OK Number 66 - Shōri no Tēma
The medical car had to clear a path through the crowd with a forceful and repeated honking of the horn to disperse the crowd from their mad celebrating around and even a few on top of the car. Once there was a decent space, the medical officers were able to clamber onto the car, remove the head surround from above her shoulders, and extract her from the car. Their first instinct, to grab onto her arms, only elicited screams of pain, and given Kallen's insistence that she couldn't lift herself out, the solution took a few moments; the crew grabbed the lapels on her shoulder blades and behind her shoulder blades to lift her out of the cockpit, or at least as far as they could.
Fortunately, this was far enough that Kallen was able to bend her legs, and thusly she pulled her legs back into a crouch and managed to stand up and out of the cockpit. Immediately, the crowd, which while standing a ways back to allow the medical team to work to get her out were still excitable, cheered, applauding as she stood on top of her car.
Humbled, she briefly pumped her fist about her waist, before leaning forward into a keirei bow. She certainly was not able to lift her arms above her head, and killed two birds with one stone by showing a respectful ritsurei, thanking them and being grateful for their support without having to lift her arms.
They seemed to understand, as Kallen dismounted from the car and sat into the medical transport. Sitting into the ambulance, she could feel the buzz of the people, who were just barely professional enough to not ask for an autograph. They were certainly not too professional to share massive smiles, nor cheery pats on the side of her torso. It was all in good fun, though she had to protest rather sharply in language about as explicit as the vocabulary of nihongo allowed when they started slapping her shoulder in congratulations, aggravating her muscle pain.
They were more circumspect after this, however only just, barely containing their excitement before they dropped Kallen off underneath the podium. There was a mad frenzy, worse than the Shibuya Crossing in the summer. The noise, the heat, the rain above them would fall on the shoulders of the bustling, shouting crowd and immediately vaporised, turning into steam on contact with the sweaty mess. Everyone seemed to be throwing some manner of confetti or just madly moving their bodies as if they were having a seizure. Kallen laughed as her legs, fortunately still operative, carried her up the spiral staircase, past the cooldown room and up, only pausing as she was presented with a massive flag, to hold up behind her back between her outstretched arms.
Smiling through a burst, bloody lip as she leapt up the final steps up to the platform, Kallen leapt out into the view of the crowd, beaming madly as the crowd exploded into noise. The entire nation of Japan seemed to have descended on Inoucho, with the land swarmed by humans as far as the eye could see. The national anticipation, the cultural, almost tangible sense of forthcoming euphoria, had delivered, and now Kallen could see every single one of the hundred and twenty-six million in front of her.
The split in her lips grew as the skin stretched to accommodate her widening grin, sending the gash from a faucet to a hose, flooding out blood. Laughing as she wiped her lip with her cuff, being careful not to stain the Hinomaru, she waved her arms, not quite above shoulder level, once again before she leapt onto the top step, nodded up by a respectful Suzaku.
Kallen held the circle of the sun up behind her in celebration of her success for a few more moments, before she was forced to drop it, with her arms simply not being able to take even a right angle for a long time. Her muscles were likely torn quite seriously, as she, though the euphoria and adrenalin of having won at Suzuka was putting it at bay somewhat, was in indescribable pain.
But goddamn if anything else hurt this good.
Somewhat fittingly, Suzaku and Naoto picked up either side of the flag, holding it up behind the three of them, before gently draping it on Kallen's shoulders as she hunched over, still in disbelief. Only her face tilted up towards the sky, still lashing out its contents, however she welcomed it. The rain had done well by her, she would hardly scorn it, particularly given that it might have saved her.
In rainy conditions, the drag reduction system, which could be activated when a car was one second behind another to give a chasing car a speed advantage, was disabled for safety. Had it been enabled Suzaku would have soared past on the straights, however the straight line speed had remained reasonably equal throughout. If not for the rain, if not for a backup direct drive wheel linkage, for want of Kallen's borderline psychotic willingness to disregard pain, disregard her personal health, for want a nail…
She wiped her face again, though this time she wiped her eyes rather than her lip. It had been so close. Kallen had spared no effort, spared no margin. If you went around the track you could probably find flakes of blood and muscle, torn away as she ripped herself apart for anything, any advantage, any bit of strength to stay ahead for just one more corner. Just one more. And then another. And then another, until there were no more corners.
