The big devil in red was indeed smiling smugly as they pulled up. However, his smile faded somewhat when The Mick pulled up directly alongside him, and Castle’s battlevan on the other side, instead of halting before him and getting out in proper fear and obeisance.

“Hey, there,” The Mick said casually, looking up at the looming devil with red skin, red outfit, and touched up with crimson hellfire. “You the local lord for this plane?” he asked casually.

FOOM!

Hellfire blazed and filled the sky with roaring power, the ground pitched and groaned, the devils and the damned sang out in chorus, and the face of the Lord of Hell filled the skies as the landscape descended into cliffs of hellfire and infinite canyons of doom. “I AM MEPHISTO, ARROGANT MORTAL! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!” shook all of this plane of existence.

The Mick squinted at him, but the hellfire didn’t touch his Car. “Just a Road Warrior here to acknowledge a debt from the local lord,” he replied neutrally. “Frank?”

Mephisto blinked, his hellfire going still and his image in the sky looking baffled as he turned around.

The van door opened, and Natalya Romanova politely handed a nice big slimy tentacle over to the hell-flaming Lord of Lies, who took it reflexively in surprise.

“Your layer of Hell was suffering an invasion by some Thing by name of Shuma-Gorath. Me and my fellow Road Warriors stopped it and took the Portal it was using down, as well as those traitors to your Realm defending it. I don’t know how dangerous it would be to have a demon god flouncing around Hell, but I presume that us stopping it saved you a great deal of time and effort.

“Thanks for arranging this escort out of Hell for us, it is appreciated. I’m sure we’ll collect the favor from you in the future, Lord Mephisto.

“Now, if you don’t mind, the Road is calling.” The Mick waved absently at the legion of flaming devils camped menacingly across the road ahead.

Mephisto looked at the tentacle in his hand. He could immediately tell where it came from, naturally, and there was no way to fake such a thing. In addition, a Road Warrior who lied about such a thing was basically asking to die on the Road.

His eyes drifted over the Mick’s Mustang to Johnny Blaze, whose burning skull looked back at him in old anger and hate. “Oh, whatever would you use a debt from me for, Johnny Blaze?” the Lord of Hell snickered at him. “Perhaps you would like to collect it now?”

“By the Rules of the Road, a Road Warrior who aids a Planar Lord against an invasion of his Realm shall be owed a debt by the Lord, and be given free passage onto and off their Plane,” Johnny Blaze ground out in his hollow hellfire voice. “I would introduce you to The Mick, a Driver on the Road; his team of Chopsaw, Wheels, and Bunny, who are all Drivers on the Road; Marc Spector, who defends the travelers of the Night; and I am a Ghost Rider, a Rider by default.

“There are enough of us to vouch for and Guide all non-Riders and Drivers here, Lord of Hell. You will forgive us if we ask no favors from you now. The Ride Outta Hell awaits us, and you are literally the least of our concerns.”

Mephisto smiled cruelly. “Indeed, the Ride awaits you! Well, then, you may depart, with my... gratitude.” His burning smile grew wider. “But my reach does not extend onto the Road. You cannot ask for my aid there!” he warned them with a knowing laugh.

“Good. If I can’t beat the Ride Outta Hell, would I even be able to call myself a Driver?” sniffed the Mick, shooting down any secret glee Mephisto could stir up, since they knew what was coming.

“Then far be it from me to stop you from experiencing your apotheosis, Driver!” Mephisto waved his hand, and the legions of devils flowed aside, great flaming polearms stamping earth-shaking time on the ground as they did. “Hell salutes the Drivers on the Ride Outta Hell!”

Thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions of the feet of the Damned started hitting the ground. The Mick ignored the implications of the Damned cheering for him, for the freedom they would never have, and gunned his Mustang.

Johnny Blaze and Wanda zipped on ahead, and the Punishment Team headed out of Hell, the armies of Hell itself seeing them off.

--------

“Holy fuck, they are waiting for us!” Gunn said from his position on the Jeep, gaping at what was ahead of them.

The Chase was already in front of the On-ramp! They were going to come up out of Hell right into the middle of the Chase!

Dealer coolly stood up in the seat of the Monster, popping the cap above, and threw out four complete Decks of Cards. They whirled and spun around her, lining up in multiple circles of hundreds of gleaming diamonds, and burst into all kinds of colors and lights.

Before their team reached the burning cacophony of fire and engines and Damned eager to kill them all, she let them fly.

The limit of one target per attack was only if you were ON the Road!

The number of streaking Cards and the Diamonds around them was in the hundreds. They came down on the Chase like the burning wrath of a roulette wheel of Doom, and slammed down onto the teeming cars of the Damned Chasers like a meteor storm of death and destruction.

Hundreds of Chasing hellcars exploded, blowing away and tumbling out of the paths of those behind, as was the wont of the Road. The Punishment Team roared up onto the Road at full throttle and merged in, gunning it for the front of the rather shell-shocked Chase around them, who had likely NEVER been hit by a massive Area of Effect attack effectively.

There was very little attempt made to conserve ammo, but they were all Fifteens or higher at this point, and missing their targets simply wasn’t a question by now. Bursts of fire were quick, clean, precise, and even as the Chase tried to constrict itself around them, it was being blown apart.

