(Writer's note: Crystals are assumed to be 1/10 of the value of a US dollar. 10 crystals = 1 dollar, 100 = 10 dollars, and so on.)
"Hey, Lilac, you wanna race?"
The fan was chugging along quietly on this Saturday afternoon. Lilac was splayed out on the couch, while Carol was lying on the floor with her neck propped up against the couch, and Milla was sitting cross-legged and leaning forward at the TV. At a glance, it appeared that Milla was the only one truly entertained by the show. The TV was playing an episode of Magic Crystal Twinkle Star Peach, and it was at that point where the 5 characters would do their power-up sequences and cast magic spells to defeat the monster of the week, and Milla was making excited noises at the flashy special effects. For some reason, the show was naught but white noise for Lilac today; normally, she'd be more invested in the show, maybe sitting up front with Milla, but she just wasn't feeling it.
Lilac perked up at Carol's question and flopped over on her back.
"I don't know, Carol. It's really hot today, and you know I always win our races. It's no contest."
Carol scoffed. "Yeah, see, you would think that, but I went to see this guy, right? I got a pair of boosters on my bike, and I went on a test ride. You should've seen it, Lilac. I shaved like two minutes off my time without even trying! I bet I can keep up with you now. It's gonna be awesome."
Lilac sat up on the couch with a start.
"Carol, exactly how much did these boosters cost?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhhh…they were pretty cheap?"
Lilac stared obliquely at Carol. She had a nervous smile on her face and was looking everywhere except where Lilac was.
"Carol…"
"Okay, well, uh, I kind of promised him 100,000 crystals for the boosters, but it's okay, Lilac, I can just steal the money and pay the guy back by the end of the month! He's pretty cool about that sort of thing!"
Lilac sighed heavily and rubbed her hand against her forehead.
"Lilac, I know what you're going to say, and it's okay! I got this covered! It'll be like normal, I swear!"
"Avalice's sake, Carol, we talked about this. We can't stay here. We have to save up money to get a bigger house for the three of us. That can't happen if we keep using our money on dumb stuff."
"But, but...the boosters are way better than nitrous oxide! They use rocket fuel!"
"Rita, no!"
Milla's cry cut short a long and tired argument as the duo snapped to attention at what was on the screen. The monster of the week had attacked Rita during a vulnerable moment, and she was lying broken and unconscious on the ground. As the monster wound up for another attack on Rita while the girls were rushing to save her, the screen faded to black and the words 'To Be Continued' flashed on the screen.
Lilac exclaimed. "Are you kidding me? That's the second cliffhanger in a month! I can't stand waiting until next week to see what happens!"
Milla had tears in her eyes. "I hope Rita is okay!"
And then the TV froze for a minute. It started whining as the pixels glitched out and then abruptly switched to a screen that one did not normally see.
"13:30: Due to a service outage in Shang Tu, all television networks are temporarily offline. Estimated time of service restoration is at 21:30. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused."
Carol sat there open-mouthed. "Are you kidding me?! I was looking forward to watching Metal Bike Rider after this! What are we supposed to do for the rest of the day?"
Carol blinked as she remembered what she had asked Lilac not very long ago. She stared at Lilac, and as they looked at each other, they came to a silent understanding.
And then they asked Milla the exact same question in the exact same tone.
"Hey, Milla, do you want to watch us race?'
All thoughts of Rita's potential demise left Milla's mind as she smiled widely.
Bip, bip, bip, whirrrr.
"That will be 400 crystals, ma'am."
The cheetah's eyes widened a bit. When did TV dinners and juice cartons get so expensive? Aisha took out her wallet, which was becoming dangerously lightweight, and paid the cashier with a pair of grey 200-crystal cards. She gagged as she realized she only had a singular 100-crystal card left over. She resolved that into a smile and a 'thank you' as she picked up her groceries and receipt, and walked home.
