It didn't take long for Wren to change into her costume. And when she came out, she wasn't alone. She had Cherry the duckling and Ash the dragon with her. They wanted to go too, using the connection to the shop through my bag to leave their siblings behind. I shrugged and set Cherry in one of the pockets of my suit, while Wren slid Ash into the side pouch of her flightpack. She left it a bit unzipped so the little guy could still poke his head out and look around carefully.
With that, we were ready. I stepped on the bike and let Wren get on behind me. Once she wrapped her arms around my waist, I revved the engine and asked if everyone was hanging on.
There was a loud chorus of gleeful agreement from the other three, before Wren excitedly added, “Oh yeah, and while we're riding, I can show you all the other stuff I added to the bike!”
Okay, well, part of me wanted to take a moment there and ask exactly what she meant by ‘other stuff.’ That part wanted to get a full list of everything Wren had done to this bike. But the much louder part decided it would be more interesting and fun to find out on the way. And that was the part I liked to listen to. The quiet part could just shut up and be boring over there in the corner. So, I just started it up, listened to the bike purr for a moment as a satisfied smile crossed my face (and appeared in emoji form on my visor), then aimed right for the end of the alley and gunned it.
And boy, was that phrase apt. The dirtbike launched itself out of there like it had been shot out of a rifle, jumping straight from nothing to going so fast we almost went right into the wall of the building there before I barely managed to turn and send us skidding loudly out to the sidewalk.
The two Cuddles were whooping loudly, even as Wren noted, “Oh, um, right, I guess I probably should've told you that I made sure the bike could get up to speed a lot faster than it used to?”
“Relevant things like that are probably good to know,” I agreed. “But don't worry, I think I've got the hang of it now. And hey, we got the almost slamming into a wall part out of the way early.”
There were probably some who would have eased up then, adjusting their driving to be more careful until they totally understood what the bike was capable of. And sure, I didn't lay on the throttle quite as hard as I wanted to, since I had passengers, one of whom could actually be hurt. But I also didn't completely wuss out. We went rocketing about three-quarters of the way down that sidewalk, blowing right past a couple storefronts before I took us out into the street, launching off a slight incline at the edge of the sidewalk so we caught air. That time, all four of us were cheering. It was enough to make the few people who were out walking around, or stopped in their cars at the nearby light, look our way. When they saw us, most stopped short and stared, like they weren’t quite sure if we (the two of us they could see) were the real thing, or just a couple kids dressed up like them.
They got their answer pretty quickly, as I extended one hand toward the front wall of a store across the street from Wren’s shop, and sent a stream of green paint that way. A couple twists of my wrist made the paint form a hand giving the thumbs up sign. My voice rose to call out, “Phoenix was okay, I guess, but boy it’s good to be home!” Then I jammed the throttle and we took off again, even as a loud assortment of cheers and a few blaring car horns filled the air.
For the next few minutes, I kept things relatively simple while I was figuring out this bike’s normal ins and outs. With the upgrades Wren had given it, the Paintcycle could get up to about a hundred and fifty miles per hour without any boost or anything. Apparently, if I needed to, there was a red button near the start switch that would kick the thing into turbo and more than double that speed for a few minutes if I pushed it. But if I did use the full boost like that, it would need hours to recharge. On the other hand, if I just wanted to go faster for a couple seconds or so, there was a toggle near the left handlebar that would only use the boost as long as it was pressed. I could definitely have some fun with that, especially if I mixed in some green paint.
And because Wren wasn’t blind to the need for safety measures, there was a built-in emergency system that would stop the bike if I was about to hit something, or someone.
Beyond that, the bike had the same gravity-adjustment ability as my boots, so it could go up walls and drive upside down, without help from my paint. Which was already cool enough, but it also had one more trick. It could stop. Yeah, yeah, that didn’t sound like much, but the thing was, it could stop. No matter what it was doing, how fast it was going, where it was, a single touch of a button on the right handlebar would bring it to a complete and immediate halt. Even if that meant it would be hovering in midair, the thing would just stay there until I hit the button again. One quick press would restore all the previous momentum the bike had before stopping (as well as any it somehow gained while it was frozen), and two quick presses would remove all that momentum entirely, simply allowing it to move normally again. Which sounded all sorts of fun.
Of course, there was one very apparent potential problem there. Namely, the bike going from a hundred miles per hour or so down to a complete and total stop in an instant could do bad things to the driver. But the way Wren’s tech worked, the driver (and anyone else on the bike) would have all of their momentum safely halted (and then restored or removed) as well. I had less than no idea how the science of it worked. But I trusted Wren to know what she was talking about. If she said you could go that fast and then abruptly stop without totally fucking over your insides, I believed her. And I could already think of some very fun ways to play with something like that.
Once I had the basic idea of how all the new stuff on the bike worked, I brought it to a stop. By that point, we were sitting in a back lot behind an old grocery store that was being remodeled and wasn't in active use at the moment. I revved the engine a couple times, just for fun, while looking at the closed store with all the construction equipment around. A slow smile came as I asked, “So, you guys ready to see just what we can do with our new toy-- err tool. I mean our new tool. The very helpful and totally serious tool that we're going to use in a totally helpful and serious way. You know, to help people, and never ever just to see how many feet of air we can put between us and the ground. Cuz we are a team of responsible and careful superheroes.”
