“NO NO LEFT, GO LEF-” Vince’s screams are drowned out by the crashing of the new engine as one of his workers stumbles over a wrench. “This is why I said left” Vince mumbles under his breath as he unlocks his office and plops into the chair. He pulls open one of the drawers on his wooden desk, turned grey by the years of collective smoke. Everybody said that it was bad for him, including Alex, probably the only person he actually trusts. But Vince had been smoking since he was 16, when he first started working at the dingy mechanic shop, and the previous owner had offered him a smoke, and how ironic, the place was now his, and he carried on the filthy staining habit of his old boss. He pulls out a cigarette from the massive stash and lights it, dimly illuminating his face in front of him in the dark office, for he had neglected to turn on the lights.
The sun had just risen, and Vince had arrived early to make sure the morning shift mechanics didn’t break anything, but he had already failed that task. Just as he was about to return to the floor to help with the car that had come in yesterday, he heard a series of loud bangs come from behind him.
“Up already Alex?” he said to nobody in particular as he unlocked the secret doorway to the “cellar.” It wasn’t quite a cellar, more of just a large room, but for lack of a better name, cellar, is what he and Alex referred to it as.
As he descended the stairs Vince began to hear a lot more than just bangs, he heard small pops and fizzes, and a hiss that made him accelerate from a walk to a fast paced half trip half run down the stairs.
“No no no not now, please there are people here!” He tried yelling as he made his way down the disorientingly long tunnel, and he could swear the stairs felt like they went deeper than usual as he tried to make it to the bottom landing as fast as possible.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs he skipped the last few steps to reveal exactly what he had expected. A massive walker loomed in the center of the cellar, and he was once again thankful to whoever built this room for making it so deep, for the mech was over two stories tall. Vince and Alex had been smuggling it into the cellar for just over a year now, but there was something different now, it was moving.
With another hiss of steam and a pop of the hydraulics releasing, the great giant rose to it’s full height. The mech was a beast set on two steel legs, each easily larger than a car, but what they supported was more terrifying, a two ton death machine, piloted by his exposed friend, currently trying to figure out how to close the cockpit’s bullet proof hatch.
“Oh my god!” Vince exclaims, his mouth hanging wide, and the freshly lit cigarette falling to the floor with a muffled crash no louder than a fly beating its wings, drowned out by the massive noise of the mech, the same mech that shouldn’t be moving yet, the same mech that could be heard above ground through the massive amount of noise it was making... The illegal mech.

“Hey Vince! How do you like it?” Alex yells, straining over the roar of the engines, newly added to the mech this morning by herself.
    “TURN IT OFF!” Vinces deep bellows cutting through the noise much more clearly than Alex’s own voice. She didn’t even bother with trying to make a retort, she knew it would be lost in the roar of the engine, besides, she knew it worked already so why keep it on?
    The giant lowered itself gracefully to the ground as Alex killed the engine, the hiss of steam being vented from every nook and cranny in the behemoth. The cockpit stayed open as Alex climbed out, she would have to figure out all the little flashy buttons later, but for now she needed to see what Vince wanted.
    “What’s up, buddy?” she tried to sound as friendly as possible, because from the look on his face, Vince wasn’t.
“Whats up! Do you even realize how loud that thing is?! You can hear it above all the idiots up there dropping my new engines, and that’s saying quite a bit.” Vince’s crude humor always managed to make Alex smile, but she was completely serious now, realizing her mistake that could have cost both her and Vince a lot more than just the not so gentle giant, now crouched in the center of the room.
“Oh... sorry man” she tried to sound okay, but the slight shake in her voice and the burning sensation that she could feel in her cheeks, betrayed that fact that she was just as scared as Vince right now, maybe more. All that noise could have sent one of Vince’s “idiot” employees straight to the police.
“It’s ok... I think, just remember to only turn that on at night.”
“Ok, but hey look! I finally got us an engine!” Alex squealed excitedly, the mech may have been enough to alert people up top, but their words would never make it far enough.
“Thats great, Alex” Vince mumbles, just loud enough for her to catch what he was saying, before storming his way up the stairs.
“Harsh...”