The early afternoon sun had gotten hotter in the short time she was in the supermarket. Or maybe it just felt hotter because the air conditioning was so chilly in comparison. In just minutes, she was already sweating through her white t-shirt and shorts. Aisha was glad when she burst through the door of her house a half hour later, after a series of twists and turns through the Shang Tu streets.
Well, she called it a house, but it was rather small for a house. Not much more than a glorified apartment, really, but at least the rent was cheap. She locked the door, kicked off her slippers, and wearily took her bags into the kitchen. Following the theme of a glorified apartment design, the house was set up much like an apartment, with a short zig-zaggy hallway that branched off into several rooms.
The kitchen was straight ahead at the end of the hallway. It had boring white paint, a ceramic-tiled floor, a table, a couple of cabinets, a small stove, a small fridge and a trash can. She stalked over to the fridge and opened it, or tried to. For some reason, the doors were ridiculously sticky and needed a few seconds of strained tugging to open them properly. If only she hadn't needed to pay the rent a couple of days prior, she might have bought a less annoying fridge with doors that actually worked. Maybe next month…
She tossed the contents of her grocery shopping trip without really caring about things like organization and efficiency. The only consideration was whether it was a freezer or bottom fridge thing; otherwise, if there was space and it fit, that was all that mattered. That being done, she slammed the doors (because they didn't close properly without some force, of course) and stuffed the bags into a cabinet that was practically overflowing with unused plastic bags. You know, just in case she needed them.
She retreated to her bedroom, which had a better (read: orange) paint job on the walls, a queen sized bed, a bunch of drawers for stuff and things, a large fan that was already running, and a 30 inch TV. She changed out of her sweat-drenched shirt into a Ninja Hurk shirt and popped into the bathroom to dump it into the laundry hamper, then collapsed on her bed and switched on the TV with a nearby remote. All she really wanted was to laze around today, as it was too hot to do anything.
Her hopes would be dashed soon, though. Roughly five minutes into the season finale of Mighty Ultra Shoot Bang Heroes, the TV started freezing in the middle of an action scene with the show's heroine, Rubi, and the big bad, Blaser. After it was stuck on that same frame for a minute, the TV started whining and the pixels glitched out before the screen switched to a service outage notification.
Aisha groaned out loud. With the TV rendered useless, there was nothing to do in the house besides sleep, and she was too wired to fall asleep this early in the day. She would have to go outside. This was mildly objectionable, because she far preferred to stay inside if she could help it. She couldn't really explain it to anyone if she tried; she just preferred to stay inside and watch TV for some reason.
With no other choice in the matter, though, she hopped into the shower, drenching herself with cold water. She just hoped there'd be a rerun of the finale of Shoot Bang Heroes later tonight.
On the occasions where she had the motivation to head out for anything not involving chores, Aisha preferred the Shang Tu national park. The scenery was timeless in its appeal; bamboo shoots and different types of trees were numerous, and the lake was positioned just ten feet away from the trail. Its presence felt like a window to the sky and maybe even the heavens, and every so often, a pleasantly cool and vaguely dewdrop-like breeze would blow in from the lake. As well, the park was very long, making it a good place for a run.
Even though she preferred the indoors, running was the one thing that she enjoyed a lot more than sleep and watching TV. It was an odd paradox that sometimes got her thinking on especially lazy days about what she was doing with her life. It always came back to the same conclusion; running might be quite literally in her blood, but there was nothing wrong with being a couch potato. Maybe.
Aisha took off at a light jog the second she entered the park. The wind lightly whipping at her face was better than the fan at home, and the simplicity of the jogging itself, her shoes pounding the gravel rhythmically as snippets of conversation from the people passed her by, was zen-like. If it felt this good for a simple jog, Aisha wondered why she didn't do this more often.
'Oh, right. I'd have to actually get out of the house more than once in a while.'
She needed to stop asking herself that question.
