[WIP] Mocha's Story
The Western Republic is a place of extremes, and not just because of the political tensions. An enormous nation state nearly the size of a continent with some of the hottest and coldest, wettest and driest that the planet has to offer.
Other extremes, however, are entirely of an artificial nature. Crafted by society for thrills, spills and excitement... and to generate loads of advertiser revenue.
The Western Republic Rally Championship is one of these things, racing along dirt or gravel tracks, over snow and ice, between trees and generally just pushing the limits of consumer vehicle technology and their drivers.
Mocha squinted into the sunlight from under the canopy at the Gallop Rally Team tent. It was a pretty hot day, but visibility was fantastic. A small contraption sat on her head, holding her normally lopped ears upright so they caught the cooling effects of the nearby AC better.
Her car was up on a jack as the mechanics gave it a final once-over.
She was the favourite to win the stage, and leading the whole championship in points. One more stage, and the championship would be hers.
"Ok Mocha, once more. This is a very rough stage with lots of jumps, loose gravel and debris. I feel like we're going to be in the air a lot this time round." a voice came from behind her.
Turning round to greet the voice, she was met with her racing suit clad co-driver, and fiancé, Michi. Abrasive, assertive, and absolutely wonderful, their wedding was planned for a month or so after the rally season finished, victory or not.
"You know me Michi, I love driving by the seat of my pants almost as much as I love you!" Mocha beamed.
A nearby mechanic made a faux retching noise and was met almost instantly with a death glare from Michi.
"You shush!" she snapped, the mechanic quickly turning back to work on the car. Turning back to Mocha her smile returned and she wiggled her pad of pace notes, "Just do as I say, and you'll win this one."
"Hey, I'm the one doing the driving!" Mocha laughed, patting Michi on the back as they walked towards her car.
It was hotter in the car than it was outside, especially with their racing suits buckled up fully and their helmets on.
"Radio check." Michi's voice crackled across the comm.
"Driver, receiving." Mocha responded, her attention mainly focused on making sure the car was idling ok, and that the heat wasn't doing anything weird to it.
"Control, receiving!" a response crackled down the line from the pits.
"Radios ok. Mechanical check?" Michi queried, leafing through her pace notes.
"All seems ok to me, batteries are a bit hot, but that's just this weather. Management systems OK, and ECU reporting no faults." Mocha always sounded relieved at this stage, as if the car was the largest hurdle rather than the multi kilometer run ahead of them.
"Clear to start, await race coordinator. Best of luck you two, win us this championship!" the voice from the pits came through again.
"That's what we're here for!" Mocha practically growled, squeezing her hands on the wheel and doing one last check of the cars systems.
The race coordinator outside held a flag across the bonnet of the car, Mocha switched the power plant from "idle" to "race".
The flag lifted a moment later and Mocha put her foot down, all four wheels spun up and the car took off, the motors in each drive train screaming as they each dumped nearly a thousand kilowatts of power onto the track.
The world around them was a blur, Mocha's eyes were locked on the road ahead, Michi's danced from road to pace notes and back again several times a minute.
"400 straight, into K left 2, tightens, crest, 100 flat square right no cut..." Michi rattled off her pace notes as the car went screaming across the track.
"Forest section next, 50 K right 3, into easy left maybe tightens, 100 flat, crest immediate square left don't wide don't cut..." Michi continued, the trees lining the road seeming more like a wall than individual trees, the gravel surface below the car was kicked up into plumes of thick cloud behind them, small stones and pebbles rattled in the wheel arches.
"Long straight flat, over jump caution, into hairpin left..." Michi turned a page as the car went sailing through the air and landed with a rather unsettling thump.
The dashboard lit up with error codes and warning lights almost the instant they landed. That landing had dislodged something. Michi took little notice as she continued to read from her pace notes.
"...into long K right 2 tightens 4..." she glanced up to see the wall of trees fast approaching, "Mocha, Trees, TREES!"
Mocha wrenched the wheel to one side, the car sliding across the gravel surface sideways at over 300kph, "I HAVE NO CONTROL, I HAVE NO..."
The sound of crumpling metal is never a pleasant one, the sound of metal shearing apart as it loses a fight with a several hundred year old tree is a less pleasant one.
