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Chapter 16 - A Small Race

1 Week Later

"Look, the bread from that store looks really good!" Charles said, bouncing up and down from excitement. North, who was standing behind him, looked over to see different types of bread that were steaming as they were taken out of the oven.

His eyes glanced to see that they even had different types of donuts being sold. He grabbed Charles by his neck and dragged him over to the store, ignoring the sounds of revolt coming from the child.

As he was going to order, he noticed the pricing that was being displayed on the board. "1,800 Yen!" North stopped as he looked at the pricing, his face showing how stupified he was from the price.

He quickly turned around and stumbled away from the store, his face in shambles. Charles looked at him, still being held by the neck, with a smirk on his face which was quickly stopped by North letting him fall to the ground.

"AH, not again!" Charles, rubbed the back of his head as he rolled on the ground in pain. North looked at him with his usual blank face, which irritated Charles when he noticed it. "Je te déteste, toi et ton stupide visage.(I hate you and your stupid face)"

North ignored the rumblings of Charles as he continued on walking around the mall. He was wearing a plain blue jacket and light blue pants, his tail was softly swinging around as his ears, picking through holes in his hoodie, twitched whenever he heard something interesting. The fluorescent lights shone on his black hair before fading when it hit the white parts of his ears and mark.

Charles got off the ground before quickly catching up to North who was looking around the place. Charles was wearing a yellow collared sweater with white strips at the stomach area and khaki pants. The tail and ears of his twitching as he glared at North.

"When is your next race again?" Charles said after sighing, his eyes glancing around the place, people watching.

"Tuesday, 2 weeks from now." He answered, his eyes looking for places to eat that weren't over priced.

"That would be your last race of the year, right?" Charles said as he took his phone out to check the month.

"Yeah, it is a week before Christmas."

Charles nodded his head before turning his attention to looking at videos on his phone. North glanced at him for a moment before turning back to looking for food. He was given a break today and was practically forced by his Araki to go out of the dorm, seeing that he doesn't know anyone else other than Charles, his trainer and Araki, he decided to go to the mall nearby with Charles hoping to see something interesting or tasty.

Yet, it has already been an hour since they had come here and there has been nothing but boring things or overpriced food. The bright lights of the stores irritated his eyes, and the whiteness of the place didn't make it better with the occasional colors only helping him slightly.

"It is pretty boring, right Hayate." Charles spoke out, his eyes still focused on his phone. "There is nothing really interesting here for people like us, other than the food but they are pretty overpriced."

North nodded his head in agreement, "Yeah, I would much rather be training currently but I wasn't given much of a choice when Ego had you watch over me."

Charles gave a quick glance, "Trust me when I say that I would much rather be anywhere but here but rest is an important thing, even if we are stronger than humans."

"But that doesn't mean we can't have fun." Charles said, a smirk appeared on his face as he showed something on his phone.

North turned to see what he was showing, seeing that he had rented a track nearby for them to run in. "How much did that cost?"

"A little over 200,000 Yen." Charles casually said as if he hadn't spent a large amount of money.

North looked at him, eyes wide, as he tried to comprehend what he just said. "w-w-what..?"

"A little over 200,000 Yen, not that much honestly." Charles said, repeating himself as he looked at North with a faint amused look.

Breathing in, North calmed himself down as he let the information sink in. "And you say the food here is over priced." North finally said, letting out a sarcastic remark.

"Because it is." Charles shrugged. "Anyhow, let's get going, we only have 2 hours to have fun." Charles said, doing a 180 turn towards the exit before quickly walking to it.

North looked at him with a blank expression before letting out a sigh and walking behind him.

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It took a while to reach the place Charles had rented. It was a racing park, and a rather large one as it had 3 dirt tracks. 

Walking to the closet track, I looked at the dirt and saw that it was maintained often from how good it looked.

"It is a good looking place, the shade is also nice." I spoke, taking in the sight.

Charles, who was behind me, nodded his head in agreement. "It is, I came here before and saw how nice it was which is why I decided to rent it."

