Red Panda Goddess

The Firefox Chronicles

“For as long as I’m behind the wheel you’ll never have to worry I promise.” I hold my pinky up to her and she curls her pinky around mine and grips it tight, then she smiles. Her beautiful face being accented by the mixture of lights is beautiful and bliss. “Are you ready?” Her body shakes as she nods yes. I let go of her hand and grab the shifter. I watch the boost meter rise as I come to the stop sign. Just as I notice a cop car pull down on the opposite side I’m still goosing the gas waiting for the boost meter to reach 9. The cop doesn’t move an inch after stopping and my eyes catch on a button under the radio that reads “running tag” next to it says “casual tag” and below them says “try2catchm3” I press the try to catch and I hear something in the back moving and I realize it has a tag switcher to keep from anyone running the plates. I look back up to the radio and press the number 6 and the song Dragula from Rob Zombie starts playing. Just as the song reaches the chorus, the boost meter reaches 9, the cop flips on his blue lights and siren, my left foot releases the brake pedal, my right foot slams the gas pedal to the floor, and my left hand swings the steering wheel to the left hard and we take off jerking us both back into our seats and with barely a tire squeal from the all wheel drive monster we are off.I ask Lori to help me navigate by telling me when to turn 1 second before I get to the turn and how much of a straightaway I have at certain times so can gather when to gain or lose speed. I was only going to show Lori how to actually give her car the driving experience it needs rather than the granny style driving she was doing. Although I give her credit for being able to drive a manual straight shift. I’m able to gain a pretty good amount of speed on the first road since it was fairly empty and straight. Lori looks over to the HUD and her eyes widen so far I thought they were going to pop out of her head.

“190 miles per hour? Are you kidding me? I didn’t even know this thing would go that fast!” Her face turns as white as a sheet of printer paper.

“Don’t worry, it’ll go faster, plus it’s only in 4th gear. I just need to know how much longer until the first turn off?” My eyes never leave the road ahead of me so I never actually get to see the speed.

“3 1/2 miles then a left turn...hey where did the cop go?” She looks around frantically.

“He probably knows a shortcut through unmarked roads or alleys.” The car reaches its maximum power limit and I shift into 5th. The car jumps slightly and the tires squeak through every shift showing me she’s got more power than grip, which may be good, but also bad depending on how you drive and how you look at it. She leans over again after we get close to the end of the rpm gauge.

“I haven’t looked, but is there a 6th gear?” She looks at everything with a worried look.

I lift my right hand off the shifter knob and we both glance at it for a moment then back to the road, “yep it has a sixth gear.” I say it while trying not to laugh. Then I shift into 6th gear and the car shifts a little bit but the tires don’t squeak. I glance at the hud to see if 6th was worth it or not and to my surprise I notice the speed climbing still, at a much slower pace but still faster than I thought it would.

“195, 196, 197, 198, Hey don’t take it over 200 please? I don’t want to die today, but I don’t wanna go to jail either...” she says hoping I’ll listen to her. And wouldn’t you know it, the car did the listening for me. As the RPM gauge redlines at 8000 and we hit 4500 at 200mph, and the car sits there. It’s not topped out and nothing increases or decreases and I’m sitting there confused.

“Hmm, maybe there’s a governor in there? But that makes no sense, wouldn’t they remove it when tuning this beast? Maybe for safety they decided to recalibrate it instead.” I’m thinking out loud and Lori is just relieved that it’s over. But she would be very wrong. I can see some headlights reflecting on a fence from my left in the distance and some blue reflections as well, “seems the go getter wasn’t smart enough to cut his lights off before hiding.” I swap over to the brake and clutch slowing us down very quickly and decide to take a detour around the back of the cop.

“Hey!! What are you doing?! You’ve got .78 miles left! Don’t turn here! You’re supposed to go LEFT!” She yells at me relentlessly without hesitating for an answer.

“The cop just showed up in an alleyway up ahead, and I’m taking a detour so I can go where he won’t think of looking. Now the gps should be rerouting so let me know what to do once I turn back left.

“Oh ok, just so you know, you’re starting to scare me.” I could see tears welling up from the corner of my eye and I knew I couldn’t stop now but I needed to try and calm her down.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I was just gonna take your car out for a spin and show you how to really get into it when you’re driving. If you’ll trust me and just keep me updated on the gps, I swear I’ll make it up to you. But you’ve got to hang in there, you’ve got to believe, and you’ve got to have courage.” Just then I swing to the left hard and squeeze out of the alleyway into the backroad behind the buildings. “What do you say?” I glance at her quickly.

