Chapter 46: Screeching rubber

“So, how does it feel to see your beloved ‘big brother’ at death’s door, huh!?” mocked the thug, as he turned the wheel from the van’s driving seat.

Even though it looked quite wide and spacious from the outside, the minivan was impractically cramped past its sliding doors, and both seats and roof were covered in soot and grime. It reeked of beer and cigarettes, much to the small girl’s chagrin. 

Sitting on the back, Akane was being held in place by two of his servants, who tightly gripped each of her arms so as to prevent any more attempts at interfering. She had already made that little job of his difficult enough.

“Whatever! I know he’ll come to help me!! He always does.” she shouted back, in vexation.

“Yeah. You keep tellin’ yourself that.” he retorted. “Once this is all over, I will have a lot of fun detailing your pathetic treachery to Lord Pizza. I am sure he will be glad to have some fun with you.”

“Screw you!!”

The man let out a loud cackle, stepping harder on the gas pedal. This had been quite an eventful day, thus far. For the first time in a long while, he was amusing himself with a job.

Still, he could see the two little bugs behind him scrambling to catch up. How bothersome. Though the obvious outcome was inevitable, it would take quite a long while for him to reach ground floor at that pace.

“I suppose we can deal with them right away. Ladies? Get ready. It is time.”

The three women jerked in place as their master’s grave voice was directed at them. He turned back to face the one sitting to the middle school girl’s left, however, who immediately started to bow and apologize profusely.

“I don’t want to hear that! Listen up: you stay. The others move out. I want you here to keep an eye on this little wretch. Ya got that!?”

“Y-Yes… Master…”

“Be ready to act, all of you. Once we pass this turnaround, I want those blabbering hindrances out of the road!”

 

***

 

The minivan entered the sharp turn with ease, disappearing from sight for a moment as it passed under part of the floorings’ metal supports below.

Adapting to the change in the course, Suzuka entered the turn as well, following closely after it, leaving only Haruto lagging behind.

“How did she even…?”

The way he saw it, though, making that turn at a doable speed was impossible… Heck, to even call something like that a turn would be far too big of a stretch. It was a full-on perpendicular change in his trajectory, and the way the other two had been moving should have ensured them a direct crash against the fragile railing at the edge of that floor’s perimeter.

Both Suzuka and that thug had, however, made that turn cleanly without any sort of trouble.

“Damn it… What do I do now?”

He wondered if he should slow down and just take it slow… But then again, he’d be dead anyway doing that. Or he could always try doing that. But wasn’t that just too damn crazy? He was out of ideas. Before he could start to wallow and panic once again, though, before he could do anything, something else caught his attention.

“Master, remember what I told you!”

The girl’s voice echoed all the way back to him, reaching his ears as clear as though she could be sitting right next to him again. Startled, he gave a slight jump at the sound, before easing up and focusing on the glass track instead. He couln’t just keep getting caught up with distractions like such…

“Huh. Funny. How are you doing this??” he demanded, still.

“It’d be pitiful if masters couldn’t communicate with servants at a distance, wouldn’t it?” the girl’s echoing voice replied again. “Consider it a feature, if you will.”

“... Okay… Good to know. What do you want now, anyway!?”

“You need to remember what I said. If you don’t do this next turn the way I explained, you won’t survive this race for long. Please, concentrate, master!”

“That’s way too much for me to pull off, right off the bat! Isn’t there some other way? I could just break through the floor if I crafted the right tool and –”

“I really doubt you could just do something like that cleanly without any setbacks, you know? Plus, you are greatly underestimating the stability of this building. If you damage it at the right point, at the right time…”

“Oh, I know, I know…!”

He groaned weakly in his seat, as the remainder of his patience for that world and its whims just kept on plummeting by the second.

The turn was approaching, and he couldn’t do anything to go past it.

“Oh, man… I hate cars so much… Do I really have to do this!?”

“It’s the only way to properly move on this track! I already taught you everything you need to do, so put it to use!”

“You didn’t teach me anything! You just rushed a bunch of disjointed directions at me like you were expecting me to just suddenly understand it all! This is insane!”