I felt Cherry shift around in my pocket before hopping out. She joined Ash in Wren’s bag. The three of them held a quick, whispered conversation while I waited patiently. That went on for a few seconds, before they resumed their spots and called out in a loud chorus. “Gun it!”
Well, who was I to argue with the majority? Lifting my foot from the ground to set it back on the bike, I revved the engine once more and took off. Just like back by the shop, the bike hit sixty almost instantly. But that time, I was ready for it. Even as I took a sharp, somewhat skidding turn right there in the lot, my hand snapped out to point at one of the large pickup trucks that was parked there. Or rather, at the pile of boards sitting in the back, waiting to be taken inside for their remodeling work. A shot of red paint hit the back of a couple of those boards, before a quick second shot hit the ground just behind the truck. The boards were yanked most of the way out and down, landing with the top end still slightly in the bed. They were angled like a ramp, of course.
By that point, I had turned the bike that way, still gunning it, as my excited passengers requested. As we approached the makeshift ramp, I flicked the turbo for the last couple seconds. The bike had already crossed eighty miles per hour, and the turbo almost instantly doubled that. Obviously, going a hundred and sixty miles per hour on the back of a dirt bike was pretty absurd, but Wren had included inertial dampeners to take some of the edge off that. It still felt like we were going incredibly fast (and I would have had it no other way, because what the hell was the point of going fast if you couldn’t feel it?), but her safety measures toned it down.
It probably went without saying that we crossed that parking lot pretty quickly. In an instant, we reached the base of that ramp. As soon as we did, I activated the green lightning bolts I’d put along the side of the bike while I was waiting for the others to finish whispering with each other. Which meant that at the moment we hit the ramp and started going up it, the bike had hit about two hundred miles an hour. We rocketed up those boards and into the air above the truck so fast, I was barely able to point off to the side and send a spray of red paint at a few two by fours that were sitting on the ground. All while the bike had just made it about twenty or thirty feet above the parking lot, and maybe a couple hundred feet beyond the truck where we’d started. We were soaring through open air, tires spinning against nothing as my passengers squealed.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Obviously, in most cases, hitting something that was flying through the air that fast would’ve been pretty difficult. But all I had to do was make myself red, shifting to my liquid form. I had to time it carefully, which would’ve been hard enough to do while stationary on the ground. In this case, I was timing it while flying forward on the bike, which was just starting to arc back down.
But hey, the whole point was to show off and see what we could do with this thing. So I was gonna see what I could do. The two by fours were flying at me, and I very carefully waited until the last second before shifting back to my regular colored-self. I was, however, still liquid. So the boards continued their momentum and passed right through my liquid self around my stomach, barely missing the bike itself and Wren (not to mention Cherry and Ash in her bag). I had managed to aim the three boards, and time their approaches just right, so they passed through my liquid self one after the other, even though the dirt bike was still going forward and down.
After passing through me, the boards continued their descent, clattering loudly off the ground. But the paint itself, the bits of my liquid self that had covered them as they went through, that stayed where it was. I was using that paint-construct power, the one that let me create solid paint copies of things that passed through me and move them around. I really needed to practice with it anyway, and this was a good way to do so. Under pressure, but not life or death.
As the bike dropped dizzyingly quickly, I made the three paint constructs fly over, arranging them in front of us in a line. One was pointed slightly down so the bike’s tires could land on it properly. The next one was horizontal, finding its place just as we reached the end of that first board. And the third one set itself up at the end of the second, pointing slightly up. The bike hit the end of the second board and immediately went rocketing right up the third one. We hit the end of that one and were launched right back upward. Just as the weight of the bike started to pull it back down without anything under the wheels, I brought that first paint construct board up and shoved it in place. The tires immediately found purchase, and we went riding up and forward once more.
Repeating that a couple times to get even more height and speed, I angled the last couple board constructs toward the roof of the store, then stopped putting more of them in place. As we were launched off that last construct, all of us were screaming. By that point, I had no idea how fast we were going. The speedometer had given up trying to track it, maxing out at two hundred miles per hour. We were going well beyond that. Our squeals filled the air, drowning out the engine as the bike dropped like a stone. A stone that had a fucking rocket jetpack strapped to it.
About halfway down, as we were still plummeting like a brick launched by a trebuchet, I set a series of four yellow parachute images along the side of the bike, immediately activating one of them. That slowed us a little bit, before I activated the next, going down the line until we were falling at a much more manageable speed. Under a hundred miles per hour and everything. I would’ve called out for the others to hold on, but there wasn’t time. I just put one of the board constructs in front of us, angling it just right so the bike hit it and cruised right down to the roof itself. Instead of slamming like an anvil into the building, we drove down the board and then along the roof. I had to weave back and forth between several pieces of machinery and a couple random bits sticking out of the roof up there, narrowly avoiding a full-on collision more than once. I had never felt more like one of those starfighter pilots in Outlanders of Reach, weaving between obstacles at top speed. If only there were enemy fighters shooting at us from above.
