Oh yes Kenta and Dysuke!
Well, rather than stand on ceremony...
Challenges and Victories.
With a flick of his wrists and a small input of throttle, Nobutachi Dysuke turned his car in and allowed the rear of his white Altezza to settle into the comfortable feeling of drift. Even with Kogashiwa's SW20 breathing down his neck, Dysuke, the drift expert of Five Fire Flame, kept a relaxed pace, recounting to himself the battle against Nakamura Kenta of the Akagi RedSuns.
Both cars had had more or less equal power, there were certain limits that common sense and intelligent tuning placed on mountain going cars, but Kenta's FD was lighter, and much more agile in the corners compared to the portly four-door Toyota. Kenta had led for the first lap, keeping a quick, but more importantly tight line, even on a sodden Nikko circuit. Dysuke pushed himself as close as possible to the RedSuns leader as possible, hoping to put the young driver off his line. Kenta was, unfortunately, hardly fazed, tailgating was a very common practice on the touge, and experienced drivers were rarely worried by it. The first lap should have been a tie, Dysuke had approached one corner in the wrong gear and not drifted it properly, but Kenta had cut the apex of two corners with his front wheels, unless one of them made a critical mistake the battle would probably continue for another two laps.
Reacting to Takuya's brake lamps, Dysuke began the necessary down-shifting and braking to take the upcoming hairpin. Kogashiwa had been the one to lead the team to Happohagga, wanting to demonstrate to Rina the differences in line that should be taken if you drove a midship car. Keeping Rina's face in his mind for a moment Dysuke smiled and pushed his accelerator hard to the firewall, generating two huge plumes of smoke. Though it wasn't really his place to tell her, Dysuke was proud of the young woman, how she had taken to drifting so quickly, how, despite his earlier suspicions, she hadn't slacked her workload at University at all. Kogashiwa was a very lucky young man. A very lucky young man.
On his lap as leader Dysuke had perfectly mimicked Kenta's tight line-taking strategy, startling Takuya in the pits, the person most knowledgeable with Dysuke's technique. Normally on the track he would take an out-in-out line, the most common and fastest line method through a corner. Changing his line taking for a battle was an advanced strategy, one Takuya hadn't realised Dysuke was fully capable of until now.
"I wonder how...?"
Leaning over the barricade to look at Takuya, Rina gave a little smile.
"The same way I learned to drift. We practiced, of course! While you and Kai were busy practicing on the mountains, Dysuke took me out to a car park near aniki's workshop and helped me practice sliding the car. Once I could do 90 and 180 degree turns, he set out corners with paint, I told him he wasn't allowed to do that to the parking lot, but he wouldn't listen and made me do it anyway. It was so hard, Dysuke painted really small streets onto the road, even he didn't get it right all the time, but he wouldn't paint wider ones and eventually we got used to letting the car drift in a close space. We practiced nearly every day, aniki isn't too happy with us, we used up so many of his practice tires!" Impressed despite himself, Takuya turned back to the track while Rina answered a few questions from Kai as she snuggled familiarly with him.
The Altezza caught Takuya's EP82 easily on the straight, but was unable to overtake. Takuya, knowing that he was better than his friend in the corners, moved his turbo Starlet into the centre of the road, blocking off his overtaking attempt, before returning to the outside for a corner. Showing his increased maturity on the touge, Dysuke didn't adversely retort to Takuya's little stunt, instead he concentrated on following the line his friend's car set and optimising his cornering speed. Predictably Takuya still won ground, his car was lighter and while Takuya knew exactly how to eliminate his car's understeering, Dysuke still let his car oversteer out of habit, and enjoyment. But the difference wasn't a great as it had been two months ago and Dysuke was able to keep most of his car in his own lane as he drifted, a precaution that he felt warranted. They had seen the Lancer Evolution VII's of Evo Prime circling the pass earlier that night and Dysuke had no desire to have his bodywork ruined by a Mitsubishi rally beast. Truth be told, Dysuke was beginning to see the limits of drift, hell if it wasn't for Ken-san and his father supporting his car racing habit, his father having been a bit of an enthusiast in his day, (hell he still owned a Nur Spec 34 GTR at the wintering age of 52), he would have been hard pressed to keep paying for tires. But money aside, he knew that it was his car's tendency to break into drift that made a big difference in the cornering speed between Takuya and Kai and himself and Rina. Perhaps some time on the track would help, or some advice for Ken-san, six years of breathing and eating drift was a hard routine to break alone.
