"Department Of The Navy. To: PVT Miller. Josh.

Saturday, June 6th, 2017

In the light of certain events that lead to a reevaluation of time and Resources, you are hearaby discharged from the United States Navy with full honors for [Redacted] reasons. We wish you the best of luck with your future.

-Admiral Alex M. Thomas"

Speechless. That was the one word I would use to describe how I felt as I read that letter. I had enlisted in the Navy about a month or so back and I was supposed to go to basic in five days. Five days. I had worked on slimming down to meet the weight requirement for almost a year and believe me, with how lazy I am, that was a rough road to follow, but I made it and went to the recruitment station about two days after I had reached it and now, one paragraph took a year of work and just tossed it out the window.

"You gotta be kidding me!", I shouted, "I don't believe this shit!"

"Hey!", my Mom shouted from the kitchen, "watch the mouth."

"Come read this crap the department of the Navy just sent me!", I said throwing it down.

Mom set down the spoon she was using to stir dinner and came into the dining room. She picked up the letter off the table and read it. There was a few minutes of silence before she looked at me.

"Oh honey", she said.

I sighed, "a year...a year I worked to get in, in five days I was supposed to go, then I get that shit."

Mom didn't answer me.

"Was there any pizza left from last night?", I asked standing up, "I think I'mma go out for a while."

"I think so", Mom answered, "where you going?"

"My friend Tristan is in Victoria for an Audio show", I said opening the fridge and pulling out a small, green lidded plastic container that held three or four pieces of homemade pizza, "I think I'mma go talk to him."

Mom didn't answer me. I went into my bedroom and got a pair of socks. I pulled them on along with my black Sketchers and then grabbed my keys before walking out to my car. It was a liquid blue, 2016 Honda Civic with the standard four banger ditched for a bigger, 3.5 liter V6 from the Nissan Quest. It had a 7.3 liter Cummins turbocharger bolted to it via a custom built intake. It rode on a 5 speed Front Wheel Drive transmission from a Ford Focus and made 510 wheel horsepower. The suspension was all Buddy Club and the wheels were second hand Motige Racing Tracklite 2.0s, but turbo lag, you know, for days. But that was a Group B engine, because when it does kick on it's massive. I had a custom exhaust that I had built myself, Willwood 4 piston calipers upfront and two piston in the rear that I had pulled off a scraped Camaro last time I was at the junk yard and a wing I had built myself in my spare time. There was a bit of a roll cage in the rear, which served as a mount for my 6 point harnesses and the steering wheel, interestingly enough, I have no idea why I put this thing on, was off a Mazda 3. And since a new tuner shop had moved into town, I had all the stupid shit like power steering, power brakes ripped out and gone to all manual controls. So now it was just me, three pedals and the road. It had custom FWD badges that I put together with a lettering kit and an Orbit GT badge in the rear, it almost wasn't a Civic anymore.



I unlocked my car and slid inside. I pressed down on the clutch and put the car in neutral before sticking my key into the ignition and turning it. The Turbo 6 upfront rattled a bit before coming to life. You know something? I thought this engine sounded good in the minivan, in my Civic? With the turbo and the exhaust, it had a very deep, raspy sort of sound that was like nothing I'd ever heard coming from an engine. It seemed to be a newer model Nissan GTR thing, and since this engine was a Nissan GTR engine that had the turbo removed for use in the minivan, it made sense to me that it would return to it's roots once a turbo was added back. One of my favorite things to do was drive up behind people in high power mustangs and spin up the turbo to see what kind of reaction I would get. Though in all honesty, it was, dare I say a little annoying? I'm not even sure that it's a good sound, there's just a lot of it.

Sighing at myself, I pulled the Go-Pro camera out of the glove box and set it on the dash turning it on as I started to buckle up the harness.

"Okay people", I said, "I get it, you comment every week, you wanna see the Civic, so here's the Civic. The most recent modifications include a stereo that I have no idea how to pronounce the name of, Willwood brake tubes and fluid, new fuel lines and a sport radiator. Were now turning 510 Front Wheel Horsepower. Shall we?"

I put the car in first and drove out of the driveway, making a left hand turn to the end of the road just as my buddy Austin drove past me, his Caviler, which had a few mods, exhaust, air system, wheels, Buddy Club calipers and disks I'd gotten him for his 20th birthday and a front and rear body kit, growled at me as I turned into the road behind him.

