LET'S RIDE!
-3!
-2!
-1!
The crowd erupted into a frenzy of cheering. Jack and Dullahan threw themselves into it, root-ing for Ash with every fiber of their beings, while from the neighboring car rolled an unmistakable wave of hostility.
And in the midst of it all, Ash's optical sensors glowed.
A moment later.
BANG!
The starting gun cracked against their eardrums, and Ash stomped the accelerator all the way to the floor.
SkreeeeEEECH!
A shriek closer to a scream than an engine note tore out of the machine.
The twelve piston cylinders hammered away without pause, unleashing explosive power. Ash's head was slammed back into the headrest — that was how violently the car launched forward.
As expected, Ifrit's scarlet muscle car was, from its very roots, a different beast from the Revenant.
The Revenant had been built to force its way through hostile terrain — an armored transport bristling with plating, equipment, and weapons. This thing shared nothing with it; even the feeling of direct connection to the road belonged to another dimension entirely.
A responsiveness so sharp it bordered on nervous.
A skeleton frame stripped of every excess gram.
Stiff, unforgiving suspension.
And on top of it all, a brutish, absurd output that kept surging ahead no matter how hard he pressed the pedal.
At first he'd wondered what was the point of such an inefficient machine, one that could only seat two — but no. There was a purpose behind it.
A very specific purpose, in fact.
And that purpose was speed — the one thing he needed most right now.
Ash tightened his grip on the steering wheel. With the grinning jester emblem set dead center, he couldn't shake the feeling that the thing was smiling right at him.
"Not bad, this thing...!"
But there was no time to sit back and admire it.
GrRRRrrm!
A shriek of rending air announced another car's arrival. A Nitro Tribe machine. Despite his lightning start, the opponent closed in without yielding a single inch, pulling up level with his shoulder.
Through the side window, Ash caught sight of the man. The racer looked over at him and drew a finger across his own throat.
"..."
Ash ignored the blatant taunt and worked the gear lever.
Tak! Tak!
A faint shudder rolled through the chassis as the RPM needle began to dance.
Shifting up once more, Ash recalled the conversation he'd had with Jack before the start.
— We have to make our move on the straight sections, sir!
So it had been all about the course.
— The straight sections?
— Yes! This car itself is built for raw straight-line speed. High-speed stability and output are both way beyond what they've got, so...
— Never mind that. Just explain the course.
Jack had stumbled and stammered for a long while, but once Ash untangled the rambling mess, he'd been able to piece together the basic structure of the race route.
A straight stretch along the elevated highway.
Then the ruined old town district.
One full lap through it, and back onto the highway again.
Simple, and crystal clear.
And the point of attack Jack had been babbling about was precisely that straight section.
'So — build my lead here, before the turn.'
The man had gone so far as to steal Ifrit's car and wager it; his analysis was probably sound. Ash seized the gear lever.
CLUNK!
With a crisp engagement, the RPM needle shot skyward.
KeeeeEEEIIING!!
The sensation of his whole body being yanked backward. The speedometer had blown past 200 km/h long ago.
The night scenery outside the windows was already smeared beyond recognition. Even the scattered streetlamps had melted into a single yellow streak rushing past, and the knife-sharp wind battering the convertible's open top wailed in a strange, howling chorus.
At last, the opponent began to slip back, little by little.
GrRRRrrm!!
He could hear the engine wringing out power until it felt ready to burst, but the gap refused to close any further. Ash checked the RPM, shifted again, and after a brief shudder rippled through the body, the scarlet muscle car spat out a roar and lunged ahead.
At such speeds the wheel thrashed violently left and right, fighting him without mercy.
"Ugh...!"
Merely driving straight was a battle in itself. A monstrous howl of wind whipped through the open cockpit on both sides.
Perhaps because of that.
It didn't take long at all for his opponent to shrink into a dot in the rearview mirror.
"Haha! Now we're talking!"
Ash laughed out loud.
Fast.
No — light.
It was as if once he took a single step, the world simply delivered him to the next point on its own — as though his feet weren't touching the ground at all.