Mocha snapped bolt upright and screamed.
A nurse came sprinting into the room, "Miss Loppe!"
"What, where, how!? MICHI!?" Mocha spluttered as she attempted to climb out of the hospital bed.
"Miss Loppe, she's fine! She's fine! Please remain calm!" the nurse placed her hands on Mocha's shoulders and pressed her back down onto the bed.
"The last... the last thing I saw... I heard... trees... metal... Did I crash!?" Mocha's eyes darted around the room she was in as her mind raced. A pretty standard hospital room in a high-end Western Republic hospital. Probably run by whoever her team had a medical contract with.
A large, flat-panel TV hung from the wall opposite her bed, it was off. On one side of her bed was a simple set of locking drawers for a patients personal effects. On the other side was a selection of rather comfortable looking chairs for visitors. She was hooked up to some kind of IV, probably antibiotics and painkillers. The bed-side table had a massive bunch of flowers in a large vase along with a huge "Get Well Soon" card, she couldn't see who it was from.
She locked eyes with the nurse, a large, but kind looking woman, some kind of canid, but Mocha's vision was still swimming a little.
"You were involved in a high speed incident whilst rallying. Your car left the track and hit a tree. Amazingly your co-driver, Michi, was fine. She literally walked away from the accident with only minor bruising. You, on the other hand..." The nurse seemed to pause, as if thinking about how to phrase the next part of her sentence... or if she'd already said too much.
"On the other hand what..." Mocha's eyes narrowed as she attempted to push herself further up the bed with her legs... her legs that were not responding... her legs that she couldn't feel... her heart sank. "Do I have a paralysis injury?"
The nurse took a breath, side-eyeing Mocha's steadily rising pulse, "The way that your car hit the tree, resulted in your legs being crushed... they couldn't disentangle you from the wreckage, so the EMT's had to amputate on site... I'm sorry..."
Mocha just blinked a few times, her mind not fully processing what she'd just been told, "Say that again please... If I look under this quilt, I'm going to see that I have, no legs... did I hear you correctly?"
The nurse side-eyed Mocha's now rapidly rising pulse, "...yes."
Mocha glazed over, thoughts rushing through her head. The crash, racing again, walking again... Tears welled in her eyes, "B-but I need them..."
"Hey! You're making my fiancé cry! Back off!" Michi shouted from the doorway.
The nurse bristled, "That is highly inappropriate!"
"I'm inappropriate!? You made my fiancé cry! Get out of here!" Michi snarled as she marched into the room, placing herself between Mocha and the nurse before leaning over and holding Mocha tight to her chest.
The nurse huffed and stormed out of the room, muttering something about calling a doctor.
"Hey, hey, hey, bunbun, stop crying. Please. I'm here now." Michi muttered, squeezing Mocha tighter.
"I'm never going to race again... am I?" Mocha sobbed.
"Hey, HEY! NO! None of that! There's car adaptations, augmentations, and more. People have continued racing with worse injuries!" Michi held Mocha away from her, a soft smile spreading across her face, "We always pull through, this will be no different! I promise."
Michi glanced around the room and spotted the flowers, "Hah, more than I got!" Keeping one hand on Mocha and reaching out with the other Michi picked up the oversized greetings card and had a look inside it. "It's from the team at Gallop!"
"That's nice of them..." Mocha smiled softly through her sobs.
"What else is nice is how much your insurance is paying out!" a voice came from the door. A tall man in a long white coat, feline, big cat, panther of some sort. The great "resident doctor" stereotype. He exuded an air of smug self importance and smarm. "Who the fuck are you?" Michi snarled.
"I'm the fuck that's going to get your girlfriend behind the wheel of a rally car again!" a smug grin spread across his face, "My name is Dr. Tallak Hall, and I'm the resident cyberneticist at this hospital."
Dr. Hall explained his proposal elegantly and professionally, a massive departure from how he'd presented himself when he initially slithered into the room.
It was a new-ish procedure, where the entire leg below the hip was replaced with a full cybernetic prosthesis, spinal shunts and a neural interface would be installed to facilitate the control of said leg. Nothing fancy about those augmentations, just the legs. Specifically designed to be as close in performance and form to the organic parts they were replacing, users found themselves recovering from the surgery, and up and about much faster than with traditional reconstruction surgery or using augmentations to reinforce damaged limbs.
