Prime million

Jen downed another glass of Corellian whiskey at the crowded bar, head still spinning from his unprecedented triumph at the notorious underworld Grand Prix. Just months ago he had been just another backwater pilot - now his name was spoken with awe across the Outer Rim racing circuits. Groupies and admirers endlessly plied him with drinks and praise, but it was never enough. Jen was hooked on the adrenaline high of cheating death again and again.

In a shadowy corner booth, Amara sat observing her wild champion with a mix of pride and wariness. Together they had reached the pinnacle, but living legends made dangerous lovers. Jen burned too bright, uncaring that all stars eventually go supernova. Still, she stayed in his orbit, drawn like a moth to that defiant flame.

Their dangers liaison continued as more exclusive death race invites poured in following Jen's spectacular Grand Prix victory. They toured the Outer Rim constantly, leaving smoldering wreckage and broken challengers' dreams in their wake. Betting syndicates made them rich, but still Jen chased the next untamed track and girl. Nothing satisfied for long anymore.

Between events, life devolved into a haze of strong drinks, drugs, and pretty faces eager for the champion's attention. Jen had forgotten what sobriety felt like, stumbling from one oblivion to the next while crowds cheered his antics. This wild flame would consume itself if left unchecked.

One night Amara found Jen passed out alone in a grimy hotel strewn with empty bottles. She bit her lip anxiously. Jen was flying recklessly close to the suns, heedless of the fall awaiting. If she couldn't tame his self-destructive hunger, he would spiral out of control.

When Jen finally came to groggily the next day, Amara informed him she had cancelled his upcoming races and cleared his social calendar. He started to protest angrily, but she cut him off. "You need to slow down before you wreck everything we've built. I'm taking you away to rest and reset."

Jen knew better than to argue with Amara's icy resolve. Sullenly he allowed her to bundle him onto her sleek ship, headed for some isolated safe house far from temptation. Rehab and restraint were not in his vocabulary, but Amara seemed determined to change that.

Their destination proved to be a secluded ocean villa on the tropical resort moon of Vega 3. As the ship descended over azure waves, Jen had to admit a break from his chaotic lifestyle was overdue. Here the weary haze in his mind cleared slightly, helped by fresh sea air and Amara's watchful care. Maybe she was right that he had been burning too hot for too long.

Amara restricted outside comms and visitors, maintaining complete control over Jen's schedule. Mornings meant swimming laps and beach jogs to regain physical discipline. Afternoons passed with tactical simulations and engineering projects to rebuild mental reflexes dulled by abuse. Evenings brought relaxing spa treatments and herbal detoxes to gently drain the toxins from Jen's strained system.

Under Amara's firm but compassionate guidance, Jen started coming back to himself week by week. The wild edge slowly dulled from his eyes as mind and body recalibrated through rest and care. Inside, he was surprised to feel embers rekindling for simpler joys like watching the twin suns set over the glittering ocean each evening. Perhaps the hedonic treadmill only ended in emptiness without these grounded moments between extremes.

But as much as Jen healed outwardly, in his quietest times an aching void gnawed inside. His family's memories had faded to blurred echoes except in scattered dreams. Were smiling Aurora and wise Liya still stargazing together, thinking of him? The Jen they knew was gone forever, burned away by infernos of ego. There was no bridging that gulf now, even if he dared try.

After two months of secluded recovery, Amara finally declared Jen ready to reenter the worlds he had almost left in flames. Their parting in the villa hangar was bittersweet - each owed the other so much, but destinies ultimately diverged between the patient caregiver and restless wild heart she had pulled back from the brink. Still, their bond would endure wherever fate led.

Jen flew aimlessly for awhile, unsure what came next with old destructive habits left behind. He jammed with rowdy spacer crews to relearn camaraderie, realizing his revolving door of hangers-on before had held little meaning. And he accepted friendly races against fellow washed-up pilots, reminding him of youthful dreams before cynicism darkened the skies. Jen was satisfied - almost - existing simply day to day again.

But as Amara predicted, existential restlessness inevitably returned. Jen needed purpose, however reckless. He would climb back to prominence the only way he knew - through daring what others deemed impossible. Opportunity arose in the form of the infamous Prime Million Rally organized by underworld heavy hitters for only the galaxy's craziest racers. Just entering meant laughing in the face of death. Naturally, Jen was in.

The Prime Rally course was a gauntlet through environmental extremes across various planets. Acid sea divides, impassable mountain ranges, uncharted darkness - merely finishing with ship intact was unthinkable. Untold billions would be wagered on the outcome.

Arriving on the lawless desert world that served as Rally headquarters, Jen saw he was not alone in heeding the siren call. Hardened pilots swarmed the dusty streets surrounding makeshift raceways as qualifying rounds commenced. Everyone here was an adrenaline junkie like Jen, come to test their reflexes and spit at mortality one more time. There could be only one Prime Champion, if any survived to claim the title.

Jen kept to the shadows as names were called, studying the other racers carefully. Cyborgs and androids with enhanced processing speeds. Augmented humanoids with reflex boosts. Expert combat pilots already comfortable skirting death. And of course muscleheaded adrenaline addicts like Jen eager to make their names immortal through impossible risk. This would be no gentleman's sport.

In his qualifying trial, Jen pushed his patched-up ship to the limit racing local hotshots. A few blew engines trying to match his audacity through the jagged mountain passes. He took corners by momentum and faith alone, feeling fuller than he had in ages. Near-disaster was home to Jen. He crossed the finish line viciously, leaving no doubt he was a top threat for the main event.