Vince practically flew up to his office, barely feeling the steps beneath his feet, he needed to make sure all of his mechanics were still there, and that no calls had been made from the phone in the corner of the shop that he had set up for business calls.
    The secret door exploded outwards easily on its well oiled hinges, and crashed into the wall from the force of Vince’s kick, chipping yet more paint from the already run down looking office. His urgency making him careless to the fact that somebody could see him coming out of there. He was fuming, thoughts racing through his mind at a million miles a minute.
“How could she be so stupid?!” he raged behind the soundproof glass of his private haven, away from the workers. He wasn’t close enough to connect with any of them, and he sure as hell didn’t trust them to keep a secret like the mech. “I need a break” he rambled to himself while lighting another cigarette.
As the door to the office opened he noticed his workers looking up from the car and giving him wary glances... How long had he been down there?
“Hey guys, how’s the car coming along?” Vince stammered, trying desperately to sound natural with all eyes in the room on him
“Good boss, coulda used your help a little while ago though, kept tryin’a find you” retorted one of the older workers, forcing the burning flush into Vince’s cheeks.
“Oh uh ya I was... taking a break outside, didn’t want to smoke around the new car.” He knew it was stupid and he sounded guiltier than a 6 year old with his hand in the cookie jar, but he hoped more than anything it would work, nobody could find out about this mech, not yet, and definitely not here.
Vince was about to go back to his office when he heard a loud banging on the garage door. The chain rattled loudly as the door was lifted, mixing with the chaotic symphony made by the sounds of the shop. When the door was folded to its fullest extent, Vince put a wrench in between the overly sized links of the chain to stop it from falling.
“Hello there, Vince” a cool voice sounded above him, a deep and serious tone that set Vince’s hairs on end, and froze him where he was crouched next to the chain.
“H-hi Mayor White” was all he managed to choke out.
“Is my daughter here, mister mechanic?” Vince managed to steel himself and stand upright, but each word was sharper than the last, making him want to spill everything he knew about the mech right there and then, but he took a deep breath and managed to looked at the massive man with a smile, though it was obviously a false one.
“Sorry Mayor White, haven’t seen her today, have you checked her friends’ houses?”
“As a matter of fact I haven’t, this was the first place I thought to look for her.”
“Well sorry again, let me know if you find her M-Mayor White” Vince silently cursed himself with every violent word he knew for tripping up, he had done so well, but that man honestly terrified him.
“Good day, greasemonkey” That last word was spat out with so much hate Vince was almost positive it was meant to physically harm him.
“I swear I’m going to kill that girl” Vince muttered, a shiver running down his spine as he walked back to the privacy of the tinted glass of his office, where he knew he was safe from the cold stare of the mayor. “Its not even noon yet... Today’s gonna be great.”

