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Episode 1, Part C

Linx Kytone flopped back on the bed. "Whuff! Damn, that was fun!" the black-furred feline giggled, the electric-blue circuits under her fur dimming as she came down from her orgasm.

Below her, the lean, well-muscled reptoid she'd picked up earlier that morning (what was his name again? Zap? Flash? Something cute like that...) just gasped, his shiny metal limbs and spine whirring as his cyberized body tried to get back to something resembling normal status. "You ... can say ... that again!" he panted.

After a few seconds, Linx's field of view flashed with a message, indicating that her metabolism was back to normal. Sighing contentedly, she jumped nimbly off her space-foam mattress pad, the reptoid boy's now flaccid penis exiting her vagina with an audible pop! Like any cat, Linx landed on her digitigrade feet, then padded over to the closet. Sensing her approach, the door slid upward, revealing a wardrobe composed mostly of black vinyl and latex outfits, some with metal studs and decorations, others with blue designs that complemented her own body coloration. After a moment's thought, she pulled out a pair of tight black vinyl pants with a pair of blue stripes running down each leg. After sliding them over her long, multijointed legs, she pulled out a black, backless tube-top featuring an electric blue feline face, tribal style, with the words "Good Kitty" printed underneath. To complete the outfit, she donned a long-sleeved black vinyl top with silver metal plates on the shoulders and sleeves, riveted into the material like armor.

Meanwhile, Zap-Flash-Whatever sat up groggily. "Unh, what time is it?"

"Eight-thirty-seven and twenty seconds. I gotta head down to the track," she replied. She didn't need to consult external timepieces for that number; the time of day was one of the things Linx usually kept displayed in her field of view, along with her heart rate, energy levels (organic and electrical), CPU usage, and a list of the ten most recent Voxmail messages in her inbox. Usually, she also had a 360-degree radar map of the area around her, but of course, the only thing it would show right now was an image of Linx's one-room apartment: her bed (currently occupied), her desk, the little NutriFab food replicator in the corner, and the balcony outside.

Taking a moment, Linx walked out to the railing and surveyed her domain. The planet Teknos was originally a Terran colony, founded by a small joint-stock company who had intended to transform the once barren, airless world into a technological utopia. Of course, no place is ever perfect, but the colonists managed to make their world habitable, with a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and a sprawling planetwide cityscape that, by 2311, was home to over fifteen billion beings of various species, most with a higher quality of life than some worlds with smaller populations. Part of the planet's prosperity came from the fact that many galactic tech firms and development labs used Teknos as their headquarters, providing employment for the people and paying the planet's government a portion of their profits in exchange for office and laboratory space.

Linx gazed out over the cityscape, admiring the shimmering milespires of metal and glass, the layers of buildings and roads, some suspended over each other by thick columns or antigravs. Nestled among the industrial sprawl, she knew, Teknos boasted a number of GRXL tracks, with the main League stadium located in the planet's capital sector, Gold One.

Today, she would finally make it there.

Today, Linx Kytone would win the Teknos Regional Championship.

"Don't wait up for me, big boy," she called. Blowing a kiss, Linx winked at the thunderstruck boy on her bed, then strolled out the door.

-

Kaje looked around the stadium. He often forgot just what it was like to sit in the midst of thousands of screaming fans, some holding banners, some wearing ridiculous bodypaint, some even going so far as to take a temporary nanite treatment to turn themselves wild colors or patterns.

Frankly, he would have preferred to be down on the track, facing killer g-forces and murderous opponents, to having his sensitive ears assaulted by the cheers of the crowd. And to think, the race hasn't even begun yet. Dios help me when they really start making noise ....

Beside him, Anjie tapped his shoulder. Not wanting her famous face to draw attention at a well-covered sporting event, she had used a designer treatment to change her appearance for the day. Instead of her angelic, mostly-human form, Anjie's entire body was currently covered in gold and flame-red feathers, a feathered tail folded up behind her on her seat, a long yellow beak where her mouth and nose usually were. She looked like a humanoid phoenix, clad in a shimmering golden dress, red-and-gold wings folded behind her. "Look down there in the blocks. See that black one, with the blue stripes? That's hers."

