Notes: My first thing up on FFnet! I hope it's not OOC or anything else. Genfic.
Dead End
"You can't just keep running, okay. Sooner or later, you're gonna hit a dead end. And fuck, when that happens, what're you gonna do? Yeah, that's what I thought."
The road burned under his touch.
But Kazu already knew it.
He couldn't just keep on running away, even if that was what he was best at.
Either way, he still loved it.
That feeling.
The motors clicking and spinning with his every pulse.
He loved the sheer feeling of his wheels bouncing off the asphalt. Indescribable. The wind tearing up against his (fragile) face. The way he—he, Mikura Kazuma—could tear through the streets at the speed of sound. The thrill, the excitement, of it all. Epinephrine rush. The blood pumping into his heart. Like he couldn't stop. And please don't stop. It was something else entirely.
Then again... nothing was forever.
Not even this.
Maybe this was just an illusion. It was just too good, too good to be true anyhow, to suddenly discover something so spectacular. The whole thing with Air Trecks—maybe it was all just a dream.
If so, he didn't want to wake up.
Out of breath, Kazu scraped to a sloppy stop, like the awkward beginner he felt like he would always be. He could feel beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. He wiped the perspiration away absentmindedly with the sleeve of his jacket. That didn't matter. His eyes lifted. But that did.
It was a high fence, crisscrossed with rusted wire.
But, for Kazu, it was so much more.
It was a mockery. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much determination he had... it would never be enough. Never. There was always going to be something to stop him. There was always a barrier he couldn't overcome. As if always there to prevent him from achieving. From being something. But well, was he even something to begin with?
He sure as hell didn't feel like it.
That was just the way things worked, anyhow.
Kazu sighed, leaned against the barbed wire, eyes cast downwards a slight moment before tilting his head upwards, towards the blue sky, stretching infinitely across the horizon. Birds soared. The sun's blaze left blurry black tints at the edges of his eyes.
It hurt, so he looked away.
Now what?
"...Kazu? Tired already?"
The blond averted his gaze. Ikki. Sure enough, the tousled-haired boy glided towards him, his clothes rumpled askew from the pressure against— with— the wind, cheeks tinted with pink, eyes bright. In any case, he looked a little tired.
But he was the sun's child.
Kazu could never forget.
Kazu tugged at his beanie. "Yeah... We can come back tomorrow."
Ikki nodded, and something glanced off the amber of his eyes. But he let the matter go. "Yeah... I'm gonna head back now. See you tomorrow, yeah?"
Kazu didn't reply immediately. His fingers slanted off the decay on the fence and it crumbled in the palm of his hand. After a while, he nodded slowly, as if his thoughts were somewhere else. They were.
"Yeah," Kazu sighed. "See you tomorrow then. I'll go in a bit."
A slight pause; "Suit yourself."
Kazu turned, instinctively (Ikki always got that spotlight) and watched his best friend vertically slope up up the fence. And when he reached the top, he was a silhouette under the sun. It was just a flashing nanosecond but—and then he jumped down so easily, already speeding down the dirt road, swirling the grains into dust as he thrust past.
Kazu could only stare at Ikki's wide retreating back, until he was far off, far away... out of sight.
The sun blazed.
Hesitating, Kazu slipped his fingers through the crisscrossed wire, slowly, painstakingly, climbing atop the obstacle. The bar affixed at the top—his wheels cut at it. Perspiration touched. And the view is so different up here—on the other side, the road stretched on, infinite.
Kazu jumped down, the motors in his wheels already spinning as he hit the dirt. His mouth sloped into a slow smile, and he started riding the road again, feeling everything he ever wanted from Air Trecks. All that and more.
It was just a fence, after all.