Chapter 10: Girl, Enters a Dead Heat
“OUTTA my way!”
“Whoa!”
Nichika followed the contestants who took off immediately, but someone suddenly rammed into her from behind, nearly knocking her off the broom. Looking up, the beautiful woman in the blue dress was flying away laughing at her. Wind mana flocked to her beauty, giving her an extra boost to the front of the race.
“Grrr!” Rightfully angered, Nichika burst through the gate and held her right hand out in front of her. “O wind mana, lend me your strength!”
Glowing butterflies fluttered over and became one with her broom in a flash of green light. Given an instant boost, Nichika overtook the middle group and trailed right behind the riders in the lead.
“Alrighty, they’re almost upon the first checkpoint, Spectacles Bridge!”
Listening to the live commentary got Nichika to look down at the bridge built over the waterway running through the village a slight distance ahead. A thin green light was stretched under the overhead structure shaped like a pair of spectacles. She flew on the tail feathers of the pacesetters who shot through the checkpoint without slowing down. A ping sounded from her wristband when she passed under the bridge. The orb furthest to the left lit up.
“So this is how you pass through the checkpoints,” she noted out loud as she orbited over the village. The route was marked by green lights that made it easy for her to find her way around without following the others. She hurtled through the next wall of light stretched across the sky, lighting her second wrist orb.
All of a sudden the man and woman flying right in front of her started quarreling. Not wanting to get pulled into it, she kept her distance by a few feet. Still close enough for her to see their good-looking faces twist and distort as they cussed each other out.
“Stop getting in my way, ugly hag!”
“I dare you to say that again, swine! It’s a joke having to fly behind a filthy pig in human clothing!”
Simply sweeping her eyes over the nearby sky revealed they weren’t the only ones arguing. Everyone at the head of the race was flying while badmouthing each other. They were all so good looking that Nichika was extremely disappointed to see their ugly side on full display like this.
What’s wrong with them? They’re not acting beautiful or graceful at all.
The wind mana felt the same way. Green light sputtered from their brooms and they lost all speed. The arguing contestants’ brooms slowly dipped toward the earth.
“Blast it all! It’s all your damn fault!”
“What the spirits’ blight is going on here?! This isn’t how things work!”
The louder they fought the more wind mana scampered away. Five of the contestants plummeted into the waterway.
“Oooh, this is a bolt out of the blue!” the commentator bellowed at the critical moment. “Our top favorites for winning today’s race have quite literally dropped out!”
The turbulent shift in contestants had the crowd on the edge of their seats. Now was her chance. Nichika psyched herself up and moved to take the top spot. But before she could, a windblast smacked her from behind, knocking her forward on the broom. She managed to maintain her balance with an eagle’s grip on the broomstick and scoot back into position.
Catching her breath, she looked over her shoulder at a girl around the same age as her with hair tied in screwdriver pigtails by a gaudy hairpiece, hot on her tail. The girl’s sexy dress was practically sliding off her petite figure. She summoned another gust of wind to knock Nichika off. Nichika angled her broomstick diagonally down to escape the burst.
“Hey! Isn’t attacking each other taboo?!” Nichika shouted against the wind.
“Don’t be foolish! That was just an accident. You do know what an accident is, don’t you?”
She doesn’t have to cheat. With her pretty face, she’s got more than an advantage over me.
“It’s not fair!” both girls yelled at the same time.
“Don’t cheat when you’re so much prettier than me!”
“How dare you wear cuter clothes than me!”
Nichika’s speed dropped significantly when she screamed back at the blonde beauty. Snapping back to her senses, Nichika stomped out her unshakeable desire to argue and forced her broom in a different direction.
“Come back here! I’m not done talking to you!”
She flew headlong into the residential district without looking back at the hollering girl. Nichika was so deeply embroiled in battle with the nasty emotions bubbling inside her that she didn’t hear the audience’s cheers.
This isn’t right. How could I be blinded with jealousy—wait, this is ‘jealousy?’
Hoping her hunch was wrong, she strained her eyes. Shockingly, a thin purple haze had managed to coil around her without her notice. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Why, a layer of haze so thin it was almost unnoticeable hung over the entire village.
“No way! When did this happen?!”
With one hand firmly planted on her broom, she peeled off the haze clinging to her and regained a modicum of calm. No doubt about it: this mysterious purple haze was a trap set by Phantom. Getting another bad premonition, she flew over the crowds and observed them from the air. Her premonition was right on the money—fights were breaking out all over the village. The jealousy existing in the darkest reaches of the heart had become the dominating emotion for everyone present.