“Haven’t you done more insane things before!? Just try it and see! It’s not like you have to comprehend every little detail to pull it off. For these kinds of things… Sometimes, you just need to have a feel for it. You need to feel more, think less. Do you get it, master?”

“No!!!”

“Just take a deep breath.”

He followed her.

“Alright.”

“Now brake. Not too much, not too little.”

“And!?”

“Switch to dead point. And stomp the gas! Then go back to drive.”

“Got it…”

He could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand all straight up. With such a narrow turn fast approaching, he would have wanted to slow down, not go faster and crash right into the metal railing. Still, he held on a bit longer. He trusted Suzuka. From that moment on, the two of them would be sharing the exact same fate, for better or for worse.

“What now, matchsticks!?” he yelled. “This is seriously ridiculous!!”

“Throttle more!”

“Throttle more!?”

“Just do it.”

He pressed down on it once again, holding tight onto his wheel.

“Now brake slightly, and steer the wheel all the way to the left!”

The car slid wildly, slowly but surely turning to face the next level, entering the descending ramp with a wild screech, and as the crackling of the translucent glass below him sank into his mind, making the boy’s fingers tremble even more, he gripped the wheel even tighter. As though it had suddenly gained a life of its own, it had started to spin back, startling him into trying to keep it in place. Doing that however, had only shaken up his movement more, making him lose control of his trajectory.

He was getting too damn close to the ramp’s inner railing, and a violent collision with the solid metallic framing at the center of the building was the last thing he wanted. And so, panickedly, he had attempted to brake instead, hoping it would compensate for the unruly steering wheel and straighten the car out to pull it away from the steel beams.

“Master, wait! Don’t overdo it!”

Despite having avoided the crash into the inside of the building, he hadn’t been able to keep control of the car, instead pulling it back enough to pummel itself blindly against the outer railing.

As the deafening shatter of glass windows, along with the feeble pieces of railing, pierced through his mind to the point of gagging, he felt the car jerk around as one of its rear wheels slipped off the clefted surface of the track, hovering over the city below as the cold night wind hit Haruto from the back. Though he was far too shaken up to pay it any more than a mere instant of his mind, he could tell through the rear mirror that something sharp had just been stabbed through his trunk’s window.

The car continued to slide down the ramp all the while, shattering window after window as countless, razor-sharp pieces of glass rained on the car’s roof and windows, breaking down further into even smaller pieces before before hitting the ramp, or otherwise plunging out of the tower itself, making Haruto fear for a moment that one or another of them would eventually pop one of its tires as he kept on.

One more false movement, and he would plummet to his death, in more ways than one.

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(Shit… I can’t just leave her to handle all of them at once…)

Sure, he trusted her. But he didn’t trust her that much.

Cursing through his teeth, he stepped down on the gas again, attempting to move forward again.

“Are you okay, master?”

“Of course I’m not! I almost fell out of the building, here!”

Just at the base of the ramp, he had finally managed to stop in place, revving the damn thing up again and carefully pulling himself back onto the main path and proceeding towards the center of the new floor as fast as he could, avoiding the steel beams as wheel as the central rooms that lined it up.

“How the heck are we even supposed to use our abilities like this!? This whole place will just start falling apart with one little push!!”

“I know that, master! What you did there was definitely not a ‘little push’, though! I heard some pretty loud rumbling from here! Did you drift the whole floor to the ground or what!?”

“That…! That doesn’t matter right now, alright!? What matters is I’m still here! Fine?”

“Fine! We’ve got to hurry up and overtake them before any of them or us can do more damage and end this race on a wrong note. Come on!”

Up ahead, he caught sight of both the motorcycle and the van, still going wildly at it, a few ways ahead of the next descending ramp. Suzuka’s voice came back, just slightly clearer than before.

“Can you–!?”

“I see you! You’re going too fast for me to catch up, though. Have they made any move?”

“Not yet! But keep an eye –”

Speaking of the devil, two of the side doors opened on the minivan, one in the front and one on the back, and a pair of smaller, rusty-looking cars appeared right next to it, one on each of its borders.

