A/N: Finished rewriting this at 13.12.2009. Actually I was going to keep this first fanfic of mine unedited as a sort of yardstick for any improvements I make in writing, but upon re-reading the original I decided it deserved some editing. The RazerRayn-parts are somewhat tuned down - still love the pairing, but this was for the sake of more credibility.

Regretting forever

I clearly remember that morning. In fact, everyone present does. I've often regretted my actions that day; wondered how…

But mostly I feel hate, hate that still drives me, no matter what happens, I'll find my brother's challenger, strangle him with my own hands and make him wish he never ever had been born.

I sense that you don't understand what I'm talking about. Perhaps we should take it from the top, hm?

It all happened two years ago on the last Sunday morning in October. Last Sunday morning in October means the last, and most important race of all: Grand Prix Racing Championship. The highlight of the season - or it used to be, back when I still had a heart that fluttered as the lights went from red to green.

I was kipping down in my loft after a late and booze-filled night at the bar. It had been an achievement even for me to drive home in the small hours and find the front door. Suddenly a short, demanding signal followed by many more reached my ears. I thought it was Edje who called to ask if I was going to show up at all for the coming competition. I reached the phone, a nice, black phone fastened to the wall. They're nifty when you want to fetch a pack of cigarettes and a lightener or load the coffee maker, aren't they?

Enough details. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I took the phone and answered.

'Razer''.

''Good morning", a voice greeted in a typical military manner and. although I already knew who it was, added: "It's Erol''.

Ah, my dear kid brother who has trod my footsteps long enough to become a Class One racer himself, but not long enough to know when I was better left undisturbed. For instance, after a night of heavy drinking.

''What?'' I snapped. If I had muttered, he hadn't gotten offended, but this was snapping, and that I regret ever since.

''What you mean by - 'what'?'' he sounded irritated. ''You've not seen the sport news of today? I have a Class One race in less than two hours, and there's a lot at stake!''

"- Erol, Krew is always placing six-digit bets on you" I muttered after a dumbstruck second, honestly not knowing what he worried about. Swaying from side to side I shuffled through the rooms, trying to find a lightener for the cigarette pressed in between my clenched teeth.

"This is not just about money" came the hissed reply. "Today I'm racing against the one lowlife I couldn't imagine ever to master a zoomer-"

My brain clicked at the word 'lowlife'. Lately, there was one individual in particular who had aggravated my brother tremendously.
"It's the 'Eco Freak', hm?"

Exactly how Erol had come to meet and despise this person was shrouded in mystery clear to me. The only time the question had popped up, he muttered something along the lines of "through work". I didn't inquire further; it's only natural that secrecy surrounds Haven's top policy, so it's not much job talk from my brother's side whenever we meet. A few weeks earlier, however, he'd told me the man was a renegade, escaped from prison and a threat to the people of Haven City, who the KG did their best to put down. According to Erol, his intelligence was nothing to write home about.

"Half animal and half crazy" was his affirmative reply. "Yet somehow, the filth managed to qualify for the Class One race, and is now starting from the front!" His voice was strained.

The lightener in my hand stopped a half centimetre from the cigarette. I stared cross-eyed at the small flame, going through what I had just heard in my head.

''Would love to pretend I didn't hear anything of this..." But considering how crystal clear the line sounded, this option was unfortunately impossible. "You're actually nervous that buffoon will run you over like a dry oil slick? What a hare you are''.

There was a long pause in the ether, and I did nothing to interrupt it. The hung-over headache was rumbling in over the horizon. When Erol spoke again, he was slowly burning.

"It's not the 'buffoon' that scares me, I've handled something similar before. It's the possibility that I might lose against him. If so, my prestige within the racing world will suffer. Me, losing against beginner's luck-!"

I couldn't hold the disbelieving chuckle back, and shared it with him over the line.

"What, are your racing skills so insufficient they can't compete with a pup in a shopping trolley? Forgive me, but it's highly disturbing to hear that a professional racer and moreover the Baron's second-in-command, calm and collected on duty and smashing on the track, cries over such a petty. Erol, if you're not mentally stable to play even with a fry, leave that career path to me..."

I was cackling, so caught up in my own jesting that I didn't register at first that my brother - at this time of day still figuratively speaking - exploded with anger at the other end of the line.

"You pompous ass! I hope you choke on your poison stick!"

"What for?" I asked, daring him to go on any further. My mind turned on a dime, was instantly sharp, sober and cutting again. Superior to Erol's brain, which even at the best of times gave away as wicked and wracked. This quality may have helped him on the racetrack, made him brutal and numb for the consequences as effectively as dope, but in an argument like this it was a dead end.

I can't recall exactly how the words fell throughout the quarrel that followed, but it's self-explanatory that the more revved up Erol became, the more contradictive, irrational and groundless his arguments became. They degenerated to personal attacks, all the more distanced from the subject until they were an oddball's fantasies. I easily sliced through them like a hot knife through butter... Which made him go livid, of course, and eventually lash out irrationally.

"You sodding lapdog for the Mizo clan!"

I've poked my surroundings with a stick many times before, and Erol in particular. Only this time, he didn't seem to realize he'd been tricked into an outburst of rage.

He accused me of being a 'supercilious society yuppie' - and it was barely he could get the words straight when he spat them at me - and of disowning my old life... Well, well, he'd never dared to say these things face to face.

He vowed to send law enforcers to Kras and have them hunt 'my pack' down. Now, the mere thought of taking down a KG troop by the help of UR-86 bots was bracing. I asked if he wanted their remains dumped in the Haven Port or sent home one piece at the time by instalments. This discussion was clearly not about the upcoming competition anymore. It was about a younger sibling's mad attempts to make his older brother feel intimidated. I easily dodged out of reach for his mental swings, stood back and let him do the shouting. The hall mirror told me that although Erol couldn't see it, I still kept a mock mask of kind overlooking towards my baby brother's vivid imagination.