“Alright, I think I can do this. This kind of like those fast and furious movies, or like the need for speed games. I think the last one is coming out soon, it will be the #4 movie. Once you pass the next intersection turn left and immediately right onto the turnpike and follow it to the highway.”

“Yeah I was wandering how Tokyo drift fit into the mix being that Toretto called Han family at the end before racing Lukas Black, you know he was from Cullman, Alabama.” I take the next left fairly easy, swing the car back right, drift around the turnpike with ease, and merge onto the highway.

“Really? I didn’t know that, I really liked him Friday night lights too...up on the right take the next exit ramp and take a left across the overpass.”

“Yeah, do you remember the kid in Slingblade? The one following Carl around everywhere?”

“I think so, wait, was that the same guy?”

“Yep, that kid was Lukas Black and Carl was played by Billy Bob Thornton if you can believe that!” I make the exit and grab the corner of the overpass as I squeeze through two cars at the traffic light.

“No way! That’s crazy! Oh, you’re going to make a left up here.................right...........now!” I make a sharp left drifting the back end around to alleviate the roll of the car and speed through the turn. “Wow! I’m amazed at how good you are at driving. I’m a little aroused as well, it being my car and you giving it all she’s got and then some. I’m just blown away!”

I smile and sit back for a second stretching my back, “what’s the next turn?”

She looks at me for a second and then back down to the gps, “umm, there’s a right coming up in a mile, then you’ve got a left about 500ft after that. But what happened to that cop?” She looks around to see if it had made chase yet or not.

“We passed by him twice, once when we went behind him but it was too fast to see. Then again when we turned off the highway and rounded the overpass there was another cruiser or the same one that kept going.” We come up on the right turn and make it very easily and then shortly after make a left turn but start to slide on some dirt and gravel.

“Oh my god we’re gonna die aren’t we?” Starts to have an anxiety attack and I’m straining to keep the car straight and moving forward away from the edge of the road. “There’s a very big drop off over here Mark, like almost straight down and nothing to stop us but the bottom.”

“I know,” I say while getting an idea, “hold on to something...” I grab the emergency break, turn the wheel to left, shift down a gear, stomp the gas, and when I feel it grip the road I rip the steering wheel back to the right and we slide back onto the road. “Phew!” I wipe the sweat off my brow, “that was fun right?” I glance at her and she’s breathing really quickly and her face is solid white. “Hey come on! Here, hold my hand and feel my pulse...” she grabs my right hand with her left and feels the inside of my wrist. “You concentrate on my heartbeat and try to listen to the music, and if my heartbeat matches the music then we are doing good.” She sits there listening and focusing. I can see her right hand loosening it’s grip on the gram handle and her body relaxing slowly.

“I’ve told you before about my anxiety, it can kill me if I get too overwhelmed. But thank you for calming me down and not killing us.” She lets out a small smile and leans over to kiss me on the cheek. “But can we please go back to my house now?” I flip the exterior and interior neons off, flip the tag switch, turn the turbo switch off, and point in front of us.

“That look like your house up there on that little hill?” She leans over and looks carefully.

“What?! How did we get back here so quickly?” Her face goes from a slight smile to really excited in a matter of seconds.

“How long do you think we’ve been gone?” I turn left and then right to get onto her road and then another right to pull in her drive way.

“I’m not sure...it feels like we’ve been gone an hour almost, or maybe more?” She pulls out her phone and looks at the time, “WHAT?! But how?! There’s no way!” She screams in terrified excitement.

“What do you mean? We’ve only been gone for 10 minutes...”

“But the gps route said it would take 50 minutes to make that route, and we took two detours that cut us off by 10 minutes each! So how?!” She interrupts with more confusion. And I can’t help but to laugh.

“The only time we wasn’t going 100mph was when we started, backed up to make the first detour, made the merge onto the turnpike bridge, made the death defying turn on dirt, and when we came up that hill. The rest of the way we were doing 100-200mph the whole way. So it cut our time down by a large margin.” I explain this all nonchalantly while her jaw drops to the ground. I start to walk around the car to escort her inside, “why don’t we go to that beach now, we have... time... to... spare...” I notice her shorts are soaking wet and her legs are too. “Hey, did you pee yourself?”

“No why? I don’t think I did?” She looks back at her seat and notices a slight circle of moisture where her butt was, “oh no, that’s not good...”

“What? I can carry you in the house if you need me to....”

“NO! No no no, let’s not touch Lori right now, I need to go change...” she starts waddling to her front door trying to keep her legs closed tightly together.

“Well, ok. Do you want me to clean your seat off...” I slowly start to walk towards her.

