Chapter 12: Dude, where’s my speed boost?

He spun his steering wheel wildly, veering from one side of the lane to the other, then back around to the same place.

Right past his window flew a raging fireball. Soon after came another over the roof.

At that rate, he wasn’t going to last long.

Left without any other choice, he just kept moving around at random intervals, wary of the girl’s deadly aim.

Subduing his rising panic for a single moment, he was able to force himself to look away from his rearview mirrors long enough to spot the suspended train bridge coming up right in front.

It seemed empty, not a single car in sight. But that was not what bothered him. The whole structure seemed to be covered in rust and dirt. It was old. Corrupted. And most of all, it did not seem stable at all. If, perhaps, one of the motorcycle girl’s fireballs were to hit the wrong spot on one of the wrong pillars, the whole thing could be coming down on them. What happened, then? There was a draw, would they both lose their souls?

(Focus! Focus on what matters, damn it!)

Whatever. It wouldn’t matters whether that thing fell on him or not if he didn’t survive the oncoming fire from behind.

She was starting to wise up to his moves. There were only so many directions you could go before you started repeating patterns. He was starting to become predictable, and she was catching up. This time, the coming fireball had actually grazed his right mirror.

Finally, the bridge came up. Its shape blocked the wild checkerboard sky above, and its shadow dominated his own… or so he wished, but now he had those blinding, yellow-burning projectiles flying all around him through and swings and angles only the greatest of lunatics would have ever been able to come up with.

He was running out of… Well, everything, now. Time, energy, hope… How could he possibly escape…?

“The hell…?”

He spotted a strange, large object ahead. It was only a few meters from them, but he couldn’t quite see it amid all the darkness. The Roller’s lights weren’t even working anymore. Had he broken them too at some point? Or had the car already come like that…?

“I swear, when… if I find out whoever the hell designed this thing…”

Shortly after, though, he was able to get a good look at it.

It lay over the road. Oddly to him, it wasn’t quite laying on it, but… floating. It floated above the asphalt, almost as high as his own eye level.

It looked like some kind of box. An oval, slim-looking metal box with an array of countless, rusty exhaust pipes coming out of it, wrapping themselves around the narrow shape like an octopus shielding itself behind its arms.

It looked so bizarre. So outrageous. Heck, it even floated! Spotting something so utterly absurd in a setting such as this one could only mean one thing to the boy.

“Great Scott… It’s a game item! I’m saved!!!!”

And mistaken, he was not. About it being a game item, of course.

As he approached the floating metal-thingy, driving straight towards it while steering sideways on occasion to avoid matchstick’s fire attacks, he was able to see it briefly move, floating in his direction before he could even reach it proper and over towards his windshield, on top of which it then instantly vanished.

“... It’s gone…?”

“Pocket Booster acquired.”

(A ‘booster’? As in, it increases your speed? Then, that must mean…?)

He looked back for a single moment, praying he was right.

Generally speaking, the kind of racing games that would allow you to pick up power-ups in the middle of a level would put them instantly into action the moment they were picked up, no? But if so, why was nothing happening!?

The distance between him and the girl was still the exact same, she was still throwing more fire at him from her hands, all the same, and it did not seem, for the life of him, that she had even attempted to increase her speed to keep up.

What was going on, then? Was the item supposed to be something else? But it definitely looked like a speed-up item.

Another fireball flew by. It took out his right rear mirror without even a warning. Boom. Bye. Just a blink of an eye and it was gone.

(Focus! Focus, or she’ll blow you to bits!!)

What did he have to do!? What was he missing? He’d picked up a powerup item, right? It should do something!

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“... Oh… Oh, no…”

(... Don’t tell me I also have to open up the inventory to equip the damn thing…!!)

He took one hand off the steering wheel right then to do exactly that.

“Please don’t hit me, please don’t hit me, please don’t hit me…”

With that moribund, defeated chant, he opened up his inventory to try and spot if the pickup item was hidden in there somewhere, all while his other hand was trying to keep the car moving, lest he wound up as the next serving of fried meat on gramps Bonefat’s friday night serving at the restaurant.

(What the hell did I just remind myself of…?)

Oh, what a miracle, it was actually there! It’d been tucked under the ‘Support Gear’ tab, because obviously, that would be totally intuitive for a beginner!!

“Stop dodging, you stupid grasshopper!!! I’ve got better things to do today!!!!!!!!” the insufferable, high-pitched voice struck him again.

“Sh… Shut the hell up!” he managed, his truly poetic comeback.

With his right finger wobbling back and forth, was able to press over the item on the glassy menu and open up a small window, showcasing him the option to ‘Equip item’.

“There we go! So much red tape just for this…”

Tapping the option with his finger, he waited eagerly for the deserved boost of speed… Which never came.

What he got, instead, was the opportunity to once again listen to the game announcer’s sexy, guttural voice he knew and loved.

“Installation not possible. Vehicle incompatible.”

“What? Why!?!?!”

“Excessive damage sustained.”

“Well, screw you too!!”

It was true his car had taken quite a bit of punishment in his first race against that Nohara nut, but still… Wasn’t preventing him from using game items just a bit too much!? Why even place something like that on the race track, if he couldn’t even use it!?!?!?!

“Damn it all!!!”

With an absolutely nasty amount of menus and inventory pages still open (because by this point, the young man could not even be bothered), he started yet another bout of crazy veering and scraping as the first turns on the track had finally come about without him even noticing them, just barely avoiding driving off the road quite a few times.

Meanwhile, the Hellfire girl was still at it with the matchsticks behind him, and as he clumsily moved out of the way of her ‘skill’ once again, he noticed her grab a Pocket Booster of her own, as well.

“If I was you,” she mused. “I would really start to pay closer attention to my surroundings!”

He had no idea what that could mean, but then it reached him: the sound of his doom.

A shrill, grating noise… coming right from above.

It hadn’t necessarily originated from the pillars, though. The underside of the bridge was… bulging!?

The noise became louder. Heavier.

Something was running above them. Rumbling. And not majestically at all. It was coming for them.

With a single spin of the wheel, Haruto skidded as further as he could to his right, and the motorcycle soon mirrored his movement, moving to the left.

And then came the train, with nothing but even louder chugs to signal its arrival.

A single, snaky mass of steel and aluminum, tearing right through the suspended tracks above and plunging into the road they were on, as the recently deceased racer could only stare its unstoppable fall in shock.

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