Baden-Württemberg.
Snow fell down from above in a rain of white. A flake hit the fuel tank and melted into water, dissolving in steam that curled and was gone.
Pines layered in patches of frost flickered past on both sides, two strokes of bleached ink that looked close enough to touch.
The engine's sound had dropped from a wail to a hum. Those magic circles rotated at barely their capacity.
I glanced down at the speedometer.
200 mph.
After 500, it felt like standing still.
The world had regained its depth. Trees had branches now, branches had individual needles, the road had recovered texture, cracks and patches of dark asphalt visible where repairs had been made months ago.
That air corridor around us had narrowed to a thin layer. Snowflakes entered its edge and spiraled along its boundary in slow, gentle arcs instead of detonating on impact.
Medusa's chin remained on my shoulder.
Her breath came in small, even clouds that drifted past my jaw and dissolved. Each one warm and brief.
Her grip had changed. Somewhere between 500 and now, her fingers had stopped clutching my coat and had settled into it, relaxed and resting.
I felt her shift. A small adjustment, her right thigh pressing a centimeter closer against mine.
The road curved left. I leaned. She leaned with me, our movements perfectly synchronised, as if the bike were being steered by four arms and one mind.
A snowflake landed in her hair, just above her ear. I felt it melt against those purple strands into water, and fall on my shoulder. She didn't notice, or didn't care. Either way, she left her hair where it was, and the cold alongside her warmth seeped through my coat.
The forest opened ahead. Sky appeared, dark and glittering, flecks swaying above like curtains in shallow wind. For a stretch of road, the world was just white above, dark below, and we were the only line between them.
Her breathing slowed.
Before, her inhales were sharp and measured. Now, they stretched deeper and longer. Her forehead came down against the back of my neck, brows pressing into the space between my neck and shoulder.
I didn't say anything.
The road widened further. I eased the throttle.
150 mph.
Her fingers moved. A micro-adjustment on my coat. Her thumb found a crease in its cloth and pressed into it, smoothing it. Then it found another. Then another. Small and absent motions, done by hands when they're not thinking.
A town appeared on the horizon. Houses in a line, smoke from chimneys, light in windows that illuminated the night with a gentle glow.
I eased the throttle further.
100 mph.
The road curved again. A long, sweeping bend through a corridor of pines whose branches sagged downward. R1's headlight caught each trunk as we passed, painting them crimson for a breath before returning them to dark.
Her palm left the coat and found my hand on the throttle, index finger against knuckle, thumb tracing my glove's edge.
Gott Mit Uns disappeared under her grip.
She didn't say anything.
I didn't either.
The town passed around us, quiet and ordinary. A dog barked once. A child waved from a doorway. A large clock rang three times, that sound caught us mid-passage and carried with us for two hundred meters before the snow swallowed it.
Medusa's body was fully leaning against my back now. I could feel her heartbeat through my coat.
Her lips moved against the back of my neck.
"...This is nice."
Three words. Barely a murmur. Lost in the engine's sound and wind's movement.
I heard them.
Something in my eyes shifted.
Peace? Contentment? Warmth?
I didn't know. Those labels didn't fit. But I opened my mouth anyway.
"We can stay longer—"
VROOOOM!
An engine screamed behind us.
Both of us snapped right. A matte-blue Kawasaki surged from our flank, its rider wrenching the throttle with one hand, the other pointed at us, thumb down.
Laughter echoed from our left. A chrome Harley rode alongside, its rider standing on the footstands, hands spread wide instead of gripping the handle.
Behind us, a white Hayabusa closed in, its rider snapping the handlebars left-right-left. The front wheel slashed side to side while its rear wheel rushed straight.
They had boxed us in. The gap was shrinking, each bike pressing closer from three sides.
Medusa's eyes narrowed into slits beneath her glasses. Her grip on my knuckles tightened.
I took all of that in.
And let out a deep breath, eyes closing.
My fingers shifted on the throttle.
Then—
I snapped my eyes open.
And pulled brakes all the way back.
100 to 0. Instantly.
R1's tires screeched. Sparks ignited inside its wheels. The suspension shrieked, dragon tendons compressing hard enough to crack their casing.
The front tire lifted of its own accord and R1 stood vertical on its rear wheel, momentum shedding off in a single breath.