Alex paced the room back and forth, widening the faded line in the carpet stretching from her window to the door on the other side of the room. She had picked up the habit from her dad when she was little.
She thought back to when she was little, maybe 8 or 9 years old, her dad would pace back and forth in the living room, trying to think of new things to do. Every third or fourth time between each wall he would blurt something out, like “Zoo!” or “Park!” She would usually agree quickly, there wasn’t much that couldnt interest her back then.
    “How times have changed” she mumbled, her words lost on the breeze that drifted through her window as she worked on a little wind up robot toy on her bed. She began putting it together piece by piece and then disassembling it again trying to make it walk more smoothly, but the jittery movements never seemed to even out, no matter how much she oiled it or rearranged parts.
    “ARRG!” she yelled as she flung the miniature mech at the wall, shattering the fragile pieces, and chipping the paint on the wall of her less than immaculate room.
    “Alex, what was that?” The deep rumbling voice of her dad came rolling upstairs, before rolling out the window. HA! He almost sounds like he cares, she thought to herself, the thought of her father actually caring about anything other than his work brought a cheesy grin to her face.
    “Ya right” her voice nothing more than a whisper as she bent down to pick up the pieces of the shattered toy, and even as she moved to pick up the two pieces of the robots head, a large rough hand reached down next to hers and began putting the larger pieces into a bag.
    “Oh... Hi dad” Alex tried to say as cheerfully as possible, but there was no denying that she was afraid, he hadn’t come up to see her in her room for over a year, at least since he had become mayor. To top it off he was the mayor of one of the few cities in the world to abolish the mechanical genius that the rest of the world has accepted.
    “Alex, where were you this morning?” There it is, the words she knew would come before anything else, no caring for her, no wondering if she was hurt, just suspicion. Just doing his job!
    “At Liz’s house” What a bad lie, if he had checked there she was screwed.
    “Oh, alright then” there was no suspicion in his voice, but you can’t trust the mouth of a practiced politician. The mayor didn’t even take a second glance at the shattered mess as he walked out of the room, and only once he left did Alex notice she had been biting her lip to the point that it was drawing a trickle of warm blood, in hopes that he would believe her fib.
    She ran for her phone, if she knew her dad he would try and confirm her story. Liz was one of Alex’s few friends, she would back up her story, but Liz’s mom was a different story. The phone rang for what seemed like forever, and she began to wonder if the line was busy, oh god she was dead if he had already called her. One ring, two, three, four, five, a voice, she had never been happier to hear Liz’s voice.
    “Liz!” She shouted, making a mental note to keep her voice down from that point forward, for fear that her dad would show up like before and hear what she was saying.
    “What’s up? You sound worried” How could she tell that over the phone? Did she really sound that bad?
    “I lied to my dad about where I was this morning, I told him I was at your house. If he calls you please cover for me, and try to convince your mom to also!” She didn’t even stay in the call to see if Liz would agree, her dad can be pretty scary, but she had faith that Liz had her back.
    Now what to do about the mech, Vince was obviously mad at her for turning it on this morning, but with the new engine she just couldn’t resist. They had originally decided to build the mech as a personal project, but what would they do with it now? They couldn’t own it, let alone pilot it legally here, but not much more than 30 miles out and they would already be in mech territory.
    What was she thinking! She couldn’t just go traipsing about off into the wilderness with a massive mech and not get caught, this was a strictly mech forbidden city, she’d be thrown in jail faster than a serial killer. It was true, she would love to ditch this town with Vince and run away to somewhere with more freedom for them to work, but she just couldn’t see how it would work, not now at least.
    As she put the last shards of metal into the plastic bag, she tied it up and tossed it into the corner of her room, doing nothing but adding to the clutter.  Psh, by tomorrow I might not even have to think about the clutter. Alex lay down on the soft bed, like a pillow, the mattress formed to her body, making it feel like she was floating, there are some perks to having a mayor for a dad, some.

The sparks flew all around him as his blow torch met the mech’s arm. It was the dead of night and Vince’s whole body was drenched in sweat, both from exertion and from the heat that radiated from his tools.
    The mech may have been running, but it wouldnt get anywhere without a proper fixing up, luckily, that was Vince’s specialty. The stuffiness of the underground room doing nothing to help with the fact that Vince was slowly dozing off more and more with each passing minute. The master mechanic didn’t hit the floor until the entire upper body of the mech was shiny, new, and ready to face the world. Tomorrow would be the lower body, how fun.
    At well past 3 in the morning Vince had collapsed into the hard bed in his apartment, he could afford a lot more, but he prefered to put his money to better use. With the strength ebbing from his body, and a stiffness setting into every muscle he had, to him, nothing had ever felt more comfortable.
   

