Chapter Text
What first drew Yuu to racing was the speed. Flying through the air, the wind buffeting against his face, blowing the dust and the sand against his skin so fast it can cut him. The second, what makes him keep returning to the track, is the freedom. Maneuvering the twists and turns of the landscape, seeing the world outside the city walls. It isn’t safe to be outside of the city walls, out in the desert. But on a racer, the flesh-eaters and sand skippers can’t catch him.
When Yuu first started racing as a young boy, it was against the law, and he had to scavenge together a racer, and sneak out of the walls with the others just to participate. Eleven years have passed, and now, not only are the races legal, they’re government funded. The government seemed to realize how much audiences love to see the races, and now, instead of risking their lives creeping from the city during the night, the drivers are public celebrities, and leave the walls for the racetrack among crowds of cheering fans. It’s been five years since the transition, since the creation of the official city races. A lot of drivers stopped racing, after the government got involved, saying what was once an act of rebellion was being turned into a distraction for the populace, so they don’t question the government’s corruption. But Yuu was young, and didn’t care about the politics of racing. For him, racing would always be about the freedom.
Yuu is in the middle of a winning streak when his life changes forever. The day starts like any other. His bed is soft and plush now that he lives in the government-funded drivers’ quarters, a tall white building beside the Royal Mechanics’ workshop. After years of living on the streets, always on the run from the city guards and never feeling safe enough to get any good sleep, Yuu relishes every moment he gets in his bed. But it’s a race day, and racing is one thing he’d gladly lose sleep for.
Even the walls of his room are white, like the bed sheets, and like the entire building. Besides being in a better part of the city, the towering ivory walls are clear signifiers of the building’s importance, and it’s connection to the government and the crown. Yuu quickly realizes he’s probably going to be late, so he rushes to find his driver’s uniform and hurries down to the showers in his sleeping clothes. He catches sight of Daichi, Yui, and Hajime in the hallway. Like him, they’re young drivers, although he and Hajime have been racing the longest out of the four of them. Daichi and Hajime have similar builds, strong and dependable, although Daichi is slightly leaner. Daichi has black hair and a stern set to his face, and always gets terrible tan lines on his neck and face from his driver’s uniform. Hajime’s skin is similarly darkened by the sun, with freckles running across his nose, and deep brown eyes. Yui is one of the few female drivers, her dark brown hair cropped short so it curls around her face, with a deceptively slight figure, her uniform hiding her well-defined muscles. She often gets bad tan lines too, and the skin around her eyes is just a few shades paler than the rest of her face, thanks to the goggles now hanging around her neck.
“Yuu!” Daichi calls out to him, a scandalized expression on his face. “Are you seriously just going to the showers now?”
Hajime and Yui grin at Daichi’s nagging and Yui ruffles his hair roughly. “Relax, Daichi. He’s Silver Lightning, remember? If he showers as fast as he races, he’ll be just fine!”
“Right!” Yuu smiles brightly at Yui and claps her offered hand loudly in a high-five before hurrying on to the showers.
He’s clearly not the only driver running behind, when Yuu is getting dressed after his shower, Keiji, another of the younger drivers, is only just getting out too. Like Yui, it is easy to overlook Keiji’s physical strength because his figure seems slight, but his legs are long and thick with muscle. His face is strikingly beautiful, with sharp black eyes and a pointed nose. His skin is naturally dark, so he never endures the embarrassing tan lines or sun burns of the more pale skinned drivers. Though he is running even later than Yuu, Keiji remains as calm as he ever does, and strikes up a conversation with Yuu.
“How did you sleep?”
“Oh, well, thanks! Uh, you?” Yuu asks, wresting his shoulder guards on, over his pale sandy-coloured driver’s jumpsuit. The boiled leather of the outer armour reminds Yuu of freshly fallen chestnuts, a gleaming red-brown, the kind he would see sold in the black market when he was younger. There is similar protective armour on his elbows, hips, and knees, and his helmet of course, and the long gloves and boots are made of the same leather.
“Alright. You’ve forgotten your helmet and goggles,” Keiji says, pointing to Yuu’s pile of clothes.
“Ah, damn. I’ll see you round then, I’d better run!”
“Good luck,” Keiji says, offering Yuu a small smile and a wave.
Yuu gathers up his pile of sleep clothes and waves hastily at Keiji as he rushes out of the showers. “You too!”