She kept going at a steady pace, lost in her own thoughts and passively listening to the world around her.
"...hear about Mayor Zao's new girlfriend? Third one this week..."
"...quite nice this time of year…"
"Will you marry me?... I wasn't expecting them to say no…"
"...we should watch a movie after this…"
"What the…did you just say about me, you little...I'll have you know..."
"...I don't think this is a great place to race each other…"
Aisha's ears perked up at the word 'race', and she slowed to a walk as she tried to figure out where that particular conversation was coming from. A minute of searching led her to a group of girls, surprisingly looking much younger than she had thought they would be. The goat girl was talking to a cat pushing along a motorcycle, while the dog (or should she say puppy?) seemed to be admiring the environment rather than listening to them.
Aisha felt compelled to talk to them, against her better judgment. She couldn't explain why she wanted to join in the race these girls were apparently hashing out the details of, as normally she preferred to race against herself if she felt so inclined. Maybe an invisible force of nature was subtly pushing her towards them. Or maybe she just felt lonely without really realizing it. Whatever it was, she strode up to them and made her presence known before she could stop herself.
"Um. Hi."
The goat and cat turned around in surprise, probably expecting to be left to their own devices. The pup jumped a couple of inches, but after seeing Aisha, she broke out in a grin.
"Hello," said the goat girl.
Aisha felt a pang of embarrassment, but having inexplicably initiated the conversation, it would be rather rude if she didn't keep going.
"I heard that you guys were planning to race each other. Sorry if I'm being rude, but can I join in?"
The goat blinked, but it didn't take her long to make up her mind.
"Sure," she said, deaf to the cat making a choking noise and shaking her head vigorously. "What's your name, by the way?"
"I'm Aisha. What's yours?"
"My name's Lilac, and these are my friends, Carol and Milla. Milla's like a little sister to us."
Carol gave a reluctant wave, while Milla's face lit up as she waved with both hands. Aisha could definitely see what Lilac meant.
"Now, uh, for the race itself, we're going from this end of the park to the exit. It's just one lap, though. Think you can handle that?"
Aisha nodded.
"Great. Give us a few seconds to talk, and then we'll race, okay?"
That being said, Lilac dragged Carol away to talk. For some reason, Carol seemed rather panicky and animated. The conversation was over as soon as it had begun, and Lilac waved to Aisha to follow her.
The girls took up their positions. Carol revved up the engine on her bike while Lilac stretched. Aisha, in the middle, just awkwardly crouched the way she saw some marathon runners do at the start of the race.
Carol leaned down toward Aisha.
"Quick heads up, cheetah girl. You're about to race a dragon. Lilac especially is probably the fastest thing you're ever going to see, so I wouldn't feel too bad no matter what happens."
Aisha stared at Carol. She might not have quite stared at her with a gaping mouth, but it was close. Carol shrugged as she diverted her eyes to the gravel pathway.
Aisha was suddenly having second thoughts about this. She had assumed that Lilac was a goat, but she never thought she'd see a dragon in the flesh, let alone race against one.
"Hey, Milla," Lilac called, "could you count down from 3?"
Milla, who was busy picking a flower for whatever reason, quickly turned to the would-be racers. She cleared her throat and waited for a second, and then started counting down.
"Three…"
Aisha's muscles tensed.
"Two…"
It was probably okay if she lost.
"One…"
Why did she chat these people up, anyway? She never usually did that. That was weird. This felt weird.
"Go!"
Time slowed as Aisha pushed off from the gravel. She was deaf to everything except her own slow and steady heartbeat. She ran, and ran, and kept running until she wasn't running anymore.
"I don't think this is a great place to race each other, Carol."
"Well, yeah, but they decided to close down Dragon Valley for 'safety concerns', because some idiot crashed his car in that place and it blew up. I don't know about you, but this is probably the best thing we got to Dragon Valley."
Lilac frowned.