The moonlight slid into his apartment through the uneven curtains, painting a sort of ethereal picture from the undersized space. The rough bed that his sleeping form currently occupied took up the better part of his small bedroom, the rest filled up by his desk, currently piled with blueprints and pens. The apartment had come with a large wooden bookshelf that leaned precariously against the wall of the room opposite his desk, but since Vince wasn’t much of a reader, the shelf ended up being mainly filled with bobble heads and DVD’s. The steel in the kitchen glowed dull blue in the night, making the small cube of appliances and scattered snacks look like somebody had just spilled a fresh coat of paint on them.
Vince slept peacefully, not even feeling the strained muscles trying their hardest to keep him awake, there was no way he could, he had already drifted into an exhaustion fueled sleep, but the peace wouldn’t last as long as he wanted, and chaos erupted when dawn struck.

    With the sounds of birds and a fresh breeze blowing the scent of pancakes into Vince’s face, he shot out of bed, pulling the muscles in his back.
“Urgh, forgot about that” he groaned, almost not even forming the words, but rather more of a low growl. He began rubbing out his sore muscles in an effort to find out where that smell was coming from, but before he could stand up, a form in a flour dusted apron shot through the door, pushing him back down onto the hard mattress, less than comfortably.
“Good morning sleeping beauty, I went to check on the mech this morning and saw your handy work, so I came here and you were asleep... So I made pancakes!” Alex was practically jumping up and down, sprinkling flour all over Vince, turning his black hair into the likeness of a snow speckled forest.
“Alex? Wait a second, you can cook? And how did you get into my house?!” The cooking honestly surprised him more than the breaking and entering. Alex was the last person he thought would ever cook a good meal.
“Well my dad’s at work a lot so I make myself pancakes every now and then, got good at it too! And you leave your door unlocked when you’re tired.” He was suddenly glad it was Alex in his house and not some street thug.
“Well alright, let me have some, I’m practically starving over here.” He forced himself out of bed and into the kitchen, where a large stack of pancakes was balancing on his table, there were at least 30. He took a bite of one of the fluffy cakes, amazed by how good they were, until he made a terrifying realization. “Alex, please tell me you brought your own ingredients.”
“Oh ya of course, but I forgot butter, so I used that stuff you had in your pantry.” She said with a huge grin plastered on her face, as if it was some sort of accomplishment.
“Wait a second, my imported butter... how much did you use” He yanked open the pantry door to find the bottom shelf, where he would usually keep his massive stash of expensive imported butter, completely empty.
“All of it, I mean how much butter do you think I needed for all those pancakes?” He could feel the rage building up inside him, that was his favorite to cook with, and he almost never used regular butter, I know, I know a bit picky but hey, its some good butter.
“YOU USED ALL OF MY IMPORTED BUTTER FOR YOUR PANCAKES!” Vince
yelled, straining his vocal cords to their extent.

“THE PANCAKES ARE DELICIOUS!” Alex retorted, trying to outmatch the volume of Vince’s rage, but only managing to accidentally make her voice crack.

Vince un-scrunched his face in remembrance of how delicious the fluffy cakes were, but almost instantly realized that he didn’t want to lose this. “YEAH BUT YOU DIDNT HAVE TO MAKE SO MANY! HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU USE 4 POUNDS OF BUTTER IN ONE SITTING, THAT STUFF WAS EXPENSIVE!” Vince exclaimed before stomping out of the room, effectively ending the argument with one swift motion. Alex then went back to working on the enormous stack of pancakes filling up the kitchen table.
“Totally worth it” she mumbled between bites, as Vince was in the other room, audibly ordering more of that fantastic butter, she was going to have to remember to only use half of it next time.
When he returned from his calls, Vince and Alex sat down, each with a massive stack of pancakes, trying to make clear sentences between bites.
“We should use the mech to get some money, like a brawl ring or something.” Was Vince’s main suggestion, he may have run the mechanic shop and made pretty decent pay from it, but everybody could use a little extra dough. A brawl ring is a less than legal fight club, where you can pitch mechs against each other in a fight, its not to the death but the metal giants are easier to break apart than you would think when they’re on even terms.
“Or we could take it to another city where we can actually use it without breaking it! You know we could use that walker to finally get away from here, leave the city, go somewhere we can be useful, maybe open up a new shop specifically for mechs!” All the ideas spilled from Alex’s mind like a tsunami, she didn’t even notice Vince’s shocked face until she stopped talking.
“Leave! Thats your idea?” Alex had thought of the idea as more than appealing, but she never actually stopped to think of what Vince’s opinion of skipping town would be.
“Well think about it Vince! Look at what we do, who we are. We are in THE worst place in the world to be mechanics. Technology is advancing and we both want a part of it, but as long as we’re stuck here, then our skills are wasted, reduced to nothing but a hobby.” Vince sat there, the words flowing out of his friend like a politician... Like her dad.
“You know, you sound a lot like your father when you talk like that, maybe you’ve been picking up a thing or two more than just mechanics, Ms. White” The words sent a shiver up Alex’s spine, and set her cheeks burning red.
“You know I hate it when you call me that!” She finished off the last of her pancakes and stormed out of Vince’s apartment, leaving him to his thoughts.
“Leave the city... Maybe its not such a bad idea.”

