Warning! Achtung! Aviso! This is the third installment of an ongoing series, if you have not read volume 1 and 2 please do so before reading this, as it may not make sense.
Disclaimer; I do not own Initial D. It should be pretty obvious that I am not Shuichi Shigeno, and don't claim to be. I do this for fun and the sheer enjoyment of writing and love of cars.
Chapter 1 The Great Glass Galaxie.
Four headlights pierced the darkness on the Shammel Highway just outside of Denton North Carolina. Behind the headlights one of Fords mightiest motors roared, the venerable 427 side oiler, adorned with dualquads and performance headers. No one at Ford had envisioned a Galaxie to be used this way, on a twisty stretch of two lane asphalt, but moonshiners had jumped at the chance to get a car that started off at least as fast what would be chasing them. The owner of the dark blue 1963 ½ Galaxie sports roof had gone a step further by replacing many of the sheet metal body panels with ones made of fiberglass, and two massive tanks, one in the trunk, the other under the back seat for transporting moonshine.
There was no radio, or heater in the cockpit, to save weight, even the Galaxie seats had been ditched in favor of bucket seats from and Econoline van to save weight. A large Stewart-Warner tachometer was mounted to the metal dashboard angled towards the driver. A driver who didn't realize the significance of what the car was, to him it was the only Galaxie he had ever known. Since the time he was 13 he had been piloting the 425 horsepower monster through the woods. Off in the distance he saw a pair of little red spots. Brake lights. The 18 year old driver of the Galaxie didn't lift his foot, the mighty 427 charged ahead, rapidly closing on the brake lights.
The cockpit of the Fiat X 1/9 lit up from behind. The driver checked his rearview mirror. Someone's behind me? Who could be tailing me, everybody's gone home. He thought just before checking his speedometer, which read 70 miles per hour. What the hell is behind me? Everybody had gone home, it was 2 o'clock in the morning, and he had watched the current king of the Shammel Highway leave in his Corvette.
Even though the X 1/9 was underpowered it still had an advantage over most of the competition, it handled so well that he could stay ahead of people just in the turns. A tap on the brakes brought his speed down enough to take the upcoming right hander.
"What the hell!" The X 1/9 driver gasped as he exited the turn, he suddenly found himself starring at the side of the Galaxie, on for a brief second as it exploded down the straightaway. "There's no way he can corner with me!" The driver of the X 1/9 exclaimed as he watched the afterburner taillights disappear into the North Carolina night.
"Huh, I wonder what that was?" The driver of the Galaxie wondered out loud.
•••
May 15, 1998.
"Come on Bud! Get your ass out here we're going to be late!" William "Grizz" Graves yelled, half in his 1968 Plymouth Barracuda 340S. He hit the horn again. His other two half awake companions in the car both winced at the shrill blast of the horn. A couple of seconds latter the screen door swung open and out trotted John "Bud" Moody, backpack slung over his shoulder. He stood about five foot seven with dusky blond hair, but he was normally buzz cut. He trotted over to the car and his waiting friends.
"Mornin' Grizz." Bud said with a yawn.
"Get in." Grizz responded, holding the back of the bucket seat forward. "What do you do, stay up all night and go to bed at four in the morning?"
"Nah." Bud responded, not letting on how close his friend was to the truth. "Hey I thought it was my turn to ride shotgun?" Bud said as he plopped down on the vinyl bench back seat.
"Well if you hadn't kept us waiting, yeah." Grizz said, dropping down into the driver's seat.
"Yeah, we're always waiting on you Bud." Matt Karsberg piped in from the backseat.
All four of young men sitting in the Barracuda were seniors at South Davidson High School, all from the town of Denton. They only had a few more weeks of school and then graduation in early June.
"I can't wait 'till we're done with exam, then I can be out at night with you guys." Matt piped in again. "The Shammel Highwaymen will rule the Shammel Highway!" He said, getting very excited.
Scott Jones, riding shotgun looked back at him skeptically. "Yeah, and do you have a car yet?" Scott said, gently looking down his nose at his friend.
"Not yet." Matt responded, becoming sullen for a moment before perking right back up. "I've got an IROC Z Camaro all lined up! I just have to get a little extra cash!" He said.
"How much?" Scott asked, as he also owned an IROC Z, one of the top performers of the mid 1980s.
"$1500." Matt responded proudly. "Oh, I can't wait! 350 cubic inches of Chevrolet muscle. I can almost hear the rumble now." A funny excited look came across Matt's face as he discussed his perspective purchase.
