Test Drive

Hey guys welcome to chapter four of Test Drive.  Fair warning there is gratuitous car nerdery in this chapter. Normal service will be resumed next chapter if it isn't your thing.

Angel- Hi, sorry to say but COA is undecided.  I'm pretty dissatisfied with it as it sits and I'm not sure I want to attempt re-writing it all.  Thanks for the review.

Hope you all enjoy please read and review!

~~~Test Drive~~~~~~

As the GPS’ counter hit zero, Inuyasha dumped the clutch and with a shriek from the German six cylinder and a roar from the rear tires, his BMW jumped from the line.  He’d gotten pole position, a white 325i with gold BBS mags, and a green, blue and red stripe across its hood and fender next to him.  Behind them, eight more of the four seat convertibles, a mix of M3, 325i, and 318i were in immediate pursuit.

Inuyasha watched the revs climb, the rear tires hooking up and shunting the rag-top German forward towards the road.  Shoving the clutch in, his left hand grabbed the shifter, quite unnaturally, and dropped the 3-series into second gear.  Letting the clutch out with plenty of throttle, he pulled a slight lead on the white Bavarian next to him, the wolf demon behind the wheel shifting almost in time with him.

To Inuyasha’s surprise though, they weren’t exactly leaving the pack behind.  Behind him, there was a purple 325i with white O.Z. Racing mags, behind the wolf a red M3 with black mags, both right on their tails.  A dark gray 328i and a black M3 with later M3 mags, followed them.  Seventh and eighth were occupied by a white 318i with black aftermarket mags and a silver 325i with silver mags and blacked out trim.  Ninth and tenth, for the moment, belonged to a green 325i with BBS wheels and an M3 painted in a deep magenta color, bright alloys accentuating its dark color.

Fumbling with the shifter once more, having never driven right hand drive prior, Inuyasha got the three into third as their little off-shoot road merged with the actual roadway, a winding, meandering piece of asphalt that wormed through the mountains of Monaco.

Off the slip road, Inuyasha pushed it into fourth as he went left past an oncoming car, then right to overtake a car in front of him.  As he did, the white BMW tucked in behind him, following him as he dipped into a right hander, the road dipping down into the apex.  Keeping his foot down through the fast bend, Inuyasha stayed on the throttle as the road straightened, only to begin braking very hard for a left hairpin.

Pushing the clutch in, Inuyasha pushed it out of fourth and tried to grab second as he slowed, but in his haste, and unfamiliar with shifting with his left hand, banged it against the gate into reverse.  Grabbing the handbrake, Inuyasha give it a quick tug, inducing a bit of oversteer and rotating the BMW round the corner.  His second attempt got the cog he was looking for, and the 325i started to accelerate, though the handbrake turn to compensate for his lack of engine braking had scrubbed off a good bit of speed.

The missed gearshift had been bad as well, slowing his return onto the power, and the entire ordeal having kept him from keeping the revs up, thus reducing the ferocity with which the small convertible began to build speed once again.  Thus, the white 325i and the purple 325i both slipped past, though Inuyasha managed to hold back the red M3 that had nearly caught him up.

Gaining speed once more, Inuyasha ran second gear up to redline and banged it into third gear, using the modified six cylinder’s surprisingly ferocious power to stop the two ahead of him from gaining any ground.  Thankfully he had time; there was about two miles of meandering asphalt before a roughly mile and a half dirt section, with another mile and a half of road to the finish.

It wasn’t going to be easy though, the two cars in front of him were hauling, and the seven behind him weren’t exactly sandbagging it either.  While the traffic was light, there was some traffic, which was a variable Inuyasha couldn’t rely on one way or the other.  The course itself was an issue as well; the road was beautifully maintained but it was narrow in sections, and carved into the mountains, with sharp stone rock faces bordering one side for much of the course.

The open edges weren’t much better; low rock ledges for guardrails, and steep, long falls awaiting if one were to go over.  There were some gravel patches that bordered the road in certain places, but they weren’t common enough to rely on, and in some areas were more likely to get Inuyasha in an ambulance than around a competitor.

But, such thoughts were a speck of dust in the back of the hanyou’s head as he kept his right foot down, hanging with the two convertibles ahead of him.  As the road fell right and then back left, Inuyasha hugged the edges of the road, putting his car right on the apex of both corners.  The other two were still ahead, following a similar line, but the ferocious modified inline six in Sesshomaru’s BMW was pulling hard, not letting them pull out any sort of a lead.

