The first battlewagon was slammed into the ground by over two tons of impact at crazy speed, and it bounced, sending bodies flying as it tumbled off The Road.

Blaze braked into a reverse wheelie, zipping right back between four vehicles trying to bracket him, past the rear battlewagon, and the Mick’s force ramp came up right under him and launched him into the air.

Mr. Hill reached out and grabbed the burning bike with one hand as his Flail spun back to his other one.

No flying on The Road, but nothing said someone couldn’t hold you up in the air.

Johnny Blaze stood up on his stirrups, Chaos magic swirled around him and his shotgun, and he racked off the shots.

The battlewagon ahead spewing fire from its rear-mounts had one side of its armor blasted off, and then hellfire detonated inside the compartment. The vehicle veered sharply off The Road, crashing and rolling as it flamed out.

Two more sidecar bikes went screaming up in balls of flame.

The Mick gunned it, rockets roaring on the back of his Mustang as he came up on the second-to-last armored sedan. The force field came up under its wheels, tilting it up as its driver tried wildly to veer away from it, and Blaze bounced a shot off the field into its undercarriage. The resulting explosion blew it clear off The Road.

The Mick didn’t slow down, and the gunner on the other car barely had time to bounce a couple shots off his armor before he was past and in front of them.

They screamed as one Monster of a truck came rolling up behind them, and for just a couple seconds, the massive tires of Chopsaw’s truck on that side weighed several dozen tons. Massive inertia kept them rolling forwards, and crushed that armored sedan pretty damn flat as Chopsaw drove right over it, bounced a couple times, and kept on going as the flattened wreck hopped once, carefully avoided by the rest of the team.

------

Torch’s and my hands were on a bar, connected to the chain that was hauling Ben Grimm’s Disk. Fiery energy crackled along that chain, into Ben’s feet, and swirled in burning waves up into his hand, still holding the missile launcher tube as the scavvers still following closed in.

They weren’t expecting a second shot, but when that tube snapped back up and they saw the volcano inside it, it was a bit too late.

The stream of 30d6ish plasma-level heat washed out, melting steel and burning through glass, cooking the lead car and sending it into a burning tumble. The cars behind instinctively veered, and walked right into Shotski’s tracer fire, costing them another car.

The big battlewagon coming in behind didn’t seem to be too deterred, however, its driver barreling forward, a wall of steel ready to ram in front of it as it tried to catch them.

“Pull up parallel,” Ben waved to Wheels, who rapidly zipped up next to Johnny and I. We were totally unperturbed as turrets up top of the battlewagon spat tracer fire all around us, most of which bounced totally off the black-and-silver stones of Ben’s hide, or tinged off the rear armor on the Charger.

Ben’s Disk was glowing with Fire pouring up into his feet, and Ben pulled out the Monkey Stick hanging on his back.

A Sun Wukong-style Monkey Stick.

The Battlewagon had all its guns on him, the driver barely visible with a fanged grin, lurching excitedly in exultation as he closed in on the bike and the Charger. Up ahead, Chopsaw’s truck compressed the last scavver vehicle there down, everyone slid to the sides to pass it, and the battlewagon just smashed it off The Road heartlessly instead of shifting over.

Then the Monkey Stick clutched in Ben’s hand was abruptly sixty feet long, driving right into the view slit in the steel ram coming up on them and punching through the thick glass of the battlewagon behind.

Ben blew Torch’s full load of fire through the Stick, at the same time levering calmly sideways, shoving the whole wagon at those behind, as unmoving as a mountain and plenty strong enough to do that.

It was a three-point attack, as the blast of fire swallowed a following car, Grimm upset the battlewagon, and then he effectively tossed it at another car.

Three of our pursuers went flying and raging off The Road in explosions of green and yellow flames, and the remaining two braked sharply, deciding they’d had enough.

Stopping was a bad idea on The Road. Shotski’s tracers smashed into the sides of the cars as they turned sideways, drove through their windows, and the dead drivers lost control, sending their rides over on their sides in careening tumbles that quickly took them off The Road.

“Get off The Road, THEN brake,” Wheels muttered into coms, tossing her hair back. “We’re clear behind.”

“Clear ahead as far as I can see,” The Mick called back. The Mountain gave Blaze and Wanda a toss ahead with no effort. Blaze’s bike’s flaming wheels came down firmly on Jennifer’s plow-shield ahead of the Mustang, zipping on down it and out into the burning lead once more.

“Smooth,” said Frank, his and Bunny’s vehicles uncommitted, just waiting in support. Gunn had been ready to open up behind us, but hadn’t needed to, and had just conserved ammunition.

“Transition just ahead. Looks like a new Highway,” Blaze called back to us in his burning voice.

“Second encounter coming. Get back in formation as soon as possible,” Castle growled, seeing the vague swirl of the side-ramp growing in front of them. “Shotski, check your guns.”

“On it, Castle!” the Charger’s gunner called back, lowering his turrets and quickly checking the barrels and ammo feeds. Maintaining your weapons was another test by The Road...

