215. Need for speed

215. Need for speed

Once inside Tomoka walked towards a large metal door before turning around. With a face splitting grin Tomoka slammed her fist on the big red button by the wall. Instantly the thick metal door opened with a hiss revealing what lay beyond.

“This is the big room! It uses top of the line tech and seals to create a completely malleable environment.” What met everyone’s eyes was the sight of an enormous ten kilometer cubed room. Featureless white walls, floor and ceiling composed of hundred meters square panels.

“Right now it's in rest mode so no environment has been loaded into it. Let me give you an example of what it can do.” With that said Tomoka spent a few seconds interacting with her womp before the room started to change.

A moment later a perfect replica of Konoha could be seen by everyone present. Even more frightening was that they could see people walking around doing what the usual residents would do.

“The room is a kilometer cubed in real space. However using seals the internal space has been expanded by ten times. Everything you are seeing is a mixture of hard light constructs, genjutsu and nano constructors.” As Tomoka explained, she began walking inside. After walking up to the fake Konoha’s gate she tapped on her womp making the fake village disappear as the room went back to rest mode.

“With that said, let's have some fun with this.” Once again Tomoka tapped her womp a few times. What followed was the sight of a race track being made from thin air. Followed by a myriad of different cars appearing from thin air to either side of the girl. The race track looked like something taken out of track mania more wild maps. With loops, wall rides and much, much more.

“Choose a vehicle and go through the tutorial to learn how to drive it. We have the whole day to have fun. Oh, but before that, safety first.” After saying that, Tomoka once again worked on her womp until from the ground ten glass chambers rose with full body armors inside.

“These are armors made to both safeguard and enhance its wearer.” Inside the tubes armors resembling those from the halo franchise could be seen in different colors and shapes. With a smile Tomoka walked to the red one before placing her palm on a hand scanner. A moment later both the tube and armor opened up allowing her to settle herself inside with no trouble as the armor closed around her.

“As long as you wear one of these you are pretty much immune to anything below A-ranked jutsus, and even those will deal minimal damage.” Tomoka’s voice came out of the inbuilt speakers as she approached her car of choice. Call it cheating but her car had been personally designed by her with speed and only speed in mind. A scarlet red Lotus Evija looking beast. Aside from the usual fossil fuel engine, her version has a chakra reactor. Its top speed being a ridiculous five hundred kilometers per hour thanks to its gravitational engine preventing the car from lifting off the ground.

As Tomoka closed the door of the car a new track appeared in front of her, this being the tutorial track. Unlike the one they would be racing on later, this one didn’t have wall rides or any other game like segments. That didn’t matter to her however. With a massive grin on her face Tomoka put the pedal to the metal, feeling inertia pushing her against her car’s seat as she went from zero to a hundred in just a single second.

Seeing Tomoka race in the strange machine the others just shrugged their shoulders while walking towards the armors. Each one had their name at the top so there would be no confusion. Armored up and raring to go each one chose a car from the many that were laying around.

“Welcome Nozomi Uchiha, would you like to engage in the tutorial?” Once Nozomi sat in her chosen car, a black Rimac Nevera looking one, a voice sounded from within her helmet.

“Sure.” She didn’t feel all that interested though seeing Tomoka speed along the track did arouse a bit of her curiosity. Listening to the voice in her helmet she memorized the instructions. Though the automatic mode felt nice, something inside her made her go manual on her car as she aligned her car with the training track.

Once aligned her car windshield lit up with a display showing different information, from the state of the tires, engine to the most optimal path for maximum conservation of momentum. Right in the middle a countdown started from ten. With each passing moment her heart rate increased until it reached zero.

On instinct Nozomi slammed the accelerator to the max. Her pupils dilated as her sharingan took in the details of everything within the display as well as the track flying by her. As the first curve came into view she didn’t slow down but instead slammed the breaks as she spun the wheel. With the screech of tires against pavement her car smoothly glided through the curve while drifting.

“Oh hell yes!” Nozomi screamed atop of her lungs as she continued down the track forcing her car to go as hard and fast as the machine could, after all, her sharingan was working just as hard.

Meanwhile Hinata too finished her brief tutorial. Seeing both Tomoka and Nozomi speed down the track she became excited to join them. Once her countdown came to zero she too slammed the accelerator as her own dojutsu worked to aid her in working her car to the limits.

Soon enough a total of ten cars were racing on the training stage as everyone got used to driving. Some however, didn’t take to it as easily as the main trio. Karin, who had been here before, drove like crazy, barely avoiding the containment walls by a bald toad’s hair. Temari and Kankuro at the start went at it with far more respect and fear. Gaara who seemed almost uninterested at the start was now howling with joy as his voice overlapped with the tanuki. Finally Orochimaru was far more interested in the workings of the machine than the act of driving.