Preparations continued over the following weeks as Jen modified his ship night and day in secrecy. He bulked up the stabilizers, stripped unnecessary weight, and boosted the engines to extreme capacity with unstable fuel mixes. Safety or longevity were non-concerns - his only goal was outracing death's reach for a few thrilling moments when worlds held their breath. Nothing else mattered anymore but those transient bursts of godhood that left mortality behind.

The day of Prime launch arrived amid citywide riots and blowout celebrations across the desert world. Hundreds of billions had been wagered on the incoming carnage. As Jen climbed into his stripped-down cruiser, cheers and jeers rained down equally on his head. Fame awaited at the end for one...or infamy in a blazing crater. He was here to flip his cosmic coin.

Jen's vision tunneled as the start klaxon blared. Then his modified engines were screaming to life, accelerating insanely as the battered ship leapt to the head of the pack. First cross this frigid ocean studded with jagged ice upthrusts. Next carve a blistering path through the shattered badlands before deadly storms overtook them. The rest lay cloaked in darkness and distance. Jen smiled viciously, on the hunt once more. No matter the odds, some truths never changed - he was still the alpha. Let lesser beasts try to keep pace.

Gravity seemed an afterthought as Jen slingshotted around frozen peaks that appeared dead ahead in the haze. His strained engines whined in protest, but he tuned out all external stimuli, focused only on riding the razor's edge another split second faster than total oblivion. The other racers were gnats to be crushed beneath contempt. All that existed was the kill.

Howls erupted planetwide as Jen shot into the lead crossing into the dusty wastelands. No one could match this level of sustained risk - it was almost inhuman. Billions doubled down on their bets, unable to look away from slow motion catastrophe. But on Jen flew past former limits, closer and closer to believing his own growing mythos.

Swooping recklessly through narrow cliff gaps to gain precious milliseconds soon took a toll. Jen cursed as warning sirens blared a breached fuel line. Icy liquid sprayed into space as he limped onward, systems failing rapidly. But quitting was no option with glory awaiting. He coaxed the sputtering engines on stubbornly even as death closed in from behind.

Jen's ship shuddered as multiple systems edged toward overload. The left thruster was sputtering erratically now from the leaking fuel line. Ship wide alarms wailed warnings of imminent catastrophic failure.

On the outskirts of the wasteland loomed deadly plasma storms ready to envelop the racers. They would fry circuits instantly with lightning that jumped planet to planet. Navigating the swirling particle maelstroms was suicide in normal conditions. But with his disintegrating ship, Jen's odds of slipping through unscathed dropped to zero.

For a split second, reason flashed through his adrenaline-soaked brain. No trophy or glory was worth this. He should pull up and withdraw before the storms fried him. Survival first, race be damned.

But that flicker of rationality was soon smothered by primal defiance. Quitters never won legends. And he had come too far to crawl back defeated now. The Jen that compromised was dead - there was only the relentless fanatic obsessed with victory at any and all cost.

So with a snarling roar that few could hear in the piston-pounding din, Jen plunged into the plasma storm's eye. Reality outside became a violet electric hellscape as lethal voltages danced across his hull, shorting systems. The ship's interior darkened to emergency crimson as surges blew out the lights.

Jen flew on sheer frenzied instinct now, wrestling the barely-responsive craft through the hypnotic flashes of particles and current. Like some berserker of old consumed by battle rage, no terror could sway his course or even register as he tore a path through the maelstrom's fury. If these were his final moments, he would ride them at full throttle into whatever awaited past the veil. No regrets, no doubts, no looking back. Only unbound ecstasy and rage in the face of annihilation.

Blinded by iridescent flares and dependent on failing controls, Jen nearly plowed straight into an obese crimson sun that loomed out of the static ahead. At the last possible second, he wrenched the ship into a spiral dive under the bloated star's massive gravity well, engines protesting wildly. But the risky slingshot maneuver paid off with acceleration vital to stay ahead of the other battered racers emerging from the storm.

As his ship blasted back into open space from the plasma clouds, Jen could scarcely believe he had somehow survived the insanity and made it through intact. Up ahead, the distant winner's banner shimmered over the ice-locked finish line, impossibly close now.

Teeth bared manically, Jen focused everything left in his shattered vessel on reaching that immortal banner, heedless of consequences. He was beyond pain, fear, reason - a bloodied ghost consumed with crossing the threshold first. Nothing could deny him so near the summit.

In a final burst, Jen's ruined machine shot across the finish an instant before the next competitors emerged from the storms behind him. His triumphant yell was lost in the vacuum as what remained of the ship gave out and spiraled into the planet's gravity well, streaking toward the surface wreathed in plasma like a rabid comet.

Jen never felt the impact. In the cockpit's last seconds, endorphins and delirium carried him far from all mortal sensations. As the corpse-ridden craft augured in kilometers below to erupt in a cataclysmic shockwave, the crowds' gazes were riveted skyward. Because there against all odds, a lone ejection pod streaked upward through the chaos, fragile human cargo still intact.

The pod floated serenely down through the awesome debris cloud like an angel emerging from purgatory fires. No cheers yet rang out, only stunned silence across a world too jaded for miracles as the battered survivor emerged coughing steam but savagely alive.

In the days that followed, Jen was elevated to living myth as vids of his death-defying run through the storms spread planetwide. No one could explain how his body had endured G-forces and volatages that should have liquified organs or fried synapses. Whispers spoke of divine protection, twisted genetics, unholy bargains across forbidden dimensions.

But ask the soft-spoken champion himself, and Jen would just smile enigmatically.