Wait, if only there were enemy fighters? Did I think that? What the hell was wrong with me?
Well, one thing that wasn’t wrong was my driving. Thank you, Antoin de la Mothe Cadillac Preparatory School Drivers Ed Course. And, uh, probably my superpowers too. I managed to navigate across that whole roof at top speed, before putting a couple of those construct boards right at the edge of it, angled up. We launched off the roof, sailing through the air while I made a quick judgment call about how far we were from the street I was aiming for. Too far, as it turned out. There was a small wooded area full of trees and rocks between the edge of the parking lot and that street. At this rate, we would’ve slammed right down into them, which didn’t sound fun.
Fortunately, thanks to Wren, I had a way of dealing with that. About one second before we would’ve started losing altitude and falling, I activated that total stop function and brought the bike (and the four of us on it) to an instant halt. Just like that, we were sitting on a completely frozen motorcycle as it hovered in the air, maybe ten to fifteen feet above the tips of those trees. If I’d hesitated any longer, the bike would’ve started dropping faster than it was going forward, which would’ve made this next part impossible. Now, I just had to hope my plan would work.
“Take a good look around, guys,” I called out while taking the time to paint the entire bike green. “Cuz in a couple seconds, we’re not gonna be anywhere near this place anymore.” With that, I pushed the full turbo boost, and activated the green paint, all while keeping the bike in its frozen state. Wren had said that the bike would manifest all the momentum it would’ve gained while it was halted like that, once that freeze tool was turned off. Which meant I could cover the bike in green paint several times as we were sitting in one spot, and let it all come out at the same time.
Wren, Cherry, and Ash were all gushing about how fun this was, and pleading with me to tell them the ride wasn’t over yet. I assured them it wasn’t, and to make sure they were holding on tight. The three of them belatedly realized what was happening, and the Cuddles snuggled down into the bag, with just their heads poking out so they could see what was happening. Wren, meanwhile, held onto me tightly, her arms gripping my waist even as she took a second to lean around me so she could quickly check the inertial dampener display by the speedometer. Whatever she saw on it must’ve convinced her the thing was still working properly, because she gave an eager giggle and called out that she was ready. The other two quickly followed suit.
If I had to do this in the middle of an actual fight, or a chase, obviously I’d need to do it quicker, with less hesitation and safety checks. But that was the point of doing it now, with no real pressure, and with Wren herself sitting there to tell me if I was pushing the bike too far, or doing anything wrong with it. She said we were good to go, so I held on tight, took a deep breath, then gave that button by the right a single quick press. At the same time, I called out, “Here we g--”
That was as far as I got, before my words became an inarticulate squeal, as the bike hurtled itself forward. We had already been going pretty fast as it was, just before Wren’s neat little momentum-halting tool brought us to an instant, temporary stop. But with the full speed-doubling turbo boost coupled with three servings of green paint hitting all at once… yeah, it was a lot.
Despite the very effective inertial dampeners, the sudden burst of speed was still enough to make me jerk back on the bike, while Wren’s arms tightened on me even more. We were going so fast in those next few seconds that I couldn’t even see what was happening. The ground was just a confusing blur of motion. Fortunately, my spatial sense meant I didn’t need to actually see to aim the bike properly. Or to move one of the two by four constructs into position ahead of us.
“Lean left!” I called out, suiting action to words as I shoved myself that way. Wren did the same, as we tilted over while sailing forward. Not only had we already reached the road by that point, we were a solid five hundred feet along it. In another second or two, we’d pass the point where it curved, and keep on going out into the field beyond. I didn’t want that, I wanted to land on the road itself. Which was exactly why we were leaning, and why I put that construct ahead of us.
With that help from Wren, I got the bike tilted halfway over, so we were flying sideways through the air, about twenty feet above the pavement. A second later, the wheels hit the two by four construct straight on. Just like that, we were driving forward and down instead of flying sideways over the road. As we reached the edge of the construct, I already had a second one hovering ahead of us and down about ten feet. We came off the edge of the first construct, as I gave a quick shout for Wren to lean the other way. That righted the bike just in time for the wheels to come down on the second paint-copied two by four, angling us at the road just past the curve.
The wheels launched off the edge of that construct and hit the pavement immediately after that, and we were suddenly driving along the street, weaving between a few cars while the tires squealed. Or maybe that was the sound the four of us were making. Either way, it was loud.
Soon, we left those cars behind and made it out to an empty stretch of street, far outside the busy parts of the city. I let the bike come to a gradual halt that time. As the engine idled, I looked around before taking off my helmet to breathe in a couple times. “Well, guys, there’s the first couple minutes of our ride. What do you think so far?”
Once more, the three of them held a quick, whispered conference before coming to an agreement. And that agreement, as it turned out, was to simultaneously start chanting a single word as loud as they could. A word that made it clear exactly how they felt about the ride so far.
“Again! Again! Again!”
Joke Tags: For Those About To Raise Concerns? Cassidy Did Go Back To Put The Boards Back In The Truck? And Left Money To Replace The Ones Damaged By Riding The Motorcycle Over Them