 

***

 

“Out, now!!” shouted Sixshot.

At once, the two servants complied, jumping out each onto one of the summoned vehicles, while only the last of them remained inside, holding onto the middle school girl’s arm.

“It’s no use!! You’re gonna lose anyway!” she kept on whining.

“Shut the hell up, already!”

Opening the inventory screen, he summoned a gun onto the woman’s hand. She, at once, held it against the girl’s torso, who froze in place at the sheer sight.

“We may not be able to kill you.” he said. “But we can make you go through a quite painful experience… So stay still, and stop making noise.”

 

***

 

He couldn’t close the distance between himself and the other vehicles, but he knew they weren’t going to wait up for him, either. The two rusted vehicles had slowed down until they were running right behind the minivan, blocking Suzuka’s way towards it, and in the meantime Sixshot’s van had entered the next steep turning path and vanished from their sights, headed towards the next level.

They were, no doubt, planning to hold them back for as long as possible. So, with that in mind, he called out Suzuka once again.

“Find a way past them!! I’ll keep these two busy while you take care of that guy!”

He had finally managed to get near her, since the two cars had obstructed the path and forced her to slow down. Suzuka, however, was not keen on the idea.

“I don’t have the kind of protection needed to take on his ability. Just one hit and I’m out. I’ll take care of this garbage, so you go and do what you have to!”

“But…!”

“Go!! If you can’t go fast enough, just find some other way to cut the distance down! You’ve survived this long in here for a reason, right!?”

She took aim at one of the vehicles in front, and with a fistful of flames, blew it all up in one go, leaving no trace of their opponent behind aside from the bad cracking of the floor all around them. Such a decision, however, had been far too hasty.

“C.O.U.R.T.N.E.Y.I.I.’s vehicle has been destroyed. C.O.U.R.T.N.E.Y.I.I. down.”

Hellfire’s throw had left her completely open to the remaining servant’s attack.

“Ability activated: Magne-beam.”

A long, thick chain of light suddenly sprung out from the car’s rear, locking itself onto the side of the girl’s bike and forcefully veering it away towards a wall, making her crash directly through three full layers of glass. The motorcycle lost all of its momentum, throwing her mangled, instantly static-covered body out onto a nearby corridor, where it landed, somewhere out of his view.

“H.E.L.L.F.I.R.E.’s vehicle has suffered critical damage.”

“Matchsticks!?” he stammered, shocked by the sudden movement.

The girl’s voice returned to the echo from before, weak, but still clear enough for him to tell she wouldn’t be getting up again. She spoke irregularly, and would even cut herself off entirely at points. Just hearing that had sealed it for him. Suzuka was not making out of there, whatever happened next.

“Go… ahead. She’s stuck now… Take that chance… and… win this…”

“Damn it…”

That woman’s power consisted of a string of light which locked its target into whatever path she set for it. It seemed, though that she couldn’t take over more than one vehicle at a time.

“Master… Listen… Those turns get easy… When you get used to them… Just… don’t fight the wheel… Work with it…”

“That’s easier said than done!! I can’t just go and…!”

“I can… hold her off.... I’ll put a stop to this now… But I can only do it if you move down to the next floor fast… There’s going to be rubble… Lots of it…”

“...”

“If we want to win this, we don’t need the new dumbass H.A.R.U.T.O., we need…” she stopped for a moment, as though psyching herself to face her greatest fear. “I can’t believe I’ll say it… We need the other dumbass Haruto! The other one!”

“The other one…?”

(The other one…?)

The other one, he thought?

“So, go be a dumbass, and get us out of this mess, master! Do what you do best! Don’t think, don’t reason, just figure things out and solve the problem!”

“... Fine.”

Without looking behind, he floored the gas once again, rushing past the surviving rusted car and onto the glass ramp ahead, readying himself for what was coming.

He had half-expected the woman to try her hand at coercing him as well, some other way, but she instead simply remained idly there, having come to a complete halt to focus her full attention on Suzuka.

He didn’t stop to question it either, however. He had a race to win, and time was running out for him in more than one way.

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