Statyck in Sound -FANFIC-

‘Lani? There’s something up with my car.’

‘All the read-outs look fine, Nolo – what’s the problem?’

‘Someone’s messed up my stereo! All my music’s been changed!’

Lani covered her mouth as she laughed. ‘That’s terrible, but maybe you should just concentrate on driving. How’s that for an idea?’

‘Can’t drive with no tunes,’ Nolo grumbled over the comm.

Up in the control room, Lani shook her head and sighed. Of all the problems the racers encountered in the realms, she would have thought that loss of music was a fairly minor one. But it was always the one that they complained about first.

The current race was playing out on the big monitors throughout the acceledrome. Apart from Lani and Dr Tezla, there was one extra person in the control room that afternoon – Rai Statyck, one of the Metal Maniacs. She sat with her purple New Rock boots resting on top of a control panel, which Lani had repeated asked her to not do. Rai’s long brown hair was tied up out of the way on top of her head, because she had expected to be racing that day. Unfortunately, Dr Tezla had decided not to select her to go into the Fog Realm, and now she was sulking around the control room and generally getting in the way.

As she heard Nolo complaining, Rai smiled and leaned forward so that she could speak into the comm. ‘Someone’s changed your playlists, Nolo?’ she laughed. ‘Now who on earth would do something like that?’

There was a pause, and then Nolo’s irate voice came through. ‘What did you do to my stereo, you Maniac?’ he demanded.

Rai laughed again. ‘What? You don’t like Jack Johnson?’

‘Acoustic country music is NOT Teku!!’

‘You need to chill out more often,’ Rai grinned. ‘Kick back, relax, enjoy. You shouldn’t just listen to the same old stuff over and over again…’ She could hear the sound of the pleasant acoustic music coming through the comm. ‘Based on your smile, I’m betting all of this might be over soon…’

Nolo’s voice cut over it. ‘GAH, someone make it stop! It won’t turn off!!’ They could hear the sound of his punching the controls of his stereo.

Lani sighed. ‘That probably wasn’t so smart, Rai. Nolo’ll kill you for touching his car.’

‘Probably not so smart,’ Rai agreed. ‘Funny though.’

The racers out in the realm were having more problems than just some random girl altering all their playlists. The realm was filled with thick fog that brought visibility down to only ten or fifteen feet, meaning that most of the time they were practically driving blind. The sensible course of action would have been for them to drop their speed right down, but obviously this was not what the racers had done.

Kurt was currently leading the race, relying on the speed on his reactions to deal with the sudden curves and obstacles that came looming out of the fog. Wylde was right behind him, using the taillights of Kurt’s Battle Spec in front of him as guide to show which way the track was going. As usual, the two brothers were concentrating at lot more on each other than on the race.

Further back, another feud was also ongoing, as Nolo had come close to running Tork off the road. Watching Tork’s car Hollowback going into a spin had more than compensated for Rai screwing up his music, and now Nolo was fast gaining on the leaders. Behind Tork, Pork Chop was cheerfully bringing up the rear in Old Smokey. He’d already barged four drone cars off the track, and as far as he was concerned that was much more important than winning. More fun too.

The fog didn’t seem to be affecting the drones as much as the racers, and Lani had speculated that maybe the drones had some kind of radar fitted to their cars which enabled them to find their way easily in the low visibility. Whatever it was, Tork for one was getting pretty sick of the black cars appearing out of nowhere and constantly attempting to ram into the back of him.

Almost as soon as he thought it, a drone car came racing out of the fog right behind him. Tork caught a brief glimpse of the car in his rear view mirror.

‘I’ve got drone trouble –‘ he reported, an instant before the black car ploughed into the back of his own. Tork swerved across the road, his car fishtailing as the drone pushed him off his line. He fought with the wheel in a vain attempt to correct the skid.

‘Tork!’ Lani yelled. She watched the monitor helplessly as Hollowback came off the road and bounced heavily over the rough ground on the other side.