Then the trophies were given out, third, given by the organiser of the race and honourary clerk of the course, to Naoto, second to Suzaku from the Governor of Mie, and finally, from the Minister for Sport for the nation of Japan, the winners trophy, at Japan, for the Japanese Grand Prix, for the first time, to Kallen Kōzuki.
And then she dropped it.
A sudden hush, surprisingly audible for how vast the crowd was, fell over them with several gasps clearly distinguishable. Kallen had had the trophy placed into her hands about her bellybutton, but as she tried to hold it from the bottom, it slipped out of her grasp and clanged to the steel grating the podium was built atop.
Embarrassed, she made a second try of lifting it, gripping the long trophy at the base again, though this time clasping as opposed to balancing it as she tried to raise it up. She made it up to about her shoulders, with her upper arms barely able to raise themselves but her forearms compensating by getting the trophy up to just below her neck.
She tried to raise it further, but with the balance of the cup being quite top heavy, as soon as she held it a bit above her head with an already herculean effort, it toppled forward, with Kallen's wrist unable to provide enough force to resist the torque of the trophy as the top tried to make its way back to the ground, regardless of what the bottom was doing.
As the crowd, which had changed now from shock to amusement, laughing with their crippled winners struggles, Kallen's old high school physics lessons, began to come back and she found the solution. She grabbed the bottom with one hand, the top end with the other, and raised the trophy on its side, holding the cup up on its side. However, while it made for a much more stable platform, she still couldn't get it above her chin.
Then she felt it become much easier, as the trophy became suddenly lighter, as Suzaku and Naoto had stepped forward to help her lift it all the way up, each taking up the slack for one arm, until Kallen's arms were both fully extended upwards. As soon as the joints reached their locking point, the two men released Kallen slowly, and she proudly stood, able to just about hold the trophy above her head with a pair of bolt-straight arms, the slight angles relative to ninety degrees held between her arms serving as a good mechanical anchor.
She stood by herself with the trophy for a moment, holding it above her head as the crowd applauded. This was the release of the longest week, this was the spray that came from shaking a bottle of champagne for an entire week, though in this case the bottle was instead the archipelago of the State of Japan. Kallen, unable to raise the trophy anymore, was forced to drop it, though this time in a more controlled manner, letting the metal cup down slowly.
Then came the anthems of Japan for the winning driver and the United Kingdom for the winning constructor, and then the champagne. Kallen simply didn't have the strength though to raise the large bottle, let alone shake it to a froth, however once again Suzaku and her brother were on hand to help; rather than simply spraying them wildly, they poured the foam onto the top of Kallen's head, letting it trickle down her head and her torso as she stood, arms by her side, simply taking it in. It was an incredibly emotional moment, and forgoing the tongue-in-cheek spraying of the alcohol for the more heartfelt substitute.
And then Kallen remembered what Tohdoh had said.
She stepped forward off the podium, waving with a low arm down to the crowd, behind her gloves. With the broken power steering, Kallens arms had had more work than they had ever done, and as well as ripping several muscle connections, her hand's sensitive, charred skin had been aggravated even beyond what they would be in a normal race. They were bleeding as if Kallen had lost a limb, and that was with the fireproof gloves her skin was wrapped in arresting the most severe of the bleeding. When Kallen pulled them off, which she would have to do at some point, the congealed blood, which had solidified to form a seal between the open wound and the fabric, would be broken open, the scabs would be ripped open and the blood would flow much more readily.
But why hide it? Tohdoh was right, it was like a blacksmith guarding the reality that their work had roughened their hands. Besides, it was hardly as if the burn doctors in Hungary could revoke their conditional discharge.