And that sensation was anything but unfamiliar to Ash.
Along the snow-covered ridgelines of Mount Kunlun.
It felt uncannily like those days, when he had run with his master atop the heavens themselves, striding across a sky scrubbed of every season's light.
Yes.
That feeling of the wind at his back and the world pouring away beneath his feet. The sight of all creation stretching into long, streaming lines as it flashed past. What Ash beheld from inside the racing machine was, without question, touching something deep in his past.
KeeeeEEEIIING!!
But.
Regrettably, his laughter did not last.
The sleek, unbroken highway began to split apart, the lanes narrowing bit by bit until a bleak, forbidding landscape rose up to greet him.
Ruins, grotesquely warped, gaping wide like hungry mouths.
The entrance to the old town.
"Hm?"
What filled his vision was emphatically not a road made for speed. Half-collapsed buildings lay toppled across the middle of the asphalt, and rusted steel frameworks were strewn in every direction.
Driving straight was out of the question — even holding his current speed looked impossible.
So, for the first time, Ash eased off the right pedal. The thrashing RPM needle fell, and the wildly sprinting machine began, little by little, to shed its speed.
Screeeech!
Regripping the wheel, Ash started threading the needle — weaving through the narrow gaps left between the wreckage. Enormous slabs of concrete and streetlamps bent like taffy lay tumbled all around.
The mad sprint was over.
From here on, it was a matter of precision steering.
He was carving through the winding maze with every sense pushed to its limit when —
TATATATATANG!
A sharp, staccato roar shattered the stillness behind him. Ash's optical sensors snapped reflexively to the rearview mirror.
The Nitro Tribe.
A silver car, headlights blazing, had come up on his tail close enough to bite.
"How in the world...?"
He couldn't fathom it.
Already? How?
Had the man really blasted through this suicidal ruin at full throttle?
A moment later, Ash understood exactly how his pursuer had caught up.
First, the man never slowed down.
Near-90-degree corners, and no braking? That alone was astonishing — but it was what came next that defied belief.
The whole car seemed to twist on its axis, the rear wheels breaking loose, and it slithered through the gaps in the debris like a snake.
Screeeech!
A shriek of friction — the tires clawed the asphalt, spewing thick smoke, all while holding a gap that grazed the wreckage without ever quite touching it.
A riding technique as bizarre and unfathomable as a serpent's own movement — Unfathomable Mysteries, beyond all guessing.
A drift.
"Oh no...!"
The distance was shrinking fast. Ash held the maximum speed he could possibly muster and tore through the snaking road, but textbook driving alone would never shake an opponent who moved like a living whip.
And then, at the hairpin turn —
Screeeech!
The silver car sliced into the space beside Ash, headlights flaring. For one frozen instant, he saw the man through the window.
With a sly grin, the racer blew him a wink — then, in one more grotesque, serpentine flourish, vanished beyond the wreckage.
"..."
Overtaken.
Ash's turquoise optical sensors undulated far deeper and darker than usual. An inexplicable, staggering sense of loss had slammed into his main core.
The hands gripping the wheel were trembling.
"...So that's how you choose to play it?"
At some point.
The trembling stopped — dead.
"I concede. Truly, a splendid display of skill, Nitro whoever-you-are."
Light like polished steel flared from his optical sensors.
"But tell me — how could a disciple of Kunlun, sworn to my very lineage, ever lose a contest of qinggong (Lightness Skills)? Impossible, surely."
It was neither qinggong, nor a contest — but such trifles had long since ceased to matter to Ash.
He stomped the accelerator with everything he had.
The engine, silent for so long, roared back to life.
WAAAAAAAAANG!
The scarlet muscle car charged dead straight at the ruins ahead — close enough that collision seemed certain.
And at that very moment.
Ash thrust his right arm forward.
"If you assumed I'd simply concede the front because I don't know how to slide — you were sorely mistaken!"
GOOOOOO...!
A tremendous electromagnetic force reached out across the road ahead.
