Who: Anakin and James What: Diagnosing James' motorcycle problems When: Now Where: In the parking lot of a bike parts store Rating/Warnings: Low Status: Complete
In the past, James had always just brought his bike to the shop for any repairs that needed to happen. It was easier, for one. He wasn’t entirely sure why he had decided that now he’d follow Motorcycle Repair for Dummies, though he was beginning to think that this was a terrible idea. He wanted to stop relying so much on his parents money, but since he was only just assuming that his bike needed new spark plugs, he wasn’t even sure if he was looking for the right thing.
He stood in front of a wall of parts, looked at the image on his phone, and then looked back at the wall. Nothing looked familiar, and he frowned to himself. He debated taking out his wand and casting Accio Sparkplug, but using magic in such a public place was also not the greatest idea.
End of the work day. He could finally go home and take off his Earth prosthetic and put on his much more technologically advanced Other Universe prosthetic. He wore is Earth version at work to keep people from asking probing questions.
Anakin couldn’t think of anything more relaxing than picking up some parts for his new project—restoring a beat up motorcycle—and spending the rest of the night making use of those new parts.
Running into James was coincidental.
“You look lost…” he said as he moved to stand next to James and stare at the wall of parts. “Is this where you meant to go?”
James glanced over when he heard a familiar voice, and grinned at Anakin. “Anny-kins,” he said a little too cheerfully. The last thing he’d wanted was for anyone he knew to see him standing here like an idiot, let alone Anakin who he still wasn’t sure he liked or not. “Here as in this shop, or here as in this wall?” he asked. “Because yes to the former, and ‘I’m not sure’ to the latter.”
There was no point in pretending on that point, at least. It was obvious to anyone with eyes just how out of his depth James was.
Anakin looked at James and then the wall, his face not changing.
“Well,” he said, figuring this was a good place to start. “What are you here to buy, Joseph?”
He asked without any hostility. He could play this game.
James grinned. It was well-played, though James wasn’t likely to express that compliment in words anytime soon. “Well, Andrew,” he said, glancing at his phone. “I think I might need spark plugs.” He paused. “At least, I hope that’s all I need.”
“You don’t know?” Anakin blinked, he didn’t even try to hide his disbelief, burning up any gain in James’ good graces he’d earned just moments before.
But this was serious. Really serious.
“Why do you think you need spark plugs?” His stare should be boring into James’ mind that this was indeed a poor choice.
“Oh, you know,” James said, not meeting Anakin’s eyes. “My girl hasn’t been having trouble getting going. Engine surges and not accelerating very much and using more petrol than usual. Spark plugs seemed like the cheapest and easiest thing to replace, and if that didn’t work than I’d move onto the next thing.” It had made sense in his head, but now that he said it out loud, with Anakin looking at him like that, he wasn’t entirely sure that it had been a good idea.
“With it doing all that, there could be, like eight different things wrong with your bike,” Anakin’s expression didn’t lessen.
“Did you drive it here?” He would give James the benefit of the doubt.
“I’m sure with enough googling I’d eventually stumble into the problem,” James said boldly. He wasn’t sure if Anakin was offering to help and he wasn’t sure if he wanted Anakin’s help in the first place, but he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s just out front.”
Anakin blinked. “I should have seen that answer coming,” he said flatly.
“Well,” he waved to the front entrance of the store. “Show me. Lily would stop being my friend if I knowingly let you drive off on something that has a statistical likelihood of killing you.”
“Please, it’s not going to kill me,” James scoffed. First of all, James would never die, he’d decided. But second of all, if he was going to die, it wouldn’t be over something as lame as a motorcycle crash. “Anyway, it’s not like I could ride my broomstick here. I’d get all sorts of looks.” He hesitated, but then decided that at the very least Anakin might be able to tell James what was wrong with his bike. He at least seemed to have some idea what he was doing.
He led the other man out of the shop and to his bike, a pretty little thing that had been built custom for James back home that he’d had shipped overseas when he’d moved. “Here she is.”
“It’s called Uber,” Anakin said.
But he followed James to his bike and squatted down next to it. He ran a hand along the frame and over the side panel. He opened the engine casing and just let the Force guide his inspection.
