One Week
After meticulously finishing the disassembly of the black Ferrari, Arthur Sterling wiped the last smears of grease from his hands and locked the heavy warehouse door behind him.
The damp, salty air of the Los Angeles port stung his nose as he moved through the thick midnight fog.
Following Old Parker's strict instructions, he silently made his way around to the dilapidated side door of the massive building.
There, located over two meters high on the brick wall, was a narrow, cracked window that had been intentionally left slightly ajar.
With a calculated flick of his wrist, Arthur tossed the heavy ring of keys through the gap, listening to them clatter onto the concrete floor inside.
After seamlessly completing all of this, Arthur quickly threw a leg over his vintage motorcycle, the engine roaring to life as he rushed back through the neon-lit streets to his residence.
That entire night, Mia Toretto still didn't show up at his apartment.
Laying in the quiet darkness of his room, Arthur realized there was a distinct problem developing.
Their interactions over the past two days, capped off by the intense, adrenaline-fueled escape from the biker gang, had made him deeply realize something important.
Mia, who was experiencing her first real awakening of independence and had been suffocated by Vince's aggressive harassment for a long time, seemed to have developed a considerable amount of genuine goodwill towards him.
According to his logical, strategic plan, Mia should have come to see him again very soon to check on him or her car.
But having not seen her for several days in a row, it was glaringly obvious that something had gone wrong on her end.
Either she was temporarily grounded and restricted by Dom after staying out so late, or there was something far more dangerous going on behind the closed doors of the Toretto house.
For example, Dom's highly coordinated team might be actively planning another major, high-speed operation on the asphalt.
In the blink of an eye, it had been some time since he had unexpectedly arrived in the chaotic world of Fast & Furious.
He just didn't know exactly how much longer it would be before the main overarching plot officially began to explode across the city.
At the cold thought of this looming uncertainty, Arthur felt that he might need to take the initiative to actively investigate the shadows around him.
And so, early the next morning when it was time for work, Arthur drove Mia's sleek, highly modified Honda Acura directly to the repair shop.
As for his own beaten-up, vintage motorcycle, it was safely stored away in his dimensional private space.
With the rapid awakening and continuous upgrading of his various skills over the past weeks, Arthur's private space had now impressively increased to fifteen cubic meters.
Carrying a vintage motorcycle around with him in that invisible void was more than enough room, leaving plenty of space for his tools and his M1911.
Because Arthur was the very first person to arrive at the dusty repair shop and didn't hold a master key to the rolling steel gates, he leaned comfortably against the hood of the Honda and waited in the morning sun for over ten minutes.
Only then did he finally hear the low, throaty rumble of a classic V8 engine approach.
He watched Old Parker arrive, driving a beautifully maintained, old-model yellow Chevrolet Camaro.
"Hey, Arthur," the older man called out, killing the engine and stepping out onto the cracked pavement.
"You're here quite early today!"
Old Parker had seen Arthur casually leaning against the customized car from afar, so he greeted him with a nod.
Quickly recognizing the aggressive body kit and custom paint, he realized the Honda belonged to Mia Toretto.
He looked at the young mechanic with some genuine surprise. "This is Mia's car. Why is it here with you?"
Arthur kept his expression entirely neutral. "She said the car occasionally fails to start when she turns the key. So I took a thorough look at it last night and found some loose issues with the main battery terminals."
"By the way, Parker, do you happen to have her home contact number?" Arthur asked smoothly.
"I can call and let them know the car is completely fixed and ready for pickup."
Nodding slowly, Old Parker didn't think much of the simple request.
After all, he had also heard the loud, aggressive rumors about Dom's subordinate, Vince, having a massive, obsessive crush on Mia.
The last time Vince had violently targeted Arthur in this very garage was precisely because Mia had innocently asked the young man to do some routine maintenance on her ride.
Old Parker simply didn't think that, after only knowing each other for a few short days, Arthur would actually have the charm or the ability to make a girl like Mia genuinely like him.
So, he rummaged in the cluttered center console of his Camaro for a while, found a slightly grease-stained business card, and tossed it to Arthur.
"That's Dom's direct number. You'd better contact them yourself to arrange the pickup," Parker advised, his tone shifting into something more fatherly.
"Keep the card, kid. With your recent skills, you might be leaving my small place soon enough."
"When that time inevitably comes, going to him will surely lead to a much better, faster future."
Old Parker's own street-racing ambition had long since faded into the rearview mirror, and being older and wiser, he was quite open-minded about the harsh realities of Los Angeles.
He had already clearly noticed Arthur's extraordinary, almost supernatural qualities over the past few days, especially his rapidly advancing [Repair] skills.
It wasn't hard for the veteran mechanic to see that his small, neighborhood shop wouldn't be able to keep a talent like Arthur tied down in the future.
Seeing Arthur silently take the business card and pocket it, Old Parker suddenly seemed to remember something important.
He reached back into his car, pulled a thick, unmarked manila envelope out of the glovebox, and handed it directly to Arthur.
"Here. Your payment from yesterday's late-night job."
"They were very satisfied with how clean you stripped it," Parker said, his voice dropping into a low, serious murmur. "So, Arthur, as long as you keep your mouth firmly shut, there will definitely be more highly lucrative private jobs like this for you in the future."
Arthur took the heavy envelope and opened it directly, completely unbothered by the lack of subtlety; he had recently gotten quite used to the straightforward, blunt ways of this city.
