Story Two - The New Groove - 3

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'Any idea where they were heading?' I yelled to Markro over the buffeting wind, Reyna tucked inside my coat to keep her from flying off in the wind. He braked hard and swung the Zoomus around a tight bend, heading towards the highway as I had thought.

'Not a clue,' Markro replied, his teeth gritted. Riding shotgun behind him I couldn't actually tell that his teeth were gritted, but I had no doubt that this was exactly what he was doing. His feet dug into the side of the tank as we righted ourselves again, the engine back onto full throttle and hitting the main road up to the highway. 'But this is the general direction they were going, so I reckon they'll try to get out the Region.'

Swerving around the kars that seemed to be driving at so slow a speed that one would think they were placed there deliberately to annoy us, we powered down the main straight, the banked helix up to the raised highway up ahead. The black kar that had taken Villa and Siala was just about powering around into it, swerving a little with the other road users keeping visibly clear of it.

'Ah, shit,' Markro said, revving the Zoomus as much as he could and tucking down behind the screen.

'How many of them do you think she's taken out, do you think?' Reyna asked me from her position huddled against my chest.

'Just the one,' I said. 'She'll have the other one pinned with her foot to the back seat and she'll be wrestling with the driver now.'

'Villa'll have a bloody face as well,' Reyna responded, her outlook on the situation as chipper as always.

I nodded, keeping my head down as well and my gun in tight. I had the idea to shoot out the anti-grav generator at the bottom of the kar when we got close enough up behind it, hoping to send it sparking along the ground and into one of the highway barriers, but I didn't have my hopes too high. The whole thing had gone tits up and we were in a perpetual state of our most favourite situations; we were making it up as we went along, this time at a good 80mph.

Hitting the banked turn up onto the highway I ducked down into the seat, feeling my body pushed down onto the machine as our knees went down to the corner as Markro took it tight. I couldn't see that much past him, but what I could see was something I didn't like. As we came out onto the main highway there were now two kars exchanging gunfire, the kar we were after with blast holes and glass shattered from its windows, and a visibly less-damaged vehicle alongside it.

'They've got back-up,' Reyna said, 'how thoroughly un-sportsmanlike of them.'

We got in closer, Siala firing out towards the kar (of identical make and model, probably a trade deal of some kind) alongside her, visible only from the crimson hand wrapped around the trigger of the gun. I hadn't known her for that long, and even in our escape from the group of Red Rose people that had been after her initially I didn't know how much of her old shooting abilities she had retained from her time at Dirty Work. Apparently she had kept much more than I realised. Perhaps this kind of thing was something that just seeped into your blood, and no amount of shedding it would get it out again. Gunfire nowadays left metaphorical black powder on your heart as well as your hands.

'On the right of them,' I shout to Markro in front, 'I'll take out the window.'

Markro swerved from out behind a small family kar making an early morning start to somewhere or other, the grandparents most likely, and ended up on the far right of the highway. By the time we caught up with the small war up ahead of us the three vehicles would span most of the Lower-Bound side of the 17-36. As we sped past the red brick of a kar I saw the little faces of the entranced children peering out of the back windows. I gave a quick salute, or as much of one as I could, before we were past and up into the combat zone.

The kar that had come to aid our kidnapping friends had apparently noticed our entrance and our intentions, because the back window was broken and after Markro executed a quick left-right flick a blast just missed us and dug out a good sized chunk of the black tiles that made the road. I checked the 52 over quickly with a speedy glance and took it in my left hand. I aimed for the gap now in the back of the kar but couldn't get a good shot in. The reinforcements had ducked down out of view as soon as the barrel of the Alpha came in to view. Meanwhile the battle in the other kar was still raging on, and as we got closer I saw a quick glimpse of Siala's face pressed against the glass at the back of the kar, blood flowing down her cheek, before she spun and scraped an enemy hand with her right horn.

'I'm going through the back,' I yelled to Markro. I felt him stiffen as the mere idea of what I was suggesting went through his head, but he nodded, beginning to move into position at the rear-right of the kar. He knew I was a little more than mental, but then again this entire situation was. How we wouldn't be pulled in for questioning this time, having gotten away with it several times before, was beyond me. Grasslea's power and influence only had so much scope, and as these were unknown targets, we couldn't use the Red Rose excuse. And besides, it was all caught up with someone we had framed for an awful lot of carnage and, as far as we knew, was still wanted by the police for the misdemeanours described before in the first volume of my diary. We were flying by the seat of our pants now, taking things as they came and if we were to be put inside a cell or two for damages to government property sustained in a high speed pursuit and subsequent gunfight, then so be it.

And so it was that I put my gun hand down to the side of the Zoomus to have something to hold onto, the rear boot-holds not enough, and passed Reyna to Markro with my right hand.

'Don't pass me around like a damn pet,' she cried in protest, but did nothing about being tucked away in Markro's coat.

'You love it really,' I said as I fired a quick shot through the back of the kar as two hoods began to rise up with guns in hand. 'Get in closer Markro.'

Markro did as I asked, the two vehicles now inches from one another. I slowly took my right foot out of its hold and stood up on the Zoomus. I could see the driver of the kar looking at us, saw his fingers twitch as he prepared to turn into us and shake me off to a quick and messy death, sprawled across the highway with my brains scattered like old magazine leaves in dusty alleys.

'Hold on,' I yelled, kicking off the Zoomus and launching myself at the back of the black kar. The Zoomus went shooting off to the right, Markro's leg slamming against the barrier wall of energy that kicked up as they hit into it. The kar came towards me, both as I flung myself at it and secondly due to the driver turning into where the Zoomus was before to anticipate my action. I reached out with both arms and hooked one around the left pillar, body flying off past my hands and legs dangling in the air towards Siala's kar. Shards of broken glass still in place in the window frame dug into my arm and I swore as I felt one of them dig deep enough to scrap against the bone. Blood erupted from my arm and an ungodly amount of pain and excruciating agony split my skull as I tried desperately to cling on.