I held it there.
That Harley, Kawasaki and Hayabusa shot past us. Each rider grabbed their throttles and pulled, racing ahead without looking back.
The Harley rider laughed even louder. He jerked his thumb back, tongue wagging between his teeth, bike swaying beneath him.
The Kawasaki rider threw his head back for one full second. Chin skyward.
The Hayabusa rider raised one hand off the handle, middle finger extended up.
Then all three of them burst out cackling.
"Hahahahaha—"
VROOOOM!
Their howling died.
R1 was already moving.
Asphalt beneath the rear tire vaporized on contact. A trench four inches deep carved itself into the road behind, stretching backward like a scar.
Medusa's weight shifted against my back. Her thighs clamped down. Her hands found my waist, fingers pressing into my coat with a crushing grip.
Hayabusa was forty meters ahead, its exhaust melting snow in its wake.
I dropped R1 left.
It fell and tilted past the angle where friction could hold. The left footstand scraped asphalt, throwing sparks that lit snow like a fuse. My knee hovered an inch above ground. Our bike's headlight beams swung sideways, painting the road's surface crimson.
R1 slid sideways across the lane, closing the distance to Hayabusa in two seconds, everything between us compressing into nothing.
I came up on his left.
Close enough that my handlebar moved beside his side mirror by less than a hand's width.
Hayabusa rider's head snapped left. His eyes met mine. Whatever he saw there made his hands clench on the bars.
He pulled right.
I followed.
Hayabusa cut sideways. R1 matched that angle, staying on his flank, filling his peripheral vision with crimson headlights. The gap between us and the guardrail shrank. Two lanes became one. One became half.
He pulled right again. Harder this time. His rear tire lost balance for a fraction, skidding before catching again.
I stayed.
The guardrail ended just beside him. Beyond it, pines stood in a cascade of white trunks.
That Hayabusa rider looked left, then right, then at the forest.
I rolled the throttle forward. One inch closer.
R1's front wheel crossed into his lane and clipped Hayabusa's side.
His rear tire left asphalt, and his bike flew, vaulting sideways over the guardrail to plow into a line of pines, branches snapping in a chain of cracks that echoed for meters.
R1 straightened. The left footstand retracted, scrape marks glowing faintly on its surface.
Our bike levelled out.
Medusa's grip on my waist loosened.
"...The other two?" she asked.
Instead of a reply, I rolled my wrist fully.
The speedometer wrenched from end to end.
Our surroundings lost their boundaries, shapes shedding their definition and colors draining their gradients.
The Harley rider had his head turned, checking his mirror for Hayabusa's absence and what was coming.
He saw me.
His hand clenched on the handle and Harley's engine bellowed, pipes roaring, rear tire punching asphalt for every ounce of speed it could find.
It wasn't enough.
The gap closed. Sixty meters. Forty. Twenty.
I pulled left, moving into his lane. His mirrors filled with my headlight.
Ten meters.
The road ahead was broken. A pothole visible, wide and shallow. Its near edge was crumbling, its far edge raised where the pavement hadn't yet collapsed, a ramp of dark tar.
Harley passed beside it.
I aimed for it.
R1's front tire hit the pothole's near edge and dropped. The suspension squeezed, dragon tendons coiling tight. The front tire hit that far edge next and climbed, rear tire followed.
R1 launched forward. Its nose tilted upward, carrying momentum and hundreds of pounds over the Harley's rear wheel. Over the rider's back. Above his head.
Our exhaust pipe passed an inch above his scalp.
Heat hit him first. A thrust of superheated air from the 8-piston engine. It scorched a bandana clean off his skull, singed his hair to their roots in a straight line from forehead to nape.
His hands flew off the handlebars.
Harley kept going. Its rider didn't.
His balance broke. He slid off its seat, shoulder hitting ground first, then hips, then the rest of him following in a tumbling mess of limbs and seared clothes.
Harley held its line for another thirty meters, engine screaming, riderless, before its front wheel caught another pothole and that whole bike folded.
Behind me, the rider had stopped rolling. He lay in a side lane, arms spread, chest heaving, staring at the sky, hair still smoking.
R1 landed.
