Test Track

~F-ZERO TEST TRACK, UNSPECIFIED LOCATION, EARTH~

"This is probably a bad idea."

Shockingly, it was not Stephen saying that. It was Russel, stopwatch in hand. And he was staring at Pele, the very dented Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno with considerable apprehension. Which was more than justified, as the car now appeared to have a rejected prop from Back to the Future stapled to the back of it. It hummed gently, which served as a contrast to the almost impatient and irritated snarling of the car's real engine.

Noodle's frizzy hair appeared from the passenger window. Underneath it, she was grinning maniacally.

"Hey, it worked when we went into space" she trilled over the rumbling noises. "It's gotta work on the track, too, right?" She patted the side of the Trueno, which seemed to growl in response.

"But that was us going into space!" protested the Boston drummer. "Escape velocity! This is actual steering and manouvering, with gravity and friction and all that shit! That booster wasn't designed for that kind of thing, baby-girl!"

"Only Stephen-kun gets to call me that now," Noodle retorted, sticking her tongue out at him.

But Russel's expression didn't change. His eyes kept flicking between the car itself and the looping, curving racetrack that stretched out in front of him. The addition of the hyperdrive had been a last-minute botch-job, under concerns that Pele as she stood wasn't qualified for the F-Zero track. But as much as he'd tried to modify it, Russel had no clue if it would even work. He could only see two endings - the engine exploding, or the car shooting off into the sky before exploding.

They ended surprisingly similar to each other.

Noodle ducked back into the car and out of sight.

"How we doin'?" Russel heard her ask her pilot.

"I dunno." Stephen's voice, muffled as it was behind the rest of the car, sounded confused. "Engine seems really hot already, and the oil pressure... She's not happy, Noodle."

"Eh, she'll be fine," was the retort. "Put her in gear, Steph! Let's get going!"

There was a metallic racheting noise as Stephen fought against a gearbox that suddenly seemed unwilling to co-operate. Russel hadn't noticed before, but Pele seemed to be trembling, the body vibrating as if under tension. He didn't like to think of the car as alive - that was ascribing too much to it on the whole. But he could have sworn that the way the engine rumbled and the wheels twitched seemed...

Almost angry.

He raised the stop watch.

"Ready?" he shouted.

No answer from the inside. So Russel took it as his cue.

"GO!" And he clicked the-

Pele took off.

To understand that last sentence, do not imagine a car moving off from the starting line. Imagine a car exploding briefly into white fire before shooting forwards at comet speeds, bellowing like an angry dragon all the while. And imagine a very terrified drummer from a cartoon band throwing himself to the floor with a yell as heat washed over him.

When Russel could look again, the car was gone. And the hyperdrive engine that had taken a whole week to retrofit was in pieces on the start line.

He stared at it.

"At least I ain't payin' Pickle-Puss for the privelage," he muttered.

------

When the car finally came rocketing back and slid to a stop over the line, it had shaved an entire five seconds off the previous record-holder. Russel nearly forgot to click the stopwatch off in his shock. And then he spent several seconds staring at a car that, rather than tearing itself apart from g-forces and velocity, was instead quietly simmering as if to say "Ta-daaaaaaah!"

Inside the car, Stephen and Noodle were a mess. Their faces were sweaty, their hair was wild and tangled and their expressions were pictues of shock. They looked like they hadn't stopped screaming for a long, long while. They blinked owlishly, staring ahead as if trying to see ghosts - and having probably seen plenty already.

There was a very long silence indeed. It was marred only by the quiet purring of the engine.

"I think," Stephen murmered at last, "that she doesn't like being altered."

"Yeah." Noodle tried and failed to smooth down the explosion that was her hair. "Let's... let's keep her like this."

Pele snorted steam from her grille. It sounded almost smug and self-satisfied.