‘Get out of there!’ Rai was bouncing on her seat, her hand hovering over an imaginary EDR button.

The two girls were able to do nothing but watch as Hollowback hit the ground and was thrown into the air again, turning over and coming down hard on its roof. It seemed like there was an eternity of scraping metal before the car finally came to rest. Rai kept glancing up at the portal, expecting Tork to hit the EDR and come out of it at any moment. He did not appear though.

‘Tork!’ Lani yelled again. ‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine,’ a voice answered. ‘Just a little… upside down… at the moment.’

Rai had been chewing the knuckles of her left hand, and had to remove them before she could talk again. ‘Why didn’t you autopoof, Tork?’ she asked breathlessly.

Lani looked at her. ‘Why didn’t he WHAT?’

‘He could have been seriously hurt! Why didn’t he autopoof out of there??’

‘Autopoof?’

Rai flapped her hands around her head. ‘Y’know, that button! The one that automatically poofs us out of there!’

‘The EDR?’

‘Yeah, the autopoofer!’

‘Sometimes you worry me, Rai.’

‘GAH!!’ Rai flapped her hands again.

In the realm, Tork was still upside down. He unclipped his seatbeat will difficulty and dropped onto his head. ‘Son of a…’ he complained, attempting to un-invert himself.

PARMP PARMP

‘Huh?’

PAARRRRMP PARMMMP PAAAAARRRRRMMMMPPPP

Awkwardly, Tork turned around so that he could see out of the side window. There was a vehicle approaching – a very large vehicle travelling at high speed. For one heart-stopping moment, Tork thought it was a sweeper, but then he heard Pork Chop’s voice coming over the comm.

‘YEAH, PORK CHOP!! Here comes the cavalry, oh fearless and upside-down leader!’

‘Thank you for calling attention to it…’

‘Hey, you want a hand or not?’ Without waiting for an answer, Pork Chop flipped a switch and a metal plow unfolded from the front of his rig. ‘Hold tight, buddy – Pork Chop’ll set you straight!’ He gunned the engine and drove into Tork’s car, catching it underneath and on the left side, flipping it back over in an almost graceful movement.

Tork quickly regretted having taken his belt off too soon, as he landed on his head for the second time in as many minutes. Swearing quietly to himself, he got back into the drivers seat, thankful that his stupid pink helmet had cushioned most of the impact. ‘Appreciate that, Pork Chop,’ he said into the comm.

‘Happy to help!’

Tork restarted the engine, which had automatically cut out when he’d been thrown into the air. From the way his car rattled as he reversed back onto the track, he guessed that a few things had been jolted loose, but repairs would have to wait until he got himself back through the portal. For the moment, he had a race to finish. Preferably not in last place.

The girls in the control room were both greatly relieved to see Tork back on the road, although Rai was still mad at him for scaring her like that and not using his EDR. Lani had noticed that Rai tended to get far too overexcited watching the races she wasn’t taking part in, frequently squeaking and hiding behind her hands whenever any of her teammates had a particularly close call. She was an entertainment all by herself.

‘Eeeeeeeek!!’ Rai suddenly squealed, covering her face for the fifth time since her friends had entered the realm. ‘Wylde, look out for the DRONNNNNNNNEEEESSS!!!’

On the track, Wylde had already seen the drone car coming up fast behind him, and Rai’s panicky little squeak did nothing but make him smile. Sometimes he wondered how such an excitable little girl had become a Metal Maniac. She could be as cool as fish when it was her who was racing, but if any of her teammates were in trouble…

Wylde swerved and easily dodged the drone as it raced forward on a collision course. It drew level with him and Wylde swung Spinebuster back, smashing into the side of the black car. The drone was shunted to the side of the track but kept control and began to ease past him. That annoyed Wylde even more and he slammed against the car again, this time with more force.

