Darkness GP

**Darkness GP** is a special chapter in Racing Lagoon, featuring the eponymous race.

The GP is the only chapter where there are no music playing in the chapter's title card. Additionally, a majority of the chapter is spent on an expository about WON-TEC and the incidents of the past.

## Synopsis

### The race

The Darkness GP features four opponent cars equipped with Aero-Diablo and Color-Diablo: three Aero-Diablo cars in form of HighwayStar, Scuderia12 (possibly Forza Rush's), Backyard-SP (possibly John Truth's), as well as the Diablo-Zeta and Sho Akasaki. The race is five laps long much like the Yokohama GP Championship Round (the race also shared the layout as with Yokohama GP's course layout), but with the starting line moved to that of BigWheel Street's and no ability to practice. Additionally, the player is required to win the race outright. Completing the race gives the player 3 million yens and Aero-Diablo; losing the race and then retrying sends the player back to 11th Night, where the player have to visit Redrenga Warehouse/Spencer's Test Course to try again.

Following the race, Akasaki noticed how the Diablo-Zeta is returning back just before his eyes, having the opponent of the race. The voice inside him took control of Akasaki's body and told him that it is his turn to become himself, just like that one crimson moon night - the night of the Diablo-Zeta destruction incident. Rush and Truth then told Akasaki that they have done a good job for them and that they will reveal the contents of the disk that he had obtained (and subsequently confiscated by a WON-TEC official) chapters ago, but the voice inside him was more interested in fighting the Diablo-Zeta again over that information, in the pursuit of speed. This leads to a three-lap Taiman battle against the car (the player can get rewards from this battle, mainly the Color-Diablo paint item).

### Post-race

After the Taiman battle, Ikki Fujisawa is revealed as the driver of the Diablo-Zeta. Ikki then proclaims that he will never escape from the voice until Akasaki is "erased" from this world; the voice subsequently noted that that the time has came for it to break his silence and that it and Akasaki "has always been the one and the same". When he asked what does the voice meant with that, the voice revealed that Akasaki *is* the Yokohama's Fastest Legend, as the voice reflected back on the Diablo-Zeta destruction incident ten years ago, and the quest for the land beyond speed hasn't yet over, and the legend is unstoppable.

Akasaki then attempted to escape, but he was captured and ended up in a warehouse. Finding himself on the floor of the interior of the warehouse, he felt that the voice had took over his body as his mind replayed the decade-old incident, before Gamou Kusunoki and Keisuke Ishikawa arrives and awakes him, revealing that he is in the Tuneshop Diablo and that Kyoji Nanba and Fujisawa got their cars tuned here to outrun him (Akasaki already knew about Kyoji's car being Diablo-tuned from Kuniteru Takahashi and Shinsuke Ishikawa in the previous chapters), something that Akasaki attempted to deny due to the dilapidated conditions of the garage. In response, Keisuke attempted to hit Akasaki with a steel pipe in an attempt to "erase" him; with Akasaki missing the attack, a limousine consisting of WON-TEC higher-ups arrived to take Akasaki to WON-TEC's headquarters.

At WON-TEC's headquarters, he is told by Heidel Schneider that manufacturing auto parts was a main front for the company; the company's true interests are in biotech sector as they developed the Diablo drug for ten years. Using the disk that he obtained from the man in Hokkaido, Schneider explained the Diablo drug: that it is used to manipulate someone's emotions by eliminating feelings of fear, to awaken one's true potential.

After an intermission (ostensibly so the player can save, if desired), Akasaki is shown the Diablo-Zeta destruction incident by Schneider, where incident was referred to as **The War of Yokohama**, that led to the birth of the Yokohama's Fastest Legend lore. He further continued that the War exposed the flaw of the Diablo drug during high mental stress that led to fatal accidents on experimental trials, but also noted that the War was not only the case of the incident; the death of Nenji Nanba (who also popularized the term Diablo Tune) was the one of the first incidents involving the drug, leading the company to seek more test subjects that could withstand extreme stress, as Nenji's accident was a huge detriment for the D-Project. These subjects, which then gets disposed in an underground prison once they are past WON-TEC's use, are what the company considered as Drivers, in which they were given a sample of Diablo and then an incomplete version of Diablo-Zeta; the results were ineffective as it lacked antibody-like additives, even as WON-TEC administered different additive mixtures to each Driver, before they perish in high speed accidents. He also revealed the dream and title of Yokohama's Fastest Legend was nothing but a cover for WON-TEC's project, and that the War of Yokohama occurred because of various failed Drivers attempting to escape, and the reason (as well as scrutiny from authorities and financial reasons) the company halted work on Diablo.

When Sho asked if he have any relation to the past Drivers, Schneider revealed WON-TEC's final hope: a Driver that survived that incident and possessed the right antibodies needed for Diablo, and thus placed that Driver to a ten-year slumber (through D-Sleep), and that the Driver *is* none other than Sho himself. Surprised at this revelation, he immediately attempted to escape the headquarters, in which he found himself having a confrontation from within yet again:

* The voice inside him - basically revealed to be his past self at this point - has always been angry most of the time, but for this time the rage was about how Akasaki is supposedly WON-TEC's final hope, although the voice left whether it understood that information or not to himself.
* When asked about the War of Yokohama, his past self denied that it had ever died, instead claiming that it has always been lived inside him.
* When his past self was given a strain of the Diablo drug, he did not lose his soul, instead feeling differently in pursuit of destruction, given he hated everyone - including Akasaki himself - and warns that the voice will never allow him to betray itself.
* When asked about the sleep, the voice claimed that he have slept for a long time, and that he is now awakened inside Akasaki himself.

Finally, when the voice asked what would happen if the voice is fully awoken, Akasaki received no reply, as he questions if he is even alive, with his next goal being looking for the answer for that very question, as the chapter ends.