The time was 9.40 PM. The sun had set two hours ago and by now the sky was black, cloudless, thinly starred. Mateo sat on his bike down an alley in the Gwae Sleek District, his helmet in his hands, listening to the radio. The sound of hazy funk and soul floated up from the bike radio. It was a dead end alley full of trashcans, with fire escapes up the buildings, the windows shut tight against the smell of the cans. Mateo flipped open a small bottle of peach lotion, squeezed off a pea sized blob, and massaged it under his nostrils before passing the bottle back to Underarms.

“Thanks.”

He looked at the back of his hand. Scrawled in black marker was the number 1. For as long as he could remember, it had been the number 3. Prince took point, Underarms supported him, and Smoke was backup. That’s how they’d run it, since Prince had pulled them all together when they were 15. He lowered his hand and glanced around. Underams was watching him.

“Looks odd,” said Mateo.

“Yeah,” said Underarms. “Looks fucking strange.” He shook his head, looked at the 2 on the back of his own hand. “Might as well get this tattooed.” Mateo chuckled.

“Smoke?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about throwing it in?” Underarms looked straight ahead, his face blank.

“What?”

“The towel. Figuratively speaking.”

Mateo shot his friend a look.

“No.” He said. He looked up at the cloudless sky, thinking. “What else would I do?”

Underarms snorted. “Anything. We’re only gunna get older.”

“You were born old, Arms.”

“Sure. I want to go to school. I want a family one day.”

Mateo took his helmet and rested it on the handlebars, linking his hands over it, leaning forward and resting his chin on the back of his hands. One of his fingers was sore, he’d noticed. He tried to remember injuring it, but couldn’t think of anything. More gaps in his memory.

Underarms always got kind of existential before a job. That was how the nerves came out of him. They both faced out of the alley, watching the headlights of the cars zip by in an endless chain, like some kind of heavenly serpent. Both wore their jackets, patched on the back with a pair of angular eyes and sharp eyebrows, beneath a crown of fire. Mateo’s said ‘Smoke’, Underarms’s said ‘Under Arms’. With no streetlights, Gwae was poorly lit. You couldn’t see much, just the ashen bricks of the buildings and the lights of the vehicles. That was the point.

“Fuck school,” said Smoke. “I don’t want a family. You miss him that bad? We don’t need him, we can do it.”

Underarms didn’t reply. For a while, Mateo thought he wouldn’t. Then he spoke.

“I miss him pretty bad. He had it all figured out.”

“So he said. He never figured we’d stop riding.”

“Sure.” Underarms took out a hip flask and swigged, passing it to Mateo. “I don’t have his ambition.”

“No one has his ambition. And despite his talk, Prince loved to ride. That’s why you get all your thoughts, Arms. Everyone in the chapter is addicted to the ride, even Thrift. Everyone apart from you.”

Underarms didn’t respond. Then he jerked his chin, sliding the hip flask into the pocket of his jacket and pulling his gloves out. Underarms gloves were knuckled in sharp iron, with a hole for the pore in his palm.

“Green,” said Underarms. The pair shoved on their helmets. Mateo kicked fire into the bike mount, jumping forward and pushing in the pin on the clock by the gauge with a click. Underarms followed, a space behind him. They flashed out of the alley, turning smooth and silent so as to stay under the radar, and right away he saw the plates. He looked up to see what car they’d be jacking.

“Uh oh,” said the voice, sneering. “You’re in trouble.”

The car was a Tripple Black Penzo: a sleek, muscular, deluxe set of wheels that only Holders could afford and which the Executive Branch particularly favoured. Mateo mouthed the word fuck, then shook his head. He glanced to his left, at Underams. They were six or seven cars behind the Penzo. He gestured and they dropped back three more. Whoever was driving the Penzo would have good eyes and be on the lookout, particularly for F-bikes. He gestured in hand language at Underarms.

“Still running it?”

The other biker jerked his hand in assent.