“No! I’ll do it later,” she’s saying all of this while being very nervous, “just, follow me inside and have a seat while I get changed up okay? Okay...let’s go, I made a mess...” she trails off whispering to herself. I couldn’t understand why she was being so angsty all of a sudden. If she just peed then it’s nothing, I’ve dealt with diapers before and surely she didn’t defecate herself. She opens the front door and bolts through the house to her room. I sit on the arm of her living room couch, and soon realize that I didn’t see Mr. Cheng outside or in.

“I wonder where he went?” I scratch my head looking around and back again. Then I hear a tap on the window near me and see Mr. Cheng holding Juki. He waves at me and I use sign language to tell him she was changing and we would be a few minutes. He walks away from the window and I look back over towards where Lori’s room is and see her walking out of her room with her back turned. She was wearing a one piece bathing suit that had no back, tied around the neck, came to a V around her hips, and barely covered her butt. I was barely able to get my jaw off the floor and my tongue in my mouth before she turned around and they both fell and my nose started to bleed a little. The strings that tied around the neck made an X across her chest which made a tear drop open shape between her breasts and down to her waist pretty far. The suit barely held her breasts in to begin with and there was barely any material covering the southern area of her body as well, it must’ve cost a fortune. Female clothing price logic, the less amount of material use to make said garment, the more 0’s you add to the price. She looked at me stunned for a second while her face turned really red really fast.

“Hey, uh...is this ok? I’ve never worn it before... I always thought I’d look ugly in it because it’s bright purple and black and doesn’t cover up much of my fat.” She pats her belly, butt, and legs gesturing to what she thought was fat, when in reality most of the girls I know would be jealous of how toned she was. You could see the indent in her abdomen but not the outline of her abs, to me that was perfect, just right amount of fat/muscle ratio. Her waist, hip, and butt were perfectly proportioned and her legs went on forever. Her body was like a work of art crafted just for the sheer beauty of observing. But I had to get out of my trance to answer her.

“What you think is fat, I think is wonderful. Honestly I wouldn’t change anything about you.” I smile at her and stand up. She walks over to me and grabs my hand interlocking our fingers then leads me to the door. She reaches for the door handle and quickly turns around to me surprising me and I almost bumped into her. My head was already tilted down and she ducks down just slightly and bumps my head up with hers and kisses me.

“Thank you,” She smiles cheerfully, “I get called fat all the time saying my legs, or my belly, or butt are too fat for some people. So you telling me that I look wonderful is really a big confidence boost.” She kisses me again and reaches for the door behind her and leads me outside. We walk around the house and meet Mr. Cheng who was quietly watching the stars as you could see them clearly and it felt like they went on forever. “Hey Mr. Cheng! I’m sorry I made you wait, I had a slight accident and needed to clean myself up,” She shies away bashfully, “I hope we’re all ready to go now, it’s this way and about a 15 minute walk. But it’s worth it I swear.” Mr. Cheng and I both nod to her and she starts leading us towards the northwest of her house. Mr. Cheng walking on my right held Juki up to me and she crawls over my arm and onto my shoulder planting herself firmly.

It doesn’t take very long for us to get there and we both tell Mr. Cheng about the drive and he tells Lori about the times I had to drive for him in some circuit races. “Mr. Cheng was one of your sponsors? You never told me that.” She asked with great enthusiasm.

“Yes and no, he sponsored me for two races that day by betting 1000 on me for the first race since the odds were 15-1 and when I placed first he took a jackpot. Then the second race I was racing against a professional that had never lost and he placed 200 on both of us. So he was going to win no matter who won.” And I finished what I was saying before she was through listening but I didn’t think about not ever telling her about this.

“So?” She stopped me and looked at me curious eyes.

“So what?! He got his money when the race was over...that’s all there was to it.”

“I mean did you win the race?” She slapped my arm.

“Oh, right. Yeah I won. But I placed second overall.”

“So it was a tournament?”

“Well, kind of the bracket was lined up like a tournament but the scoring was set up differently. I won all of my races and beat the tournament. But my score was 4785, the professional guy scored a 4305, and the guy in first was a stunt driver that did a lot of movie stunts for most of your big budget car movies...”

“Like fast and furious?” She interrupted.

“Yeah, and the new Burnout movie they’re making. But his score was 4990. He messed up one tiny thing on one of his turns and they docked him ten points, or else he would’ve gotten a perfect 5000 which would’ve made me look like a punk driving next to him...”

“But if you would’ve been there you would’ve said Vemo’s driving much better than the stunt driver. You notice the way he moves and handles your car even though it was the first time he ever drove it?” Mr. Cheng interrupts me and looks at Lori.

“Yeah... I didn’t really think about it, but yeah. Almost all of the professional racers, and stunt drivers say it takes a few days to get used to how a different car drives.” She stands there in a daze.

