The Mick had shadows and bags under his eyes. But there was a gleam of excitement deep in the dark of them that his fatigue couldn’t hide.

“Six goddamn Long Roads. The biggest off-road crawls I have ever been through. Two Chases, four Hordes. We got no ammo left, and piss-all for shields.” He nodded towards Serenity. “Saved our bacon, having her along. Just like you, an organic cannon, and that Chain of hers is total murder.”

“Can ya take us back?” Mr. Hill asked the important question.

“Damn right I can.” His eyes almost shone with eagerness. “A Road no other Driver has been on. I been on it, and I can take it back, no sweat.”

“Here’s yer client. Boss Mandarin, meet The Mick. He will be yer guide on The Road.”

The sharp-eyed Master of the Ten Rings looked over the men and women who had obviously been through Hell, or at least its next-door neighbor, just to get here when no other beings could. He could not help but be impressed.

“You must rest,” he stated unequivocally. “Would you like us to start on repairing your vehicles?” he asked calmly.

“No one fixes our cars but us. That’s the Rule of a Driver on the Road,” The Mick said firmly. “Show us where we have to park, we’ll lay it in there, and catch our zzz’s. How far along are you?”

“I got people who can man a wheel, and I got people who can fight. They ain’t Drivers, but they are Fighters,” Mr. Hill stated firmly.

“Then figure we are out of here in forty-eight hours, if your shop has the goods.”

“We got everything ya need,” Mr. Hill assured him.

------

The heroes hit the villain base the next day with full force and teamwork, cutting right through most of them with extreme teamwork and firepower. Unwilling to lose his vehicles, the Mandarin mounted a last-moment offensive, picking up those who had fallen, getting on their vehicles, and roaring out of the garages where they had been stored, heading out for the track and sheds ten miles away where they’d been practicing.

The heroes deigned not to follow.

The reason for that was pretty obvious. Galactus had come back down from Taa III, and was starting to assemble His world-eating engine, obviously planning to dine on the Battleworld, and someone had to stop him.

Doom was incapacitated and left behind, along with the capering Lightmaster, both of whom were simply kept locked-up as the heroes headed out to stop Galactus.

Naturally, that was when Doom recovered, and realized what he had to do. He blew his way out of his cell with his backup power source, freed Lightmaster, and then took him to the main labs, where he promptly began his preparations for Galactus by dissecting Lightmaster’s hard light form, turning him into an array of photonic lenses aimed squarely at the system-ship that dominated the heavens above.

------

The Mick looked over the gathered vehicles, engines roaring, ready to be off. He eyed the play of lights on the horizon, saw Mr. Hill’s eyes, and knew they had to get moving, as something was going down.

“Boss Mandarin!” he called out urgently. “Dealer! We got a problem!”

That was not what either of them wanted to hear as he hurried over. The Mandarin had been put up on a throne on the back of Chopsaw’s Monster, because The Road loved pageantry, and he was the one leading this. Obviously, he had to be out there and seen leading this caravan.

“Mick! What’s up?” demanded Hill, not liking the sound of that.

“Rules of the Road, Hill! This is a caravan under contract!” the Mick called out. “Everything but the lead Driver’s car has to be in colors, or you take a hit by the Rules!”

“Shit!” the three other Drivers swore, slapping their heads, as the Mandarin looked back and forth in confusion.

Dealer swarmed out of the front of Chopsaw’s truck, her Deck already glowing. “Boss Mandarin, you have a matter-rearranger Ring among that set, and experience using it, right?” she asked hurriedly.

“Yes!” he answered quickly, seeing this was urgent.

On the horizon, something popped and blew twenty miles into the sky. “I think they broke Galactus’ toy!” Maelstrom called out from the top of a neighboring battlevan, where he’d be serving as living artillery. There was a weird note in his voice that couldn’t possibly be fear, right?

Dealer energized her Cards rapidly. “The whole Caravan, except for Mick’s Mustang, has to be repainted and realigned to wear your colors and image! Change every vehicle into something suitable to escort the Mandarin, not a ragtag band of stuff in these crazy paint jobs!”

The Mandarin rose to his feet as she offered the glowing Cards to him, their faces wiped clean. He stared at the vehicles around him, then the floating Cards. His brow furrowed, he began to visualize, and gestured sharply and rapidly, chopping with the speed and skill of the martial arts he had demonstrated in their withdrawal from the fortress.

Glowing Cards flashed out, hit the vans and cars and carriers, including those of Bunny, Wheels, and Chopsaw, and magic swirled over and around them and their riders.

Personal colors vanished, and were replaced by uniforms and colors in green and gold, wrought with the winding dragon-rings of the Ten Rings. The villains there were shocked at the move, and moreso as their rides suddenly were painted and morphed, taking on golden ornaments, fanciful Oriental beasts, grinning jaws, floating manes, and other Chinese features. Serpentine dragons, bears, lions, dogs, and other mythological beasts replaced the gleaming steel, lightning bolts, chaser flames, and other adornments of the various cars.

“This is now the Caravan of the Mandarin! As far as the Road is concerned, this is one unit, one company, and it will judged as so! If we go in bearing other colors, we’re a Motley, and the Road hits a Motley harder than a Company!

