VR Hyper Fighters Turbo 02: Reckless Racers

Part 02 - Reckless Racers

7 A.M. on a Sunday

Ninja woke up to the sound of his phone's alarm chime at full volume. Sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he noticed to his disappointment a lack of sunlight coming in through the blinds. A large pile of clothing was forming in the general vicinity of his laundry hamper and the smell was just about to tip over into getting a lecture territory, so he would probably have to get to that soon. Nearly empty soda bottles were packed into a milk crate against the wall, some abandoned art project. After shutting off the alarm, the house returned to a comfortable silence. He ran his fingers along his soft, inviting, welcoming bed sheets but ultimately stood up, grabbed his VR headset and went to the mall.

Logging into the game, Ninja scrolled through the server list and found a room labeled "Rumbleboys Secret Clubhouse XD". He shook his head over and over, wondering how he got stuck with such a...unique teammate and logged in. Ninja's headset whirred to life and loaded in the assets, a plain gray room about the size of a studio apartment. A grid pattern was etched into the walls, ceiling, and floor, the default setting that was supposed to be changed with a more personalized look. The only things in the room was a 1970's CRT television set and a figure sitting with her back to him, hunched over the TV. "How long have you been here?" Ninja asks incredulously.

"Since the arcade opened," Mage answers without looking up. Walking over, Ninja can see that she's watching replay footage of VR combat missions. The game's simulation of a cathode ray tube display was pretty convincing, with scanlines overlaying a match between two teams played. After an awkward silence, Mage shuts off the TV and turns to Ninja. "Sorry! I was just studying up on the competition. Did you know that Hacker can control thousands of little hacker-bots at once? Or that Ace is able to fly at Mach 1 at an altitude of 5000 feet with his standard gear?"

"No, but that's why I'm glad I got such a unique teammate," Ninja says with the irony withheld. "So where's Knight? You texted me saying we're starting soon."

"Right behind you," a placid voice answered behind him, causing Ninja to shriek and involuntarily launch himself into the air. He caught himself midway, however, and landed dramatically as if that was the plan all along.

"N-nice to see you, Knight," Ninja played it off and his teammate just shrugged and waved back.

"Hurry up you dorks, we're gonna be late!" Mage shouted, pointing to an ornately carved wooden door that appeared in their clubhouse marked "Tournament Entry". She put her hand on the handle and swung it open to reveal a huge, grandiose throne room. Tapestries hung from the ceiling depicting feats of strength and torches lined the walls giving off a warm, comforting glow. Ninja and Knight walked in after her and immediately drifted over to the feast prepared on long wooden tables. Even though it was just a simulation, the game did a good job of tricking your brain into thinking you're actually eating.

Mage was astounded by the people she saw. Previous champions and up-and-coming teams filled the hall, talking among each other. She couldn't contain her excitement and went from person to person, recounting their past triumphs. "You got the best protection rating for a support in middle school history! And you, you took out an entire team with one berserker charge! You guys are all legends!" She makes her way over to a confident looking guy in a pilot helmet. "Whoa, you're Ace! You can fly at Mach 1 at an-"

"Altitude of 5000 feet with my standard gear, that's exactly correct," Ace said with bored arrogance. "You know quite a bit about us,"

"I've been studying replay vids ever since the game came out! My team's gonna win this year for sure," she said assuredly.

"Weren't you the three that failed to make it onto Hacker's team? I'm glad you didn't let rejection stop you from aiming for a participation trophy," Aced sniffed, wanting to put the newcomer down.

Mage's brow lowered. Without changing her exuberant, enthusiastic tone, she blasted back, "Hey, just out of curiosity, how did it feel to fight extremely hard all season last year only to wind up in second place?"

Ace stumbled back as if the reminder caused him physical damage. After regaining his composure, he retaliated, "It's true, Tussle Squadron took silver. But then again, I don't recall you guys doing anything noteworthy at all."

The two were at each other's throats and the tension was palpable. Just when a fight was certain, Ninja walks in picking food out of his teeth and asks, "Hey, I thought the tournament was starting today. Why are we here again?"

"Welcome everyone!" As if answering his question directly, a voice boomed through the hall. Everyone turned to find the speaker and found a fighter clad in silver armor standing to the side of the largest throne. Sliding down the extensive stone staircase, he landed with grace at the foot of the stairs. Mage couldn't help but applaud. "Thank you all for coming! I am Lancer, of the King's Guard, and I welcome you all to our private accommodations."

This is their room? Ninja thought. Makes ours look like a doll house's broom closet.

"Today we shall have a grand race!" Lancer continued. "Your placement here will determine your position in the tournament." While he continued with the rules, Mage couldn't help but notice that Lancer looked and talked quite a lot like Knight. VR Hyper Fighters didn't change much of your actual appearance, if you were a certain height in real life, you were that height in-game. They had similar builds and statures, maybe they were related?