After a deep breath, she grabbed the middle finger of her right glove with her left, and ripped it off like a bandage.
It hurt like all hell as the scabbed over tissue was torn away, however there was give, and after a bit of effort, the glove flew off, and Kallen's hardened, discoloured flesh, almost looking as if it had been calcified, was exposed, even if it had the surface sheen of blood.
Then, Kallen used this pockmarked surface, at once dry as the desert and vaguely moist, though only at the surface, to pull away her other glove. The same process, a painful tearing of skin, the ripping of congealed scabbing and a hefty resistance to tug, and it was free, with her hands, a surreal blend of chalky white and rich red, contrasting heavily with the oily, dense dark almond skin she shared with Naoto, though his burns were more obvious, concealing half of his face.
As soon as her hands were exposed, she solemnly raised them as far as she could, remembering Tohdoh and how close they had come to a horrible death. There was a minutes silence, before Kallen gave a bow of thanks and then the celebrations, with the formalities finished with, could begin in earnest.
And the party that night… absolute madness. Like the ending scene of Apocalypse Now. Kallen woke up the morning after with her Camelot overalls only up her hips and tied at the waist to form makeshift trousers accompanied with her nomex skintight top, also branded Camelot, but then she was wearing a zip-up tracksuit belonging to Denso of all teams, and a baseball cap from Vanwall.
Last night had been an entire thing.
The crew were all assembled in the garage when Kallen was coming down from the podium, as she had not been able to meet them in parc ferme to celebrate with the whole gang. While Kallen's arms were too weak and shoulders too sore to engage in the traditional mosh-pit hugging, the entire Camelot away team gathered together for a huge photograph, with almost a hundred and fifty people huddled into one 8K frame. At the centre, there was Kallen, giving the toothiest of toothy grins, as she crouched between her brother Naoto and her teammate Gino. Her forearms were propped up off of her thighs against her elbows, and exposed, with her sleeves rolled up beyond the elbow joint, highlighting Kallen's injuries, no longer hidden.
Naoto, himself with extensive facial scars, was holding up a pit board sign, reading out "KK11 – P1, GW02 – P5", with Gino being the hype man to end all hype men, with the most enthusiastic face in the history of man as he pointed one finger at Kallen and the other at the board.
The hubbub was then taken inside. Their driver had just won their home event, to say they would celebrate was an understatement. They staked their flags to the entrance of the garage, and proceeded to throw a massive party underneath the rain and the stars.
The team barely paused from their positions huddled underneath the podium as Kallen pulled off her gloves to show off her hands to the makeshift party into the night, with no concern for packing the equipment up, at least not before dawn the next day. The other teams started off packing up their things, though through the night, one by one they put down their work to join in. Soon it spilled out beyond just the garage, into the garages to either side of them and into the administrative buildings behind them. The executive suites, the stewards offices behind them, the FIA meeting rooms, all were fair game.
Then someone made the mistake of introducing alcohol.
Muscles exhausted, Kallen had made at the whiskey like a bandit, downing miniatures by the gulp, straight out of the glass hand bottle, though stored in an ice bucket which grew emptier and emptier as the night went along. Several other drivers and mechanics poached from the litany of ice buckets of beers, wines, and spirits, each getting more inebriated throughout the night. Suzaku, who was among the first to join the celebrations, hovered around the beer bucket, while Naoto was not fussy as to the means by which he got smashed.
Kallen, by this point very much under the influence, was rather pleased to see Suzaku. He was the winner last year, he was her main rival, if it could be described as such. Their title fight had gone down to the wire last year, and they were in many ways good foils for one another; Suzaku rural, Kallen urban. Suzaku smooth and gentle, Kallen rough and ragged. Turning up was a very wholesome little gesture, that he would surrender his victory last year with grace, and appreciated that another driver was on the top step at their home event.
