The new team was built faster, without a battle van or a truck, clearly made to win Races in one form or another. They had a sleek look, black metal with lots of turret mounts made for mowing down Chasers, but less armor, which made them more vulnerable.

Not human, a mixed crew of other species from who knew where, it didn’t matter. The Road treated everyone the same.

The first long shells came in, and Shields sparked and took the hits, or they exploded in front of us. The newcomers swerved to avoid the short craters, we just ignored them and powered on through with Zephyr on the wheels taking care of things.

The Mick was driving with one hand and picking off Chasers with the other, again short bursts to conserve ammo. Jennifer was ready with the Shields as the incoming fire began to pick up markedly.

Ben was attracting a lot of attention behind us, but his Disk wasn’t shifting even a tiny bit. He casually pulled up his tube as we filled it with fire and let fly. An oncoming car exploded and went flying in an exciting eruption, whooping Chasers tumbling in all directions out of it. It slammed down, and was smashed out of the way by those behind without any hesitation, unable to stop them by the Rules of The Road.

The outriders on the left were catching up, but unfortunately, they had a Ghost Rider to deal with, warded by a Scarlet Witch. Hellfire boomed repeatedly as Blaze accelerated, braked, juked, and wove a path between Bunny and Wheels. Anybody who got too close got some enhanced Hellfire to the face, or ran into his roaring trail of hellfire and realized too late it was a weapon, too. There was a lot of fire focusing on him and Wanda’s Shields, while Gun and Shotski continued their own tasks.

The other Drivers had caught up on the right, saturating fire sparking off the shields and occasionally pinging on the lighter armor of the other team. They were slowed down by having to veer around the shelling, a fact noticed by the combined force of Chasers, while our team was totally ignoring the big rounds coming in from the larger vehicles rumbling behind, spewing fire and choking fumes as they rocketed along after us in bus-sized battlewagons with wheels taller than other vehicles and impromptu rockets belching hellfire jets of acceleration here and there.

“Wait for the ‘accidental’ shot,” Castle rumbled, keeping his course nice and steady, ignoring the shells falling ahead, and the way the other team was starting to veer dangerously close to our formation.

A turret on a long racer spewed out a line of plasma shots sideways, ripping out in what would normally be a sustained burst, something that was pitifully ineffective on The Road... except when used against another Team.

It came in right across us, explosive blasts rupturing across Ben’s side before the SS Shields of solid air I flicked up from my Bite washed it away.

Blade wrenched over to his new target calmly as Torch swerved in closer, and abruptly we were within fifty feet of the shooter, even as Ben turned around and stared with burning eyes at the gun that hadn’t done jack shit to him.

The snap and flash of silver tearing through their shields and bringing them down was a nice punctuation to his burning stare.

Blade hit the trigger, and the side of that racer caved in before exploding in a garish display of pyrotechnics, probably an uncorked fusion bottle. Torch just waved his hand and absorbed all the heat coming in at us, then redirected it to Ben’s launcher. The long racer went flying into the air, its rear end demolished and trailing fire, and landed somewhere in the Chasers behind us.

They’d made it Dirty, and now they were gonna pay.

Their first abrupt howitzer shots blew out of waiting and concealed side guns, intended to be a murderous first hit against us, and smashed directly into the waiting Shields ready for them, getting nowhere.

A silver Card flashed across the distance and impacted on a sleek black SUV with a rocket load-out that was retasking on us. A second after its shields blew, a bowling-ball-sized lump of deCompressed iron smashed into the side of it at Mach One, and then the Explosive Runes on it did their thing, dumping a load of wild and crazy lightning into the SUV and setting off the rockets all at once.

Said rockets went spinning crazily in every direction, several instantly detonating to blow the vehicle apart, and one managed to take out a chasing hellcar with metal jaws for a hood and a hellfire furnace for an engine, sending it tumbling in explosive joy.

Unperturbed, Torch simply wove into the pack, getting close enough for me to pop their shields, while Dealer flicked out Dispel Force Cards to do the same thing.

The doors on the right side of the battle van popped open, and Natalya swung out with her own minigun snapping into place, the braced doors dealing with any scattered fire or debris from ahead that got past the Van’s Shields.

I swept my fingers across a short Racer’s shields as Torch swung us past, the long-jawed Driver staring in horror as his shields shorted out in sparks of silver, molten metal flying off the emitters from the feedback. He tried to brake and evade, but the Black Widow was having none of it, Natalya tracking him smoothly and chopping thirty or forty armor-piercing rounds into him with a brrrt of grim finality.

He and his car went tumbling away, and the other team realized it had a real problem.

The two fastest cars promptly put their pedals to the metal, pulling away from the slower, heavier cars behind, gambling they could outrun the remaining hellbikes or outriders and get away, winning the Race by leaving the others to die.

Torch gunned it, his bike fairly leaping ahead to close in on the furthest car while a flash of silver shot out, smashed into the strong rear shields of the nearer one, and then a couple hundred pounds of explosive iron slammed into it and detonated.

Blade coolly tracked our progress, and the second he saw the silver discharge, pulled the trigger.