“Uggh, if only I was beautiful enough to enter this race, I could’ve won…”
“You always piss me off! You act all high and mighty just because you have a little more money than me!”
“The married couple next door always has so much fun. Compared to them, my husband is a real lout!”
Nichika searched for the magic crystal while she kicked the checkpoint light stretched between the four-story house walls. The source drawing out these negative emotions had to be somewhere.
“The race has reached the halfway point, but… please listen to my complaints!” The announcer abusing the microphone to morosely spill his dissatisfaction proved just how bad things were getting. “Last month my childhood friend got married… His wife is damn beautiful, I tell you… Dammit… I want to get married, too!”
No one was listening to the announcer anymore. Fistfights were breaking out throughout the village, and brawls were going down in the streets.
“What in the world is going on?!”
Baffled as she was, Nichika couldn’t stop the race. She ran her hand over the checkpoint a few inches off the ground and passed through another point under the banner in the shopping district. Returning to the residential area again, Nichika spotted a black shadow on the roof ahead of her.
She called out to that person for help. “Oswald!”
Her master tossed a small bag up to her as she flew past him. She caught it midair and continued flying on to the next checkpoint as she checked its contents. A hairclip she’d used before was inside.
“This is the one from that time…!” Nichika quickly clipped it into her hair.
“That narcissist!” an unhappy voice echoed in her head with some static noise. “His whole, ‘As long as I’m in this village I won’t allow such ugliness to be brought in!’ was a load of crap! All hell is breaking loose down here.”
“This is so cool! Could we always use this hairclip to communicate?”
“I improved it last night in a bout of drunken genius. I based it on that wind communicator. And sure enough, it’s letting us make use of wind magic even during the race as I’d hoped.”
I seriously wish you wouldn’t invent things like this while drunk! Nichika drove away the envy welling up in her over her own crummy witch inventions.
“Anyways, we’ve got bigger problems!” she shouted while keeping her speed up. “There’s a magic crystal hidden somewhere in this village!”
“I figured as much. There’s no other explanation for this mayhem.”
Nichika kicked out both legs to hit the two checkpoints set up on opposite walls. The seventh orb on her wristband lit up.
“Can’t you see anything from above?” Oswald asked.
“It’s not as easy as you think…”
Nichika purposely flew off course to get a better view from above. She gasped—a wind orb attached to the top of the clock tower in the center of the village was coruscating purple.
“I found it?! Hang on, that’s the goal!”
Of all the places, Phantom had to place it there?
“Take another look inside the bag. There’s something else in there for you,” Oswald instructed, his calm matching his apprentice’s terror.
“There is?”
She hastily fished around inside it until she pulled out a black tube. It was the booster Oswald suggested she attach to her broom yesterday.
“I closed off the vent to block the propulsion energy,” Oswald explained before she could yell at him. And then he dropped the most absurd thing on her yet, “Pulling the red lever should make it explode in exactly a minute.”
“E-Explooooooode?!”
The tube slipped from her sweaty hand and she fumbled to catch it. Descending, she passed through the eighth checkpoint.
“You’re done with that orb once you touch it. Blow it to bits!” her master instructed, a sharp edge to his voice.
“Okay!”
This was the one time where she knew she wasn’t in a position to argue with him. I have to reach the wind orb first before I or anyone else gets caught up in this terrorist act—er, in the blast!
Faster! Carry me faster!
In answer to her silent prayers, vivid cobalt green consumed her eyes, and her broom blasted off. She zoomed past the two fighting contestants in the lead so fast they fell off their brooms, and plunged through the ninth checkpoint.
“Oooh?! Someone is finally at the goal! Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to miss this!” the announcer bellowed, brought back to the moment by how close the race was to a close.
The villagers stopped cursing each other out and looked up at the sky. A girl trailing a cloud of green light rocketed over their heads. Excited cheers slightly pushed back the purple aura.
All that’s left is to get to the top! To the clock tower’s spire!
Nichika arrived at the bottom of the tall clock tower and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Everyone, get awaaaaaaaaaaaay!”
She summoned a windblast and blew away everyone around the goal.
That takes care of that!
Nichika confirmed everyone’s safety at the last minute and pulled the bomb lever. Then she made her steep ascent up the clock tower, skimming her broom within inches of the wall.
Just a little further. Little further…
The orb creating the vortex of green and purple was in sight. She reached out her right hand to touch it—
“Wha?”
Her broom suddenly stalled a hand away from the orb. She looked down just as her broomstick crumbled under her.
“N-No way! Why?!”
The girl thrown into the distant sky without a ride was freefalling with the bomb that had begun its countdown.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”