"It's a beautiful summer night here in Mute City as 30 of the greatest racers in the galaxy will be fighting tooth and nail to score the victory. With one race left to go in the F-Zero season, there're seven racers with a mathematical shot at the title, but this is basically Captain Falcon's championship to lose. He'll be starting from way back in the field today, but he's never had a problem with passing every car on the field. And even though a simple top ten finish will guarantee him the championship, Falcon's never been the kind of guy to play it safe like that. You can expect a fight to the finish and an exciting race here tonight. The racers are already on the starting line, and we are moments away from the command to fire engines."
Starting on pole is Roger Buster, a stoic man who was normally a delivery driver in his off-hours. Racing isn't his passion, but when he and his co-worker Draq found a pair of F-Zero machines with no owner, Draq convinced Roger to enter the Grand Prix and race them in order to find the vehicles' original owner. This is purely business for him. The same can not be said for his partner Draq, starting fourth. A lifelong fan of the series, getting to race in the Grand Prix alongside several of his idols is a dream come true for him, and he intends to milk this bit of time behind the wheel as much as he can, until the owner of the crafts reveals themselves, by which time, Draq hopes he'll have earned enough prize money to buy his own craft.
Kate Alen is returning to her craft after singing during opening ceremonies. A former soul singer before she found her new love of racing, she's taken to the sport like a duck to water. She's starting ninth in this race, and is just barely in championship contention. She basically needs to win the race, and have every one of the other contenders crash out, but crazier things have happened in the Grand Prix. She'll just control what she can control and let the cards fall where they land.
"Hey Katey, lookin' good as ever", calls out a voice from the other side of the track. It comes from Jack Levin, starting 10th. Another former musician, Jack just finished shooing away his legion of female fans looking for autographs and smooches.
"Likewise, pop-boy. You planning on giving those girls something to cheer about tonight?", Alen replies with her trademark sass.
"Always, sugar. Though I'd prefer to give you something to cheer about tonight."
"Help me win the title, and maybe I'll give you a peck on the cheek."
"It's a deal!", Levin says as Alen closes her cockpit while he speaks. He's never afraid to shoot his shot, but can never seem to make it land with the ones he really wants.
Gomar and Shioh are finishing up their pre-race preparations from the 14th starting position. Shioh is listing off things from a checklist, while carrying Gomar on his shoulders, so that he can reach everything. The two Furikakians have lived this way together for the last 100-plus years, as their species pair up at birth and do everything together.
"Boost panel reactor?", Shioh calls out to his more intelligent partner.
"On line", Gomar replies to his stronger friend.
"Shield recovery device?"
"Operational."
"Starter keys?"
"They… they aren't here. Shioh, do not tell me you forgot them at the resting grounds."
"They're here somewhere, I swear!" As the two Furikakians struggle to find their keys, the racer beside them lets out a little chuckle watching the two partners panic. That racer is Mrs. Arrow, starting 15th.
"Shioh lost his keys again, eh?", asks a driver from behind that turns out to be none other than her husband, Super Arrow, legendary superhero of the galaxy.
"Yep, third time this series. They need to put a tracker on those things, I swear", his wife replies.
"Yea, but they'd lose the tracker too", Arrow replied with a little chuckle that gets one out of the missus.
"Where you starting tonight, hun?", Mrs. Arrow asks.
"Eh, had a bad race last time, so they've got me starting 5th."
"Don't worry, dear. You're getting the hang of it. Just make sure to use your precognition more, and you should do better."
"It's hard to do while driving, but if we're gonna make sure Zoda doesn't win, I guess I'll have to", he said with a little shrug.
"You'll get there, I promise", she says before reaching up and giving her man a kiss. "Good luck out there, hun."
"Yessssss, good luck out there, 'hun'. You're going to need it", says a jittery voice coming from behind them. The man, if you could call him that, attached to the voice is Zoda, starting 18th. Zoda is constantly running on overdrive, thanks to the machine he created that feeds unreasonable amounts of dopamine and adrenaline into his brain, which makes him hyper to the point of delusion. Despite the fact that Zoda is fifth in the points, and has an outside shot of winning the title, it's not the biggest motivator for him, and neither is the prize money. There are two people who've done more to disrupt his schemes for galactic domination than anyone else: Super Arrow and Captain Falcon, along with the Galactic Space Federation (and there happen to be two GSF pilots in the field). He'd love to win the Grand Prix and the prize money that comes with it, but he sees this race as his best chance to eliminate some of his most annoying obstacles.
He starts maniacally laughing, as he's barely able to contain his devilish schemes. However, the rest of the field have learned to just sort of ignore the crazy purple man's laughter; that's just a thing he does. (Plus, the last guy who said anything about it nearly got disintegrated.) Dr. Clash, starting 19th, has the closest view of the psychopath and can hear him laughing, despite him being inside his cockpit. He simply rolls his eyes, and makes a few last minute adjustments on his tablet. The robotic limbs he's created help him point out a few abnormalities in his setup, and its neural link-up tells him about these issues directly in his mind. "Relax Bob, it's just a more aggressive setup for this final race. We could win the title with a win today, so I need this machine to be in tip-top form. A little structural integrity is a small price to pay for the possibility of winning the Grand Prix at long last."