The battle had indeed reached a second round with Kenta again in the lead. By this time though their tires were beginning to succumb to heat and taking a tight line was much harder. There were a few turns where Dysuke was tempted to attempt to overtake and settle the battle, but the risk of striking the FD was too great. It was a similar story for Kenta when the two reversed position, it was obvious that he wanted to overtake, but couldn't do it safely. The battle would, once again, have to go into another round to determine a winner.
Dysuke knew that the end of the Happohagga run was after this corner, a short run-off before a wide gallery area that allowed racers to congregate and socialise. Simply to annoy Takuya he waited until the EP82 slowed, a common practice when collectively running a pass with spectators around, and blasted by him on full boost, quickly jumping back in the appropriate lane and hitting his hazards to indicate that they were parking. Takuya followed suite, not before flicking his lights on and off a few times to show his annoyance at the more powerful car. As Five Fire Flame entered the parking area, Dysuke noticed a pair of Evo VII's, they had to be Evo Prime, along with a black 32 and a red EG6, probably another team from the area, or even novice racers seeking Evo Prime's advice on running the treacherous Happo pass. Giving the cars a wider enough berth, Dysuke parked his car, careful not to use the handbrake in case the red-hot discs fused to the brake pads, and switched it off, his turbo timer allowing the car to cool down in peace. Takuya had already exited his Starlet to offer Dysuke a cigarette, and Kai was congratulating Rina for seeing the heart of tonight's lesson. Leaning on his carbon-fibre hood, Takuya kept his attention solely on the EG6 and 32, even to the point of ignoring the lighter Dysuke was attempting to return. With a confused look on his face Takuya fished his phone out of his pocket and ran through the listed numbers he had saved for various reasons. Arriving at one that he thought suspicious, Takuya signalled for quite to the rest of his team and set his phone to ring. Across the car park there was the shrill notes of a mobile phone and the intended recipient, Shouji Shingo, answered with his usual lacklustre tone.
"Yeah what?"
"Shouji?"
"Yeah, who's this?"
"Ohna Takuya. Hey, turn around." Doing as requested the longhaired EG6 driver turned a slow 180 degrees until he saw Takuya, cheekily waving his mobile phone in Shouji's direction. Wandering over with another driver, tall and solemn, in tow, Shouji took out a cigarette, lit it and continued his conversation with Takuya.
"Oi oi, Ohna, what are you doing here? Decided to travel around looking for challengers huh?" Well if nothing else the Myougi driver hadn't changed his acerbic tongue. Takuya laughed half-heartedly in response.
"No nothing like that Shouji, I moved here from Saitama for Uni. I changed courses from business to education..." Takuya let the sentence trail of at Shouji's obvious disinterest.
"So, whose this, your new team our something?"
"Something like that yeah. Shouji Shingo, meet Nobutachi Dysuke, Kogashiwa Kai and Satou Rina. Together I suppose you could call us Five Fire Flame."
Ignoring the niceties of conversation the EG6 driver mulled over the names he was given.
"Nobutachi? Weren't you the guy that battled the RedSuns brat over at Nikko circuit?"
The amount of attention Shouji had been paying was evident; he was talking to Kai, not Dysuke. With a roll of his eyes, either at being ignored or at the thought that Kai would actually hold up to Kenta in a drift battle Dysuke replied.
"Yes, I was."
It was the third round now, Kenta's FD leading Dysuke's Altezza. Tires were worn, nerves were frayed and things were about to get interesting. When the judges had told them that one more round was necessary to critic them properly Kenta had launched his car hard, using the better power to weight ratio of the FD to attempt to simply outrun the heavier Toyota. Somehow, with shuffling blasts of boost and rev-limiter, Dysuke had gained exiting the apex of the turn as Kenta set up for a tight right hand corner. Rushing to catch up and compete on equal footing, Dysuke slightly understeered at the entrance point of the corner, but with a quick tug of the handbrake had retrieved his line and set the Altezza into oversteer. The next corner the two would drift side by side. Abandoning even the pretence of maintaining a tight line, or perhaps just not turning the wheel quickly enough, Kenta ran wide, drifting at a wide angle. Seeing his chance to settle the battle Dysuke dived in.
