flat-out cheating, this is the third race in a row he’s DNFed or been disqualified from. He’s lucky there’s no provisions to ban someone from racing, because he’d definitely have been kicked out by now if there were.
“Fine. Let’s just go. People are watching,” Electra concedes.
He’s right. They’re not far from the spectators, and more than a few of them are more interested in the argument than the race. Look at that little electric diva-in-training, they think. What a temper. He’ll fly too close to the sun one day if he carries on like that.