"Carol, I'm betting that these new boosters of yours are some kind of black market thing. The last thing we need is more attention from the Magister. Remember, we got locked up in jail once trying to save the world?"
Carol scoffed. "So what?"
"So, maybe I don't actually want to race you in an open place with a lot of people here to witness you using your illegal rocket fuel boosters that you have to pay off by the end of the month."
"Jeez, you're such a downer, Lilac. Who cares about the Magister? Last time I remember, we busted out of prison pretty easy. And it's not like we can't just outrun them or something. We've had a lot of experience with that, what's one more time running from the cops?"
Lilac recoiled from the callousness of Carol's words. True, they had a lot of experience evading the cops, but that had been years ago when splitting from the Scarves had been a life-changing decision for Lilac. She had gotten a lot of goodwill from the Magister after she and Carol beat Brevon and accidentally managed to solve the energy crisis in the process, and she didn't want to squander all of that goodwill on an extremely public race that was guaranteed to get them in trouble. And there was Milla to think about. The duo may have had experience with the cops, but Milla most definitely did not have that experience and she certainly didn't need to learn anytime soon.
Lilac was about to voice these thoughts when a girl greeted them from out of nowhere.
Momentarily taken off-guard, Lilac could only say 'hello'. She used the time to take in the cheetah girl's appearance: a green Ninja Hurk shirt, sweat shorts, bumblebee-yellow fur with grey spots, and white sneakers with dark orange highlights. She didn't look much older than Lilac, maybe 17 or 18?
"I heard that you guys were planning to race each other. Sorry if I'm being rude, but can I join in?"
Lilac had the full intention to say no. Bad enough she was having trouble talking Carol out of having the race in the park, she didn't intend to bring an innocent bystander into it. But instead of dismissing her, something came over her. It was an odd and intangible feeling of wrongness, and before she realized it, she was speaking, telling the girl that she could race with them. Carol gagged and shook her head forcefully, and Lilac privately agreed with her because this was nuts, why was she saying this stuff?
But she just kept talking, introducing Aisha to her friends and setting a course for the race that she had never discussed with Carol. She gained enough sense of mind to explain that she wanted to talk to Carol, and so said, they walked out of earshot of Aisha.
Carol rounded on her. "Okay, what the heck is going on, Lilac? One second, you're telling me not to race in the park, and the next, you're telling some random girl to come race with us in the park and you're setting a course on your own? Did I miss something?"
Lilac was at a loss for words. She thought once again about explaining to the newcomer that they had changed their mind about the race. In a slow instant, that feeling of wrongness came back to her, stronger and more dreadful than before. She shuddered.
"Um, Carol. This might sound kind of weird?"
Carol tapped a foot and circled her hand in a 'go on' gesture.
"I agree with you. But I think if we don't race with that girl, bad things might happen."
"What do you mean, bad things?"
"Bad things." She couldn't figure out how to impress upon Carol exactly how dire the consequences would be. Or might be. She wasn't sure. But that one time where one of Carol's fireworks randomly went off and almost burned the treehouse to the ground came to mind.
Carol rolled her eyes.
"For the record, you're acting weird and unreasonable, and you should probably think really hard about where that's coming from. But sure, let's play along."
That being settled, they went back to Aisha and started prepping for the race. Carol strapped on her helmet and whispered something to the cheetah. Whatever the reaction was, Carol was enjoying it. Lilac asked Milla to count them down, taking an outwardly relaxed and inefficient running stance. And at the count of one, she hopped and spun wildly in the air to do her Dragon Boost, taking off at the word 'go'.
Most people have blurry vision when they are exposed to high speeds. Appropriately termed as motion blur, people could not really focus on their surroundings and had to either look around really fast or keep their eyes fixed on a single point to deal with it. Lilac had heard about it, but when she went fast, she didn't really feel the effects of motion blur. She wasn't even sure if she could recognize motion blur outside of movies and TV shows. In point of fact, the surroundings looked exactly the same, but she was acutely aware that she herself was moving fast.
