---

"Coming!" yelled the mechanic to whoever had just rung her desk bell five times in a row. She dusted off her overalls, put on a practiced grin, and bounded over to the desk where a pink-haired woman in a shrimp hat looked very upset.

"Hi, welcome to Wrench Wench, what can I do for you today?"

"Ugh, some asshole clipped me and now my left pedal is all busted up." She set her helmet down and wheeled over a dented bike. "How soon can you fix it? I need it to get home."

"People who contribute to the economy don't ride bikes."

There was a chuckling from the shadow by the doorway.

"Excuse me, what? What are you attacking me for?"

"I'm attacking you for taking a bike to a car mechanic and for pretending to be a woman."

"You are the most socially inept TERF I've ever met. I bet you were homeschooled!" The pink-haired woman stuck up her middle finger and stormed out the door, passing the laughing shadow which resolved itself into a tall, dark man whose eyes remained obscure beneath a well-worn stetson.

"Way to tell that tranny off."

The mechanic indulged in a real smile now. "At least he was HSTS. There's a lot worse out there."

"You know about Blanchard?" He tilted his hat up, out of interest or respect, but the eyes remained unseen. "Then you surely understand that chemically-augmented crossdressing is a corrupting memeplex which reproduces exclusively along a feminine line, just like--"

"--the Jews," finished the mechanic. She twirled a wrench in amused boredom. "Jews are p sus, but trannies are susser."

"Listen," said the man, now leaning on the counter, "my truck is giving out from all the trips I gotta make these days, and I was hoping you could replace the brakes and check the engine."

"Sure thing! Shouldn't take-"

"-but also, when you get off work, how about I come pick you up and make you my radiator wife?" He scrawled out an invite code to a Rust server as the mechanic replied:

"Sus ngl. I'll meet you at yours instead."

---

As the sun set over the small shop which stood alone along a dry, sandy road, the mechanic locked the front doors, checked the key drawer, and hopped into the break room where a hidden elevator took her down into an expansive basement filled with lights and machines and sleek metal surfaces.

With a snap of her fingers and a subvocalized command, the kitchen sprang to life and whipped together a beautifully plated synthetic-tuna tartare, artificial ikura, and (for old times' sake) a small bowl of fresh petite peas.

Ten minutes later, she was already changing into her outfit for the night: black gloves, a light suit made of adaptive polymer armor, a mask styled with wings and scales, and an energy weapon which looked, to her amusement, a little bit like a giant wrench.

After a long gaming session in her self-driving car, she arrived, finally, at the ornate wooden door of the transphobic nazi into whose truck she had earlier installed a tracking device.

Two shots rang out and struck the windshield. She sprinted out, rolled behind a tree, waited for one more shot to pass, then grappled and crashed through the second story window.

"Is this how you always start your dates?" she yelled, goading him into replying:

"Who the fuck are you??"

Her echolocation visor flashed her target's position on an HUD whose dim glow illuminated a sarcastic smile. "I'm your nemesis."

At his bedroom door she was accosted by one more bullet that punched hard against her absorptive suit and another that deflected itself off of her 'wrench' which hummed with power as she hurled it at the man's stetson-covered head.

He ducked and lunged and time slowed down as her combat q-module took control. Her conscious mind, now freed from its center, surveyed the dim room in which two people fought for their lives. In the corner: a desk, some papers, an encrypted address, a handwritten private key.

She wondered, for a moment, whether the decryption subroutine would finish before the fight did. The torrent of street names and compass directions which flooded into her mind almost overshadowed the moment of triumph as she regained awareness of her hand which now held her enemy's unconscious body.

She chained him to his own radiator, and left.

---