The drone activated its accelecharger and immediately seemed to shrink to a fraction of its normal width. It accelerated and zipped past Wylde, who almost drove straight off the edge of the track. The man swore loudly and pounded his steering wheel in frustration.

His anger turned to laughter a moment later when the drone deactivated its accelecharger just in time to run straight into the back of Kurt’s car. Kurt had obviously had been concentrating on the road ahead at that moment rather than looking in his mirror, and the attack took him completely by surprise. The drone pushed forward, putting Kurt into a skid. Unfortunately, they were both going too fast to be able to get out of it, and Battle Spec flipped, taking the drone with it.

The two cars crashed back down together, blocking half of the track with wrecked metal.

Laughing, Wylde sped around the wreckage. ‘So long, big brother!’ he yelled as he passed.

Kurt opened his eyes and was surprised to find that he was somehow still the right way up. His car had flipped over in the air in a perfect three-sixty and landed facing the wrong way but still on its wheels. The drone car had fared worse and was not only upside down, but half on top of Battle Spec. Through his tinted windshield Kurt could clearly see that the driver’s seat of the other car was empty. The drone must have been thrown out during the spin…

Something large and heavy dropped onto the top of his car. ‘AUGH!’ Kurt yelled, realising that the black shape was the missing drone. It had lost its car but now it was coming after him instead.

Kurt slammed his car into reverse and pulled back so fast that his wheels spun. He did a handbrake turn, hoping that the resulting spin would throw the drone off, but it dug its metal fingers in and refused to let go. Over the comm he heard his brother laughing.

‘Yeah, Wylde wins! WYLDE WINS!! How d’ya like that, losers? YEAH!!’

‘You’ve not won yet, Markie.’ Kurt put his car back in gear and put his foot down hard. The drone still clung to his roof, half obscuring his view of the track ahead, but Kurt didn’t care. His brother wasn’t that far ahead of him – he could still catch up.

‘YEAH! How does losing feel, you… huh?’ Wylde glanced behind himself and saw Kurt’s car right behind him and closing the distance fast. ‘No way!’

‘YES WAY!!!’ Kurt drew up right behind Wylde and moved to pass him. Angrily, Wylde swerved into his path, nearly causing another collision. Kurt pulled back and then tried to go round the other way. Again his brother blocked him. The drone still clinging to the top of Kurt’s car had let go with one hand and was busy trying to punch a hole through his roof. Kurt turned on his megabass in an attempt to dislodge the drone, but it kept hanging on.

Up ahead, the fog abruptly cleared and the two racers realised that the portal was right in front of them.

‘Too late, I WIN!!’ Triumphantly, Wylde hit the last of his nitrox booster and came off the ramp and into the portal at nearly three hundred miles an hour.

‘Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’ Spinebuster hit the ground on the other side and Wylde spun it round twice in sheer exuberance. ‘I win, I win, I win!’ he sang happily, completely forgetting for a moment his tough guy attitude. An accelecharger popped into view beside him and he snatched it out of the air. Holding it above his head he jumped out of his car just in time to see Kurt come through the portal and skid to a halt nearby.

‘You LOSE!’ Wylde yelled at him. ‘Who’s the big brother now… AUGH!’

As he’d walked towards Kurt’s car he had completely failed to notice that there was a drone still attached to it. The drone had not been shaken off by either the journey through the portal nor the sudden stop in the middle of the workshop, and it had immediately gone back to trying to punch a hole through the top of Battle Spec.

Up in the control room, Lani stared open-mouthed at the scene below. ‘Kurt!’ she yelled. ‘You moron, you brought back a drone!’

‘Thank you, Miss States-The-Obvious,’ Kurt grated, attempting to escape from his car before the drone destroyed it.

Wylde grabbed a wrench that was lying on the floor and ran at the drone. He swung the wrench and hit the machine hard around its head, but apart from making a sizeable dent the blow did little else apart from attract the drone’s attention. It swung round towards him, letting go of Battle Spec and unfolding itself onto the ground. It loomed up above Wylde, who hefted the wrench.