In Mochas case, both of those options were unavailable, as her field amputation hadn't left her with much leg to work with.
It was expensive, somewhat experimental, and the team's racing insurance was covering it... she asked for some time to think.
Dr. Hall nodded and handed Michi a business card with a net address on it before excusing himself from the room. They were to let him know what they decided, sooner was better so the legs could get manufactured promptly.
RallyNews//MediaNET : Carnage on WRRC Stage 10!
Article by RallyNut28//MediaNET
High drama today on the final stage of The Western Republic Rally today as fan favourite Mocha Loppe appeared to suffer some kind of extreme mechanical failure, crashing her Tsuyoda Polaris GT-Four sideways into a tree at over 300kph!
Near the start of the forest section of the infamous Verdant Raceway stage Mocha's car went flying over a large jump and apparently lost control shortly after.
Incredibly, Michelle "Michi" Flora, co-driver and fiancé to driver Mocha walked away from the smash with only minor bruising. Emergency services were on the scene in minutes to extricate Mocha from the wreckage. She has been described as "gravely injured, but stable".
Gallop Racing boss Matsumoto Mayu has commented on the incident:
"Gallop Racing take all mechanical incidents incredibly seriously, especially now with the serious injury of our top driver. We will be launching our own internal investigation, alongside Tsuyoda engineers, into the cause of this accident once the FIA complete their own and release our vehicle to us. We wish Mocha a speedy recovery."
Matsumoto-san refused to comment further citing the situation as "developing".
From what RallyNews can tell, it appears that Mocha's injuries are severe and may threaten her rally career. An incredible shame for the rising star.
FIA investigators who do not wish to be named have stated that the car appears to have been at fault, the impact on landing dislodging a critical component resulting in the throttle controls being locked open. There were also murmurs about the future of Class EX rallying as a whole.
FIA chief investigator Stian Nilsen refused to answer any questions stating curtly that "ongoing investigations should not be commented on" before demanding we reveal our sources of information within the organisation.
We will have more on this story as it develops. Everyone here at RallyNews wishes Mocha a fast recovery and we hope to see her behind the wheel of a car again soon!
Mocha tapped the screen of her PDA, the video played again. Overhead drone footage of her crash. Her car sailed over the jump, landed hard and appeared to accelerate. It twitched and squirmed across the track as she attempted to regain control before going completely sideways and smashing into a tree.
She winced every time she watched it.
A moment or two later, the passenger door opens and Michi practically leaps out of the car, moving a short distance away from it before realising that Mocha had not done the same. She then sprints back towards the car again, the camera drone getting closer to examine the scene. Michi leans across the passenger seat and appears to be moving around, but it's not clear what she's doing.
Mocha taps the screen again, rewinding the video back to the jump.
Jump, landing, acceleration, crash... jump, landing, acceleration, crash...
"Are you still watching that footage hon?" Michi grumbled from the chair at the side of Mocha's bed, she'd dozed off for a bit. It had been a long day.
"I'm trying to figure out what I did wrong..." Mocha muttered, rewinding the video again. The sounds of shearing metal once again playing from her PDA.
"It was a freak accident hon, nothing you could have done differently." Michi straightened up a bit, pulling her own PDA out and checking her messages, there were lots, she decided to read them later.
"I could have taken that jump slower, or insisted the engineers look over the car again, or..."
"No, you stop that right now! We were racing for the championship, and we didn't have any maintenance time left." Michi rapidly interrupted Mocha's impending ramble, "It was an unforeseen mechanical failure, don't get yourself caught up in this self destructive thinking, please..."
Mocha sighed and dropped her PDA onto her chest as she lay back in the bed again, "I don't think it's the accident I'm constantly walking myself through. It's this surgery..."
"I don't really see any down sides," Michi picked her PDA up again and started deleting unread messages from media outlets demanding comments about the crash, her personal life, or about Mocha. "Shiny new pair of cool robot legs, and we get you back behind the wheel... Nair is insisting that he come visit us in the hospital."
"I don't want to drag him away from his work... he's got a lot going on..." Mocha picked her PDA up again and started tapping on it, not watching the video again but looking at the technical documents on the legs she was being offered.
