Morning at the Gas Station – A New Challenge Awaits
The early morning sun stretched thin gold lines across the cracked asphalt of the gas station, washing the world in a haze of rising heat and gasoline fumes. The air shimmered faintly above hoods and steel panels, the scent of motor oil mixing with sweat and coolant. A soft clink echoed as March 7th tossed a wrench into the toolbox, brushing strands of hair off her damp forehead with the back of a gloved hand.
She exhaled loudly, stretching her back. "That's the last one for now. I still can't believe how that race played out."
Collei leaned against the open hood of a kei truck, wiping a smear of grease from her cheek with a rag. "Yeah. One wrong move and we could've been wrapped around a guardrail. It was chaos out there. Controlled chaos."
Just a few feet away, by the vending machine humming in the corner of the station lot, Seele stood with her arms crossed, her back against the flared fender of her Devil Z. Beidou was animated, gesturing with one hand as she spoke to Lyney, who stood flanked by a quiet Pela, the strategist's sharp violet eyes half-lidded but locked in.
"I'm telling you," Beidou said, voice low and tense, "that Integra was different. Whoever's behind the wheel—she wasn't just fast. She was surgical. Like she was probing for weaknesses."
Pela adjusted her glasses, her tone analytical. "I noticed something too. She was tapping the brakes mid-corner, repeatedly. Not hard enough to lose speed—just enough to unsettle the balance."
"Brake pumping," Lyney muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "That's not how we run FRs on the downhill."
Hearing the technical talk, Collei and March wandered over. Collei's brows furrowed in thought.
"She pulled the handbrake once or twice," Collei offered. "I caught it in my mirrors. Rear wheels locked for a split second. Just enough to swing the tail."
Lyney's head turned slowly. His mouth curled slightly—not a smile, but the expression of someone seeing puzzle pieces lock into place. "They were using FF-specific racecraft."
Seele raised an eyebrow. "You better explain that."
Understanding the Enemy
Lyney crouched down, drawing a rough diagram in the dust with his finger—two lines, arrows indicating weight transfer.
"FF cars—front engine, front-wheel drive—are inherently unbalanced in corners. They tend to understeer hard, especially at speed. Turn the wheel too much and the car just plows forward instead of rotating."
"Yeah," March nodded, "I remember that from the Touge 101 videos."
Lyney glanced up, "But in expert hands, understeer becomes a weapon."
He stood, voice taking on the clipped cadence of a tactician explaining battlefield logistics. "That Integra was rotated manually—forced oversteer. By pulling the handbrake on entry, the driver loads the front axle with weight, unhooks the rear, and kicks the tail out. It's violent, but controlled."
Beidou's jaw tightened. "So instead of fighting the car, she made it slide?"
"Exactly," Lyney said. "And once it's sliding, that's when it gets advanced. She used left-foot braking to modulate traction mid-slide. Gas stays on with the right foot to keep forward momentum. The left foot dabs the brake to tighten the line or hold rotation."
Pela's eyes widened slightly. "That's incredibly risky. Brake balance has to be perfect or the car spins."
Seele snapped her fingers. "That's why her lines were so tight through the hairpins. She wasn't just avoiding understeer—she was dancing through it."
Lyney nodded, eyes gleaming. "In the right hands, an FF on the downhill can be a monster. Especially on tight courses where traction matters more than torque."
Collei's lips parted in quiet realization. "So how the hell do we beat that?"
Beidou muttered, half to herself, "If brute power isn't enough..."
The silence after her words wasn't empty—it was heavy. Heavy with the knowledge that what they'd faced wasn't recklessness. It was precision. This wasn't some arcade-driving maniac. It was a surgeon in a scalpel-shaped machine.
A New Challenge – Beidou's Request
The tension broke like glass under a bootheel as Beidou turned to Collei with a sly grin curling up at the corners of her mouth. The pirate-turned-tuner's eyes gleamed with mischief and something else—intent.
"Hey, Collei."
Collei blinked. "Yeah?"
Beidou leaned in slightly, arms folded, voice lowering. "Do me a favor. Drive my R32 down the hill."
Collei blinked again, stunned. "I… wait. What?"
