MIDNIGHT PRETENDERS #2
You and Maya were a team. Navigator and driver. Together against the world.
Intercom playback from Acropolis Rally, 2018. **
"...one-hundred, flat right over crest, into left six long, tightens four."
Dirt blinded your windshield. The engine’s roar over the pop of gravel was deafening. You couldn’t feel anything through your racing gloves.
Zero visibility. Zero sense of direction.
Yet Maya and you tamed every single rally terrain unchallenged. Side by side.
You trusted her driving skills. She trusted your voice.
"Eighty, right two, don't cut, rocks on inside—"
"LOUDER! Can’t fucking hear you!”
That wasn’t always the case. The early days of your partnership with her were rough. She was stubborn, hotheaded. It was always either her way or the highway.
But you two made it work. Through the blind jumps of Finland’s ice-cold tarmac to the fast twists of Croatia’s abrasive routes.
Each race point gained brought you two closer to the top—to each other. The Junior WRC Championship title was within arm's reach.
And you two were invincible.
"Left five opens flat, one-hundred down middle, very fast."
"...heard.”
You spent the early months of 2018 together. Inseparable.
Media rooms. Garages. Airports.
You remember the weight of her head on your shoulder during long flights. You kept the doodles she left on your pacenotes.
You remember the way she looked at you when she thought you weren’t paying attention.
"Sixty, left three over dip, narrows—sharply at the trees."
"...power steering's out! Handle the handbrake! —BRAKE, NOW!!”
Sometime after Portugal and right before Greece, that trust blossomed into something more. It’s only natural. Both of you trusted each other with your lives.
You completed each other.
She didn’t know how to win without hearing your voice through the intercom—
—didn’t know how to drive her steps forward without you by her side.
"TRIPLE CAUTION! TRIPLE CAUTION! Hairpin right after big jump!"
It was a scorching hot summer. Acropolis Rally, Greece.
The one that racers call the Rally of Gods.
"Hard brake mid-air! Into immediate left two, DON'T CUT—"
But she cut.
A fraction of a second of ego. A moment of relapse that shattered the trust you two had built. For a moment, all you could see was a blur of Greek sky and dry ground. All you could hear was the crunch of metal and her panic through the intercom.
And you could finally feel something through your gloves: the heat of dry brush catching the ruptured fuel line.
You survived, but you didn't pull her from the wreckage fast enough. She survived, but with a permanent brand of her own arrogance.
The championship was ash. The sponsors gone like smoke. And Maya disappeared.
"I CAN'T—*cough*—I can't see! Where—”
"—where are you...?”
Three years later. You're in Tokyo. Attending college. You've left the professional rally world behind. But late at night, the local touge crews whisper about a wraith on the downhill mountain passes.
A girl who drifts through the pitch-black roads like she has nothing left to lose.
Screaming her 1JZ engine into the hills.
Waiting for a different voice to echo back.
DAYTIME: KEIO UNIVERSITY — An academic hub suffocating under a hierarchy of wealth and clout. The Mikazuki crew leans into their romanticized street-racing infamy to rule the campus, hiding their flaws beneath designer clothes and media-trained smiles.
MIDNIGHT: THE KANTO PASSES — A lawless arena of tarmac and ravines. Rival crews want to crush your ego beneath their wheels, while Yakuza fixers intend to trap you in debt and run your chassis into the guardrails for a rigged bet.
—TEAM MIKAZUKI
"I didn't ask you to ride shotgun. If you're going to sit there and panic, get out. I don't need a navigator for this."
Maya—21Y/O, 176cm—is a disgraced former Junior WRC prodigy driving a black Toyota Soarer, masking her trauma and burn scars behind biting hostility and isolation.
"It's so cute that you think horsepower matters on the downhill. But sure, let's bet on it."
Risa—20Y/O, 168cm—is a popular gravure idol and the leader of the Mikazuki Crew. Drifting a notoriously difficult mid-engine MR2, with a personality big enough to hide the cracks underneath.
"They're going to burn this whole place down eventually. I'm just here to keep the engines running until they do."
Kei—20Y/O, 169cm