A little further back is Mighty Gazelle, starting 23rd. A living miracle of science and medicine, Gazelle was catastrophically injured in a hellacious crash five years ago. He survived, but only just, and had his entire body replaced with robotic parts. Ever since he returned to racing, he's had protesters claiming that a cyborg shouldn't be allowed to compete with other humans. If Gazelle looks into the crowd, he'll see a small pocket of audience members holding picket signs opposing robotic competitors, like him and Mr. EAD, in the F-Zero field. A few of the more rowdy spectators even try throwing garbage at them, though those fans are swiftly dealt with by security. But inside the cockpit of his Red Gazelle, everything is calm for now. The outside world doesn't exist. Nothing exists, except this track and 29 obstacles, standing in the way of his second title, and his first since the crash.
Suddenly, someone leaps up on the hood of Gazelle's machine to try and startle the robot out of his zen-like trance. That someone is Samurai Goroh, starting 24th, who always has a free minute to torment his fellow racers. "Hahaha, made you flinch Gazelle, everyone saw that, right?", he asks as absolutely no one corroborates his story. Even the normally stoic Gazelle looks at him in confusion, before turning the steering wheel of his ship, tilting it, and making Goroh fall to the tarmac with a big thud. Goroh picks himself up, and heads back to his ship, snarling and cursing Gazelle under his breath. He glares at the driver directly behind him, Captain Falcon, his fiercest rival in the bounty hunting game, and growls at him, while Falcon simply nods in acknowledgement.
"You think we can arrest that guy yet, or would that be a bad idea?", asks the man starting 25th, John Tanaka.
"For being annoying? Somehow I don't think that'll stick", replies his teammate, Jody Summer, starting behind him in 29th. Both of them are pilots in the Galactic Space Federation, and have the authority to do so, but Goroh is more slippery than they'd care to admit. "For all the other stuff his gang's done? It's all circumstantial evidence, we'll need something to make it really stick. Plus, he let his right-hand man take the fall for him back on Takora, I'm sure he's got a thousand pawns he could throw at us to get away. Don't worry though, we'll pin him down soon enough."
"Riiiiiight, just as soon as you win the title first, right?", Tanaka teases his friend with a little nudge.
"Hey, my title chances aren't gonna stop me from… oh, joking again", she says with a little huff. Tanaka and Summer have been friends for ages, since their days in the GSF Training Academy, but Summer still has trouble reading people sometimes.
Tanaka puts his arm around her and tries to cheer her up. "Look, forget about Goroh. We'll get him when we get him. There's a whole field of people we gotta watch out for, and if you're gonna win one for the Fed, you gotta be all there."
Jody closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. "You're right, John. Thanks. See ya on the track", she says as she climbs into his machine while John walks off toward his.
Falcon starts 28th in this race, and as the announcer said, he'll have to deal with a lot of traffic, but this is par for the course for him. Falcon is far and away the most successful and decorated F-Zero pilot of all time, and could retire any time he wants to, secure with the fortune and accolades he'd built up over the years, but he still has a few things to deal with before the legendary racer hangs up his helmet. First off, Zoda is still kicking around, and is the only blemish on an otherwise spotless bounty hunting record. Secondly, he's one championship away from tying Arbin Gordon's (aka The Skull's) record of eight F-League championships (he won his in the old F-MAX series, 200-plus years ago). And third, there is literally no reason to stop. At 38, he's still in his prime. The bounty hunting has become more of a side-gig as he's devoted more and more of his time to race training, and most of all, the racing is still fun to him, so he's going to savor this as long as he can. His state-of-the-art Blue Falcon has AR functionality built in that can identify the other racers in title contention, and mark them with a little indicator on his windshield. This way, he knows who he needs to stay ahead of, and who he should watch out for. Though the one he'll need to watch out for the most isn't in his windshield, but rather in his rear camera.
"This is the last chance I'm giving you, Shadow. The only reason I haven't obliterated you yet is because of your racing talent, but my patience is at its end. You won the previous race, now win this one, by any means, and take the Grand Prix's prize money. Succeed and we can move on to Phase 2 of our plan. Fail… don't fail."
"Understood, I have a secret weapon cooked up this time. Nothing will stand in our way." The figure on the screen nods, and the feed cuts out, and Black Shadow relaxes in the cockpit of his machine. He knows he can't fail his boss again, not after as many chances as he's been given. Shadow has on numerous occasions orchestrated destructions of large cities, but the win in the Grand Prix would give them the capital to ramp their plans up a gear, and really become a threat to the galaxy. This was it. No more screw-ups. "This time, Falcon. No more games. I must destroy you…"
"Racers… on your mark", comes a voice from the announcers booth. The lights on the starting grid flash on. 3… 2… 1…
GOOOOOOOOOO!