Kaje nodded, scratching absently at his own altered fur. Like Anjie, he hated having reporters in his face, but the tiger-morph always felt as though his skin was itching when he changed his fur coloration. At the moment, all the fur on his body, save for a white patch that ran down his chest, belly and groin, was jet black, with jagged white stripes on his back and limbs. He was wearing his usual black leather jacket and jeans, with a pair of shades over his temporarily blue eyes. As Anjie pointed, Kaje used the lenses to zoom in on the racer she'd indicated.

"Stripes" wasn't quite the word for the electric-blue designs all over the black vehicle; they looked more like circuit diagrams, and in Kaje's magnified vision, they pulsed with some kind of internal illumination, as though charged with flowing electrical current. The racer was within GRXL specs - barely - but as Kaje looked closely at it, he realized that each wheel was separate from the body of the car, some sort of miniaturized motor in each hub, joined to the frame only through a rotating joint above them. Where's the suspension? Kaje wondered. He also realized that, while the car's cockpit was currently open - a pod design very much like Kaje's own, with a padded seat and body-rest that allowed the driver to pilot it in a prone position, bullet-bike style - the curved windscreen that hinged up over it was made of the same black composite as the rest of the body. How's the driver supposed to see from in there? Who in the Pit built that thing!?

"Look! There she is!"

Kaje's view blurred as he turned his head, then the optics refocused on the figure Anjie was pointing to: a black feline-morph, her fur broken up by shining cybernetic components that rose above her skin, which featured pulsing lines of electric-blue light. As she turned, Kaje noticed that the glowing lines seemed to radiate from two rows of six cybernetic jacks that ran parallel to her spine. Obviously, this was the vehicle's driver, easily identified by the fact that her own appearance matched her racer's.

"I'll admit that your candidate is certainly color-coordinated," a female voice commented crossly from beside Anjie, "but a sense of style does not necessarily equate to capability." Prest shifted uncomfortably in her seat; while she had managed to obtain a lower-body rest designed for taurs, she suspected that it had been designed by bipeds; the rows of teats on her lower torso felt as though they were being squeezed flat. "Just how did you learn about this pilot again?"

"Her name's Linx Kytone. She's been driving in the Teknos Regional League for just three years, but she's placed in the top ten every time. Last year, she placed second in the championship, and there's a lot of talk that she might win it today."

"Hmph! Even if she wins today, this is no proof that she's qualified to race in the Galactic League. It's like pulling a schoolchild from the playground and expecting them to compete against professionals. How do you expect this ... child to take the place of a Hall of Fame driver such as yourself? The quality of the team will be diminished, and our sponsors at R-Tek will have my head for letting you talk me into recruiting her."

Anjie only smiled, the corners of her beak somehow managing to express a sly grin. "Just watch," she said. "I think you'll be surprised with this one...."

-

As she walked up to her racer, Linx glanced around. The other pilots all stood around, fastening on helmets and HUD visors, making last-minute checks, waving to fans. She looked up into the stands, and noticed several clumps of spectators decked out in black and blue stripes, signs with her face and encouraging messages like "Go Get 'Em, Linx!" The cyber-feline gave a big grin and waved at her fans; the cheering of the crowd rose a notch. Linx knew she was one of the most popular racers on Teknos; everyone loves an underdog, and the fact that she'd managed to make it to the planetary championship in only her third year, with no corporate sponsor and no teammate, only made her more appealing.

Waving and throwing kisses to her screaming admirers, Linx put her leg into the cockpit and started mounting up. As she got in, she noticed one of the other pilots, Charger Wattsen, gazing appreciatively at her legs. Linx gave him a wink. She and Charger had had sex on quite a few occasions - almost as often as she had left him smashed and blasted on the side of the track. Maybe after, she mouthed (noting the delighted expression on the young man's face), then climbed in and sealed the cockpit over herself.

For a moment, the space inside was completely dark, lit only by the blue glow of Linx's own techno-organic circuitry. Then came the whirr of servos as two rows of cybernetic connector plugs extended from the top of the pod. Linx gasped as she felt the plugs enter the jacks on either side of her spine, then lock themselves into her with an audible click. She shivered as data flooded her systems. Suddenly, she saw the world around her through a dozen different eyes, not just in front, but on all sides, above, below, even behind herself. She felt her composite-shelled hyperalloy chassis shiver at the sensation of contact. With her central nervous system linked directly with her racer's onboard computer, Linx and the vehicle became a single entity. She was the CyberLinx.