Its front tire hit the road with a crack that traveled up its shockers, through the dragon tendons, and into my wrists. The rear tire followed, suspension absorbing any impact in a single, violent inhale, then releasing. Our bike settled.
I didn't look back.
The Kawasaki was still ahead. One red light, growing smaller.
Medusa's chin returned to my shoulder. Her hands slid up from my waist to wrap around my chest.
"...Last one." she said.
150 mph.
The Kawasaki was fast.
Its rider had stopped laughing. He'd seen Hayabusa disappear and heard Harley go silent. Whatever game they'd been playing had stopped being a game, and he knew it.
His head tracked his mirror once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession.
I was there each time.
He tracked a fourth time. Gone.
No. Not gone. Beside him, holding a position at his flank. Same speed and same lane, not closing the gap. Just a crimson headlight in his peripheral vision that wouldn't go away.
The road curved ahead. A sharp left bend, guarded by a steel rail.
Neither of us slowed.
The Kawasaki rider's head turned to me.
Our eyes met.
His were wide, white showing around brown irises, pupils constricted to pinholes. His teeth were clenched so hard that the muscles in his neck were taut.
That curve was ahead. That guardrail was ahead. And I was on his right, blocking his only path to turn.
He couldn't brake. Braking at this speed meant his bike would flip. He couldn't accelerate. The curve was nearly on us. He could only hold his handlebars and hope.
I held his gaze.
The guardrail grew in my peripheral. Silver steel, frost-covered, bolted to supporters that disappeared into snowy earth. Beyond it, a treeline of frosted soil and pines.
Thirty meters.
His bike wobbled. A micro-tremor in its front end. He was losing control.
Twenty meters.
His eyes were still on mine. Searching for hesitation, doubt, the normal human instinct to survive.
He wouldn't find it.
Ten meters.
I turned my head forward.
My lips moved.
"I am the vessel of every talent."
Those words were quiet. Meant for no one.
Sky-blue particles bled outward from R1's chassis. A precise boundary unfurled, halting a meter beyond the bike's frame. Inside it, air stilled and temperature stabilized. The world's texture shifted from organic to geometric.
The guardrail ahead dissolved. Steel parted from steel, atoms releasing their hold on each other like a crowd stepping aside. A ten-foot gap opened where solid metal had been a heartbeat before.
R1 passed through that gap.
Kawasaki didn't.
The rider's line had been straight, and his eyes had been on mine, believing I would bank away to save myself.
His front tire hit the guardrail where that gap ended and solid steel resumed. Kawasaki stopped. He didn't. The rider launched over that rail, arms wide, hands still curled around handlebars that were no longer there.
I continued.
Beneath R1's tires, frozen soil flaked away into concrete in a spreading wave, slabs interlocking with geometric precision, extending ahead of our bike's path as a corridor of grey paving.
Medusa's arms were still around my waist.
Her breath tickled my ear.
"...You used it." she said.
"Hm."
She went quiet for a moment. Her palm slid down once more to cover my hand.
"Was it worth it?"
I thought about her question. About those injuries still running across my inner world.
Then I thought about her breath on my neck. Her thumb on my knuckle. The creases in my coat she had kept smoothing.
"Yes."
Her arm tightened. One brief squeeze.
The forest grew denser. Wind found us, screaming through hundreds of trunks, and the snowfall thickened from flakes to a cascade of white that erased everything ahead.
My reality kept all of it at bay.
In the dead centre of a roaring blizzard, ordinary sunlight of a normal day shone down upon us.
The sky above R1 was clear, the real sky replaced with a soft blue one.
Outside, a snowstorm raged. Inside, snow didn't fall.
I pulled the throttle back. Gently.
50 mph.
The speedometer needle barely moved.
We could take our time.
The Einzbern Castle was not far now.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
I'll someday write an action sequence on bikes and it'll be fun. Maybe not in this story because Izuru is too OP for a real bike fight, but I will write something like this when I have the chance.
Now, one more thing. Einzbern castle is most probably located in Baden-Württemberg, because Einzbern castle was described as being near Rhine river, inside a forest of frost. Which should be the the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), in fact there is even a castle there called Burg Guttenberg, which looks like Einzbern's one. Though Bavaria can also have it, its just that Rhine river does not pass through Bavaria.
Have a wonderful day, everyone!