"That's a good deal, it's not a shit box is it?"
"Nope, it looks really good, its red with the 5 spoke alloy wheels." Matt responded, getting more excited then he had been before.
"You know the competition out there is really tough." Grizz interjected. "Right now the two tops are a 'Vette and some little Fiat." Grizz said this with a sort of admirable contempt because the reality of the situation was that the Shammel Highwaymen, as they called their team were mediocre at best. He also purposely neglected to mention the 1982 Mustang GT that was running amok, and generally considered the third fastest car. It was driven by a girl who went to school with them, a Junior Mallory Iskenderian.
"Once I get my IROC-Z all that's going to change!" Matt said, proudly puffing out his chest, "And Bud will sit on the sidelines cheering us on." Matt said playfully punching Bud in the shoulder. "Can we come with you this Saturday night, can we?"
"Yeah." Grizz said, "Just be ready at 8, I'll pick you up at Bud's."
Bud had been staring out the window, watching the trees and fields roll by, the 340 V8 providing a good soundtrack.
"Oh alright. I wouldn't mind a chance to drive." Bud responded absentmindedly. There was a stunned silence for a moment before the other three broke out laughing.
"Come on Bud, you don't even own a car." Scott said between laughs.
"I've never even seen you drive." Grizz said.
"He would probably space out in the middle of a race and drive off the road." Matt said punching Bud in the arm this time. "Street racing is serious business, you have your reputation and your teams on the line, and your own safety." Matt jeered, "And you would screw both of those up."
Bud and Matt were very close friends, they'd been in school together since first grade. Grizz and Scott had been friends since Grizz's family moved to Denton when he was in fourth grade. Grizz and Scott had gotten into car, while Matt got into cars when he got is license eventually to fall in with Scott and Grizz. Bud just sort of tagged along, not quite fitting in, he didn't know much about cars, he wasn't particularly good at sports or school for that matter. He just sort of got through.
"I can't wait 'till we graduate, then all I have to worry about is work, my car, and racing." Matt said, and it was true, come early June it would be over, and then work and Saturday night racing would be all that concerned the small group.
Even though he gave off the air of being a total spaceshot Bud picked up the sound of a different motor behind them as Grizz pulled into the High School parking lot. Half turning in his seat Bud looked out the back window and saw the unmistakable four rectangular headlights and airdam of a black 1982 Mustang GT. He caught sight of Mallory behind the wheel.
While Bud and his friends might as well have been cloned, wearing the same basic blue jeans and T-shirts, all with slightly varying close-cropped hair where the only difference was the color of their eyes and their personalities. Mallory was something different, she didn't fit into the norms of High School girls, she was independent, her own person, and it made her generally unpopular, except for with Bud. He really liker her big round gray eyes, he smile, her wavy hair, dyed a dark sort of blonde, with the last few inches blue. It didn't help that she had the almost perfect female figure, befitting a pinup girl, and drove a cool car. He really liked her.
Even though Bud had never told her how he felt they had known each other for a few years now, she was smarter then him, or at least tried harder in school, so they ended up in the same English class, both of them not quite fitting in with the group, or almost any group at the school. Mallory parked her car right next to Grizz's.
"Morning boys." She said as she climbed out of her car. "At least today I don't have to worry about some jerk parking next to me and scratching my car, well at least on one side anyways."
"Yeah, it's nice how that works out." Grizz said, trying to hide the fact that he didn't like her, that and the fact the she was faster on the Shammel Highway.
"Hey." Bud said.
"Hey." She smiled back at him. "Did you finish the English homework?"
"Mostly." Bud responded.
"You jerk! You stay up all night and you can't even finish your homework!" Matt said, whacking Bud in the back of the head, "And you keep us waiting almost every morning!"
"Oww jeez, what the hell was that for?" Bud said as he turned to glower at his best friend.
"I'll see you in class." Mallory waved as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. Bud watched as she walked away, he noticed how the jeans she was wearing showed off her figure, especially her . . .
"You know she actually has a nice body." Matt said, "To bad."
"To bad?" Bud asked. "About what?"
"I heard she's kinda nasty, you know. . ." Matt said, trailing off.
"No, I don't know." Bud said.
"She's easy." Scott said from the other side, "Probably riddled with stuff."
"How, she doesn't really have many friends." Bud said, he may have been a spaceshot and not the most observant, but he could certainly see something this plain.
