KON POV
Life is indeed unfair.
I find myself lamenting the fact that my demise came in such a pathetic manner.
Seven years of enduring poverty and struggling to earn more credits, only to meet my end at the jaws of an animatronic dog, all while it sang 'Happy Birthday.' Its terrifying face haunted children under the age of 10.
I can only imagine that Venti and Zack would mourn my passing, albeit after indulging in their fair share of laughter. Those assholes.
"Kon, Kon, Earth to Kon," Zack's voice pierced through my daze. I cracked open one eye and peered out from behind my shielding arms. I wasn't dead. Wait. When did Zack carry me under his arm?
"I'm alive," I managed to croak.
"Way to exaggerate, dude. I just covered you properly," Zack retorted.
During the brief moment of that dog’s pounce, Zack must have intercepted it with a kick. I glanced towards the wreck of a dog in the approaching distance. So far away. How strong did he kick it?
Such quick reflexes too. To transition from a standing stance to a kick that quickly, Zack must have trained a lot to achieve such a feat. I want to compliment him, but this position is a bit…
"Um, Zack? You can put me down now."
"You know, I didn’t think you would be this light."
"I-I am still growing!"
"Past sixteen? Too late for that, squirt. Haha."
"......"
When pointed out that way, it felt as though part of my soul was being chipped away. Sporting a height of 131 cm, memories of being mistaken for a kid while sitting in class resurface. I swear I have grown taller since then, but I’m still shedding manly tears remembering it.
“Just put me down….”
“Aww, don’t be mad.”
Zack tossed me gently to the ground. I executed a backflip, landing perfectly into a run, catching up with him to take the lead position again. I didn’t forget to flip a middle finger back at him.
Jokes aside, I miscalculated.
I had meticulously factored in my friends’ balance and direction during the run, envisioning how we could use the dead end to our advantage and buy us more time to devise another plan.
What I failed to anticipate were the unforeseen variables that could arise during and after the envisioned scenario. In essence, my information processing is still too rigid and slow.
By the time I finished crafting a scenario for my teammates, a wrench thrown out of nowhere could disrupt the entire plan, rendering all our prior preparations pointless. It’s akin to painstakingly building a rocket and waiting for the perfect weather to launch it, only for a dog to suddenly appear, start biting your ankles, and steal the rocket.
I looked up toward Venti, who was still darting from stacked cars to cars, occasionally casting a worried glance toward me. Ugh, this won’t do. I am supposed to be leading!
To operate on instinct, I needed to reverse my thinking process and go from top to bottom. I knew what needed to be done, but achieving the ‘Zone’ was still beyond my current capabilities because this was my first time running with this mindset.
Even though my friends might have an inkling of what I was trying to accomplish, I wasn’t sure if they could seamlessly follow my visualized path. Though we had been running together for a long time, we had never engaged in intense teamwork training to perfect our formation and synchronized movements.
Sigh, if only we had a Diva…
“Kon, the barking’s getting louder. What to do, what to do?” Zack said in a sing-song voice.
He enjoys pushing my buttons, doesn’t he… Fine. If playing by instinct is still out of reach for me, then there is only technically one thing left to do. Envision a play... and leave the rest up to luck. In other words, just scramble around until you can think of something.
“Venti, go further left!”
“Towards the maze!? Are you insane?” I hardened my hard-boiled face to the best I could towards Venti, hoping that he would trust me enough to follow through. “Guh! Fine, if you guys leave me to die, I will haunt you!”
“Don’t worry, I will make sure to bring some chihuahua to piss on your grave!” Zack answered.
“You are not helping.” I elbowed him.
Venti heads to the dreaded part of the junkyard, but not before expressing his discontent with a string of colorful expletives.
The pathways in the maze are narrow and difficult to traverse. Cornering is challenging when the roads are barely wide enough for a person to maneuver around. It’s tight, but I believe that out of the three of us, Venti had the highest chance to outrun the dogs in that kind of environment.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
The barking that had been approaching from the left moved along, chasing after Venti. Now, we only had to worry about the ambush from our right.
“What now, leader?” Zack questioned.
“We run. To the next junction. Fast.”
“Aye aye, captain~”
---
VENTI POV
I jumped off the cars and picked up speed to outrun the dogs. While the narrow maze of the junkyard seems like a tall order to navigate through, it’s not a big deal for me since cornering is the one thing I’m very good at.
I studied Taekwondo and other kicking arts extensively, so breaking and turning during a run is almost second nature to me. Kon must have considered it and decided to divide the number of dogs chasing us so we wouldn’t get surrounded.
Still, doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“Tch, pushing the hardest part on me.”
I hope Kon had a plan like always and not just sending me off as bait. Otherwise, Zack won’t stop harping about how the two of them managed to escape without me. Sometimes, I just want to punch the guy in the face if it makes him shut up.
Scratch that, I did it at least twice a day, and the guy still won’t stop yapping. He is a freaking menace.
Kon, on the other hand, is too nice of a kid. Sometimes, I wonder how we managed to pick him up and become friends. People called me and Zack the feared duo marauders. Zack more than me since his infamy started long before I joined him on whatever shenanigans he usually concocted.
