Chapter 3: System
"Tuna melt and a Coke, Mia."
School let out at three, and Simon had no clubs, no practice, no obligations. He brought Meg to the only place in the neighborhood that felt like neutral ground — the small grocery and lunch counter that the Toretto family ran out of a converted storefront two blocks from the garage.
Mia Toretto worked the counter — waitress, cook, and cashier, usually all at the same time, usually without complaint. She was Dom's younger sister, which in this neighborhood meant she'd grown up understanding things that most people her age didn't have the vocabulary for yet.
"What about you, Meg?" Mia asked, already moving toward the sandwich press.
"I'm eating at home later." Meg slid onto a stool. "Just an apple soda if you've got one."
Mia nodded and was back in under two minutes with a tuna melt, two sodas, and the particular efficiency of someone who'd been doing this since she was twelve.
Simon was halfway through the sandwich when Dom appeared from the back, a bottle of Corona already in hand, and pulled up a stool across from him.
"Heard you had a thing with Weevil today," Dom said. Not accusatory. Just noting it, the way you'd note the weather.
Simon didn't look up from his sandwich. "I'll handle it."
Dom studied him for a moment, then nodded once. "You need something, say the word."
He pushed back off the counter and disappeared into the back of the shop. That was Dom's version of a lengthy conversation.
Meg and Mia immediately fell into their own discussion — something about the upcoming pep rally — and Simon settled back into his seat, quietly working through the rest of his sandwich.
Then the door opened.
"Tuna melt, please. Thanks."
The voice was unfamiliar — easy, a little self-deprecating in its politeness, the voice of someone who defaulted to being likable because it had always worked for him. Simon didn't turn around right away.
He didn't need to. Because at that exact moment, something else happened entirely.
DING.
A notification materialized in Simon's mind — clean, precise, impossible to ignore.
[ Fast & Furious franchise protagonist detected: Brian O'Conner. ]
[ Check-in available. Proceed? ]
Check in, Simon thought.
[ Select one skill: ]
[ 1. Hand-to-Hand Combat Mastery (Intermediate) ]
[ 2. Weapons Proficiency (Intermediate) ]
[ 3. Mechanic (Beginner) ]
Simon considered for half a second. One.
[ Note: Host already possesses Hand-to-Hand Combat Mastery (Intermediate). Merge to raise level cap? ]
Confirmed.
[ Hand-to-Hand Combat Mastery level cap raised to: Advanced. ]
A wave of information moved through him — not painful, more like suddenly remembering something he'd always known. Angles, timing, leverage points, the specific geometry of how bodies moved when they didn't want to be moved. It settled in like it had always been there.
[ Hand-to-Hand Combat Mastery: +100 XP. Bonus reminder: consecutive daily check-ins yield 2x (Day 7), 5x (Day 15), and 10x (Day 30) XP multipliers. ]
Simon opened his status panel — a display only he could see, hovering just inside his field of vision like a HUD.
HOST: Simon LewisAge: 18
Skill Level Progress Driving Mastery Master MAX Mechanic Expert MAX Surveillance & Tracking Beginner MAX Physical Conditioning Intermediate MAX Hand-to-Hand Combat Advanced 100 / 500,000 XP Weapons Proficiency Intermediate 25,000 / 50,000 XP
This was the perk. This was what coming to this world had given him.
The System activated whenever Simon was in the physical presence of a main character from one of the film or TV universes bleeding into this world. First check-in with any character was the big one — he could select a skill from their profile and receive both the skill itself and a meaningful chunk of starting experience. Subsequent daily check-ins with the same person generated ongoing XP for whatever skills he'd already acquired from them.
Hit seven consecutive days with the same person — double XP. Fifteen days — five times. Thirty — ten times. And if Simon managed to check in beside the same person for a full 999 days, he unlocked a second skill selection from their profile entirely.
Skill levels ran: Beginner → Intermediate → Advanced → Expert → Master.
Leveling up worked two ways: grind it out through real-world practice, or find another main character carrying the same skill at the same tier and merge them — combining two Intermediate skills into one Advanced, two Advanced into one Expert, and so on.
Dom had been Simon's first. Dominic Toretto — whose skill profile included Physical Conditioning (Intermediate), Driving Mastery (Expert), Mechanic (Advanced), Hand-to-Hand Combat (Beginner), and Weapons Proficiency (Beginner). Simon had taken Driving Mastery and started merging from there.
Letty carried Advanced Driving Mastery. Mia carried the same. Those two merged into Expert.
Expert plus Dom's Expert became Master — the highest tier in the system. Simon currently held the single strongest driving capability the system could generate.
The same merge process, applied patiently over time, had brought Mechanic, Hand-to-Hand Combat, and Weapons Proficiency all up to their current levels.
Surveillance & Tracking had come from Veronica. Hard to be a teenage private detective without logging serious hours on that particular skill. She also carried a Photography skill, which Simon had declined. He had no use for it.
Meg — wonderful, genuine Meg — wasn't a protagonist in this world's logic, which meant the system didn't register her. No check-ins, no skills. Simon found that he minded less than he expected. Some people you just wanted to know for ordinary reasons.
The one real limitation: one check-in per person, per day. No stacking. No shortcuts. Just patience.
"Simon. Simon."
A hand on his arm pulled him back.
"What?"
Meg was looking at him with the specific expression she used when she suspected he'd been somewhere else entirely for the past thirty seconds. "You okay?"
Simon blinked. Reset. "Yeah. Sorry. I'm good."
"You sure? You completely zoned out."
"Long day." He smiled. "I'm fine."
She studied him for another moment with those perceptive eyes, then let it go. "Okay. It's getting late — can you drop me home? My mom's going to start calling if I don't show up for dinner."
Simon folded the last of his sandwich into his mouth, left three dollars on the counter, and stood up.
"Mia — keep the change."
"Watch yourselves out there," Mia called after them, not looking up from the register.
He dropped Meg at her door, waited until the porch light came on, then pulled back out onto the street and pointed the truck toward the edge of town.
Dom's garage sat at the end of a long private road past the city limits — technically a repair shop, functionally something more like a private racing laboratory. It didn't get much walk-in business. It didn't need to. Most of the work done there had nothing to do with paying customers.
When Simon pulled in, Letty was already underneath a lifted Civic, a shop light clipped to the frame above her head.
She rolled out just far enough to look at him. "You're late."
"You're early." Simon grabbed a shop rag off the workbench.
He walked to the far end of the garage, where a car sat under a fitted cover — the only one that got that treatment. He pulled the cover off in one practiced motion.
The 1994 Toyota Supra sat there looking exactly like what it was: a car that had started life as something very good and had been rebuilt, over the course of several years, into something that redefined the category entirely.
Black. Twin-turbocharged. The fourth-generation Supra had rolled off the assembly line with 280 horsepower — already nothing to dismiss. But Simon had spent years on it, methodically upgrading the internals, retuning the boost, reinforcing the drivetrain.
Current output: 712 horsepower.
On a quarter-mile strip, with Simon behind the wheel, it had never lost.
Every win meant prize money. Every dollar of prize money meant Simon's college fund grew. And every dollar in that fund meant one less thing he had to depend on anyone else for.
He pulled on his jacket, climbed in, and let the engine come to life.
It wasn't a gentle sound. It never was.
Let's go.
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