This far back the boys would be invisible in the gloom of the Gwae. As it passed, Thrift will have shot the ass of the car with his radio gun and sprayed it with whatever chemicals he mixed up in it. Mateo shoved down his visor and the world was tinged orange. On the back of the Penzo, a green splotch of radioactive material became visible. Up ahead, the radioactive material on the back of the jackets of the other bikers became visible. On each was the burning crown, the cunning, devilish eyes, and their symbol. He could see the gray monk’s moustache and the bulging belly that meant Wisely and Paunch were in position, leading the Penzo by ten or so cars. He shook his head. Wisely should be in fifth, behind him, rather than up ahead in third. If he slipped redirecting a car like a Penzo it would drive right over his bike and his body and they’d never catch it. He shook his head again. Paunch would handle it. He glanced behind him. The wagging finger, No No, and Thrift’s cracked coin floated in and out of view as they wove between cars.

He checked the dashboard clock. 30 seconds. He signalled Underarms.

“Does Thrift know it’s a Penzo?”

“Yes. Definitive. Get ready”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He heard a bang, then a screech. Up ahead, the Penzo was slowing down, curving right. In front of it Paunch, huge on his nimble F-bike, fed the breaks. He squeezed in close and jammed another ignition tube under the wheel of the car. Explosives in the front third of the tube detonated as the wheel squashed it into the road and compressed the explosive material. He followed this up with a sweep of fire from his palm over the windshield of the car, and Wisely threw a handful of small grape charges against the left flank of the car, detonating them with a bolt of tight fire, kicked from this heel. Wisely might be a bit slippy on the bike, but he spat fire better than anyone in the chapter.

The Penzo turned right, down the street they had selected. The signage Glow and Dove laid here earlier, which explained that the street had been shut due to a potential Lumin incursion, meant cars had been dodging it for the last five minutes. It was enough. The road was empty. Mateo could tangibly feel the alarm of the Penzo as it saw this and realised it was being led. It hit the gas, combustion engine jumping to life, pistons flying. The Penzo shot forward like a cat from a bath.

Mateo chuckled. Distantly, he could hear the voices delirious cackling. The pain in his finger faded. If there’s one thing he always found funny, it was the speeds combustion drivers thought of as ‘fast’.

Frankly, it was insulting.

Fire fled his heels. He could feel the heat of the bike as the coils absorbed it, could feel it warming his body though the seat of the bike, that tell tale shudder as the coils expanded ever so slightly and started to thrum. Beneath the vizor, a grin spread over his face. The Dayzl Smoke Chuffer danced forward. He tickled the breaks and the bike curled around the turn of the alley like it was on train tracks. More fire for the machine and the street spread to a blur, and then he was behind the Penzo. Then he was with it, left side.

He took out the hammer from its holster and struck the rear window, the one which Wisely had softened with grape charges. It cracked further. Tough glass. He pulled forward and danced over the front of the Penzo, forcing it to slow and swerve. Underarms took his place, jamming a thin-line crowbar in the gap where the window slid into the door. He hit the breaks and disappeared, and Paunch replaced him with a hammer in his hand. He smacked the crowbar and it dug deeper into the door of the Penzo. He dropped the hammer. Then, daintily, as Paunch always rode, he hooked his arm into the V of the crowbar, and let his bike drift to the left, cambering. The window cracked further and, just before he spilled, he let go of the crowbar. One more hit. Mateo dropped back, pulled his hammer from its holster, and smacked the window as hard as he could. It shattered in a single sliver, roughly the width of his hand.

From this jagged gap escaped a mechanical tentacle of ringed rubber and steel, tipped with metal jaws. It darted towards Mateo through the air, moving with the distinct intelligence of a snake. The tentacle wrapped around Mateo’s arm and pinned him to the car. His front wheel skidded on the pavement, turning to the side, nearly slipping. He grabbed the handlebars and forced it into a straight line, feeding fire into the bike to keep it in line with the car. A jet of fire escaped his hand, splashing harmlessly against his leathers and bike, and against the black flank of the Penzo. Panic bashed dimly against the zen of the ride. His arm started to ache, somewhere deep in the bones, as the tentacle tightened. The jaws snapped open and shut. It was looking for something to bite.

“VADU!” Mateo screamed over his shoulder. At the same instant, Wisely appeared beside him, jumping into existence from up ahead as he braked heavy.