We happened upon Kon when he was being bullied. After smacking around those idiots, Kon decided to stick with us despite knowing our reputation. I don’t know what Kon sees in a bunch of delinquents, but his desire for friendship seems genuine.
Strange as it sounds, I don’t ‘smell’ anything bad off of him. Although Kon can be a nerd at times, he is fun to hang around with.
If there is anything for me to consider about Kon, it’s what he kept from us all these years. I happened upon it recently by accident.
......
No, it’s none of my business. If anything, I am at fault for secretly poking my head into it.
I snapped out of my thoughts as the dogs were hot on my heels. I need to quicken my pace. Going to the observatory building from here would take longer than usual since I’m not taking the direct path.
Instead, I’m detouring from the left, so I had to spend more stamina trying to catch up to those two. Luckily, the AI mechanical dogs don’t have the same capability of turning and cornering as a real dog. Otherwise, my butt would have been made a chew toy right now.
The pathways get narrower the deeper I head into the maze.
Luckily, I only had to worry about the dogs behind me. I’d rather not be jump-scared by this abomination in tight corners. Maintaining running speed in these conditions is hard enough without adding a bunch of ambushes from my side. Kon knew this too; that’s why splitting is preferable.
Come to think of it, Kon is finally brave enough to take charge and order us around, huh? I smirked. His intimidating face still needs some work, but he finally grew a pair to take the lead at last. I had no doubt the reason was the match that we just watched.
That high-level battle. Compared to what we are doing right now, we are nothing more than a bunch of kids playing with wheeled shoes.
Even if we managed to buy ourselves a real SpeedGear, are those moves something that can be replicated? That bastard sis. I knew she was strong, but what in the world is that? She moves like a freaking superhero that we watched when we were kids.
The more I think about it, the more heated up I am.
That magician guy too. I have to surpass them if I want to reach the top. Thinking deeply has never been a thing for me, so just go and get stronger, simple as that.
First, to shake off these nuisances.
As the dogs are getting closer and closer, I amped up my core and tightened my leg muscles. I let it all explode at once, boosting me ahead of the chasing pack with a single dash.
As the space between corridors was getting shorter by the turn, I gauged the distance between one corner and the next and carefully timed my dash so that I could traverse them in two to three leaps.
Dash, decelerate, brake, turn, gauge, tighten, dash, repeat.
With each repetition, I could feel myself moving faster and faster in traversing these mazed corners until I was leaping through each of them in one go, alternating between my left and right foot for a pivot.
Left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right. I’m zigzagging through the maze, struggling to remember the correct path. Fortunately, Kon had drilled me on the answer when I was lost in it one time. Zack’s smug face motivated me like never before, and I spent three whole days memorizing it so that I could shove it in his face.
I managed to put some distance from the dogs, but unfortunately, I couldn’t shake them off completely. Instead, they seemed to be gaining on me little by little. Is it learning from me? A freaking learning robot? Damn that crazy old man. What the heck sort of processing unit did he put on these dogs?
My stamina will take a toll, but I cranked up my muscles a notch and maintained a good distance from the dogs. I can only hope there will be an elevation I can jump onto soon. It’s better to get trapped and wait until Gramps turns them off rather than spend the night being chewed apart while listening to nursery rhymes.
The walls are getting steeper, and the corners are getting tighter. The width of the path becomes narrower to the point that it can barely fit three people in there. I heightened my concentration, knowing that I had less room for error in my estimation.
Regardless of how much I wanted to go faster, I needed to be more efficient and precise with my movements lest I crash into the wall. It’s frustrating that I can’t just simply brute force it. At this rate, those AI learning dogs are going to catch up to me.
And then it happened. I can hear two people running from my right, followed by another nursery rhyme and a bunch of barking. Why are they coming here? We are going to intersect at the next cross-junction!
There are only steep walls around me, and I can’t slow down, let alone turn back.
We are going to crash!
“NOW!” screamed Kon. Our eyes met as both Kon and Zack jumped above my head, narrowly avoiding crashing into me. I ducked my head as Zack’s shoes lightly scraped against the back of my head. It wasn’t intentional, was it?
CRA-BANG! CRACK! CRASH!
I transitioned into a safety roll as I stopped and looked back at what had transpired behind me.
All six dogs that were racing with unbridled enthusiasm to bite our behind had collided into a chaotic symphony of metal shards, barks, and nursery rhymes. One of them crashed so hard it flung right next to me and stopped moving.
Some lost their mechanical limbs, others had their heads and eyes popped out, and yet they all struggled to get back up and crawl to us while singing distorted nursery rhymes. This horrific sight is somehow scarier than that one zombie movie scene.
I glanced at my side to find Kon sitting on the ground inching back, struggling not to piss his pants.
“Snap out of it, guys! Venti, come here!”
Zack picked Kon up and beckoned me to start running. You don’t need to tell me twice. Some of the dogs got back up and chased us. But none had the capabilities to keep up with us after the damage they sustained. Should we count ourselves lucky?
I stared at Kon, who was being carried like a sack of potatoes, struggling to get off. Zack was just laughing like usual, but I focused more on Kon and narrowed my eyes.
It’s not luck.