In the meantime, Lancer finished explaining the rules and with a snap of his fingers, he loaded in the racetrack. The grand hall fades to black and a sunny coastal cityscape takes its place. Skyscrapers burst out of the ground in densely packed blocks. Cable cars clink up and down the steep hillside and seagulls orbit overhead. Ninja wonders if there's a place to get clam chowder after. It's a race from one end of the city to the other, first team across wins. The 18 combatants line up on a large checkerboard starting line that stretches across the street. Ninja, Mage, and Knight end up next to Ace, who pops the wings out on his jetpack and readies the throttle. The game's interface initializes and plays a message on everyone's headset.

[ON YOUR MARKS]

"What are you gonna do with those dinky little wings?" Ninja jeers. Without saying a word, Ace loads up a program and a giant jetpack, more of a aerial superiority combat platform than anything, attaches to his back and lifts him up off the ground. The wingspan threatens to dig into the Victorian style apartment buildings on either side of the street. Ace looks down on Ninja and smiles, to which Ninja replies with an inappropriate hand gesture.

[GET SET]

Ace presses a button and two ropes drop down from his wings. His teammates, a taller punk with robot legs and a shorter punk with robot arms grab hold of the ropes and are lifted upwards.

[GO!]

A starter pistol SFX plays and everybody takes off. The deafening roar of Ace's jet engines rips through the sky as he takes the lead with authority. After the chaos dies down, Mage coughs up some dust and realizes to her horror that she hasn't even left the starting line. "I can't believe this!" she throws her hands up in the air. "How is it everyone is this fast?" She turns to where Ninja should be standing only to to discover that he's gone ahead. Sighing to herself, she asks if Knight wants a ride, to which he just nods. Mage clicks the gauntlet on one hand on, grabs her teammate with the other, and pushes herself off the ground with a gout of fire before zooming off.

---

Wind ripples past Ace's wings as he opts to bypass the roads altogether and heads toward the finish line as the crow flies. A seagull crashes into Scout's head, a loud thump followed by panicked squawking. "Ah, gettoff!" Scout cries, trying to brush the bird away. He extends the claws on his glove and digs into the seagull, throwing it behind him. The seagull yelps in pain and blips out of existence, earning him 1 exp. "Annoying pests," he grumbles.

"You didn't have to do that!" Heavy yells over the sound of the wind. "Birds have feelings too."

"They're digital!" Scout whines. "What's it matter?" Heavy had a gift for compassion, especially when it was inconvenient or didn't make sense.

"Yeah, but...I dunno, it doesn't feel right. And maybe it says more about you than-"

"Wait, shut up a second." Scout's helmet was a finely tuned piece reconnaissance equipment and right now his ears were telling him something was coming. "Something's coming!" he relayed to his captain.

"Something big?" Ace asks.

"No, something tiny! Something SO small that I thought about warning you, O Captain, My Captain." Scout snarks. "YES it's something big."

When this match is over, we really need a meeting about insubordination, Ace thinks to himself before hearing a low, rhythmic stomping sound. He sees cars wobble with each tremor and the buildings ahead of him sway. In the reflections of the glass, Ace sees Golem from King's Guard piloting his gigantic sand behemoth, jogging along behind them. It was an enormous creation, a mass of sand taking a humanoid form, standing with its shoulders above nearly every building in the city. Whenever it took a step, a little bit of sand would get knocked loose from the exterior but find its way back onto the body, thanks to Golem's concentration.

Cupped in the giant's hands were the other members of King's Guard, Lancer and Archer, sitting comfortably and enjoying the race. They could also see Golem in the center of his creation, huffing and puffing as he ran in place. Even after Ace leaned on the throttle and burned through fuel, Golem's golem gained ground, stride for stride, until it took one giant leap over Ace and landed with THUD in front of him. The golem runs off toward the finish line and disappears in the horizon.

"Could you believe the size of that thing?" a voice cried out from somewhere. Scout and Heavy both look at each other and wonder who the stowaway is. Climbing up their individual ropes, they hurdle onto the top of the wings and find Ninja sitting comfortably on Ace's jetpack. "The absolute size of that thing..." Ninja muses.

"Hey, we're gonna throw you off now," Scout explains.

"Yknow, that's fair." With Scout on one wing and Heavy on the other, Ninja was surrounded. Pretending to give up, he lifts his hands over his head and walks toward Heavy, but at the last minute claps his hand together, creating two water clones that rush the shorter punk while he turns and runs to fight Scout one on one. Using his lanky legs and a couple years of kickboxing training, Scout is able to land some strong kicks to Ninja's head and sternum. Recoiling backward, Ninja creates twin water daggers and slashes forward, only for Scout to dodge out of the way and step on Ninja's hand, breaking his concentration and causing the dagger to turn into a puddle.