A voice came over the stadium's loudspeakers. "Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!" CyberLinx activated her Q-cell, feeling its power coursing through her. Both her techno-organic Linx component and her larger racing body purred with pleasure. This was why she had learned to always satisfy her driver component's sex drive before a race; the stimulation of the racer's myriad sensors was like a constant orgasm, a cybernetic power trip.

"Ten ... nine ... eight ..."

CyberLinx willed herself to focus, feeling her systems' status. Her main engine was functioning normally, all capacitors charged, her wheel motors fresh and ready to go.

"Seven ... six ..."

No anomalies in any system. All checks complete. Installing updates....

"Five ... four ..."

Track layout loaded, course analysis complete. Weapons ready, safeties off.

"Three ... two ... one.

"GO!!!"

CyberLinx's quantum purr became a leonine roar as she charged ahead, moving among and between her opponents, knocking others aside as she worked her way forward, trying to get ahead early so she wouldn't have to catch up later.

One pilot came at her with a tire shank. CyberLinx decelerated so that her wheels were no longer in line with the enemy's, then slammed sideways into the other vehicle. Her opponent lost control, tires scrambing for purchase as it spun out. Another racer collided with it at an angle, sending it into the air, tumbling sideways, bouncing erratically as the other drivers maneuvered in frantic attempts to avoid the flying obstacle. One unlucky racer collided with CyberLinx's victim at full speed, causing a terrific explosion that damaged a number of cars directly behind and forced those farther back to apply brakes and try to drive around the wreck, creating a gap between themselves and CyberLinx's position.

Satisfied that nobody would be catching up to her any time soon, the racer-driver hybrid spun a full 720 degrees on her center axis, dancing with glee, then straightened up and continued forward.

-

"Do you see what I'm seeing?" Anjie said as her teammates gaped at the spectacle unfolding on the track. CyberLinx was sliding between the other racers with uncannily fluid moves, less like steering and more like the graceful movements of a living creature, a road-going feline predator. As they watched, the black and blue racer's strangely jointed wheels all turned together, keeping her moving forward on the track at full speed, but with her body turned nearly perpendicular to her direction of motion , facing off against another racer who had tried to hit her with a rear-mounted chaingun. CyberLinx maneuvered around him, driving a quarter-circle around her opponent, then released two bolts of blue-white energy from her front. The miniature lightning bolts crackled over and within the shell of the other racer, frying sensitive electronics and stopping the vehicle cold. With that enemy taken care of, CyberLinx turned again, wheels and body pointed straight ahead once more, shoving other racers aside and moving toward the front of the pack.

Kaje stared openmouthed at CyberLinx's display. Now he understood the purpose of those strange wheels! "How does she get them to turn like that?" he asked Anjie. "It's like her wheels are going one way, but she's going another."

"It's because she's not just using a hand yoke or a steering wheel. Linx is a cyborg; when she gets inside that cockpit, she can control everything about her racer just by thinking what she wants it to do. Keep watching."

-

Back on the track, CyberLinx was having a blast. The new wiring and software patches she'd been working on all week were obviously doing their jobs. It felt as though she was racing against a bunch of landlocked turtles, dancing around them, battering them out of her way with almost casual ease.

If she had ever heard the story about the tortoise and the hare, it might have inspired her to be more careful.

As she turned perpendicular to attack another racer, her radar sense detected a very small object hurtling toward her, flying just above the ground. Missile! There was no time to evade it; at the weapon's current speed, with her body presenting the largest possible profile, there was no way she could move sideways fast enough to get out of its way, even assuming that the missile weren't somehow designed to track her movements.

All this thought occurred within microseconds. CyberLinx watched through her lateral sensors as the projectile streaked closer, its miniature rocket engine shrieking, radar targeting system pinging at her rapidly to ensure a direct hit. Three seconds to target ... two ... one ...

And then she jumped.

There was no time for the missile to reacquire its target; one moment CyberLinx was on the track, presenting a perfect side-on profile, and the next, she was nearly five vertical feet above the ground, still oriented perpendicular to the track, soaring through the air. Unable to correct its flight path, the guided projectile flew by beneath her, screaming as though in frustration as it slammed, not into her side, but straight into the rear of the racer ahead of her.