"I dunno, just what I've heard." Scott said. Bud wasn't happy, but he knew that his friends were just telling him what they had heard. He knew that it was most likely just stupid High School games and name calling, but that didn't make it true, and he didn't have to like it.
Together the four friends walked into school, Matt with his nose between the pages of an Auto Trader magazine, scanning for cars.
"What are you doing Matt. I thought you already found a car?" Bud said.
"Yeah, I did, but I still like to look, and who knows I might find a good deal. But others like this restored '87 IROC for $5000 make me feel better about the deal I got."
"Oh."
"And there's a lot of other cool cars, like this GT 350, but I'll never be able to afford one of those, they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"Huh, isn't that just a Mustang?" Bud asked with a disinterested voice.
"Just a Mustang! Just a Mustang!" Matt yelled. "A Shelby GT 350 is one of the best American sports cars from the 1960! I can't believe you don't know anything about cars." Matt said with disgust.
"Jeez sorry." Bud said just before the bell rang. "We'd better get to homeroom." Bud said with a sigh of relief as they joined the mass of students headed towards classrooms.
Latter that day in English, the class had been broken up into partners to come up with interesting quotations from Shakespeare's Macbeth. Bud and Mallory had paired up. Towards the end of class she looked up at the clock mounted on the wall, and then back to Bud.
"Alright, it's almost lunch time." She said, and leaned back in her desk. "So Bud, do you have a car?" She asked.
"No, I don't have the money to get one, but I haven't really needed one."
"Psssh, nonsense! Everybody needs a car." Mallory scoffed playfully.
"I dunno, maybe when I get a full time job." He said absentmindedly.
"Well, ok, if you had the money what would you get?" She asked, leaning forward again, Bud caught a faint whiff of her perfume.
"I dunno," Bud said absentmindedly again. "Does Ford still make the Galaxie?"
"The Galaxie? Really Bud, you're such a spaceshot. Ford hasn't built the Galaxie since the 1970s." Mallory laughed a little bit.
"Oh, huh, well I really like your car."
Mallory cocked her head to the side and put on a comically big smile, so big she had to squint. "Good taste, and good luck." She said after a moment. "82s are very hard to find."
"Really?"
"Yup, it was the first year Ford brought back the GT and the first time it had a performance motor since 1973. In '83 it got a facelift, and the GT even had special body parts that didn't come on non-GT models in '82."
"Well maybe I'll find one someday." Bud said wistfully, thinking that it was fitting that somebody as unique as Mallory would have a car that was just as special. Bud looked into Mallory's gray eyes and for a moment thought about asking her where she got her reputation from. Conflicted, not sure it would be a good question to ask. Just as he was about to open his mouth the bell rang, dismissing them to lunch.
"I'll see you latter Bud" Mallory said as she escaped out the door down the hallway to the cafeteria.
"Hey?" Matt said as he caught Bud. "Hope you didn't catch anything." He joked.
"You shouldn't say that, you don't know it's true." Brian responded.
"Yeah I guess not." Matt said. "But everybody else does it."
"Uh huh." Bud responded.
"Are you coming out to the Shammel Highway with us tomorrow night, you gotta come, come on man, it's so cool!" Matt was almost jumping up and down.
"I dunno, I can't stay out that late."
"Oh come on, it usually doesn't go that late, you gotta it so cool to see all the performance cars, to hear the engines to watch as they race. It just gets me so excited, to think I'll be doing it soon too."
"I guess I could ask my dad, as long as I'm home by midnight it should be alright."
"This is gonna be so cool."
•••
Chris Duntov put his burger down, stretched his shoulders and faced out the window to gaze at his 1973 Corvette. The mirror smooth black paint reflected the beautiful spring day from all directions. He smiled a little to himself.
"Hey, come back to the real world." His friend sitting across the table said in a relaxed tone. "Black Vettey's already your, no need to keep drooling over her."
"I know Sung." Chris responded. "But sometimes I look at that car and it just makes me feel good, sometimes I can't believe it's my car."
The two young men sitting at table were almost indistinguishable, except that Sung was Japanese. He was in his late twenties and stood five and half feet tall with black hair that he wore a bit longer then most of the local men did. He was very laid back and easy going. Chris by comparison stood just under six feet tall, with buzz cut hair, a hold over from his days in the Navy. He was never one to get riled up easily, this made him stick out a bit in the Shammel Highway crowd as he was one of the small group of people who didn't let brand loyalty get in the way of appreciating a good car, regardless of its make or country of origin. There were certain things that he didn't like, namely economy cars with big wheels and zero performance parts. The reality being that he didn't have a problem so much with the car, but the person behind the wheel who thought he could take down anything with his Honda.