"I don't think he's going to take 'no' for an answer..." Michi smiled softly as another message came in.
"Tell him that he can come visit once I get these new legs."
"You going for it then?"
"Onwards and upwards Michi. That and I'd still rather be able to walk than need a wheelchair."
The Northwoods Racing Facility in the Eastern Union was always a treat to visit. Several hundred acres of expansive estate owned by some barmy multi trillionaire with a passion for all things motorsport. Lord Darren Burnes, the most upper of the upper class and with more money in pocket change than the entire GDP of some nations. He permitted most motorsport enthusiasts and professional organizations use his facilities for free, as long as he got access all areas whenever they were running events, of course. It was a very fair trade, at least he thought so, and nobody in motorsport was going to question it.
The Gallop Racing team car pulled up at the entrance to the rallycross track, the hum of the power plant faded as the driver turned the ignition off and set the hand brake. "We've arrived Miss Loppe, do you require assistance getting out?" the driver swivelled in his chair to look into the back of the car.
Mocha sat gazing out of the rear window at the scenery. She'd raced here, and won, several times in the past in most disciplines. She took a few deep breaths. "I think I'll manage Charlie. I'm about to get back into my car, I need to make sure my legs at least work on their own!" she laughed a little to herself, the humour masking the near paralysing fear that something was going to go wrong.
She opened the door and swung her legs out, armour plating catching the bright sun overhead. The servos whined slightly as she stood up and took a few steps forward and checked her balance. A short self diagnostic flashed up in her vision, all passed. Those messages still caught her off guard, she didn't like an active HUD... She glanced down at her legs, they still felt wrong, despite being functional to the organic legs they replaced.
"LOPPY!" a voice shouted from across the parking area, "It's so good to see you on your feet again!"
"Lord Burnes!" Mocha's gaze jumped up to the sharply dressed spaniel barrelling towards her.
Before she could say anything else she was hoisted into the air and spun around in a hug, her legs had added more than a few kilos to her total mass and Burnes was lifting her as if she were weightless. "I keep telling you, it's 'Darren' to you! I have so missed watching you and your team tear up my racetrack!"
Mocha staggered a little as she was placed back on the ground, another couple of warnings popped up from her control software. "Thank you Lo..." she paused a second, "Darren."
Burnes smirked and nodded his head, "That's more like it." He paused to look over at the garage next to the track, a team of Gallop engineers were prepping what looked like a Tsuyoda Resonate for the track. Class E1. Beginner stuff. "Really lads? Putting the finest rally driver of our age into a baby car again?" he shouted over, the engineers froze for a second. Burnes quickly felt the need to follow up, "No, No, I know why you're starting there! Carry on!"
Mocha felt herself flush a bit, she understood too, the team needed to check that she could safely operate her new implants at speed. She couldn't help but feel a little insulted nonetheless. Taking a deep breath she started putting one foot in front of the other again and made her way down to the garage. Slipping her PDA out of the pocket of her shorts she opened the message she'd got from Michi earlier that day. "Make that track your bitch <3". A smile crossed her face.
"OK Mocha, you know the track, take it easy on your first few laps though, get used to the car." an engineer's voice crackled over the radio as Mocha checked over the car. Not quite what she was used to, but she'd driven an older model back when she was starting out, so it came back to her quickly. "We're hooking into your implants now. You should get telemetry and course data in a second." Her HUD flickered to life and was immediately populated with information about the car and the track ahead. She slowly closed and opened her eyes a few times and wrinkled her nose.
"Ugh, I hate this. Turn it off!" she practically snapped back over the radio, "This feels totally wrong!"
There was a pause and the HUD vanished, "That better? I probably should have given you more warning.", the engineer's voice was punctuated by the sounds of a keyboard in the background.
A sigh of relief escaped Mocha, "Much, thank you... I just want to race the way I always raced. These legs aren't going to change that."
"Ok, no countdown, just pull away and do an out lap of the inner track. If you're happy with the control you have of the car, see if you can do a fast lap." she could hear the continued chatter of keyboards and murmurs in the background of the engineer's message, but couldn't make any of it out clearly.