Upon pulling the flap back, he saw five crisp, hundred-dollar bills featuring Benjamin Franklin, neatly arranged inside.
During his time here, Arthur had actually noticed a very specific economic quirk about the streets of Los Angeles.
A pristine hundred-dollar bill didn't actually have a very high circulation rate within the everyday US economy.
Regular people usually used small-denomination bills, like ones, fives, and tens, for their daily grocery shopping and minor expenses.
The absolute most frequently used cash on the street was the twenty-dollar bill.
As for large, expensive purchases, people generally just swiped their credit cards directly.
So if someone went out to a local diner or corner store and paid using only hundred-dollar bills, they would likely be given a few extra, highly suspicious looks, as nervous shopkeepers always worried about receiving high-grade counterfeit money from gang members.
Arthur didn't bother to hold the bills up to the light to check if they were counterfeit; trusting Old Parker's reputation, and seeing the total amount was exactly correct, he folded the cash and put it safely away.
Since it was the very first real, substantial money he had earned through his own hands after his transmigration, Arthur felt quite satisfied with the heavy weight in his pocket.
"Alright, Parker," Arthur said, his eyes locking onto the older man's gaze.
"In the future, if there's specialized work, just come straight to me. I might not have a lot of other shining virtues, but my mouth is shut tight like a vault."
It was an easy promise to make. Just kidding, his predecessor didn't really have any close friends to gossip with anyway.
As for Arthur himself, it had only been a matter of weeks since he arrived in this dangerous timeline.
The only people he was relatively familiar with in the entire sprawling city were the mechanics at the repair shop and Mia.
Even if Arthur desperately wanted to find someone to brag to about stripping stolen supercars, he literally couldn't find a suitable target.
Seeing how highly sensible and grounded the kid was, a satisfied, relieved smile immediately appeared on Old Parker's weathered face.
"Okay, I'll go unlock the main bays and open the rolling doors first," Parker said, turning toward the shop.
"In a bit, use the office phone to notify Dom's side to come pick up the Honda."
The morning quickly shifted into the loud, metallic rhythm of the workday.
Around mid-morning, Arthur wiped his hands and used the number Parker had given him to dial Dom's house.
He didn't have Mia's personal cell phone contact information yet, so he could only reach out directly to the Toretto landline.
As it turned out, shortly before noon, someone finally arrived at the garage to drive the sleek car away.
Two people walked onto the concrete floor; Arthur didn't recognize the quiet, broad-shouldered man standing by the entrance.
However, the woman taking the lead was Letty Ortiz, Dom's fiercely loyal childhood friend and fiercely protective girlfriend.
She confidently walked into the repair shop, her dark eyes sharp and calculating, wandering around the toolboxes for a bit as if conducting a silent inspection of the territory.
Arthur keenly noticed that Letty's intense, scrutinizing gaze fell directly on him several times, lingering with a heavy, unspoken weight.
However, she didn't stay too long or attempt to start a conversation; she simply took the Honda's keys from Old Parker with a brief nod and then drove the car away, the exhaust echoing loudly down the street.
Over the next week, Arthur buried himself in metal and grease, and his [Repair] skills advanced by absolute leaps and bounds.
Through sheer repetition and system integration, it even quickly reached a staggering Level 4.
Perhaps having clearly discovered that Arthur could easily and flawlessly fix almost any complex car-related problem brought into the shop, Old Parker eagerly arranged three more lucrative private jobs for Arthur during that single week.
Two of them were also late-night, rapid disassembly work for untraceable black market cars, each paying a clean five hundred dollars as well.
But the final, most complex job involved him and another trusted veteran employee of the repair shop performing highly illegal, performance-enhancing modifications on a getaway car together.
And for that highly dangerous time, Arthur received triple the usual payment in cash.
The sudden, massive influx of off-the-books money significantly eased his crushing credit card debt crisis, allowing him to finally breathe.
But during this entire busy week, Mia didn't appear even once.
Not only did she not go to Arthur's residence in the evenings, she didn't even come by the repair shop to say hello.
However, Arthur, utilizing his enhanced situational awareness, also noticed a highly suspicious pattern: this week, the high-performance cars belonging to Dom and his core subordinates were all quietly sent to the repair shop for comprehensive, heavy-duty maintenance and structural repairs.
He even discovered, while walking past the paint booths, that all of their signature cars had received brand new, completely different paint jobs to mask their previous identities.
Realizing something massive was brewing in the background, Arthur began to actively investigate the shadows secretly.
He started paying intense attention to the local radio news broadcasts and began buying various morning newspapers related to California and Los Angeles county, sitting at his small kitchen table, trying to verify his growing suspicions.
In the meticulous process of cross-referencing police reports and shipping manifests, the system chimed, and Arthur even awakened another entirely new cognitive skill called [Intelligence Gathering].
After a few tense days of being busily occupied with his research, upon waking up early and brewing a cheap cup of coffee on a new day, Arthur saw a massive, bold news story plastered across the front page of a California newspaper that had just been delivered.
"Highway Bandits Reappear, Two Heavy Transport Trucks Stolen, Corporate Losses May Exceed Six Million Dollars."
Reading the vivid details of the precision driving used in the heist, Arthur finally confirmed his dark suspicion.
Dom and the others had made their adrenaline-fueled move again.