[03] Desire for Velocity!

[Piper Juunanagou]

Since obtaining the virtual nutrition, Piper hadn’t really done much of anything with the rest of her downtime. Sure, she’d hopped onto a few of the smaller, less intense rides, and she had even bothered to take a ride on the log flume despite the fact that the majority of water rides were boring and uneventful. Fortunately the woman’s pessimistic thoughts were put to an end when the ride turned out to be less of a plastic log floating down a water-filled flume and more of a horrifying rollercoaster submerged almost completely in water.

At the ride’s terminus, the woman disengaged the four different safety harnesses and slowly disembarked from the metal, log-shaped cart. Despite the throbbing agony in her skull from the shakes and jolts of the ride, Piper couldn’t help but smirk like an idiot as she made her way across the wooden, sawmill-themed boarding/exiting station and began to descend the wooden logs that had been sawed in half to serve as stairs.

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

Furrowing her brow, the woman popped her pager off her belt and shook it to remove some of the plump water droplets that still clung to its plastic surface. After a few good shakes, Piper tilted the screen out of the sunlight and noticed that the continual beeping was accompanied by a large warning icon. Unsure of what to do, the woman simply pressed one of the buttons below the screen. All at once, the beeping and the flashing icon vanished, but without much of a delay, they were replaced by a rather amusing string of words.

“‘Your event, Desire for Velocity, is ready. Please proceed to the boarding portal’,” the statement on the little device served only to augment the grin on Piper’s visage. Despite her distaste for this entire situation and her overwhelming urge to break free and kill Gamer, she couldn’t deny the fact that she’d rather be stuck in another inane scenario than wandering around the oversized carnival in search of gems like the log flume and the alien shooting game.

“Well if this gets me one step closer to wringing that little bastard’s neck, let’s get this shit going,” Piper chuckled as she clipped the pager back onto her belt and promptly crossed her arms across her chest.

Any day now…

After a brief silence, space and time just a few feet in front of the impatient soldier were ripped apart by the swirling blue vortex that formed to usher her to her next ‘event.’ Leaning toward the churning maelstrom with a pair of squinted eyes, the woman was able to catch the slightest peek of what looked to be an old junkyard before the portal suddenly expanded to incorporate more of its surroundings—including Piper.

Unlike the previous portal she’d stepped through casually, this lovely vortex dropped the woman down a swirling pit of vibrant, neon colors all melding together like a really poor piece of artwork. The more she fell, the faster the colors whipped passed her, until the entire thing resembled nothing more than a very poor acid trip. Fortunately for Piper, her psychedelic journey came to an abrupt end with her being deposited—in a rather calm manner despite her previous rate of acceleration—in a dark room atop what smelled like a mound of dirty mechanics’ uniforms. After all, it wasn’t that often that you could smell transmission fluid and grease on the same outfit.

Oh, great. Piper thought as she pinched her nostrils shut and stood up out of the pile of greasy, oil-stained clothes. Just what I want to smell like... a grease monkey. Now my milkshake is totally going to bring all the boys to the yard. An amused smirk spread across the woman’s visage as she reached out with her gauntleted right hand and felt around for the closest door. After a couple moments of groping in the darkness, Piper’s metal fingers fell around a door handle.

“Now what does this entail?” Piper spoke out loud as she opened the door and stepped out into the back office of what she could immediately identify as a mechanic’s. If the inventories of miscellaneous car-related items and the gutted parts of cars hanging from the walls weren’t enough, then the fact that there were several vehicles elevated on platforms in the main room served to paint the picture quite well. Was Piper supposed to fix up some cars or was there something more to this whole spiel?

“You ready to race, Speed?” A voice interjected from the outside room—answering any questions that Piper might have still had swirling in her head. It was at that moment that Piper turned to look at the large attached to the back of the office door. Once again, her officer clothes had been replaced by (apparently) more aptly themed garments. Instead of her comfortable green dress slacks and matching suit, Piper was wearing a pair of white jeans and what looked and felt like a blue polo shirt. Instead of her black military gloves, she was wearing orange racing gloves, and oddly enough, she was still wearing the metal gauntlet beneath one of the gloves. Although most of the changes were bearable, her stylish and comfortable headband had been replaced what looked to be…

An ascot? A damn ascot? What am I, a gay man? Piper frowned heavily as she grabbed and tugged at knot on her neck only to find that it wasn’t even remotely removable.

“Are you ready in there?” The voice remarked with some evident irritation, prompting Piper to divert her attention away from her attire and back toward address the event at hand.