In a spray of gravel and scree, the vehicles turned one by one and surged up an incline, tires hitting pavement and leaping ahead as they didn’t stop, zipping up onto something that looked like ridged stone, and sounded like it as we hummed over it.

“Sulphureous sky. We went down a tier or two,” Dealer judged on coms. “I’m smelling brimstone.” That was confirmed by the others. “Okay, we’ll have Damned Riders coming at us soon, then. Remember, no vivus on The Road, unless you want us to get dumped somewhere,” Dealer reminded them. “Infuse for Anarchy and Holiness, and Banefire if you’re feeling mean, and we’ll be just fine.”

“Dealer, do the reading for the Race,” Castle said, and everyone went quiet.

Cards flickered in the cab of the monster truck. “Oh, Hell,” she mused after a minute, and everyone else cursed softly. “Odds are I’d say we’ve got a Wrecker Crew coming,” she went on.

“That good news or bad, for us newbies?” Grimm ground out.

“Good news,” The Mick explained curtly. “It means they’ll run a Dirty Race, and we can dispose of them and guarantee our Exit. If it’s a Clean Race, we have to win the Race to guarantee the Exit, or we’ll have to loop around and find ourselves another one.”

“More encounters?” the Torch asked to confirm.

“More encounters,” Castle agreed. “We’ve only had to do that once, when we went Up and hit a dedicated Race team. The truck and the van slowed us down too much, we couldn’t manage a clean win.”

“They were good sports about it all, though. Helped us through the Swarm with no fuss and we got to our destination, just took us an extra hour and a lot more ammo,” Chopsaw broke in.

“First surviving team completely to the line wins the Race, if you get stuck with one. It’s still possible to win even if most of the team dies, but it’s damn hard if you’re dodging fire from every direction. There’s a reason you travel in teams when you hit the Highways,” the Mick went on.

“If you lose dirty, you probably have to go into a Pit Stop and wait for another team to come through and pick you up, or enough dregs get together to make a run out. The fact that they might not all want to go even to the same planet can be a bit of a downer, however,” Bunny contributed. “They are good places to pick up information and even mercenaries, as losers of a Race are generally looking for a way off The Road, or a new team.”

“Good place to learn the Rules of The Road,” Wheels chimed in. “There’s a lot of the damn things. Of course, The Road is so bloody huge, I can see why.”

“We’ve got movement at four o’clock. Parallel Road?” Gunn broke in.

“Take a gander at seven,” Ben replied from where he was standing, ignoring the air streaming by him a foot away. Heads turned to see.

“Seven is our Chasers. Four is the other team. Torch, you’re on four o’clock. Dyna, you’ve got the Argent force-breaker. Every team on the Highways uses shields. Torch, you’ll need to get close enough for her to break them, and the van can punch them,” Castle said immediately.

“Getting up top,” the stoic Blade called out, heading for the turret of the van.

“Moving to the middle,” his other passenger Natalya said, swapping with Microchip.

“Moving back with Wheels,” Bunny called out, veering left.

“Covering left!” Blaze confirmed, sliding over to work interference with Wanda’s Shields and Hexes against any surprises from the Damned Chasers.

“Front right, taking point!” Chopsaw said, and the Mick smoothly pulled over in behind him and Castle. With a hum, his own rear-mounted turret deCompressed and rose into position, the ammo feed humming and then sparking with strange energies moving through it.

Atop the battle van, a shielding eggshell came up halfway to guard Blade’s back, and his muscles worked with superhuman speed and strength to rotate the cap around to the left. Two holes opened in the cap, and the anti-tank guns there were ready to play.

One of the nice things about The Road was not having to worry about attacks from above, as literally nothing could fly here. You could throw or launch stuff, but you couldn’t even glide successfully here, the air too heavy, too light, or just plain ripping your wings to shreds before you fell and became a casualty of The Road.

The cacophony of the Damned Chasers, horns and drums and bad heavy metal music combined with the shrieking of diabolic engines rumbling discordantly thundering out ahead of them, let us know they were coming. Despite that, they were holding a pretty decent formation, their bikers racing out into the lead, side gunners already starting to let go at range.

Advance cars and bikes were the least well-armored, naturally enough.

Gun and Shotski were clinical about it, using very short bursts, snapping from one target to the next with precision and skill, ignoring the plinking coming in as the occasional round echoed off the armor around them. The Bikers were picked off and went tumbling away, avoided organically by the cars coming in behind as they fell.

They were Damned. They’d be back tomorrow, somewhere, in a new Chase. Be an arsehole on The Road, you joined them. The Lower Realms didn’t get you if you were Evil and died on The Road; you rode The Road forever, just something to be shot and killed as the Drivers did their things.

A competing yet meshing cacophony was coming from our side as another Highway merged in, and a horde of the Damned chasing another group of Drivers suddenly swung in alongside us. There were catcalls and jeering and some shooting back and forth between our Chasers, and then they settled down and focused on coming after all of us.