As the momentum from the swing died down my feet came back around to me, and I managed to throw my right arm (the arm with the fragment of glass against the bone) to the other side of the frame. A black hood popped up, gun about to smash down on my hand and send me down the road. A quick flick of the wrist from my other hand brought the 52 into a position so that when I fired, it was near enough to his head to cause him to hesitate. With a quick grunt despite the pain, I curled my back and brought my legs in tight, my shoes going against the boot of the kar. Heaving for all I was worth, I threw my torso into the kar, swinging an arm to knock out the second hood on my left.

More glass dug into my belly, and I could feel blood running down there as the rain had done when I was stood on the rooftop. The momentum from the heave to get my body in brought my legs in to follow, and I ended up with my head to the rear of the kar with my feet kicking against the roof. I was looking at the world upside down, but I had my senses and lunch enough to swing a kick out to the left and hit the one guy in the side of the head. A swift punch to the right knocked the gun out of his hand as he brought it to the side of my head. Chaos was the order of the day here. I couldn't let them get a clear shot at me.

To my right, the door opened in the confusion, and the hood that was there was thrown halfway out of it, his head running millimetres off the ground. I felt a punch go into my head, and I heard the sickening crunch of something breaking in there. I took a large quick gasp to keep air to my head as I shifted to the side, putting my feet to the left and my head on the back of the legs of the man hanging out of the door. Left hand still somehow managing to keep a hold of the gun, I grabbed onto the seatbelt on my right and shoved for all I was worth. Black hood in the right seat got his arms slammed and pinned to the window, whilst I felt the other guy go an inch closer to the ground. The blood splattered back up into the back of my head as his face began to grind down like it was going against a sand belt. There were still vocal chords for him to scream, but it wasn't that much of a scream, and more of just an inhuman wailing and screeching like some exotic animal you find in the rich markets of Region 15.

I straightened myself up, shooting out the window on the right hand side. The glass shattered and his arms went through it, along with my feet which were quickly retracted. At my back the man without a face finally had his legs follow his torso out of the kar and I never saw anything of him again aside from the blood and brains in my hair.

The other guy in the back had got his act together, apparently unfeeling towards his comrade whose remains were rapidly fading away behind us. He threw himself over me, intending to push me out of the door along with his friend. He knocked the 52 out of my hand finally and began raining down the punches as his feet scrabbled for purchase. I tasted the blood in my mouth as I brought my knee upward and knocked the wind out of him.

Seeing stars I sat upright in my seat, spitting copper through cracked teeth. I threw myself into the gap between the two seats in the front, where the driver was trying to both drive and open the glove box to get a new weapon. I slammed his arm down under my bodyweight and slammed one of the shifters out of place. The kar suddenly stalled at 85mph, and we were all thrown forward. I found myself a missile, nothing but a passenger as I hurtled through the tight gap between the seats, twisting in midflight to head into the windscreen feet first. The driver hadn't been so lucky, and had been ripped out of his seat and smashed his skull into the windscreen a split second earlier, glass spraying the highway once again. My feet went through, my legs following soon after.

On instinct alone I threw my hands out, clinging onto the front of the kar and finding myself in a reverse position to the one I had been in to enter the kar with. Siala's vehicle sped past us, waving and swerving frantically, apparently in a mad tussle with the driver. Our own kar was beginning to swerve as there was nobody to slow the vehicle down. My hands were nothing more than ragged, bleeding lumps of meat, and they were beginning to let go.

Out of the corner of my eye as I was beginning to black out, I saw the driver's side door blast off its hinges and rip away from the body, hitting the energy barrier and spark off down the road. I saw the figure of Markro, who had somehow managed to avoid the carnage and the flying door, leap into the kar and grab the wheel, bringing the vehicle into a straight line again. Now at a controlled pace and with the kar at a much slower speed, I found the strength in me somewhere, (a cocktail of adrenaline and the latent fury of the new groove) to pull myself back into the kar, where the second hood was trying to muscle his way into the front of the kar and throw Markro out, who was lying over the body of the driver with his feet out in the open, holding on by his sheer will to the steering wheel to stop him flying away to follow the first hood.

His mistake came in not recognising the figure of a very pissed off Harpi who emerged from around Markro's neck and flew at the face of the second hood with all the fury and anger of a resident Androssian. Talons raked and claws slashed and the chiselled jaw of the second black hood was lacerated to within an inch of its life. Somehow I reached through the gap and grabbed onto his hood and pulled him towards the open door on the left, trying to throw him out of it. His hand went out for the passenger's headrest, blood pouring everywhere and painting the black interior scarlet.

Reyna went for his eyes. His hands went up as the jelly soaked her talons, and I pulled for all I was worth. He went out of the kar and rolled a few times before bouncing into the air like a rag doll and disintegrating in the air. The barrier shimmered as arms and blood splattered into it.

I turned and grabbed onto one of Markro's arms, helping to pull him fully inside the kar, whereupon he managed to have enough control of the kar to get it around the corner that was coming up to meet up still at a grand 50mph.

'You ok?' he asked sourly as he floored the accelerator again on after Siala's kar, which had its right door burst open at that moment halfway around the corner.

'Fuck off,' I told him as I sat in that kar, beginning to pass out, blood pouring from almost every possible cut and wound on my body. I tried to hold on, I really did, but the blood loss was beginning to catch up with me, and the last thing I remember of it all was Reyna looking over me and trying to rip bits of my shirt off to stem the bleeding. After that, for the next twenty four hours, everything for me was a black darker than a Celestrian night.

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