“DUCK.” He screamed. Mateo tucked his head to the left and raised his right shoulder, cowering away from the window as Wisely threw his three remaining grape charges, followed by a handful of fire. The charges detonated and the remaining glass shattered into pebbles, draining down the window and tinkling against the metal door. There it was, in the empty window. The bug like, goggled mask of a vadu, hidden within the shell of its beloved maicha.

Those who sing to fire, burn. They are passionate, quick to anger, addicts and thrill seekers. They are vulnerable to impulsive mistakes. Their song is of minimal utility, and so they are trodden on. Those who sing to the wind pass above it all, see the city from above as the stinking sprawl it is, follow high ideals like justice, peace, or simply their own private narcissism. Those who sing to the earth pin us to it. They bolster the buildings against the titanic bickering of the Mantled, and sing always to the sand bellow so that the city does not sag into dereliction. They rest in their temples, emitting their song at all times, and by all are loved and respected.

It is said that once, long ago, those who sang to water were a peaceful, beautiful, nature loving people. That they joined often in passionate union with the rhata, were artists and thinkers, fairies. It is said they knew the ways of the heart and of the deeper mind, and were the most human of us all. It is said they knew how to grow things.

But the new world had no use for fairies. With the invention of hydraulics the vadu were repurposed, corrupted. Now they hide behind their maicha and serve.

The vadu in the car extended a second tentacle from its suit, adjusting the focus on its lenses to align with its own private analysis. Wisely bathed it in fire from his palm and the tentacle jerked back. The one around Mateo’s arm slackened slightly, and he gasped as blood flowed back into it. A tentacle darted forward, aiming for his throat. Now it was Underarms who appeared, a baseball bat in his hand, slapping the tentacle away. He dropped back, darted forward, struck the tentacle around Mateo’s arm.

This had no visible effect.

Wisely sent fire over Mateo’s back. Again the vadu was bathed. There was a moment of peace, as the thin fire was like a barrier between them. It faded to show the goggles spinning in their sockets. They twirled with a click, snapping into alignment. A shiver went through the tentacles. One darted out and grabbed the baseball bat, crushing it and wrenching it out of Underams’ hand. He jerked forward, nearly off his bike.

Mateo glanced ahead. They had another two minutes to finish the job before they got to the junction. They would have to go for plan B. Hopefully Underarms would understand and tell the others.

“Need an icepick!” Wisely screamed.

Underarms disappeared. The tentacle around Mateo’s arm loosened its front third, such that he was only bound by a single coil. Now, the limber appendage had space to behave. It darted for his helmet and he ducked to the side, heard it snap together just behind his head. Wisely sent fire again, but it had no effect. Likely the maicha had a set of lenses to see through fire, and of course its suit would be totally flame retardant.

“What about the paint?” Mateo screamed at Wisely. “Do you have it?”

As he spoke, he jerked his head back and forth to avoid the tentacle, constantly dodging. His arm ached where it was clamped, and tired where it continued to force the handlebars into position.

“NO.” Wisely called back. “FUCK.”

“I have paint.” The voice was serene. It floated up from behind him.

Mateo glanced over his shoulder, still dodging. Paunch sat on his thin, nimble F-bike, not wearing a helmet, his broad, gap toothed face open in a calm smile. He looked more like he was sat in the carriage of a train on his way to a scenic day out than flying forward at a hundred klicks on a fire bike during a car jacking. Totally at ease, totally serene. A single finger kept the handlebars straight. In his other hand was a can of spray paint. Mateo shook himself, ducking down as the pincers glanced off his helmet and propelled it down against the handlebars, briefly stunning him. A shudder passed through the tentacle. It grabbed the right side handlebar and started to turn the bike to the left.

“I’ve got no FUCKING hands!” Mateo called over his shoulder.

“Very well.”

Now Paunch was at his side, riding directly next to him. He reached over, extended his arm into the window, and sprayed the can of paint over the goggles of the vadu. They misted over with thick, white spray paint, dribbling down. He felt the pressure on his arm and on the bike increase. He was in an arm wrestle with a machine. It was a wonder he hadn’t lost yet: maicha are far stronger than men.

“See,” said the voice, faintly in the back of his head. “You’re stronger.”

All of a sudden, the tentacle unwrapped from his arm, darted to the side, and like a predator the jaws of the tentacle lunged. The teeth of the clamp sunk into Paunch’s forearm.