Redline
Flight.
It's Ravana's passion. His love. His obsession. One of the few things he loves as much as drugs. When he's in the air, he's free. All the problems on the ground fade away, all of the crap in the shithole he comes from is left behind. All that's left is him, his ship and the sky.
It's the best feeling in the world.
Currently it's a feeling that's tarnished by worry over Harmeet, not to mention the bumping and juddering of his ship, but he still feels the familiar thrill go through him as he cranks his sole remaining engine to full throttle and adjusts what few flight surfaces remain attached for supersonic flight.
It would be suicide for anyone to try this, but they've got a handicap Ravana doesn't have.
They're not him.
It doesn't say good things about a ship's lifespan when the pure awesome running through it is so high that the awesome switch breaks when Ravana flips it one last time, but what the hell. He throws the ship into the first turn, edge-on to the ground, and right away it tries to overbalance and smash against the rocks. He's having none of that, he slams one of the airbrakes, punches the accelerator, and fires into the canyon walls to turn the tumble into a spin, bottoming out just in time to hurl around the next corner. As he approaches the next straightaway, he accelerates and corkscrews through Chandra's slipstream to get a few seconds of reduced drag. Then a sound like a thousand screaming banshees rips through the air, and a Mach disk forms and bursts around his vessel as the acceleration slams him back into his seat like a sledgehammer.
... okay, actually that kind of hurt. Dammit, why did he unpack all the Trance from the cockpit? Okay, sure, it makes the occasional dragon come out of the walls and try to eat him, but it would be real handy for the pain about now. Ah well. He'll just have to rough it.
With a savage whoop of glee that's echoed by every speaker in the race, he does a supersonic barrel-roll past Chandra, noting with satisfaction that the race cameras catch it perfectly - oh, hey, sweet, they added a little cut-window of his cockpit to show the rude gesture he made while upsidedown. He flips the remaining nub of the switch back to Awesome to commemorate the occasion. His rival's own afterburners light up, but too slow - he's got no chance now that Ravana's ahead of him. Nobody but
nobody passes Ravana while he's in the zone.
Now all he has to do is overtake everyone left in front of him while making sure those worrying clanking sounds in the wing don't develop into something fatal before he crosses the finish line, and avoiding being shot down by anyone who objects to his passing them.
Should be a piece of cake.
Marcelina and Rax are next. They're accelerating, presumably because Chandra said a rude word and they figured out what he's doing. Marcelina pulls ahead of Rax, breaking the sound barrier first. In response, Rax activates his wings and pushes his engines to full. His ship isn't faster, but Marcelina's forced to slow and turn as you approach, and Rax practically leaps on her. A plasma wing shears through her engine block, and the squid's ship spins towards the floor, emitting belching smoke all the way, but according to her screen she survives the crash just fine. Which is nice.
It takes Ravana the better part of twenty seconds to overtake Rax. The Mantis-man swings for Ravana, but he glides over the blade and bounces Rax into a landslide in progress. The mantis' ship slices its way out in a spray of superheated mud and shattered boulders, but by then Ravana's already passed him and is heading for the front.
Ilana's trivial to overtake, and while Blando's got a far better ship and screams bizarre nonsense at Ravana over the comms, he isn't too difficult to pass up either. Really, there are only two big surprises here.
The first is that Chandra's still behind Blando, he expected his rival to have caught up already. Evidently that stupid new ship Blando had pulled out of his ass after the Harun Cup was counting for more than Ravana'd assumed.
The second is that the camera isn't focused on him. I mean, after his stunt forced
basically everyone else to go supersonic or get left in the dust, he'd expected at least a
little camera attention, but no, instead it's zoomed in on a series of tunnels behind Blando and Ilana. And after a moment it becomes obvious why. Rax is ducking in and out of the tunnels, slowly,
surely catching up to Blando and Ilana for what you're certain is a gruesome fate involving lots of plasma blades. Ilana's noticed, but she's not moving out of the way, instead she's putting herself between Rax and Blando for some stupid reason.
Ravana has a moment, he can say something, interfere, maybe urge Ilana to leave Blando over there. Maybe even get her to just turn on him formally. He
is about to let her serve as a meatshield, after all.
But...should he? Blando'll be distracted by his waifu in distress, Ilana won't be in much form to interfere after a plasma blade to the rear engines, and Rax won't catch up if he gets stuck in a dogfight. It'll just be Ravana and Chandra, pretty decent odds.
And, frankly...he could handle a loss to Chandra. Ravana could ask him to free Indrajit, he might even do it, and...Ravana respects him. As loathe as he is to admit it.
But Blando? Ilana? Not so much.
Choose One:
[ ] Let her do it. If she wants to spend the rest of her life as a not-girlfriend of Blando McBlanderson (Or Die for Him) then that's her choice. (.8x)
[ ] MAX RAVANA. (2x. 2 Die Stunt.)
[ ] Tell her to fire on Blando
herself. It's a bit fucked up though, I mean, he kinda deserves it but it's
really messed up to do this. (.6x)
Choose One:
[ ] If the rockslides are triggered by sound, then obviously the solution is to
break the speed of sound. You're in the last stretch, no reason to slow down now. (+2 Autosux, +2 Hazard. 1.6x)
[ ] Your left engine's gone, but if you stick close to the slag streams the heat
should reignite your fuel for a bit, giving you a boost of speed later. You know, if they don't kill you.(+1 difficulty, +3 dice on next turn's piloting roll. 1.3x)
[ ] Bide your time, take it slow for now, your systems can't take much more damage, so you need to be careful. Maybe try to get some of these switches working again. (-1 Hazard, you can convert threshold successes to remove more hazard.7x)
[ ] STRIFE. Time to start shooting the competition. (+1 Dif, +1 Hazard, Pick a Target. .8x)
[ ] Take cover. You're damaged, if Chandra decides to cripple you to finish the race, well, you're
fucked. (+1 Difficulty, +3 to all DVs. 1x)
[ ] Stalk. The landslides and tunnels give you a unique opportunity to stalk a racer of your choice before unleashing a horrible ambush on them. (+1 difficulty, you roll stealth against an enemy, if you succeed they're treated as surprised if you attack or do something to them next turn, Pick a Target. 1x)
[ ] Zone Out. Knocking someone through a landslide or two, or pinning them in a collapsed tunnel, may well force them to land or crash. (+1 Difficulty, pick a target, whoever gains the least threshold successes of the two of you gains 3 Hazard. 1.3x)