After a minute of what must appear to James to be Anakin just looking, he located the source of James’ problem.
“It’s not your spark plugs, they are just fine.” He started looking more closely at various sections of the bike. “But you do have a vacuum leak.”
James raised an eyebrow. He might not know very much about engines or fixing vehicles, but he thought at the very least a person had to turn it on in order to figure out what the problem was. “How can you tell?” James asked, coming to stand next to Anakin to look down at his engine. Maybe he was skeptical, but he also genuinely wanted to know the answer. He wasn’t going to learn how to do this on his own if he didn’t ask questions now and then.
“The bike told me,” Anakin said without looking up “Through the Force. You have magic and fly on a broom. I’ve got my own abilities, like talking to machines and electronics.
“And I’ve been building engines since I was a kid eating dirt in Arizona.”
He reached in and pulled out one of the spark plugs. “And this looks good. Corrosion and build up are minimal.” He put the spark plug back.
“I can show you how to find the leak,” he looked up at James. “Just go in and buy some carburetor cleaner. It’s in aisle five.”
“Huh,” James said. That did sound like a pretty neat trick. One that would be more useful for someone who had a passing interest in technology, at least. James enjoyed his cellphone and his Playstation, but that was about as far as it went. In fact, if he used too much magic at home his technology didn’t seem to work at all, or, at least, how it was supposed to, until some of the magic had left the air. “Why am I trying to fix this thing myself when I could have just pawned it off on you?” he teased, before heading back in the store.
It wasn’t hard to find the carburetor cleaner, and so it only took him a couple of minutes to find it and bring it back outside. “Alright, teach me, sensei.”
Anakin shrugged at James’ question and set about opening necessary panels.
“Okay,” Anakin said when James got back. He held out his hand for the cleaner. “First, start your bike.”
James handed over the cleaner, and then went around to start his bike. It took a moment, but she finally chugged to life, much to James’ relief. He let out a sigh, and then head back beside Anakin. “Alright, so, what do you do first?”
He pulled the tiny attachable hose that came with the can off and then affixed it to the nozzle.
“Okay, so the problem is that the mixture of fuel entering the combustion chamber is too lean. Your system is not delivering enough of it, or it’s diluted with air— hence the vacuum leak. You need to find the source of the leak— you can have more than one because there are a bunch of places that can develop leaks.”
He held up the can, “The process of finding the leak is spraying this on the parts where leaks can develop. If you hear the engine RPM increase after spraying it on a spot, you’ve found your leak – this acts as kind of a substitute additive to the fuel.”
He pointed to the carburetor boot, a thick, cylindrical, rubber tube. “This is a very common spot for leaks to form.”
He aimed the cleaner hose at the spot and sprayed.
It didn’t take a mechanic to hear the change in the RPM, and James burst into a grin. “That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed. “Like magic. So, does this mean she’s fixed?” That was easier than he had expected, if he was being honest.
“No,” Anakin said with a bit of a laugh. “You still need to replace the part.”
He rubbed up the bits of cleaner that had dripped with the sleeve of his shirt.
“But once you do that, then it’s fixed. You can buy a new boot inside if you want. But--” He looked back down at the bike. “You might want to take the boot in with you to get the right match.”
Well, that seemed easy enough. There really was nothing to this whole mechanics thing after all. James didn’t especially want to like Anakin, for no other reason than his first impression had been that Anakin was a weasel, but he was beginning to think that he might have been wrong about Lily’s new guy friend.
“Thanks, Annykins,” he said, and despite the obnoxious pet name sounded genuine enough. “I might be able to figure it out from here. I’ll let you get back to… whatever it was you were doing here.” Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t actually asked what Anakin had been doing here, but if he could talk to machines he was probably here a lot.
Anakin stood up and backed away from James’ bike.
“Good luck, José,” he said, without missing a beat. “And be careful with the cleaner. It’s flammable.” Obviously, as it did make the pistons fire with a bigger bang.
He didn’t have any more advice to give James, so he turned back to the store, he was here to get some parts before this side adventure derailed him. And he was going to finish that task before something else stole his attention.