The road started to rise as it went further left, a high speed sweeping corner allowing Inuyasha to keep his foot in it as he ran right up against the sheer rock on the left hand side of the road.  Chasing the purple 3-series, Inuyasha kept his foot in hard, willing the tires to hang on as the 325i closed the gap slowly.

“Come on damn it, slip up for me, just once.”

Inuyasha talked more to himself than anyone else as the road straightened briefly, dropping down into a tight right hander ahead.  Relying on the car’s excellent brakes, the hanyou tried to out brake the purple Beemer, only partially successful.  He got alongside the red head in the purple convertible, but she hadn’t slowed early enough for him to get by before the turn, and she had the outside line going into the corner, which meant he couldn’t outgun her there either.

Even into the corner, Inuyasha was closer to the apex but his tighter line meant he had to slow further and had to wait longer to get back on the power, meaning the purple 3-series was still ahead out of the bend, just.  Another, sweeping right into sweeping left lay ahead, allowing Inuyasha to stay close though there wasn’t enough of a power gap for him to pull ahead on the more open

sections.

There was however, a much tighter, more technical S-section at the end of the left sweeper.  A right hand turn with a tightening radius, into a sharp left hairpin, a tight but widening right hairpin into a left hand sweeper.  Being a bit of a hooligan at times, Inuyasha saw his chance to employ a bit of tire smoking action to his advantage as they slowed for the first right hander.

Braking and turning in, Inuyasha was right behind the purple 3-series as they neared the right edge of the road.  As the 325i ahead of him modulated the throttle, feathering it to keep traction as the turn tightened further, Inuyasha dabbed the brake and stabbed the throttle, kicking the rear end out a bit.  Aiming the car with his power slide, Inuyasha feathered the throttle, losing a bit of ground to the car ahead, but setting his next turn up brilliantly.

Letting the tires hook up once more, Inuyasha had the car pointed so that he had a straight line with the right edge of the road going into the left hand turn while the purple 3-series had drifted wide to the left, requiring the red head behind the wheel to slow further for the poor angle she’d have to take the left hand turn at.

Gassing it, Inuyasha pounced, hugging the right side of the road, pushing the second place driver out, and braking hard as he crossed left into the apex of the left hand turn.  The other driver had no choice but to slow enough for him to pass, and the hanyou climbed from third to second as he aimed for the next hairpin.

The white 325i was now ahead of him, and booking it as the driver got a perfect line through the slightly wider right hand turn.  Modulating the throttle perfectly, he didn’t allow Inuyasha to gain any ground as he came out of the corner and powered into the left hand sweeper.  Inuyasha was a few car lengths behind, but the first tarmac section was nearly at its end.

“Alright buddy, let’s see how you handle dirt.”

The left hand sweeper barely straightened before they had to make a tight, right angle turn onto a dirt path that rose up between the rock walls that bordered the road.  Using a tweak of the handbrake, Inuyasha rotated the tail happy BMW onto the dirt as the white convertible ahead of him did the same.  This was the x-factor of the race, the spot where Inuyasha could get ahead and pull a lead, or smack up Sesshomaru’s car and come dead last.  Given his experience with dirt and gravel and snow, and his ownership of more than one rally bred WRX, he was counting on the former.

The path wound right, left, slightly right, then a short straight before an S-bend.  The left and right hairpins were Inuyasha’s ace in the hole, the hanyou counting on a couple of quick Scandinavian flicks to get him back in the lead.  The dog flicked the car right before dabbing the brake and flicking it back left, sliding the back end out in a proven rally technique, pointing the car the way it needed to go and gassing it so that it would slide round the corner and be off in the right direction instead of babying it through the corner only to be going way wide.

Unfortunately, the black haired male in the white BMW in front of him was aware of the same technique.  It was quite a beautiful sight, the two 325i’s drifting round the corner, both kicking dirt as they moved side by side through the left, then the right hairpin.  But, it didn’t afford Inuyasha any advantage, his opponent had handled the bends too well.

