NOVEL WEB Chapter 100: Battle Derby (3)
"How many laps are there in the race?" I said, as I pulled the cybernetics trunk out of Midas's mouth. I popped open the case and took a look at what I could use to fix her up.
"Three, but we're losing a ton of time just sitting here," she said. "There's no hope of me catching up."
"Don't give up just yet. I have some pretty crazy shit up my sleeves," I said.
As far as I could tell, limb replacements were fairly standardized so as long as you had the right size, they were exchangeable. All I had to do was pop off Mira's destroyed limbs and pop new ones on.
As I looked at what I had available, I realized Ralph had given me everything he had in Mira's size. There were even multiple sets of legs with roller blades all ready attached to the legs. Not legs with roller blades over the feet.
The roller blades were the feet. I saw a couple sets with cool looking high tech roller blades but the third pair is the one I chose. That was due to some tubes attached to the back of the roller blades.
I didn't know for sure, because I hadn't gone over everything single item I purchased from Ralph, but the tubes made the blades look like they had rockets attached to the back of them.
If rocket blades wouldn't allow her to catch up, then nothing would. I popped her legs off and tossed them behind me. I lined up the rocket blade legs up with the sockets at the end of her limb stumps and attached them.
I made sure to attach the correct legs to the correct feet positions. Then I looked through the arms with a specific pair in mind. Ralph had actually taken the time to explain some of the different arms to me and the ones that seemed best fitted to the job of catching up were the serpent arms.
The serpent arms were multijointed multi segmented arms that could extend more than four times their original length. They could launch and extend forward to grab distant objects or people. They had incredible retracting strength that could be used to pull and propel yourself forward.
They could also coil around objects and people to constrict and crush them. The originally designed hands had incredible grip strength which was necessary to perform essential functions.
The hands could always be exchanged out for specific use cases, but I kept the original hands and just bought different individual hands as backup in case they were ever needed.
They also had serpent like striking capabilities and whipping action, but that wasn't why I picked them. I just needed arms that could help Mira catch up to her competition.
Once I had located the serpent arms, I pulled off her trashed arms and attached the new ones.
I leaned in real close, looked Mira right in the eyes, and said, "Rocket blades and serpent arms. Go get them tiger!" Then I pulled her raggedy ass up onto her blades and faced her in the right direction.
I stepped out of the way before she could activate the rockets, knowing it probably wouldn't feel good to stand directly behind her when she did. She looked at me with the biggest tears of joy I had ever seen, smiled at me, and said, "Thank you, Dylan! I'll see you at the finish line."
She crouched down, leaned forward and activated the rocket blades. She literally rocketed away from me at record speeds. She probably went 0 to 100 in a split second, she was gone and out of my sight so fast.
I decided to follow behind until I got to the finish line and just wait there and take out anyone who passed by before Mira did. I kept looking behind me to see if anyone was coming up on me.
Then one of the times I turned back around, the three remaining competitors other than me and Mira zoomed right past me. They must have been going 80 miles per hours or more.
I missed that opportunity but I wouldn't miss the next one. When I made it to the finish line, completing my first lap, I stopped and turned around. Mira passed by me at incredible speeds. I considered waving but decided against it so I didn't distract her. Read the latest on empire
I stood off to the side and kept Blood Draw activated the whole time by just holding the bottom of the hilt forward so it was constantly stabbing into the bottom of my hand.
I didn't know when someone was going to come around the corner, so I had to be ready at any moment. All three of the remaining competitors came around the corner at the same time without Mira in sight.
They all looked at me and realized what I was going to try to do. They all steered as far to the other side of the track as they could to stay away from me. I wasn't completely fucked yet though.
I bladed more toward the middle of the track and extended my blade out twenty feet with a huge amount of my blood. I didn't have time to meditate and stimulate more blood production like I had against the giant bats.
If it hadn't been for the meditation I never would have pulled off such an incredible feat that was required to defeat those bats. I know you may think I could just pull giant blades of blood out of my ass, but that was far from the case.
So as soon as I extended my blade out that far, I got lightheaded and dizzy. I slipped and fell forwards. I still had enough presence of mind to swipe my blade horizontally around ankle level but a couple of the racers were still out of my reach—it was a really wide track—and the one who was in my reach saw my plan ahead of time and jumped as high over the blade as he could.
He way over jumped it and landed hard. He almost lost his balance and tumbled over but he eventually regained his balance before turning around the corner and out of my sight.
Fuck. Now it was up to Mira to make this work. It would be too dangerous and too difficult to take out all three competitors the next time they came around. Mira would have to win this straight up. No cheats and no help from me.
I sat down and waited. After a few minutes, the three competitors came barreling around the corner. They were neck and neck and Mira was nowhere in sight.
I bit my lip so hard it drew blood. I didn't know how she was going to pull this off, but I crossed my fingers. I knew I could activate my domain and try to transfer good luck into her, wherever she was, but I didn't want to cheapen her victory, if she somehow pulled this out of her ass. I don't why, call it intuition or call it faith, but somehow I just knew she was going to win. I didn't know how, but I knew she would.