At the same time, the two water clones were hanging from Heavy's arms, having quite a bit of difficulty restraining him. Barely able to wrap their own arms around his huge, mechanical biceps, they seemed to only delay the inevitable. "Now clones, clones I can deal with," Heavy's conscience at ease, he activates extra nano-tendons and micro servos in his arms and lifts both clones off the ground and chokeslams both of them into the wing of the jetpack, splashing them like water balloons.

With his distraction fully dealt with, the spotlight was now back on Ninja. The two Tussle Squadron members corner him in the middle of the wings. Scout channels his energy and coats one of his legs with a brittle layer of rock, while Heavy revs up his arms and gusts of steam shoot out. Yelling together, the taller Scout sweep kicks low while Heavy swings high. Unable to dodge both moves, Ninja takes a foot to the ankles and a clothesline to the chest and gets knocked off of the wing, landing in a rosebush on the side of the road.

Scout and Heavy high five and celebrate a job well done. Getting back to the race at hand, Scout tunes in with his enhanced vision and sees the finish line in the distance and Golem stomping toward the checkered flag. Passing on the info, Ace is relieved. "They haven't won yet."

"Want me to throw a car at them?" Heavy asks, but Ace just shakes his head.

Leaning even more on the throttle, Ace repeats to himself, "No more second place," over and over like a mantra as they turn a corkscrew  and jet off to the finish.




Fell Down a Hole
-mage and knight eventually catch up and find him, she's riding on his shoulders
-"what happened to you?"
-"fell down a hole"
-"here, lemme help you up"
-every other team has crossed the finish line at this point
-"let’s just quit. we don’t have a shot anymore"
-mage frowns "is that what you're gonna do every time you hit a wall? just give up? just pack up and go home? you're gonna find a lot of walls bigger than this one in your life! you gotta CLIIIIMB, you gotta DRIIIIIIVE" she starts making car noises to emphasize her point
-ninja just looks at her despondently
-mage high fives knight and tags out

Motivated
-knight tries a different angle, walks over to where ninja is sitting, and whispers something to him
-the more knight talks, the more ninja's expression brightens up
-mage watches this absolutely perplexed, what could they be talking about?
-after a minute, ninja claps his hands on his knees and gets up
-"okay! let's finish this thing"
-mage turns to knight "what'd you tell him?"
-knight shrugs his shoulders
-ninja, now 100% in the game, wants to come up with a plan
-"knight, make a sled thing out of vines" he does
-"everybody, get on. i'll help us along." he does, creating a pathway down the winding ups and downs
-"mage, sit in the back and boost us from behind" she does

Race For Not Last
-it's now a race for who can be not last
-the vine sled zooms along the asphalt, twisting and turning as the road demands
-soon enough, they see the second to last team on the horizon
-one girl in a big coat and another with holographic pigtails are sitting in a trolley car as a third girl is electrifying the rail
-both teams lock eyes and it's on
-"FASTER!" ninja demands to mage, and she puts all the fire she's ever had into propelling her team to the finish line
-the two karts race neck and neck toward the final stretch
-the girl in the big coat puts a hand on pigtails
-"what are they doing?" mage asks, who is focusing behind her and unable to see
-pigtails approaches the side of the kart and takes out a futuristic microphone
-"...brace yourself" knight mumbles, and everyone grabs hold of something
-the loudest scream imaginable hits the rumbleboys vinesled like a ton of bricks
-sheer sound bombards them for what seems like ages as the vines in their kart disintegrate into pulp
-going on momentum alone, the team gets thrown a pretty far distance forward before skidding to a halt
-"CUTE BRUTES!" the other kart yells as they zoom past on a runaway trolley car crossing the finish line

Lost the Race
-they lost
-it's a sad fact of life
-rumbleboys walk across the finish line long after everyone else has already logged off and gone home
-mage is replaying the events back in her head
-tussle squadron, cute brutes
-everyone's playing on such a higher level than last year
-we're just a bunch of nobodies, how can we keep up?
-she's snapped out of her self doubt by a clear and confident voice at the winner's circle
-"you guys got spirit. i heard a few of the other teams counting you out as an early DQ"
-it was lancer, who for some reason stuck around to watch them finish. he had a trophy, but it laid on the ground neglected
-"h-hey thanks." mage managed to say
-"what's your team name?"
-"the rumbleboys!" ninja says proudly
-knight is averting his eyes
-"i'll be looking for you guys in the tournament."
-lancer logs off in a haze of binary code
-"oh they posted the brackets!" ninja
-the first match is brain gains vs. cute brutes
-and the second match is us against...
-"That Girl is Poison?"