CyberLinx flew directly over the fireball. Flames licked her undercarriage, and random bolts of discharged energy spidered across her shell, seeking anything conductive to overload. For one horrifying split-second, Linx was back in her humanoid body, screaming out loud, convulsing as raw current poured in through her cyber jacks, cut off from her other sensors. She was trapped in an unlit, claustrophobic space with no idea of what was going on, and all she could feel was that outside, the world was going by way too fast....

Then the onboard computer kicked back on, her senses returned, and CyberLinx barely managed to control her landing, her tires clutching the track desperately to fend off a spin. Sensing her systems' status, she was appalled at just how bad the damage was; one of her right lateral sensors was fried beyond recovery, and her right rear wheel motor was showing some kind of irregularity in its output, with patches of her outer shell melted and interfering with her aerodynamics.

Then her emotions switched from shock to rage. Who the hell fired that thing?

CyberLinx looked back through her radar data from the previous few seconds, and discovered that the missile had come from the number 67 racer, Gearhead Special.

Spinning around, CyberLinx turned her body around, still traveling forward on the track but facing backward toward Gearhead Special. The black and chrome racer faced her, the metallic skull on its front a perfect match for its fearsome-looking driver, a cyborg who called himself Gearhead and looked like a skinless Terminator robot from an old 2D Linx had seen. Looking closely, she realized that the vehicle's launch tubes were located in the skull's eye sockets and mouth. The right "eye" was empty, with red missile nosecones peeking out from inside the other tubes.

Her engine snarling with fury, CyberLinx headed straight for her enemy. From either side of her scarred front fairing, three wicked, curved blades extended. Realizing that she was coming for him, Gearhead fired off one of his remaining missiles, but CyberLinx jumped over it. In desperation, Gearhead deployed a pair of target-seeking machine guns from either side of his cockpit, each swiveling toward the centerline, trying to draw a bead on her. Engine roaring, claws outstretched, CyberLinx began a rapid turn, then launched herself into the air. Before Gearhead's machine guns could get off a shot, CyberLinx's right set of claws sliced through the cyborg's neck, sending his head flying backward, sparks leaping from the base of his metal skull.

CyberLinx soared over the now unmanned racer, landing with feline grace. Her vanquished foe drove on mindlessly, smashing into the duracrete slabs at the side of the track and flipping over on its cockpit, wheels still spinning in futility.

Still snarling, wounded but very much alive, the black and blue racer faced forward and tore into the remaining racers ahead of her, claws ripping and slashing, tearing through tires and composite shells. Leaping over the racer who had been just behind the leader, CyberLinx finally found herself in second place, only two feet behind the current leading racer - close enough to smell victory.

She recognized the lead vehicle: Number 37, Destiny's Blade. The pilot, Jan Roane, was a two-time regional champ, and the sponsors' decals all over her racer showed that her success hadn't gone unnoticed. CyberLinx was dimly aware that her techno-organic component was baring her fangs, growling low with disgust. Roane was no racer: she didn't care about honor, sportsmanship or the reputation of extreme racing; she was just a mobile billboard who won races because her sponsors paid for all the best weapons and defensive tech they could cram into a GRXL-spec racer.

It would be a pleasure ripping it out of her.

-

"Impressed yet?" Anjie asked.

"Hmm," Kaje murmured, "I'm still not sure. The whole cyborg thing obviously gives her an advantage, but I'd bet there are drawbacks from it, too. Plus, it looks like her moves are mostly just instinctive - she maneuvers faster than any of the other racers, but where's the skill?"

"I've already voiced my objections," Prest said. "While I will honor our agreement to take her on if she wins this championship, I still think that this Miss Kytone lacks the experience to compete in the galactic league."

Anjie just shrugged. "Sheesh, you two are just determined to be pessimists, aren't you?" Turning from her soon to be former teammates, Anjie quickly spotted the two leading racers, and sat back to watch how Linx handled her final opponent.