And then something even stranger than drifting occurred.
The concrete slabs and rusted girders blocking his path began to rise into the air.
If the road bent, break through it. If debris blocked the way, clear it away. That was all there was to it. And so, against his opponent's serpentine artistry, Ash simply forced a straight line of his own into existence.
He plunged into the gap without easing off the pedal one bit.
And that wasn't all.
Where the wreckage was too massive even for electromagnetic force to move, he rode up it without hesitation, climbing along the tilted steel framework itself.
"Even the heavens have roads, if one knows where to look!"
The muscle car used the girders as a springboard and hurled itself into the night sky. Its crimson taillights carved a line across the dark, leaving a trail of pure geometry in their wake.
KWAAAANG!
The impact of landing knocked the muscle car sideways, and it skidded for a moment — but Ash paid it no mind whatsoever.
Faster.
Still faster.
Eyes fixed only on the road ahead, Ash hammered the accelerator without hesitation.
It was driving beyond any sane human's reckoning — closer, honestly, to the work of a stuntman.
And at the end of that insane breakthrough —
The far edge of the old town finally came into view. And beyond it, the silver car still running ahead.
"There you are."
His optical sensors flashed.
KWAAAAAM!
The scarlet muscle car burst through a shattering wall in a storm of debris, dust swirling into a vortex around its spinning tires.
Startled by the sheer audacity of the entrance, the silver car wobbled left and right — the driver, apparently, had flinched.
Ash ripped the gear lever down in one brutal pull. The maze of the old town was behind them now; smooth asphalt stretched out ahead once more.
"Now, then — let's settle this! Nitro whoever-you-are!"
Ash's right foot slammed the accelerator to the floor, once again.
Dead End.
The finish line.
The euphoric fever of the starting flag had long since drained away, leaving behind a dead, oppressive silence — and a tension stretched tight enough to snap.
"...They should be back by now, shouldn't they?"
"I am waiting! But it's about time, isn't it?!"
Jack finally couldn't take it anymore and collapsed onto the ground. His lips were trembling.
"A-Ash is going to win... right? Right?!"
But even as the words scrolled across his visor, Dullahan's fingertips were shaking too. His usual cold, unshakable composure was nowhere to be found.
The crowd was no different. This race had turned out to be a far bigger event than anyone expected — one by one, the spectators swallowed hard, eyes flicking between the makeshift scoreboard and the dark, distant end of the elevated highway.
Then —
Rmmmmmm...
The ground began to rumble.
At first it was nothing more than a faint tremor, but in an instant it came crawling up through the earth and hammered against every heart present.
WAAAAAAANG!!
TATATATATANG!
A colossal roar was rending the very air — rolling toward them from beyond the far horizon.
And it wasn't just sound that appeared.
Two searing streaks of light flashed into view atop the elevated highway.
"Here they come!"
Someone screamed, and every rider gathered at Dead End craned their necks at once — Jack and Dullahan very much included.
"Come on, come on...!"
The crowd hung off the guardrails, howling. The engines grew louder and louder until the sound was driving straight into their eardrums, and the two streaks of light kept twisting, tangling, and separating across the dark highway.
Jack squinted, straining to make out what the lights belonged to.
Or rather — which one was ahead.
Silver?
Or red?
And at last, as the rapidly closing distance brought them within the range of recognition —
"......Red."
Jack's voice rang out, brimming with a full-body shiver.
"R-RED! IT'S RED! REEED!"
Both of them were beyond all reason now. Jack and Dullahan clutched each other and bounced up and down like madmen.
"Wahaha! That's our Ash! I never doubted him!"
As if that shout had been the starting flare, the hundreds of riders massed at Dead End surged over the guardrails all at once.
WAAAAAAAH!
A roar shook the atmosphere to its bones. Whatever cynicism these riders usually held toward other teams' races had evaporated — every last one of them was screaming in celebration.
And cutting through it all, the scarlet muscle car finally crossed the finish line.
The crowd's thunderous cheer filled Dead End from edge to edge.