Chris and Sung had met shortly after Sung arrived in Denton, it wasn't long before Chris heard of 'some Asian fellow' driving a bright blue AMC AMX. Like he had looked at his Corvette a few minutes before Chris looked at the Big Bad Blue AMX parked in the spot next to the Corvette. It was spotless, perfect, all the best options to make a serious machine for the street, the Shadow Mask hood with Ram Air Scoop made it look even more menacing.
"When are you gonna run that thing on the Shammel Highway?" Chris finally asked, when he turned his gaze back to Sung. His friend was just about to pop a French fry into his mouth. All Sung did in response was make a face and shrug.
"Speaking of racing though, have you talked to Jason lately?" Sung asked.
"No." Chris said before taking a sip of his soda. "Why, what's going on?"
"Nothing. I just ran into him earlier today and he was wondering if you had gotten a new car?"
"Why, you guys get a lead on something good, a Mustang? A Charger?"
"A Galaxie." Sung said.
"A Galaxie?" Chris repeated, a little confused. "I don't know. I'm not sure how good that would be out on the Shammel Highway."
"No, he was wondering if you had already bought one, he had a run in a few nights ago, said one passed him." Sung said, staying calm which could be his most annoying trait sometimes.
"A Galaxie passed him, on the Shammel Highway?" Chris couldn't believe it, the thought of a full sized 1960s American car being able to out corner Jason's Fiat? "When did it happen?"
"I told you already man, a couple of nights ago, really late, he was hitting it hard trying to log enough time so he can outrun you when he got passed."
"Yeah good luck with that." Chris said. Although he was friendly with Jason he was still a competitor. Chris after logging countless hours on the Shammel Highway knew also know how much Jason would have to improve before he could take down Chris. "So what did this thing look like? Or did you not think to get a description?"
"What am I? A detective?" Sung asked with a wry smile. "He said it was dark blue, two door, with round taillights."
"Did he see any badges? What about a chrome contour line running from the fender to the front part of the door?"
"No, that was all he said, couldn't even get a plate number off the car, said it accelerated to fast." Sung said, enjoying the fact that Chris was getting so excited about this.
"I wonder if this mythical Galaxie is going to show up tomorrow night?" Chris wondered out loud. "The competitions been good lately, but it's always the same people, you know, it starting to get a little boring."
"Boring?" Sung asked.
"Yeah, Jason's good and all, but his car just doesn't have the power to run with Vetty. Sure his little Fiat handles well enough to let him outrun Mallory, but she's getting better and soon she'll be able to handle her car well enough to outrun him too. His car handles well, but mine handles well and has power to match. I'd just like to see somebody out here long enough to shake things up."
"Sounds like this Galaxie will do the trick, and you know if he does show up others will follow, looking for him, and more are going to come gunning for you." Sung scoffed.
"If I lose that is." Chris said, shaking a French fry at his friend warningly.
"Of course." Sung paused. "I might be able to help you out though, a friend of mine from Japan might be around eventually." He said, with just the hint of a smile that meant he was plotting something.
"Japan?" Chris arched an eyebrow. "Sounds cool. Is he any good?"
"Of course." Sung said, still calm and relaxed. "Come on man, nobody travels from Japan to the US to street race if they're not good."
Chris looked at his friend for a moment, thinking it over. No he would never go to Japan just to street race, he might do some if he were there, but it wouldn't be his only reason for going. Whoever Sung was talking about must be good.
"Well I hope he decides to make his way out here. Although why you would come out here I don't know. But for right now, I just want to see this mythical Galaxie."
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A/N
Hi everyone,
Thanks for checking out my story, and I hope its up to everyone's standards so far. Please stay with me for a little bit as I try to establish my OCs before Project D makes it down here. I want to thank MoonRunnerDuke for allowing me to use some of his OCs for this story. One additional thing I'm having a little fun with this volume and to that end I'm including numerous little trivia/obscure references within each chapter so be on the lookout,(most of the references are either automotive, music or movie related) and if you think you've found leave it in a review which are always appreciated. Let me know what you think please, and thanks for reading.
Margrave.