VIPER || Oscar Piastri

Prologue

With one hand on the leather-wrapped steering wheel and the other in the wind, a girl sped along a deserted road with an occupied mind.

She was paying hardly any attention to the road in front of her as it had been driven on by the same vintage Dodge Viper more than enough times for the driver to remember what dips in the road were worth swerving for. Instead, she pondered. Having just arrived in Bahrain, and as the wind kindly took the hair from her face, her plum sunglasses serving as a useful shield, she stared ahead in reverie.

Andreanna Saunterre was not pleased with her current situation. If she had been driving through the dusty deserts of Bahrain due to her own free will, she would be. More than pleased in-fact. But today, what concerned her was how murky and grainy her car would be once she arrived at Brahrain's international Formula One circuit, seen as it had been painted black at the beginning of the summer just passed.

Normally, and as she had proved countless times before, Andreanna (or 'Andi' as she more commonly and much preferably goes by) adores attending the races. Ever since she was little, she had been a regular viewer of the sport, partly due to her families involvement with it. Her father, a successful investor and businessman, works as a member of the management team at Ferrari, having formally been working alongside Alpine for several years. Due to her French background, her father's switch to Ferrari came as a surprise to her. However, where the team lacked in French-ness it made up for in a pay-rise, so Andreanna couldn't complain much.

Additionally, her dad working at Ferrari meant that she had an excuse to spend days on end with her closest and oldest friend, Charles Leclerc, a driver for the F1 team.

Ever since the two became friends, Andreanna was no longer considered to be just Andreanna, and neither was Charles referred to as just Charles. From then on, it was always 'Andi and Charles', 'Charles and Andi.'

They were a duo everyone knew about, everyone recognized, and everyone adored. When she wasn't racing herself, she was supporting him instead, and vice versa. If anyone needed to knew where either of them were, the assumption of "he's probably with her", or "you need to find him to find her" would he made. They were young, sprightly and at the beginning of what would be, for the both of them, extremely successful careers in racing.

The pair of them go way back. Long before the first Grand Prix she attended on behalf of the Ferrari team,  Andreanna and Charles had known each-other well. Since Andreanna lived nearby to where the Monegasque resided, the two of them often crossed passed. Plus, Adreanna's involvement with the sport of F1 helped a little. And, to add on even further, once her father got the job at Ferrari, he kindly offered to help Andi finally move to Monaco like she'd always wanted, however she declined his offer. She wanted to do it by herself, and she very well could, thanks to her own profession.

Andreanna Saunterre is a Motorbike racer for the Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP team. And so, almost as soon as she met Charles, the two of them hit it off due to their shared passion for racing. Eleven years later, they're no less close than they were at the beginning of their friendship.

Well... kind of.

Long story short, they were glued together by the hip, which, naturally, lead to media speculation about the two of them's involvement with each other.

Charles hated it.

Andreanna did not.

Of course, as one would, she pretended that she too hated the assumption that the two of them had romantic feelings for one another. This was because, as you've probably guessed, Andreanna Saunterre did indeed have romantic feelings for Charles Leclerc. And, as you might have also guessed, Charles Leclerc did not reciprocate these feelings.

In truth, Andreanna had not always had these feelings. In fact, they only came about at the beginning of the 2022 season, for no apparent reason. So, the girl tried to get rid of them. Desperately.

Andreanna was known as the 'cooler' one of the two. This was due to her icy countenance when she was by herself; Often, people would avoid her if she wasn't with Charles, but as soon as she was, people noticed a shift. When the two were together, Andi was energetic and smiled a lot more. Now, you might think this was because of her (unwanted) crush on her best friend. That is not the case, however. The truth of it was that Andi was an incredibly shy person. When she was by herself, she felt uncomfortable engaging in conversations with people she wasn't close with, so whenever Charles came around - a person she was close with - she'd open up. Classic, really.

But, nevertheless, people who didn't know her as well as Charles did might construed her as being grumpy, serious and much too reserved.

Plus, her reputation as a racing driver didn't help. In fact, her career in MotoGP is what earned her her infamous nickname, the Viper. The connotations that came with this nickname were nothing short of ruthless. Viper snakes are known for their ability to ambush their prey in a flash, undetected. Andi was connected to this nickname due to her driving technique. Much like a Viper snake, Andi was known for her skilled attacks, often unexpected.

As you've probably guessed, the 'Viper' is not a great nickname to have when you're a person who's shy, introverted and very much not a ruthless killer. But, Andreanna didn't mind it. In fact, it meant that people avoided talking to her at races, which made her life a little easier.

But, 'people' did not include Charles Leclerc, who'd try to spend every minute with her if he could.

Due to his eagerness - which he'd always had when it came to their friendship - mixed with Andi's newly developed feelings,  her mind started to work against her. She had an itching feeling that perhaps her closest friend did share the same feelings as her. But, she also worried that if she dared to tell him, she'd risk losing their friendship. Nonetheless, she had hope; She held onto her emotions as tightly as she could for the entire year until one fateful day, when she could no longer hide how she felt.

With a plan in place to finally, after much too long a wait, tell Charles how she felt about him, Andreanna decided to wait until after Charles' final race of the 2022 season to confess. Though she still worried that there was a chance things would go south, the girl still felt optimistic that he felt the same way, as well as feeling overwhelming relief that she could finally get her feelings off of her chest and into the open, to which she hoped helplessly that he'd accept.

But, that night, her hopes were crushed in a flash.

That night, Andreanna discovered that she had been desperately and foolishly delusional. She had waited, ineptly, for the impossible, for she had seen something that was never really there to begin with.

And so, that following summer, Andreanna Saunterre changed.

To the media, it was the best summer she'd ever had.

To her, it was quite the opposite.

In the span of that summer, Andreanna Saunterre became the real Viper.

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