Gilded Ashes-Chapter 80: Fastest Choice

The vehicle level stretched long and wide – endless rows of machines parked on marked lanes, organized by type and size. Bikes lined the near wall, ranging from compact commuter frames to stripped-down racing chassis. Low-profile cars sat further back, their panels seamless. Compact drones occupied folding racks along the ceiling rails. The air smelled like clean metal, warm rubber, and ozone.

Hikari took one step inside and stopped.

"It’s bigger than my grocery list" Esen gasped, putting his hands on his head.

"It’s a whole city" Feris corrected, already craning toward the drone racks.

Alteea spread her arms. "Wheels, wings, and a few things that violate regulations in three districts from neoshima and most of the world. We start civil before we get creative." She looked at Hikari over the rim of her glasses. "Try to pretend you haven’t already picked."

Hikari didn’t pretend. She was already walking – fast. Past the commuter bikes, past the scout models, past the mid-range frames with their sensible fairings and visible safety features. She stopped at the far end of the row, where the overhead light caught a machine that looked nothing like the others.

Black. No chrome. The frame was a single continuous line from headstock to tail - no seams, no visible welds. The front fairing narrowed to a blade edge. The tail lifted in a clean upward sweep. A thin strip of light traced the rear - a swallowtail shape. The saddle was low, the pegs set way back. Everything about the geometry and the way it was built said forward. A stencil near the fork read: KESTREL-X.

Hikari stood in front of it.

"You’re not even going to look at the other options?" Arashi tried convince her.

"No" Hikari ended the conversation before it even started.

"Specs? You don’t even care about them?" Esen offered. "Range, torque, weather pack, suspension - "

"No" Hikari said again. Slightly softer, but her answer was still absolute.

Alteea brushed the seat with her knuckles. The console lit - muted white, no color display. "She’s hella fast. That’s the short version. But you’ll need proper training. I’m guessing you’ve never touched something at this level."

"She finished the course in the Rust Room" Raizen said without actually thinking about what he was saying. "That enough?"

Then he realized what he had just said and covered his mouth. The Rust Room is a secret, aside from him, Hikari, Arashi and Keahi, nobody should know about it. He just sounded like an idiot, probably.

Alteea’s eyes sharpened. "Rust Room?"

"How fast is it?" Arashi asked, throwing a short confused at Raizen. The look meant "What are you trying to do!?"

"Fastest machine we keep for Academy-level riders" Alteea said. "Not forgiving at all. She needs a steady spine and flawless inputs."

"Why X?" Lynea asked. "The other models have numbers - like the board with two hundred prototypes before it."

"Because it’s not a prototype" Alteea said. "It’s too much machine for most riders. The thing has no software, no safeties, no baby wheels to stop you from crashing. It’s just you and the engine. They built it once and it was either going to work or kill someone." She looked at Hikari. "This thing sings. Are you sure?"

"I can listen" Hikari nodded, eyes bright. She put her fingers on the handlebars. The display flashed on - a low, steady tone through the frame. She swung her leg over and sat. Her back straightened. Her shoulders settled. Her hands found the grips and her wrists angled down to the exact position the bike’s geometry demanded.

"Helmet" Alteea said.

A tech brought one. It didn’t look like any other helmet Raizen saw. It had special breathing funnels, the visor was wide, reaching her ears, and the overall shape looked sharp. Hikari pulled it on, locked the chin strap, and thumbed the starter before Alteea could say engine on. The Kestrel didn’t roar like any other normal bike. It produced a tight, contained sound - a vibration that traveled through the frame and into her hands, her thighs, her spine. Quiet. Focused. Built for the rider, not the audience.

Alteea turned around and shouted something about preparing some "lane three".

"Lane three" a tech called. "Lighting it up."

They took the Kestrel to a huge underground room with multiple tracks.

Blue dash-lights traced a path on a special track. The material was something that only looked like concrete, and Raizen asked himself if there were any foam safeties or some kind of safety system. Before he got an answer, Hikari eased the bike forward. No wobble. First meter slow, feeling the throttle response. Second meter faster - she opened it a fraction and the Kestrel answered instantly, no lag, the acceleration matching the input exactly, the bike’s humming sound waking up. Third meter, her posture changed: chin down, elbows in, weight centered. She’d found it - the position where the bike and her body wanted the same thing.