As the night went from liquid to liquid, the party seemed to sprawl out. As Kallen, now in the depths of probably the worst hangover of her life, placed a nearby icepack against her forehead to ease the ache, tried to recall the highlights of histories biggest bender, she could only piece together a slideshow of still images, which played slowly as she tried to walk through the messy garage, still littered with bottles, cans and glasses. The back door to the garage, opening out into the car park and trailers, was broken at the hinges, as Kallen saw Gino in her minds eye trying to break in from the outside after he had been locked out as a prank, and remembered the sense of terror mixed with cackling laughter as Gino, 'the absolute madman', unexpectedly ripped the MDF door out of its mounting hinges to break through in an object example of the saying that a chain was only as strong as its weakest link.
As she continued to wander through the garage, more memories came flooding back. Driving a forklift around the main straight, using the pit boards and the card letters accompanying them to spell out increasingly childish messages, trying to do a pull up before genuinely feeling her muscles rip and deciding that that was enough. She then started exchanging clothes and hats and accessories with the other drivers and mechanics, hence the mishmash of clothes she was wearing when she woke up.
However, as she arrived at the second floor, where Li Xingke, uncharacteristically sat in a deck chair with an ice pack of his own, was just waking up, she noticed an elephant lying on the floor across its long axis.
"Did I… knock over a fridge last night?"
The Chinese pilot moved to try an answer, before breaking into a flurry of chested coughs, hacking up half of his lungs before he finally came around, catching his breath. Kallen could hardly blame him; you could catch all sorts of bad doses from a night of drinking out in the wet and cold. Even so, it was concerningly severe, the coughing.
However, it subsided, and Xingke finally explained "You tried to push it over, but your muscles couldn't do it. They were shredded, you were almost crying in pain. Suzaku was fairly drunk by that point too, so he tipped it the rest of the way."
Kallen felt a sudden chill fall over her, felt every cell in her body suddenly shift into attack mode, whatever that was. In spite of only having slept a few hours and having just been on the biggest bender of her life, she suddenly sat to attention at the mention of his name.
Last night, Suzaku had been a pleasant presence, but in hindsight, sober, he was a phantom. He was the ghost roaming the party just beyond view, haunting it, reminding attendants of his looming presence, just on the precipice of spoiling the party.
Because for all the good this weekend had brought, Kallen's first win at home, her fourth win of the season, twelfth of her career, the ecstatic, hopeful glee had a dark cloud over it; Suzaku, at sea for much of the season, had finally found his groove.
Kallen's countryman had come from the back of the grid to second, and he would, if Kallen had not given everything she had and then some, have won, with a drive akin to her own comeback at Britain in 2017, or Xingke at China this year. In his first race in a new team that was structured around doing well by him as opposed to using him, he had already come on song, had already returned to the peak of his form, in only one race. In the next race, he would not be starting at the back, he would be starting in the top five at the very least, and his job would be much less significant.
Only one race to bounce back to form, and there were five races to go.
That he was not cruel, that he was not an active sadist, did not preclude selfishness. One could be cruel but not selfish, and one could be selfish without being cruel. Suzaku was generous off track, a real raconteur, kind and probably a bit too considerate for his own good.
On it, he transformed. He was no less smooth, no less measured, but that kindliness, that benefit-of-the-doubt he would give, was gone.
Suzaku Kururugi, in this new car, back at both the mentality and the form he was at when he won the title, was a force to be feared, and as Kallen sat, ice pack pressed against her forehead, she quietly acknowledged that a motivated and driven Suzaku who had a fire under him was something that made her very, very afraid indeed. They had awoken the sleeping bear, as it were, and that bear was just going to run and run.
16.7 billion years. Millions of planets. Thousands of years of recorded history. Hundreds of civilizations have risen and fallen, spanning decades of rule, moulding the lives of their people and the long, winding route of history. All of it, leading to and culminating in the moment, on the eighteenth of October per the Gregorian calendar, 2020 years after the beginning of the common era, where, at Suzuka Circuit in Mie, Japan, Kallen Kōzuki and Suzaku Kururugi knock over a fridge full of beer.
I have nothing more to say on this cosmic happening. Have a great day, and leave a review if you'd be so kind.
~G1ll3s