Fifty feet in front of us, the fast car lifted right off the ground in sprays of incandescent dark metal and fusion fire. Torch drove right through underneath it as it soared over our heads, and Ben totally ignored it as it missed his head by about a foot.

The Chasing cars and bikes were now up on the sides of the last two members of the other team, who were wildly trying to shoot them off. Tire-ravaging spikes and armor-shredding horns and tusks slashed and rent as the Chase vehicles slammed into them, eventually finding the tires and dragging the two vehicles down, whereupon following cars rammed into them at full speed in suicidal fireballs or hellfire-spewing infernos that cooked them alive.

The Road was not a friendly place.

Natalya calmly and coolly brrrted every single hellbike and outrider that wasn’t involved in the exploding mess behind us. Everyone else’s attention shifted to the left side, which had totally kept its cool in the face of the pursuit closing slowly in.

Now that the business on the right was done, full attention could be paid to the left.

Wheels and Bunny, who had the lightest Shields, shifted right, swapping with the Mick and the Van. Torch drifted us back to block their rear and left flank as the two Cars directed a cone of scathing fire into the Chasers to the right, while Ben charged up his tube on our juice and blew lines of heavenly-golden and cosmic-white fire into the bigger things coming after us, a stolid and immovable tank cannon.

Up in front, the Mountain was also deCompressing plain iron balls now, tossing them out at the bigger targets to take out engines and drivers casually. The loud crunchings always seemed to coincide with particular convergences of drumbeats and backfiring hellmotors...

The shelling intensified, occasionally detonating on the Shields overhead, but Dealer and I had those covered, and them blowing craters ahead of us did nothing to slow us down.

“I see the line ahead!” Chopsaw called out from his elevation point, and our shooting tapered off even as the Chasers set up a blazing mad howl of frustration. A couple overeager Chasers got tire-picked by Blaze and did the end-over-end tumbles before exploding into proper fireballs.

The Road split ahead, an obvious turnoff. The reward of the Race, reaching your destination faster.

We roared down the Off-Ramp, and the frustrated Chase streamed on past behind us, the hulking cruisers and battlewagons at the back never able to quite reach us, and the only two that had gotten close enough getting recoilless rounds in the face from the Van’s anti-tank guns.

“Need a Shield recharge!” Bunny called out quickly, affirmed by Wheels and Castle.

“I’ll get the cars,” I said, Johnny shifting up between them. I held out my hands and poured out some friendly voltage for them, reaching out with Function on one side and gripping an emitter like steel on the other. A whole lot of energy began to pour out both sides, while Castle and Chopsaw swapped positions and Dealer poured Reserves into the Van.

“We’re good!” Bunny called out, and I flicked up Function, followed a moment later by the affirmation from Wheels. Torch braked and took up position center behind, and the two Cars shifted to flank us as we guarded the rear, Ben still standing up there and watching behind us as the Highway fell away, the landscape closed in, and we were shifting somewhere else.

“Slowing down. The Road is getting rough,” Blaze called out from just ahead, and everyone quickly began to dial it down.

“Looks like flowing stone?” Ben murmured for everyone, looking up as the light began to dim.

“Doing a planar read,” Dealer sang out, as trees that were glinting with some fluorescent hues began to show up, leaves and branches more fluid than they should be, the sky showing organic streams like webbing here and there. There was a sun out, but it seemed dim, and didn’t change the color of the sky.

“Frak. This is the Dark Dimension,” she muttered after a moment.

“Clea’s home?” Wanda asked immediately, startled. “It brought us here to help her?”

The last of the transition fog vanished, and we could see fires burning ahead.

Lots and lots of fires, capering and moving around, as bolts of magical force shot this way and that, and a web-like dome of crimson-hued tentacles protected the center of a village from an assaulting force.

“Portal to the right! Dyna, close it!” Dealer shouted out.

“Everyone else, put on the vivus!” Castle ground out. “Stealth mode until we’re on top of them, and watch the skies! Mr. Hill, drop them from the air!”

“Har!” was The Mountain’s only reply, and his Stillflight Field rippled out. It wasn’t his Weight, but it would clear the skies around and above us as we moved for the town. I pointed, and Torch braked, falling back out of the Field quickly.

“Eyes forward, Ben.” He obligingly turned around. “You’ll probably only get off a shot or two, and then it’s Monkey Stick time. I’ll join you shortly.”

The ire of King Gravity faded, and I shot into the air, zipping around and away as I headed for the Hellportal still leaking obvious new streams of burning creatures, while Johnny gunned it to catch up quickly with the others. His hands were already burning with vivus, one hand’s armored scales white, one black, and the devils having fun here were about to get a big surprise.

I was up on the Portal in seconds, not being the kind to waste time. The Nova Core helped totally with stabilizing my flight path, and if I looked like a lightning bolt as I came in, well, Dynamo does voltage.

Function’s Blade snapped out, and in the interest of speed, I hacked around me with the arm-long head of the ladyglaive out surrounded by an Eldritch Blade, and the shocked devils could only shriek in alarm before a literal storm of death was playing around them.

Sacred lightning and a lot of force behind an enchanted force Blade ripped through them, hewing a path toward the Portal in a blur of super-speed strikes backed by, you know, waaaay too much strength for my size, as I Wrecker’d up for the additional mass to really make this work.