-

As she neared the middle of the final lap, CyberLinx was getting frustrated. Destiny's Blade was loaded with tire shredders, a self-targeting machinegun, and extensible rotary blades in the rear, sides and front, making any approach deadly. Though CyberLinx was the faster of the two vehicles, one attempt to pass the well-armed racer had ended with Roane veering sideways, deploying her weapons, and gouging CyberLinx's right flank. Leaping over her was out of the question; the machinegun would shred her undercarriage from below. She would have to take out Destiny's Blade from behind, but at a distance.

As she checked her weapons' status, CyberLinx noted that her left arc gun was damaged. Shutting it down, she activated its twin on her right side and let loose, blue-white lightning leaping from her front to the rear of Destiny's Blade. The lead vehicle crackled with electrical current, swerved wildly - then deployed all its blades at once and came flying backward at CyberLinx!

CyberLinx barely had time to turn her cockpit pod away from her enemy's abrupt reverse charge. Instead of shredding her cockpit, Destiny's Blade buried a rotary saw blade deep in her left side, and CyberLinx was aware of a horrifying pain as the still-spinning disc severed cables, cut through fluid lines and sundered alloy chassis components. Locked together, the two racers spun wildly on the track, bouncing off duracrete guardrails, completely out of control. Desperately, CyberLinx fishtailed, hitting Destiny's Blade hard with her left rear fender. The saw tore free of her side with a hideous metallic screech, then the razor-edged racer stopped dead on the racetrack, its electronics finally shutting down from the lingering effects of CyberLinx's arc discharge.

Dazed and damaged, CyberLinx realized that her lead was quickly evaporating; in her weakened condition, her racer was limping at only ninety percent of its normal top speed, and the other vehicles - most in far better shape than her own - were rapidly gaining on her.

With one last roar, she brought her engine back up to full power - noting the fluctuations in output as she cycled up the Q-cell as high as it would go. Sprinting for the finish line, her right rear wheel, already damaged from her near-miss with a missile, finally exploded, detaching from its pivot joint and dropping back behind her.

Pouring every iota of power into the three remaining wheel motors, CyberLinx screamed forward, flames erupting from the gaping hole in her side and several places where her shell had been melted away. And still, the others were gaining on her ....

With her indicators already past redline, CyberLinx finally pulled out her trump card: with a mental command, she switched off her cooling systems and activated the R-Tek T-recycler she'd installed just days before.

The rear half of her racer was immediately consumed in red-orange flame, igniting the pavement and leaving a trail of fire behind her. Even as every sensor in her shell screamed directly into her mind, CyberLinx's engine noise rose from a mighty roar to a high-pitched, tortured scream.

CyberLinx shrieked across the finish line like a meteor on wheels.

Now barely conscious, the cyborg managed to shut off her T-recycler and apply brakes, coming to rest nearly five hundred feet beyond the finish line, her rear half still blazing, tires melting into the pavement. The damaged racer finally issued the command to disengage her cyber jacks, and suddenly Linx was back in her own body. The pain in every component of her chassis was gone, no hole in her side, just a healthy, black-furred young catgirl, quite unharmed thanks to the thick foam cushioning of her enclosed cockpit pod.

Then it hit her. "I WON!!!!"

Leaping from the remains of her racer, Linx ran toward Victory Lane, jumping and twirling in midair. When CyberLinx's overheated Q-cell finally detonated, Linx glanced back at the fireball for a moment, then shrugged and continued onward.

She could always build a new racer, after all.

-

"I did it, I did it, IdiditIdiditIdidit!!!!" Still giddy from her victory, Linx skipped out the contestants' cordoned-off exit from the racetrack, throwing her gleaming golden trophy into the air and catching it. I won the Teknos Regional Championship! For the first time! I'm the fastest extreme racer on the whole PLANET!!!

It took the young feline a moment to register the fact that there were three people standing in her path, clearly waiting for her. "Hey," she called out, "I don't mean to be rude, but Security keeps this place free of spectators. You'll have to go in using the main doors."

One of the three, a female Elori, snorted. "We're not spectators, Miss Kytone."

"That's right," a red-and-gold phoenix-morph added. "Linx, we represent the R-Tek racing team. We're here to offer you a position."

Linx rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. Like a major corporate sponsor would be interested in a metalhead who builds racers in her garage?"

Anjie only smiled. "Oh, you'd be surprised...."