“Since we all want to go home, you tolerate wearing these colors until we deliver our Client to his home! EVERYONE GETS HOME!” Dealer called out, her Voice carrying clearly to everyone, even Apocalypse, Modred, the Dreadknight, and the Swordsmen, who’d opted to tag along, especially after the heroes had kicked the shit out of them so hard and fast. Apocalypse had gotten his skull caved in by Thor, something about an old grudge; Modred was nursing a broken arm, shattered by the Patriot’s Shield; and the Ultron killbot had been left behind, fried by the Wasp shrinking inside it and blowing out its internals.

“Now, fire them up, and get into position behind the Mick!”

“Holy fuck, look at the sky!” someone screamed.

The system-ship was breaking apart, matter dissolving into energy. Everyone gaped as the gargantuan vessel was reduced to basic energy, and began to gather towards a certain point...

And then a beam of light came out of their own fortress back there, punching into that cloud of energy, and began to pull it away from that point and down...

“GO GO GO GO!” screamed the Mick, and put the pedal to the metal. The only black vehicle, leading a caravan of fantastically ornate gold and emerald vehicles, he roared into motion, and desperate drivers trying to ignore the sky falling down behind them roared after them.

“Get in formation! Bulldozer, close it up! Line up behind the Mick in a flying wedge! MOVE!” The sky was crackling like endless lightning bolts were going off, the air and ground shaking with the reverbs, but the desperate villains were trying to focus.

There was an explosion behind them, and a sensation that something huge and grandiose had been born, and was stepping out into the stars towards a distant point of light out there, watching them all.

And then something in the sky exploded, and the ground jumped, sending all the cars off the ground.

“Doom just threw a punch at the Beyonder! GO GO GO!” Dealer shouted, as the whole planet groaned underneath them.

Desperate men floored vehicles barely proven to be drivable, but superscience and Schmot Guys carried the day.

A rolling sandstorm bounced up from the debris and shockwaves ahead of them. With howls and roars of engines, as the skies above them tore apart and went mad, the Caravan drove into the swirling sands, and the sounds of their engines faded into the background of a planet convulsing from the aftershocks of two cosmic entities throwing force bolts at one another.

------

-Dimensional barrier just went down.-

-Activating the Return Protocols.-

Across the planet, Obelisks that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the settlements stolen from other worlds some days before glowed, sucked in the massive amounts of ambient cosmic energy, and swallowed those settlements in light.

-Galactus get away?-

-He’s teleporting off. He drew enough energy from Taa III that He’s fine.-

-How’s Doom doing?-

-He hasn’t realized that Taa III, however big it was, wasn’t infinite, and the Beyonder effectively has infinite reserves. Their attacks are doubling in power with every exchange. He’s going to lose the race.-

-The Beyonder is even sparing the planet. I doubt Doom even realizes it.-

-Okay, he’s starting to falter. He’s going on the defensive now, trying to withstand the attacks. Nope, he’s not holding. He just lost a foot. His shields are collapsing. He just lost an arm... he’s been overwhelmed. The Beyonder is drawing him in...-

-Well, now, can’t it examine him closely enough out here? That sounds like a damn stupid move.-

-Cosmic entities with a surfeit of common sense, who knew such things existed?-

-His armor was still intact, right?-

-Not the limbs. The cosmic energy he took in is keeping him alive. Nice of Galactus to make it perfectly usable by a human.-

-It’s like He’s played these games before.-

The explosion that came barreling out of that hole in the sky dwarfed all others that had come before. The mantle shattered across the planet. Buildings were flattened, mountains were leveled, and tornado-force winds were scouring the planet clean.

Across the sky, the effect that was intercepting the light of the stars vanished, and suddenly a whole galaxy was on display, filling up the heavens abruptly.

The heroes were outside, covered in a layer of force fields from Liberty, Darkstar, Sunstone, Cyclops, and Iron Man. The planet-crushing impact smashed the landscape all around them into powder, but left them unharmed, as the other fields fed the full force of the impact into Liberty, and the Shield endured it without harm.

-The bastard did it. Stole the Beyonder’s power.-

-Can you orient on it, Dyna?-

-Yeah, it’s already down on the planet. It just hit Lightmaster, who was reassembling himself out of the ruins of Ringbase, and is taking shelter inside him.-

All three of us felt the power of a massive hand come down and wash across the world. In a wave of pure power, all of the damage done to the planet was unmade, the screaming air went still, and very, very abruptly, all was well.

-Doom just popped up by the heroes. He’s giving them a nice victory speech, how they’ve nothing to fear, blah blah. They aren’t buying it.-

-Strange, that. Does he know we’re here?-

-He might notice if he were looking specifically for you and the Forsaken effects you cause. Since he probably doesn’t know what those effects look like in Cosmic Awareness, nah. I can feel him fumbling around and improving his brain to deal with everything. He’s still holding onto a finite nature. He won’t be able to control the power.-

-So, we wait to strike as he loses control, and the Beyonder moves to get its power back.-

-I got the latter, Fuzzy.-

-And I have the former. Dyna, just tell us when.-

-You got it. I’ll move over in support of the heroes. I have a feeling they are gonna end up in a bad way. Happily, I happen to have a convenient source of cosmic energy riding around inside me who can really mess Doom’s plans up.-