"Out, fast, in, done... got it..." she repeated back, deliberately, slowly. Her right foot twitched, a little bit of sensory feedback in the prosthetic, she could almost feel the control software compensating as the twitch went away.
"Don't do the fast lap if you feel bad in the car, you can come right back in. This isn't a race or a time trial, just a shakedown." the engineer's voice seemed a bit more urgent, and with good reason. He knew Mocha was out to prove herself. Not to the team, or Lord Burnes, but to herself.
Mocha failed to respond, the telemetry on the wall in front of him lit up as she put her foot down and the car went screaming out of the pits. It wasn't a powerful car by any stretch, but that didn't mean it lacked power in the right hands...
Mocha knew the rally cross track at Northwood rather well, she'd done several laps of it in a classic Group S Audiini Quadra during the last Northwoods Fastival. She tried not to think about that, the Tsuyoda Resonate was no Quadra and she didn't want to get into the mindset that she had that much power at her control right now.
She mused briefly about what the doctor had said about her new legs being exactly like her old ones. He'd been a smarmy git about it the whole time, but he was right. They did feel almost identical, almost. There was something vaguely artificial about the feedback she was getting from them. She twitched her left foot a bit and gauged the braking power, her right foot twitched and she brought the car back up to speed, it was all coming back to her very quickly.
Also coming up quickly was a deceptively sharp right hander, the brakes rumbled underfoot, the feedback was there, she recognised it and knew what it meant. Pushing the artificial feeling of it further back in her mind she threw the car into the corner, lifting off the brake and pushing back down on the power, the front wheels spun up kicking dust up the sides of the car. A little too much power, she compensated with the steering.
The rest of the out lap was rather uneventful, despite her legs feeling like they were driving in a simulator and the rest of her body grounded firmly in reality, she was ready to set a time. The line approached and she squeezed the power, the first corner approached fast. She took a deep breath, and she felt it, the zone... she was there again... the world slowed around her... she knew exactly what the car was going to do with each input. She was past the ideal braking zone now... throwing the wheel to the right she reached across to her handbrake and twitched it slightly before throwing her wheel back to the left. A massive plume of dust sprayed from the back of the Resonate as it barrelled around the corner sideways. Someone said something on the radio... but she didn't hear it... she was having too much fun.
Lord Burnes was grinning from ear to ear as he watched the Resonate practically floating around the track, his eyes danced from screen to screen as he watched the footage from various drone cameras positioned in strategic places. The car telemetry and onboard sensors being fed directly into his own neural interface. He couldn't feel Mocha, she wasn't connected, but he could feel the car and it was getting pushed to it's absolute limit.
"Look at our Loppy go!" he practically giggled as he watched the Resonate go sideways around yet another corner it really shouldn't have gone sideways around.
"She's been out for five laps now Sir! At this rate the battery is going to go flat and she's not responding to our radio messages." one of the engineers twisted round in her chair to address him.
"Let her have her fun. When the battery runs out I'll drive out and get her myself." Burnes chuckled, the Resonate probably only had a few more laps left in it anyway, and he knew exactly what he was going to go get her in.
"But what if she crashes?" the engineer queried, wincing as the Resonate went screaming past the windows in front of them setting another, faster time.
"She won't... I can feel it..." Burnes stood, disconnecting himself from the telemetry feed, "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a car to collect."
Mocha's fun was rudely interrupted by various warnings lighting the dashboard in front of her. Power loss, the car was dropping into limp mode.
"Damnit! That was going to be a perfect lap!" she growled.
"And you'd have heard us warning you that it was about to happen if you hadn't been busy setting... seven consecutive fast laps when we only asked you to do one!" a voice crackled down her radio feed, another member of the engineering team.
Mocha paused, pulling the car over to the edge of the track and bringing it to a halt. Looking over the various indicators on the dashboard she realised she'd literally run the battery into reserve. Tapping a button on the wheel tappedreconnected her neural interface back into the telemetry feed. Brakes were nearly worn out and overheating, power cells were completely tapped out. "Ok, point taken." she muttered.
"Stay with the car Mocha, we have someone coming out to get you." the engineer stated again, "See you back in the pits Rally Rabbit."
