Spirit

Spirit is an ambassador of the Phils, a race of mute, telepathic shapeshifters. When racing, he uses shapeshifting to turn his body into a birdlike creature that can well match the speed of other star-racers. The edges of his wings are also very sharp.

Biography

Background

In 2072, Spirit was one of the competitors at the First interplanetary championship on Earth. There he raced in the finals against Maya Wei. Spirit is commonly blamed for her crash during this race, but in reality he tried to stop the race when he saw her ship malfunctioning.

Alwas Cycle

In 2082, during the Pre-Selections on Alwas, Spirit was among the six pilots who qualified for the Playoffs in Treacherous Like Toros. His first race was against Prince Aikka, which he won by cutting one of the legs of G'dar, the prince's mount.

Spirit's next appearance was in Silent Like Spirit, when he raced against the Earth Team. Upon seeing him transform, Molly recognized him as the pilot responsible for her mother's crash ten years ago. During the race Molly made several attempts to attack Spirit but succeeded only in injuring herself and Jordan, and wrecking the Whizzing Arrow II beyond repair. Finally, Spirit approached Molly and used telepathy to discover the reason for her violence against him. He then showed her his own memory of Maya's crash, proving that it was an accident caused by a fuel leak. Spirit had tears in his eyes after this memory, but flew away to win the race.

Spirit's last appearance was in Make Way! in a rematch against Prince Aikka. The outcome of this race was to determine if the Earth Team would qualify for the Grand Finals, and Aikka was under orders from the Crogs to lose on purpose. However, Aikka could not bring himself to do this and defeated Spirit by using a magic arrow to stun him. Spirit was disoriented by the arrow's flash of light, crashed down on the track, and lost the race. Curiously however, at the end of his race with Aikka, Spirit's score is shown to be equal to that of the Earth Team, despite having only gained one point from his victory against them in the fifth round. As the rules of the sixth round are not all fully explained, it is not clear how he obtained the extra point.

Trivia

• Don Wei described Spirit as being a polymorphic creature, generally implying that he and other Phils are all capable of shapeshifting to some extent. This may also apply to other races in the Oban universe.
• Spirit is the only pilot that Molly wasn't able to defeat in the Great Race.
• After the sixth race against Aikka it is incorrectly shown that Spirit had 3 points, this would have meant that Spirit would gain entry to Oban regardless of the outcome of the 6th race, since he held the tiebreaker over the Earth team by beating them head-to-head. Spirit's actual score heading into the race was 2 points, won via victories over Nourasia and Earth.