Dealer was still standing in the Monster, flicking out a Card every three seconds, and wedges of diamonds were driving nonstop into the vehicles trying to close in ahead of them, sending them bouncing and rolling. Wanda was waving her hands, and wheels were wrenching, ramps forming, or cars simply yanked sideways, cars smashing into other vehicles, taking two of them out of the game as each use of her power turned one Hellmobile into a weapon against another.

Johnny’s hellfire shotgun boomed constantly, blowing out tires and sending cars slewing, not caring if he killed them, just getting them out of the way. Mr. Hill was tossing deCompressed stones the size of bowling balls with the accuracy of long practice, and Spears was hurling out lightning and wind via his Spear with pinpoint precision. Blade was shooting the anti-tank gun from the top of the Battlevan, while the Gatling mounts on the Jeep, Chargers, Moon Chariot, and Mustang were all burping short, sharp bursts.

The side of the battlevan opened, and Natalya came out with her electric minigun, joining the savaging of the Chase trying to come up on their right side. She began popping drivers with short bursts that took them out and kept them from closing in just long enough to escape the closing formation of the Chase.

With a rumbling roar of engines and wheels, their formation was suddenly out in front of the Chase, which had slowed down in order to be able to converge on them.

“EJECTING WHEELS!” Chopsaw shouted, and with a ping of exploding bolts, the six-foot wheels on his Monster were blasted free. Compressed secondary Wheels exploded into full size as his suspension system morphed and changed in ways metal and steel weren’t supposed to before the body of his truck could hit the ground.

The truck that slammed to the black pavement was much shorter in height, more aerodynamic, and wasn’t hauling around near as much weight as it had been a moment before. He floored it, and suddenly the whole team was moving that much faster. His massive wheels were each considered separate attacks, and not only did they bounce and roll into some of the oncoming cars, they were polite enough to explode after they did so, and send even more hellcars flying on top of it all.

The incensed Chase was picking up speed and pouring after them, but now all the arcs of fire were behind the Drivers, and picking off the lighter, faster vehicles wasn’t that difficult.

“Take down the van?” Frank Castle growled over coms.

“Lose all your extra weight and ammo first,” the Mick called back.

“Man, that is always so good to hear,” grinned Blade up top, as Bunny cleared out of his arc of fire, and he just held the trigger down on the anti-tank gun.

His reflexes were totally up to retargeting in the one-second interval between shots, and armor-piercing rounds sped out with great accuracy, driving to meet the overeager Damned Chasers who had been denied their prize.

“Launch a spotter! I want an eye-map ahead!” the Mick called out.

There was a FWOMP as the drone was launched skywards, rocketing up for altitude and hastily giving them a view of the surroundings as it did. It only got about a half-mile before the Road brought it back down, but it was enough.

“We’ve got Big Rigs coming up an off-Road shortcut ahead!” Microchip called out, feeding the view to everyone. “Two miles! We’ll be up on them in less than a minute!”

The massive battlewagons were going to come out either ahead of them or right in the middle of their formation. That was going to be a killer if they did so.

“Wanda, get the first one, would you? I’ve got the next three.”

“You know it, Dealer!” whooped the Scarlet Witch, Chaos magic coursing around her as she kept up her destruction of vehicles following them.

“Blade, take out the last one.”

The daywalker yanked the anti-tank gun around, looking for the swirl of dust from the rough terrain to the side of the road, soon seeing the cloud weaving between hillocks and boulders.

He counted the distance, the range, the spacing between the Big Rigs, and he began to shoot.

Normally shooting off the Road did nothing, the ammunition would just fall into the infinite range between dimensions and be lost.

But this was obviously a coordinated attempt to come in from within the realm of the Road, as the Chase couldn’t go OFF the Road. So, this was a side Road coming in, leading pretty much nowhere and not much used, maybe a shortcut between branches, maybe just a Road to a Pit Stop or Scrapyard nobody used.

Whatever, he could shoot them!

The Big Rigs had a lot of side armor, but these guns had been Infused to punch armor on top of the AP shells, and first one, then two, three, five shots pounded into the cabin of the last Big Rig as they moved to collide with the Punishment Team. It began to waver and falter, weaving back and forth as it slowed down.

He gave it four more shots, and then the turn-on was on top of them.

Wanda waved her hand, and the Big Rig that should have hit her and Johnny near square on suddenly jerked to the left. Before the burning bones of the driver could yank it back the other way, it had crossed the entire road and slammed solidly into the stone drivewall, spinning and swinging its back end out of the way of the rest of them.

Dealer’s hands moved, and Cards were flicked away.

Number two hit an invisible ramp that became a Jack of Spades, and flew right over the Mick, smashing into the back of the first Big Rig solidly. Three and Four naturally jerked right and left to avoid the unseen ramp... and found there were two more Card-ramps waiting for them, Jacks of Clubs and Hearts. The Ramps sent them airborne, extending fully halfway over the road, and they went haplessly right over the edge of the railing and towards the dark, burning landscape below.

The last Big Rig was too late, and plowed onto the road behind them, smashing the end of Number Two out of the way as it strove to turn after them, smashing a few Chase cars flying as it pounded its way through the bottleneck.

Blade pumped three more shots into its engine, which exploded and sent the Big Rig careening over to the edge, which it rode up on and fell back sideways from, helpless and useless as it skidded to a sparking halt on its left side.

“Start mining!”