“That was something that Vemo taught me, and then I turned around and taught him. He said that every car has a personality, they each drive a different way and like to be drove a certain way. The only way to learn it is to listen to it. I told him that everything has a personality, the sand, a rock, that tree, the birds, everything. You remember when you pulled out of the driveway and slowly made your way to the stop sign and the car was revving up and he was turning the steering wheel back and forth?”

“Wow, I’ve never thought of that, and yeah I remember that I thought he was going to blow my car up.”

“Vemo, explain.” He looks at me and gestures to continue where he left off.

“Oh right, well I was doing more than just letting the turbo get a brake boost and giving us time before the stop sign. I was getting a feel for how the car moves and feels, and listening to how she talks. Once the car had enough boost built up I took her to her maximum speed and then slowed down as fast as I could without locking the brakes down, then I backed up really fast and swung the car around to get a feel of the reverse and turning feels. The way the car sways when she’s turned really hard. Then we went through the bumpy rough alleyway and made the tight left turn to feel how smooth her suspension was and the other sides sway. After that I knew what she was capable of and I just took it from there.”

“But that was only about 2 minutes?” She looks at me confused.

“Yeah?” I shrug my shoulders.

“But...how?”

“How what?”

“How were able to justify everything with just 2 minutes?”

“I don’t know, I’m a fast learner I guess?” I keep shrugging my shoulders.

“Wow, I’m not sure how to comprehend that honestly. It blows my mind really and I can’t really go back to thinking about it because...anyways we are almost there. That big stone that looks like it’s holding that cliff up is my personal little secret spot that not too many people know about.” She smiles bashfully shrugging her shoulders. She tightens her grip on my hand and starts to pick up the pace. It’s good that the moon is shining so brightly that it lights up the path we’re walking on. There aren’t any lights at all from here to the water. We make it to the huge stone that rises from the sand on the beach all the way up to over the top of the cliff. The spot she was talking about was on the other side of the rock where she has a footlocker with a combination lock on it. There’s also chairs and a place for a campfire on the side facing the path we were on. Mr. Cheng waves to me and walks over to the water and wades in about knee deep and starts doing his version of the tai chi step. Juki hops down off my shoulder and playfully runs around the beach playing with shells, crabs, and the water. Lori pulls me around to the footlocker and sits me down in the sand. She unlocks it and opens it up and starts pulling out trinkets, shells, gold coins, jewelry, and a lot of other random things.

“These are all my treasures that I’ve collected here at this spot. I’ve never shown anyone else and I always try to keep it hidden as much and often as possible. I want you to have...let’s see, where is it...” she’s digging around inside the box talking to herself at this point and I’m still trying to keep my eyes off of her. I’m not sure if it’s my entire attraction to her from how often we’ve talked and connected on a whole other level. Or if it’s because I’m able to see her, touch and feel her, and talk to her physically in front of me. While she’s distracted my body just starts moving on it’s own and I rise up to my knees and move around to her right back side. My left arm extends around her waist while my right arm snakes it’s way under her arm, between her breasts and up to her chin. I pull her to me and I can see the look of delight as her face crashes into mine and we kiss passionately. She pulls back in surprise and smiles at me. “Well hello there, where have you been? I thought I was going to have to be the one that made all the advances here today.” She smiles and kisses me again.

“I’m not sure what came over me really. I was just sitting there wondering it felt impossible to take my eyes off of you and my body started moving on it’s own and now I can’t let go.” The honesty just starts pouring out of my mouth without any hesitation and my mind is screaming at me to stop but it’s like I’m on autopilot.

She smiles at me blushing and pulls her left hand out of the box and puts it in front of her face, while covering my eyes with her right hand.

“So I was saying that I wanted you to have this, that way no matter what happens you’ll always remember me and the time we had here today. And...that...well...” she trails off and her hand drops from my eyes and I see this beautiful blue and white shiny marble like thing attached to the top of a spiral conch shell. “I found it like this, I was snorkeling off the coast about 500 feet that way,” She points directly west, “and I saw the blue twinkling on the floor. So I dove down and tried to pick it up but it pulled this shell out of the sand with it. So I stuck it in this box and I knew that one day I would have someone that it would be special for...”

“I absolutely love it. And I will cherish it forever.” I smile and kiss her. She hands it to me and I take my shirt off and wrap it in the shirt then sit in down where my bag was laying.

“Do you wanna go play in the water? It shouldn’t be too cold and it’s pretty safe around here.” She looks at me with innocent eyes.

“Sure we can.” I say without thinking. And we both get up and jog over to the water.