"Stop cowering and show some spine! Answer me!" he lunged at last, panting like a boxer after ten intense rounds.
"Hey, save it you loon". I tried to swat his fury away, but unlike every previous time, it proved fruitless. He did fall into silence, but it was only to regain air enough to go on fretting. I waited patiently, until he eventually gave up and bid a curt but resentful farewell.

"If this is what you want it, then goodbye for good". A rustle on the line, and the phone clonked back in its cradle.

With a racking headache reinforced by the past half hour's shouting in my ear, I lit a much-needed second cigarette of the day and inhaled deeply. Right then I would've fancied to press the front of that ludicrous racing mask up his eye sockets. Still irked about the phone call, I splashed some after-shave in my face and spent a good while on tuning my hair into the right spikes and waves. Much like a bridal pair doesn't come to church untidy, I don't hit the racetrack un-groomed.
Many soft-hearted pansies tend to fall into self-pitying at times like these, but there was no reason for me to feel like I had just been slugged in the face - that task is left for me to impose upon others, folks. It was too pre-occupying to think about what Erol felt right now, or should feel in my opinion.

Regretful about his rash decisions, for one. Embarrassed when he called to retract this quick dissociation from me. Hopefully very upset when he braked at the starting line within the next hour. Even now I have to admit that when Erol channelled his mental agitation into his driving, any advice from an older and wiser man was superfluous. There would be nothing but mincemeat in his wake, if he did so today.

This proved to be completely right, yet so, so different from what I had fancied.

Right after the soporific prize ceremony of the Grand Prix, Mizo hosted a gathering at the Bloody Hook. These gatherings used to be thundering follow-up-parties that began, progressed and ended in a drunken stupor. Even members of rivalling crime clans happened to slip in at those times - I know, during one of these celebrations I had namely taken a good look on a young woman, whom later turned out to be Krew's progeny.

But when the novelty of winning had worn off, the parties became more of a Mizo-only, loosely interconnected crowd that entered the bar, before everyone went to sit with a beer stoup in their own corner. A great opportunity to let your mind drift, in other words.

I thought about calling Erol to say I forgave him, but then swept the thought away and decided that the time it takes for shame to drill into his thick skull is off the charts. When he eventually gave in and ate the humble pie, I could graciously forgive him and ask him to come visit the town someday.

It was at this point my attention was caught by something familiar flashing past on the bar's large TV screen, and I turned my head in time to see the replay. I just stared at the news tape of Haven's Class One Race earlier that day.

'... And so the most harrowing news of the racing world today: Famous NYFE-racer Erol, Commander of the Krimzon Guard, died today in a frontal crash with a month's supply of Eco shortly after Haven Class One race. Only minutes before had the wanted renegade known as Jak won the race... As we speak, we're receiving facts about a stake from the black marketer Krew. Over to our special correspondent, live from Mar Memorial Stadium... Jordan, how's the atmosphere at the moment?''

Pictures from the stadium flashed by: The crowd was roaring, either upset or excited. No visible zoomer wreck; possibly it had dissolved in the Eco explosion. And then the thing that unconditionally burned onto my retina: His racing mask lying left on the ground, staring emptily into the camera as if it couldn't believe it was the sole survivor of the crash. Neither could I. That mask was so familiar - specially designed and made out of the mudguard of his first competition zoomer after it had served its purpose. A small birthday gift paid by me back in the old days

I was shell-shocked to the point that I first didn't register when our most prominent rivals got their share, too. Crime lord Krew had died the same evening, mere hours after the race. Now usually a crime lord's death is something that comes about discreetly and with the helping hand of an enemy, but this time one just couldn't expect it to go by unnoticed - the explosion in which he was killed could be heard from miles away.

Midway through these breaking news, somebody with a shapely body disentangled from the rest in front of the TV and approached the bar desk. It turned out to be the princess herself, Krew's daughter. She had just ordered a drink when the news of her old man's death came, and it seemed rather than losing her face by leaving the bar in tears, she stayed to finish this funeral feast. She sipped quietly from the beer with a facial expression as void and bereft as I felt. Her lower lip hardly quivered, but one could see from how it pressed against the glass that it was tense.

It's said that misery loves company, but the reason she joined me at the bar I will never quite figure out. Perhaps she fantasized about a handsome stranger reaching out and attending to her. More likely because she knew I wouldn't, too full of myself. She had turned away from the murmuring audience, and strangely enough none exploited on this by slipping a knife between her ribs. The princess would be uninteresting until Krew's empire was "rightfully" hers.

Maybe it was all because we had both lost someone. But they had been her father and my brother, and although there had been connections between them in the past this had been possible solely because Mizo wasn't involved in it at any level.

But once the drink was finished, she left.

Three months later I went into retirement, left the track to the brats and their tinker toy cars. My interest and excitement had died down years ago, passed a certain threshold when a win no longer equalled an achievement. I was present solely to collect money for Mizo; otherwise it was a daily chore.

But, I vowed not to rest before I had killed my brother's challenger. Not a second I would lay back down and watch the clouds drifting before the culprit's body lay cold by my feet.

And yesterday night, he sought me out. I recognized him from the hair - the same blond shock had been shown on TV at the day of the Class One Race nearly two years ago, bobbing as its owner escaped the stadium running. Coward. Yet the hypocrite now had the stomach to come into the garage and tell me to pick on someone in my own size.

I'll kill him off. He's more or less involved in causing Erol's demise, and I'll be happy to return the favour.