She took the first curve wide and smooth, leaning just enough to hold the line. On the return pass, she leaned harder. The Kestrel tracked through the turn without protest, the suspension absorbing the lateral load, the tires gripping clean.

"Good" Alteea raised her eyebrows.

"Do a wheelie!" Esen shouted.

"Don’t" three people answered at the same time.

Hikari didn’t hear him. She braked at the end of the track - smooth, progressive, no pitch - turned, and came back faster. On the second pass, she took the curve tighter. The rear tire slipped a millimeter and then caught. She corrected with her hips, not her hands. No panic, just pure focus.

On the third pass, she accidentally clipped a cone. It tapped the fairing and spun away. She flinched. Grimaced. Took the exact same difficult line again and missed it by ten centimeters.

She killed the engine at the start. She took off the helmet - hair creased, cheeks flushed.

"Not based on specs, huh?" Alteea said. "Not based on what it can do... You just picked it."

"Well... I like it" Hikari said with a low voice. She put her palm on the tank. "And I think it fits."

"That’s the only thing that matters on day one" Alteea said. "You can bore me with tire compounds later."

"Name her?" Esen asked, hope sparking in his eyes.

Hikari shook her head. "Nobody’s as obsessed with names as you are, Esen."

"What’s wrong with it!?" Esen protested. "I named my rings! Here, this is Bulbatron, this is Galaxy Destroyer, this one’s Bob, then there’s Son Of Thunder-"

Keahi huffed a laugh. "Tradition I can respect."

Raizen watched Hikari dismount. Her face was calm, certain, the quiet stubbornness locked into place. His hand went to his jacket pocket without thinking. The packet was still there. The brass stars inside it pressed against his fingers through the fabric. He pulled his hand back and put both in his pants pockets.

"We’ve indulged romance" Alteea said. She looked at Keahi. "Now we indulge arson."

Keahi’s mouth pulled tight. Not quite a smile. "I need a big room. A really big one" she made a really wide gesture.

"You’ll get the sky, dear." Alteea smiled.

She then led them back to the main vertical elevator – not the one that could traverse half of Neoshima in a few minutes. The cab dropped a few meters at once, making Lynea gasp, then the lift descended in a long, steady fall. H-4. H-7. H-12. The air cooled. Thinned. Took on a mineral edge - the smell of stone deep down and old infrastructure.

The doors opened onto something that stopped looking like a room and started looking like a cavern. The ceiling arched high overhead - structural metal ribs running the length of it, lights mounted along them at intervals. The floor was gray tile, broken by expansion seams. Old scorch marks had been buffed down to faint shadows. Along the far wall, massive ventilation grilles sat behind reinforced housings - military-scale heat extraction.

Raizen put his palm on the rail beside the door. The metal vibrated under his hand - the same deep hum he’d felt at the top of the Lighthouse. "There’s a vibration here" he told himself.

"Underworks are closer than you’d think down here" Alteea said, hearing him. "The dampeners in the walls are made to absorb most of the thermal spill, not vibrations. There’s a full underground city below, remember." Then she turned towards Keahi. "Try not to direct anything at the vents."

Saffi whispered "Heat sensors online" to Alteea. Raizen looked at her. She really didn’t talk much, and he couldn’t figure out if it was just the fact that she was shy, or spending so much time in Alteea’s company had some impact on her personality.

A red line lit up on the floor, between the tiles twenty meters out, marking the safe boundary.

"Whenever you’re ready" Alteea shouted, stepping back.

Keahi stepped to the mark. Rolled her shoulders once, and dropped into her stance - claymore in both hands, hips loose, weight low. Nothing showy.

The first flame slowly climbed the flat of her blade.

Not orange. Pink-hot - thin filaments that rose from the steel and wound up her forearms. They didn’t touch her skin. Didn’t burn her sleeves. They climbed through the air a centimeter above her arms, braiding together, thickening, brightening. She tilted her palms and the fire followed - gathering in front of her, drawing together into a denser mass.

