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Okay I should probably explain this so it starts to make sense.
I've said a bunch about stims but by now it probably seems confusing. You don't take stims one at a time. Usually when you're driving or walking down the street or something you take a few, one right after another. That way you don't' crash while you're just talking or something. See, now I've probably gone and confused you good. Let's see if I can fix that.
You take a stim right before you fly, but once you're up in the race it's suicide to take your hands off the controls for even a minute. So you run the race on one dose, and when you finally land, you crash right away. Got that cleared up? Okay, let's keep going then.
You're probably wondering what a stim overdose exactly is, seeing as I've been talking about being stim-kicked for hours on end. An overdose is basically when you keep stim-kicked for something outrageous like ten days -no sleep, no crashing stages and just one stim after another- and then you crash. That can put guys into comas. Also, if you keep taking stims even after ten days you can start to loose parts of your brain. It's nothing nice, something none of us want to have happen. But once you're kicked up on stims, you kinda get illogical and feel invincible so sometimes you just don't think to stop and let yourself rest. Basically, it's just like any other vice.
By the time we got to the races I was a little more stim-kicked, Kyo was a little less dimmed up and Kammi was a lot more enthusiastic towards the whole thing. Not like you'd expect anyone to be otherwise. It was a big event, just like all races. People get excited at things like that, especially if they have a favourite racer or contestant to cheer for.
I knew I had at least two people in the crowd voting for me. That hyped my mood.
We drove the tug out to the race ramp, then detached the car and undid the clamps that held the ship on. Kammi drove the car back to the street outside for parking, if she could find any. I climbed into the cockpit and ran through the start-up sequence. Kyo tossed me my helmet and waved as he turned to go.
"Good luck, man."
I nodded enthusiastically in return and plunked the helmet on my head, knocking my fist against it for no real reason. "Thanks, man," I felt pretty lucky anyway, couldn't wait to get up in the air and go zippin' through that field. Hey, who needed extra luck? Still, Kyo had kept me from being a splatter on the mountains plenty of times so if he offered me some luck, I ought to give him some thanks back. "Same to you!"
Kyo snorted from where he stood and waved over his shoulder. "Don't need luck," he muttered, "I ain't the one racing."
Then, someone's engine roared. The announcer stopped gabbing and Kyo ran off the starting ramp. I lowered my cockpit into place, gunned the engine on my ship and grinned. This was it; this was the thing I'd been training all year for. This was the race.