"Gonna make sure to ride my friend's ass here a little bit", I smiled as I shifted to second. Austin wasn't one for going all that fast, and he only had the Mods on his car because they helped at the pump. Sometimes if he was in a good mood we would a have a little bit of a drag, but most times he would just ignore me, today was not one of those times. Even though I had 300 horsepower, two cylinders and a Turbo over him, his Caviler with 210 at the front, 2100 pounds and a 4 speed wasn't exactly slow. There was a pop from his car's exhaust as he sped up a little bit.

"So were gonna play huh?", I asked myself, "alright let's play."

I shifted into third and put my foot in it, starting to overtake him as he put his foot in his car as well. I got fourth gear at about 55 miles an hour and from the sound of my friends 4 banger it was in fifth. Both the cars pulled quite well and it could have been an interesting race if our county road wasn't so damn small. The max speed for our road, from my driveway is about 60 miles an hour for maybe two or three seconds, after that if your not on the brakes, your gonna crash.

Austin rolled down his window as he turned into his driveway, "get off the electric car you hippie!", he shouted.

I laughed as I came to the yield sign and braked for the turn.

"The very definition of whipping", I laughed, "this Civic is like driving a little mosquito on a whole bunch of great drugs."

As I turned around the corner, I saw a Shelby GT500 drive up behind me. It had a huge Roots blower sticking out from underneath the hood and was screaming at me to step aside.

"At this point in my spheal", I sighed as I let the 500 pass, "it's where I tell you that I won't be leaving for the Navy in five days like I've been harping for the past month or so. I got a letter just a few minutes ago that told me that I've been honorably discharged for classified reasons. So now, I'm gonna make this to update you guys on the Honda and then I'm heading up to Victoria to see my buddy Tristan and maybe record some of that Audio competition that's going on up there."

I passed a few more roads and driveways before I came to a road that was beside the river with no posted speed limit.

"You guys know what calms my nerves", I sighed, "shall we?"

I put both hands on the steering wheel and put the gas pedal to the floor. The front tires fought for grip for a few seconds before the car shot off. I was at about 55 miles an hour before I pushed in the clutch and pulled the shifter back into second gear. I could hear the turbo spinning up as my speed went to about 80 miles an hour and at 4500 RPM the boost kicked on, flinging the car to 103 miles an hour and third gear. Since cruising RPM in third gear was over the 4500 Boost Threshold, the Turbo was now feeding my V6 10 pounds of boost through the entire power band. The speed was at almost 145 miles an hour as I got 4th gear and nearly 190 as I hit fifth, if I had a little more road, I could have run 200 miles an hour, in a front wheel drive car, but I knew that cops liked to hang out down this road and there was a stop sign up ahead. I pushed down on the brakes and started to down shift.

"Now, I'm not gonna tell you how fast that was because I don't feel like going to jail, but damn", I laughed, "that was the first time in my life that I've gone over the speed listed on the speedometer. Thank you all for watching, follow me at Short Throw Shifter on twitter if you want to get on the list of random people who let me drive their modified cars in the back roads out here. Also, if you watch my show regularly, I asked a question last week, and if you have the answer to that question, message me on Facebook at Short Throw TV and I will send you the Race Brake kit that Willwood recently sent me. See you guys next week."

I reached up and turned off the camera as I pulled to a stop for the turn onto the bridge. Sure enough, there was a cop sitting at the Parking lot that was just across the bridge with a radar gun.

"Hope he didn't see any of that", I said as I turned on my blinker. When the way was clear, I turned onto the road and started back towards my road, passing it and headed down Fm 521 for an intersection called the four corners. I passed through a set of flashing hazard lights and starting down what some might consider a back road, while others might not. In order to calm my nerves and try and make the headache that was setting due to lack of decent sounds other than my engine, I turned on one of my favorite tracks, Slammin' by a band that officially was a website by Purple Planet Music, but I thought the name Dark Matter suited them a lot better. The road wound through some pretty nice landscape and through some pretty ugly landscape as well, but the curves in the road were plentiful and the sky was painted a red orange gold color due to the setting sun, so I wasn't complaining about the condition of the houses.

