“Stick to the plan!” I shouted, pulling my arm back.
Green light! Green light!
I hurled the banger sphere through the windshield, which shattered into pieces. The sphere continued its forward trajectory as our vision was suddenly kind of clear. In the distance, a hailstone the size of a two-story house smashed into the ground between the two roads.
At the same moment, Donut tensed, about to fire, but she paused.
She paused because a long tanklike tube had just popped out the side of the team Sparkles bush, and it was pointed directly at the muscle car right in front of us.
“Get down!” I shouted.
I didn’t duck in time. Flames burst from the turret as they fired directly into the Chevy Bel Air. Instead of spinning away, the car, miraculously, went straight up as if it were a rocket.
“Gah,” I shouted.
Donut sputtered, her face covered with gelatin. Pieces of Mastermind the elemental had exploded all over her.
Kablam!The burning Chevy Bel Air landed loudly to the left of us, smashing into the ditch, burning furiously.
“That’s right!” Dwight shrieked. The tank cannon was peeled back like in a cartoon. It must’ve been a onetime-use weapon. Or, more likely, a once-a-race weapon. “How’s that for girlie? Gargle my unicorn balls, you translucent bitch!”
And then the bush just took off, moving significantly faster than it had the last time.
The only ones left on the track were us and the bugbears.
Team six, Girth the Trouble, has been eliminated due to the destruction of their vehicle. Seven teams remain in the current heat.
Next to us, the song “Black and White” by Three Dog Night blared from the bugbear van. I recognized it because my mom had loved that song, and there was a strange, surreal moment where I just sat there listening, remembering my mom holdingme and dancing while she sang to me. The reverie was broken by yet another massive hailstone crashing against a distant hill. Jasha gave me an apologetic shrug, and the bugbears zoomed off, leaving us sitting alone at the start line.
[ 19 ]
“Don’t turnwhen you look left and right,” I said as we bumped up the hill. “It’s okay. You’re good. They’re stopped up ahead. I see them.”
“Goodness, Bucket Boy,” Donut said, talking over the sound of the pouring rain, “you don’t have to avoid everything in the road if it’s tiny!”
Crash!A hill to our left exploded from the strike of a massive hailstone.
Donut’sShieldspell was strong enough to keep us mostly safe, but when she had it large enough to protect the entire truck, it wasn’t as powerful. The massive chunks seemed to be mostly hitting off the track. Smaller but still big shards rained down on the road, covering the asphalt and pinging off the shield. The truck had already slid once as we crested a small hill, which freaked out Bucket Boy, and now he was moving at a snail’s pace.
Ahead, I could see the large armored-tank thing from team One Fine Pig and the convertible car from the Lady Dominators parked at the top of the next peak. Several figures were out of their vehicles, staring at something I couldn’t yet see.
The Lady Dominators’ car appeared to be a late-60s Pontiac GTO convertible painted in a deep burgundy. Corcunda the half-mantaur remained in the back of the two-door car, hanging out the side like he was asleep.
As we expected, there was a wide shield around the car that was clearly visible as the rain and hail fell around it.
The other vehicle from team One Fine Pig was like a mix between a Hummer and a bank’s armored truck. It appeared it might have been of Russian origin based on the boxy utility of the thing. This truck also had a shield around it, but it was a different type of shield, shaped like a cube. It, too, kept the rain and hail from hitting it.
We had to be extra careful here. Yes, we needed to work together to fight whatever they were looking at, but they could just as easily blow our truck off the road, eliminating us. And if the two womantaurs knew what we’d been planning, them attacking us was likely.
“We should have gotten a better shield,” I muttered as we pulled up. That would be our priority after this race. “Pull up right next to the convertible car. Do it slow. I can see what type of shield they have, and it looks like the ones we used on the last floor. It’ll protect us from the hail, too.”
“Carl, Carl, look!” Donut suddenly shouted, pointing at the figures. There were five of them. Well, four and an animal of some sort. “Is that a Bautista? And look at the bull guy. Wow. He looks like someone from those weird lady porn books Miss Beatrice was always reading.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is a Tigran.” This guy was significantly buffer than Bautista, which was saying a lot.
“It looks like a gathering from backstage at the Penis Parade,” Donut said. “Everybody is so muscly. Except the creature. My goodness, is that just a regular pig?” She scoffed. “One Fine Pig indeed.”
We pulled to a stop right next to the GTO. I knew from experience the shield guarding the car only stopped things moving fast, so we pulled up slow. This close, we’d also get protection from the hail.