As Alex walked home she rolled the idea of leaving around in her head, how they would leave, what they would do, would they live together? The thought of it sent images of her and Vince into her head that caused her to blush. Shaking her head to clear her mind, she wandered aimlessly towards her house, the way wasn’t confusing, and the borderline mansion was impossible to miss, so paying attention wasn’t necessary.
    As she walked up to her doorstep, passing the lawn, immaculate as ever, just like everything else in this damned house. She pulled the key from her pocket, the small sliver of metal slipped into the door handle with perfect ease, she hated it, everything was always tended for, she didn’t have struggles. Everything was laid out for her on a silver platter even though she didn’t ask for it. She had lied to Vince, even though her dad was at work most of the time she still had somebody to make her a meal every morning. In fact the only reason she knew how to make the most basic dishes was because of Liz.
    Thats what she decided to do today, she would go to Liz’s house, maybe apologize for the abrupt phone call before. But not before relaxing a little.
    As she walked up the stairs she could practically feel the silence of the house, the emptiness left her the perfect opportunity to do whatever she wanted for at least another few hours, what time was it anyway? She looked up at the clock in her room, reading half past noon, still fairly early. She walked over to the computer sitting on her corner desk, hooked up to the sound system that she had to beg and plead her dad for, along with the promise that she would only use it when he wasn’t home. She put on her favorite playlist, a compilation of her favorite rock and indie bands, and cranked the volume to nearly full, feeling the floor vibrating underneath her feet she walked over to her bed and pulled out a large sketch pad from under the mattress.
    She made rough sketches one after the other of the new mech, large sweeping lines taking up the entire page, nearly as tall as her arm was long. She worked off nothing but memory, the cockpit filled with levers and flashing buttons, each with their own important purpose, was put into the corner of the page, next to the full size drawing. The massive tanks on the machine’s back storing pressure for the mechs hydraulics. Each wire running down the massive metal body, was a thick black coiling snake on her paper, the crude lines not quite catching the complexity of the beautiful and destructive device. Last but not least was the size comparison, the mech stood over the height of 5 full grown men, and the only way to the cockpit was climbing up the legs and arms. She drew a small man standing next to the massive mechanical beast, in a greasy mechanic’s apron.
    When the rough sketch was finished she slipped the book back under her mattress, if her dad ever found the drawings inside he would surely find out what she and Vince were up to, and him being the mayor, she was almost positive that it wouldn’t go down well. The music was the next thing to go, the sound system had been drowning the rest of the world out, and as soon as it was shut off the quiet sound of bird songs were audible once again.
    The phone across the room took less than a few steps to reach, the beeping of each number key momentarily filled the room as she dialed Liz’s number, practically scarred into her memory. The phone rang a few times and then there was a voice, soft and caring, but at the same time anxious and worried.
    “Alex! I’m surprised your dad hasn’t killed you yet.”
    “Well he must have believed me, thanks by the way, I know it was really short notice but I couldn’t have him knowing where I was that morning.” It felt good to get this all off her chest, even if it was over the phone.