The trip into Victoria took me about an hour or so and when I got there the sun was just starting to sink below the horizon. At the first light I had to stop for, I saw a Nissan Frontier that was sitting on a huge lift kit with a sign in the back that read "Breildi Bass Audio Competition, two miles on right." The light turned green and I put the car in first, driving from that light through a few more sets before getting stopped just before the turn, I switched lanes before I came to a stop and turned on my blinkers. Even over the sound of my engine and my own music I could hear the beating for the speakers that were about a half mile away. The light turned green and I made the turn onto the road and began approaching the city park where the competition was being held. The closer I got, the louder the sound got, the more my windows shook and the more my car actually had to fight to accelerate. Tristan wondered why I rathered going fast over being loud, now he knew why. When I pulled up to the entrance of the park, I could see several hundred ludicrous vehicles that were just filled with speakers, some so much the suspension was sagging. I found a spot near a few sagging vans and parked my Civic in the grass. I'll admit, I was worried I might not have windows for the trip home, which would not be good.

As I stepped out of my car, a woman who by my guess was a judge came walking up to me.

"Excuse me sir", she said, "I don't have your name or plate numbers in the registry, whose team are you on?"

"I'm not a contestant", I said, "I only parked here because there was no where else."

"Oh", she said, "never mind then."

"I'm looking for someone named Tristan Hungate", I said, "he runs on Chow Audio?"

The woman looked through her clipboard, "he just checked in about 20 minutes ago."

"Thanks", I said, "I can find him from here."

She nodded and went off somewhere as I started looking around for my friend, looking at the cars that were there as I did. Most of them were huge lift trucks that were petty decently put together, but others were custom, AWD, supercharged, crazy suspension and speaker mounts and custom sheathed wires so it would look better. The rows of cars were marked with signs that had the teams names on them, and Chow was the very last row. They had about five cars there and only one of them was the one I was looking for, which was way at the back. Tristan was leaning up against the grill, looking pretty beat down. He'd just gotten back from Advanced Infantry Training like a week ago.

"Hey Tristan", I said walking up to him.

"Josh?", he said looking at me, smiling slightly, "what the hell are you out here for?"

I shrugged, "heard you were in town, had to come meet you for myself."

Tristan was about six one or so. He had brown hair, but at the moment his head was shaved. He was dressed in a US Army T-Shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots with a black sports watch and a red paracord bracelet. He had sunglasses on his head and brown eyes.

"Nice to finally meet ya in person bro", Tristan said, "I got your message that you were going to Navy Basic in a few days?"

"Was", I sighed.

"Was?", he asked.

I pulled the letter out of my pocket and handed it to him, he unfolded and read it, paused, then held it up to the sun.

"If this wasn't on Navy security paper", he said, "I'd tell you it was faked."

I sighed, "Five days. After a year of work I was five days away, now..."

"They don't even tell you why they kicked you out", Tristan said, "it's just like, oh by the way, you don't have to come in, ever."

I laughed, "oh well, can't be helped", I pulled out the camera, "smile, your on."

"Evening everyone, we are in Victoria Texas for the Breildi Bass Audio Competition and I've got a good friend of mine behind me, since I never get to see him, were gonna take his van apart first, alright bro what you got in here?"

"It's a 1993 Chevy ASTRO EXT with a 7:1 Ratio 4th order tuned to 33 hertz with a C2 Audio 1.6RECON powering 1 12" Frankenwoofer inside a .75CU sealed box for temporary play while the front stage carries 6 5" mids and 2 8" mids on a Taramps TS800x4."

"How much it set you back?", I asked.

"About two grand for the equipment", Tristan said, "if you wanna count the truck it was about three to four."

"In other words it's just a louder version of my Civic", I laughed, "wanna demo it for us? It's what the people wanna see."

"Sure", he laughed pulling open the door and climbing in. He started the van. A couple of seconds later the speakers came on. I felt a blast of air and then a loud crack, next thing I knew I was covered in glass from the car I was standing in front of.

"Holy shit", I laughed, "you blew out that guys window."

"Happens", Tristan smiled, "hope he had insurance."

The competition lasted for about... I'm tempted to say three hours, but I don't think it was that long. Chow Audio didn't win like I hoped they would, but damn did they put up a good fight. After the competition, I told Tristan I'd see him in the round the next day and walked back to my Civic. Somehow I hadn't lost any windows. I jumped into my car and got back onto the main street. Even though I'd had a good time, I was still a little phased out over the Navy thing, add to that the fact that it was late, I was hungry and tired, I really didn't feel like driving two hours to go home, so I decided to spend the night in town. If I had known what was coming, I would have gone straight home.