“Yea, I’m good,” the blond remarked as she pushed open the swinging door and stepped out into the garage proper. Immediately, her eyes fell upon the hefty man in the white ball cap and the red t-shirt. Hidden beneath a tarp next to the overweight man, Piper could note the outline of a vehicle of some design. The man was sweating bullets—his oversized belly heaving with every accelerated breath as he paced back and forth in front of the only working vehicle. “What’s up? You gonna to be okay?”

“How can you be so calm with the Mac 5 on the blocks?” The man sputtered as he reached up to wipe the sweat from his brow with the hairy backside of one of his pudgy hands. “This new car hasn’t even been road tested,” he spoke as he grabbed two handfuls of the tarpaulin and yanked it away to reveal the four-door vehicle underneath. Piper stifled a fit of laughter when she saw that the car was designed—paintjob, added effects, and all—after the strange “pocket monster” she had fought alongside during the first event. “Seriously, Speed, do you even know what this is supposed to be? It certainly doesn’t look like a race car to me,” he groaned as he ran a sweaty hand across one of the giant ‘ears’ projecting from the roof of the car.

“Did you just call me ‘Speed’ again?” Piper asked as she reached out and closed a hand around the driver-side door of the bizarre yellow car.

“Don’t tell me you hit your head, Son,” the chubby man said with a nervous chuckle as he walked over to a nearby bench and scooped up a white helmet with a small glass visor. Without much of a warning, he tossed the helmet at Piper, who only managed to catch it because she had looked up in enough time to see it coming. “Make sure you wear your helmet. I wouldn’t want the Racer family to go out of business because you wrecked and couldn’t compete anymore,” he said with a faint, almost forced smile.

Does he not realize that I have breasts? Piper mused as she looked down and verified that she was still, in fact, a woman. If she wasn’t vehemently opposed to inflating her own ego, she’d probably go as far to verify that was actually quite a woman... But then why the hell did no one ever notice her? To everyone on the base, she was just 'one of the damn dudes.' The only one who ever really gave her any attention for being a woman was Private Reckner, and her motives were questionable at best…

“Focus!” Piper’s ‘father’ suddenly shouted, yanking the woman out of the downward spiral that was her current train of thought and back to pseudo-reality that was Kill Town. “Keep your head in the game, or you’re going to lose, Speed!” He added with a softer tone as he moved over to her position and ushered her into the leather interior of the vehicle. Once she was seated, her ‘dad’ pointed to the helmet she still had clenched in her hands. With a groan, the blonde slid the helmet down over her head and shifted it around until it sat straight.

“Can I at least get out of wearing this ridiculous ascot-thing?” Piper groaned as she tugged at the red accessory that clung to her neck like a soft, fluffy vice.

“It’s a racing bandana, Speed!” Her ‘dad’ said with a boisterous laugh that he punctuated by slapping his large stomach with both of his hands. “You need to get out and race, son,” he said with a chuckle as he shut the door and walked around to the other side of Piper’s ‘race car.’

“I guess this is better than zombies or mountain climbing,” the soldier-turned-racer remarked to herself as she snatched the key off the dashboard and turned on the ignition. As the car’s engine thrummed with life and power, the woman watched as the large garage doors slid up on old, shaky tracks. With a smirk, Piper noticed that the garage, which had shown numerous inklings of being an old, rundown country location, was actually in the middle of a giant city.

Moving her car to the edge of the garage, the blonde noticed that there were three other garages positioned along a wide city street. From each of the structures, Piper could hear the roar of engines, although she couldn’t see well enough to actually get a look at anyone.

“Engines sound irritating,” the soldier muttered as she reached down and gave the stereo power button a light tap. After a few seconds of static, the woman heard the sound of someone clearing their throat—an amateur DJ unaware that he was back on the air, perhaps?

“Well if it isn’t Sergeant Piper Juunanagou. This is such a wonderful pleasure,” the voice, albeit slightly manipulated by the audio equipment, was familiar enough (and bitter enough) that the woman didn’t need any clues when it came to guessing its origin.

“What’re you doing in my race car, Pikachu?” Piper asked with a smug smirk as she flicked on the air conditioner and reved her engine. In front of her car, a traffic light stood as her indicator for when the race was to begin.

“Based on the fact that I can’t actually feel my damn limbs, I’d say I am your race car, you monkey,” the rodent groaned as the numerous lights and meters on the dashboard flashed in synch with his voice. “I guess this doesn’t say much for my argument that I’m real, does it?” The pocket monster asked in an uncharacteristically somber tone.

Instead of responding, Piper merely let the silence speak for itself.

“Well,” Pikachu remarked as the light switch from green to yellow. “At least we can beat these stupid bastards!” With that declaration still fresh in the air, the light turned from yellow to red, and before Piper could so much as hit the gas, the car erupted forward—turning on a dime and proceeding down the empty city street.