"So Shouji is the offer for a race still on the table?" After what had happened between Kenta and Dysuke, it would be good to show the level of skill and racing experience that Takuya brought to the team. Screwing his mouth to one side Shouji considered the arrangement. The two had met at the pits of a Mirage Cup race at Twin-Ring Motegi. Though they exchanged numbers, both being skilled with the FF platform, Shingo never expected to hear from Takuya. What could it hurt; he hadn't had a race since his car had been totalled in the gum-tape deathmatch against Iwaki Seiji and, truth be told, Shingo was dieing for another run.
"Yeah alright, next Saturday over at Myougi, I'll be waiting at 10 pm."
Having remained silent for the conversation until this point, the stoic beside Shingo spoke up.
"Shingo! You shouldn't be making plans at a time like this. What about Seiji?"
With an insubordinate snort Shingo whirled on his teammate.
"What about him Takeshi? It's not like me racing is going to kill him and anyways, he put himself in front of the truck, I'm sure he'll live with the consequences." Gape mouthed at what Shouji had just said his teammate, Nakazato Takeshi, shook his head and excused himself from the conversation. Although he was sure Shingo wished Seiji the best, there was no way in hell that he was going to be told not to do something by the Night Kids team leader and let him get away with it. Ignoring the outburst between the two Night Kids, having dealt with Dysuke and Kai making it much easier, Takuya concentrated on accepting Shingo's challenge.
"10 pm, next Saturday, on Myougi? Alright you've got a deal."
Saying his farewells, which really consisted of a shrug to all concerned, Shingo rejoined his teammate and the Evo Prime drivers. With a punch on the arm, one of Rina's many effective ways of gaining attention, she turned Takuya's interest to her.
"You've got a battle! That's so cool, just like Dysuke! Now Kai and I need to find one."
Raising an eyebrow at how easy Rina made it sound, not for the first time, Takuya hoped that his battle would be clear of rain clouds.
Dysuke dived in, equal with Kenta's position on the corner, even at equal speed Dysuke had the inside now, there was no way that he would not overtake the RedSuns FD. Preparing to burry the throttle and cloud the sky with victory tire smoke Dysuke suddenly saw exactly what it was that the RedSuns leader had been doing. He hadn't made a mistake; he did the one thing that could win the battle. He enticed Dysuke into a pool of standing water. While they were trailing each other with tight lines their concentration had been solely on mimicking each other as perfectly as possible on the available space. When Kenta opened up the inside it had been a deliberate play on Dysuke's instincts. He had wanted him to take the inside the whole time, it was the outside of the corner that was free of rainwater. Reacting as best he could, Dysuke vainly considered running wide but with the FD beside him there was no other option. Trying his best to simply run through it, the FFF Altezza ploughed apexing wheel first into the lake, bogging down immediately. The rear tires, free of the cloying embrace, continued on their sideways expedition without the front and in that terrible instant, Dysuke still pushing on the wheel for more opposite lock, the front and rear exchanged alignment. Kenta had sailed by, somewhat messy to avoid Dysuke as he spun, but his victory was assured. Looking at his rain splattered bonnet and able to hear the cheers of the crowd and the announcers as they praised not only the victor, but his effort as well, Dysuke was unable to be bitter about the outcome. It was a great battle and on the plus side he had won himself a new bonnet from local brand 'Optimum Line'. All in all a good result, Kenta was one hell of an opponent and with moves like that he deserved the win and the right to challenge the D1 grand prix.
Well now, Dysuke loses but he's happy with his effort, as well he should be against the RedSuns experienced ace, with the rain working for him. Speaking of rain, it's pouring outside, pretty ironic, if you ask me. Anyways, that's the battle between Kenta and Dysuke, and as an added bonus you get a challenge from Takuya to the downhill specialist of Myougi. For those of you who read and love BoomChish's amazing Follow the Leader, this chapter of course fits in between Seiji and Kyouichi racing and Seiji awaking in the hospital, the two Evo Prime members could have been any combination, but I'm sure everyone has their suspicions on who stayed at the hospital and who was conversing with the Night Kids.
Anyways, by now you may be wondering what happened to the omnipotent Nicolas Sainz. Stay tuned, while the members of Five Fire Flame are busy confronting the Night Kids he'll be taking a look within his passion for racing and the reasons for his return to Tochigi, look out, things could get deep and spiritual man!
Next chapter, the showdown, Sainz and Sodou. Don't miss it.