So as the momentum from the Dragon Boost carried her off the ground for a few seconds, she was able to to look around and see that Aisha was trailing behind Carol by roughly ten feet. Carol herself was surprisingly neck-to-neck with Lilac and gaining ground, sticking out her tongue as the heat from the rocket boosters singed the nearby grass. Maybe these boosters really were that good.
Lilac felt the exact moment the momentum from the Dragon Boost wavered, and did a little flip in the air to orient her feet towards the ground, not missing a step. Her winged boots hammered against the gravel path, making a 'takataka' sound that always sounded like raindrops to Lilac. She found herself struggling just to keep pace with the motorcycle, but she persevered. Eventually, the boosters would run out of fuel, and then she would have the edge, like always.
Neither of them were prepared for this particular surprise. No one could really blame them for not seeing it coming, especially with Aisha's performance less than thirty seconds ago. But it certainly came as a nasty shock when Aisha became the dark horse and bolted past them in the span of two seconds, her fur lit up with a bright golden glaze and sparks of purple electricity as she left behind an inexplicable trail of dust that Lilac almost inhaled. As it was, she had to duck her head so it wouldn't get into her eyes.
Three minutes later, they arrived at the 'finish line', Lilac just slightly ahead of Carol by about two inches. They found Aisha greedily sucking down water from a nearby fountain, her shirt drenched in sweat and pockmarked with little holes that weren't there before. She pushed off from the fountain when she heard the girls approaching, breathing heavily.
"Oh. Hi."
"Uh. Hello there, Aisha."
An awkward silence filled the air as Carol unstrapped her helmet.
"So, uh, Aisha," Lilac started, "how did you do that thing?"
The cheetah blinked. "Do...what?"
"That...thing. Where you were running really fast, and your fur was glowing."
"And your feet were literally on fire. It was pretty awesome," Carol chimed in.
(Lilac had somehow missed that detail. She checked Aisha's shoes, but they weren't burned at all. How odd.)
Aisha looked at both of them as if they were crazy.
"What thing are you talking about? I just remember running, and the next thing I know, I'm at the finish line? I don't really know what you mean."
Lilac shot a glance at Carol. She was just as bewildered as Lilac.
"Um, anyway. Thanks for letting me join your race. It was nice meeting you two. I have to go, though. See you around sometime?"
The girls waved half-heartedly at Aisha and watched her go. They stood there for a good couple of minutes lost for words, Milla's presence barely registering.
"Hey, Carol. You ever get that feeling that someone just messed with the natural order of things, and you just watched it happen?"
"Maybe, I don't know. What are you talking about?"
"Well, I don't know about you, but I don't think it was a coincidence that the day you asked me to race, the TV went down for like eight hours and Dragon Valley got closed down. And then we go to the park, right, and that girl approaches us to join in our race? And I was about to tell her no, but something told me to let her race or something bad would happen to us. And then she beats us single-handedly? I don't know about you, but something fishy is going on here. Someone out there set this all up and-"
Carol yawned loudly. "I think I'd rather go home and forget about all of this, Miss Conspiracy Theorypants. That girl beat us fair and square, and that's the end of that."
"Okay, fine. But can you answer a question real quick? When you decided to buy these boosters, do you remember feeling more pressured into it than usual?"
Carol frowned deeply, but she didn't get to answer, because the sound of sirens filled the air just then.
"Holy crap, Lilac, there's cops! Milla, hop on!" Carol sounded panicky as she gestured frantically at Milla, who jumped at Carol and wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach.
"I knew this was a bad idea!"
"You're the one who pulled a dumb 180 and decided we should do the race in the park! Shut up and get moving, Lilac!"
The trio beat a hasty retreat from the police in short order. As they ran with the late afternoon sun overhead, Lilac couldn't help thinking that someone out there was messing with them yet again.