Beidou's grin widened, the gleam in her eyes more amused than threatening. "You need experience with heavier machines. AWD. Turbo lag. Torque split. The GT-R's a different beast than your Hachi-Roku."
Collei instinctively waved her hands, stepping back. "No way! That's your baby. I'd feel awful if I scratched it. Or blew a gear. Or stalled."
Beidou reached out and clapped a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You're not gonna fuck it up. I'm asking because I trust you, not because I'm outta my mind."
Collei hesitated, eyes drifting to the black-and-silver R32 parked under the station awning. Its stance was low, coiled like a predator, exhaust ticking as it cooled. It looked... heavy. Dangerous.
Beidou's voice was gentler now. "Look, you want to get stronger, right? Learn to fight this new kind of opponent? Then you need to learn how every machine behaves. AWD, FF, FR. You need to feel the difference in your bones."
The offer hung in the air like a loaded gun between friends.
Sunset Tensions – A Partnership Shattered
The sun had long dipped below the rooftops, leaving behind a bleeding sky the color of rust and violet ash. Outside the convenience store, the glow of flickering neon signs painted the parking lot in sickly pinks and blues. Long shadows reached across the concrete like claws.
Yelan stood under a streetlamp, arms folded tightly across her chest. Her Blackbird—a jet-black 930 Turbo—idled quietly behind her, its turbocharger ticking as it cooled. She wasn't moving. She was boiling.
Across from her, Silverwolf leaned against her white Integra Type R, one foot propped against the bumper, a can of soda dangling casually in her fingers. Her expression was unreadable, but her posture was pure provocation. Like nothing mattered.
Yelan's voice sliced through the silence, sharp and cold. "You think I wouldn't find out?"
Silverwolf didn't even blink. "Find out what?"
"You ran racers off the road on Mount Yougou. You ambushed them. Seele could've crashed. You cut her off."
Silverwolf shrugged, taking a sip. "Must've been a different white Integra."
Yelan was across the lot in two steps. Her hand shot forward like a whip, seizing Silverwolf by the collar and slamming her into the side of her car. The Integra's aluminum body thunked dully. The soda can hit the ground, spraying fizz.
"What the fuck is your problem with me?" Yelan hissed. Her breath was hot and close. Her knuckles white with restraint.
Silverwolf stared at her. Not angry. Not scared. Amused. "No problem," she said lightly. "Just showing everyone what a rear-drive car looks like when it's getting eaten alive."
Yelan's lip curled. "This isn't a goddamn game. One mistake out there and you're dead. This isn't some digital sim you can reset when you crash. You're fucking with real lives."
Silverwolf gave a short, breathy laugh. "And yet I'm still standing."
That was it.
Yelan didn't speak. She just moved. Her fist crashed into Silverwolf's gut like a piston hammering into a cylinder at redline. The sound was thick and wet. Silverwolf's breath whooshed out in a strangled gasp as her knees gave, her back sliding down the side of the Integra.
Yelan stood over her, eyes like frostbite. "We're done. You and me. This partnership? Over."
She spun on her heel, boots crunching gravel, and stormed toward the Blackbird. The door slammed like a gunshot. The 930's flat-six engine roared to life with an angry growl, spitting unburnt fuel from the exhaust.
With a savage blip of the throttle and a screaming peel-out, the Porsche launched from the lot, leaving a haze of tire smoke and fury.
Silverwolf stayed on the ground, one hand on her stomach, breath shallow. Then, slowly, she grinned. Wide. Wild.
She pulled herself up, eyes glinting like a hacker staring into a firewall they were about to break.
"Run along, little Blackbird," she whispered into the night, voice soft as silk. "You can't clip my wings. Not now."
Lyney's Gas Station – A Choice to Make
The sun had all but disappeared, its last rays smeared across the horizon like the dying embers of a long day. In its place, the cold glow of neon signage buzzed to life—casting long shadows over the cracked pavement of Lyney's Gas Station. The scent of burnt rubber and spilled gasoline hung in the evening air, tinged with the distant, muffled screams of tuned engines echoing through Mount Yougou's canyons.