Once everyone finished their three training laps their cars came to the starting line of the true race track. Ten cars side by side engines roaring their challenge to each other. At that moment Tomoka connected the inbuilt communications systems of each suit so they could talk.

“Alright, the rules are simple. No jutsu or anything of the sort. That’s it, have fun! Hahahaha” With that the countdown started from three. What the others didn’t know was that this track was far crazier than what they might have thought. Sure, they could see the loops, wall rides, and more. What they didn’t realize was that...

As soon as the timer hit zero everyone hit the accelerator to the max. However, the lurch they felt from inertia was ten times stronger as the electromagnetic catapult built at the starting line lit up. Instantly ten cars accelerated to four hundred kilometers per hour as they shot out like bullets.

Tomoka decided to give herself a handicap to make things extra fun for herself. She wouldn’t be using any ability besides her driving skills to keep herself and her car going! Of course everything had been coded so it could be avoided with superb driving skills otherwise it would be no fun for non-shinobi.

Mayhem soon ensued as missiles and bullets began to rain on everyone. Karin, who was prepared for something like this, activated a series of seals she had placed on her personal car. Soon after a chakra barrier surrounded her car, tanking the attacks with ease despite the rather large chakra cost. Gaara covered his car in sand armor while Temari did a similar thing with wind.

Poor Kankuro didn’t have any such means for defense and found his car blowing up soon enough. Orochi for his part chose to use different jutsus depending on the situation, from mud walls to fireballs. Naruko covered her entire car in Kurama’s chakra as the fox was having one hell of a time. Satsuki, finding the situation to be rather bad for herself, could do nothing more than use her lightning release and fire release to defend herself as best she could.

Finally, Nozomi and Hinata were the ones having the easiest time as they abused their doujutsus. Nozomi covered her entire car in susanoo while Hinata used her own dojutsu to redirect the bullets and missiles away from her car.

The race continued and everyone aside from Kankuro began closing the gap. Since Tomoka had to constantly dodge the bullet rains and missiles, not to mention the mines her speed had gone down.

“Well, people, we are reaching the final stretch!” After the spaghetti there were some normal curves and straights which led up to the final segment of the race track. Once again everyone found themselves being pushed into their seats as a new set of magnetic accelerators propelled them forward.

“Prepare for the abyss! Hahaha!” This time Tomoka wasn’t the first one to enter the new segment as she had been overtaken by Nozomi though not by much. What Nozomi came to was a large fifty meters in diameter tube with no light inside aside from the one produced by her car and the myriad of weapons pointed towards her.

Instantly the tunnel was lit up by the mussel flashes of the many guns as well as the explosions from the missiles. To make matters worse, the cylinder's many segments would rotate in different directions. Some segments would have holes while others would have walls that people would need to avoid.

“I won’t lose so easily!” Shouted Tomoka after both Karin and Hinata had overtaken her. She still had an ace up her sleeve. flipping open a small transparent box attached to the side of her dashboard Tomoka slammed her hand on the bright red button with the word nitro written on it.

“Lets goooooo!” Instantly her car lurched forward as she accelerated past the usual maximum speed of her car. Small blue flames began spewing out of the exhaust pipe.

“See ya later suckas! hahah” It took but a moment for Tomoka to over take Hinata and Karin as she swerved and drifted avoiding the many dangers shot at her by the weapons inside the tunnel.

A moment later Tomoka’s car began closing in on Nozomi who could already see the light at the end of the tunnel. Both cars continued to race forward as they came out of the tunnel, Tomoka's car a bit behind yet catching up quickly. As the finish line grew close in the final straight both girls pushed their cars to the limit until they passed the line almost at the same time, the winner unknown.

Moments later the rest began crossing the finish line until finally the last car came to a stop. The track began disappearing as a screen appeared in front of them. Ten spots were on the screen as names began rolling in like the sight of a gambling machine.

The first name to be seen was that of Kankuro at the last place followed by Temari and Gaara. In seventh place was Orochimaru, followed by Naruko and Satsuki. In fourth place came Karin’s name who had lost to Hinata by mere milliseconds. Finally the second place name came into view.

“Ah fuck.” Tomoka Fushi had lost to Nozomi Uchiha by a single millisecond. She wasn’t really angry or disappointed about her loss. It's just that with this loss her clean streak of wins had finally been broken. That is what she gets for handicapping herself.

“Hehe, I won. What do I get as a reward~?” Seeing Nozomi’s cheeky grin, Tomoka and Hinata felt like having revenge on the girl.

“How about...” Tomoka started before turning towards Hinata while wiggling her eyebrows.

“You get our attention for the entire night tonight?” Hinata who caught on instantly to Tomoka’s idea continued.

“W-wait, we can talk about this!” Nozomi felt cold sweat on her back, she felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation. She could barely survive taking on Tomoka with the help of Hinata. Having both of them bullying her the entire night would be her end!

“Nope.” With that, Hinata heartlessly sealed Nozomi’s fate.