cascade | kotlc

6. Streamliner

Dex had told June her motorcycle was ready, and -- even though it took forever -- she'd managed to convince him to arrive at Everglen to test it out.

They arrived at the giant gate and Fitz let them in. Dex glared at him and he shrank back, and June put a hand on his shoulder. He calmed down slightly.

"Seriously, why do you hate him so much?" June asked him.

He wrung his hands. "I don't know. It's just... I feel like they've- not them. It's not them. But it is."

June sighed. "That made absolutely no sense whatsoever, just please don't be too rude to my boyfriend or Biana. They're really nice people, I just don't understand why you-" she gestured helplessly. "Whatever. We're here to test out the motorcycle."

Fitz looked confused. "What's a motorcycle?" Dex snorted. He handed her a small, metal sphere about the size of an imparter. "You throw it down," he told her. "Try to not get smacked. I haven't fully tested this. Hopefully it doesn't implode, explode, or-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Fitz interrupted, holding up his hands. "What's happening? Somebody, context!"
"I asked Dex to make me a motorcycle, which is like- I'll show you." June held the marble up, inspecting its gleaming black coat. She threw it down.

It creaked before two rods extended from two sides of the sphere, and the metal seemed to collide into itself, seemingly creating matter from thin air as shards met and pieced together, forming the frame and engine. Two spinning devices shot out and expanded into wheels as air pumped and an inflatable cushion seat appeared. A tube popped out of the front wheel and created the hand clutch and handlebars, before solar panels rotated outwards and absorbed energy from the sun, powering up the motorcycle as it vroomed almost menacingly.

It was sleek and white, elegant while bulky, and it was everything June could've asked for. She crushed Dex in a hug.

"Thank you," she whispered. "This is amazing."

"Woah," Fitz and Biana breathed behind her, their eyes glued to the motorcycle.

"How do I ride it?" June asked Dex.

He fidgeted slightly. "Well, human movies weren't exactly great at explaining how this thing is supposed to work, so I created my own rendition. You use the handlebar to steer, and if you push the handlebar forward, you'll speed up. The break is this thing over here" -- he pointed to a red button in the middle -- "this will slow you down depending on how fast you push it. For reference, if you push it fully in a quarter of a second, you'll completely stop and get pitched over, I've tried on the prototype. There's stabilizers on either side of the rear wheel, so even if you tilt from turning, you won't fall over. There's a rearview mirror here, here, and here, and there's also an echolocation software that will display your current environment on top of the handlebar holographically if you click the green button. The blue button's self-destruct in five seconds, so make sure you don't accidentally press that. Purple button's eject, it'll throw you out, and it'll also dispense a parachute that you just have to grab onto and pull on; tug once to deploy. White button shrinks it back into a ball."

June blinked. "That was a bit much to take in."

Dex laughed. "I know, this took so long to design, my blueprints are completely messed up. I went through five prototypes before I finished the final design. Oh, and I painted it white. Hope you like it."

"Are you kidding? I love it! It's amazing! I can't believe Technopaths can do this type of thing." She gave an adoring look at Dex, and he flushed red.

"You have to test it out first," Dex said. "I've given it a small test ride, but I didn't want to use it too much so I don't know how well it'll work. As far as I can tell, the motorcycle's indestructible unless you click the blue button, so it shouldn't matter too much if you fall off it, be more concerned about protecting yourself. But yeah. Go for it."