‘You wanna beat up my brother?’ he asked with a snarl. ‘You’ll have to wait till I’m done with him first.’

The drone seemed to take that as a challenge as it advanced on him.

The portal suddenly flared as Synkro came through it at high speed. Nolo wasn’t expecting anyone to be standing in the middle of the landing area, and when he saw someone there he swerved quickly out of the way. Admittedly, if he’d realised that it was one of the Maniacs he probably wouldn’t have tried so hard to avoid them.

Synkro left twin tracks of rubber across the smooth floor as it slid straight into the drone, knocking it into a nearby pile of barrels.

Nolo climbed out of his car, leaving the engine running. Pleasant acoustic music was still playing from Synkro’s speakers at a less than acoustic volume. ‘What is THAT doing here?’ he demanded.

‘It came back through the portal with us,’ Kurt explained hurriedly.

‘Which idiot did that?’

Wylde grinned. ‘I’ll give you one guess. And why is your car playing Jack Johnson?’

‘Shut up,’ Kurt and Nolo said in unison.

With a grinding of metal and hydraulics, the drone hauled itself out of the pile of barrels. It didn’t seem particularly happy about having been shunted across the room. Monkey, who had been working underneath one of the other cars, came running over to see what was going on and then decided he would have preferred staying underneath the car. The drone looked at the four humans in front of it, but instead of attacking again it seemed to have a different plan.

It turned around and started climbing the wall behind it, headed for the large window of the control room.

‘EEEEEEK, climbing drone climbing drone!!!’ Rai backed away quickly from the window.

‘Run!’ ordered Dr Tezla, already escaping through the back door as fast as his mechanical suit would carry him.

Rai grabbed the chair that she had been sitting on. As the drone came bursting through the window in a shower of glass fragments, she waved the chair threateningly at it.

‘BAD DRONE! HIT YOU WITH A CHAIR!!’

The drone seemed utterly unimpressed by the small girl in the big boots waving a chair at it. It swatted the chair out of her hands and grabbed hold of the front of her t-shirt, lifting her off the ground.

‘EEEEE, BAD DRONE! PUT ME DOWN!!’ Rai kicked the machine in the chest with her giant boots. ‘Ow! Bad drone made of extremely hard metal! PUT ME DOWN!!’

Lani, seeing that the drone was between her and the door, decided to hide under a desk instead.

The drone held Rai at arm’s length, watching with robotic disinterest as she flailed about. Then he turned and threw her out through the broken window.

‘EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!’

Rai went flying through the air high over the heads of the other racers, and hit the huge inflatable crash cushion at the far side of the workshop.

‘Rai!’ Wylde ran over and almost but not quite managed to catch her as she slid down the cushion and landed on the ground. ‘Are you alright?’

‘Ohhh… I fell on my bottom…’

‘Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone saw.’

‘Yay, I’m still cool!’

From the control room there was the sound of crashing metal.

‘What’s it doing?’ Nolo asked, looking worried.

‘It’s trashing the control room!’ Kurt was busy looking for something to hit the drone with. ‘We’ve gotta stop it before –‘

A piercingly loud siren began to sound throughout the building. Every head turned at once to the portal at the centre of the Wheel of Power.

Rai was back on her feet. ‘Augh, what’s that noise, that’s not a good noise!’

‘It’s shut off the power! The portal’s gonna close!’

‘THAT’S NOT GOOD!’ Rai ran to Spinebuster and dived through the window to get at the communicator. ‘Everyone out of the pool!’ she yelled, hitting the buttons at random.

Tork’s voice came through first. ‘What?’

‘The portal’s closing! It’s making that bad noise that it makes when bad things are happening! You’ve gotta get out of there RIGHT NOW!!’

‘But –‘

‘Noooooooo, get out NOW! Use the autopoofer!’

‘Autopoofer?’

