Disclaimer: Shin Kidousenki New Mobile War Chronicle Gundam Wing and all
affiliated characters are property of Bandai, Setsu Agency.
Title: Maximum Pulse
Authors: Switchblade003 Sanyu-Kumiko (Collaboration)
Chapter 4: Big City Races
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: DuoxHeero
Status: Incomplete, but active.
Two days after the race everything had returned to normal at the Chinatown Restaurant.
Wufei was out back, mowing the lawn while Meiran took the girls to school, and Hiirou found himself standing in the kitchen for yet another morning of food preparation and produce orders. Before that first unofficial race, his life had seemed content enough, but now every chore that he took on seemed so menial, so pointless. He'd forgotten what it felt like to get on his bike, gun his engine, and let his adrenaline take over, and now that he'd been submersed in that temporary euphoria once more, everyday tasks seemed so mundane.
But he had a job to do, and he set to it with a conviction borne of preoccupation. The knife in his hands sliced cleanly and expertly through its target without thought, and Hiirou mulled over his current situation.
No one had openly mentioned the race since that night, though Meiran would make the occassional odd comment in reference, and Wufei seemed a little preoccupied with the other garage lately.
He'd caught the Chinese man and Duo in heated discussions in the dining room at all hours of the night, recently...
Speaking of Duo.
The mechanic had been livid with him after the altercation with the uptown garage members. He'd claimed to have been 'sticking up for Hiirou' when he'd smarted off to the men, but the Japanese youth knew better.
The braided American just had a knack for causing trouble. It followed him around like a forboding rain cloud, and Hiirou preferred to steer clear of any potential 'storms' brewing in that idiot's head. He'd been avoiding prolonged contact with his violet-eyed counterpart after their first meeting, anyway.
Now he felt more than justified in his attitude of moderated tolerance of the boy...
"Hiirou! There's something in the mail for you!"
...It was just that no matter how hard he tried to be hostile with the mechanic, Duo just shrugged it off and came back for more, like an abused spouse. The long-haired young man came barreling into the kitchen, a confused look on his handsome face, and Hiirou wanted to scream in frustration.
"It's a Christmas card," Duo mumbled. He handed the green and red envelope to Hiirou. "Who the hell sends a Christmas card in October?"
The Japanese youth shrugged, opening the mail with a frown on his lips, and when he pulled the card out, Duo snorted, obviously unamused.
It was a generic holiday greeting card, with a little reindeer on the front, and scrawled across it in permanent black marker were the words, "Merry Christmas, Motherfuckers!"
"Nice," Duo whistled from behind the Asian, and Hiirou decided to overlook the not-so-festive greeting, opening the card. Inside, he found a folded map of the more metropolitan area of their city, and a section of the streets had been highlighted. The note inside the card read,
"Starting point: Starbucks on Fifth Avenue.
1AM, Sunday. BYOB."
Hiirou paused at that last part. "Bring your own beer?" he asked, turning to Duo. The mechanic was fuming.
"No, stupid. Bring your own bitch." The Japanese youth still looked confused, so the other boy elaborated. "It's a racing term. A 'bitch' is your mechanic and engines tech."
He waited for the delivery boy to catch on. "Me!" Then he threw his hands up disgust, groaned, and stormed out of the kitchen, leaving Hiirou to ponder over how Duo had become his new mechanic. He removed the map, tucking it into his back pocket, and he noticed one more line in the card.
"Reward for winner is one grand."
Hiirou's eyes widened at the figure.
This racing business was looking very lucrative.
0446EST26Oct04
The city was quiet as Hiirou sat listening to the new 'ref' of the races.
He could hear distant, faint traffic noises, but the coffee shop across the street from them was dark, as were the office buildings that loomed twenty or so stories over them. To his left, Duo stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, and from under the ducked brim of the hat Hiirou saw the glowing orange cherry of a cigarette burning.
The mechanic was in a foul mood, but it kept him from talking the Japanese youth's ear off, so he supposed he'd let it go for now.
On Duo's other side, the redhead with the temper was sitting on his bike, pretending to snore as their 'ref' gave instructions.
Hiirou sighed. He still couldn't remember why he'd decided to race again, but he supposed that he'd probably had a fairly good reason. Probably...
"Here's how this is gonna work. On my signal, you two start, and you'll follow the course highlighted on the maps. If you forget where to turn, we've got you covered." Another boy behind him stood up with a brightly-colored band poster and held it up for everyone to see.
"We pinched these out of the local concert hall. We've posted them on the cooresponding side of each street that you need to turn on. Right now we've got a decoy running up and down the course, so as soon as I get the clear we'll start the race..."