It built. Filament by filament, the fire took shape. A head formed - angular, narrow. A body extended behind it, long and tapered. Wings emerged in segments, each one a series of heat-bright slivers fanning outward. The whole construct flickered and steadied, flickered and steadied - Keahi’s concentration holding it together against its own instability. A beak defined itself at the front: sharp, precise. The wings spread to full extension, each feather-width filament distinct and glowing.

Raizen’s eyes widened. He’d seen this before. Only in old mythology books. A phoenix. Five meters wingspan. Made entirely of compressed, shaped flame.

Keahi stepped onto it.

She stood on the construct’s back, between the wings, where the fire was densest. The flames held her weight - not solid, but resistant, pressing back against her boots with thermal force. The air around them rippled. The heat baffles along the walls activated with a deep sound.

Keahi bent her knees. The wings dropped once - a single, heavy downstroke - and the construct rose from the ground. Two meters. Three. The temperature hit their faces from twenty meters away - dry, intense, not painful but impossible to ignore. Keahi guided with her palms and shoulders, shifting her weight, and the phoenix banked left in a shallow curve. The air behind it shimmered - heat distortion hanging where the construct had been.

Arashi’s voice cracked. "That’s illegal."

"Not yet, but let’s see" Alteea said, watching. "Saffi?"

"Surface temperature below threshold. Containment at thirty-two percent. Wind shear acceptable."

Keahi let the phoenix climb. Higher. The flames along the left wing stuttered - a section of filaments losing cohesion, the shape blurring. One heartbeat where the whole construct threatened to come apart. Keahi’s jaw set. She didn’t reach with her hands. She shifted her torso - leaning into the unstable side, redistributing her weight and her will at the same time. The wing solidified, curve holding.

She wasn’t making it beautiful, even if it was. For now, she was just trying to make it work.

The heat baffles shifted to a lower tone as they worked harder. The phoenix produced a sound - not from flame, but from displaced air. A deep pressure that hit your chest. Not threatening, just massive.

Keahi pushed a faster descent. Too fast. The wing geometry shifted under the speed change - one wing kicked upwarc. She drifted toward the far wall, toward the old scorch marks from someone else’s mistake. Keahi swore - one word that made Arashi flinch - and clamped down. Every filament in the construct tightened at once. The wings leveled, and the descent stabilized.

She brought it down in a long, controlled arc. Easing the temperature gradually so the sensors won’t go crazy. The flames thinned - the construct’s solid shape reducing to visible structure, bright ribs of heat with gaps between them. Then she released it.

The wings collapsed completely. The flares snapped back toward the claymore, drawn in like thread winding onto a spool. The body dissolved - unwinding into open heat that blurred the air for a moment and then vanished. Keahi jumped the last meter, hit the tile in a crouch, and stood before anyone had time to react.

Silence.

"Oh damn. That was a lot" Esen said, quiet for once.

"It was... Just a start" Keahi said. "It’s still unstable"

Alteea held the silence one second longer than necessary. Not for drama. Because what she’d just watched deserved it. "I- I... Uh... I mean... It’s approved" she said. "But you’ll need a pass for extraction if you stall at height. And for the record - not many people can hold that construct on their first flight. At all."

Keahi’s expression was flat. "It’ll do."

"It’ll do beautifully" Arashi said. "And very illegally."

Saffi wrote on her slate: Keahi - Phoenix construct (field restricted). Her stylus paused. Then she started doodling a small flame in the margin.

Raizen was still at the rail. The metal under his hand had gone warm from the residual heat, and now it was cooling down - the vibration returning as the temperature dropped, the Underworks hum coming back through the floor.

Hikari stood beside him, helmet still tucked under her arm. Her eyes were bright. Not from the fire. From something quieter - the particular expression of a person who has watched someone do something extraordinary and is already wondering what they’ll do tomorrow.

Several floors above them, the Kestrel-X sat on its stand, already being fine-tuned by five mechanics.. Down here, the leftover heat was already fading into the tiles.

Alteea let out a breath. "Speed and fire" she said. "That’ll do for now."

She turned to the group, annd looked at them the way Kori sometimes did - measuring not what they could do, but what they might become.

"Two more to go"

On the lift back up, Hikari held the helmet close. Keahi opened and closed her hands, working the last heat out of her fingers. The cab rose and leveled.

The doors opened on a floor they’ve never visited before.