Rai mentally flapped her hands since she didn’t have time or space to do it for real. ‘The EDR, you spanner! Use the EDR!’

Tork didn’t reply, but a second later there was a flare of light and he came flying out of the portal at about a hundred miles an hour, without his car. He hit the crash cushion and slid down it, his face livid. As soon as he hit the ground he was after Rai.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he demanded. ‘You make me lose my car and you call me a spanner –’

Rai was still lying half-in and half-out of Spinebuster with her legs sticking out of the window. She ignored him and pressed the comm button again. ‘Who’s still in there?’ she asked. ‘Pork Chop? You in there?’

‘Ten-Four, Big Momma, I’m still here,’ came the reply.

‘Well, quit being there! Be out here instead! Is anyone else there?’

‘That’s a negative,’ Pork Chop rumbled. ‘I’m the only one. And I’m a-coming out, but I ain’t leaving Ol’ Smokey behind.’

‘Pork Chop, the portal is closing RIGHT NOW! Don’t make me come in there after you!’

Pork Chop just laughed.

‘Gah!’ Rai took her finger off the comm button. ‘Someone pull me out of this stupid car.’

Wylde grabbed her legs and pulled her out. The siren was getting louder and everyone was watching the portal nervously. The light seemed to be wavering, as if it were going to close at any moment. Up in the control room the drone was still crashing about and causing destruction.

Rai’s eye’s suddenly went wide. ‘EEEEEEE, Lani’s still up there!’

‘What??’ It was Monkey that moved first, running to below the broken window. ‘Lani!’ he yelled, but got no answer. He was still holding the large wrench in his hand, and threw it upwards through the window as hard as he could. He was rewarded by a loud CLANG. ‘Leave her alone!’ he yelled.

The sounds of destruction abruptly ceased, and then the drone launched itself out of the window. It dropped straight down and landed right where Monkey had been standing about a half second before. It held a large piece of damaged control panel in its metal hand.

‘Nicely done, Monkey,’ Wylde growled at him.

‘Hee… yeah, I’m good like that.’

Wylde hefted his own wrench. ‘Okay Maniacs,’ he said. ‘Let’s show this drone how a real fight is done.’

‘Ooooh, I wanna hit him!’ Rai said happily. She grabbed another tool off the floor. ‘HIT YOU WITH A… what is this?’

‘It’s a spanner,’ Monkey supplied.

‘You’re a spanner.’

Tork pretended that he couldn’t hear the kiddies arguing and instead advanced on the drone. He didn’t have a weapon but he figured he could hit the machine hard enough with his fists to at least cause a few dents.

The drone didn’t appear to be ready to back down from the fight. It flexed its robotic arms and waited for the first human to get within its range.

PARRRMP PARRRRMPPPP

Heads went up. ‘What the…?’ someone asked.

PARRRRMMMP PARRMP PAAAAAARRRRMPPPPP

The Wheel of Power was starting to spin and close off the portal to the fog realm forever when suddenly a huge shape came piling out of it.

‘Yeeeee-HAWWW!!’ Pork Chop yelled as Ol’ Smokey hit the ground hard enough to shake the entire building.

‘RUN AWAY!’ yelled several people at once as they dived for cover.

The sixteen wheels of the big rig all locked at once as the brakes were jammed on. It slid sideways across the room, Pork Chop grinning and looking utterly unconcerned about what was happening.

The drone had only just turned around when the rig struck it and smashed it into a hundred separate pieces.

‘Ha!’ Pork Chop finally got the rig stationary and leaned out of the cab window. ‘Told you I’d get Ol’ Smokey out of there! Now, what’s the big emergency going on here?’

Behind one of the piles of barrels, Rai seemed to be on the bottom of a large pile of very large people. ‘Someone else tell him,’ she groaned. ‘And whoever’s sitting on my spleen, please get off it.’

‘First apologise for calling me a spanner,’ Tork suggested.