Mocha didn't respond, she flopped back her seat, the adrenaline was wearing off. Her arms shook and her breathing was irregular, but her legs were perfectly motionless. Sure she could throw a car around a track not even thinking about it, but it was going to take some time to get used to how fake the senses in her legs felt. Moments later the adrenaline was back, her nose twitched, something was burning. What was burning was quickly confirmed as several warnings flashed across her HUD. Brakes.
She yanked off her seatbelt and whipped the fire extinguisher out of the passenger footwell. Throwing the car door open she stepped out into the warm air which was rapidly getting warmer as all four brake disks smouldered away behind the wheels of the car.
Several blasts from the fire extinguisher later, she'd got it under control, thick white foam pouring from the extinguisher and into the wheels. The car was a mess. Not a dent, but covered in tiny scratches from all the gravel and mud that had been spraying up the sides. It had been going fast... for a Resonate...
She threw the extinguisher onto the verge and sat down next to it, stretching her arms, legs, back... ok, she'd maybe gone a little overboard.
She sighed, her eyes moving from the clear sky, to the treeline, to the ground, to her legs. She paused, wiggling her feet in her boots. Looking at her, you'd not know she had them,cybernetic legs, especially not with all her racing gear on. But she knew. Had they affected her driving, was what she just did all the implants... no she'd done similar before, she knew what the zone was like, and that was just like every other time. But that doubt nipped away at her.
She didn't have much time to think about it, her ears twitched as a noise approached. Something coming up the track at a reasonable speed. It didn't sound like a team car, it didn't even sound like a normal vehicle. Was that, an internal combustion engine?
Her query was answered seconds later as a Group B, Audiini Quadra came sliding to a stop next to her, inside Lord Burnes grinning like a maniac.
"NEED A LIFT?!" he shouted over the growling turbocharged inline five under the hood.
Burnes chucked the Quadra around the track on the way back to the pits, he'd decided to diverge a little after picking Mocha up and do the long circuit, it would only add an extra few minutes and watching Mocha's laps had inspired him to take a bit of a run himself. Mocha had been all wide eyed and smiling when she got in the Quadra originally, it was the same one he'd let her use at the Fastival a few years ago, and despite it being around a century old it still drove like new.
"It should be in a museum!" his fellow car enthusiasts would yell at him every time he ran it on a track or took it to a meet.
"Fuck that!" was always his response, "It's a car, it's meant to be driven!"
But now, the rabbit was quiet, staring dead ahead as the world sped by them. He couldn't see her face and wasn't going to put much effort into doing so, crashing was not a desirable outcome. Her complete lack of motion worried him.
The sudden lack of engine noise and the car slowing down snapped Mocha back to reality.
"Hmm? What happened?" she stated, suddenly, glancing around to see if it was something obvious.
"Just me being an idiot, I forgot to top up her fuel before bringing her out." he chuckled a little, "If I'd just taken you straight back we'd have been fine."
"Oh, so we need someone to come get us then?" Mocha queried, unlatching her harness and stretching out a little.
"I'll call for a can of fuel and finish my run, I was having fun!" Burnes' smile flickered a little, "I don't think you were though?"
"Wh... no... I was loving it. Yeah... Great being in the Quadra again..." Mocha stuttered, she'd really not been paying much attention to the run, or the car, she'd been lost in her own thoughts again.
"Be honest with me Loppy, please." his smile softened, mixed with a look of concern, "Something's bugging the hell out of you, and whilst we're waiting for fuel I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me."
Mocha's gaze shifted to the passenger footwell, she still couldn't "feel" her legs, she wiggled her feet in her boots. They were there, they were functioning, the feedback signals being sent to her neural interface were being passed to her brain and vice versa.
"I see..." he didn't need her to say anything.
There was a silence in the car again, broken only by the occasional click from the engine bay as metal parts cooled down and contracted slightly.
Burnes broke it again after a few moments, "How much of me do you think is cybernetic?"
Mocha stuttered some more, it really wasn't something she'd thought about. Despite how outgoing and bombastic Lord Burnes was he was a very private man, in particular he didn't like to talk about cybernetic augmentations despite being an augment himself. He was rich enough that nobody in the media dared asked questions about it, even with the growing anti augment sentiment. She composed herself a bit as her eyes danced up and down his body. He was in a full racing suit too, so that really didn't help.
(This Document is a Work in Progress)