Bolting back up the stairs, Yuu reaches his room on the third floor quickly enough, even if his legs are a little too short to confidently and quickly take the stairs two at a time. He snatches his helmet and goggles off the back of his door and chucks his unneeded clothes on his bed, before turning and rushing back down the stairs into the basement. There, he hurries through the underground passage connecting the driver’s quarters to the Royal Mechanics’ workshop. The basement of the workshop is a driver’s lounge, although it’s mostly empty now, as the drivers have probably all gone upstairs to get their racers and set off towards to starting line. Yuu grabs a cup and fills it with water from the dispenser, gulps it down, and repeats it once more before tossing the cup with the other dirty dishes and heading upstairs. He figures if he doesn’t have time for a proper breakfast, he should at least stay hydrated.
As he climbs the stairs up to the workshop itself, Yuu untangles the straps of his goggles. The workshop is enormous, with a high vaulted ceiling. The ceiling and walls are white, and the harsh white lighting makes it all a little blinding. Yuu snaps his orange-tinted goggles over his eyes, pressing them against his face until they stick, and slips his leather helmet onto his head and over his ears, flattening his unstyled hair down under it. Leaving the chin strap of his helmet unbuckled, Yuu makes his way over to his racer, perched on its metal frame. Koutarou and Tooru are fixing the wheels to the frame, to move the whole structure through the streets. Out of all the Royal Mechanics, Yuu knows Koutarou and Tooru best, as they are usually the ones working on his racer. Tooru is tall, with a trim waist and long legs. His hair falls in short bouncy brown curls, and his eyes are a matching brown, soft and knowing. Koutarou’s pale hair is pushed back behind a thick black headband, sitting in stiff, gelled spikes at the back of his head. He is quite well-built for a mechanic, and his face is broad and cheerful. They are both wearing their uniform, a pale teal jumpsuit, unaltered and buttoned all the way up to their necks, as regulation stipulates.
Yuu reaches them as they finish attaching the wheels. They stand up from where they were crouched to greet him, Koutarou stretching his arms over his head until his back cracks.
“All ready to go,” Tooru tells him, gesturing to Yuu’s racer with a flourish. “Off to meet your adoring fans then! You’re already behind schedule you know.”
Yuu grins at Tooru’s mock finger wag, as if he is nagging him, and mounts his racer, pulling himself on top of it before sitting securely in the saddle.
Koutarou smiles brightly and waves up at Yuu once he’s perched atop his racer. “Good luck!”
“Thanks!”
Then the pair of horses begin the pull the racer forward, as if they had grown tired of the conversation, and Yuu can only wave a hasty goodbye as the two mechanics are left behind in the garage.
The parade through the streets has already begun, beginning with the oldest, most respected racers. At the end, the younger champions, the current victors. As winner of the last four solo races, Yuu comes in right at the end. Beside him is Daichi, Grey Thunder, his partner in the duo races. Directly ahead of them are Keiji and Hajime, as the reigning champions of the duo races. The procession makes its way from the Royal Mechanics’ workshop to the garage where the race starts, at the edge of the city, built into the walls. The streets are lined with people, cheering and throwing scented scraps of fabric, as good luck tokens, at their favourite drivers. City guards in crisp grey uniforms stop the populace from getting too close to the procession. When Yuu and Daichi raise their hands to wave, the screaming from the crowds around them becomes even more loud and feverish, and people try to reach past the guards to aim their scraps of fabric better, so that they’ll land on the racer or its driver.
Their progress is slow, going no faster than the pace of the horses’ trot, and the unforgiving sun beats down on Yuu. He wonders each time if perhaps he’s gone soft, used to the cool, conditioned air of the driver’s quarters and Royal Mechanics’ workshop, and no longer able to withstand the harsh heat of the midday sun. Finally the long garage is in sight, small and dark beneath the towering grey expanse of the city wall. More of the Royal Mechanics are hanging around, instantly recognizable in their uniforms, and they set about unhooking the horses from the metal structures and wheeling them into place. The hum of the racers’ engines turning on begins to fill the air, and the metal structures supporting the racers are wheeled out from beneath them as they raise to a hover. Yuu’s racer is pulled into place last, and he switches on his racer’s engine after the teal-clad mechanic nods at him. His racer starts to hover, the metal structure is wheeled away, and the mechanics clear out of the garage. The gaping doorway to the street is closed, and with the sound of a heavy breaker switch, the garage is plunged into darkness. Yuu reaches under his chin and buckles his helmet straps, securing them tightly around his face.
Ahead of each racer, the garage doors shudder open, and the clear morning light blinds Yuu momentarily, as it illuminates the dark garage. He keeps his eyes on the two lightbulbs above his door, the left one lit up a vibrant blue, although through his heavily tinted goggles it seems a bright orange. He feels the temptation to glance at the other drivers on the racers beside his, but resists, not moving his stare from the lightbulb on the right, just waiting for it to light up, and send them all flying out into the desert. Tension thrums low in his stomach, and he raises himself off his seat a little in anticipation, his thighs clenched tightly around the hull of his racer, feeling the engine hum beneath him, his feet slotted securely in the stirrups. Despite the din of racer engines echoing around the garage, to Yuu, this moment is always the quietest.