Collei sat at the edge of the lot, elbows resting on her knees, her green gaze unfocused—locked in an invisible tug-of-war between anticipation and dread. Beidou's words looped in her skull like the idling of an angry engine.
"Drive the R32 down the hill tonight."
Simple words. Heavy consequences. That wasn't just any R32. It was Beidou's R32—the one she rebuilt with her own hands, tuned with a mix of stubborn willpower and raw instinct. It was a beast, a sacred relic in the local racing scene. Driving it wasn't a favor—it was a fucking honor. And a massive risk.
Collei's stomach twisted into a cold knot.
A familiar plop beside her broke the silence.
"You're acting like Beidou asked you to deliver tofu in her R32 or something," March 7th quipped, that signature grin plastered across her face like a billboard ad for chaos.
Collei jerked in surprise. "What?! Oh... no." Her voice came out flat, heavy. "Beidou wants me to take the R32 downhill tonight."
March's eyes went wide, lit up like someone dropped a firework in her brain. "Are you kidding!? Dude, you have to do it!"
"I don't know…" Collei murmured, pulling at the hem of her jacket sleeve. "What if I screw it up?"
March slung an arm around her shoulders without missing a beat. "You pulled perfect drifts in my Supra on your first try, remember that? You even kicked the tail out mid-corner while I was still figuring out the damn steering ratio. If anyone can wrangle a skyline, it's you."
Collei's mind flashed back—her hands glued to the Supra's wheel, heel-toe blips timed to heartbeat precision, tires howling in unison as she carved through switchbacks like the road was speaking to her. For a moment, her chest swelled with remembered confidence.
"…Maybe you're right," she whispered. Then a breath. "Yeah. I guess it wouldn't hurt to try it out."
Before she could stand, a pair of strong arms hooked around her and March from behind, pulling both of them into a rough, grinning squeeze.
"That's the fuckin' spirit!"
Nightfall at Yougou – The Test Run
The mountain was swallowed by shadows now. The only light came from sodium-yellow guardrail posts and the icy blue gleam of Beidou's R32. Its aggressive silhouette gleamed under the fluorescent tube lights above the lot—hood vents steaming lightly from the earlier warm-up run.
Collei leaned against the AE86, arms folded tightly. Her eyes hadn't left the R32 in five minutes.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked Beidou, voice taut with tension.
Beidou slung her leather jacket over her shoulder with a wild grin. "Collei, drive it like you drive anything—with your gut. That car's not gonna bite."
"I dunno…" Collei muttered. "It's heavy. It's turbocharged. It's got all-wheel drive. I've never…"
"Just once," Beidou said, stepping closer. "Just feel it out. I'll ride shotgun. If you spin, we spin together."
Collei hesitated a moment longer. Then nodded. "Alright. Just once."
Right then, the sharp bark of a boxer engine cracked the quiet. A mechanical growl echoed off the trees like a warning snarl. Everyone's heads snapped toward the sound.
"Shit," Seele muttered, eyes narrowing. "Heads up. Something's coming."
"Please don't be that Integra again…" March whispered like a prayer.
But it wasn't the DC2. A low-slung shadow glided through the mist like a shark, headlights slicing the dark apart. Then came the purr of a flat-six—the distinct, snarling growl of a Porsche 930 Turbo. Blackbird.
Yelan's car.
The 930 rolled in, stopping with surgical precision behind March's Supra. The engine shut off with a sharp clunk, and a second later, Yelan stepped out, cigarette already dangling from her fingers. Her posture was relaxed, but her eyes were scanning. Always.
"Yo," she called. "Good to see you degenerates still breathing."
March laughed. "You too! What brings you all the way out here?"
Yelan blew out a long stream of smoke, looking toward the R32. "Heard there was a new engine in Beidou's tank. Figured I'd see what the fuss was about."
Pela tilted her head, nodding toward Collei. "She's the one driving it."
Yelan raised a brow. "The tofu girl?"
March clapped Collei on the shoulder. "That's the one."
The Downhill Run
Collei strapped in, pulling the five-point harness tight across her chest. Her knuckles flexed as she adjusted the seat and checked the mirrors. The R32 felt… alive. The steering had more resistance than the Eight-Six, the pedals firmer, the turbocharger hissing impatiently with every light press of the throttle. The twin-plate clutch felt like it would either launch the car—or snap her shin in half.
