Imperator Rage swore violently, “ACE! Buzzards!”

Down below, Ace froze, a length of thick tubing around his shoulders. Buzzards never came in this far. Never. He grabbed the hose where it connected to the fuel-pod and twisted it off, flinging the coil onto the tanker. With a near-heroic leap, he pushed himself up onto the tanker and rolled the hose through the hatch, shouting down into it, “Ladies, make the straw as long as you can,” with a half-distracted glance out to the left, he added, “Also, please ignore the screaming and shooting. I'll deal with it.”

One of the five wives of the Immortal frowned, but she grabbed the hose in her white hooves, green magic pulling a patch-kit off the wall, “Come on Silver, give me a hoof with this hose.” The two of them were the only ones with even rudimentary repair skills, a side effect of being born in Gas-town.

The rig swerved slightly, dodging a thunderstick thrown by a Griffon on a car with as many spikes as a hedgehog. Rage knew that it was an exact count too. The Buzzards were far too proud to miscount such a thing. And it was terrifying, knowing how much effort they put into something almost no other pony would care about, and knowing they put that much into everything they did. It made her almost half delighted to hear the roar of Citadel buggies. Almost.

–
Rumble felt his buggy shudder as it left the ground, lifted by a berm on one side, “MASH! LEFT!” The stallion in the Lancer's perch grabbed the semaphore post and swung out, keeping the vehicle on two wheels when it landed. The bike behind them wasn't as lucky, slamming into a pit trap.

Mash swore he could hear the squelch of the rider on the spikes as he saw the whitewashed stallion slide into the pit, streaked with blood, “WITNESS!” A quick swing and he was back in the perch, howling at the Buzzards, and at the Rig. His hooves slid onto a pair of thundersticks and swiftly whipped them at the spike covered vehicles, blasting them apart.

Rumble twisted the wheel, sliding the buggy sideways and darting under the tanker as he spotted a Buzzard Rig coming up on the other side, “MASH! DECK DOWN!”

Brown fur hit metal plating as the Rig itself tore off the semaphore posts and bent the rack holding Rumble's blood-bag. The instant the buggy was clear, Mash was rising to his hooves, flinging another thunderstick at the windshield of the Buzzard vehicle. A spinning saw-blade just barely cleared the blood-bag, and Rumble called out, “Get the blood-bag in your perch!”

The blood-bag barely struggled as he was pulled back, either too weak, or knowing that it wasn't safe yet to move. “Rumble, Witness me.” It wasn't a request, Mash suspected this would kill him, but Valhalla would be waiting. Last thunderstick, he climbed onto the hood and waited for the blade to sweep back before launching himself at the blown out glass. Fragments of sharp silicate and metal tore his fur and flesh as he slammed the detonator cap into the driver's lap. His world became fire as he was thrown clear, landing roughly on another buggy.

“Button Mash. What an honor to have you here. On my buggy.”

“Little Pip,” the other stallion was pale, with the exception of exactly five dark brown spots that Mash had mistaken for grease stains at first. Still, Pip was one of the greatest Lancers still alive. He had claim to being a Three-quarter life, and was rather vicious about it to some, acting like an old pirate from the stories of the endless sea. Mash knocked on the roof of the buggy, this one built on the chassis of an old truck, “Twist, get me back to Rumble!”

“Thertinly,” Peppermint Twist was one of the odd Warcolts, being a filly. Most fillies either went the route of Organic Mechanic, Wife, or if they were useless as either, Blood-bag. But Twist was the only filly Mash knew who could actually take him in a fight. Not that he would ever admit it.

Her buggy slid up beside Rumble's, and Mash prepared to leap when he saw, much to his disappointment, that the weather-pegasi were VERY wrong. The storm had to be two hundred and fifty klicks wide, that was greater than the distance from the Citadel to the Bullet-Farm. Or the span from the Farm to Gas-town. Both of which he could see being eaten by the sand whirling around. He launched, screaming, “GET TO COVER!”

Rumble, of course, took that literally, crashing the buggy underneath the Rig. It was close, uncomfortably so for any length of time, because he could feel the heat of the engine reflected off the metal barrel. Behind him, he could feel the roar of another engine tucked under the rig. Twist, showing off. The wind roared angrily, ripping at the sand beneath him, and everything went black for Mash as the rig dipped, slamming the tanker into him.

–
Ace curled through the sunroof of the Rig and pulled it shut behind him, face covered in a leather mask and goggles, “Boss, are you sure the Rig is heavy enough?”

He saw her muzzle twist up in a grin under the bandanna as her talon stroked the stuffed rabbit, “Of course. Angel's a buckin' heavy beastie. Aren't you, honey...”

She wasn't kami-krazy. That was what Ace told himself every time he saw his Imperator talking to that stuffed rabbit, or to the Rig. He wasn't sure which. All he knew was that at some point in her past she had lost something, and that rabbit was all that was left. If she died, he would personally burn the wheel, rather than pass it down to the next colt looking to drive.

He almost panicked when she let the brakes out, stopping the Rig in the whirling sand, and to the resounding echo of twisting metal behind him. He hoped it wasn't the tanker buckling, but couldn't see past the back window to know for sure.

Author's Note

That's two wrecked cars in one.