“Fuck, come on!”

The path wound right, twitched left, straightened, then turned left again.  Inuyasha had tightened it up a bit, drawing the white one in a car length and a half, though even a dead accurate slide through the final left hand corner couldn’t win him the lead on dirt.  There was however, one final chance, another mile and a half of tarmac, which was coming up as the dirt path descended to meet another of the mountain roads which had bent left with the dirt road above it.

The two convertibles were close on each other, the purple 3-series still threateningly large in Inuyasha’s rearview as well, as they turned into a long right hander, really two bends together which straightened out onto a stunning view of a rather sheer drop.  The road then had three tight hairpins, a left, right, and left, each tighter than the last.  They cut down the sheer face of the mountain before the road continued down a flatter section.

It was possibly Inuyasha’s best and likely only remaining chance for gold on his first day out; the tight corners offered him the chance to out brake his competitor and squeeze ahead.  That said though, they were also fraught with risk; the brakes were holding well, but fade in one of the corners would be lethal, and with the speed they’d be getting on the downhill straights between the hairpins, braking points were essential, a few feet too late and Inuyasha’s first race was over in spectacular fashion.

Bombing into the first and widest corner, Inuyasha stayed tight on the white BMW’s tail, taking the same, perfect line through the left hander.  Coming out, Inuyasha revved the hell out of the inline six, using every last rev he could get from it, ramming each gear change through fast as he could.  He went right as the white convertible drifted left, and Inuyasha drew his front fender alongside the other’s rear.

He kept his foot in hard as they got dangerously close to the corner, waiting to see the white four seat rag top start to slow.  It was a duel between the two, who had the brassier set of balls really, and by the skin of his teeth Inuyasha won.  The white BMW hit the brakes hard, half a second later Inuyasha did the same.  It wasn’t much but it was enough; the half second on the throttle while the white car was slowing brought him alongside and his hard braking coming a half second later nudged him ahead.

Nudging the other BMW far left, Inuyasha kept braking hard as he could, downshifting and cutting the wheel hard as it dove into the right hand bend, trail braking into the corner then feathering the gas, trying to hold his barely there lead without scrubbing the car out to understeer.  

“Hell yeah!”

It worked, and Inuyasha got it straightened out and mashed the throttle, holding his lead as he accelerated away.  He actually drew a car length before braking for the tightest of the hairpins, hanging on through the corner and accelerating away into a much more open right hander, missing a lorry that was coming at them through the bend.

As the road straightened out, he floored it, dodging a couple of small French hatchbacks as the road meandered right then left, before dipping into a tighter right bend and down into a tunnel.  The nicely illuminated tunnel dropped left several hundred feet, the sound of the modified inline six screaming against the tunnel walls and into the open cabin of the 325i giving Inuyasha the aural sensation to accompany the breath taking excitement of the race.

Coming out of the tunnel, two and a half car lengths ahead, he slowed into a tight left hand, diving from the right side of the road, nearly clipping an oncoming 5-series, as he dove into the apex and came out into a right hander that tightened up.  There was only one more corner, a sweeping left hander, that dropped them into a small town that was actually right below the slip road they’d started from, the finish line just a few hundred feet away.

Dodging a couple of Citroens in his way, Inuyasha held the lead, keeping the competitors at bay as he came to the bottom of the phenomenal mountain road and crossed the finish line, in first.  On his first day out, in a right hand drive car he’d never seen before, in a country he’d never actually been to before.

“Fuck yeah!”

~~~~~~Thirty Minutes Later~~~~~~

Inuyasha pulled the 3-series into the garage, the car cooling on the more relaxed drive back.  Pulling in, he saw the open spot he’d left and backed in, letting the car cool a moment as he put the top up before turning it off, the motor ticking and popping as it cooled from its hard run.  As he got out he was alone, a number of other cars sitting covered, all but one, Sesshomaru expecting him to pick him up in it.

But, there was just no way. 

No way he expected Inuyasha to drive it.

Alone, unaccompanied, unchaperoned.

There was just no way.