Wind ripped through Kevin’s ears, trying desperately to strip his reason away from him. Kevin’s shirt flapped about as his bike uselessly spun its wheels. It was a trance. A bit of self-hypnotism. To Kevin, he was already on the ground. The ground. The fall. Oh he thought again of the ground. Why was the ground so far away?

  A small thunderbolt arced to nowhere, dissipating in a burst a light just a few feet in front of Kevin. It shocked him awake. The source was Oswin. He held his tube sock high above himself as he spun the weapon around and around. With each rotation the sock growing bigger and bigger. The sound of currency rubbing against other currency becoming deafening.

  With Oswin’s free hand a shirt, summoned out of thin air, was thrown to Kevin. Its balled up form hit Kevin in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. The article of clothing expanded to be the size of a small building, and attached itself to Kevin with small strings to act as a parachute

  His friend taken care of, Oswin rotated around his signature weapon a few more times before holding it behind his back. The sock was 15 feet long and the end of it was the size of a small car. Electricity and blue light emitted from Oswin as he swung the tube sock over his head. The cluster of bikers underneath Oswin noticed him at this moment, but it was already too late.

  The execution was near perfect. The tube sock of quarters impacting the ground moments before Oswin landed. Biker’s were thrown from their bikes just from the shockwave. The unlucky were blasted to bits in the immediate impact zone. Secondary explosions caused by bikers losing control of their RAD kicked up even more dust then the initial impact, smearing the whole area in a sea of flames and debris.

  Kevin gripped the strings that held the t-shirt parachute onto him. I can’t let him down now can I? He could not see anything though the cloud of fiery smoke. It's gonna be a rough landing. He tensed up his body and held the handlebars with extra force. The fire burned his face as he descended, igniting the t-shirt and quickly burning through the connecting strings. With no control, Kevin hit the ground. He steered and swerved as he blindly attempted to avoid the craters and upturned earth left behind from the impact.

  He almost lost it all, hitting a massive rock while he fishtailed to the left which shot him to the right. Just holding on to his balance enough for the next moment, He burst out of the thick smoke and back into the sunlight. Able to see once more, His instincts kicked in. His left foot stomped against the ground at a precise angle to balance his trajectory, and he easily avoided the continuing obstacles.

  Oswin’s battle continued up the track. A biker approached him from the left. In all black clothing he summoned a shadow that loomed over him, ready to do his bidding. He pointed a black glove at Oswin, and the shadow lept after him. Oswin had his own countermeasures. He summoned a ball of socks and threw it at the cloaked figure. The projectile impacted him in the head, the socks sticking to his skin. The shadow dissipated.

  Oswin swung his tube sock at his enemy. The sock stretching long enough to impact the other rider directly in the face. Knocking him off balance, but not taking him out of the fight. Before the shadow summoner could recover, Oswin impacted him again, this time in the back of the head, sending him flying over the handlebars. Kevin dodged out of the way of the resulting explosion. He still was catching up with the group.

  Oswin's next opponent with a man in a bathing suit with a shark fin on his back. He dove into the pavement as he transformed into a shark. Once at Oswin's position, he lept out of the pavement with a maw large enough to swallow Oswin whole. Oswin ducked under the shark and tossed the sea creature over his shoulder. This blocked another woman who was approaching in full plate armor. Her jousting lance pierced the shark instead of its intended target, and broke in two. The man-shark, wounded, transformed into a man once more as he planted his face into the ground.

  "Your sock is nothing against proper plate armor" proclaimed the woman. "I will brush off your blow as--" Oswin slammed her in the head with the quarter sock.

  "Ha that wa--" Oswin hit her again, this time in the shoulder

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  "I could har--" The next blow impacted her head piece hard enough to dent it. Then her chestpiece buckled. Owsin continued the onslaught, denting, smaking, and shattering his way through the plate armor until the woman slumped over her handlebars, unconscious. Her bike lost balance and hit the ground like all the others.