There is a muffled click, and the second lightbulb flashes on. It’s as if the light sends a message straight to Yuu’s body, bypassing his brain entirely, the second he sees the light, he twists his hands around the handlebars and shoots off into the desert. The racetrack rushes along beneath him, and Yuu knows that the pre-marked track will soon narrow, as the racers spread out, some falling behind while other speed ahead. For those willing to risk it, for the daredevils like Yuu, there are shortcuts through the desert, off the track. But they come with drawbacks, that it might not be a shortcut after all, it takes more time, it could be fraught with danger. Those who know the track well enough know the good shortcuts, the ones that only end in disaster, and the ones that could go either way, for only the most skilled of drivers. Yuu is one of those drivers.
The first shortcut he takes twists and turns through spires of sand-coloured rock, groups of them cropping up around the desert basin like rocky forests. They’re the closest thing to a forest Yuu’s ever seen, and he navigates the sharp turns with an enviable finesse. Two other drivers follow him through the spires. When he returns to the track, there are only three racers ahead of him. Yuu briefly registers that one of them is Daichi, his racer painted black with a distinctive bright orange stripe wrapping around it. Then he looks past the racers ahead of him, past to the horizon, hazy with heat, the pale sky blurring into the dull colour of the sandy terrain. Sometimes Yuu considers driving straight off the track, right off towards the horizon. But he never does. Blinking, he refocuses on the race, and swerves to pass a racer, sliding into third place.
Another of his favoured shortcuts is coming up, and he drifts off the track, weaving between shifting sand dunes. He's the only one who ever seems to take this shortcut. Grains of sand skate off the top of the dunes and get blown into his face, causing brief pinpricks as they hit his cheeks at such a high speed. The dunes seem to line up, and Yuu has a straight shot through back to the track in the distance, except-
There’s something lying half-buried in the sand. Yuu’s sharp eyes pick it out immediately, despite it being almost completely camouflaged. He keeps an eye on it as he approaches it, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s slowing down. His racer slows to a hover a couple metres away from the… thing. It’s a body, he quickly realizes. His mind still hasn’t quite caught up with his instinct to go over to the figure lying in the sand, hasn’t reminded him of the danger. With such large sand dunes, the chances of sand skippers moving beneath the ground are high. There could be flesh eaters roaming around. The body could be infected, in the process of becoming a flesh eater. They could just as easily be dead. Yuu could still win the race if he left now. But he does not. If he would just look up at the track in the distance, he’d be able to see racer after racer skim by. But he cannot tear his eyes from the body in the sand. He feels... almost drawn to it.
As his foot hits the sand, sinking in just a bit, his mind seems to catch up to his actions, and he looks around, his heart beating wildly in his chest. The landscape is deceptively quiet, eerily empty, as if he is the only living creature in the world. Yuu returns his eyes to the body and approaches it tentatively, the dry air catching in his throat. As he reaches the person’s side, he sees the shallow rise and fall of their chest. They’re breathing. Lifting his goggles off his face onto his forehead, Yuu drops to his knees beside the stranger. He sets about brushing the sand off of them, taking in their appearance as he does.
The underside of the stranger’s heels and toes are blackened with grime, no doubt from traveling barefoot across the harsh terrain, but the raised arch of their foot is as pale as the white sands in the Eastern Wastelands. Their skin is cracked and dry. On their lips and knuckles and knees, the skin has broken up so much that it must have bled, leaving rust coloured stains where the blood was wiped at or dried up. They have strange, dull-coloured clothes, the colour of the sand around them, wrapped up around their small frame like tattered bandages. Their skin is darkened and heavily freckled from the sun, and their hair is shoulder-length and two toned. Around the roots, it is dark, like most of Yuu’s hair, but the rest is a golden yellow, just as the small tuft of hair that falls across Yuu’s forehead is.
Once he has uncovered them from the sand, Yuu hauls the stranded stranger onto his back and maneuvers their limp body onto his racer. With the stranger’s body slumped up against his front and his goggles placed back firmly over his eyes, Yuu revs his racer again, and sets off at a slow pace, so as not to jostle the stranger into falling off. He heads back to the track, bare of racers, meaning they must have all passed by already. For some reason, Yuu feels no loss, no dejection at the realization that not only will he not win, he’ll be coming in dead last, for the first time ever. He feels excited, but at the same time calm, as if he was meant to find this person out here in the desert. He has never believed in fate before, but as he catches sight of the grey city walls rising from the sands ahead, Yuu can’t help but wonder.