He climbed aboard and revved the throttle. The bike responded with a nigh-inaudible whine, rising to a sputtering roar as the attitude jets ignited and the vehicle began to move. Once he'd gotten it pointed more or less in the right direction, navigating by the position of the Coruscant gate and his memory of the maps in the AMBR database, Kelly gunned the jets, and took off.
Traveling by hover-bike was an interesting experience in more ways than one. It was hard to judge with so few landmarks in the endless alabaster expanse of the Nexus, and Kelly hadn't bothered to give his creation any kind of speedometer, but he would have sworn his ride was topping out at less than one hundred miles-per-hour. He'd expected to get two-sixty out of it at least before the drag became too much for the tiny jets to overcome.
It was also the first task he'd attempted since arriving in the Omniverse that he just plain couldn't do well. The traveler's highly developed co-ordination and quick wits made up for a lot, but he felt like he was only barely controlling the bike, weaving a crooked path towards his destination, hair flapping wildly behind him. In the first ten minutes, he came within meters of running down no less than six different people, and in the sparsely populated Nexus that took either notable talent, or an impressive lack thereof.
This may not have been such a bright idea. Perhaps it's a good thing it doesn't go faster.
Eventually, Kelly got the hang of it, at least enough not to be a hazard. The sheer monotony of the environment actually made it difficult to tell whether or not he was going in a straight line, but his sense of direction was well-developed enough to compensate once he'd had a little practice.
At least, that's what he thought. As it turned out, he'd underestimated just how bad he was at riding a hover-bike.
Abruptly, the Fountain of Infinity loomed large in his vision - a plain, water-filled marble bowl as big as a diving-pool. There was a statue in the middle, an upright limestone obelisk, with a well-developed human ass lovingly sculpted on one side at about eye-level. White-on-white, it blended into the surrounding environment, an image of absurd, surrealist perfection, and he was heading straight for it.
The brakes on the bike were good, but they weren't that good. He pulled the handlebars hard to the right, the jets swiveled and flared, and anti-gravity unit whined.
The bike spun around twice and rolled over - the gyroscope he'd given it was serviceable, but not fantastic.
As Kelly was thrown free of the pin-wheeling machine, sailing through the air in a spiraling arc, he responded instinctively by triggering his neural throttle, overtaking an oncoming adrenaline rush with a more useful cerebral tool. Time seemed to slow down as his thought-speed sped up, but unlike a mind under the capricious stimulus of epinephrine, his thoughts remained clear and precise. Not that it did him much good. He was already beginning to tuck in preparation for a safety-roll, a reflex, presumably, born of long habit. The only other thing he could do was to activate his vector-sketch technique and hope for the best.
The tides of power within him shifted, hardening his body, and the world caught up with him. Kelly hit the ground and rolled. He skidded and bounced almost forty feet across the Nexus' strangely supportive non-ground. He managed to limit his injuries to only moderate lacerations. At least, he did until he shattered the lip of the fountain with his back, splashed into the basin off the ensuing bounce, and broke half of his ribs in the process.
He let his internal channels of psychic energy ebb. They'd served their purpose.
Kelly lay beneath the cool, clear water, and stared up at an alabaster male posterior sticking out of a stone block. From here, he could see that there was a trickle of water running down the crack. Any other time, the traveler probably would have felt that the entire Omniverse was having a laugh at his expense, but something interesting had happened just before he hit the fountain.
Kelly had been struck by a feeling not unlike being startled awake by a sudden, loud noise. On its heels had come the abrupt sensation that there were two of him inside his head, one a rudimentary echo of the other - only the simple passenger was also slightly quicker, and had access to strange, additional realms of perception. The mental echo had warned him, and in the instant before impact, Kelly had already known it was going to be his ribs that paid the price.
The sensation of duality was still with him, a strange double-experience of the world that made everything seem more vivid. He felt... haunted, but the spirit in question was really just another part of himself.
In spite of his injuries, and in spite of his newfound incompetence as a biker, the traveler smiled.
My higher senses are beginning to return. Judging by the echo, I guess I must have set up a psychic partition at some point, to act as a data-buffer for danger-signals, or something along those lines. Maybe to prevent surprise? Mitigate distraction? Come to think of it, that's probably why I'm not bothered by pain.
How did I do that?
The traveler didn't know. He felt like the knowledge was there, but processing it was like listening to a dog explain how to diagnose cancer with your nose. He lacked some necessary background or trick, some power or ability or quality. It was possible that he just plain wasn't smart enough yet, his brain still too human to decipher such complicated information.
That was a frustrating thought.
Satisfied with his analysis for the moment, Kelly hauled himself upright against the lip of the fountain, and taking note that his broken ribs were poking him in the lungs. That was okay - he'd figured out by now that his lungs weren't strictly necessary, in his specific case more of a biological luxury than a vital organ. Having them torn wide open by a shotgun-blast had been the big clue, but the several minutes he'd just spent thinking at the bottom of a fountain were also fairly compelling evidence.
Still, he needed to fix himself up. It wouldn't do to have broken bones ripping him up insides. Clenching his teeth more at the delay than anything else, the traveler drew upon his Omnilium reserve and thought of healing.
Many hours later, Kelly stood up, his skeletal integrity restored. He still had some minor cuts and bruises on his arms and back, but nothing that was going to slow him down.
At least, not slow me down any further. Returning abilities aside, this trip has already been a fiasco.
He took several minutes to find his hover-bike, and after righting it, to determine that it still ran. It took him slightly longer to decide to climb back on. He eventually did, but erring on the side of caution, the traveler carefully kept it at less than fifty-percent of its top speed all the way to moss-covered, mildewed stone arch that housed the gate to the Pale Moors.
Mist rolled off of the portal as Kelly coasted to a stop in front of it, ominous vapors smelling of damp earth and night-time. He climbed off his bike, and took a profound satisfaction in reducing the vehicle back to its component Omnilium before finally striding into the fog, leaving the Nexus behind.