Beidou climbed in beside her, tightening her own belt. "Don't be afraid of it. Just let it talk to you."
Collei's fingers danced across the shifter—metal knob cool and familiar. She glanced once at the rev counter, then turned the key.
The RB26DETT snarled to life with a guttural roar. The idle was lumpy, cammed to hell, the kind of note that made grown men grin and rookies wet themselves.
She took one breath—and dropped it into first.
The R32 launched forward with a bark, tires grabbing violently as they surged toward the edge of the downhill.
"Wait, isn't this a bit fast for the first corner!?" Beidou shouted.
Collei didn't respond. She slammed the brakes—ABS chattered as the nose dipped. The steering wheel jolted, and with a sharp flick, the rear snapped out.
The car slid sideways into a braking drift, the tail hanging perfectly on the edge of traction. Collei downshifted into second with a heel-toe tap, revs matching perfectly. The tires shrieked like wounded animals.
Beidou's eyes nearly bulged from her skull. "SWEET SHIT, you've never driven this thing before!?"
"Next corner…" Collei muttered, eyes laser-focused. "We're gonna drift it."
"Drift? What the fuck do you call what we just—OH SHIT!"
The next left-hander came in fast. Collei dropped from fifth to third, slammed the throttle wide open, then feathered the brake while rotating the steering into the apex. The R32's chassis bucked—then obeyed.
A perfect four-wheel drift.
The RB26 screamed as the tach kissed redline. The tires spat chunks of rubber into the night.
Beidou screamed, holding onto the passenger door like it might save her soul. "JESUS FUCK, SLOW DOWN—NO, NEVER MIND, SPEED UP, SHIT THIS IS AMAZING—"
Back at the Finish Line...
They waited at the guardrail, every second dragging. No one spoke.
Then—engine noise. Deep, angry. The R32's headlights reappeared in the mist like a ghost rejoining the living.
It screeched to a halt in front of the gas station, front tires kissing the painted curb.
The door swung open—and Beidou rolled out like she'd been shot, collapsing onto the asphalt in a heap.
Collei stepped out slowly, as calm as if she'd just come back from a grocery run. She didn't even blink.
March ran over. "Holy shit! Beidou, are you okay!?"
Beidou waved a hand weakly. "I... I didn't… I didn't see anything…"
"What!?"
"I blacked out somewhere after the second drift…"
Everyone burst into laughter.
Then—an engine again. Sharper. More aggressive.
A white DC2 pulled up, parking across the lot like it owned the whole mountain. The headlights stayed on.
Beidou's smile vanished. She stood slowly. "No way. That's the asshole that clipped me last night."
The driver's door opened.
Silverwolf stepped out.
Their smirk said everything.
The Challenge
Beidou stormed forward. "HEY! You got some fuckin' nerve showing your face here—"
Silverwolf tilted their head. "And you are…?"
"You bumped me on the inside at Akafuji corner! Don't play dumb!"
A pause. Then a smirk. "Oh. That R32. Yeah. I remember."
"You nearly wrecked us—!"
"Maybe if you were better at driving, that wouldn't have happened."
Beidou nearly lunged. Seele grabbed her arm.
Then Silverwolf smiled wider. "Tell you what. I'll apologize—but only if the Eight-Six girl beats me."
Everyone froze.
Pela blinked. "What kind of race?"
Silverwolf raised a roll of duct tape. "A Gum Tape Deathmatch. Tape your right hand to the wheel. One hand driving only."
Seele looked like she'd been slapped. "You can't be serious."
"I'm always serious."
They pointed straight at Collei. "You in?"
Collei stepped forward. Calm. Solid. Fire in her eyes.
"If I win, you apologize. On your knees."
She walked to her car without waiting.
Beidou chased after her. "Collei! Don't do this! That's her game—"
Collei slid into the AE86, hand on the key.
"No chance in hell I'm letting that smug prick walk away with this."
The engine barked to life.
Everyone stared. The weight of what was coming settled like storm clouds overhead.
This wasn't a grudge match.
This was war.