  A pterodactyl took a swing at Oswin, who ducked the fatal blow. But, he did not dodge the blow of the rider, whose spear grazed his side. The woman riding on top of the dinosaur dressed in furs and wore red war paint on her face. She cried out in victory at drawing blood from Oswin. He responded by swinging with his signature weapon, but the dino rider was already out of range. He summoned a ball of socks and threw it with an impressive and unpredictable curve. It was still avoided easily.

  Kevin readied his bow, and fired several arrows at the dino rider. She easily dodged all of them. 'If only she knew how little of a threat these arrows were, then she would not be dodging them', thought Kevin. 'but just because these arrows don't hit you, doesn’t mean that they cannot hurt you.

  Upon dodging the final arrow, the dino rider flew too close to the ground, close enough that she was in Oswin's range once more. He lept up out of his bike, grabbed his tube sock with both hands and delivered a devastating blow with an overhead swing. The dino rider slammed into the track, her dino reverting once more to a bicycle before an explosion erupted from the collision.

  “Come on” shouted Oswin. “We can’t stop now”. He raced ahead, Kevin following in short pursuit. The next big jump was just ahead. This one cleared a river hundreds of feet across. The ramp was made out of rickety wood, and there was several person-sized holes were riders had picked the wrong part of the structure to hit at full speed. On the left part of the ramp, there was a section which looked particularly weak, the wood old and moldy, but raised the highest into the sky.

  With no concern, Oswin aimed for the highest part of the ramp. He hit the wooden structure at full speed and sailed off its highest point. In his last moments on the ramp he redirected his momentum to execute a backflip. No. He was aiming higher. Oswin stood up, the bike seat clutched beneath his shoes and extended his arms wide. He held this position for the duration of the backflip, a trick known as the ‘shark tail’.

  Upon landing he had more RAD energy flowing through him then ever before. He felt the force of awesome guide his hands, and he happily followed. He saw visions of a new theme, detached entirely from the current track he raced on. His hands felt electric. He could make it happen. He had to make it happen.

  Kevin was not able to do any tricks during the jump. Another racer had hit the ramp alongside him and assaulted him with a two-handed spoon. Despite the best efforts of the other racer, his soup delivery device was outmatched by Kevin’s bow, and he landed on the pavement without his bike, filled with arrows. Still, the RAD reward for defeating an opponent mid-air was significant, Kevin landed and felt the energy flow through him. If I had any powers, this would be useful. He thought. Instead all the RAD was channeled into his bike, allowing him to pedal faster.

  The next closest rider to Oswin was none other than Smith. He still rode his sister’s pink bike, dwarfing it with his hulk of a body, and he was beginning to question his ability to finish top 10.

  Oswin rode up to him, careful to stay out of punching range. They made eye contact so Oswin flashed a mischievous smile. Smith ignored him.

  “You get bored riding on this same track?” asked Oswin. Smith did not reply. “I'm starting to get bored of this. The same theme. The same red rocks. Its overdue for a change”

  All things considered, this is a short race. Thought Smith. And I won’t be giving you a reply today. Smith suddenly maneuvered to close the distance between him and Oswin, but the smaller rider maintained the distance.

  “I want to see you try to punch this”. Oswin held his right arm above his head, a rotating mass of clothing formed, red light escaping cracks in the sphere. He was keen to notice the attention that the sphere gathered. “Don’t worry this will not hurt anyone.” He assured the audience. Any rider within earshot tried their hardest to maneuver away from him without outright breaking. Shockingly, this included Smith. “Of course, you will have to be a lot farther than that to escape this blast” mumbled Oswin.

  The ball of clothing stopped growing when it was the size of a single family home. The clothing on the outer edge was spread thin, and more red light was released into the world. The ball buckled and waved, it poked and stretched. There was something inside it, and it wanted so desperately to be free.

  “Do you like clowns, Kevin?” asked Oswin.

  Kevin had no time to process the question before Oswin launched the clothing ball at the ground. It exploded into blinding light and glitter, and promised to change the landscape of the race.