Charles jumped over the fence, landing on the track before getting into position. I looked at him for a bit before following. Positioning myself to the left of him, we just stood in the middle of the straight. The quietness of the place caused me to instinctively gather all the data in my head about him and his strengths but quickly stopped myself.

'This is just for fun.' I thought to myself.

"Don't worry about it, go ahead and gather that data of yours." Charles said, noticing my thoughts, a giant smirk appeared on his face. "It will make it more fun."

I just nodded my head before letting all the data rush in. I looked forward to see a leaf that had fallen from a tree. Charles also noticed this and nodded his head at me which I nodded back. I watched the leaf fall slowly to the ground, weaving through the air that pushed it around before softly touching the ground.

Charles launched forward, with me following in pursuit. Charles quickly tried to get in front of me to try and block me but I used the old running style of mine to do a weird movement to quickly disrupt Charles' plan before using the new style to quickly do a small burst and moving to the right of Charles. 

"Haha, good move!" Charles said, his voice loud. The smile on Charles' face was growing bigger by the second. "Have you been practicing the old style in secret?"

"Perhaps." 

"HA!" Letting out a single laugh, Charles started to pick his pace up with me following.

I gave a quick analysis of the track we were running and saw that it was a total of 1200M from where we started and back, a very small amount for both me and Charles. Seeing that we were entering the first corner, I quickly used it to gain back stamina while keeping pace with Charles who was only speeding up.

We quickly left the first corner and entered the second corner just as fast, which I used to accelerate instead which let me pass Charles for a second before he quickly sped up again, running at my left.

After leaving the second corner, we entered a straight that was covered by the shade of trees. The faint light of the sun shined through the branches of the trees, bouncing off our bodies as we raced.

It was a constant contest of speed as we ran overtook each other every time we sped up, it didn't take long for us to reach the third corner. I was the first one to enter and I was quick to use the corner to accelerate even more, Charles wasn't far behind in action as he accelerated as well and quickly overtook me again.

"You already know you can't beat me when it comes to acceleration!" The smile that was on Charles face had already been transformed into a smirk a while back and it was the largest smirk I had ever seen on him.

"Shut up." I said, the words leaving my mouth with a slight growl. Charles looked surprised for a second, wiping the smirk off his face for a second before it quickly appeared again.

"No can do!" He said before picking up speed.

The contest of speed continued on as we entered and left the fourth corner, the straight to where we entered being the only part left. There was about 200M left and I was reaching my top speed while Charles seemed to still be speeding up.

"Is that all you got?" Charles asked, seemingly confused but the smirk on his face showed that he wasn't confused at all. "I expected more from you."

"Shut the F##K up!" I quickly sped up once more, catching up to Charles who had gotten ahead. The smirk of his grew as he sped up, the burst I was using to speed up was causing deep marks on the track but I ignored it in favor of speeding up more.

It was only for a few seconds, that when I reached my max speed, I passed ahead of Charles with a burst of speed. It caught him off guard for a millisecond but quickly caught himself and started to close the small distance I was able to create. 

"That is what I'm talking about!" Charles yelled before passing me and creating a small lead. As Charles was running with a fever, a small amount of orange and yellow light seemed to have appeared around him before just as quickly disappearing when we crossed the finish line.

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"0:59 for a 1200M race, those kids need to calm themselves down." Muttering to themselves, Ego was watching the 2 Umas race once more.

He was wearing his usual clothing of black dress shirt and Khaki pants. He had his clipboard in his arms while holding a stopwatch. The clipboard was filled with information about the little race that North and Charles had, their usage of their racing styles, positioning, speed, guts, and multiple things.

'Then again, I expected Charles to do something like this.' He thought to himself, the sight of them racing each other turning into information to use. 'Hopefully North gets the thing I want.'

Ego continued watching as North repeatedly challenged Charles after he continued losing, a small blue fire coming from his eyes as he challenged Charles. 

A smile appeared on Ego's face.

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I struggled with some of these parts, especially the beginning of this and the interactions between Charles and North.

Hope you enjoyed this part and sorry if you were expecting a meeting between the 2.

I should've fixed the end time of the last race, it should be 1:40 instead of 1:09 since it is a 1800M race.

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