Hiirou reached out and grabbed Duo's arm, tugging him over.
"What's a decoy?" he inquired in a hushed tone,
and the American rolled his eyes.
"A decoy is another bike or car that runs the course about half an hour before you do. They use him to keep the local law enforcement preoccupied. He leads the cops away from the course and leaves it clear for the race." Hiirou nodded.
That idea was pretty smart. If they didn't distract the cops, the races would be over in minutes, because in a big city like this one, the police were everywhere.
"All right, techs! Check your opponent's bike."
Hiirou shifted nervously as a greasy-looking guy slumped down beside his bike to check for any 'special features' that might give him an unfair advantage in the race, and he snorted wryly.
As if racing against this garage wasn't a big enough disadvantage...
Across the street, Duo was kneeling down beside the redhead's bike, cigarette between his teeth, giving the other guy a hard time.
"You wanna get that damned cigarette away from my ride?" Duo arched an eyebrow, blowing a large cloud of grey smoke into the other youth's face and smirking. "Not particularly." He stood, dusting his knees off, and flashed the 'ref' a thumbs-up.
"Listen up," their mediator collapsed his cellular phone and nodded. "The cops are taken care of. We've got them halfway across town, so let's get this party started. On my signal."
Hiirou revved his engine, feeling a lot more confident than he had at that first race. He realized that these subsequent face-offs were all important to the hierarchy of the uptown garage--Duo had taken to calling them the "Jets", a joke from an old American musical.
These current races determined who would assume leadership of the garage, and Hiirou was the test. He guessed that the first man to beat him in these races would replace Blondie as head of their circle. He had no intention of losing, any time soon.
"Go!"
Zechs Merquise was bored. He'd been sitting outside his favorite diner for nearly an hour, trying to decide whether he wanted to eat, or simply call it a night and go home, when a black Nissan Maxima had flown down the street beside the diner, a group of squad cars in hot pursuit. He'd flung the door to his Celica open, grabbing his radio and calling in to dispatch to see if the officers needed assistance, but he was off-duty, so the woman had told him more or less to stay out of it.
Minutely heartbroken, the officer had slumped over his open car door, radio in- hand, and his night was beginning to look like a total waste, when from around the corner the roaring of engines had echoed through the empty parking lot almost twenty minutes later, and for a moment he wondered if the Maxima was just leading the police cars around in a circle. Instead, he watched as a silver motorcycle with a jagged scratch down one side came barreling down the road, a blue bike close behind it.
They were operating at dangerously high speeds, and Zechs suddenly felt like a kid in a candy store.
Chuckling, he jumped into his car and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a cloud of dust behind him. "0136 to dispatch," he sung into his radio, jerking his steering wheel sharply to keep up with the much more agile bikes while fumbling with his seatbelt. "Be advised, I've got two import bikes in my sight, travelling on Seventh Avenue at speeds in excess of seventy miles per hour. I'm going to need some backup."
The guy behind him had to be a cop.
Hiirou mulled this over as he made a hard left, trying to keep up with the redhead, but at these speeds one of them was going to total. He fell back just a bit and tried to find a way to ditch the Celica that was practically up his ass, but he wasn't finding anything useful. Swearing, he sped up. Maybe if he drove a little more recklessly, the cop would have no choice but to fall back. The problem with that idea was that the car behind him was definately not a police vehicle, and from the hissing noises it made every time the transmission shifted, it probably wasn't even street legal. It was definately a cop, though, because from his rearview mirrors, Hiirou could see the man talking into a radio. This was decidedly not good.
Beside him, the redhead looked pretty confident, and it struck Hiirou then that those garage assholes had probably prepared for this kind of thing.
Sure enough, the blue bike veered down a side alley, racing up a metal ramp and into the back of a waiting moving van. "Son of a bitch!" He was losing his patience, and now the Celica only had one target.
Things weren't looking good for Hiirou.
The sian glanced down at his gauges. He was almost forty over the speed limit. That added up to speeding, reckless driving, public endangerment, and racketeering if they could prove it. It was either pull over and spend the next decade of his life as jailbait or tack on evading arrest. It was a split-second decision. but Hiirou made it and swerved between two slower moving vehicles.
The Celica avoided a near-accident, bypassing the cars, and was back on his tail.
Time for a little more drastic measures. Gritting his teeth, the Japanese youth drove his bike over the solid yellow line in the center of the street, directly into oncoming traffic, and prayed that the cop wouldn't dare to follow him. He barely made it around an opposite-bound truck, turning onto an entrance ramp for the highway. When he checked his rearview mirrors again, the silver
Celica was no where in sight.
0545EST26Oct04